I would love to see them provide references and links to studies they are using to make these decisions. As it is this just reads almost like propaganda or a very strong, "trust us, we're the CDC".
We're approaching a megadeath of Americans from COVID-19 and cannot continue on this disastrous path.
While I agree with both sentiments, I find the juxtaposition between the two interesting as it implies a relationship between them but they don't seem to be related at all.
I've watched him since the start and his quality of advice has strongly declined since the pro-Ivermectin/Joe Rogan crowd started filling his comments with nonsense. He was great in March 2020 when it was clear governments were too slow to react. Nowadays he seems resigned to fatalism that "we're all just going to get it, nothing can be done".
We are all going to get it. This isn't fatalism. It's just a statement of fact.
It's an endemic respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs, and there is no vaccine that provides sterilizing immunity. Elimination is a pipe dream.
Because those diseases have been circulating amongst the human population for thousands of years (or longer), and there is a level of population immunity that keeps large outbreaks from occurring.
Also, you aren't even aware of most of the viruses you're infected with on a regular basis, because you aren't looking for them, and immunity you've built up over a lifetime reduces the severity of symptoms. For all you know, you've been infected asymptomatically / minimally symptomatically with any number of common respiratory viruses in the past year, and written it off completely.
The big difference for SARS-CoV2 was that the entire global population was immunologically naive in 2020 (maybe; there's evidence for some level of immunity due to common-cold coronaviruses). This is rapidly changing.
Kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place. With the way case numbers are going, for everyone to strictly adhere to the old recommendations would necessitate pretty huge disruptions to essential services.
Megadeath? That’s a little extreme considering that the death rate has been tapering for some time.
On the other hand, the administration and CDC have been running propaganda the entire year, so this is nothing new. Expecting truth out of either of them about this is a lost cause.
There is no way to know if those deaths were because or with Covid-19.
Also correlation doesn't mean causation. Confinement caused a lot of hardships on people. Hell, fentanyl alone kills hundred of thousands each year, that's not even counting alcohol, other drugs, stress and solitude.
The hypocrisy is astounding. I don’t disagree with the numbers above, but at the same time you are absolutely right - yet downvoted and grayed out. Reminds me of Twitter and Reddit.
You shifted the goal post, you claimed that it's nowhere near one MegaDeath (1 million deaths) despite it being fairly close, then you pivoted to "those aren't really covid deaths".
Hard to say right now. Hospitals in my state have just activated emergency protocols, because our surge is already exceeding Winter-2020 levels. This means that 20% of surgeries are going to be cancelled, and other such care is going to be officially rationed off. (BTW: We're at 90% adults vaccinated, but "70% to 80%" of the hospitalizations are unvaccinated individuals).
EDIT: To be clear: individual hospitals declare emergencies. Its not a state-wide declaration. Hospitals have begun to declare emergencies and activate hospital-specific rationing.
Omicron has been a bitch so far. It seems like it is causing hospitalizations in the unvaccinated population, maybe not at the same "rate" as Delta, but in high enough numbers that we're going to run out of hospital beds in my area.
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Elsewhere in the country... Florida's 300% rise in cases this past week has demonstrated that natural-immunity from Alpha/Delta was completely worthless vs Omicron.
Florida is well on its way to having a worse surge than it ever had before. It doesn't seem like we can natural-immunity our ways out of this.
>"Omicron has been a bitch so far. It seems like it is causing hospitalizations in the unvaccinated population, maybe not at the same "rate" as Delta, but in high enough numbers that we're going to run out of hospital beds in my area. "
One of the problems seems to be that hospital staff are so expensive (because of their regulated monopoly) that we've been running with no spare capacity in normal times. Most other systems have 20% or more extra capacity.
I agree with everything you say here, but most other systems (outside of healthcare and hospitals in particular) run with greater than 20% spare capacity. For example, your local pizza restaurant can probably produce 20% above their expected volume tonight if needed.
I mean, some hospitals in my area are reportedly at 140% stated capacity or something.
We're well above "20%". This is crisis / emergency time. The emergency declaration will reduce surgeries by 20% (going from 140% capacity to 112% capacity).
Like, its obviously not enough, but... its something.
