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COVID 46 - Please disperse, nothing to see here!


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1 hour ago, Padraig said:

You probably know far more about this than I (since you mention antivirals) but is Test to Treat the main approach in the US once you acquire COVID?

Your guess is as good as mine.  It's different everywhere.  Despite what D.C. says, there is no central federal information site to learn what to do where one is, where to go, what is available.  Our state's sites are no better.  It's all just a great big mess.  No wonder it was announced today our VP is positive. Nobody knows anything.  Including does testing positive but asymptomatic mean antivirals are called for?  I'm so damned disappointed in how the Dems just gave up handling this in the last months.  Just quit.  Biden even said he expected to get it. Everybody will.

 

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1 hour ago, Larry of the Lake said:

they'd let anyone who wants one get one

This seems to be the case here in the City at least.  Everybody I know who has wanted that second booster has gotten it no trouble at all no matter age, etc.  Make an appointment at Rite Aid, walk into the Abyssinian Church -- whatever, boosters are here for you, as long as it's been 4 months since your last vax.

What is still a PITA is there is no vaccine for little and very young kids.

 

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15 hours ago, Zorral said:

This seems to be the case here in the City at least.  Everybody I know who has wanted that second booster has gotten it no trouble at all no matter age, etc.  Make an appointment at Rite Aid, walk into the Abyssinian Church -- whatever, boosters are here for you, as long as it's been 4 months since your last vax.

What is still a PITA is there is no vaccine for little and very young kids.

 

Sounds like I might need to come visit the City again fairly soon…after all, I am having pangs of longing for The Mark hotel and the Upper East Side. 

One of my colleagues texted me, yesterday, and said he was at the office but had a cough that he couldn’t shake and was asking me for meds…I brought some cough medicine, some TheraFlu, and a Covid test. He said he didn’t need the Covid test, he was sure it wasn’t Covid…well, fast forward to 4 pm. He looked like a zombie, said he was going home. I handed him the Covid test. Lo and behold, he pinged up positive.

We are all now currently working from home. I took a home test today and was negative, will do another one tomorrow. PCR test on Friday.

Pisses me off that he didn’t take the test straightaway. 

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45 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Sounds like I might need to come visit the City again fairly soon…after all, I am having pangs of longing for The Mark hotel and the Upper East Side. 

One of my colleagues texted me, yesterday, and said he was at the office but had a cough that he couldn’t shake and was asking me for meds…I brought some cough medicine, some TheraFlu, and a Covid test. He said he didn’t need the Covid test, he was sure it wasn’t Covid…well, fast forward to 4 pm. He looked like a zombie, said he was going home. I handed him the Covid test. Lo and behold, he pinged up positive.

We are all now currently working from home. I took a home test today and was negative, will do another one tomorrow. PCR test on Friday.

Pisses me off that he didn’t take the test straightaway. 

Apart from refusing to test and coming into work untested with symptoms it sucks to see that people are going right back to not taking virus infections serious. 

I know people who have paid with permanent organ damage long before COVID for that.

Fun fact they are pushing for more home office here again not because of COVID but because it would save fuel as that would help if things with Russia escalate further. Not commuting was great for the environment too but it feels people have decided to ignore that completely anyway.

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1 hour ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Apart from refusing to test and coming into work untested with symptoms it sucks to see that people are going right back to not taking virus infections serious. 

I know people who have paid with permanent organ damage long before COVID for that.

Fun fact they are pushing for more home office here again not because of COVID but because it would save fuel as that would help if things with Russia escalate further. Not commuting was great for the environment too but it feels people have decided to ignore that completely anyway.

This is where his political leanings come into play. He’s a bit of a MAGA Republican. Not full on Marjorie Taylor Greene, but he has strong leanings. And a complete lack of knowledge on how those germ things spread. “Bless his heart,” as we say in Georgia.

And he is completely unaware that he works with a junior attorney whose wife has a compromised immune system. I contacted the junior attorney and all else who may have had contact so they would not come into the office for a few days, isolate, test, etc.

I have personally been working from home 2-3 days a week for environmental reasons / saving fuel but also happy to do 2-3 days a week from home to avoid my colleagues’ germs.

