Coronavirus

[CatB]

We've seen that here in SD county. When Walgreens gets them in, someone goes in and cleans out the shelves. You would think there would be a "1 per customer per visit" limit or something.

Here in Va, Walgreens has a limit of 4. A neighbor picked one up for me (no symptoms in my family, but as caretaker for 86yo… I try to be prepared) and I went in 5 minutes later to get another and they had nothing. Even with the limit, it is too easy to do multiple trips or text a friend.

At the risk of leaning into politics and religion (altho we all agree this shouldn’t be political) - I value the combined scientific opinion here on this one: wrt religious objections to vaccine due to fetal tissue connection. Is it true (yeah, read it on the internet) that J&J vaccine did not use/leverage cell lines from fetal abortions? And if that is true, any reason why a judge sided with Navy Seals who refused the vaccine mandate based on religious principles? It seems if they have an alternative that complies with their principles and the EO (and I know that is unpopular, but that’s a right the military signs away on enlistment or commissioning), then they don’t have (those) grounds for refusal.
And IIRC someone on this board suggested there is a whole list of other medical treatments that would be declined on that religious ground.

 

[bkp_duke]

Here in Va, Walgreens has a limit of 4. A neighbor picked one up for me (no symptoms in my family, but as caretaker for 86yo… I try to be prepared) and I went in 5 minutes later to get another and they had nothing. Even with the limit, it is too easy to do multiple trips or text a friend.

At the risk of leaning into politics and religion (altho we all agree this shouldn’t be political) - I value the combined scientific opinion here on this one: wrt religious objections to vaccine due to fetal tissue connection. Is it true (yeah, read it on the internet) that J&J vaccine did not use/leverage cell lines from fetal abortions? And if that is true, any reason why a judge sided with Navy Seals who refused the vaccine mandate based on religious principles? It seems if they have an alternative that complies with their principles and the EO (and I know that is unpopular, but that’s a right the military signs away on enlistment or commissioning), then they don’t have (those) grounds for refusal.
And IIRC someone on this board suggested there is a whole list of other medical treatments that would be declined on that religious ground.

OK, that's a can of worms, but I'm going to answer it from "my experience". One of the common cell lines used are HEK-293 for work like this. They WERE derived decades ago from aborted fetal tissue, and were grandfathered into the cell lines allowed to be used after the ban took place in the 90s.

If these were used for the J&J vaccine development (I don't know for sure, but they are used in a TON of stuff), there is an argument that can be made that they are originally from aborted fetal tissue.

The counter argument to that is this, and we hear this one in medical school: ALL the data obtained on how the human body reacts, and eventually dies from, hypothermia, was conducted by the Nazi's during WWII on Jews (yes, they let them freeze to death and took detailed measurements and tissue along the way). In the scientific community in the 1940s and 50s there was a HUGE argument about what to do with this data (destroy it, use it, etc.). In the end, the scientific consensus was that the data should be put to use in order to save lives, but that a HARD LINE had to be drawn about never conducting these kinds of experiments again (we haven't done so well on that part - Tuskegee, etc.).

Not wanting this to devolve into a politics argument with people, that's just the history of how these cell lines came into being, and another example of more clear-cut morally wrong example along the spectrum.

 

[Krugerrand]

Omicron is tracking out to be an upper respiratory infection, whereas Delta and all other variants were lower respiratory tract infections. If this pans out, it CANNOT BE UNDERSTATED how good this is. Death rates from URIs are always much lower than LRIs. They usually don't require intubation and ventilation, and therefore not ICU care.

We are already seeing this tracking out in infections vs. hospitalizations. We'll know a lot more about deaths in 2-3 weeks.

Can confirm this. Nurse friend just returned to the ICU after 3 week recuperating vacation; ICU is packed to the gills with COVID patients, but a whole lot less of them are needing to be intubated.

 

[golfcart]

I've got a kid in school and a wife that faces the pubic at work. I have no doubt we will get it (again) at some point despite us all being fully vaxxed. Especially since my fully vaxxed wife already had it back in September when we were dealing with a less contagious variant. If any of us have symptoms we just stay home regardless of a positive/negative rapid test because a negative rapid test is only about 50% accurate anyways... so does all of this grumbling about tests really matter at this point?

Isn't it just all about tradeoffs at this point? The virus isn't going away, vaccinated people can catch and spread it, they just admitted that cloth masks don't do much against it, and the risk for vaccinated people is an order of magnitude lower than it previously was.

