COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[Crumpets]

Florida man who believed COVID to be a hoax loses wife to COVID

A Florida taxi driver, who believed false claims that coronavirus was a hoax, has lost his wife to Covid-19.

Brian Lee Hitchens and his wife, Erin, had read claims online that the virus was fabricated, linked to 5G or similar to the flu.

The couple didn't follow health guidance or seek help when they fell ill in early May. Brian recovered but his 46-year-old wife became critically ill and died this month from heart problems linked to the virus.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53892856

It's crazy how long this virus can take to kill someone. We need to not only fight against the myth that COVID is a hoax, but also the much more prevalent misconception that, if infected, it will only be a couple days to at most a couple weeks until you're totally fine again.

[Crumpets]

I've seen those posts on social media all day how, supposedly, only 9,000 people have died from the virus in the US.

I have too. It's only counting cases with Covid-19 as the sole cause of death; in most cases there were co-morbidities.

I've seen this too. I wonder who the main instigator of this particular information campaign is.

[Crumpets]

From the Iowa caucuses to this, it's strange how "out of an abundance of caution" has become the motto of 2020.

[Crumpets]

I cannot fathom any family having so little regard for each other's wellbeing to have a large in-person Thanksgiving this year or taking offense to people not wanting to come in person. Our family is canceling Thanksgiving for the first time I think ever and the only people that will be together in person are my parents. Everyone else will probably just call each other at some point in the day to day hi. It was not a hard decision to make, and nobody complained. Thanksgiving comes every year. You can take one year off, especially now that there seems to be a pretty clear consensus that we will have very effective vaccines starting soon and will be more or less back to normal by late next year.

[Crumpets]

Anybody know what's going on along the Texas-Louisiana border? Looking at the NYT map, counties on the Texas side of the border have about 1/10th the level of new cases as the counties immediately next to them on the Louisiana side.

[Crumpets]

These guys...

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1336062026515410946

[Crumpets]

Noted fascist Ron DeSantis now covering up the state's COVID numbers by deploying cops to intimidate whistleblowers. Not good!
https://twitter.com/GeoRebekah/status/1336065787900145665

But BLM are the real fascists, or something.

[Crumpets]

Just tested negative hey-oh!

[Crumpets]

Not sure if this may have already been posted, but the Washington Post has launched a vaccination tracker where you can see how many doses have been administered by state.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/health/covid-vaccine-states-distribution-doses/

[Crumpets]

Reuters continues to be about as misleading as possible with its original fact wire reports, smh.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1344201601066692609

[Crumpets]

I don't see why it's a story since it's going to happen maybe 10s of thousands of times, but the headline seems accurate?

The problem is that the headline doesn't specify the person had only gotten their first dose and it's not unreasonable for someone to interpret the headline as saying that the vaccine doesn't protect you from getting COVID. It's extremely irresponsible wording from Reuters.

And this is a pretty common thing for Reuters. I've seen headlines like "Syrian air defenses successfully down dozens Israeli missiles: source" and they think they're covering themselves by adding the "source" at the end, just like they add the "ABC" at the end here, even if that source is Syrian state news. Instead of being objective, all it does is give equal credence to reports from opinion pieces, propaganda, mainstream, and alternate media, as if all are equally trustworthy and don't need any additional context.

tl;dr AP does it better.

[Crumpets]

Both of my grandparents have now received their first dose! They should both be totally vaccinated by the first week of March.

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/ZackBornstein/status/1362151993804943361

[Crumpets]

Swings and roundabouts.

https://twitter.com/seattletimes/status/1364973604442697732

[Crumpets]

Los Angeles County, the most populous (by far) county in the U.S. with about 10 million people, reported zero new COVID-19 deaths yesterday.

https://twitter.com/AnaCabrera/status/1389341462052155396

[Crumpets]

The "at least one dose" map is starting to look pretty familiar:

[Crumpets]

Here's a map of counties that have already hit 70% of eligible people totally vaccinated.



