Coronavirus COVID-19 Thread
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(Based on an unverified study published by University of Hong Kong) Omicron is also manifesting more as an upper respiratory infection than a lower respiratory infection, which gives it a very high transmission rate (and explains the transmission index and doubling time). But there appears to be a tradeoff in our favor. Patients are suffering more from bronchitis than pneumonia. They are using ex vivo samples, which means tissue taken from patients, but grown in a petri dish.
Record cases in NY, there is a usually a 1-2wk delay before you see hospitalizations climb after a spike in cases.
COVID Corner - Some reports from some news outlets* from today, Monday 20th of December:
*claims made by headlines or articles are those of the outlets and have not been independently verified, or in some cases even read, by myself.
- World: Global Confirmed 274,897,414 Global Deaths 5,357,318
- UK: Johnson: Garden photo shows people working
- UK: Food from cancelled party donated to homeless
- Isle of Man: Half of those eligible have had Covid booster jab
- Vaccines: Moderna says booster produces strong antibody response to Omicron
- UK: UK records 91,743 new Covid cases and 44 more deaths
- EU: EU drugs regulator approves Novavax jab
- Obvious: ‘Vaccines are not the only answer’ say experts
*claims made by headlines or articles are those of the outlets and have not been independently verified, or in some cases even read, by myself.
- World: Global Confirmed 274,897,414 Global Deaths 5,357,318
- UK: Johnson: Garden photo shows people working
- UK: Food from cancelled party donated to homeless
- Isle of Man: Half of those eligible have had Covid booster jab
- Vaccines: Moderna says booster produces strong antibody response to Omicron
- UK: UK records 91,743 new Covid cases and 44 more deaths
- EU: EU drugs regulator approves Novavax jab
- Obvious: ‘Vaccines are not the only answer’ say experts
Not sure Omicron is taking the same delay we were seeing in previous variants, it seems to be causing a reaction faster..
The good news is this variant is going the way of many past virus variants in giving up lethality for transmission. And if it does drop down to a lethality of 0.1% then it would be on par with the seasonal flu. As for the spread, it's not a linear mathematical progression as more of the population gets infected fewer pathways to infect new hosts exists and so its more of a s curve exponential curve dictated by its rvalue. Wiki has a pretty decent write-up on it for those interested in a quick overview. But like weather, there are different models with different modeling criteria and outcomes.
Mathematical modelling of infectious disease - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
It does, up to 5 times faster. But, the current spike in the US North East is not solely due to Omicron yet.
Ok, yes there are models that look like this. But at this point they are only conjecture, because we don't know the characteristics of re-infection yet. There is a good deal of hope that it will build on existing immunity, but it is based on hope and not live data.
There is also a danger in assuming this will become "flu like" in the end, I remind you of two things:
1. That within 102-103 years lays the Pandemic of 1918/19, 1977 (Primarily confined to the Soviet Block, thanks to politics) and again in 2009. All H1N1 Influenza.
2. Also, in the past 20 years, there have been 3 major outbreaks of related Coronavirus strains: SARS-COV, MERS-COV and now SARS-COV-ID-2.
At this point I'm ready for an Optimus Prime variant.
The vaccines pretty much failed. We're getting out of this the old fashioned evolutionary way.
The vaccines don't stop the spread and the virus is highly mutative, probably due to the massive disparities in immunity levels, perhaps even its designed programming.
At best, they give an immune boost to those who might otherwise might need hospitalization or die from complications caused by COVID, who have no natural antibodies present. The other 98% were never going to get very sick in the first place and could probably have been treated traditionally. It's just a waiting game at this point. Once the virus learns to survive in 99.9999999% of hosts, you'll see as many COVID deaths as Flu deaths per year.
The vaccines don't stop the spread and the virus is highly mutative, probably due to the massive disparities in immunity levels, perhaps even its designed programming.
