Coronavirus

[AlanSubie4Life]

So sorry for the confusion. When I said,



. . . I should have been more clear (at least for those needing certain accommodations) that I meant, what the NIH describes, as



smh


Meanwhile, for those also interested (whether to save lives and avoid disability, or simply to be amused) by out-patient early treatment recommendations for those with mild symptoms, more info is in the first two columns here and also in a recent update re Molnupiravir that hasn't yet made it into the "Summary Table" chart.

COVID-19 Guideline, Part 1: Treatment and Management

IDSA has developed living, frequently updated evidence-based guidelines to support patients, clinicians and other health-care professionals in their decisions about treatment and management of patients with COVID-19 infection. Summarized here are the recommendations with comments related to the...

www.idsociety.org

To be clear, I think it is valuable that you are posting evidence-based links on appropriate COVID outpatient treatment protocols. Even if none of them are available, it's still worth having educated patients.

It was just the (mild) implication that there was somehow something out there that was secret, or "known by others but not the US healthcare system," that I found amusing. And the FLCCC links, which are comical. (I'd note that their treatment protocols include many treatments which are well-known to be beneficial and have been demonstrated in large RCTs to be beneficial, and are used in the treatment of COVID-19. But then they include the other stuff too.)

 

[wdolson]

Here’s my biggest question right now: what fraction of the susceptible population will get omicron? I ask for my own selfish reasons - I’m looking for herd immunity for me and relatives without having to get omicron. If it blasts through 90% of susceptible I should be good.

A side question is: What fraction of the population can’t get it? I’ve heard quite a few stories of boosted or double vaccinated people definitely exposed who did not get it. Are these people robustly immune for a decent period (in some people little waning occurs), or with repeated exposure could they get it? There’s lack of clarity on this and I’m not sure whether even immunologists really know.

With a disease as easily transmitted as Omicron, you need a vaccine that is essentially 100% effective and/or a one and done disease to get herd immunity. We are able to keep measles at bay because it is a one and done disease and the vaccine is that effective. Respiratory diseases like cold, flu, and corona viruses are not one and done. You can get infected over and over again by the same disease. Most people get a couple of colds a year in normal times.

The immunity to flu after you get it varies from person to person. Some people never get it as adults because having each strain as a kid is enough. Others get it every year.

We don't really know what sort of different immunity people are going to get from COVID. I haven't had a full blown case of the flu since I was around 10 (I do feel like I'm coming down with something sometimes and it goes away after a full night's sleep), but I've now had COVID twice. Probably original strain and Omicron. Both were mild infections, and the majority of people are having mild cases of COVID. Though long COVID is going to be a big problem in the coming years. Few people are looking into it now, but it's affecting quite a few people with mild cases.

Because of the combination of transmissibility combined with the inability to get 100% immunity, COVID is here to stay. We will get better at fighting it, and it might mutate again into something as mild as the flu, but we now live in a new world medically.

The people who have made this into a political issue have made the whole problem worse, but even if everyone fell into line and quit fighting the science at this point, the die is cast for the next generation or two. Delta and Omincron were essentially inevitable once it escaped China. These evolved in countries with poor healthcare systems. Even if the developed world had achieved near 100% vaccination rates, these variants would have evolved before we could get the vaccine to the populations where they developed. Nobody with any decision making power over vaccine distribution was in favor of vaccinating the undeveloped world before the developed world. The developed world was always going to get them first.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

With a disease as easily transmitted as Omicron, you need a vaccine that is essentially 100% effective and/or a one and done disease to get herd immunity.

I think it's hard to say. We don't know how many people are susceptible and we don't know whether Omicron will effectively reinfect people who are also vaccinated.

It doesn't follow that if you get infected easily twice that you will easily get infected a third time. When you throw in vaccinations that makes it even harder to predict the susceptible pool. It's just hard to say.

I think there's a very real chance that if I avoid Omicron infection for the next 4-6 weeks that I will be able to avoid it in general - and that's in large part due to immunity of the herd. At the current rate it simply doesn't make sense for it to keep ripping through the population. Also there will be a booster available in April, perhaps.

New variants are another issue, of course.

Remember coronavirus is not like the flu in terms of how it mutates, at all. A very different viral genome. We'll see how it goes. I'm not saying it's not going to be endemic - it very likely will be. But it may be much much lower levels of transmission, and I don't know what will be the surviving strain and whether that will continue to change rapidly. Many of these changes are adaptations to the human body, which would be "easy" changes to make. There's not a guarantee that the genetic drift rate will be constant. It might be. But we don't know yet.

 

[Discoducky]

Ok, CDC posted two more days of data and it looks like we've past the spike...

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

covid.cdc.gov

 

[scottf200]

Ok, CDC posted two more days of data and it looks like we've past the spike...

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

covid.cdc.gov

View attachment 754398

Potentially the weekend lower numbers are distorting it. ie. it doesn't have the Mon Jan 10th even yet. Will be certainly interesting to see how it looks thru Jan & Feb.

