Coronavirus vaccine and Delta variant updates for 11-01-2021

<p>This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for November 1st, 2021.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>If you think it’s important, for science and public health and safety reasons, to actually know how this COVID-19 pandemic started, you may as well forget it. U.S. intelligence officials said they can’t conclude the origin. They don’t know if it was from an animal, they don’t know if it was from a lab leak, they don’t know if the virus was genetically engineered…nothing. And that’s where they’ll leave it. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The Mayor there says about 91% of New York City’s municipal workers are vaccinated as today’s mandatory deadline hits, a leap up from 83% Friday. The 9% who haven’t will go on unpaid leave starting today, which will create a corresponding shortage of police, fire, and EMS workers.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Dramatic reunions at Sydney airport as fully vaccinated Australians were allowed to fly home and stay home for the first time in 583 days. There was a lot to catch up on as countless weddings, funerals, and births had been missed. Wider lockdown restrictions are expected to be lifted for all residents December 1. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>A health official there says China’s latest COVID-19 outbreak is developing rapidly. Authorities are being extra vigilant at ports of entry as infections boom in a northeastern border city. That was caused by the virus arriving from abroad. While the rest of the world figures out how to co-exist with COVID, China is maintaining its zero tolerance policy toward it. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Congratulations to the word “Vax,” the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year. Last year, the company said it was impossible to sum up 2020 in one word. But this year, they say the shorthand for vaccine “injected itself into the bloodstream of the English language. It’s clear the language of vaccines is changing how we talk – and think – about public health, community and ourselves.”</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>In the United States cases were down 13%, deaths are down 12%,