General COVID-19 Talk #4 MOD Warning

[Maynard]

All the free at-home tests are starting to show up. Probably see a spike in cases from that alone.

 

[Master Yoda]

All the free at-home tests are starting to show up. Probably see a spike in cases from that alone.

I think these at home tests were already vastly undercounting the real case counts. Nobody had any in stock just a week or two ago.

 

[RonM11]

All the free at-home tests are starting to show up. Probably see a spike in cases from that alone.

Reporting comes from hospitals and testing sites. Very few people will self-report. I wouldn't even know who to report my test results TO.

 

[Maynard]

Reporting comes from hospitals and testing sites. Very few people will self-report. I wouldn't even know who to report my test results TO.

Right but when there are positive at-home tests, most people will go to a testing site or hospital to get an official swab to confirm/rule out the results. The home tests aren’t as reliable and I think people know that.

 

[Lt Dan]

I think these at home tests were already vastly undercounting the real case counts. Nobody had any in stock just a week or two ago.

Indeed. That was also the case early on





At the end of the day ,though, it's about not overwhelming the hospital system.
And the early signs are that we have peaked

 

[RonM11]

How worried should we be about the new BA.2 Omicron subtype? Here's what we know

As long as there are unvaccinated people in the world, this shit ain't ever gonna stop. We need to treat SARS-CoV-2 as we did smallpox, which is to mean make every effort to eradicate it (I know this won't happen but if that's our goal, we can get it down to such low numbers as to be endemic). Coronavirus will continue to wreak havoc on our economy and our daily lives until we can do something significant to get the numbers down to a whisper.

 

[Lt Dan]

View attachment 502881

Oooff the cases
Hosp 1067--->1022
ICU 184--->178

3,122 cases per day
Big drop in hosp 1022---->934
ICU 178--->174

 

[Buddy The Elf]

I felt like crap last week. I took two home test and was negative. I had been exposed to someone who used the same home tests I gave him and he was positive. I woke up Saturday feeling weak and could barely walk to the bathroom to piss. I tested positive that day. I had vaccines and positive antibody tests just a month or so ago. This one is going to get everyone sick more than likely.

 

[Lt Dan]

I felt like crap last week. I took two home test and was negative. I had been exposed to someone who used the same home tests I gave him and he was positive. I woke up Saturday feeling weak and could barely walk to the bathroom to piss. I tested positive that day. I had vaccines and positive antibody tests just a month or so ago. This one is going to get everyone sick more than likely.

I hope you are back to normal as soon as possible.

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

It will be interesting to see if (assuming it receives approval "soon") this will in-fact cause some current holdouts to take the jab (my out-of-my-keister-guess: 'The amount will be negligible'):

Novavax Submits Request to the U.S. FDA for Emergency Use Authorization of COVID-19 Vaccine (yahoo.com)

 

[Schrute farms]

I actually know several folks who have been long hold outs waiting for the Novavax one to get approved and available in the USA. A few didn't think (at the time) that it would take so long for Novavax to (hopefully) get approved. A couple of them even said that they would have gotten Ph/Moderna instead recently (1-3 months ago0, but they felt they'd be hypocrites. So holding out still.
Not me and my wife -- we're Team Pfizer.

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I actually know several folks who have been long hold outs waiting for the Novavax one to get approved and available in the USA. A few didn't think (at the time) that it would take so long for Novavax to (hopefully) get approved. A couple of them even said that they would have gotten Ph/Moderna instead recently (1-3 months ago0, but they felt they'd be hypocrites. So holding out still.

Interesting; I honestly didn't even know this particular vaccine was in the pipeline until reading this article today. As a corollary: I wonder if some people would feel more comfortable giving this one (vs. the mNRAs) to their young kids...

 

[Raccoon Jesus]

For some reason I see a lot of the same cohort latching on to the 'nanoparticle' part of that and staying the course.

 

[SmytheKing]

For some reason I see a lot of the same cohort latching on to the 'nanoparticle' part of that and staying the course.

Yeah. They'll have a new excuse. At this point it's become their lone principle (not getting vaccinated). It's not anything to do with "FDA approval" or "mRNA" or "rushed". It's just political for them now sadly. A rallying point.