At best, they give an immune boost to those who might otherwise might need hospitalization or die from complications caused by COVID, who have no natural antibodies present. The other 98% were never going to get very sick in the first place and could probably have been treated traditionally. It's just a waiting game at this point. Once the virus learns to survive in 99.9999999% of hosts, you'll see as many COVID deaths as Flu deaths per year.
If I may challenge you on that bit of misinformation:
The COVID vaccine is NOT going to stop you from getting COVID.
If you are vaxxed and you got COVID, and you are in a high risk group that ends up in hospital, odds are in your favor of coming out alive.
If you are unvaxxed and end up in hospital, odds are greater that you will die.
End of story.
Anybody that says vaccines dont work is either just misinformed or lying.
I bring receipts:
Let me explain that chart for those of you that need a little help.
Look at the 50-59 age group. There were 37 people in this age group that died from COVID, of those 37, 2 people were fully vaxxed, 3 people had 1 dose. A whopping 32 people who died had no vaccine at all.
Tell me again how the vaccines are not working?
@Montoya is right, vaccines work, and they work well. They do not stop an infection, they are not designed to. Their purpose is to reduce the damage done by the virus, to keep people out of the hospital if they can, or out of ICU if they can. There are way too many other factors to give guarantees.
To further expand on this unfortunate trend of right wing media telling us that the vaccine does not work, I bring you this article showing us how deaths in red states are over double those in blue states, again, all due to vaccination rates.
Here are the receipts: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate
The left chart shows how many adults are vaccinated and how much their county voted for Trump. The more red, the less vaccinated thanks to propaganda about how the vaccine does not work, 5G, Fauci, globalists and Bill Gates something something.
The right chart shows Republicans in red counties are dying at double the rate of dems in blue counties.
If you really want to trigger the libs, get vaccinated! That will show them! :D
Here are the receipts: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate
The left chart shows how many adults are vaccinated and how much their county voted for Trump. The more red, the less vaccinated thanks to propaganda about how the vaccine does not work, 5G, Fauci, globalists and Bill Gates something something.
The right chart shows Republicans in red counties are dying at double the rate of dems in blue counties.
If you really want to trigger the libs, get vaccinated! That will show them! :D
In the US ...
When the vaccination first came out they 100% said it would prevent COVID.
Then they said it would prevent transmission.
Then they said it would prevent most transmission.
Then they said it just prevents severe symptoms.
That's great and all. But COVID never was a death sentence for most people, nor did most people have to go to the hospital.
We know WHO the vulnerable populations are. The data is pretty clear. Always has been.
Everything we did initially was to "stop the spread". No one signed up for "4 shots a year for the rest of your life" to create some kind of weird socialized corporation system where government prints money just to hand it to Pharma through taxation.
Those are just facts that can't be denied because they're on video and in newspaper articles. The moving goal post fallacy is simply used for political expediency.
This was always a math problem at its core.
We're going into our 3rd year with this virus, record infection rates, and want to repeat everything we've done the prior 2 years. We use to call that the definition of insanity.
At the end of the day ... this virus is endemic.
You aren't vaccinating your way out of natural evolution ... not with the vaccination as it sits today. It's a band-aid for a problem that's more complex.
That doesn't sell the maximum amount of vaccines ... and I get that. And not that boosting your immunity is a bad thing either. It can CLEARLY help. You could also argue it's not the best treatment at this point. It's just the only one most governments are thus far, willing to buy and sell at no cost.
We could lock down the world for 5 years and have 100% vaccination rates and its not going to make a difference with regards to mutations.
If you can't stop transmission ... you can't stop mutation. A virus is no different than any other living thing. Survive ... Reproduce ... Survive. Mutations occur to allow virii to more effectively spread, and thus they tend to become less toxic to the host organism to complete said function over time.
You aren't vaccinating your way out of natural evolution ... not with the vaccination as it sits today. It's a band-aid for a problem that's more complex.
