45 thoughts on “C-19 Chat Post – December 28 2021”

  1. We know preventative mandates work from the experience of other countries. I’m still in shock that Wu would be heading us in the exact opposite direction.

    Activating the Guard, shortening quarantine and no mask mandate is tantamount to knowingly increasing numbers and then trying to close the barn door.

    Dr Mina’s comments and a few from others show Wu’s belief that she is following science are horribly misguided.

    https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1475598522338656266?s=21

  2. Feeling much better and much stronger 🙂

    Can´t taste much right now and as a person who enjoys the taste of food, I think I´m eating more. Just what I need.

    1. Wonderful news. But ugh on the taste. Not being able to taste what you are eating is one of the oddest experiences.

      How are your three ladies?

      1. Daughters are really good.

        My wife, her energy level is better, but she always get croupy with a regular cold and its no different here. So, she´s breathing great, but occasionally has a moment where she has one of those long, croupy coughs.

  3. Question. Is omicron more severe In children or are more children in the hospitals because it is is so contagious that more children are getting it?

    1. Interesting question.

      Playing with numbers here over a similar time period ….

      If 1 out of every 50 children with Delta end up needing a hospital visit or stay

      3 out of every 250 children with Omricon end up needing a hospital visit or stay

      Its true, in this example, that more children ended up needing a hospital visit, but as a relative percentage, 2% are hospitalized with Covid while 1.2% are hospitalized with Omricon.

      So, I think we need to data to know if this is whats happening.

      But, thats the dangerous part of something thats more transmissible. It can have lower percentage impacts, but because it effects way more people, even at lower percentages, it can still negatively effect more people.

      1. Exactly and that is why Omicron is still a very formidable virus.
        Nothing to be taken lightly and I am afraid it is.

    1. I’m sorry. I posted incorrectly to it and then forgot to go back to add to my list. I will do so now. I appreciate the reminder

          1. 🙂 🙂 🙂
            It is a wonderful French movie, with an fine English dub available. Often times the dubs are terrible, but this one is pretty good. Sometime I like watching foreign movies with the subtitles to get the actual actors voices and reflection of same.

            The scenery is out of this world as well.

    1. I just listened to a Dr Scheilen from Cohen hospital in NY. They are seeing a huge increase in children in hospitals He said pretty much what Was said above re more numbers. Also he said while there is little flu now, there were a number of children in hospital already due to complications from flu and for other reasons.

      He also felt they are seeing more infants because they have the least developed immune system. Also the kids with the most serious cases tend to have preexisting conditions.

  4. Comparing the U.S. to Europe, the U.S. had an early lead in terms of vaccinating the population, but squandered that lead and in fact became a laggard by May. To this day, that trend continues and worsens over time in terms of relative ranking.

    Very similar situation vis-a-vis boosters. The U.S. had a definite early lead compared to most of Europe, but quickly gave it up and is now just muddling along, in part because it’s not using mass vaccination centers and not messaging properly.

    Here’s some startling data on boosters. In the past week the U.S. has administered ~2.7 million boosters. Sounds good, right? Well, not at all if you compare it to, say, the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, they’ve boosted ~ 1.2 million in the past week. The Netherlands population is about 1/20th of ours. Moreover, the Netherlands is NOT boosting younger adults yet. It has boosted almost no-one over 38 (only those at-risk 38 are boosted first. It’s no wonder the death rate is so much lower there. In the U.S. the nursing home (!!!) boosting rate is 65 is ~50%. That’s insanely bad compared to practically every other wealthy, industrialized nation.

  5. It amazes me as CT had one of the lowest postivity rates in the country and now were up to a positivity rate of 14.98 with 963 in the hospital. I am getting my booster shot on Friday. I had Johnson and Johnson back in April and I am getting Phizer on Friday.