 

[Crownroyal21]

I got it a few weeks ago. I felt fine. The only reason I got tested was my wife felt terrible and she tested positive. I didn’t test positive until 5 days later. I went nowhere near her so it was weird I got it. When I got it I just sat in my room and drank beer for 5 days. I guess I got lucky.

 

[RonM11]

I was listening to Dr. Peter Hotez yesterday and he was discussing that the deep dives in the UK for Omicron plateaued. I hadn't heard that so I looked up the chart on the NYT COVID site. The curve plateaued like 10 days ago, and has begun its resumption of going lower, but not nearly at the rate it was. South Africa did a much deeper dive, but also plateaued at an unacceptable rate. I guess we can reliably assume this will happen in the USA too, but the behavior of the virus really puzzles me...it is not following a clear mathematical model. I guess it can be that the BA.2 subtype of Omicron is beginning to take hold and that this might ultimately be the reason the Omicron dives in each country have stalled.

 

[RonM11]

Here is the UK:

 

[RonM11]

And here is South Africa:

 

[SettlementRichie10]

5 year old and wife have tested negative. It’s been 7 days since onset of symptoms for wife. 10 days for daughter.

Wife is still struggling with loss of taste/smell and congestion. Daughter reports no symptoms.

I can’t believe I didn’t catch this. I’m genuinely shocked. There’s no explanation for that other than I’m double vaxxed and had a prior infection in November, right?

 

[Raccoon Jesus]

5 year old and wife have tested negative. It’s been 7 days since onset of symptoms for wife. 10 days for daughter.

Wife is still struggling with loss of taste/smell and congestion. Daughter reports no symptoms.

I can’t believe I didn’t catch this. I’m genuinely shocked. There’s no explanation for that other than I’m double vaxxed and had a prior infection in November, right?

Possibly but it's always been weird like this!

 

[Papa Mocha 15]

5 year old and wife have tested negative. It’s been 7 days since onset of symptoms for wife. 10 days for daughter.

Wife is still struggling with loss of taste/smell and congestion. Daughter reports no symptoms.

I can’t believe I didn’t catch this. I’m genuinely shocked. There’s no explanation for that other than I’m double vaxxed and had a prior infection in November, right?

Yeah, one of my boys did chest compressions on someone with a simple mask during Delta and didn't catch it. We were shocked. Then he got it clubbing.

 

[Papa Mocha 15]

From
Katelyn Jetelina from Your Local Epidemiologist BA.2 Update
The mix of case patterns across the world is likely attributed to BA.2 (the sister lineage of Omicron) taking hold. The WHO confirmed that investigating BA.2’s ability to induce severe disease and to escape prior immunity should be prioritized. Since my update last week, we’ve learned a little more about this sub-lineage:

1. Transmissibility. We have consistent evidence that BA.2 outcompetes BA.1. In England, for example, BA.2 has a +126% growth rate over BA.1. Secondary attack rates in U.K. households are also higher: 13.4% of BA.2 cases transmitted within their households vs 10.3% of BA.1. The graph below, which displays the variant growth in Denmark, confirms a growth advantage. Importantly, as seen in a studyof Denmark households, vaccination helped protect against transmission more for BA.2 than BA.1.
   
   [TBODY] [/TBODY]
   (Chart from Pandemic Prevention Institute Here)
2. Immunity escape. We have preliminary evidence that vaccines continue to work great against BA.2. In fact, they work a little betterthan against BA.1. The U.K. Health Security Agency released a reportlast Friday suggesting vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease was 70% for BA.2 compared to 63% for BA.1. This is great news.

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

So, BA.2 means that we’ll likely see a prolonged Omicron wave across many countries. For example, in South Africa cases are due to start increasingbecause BA.2 is taking hold. How much cases increases, though, will be important to closely follow over the next few weeks.

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

(Tom Wenseleers Twitter)
United States
In the United States, cases and test positivity rates continue to decline. Because both metrics are mirroring each other (rather than showing opposite trends), I’m confident this is the “true” trend and not a testing capacity or testing behavior phenomenon. The raw number of cases, though, continues to be greatly underreported. Because of the massive blizzard in the Northeast, numbers may be off this upcoming week due to delayed testing, closed labs, and people staying home.

