COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Beet]

It's my understanding that there are few scientific links to be found between schools opening and the spread of Covid-19. And in any case, having them closed isn't stopping the spread currently. Therefore, I would say they should open, but in either case it should not be a partisan, ideological issue any more than mask wearing is.

[Beet]

Trump fixated on his own political fate as virus kills record number of Americans

A day after the United States' coronavirus daily death toll nearly surpassed the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, President Donald Trump remained out of sight -- fixated not on the raging pandemic but rather on his own political fate.

The president made no public appearances Friday, a day after the United States recorded 2,879 Americans deaths caused by COVID-19, 217,664 confirmed cases of the virus and over 100,000 hospitalizations -- all records.

Trump has spent his waning days in office not focused on leading the United States through a historic, deadly crisis but rather fundraising for his future political endeavors and sowing doubt in the country's democratic foundations.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-fixated-political-fate-virus-kills-record-number/story?id=74536821

[Beet]

New ‘worrying’ Covid strain found in South Africa is ‘more severe among young adults'

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1374779/covid-strain-latest-new-coronavirus-variant-south-africa-young-adults

501.V2 may cause more critical illness among young people with no comorbidities. I don't see any statistics yet.

[Beet]

If this is a sign of the effect of Covid-19 on the general population, as it may well be, then this is catastrophic news to close out 2020.

Ohio State study: 30% of student athletes have heart damage linked to COVID-19

In a study published in September, researchers from Ohio State University found that out of more than two dozen athletes from the university who tested positive for COVID-19, 30% had cellular heart damage and 15% showed signs of heart inflammation caused by a condition known as myocarditis.

After mapping the hearts of 26 Ohio State University athletes using a process known as cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR), researchers found that not only 15% of students exhibited the rare heart condition but 30% showed cellular damage.

[Beet]

If this is a sign of the effect of Covid-19 on the general population, as it may well be, then this is catastrophic news to close out 2020.

Ohio State study: 30% of student athletes have heart damage linked to COVID-19

In a study published in September, researchers from Ohio State University found that out of more than two dozen athletes from the university who tested positive for COVID-19, 30% had cellular heart damage and 15% showed signs of heart inflammation caused by a condition known as myocarditis.

After mapping the hearts of 26 Ohio State University athletes using a process known as cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR), researchers found that not only 15% of students exhibited the rare heart condition but 30% showed cellular damage.

The good news is most myocarditis does heal over time, it just necessitates treatment and lifestyle changes. Everyone should get an MRI scan of their heart, brain, and lungs post Covid imo.
However, this further goes to show that this virus is not just a common cold and willfully murdering students based on preconceived notions and angry tweets from parents is borderline genocidal and must not be tolerated.

Some do, but not all do. Further, the numbers are absolutely astounding. According to a July JAMA paper, 60 out of 100 patients had some sign of myocarditis and 78 of 100 had some sign of heart damage. That's massive. Further, during the incidence of Covid-19 in Lombardy, there was a 58% rise in identified cardiac arrests. Realistically, only a fraction of people at most are going to get a full heart, brain and lung scan, even if you do a massive public relations campaign to get people to do it, on top of the campaign to get people vaccinated. Given that more severe forms of myocarditis can cause permanent damage, we may be living with the effects of this pandemic for 50-60 years.

[Beet]

Catastrophe.

A Texas trauma surgeon says it's rare that X-rays from any of her COVID-19 patients come back without dense scarring. Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall tweeted that, "Post-COVID lungs look worse than any type of terrible smoker's lung we've ever seen. And they collapse. And they clot off. And the shortness of breath lingers on... & on... & on."

Bankhead-Kendall, an assistant professor of surgery with Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, says patients who've had COVID-19 symptoms show a severe chest X-ray every time, and those who were asymptomatic show a severe chest X-ray 70 to 80% of the time.

"There are still people who say 'I'm fine. I don't have any issues,' and you pull up their chest X-ray and they absolutely have a bad chest X-ray," she said.

