Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Forogil]

Watching Europe take precautions while the Chicago School Systems hand wave a 30k case day and a continuing increase in hospital stays for children confuses me.

This focus on children's hospitalizations in the US has confused me for some time, as covid generally is more serious the older you are and seems to spread less from children (at least for the original variants; I don't know if Omicron changes the latter).

The most obvious reason would be that US children are different - but that doesn't seem to be the case; the children hospitalization rate is a fraction of the one for 18-29 year olds, and it then increases up to factor of 10 for the elderly compared to 18-29 year olds.

For deaths the age-difference is even larger; until September the CDC estimated that in the US there had been 645 covid-deaths in the group 0-17 year, and 700,882 among the 65+ (a thousand times more!) of the total estimated 921,371 (the numbers aren't that exact and clearly the total estimated is larger than the reported numbers).

Is it instead that twenty middle-aged men in an hospital bed, one of whom dies, isn't as heart-wrenching as one child that gets better?

[Draco-Onis]

Watching Europe take precautions while the Chicago School Systems hand wave a 30k case day and a continuing increase in hospital stays for children confuses me.

Frankly the more confusing thing in the US right now is people waiting hours in line for a test only to be charged $200+ because they don't have insurance. That's not even going into the other shady things private centers are doing now to squeeze extra cash out of panicked people.

[caractacus]

This focus on children's hospitalizations in the US has confused me for some time, as covid generally is more serious the older you are and seems to spread less from children (at least for the original variants; I don't know if Omicron changes the latter).

The most obvious reason would be that US children are different - but that doesn't seem to be the case; the children hospitalization rate is a fraction of the one for 18-29 year olds, and it then increases up to factor of 10 for the elderly compared to 18-29 year olds.

For deaths the age-difference is even larger; until September the CDC estimated that in the US there had been 645 covid-deaths in the group 0-17 year, and 700,882 among the 65+ (a thousand times more!) of the total estimated 921,371 (the numbers aren't that exact and clearly the total estimated is larger than the reported numbers).

Is it instead that twenty middle-aged men in an hospital bed, one of whom dies, isn't as heart-wrenching as one child that gets better?

I think it could just be to do with both the way covid cases are reported and the way those cases are then reported by the media.

if you look at this headline from Sky News it is pretty scary COVID: More than 500 children admitted to hospital with coronavirus in England in week to Boxing Day https://news.sky.com/story/covid-mor...g-day-12505306

But then you read further on and it explains "The definition used to identify a hospital admission with coronavirus is that someone either tested positive for the virus in the 14 days before their admission, or during their stay in hospital. It could mean someone goes into hospital for a non-COVID reason and later tests positive."

So we see there is a lot of confusion over if children are admitted "with" covid or "for" covid. You can have a child cut their arm, get taken to hospital for stitches then if they have prior tested positive or test positive at the hospital they count as being admitted with covid

[PhaelixWW]

So we see there is a lot of confusion over if children are admitted "with" covid or "for" covid. You can have a child cut their arm, get taken to hospital for stitches then if they have prior tested positive or test positive at the hospital they count as being admitted with covid

I'm not sure you understand what "admitted to a hospital" means.

Getting stitches is an outpatient procedure, obviously.

[caractacus]

I'm not sure you understand what "admitted to a hospital" means.

Getting stitches is an outpatient procedure, obviously.

It was just an example (incorrect example as you point out), admitted for any reason not necessarily covid.

Also it is plausible that a child can be admitted to hospital for stitches if you want to be pedantic about it https://www.manchestereveningnews.co...-wait-11569403

[PhaelixWW]

It was just an example (incorrect example as you point out), admitted for any reason not necessarily covid.

You're trying to make-believe some controversy where there just isn't any.

Respiratory infection has long been the #1 cause of hospitalizations in kids. You're not getting a rash of kids with some random other ailment admitted to hospitals and counting as COVID admissions. And you can see the trend line line up perfectly with the spread of COVID.

There's no mystery here, and no significantly false data.

[Twdft]

Frankly the more confusing thing in the US right now is people waiting hours in line for a test only to be charged $200+ because they don't have insurance. That's not even going into the other shady things private centers are doing now to squeeze extra cash out of panicked people.

America really is all about money, isn't it.

Here in Germany antigen tests are €20 and pcr €60. Citizens get one antigen test per week free. I also don't think i ever heard someone waiting hours. Many test points, just make an appointment.

