COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[pbrower2a]

People not already inoculated are getting scared -- enough that more people who rejected it before are taking the needle.

 

Not in my area.

Just yesterday, a Trumpster I work with was saying the vaccines are The Mark of the Beast. The other Trumpsters in the room fully agreed.

Maybe. They are still crazy.

[pbrower2a]

‘We cannot stretch anymore’: Hospital leaders on Mississippi Gulf Coast, a delta variant hotspot, share horror stories

Reading stories like this makes me want to weep.  This is such a completely avoidable tragedy.

Incompetent leadership!

Republican Governors of Ohio and Indiana both had shutdowns early... and may have saved huge numbers of lives by so doing. I may be a partisan hack, but pols who do right deserve to be re-elected if they seek re-election.

Nobody not intimately involved in medicine or public health had any idea that COVID-19 was on the way, but now we know what pols have met COVID-19 competently and which haven't. 

[pbrower2a]

Anti-vaccination cranks are dying for their beliefs. They die for nothing.

[pbrower2a]

you could end all this panic by just forcing journalists to stop talking about it and getting rid of government/corporate rules related to it

why keep the hysteria going?

The pesky First Amendment would get in your way.

[pbrower2a]

I did my part and got the first two doses. I'm not getting a third for years.

If we need a booster after only 8 months, that means we were lied to and sold a bill of goods.

We got rushed vaccines, and rushed vaccines may be imperfect -- although they have saved lives (perhaps mine). I got some nasty side-effects indicating that

(1) I had successfully evaded COVID-19)
(2) I would be in deep trouble with COVID-19, and
(3) it was only a matter of time before I got sick from it.

We were not lied to; we were not sold a bill of goods. People not inoculated have died. COVID-19 has proved to be far worse than we had yet been told. It is still relatively new as a disease and with no obvious precedent. It has since been shown to contribute to diabetes (a medical disaster), organ damage, cognitive loss, and sexual dysfunction. So where is the positive?

Objective science, including medical science, is never perfect. More than anything else, objective science more reliably points in the right direction than perhaps kindness and charity.    

[pbrower2a]

One million new cases means 15,000 more deaths in the next month or so.   

[pbrower2a]

The updated numbers for COVID-19 in the U.S. are in for 8/12-8/18/2021 per: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

From March 2020 to mid-July 2021, I kept track of COVID-19 numbers daily. Now that there's a light at the end of the tunnel and states are staggering their daily updates, I am switching to a mid-week to mid-week model (Thursday to Wednesday).

Wednesdays are ideal for weekly updates since holidays don't usually fall in the middle of the week, and most states would have reported some update by that day each week.

New Legend:

Δ Change: Comparisons of Weekly Growth or Decline of COVID-19 Spread/Deaths

Σ Increase: A week's contribution to overall percentage growth of COVID-19 cases/deaths.

• IE:What's the overall change in the total?

You may access the archive of daily reports below, with the last daily update at the end, which was on 7/6/2021.

Day-to-Day Archive from 3/26/2020-7/6/2021
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6/16-6/22: <Baseline Week>

• Cases: 34,433,696
• Deaths: 617,864

6/23-6/30:

• Cases: 34,544,094 (+110,398 | Σ Increase: ↑0.32%)
• Deaths: 620,237 (+2,373 | Σ Increase: ↑0.38%)

7/1-7/7:

• Cases: 34,641,189 (+97,095 | ΔW Change: ↓12.05% | Σ Increase: ↑0.28%)
• Deaths: 621,851 (+1,614 | ΔW Change: ↓31.98% | Σ Increase: ↑0.26%)

7/8-7/14:

• Cases: 34,848,068 (+206,879 | ΔW Change: ↑113.07% | Σ Increase: ↑0.60%)
• Deaths: 623,838 (+1,987 | ΔW Change: ↑23.11% | Σ Increase: ↑0.32%)

7/15-7/21:

• Cases: 35,146,476 (+298,408 | ΔW Change: ↑44.24% | Σ Increase: ↑0.86%)
• Deaths: 625,808 (+1,970 | ΔW Change: ↓0.86% | Σ Increase: ↑0.32%)

7/22-7/28:

• Cases: 35,487,348 (+340,872 | ΔW Change: ↑14.23% | Σ Increase: ↑0.97%)
• Deaths: 628,098 (+2,290 | ΔW Change: ↑16.24% | Σ Increase: ↑0.37%)

7/29-8/4:

• Cases: 36,176,471 (+689,123 | ΔW Change: ↑102.17% | Σ Increase: ↑1.94%)
• Deaths: 631,299 (+3,201 | ΔW Change: ↑39.78% | Σ Increase: ↑0.51%)