I was talking about other systems like HVAC, or computers, or any other system you can think of. I was not comparing one specific healthcare system to another.
So there are 9 times as many vaccinated people and 3 times fewer hospitalizations, that would be 1-1/27 efficacy (96% or so). Sounds like it's no worse, or possibly even better, than what was measured in the trials
> Florida's 300% rise in cases this past week has demonstrated that natural-immunity from Alpha/Delta was completely worthless vs Omicron. Florida is well on its way to having a worse surge than it ever had before. It doesn't seem like we can natural-immunity our ways out of this.
Tangential, but has Florida started accurately reporting their cases, hospitalizations and deaths instead of under-reporting them?
> Tangential, but has Florida started accurately reporting their cases, hospitalizations and deaths instead of under-reporting them?
Doesn't matter IMO. What matters is the change-in-percent. If Florida's "undercount" is 300% higher this week than last week, that's all the evidence we need, as long as the "undercount" remained consistent.
The exact number isn't important. Its the change in numbers we can look at and rely upon. If you don't trust the numbers, you can still trust the change-in-numbers.
Its not important to get exact numbers. Its more important to remain consistent in your reporting through these crisis. We care about apples-to-apples comparisons within the state, not against different states. A 300% rise is a 300% rise.
I agree that you can glean trends from inaccurately reported data, but I'm asking because I want to know if there is a source that is attempting accurate reporting in Florida, or if Florida is counting things differently than they were a while ago.
Any state with more than 5% positive is underreporting cases however.
You need 95% of your cases to be negative if you expect any accuracy in your case%. If you're at 10% positive or 15% positive, then if you double your testing, you double your cases.
10% positive suggests a testing-kit shortage. That's what's going on in my state, we've begun to ration testing-kits. We only give out testing kits to those with symptoms.
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At some point, your hospital systems favor the individual's health over accurate reporting of statistics. Under such circumstances, it becomes important to use alternative measures for how bad the surge is. Focusing on "% change" is one of the most effective ways of factoring in this issue.
I don't really get why the positive test rate is not supposed to have gone up significantly with availability of at home tests. Shortages of at home tests would naturally lower it again, but isn't this a useless number now that we don't know how many people used tests they already had at home to skip being in the negative reported results?
> Tangential, but has Florida started accurately reporting their cases, hospitalizations and deaths instead of under-reporting them?
AFAIK, the only underreporting they are doing is not counting positive tests as cases unless the person is a permanent Florida resident, while everyone else is counting tests conducted in-state. Which is significant, but really only effects the case count.
(They may be doing a bad job of actually doing testing, too, but that’s not underreporting though it has a similar effect. But, again AFAIK, hospitalization and death numbers aren’t impacted.)
They also changed to attributing deaths to the date they occurred, rather than the date they were recorded. Because this gap can be days or even weeks, it raises the death curve mostly in past periods, and therefore gives the impression the rate is always declining.
I think when the dust settles, we'll conclude that Omicron for the vaccinated posed very similar risks as the flu. Keyword of course is for the vaccinated. SF is seeing the highest case counts at any point in the pandemic and yet there is no real change in hospitalizations/deaths.
Anecdotally, I've attended two mega indoor concerts in the past couple of months. It is almost impossible that I haven't been exposed to or contracted COVID.
> Keyword of course is for the vaccinated. SF is seeing the highest case counts at any point in the pandemic and yet there is no real change in hospitalizations/deaths.
It took about a week or two between our Omicron-surge before our hospitals filled up around here. COVID19 is a slow-moving disease, give it some time and prepare.
Thanks for the additional data-point. That 18% difference could very well make the difference.
I'll be keeping an eye on your higher-vaccination rate and how it works out in your city. I've been trying to tell my coworkers / people around me to get vaccinated (and boostered) but not everybody would listen.
EDIT: The state's average is like 80% total population. I live in an area with far below the state's average in regards to vaccinations.
To clarify, there's a lag for hospitalizations, and then there is another lag for deaths. COVID can even take a couple of months to kill from the initial infection if the infected person is being kept alive on a ventilator.
