Did I miss Happy hour?

@PM2Ring Yup.

@rene are you not happy?

@Luuklag If it had gone through there's the approved History, which includes a few even worse than that, like this one: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/359691/…

@JourneymanGeek I was happy during my sleep.

Were you?

Do shadows dream of black sheep?

Do shadow wizards dream of black magic sheep?

@JourneymanGeek yup, without shadow of doubt.

:D

@JourneymanGeek sheep in a ship

Sailing towards the sunset.

Was the ship sheep shape? or sheep shaped?

The sheep ship had lots of chaps on it.

cheap chaps?

No, my dreams aren't cheap! :P

Only premium products.

Cake, anyone?

THE CAKE IS A PIE!

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating Lemon meringue?

@JourneymanGeek I am happy. After a long time I contributed an answer again on SO proper. Basically because I was amazed I still had a box with a legit VS2008 installed ... (although the Compact Framework power toys didn't survive the Win10 upgrade)

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating yep, send the cake over. I'll have it.

→ 23 messages moved to Chimney

@JourneymanGeek perhaps!

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog with vanilla, yes, they were in private baking lesson, instead of a whole week of "summer day camp" with baking in Passover, to which we're not allowing them to go due to COVID risk - it's about 20 stranger kids, without vaccines, different places... so we're being careful. They were so sad when we decided it, that wife asked the organizer if she can arrange private one day session. And she could. :)

@rene you.... answered.... a question.... on.... SO?!?!?!

:P

@rene actually there's still one left, out of the four they made. It's sitting in a box in the fridge, waiting.

They also made chocolate cupcakes, there were 6 (smaller in size) and all gone. ;)

!!/cupcake for @Ollie

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating No such command 'cupcake'.

:(

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating don't let the parrot hear it that you didn't share the chocolate ... ;)

Too late!!!

Oops ...

lol parrot always watching from above! :P

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating watching. plotting...

@JourneymanGeek nah the cake/pie doesn't plot. :D

Or so you think

and one day...

you will need to answer the question..

CAKE... OR DEATH!

@JourneymanGeek Right now, I'm just being a chicken. Just heard the coworker got covid at the dentist and seriously considering just cancelling my appointment next Wednesday.

:(

Plot twist: there are G5 chips hidden inside the pie... and once consumed, send the data to remote server...

G5? PPC?

as opposed to 5G?

oh

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating the data might be someone...sh**

You know what.. yes! It's very special. :D

My conspiracy theories aren't simple. ;)

@JourneymanGeek no, the chip will self destruct before the digestion is completed.

I suspect that's NAA but innocent

@JourneymanGeek skin care in mathematics??

Its an example of a contrived question

You clearly escaped acedemia a very long time ago,

@Tinkeringbell How do they know they got it at the dentist? Dentists in the UK are paranoid about Covid. They disinfect everywhere between patients. As a result they are seeing far fewer patients than normal because of the time taken. In some cases they have to wait 30 min before cleaning to allow any airborne droplets to settle and then sterilise. So an hour between patients.

@DavidPostill It's the only connection they have? Wednesday he was at the dentist, Saturday he was ill... and he hasn't been any other places or met any other people. I know dentists are supposed to be paranoid here too, but it's concerning...

meh, can be from anyone, many people have no symptoms at all.

What part about 'Hasn't been any other places or met any other people' was unclear? He got it at the dentists. Sure, that may have meant a covidiot was in the waiting room but...

@Tinkeringbell unless he lives in a bubble, he met other people... anyway if dentists were really a risk I'm sure the authorities would have given official alert.

I'm sorry. I'd rather believe a coworker than a random internet stranger... If he says he hasn't met any other people, he hasn't.

@Tinkeringbell So he lives alone? and didn't meet anyone whilst travelling to/from the dentist? Or meet anyone in the dentist waiting room?

Like I said, there may have been a covidiot in the waiting room...

But besides that, he lives alone yes and he travelled alone too.

@Tinkeringbell Well not everyone with the virus knows if they have the virus (many people have no symptoms at all). People can even be tested and get a false -ve result. Calling them idiots is a bit OTT (unless it is your brother 😂)

Whatever. Knowing the people here, there's a higher chance someone did have symptoms like a runny nose, and still went because 'it's just a cold'.

@Tinkeringbell I live alone and only go out to buy food weekly (wearing a mask at all times). In theory I could have caught the virus today and have a dentist appointment on Monday and not yet show any symptoms when I go to the dentist (without meeting anybody). Does that make me an idiot?

