Incomplete Data May Mask an Increase in US Covid Cases, But Infection Counts De-Emphasized (nbcnews.com) 140
"At first glance, U.S. Covid cases appear to have plateaued over the last two weeks," reports NBC News, "with a consistent average of around 30,000 per day..."
"But disease experts say incomplete data likely masks an upward trend." "I do think we are in the middle of a surge, the magnitude of which I can't tell you," Zeke Emanuel, vice provost of global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, said. The BA.2 omicron subvariant, which now accounts for about 72 percent of U.S. cases and is more contagious than the original omicron variant, is fueling that spread, Emanuel added. "It's much more transmissible. It's around. We just don't have a lot of case counts," he said.
Emanuel and other experts cite a lack of testing as the primary reason cases are underreported. At the height of the omicron wave in January, the U.S. was administering more than 2 million tests per day. That had dropped to an average of about 530,000 as of Monday, the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The milder symptoms become, the less likely people are to test or show up in official case counts," said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. More people also now have access to at-home rapid tests that are free or covered by insurance, and most of those test results don't get reported to state health departments or the CDC.
"Case counts and testing are progressively becoming shaky indicators because we're not catching everyone in the system," said Dr. Jonathan Quick, an adjunct professor at the Duke Global Health Institute.
Some local data, however, does reveal recent spikes. Average Covid cases have risen nearly 80 percent in Nebraska, 75 percent in Arizona, 58 percent in New York and 55 percent in Massachusetts over the last two weeks. Wastewater surveillance similarly suggests that infections are rising in Colorado, Ohio and Washington, among other states.
The Johns Hopkins epidemiologist emphasized that hospitalization figures are more important than case counts.
"If we're seeing an increase in cases, but not an increase in severe cases, I think it's a very valid question of does that matter?"
"But disease experts say incomplete data likely masks an upward trend." "I do think we are in the middle of a surge, the magnitude of which I can't tell you," Zeke Emanuel, vice provost of global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, said. The BA.2 omicron subvariant, which now accounts for about 72 percent of U.S. cases and is more contagious than the original omicron variant, is fueling that spread, Emanuel added. "It's much more transmissible. It's around. We just don't have a lot of case counts," he said.
Emanuel and other experts cite a lack of testing as the primary reason cases are underreported. At the height of the omicron wave in January, the U.S. was administering more than 2 million tests per day. That had dropped to an average of about 530,000 as of Monday, the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The milder symptoms become, the less likely people are to test or show up in official case counts," said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. More people also now have access to at-home rapid tests that are free or covered by insurance, and most of those test results don't get reported to state health departments or the CDC.
"Case counts and testing are progressively becoming shaky indicators because we're not catching everyone in the system," said Dr. Jonathan Quick, an adjunct professor at the Duke Global Health Institute.
Some local data, however, does reveal recent spikes. Average Covid cases have risen nearly 80 percent in Nebraska, 75 percent in Arizona, 58 percent in New York and 55 percent in Massachusetts over the last two weeks. Wastewater surveillance similarly suggests that infections are rising in Colorado, Ohio and Washington, among other states.
The Johns Hopkins epidemiologist emphasized that hospitalization figures are more important than case counts.
"If we're seeing an increase in cases, but not an increase in severe cases, I think it's a very valid question of does that matter?"
Answer to the last question is "yes" (Score:5, Informative)
"If we're seeing an increase in cases, but not an increase in severe cases, I think it's a very valid question of does that matter?"
Yes for four reasons. First, the risk of long-covid is a thing and it seems to occur even in many people who were not hospitalized. Second, hospitalizations trail case totals, so an increase in case totals will likely lead to an increase in hospitalization later. Third, people who are high risk such as immunocompromised people may need to take more precautions if case totals are higher. Fourth, higher case totals are also bad because they give the virus more opportunities to mutate.
Re:Answer to the last question is "yes" (Score:5, Informative)
The question of 'does it matter?' depends on the audience. Healthcare professionals, sure, they have to keep an eye on this, and every other infectious disease, particularly watching for signs of decline in effectiveness of vaccine.