> This means that 20% of surgeries are going to be cancelled
> We're at 90% adults vaccinated, but "70% to 80%" of the hospitalizations are unvaccinated individuals
> our surge is already exceeding Winter-2020 levels
Can you put any links to the data on any of these? I am really curious to know where you get that from, I can't find any hospitalization data from Omicron and vaccinated rates on those hospitalizations.
> Barrueto said 70% to 80% of the hospitals' patients are unvaccinated. He said the move also sends a message to the community that it's not business as usual.
> Elsewhere in the country... Florida's 300% rise in cases this past week has demonstrated that natural-immunity from Alpha/Delta was completely worthless vs Omicron.
This is simply wrong. A rise in cases is not evidence of much of anything related to immunity, let alone natural immunity. Plenty of vaccinated people are getting infected as well -- they're not dying from it.
> Florida is well on its way to having a worse surge than it ever had before. It doesn't seem like we can natural-immunity our ways out of this.
Please stop speculating. The "surge" in cases is currently lower than what happened in FL over the summer, and hospitalizations are flat:
>While COVID-19’s omicron variant pushes Florida to pandemic daily records in cases reported and has drive-thru testing lines snaking through parks and pharmacy parking lots, hospitalizations haven’t risen at the same rate — yet. Sunday’s report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said there were 2,302 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Florida. That’s 39 more people hospitalized than in Saturday’s report and from 245 hospitals, as opposed to the 246 hospitals in Saturday’s report. COVID-19 patients occupy 4.27% of patient beds in those reporting hospitals, compared to 4.18% in the previous day’s reporting hospitals. Of the people hospitalized in Florida, 333 were in intensive care unit beds, a decrease of nine. That represents about 5.41% of the state’s ICU hospital beds, compared to 5.55% the previous day.
I remember when people said that about alpha, and then delta, and now omicron...
When is it going to happen? The UK convinced itself alpha would give them herd immunity and stop future outbreaks. Then the same people came out to say ok now with delta in the UK we'll let it burn all summer and then be protected. And now the same people have the gall to say, ok ok this time omicron will be the one that gives us herd immunity.
It's time to call out this nonsense for the complete horseshit nonsense that it is.
>"It's time to call out the minimizers and downplayers on their horseshit. "
Maybe it's time to do that on Reddit or Facebook, but this isn't the point of HackerNews. From the guidelines:
>" Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "
So there were high degrees of heard immunity… but then Omicron came which has pretty high immune escape, and so it spreads all over, whether you were vaccinated or not, had COVID before or not. And then it finds those who were neither vaccinated nor previously had COVID and puts them in the hospital. Spreads so quickly that the hospital system is overloaded even if the Case Hospitalization Rate isn’t that high.
So it’s gonna expose everyone regardless, therefore it is a kind of herd exposure, if not herd immunity. Hopefully, in combination with the previous exposure, the transmissibility will be lowered by this “herd exposure” so in future waves the hospital system won’t be hit as hard.
It’s roughly less than half as lethal as Delta, other things being equal. In combination with boosted+vaccination, the risk is pretty low, comparable to flu or perhaps lower now that we have better treatments.
We need the pan-coronavirus vaccines, though, in addition to these less lethal variants, to really bring this down to background seasonal flu/cold virus levels. (And it wouldn’t hurt if we finally fixed the HIV pandemic so variants don’t mutate so much. And fix vaccine logistics further so we have a prayer to deploy vaccines before literally everyone gets it like Omicron.)
Coronaviruses normally don’t mutate as fast as the typical seasonal flu since they don’t do recombination as efficiently. So we SHOULD be able to keep up with it. But our main vaccine strain is now 2 years old. You can’t expect that to work well forever.
Actually it is, and the boosters came in every 6 months.
Getting to a high (like over 95%) vaccination worldwide would also prevent the creation of more variants. There are quite clearly solutions that will work; what lacks is political will (and disinformation spread by selfish people and politicians).
> Getting to a high (like over 95%) vaccination worldwide would also prevent the creation of more variants.
Maybe if we're getting a vaccine that provides immunity like the Polio one does and that we're vaccinating 100% of people in a few days and we're getting rid of all animal reservoirs of the virus at the same time, which is just near impossible given the cost and the logistics, maybe the virus could be eradicated. Maybe.