Yep.

Is dying of sepsis from rotten teeth better than potentially dying of covid? :D

A runny nose is not a covid symptom

@Tinkeringbell Why?

Oh? Then why is it on my checklist? Don't come if you have any 'verkoudheidsklachten'

It's literally right there.

In all the government guidance too

@DavidPostill You should've gotten your food delivered.

@Tinkeringbell uhhh I think he means groceries

you could get covid from your delivery critter too

True.

Everyone is an idiot anyways

It's human.

Unless you want to live in a bubble...

I wouldn't necessarily mind.

@Tinkeringbell castle.gif

Yes, that. My weekly shop. Food, booze. tobacco 😀

See, there you have it. booze, tobacco... you are an idiot :P

lol

If you're going to go anyway, might as well get life's small luxuries

also in some countries those two are essential food groups

@Tinkeringbell At least I'm not addicted to chocolate :)

and while its a terrible excuse for picking it up, apparently smoking reduces your chances of getting covid slightly, presumably cause the smoke kills everything including your lungs

@DavidPostill I'm not saying I'm not an idiot. But it might be extra idiotic to go to the dentist when it's not really necessary, before I've even had a vaccine.

@Tinkeringbell Oh. That's different. I cancelled my 6 monthly hygienist and dental check ups as they are not essential. If I had severe toothache or something it would be different.

Yeah, this would just be a checkup.

Besides I would have to take a day off as my shifts have changed and dentist is not open on Sat.

Mine would be at 8AM. Which often means even more time in the waiting room than when you have a scheduled appointment later in the day, somehow they can never start on time.

Just booked my Covid jab. Tomorrow at 16:10 ... I've been waiting for a weekend slot where I didn't have to wait a few weeks.

@Tinkeringbell @JourneymanGeek

had both mine :D

I know

@JourneymanGeek You are younger but apparently essential

Our program is going so well and so fast... but there hasn't been any sign of a vaccine for me here.

@Tinkeringbell You have to wait until you are over 60 :)

Apparently having eaten myself into morbid obesity could've done the trick as well...

But then I'm guaranteed to get one of the lousy vaccines that don't protect much, so I'll just wait and see what's available later.

@Tinkeringbell So eat more chocolate ...

Already there ;)

In theory I could call the 'huisarts' and get my fattie-jab. But like I said, it's guaranteed to be one of those that only has a lousy protection rate. I'd rather wait and see if I can get a better one later on, I don't mind the waiting.

I am 120kg - probably should be 20+kg less. Waiting for gyms to reopen. Covid lack of exercise isn't helping.

I win.

By at least 10kg.

Depends on how tall you are ...

short.

If I truly want to be healthy again, I need to get down to around 70kg, so I need to drop half a person.

I'm long. So probably I win :)

I would like to lose a 1/3 of myself and get down to 80kg. When I was in my 20s i was about 1/2 my current weight. But I was playing squash every day and running 1/2 marathons ....

Apparently all I need to do is stop taking birth control. Which is never going to happen.

Hmm. I don't have that option. But I have been snipped ...

Apparently hysterectomies come with some serious downsides/complications, so that's not really an option either according to the doctor

Yeah. Not an issue for us males ...

Yeah, those have it way easier XD

I'm about 95. 75 when I was fit. 80 felt ok

@Tinkeringbell what do you mean? What lousy vaccines? The protection rates of all of them are pretty much the same as far as I know.

@terdon The good ones protect for >90 percent, the lousy ones (Janssen and AstraZeneca IIRC) only around 60.

@Tinkeringbell The studies are not conclusive. There is at least one which says "A recent study found a single dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine offered 76% protection for three months, and this went up to 82% after the second dose." and "A single shot of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is highly protective, reducing the chance of someone getting ill and needing hospital treatment by more than 80%."

Personally I'm getting what I'm offered. I won't know until tomorrow - but any of the alternatives are way better than not having a jab at all.

@Tinkeringbell Why COVID vaccines are so difficult to compare

I'm pretty sure I got the Pfizer one. I dunno, they didn't really give us much information. It was walk in, get jabbed, walk out.

@Mithical Did they not give you a certificate?

I got a "vaccinated in the army" certificate. It didn't have info on which vaccine it was.

@Tinkeringbell I really don't think that's true at all.