The average random person walking around? Practically speaking they should be able to go to largely ignoring it and waiting for the professionals to indicate a time to take action. At this point they've done about all they can reasonably do and there's no foreseeable improvement coming to stall for. We have vaccines, we have treatment protocols, the health system has a very light covid load. Despite a fairly prolonged period of most people no longer acting with caution, cases of significant severity have continued to decline. This is a trailing indicator sure, but even wastewater testing (where everyone is being indirectly tested, healthy and sick alike) is showing less than half a percent of the amounts seen three months ago.
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I think what concerns me is that there is a dismantling of reporting. My state switched to weekly reporting, which is pretty useless for giving any warning. I don't think their sewage treatment reporting is fully deployed either, and to the extent it is, it only covers 1/3 the population at most.
It makes perfect sense to de-emphasize the case counts at this point, but not having an accurate count (or proxy) is just stupid because these tools are needed for preemptive reasons.
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"... particularly watching for signs of decline in effectiveness of vaccine"
Bad grammar is indicative of addleness.
Re:Answer to the last question is "yes" (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from Long COVID being a horrible, debilitating disease that people should avoid at (IMHO) any cost, the government needs to consider the economic down-side to having millions of people unable to work or at reduced productivity levels.
In the UK we have between 1 and 1.5 million people with Long COVID. The effect of having a million people living on disability/long term sickness benefits is going to be extremely bad for the economy and the government's finances.
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This has to be weighed against expectations of having any *new* solutions to the problem and opportunity costs of continued restrictions.
We don't have any reason to expect a new improvement in tools at our disposal. We have vaccines, treatments, and we know we can't manage to eradicate it entirely and it is doomed to be endemic. People have had ample opportunity to avail themselves of the vaccines and we've pretty much exhausted ways to get them to do this.
Further, long covid is predominantly a consequence
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Yes for four reasons. First, the risk of long-covid is a thing and it seems to occur even in many people who were not hospitalized.
This doesn't mean anything to me. If I get covid today, next week, month or few months my risk of "long-covid" is not meaningfully different. Current vaccines do not stop infection and it is both a fools errand and counterproductive to attempt to hide from this virus the rest of ones life. Whatever change to my short term personal risk of infection with time is not important to me. The issue is not worth my time.
Second, hospitalizations trail case totals, so an increase in case totals will likely lead to an increase in hospitalization later.
What is relevant is the fact no reasonable danger to hospital systems exist given there are
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Yes for four reasons. First, the risk of long-covid is a thing and it seems to occur even in many people who were not hospitalized.
This doesn't mean anything to me. If I get covid today, next week, month or few months my risk of "long-covid" is not meaningfully different
If you get COVID today you may also get it in a few months. You run a risk of long COVID each time, unfortunately. To what extent that risk changes each time is not very clear, though, nor the long term effects of long COVID.
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Yes for four reasons. First, the risk of long-covid is a thing and it seems to occur even in many people who were not hospitalized.
Not yet known.
Whether the long COVID aftereffects crop up in people who had mild cases (including those whose cases were mild because of immunization) is as-yet not established.
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. If I get covid today, next week, month or few months my risk of "long-covid" is not meaningfully different.
You can get multiple infections. Each time you do, you have another chance to do so. And the longer you wait, the more time we have to develop other treatments, better anti-virals, etc.
What is relevant is the fact no reasonable danger to hospital systems exist given there are few people left in the US who are naive to sars2 virus thru infection and or vaccination.
This really isn't accurate. At this point we have strong evidence that reinfection is a frequent thing in the unvaccinated, and that Omicron in particular gives little protection to unvaccinated against subsequent infections. See for example https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(22)00159-7 [cell.com].
This is why such people receive extra doses.
That isn't the
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The reason we were able to wipe smallpox out completely is that it didn't have any animal hosts, so vaccinating humans was sufficient. That is not the case for most viruses.
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You can get multiple infections. Each time you do, you have another chance to do so.
And the longer you wait, the more time we have to develop other treatments, better anti-virals, etc.
The longer you wait will always be true of everything even 100 years from now. Meanwhile I can get shot, fall off a ladder, hit by a truck, struck by lightning or die of any of a zillion causes. Life itself is neither safe nor guaranteed. Risk and cost of risk mitigation must be weighed according to real world merit rather than ideological abstractions.