Also it is environmental pressures that drive viruses to mutate and create variants. If the virus escapes the vaccines than there is a great deal of change that it is the vaccinated that favored the vaccine resistant strains. In fact one of the first most contagious strains were noticed in India a few weeks after the beginning of their vaccination program.
It is impossible to say what causes a mutation to arise, but to say that it is 100% sure that the non-vaccinated are responsible for the variants is simply based on nothing tangible.
That is not scientifically accurate. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, the current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. Vaccines are less effective for those people.
That is not scientifically accurate. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, that will not prevent the virus from reaching immunocompromised individuals.
Saying something is not scientifically accurate is a bold claim to make and the evidence that you’ve provided are opinion pieces that don’t support that claim, so stop doing that.
If you actually read the articles and then look at the underlying sources you will see that everything I stated is correct. I won't stop correcting your dangerous misinformation.
It’s you who is spreading dangerous misinformation by attempting to validate your claims as scientific without linking to actual scientific research, just opinions in various pop science magazines.
The hospitalization rate per case is way down. IMO, we can largely credit that to immunity (from both vaccination and prior infections). Severe cases are much less common on breakthroughs. That’s consistent with the earlier comment that covid-19 will become more like the flu. It’ll become one of the many endemic respiratory viruses. Usually not severe, because everyone’s been exposed before.
That's not at all what herd immunity means. It means there are no more infections because there's a base level of immunity all around you. It's how people that are immunocompromised or unable to be vaccinated/protected (i.e. children) are spared by the virus.
Oh sure, I don’t think complete herd immunity is a reasonable goal for this virus. The immunity isn’t persistent enough to achieve that. The GP’s description of it as an endemic we live with like the flu seems more plausible.
> Completed the primary series of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine over 6 months ago and are not boosted
> OR Completed the primary series of J&J over 2 months ago and are not boosted
> OR Are unvaccinated
So vaccinations received greater than 2-6 months prior are worthless in this context (still keeps you out of the hospital, doesn't reduce transmissibility).
This signals that the provided "immunity" is quite short-lived, moreso than any other vaccine I can recall. How unfortunate.
Flu vaccines have a similar immunity cliff. Some HIV vaccines in trials also had similar rates, where the vaccine would need to be given once to several times a year. Some viruses are adapted, or are able to mutate, to avoid immune responses relatively rapidly compared to other viruses.
Pharma companies realized the money is in subscriptions. Like Adobe, why offer Photoshop for a one time sale when they can go the SaaS model and get the juicy recurring revenue.
It’s really interesting how this pandemic has got formerly cautious people all in on big pharma. You are of course correct that pharma, like all businesses, loves recurring revenue. Statins made billions and billions to just give one example. Meanwhile Gilead made a Hepatitis B cure and while it did well the first couple years, profits dropped like a rock because, well, it was a cure. Goldman Sachs even helpfully pointed out in a research note that cures are economically inferior.
> It’s really interesting how this pandemic has got formerly cautious people all in on big pharma.
I think you might be confusing support for vaccines as support for pharmaceutical companies, when that's actually far from the truth. To use your statin example, suggesting or even pressuring a sick loved one to take statins so they don't die a preventable death isn't implicit support for statin manufacturers, but recognition that in the face of preventable suffering or death, sometimes the pills are one of the least worst options available. Similarly, in the face of an ongoing pandemic, vaccines are one of the least worst options available compared to preventable illness and death.
> I think you might be confusing support for vaccines as support for pharmaceutical companies, when that's actually far from the truth.
I think the OP is still accurate, as people have been very defensive about questioning big pharma now and the media is calling everything “anti-vax” if even questions some details
It seems that the CDC's logic is that reducing the quarantine will encourage people 1) to get tested, since 5 days of quarantine isn't as bad as 10 days and 2) to actually quarantine if they are exposed or positive. But no one is going to wear a mask for those 5 days after quarantine. You're either contagious or you're not. If you and/or others believe you're contagious, you're going to isolate. If you don't believe it, you're not going to wear a mask. No one is going to go around saying "yeah, I might still have COVID so I thought I'll still hang out with you, but I'll just wear a mask". Yeah right.