I mean y'all like to get on Florida but their age adjusted death rates are 29th out of 51 and we've been pretty open for a while in Virginia and we are 42nd out of 51

Age Adjusted Covid Deaths

we (and Florida) have had schools open, restaurants open, gyms open, and have been living relatively normal lives since the vaccines came out. I didn't do any complex statistics but a quick eyeball of low vax rates and high rates of obesity in states pretty much tracks with death rates regardless of policy. So what is the reason to not get your shots and live your life at this point?

 

[madodel]

I'm also quite suspicious if people were not buying a lot of them when they were available (hoarding) for their
a) paranoia or
b) to resell at a profit.

I bought two set (4 test) about a week before things got crazy. I would have bought 3 but they only had 2.
With 3 people in the household that is two test each spread out over a few days.

So COVID tests are the new TP? Whoever has them, people are desperate to get their hands on them or to find places to get tested. I guess that's a US thing. In Germany where even when they were requiring a test within 24hr to do just about anything up until 4 months ago, and they handled all the testing.

 

[madodel]

Can confirm this. Nurse friend just returned to the ICU after 3 week recuperating vacation; ICU is packed to the gills with COVID patients, but a whole lot less of them are needing to be intubated.

Yes. That's what my wife is seeing. They are using high flow oxygen on most of the sick people.

 

[daniel]

At the risk of leaning into politics and religion (altho we all agree this shouldn’t be political) - I value the combined scientific opinion here on this one: wrt religious objections to vaccine due to fetal tissue connection. Is it true (yeah, read it on the internet) that J&J vaccine did not use/leverage cell lines from fetal abortions? And if that is true, any reason why a judge sided with Navy Seals who refused the vaccine mandate based on religious principles? It seems if they have an alternative that complies with their principles and the EO (and I know that is unpopular, but that’s a right the military signs away on enlistment or commissioning), then they don’t have (those) grounds for refusal.
And IIRC someone on this board suggested there is a whole list of other medical treatments that would be declined on that religious ground.

Some religions object to any and all medical interventions. IMO, public health takes precedence over religious beliefs. We already have precedent: You may not kill somebody who your religion says you should kill. This is a clear limitation on how far you may act on your religious beliefs. And as noted, when you join the military you sign away certain rights. IMO the judge erred in allowing the serviceman to refuse the vaccine. He may have a genuine religious objection, but when you join the Navy, your butt belongs to the Navy. (Or any other branch of the military.)

 

[TespaceX]

My friend and neighbor is a high-up exec for one of the test makers (Gen-Mark - bought by Roche). Your assumption is 100% wrong. This company and every other testing company have continued to ramp up and crank out tests as quickly as possible, even 2 years into the pandemic.

Have you looked at the cases for Omicron? The peak currently is 2X the highest we saw in Jan of 2020. Demand is simply outstripping the ability to produce both antigen tests and PCR tests.

PCRs take a good bit of time to run, and have relatively complex chemical mixtures. Antigen tests are literally antibodies strapped to a stick that glow when the virus bound to them. BOTH of these are "biologics", not some stupid simple chemical test. Biologics are difficult to produce in volume with high quality control. The antibodies for the antigen test literally take a lot of time to create, and the PCR tests themselves take a lot of time to run.

You think it's bad here, you really don't want to try to obtain a test outside of this "capitalist" market. I have employees in 4 countries at least with concerning symptoms (fortunately these are young people), there are ZERO tests to be obtained there, even on the "grey" market.

I have extended family living in Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. They don’t have anywhere close to the situation with testing as here in the US, and those countries have metro areas that are more dense and highly populated than most, if not all, metro areas here.

 

[JRP3]

New variant, IHU

New COVID variant discovered in France: What is known so far about IHU

Scientists in France have identified a new COVID-19 variant called the IHU variant, which has 46 mutations. So far, 12 people have been infected with the variant in France.

www.nj.com

 

[FlatSix911]

JHU Weekly report: COVID-19 DATA IN MOTION: TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2022​

 

[wdolson]

Well I'm positive... for antibodies.

I had some bug about a month ago and thought it odd (I haven't been really sick in many years), but when my partner was looking up the symptoms of Omicron I thought I might have had it. So I got tested yesterday. For what it's worth the turn around on the test was amazing. I got the results in about 15 hours. The threshold was 0.8 U/mL on the test for a positive and I tested 197. I was scheduled for the vaccine booster next week, but my doctor thinks I should wait 60 days, test again and get the booster if my antibodies have fallen significantly. With that level of antibodies she considers that a booster.

It was a weird two stage thing. On Thanksgiving night I felt like I was coming down with something and had a headache. I took it easy over the weekend and felt fine by Sunday. Then the next weekend I had a couple of days of running around and by Sunday the headache was back even worse. This time I felt feverish and had a low fever (around 100 F) for two days. About the time the fever broke my mouth exploded in canker sores. I had to go to the local clinic and get some steroid stuff because I couldn't eat and moving in the my sleep was incredibly painful.