That doesn't sell the maximum amount of vaccines ... and I get that. And not that boosting your immunity is a bad thing either. It can CLEARLY help. You could also argue it's not the best treatment at this point. It's just the only one most governments are thus far, willing to buy and sell at no cost.
We could lock down the world for 5 years and have 100% vaccination rates and its not going to make a difference with regards to mutations.
If you can't stop transmission ... you can't stop mutation. A virus is no different than any other living thing. Survive ... Reproduce ... Survive. Mutations occur to allow virii to more effectively spread, and thus they tend to become less toxic to the host organism to complete said function over time.
They made a vaccine that would work well against the alpha variant. You do understand that what we see here today is not the COVID from 2019 right? Same way that the annual flu shot is not the same flu shot, its actually specifically for the flu variant they see as problematic for that year.
As more data comes in, you adjust your model and the expectations, vs being ignorant to the data, covering your ears and saying LALALALALA!
809,268 American families disagree. At which point is it a more of a problem? 1M? 5M? 10M? Whats your magic number that would make you consider it a problem?
We tried to stop the spread, that failed. What should we do next? Nothing?
If your concern is about pharma getting money, you are too late, they make billions off you every year long before COVID came along. Ironically enough the only way to end that is go for a more socialized healthcare system.
Nobody is denying those facts.
I have another fact: Republicans are dying at twice the rate of Democrats.
I admit that early on I, like everybody else believed that if everybody got vaxxed it would go away. Now 2yrs later with all the data we have, Im fully OK with people not getting vaxxed. Roll the dice, take your chances, its not my problem.
Actually Im lying, it is my problem if I need to go to the ER and the beds are full of antivax nutjobs struggling to breath.
My neighbor went to the ER last week, she had bad abdominal pains. She had to wait 5hrs, the nurse said all the beds were full of COVID patients.
There very simply, aren't a bunch of hospitals full of dying unvaccinated people.
Not in America anyways. Pick a state ... any state ... look up the numbers.
I live in Ohio. We have never ran out of hospital beds, not once since the pandemic. As of 12/20 (and we're getting hit HARD with COVID) ... we are at less than 1/3rd capacity. And that's total vacancy.
Now there might be spots with very stressed and poor quality medical facilities struggling. And that honestly sucks. But overall, the health system has done so well around here that they could afford to get rid of help and sell off equipment. lol
EDIT:
To put in further perspective, 44,500 unvaccinated Ohioans have went to the hospital this year in a state with a population of 12,000,000 due to COVID.
That's 0.37% of the state's population over the span of an entire year. Assuming Omnicron is less harmful/symptomatic, that number should decrease even more so next year.
Even if you adjust for only the unvaccinated population (roughly 5 million) ... less than 1% of the unvaccinated in Ohio went to the hospital for COVID this year.
Worth repeating: Less than 1% (0.89%) of all unvaccinated Ohioans required hospitalization in 2021.
We've got more young people dying from suicide and Fentanyl in Ohio than we do COVID. Treating COVID like a death sentence isn't the answer and it sure has heck isn't a reason to allow things to happen unquestioned, imho. Some of the responses have been tragic given the data ... but that's just me. And all that takes NOTHING away from people who have been affected by the disease. It's very real, and it can be very deadly. Most of us probably at least know a few people it has taken. But the level of panic is causing more harm than the reality of the dang virus at this point. People are breaking and governments are getting out of hand. It's heart breaking. All of it.
Early identification of severe COVID and immediate treatment can save even some of the weaker patients ... vaccinated or not. The medical evidence couldn't be clearer and frankly, my wife sees it every day. This newer idea that unvaccinated people don't deserve treatment because it will bring down the healthcare system is truly a dangerous narrative to hold. It's a "Us vs Them" narrative that's not even built on the factual reality of our current situation and the capabilities of our current system. It lacks empathy, compassion, and provides no intelligent logistical strategy to defeat the virus. Whether someone else lives or dies has no bearing on how your individual biochemistry will be impacted when facing the virus (and you WILL continue to face it). And if the virus is truly conforming ... the fear of not being able to get treated should be practically non-existent. Symptomatic expressions from the virus -should- decrease in most (most, being a key word) everyone, which naturally leads to less treatments needed through hospitalization.