And sadly, the CDC don't appear to be offering any advice or information about how long one is actually contagious, which is the information people really need to make safe and responsible decisons. Nor do they appear to be encouraging more rapid at home testing, which is really what needs to happen to start managing this virus. I spent the entire day today calling around for any kind of rapid tests anywhere in Ohio after someone from our Christmas Eve gathering fell sick. They're sold out everywhere. Was finally able to get some tests when a shipment came in to the county health department, but they were gone in a couple of hours.
Meanwhile, I think Joe Biden is asleep. Why doesn't he issue an executive order and/or activate the Defense Production Act to get rapid tests to Americans now? He's had plenty of time to prepare.
> The change is motivated by science demonstrating that the majority of SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after.
When this pandemic started, a 35-year-old family friend of mine got infected with COVID19, infected his father, and then both died. Then we couldn't attend their funeral because the devastated family was worried they would spread COVID19 to everyone else during the funeral.
You can't live like normal in these social circumstances.
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Florida's death rate has been far higher than the rest of the country due to their decision. And for what? Omicron arrives, and their "natural immunity" is falling apart like a paper tiger.
"Natural immunity" gave them absolutely no protection at all.
> Florida's death rate has been far higher than the rest of the country due to their decision.
According to CDC data, Florida and New York at this time have the same death rate. About 320 excess deaths per 100K.
Re: NI, I'm baffled how this is still controversial in the US when the UK, Germany, Israel, etc. Many others recognize it as a valid alternative to vaccination.
It absolutely did give them protection against severe illness just like South Africa. It's in the data.
This discussion has happened literally every surge.
Hospitalizations lag case counts by about 1 to 2 weeks. Deaths further lag hospitalization counts by another 1 to 2 weeks.
Omicron arrived in NYC weeks before it arrived in Florida. You can see it evident in the case counts. You have to wait the appropriate amount of time (ex: ~1 to 2 weeks to compare hospitalizations, and ~2 to 4 weeks to compare deaths).
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Omicron hasn't hit Texas yet. So in a week or two (or whenever Omicron arrives there), Texans will be making the same time-delayed fallacy that everyone else has made.
After 3 or 4 "humps", you'd think that people would be understanding of this time-delay effect by now.
"Just wait two weeks" - this mantra is a bit overplayed? The USA is not monolithic. COVID has proven to be seasonal. Flu season in Texas/Florida are quite different than New York/Michigan.
In the past 7 days, hospitalizations rose by 107% in Florida, matching the rate of COVID19 growth from a week or two ago.
We're _already_ seeing the massive increase in hospitalization numbers in Florida. Its a time-delayed compared to case-counts, but its clearly hitting Florida now. What do you think will happen in the next week (when last week had +300% case count) ??
There was a blip in the data for Christmas / Christmas Eve (I dunno if that's because fewer people were working, or if fewer people decided to go into the hospital). But otherwise, the trajectory and hospital usage number-trend is pretty clear and evident already.
When I read comments like OP's, I always try to square where their perspective is coming from.
If P_death is 0.1% and Dunbar's number is 150, the chance someone you care about will die of Covid-19 is a mere 14%. You have to get to caring about 700 people before you're more likely to know someone who dies of Covid-19 than not.
This whole thing essentially only really matters in aggregate. Sure comorbidies, protecting yourself from long Covid, etc. But in general there is so much leeway to come up with your own hypotheses and have them "confirmed". I've got a special rock that keeps tigers away etc.
One thing I know for sure is that I wouldn't go telling a nurse that the past two years have been for their imagination. Especially not with hospital occupancy being what it is.
(PS I'm sorry for your family's loss. Negotiating funeral customs during Covid is truly terrible.)
I am sure you have a source for the claim, as a Dec 23 FL and CA have about the same Deaths per 100,000 population, massively under NY, IL, MI, etc.
One trend that is clear, Cold Weather states have MUCH higher death rates than states Warm States, I think weather more impact than any government policy has a on COVID deaths.
Careful: the death and personal pain my family had was not worthless. If your argument is to just be callous to my family's pain, then there's not much discussion I can reasonably have with you.