8/5-8/11: <Last Week>

• Cases: 37,027,466 (+850,995 | ΔW Change: ↑23.49% | Σ Increase: ↑2.35%)
• Deaths: 635,629 (+4,330 | ΔW Change: ↑35.27% | Σ Increase: ↑0.69%)

8/12-8/18: <This Week>

• Cases: 38,072,249 (+1,044,783 | ΔW Change: ↑22.77% | Σ Increase: ↑2.82%)
• Deaths: 641,338 (+5,709 | ΔW Change: ↑31.85% | Σ Increase: ↑0.90%)

The 2020 Census numbers are out for the largest cities. We have just "lost Detroit"  in numbers... maybe Las Vegas.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

[pbrower2a]

What was the super-spreader event?

[pbrower2a]

I am not opposed to indoor mask mandates.. like the one Pritzker just imposed..but I am worried of the slippery slope into more restrictions.

From my perspective, as someone who works with the public, I want to see businesses open (which they are) and people masked.

The thing about indoor mask mandates is that they don't actually cost anyone anything.  Almost all businesses can operate as normal with indoor mask mandates.  Here in Seattle most businesses have been requesting that you wear masks even when we didn't have a mandate.

The only ones that it won't work for are like comedy clubs and nightclubs and things like that where the point of the business is to talk or laugh or do something else where a mask doesn't work.

One can laugh through a mask. I have seen video of people singing through masks. One can drink almost any quaff through a straw, even though that is a compromise.

Shuttering businesses and going back to lockdowns obviously comes at a much higher cost.  People are much more willing to accept vaccine mandates than they are to accept a lockdown for Delta.  Especially because the point of the lockdowns was to wait until we had the virus under control, like we'd stay in lockdown until we saw the light at the end of the tunnel.  But now we have the vaccine.  We're at the end of the tunnel.  The virus could end tomorrow.  It only propagates because of idiot anti-vaxxers.  If we enter a lockdown because of the current situation then that lockdown will continue indefinitely until the anti-vaxxers get the vaccine.  And I for one am not willing to endure a lockdown just to coddle the anti-vaxxers.  I think all restrictions should be targeted at them and extremely punitive.  This is all their fault and they deserve society's wrath.

People are sick of COVID-19, and on the whole people are turning against those who have not gotten the message. One lockdown is unpleasant enough when there are no people to blame. A second one is almost as unpleasant and especially aggravating when such a lockdown results from people failing to get vaccinated.

Aside from official secrets and such obvious abuse as child porn and Streicher-like hate speech, one of the few things for which I would tolerate censorship is medical quackery. Anti-vax garbage is in that category. If one uses the SLAPS test for obscenity (Serious Literary, Artistic, Political, or Scientific) value... it's not imaginative enough to qualify as either "literary" or "artistic"; it is hardly necessary for any political purpose -- and it is in no way scientific.  

People who defy social pressures to use masks and get inoculated will increasingly be pushed to the fringe of American life -- if COVID-19 doesn't first threaten them with death and other problems.

[pbrower2a]

https://twitter.com/accnetwork/status/1433916233599143944
Resistance libs getting up in arms about this video without realizing that Virginia Tech has a vaccine mandate.

The stadium is open to the public, did they impose the mandate on everyone? Did they check the vaccine card at the door? I highly doubt it.

I didn't say the stadium should have been closed, there are economic costs to that which at this point nobody has the will to pay. But it's clearly a highly risky activity and people who want to avoid catching COVID-19 should stay away. It's entirely reasonable for public health officials to message against it and discourage people from attending. People who attend do so at their own risk, there are plenty of allowed activities that involve taking on personal risk.

Guess what? People die in car accidents. People die from bee stings. People die from alcohol poisoning. People die from falling down stairs. Risk is inherently a part of life.

Some risks are necessary and some are pointless. The best risk-takers are the ones capable of assessing how to mitigate risks or how to calculate risks better than some common wisdom. Consider the supposedly daring stunt of driving a vehicle from one ramp to another. As long as one has adequate speed while leaving one ramp and precise direction, one will get to the next ramp because gravity is highly predictable.     

[pbrower2a]

People need to be arrested and fined for violating COVID restrictions and for any disorderly conduct related to violations.

Businesses have some right and indeed duty to control the conduct of employees and customers for the protection of everyone. No, one has no right to take a nap in a sofa on display in a furniture store. One has no right to be "an irate" when told to wear a mask that the business offers free or at nominal cost. If I own a store, you wear a mask no matter whether you have a vaccine passport or not. (Damn fakes!)     