Just before my doctor's appointment my partner saw my lower back under my shirt and she noted that I had some red splotches. I didn't feel anything, but they were there. I showed them to the doctor while I was there. He said it's a rare rash he said he only saw once or twice before the last few weeks. He said there appears to be an outbreak of it. He found some patches I missed. The red spots got worse over the next few days and then went away. Personally I think it was the external appearance of the same thing that caused all the canker sores in my mouth, but because skin is less sensitive it just appeared as red splotches and nothing else.

I don't normally get fevers. The last time I had a fever before the COIVD era was when I had chicken pox when I was 28 and that was only a day. I haven't had a full blown case of the flu since I was 10 or 12. Normally when I feel like I'm coming down with a bug I get a bit of extra sleep and I'm fine. I did get a fever from the COVID vaccine (within a couple of hours) that lasted a couple of days and then this fever are the only two in recent decades.

Was it Delta or Omicron? Hard to tell. Both my lungs and upper respiratory systems were completely clear until I was over the fever. I noted it because my asthma has been much more consistent since I got the vaccine last March. My lungs were working abnormally well. I did get badly stuffed up for a day or so after the fever cleared, but that could have been something else, like an allergy.

Anyone keeping track of the number of cases of Delta on an ongoing basis? I'm too lazy to try to look up what the estimated number is from sequencing proportion, etc. It'll be curious to see if it gets crowded out or whether it too will have a surge due to the general merrymaking of the last couple weeks. (COVID appeared to be completely over, based on the New Year's broadcasts. I hope it is; it seems like it might be! )

On my 3000 miles of driving in the last couple weeks, I noticed that most people are not wearing masks indoors in California, Washington, and Oregon. Generally those precautions seem to be reserved for the most crowded indoor urban environments, and even there it is optional (and of course in restaurants in the city they're not needed since COVID observes a truce in those situations).

I haven't traveled since October 2020, but I noted that on the coast of California and in the Willamette Valley in Oregon mask compliance was pretty good. In the San Joaquin valley and southern Oregon, not so much. In the last few months I've noticed mask compliance has varied depending on what store I'm in. The local equivalent of Whole Foods (New Seasons), mask compliance has been consistently very good. In the local Safeway before Christmas I noted that about 40% of the people in the store either had no mask or were wearing theirs wrong like under their nose.

I went to Costco yesterday before my blood draw for the antibody test and mask compliance there was good. I didn't see anyone maskless, though the food demo stands were back. I kept my distance and grabbed what I was there to get then got out as quickly as possible. I thought it would be uncrowded at 2 PM on a weekday the first day back to work for most people, but it was almost as bad as a weekend day in there.

Just before Christmas I scored some Honeywell N95 masks and got some 3M just after Christmas. Since getting the N95s I've been double masking before going into stores. Since I now know I had COVID a month ago it's a bit like locking the barn door after the horse got out, but I'll probably continue to do it for a while.

 

[EVNow]

Finally, Australia succumbs to Covid.

 

[heltok]

I recommend the latest podcast with Dr Peter Attia.

(or whatever platform you prefer)

 

[scottf200]

New variant, IHU

New COVID variant discovered in France: What is known so far about IHU

Scientists in France have identified a new COVID-19 variant called the IHU variant, which has 46 mutations. So far, 12 people have been infected with the variant in France.

www.nj.com

Re: The IHU variant, also known as B.1.640.2
FYI,

https://twitter.com/x/status/1478118173903839237

...

 

[Jeff N]

This is a good article on part of the reason why the U.S. has relatively poor availability of rapid antigen tests. FDA has not approved a bunch of the cheap tests used in Europe. They also slow-rolled the approval process and created unrealistic and unnecessary clinical-grade testing compliance rules.

Another reason, not mentioned in this article but discussed earlier here, was the lack of a guaranteed market to limit or remove the risk of short-term private investment in production scaling.

This all could have been handled so much better under both Trump and Biden.

This Scientist Created a Rapid Test Just Weeks Into the Pandemic. Here’s Why You Still Can’t Get It.

Irene Bosch developed a quick, inexpensive COVID-19 test in early 2020. The Harvard-trained scientist already had a factory set up. But she was stymied by an FDA process experts say made no sense.

www.propublica.org

 

[cwerdna]

Multiplex PCR, not individuals.

Basically, think of taking 100 samples, mixing them, and running one test. That tells you if there is a single positive in any of those 100. If not, move on and repeat. If there is, re-divide and retest.

It's a cheaper, more efficient method of testing populations, but it is not viable when:
1) virus is at pandemic or endemic levels (i.e. this works with 1% infection rates and lower)
2) need individual by individual testing


Trust me, China didn't actually use 9 million individual tests during that time. Probably 1/100th of that.