No. Deaths happen, and its important to remember why and how they happen.
Every death in this pandemic is a personal pain point for somebody out there, maybe dozens or hundreds of people out there. And even more are now crippled by months long, or years long headaches and/or breathing problems due to "long-COVID".
I won't let you minimize the pain that has occurred.
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At a bare minimum, I expect you to have the decently to make a discussion point with the proper level of respect on this issue.
You chose your words. Choose them more carefully next time.
EDIT: Since you've edited... I'm well aware of what you mean. You purposefully chose to be callous in an attempt to gain a rhetorical advantage over me. That's fine, just don't expect me not to point it out when you do such a technique.
I know you don't personally mean to be callous against me. But that doesn't change the fact that you're rhetorically being callous against me or my argument. I'm not taking it personally, trust me. But I'm not going to walk away from a rhetorical freebie like you setup for me here.
> its important to remember why and how they happen.
It would be important to be factual about it, too, but some Governments are not; if it turns out (premortem or postmortem) that you are positive for COVID-19, your cause of death will be COVID-19, and you go into the statistics of COVID-19 deaths.
> "long-COVID"
I have a comment under a different submission. What is the mechanism behind it? What do we know? Self-reports of "fatigue", "headache", and "muscle pain" is just not good enough, which is the reason for why we think it is actually a thing: those self-reports[1].
> I won't let you minimize the pain that has occurred.
I think no one is trying to minimize the pain that has occurred. He is just saying anecdotes are anecdotes. He is right, but this is not an attempt to minimize the pain that has occurred to you, or personally I would not think of it as such. I cannot imagine how heartbreaking it must be, and I am sorry for your loss.
[1] According to many websites, but perhaps you can give me a study or studies.
> It would be important to be factual about it, too, but some Governments are not; if it turns out (premortem or postmortem) that you are positive for COVID-19, your cause of death will be COVID-19, and you go into the statistics of COVID-19 deaths.
Luck would have it that I am close to people who literally wrote the training for the CDC guidelines for death certificate handling, and instructions to the doctors. You're wrong on that and I have the citations to prove it.
This is an official death certificate. The section you're worried about is section 32, "Cause of Death".
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> Enter the chain of events--diseases, injuries, or complications--that directly caused the death.
Another person in her office handles the death certificate processing for official CDC stats. Only if the doctor's argument for the exact chain of events includes COVID19 are they included on the COVID19 death counts.
These documents are dated and controlled. We therefore know the exact wording of the training, guidance, and other such documents for how to fill out "cause of death" (line 32 on the death certificate).
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You can request the chain of death statistics from the CDC IIRC. They're almost all "Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome" (aka: patient is having difficulty breathing, and then died), caused by pneumonia, caused by COVID19.
Its pretty damn clear when something is a death by ARDS (its literally on the death certificate), vs say, a Car Accident. In fact, COVID19 is __NOT__ a direct cause of death, no more than AIDS is a direct cause of death.
The literal death is "heart attack", or "ARDS", with a chain pointing to COVID19 (or suspected COVID19).
As it turns out, the bureaucrats who literally have PH.Ds in death certificate handling have a more nuanced view than you do on death certificate handling and processing. Who'd a thunk it?
Look: there's a controversy all the time when it comes to death counts. When New York Times reports a different number of deaths due to say, Hurricane Maria, the CDC gets the blame for that (even if NYT was wrong and CDC numbers were right and double-checked)... or Tobacco claiming the tobacco deaths are wrong, or whatever. These people are very used to controversy and are very careful about crossing all their Ts and dotting all their I's. That's literally their job.
I left out an important information: I am not speaking about the US, because I do not have any idea about it.
What I said applies here in Eastern Europe[1], it is a known fact. They go into the statistics of COVID-19 deaths if they are positive for it, even if the actual cause of death is something else.
Want to hear an anecdote? About 1.5 years ago when one of my relative's husband died, cops contacted my relative and asked her if they could claim that the death was caused by COVID-19, and if she agrees, she would get some amount of money (!). Things may have changed now: they do not ask. Truth be told, if someone told me this, I would have been hesitant to believe it, but it happened to my relative!
