covid

Covid is still killing and disabling people. Mask mandates are gone and many medical staff opt not or refuse to wear them. Politicians are creating policies designed for their personal political gain, rather than public health. N95 masks are still one of the important tools for stopping the spread of covid, but they've been largely removed from CDC covid public health policy. Wear a mask. Defend yourself and your comrades. Resist the propaganda.

A new Covid variant is spreading in England and is behind an outbreak at a care home in Norfolk, UK health officials say.

There have been 34 confirmed cases of BA.2.86, with 28 of those at the care home. There have been no deaths.

It is too early to draw conclusions on whether it is more serious than past variants, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said.

What the article doesn't mention:

• 33 out of 38 residents tested positive, along with 12 staff members.

• The attack rate was 86% among residents

• 29 out of 33 residents had received a booster within the past 4 months.

• All 4 residents who didn't test positive received a booster in the spring.

• 1 hospitalization.

• Only 19 of the 33 residents were symptomatic.

• The outbreak was reported on August 21st, and indicates "established community transmission".

• The outbreak was more severe than previous ones at the facility.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-sars-cov-2-variants-technical-briefings/sars-cov-2-variant-surveillance-and-assessment-technical-briefing-53

I don't think this variant will fizzle out.

Second part isn't out yet.

We must expand COVID wastewater collection and analysis! The deadline to send a public comment to the CDC via the Federal Register is tomorrow.

Submitted comments to Docket No. CDC-2023-0055-0001 must be received by the CDC no later than September 7, 2023 11:59 p.m., EST.

https://biobot.io/data/covid-19

Jill Biden's bout with Covid-19 upends White House's sense of normalcy, but pandemic protocols don't appear to be coming | CNN Politics

Testing requirements are still in place for those in close proximity to the president and passengers aboard Air Force One, including for the upcoming trip to India. But the stringent monitoring that prevailed in the early days of the administration has eased significantly.

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU01074597

Okay, So, ignoring how shit all that is. I finally found info on how these numbers are acquired.

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of households conducted by the Bureau of Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It provides a comprehensive body of data on the labor force, employment, unemployment, persons not in the labor force, hours of work, earnings, and other demographic and labor force characteristics.

Here's what I feel are the 2 most important points from the FAQ on disability data

How are people with disabilities identified in the CPS?

The CPS uses a set of six questions to identify persons with disabilities. A response of “yes” to any one of the questions indicates that the person in question has a disability. >The disability questions appear in the CPS in the following format:

This month we want to learn about people who have physical, mental, or emotional conditions that cause serious difficulty with their daily activities. Please answer for household members who are 15 years old or over.

Is anyone deaf or does anyone have serious difficulty hearing?

Is anyone blind or does anyone have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses?

Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does anyone have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?

Does anyone have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs?

Does anyone have difficulty dressing or bathing?

Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does anyone have difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping?

Labor force measures from the CPS are tabulated for persons age 16 and older.

Are the questions asked about everyone in each household every month?

No. The CPS questions for identifying individuals with disabilities are only asked of household members who are age 15 and older. (Labor force measures from the CPS are tabulated for persons age 16 and older.) Each of the questions ask the respondent whether anyone in the household has the condition described, and if the respondent replies “yes,” they are then asked to identify everyone in the household who has the condition. The CPS is administered to a household for 4 months in a row, followed by 8 months in which the household is not part of the survey, and then the household is again included in the survey for another 4 months. Those households that are in the survey for the first time, or for the first time after the 8-month break, are asked the disability questions. Replacement households and new household members are also asked the disability questions. During months that the questions are not asked, the responses collected earlier are retained to establish disability status in the same manner used for other demographic questions (about race, sex, etc.).

HMMM!

Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does anyone have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?

The brightside is that I know there were quite a few of us that were worried about that dip in 2020 being from the deaths of people, but I don't think that's the case. If you look at the graph in a less compact form, the dip starts in March (far before deaths peak) and is spread out over the entire course of 2020. Based on how often the questions are asked I don't think the data itself would show deaths that visibly. Plus, looking at the questions, I actually kinda think that dip may be from people having a bit of breathing room thanks to time off from work and all the "assistance", relatively speaking.

Here's some graphs of US covid data (cases and deaths) if you want a reminder of what the numbers look like

He said "If you see our company policy we treat it like a cold now"

No paid time off of course, so I'm currently eating through my own cash so that I don't get my coworkers sick

Texas, Ohio, Michigan, New York and Virginia.