[For_The_Horde]

Watching Europe take precautions while the Chicago School Systems hand wave a 30k case day and a continuing increase in hospital stays for children confuses me.

[Lenonis]

People will only hear/read "the CDC said I only need to quarantine for 5 days". You better believe anti-vaxxers will take the statement to the bank.

You seem to have a misunderstanding of the role of the CDC. The CDC isn't there to make manipulative statements to try to trick people into following proper procedure. The CDC is there to make recommendations based on available data. That people don't read the whole thing or ignore it isn't the CDC's problem.

Adherence to CDC guidelines is up to the local government.

[Breccia]

I stumbled across this OP ED. I don't necessarily agree with it, not entirely at least, but it draws an interesting parallel, as the author calls it "Abstinence only" COVID education.

In recent days, this type of talk is very common coming on the heels of President Biden’s speech and updates to CDC isolation and quarantine guidance that very much concretize the endemicity of COVID-19. By articulating a sustainable and practicable scientifically informed path forward, these plans are part-and-parcel of a very successful public health policy known as harm reduction.

Rooted in the world of HIV, hepatitis C, sexually transmitted infection prevention, as well an injection drug use, harm reduction identifies the fact that individuals will take risks and providing them with guidance to modify risks has great value. Counseling abstinence fails and serves to drive risky behavior underground devoid of any attenuation.

Unlike the other infectious diseases, the approach to COVID-19 this past year (and stretching back to the early days of the pandemic) has been one consistent with an “abstinence-only” approach that eschewed any risk-taking. By promoting such an approach — that was not practicable by many — not only was behavior driven underground but the ability of the public to risk calculate was stunted.

Chastising joggers without masks, lamenting high passenger volumes on airplanes and scowling at Disneyland attendees, the advocates of abstinence jettisoned everything we learned about public health communication from decades of research and practice from the realm of harm reduction.

Having gone through American high school sex ed in an...interesting time for the subject, I can understand what he's talking about, at least. I don't agree entirely, it's much easier to breathe on someone than have sex with them, but I've also seen my share of pearl-clutchers who didn't want teenagers to have access to birth control because it'd turn high school into uberogrymeister.

[Mayhem]

This focus on children's hospitalizations in the US has confused me for some time, as covid generally is more serious the older you are and seems to spread less from children (at least for the original variants; I don't know if Omicron changes the latter).

The most obvious reason would be that US children are different - but that doesn't seem to be the case; the children hospitalization rate is a fraction of the one for 18-29 year olds, and it then increases up to factor of 10 for the elderly compared to 18-29 year olds.

For deaths the age-difference is even larger; until September the CDC estimated that in the US there had been 645 covid-deaths in the group 0-17 year, and 700,882 among the 65+ (a thousand times more!) of the total estimated 921,371 (the numbers aren't that exact and clearly the total estimated is larger than the reported numbers).

Is it instead that twenty middle-aged men in an hospital bed, one of whom dies, isn't as heart-wrenching as one child that gets better?

Do the US even regularly test children?

Because over here it was quite obvious backed by data that the last delta wave back in November was largely carried by schools and children spreading the virus. Children aged 6-14 had the highest incidence rates.

Our city has a pretty extensive PCR testing program that outdoes every other city on the planet. I am not joking, the city tests as much as all of Germany combined.

Oh, the tests are entirely free, I myself went testing on the 24th and 25th, you make an appointment online, choose where and when you want to get tested, go there, do the test and get your results the next morning.

[Draco-Onis]

America really is all about money, isn't it.

Here in Germany antigen tests are €20 and pcr €60. Citizens get one antigen test per week free. I also don't think i ever heard someone waiting hours. Many test points, just make an appointment.

There is a shortage of rapid test so a lot places are flat out not accepting insurance and charging upwards of $100 for one.

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Do the US even regularly test children?

A lot of parents are not agreeing to having their children tested, US schools have a rather poor track record when it comes to well a lot of things so trust is limited. You can write several books on US school failings so parent skepticism is high.

[PACOX]

You seem to have a misunderstanding of the role of the CDC. The CDC isn't there to make manipulative statements to try to trick people into following proper procedure. The CDC is there to make recommendations based on available data. That people don't read the whole thing or ignore it isn't the CDC's problem.

Adherence to CDC guidelines is up to the local government.

This sentiment is why COVID is kicking our ass.

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I stumbled across this OP ED. I don't necessarily agree with it, not entirely at least, but it draws an interesting parallel, as the author calls it "Abstinence only" COVID education.