Post-COVID lungs worse than the worst smokers' lungs, surgeon says

So even asymptomatic people have bad lung damage. So you are talking about already 24 million confirmed cases plus potentially another 24 million asymptomatic cases that never got tested, that's nearly 50 million people already, and 70 to 80 percent of them have suffered bad lung damage already. We're going to be living with the public health damage of this for decades.

[Beet]

D.C.

https://twitter.com/AlexCTaliadoros/status/1350236342182096905

[Beet]

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1352755683041685506

[Beet]

I hate to say it but they should be aiming at 4 to 5 million vaccinations a day, at least. Negotiating between 1 million and 1.5 million a day is too slow. The more time you give this virus to be out there, the faster new variants will develop. That's why you need "Shock and Awe" to beat it back as fast as possible.

[Beet]

By the way, I really appreciate you posting these daily updates Arch. You've been a rock of reliability. I always check this thread at least once a day for the numbers.

[Beet]

B. 1.1.7 is now skyrocketing as a percentage of cases. If we're not lucky we have one more wave to go before mass vaccination really kicks in.

[Beet]

The worst is over *IF* the major vaccines work on all the variants. The P.1 variant coming out of Brazil right now is highly disturbing.

[Beet]

How are you all getting doses? Here it's still not allowed for anyone under 50 unless you're in certain professions.

[Beet]

How are you all getting doses? Here it's still not allowed for anyone under 50 unless you're in certain professions.

According to AARP, the Texas Covid plan also allows those with certain conditions to get it now?
Not sure but that’s what Google says.
Colorado is about to open it up for those with potential high risk conditions.
I have a neurological condition so I’m going to get it soon.

Regardless, most people will get their first dose in the next month imo. We are at the end of this hopefully.

Oh yeah, you can get it for obesity here too. Alas I'm what can generously be called overweight after a big meal, but not obese.

[Beet]

https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1387255022438780932

It's called his smartphone.

[Beet]

A new study published earlier this week estimates that more than 900,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, nearly double the amount recorded by health officials and trackers.

Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, for example, has the coronavirus death toll in the US at around 581,000 people. A tracker from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a number within the same range, at about 577,000 deaths.

“We’ve been saying – and the CDC has been saying all along – that it is very likely that we’re undercounting,” Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/fauci-no-doubt-undercount-covid-19-death-toll-2021-5

Very bad news. In comparison the number of people who died from the flu in recent years ranged from 23,000 to 61,000 annually. And without containment measures it would have been even worse. So the idea that the pandemic was nothing was obviously wrong.

[Beet]

COVID Linked to Long-Term Erectile Dysfunction

The results only examined tissues from only four men — two with a history of COVID infection, and two without — who underwent penile prosthesis surgery to treat erectile dysfunction. That’s a very small sample size and may or may not be generalizable to the greater population, but the work builds on separate research, published earlier this year in the journal Andrology, which found that men who had previously had COVID were six times as likely as other men to develop erectile dysfunction.

“Our research shows that COVID-19 can cause widespread endothelial dysfunction in organ systems beyond the lungs and kidneys,” said University of Miami Miller School of Medicine researcher and author Ranjith Ramasamy, in a statement. “The underlying endothelial dysfunction that happens because of COVID-19 can enter the endothelial cells and affect many organs, including the penis.”

https://futurism.com/neoscope/covid-linked-long-term-erectile-dysfunction

More bad news.

[Beet]

The topic certainly shouldn't have been taboo for the past year, but I don't see what Stewart's monologue has to do with it. His entire argument is that the name of the lab is the "Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab", but is that really true that there is a lab (presumably a department of WIV) that is called that? All web search results for that only point back to links on Stewart's own monologue.

It's important to note that there is no direct evidence of how COVID-19 started, or that there has been any coverup over how it started. There is circumstantial evidence but it doesn't all point in the same direction. For instance, SARS-1 is of natural origin and came from the same region of the world, so wouldn't be too surprising if another naturally originated coronavirus did as well.