In any case being careful has resulted in me not getting the virus so far, despite the sometimes high infection rate in the UK. I'm not planning on changing my behaviour after getting the first jab and probably won't even after the second jab ... avoiding risky behaviour and being careful about hygiene has worked so far. There is no reason the change that, regardless of being vaccinated.

And the whole thing about X% protection is very misleading. What it means is that of the people tested, X% did not have serious complications while Y% did. This is not the same as saying that the vaccine provides X% protection.

@DavidPostill Can't find the article that had the 60% number for AstraZeneca, and the government site now says it's 60-80... True SE vibes there. Anyhow, like you I'm not planning on massively changing my behavior once I've had any vaccin, so I can avoid the wait to see if I can get a more effective one :)

The whole AstraZeneca one is iffy as is... I get massive 'We're trying to make as much profit of off this as we can' from the whole thing. It's not as effective as the other two, they're continually selling more than they can deliver, and of all the times I heard 'X country has stopped using a vaccin because they suspect serious side effects' it was always around the AstraZeneca one too.

I'm not saying I'm never getting one, but if I can get one that can ease my mind more than 'just a tiny bit', I will.

@Tinkeringbell That's... really not true. The AstraZeneca one is the only one that is being done decently and sold at cost, not for profit. theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/06/…

> The company has pledged to supply the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis during this pandemic, and charges $4.30 to $10 for two doses.

There is also likely a political side to this since this is a vaccine produced in the UK and has been an issue in the whole Brexit farce.

Macron, for example, claimed a few weeks ago that it was "virtually ineffective" but could produce no evidence to back that up and the regulatory bodies of his own government also denied the claim.

A lot of what we hear is going to be political posturing.

Now, there have been reports of some incidents where someone who took the astrazeneca vaccine developed blood clots, but the numbers are far from conclusive ("30 cases of “thromboembolic events” or blood clots had been reported among 5 million people who had received the jab in Europe so far. from here).

We know that covid itself predisposes to blood clots, so it's very hard to know if it was even linked to the vaccine or just normal disease progression.

> From separate analyses, the Vaccine Effectiveness (VE) was 71.4% (95% confidence interval 46.5, 90.6) for Pfizer/BioNTech and 80.4% (95% CI 36.4, 94.5) for Oxford/AstraZeneca, although when a like-for-like time period was used for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, VE increased to 79.3% (95% CI 47.0, 92.5). All in all, impressive results for both vaccines.

@terdon Well, then for once politics has actually got me interested and convinced. Like I said, maybe there isn't anything going on but if I can get a vaccine I feel more comfortable with, I'd be an idiot to get one that will always have me doubt it.

The studies are also based on only a few months of usage.

> It is only 12 weeks since (on 8 Dec 2020) we started to use the Pfizer-BioNTech (Pfizer) vaccine in the UK; and 8 weeks since (on 4 Jan 2021) we started to use the Oxford-AstraZeneca (AstraZeneca) vaccine against Covid-19 in England.

And of course the age range of the people being vaccinated is very different now to when it started to be administered.

So there is at least one study showing AstraZeneca is more effective after a single does. Very few people in the UK have had both doses yet ...

Side effects are slightly worse for AstraZeneca

And not much anecdotal evidence from the US for the AstraZeneca vaccine since they still haven't completed their US trials yet, heh

@Tinkeringbell Ah that is a very valid point. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant. If you, for whatever reason, feel more comfortable with one than with another, then you should get the one that makes you feel better. Anything that makes people less reluctant to take vaccines is a good thing.

But please don't spread the idea that the only vaccine that isn't being sold for profit is actually sold for profit. That one is really unfair and untrue. We should be rewarding companies for acting ethically and having big pharma sell something at cost is not exactly common.

@terdon While I'm all for 'rewarding for acting ethically', making false promises isn't exactly that. But sure.

Got a question:

Can I rollback a revision on a per-site Meta with < 2K?

don't think so

I wanted to test on this one, but then I'd ruin Makyen's work ;)

Well, I did it. Apologies to @Makyen - I'll leave a comment explaining why it jumped to the front page twice. Is that a bug, or what?

Oh dang

It was a wiki.

@Tinkeringbell What false promises? They have made no false promises. The vaccine is safe and effective as has been demonstrated by independent studies. The only problem, as far as I can tell, is that various politicians have made false and unsubstantiated claims against it.