[1] I read comments here where it applied to Germany, as well as a couple of other European countries.
Except that argument is backwards from real-politik. Any politician who is in charge of an area wants to pretend that the case numbers are lower than they actually are. See China for instance.
Doesn't matter if you're local, state, or national levels. The real-politick move is to pretend your counts are far lower than reality.
When in doubt about reality, focus on the real-politik. Conspiracies that go against human nature should be discounted.
Mate, higher death counts were supposed to cause "panic" and encourage people to obey by the restrictions and to get the vaccine. They have been telling us in every way possible to get the vaccine, for example. Everywhere you looked, you got "register for vaccine as quickly as you can!"... now you do not even have to register anymore. They are saying "come, get the vaccine" without registering. Higher death counts was supposed to be another way of encouraging people to get the vaccine, and to wear masks where they gotta, and so forth.
The chances of a 35 year old without serious pre-existing conditions dying at the beginning of the pandemic is about the same as being struck by lightning. Another family member getting sick and dying also seems unlikely (<10%). Wonder if there was a genetic component.
That said, it doesn’t change the risk profile. The stats are the stats, individual circumstances will happen. As the pandemic goes on the community immunity will improve, treatment options improve and virus should evolve to be weaker.
Yeah. Treatment options have definitely gotten better. IIRC, something like 80% of deaths can now be prevented thanks to a combination of Dexamethasone, Monoclonal Antibodies, and other such advancements. Monoclonal antibodies may have stopped working for Omicron, but the Pfizer pill looks like it still works.
A lot of it was probably timing, getting hit early before doctors really knew what the best treatment options were is the "lightning" event for sure.
The father was older, near 70 and with some pre-existing conditions. He was being careful about COVID19. But the chain was nurse -> 35-year-old -> pass to his father. Sometimes, even with all the precautions you take, its not really possible to avoid the disease.
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Nonetheless, my sister works in the emergency room as a doctor. She's had to declare plenty of 30-some year olds dead. I know for a fact that my story is far from unique, plenty of other young folk have died from this disease.
You can talk to anyone who works in the emergency room: there's plenty. Firefighters / First Response teams, nurses, and doctors. Hear the stories directly from them.
Florida's death rate is not "far higher than the rest". It's actually about 14% higher than the USA national average. Which is about what you would expect considering that age is the primary risk factor: Florida has 21% of their population over age 65 compared to only 17% for the country as a whole.
You also haven't established any causality between those decisions and the death rate.
> When this pandemic started, a 35-year-old family friend of mine got infected with COVID19, infected his father, and then both died.
I've now had literally dozens of friends and family get Covid, ranging from children all the way up to elderly relatives. None have had more than minor illnesses, from which they quickly and completely recovered.
Anecdotes are worthless as arguments. Appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy, and that's all you're doing here.
> Then we couldn't attend their funeral because the devastated family was worried they would spread COVID19 to everyone else during the funeral. You can't live like normal in these social circumstances.
I'll say this: we most certainly can't live like normal when we're being prevented from living like normal by people who make up silly and inhumane rules, based on speculation and fear.
I… currently am isolating with COVID and don’t know how to feel.
I was fortunate to get both Moderna shots and then get a booster in November. So far symptoms have been overwhelmingly mild (sore throat, allergies, mild cough, no impact to blood oxygen levels).
Started feeling them on Christmas morning, but thought it was my parents’ HVAC and winter drying me out. Went to my in-laws, had a nice Christmas and day after Christmas, and COVID came up in discussion. My in-laws had a test remaining, and I said “I’ll take it - my parents are seeing other family and in the off chance I have it I’d want to let them know”.
So I took it last night, and it was very positive very quickly. Got another test today from another brand - also positive.
Looking at CDC guidance, I’m somewhat confused. 5 days of isolation are fine, but if you look at timelines, respiratory issues seem to start around day 5. So I guess you’re either getting better or taking a turn on day 5. And I’m stuck at my in-laws a few hours from home, just isolating in a room. Everyone else took a test (we were lucky to find them) and tested negative, but we will see if symptoms develop in others in the coming days.