Given present transmissibility of sars2 virus waiting with any chance of success means being a hermit forever. In my view this is not a rational precau
You missed the big one (Score:1)
No joke, a CNN article I can't find at the moment called it "failing up". That's not really a valid use of the term though, since those people are still dead.
Or dying. Just saw a HermainCainAward nominee on month 8 of his hospital stay. His (anti-vax) family were freaking out because the insurance company was cutting them off (shouldn't be possible with the ACA but the Republicans snuck several h
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HermainCainAward nominee on month 8 of his hospital stay. His (anti-vax) family were freaking out because the insurance company was cutting them off
Good grief, Herman Cain died before any covid vaccine was even available.
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Herman Caine had suffered from serious cancer a few years before and was also 74.
We call that "getting your just desserts" and that is the reason for the Herman Caine awards.
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Herman Caine got covid because he refused to wear a mask
You don't know that.
and then he went to a Trump rally, and stood in a crowd of people who also refused to wear masks.
What has this to do with anti-vaxxers? Do you have any objective evidence for believing Herman Caine would have objected to vaccination when it became available to him?
Herman Caine had suffered from serious cancer a few years before and was also 74. We call that "getting your just desserts" and that is the reason for the Herman Caine awards.
I just don't understand the connection. If you are going to mock the dead and condone illogical anecdotes there are no shortage of some left and many right wing nutjobs (no offense to rightwingnutjob) who elected not to get vaccinated and later died from covid to pick from.
Why use someone who didn't even do the thing the
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I'm curious: what award are we giving out to those who wore masks, got vaccinated, and still died from covid?
The same one we give to careful drivers who are killed when someone else drives into them - the Bad Luck award.
Re:You missed the big one (Score:4, Funny)
I'm curious: what award are we giving out to those who wore masks, got vaccinated, and still died from covid?
The same one we give to careful drivers who are killed when someone else drives into them - the Bad Luck award.
Thank you for confirming that the vaccine and mask don't actually work.
Yes, because that's how the world works. If one person is killed in a car crash while wearing their seat-belt we all stop wearing seat-belts because "they don't actually work".
You fucking retard.
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Yes, because that's how the world works. If one person is killed in a car crash while wearing their seat-belt we all stop wearing seat-belts because "they don't actually work".
You fucking retard.
Your analogy is retarded and a complete strawman. If a person is killed by COVID after wearing a mask (that we were all told to wear to prevent infection) and getting the vaccination (with boosters to "prevent infection"; later downgraded to "reduce symptoms"), because someone else didn't do those things, then those measures by definition don't work.
Retard says "duuh".
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I don't take issue with the people who can admit that the vaccine isn't perfect, but with those who insist that unvaccinated people deserve to die. Or those who honestly believe that all deaths could have been prevented if everyone had vaccinated. Neither position is ethical or realistic, and just because someone else evaluates their risk of dying differently than you do doesn't mean they deserve to die.
Some people, after all, go skydiving or mountain climbing - both of which have a very serious risk o
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Hot take: cloth masks wouldn't have saved him. Paper masks probably wouldn't have either. Properly-fitted N95s that stayed perfectly dry and unperturbed on shaven faces (no facial hair!) might have worked.
Re:You missed the big one (Score:4, Interesting)
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Look at what's currently happening in China what chasing zero infections costs for Omicron.
It's simply unsustainable in western nations. We're all Sweden now. She'll be right ... or not. Regardless, this is how it is.
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So let's say we have great/perfect indicators of cases rising. What, exactly, do you want to do about it? Stay at home? Shut down businesses? Avoid each other? Keep wearing barely functional masks? Even your third point about immunocmpromised people doesn't make sense. Are they really going out and about with no precautions when there are X number of cases a week, but then will suddenly take more precautions when it reaches Y number of cases a week?
COVID is not going to go away. We've done all we c
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So let's say we have great/perfect indicators of cases rising. What, exactly, do you want to do about it? Stay at home? Shut down businesses? Avoid each other? Keep wearing barely functional masks?
