Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Rasulis]

The number of new cases per 100k is still relatively high. It went down to 8 in mid-March, and currently back to around 10.8. Confirming that there is still a lot of virus in the community. Lowest post-Delta was around 4.

Hospitalization is back to post-Delta/pre-Omicron number. Only 3 hospitals (UCSF, SF General & Kaiser) in San Francisco still have Covid-positive patients - 21 in acute care and 3 in intensive care. The trend is still going down.

FDA approved second booster for 50 and up. We received our first booster in October last year. We’ll make the decision after our quarterly check up next month. If the antibody level is still high, we’ll wait till Summer/Fall.

Booster wise, 65% of SF total population are boosted, 83% for 65+. I think SF county is second in the US for vaccine booster rate. Marin is #1. At least according to Marin County DPH.

So, not sure how high the demand for second booster will be. We unfailingly get our annual flu shots, so it is not a big deal for us.

[Forogil]

The number of new cases per 100k is still relatively high. It went down to 8 in mid-March, and currently back to around 10.8. Confirming that there is still a lot of virus in the community. Lowest post-Delta was around 4.

And it's also rising in other parts of the world: France and the UK are seeing something that looks like a new wave after the Omicron-wave in January; the UK are even seeing deaths inch upwards a bit. To me that seems sooner than expected - but I might be missing something.
However, Denmark and Norway that completely lifted restrictions don't see it (yet); and the numbers in S. Korea seems to be stabilizing.

And it's still unclear if China will get it under control; after three weeks it's still at about 1 case per million.

[DarkAmbient]

And it's also rising in other parts of the world: France and the UK are seeing something that looks like a new wave after the Omicron-wave in January; the UK are even seeing deaths inch upwards a bit. To me that seems sooner than expected - but I might be missing something.
However, Denmark and Norway that completely lifted restrictions don't see it (yet); and the numbers in S. Korea seems to be stabilizing.

And it's still unclear if China will get it under control; after three weeks it's still at about 1 case per million.

Yep, hospital admissions have been trending upwards all month here in the UK. I'm not surprised, because the pandemic has all but disappeared from the public consciousness. People don't care about it anymore. And really, most people don't need to, as thanks to the weaker variant and high immunity it's now less likely to cause death than flu. I'll still be wearing a mask because if I get covid I'm likely to have a very bad time. I wonder how enthusiastic the public will be about getting more booster shots.

[Iliena]

Yep, hospital admissions have been trending upwards all month here in the UK. I'm not surprised, because the pandemic has all but disappeared from the public consciousness. People don't care about it anymore. And really, most people don't need to, as thanks to the weaker variant and high immunity it's now less likely to cause death than flu. I'll still be wearing a mask because if I get covid I'm likely to have a very bad time. I wonder how enthusiastic the public will be about getting more booster shots.

Yep I have also noticed a big disconnect from the UK press about it, but yet I know quite a few people who have had friends or family come down with it over the last month or so.

I'm also at high risk and hopefully will get the next booster soon. I think it will be every 6 months for the foreseeable future for those at extra risk, which I'm fine with I seem to have a far worse response to the flu jab the last couple of years.

[Rasulis]

And it's also rising in other parts of the world: France and the UK are seeing something that looks like a new wave after the Omicron-wave in January; the UK are even seeing deaths inch upwards a bit. To me that seems sooner than expected - but I might be missing something.
However, Denmark and Norway that completely lifted restrictions don't see it (yet); and the numbers in S. Korea seems to be stabilizing.

And it's still unclear if China will get it under control; after three weeks it's still at about 1 case per million.

The Chinese government is playing whack-a-mole with Covid right now.

[Forogil]

The Chinese government is playing whack-a-mole with Covid right now.

They have for a long time, but now it is getting intense.

I also noticed something weird - https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases now have them at 3-4 cases per million the last week, yesterday I thought they had been at about 1 case per million for a week.

Well, I guess that one way of showing a decline in cases is to increase the number of cases in the past :-)

[Rasulis]

Yep, hospital admissions have been trending upwards all month here in the UK. I'm not surprised, because the pandemic has all but disappeared from the public consciousness. People don't care about it anymore. And really, most people don't need to, as thanks to the weaker variant and high immunity it's now less likely to cause death than flu. I'll still be wearing a mask because if I get covid I'm likely to have a very bad time. I wonder how enthusiastic the public will be about getting more booster shots.

The original booster was a tough sale in the US. Statewise, Vermont has the highest rate of 47% of the total population. On a county by county basis, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo are ranked #1 through #4, Alameda & Contra costa #8 and #10, Sonoma and Santa Cruz #12 and #16. Marin & San Francisco are the only two counties in the US with over 55% of the total population booster rate.