[pbrower2a]

Moderna was the correct choice. I'm glad I made the right decision.

Moderna is what was available at the time during the late winter. I was 65 and had a mild auto-immune disorder (psoriasis, which is easy to live with... ironically, dogs love to lick it; it must be tasty) so I could get the vaccine fairly early. 

I felt the side effects -- flu-like symptoms, mild chest pains, and shortness of breath. I came to the conclusion that COVID-19 might have killed me, and that shapes much of what I have as the basis of my views toward COVID-19.

Anyone who has not gotten the appropriate inoculations by choice (one is excused if one cannot take the vaccine due to medical reasons) is a schmuck. Anyone denied the vaccine due to the choice of a parent or guardian is a victim waiting to happen.   

[pbrower2a]

How likely will this end up before SCOTUS? And what are the chances the mandate gets struck down? Not sure there's a real legal argument as the constitution specifies authority of the prez over the executive branch, though the GOP and anti-waxers will go nuts.

Will unions support a vaccine mandate? Probably. Civil-service rules?

The resentment that vaccinated people hold toward the unvaccinated is strong. People are dying because ICU's are heavily under the occupation of people who could have taken the easy measure of getting inoculated and did not.

We should be scared. We are all one vehicle crash away from having to get emergency treatment in a hospital.

[pbrower2a]

We just surpassed the populations of the cities of Boston (24th largest), El Paso (23rd largest), and Oklahoma City (22nd largest). That's the equivalent of roughly twenty-three 9/11 attacks in sheer volume of death, four of them last week alone.

We go to great lengths to reduce the death from vehicle collisions, and I do not feel any sympathy for people nailed for 78 mph on a 70 mph rural freeway as the result of enhanced enforcement by the state troopers.

[pbrower2a]

A reminder: deaths significantly lag infections and thus treated cases.

[pbrower2a]

Love watching the college football games.  Cornhuskers vs Sooners last Saturday. 100,000 plus people, all in a tight space, but no masks in sight.  No vaccine passports or "social distancing".  Just some Americans havin good old fun.  Freedom over Faucism!!  

Potential super-spreader event.

Being connected to a ventilator isn't my idea of freedom.  

[pbrower2a]

The government doesn't need to implant any chips into anyone. It can follow cell phone use or use of credit or debit cards. One would need to do a very good job of deflection to avoid getting tracked. I heard of one large-scale drug trafficker who gave credit cards to friends and told them to go on vacations to distract the Feds from him while he was on the run (Doing so makes one an accessory in aiding a fugitive evade law enforcement, so I would not encourage anyone to do that). The fellow got caught some time ago, so even that probably would not work.  Someone facing twenty years of federal time if not exposing one's "friend" and a year if telling the truth will betray his supposed benefactor.  

If the feds wanted to track me (I do not do crime, so I am a non-target) they could follow my cell-phone calls and debit card use in recent weeks in the northern and central parts of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Indeed if they ever got my camera's data card they would recognize that I took photos of the Mackinac Bridge, Sleeping Bear Dunes, and the Meijer Gardens (Grand Rapids). Because I am on disability I get food aid... and my purchases of stuff that I ate or drank on that food aid (sodas, sandwiches, some chicken, and pre-made salads) could also track me.

Then again, my computer has no child porn or beheading videos on them either.    

[pbrower2a]

Excess deaths include any deaths attributed to COVID-19 and excess deaths not attributed to causes obviously unconnected to COVID-19 such as homicides, industrial calamities, fires,  and vehicle crashes. Some people have died of COVID-19 without being treated for it.

[pbrower2a]

Is it right that COVID-19 is easily identified in an autopsy?

[pbrower2a]

Is it right that COVID-19 is easily identified in an autopsy?

I am getting a booster and at the first chance a flu shot so that I do not get a respiratory infection that can be confused with COVID-19. There are just too many fools in the county in which I live.

[pbrower2a]

The only herd immunity that we will ever have will result from people joining the herd into pharmacies and inoculation sites to get the vaccine.

Inoculated people are getting frustrated with people not inoculated. It's much like attitudes toward reckless sexuality when HIV/AIDS was a death sentence. To be sure, the analogy is far from perfect, but it has some parallel. "You have had sex with fifty partners" in the early 1980's and "you did not get inoculated" today test the limits of sympathy for the deceased or doomed victim. Both are harsh judgments, but taking risks with dangerous and lethal infections that do lasting harm if they do not kill outright needs powerful justification. The sex drive and rejection of objective science are not excuses for self-destructive behavior.

[pbrower2a]

Sad, but correct.

https://twitter.com/cbschicago/status/1443183810754060289

That's only fair.