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On 4/22/2022 at 7:30 AM, Padraig said:

The real test will be where we are in 5 or 6 months.  Especially if there are reformulated vaccines which significantly reduce transmissability again.  Moreover, if cases start to grow in Sept/Oct, I can easily imagine that a lot of countries will restart a wide vaccination campaign.  That's me ignoring the possibility of a summer wave!

Scientific American has a very good article on risk (although it unsurprisingly errs on the side of safety first):

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-make-smart-decisions-about-covid-risk-benefit1/

And it has a link to a nifty risk calculator, where you can compare risks across a wide variety of things.

https://www.covidtaser.com/relativerisk

It makes other solid points:

 

Yeah I think the same but the possibility of a summer wave I see it very very high.... ppl are just too sick of being indoors and they just wanna have a "normal" summer whatever the cost is.

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8 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Sounds like I might need to come visit the City again fairly soon…after all, I am having pangs of longing for The Mark hotel and the Upper East Side. 

One of my colleagues texted me, yesterday, and said he was at the office but had a cough that he couldn’t shake and was asking me for meds…I brought some cough medicine, some TheraFlu, and a Covid test. He said he didn’t need the Covid test, he was sure it wasn’t Covid…well, fast forward to 4 pm. He looked like a zombie, said he was going home. I handed him the Covid test. Lo and behold, he pinged up positive.

We are all now currently working from home. I took a home test today and was negative, will do another one tomorrow. PCR test on Friday.

Pisses me off that he didn’t take the test straightaway. 

Come to NY!  But one of our babysitters just recovered from covid.  She got antivirals absolutely no problem.  PA prescribed them on sight of positive test and they were delivered to her home same day.  So that is totally do-able within the city.

And Chats, UGH re the colleague.  

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8 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Apart from refusing to test and coming into work untested with symptoms it sucks to see that people are going right back to not taking virus infections serious. 

The government is basically encouraging it. I will reiterate my position that the average American is lazy, selfish and dumb. Perfect combination to aid the virus.

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16 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

This is where his political leanings come into play. He’s a bit of a MAGA Republican. Not full on Marjorie Taylor Greene, but he has strong leanings. And a complete lack of knowledge on how those germ things spread. “Bless his heart,” as we say in Georgia.

And he is completely unaware that he works with a junior attorney whose wife has a compromised immune system. I contacted the junior attorney and all else who may have had contact so they would not come into the office for a few days, isolate, test, etc.

I have personally been working from home 2-3 days a week for environmental reasons / saving fuel but also happy to do 2-3 days a week from home to avoid my colleagues’ germs.

Being unaware is a useful tool to ignore reality. Has always worked well for people with privileges!

Yay on working from home. :)

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One thing to consider about coming to NYC to get a booster -- our numbers are surging.  We are in another wave.  And masking is no longer mandatory, nor is anything else such as proof of vaccination.  Unless, of course, one attempts to get into something privately owned, such NYU, as for our event today, 2 - 7 PM.  Five days of showing tests, vaccination record, and then showing all of it at the door, and then signing in, and being led individually to one's reserved spot, and wearing a mask.

Though how they're going to handle the reception, I have no idea. But I'm leaving then.

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1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

Ilya has finally got the 'rona.

This is some heinous unpleasantness. I don't like it.

Someone make it stop. Will thank with cookies. When it doesn't hurt to move again.

I am so sorry. Yikes 

I have escaped it this far, and am living like it’s 2019, so either the Modena two dose + J&J is magic? Or I’m immune? Especially with the colleague who sits next to me with active ‘Rona all day with whom I interacted.

He is so bad off, he’s been prescribed the antivirals. Of course, I had to tell him there were such things and he should Call His Doctor. 

Day 2 post-exposure, and I’m negative home tests (two) and one negative 2-hour PCR as of tonight. 

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Covid deaths no longer overwhelmingly among unvaccinated as toll on elderly grows
Experts say numbers show importance of boosters — and the risks the most vulnerable still face

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/29/covid-deaths-unvaccinated-boosters/

Quote

 

Unvaccinated people accounted for the overwhelming majority of deaths in the United States throughout much of the coronavirus pandemic. But that has changed in recent months, according to a Washington Post analysis of state and federal data.