So, we'll see how it goes.

[Forogil]

The original booster was a tough sale in the US. Statewise, Vermont has the highest rate of 47% of the total population. On a county by county basis, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo are ranked #1 through #4, Alameda & Contra costa #8 and #10, Sonoma and Santa Cruz #12 and #16. Marin & San Francisco are the only two counties in the US with over 55% of the total population booster rate.

Looking at California in general it's a bit higher for the elderly, but not that much:

https://covid19.ca.gov/vaccination-p...gress-by-group report that 73% have gotten boosters of the eligible 65+; but that is among the 83% that is fully vaccinated (possibly with some waiting time) - so it's just 59% of the 65+ that have gotten a booster dose; I'm more comfortable when it is >90% (there are always a few that refuse).

So, we'll see how it goes.

Even if Omicron is milder; that seems problematic.

[Rasulis]

Looking at California in general it's a bit higher for the elderly, but not that much:

https://covid19.ca.gov/vaccination-p...gress-by-group report that 73% have gotten boosters of the eligible 65+; but that is among the 83% that is fully vaccinated (possibly with some waiting time) - so it's just 59% of the 65+ that have gotten a booster dose; I'm more comfortable when it is >90% (there are always a few that refuse).


Even if Omicron is milder; that seems problematic.

I was wondering why the state booster numbers were so high. Then I realized those are percentage of booster eligible population. Not percentage of total population. All these agencies need to stick to the same yardstick.

[DarkAmbient]

A record number of people in the UK had covid in the week up to March 26th. 1 in 13 people were likely to test positive. Not surprising tbh.

[Edge-]

A record number of people in the UK had covid in the week up to March 26th. 1 in 13 people were likely to test positive. Not surprising tbh.

This does not surprise me. I work with a few companies in the UK and they've all been talking about how many people in their offices are out with covid these past few weeks. Shit's wild.

[Rasulis]

Slight uptick in case positivity rate. Hospitalization is still going down. UCSF which handles the majority of Covid patients in San Francisco is down to 6 patients in acute, and 0 in ICU. All six are minor cases and expected to be released by the weekend. You can definitely see the uptick in the graph below.



- - - Updated - - -

A doctor leading a trial of Moderna's COVID vaccine for young kids shares the 3 most common side effects he's seeing, and they're less severe than the ones seen in adults

He doesn't know exactly how many he's actually vaccinated, because in order to properly conduct a clinical vaccine trial he's not allowed to know who got the real vaccine, versus who was administered a fake placebo jab.

But Leonard says he can't even try to venture a proper educated guess as to who's been vaccinated at his clinic so far, because Moderna's vaccine is being so well tolerated in this young age group, with such minimal side effects, that it's near impossible to tell who's been dosed.

"As a pediatrician, I'm used to kids getting shots all the time and having aches or pains or groans about them a day or two later, and I did not see that," he said. "I did not see any change in sleeping behavior or pattern, I did not see any changes in appetite, no changes in growth."

Moderna announced earlier this month that the company is making moves toward applying with the US Food and Drug Administration to authorize its baby-sized COVID-19 vaccine for kids 6 months to 6 years old this spring, after finding the company's miniature-dose vaccine generated a "robust" antibody response in kids, and had a "favorable" safety signal.

According to Leonard, that "favorable" safety signal has been so sound among his patients (with no cases of the heart-swelling condition myocarditis, and no vaccine-related hospitalizations) that it can be hard for parents to know whether their kids got the real deal.

Leonard says in his clinic, there were just three short term vaccine-related side effects he noticed regularly in the 6 month to 6 year age group. They were:

1. Fatigue
2. Elevated temperatures (full-blown fevers were extremely rare in Moderna's trial, occurring in less than 0.2% of cases, but Leonard said thermometer readings around 99 or 100 degrees Fahrenheit did pop up.)
3. Irritability for about a day or two, usually between 48-72 hours after a shot.

That milder side effect profile, relative to older vaccine recipients, is not entirely surprising — given how baby and toddler immune systems work.

"The always dialed-up state of a child's immune system probably did lend itself to fewer noted side effects," Leonard said. "They should be able to mount immune responses and not have these overly dramatic, inconvenient side effects that many of the adult participants noticed."

One family enrolled all three of their children under 5 years old in the trial, and none of the kids had any noticeable symptoms.

According to Moderna, the vaccine was 43.7% efficacious for the youngest kids in the trial (6 months to 2 years old), while vaccine efficacy for the older kids (2-6 years) was slightly lower, around 37.5%. No severe COVID cases were recorded.