Some steps are easy to take. Indoor dining at restaurants for example is a major cause of covid spread. Given that weather is better in many parts of the US, requiring out door seating or drastically reducing in door seating are both easy steps. It is true that most masks people are using only do very little. But the easy answer there is to get better masks, N-95s an KN-95s especially. We also can do more systematic testing. Many universities have just stopped their testing, but systematic regular testing
In my area.. (Score:4, Informative)
The wastewater tests show an uptick, but every other metric is down. So sure, BA.2 has been rising but hospital admissions have been on the decline, test results are still showing a decline, but the fact that people aren't bothered enough to get those tests speaks to it.
It's worth keeping an eye on it, but it doesn't make a whole ton of sense for us to try to find reasons to find data to panic over when all the indicators of consequence are still looking healthy.
Main thing of interest for the prevalence of the disease is to keep an eye on vaccination and plan what might be needed to maintain the current state of affairs, but nothing needing the continuous attention of the average person at this point.
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Basically covid has turned into "the sniffles" for almost everyone in USA.
That's a pretty gross exaggeration if I ever heard one. It's almost always at least as much of an a**-kicking as flu, which is way more than "the sniffles".
Time to stop the hysteria and also espcially time to stop the stupid idea of vaccinating infants and small children since proved almost zero protection in 5 to 11 year olds, what a wicked thing to be performing experiments on our children with *unapproved* vaccination.
Define "almost zero protection". The protection against death and serious illness almost certainly exists for people in that age group just like it does in every age group, but the total frequency of those two events is low enough that it's hard to measure it in the general population. The vaccine will, however, likely provide some lifetime reduction
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It's almost always at least as much of an a**-kicking as flu
I haven't had it, but I know at least 10 people who have since the first of the year and for all of them it was somewhere between barely noticeable and a mild cold.
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I also know at least 10 people like that, sadly I am the 11th person, and while initially it wasn't too bad (more than the sniffles, something like a mild flu) the after effects are hecking annoying. I am far from in shape, but a week and a half ago I wasn't out of breath after just walking around the block.
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Just a question, but has your out-of-breathness been linked to long-covid by a doctor, or is this an assumption? Did you do a treadmill test, or even just try riding your bike with an oximeter? If you raise your heart-rate and experience increased/labored breathing, feel tired, but still have good blood oxygenation that may point at a different cause than covid.
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Nope, I have not yet eliminated the possibility of a coincidence, in fact I have not seen a medical professional at all yet. My first symptoms started about 9 days ago, and tomorrow I am having a look at working for a few hours. If I don't see improvement in the next few days I will look into seeing a doctor and doing any tests they recommend. Also I am not sure if something like "aggravating my asthma" counts as "a different cause than covid" but if it does then that is definitely a possibility.
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It likely went through my household around the new year. For the wife and I, it was more like one of the worst colds we've ever had and if it had not been the holidays, we both would have really needed a week off, and that was being fully vaccinated. For my son it was a mild cold.
While getting sick like that isn't the end of the world or even where hospitalization is considered, there has been a lot of people off sick.
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Yea, I understand for those who had already been infected and vaccinated it wasn't too bad. For those of us who hadn't been infected, it was more like one of the worst colds we could remember. While never needing to even consider going to a Doctor/hospital, it was still a couple of days of being knocked out, a week of not being able to do much and a couple of weeks before feeling normal.
Not that bad but still something to be avoided if possible.
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Nonsense, my company had their christmas party and people who were in lockdown went, and quite a few got and were diagnosed. But it was nothing for them, like a mild cold only it went away in two days.
The sniffles, nothing.
If you're unhealthy try eating less and exercising so you don't die from trivial illnesses like flu or rhinovirus or these extremely weak covid variants.
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You can say nonsense all you want, it doesn't change reality. Possibly you're somewhere where most people had already been infected or perhaps that I was vaccinated with AZ instead of an mRNA vaccine is a difference.
Even with the population here being over 90% vaccinated the hospitalization numbers are trending up and there are a lot of problems with people off sick.
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That reasoning was flawed. There was no indication that children were significant Covid vectors, nor was there any evidence that vaccination made them less-likely to transmit the disease.