This map / charting below is from 1/6/2022 and I couldn't find a current one. Take a moment to study it and realize the dots mean new records. Largest states have dots but there are some big ones left like AZ. Via: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch

It is starting to hit the other states. Saw one of MTs larger towns (Great Falls) schools are going remote for a week because of staff being out.

"Great Falls Public Schools going remote. They have 125 staff members out on COVID-related illness. 185 confirmed cases in schools, the highest so far."

The response??

"My wife saw on Facebook a bunch of parents encouraging folks to "let the administration know how they feel about these closures". Like wtf do these people expect? 125 staff out sick and they somehow think fairies are going to appear to teach their kids?"

 

[Krugerrand]

Well thanks to the internet archive (wayback machine) the thread the one person complained about and one moderator deleted (even though 40 or so people voted), did get archived very early during the voting period. We lost the final votes (I think I left the poll open for two or three weeks after the archive date). I don't understand why one complaint can derail dozens of peoples participation but that's TMC moderation for you.

Hopefully the cat won't come in this thread and complain to get it deleted also.

What will be the overall death count in the US attributed to the Coronavirus in 2021?

See prior poll about 2020 at TMC Coronavirus Ghoul Pool Final numbers for 2020 were https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/attachments/upload_2021-1-2_13-38-1-png.623548/ How many will die in 2021 to coronavirus? (any variant of Covid-19 or any other coronavirus is fair game).

web.archive.org

View attachment 754023

847,921 - 354,316 = 493,605 for 2021 so the next to highest bracket was the correct answer.

FYI, this cat never complains about posts unless they are vulgar, inappropriate, profanity laced types. That’s happened maybe twice in all the time I’ve been here.

 

[Norbert]

By April. (Counted deaths…probably pretty close to 1 million already.)

In keeping with all the projections it seems. Just delayed. And it looks like those projections were actually a little optimistic!

On the optimistic side there was the downward trend in October/November and some seem to hope the current peak in cases is short lived. I think even if that is the case, the US will still reach 1 million. On the other hand, I agree it may go much further. It looks like much more needs to be known about Omicron (and perhaps future vaccines and the evolving willingness to use them) before there is a basis for new projections.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Ok, CDC posted two more days of data and it looks like we've past the spike...

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

covid.cdc.gov

View attachment 754398

I hope you're right, of course, but I think it is unlikely that we have peaked. NY and New Orleans are probably around their peak, so I think exponential growth is coming to an end and growth is slowing, but there are many areas that are relatively early in the surge and have a couple weeks to run. I think it's possible we could peak in a week or two, as those hit their peak in conjunction with other areas (hopefully) falling off.

I don't know whether or not a 1 million/day 7-day average is on the table still. It looks possible but we'll see how much mitigation slows things down.

 

[Yuri_G]

Ok, CDC posted two more days of data and it looks like we've past the spike...

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

covid.cdc.gov

View attachment 754398

Denmark may be peaking right now and their wave started at the beginning of December. I think we've got at least two more weeks of cases growing in most of the US...

 

[TEG]

U.S. sets new COVID hospitalization record, signaling Omicron surge could be less mild than experts hoped

Experts warn that America’s Omicron surge is already more severe than in other countries and will only get worse as it spreads from highly vaccinated cities to less protected parts of the U.S.

news.yahoo.com

... Virologist Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson institute in Seattle has calculated that tests are now catching just one in four or five U.S. infections — which means that Omicron is actually infecting more than 3 million Americans each day...

...“It causes severe disease half as often as Delta, but infects 2-4x as many people, potentially washing out any potential 'benefit.’”...

 

[Jeff N]

U.S. sets new COVID hospitalization record, signaling Omicron surge could be less mild than experts hoped

Experts warn that America’s Omicron surge is already more severe than in other countries and will only get worse as it spreads from highly vaccinated cities to less protected parts of the U.S.

news.yahoo.com

Bedford’s calculations imply that between 5 to 10 percent (~7%) of people in the USA, 1 in every 15, have active Covid cases and are currently infectious right now.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1480610448563060738

 

[TEG]

And that last paragraph!

U.S. sets new COVID hospitalization record, signaling Omicron surge could be less mild than experts hoped

Experts warn that America’s Omicron surge is already more severe than in other countries and will only get worse as it spreads from highly vaccinated cities to less protected parts of the U.S.

news.yahoo.com

“I can attest the situation in Maryland is [expletive] horrendous,” one physician wrote to the dashboard’s creator. “The state has been maxed out for about 2 weeks. Multiple hospitals are operating under crisis standard of care. EMS [i.e. ambulances] is now so taxed that Baltimore County started transporting people in fire trucks last week. This is absolutely unheard of and absurd. Reports of people waiting over 1-2 hours on scene with fire fighters before an EMS unit gets there. Then when they get to the hospital they wait literally hours for a bed. Transfer centers now just laugh when you call, the system is so backlogged. It’s mind-boggling to me how none of this has been national news.”

 

[Norbert]

Because of the combination of transmissibility combined with the inability to get 100% immunity, COVID is here to stay. We will get better at fighting it, and it might mutate again into something as mild as the flu, but we now live in a new world medically.

It's more gradual, things in general may be much less inevitable than they seem.