  6. Many folks are surprised by the fact that there is much less decoupling here in the US than in the UK and Europe, that is, we have some degree of unlinking of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, to be sure, but much less than in the UK and Europe. This does NOT surprise me one bit, and shouldn’t surprise anyone, frankly, who is paying attention. I’ve written about this so often, but clearly I have a very limited audience since I encounter surprised folks during every wave.

    Professor Forman posted a tweet about the most recent data from NYS and NYC. See below. You can see that hospitalizations are increasing by quite a bit. Someone responded to the tweet by saying he/she is baffled by our lack of decoupling. I responded to that post – you’ll see this in the tweet thread – by posting my article from last week and providing reasons why we have much less decoupling: Lower vaccination and booster rates (especially targeted ones at the high-risk folks), fragmented healthcare system (includes lack of access to testing; if you’re testing positive upon admission to hospital it can be too late for interventions of any kind), and relatively poor underlying health conditions.

    https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1475918057088376836

  7. UK hospitalizations up to levels last seen in February of this year – so worse than the Delta wave this summer. The good news is that ICU usage isn’t going up by as much. The decoupling between standard hospitalization and ICU is a welcome sign. I hope that occurs here, too.

    Waiting for data on patient breakdown, to see if pediatric admissions continue to rise steadily.

    Delta is NOT giving up without a fight. It appears CDC and other agencies were off in their estimated prevalence data last week. They’ve since revised:

    Delta B.1.617.2 : 41.1%
    Omicron B.1.1.529 :58.6%
    Other variants: 0.3%

    I’m seeing very similar figures across the European continent. In the Netherlands, for example, Omicron has only now become dominant and makes up less than half of new cases.

    There is chatter about Omicron and Delta joining forces in a mutant version. I’ve only seen one credible report of a Delta sub-lineage that looks remarkably like Omicron. I did see that chief medical officer at Moderna, Dr. Paul Burton, warned that the high co-circulation of the Omicron and Delta variants could result in the emergence of a new super variant in the coming weeks.

      1. Agreed.

        I don’t understand people who wish ill upon those who made the wrong decisions. Frankly, if someone is a 3 pack a day smoker and gets lung cancer, I still very much want that person to recover. And, I would never say “karma” or something like that.

        1. I am at the point in that those who were vaccinated and did everything they could to prevent getting covid, yet still get it should get priority over those that didn’t. (exception of course for those who medically couldn’t and children) and/or start making it impact these people’s wallet. Make it so that they have to start paying for covid treatment in the hospital if they havent been vaccinated/ do what they could to prevent themselves from getting sick. Suffer the consequences of not doing what they could to help against this pandemic and making it go on longer and more severe than it had to be.

  8. We will have to watch and see what happens with Mac Jones as Brian Hoyer is going on the covid reserve list.

  9. No matter how you slice it, this is not good. https://twitter.com/GANyborg/status/1475824865668218892/photo/1

    Moreover, as a nation the U.S. surpassed 76,000 hospitalizations today; a jump of more than 4,000 in one day (likely some backlog included, but still).

    Once again, we’re not seeing the degree of decoupling that other countries are. It’s bleeding obvious why this is, yet commentators seem blind to the reasons, including lower vaccination and booster rates (the latter being MUCH less focused on the vulnerable than boosting in other countries), a hobbled healthcare system with poor access to everything from testing to treatments, much less mitigation (really none, besides some masking), and of course the relatively poor underlying health conditions.

    Biden gets a D for his performance since May. Trump got an F. But, a D is only marginally better than an F. We’ve got to do better as a nation. Not just with respect to Covid-19. Opioids, the three diseases of despair, and other areas such as HIV, infant mortality – we’re losing, folks, and it’s really sad (I have many sleepless nights over this) and unnecessary.

  10. This has worked so well for us…and what a great time to relax measures for kids.

    “New York City will eliminate its current policy of quarantining entire classrooms exposed to Covid, and will instead use a ramped-up testing program to allow asymptomatic students who test negative for the coronavirus to remain in school. https://nyti.ms/3HjGcAQ”

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