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Nope, you didn't get the current data, less lethal now than typical seasonal flu with current subvariant. Probably you're thinking of a mix of omicron plus older more powerful variants.
https://www.ft.com/content/e26... [ft.com]
In short, it's become "the sniffles". Everyone chill out, it's nothing.
still 2-4x more deadly than car crashes (Score:1)
Nope, you didn't get the current data, less lethal now than typical seasonal flu with current subvariant.
Financial Times is selling you on wishes & dreams. Right now, the trashy limited death rate data is still 0.8 covid killed per 100k over last 7-days in my area. Annually 11 USA residents per 100k are killed in car crashes per YEAR. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fa... [iihs.org]
You are preparing to settle into a world where "sniffles" cause 400%+ more carnage & loss than car wrecks. You can dismiss sniffles all you want, when the current data says crashes have gone back to being the #1 killer of American police
Re: In my area.. (Score:2)
Amusingly, it doesn't do that since the most susceptible are past childbearing years in the case of women, and in the case of men tend to be past child producing years since although they can still get it up, especially with chemical help, the amount of women having children with them is low.
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Not yet. However it should be noted that about 3 million years ago the "common cold" had a lethality rate approaching 80%...
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Hahaha, exactly which of the over 200 viruses lumped into the very unscientific bucket of "common cold" was killing 80% of people, and how did we do RNA sequencing on 3 million year old corpses?
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If "defective genes" are the ones that get you killed when a novel virus comes along, then that is a revolving definition of "defective", as genes that make you insensitive to today's infection might be the same genes that makes you susceptible to next year's.
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The test positivity rate is going up. That is one indicator that is trending poorly. It remains to be seen if that is a problem going forward with a population that has mostly already been infected or vaccinated.
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Basically, I look toward wastewater testing for the 'heads up' due to the indiscriminate nature of the testing, and hospitilizations for how severe it is.
Of the metrics, number of detected cases and particularly test positivity rate I view as not that reliable, as it depends upon whether people feel like being tested. Test positivity rate going up may mean more people are getting it, or it could mean thot fewer asymptomaticapeople are bothering to get tested and/or that non-covid respitory illnesses are wa
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Why do we even care? Do we go through this much effort for the common cold?
Let us know when the common cold can kill 1 million people in two years.
Remember when people were saying it's just the flu? Funny how the flu, in is worst year, only kills 61,000, but its average is 32,000. This means it would take over 16 years of flu at its worst to kill the same number for covid, or over 31 years for its average.
You know why we don't go through this for the common cold? Because the common cold doesn't kill thousands of people each week, week after week. Right now over 500 people die ea
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Does the phrase "Spanish Flu" mean anything to you? Hint: That was the pandemic that hit about a century ago. Tens of millions dead, for that one.
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Does the phrase "Spanish Flu" mean anything to you? Hint: That was the pandemic that hit about a century ago. Tens of millions dead, for that one.
Right. One flu. Not the flu we experience each year. Cherry pick much?
Re: So if the symptoms become milder with each var (Score:2)
If nobody had significant resistance to the flu the death toll would be much the same. However everyone already has resistance to the flu from exposure and antibodies passed down from parents as children, so its not that lethal. Actually probably much higher since the flu is much more lethal than COVID among the younger population.
Yes, Flu did kill millions once (Score:2)
Does the phrase "Spanish Flu" mean anything to you? Hint: That was the pandemic that hit about a century ago. Tens of millions dead, for that one.
Right. One flu. Not the flu we experience each year. Cherry pick much?
The post was in response to a parent post with text
"Funny how the flu, in is worst year, only kills 61,000, but its average is 32,000.
The statement was "in its worst year" the death toll for flu is 61,000. The reply was that this statement is wrong. It wasn't cherry picking, it was a direct response to a wrong statement.
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Does the phrase "Spanish Flu" mean anything to you? Hint: That was the pandemic that hit about a century ago. Tens of millions dead, for that one.
Almost no one who was (and still is) saying it is just the flu was insinuating we should be preparing for a Spanish Flu level pandemic. This phrase was used to compare Covid-19 to the standard flu most people get a couple times each decade. The phrase was used to back up the belief we shouldn't do any more to combat Covid-19 than we do in the average year to combat influenza.
