Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Edge-]

Both case and hospitalization are going up again in the Southern States, including Florida.

Researchers are going to have a field day calculating how many excess deaths are attributable to unvaccinated idiots packing hospitals.

[Shadowferal]

What about Africa where barely anybody is vaccinated yet for some reason they have barely any issues with Covid compared to countries where most people are competely vaxed? Also media is just calling it a "miracle" etc.

Source fir this dubious info please.

[caractacus]

Source fir this dubious info please.

This is basically second hand information based in truth. I've seen a couple of science journal articles about Africa being a bit of an anomaly. It is true that they have low vaccination rates and also true that they have reportedly low death count in comparison. There have been several explanations advanced for this difference though, mainly that there has been under reporting of deaths coupled with a population that has a lower average age, there could also be environmental factors in play.

[Edge-]

This is basically second hand information based in truth. I've seen a couple of science journal articles about Africa being a bit of an anomaly. It is true that they have low vaccination rates and also true that they have reportedly low death count in comparison. There have been several explanations advanced for this difference though, mainly that there has been under reporting of deaths coupled with a population that has a lower average age, there could also be environmental factors in play.

Nobody is calling it a miracle, and while we don't know exactly why we have good ideas - https://qz.com/africa/2079064/only-o...a-is-reported/

Most of them relate to the lack of infrastructure in most African nations to test, track, and report cases and correctly identify deaths.

[Shadowferal]

How many have died to this Omicron variant?

[Hypasonic]

How many have died to this Omicron variant?

0 thus far

[Edge-]

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/coro...indings-public

Mask mandates saved lives and prevented COVID-19 infections in Missouri’s biggest cities during the worst part of the delta variant wave, an analysis by the state Department of Health and Senior Services shows.

But the analysis, conducted at the request of Gov. Mike Parson’s office in early November, was never made public and was only obtained by The Missouri Independent and the Documenting COVID-19 project after a Sunshine Law request to the department.

The study compared infection and death rates in St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Jackson County with the rest of the state. New state health Director Donald Kauerauf wrote in an email that the study’s findings showed the effectiveness of mask mandates and forwarded it to Parson’s office.

The analysis wasn’t included in material the department prepared for cabinet meetings, the emails show. Neither the health department nor Parson’s office responded to requests for comment asking why the data has not been shared publicly.

The comparison showed infection rates in “masked” jurisdictions were higher than the rest of the state in the six weeks prior to the emergence of the delta variant. Case rates then fell below other regions as the surge gathered force in late May and have remained lower since that time.

The statewide data shows that, from the end of April to the end of October, jurisdictions with mask mandates experienced an average of 15.8 cases per day for every 100,000 residents compared to 21.7 cases per day for every 100,000 residents in unmasked communities.

Reminder: The Death Cult in the US has indeed been actively politicizing the virus and the simple act of wearing masks. Missouri has had the data about how effective masks have been at reducing infection rates for over a month and has sat on it, doing nothing about it, while the governor of the state repeatedly dismisses masks.

This is an avoidable pandemic, but some folks seem committed to making it a forever pandemic.

[Combatbutler]

This is an avoidable pandemic, but some folks seem committed to making it a forever pandemic.

It was avoidable in the very beginning, but now? It is far too wide spread to ever go away, hopefully eventually people will adapt to it, though considering how potent some of these mutations turned out, this could go on forever.

[Zantos]

It was avoidable in the very beginning, but now? It is far too wide spread to ever go away, hopefully eventually people will adapt to it, though considering how potent some of these mutations turned out, this could go on forever.

I don't think it'll go on forever. Either the virus will mutate enough to just kill everyone, or we'll eventually all have some immunity due to it spreading so much that it'll run out of options.

[Hypasonic]

It was avoidable in the very beginning, but now? It is far too wide spread to ever go away, hopefully eventually people will adapt to it, though considering how potent some of these mutations turned out, this could go on forever.

Unfortunately it seems cases>hospitalisations/deaths these days. As soon as new high in cases are reported (usually, for the UK atleast, due to increased testing) the media go mental over it. Omicron seems quite mild so far, but ofcourse countries go full metal jacket.

[Zan15]

I don't think it'll go on forever. Either the virus will mutate enough to just kill everyone, or we'll eventually all have some immunity due to it spreading so much that it'll run out of options.

or health insurance cost will finally catch up to us in the COVID era and "those" people will finally take things seriously when they see 20-30% increases every year or they get fees attached to being unvaxxed.

Problem though is most of those people are not outright uninsured are on Medicaid/Medicare and i don't see them doing the same level of punishment on the unvaxxed.