The pandemic’s toll is no longer falling almost exclusively on those who chose not to get shots, with vaccine protection waning over time and the elderly and immunocompromised — who are at greatest risk of succumbing to covid-19, even if vaccinated — having a harder time dodging increasingly contagious strains.

The vaccinated made up 42 percent of fatalities in January and February during the highly contagious omicron variant’s surge, compared with 23 percent of the dead in September, the peak of the delta wave, according to nationwide data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by The Post. The data is based on the date of infection and limited to a sampling of cases in which vaccination status was known.

As a group, the unvaccinated remain far more vulnerable to the worst consequences of infection — and are far more likely to die — than people who are vaccinated, and they are especially more at risk than people who have received a booster shot.  ....

 

 

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Invisible Wave?

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/04/covid-ba2-omicron-invisible-wave/629708/

Quote

 

Over the past month, the number of new COVID cases in my social circle has become impossible to ignore. I brushed off the first few—guests at a wedding I attended in early April—as outliers during the post-Omicron lull. But then came frantic texts from two former colleagues. The next week, a friend at the local café was complaining that she’d lost her sense of smell. My Instagram feed is now surfacing selfies of people in isolation, some for the second or third time.

Cases in New York City, where I live, have been creeping up since early March. Lately, they’ve risen nationally, too. On Tuesday, the national seven-day average of new COVID cases hit nearly 49,000, up from about 27,000 three weeks earlier. The uptick is likely being driven by BA.2, the new, more transmissible offshoot of Omicron that’s now dominant in the United States. BA.2 does seem to be troubling ...

.... At least so far, the official numbers in the U.S. don’t seem to show that a similar wave has made it stateside. But those numbers aren’t exactly reliable these days. In recent months, testing practices have changed across the country, as at-home rapid tests have gone fully mainstream. These tests, however, don’t usually get recorded in official case counts. This means that our data could be missing a whole lot of infections across the country—enough to obscure a large surge. So … are we in the middle of an invisible wave? I posed the question to experts, and even they were stumped by what’s really happening in the U.S. ....

 

The bolded mirrors my experience too, including right here -- we see regulars who have been posting in the covid threads all along, telling us they have acquired the damned thing, people who haven't in these many previous waves, people who are mindful, people who are vaccinated.  So ya, it would be nice to have some hard information as to what's going on.  Especially as a trip to Cuba is scheduled for June (ooooboy are those tix expensive now!), and one to Colombia in August.

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2 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

I wonder if it is a wee bit scare-mongering, since most of us really have more of a likelihood of dying in a car crash. And everyone does die at some point. 

Yeah.  You have to parse what that article is trying to do.  Almost, if you are under 50 and not immuno compromised (and preferably vaccinated) this article isn't for you (see graph by age group if unsure about why that is).

But for those that were vulnerable pre-vaccine, then you are still vulnerable today.  Your absolute level of vulnerability may have changed but it is important to know that you remain vulnerable.  What vaccines do is allow you to live a more normal life again, but that still means you need to get boosted when allowed, need to wear a mask in certain situations, get tested quickly if you have sympthoms etc.

The more vulnerable you are, the more important it is to follow that advice.

The article probably could have been clearer on all of that. It is all there, just a little unclear.

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

This paragraph is useful.

Quote

An encouraging sign is that COVID hospitalizations aren’t currently rising at the same rate as cases and wastewater data. Nationally, they’re still close to all-time lows. Hospitalization data, Nuzzo said, is “one of our more stable metrics at this point,” though it lags behind the real-time rise in cases because it usually takes people a few weeks to get sick enough to be hospitalized.

If you look at Canadian hospitalisation rates, there probably is a "hidden wave" going on there.  It has been going up over the last month and the current amount of hospitalisations is higher than at any point except for Dec 21/Jan 22.  The US just doen't have that profile.  It could obviously still happen though.

But if I go back to vulnerability, for vulnerable people, the hospitalisation rate doesn't tell you a lot.  For those people, you need to know how prevalent the disease is.  The % of positive tests is probably the best metric to go with, but I agree that the lack of data isn't great for them.  You end up having to be more careful than you need to be.

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