Prior to COVID, this is nothing I would have stayed home for. Nothing I would have even considered could kill 800k+ people in the US. It’s really hard to wrap my head around it, and when I woke up this morning it was a bit of “did that test actually go off?”.
Oura ring also alerted that my body temp was higher than usual and that I should take it easy. But I don’t have a fever using a mouth thermometer.
I didn’t end up getting a PCR test, as the likelihood of two false positives across two different brands is very low, and I’m not totally asymptomatic. Just feel like 85% healthy where normal is 100%. But I won’t know if this is omicron or some other variant.
So I’m not taking any pills, monoclonal antibodies, or other approaches with this other than staying hydrated and mucinex. I figure I’m ok - but it’s really weird to be writing this on day 3 of symptoms knowing that day 5 could mean I’m either fine and can just mask up around people or I may take a turn, ramp a fever, and have breathing problems.
And I’ve been very cautious with protocols. Always mask inside, maintain distance, work from home. Yesterday was the first time since March 2020 I went to a brewery to celebrate someone’s birthday (again, feeling fine enough to drink) and I made sure the group sat outside at a fire pit (where we were alone and cold) instead of going into the brewery.
Bad symptoms and hospitalizations typically happen 4 weeks after symptoms. If you are at higher risk, i.e. older or some comorbidities, do not delay seeking treatment like monoclonal antibodies. There is a short window early in the infection where they can work. And even now the only monoclonals that work against omicron are in very, very short supply. The sooner you at least seek out or find available treatment options and discuss them with healthcare professionals the better. Good luck.
I wrote my doctor about it and he basically said “you’re in as good a position as you can be, we need to save the monoclonal antibodies that work on omnicron for someone who will definitely need them”.
I’m borderline high-risk based on BMI (how I got vaccinated early), but work out 5x a week and really don’t feel any major symptoms. If I was not vaccinated and boosted, immunocompromised, or had more significant symptoms I’d be a lot more concerned.
Coincidentally, I listened to Tim Ferris’ COVID discussion with Kevin Rose while driving Saturday[1]. I feel like I’m in a similar spot as he was, and his doctors were either saying do nothing and isolate, or do monoclonal antibodies and some other pill. He took the approach of the kitchen sink and seemingly a lot of his symptoms (night sweats) might have come from the treatment. We will never know the counterfactual had he not taken the treatment, but it’s interesting anec-data.
My wife and I both had COVID while unvaccinated. I actually had it twice.
She started off like a cold with extremely mild symptoms, but eventually developed a fever which was cut short by monoclonal antibodies.
The first go-round for me I had a few days of being tired with poor taste, and then it it full force making me incredibly tired with a fever of 102 for 2 weeks. The second time was largely the same but with less of a lead up - the tiredness hit right away.
Feeling almost completely asymptomatic with a positive test, wrecking multiple family holidays and trips (everyone I contacted now has to isolate), and sitting here not knowing if I should use the time I’m feeling OK to revise my will or if this is the extent of my symptoms and it will just go away in a few days.
And the CDC shifting guidelines down to 5 days, when I read multiple places that day 5 is where you hit a bad turning point or get better…
>Looking at CDC guidance, I’m somewhat confused. 5 days of isolation are fine, but if you look at timelines, respiratory issues seem to start around day 5. So I guess you’re either getting better or taking a turn on day 5. And I’m stuck at my in-laws a few hours from home, just isolating in a room. Everyone else took a test (we were lucky to find them) and tested negative, but we will see if symptoms develop in others in the coming days.
It's very strange that no one has yet pointed out that the new reduction to 5 days are for an asymptomatic case. You're clearly symptomatic.
Kind of. I feel like I normally feel when visiting my in-laws because they had a dog and I’m allergic to dogs. It’s hard to tell if these are COVID symptoms or allergies.
I forgot to mention the reason I tested was a known contact. Otherwise I would not have tested because this feels pretty normal for when I’m here.
Wow I didn't imagine the lack of flight attendants was going to hit the government this hard.
Remember when Joe Biden suggested these covid deaths under a president should mean that person shouldn't be president anymore? I wonder if he's gonna listen to his own advice.
We're approaching a megadeath of Americans from COVID-19 and cannot continue on this disastrous path.
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