The U.S. is seeing a significant rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations as it enters Labor Day weekend.

According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 15,067 new COVID patient hospitalizations for the week ending Aug. 19. That marked an 18.8% jump from the week before, and a staggering 86.9% increase over the past month. However, that is still down almost 61% compared to the same time last year.

The minimizers have their go-to phrase - "compared to last year".

Opinion | Cats With Bird Flu? The Threat Grows.

But Jha’s “nothing to see here” response is, in many ways, the logical outcome of Biden’s decision to essentially throw in the towel when it comes to Covid. Thanks to the official ending of the Covid public health emergency, millions—particularly low-income people—are now on their own in terms of access to the ubiquitous-in-Jha’s-mind-only tools of Democratic lore. So why bother telling anyone to worry when they might not be able to get the help they need? Instead, better to tell them that everything’s fine, that masks don’t need to be in the picture—or even that they “don’t need to know what virus they have and don’t need to be buying tests all the time,” as Shira Doron, the chief infection-control officer for the Tufts Medicine health care network in Massachusetts, told The Washington Post.

Jha and Doron and their ilk can speak so soothingly because they are part of the class that is much more insulated from the worst effects of Covid. People like them—the ones with money and access—can afford the expensive Covid tests. They can ensure that Paxlovid reaches their door quickly. They’ll be first in line for the new boosters. Some of them even have a concierge physician on speed dial for when things get hairy. Meanwhile, they offer the rest of the country the policy equivalent of “You do you” and “Let them eat cake.”

Absolute ghouls.

A tweet...

At least 8 hospitals across the U.S. have brought back mandatory masking due to a dramatic increase in #Covid cases. 12,613 new #Covid admissions for the week ending Aug. 12 marked a 22% jump from the previous wk & the 5th wk of increase. Deaths up 8.9%

It's always been assumed that how much virus you are exposed to mattered, and now we have evidence.

We really should be doing what we can to filter indoor air, mask in common public areas, and generally try to lower our exposure to this virus even if vaccinated. We should be encouraging people to make a CR box, or buy a good hepa filter, and run it if a houshold member is sick. It's infectious as hell, but you aren't guaranteed to get infected if you take measures to reduce the amount of virus you are exposed to.

But instead of having a comprehensive plan to do any of this, our leaders have decided to just infect people as much as possible to build "immunity", or cull the herd, or whatever the fuck is most profitable for shareholders.

Question being asked: What is the risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 after developing immunity following a vaccine, prior infection, or both if exposure to the virus is very high, moderate, or low? They did not study the severity of symptoms. (2/)

How? The authors used the existing database of the Connecticut Department of Correction, where infection data based on high frequency of testing for SARS-CoV-2 on ~9300 residents across 13 facilities were available. (3/)

What did they find? Prior infection, vaccination, or both provided significant protection against infection when the exposure was moderate (index case was within their cellblock) or low (no exposure was documented in cellblock co-residents) against Delta or Omicron. (4/)

However, when the viral exposure was intense (with infected cellmate - exposure is 24/7), none of these groups had enough immunity to protect against infection with Delta or Omicron virus. (5/)

I am on vacation somewhere in the USA south of Richmond, and my triple or quadruple "vaccinated" partner Grimes has contracted covid. Don't worry though I'm still negative and max vaxxed.

alt text: Eric Topol @EricTop01 More than 3 years in, with tens of millions of people still suffering, this is the comprehensive list of validated treatments for #LongCovid, as established through rigorous, randomized clinical trials

*list is blank.

There will be no collective thanksgiving, no elegies, no closure. As we have seen time and time again throughout human history, pandemics do not end—they echo.

The last paragraph of this essay stuck with me so I thought I'd share it. I wish we could collectively grieve over this awful thing that has happened and is happening to us.

Is archive.today not working for you? AernaLingus's comment has the CBS news link.

The Washington Post is officially concerned about the new variant that just dropped. No paywall on the article.

But BA.2.86 stands out in the omicron family tree because of how much it has morphed. It has more than 30 mutations on its spike protein, the part of the virus that pierces through the cell and that vaccines train the body to fend off. Experts believe the antibodies forged through battles with earlier variants will have a difficult time recognizing this new foe.

“This is a radical change of the virus like what happened with omicron, which caught a lot of people defenseless,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. “Even if they had a vaccine or prior infection, it could still get into them and infect them again or for the first time. We are facing that again.”