Sounds like the pooled testing I'd been hearing about before.

On a semi-related note is Yuzhou: Second Chinese city forced into Covid lockdown.

China has put a second city into total lockdown after just three asymptomatic Covid cases were discovered.
Yuzhou - which has a population of 1.1 million - saw its transport system shut down and all but essential food stores closed overnight.
It follows a similar lockdown in Xi'an, where 13 million have been confined to their homes since 23 December.
The strict measures come ahead of the Lunar New Year and the Winter Olympics due to be held in Beijing.

 

[golfcart]

Finally, Australia succumbs to Covid.

View attachment 752091

They put it off until vaccines were widely available... that is probably the best you could hope for. Everyone is getting it eventually.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

This is a good article on part of the reason why the U.S. has relatively poor availability of rapid antigen tests. FDA has not approved a bunch of the cheap tests used in Europe. They also slow-rolled the approval process and created unrealistic and unnecessary clinical-grade testing compliance rules.

Another reason, not mentioned in this article but discussed earlier here, was the lack of a guaranteed market to limit or remove the risk of short-term private investment in production scaling.

This all could have been handled so much better under both Trump and Biden.

This Scientist Created a Rapid Test Just Weeks Into the Pandemic. Here’s Why You Still Can’t Get It.

Irene Bosch developed a quick, inexpensive COVID-19 test in early 2020. The Harvard-trained scientist already had a factory set up. But she was stymied by an FDA process experts say made no sense.

www.propublica.org

Lex Fridman has had 2 episodes with Michael Mina, who advocates for rapid testing and has discussed that FDA issue.

 

[bhzmark]

I recommend the latest podcast with Dr Peter Attia.

(or whatever platform you prefer)
View attachment 752123

I’m not sure what to make of that Attia podcast and also Attia’s appearance on Joe Rogan. His points, and doctors similar to him are:

1) lamenting the censorship of discussion of vaccine risks
2) concluding that because vaccines pose risks to healthy young people, and their risk from covid is low, young people without risk factors should not get vaxed (utterly oblivious to the general health policy concerns of unvaxed healthy young ones potentially spreading more virus to higher risk individuals, even while they are realtively asymtomatic)
3) he and his fellow similar-minded doctors,and the others that Joe Rogan has hosted, state authoritatively that Hydroxycholoriquin and Ivermectin is safe and effective when dosed appropriately and when given *early* in covid disease stage. All the studies that show no efficacy dosed people that were already hospitalized, i.e., too late.
4) Separate from hydrooxy and ivermectin issues, they lament the lack of good research and resulting guidance on prophylactic or early (pre-hospitalization) treatment or any over-the-counter treatments.
5) They generally complain about lockdowns and mask-wearing and temperature taking at the doors of businesses.

I’m sympathetic to #4, but the rest of their points are very poorly supported and poorly argued and they seem surprisingly oblivious to general health/vaccine policy or any “flattening the curve” or viral shedding by the asymptomatic -type concerns. Are they also against the polio vaccine? ?

Regarding #4, It does seem that the recently postive-tested/infected and mildly symptomatic have little to do except wait until they feel worse to be bad enough to get rationed monoclonal antibodies or other treatments that seem reserved for the worse off.

When positive tested or even high risk exposed should one take or do anything except watch their pulse ox and temp waiting for things to get worse?

zinc, quercitin, Vit D, famotidine/Pepcid AC all have youtube videos touting their benefits, but no reliable authority seems willing to say anything about them or other possible OTC treatment or even Rx treatment that is administered outside of hospitalization.

The absence of guidance for early and home treatment is frustrating, but people like Attia and his ilk are not filling that void. THey seem to have a weird libertarian tilt to their medical conclusions that make them less reliable.

 

[EVNow]

concluding that because vaccines pose risks to healthy young people, and their risk from covid is low, young people without risk factors should not get vaxed

THey seem to have a weird libertarian tilt to their medical conclusions that make them less reliable.

I would not call them libertarian. They are just selfish. True libertarians believe in liberty for all - not just for themselves.

Let us assume the risk of vaccine for the young and healthy is 1/10M. Risk of them getting Covid and infecting someone more vulnerable is 1/100. What is the correct thing to do ?

If we apply these kinds of risks to driving, we'd all agree that drivers should take a small risk for themselves in order to not put others at great risk - think of slamming on the brakes so as to not run over a pedestrian.

Basic problem is - when these unvaccinated people infect others, it is not obvious. Infact they may never know they infected someone and that someone had to be hospitalized (or worse). So they do not feel guilty and never take responsibility for their actions.