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Let us know when the common cold can kill 1 million people in two years.
It is not valid to compare the outcomes of a viral infection between populations who are completely naive with outcomes from viral infection in which everyone has acquired immunity.
Neither is it reasonable to draw comparisons with common cold when there is not yet sufficient information to draw such comparisons.
Remember when people were saying it's just the flu? Funny how the flu, in is worst year, only kills 61,000, but its average is 32,000. This means it would take over 16 years of flu at its worst to kill the same number for covid, or over 31 years for its average.
The difference between pandemic flu like 1918 which was far worse than covid and seasonal flu is absence or presence of acquired immunity.
You know why we don't go through this for the common cold?
Because everyone already has acquired immunity to common cold
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You're living in the past, the current subvariant is less deadly than flu. Sorry, Karen, but you can stop handwringing now.
https://www.ft.com/content/e26... [ft.com]
Re:So if the symptoms become milder with each vari (Score:5, Informative)
Because if you look at Hong Kong you get a different picture. Omicron is only so mild because it's re-infecting and already recovered or vaccinated population. In Hong Kong they failed to vaccinate a lot of seniors before now, and Omicron is taking a terrible toll there. To the never-Covid-exposed, (which includes vaccination) Omicron is actually as virulent as the original disease. The other fun-fact about Omicron is that it appears to confer little-to-no immunity against future infections. It has by far the least antibody response of any of the Covid types.
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To the never-Covid-exposed, (which includes vaccination) Omicron is actually as virulent as the original disease.
While it is true most of the Omicron infections were reinfections and this primarily drove the reduction in poor health outcomes Omicron is still inherently 25% less deadly than Delta. Omicron resulted in sufficiently less alveolitis and dramatically reduced need for ventilation.
The other fun-fact about Omicron is that it appears to confer little-to-no immunity against future infections.
"Fun-fact" and "appears" are mutually exclusive.
There has been insufficient time to get much data on BA.1 vs BA.2 reinfections let alone general "fun-facts". Gap between Delta and Omicron was unprecedented. To draw general conclu
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They haven't had time to measure reinfections, true. What they have had time to do is measure antibody response, and that looks poor.
Re: So if the symptoms become milder with each var (Score:2)
Antibody response is less important than t-cell memory. Does it avoid that or not?
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Don't know, they probably haven't had time to do the clinical work, so far just the antibody side. I keep my eyes open.
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I think the question is if it will remain like the common cold (or flu) or if there needs to be more intervention.
The only way to know is to track it for a bit.
Re:So if the symptoms become milder with each vari (Score:5, Informative)
The common cold doesn't randomly cause strokes in healthy 40 year olds. Even mild/asymptomatic COVID does things to your cardiovascular system that puts you at risk for an unknown length of time. Somebody very close to me had Omicron a couple months ago and is in the hospital fighting for her life right now. Five brain surgeries later she's facing weeks in critical care followed by years of recovery, in the best case. Without the entire population getting an MRI there's no way of knowing how many of us have some kind of a ticking timebomb in our brains as a souvenir from the pandemic.
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Like being locked down. When getting outdoors and some exercise would go a long way toward making up for closed gyms. /p>
People were very much encouraged to get outdoor exercise during lockdowns.
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Where?
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All over blue-state America. You don't know this?
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-mulls-new-density-measures-as-covid-19-cases-continue-to-climb/2341964/ [nbcnewyork.com]
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Playgrounds != parks. Playgrounds were closed because they're high-touch environments.
Closures of parks designed for adults were rare, and (with the exception of indoor facilities) generally short-term. You don't actually believe that all the parks in blue states have been closed for two years, do you? H***, we did a *concert* in a city park in California more than a year ago.
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You're talking about the first *single-digit* weeks of the pandemic, before folks realized that it wasn't really spreading much outdoors. After that, everything opened up, and that happened *long* before restrictions on gatherings were lifted.
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Even mild/asymptomatic COVID does things to your cardiovascular system that puts you at risk for an unknown length of time.