Hell, this is the only (?) vaccine that was developed in conjunction with an academic institution and which had all data open and available to the scientific community from day one of the trials.

There have been problems with the company in that they seem to be unable to provide the number of doses promised. That is a valid complaint against them, but I don't know of any reason to consider the vaccine itself ineffective and I really applaud the fact that they kept their clinical trial data open and public and worked in collaboration with a public academic institute and are now selling the things at cost and not for profit.

@Ollie I guess you've got the answer, but you can only rollback if it directly bypasses the suggested edits queue (your own post, 100 rep on wiki, and 2k on anything else)

@terdon Promises to deliver a lot of vaccines, then not doing it. This week was the second or third time they were in the news here as 'not being able to deliver'.

Yes, that's fair. Apparently the contract only said they would "do their best" but yeah, there have ben been problems with production.

That's hardly AstraZeneca's fault.

If they deliver it you can't complain if nobody uses most of them.

That's 80% of what they have delivered

Revealed: four in five Oxford Covid jabs delivered to EU not yet used | Coronavirus | The Guardian

Yes. This is the political side of the problem. I note that both you and I @DavidPostill have been using UK news as sources (admittedly, particularly decent and relatively unbiased UK news, but UK nonetheless). So while I believe them to be reliable sources and think they're truthful, I cannot rule out that a non-UK outlet would have a very different take.

But yes, I think it's quite clear that politicians on both sides of the channel are using the AstraZeneca vaccine to score domestic political points.

@terdon The data did come from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

@terdon it's in Dutch, but this article has a paragraph that accurately illustrates: nu.nl/coronavirus/6121666/…

They lowered their promise twice, for a total of 50 million less than promised, for the entire EU. And I can't blame Germans for not wanting the AstraZeneca one if there's better to be had either XD

@Tinkeringbell Again, there is no evidence that any others are better. The supply issues are one thing, the efficacy is another. And there is no reason I've heard of to doubt the efficacy. The worst you can say is that their first trials didn't have enough over-60s in them so you cannot be sure how well it would work in that age group. But that isn't evidence to suggest it wouldn't work well: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

As far as I know, the only reason some people think it isn't as good as the others is because irresponsible politicians lied about it for political points. Only political sources have claimed it isn't good, no medical or scientific ones. Not that I've heard of, at least.

@Tinkeringbell That article says "The European Medicines Agency (EMA) must approve the supply"

@terdon like I said, the government info page on the vaccine still lists that one as only 60-80 percent effective and the other two approved ones as >90

@DavidPostill Yes. As I said, I don't doubt the veracity. Although UK-based, the Guardian isn't in any way nationalist or particularly pro-UK. I just figure that if we were to read German or Dutch press the spin on the same data might be different. Ans also that since both of us live in the UK it is quite possible we've missed one side of the argument.

@DavidPostill More like 'they must approve the supplying of the vaccine using a factory in Leiden'

@Tinkeringbell Could you link me to that? There's no such thing as "X% effective", that doesn't mean anything. I suspect they mean that only 40-20 percent of patients in trials developed severe clinical symptoms. But that also seems ridiculously high, so I'd love to see where they're getting their data.

{shrug} I'm done with this. I've been trying to look at this from a non political point of view ...

@terdon again, it's in Dutch: rivm.nl/covid-19-vaccinatie/covid19-vaccins

@DavidPostill And I'm just a parrot repeating info from the news I read and the RIVM ;) but yeah, a vaccin isn't something that should be made political, like masks and curfew were.

@Tinkeringbell Ah OK. Yes, they are talking about preventing infection. This vaccine is not so much aimed at preventing infection as it is aimed at preventing serious cases. I don't think they've ever claimed otherwise.

@terdon I don't know if they ever claimed otherwise, probably not. Still, a 40 percent chance of still getting Covid + a 10 percent chance of still dying is a lot worse than a <10 percent chance of even getting it, and then a 10 percent chance of death/disability

Where do you get that quote? Because that's quite different from the RIVM site I just linked to terdon...

You need to understand what Vaccine Effectiveness means

It's explained quite nicely on the RIVM site too...

@Tinkeringbell Single-dose Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine followed by a 12-week booster - The Lancet

It's based on older people - but they are a) more likely to catch CoronaVirus and b) more likely to suffer sever complications when they do.

I'll try and see if I can figure out where the numbers I know come from, which study that was... Tomorrow. It's a bit hard going on mobile

As I work in the education/childcare field now, I can get the vaccine now