[Rasulis]

Yep. The long lines of people wanting to get their booster shots in the Bay Area are back. We walked by St. Anne's Church this morning, and the line wrapped around the church. San Francisco case number is dropping fast right now. Is it due to 5 - 11 vaccination? Which just passed 50% today. Or maybe the booster shots? Who knows. However, this is definitely not 2020.

Bay Area Sees Rush to Get COVID Booster Shots

Trying to get an appointment for a COVID booster shot before the holidays is getting harder, according to many people in the Bay Area.

Susie Gallups says she tried a number of walk-in sites but didn’t have any luck. “I’m scared. People are coming back from Thanksgiving, also the new variant and I just didn’t want to take any chances,” she said.

Gallups said she looked online for an appointment first but quickly got frustrated.

“It’s been hard to be able to get it. I couldn’t schedule an appointment. It was three weeks down the road!”

Some vaccination sites are seeing an increased demand as concern grows around the new Omicron variant, especially since the first U.S. case was recently reported in San Francisco.

“I’ve been getting multiple calls per day, even more so in the past few days, especially when the news came out,” said Jessica Ly, the head pharmacist and owner of Qd Pharmacy.

She says Qd is still offering COVID boosters without an appointment Monday through Friday.

Across the bay in San Mateo County, the health department’s drive-in site saw so many people trying to get a booster, they announced Wednesday they aren’t accepting walk-ins anymore. It’s appointment only.

A quick online search showed most Walgreen locations don’t have available appointments until Dec. 17.

As of Thursday night, there are no booster appointments available at any East Bay Costco pharmacies.

Many Safeway locations are now booking out into January of next year.

Public health experts say that, while Omicron might be the reason people are rushing to get a booster now, people should be more concerned about the Delta variant.

UC Berkeley professor of public health, Dr. John Swartzberg, said the Delta variant is the one that’s more widespread throughout the Bay Area and the rest of the country. This holiday season it’s more likely for people to be exposed to Delta than Omicron.

“Going into the holidays, we know that the vaccines work quite well in terms of preventing hospitalization and death against Delta and that’s the gorilla in the room. That’s what’s here, so protect yourself against it,” Dr. Swartzberg advised.

[Edge-]

From everything I've been hearing from pharmacies I've been calling, it's a mixture of - prioritizing vaccines for 5-11 and boosters for more vulnerable folks, fewer vaccination sites compared to when they first rolled out and they were EVERYWHERE, many companies with pharmacies being slow to update systems/processes to reflect the new state of vaccinations and some other issues.

It's a mess, I've been trying to get an appointment scheduled or find some place actually doing walk-ins near me for a while. I may just have to bite the bullet and take a 1+ hour drive to get the damned booster before the holidays. I've spent at least 5+ hours over the past week or two on this shit.

[Zan15]

From everything I've been hearing from pharmacies I've been calling, it's a mixture of - prioritizing vaccines for 5-11 and boosters for more vulnerable folks, fewer vaccination sites compared to when they first rolled out and they were EVERYWHERE, many companies with pharmacies being slow to update systems/processes to reflect the new state of vaccinations and some other issues.

It's a mess, I've been trying to get an appointment scheduled or find some place actually doing walk-ins near me for a while. I may just have to bite the bullet and take a 1+ hour drive to get the damned booster before the holidays. I've spent at least 5+ hours over the past week or two on this shit.

yah i scheduled mine at the start of the week and a lot of available time slots.

now i tried to get my EX signed up and they are booked 2-3 weeks out.

[Edge-]

yah i scheduled mine at the start of the week and a lot of available time slots.

now i tried to get my EX signed up and they are booked 2-3 weeks out.

I just checked again and it seems like the earliest I can find is in Jan. Most of the sites I check like CVS are bloody useless and impossible to find anything on, everything else either isn't showing appointments at all anymore or the appointments are next year.

This fuckin sucks, I just wanna get the damned booster before the holidays and be done with this shit -_-

[Zan15]

I just checked again and it seems like the earliest I can find is in Jan. Most of the sites I check like CVS are bloody useless and impossible to find anything on, everything else either isn't showing appointments at all anymore or the appointments are next year.

This fuckin sucks, I just wanna get the damned booster before the holidays and be done with this shit -_-

Yah your only bet now is pop up sites and walk ins

my state has a pretty robust way of tracking sites though they made the mistake of closing and ending a lot of community funded/healthcare site funded shot locations at the wrong time. Leaving much of it up to the private market is always a mistake.


https://www.vaccines.gov/search/

is what i used and unchecked the "Show Only Locations That Have appointments available" box

Also you might want to go to each of the major health systems web sites for more up to date information on walk in pop up sites avalible.

there were none on that site but then i go and find a huge list of planned walk ins.

