Re: Corona Virus: It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2022 5:19 pm
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
Ontario has officially entered its seventh wave of COVID-19, driven this time by the Omicron BA.5 subvariant, the province's top doctor confirms.
"Sadly yes, we're in another wave," Dr. Kieran Moore, the province's chief medical officer, told CBC News Wednesday after Ontario's COVID-19 science advisory table pointed to exponential growth in most public health units.
Moore says the province is now reviewing further eligibility for booster doses and that a decision on that will be coming soon.
The BA.5 subvariant has been rising slowly since early June but really started to "take off" mid-month, becoming a dominant strain, Moore said. Ontario can likely expect another four to five weeks in this wave, which is now in about its third week, he said, adding infections are expected to increase over the next 10 days before beginning to slow.
The new wave comes amid the summer months when many are spending more time outdoors — something that would have otherwise been expected to help curb the spread of transmission, raising questions about what will happen as more people head indoors later in the year.
"Lots of unknowns for the fall but I can assure all Ontarians we're preparing for it," said Moore.
According to the province's top doctor, 66 per cent of new circulating strains are now the BA.5 strain, driving an increase in test positivity and hospitalizations.
"We may ask Ontarians to wear masks as we go indoors into the fall and we may mandate it if our health system has too many people getting admitted, too many people waiting in emergency departments... All of us want to maintain our health system capacity."
In a series of tweets Wednesday, the science table pointed to several key indicators signalling the beginning of a wave, little more than a month after the end of most public health measures, including mask mandates.
Public health officials’ COVID complacency has opened the door to new illnesses and devastating long-term damage.
While Omicron’s subvariants find new ways to evade vaccines and destabilize immune systems, another pandemic has overwhelmed officials who are supposed to be in charge of public health.
Let’s call it a plague of willful incompetence or an outbreak of epidemiological stupidity. Or maybe José Saramago’s novel has come to life and targeted public officials with a scourge of blindness.
In any case, COVID, a novel virus that can wreak havoc with any organ in the body, continues to evolve at a furious pace.
In response officials have largely abandoned any coherent response, including masking, testing, tracing and even basic data collection.
Yes, the people have been abandoned.
So don’t expect “normal” to return to your hospital, your airport, your nation, your community or your life anytime soon.
We're currently averaging ~300 deaths a day in the United States. I bet if you asked people on the street they'd have no idea or guess it's in the teens.a few immutable truths:
we are so far averaging more covid deaths a day in 2022 than 2020/2021.
the death rate is 2x fold higher in low income neighbourhoods.
“living with covid” has meant discriminate death and harm.
need protective policies in place to keep people alive.
For reference there are about ~7 million adults that have weakened immune systems in the United States - roughly the entire population of Tennessee or Massachusetts that needs multiple layers of protection.New @CDCMMWR finds once hospitalized, adults w/ weakened immune systems more likely to be admitted to ICU or die from #COVID19 than those w/o. People with weakened immune systems need multiple layers of COVID-19 protection, including vaccination.
But which is it, TN or MA? Your answer will help me determine my level of concern.
Okay. I chuckled. So I'm probably bound for hell now, eh?coopasonic wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 4:24 pmBut which is it, TN or MA? Your answer will help me determine my level of concern.
Was waiting for something like this to come out:
This week, a very scary-sounding article went viral (“Get Ready for the Forever Plague”!), accompanied by a picture of an equally scary crow-faced plague doctor in a hoodie. “Just one infection can destabilize your immune system and age it by 10 years,” the journalist wrote. “As a consequence it is now possible to be reinfected with one of omicron’s variants every two to three weeks,” and “each reinfection confers no immunity.”
Let’s get this out of the way: None of that is true. The article was roundly criticized by numerous experts on Twitter as sloppy and error-ridden, and hyperbolic. But it clearly struck a nerve, because it taps into legitimate concerns about the stage of the pandemic we’re in.
...
The “Forever Plague” article resonated with many because it successfully conveyed the urgency of the pandemic when the zeitgeist is maddeningly blasé. Who cares if there are some errors, one might argue, if this article scares people into action? But I disagree. As others have noted, it’s possible to believe two things simultaneously: That COVID is an extraordinary public health crisis with unknown short- and long-term effects on human health, and that inaccurate facts used for fearmongering aren’t helpful. The seriousness of the pandemic speaks for itself, but manipulating a pandemic-weary public with despair-inducing lies isn’t the way to get them to listen.
I was trying to get a representative sample for OOers from all over, but your point is noted.coopasonic wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 4:24 pm But which is it, TN or MA? Your answer will help me determine my level of concern.