Dr. Leonard says he can "understand" these efficacy numbers may not sound that great to parents (though, all COVID-19 vaccines are performing worse against Omicron, especially when it comes to preventing such mild infections.) But, when considering vaccination, he also thinks about all the potential unintended or unrecognized consequences of unchecked viral infections.

"We can control the components of the vaccine," he said. "We can't control the variance of COVID."

The same is true of many other viral diseases. For example, doctors didn't discover until recently that pediatric RSV infections may be linked to asthma diagnoses later on in life. And it took many years to figure out that childhood mumps can lead to decreased sperm counts, in a small proportion of men who were infected as children.

Leonard says the COVID vaccine, like all other childhood vaccines, should be thought of as a tool for risk reduction, for controlling the impact of the virus as much as possible — both in the short term and the long run — even if that protection can't be absolute.

"If it is less efficacious for your child and they do end up acquiring natural COVID disease somehow, that stinks," he said. "But are you as sick as you otherwise would've been having not been vaccinated?"

[Forogil]

A doctor leading a trial of Moderna's COVID vaccine for young kids shares the 3 most common side effects he's seeing, and they're less severe than the ones seen in adults

Promising, but the problem with vaccines in young people have been balancing rare bad side-effects with the rare cases of severe disease and death and studies will not catch them. There are some indications that giving a higher dose may increase the risk of side-effects but also give better protection; so they try to adjust the dose to hit the sweet spot.

So for Moderna the young children get a quarter dose compared to Adults, whereas children 6-11 get half an adult primary dose. (Boosters are half-sized to reduce the risk.)

https://www.voanews.com/a/moderna-sa...-/6497677.html
https://www.health.gov.au/news/atagi...-6-to-11-years

Pfizer/BioNTech is more cautious so children 5-11 get a third of the adult dose (and the adult dose is 30% of the dose for Moderna).
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/pres...h-11-years-age
And one plan for Pfizer/BioNTech was for children from 6 months to 6 years should get a tenth of the adult dose, but possibly three doses instead.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wire...-kids-82832198

[Rasulis]

Promising, but the problem with vaccines in young people have been balancing rare bad side-effects with the rare cases of severe disease and death and studies will not catch them. There are some indications that giving a higher dose may increase the risk of side-effects but also give better protection; so they try to adjust the dose to hit the sweet spot.

So for Moderna the young children get a quarter dose compared to Adults, whereas children 6-11 get half an adult primary dose. (Boosters are half-sized to reduce the risk.)

https://www.voanews.com/a/moderna-sa...-/6497677.html
https://www.health.gov.au/news/atagi...-6-to-11-years

Pfizer/BioNTech is more cautious so children 5-11 get a third of the adult dose (and the adult dose is 30% of the dose for Moderna).
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/pres...h-11-years-age
And one plan for Pfizer/BioNTech was for children from 6 months to 6 years should get a tenth of the adult dose, but possibly three doses instead.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wire...-kids-82832198

With the exception of a few places, I don't think there will be a lot of enthusiasm for vaccinating children younger than 5.

Last year I made a post that UCSF pediatric found that over 50% of their young patients that had never received any vaccine, nor history of prior Covid illness, had Covid antibodies. Well, CDC just confirmed that finding. The numbers for dense cities like New York and San Francisco are probably much higher.

The latest iteration of the virus evolved from the BA.1.1 branch of Omicron and was isolated from a mild coronavirus patient in Suzhou City, located less than 50 miles from Shanghai, the Global Times reported Sunday.

Scientists have said that the subtype is not the same as other coronavirus strains that are causing outbreaks in the country or around the world, causing concern that it may pose a greater threat in the region.

Meanwhile, a case found in northern China's Dalian city on Friday also did not match any coronavirus subtypes found domestically, the municipal government announced on its WeChat account, according to Bloomberg.

The country added more than 13,000 local COVID-19 cases on Sunday, marking the highest number of a daily increase amid the latest virus outbreak, according to the Global Times. Shanghai, in particular, has been one of the worst-hit cities, which reported a total of more than 8,000 cases, including 7,788 asymptomatic infections

.

Shanghai children separated from parents with COVID-19

China's containment effort is bursting at the seams.

- - - Updated - - -

What was supposed to be a partial lockdown of Shanghai is now a full-blown citywide lockdown with the army being called in to help with testing and other medical services.

Positivity rate went up again in San Francisco. Hospitalization went down. It is now in the teens with 2 patients in the ICU, citywide. Only UCSF and Zuckerberg General have covid patients.