For example:
https://www.chc1.com/community-vaccine-events/


Walmart has a specific booking site that had availabilities next week while no where else did. Maybe you can get lucky?

https://www.walmart.com/pharmacy/cli...?imzType=covid


Oh and CVS/Walgreens 24 hour pharmacy locations had openings all week but you have to go at 2am, 3am ish

[Rasulis]

I just checked again and it seems like the earliest I can find is in Jan. Most of the sites I check like CVS are bloody useless and impossible to find anything on, everything else either isn't showing appointments at all anymore or the appointments are next year.

This fuckin sucks, I just wanna get the damned booster before the holidays and be done with this shit -_-

I checked UCSF Health Care and they have plenty of appointments available. The only problem is that they only accept appointment through MyChart. So you have to sign up to MyChart.

https://www.ucsfhealth.org/covid/vaccine

Yeah. It is a pain.

- - - Updated - - -

Having severe COVID-19 doubled the chance of dying within a year in a new study — the risk was even higher for young people

Nearly 180 people left the University of Florida health system alive after being hospitalized with severe COVID-19 during the US's first wave of coronavirus infections. But within a year, more than half of those recovered patients had died, according to a study from University of Florida researchers published Wednesday.

The researchers examined more than 13,000 patient records from January to June of last year, before vaccines were available. They identified 93 patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 who died between one and 12 months after they were discharged from the hospital — a sign that long-term complications from the disease continued to jeopardize their health.

The study found that adults who recovered from severe COVID-19 were twice as likely as uninfected people to die within a year of contracting the disease.

"A lot of times when people have an infectious disease, they have it and then the episode ends and it's pretty much gone," Arch Mainous, the study's lead investigator, told Insider. But COVID-19 is different, he said: "Just because you get out of the hospital, it's not over."

Younger adults faced a particularly high risk of long-term health problems: COVID-19 patients under 65 who were initially discharged from the hospital were three times as likely as uninfected people to die within a year.

Adults older than 65 are more likely to succumb to COVID-19 quickly, so many won't ever reach the recovery stage, Mainous said. Younger adults, on the other hand, are more likely to survive an initial infection, then suffer from lingering symptoms for months, or perhaps years, to come.

"The internal trauma of having a severe COVID episode is manifested even more so in these young people," Mainous said.

Researchers aren't sure why COVID-19 patients are dying of long-term complications, but Mainous has a theory. COVID-19 may ignite a persistent inflammatory response, which wreaks havoc on a person's organs even after they've cleared the virus, increasing their risk of heart attack, pneumonia, kidney failure, or stroke.

"We believe that there's a huge inflammatory response which is systemic and that's why we don't see it localized only in one spot," he said.

COVID-19 wasn't listed as a cause of death for any of the deceased patients in his study, he added, which implies the disease may be even deadlier than available data suggests. A model from The Economist in May, for example, suggested that at least half the world's COVID-19 deaths hadn't been reported.

My first thought was if the study is even halfway correct, then Covid-related mortality rates are severely undercounted.

Second thought, get the vaccines.

[Hypasonic]

Seems all countries should follow germany and australias approach to covid. Germany has the strictish mask mandates in the world (so it seems) requiring N95 grade masks and australia are shipping people who come into close contact with covid cases to quarantine camps, no option other than a $5000 fine.

Maybe that will eliminate covid.

[PhaelixWW]

Things are not looking good in South Africa right now. Cases are exploding and they seem to be mostly omicron.

“We’ve seen quite a sharp increase [in hospital admissions] across all age groups but particularly in the under 5s,” health officials said.

[Forogil]

Having severe COVID-19 doubled the chance of dying within a year in a new study — the risk was even higher for young people



My first thought was if the study is even halfway correct, then Covid-related mortality rates are severely undercounted.

The problem is that we in many countries already know the mortality rates, and that wouldn't make sense.

If we look at https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...aths-estimates we see that several countries in western Europe even have slightly higher reported covid-deaths than excess deaths; and we temporally don't see excess deaths increases after the covid-waves.

So to just claim that half of the covid-deaths haven't been reported is neglecting to say that the under-reporting has varied a lot between countries; e.g., Afghanistan, Russia and India have under-reported covid-deaths for various reasons, but Australia, Peru, and Germany are pretty close (despite having wildly different number of deaths).

That is not consistent with post-hospitalization deaths explaining mortality.

So the explanation for the study might be:

• The severe cases of covid-19 were already close to death, even the young ones who often had other health risks.
• In Florida people were kicked out of hospitals too early with insufficient care.
• Bad rng
• Some fundamental problem in the study.

Second thought, get the vaccines.

Always.

- - - Updated - - -

RATS!

And now we have other theory about Omicron - that it spread back from animals (instead of developing in an immuno-compromised host), with special emphasis on rodents:
https://www.statnews.com/2021/12/02/...n-animal-host/
(and also some thinking it mixed with the common cold).