Risk:Before Omicron, reinfections were rare. In the U.K., reinfections comprised around 1% of cases in April 2021. With the introduction of Omicron, reinfection rates quickly increased to 11% of all infections. Right now, reinfections make up about 25-27% of cases in the U.K. (Remember, U.K. tracks antigen and PCR tests.)
Unfortunately, we don’t have a national picture of reinfections in the U.S. Some local jurisdictions closely follow the data. In New York, for example, ~25% of cases this week were reinfections. The rate of first infection is 28 per 100K in NY compared to a reinfection rate of 5 per 100K. Waves are still very much being driven by first infections, but reinfections are on the rise.
How quick:Thanks to U.K. surveillance data, we know people are more likely to be reinfected if they:
are unvaccinated
had a “milder” primary infection with a lower viral load
did not report symptoms with their first infection
are younger (although reinfections are rising for all age groups, as seen below)
There's some more about severity, which I'll let y'all read. In closing:An early 2021 study found that people have great protection from SARS-CoV-2 in the first 90 days after infection. In fact, the CDC still uses the 90-day window to exclude counting new positives as reinfections. However, reinfections do occur earlier. A study in Denmark found that while pre-Omicron reinfections were rare (593 out of 4.4 million people), many occurred within 60 days of infection. Two additional studies (here, here) confirmed reinfections occurred as early as 20 days after infection during the first Omicron wave (reinfections remained rare; 1,739 out of 1.8 million people).
...
One could theoretically get reinfected week after week or month after month, but this would be incredibly rare because it assumes no immune response after each subsequent infection. In fact, I’m unaware of a single instance of rapid reinfection described. The cadence of reinfection going forward (every 6 months? every year?) is not clear, as we are at the mercy of time, viral evolution, and booster roll-outs.
There are myriad reasons we need to do our best to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission and prevent infection. Wearing masks, staying up to date with vaccines, and improved ventilation will help. And, ideally, reinfections would not occur. But we are well past the point of zero COVID, and reinfections can be expected, just like with other respiratory viruses. Vaccine and infection-induced immunity is clearly reducing severity of reinfection. Unfortunately, protection from severe reinfection isn’t guaranteed for high-risk groups.
Well, yeah. That's the kicker. Prior to Omicron reinfection was relatively rare. Now...not so much. And guess what? By continuing to encourage uncontrolled spread, we're selecting strains of viruses that are going to get better and better at being communicable and evading immunity.
Indeed, it does not.people aren't getting as many PCR tests but the poop doesn't lie.
Now is not the time to decide you've had enough.The actual truth is that in the US, waning + omicron + massive failure to express the need for boosters has led to a modest drop in efficacy. But this modest drop has translated into tens of thousands of additional deaths among the vaccinated.
In July 2021, unvaccinated people had 15x the risk of death compared to the vaccinated. By March 2022 (most recent available), it had fallen to 10x the risk. In July 2021, 17% of deaths were vaccinated. In Mar 2022, it's almost half.
The problem with that respirator is that it has an unfiltered exhalation valve.hitbyambulance wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 3:37 pm i ordered a 3M half-face elastomer respirator (6502QL, medium size) with P100 cartridges from cyberweld.com . i had ordered one last year, but i stupidly had it sent to the wrong address and i never got it!
i think i want one of these and will wear it to every concert i go to: https://www.etsy.com/listing/897416653/ ... hield-face combine that with a respirator, and i think i'm good
That was important when everyone else was also wearing a mask. If you're the only person wearing a mask? You're not making the situation any worse by wearing a mask that has an exhalation valve.
Maybe, assuming that you're not a asymptomatic carrier and/or don't care about infecting others if you are, but there are elastomeric masks available now that don't have exhalation valves, such as this one.Smoove_B wrote: ↑Sat Jul 09, 2022 12:57 pmThat was important when everyone else was also wearing a mask. If you're the only person wearing a mask? You're not making the situation any worse by wearing a mask that has an exhalation valve.
If you want to be a mensch, you could put a surgical mask over it, but I'd be under no illusion I was helping in a practical sense.
After >2 years of COVID, this is where we are.
Katie Porter and Chuck Schumer tested positive in the last day. We need to collectively ignore this harder folks!Walgreens positivity data Summer surge worse than the winter surge.
What's even more interesting here is that for most of the winter surge, we didnt have access to at home test, while for the summer surge many are testing at home. So the test positivity rate is likely much higher
At this point, I don't even know what to say anymore. The minimizers got what they wanted, the world got this:
I was going to say the same thing. I wonder if it's that effect we see here where it just sloshes around the country.
We're down to 1 effective monoclonal antibody Rx"only one that has shown remarkably preserved in vitro activity against all #SARSCoV2 variants, including the omicron variant and the most recent BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants that are now becoming dominant."