Like being locked down. When getting outdoors and some exercise would go a long way toward making up for closed gyms. Or the stress of unemployment and the loss of social contact. As well as the stress of being told that measures you have been asked to take are for the protection of others instead of yourself.
I wear a mask, not to save other people, but to save myself. The rest of you can die of the coof for all I care.
Uh huh, you don't exercise "because lockdowns", and "the gyms". When was the last time you did a squat, was it the last time you used leaves as toilet paper? You must be one of those dudes that doesn't dim their headlights, because the stress.
Re:So if the symptoms become milder with each vari (Score:5, Interesting)
Because the common cold doesn't give some subset of people who catch it permanent brain fog via a mechanism we don't understand.
To me it's like Pascal's wager. I will continue to wear an N95 in public which isn't a significant cost or inconvenience. If it prevents me from being unemployable due to long COVID brain fog it was worth it. If I wouldn't have gotten long COVID anyway without the mask I don't lose anything significant. It's a win/win. If I did get permanent brain fog via long COVID it's a huge loss of my huge salary. For me it's not a risk worth taking.
Same reason I lock my car and the door to my house. It costs me nothing and may keep out some subset of thieves.
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What's the risk of long-term health problems from the flu compared to covid? Is it the same, much lower, or much higher?
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Why do we even care? Do we go through this much effort for the common cold?
Milder in this case means, over time, less likely to kill you before it spreads to others. That doesn't mean you can draw a direct comparison to the common cold. Colds, flus, herpes, hiv, etc. all affect you differently, and they've all evolved to spread before you die. So milder isn't the best way to think about it, make sense?
COVID is closer to a really bad flu, but that's hard to say because you might not realize a flu isn't the same as the cold you get every year. A bad flu is that shit you get ever
Re: (Score:1)
Ahhh.. yes. The HIGHLY controversial topic of government skimming. When George Bush Jr. goes to war in Iraq and VP Dick Cheney's former company gets no bid contracts... Reee. When Dems in office... what corruption?! Fools getting played by both sides.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually no. Paxlovid is a chain-terminating anti-viral that reduces viral replication to where the organisms inherently defective immune system is capable of killing the virus. It does NOT, in any sense, CURE anything. In fact, there is no drug therapy ever invented that "cures" anything at all (not entirely true, there are a few microbicidal treatments, but not many). Nor does carpentry work (surgery) cure anything at all, ever in history.
Medical treatment is always merely supportive. It is up to the
It's as the con artist said (Score:3)
Emanuel and other experts cite a lack of testing as the primary reason cases are underreported.
“If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,”
Thus spoke the con artist in June of 2020. Stop testing and covid goes away. It's completely logical. You can't have cases if you don't test.
Re: (Score:2)
“If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,”
Thus spoke the con artist in June of 2020. Stop testing and covid goes away. It's completely logical. You can't have cases if you don't test.
Sadly (or hilariously), that's probably not the dumbest thing he's said (or done, said the solar eclipse), even just in office. (And people still voted, and want to vote, for him again.)
um, it must take a lot of effort to... (Score:1)
miss the point somebody it making.
The Bad Orange Man is often inelegant in speaking, and like the majority of CEOs, poor at accurately relaying what he' heard smarter people tell him, but he was in this instance making a point which was easy to get if you were paying attention to the debate at the time and not working overtime to intentionally spin everything he uttered into the worst light possible.
The point was (and still IS) that it's INSANE to try to waste [at that time rare] resources to test everybod
Re:um, it must take a lot of effort to... (Score:5, Interesting)
The point was (and still IS) that it's INSANE to try to waste [at that time rare] resources to test everybody in an entire population for a disease that 98% will survive, and then go nuts over the "infection rate", when what matters in such an illness is the HOSPITALIZATION and DEATH rates.
So what you're saying is when there is a highly transmissible viral infection rampaging through the population you don't want to know about it. Got it.
As to the hospitalization rate, we knew the rate because hospitals across the country were overwhelmed for nearly two years. At some point hospitals put off all non-emergency surgeries, and in some case even emergency surgeries beause they had no more room. People were dying because they couldn't receive the surgery [cnn.com] or care they needed because covidiots were occupying all the beds.