Not in America anyways. Pick a state ... any state ... look up the numbers.
I live in Ohio. We have never ran out of hospital beds, not once since the pandemic. As of 12/20 (and we're getting hit HARD with COVID) ... we are at less than 1/3rd capacity. And that's total vacancy.
Now there might be spots with very stressed and poor quality medical facilities struggling. And that honestly sucks. But overall, the health system has done so well around here that they could afford to get rid of help and sell off equipment. lol
EDIT:
To put in further perspective, 44,500 unvaccinated Ohioans have went to the hospital this year in a state with a population of 12,000,000 due to COVID.
That's 0.37% of the state's population over the span of an entire year. Assuming Omnicron is less harmful/symptomatic, that number should decrease even more so next year.
Even if you adjust for only the unvaccinated population (roughly 5 million) ... less than 1% of the unvaccinated in Ohio went to the hospital for COVID this year.
Worth repeating: Less than 1% (0.89%) of all unvaccinated Ohioans required hospitalization in 2021.
We've got more young people dying from suicide and Fentanyl in Ohio than we do COVID. Treating COVID like a death sentence isn't the answer and it sure has heck isn't a reason to allow things to happen unquestioned, imho. Some of the responses have been tragic given the data ... but that's just me. And all that takes NOTHING away from people who have been affected by the disease. It's very real, and it can be very deadly. Most of us probably at least know a few people it has taken. But the level of panic is causing more harm than the reality of the dang virus at this point. People are breaking and governments are getting out of hand. It's heart breaking. All of it.
Early identification of severe COVID and immediate treatment can save even some of the weaker patients ... vaccinated or not. The medical evidence couldn't be clearer and frankly, my wife sees it every day. This newer idea that unvaccinated people don't deserve treatment because it will bring down the healthcare system is truly a dangerous narrative to hold. It's a "Us vs Them" narrative that's not even built on the factual reality of our current situation and the capabilities of our current system. It lacks empathy, compassion, and provides no intelligent logistical strategy to defeat the virus. Whether someone else lives or dies has no bearing on how your individual biochemistry will be impacted when facing the virus (and you WILL continue to face it). And if the virus is truly conforming ... the fear of not being able to get treated should be practically non-existent. Symptomatic expressions from the virus -should- decrease in most (most, being a key word) everyone, which naturally leads to less treatments needed through hospitalization.
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Bah, can not sleep and wanted to look at other numbers for the ending week here in the U.S.
Based on the states who seem to be struggling the most, it all looks the same.
Increases on reported cases, but relatively low cases of severe infection overall.
Cali for example, naturally gets hit pretty hard but they were still down 74% in hospitalizations this week compared to the same week last year.
The majority of people still getting deathly sick are absolutely unvaccinated. The part everyone seems to ignore is that even the unvaccinated are not particularly prone to severe infection as this virus mutates.
Health conditions related to obesity and/or age is what COVID feeds on in America. Hypertension, Diabetes, Cardiac Disease, etc. The unpredictability of those conditions is extremely difficult in a waning immune system that has become even more compromised.
And again, still not a guaranteed death sentence, nor is the safety guaranteed of anyone who doesn't suffer from those preexisting conditions (no two people have identical biochemistry, thus there are always exceptions). But it's obviously going to be where we see most of the carnage.
A timed boost of immunity quite literally adds some predictability into the equation for someone who is immunocompromised. It's just not a prerequisite for someone who is not.
Those are both absolutely true statements in America, based the data being reported by the states.