Having gone through American high school sex ed in an...interesting time for the subject, I can understand what he's talking about, at least. I don't agree entirely, it's much easier to breathe on someone than have sex with them, but I've also seen my share of pearl-clutchers who didn't want teenagers to have access to birth control because it'd turn high school into uberogrymeister.

The author of that op-ed is confused. Very confused. I was waiting for their criticism of an 'abstinence-approach' to COVID (which is terrible) but they what they described is 'slut-shaming' of COVID. Im disappointed.

The later part of the article on the page is good but their message get lost in sauce and fails the glance check. The quoted part is weird.

[Zan15]

COVID is so bad in the US right now that the Gov of the 4th largest state has disappeared for 12 days, and no one can find or has heard from him.

All while Florida has just broke its record by leaps and bounds and had 79k cases just yesterday

just shocking the level this particular party and its death cult members will go to, to hide even the fact they caught covid

[Breccia]

EDIT: All numbers for cases below are NYTimes sourced, 7-day rolling average. Which is why, for example, @Zan15 will say 79k in Florida and I don't. We agree, i'm just using the metric I've been using for a while.

All while Florida has just broke its record by leaps and bounds and had 79k cases just yesterday

You know...I just posted this. Not this number, I posted like yesterday when they broke their record by a few inches. Then, today:



I will keep saying it as long as it's true: a lot of states are bad right now. NY is not doing great at all. But Florida (and some others of y'all) made a point of spiking over the summer for no goddam reason. Seriously, that spike...or "hill" I guess dwarfs what most states had by a longshot.



The blue in front is NY, stretched to fit the same scale as Florida. Florida was intentionally worse.

This, of course, makes their situation right now even worse. NY, at least, is trying. Florida is not. As I posted recently and...(checks sites)...yep, still true, NY about tripled its cases in the last two weeks, Florida went up over a thousand percent. Florida is now fourth worst in cases proportionately and, if present trends hold, will overtake every state in the nation within a week.

You could say something similar with hospitalizations. NY is top of the proportional list, and growing. Florida is closing in and rising faster. It's not as extreme, but it's a parallel.

By the way, to keep things in perspective, if NY and FL were both countries, NY would be the fourth highest cases/capita and Florida would push Spain off the top ten list. Man, there's a joke in there somewhere... Which means, yes, in a week Florida would be worse than any country on the planet. (And yes we can discuss which countries are lying, I am just working with the numbers I have, Florida being worse than France and Spain is bad enough honestly)

Again, I'm just thankful deaths/infection are waaaaaaaaay down. I know, I know, 1,000+ deaths/day suck some serious balls. It's a tragedy that a country like ours should not tolerate. 2020 saw a spike of murders and even then, we lose more to COVID in a month than we lost to murders all 2020. Not even a full month, even. But considering cases are higher in many states than they've ever been, it speaks highly for US medical tech that people aren't dying in the tens of thousands -- even those people who are inviting this thing to family gatherings.

You know what I'm going to watch next? Alabama. Florida's fucked, no question, but Alabama's vice-fucked. Like Florida, they had a 100% preventable peak in August that beat one year ago, and are on the verge of breaking that record shortly. Their record is 4,719 and they're at 3,628 now, and growing +500%/two weeks.

So why Alabama when, say, Louisiana is objectively worse?

1) Alabama is far redder. Florida was a swing state. Alabama was not.
2) Alabama is far more rural. This thing is growing fast in large cities, like San Fransisco, NYC, and Miami. Alabama's three largest cities are 200,000 each and Miami-Dale has multiple school districts larger than those entire cities.
3) One of my anti-vaxxer Trump cultist relatives is dying of cancer within...well, it'll happen soon. I'd like to warn my remaining relatives how bad it is down there before they book flights.

Alabama is basically the petri dish in which Trump cultists will...um...cultivate...this thing. What we see there will be reflected in other rural, poor, heavily-red and/or science-fearing places in the unsalvagable half of this country.

Stay safe, everyone. This thing is rolling in like the tide.

[Rasulis]

My wife, fully vaxxed, boosted and had a breakthrough case in April, ended up testing positive yesterday.

First inclination that something was not quite right was when we went diving at Monastery Beach on Wednesday. When we came out of the water after the first dive her breathing sounded like she was whistling. I was not too concerned. The water was below 50F and, even fully taped and sealed, cold water diving can be taxing. We drove home with the heater cranked up and she was back to normal within 15 minutes.