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

(CDC)
The case trend seems to be consistent across all U.S. regions. In fact, there are only 10 states with case growth right now, with Montana (+79%), Washington (+55%), and Idaho (+46%) as the leaders. But even the leaders have less than impressive growth compared to at the beginning of the Omicron wave when we were reaching 4-digit percentage increases.
Unfortunately, hospitalizations and deaths continue to lag cases. And while hospitalizations continue to decline, they are still very high at 146,787 people hospitalized. This means we are still above last winter’s hospitalization peak. Deaths haven’t peaked yet and have increased 29% in the past 14 days. Last Friday, we recorded 3,824 deaths in. one. day. On average, we are losing 2,572people per day.

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Thanks to immunity, treatment, and an intrinsically less severe Omicron, the case fatality rate (CFR) continues to decline in the Untied States and across the globe. We’re seeing a similar pattern in infection fatality rate (IFR— which takes into account asymptomatic and non-reporting) in the U.K. But, as seen in the second graph below, IFR is still about two times higher than the flu. (Keep in mind this means U.S.’s IFR is about two times higher than the U.K.’s). Even though COVID19 is getting less and less lethal on an individual-level, COVID19 is also getting more and more transmissible. In places like the U.S. with suboptimal vaccination breadth and depth, the two are essentially cancelling each other out and COVID19 continues to make a big impact on population-level metrics, like death.
Vaccinations
In the United States, 67.7% of people aged 5+ have the primary series (63.7% of the total population). And, as we’ve seen in previous waves, Omicron’s silver lining was that more people got their first dose. This uptick was modest; the Kaiser Family Foundation reported only 8% of unvaccinated adults said Omicron made them more likely to get vaccinated. We are inching closer and closer to vaccination saturation. Yet vaccination rates continue to be disproportionately spread across a variety of sociodemographic groups.

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

(CDC)

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Among those who are vaccinated, only 41.3% are boosted. Even more worrisome to me is that only 64% of Americans 65+ years have a booster, as they are more likely to have severe breakthrough cases than younger populations. The number one reason people aren’t boosted is because they “don’t need it/don’t feel at risk from COVID” followed by “ineligible (hasn’t been long enough since last shot)” and “don't think it will be effective.” But the story continues to be clear: Boosters do help against infection, hospitalization, and death. But certainly not as much as getting vaccinated in the first place.

 

[Papa Mocha 15]

How worried should we be about the new BA.2 Omicron subtype? Here's what we know

As long as there are unvaccinated people in the world, this shit ain't ever gonna stop. We need to treat SARS-CoV-2 as we did smallpox, which is to mean make every effort to eradicate it (I know this won't happen but if that's our goal, we can get it down to such low numbers as to be endemic). Coronavirus will continue to wreak havoc on our economy and our daily lives until we can do something significant to get the numbers down to a whisper.

It's called everyone getting infected at this point. Too many people out there who are misinformed. I really think they are just holding everyone and our economy hostage at this point. We can't move forward until they get sick or get vaccinated. Too many people at a sixth grade reading level.

That's not meant to be insulting but it's the age that health care professionals are instructed to speak to people to make sure they understand information being relayed to them. Unfortunately, that is where this country is at in terms of being able to comprehend science. So if you look at it that way, it's a bit more palatable as info goes but leaves a disappointing aftertaste.

 

[BigBrown]

Fascinating stuff, thanks @Papa Mocha 15

 

[Papa Mocha 15]

I presented data similar to this from Israel months ago and it was met with a fair amount of pushback. This data is from the CDC and tells a similar and not at all surprising story.

Hey, long time no talk. Good to see you back again. I went back and checked out the preprint from Israel and it's still standing at preprint which means it still hasn't passed peer review and no medical journal has published it yet. My only thought was waiting on the data to actually be reviewed before considering the study. I also recall there some things they admitted were going to be difficult to measure like immunity over time, emergence of variants and admitting being vaccinated combined with natural immunity was far superior, etc. Plus this was before boosters. I'm interested to see if anyone eventually picks it up to publish it. Feel free to ping me if you're following it. It definitely got cited in news articles but that's the one thing I caution against with this media is that just because a study occurs, doesn't mean it was done properly. Outlets are selling to boost their clicks and likes. It's really eroded journalism and I think that and both political parties are going to need to reinvent the wheel to get this country back on track.