[Forogil]

China's containment effort is bursting at the seams.

Yes, the number of cases are steadily increasing - at current rate they will be at western levels in a month or two and so far the new lockdowns haven't been that effective.

And separately - what happened in the US yesterday?



https://ourworldindata.org/explorers...EU~FRA~CHN~KOR

The positive signs are that France's seemed to have a smaller peak after the one in January, that S. Korea seems to have passed their peak, and India still seems to be declining.

[Rasulis]

Yes, the number of cases are steadily increasing - at current rate they will be at western levels in a month or two and so far the new lockdowns haven't been that effective.

And separately - what happened in the US yesterday?

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers...EU~FRA~CHN~KOR

The positive signs are that France's seemed to have a smaller peak after the one in January, that S. Korea seems to have passed their peak, and India still seems to be declining.

Looks like it was a glitch. They fixed that. It is showing the line still trending down kind of flattish.

UCSF is seeing uptick in cold and allergy cases. Which is the norm for this time of the year. They were pretty much non-existent in 2020 and 2021. They were actually pretty happy.

- - - Updated - - -

My parents, in their mid to late 80s, got their second booster shot. We are getting ours this Saturday. I wanted to get Pfizer after 3 Moderna shots. Unfortunately, UCSF only offers Moderna.

[Rasulis]

Why experts are 'not concerned' San Francisco Bay Area's COVID rate is highest in California

San Francisco County has the highest COVID-19 case rate of any other county in California with a seven-day average of 13 cases per 100,000 residents, state data showed on Tuesday. By comparison, Los Angeles is reporting 5 cases per 100,000 residents. And San Francisco isn't the only Bay Area spot sitting at the top of the list. All counties in the region except Solano have among the highest rates in the state.

"No I’m not concerned," said Dr. George Rutherford, director of UCSF's Prevention and Public Health Group. "I don’t think it’s any reason to go back to putting the brakes on and our masks back on. We have lots of hospital capacity."

"I am not too concerned as our hospitals remain eerily quiet — only 2 patients with COVID hospitalized today at the main UCSF Health hospital on Parnassus, compared to close to a 100 in this hospital on January 25," UCSF infectious diseases expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong wrote in an email.

I posted that there were 6 at UCSF a couple days ago. Are the experts correct? Or is this the quiet before the storm?

[Gigantique]

Well we certainly didn't help matters last month. Finally dared celebrate our wedding on our anniversary with people coming from all over (her icelandic family, my norwegian and swedish family and friends from the UK), only to afterwards test positive and being asymptomatic.

And when the bride and groom are asymptomatic and positive you know that shit will spread, everyone hugs the bride/groom...

91 guests, most of the closer ones we talk to got the coof from it. Thank god all buy two were fully vaccinated and only had mild flu-like symptoms

Woops.

[Rasulis]

Well we certainly didn't help matters last month. Finally dared celebrate our wedding on our anniversary with people coming from all over (her icelandic family, my norwegian and swedish family and friends from the UK), only to afterwards test positive and being asymptomatic.

And when the bride and groom are asymptomatic and positive you know that shit will spread, everyone hugs the bride/groom...

91 guests, most of the closer ones we talk to got the coof from it. Thank god all buy two were fully vaccinated and only had mild flu-like symptoms

Woops.

Congratulations.

Weddings and funerals are the perfect avenues for spreading the disease. My wife and I were sick for a month in early 2020 after my business partner's funeral. When I said sick, I was talking really sick for the entire month of January. Definitely not a cold. No Covid test yet back then so we couldn't be certain. However, we had mourners coming from all over the world (Europe and Asia). So, my suspicion was that one of them gave us Covid.

[Spectral]

Congratulations.

Weddings and funerals are the perfect avenues for spreading the disease. My wife and I were sick for a month in early 2020 after my business partner's funeral. When I said sick, I was talking really sick for the entire month of January. Definitely not a cold. No Covid test yet back then so we couldn't be certain. However, we had mourners coming from all over the world (Europe and Asia). So, my suspicion was that one of them gave us Covid.

On the other hand, who knows? Covid is hardly the only virus that can have nasty, lingering effects. Back in summer of 2021, I had an incredibly nasty respiratory infection that had me unable to work (even from home, just sitting on a laptop) for a few days and that had noticeable adverse impact on my physical conditioning for about a month afterwards. I track my heart rate while running fairly closely and even a month later, I was running slower and at ~10 beats/minute faster than prior to getting sick. Nonetheless, negative tests for Covid.

If I really had to put money on it in January 2020 with a nasty bug, my money would be on Covid, but there are still plenty of other bugs around.