That night she woke up drenched in cold sweat. She had to change her clothes, and we replaced the bed sheet, pad and her pillows. We went to our GP at UCSF yesterday. Her temperature, blood pressure, lungs, oxygen level, etc. were normal. They took swab samples from both of us for Covid testing. No repeat cold sweat episode last night. We just found out today that she was positive, and I was negative.

So NYE will be just the two of us and the five cats. At least we don't have to cook. We had several food deliveries from my sister and a couple of my wife's clients. Other than the weird breathing and the cold sweat episodes on Wednesday, she is not showing any other symptoms.

Latest numbers from San Francisco. Positivity rates are literally increasing exponentially. Hospitalization is up but still a fraction of the summer's peak which in turn is a fraction of the winter's peak. Mortality is non-existent. According the SFDPH most Omicron patients in San Francisco only needed oxygen and iv. Most were released after 1 or 2 days.





This has nothing to do with Covid. My wife just showed it to me. It is the food delivery from a girl that my wife helped buy a house in Ocean Beach.

[Breccia]

COVID is so bad in the US right now that the Gov of the 4th largest state has disappeared for 12 days, and no one can find or has heard from him.

I would like to defend DeSantis.

MUAHAHAHAHA no I wouldn't. But FOX News sure tried.

If you click the article, I mean don't it's FOX News, but if you did you'd see that DeSantis' spokesperson responded to inquiries about where he was Dec 29th. Which is already 10 days too long for a governor to go missing, I did say I wasn't defending him didn't I?

But the excuse is "he accompanied his wife to cancer treatment". Um...for two weeks? Don't get me wrong, cancer treatment is one of the only things harder on the body than actual cancer, but...he runs a state, dude. Tell people you're doing that and hand off the reins. Let Pence do it. I mean, Florida Pence. Vice governor, whatever.

Incidentally other staffers who are not DeSantis also tried to defend DeSantis by pointing at DeSantis' daily schedule. Um...then why hasn't anyone seen him? If he can still meet with people for literal matters of state, he can show his face to reporters once/week, right? "Yes I'm alive, yes COVID is still not worth taking precautions over, yes I'm still a waste of carbon-based life, see you next week *click*".

FOX News spent half the article explaining/defending his absence -- again, DeSantis up and vanished without saying where or why for ten days, that should be unacceptable -- and the other half explaining why they had to. Yeah, even FOX News was struggling on this one.

Oh, and since DeSantis tried the "just because you don't see him doesn't mean he's not working" excuse, the various Trump supporters we have here are no longer allowed to ask "where is so-and-so the Democrat? we don't see him so he's not working" ever again. Or, they have to admit DeSantis is not doing his job. Pick one. I, of course, can continue to say "DeSantis should be doing enough of his job that his own voters aren't asking where he is, or he should explain the highly understandable situation and step down temporarily" without being a hypocrite.

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This has nothing to do with Covid. My wife just showed it to me.

First of all, I hope you two end up okay and I appreciate the solitary evening. I hope she recovers quickly.

But um...I'm going to need more info on those pickles on the top right.

[Lenonis]

This sentiment is why COVID is kicking our ass.

No. People who decided it was a hoax and the people who spread misinformation and propaganda are why COVID is kicking our ass. You really think it mattered what the CDC said? C'mon.

[Breccia]

Dude is a complete POS, but maybe he’s trying to distance himself from the public if his wife is currently going through cancer treatments. I imagine her immune system wouldn’t be the best atm, and he might want to quarantine with her, idk.

I would believe that.

...except for the part where it took his voters ten days to find out where he was. You know what's good for rest, recovery, and family time? Having someone cover your shift for you. Had he said "my wife has cancer, I need a couple weeks" there would be no story.

[Kaleredar]

Dude is a complete POS, but maybe he’s trying to distance himself from the public if his wife is currently going through cancer treatments. I imagine her immune system wouldn’t be the best atm, and he might want to quarantine with her, idk.

Would probably be better to do as said and start with saying that’s what you were doing, and then officially put the lieutenant governor in charge.

I don’t necessarily doubt that desantis is with his wife and her cancer treatment. But it’s painstakingly clear that he does not, and has never, had an interest in dealing with Covid in any way.

People might say that it’s indecent or improper to criticize desantis while his wife is undergoing treatment… but I’d posit that it’d be even more indecent and improper to use a family members tragic illness as an excuse for inaction while thousands of the people you’re in charge of come down with tragic illnesses.