The biggest unknown is whether the BA.2.86 will be transmissible enough to cause a surge. A variant adept at evading immunity would not take off in a population if it does not spread efficiently and multiply.

“It is still a possibility we either see this variant spread very widely as happened with the original omicron,” said Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist who monitors coronavirus variants at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, “or it doesn’t end up spreading very widely and we continue to have these XBB variants.”

This one might fizzle out, or it might not. That we are finding it in multple countries already is a bad sign, but the important thing is that we do nothing.

The CDC has been winding down surveillance of covid this year and saying "we have the tools" and to not be alarmed by this, it's to be expected and all part of the plan, etc, but this new variant was spotted by people volunteering their time and positing their findings on twitter, not the CDC.

His advice: Get the vaccine, wear an n95 indoors, and avoid public indoor spaces.

“I find it very distressing that we, as a society, aren’t willing to talk openly about COVID,” Dr. Dick Zoutman declared.

“The media are almost completely silent, and it’s really perplexing,” Zoutman said of the disappearance of COVID-19 from the headlines in the fourth year of the pandemic. “We are missing a huge opportunity to protect our loved ones, our children, our elderly, our vulnerable … by taking simple interventions.”

Although the mortality rate for COVID-19 has declined thanks to mass vaccinations, the infectious disease specialist stated that long COVID threatens the health of the general population.

“We don’t understand all the implications of long COVID,” he said of the lingering symptoms that may develop after the acute phase of the illness. “Basically, this virus gets into your body and it doesn’t leave. …And it invades the lining of the blood vessels and every organ of your body,” he explained.

“Long COVID syndrome occurs in at least 10 per cent of every infectious episode and may be as much as 30 per cent. Stop and think about that: if you get COVID twice a year, that’s a 20-60 per cent chance that you’re going to get long COVID. And the next year, it’s now 40-120 per cent. Almost certainly … you’re guaranteed statistically to acquire some form of long COVID.”

"You can't wear a mask forever" coughs in your face "I'm following CDC recommendations and washing my hands."

Less than two weeks into the school year, a Kentucky school district has canceled in-person classes for the rest of the week after nearly a fifth of its students came down with Covid, strep throat, the flu and other illnesses.

The Lee County School District, which has just under 900 students, began classes Aug. 9 but noticed attendance drop to about 82% on Friday, Superintendent Earl Ray Schuler said.

By Monday, the rate dipped to 81%, and 14 staff members called in sick, Schuler said.

It's immunity debt from those strict never-ending kentucky lockdowns, right? Or maybe they all forgot how to wash their hands?

Three years into the global COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated four million Americans report that long COVID is severely impacting their daily lives. Scientists are still trying to better understand the condition that brings with it severe brain fog, blood clots, and a whole host of awful medical conditions that don’t go away. Now, a study published August 21 in the journal Nature Medicine found fallout from COVID-19 can persist even two years after infection.

Biden is cleverly increasing regular workers bargaining power by letting covid disable millions!

The team also tallied the risks for over 80 different complications that are associated with long COVID and turned it into a health metric called a disability adjusted life year (DALY). Each DALY stands for one year of typically healthy life lost to illness. The team found that long COVID created over 80 DALYs, for every 1,000 people who weren’t hospitalized due to their initial infection.

Based on the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease study, long COVID creates a higher burden of disability per every 1,000 Americans than cancer (roughly 50 DALYs) or heart disease (about 52 DALYs).

“Our findings highlight the substantial cumulative burden of health loss due to long COVID and emphasize the ongoing need for health care for those faced with long COVID,” said Al-Aly. “It appears that the effects of long COVID for many will not only impact such patients and their quality of life, but potentially will contribute to a decline in life expectancy and also may impact labor participation, economic productivity, and societal well-being.”

Oh wait, some good news:

The team noted one encouraging note that the risks of death or hospitalization to those who were not sent to the hospital—the majority of people infected with the virus— declined and became insignificant at six and 19 months.

I'm glad covid is over and we don't have to worry about reinfections!

Decreasing the risk of long COVID should be a focus of public health policy, according Al-Aly. “Reducing the risk of infection and transmission with updated vaccines — including vaccines that block transmission — may be a critical strategy to reduce the risk of long-term health problems,” he said. “We also need an urgent, coordinated approach that matches the scale and gravity of long COVID to find treatments as soon as possible.”

I'm sure our new leadership at the CDC will get right on it!