I'll add that if you really care about learning the truth and preventing future pandemics, politicizing the issue and emphasizing blame, especially against actors whose help you want to investigate the causes and change their behavior, doesn't help. If countries conclude that being the origin of a pandemic is going to get them blamed for it, then they won't have the incentive to identify novel viruses at an early stage or honestly investigate them openly.

[Beet]

It's not over yet.

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1406257131565637632

[Beet]

Yikes. The Delta wave is definitely coming. The only silver lining I can see from this is that maybe it'll convince some people to get vaccinated.

[Beet]

California man who said he had ’99 problems but a vax ain’t one’ dies from COVID-19

    When you can’t trust the Bible cause it was written by man, but you trust the CDC/Fauci guidelines cause they were written by man. Makes total sense. pic.twitter.com/JqUeZGpr5w

    — Stephen Harmon (@stephenharmon) May 26, 2021

“Biden’s door to door vaccine ‘surveyors’ really should be called JaCovid Witnesses. #keepmovingdork,” Harmon tweeted on July 8. In June he wrote, “IF YOU’RE HAVING EMAIL PROBLEMS, I FEEL BAD FOR YOU, SON. I GOT 99 PROBLEMS BUT A VAX AIN’T ONE!”

    Biden’s door to door vaccine “surveyors” really should be called JaCovid Witnesses. #keepmovingdork

    — Stephen Harmon (@stephenharmon) July 8, 2021

But just a day later, Harmon revealed to his followers that he had been diagnosed with COVID. His situation deteriorated a few days later when he revealed he was “on max oxygen” and “struggling to function.”

i’m choosing to going under intubation, i’ve fought this thing as hard as i can but unfortunately it’s reached a point of critical choice & as much as i hate having to do this i’d rather it be willingness than forced emergency procedure. don’t know when i’ll wake up, please pray.

— Stephen Harmon (@stephenharmon) July 21, 2021

https://www.yahoo.com/news/california-man-said-had-99-221500116.html

[Beet]

I went to the Barnes and Noble around Independence Day and suddenly realized I was the only one (besides staff) still wearing a mask. I felt foolish.

Today I went there again and almost everyone is wearing a mask. The tide has turned again.

[Beet]

https://www.wfla.com/community/health/coronavirus/grim-milestone-florida-sets-new-record-for-covid-19-hospitalizations-as-variant-cases-surge/

Hard to believe there are still R hacks on here excited about "Ron DeSantis 2024". This guy has failed in just about every respect.

The more cases there are, the more Republicans will like him.

[Beet]

Sigh. It looks like herd immunity may not work. It's just going to blow through the remaining unvaccinated population with a lot of breakthrough cases too.

At the end of the day I still go back to surveillance. You need to trace who's getting infected and where they've been and who they've been in contact with. You focus your vaccination campaign among high risk groups. A sledgehammer approach does not work, besides being painful and controversial. You need the scalpel. Trade blindly spraying the forest with lead in the dark of night while not hitting anything but plants and animals, for your sniper with the heat detecting sight.

[Beet]

Since you're on this forum, you should know all about and be a big believer in political polarization. Finally it's time to put it to good use. You're either on the side of the Trumpist pro-COVID forces, or you're on the side that supports mask mandates. Pick one.

The politicization of a global pandemic is bad, actually. The fact that you're actively encouraging it to justify your beliefs is incredibly revealing.

I'm aware of my audience here. Most of this forum hates Trump and Trumpism with every fiber of their being, and many probably spent time and money to defeat Trump last year and were ready to get their guns and fight the Trumpists to the death on Jan. 6. I've spent many posts trying to convince people on this issue with facts and logic, but many are strangely resistant to that, instead taking the Trumpist position by clinging onto a falsehood that the vaccine is an impenetrable shield that makes one safe from COVID-19, and anti-mask feelings that they just don't like wearing masks. So it's time to invoke polarization for the greater good. The overwhelmingly anti-Trump posters here need to know that they are supporting Trump by opposing mask mandates.

Sure, most of us hate Trump, but most of us hate the CCP more.

"I'm against masks to own the CCP" is the new "I'm against masks to own the libs"