And for the, "But it only kills 1%", it's not just the deaths [democratic...ground.com]. It's the people who are out of commission for weeks or months recovering, those who will need organ replacements or have organ damage in general, those who will have permanent congnitive dysfunction for the rest of their lives, and those who will never be able to work again.
We have never before done this, not even with HIV (which was 100% fatal to anybody infected in the mid-1980s)
Let us know when HIV can be transmitted through the air.
if you reduce the insane testing levels, you reduce the number of people who you can panic over as "infected" but who are walking around with few or no symptoms and who will never get sick enough to need any care.
Panic? What panic? The only ones talking about "panic" are you and Republicans. I never panicked. No one I knew around me panicked. No one I worked with panicked. In fact, in my entire metropolitan area not one person I ever came in contact with "panicked". It's a buzzword in the same manner Putin having nukes. It's a throwaway designed to mislead people into something which doesnt exist.
The fact you and many Republicans whined about "the economy" while a virus was killing tens of thousands of people each week shows their "pro-life" stance is a farce. If people are dying, getting hospitalized or even staying home for extended periods, the economy is tanking anyway. And then what do you have to blame?
So Excess Deaths (Score:5, Interesting)
It's safe to say we're under reporting COVID deaths. In particular we've got folks getting it, surviving, and succumbing to heart attacks and strokes shortly after due to lingering effects. Funny thing about losing lung capacity to COVID and taking damage to your heart muscles, it doesn't help when you get a heart attack...
Oh, and yes, the bulk of these deaths are concentrated in "red states", largely due to lower vaccination numbers because we politicized vaccination for a cheap political victory.
Re: So Excess Deaths (Score:5, Informative)
That's a lie.
All causes of death are lower in the vaccinated. There was a significant increase in all-cause death counts due to covid. And the vaccines coincidentally also reduced all cause death counts.
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines... [webmd.com]
Re:So Excess Deaths (Score:4, Informative)
In particular we've got folks getting it, surviving, and succumbing to heart attacks and strokes shortly after
By "it" you mean the vaccine?
Nope. COVID.
I agree. We did see excess deaths when the first couple of COVID waves came through we saw excess deaths, but even though the dominant variants have gotten milder excess deaths have continued to climb.
The dominant variants have not actually gotten milder (or if so, not much). There are just fewer and fewer COVID-naïve individuals left, so it appears milder because a larger percentage of the infections are reinfections.
This coincides with the deployment of the vaccine thus that is the most likely cause.
Got any actual evidence for such a prima facie absurd claim? Didn't think so.
Re: (Score:2)
In particular we've got folks getting it, surviving, and succumbing to heart attacks and strokes shortly after
By "it" you mean the vaccine?
I agree. We did see excess deaths when the first couple of COVID waves came through we saw excess deaths, but even though the dominant variants have gotten milder excess deaths have continued to climb. This coincides with the deployment of the vaccine thus that is the most likely cause.
Posting as an AC because you know you're lying.
Sewage data (Score:3)
It won't cover everywhere, especially rural areas, but surely sewage data tracking is still available e.g; https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm [mwra.com]
US agencies downplaying infections (Score:1)
...in an election year? I mean, you'd have to be a complete sociopath to, say, prioritize the re-election of your candidate over human lives, wouldn't you?
I seem to recall a number of people making the same sort of comment about a previous president that didn't take COVID as seriously as they felt he should.
Long-term effects? (Score:2)
Given what we've seen of the long-term effects of non-severe infections (ones that don't hospitalize the patient), it may matter quite a bit. A lifetime of respiratory and circulatory and neurological problems isn't exactly something you can ignore. Gambling is bad enough, but here you're gambling with a stack of chips that you know you're going to have to pay for but you don't
Students' desire to remain online (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I suppose you take a shot of pennicilin every morning and wear a condom at all times just in case Gonorrhea becomes airborne and causes your penis to fall off.
Personally, I will wait until I have to step over the dead bodies in the street before I start to worry about SARS-CoV-2 ...
Re: (Score:2)
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I'll match your anecdote with one of my own.:
I personally know at least 6 people who have gotten it in the last four months, mostly close family, which is more than those I personally knew who got it during the previous 20 months.