For example, among states in the US, the death rate varies by a factor of 4.5x, the infection rate by a factor of 2.5x.
And South Korea is a factor of more than 10x below the US average, Germany about 2x.

Delta and Omincron were essentially inevitable once it escaped China.

A lower total number of infections means a lower probability of mutations. I guess that's independent of the age of the infected, young or old.

In the current state of the world, it may seem difficult to distribute vaccines over the whole world quickly. And it may seem difficult to change that. However, I believe, possible in the long run, if we actually want to change that. At least it can be improved a lot.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Bedford’s calculations imply that between 5 to 10 percent (~7%) of people in the USA, 1 in every 15, have active Covid cases and are currently infectious right now.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1480610448563060738

Scott Gottlieb agrees, also estimating close to 1% of US population gets infected each day. It's not uniform across the country, I figure ~2%/day in the hotter areas and <0.5% in the areas just starting to ramp. One month to ramp linearly from 0% to 2%/day than another to drop back down to 0% means 60% of the population catches it. No wonder Omicron can't stick around for long.

And that last paragraph!

...EMS [i.e. ambulances] is now so taxed that Baltimore County started transporting people in fire trucks last week. This is absolutely unheard of and absurd. Reports of people waiting over 1-2 hours on scene with fire fighters before an EMS unit gets there. Then when they get to the hospital they wait literally hours for a bed. Transfer centers now just laugh when you call, the system is so backlogged.

I can't get good data, but every doctor I hear talks about the ER being overwhelmed. The hospitals aren't running out of beds, they just can't process the incoming fast enough. Staffing shortages exacerbate this problem. There are no plans for emegency wards in convention centers like before, though, because the patients don't stay long enough to cause a bed shortage. The average Omicron stay looks to be about half as long as it was with Delta.

 

[TEG]

How much testing are they doing in hospitals to check Omicron vs Delta?

I assume the percent of people in hospitals on ventilators would tend to skew more towards Delta compared to just "anyone who caught some form of COVID recently." (which is probably predominantly Omicron.)

Did we just decide it is an Omicron pandemic now, and just stopped checking for Delta?

Also, what happens if (for instance) you have Omicron then get exposed to someone with Delta?

I have had a lot of friends/relatives catch COVID recently, confirmed with home test kits, but they never went to the hospital, and they don't know for sure which kind of COVID they caught. ( Too bad the home test kits don't tell you which mutation... )

 

[madodel]

I don't recall seeing this article from last month, on the symptoms of Omicron versus earlier variants posted here.
What Are the Symptoms of Omicron?

Besides what we have discussed about Omicron being mostly upper respiratory symptoms, at least to start, apparently Omicron is less likely to affect taste/smell.

 

[Discoducky]

1.4m yesterday, speechless

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

1.4m yesterday, speechless

View attachment 754760

Yes, not quite peaked yet. Tuesdays are always big days, so look on the bright side, it's really more like only 900k-1M real cases by date of symptom onset on Monday. Looks like 1M/day 7-day average is definitely still in play! Though I expect things are going to start to slow down a little...soon. But might not be obvious for another week.

Elsewhere (other countries) the peaks have stopped very rapidly (hard to see when the wave is slowing before it just stops growing) but I don't expect as sharp a peak here, because of the waves in various regions being out of phase.

These numbers are not a surprise at all. 1 million cases per day was not thought to be a crazy prediction in early/mid December.

The wave will break sometime in January and then we'll see where we are at. If you can avoid getting COVID for the next few weeks you'll likely have a lot lower risk in February (though some caution will still be needed as long as Omicron is circulating and vaccines for it are not available).

How much testing are they doing in hospitals to check Omicron vs Delta?

For PCR tests, the SGTF (a target failure dropout on the test) is the signature of Omicron. So it's relatively easy to determine the infection type and I think it's likely hospitals are using this because it definitely matters for treatment and prognosis.

and they don't know for sure which kind of COVID they caught. (

These days, nearly certainly Omicron. But of course there will be exceptions and Delta is still circulating (perhaps 5% (probably less) of the cases nationwide - which is "only" 50k cases per day, which used to be an undesirably high number - remember the days of doom when Fauci correctly predicted 100k cases per day?). Since Omicron seems to provide some immunity against Delta (reverse seems much less true), it may get rid of Delta, but that is TBD how that will play out. Delta will have a tough time with a strong vaccine-induced natural immunity wall with the "quick and dirty" Omicron "vaccination" (infection-acquired) natural immunity. But not clear if it will be a strong enough wall.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Definitely it seems that waves are breaking quickly as they have elsewhere. Just rapidly burning out, taking out anyone who is vulnerable who does not get out of the way. Looks like it will be relatively safe in Boston by early February.

It's amazing how much higher it is than the Delta spike - I wonder if it just tends to shed more than the prior variants (seems likely given the transmissibility).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1481022039167320082

 

[Young]

Santa Clara County Sewage Monitoring:

SARS-CoV-2 Sewage Monitoring Data - Emergency Operations Center - County of Santa Clara

covid19.sccgov.org

Not as dramatic as Boston, but cautiously optimistic.