No county data for VT, VA, WV, GA, or HI

Next counties set to turn green:
Dane County, WI
Hood River County, OR
Howard County, MD
Middlesex County, CT
Mineral County, CO
Montgomery County, MD
San Juan County, WA
Summit County, CO

[Crumpets]

Here's a map of counties that have already hit 70% of eligible people totally vaccinated.



No county data for VT, VA, WV, GA, or HI

Next counties set to turn green:
Dane County, WI
Hood River County, OR
Howard County, MD
Middlesex Count, CT
Mineral County, CO
Montgomery County, MD
San Juan County, WA
Summit County, CO

Almost all of these counties, with the exception of Hamilton County, New York, voted for Biden. What does that tell you? It's further evidence that Democratic voters have been getting vaccinated at higher rates than their Republican counterparts and have greater faith in the vaccine.

What sticks out to me more is that they're mostly vacation counties that likely experienced an influx of well to do urban liberals last March. Jackson Hole, Marfa, Michigan wine country etc

Yeah, it makes you wonder if the numbers might be juiced just by having a higher than usual population. I know the numbers they're using to determine the population of each zip code here are from 2019, which makes all university areas specifically look like they're doing awful, when really the population there is just much, much lower than it was two years ago.

[Crumpets]

Here's an updated map of counties that have fully vaccinated 70+% of all those eligible. New counties since a week ago are in blue. Counties from previous weeks in green. Counties with no data in white.



Next counties set to hit 70%:

Aleutians East, AK
Door, WI
Graham, KS
Jefferson, WA
King, WA
Lincoln, ME
Middlesex, MA
Montour, PA
Petersburg, AK
San Francisco, CA
San Mateo, CA
Sitka, AK
Starr, TX
Sumter, FL
Tompkins, NY

[Crumpets]

Here's a map of "at least one dose" of the vaccine vs. Biden vote percent by state. Dark green states have the most vaccinations compared to Biden's performance and red states have a lower % vaccinated than voted for Biden. Increments of 5, so 30% = 0-5% over/under performance, 40% = 5-10% over/under performance, etc.

[Crumpets]

Updated map of counties that have vaccinated 70+% of all those eligible:

[Crumpets]

Top vaccinated counties as a % of total population, per the NYT tracker.

McKinley, NM 88%
Dukes, MA 85%
Bristol Bay, AK 84%
Nantucket, MA 82%
San Juan, CO 78%
Santa Cruz, AZ 76%
Hamilton, NY 74%
Martin, NC 74%
Marin, CA 72%
Teton, WY 72%
Cumberland, ME 70%
Leelanau, MI 70%
Presidio, TX 70%
San Juan, WA 70%

The NYT tracker is missing county data for VT, GA, VA, WV, HI, and a couple counties in CA. I was able to get VA data, but none made the list. VT only publishes data for % of eligible population, and just eyeballing it, there are probably some counties in VT that would make the list, but I can't say for certain.

And least vaccinated:

McPherson, NE 9%
McPherson, SD 9%
Slope, ND 9%
Miller, AR 9%
Arthur, NE 13%
Cameron, LA 13%
Grant, NE 13%
Harding, SD 13%
King, TX 13%
Logan, NE 13%
Gaines, TX 14%
Holmes, OH 14%
McCone, MT 14%
Winston, AL 14%

Although a note of caution about this list, I've noticed some counties just take a while to update their statistics. Some of the MA counties in the top list would have made this list just a few weeks ago because of delays in updating their numbers.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the fact that there are two "San Juan" Counties in one list and two "McPherson" counties in the other. That feels statistically significant.

[Crumpets]

Updated map of counties that have fully vaccinated 70+% of all eligible residents.

[Crumpets]

Updated map of counties that have fully vaccinated 70+% of all eligible residents.

Could you please include Puerto Rico in this map?

Next update I'll give it a shot. The NYT tracker uses very small geographical units for its Puerto Rico map, so I'll have to see if I can find the same map template as a PNG.

[Crumpets]

Here's a map of the 14-day trend by state. 10% increments starting at zero (so, 30% = 1-9% growth/decrease, 40% = 10-19% growth/decrease, etc.). Looks like Delta is switching from the SUNBELT STACK to the RUST BELT STACK.