Based on the states who seem to be struggling the most, it all looks the same.
Increases on reported cases, but relatively low cases of severe infection overall.
Cali for example, naturally gets hit pretty hard but they were still down 74% in hospitalizations this week compared to the same week last year.
The majority of people still getting deathly sick are absolutely unvaccinated. The part everyone seems to ignore is that even the unvaccinated are not particularly prone to severe infection as this virus mutates.
Health conditions related to obesity and/or age is what COVID feeds on in America. Hypertension, Diabetes, Cardiac Disease, etc. The unpredictability of those conditions is extremely difficult in a waning immune system that has become even more compromised.
And again, still not a guaranteed death sentence, nor is the safety guaranteed of anyone who doesn't suffer from those preexisting conditions (no two people have identical biochemistry, thus there are always exceptions). But it's obviously going to be where we see most of the carnage.
A timed boost of immunity quite literally adds some predictability into the equation for someone who is immunocompromised. It's just not a prerequisite for someone who is not.
Those are both absolutely true statements in America, based the data being reported by the states.
What you are seeing is Omicron taking over from Delta. Delta is not gone yet, but it will be in a couple of weeks, about 3 weeks early. After that we'll see little pockets for a while but Omicron will have taken over. The death rate will go down, to about double the flu death rate, and most people who get sick may have nothing more than a cold. We think. It hasn't been around for long enough to know for sure.
And nothing stops Delta from finding a way to mutate out of it's demise, and Omicron could mutate back to a being a problem. Viruses do not consult us before they do stuff, and that is the lesson we as a society need to learn.
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We have definitely become better at dealing with this compared to the beginning.
Fair enough, its not a prerequisite, but it sure does help having a large population that is boosted up, ask any ER nurse.
COVID Corner - Some reports from some news outlets* from today, Monday 20th of December:
*claims made by headlines or articles are those of the outlets and have not been independently verified, or in some cases even read, by myself.
- World: Global Confirmed 275,981,287 Global Deaths 5,366,248
- UK: Hundreds of trains cancelled as Covid hits railway staffing
- UK: London tourist attractions shut due to staff shortages
- UK: Month delay before incorrect Covid tests halted
- UK: Wales, Fines for employees not working from home
- WHO: WHO warns of coming Covid storm in Europe
- US: Omicron is now dominant Covid-19 variant in US, officials say
- US: Biden buys 500m test kits to tackle Omicron surge
- South Africa: South Africa scientists probe source of new variants
- Germany: Germany poised to limit social contact as Omicron sweeps Europe
- WHO: WHO warns festive gatherings will lead to ‘increased cases, more deaths’
- Israel: Israel records first death from Omicron variant
- Portugal: Portugal tightens restrictions over virus wave concerns
- Sweden: Sweden introduces tighter restrictions amid surging infections
- Thailand: Thailand reinstates mandatory Covid quarantine
*claims made by headlines or articles are those of the outlets and have not been independently verified, or in some cases even read, by myself.
- World: Global Confirmed 275,981,287 Global Deaths 5,366,248
- UK: Hundreds of trains cancelled as Covid hits railway staffing
- UK: London tourist attractions shut due to staff shortages
- UK: Month delay before incorrect Covid tests halted
- UK: Wales, Fines for employees not working from home
- WHO: WHO warns of coming Covid storm in Europe
- US: Omicron is now dominant Covid-19 variant in US, officials say
- US: Biden buys 500m test kits to tackle Omicron surge
- South Africa: South Africa scientists probe source of new variants
- Germany: Germany poised to limit social contact as Omicron sweeps Europe
- WHO: WHO warns festive gatherings will lead to ‘increased cases, more deaths’
- Israel: Israel records first death from Omicron variant
- Portugal: Portugal tightens restrictions over virus wave concerns
- Sweden: Sweden introduces tighter restrictions amid surging infections
- Thailand: Thailand reinstates mandatory Covid quarantine