Refusing to get vaccinated isn't in the same category as LGBT rights, reproductive freedom, interracial marriage, or religious identity.

The firing is for cause. Good luck in getting hired elsewhere! 

[pbrower2a]

It's anecdotal, but my brother volunteered for a COVID-19 clinic yesterday, and a woman who got the inoculation gave everyone (my brother included) there a hard time because she had to either get inoculated or lose her job. She took it out on everyone from the schedulers to the person injecting her to him,,, and he related her hostility to him and the others said basically "We know".

Marketing and propaganda work best when they cause someone to think that they really made their own decision, and that such decision is reasonable and unobjectionable. Considering that someone might be convinced that some marking device comes with the inoculation so that one can be tracked wherever one goes (the GPS on your car if you use that, your use of a credit or EBT card, or your use of a cell phone can do that too), this might be understandable, however wrong. Some take the warning from Revelation against the Mark of the Beast seriously. Supposedly, acceptance of the Mark of the Beast (a tattoo? a Party badge? Salutes reminiscent of Sieg Heil! or a greeting such as AKIA (A Klansman I Am?) is 100% voluntary, but obviously advantageous under such a hideous regime. Such a regime will work people to exhaustion on starvation rations as a threat, and will make sure that you have empty entertainments as relaxation if not official pageantry glorifying the regime.

We still need to shore such a civic society as we have, improve our character, and create economic alternatives other than reliance upon the government for the goodies in life. Such will require a mass commitment to social equity and the rule of law -- both of which our 45th President mocked.  


Should we ever have Big Bad Big Government, then we are doomed to a particularly nasty tyranny made all the worse by the technology and the potential of ruthless managers of pleasure and pain making the pain and anguish far more excruciating. We would have disparities between indulgence and deprivation that would have shocked Nicholas II of Russia. Even culture and spirituality would be suspect. At this point our first priority must be preservation of our civil liberties, and one of those is safety from a lethal, highly-transmissible respiratory infection that we can all prevent.  We need a government strong enough to do the necessary, but tame enough to not do evil.  

    

[pbrower2a]

I just don't see how we will ever have another bad surge.

Delta basically infected most people who were unvaccinated.

90% of americans have either natural or vaccine antibodies.

I just don't see the math working out for another surge.

maybe a surge of breakthrough, mild cases.

There, perhaps, will be a mini-waves during fall/winter, but by spring it's likely over. Covid will become another [though, perhaps, more somewhat more dangerous] seasonal flu/cold. BIG Pharma works as well on antiviral drugs to treat [breakthrough] Covid.

Financial Times - Antiviral pill: How close are we to a drug to treat Covid?
Scientists seek breakthrough in effort to ease virus symptoms and speed up recovery times

Come December 2021, during the grips of severe cold weather, my prediction is that the northern hemisphere will get another surge.

Nasal cavities shrink, virus survives longer in lower temperatures, more people indoors. Large family functions. Lots of sniffling and runny noses.

It will essentially be the same as Christmas last year minus the vaccinated people and people smart enough to wear masks and wash their hands. Are the pathways for COVID still available through transit/retail workers?

And the other good news is that the mortality rate on this surge appears to be lower.

Thailand, Vietnam, The Phillippines and Malaysia finally got their big surge.

Very interested to see how Sweden goes with it's alternative play this winter. Norway has a mortality rate of 0.5% whilst Sweden have around 1.3%.

It would be interesting to study if the Swede's have higher levels of natural immunity and if that provides more benefit as compared vaccine immunity.

Might be difficult to measure as an effective research project.

Maybe mortality rate being lower is because of the vaccine? That is what I would believe.

That is precisely what I would expect. People will not get un-inoculated.

The pressure will be on to get vaccinated. Incarcerations will be excellent opportunities for inoculating people not yet inoculated. People busted for minor offenses such as shop[lifting will have their sentences reduced in return for inoculation. Should we have a nasty cold wave, such a city like Chicago will round up the homeless as usual for trumped up charges such as profanity that the cops provoke... and the homeless person usually goes to a shelter. Not inoculated? You go to a courthouse, and charges are dropped if you take the needle. The public defender and the prosecutor will drop a charge in return for getting inoculated.


This time one might be connected to food aid and a cell phone... and those make tracking people for their second inoculation much easier to find. So if you use your Illinois food-aid card at a particular store all the time, typically on a Wednesday around 2PM, then guess who might find you some Wednesday at 2PM five or six weeks later.  Someone with a second dose? 
I have seen that every year on WGN News when WGN was available on cable.   

[pbrower2a]

Barf Kavanaugh likely has a pre-existing  condition: his liver.