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Coronavirus (Covid-19) informational thread

Uk reporting on a Scottish report that is encouraging but early days.
www.bbc.co.uk

Omicron wave appears milder, but concern remains

The risk of needing hospital treatment could be 30 - 70% lower with Omicron than other variants.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
Again, some of this paper is above me, presented as is.

One salient point is the rapid spread can still outweigh the mild infection. Meaning health services are still up against it.
 
400 said:
Uk reporting on a Scottish report that is encouraging but early days.
www.bbc.co.uk

Omicron wave appears milder, but concern remains

The risk of needing hospital treatment could be 30 - 70% lower with Omicron than other variants.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
Again, some of this paper is above me, presented as is.

One salient point is the rapid spread can still outweigh the mild infection. Meaning health services are still up against it.
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The trend that I am seeing just based on my region from reflecting back, ‘Delta’ was already originating in our state in May 2021, and it wasn’t very ‘fast acting’, where it slowly saturated our state to a point where the end of summer 2021 was where the case rate was very high and overall, was moderately contagious. Basically a total of three months where it was very dominant over Alpha. Delta in general, was a devastating rift caused lots of chaos.

With Omicron, it’s very fast acting, and in less than three weeks (compared to three months like Delta), it’s [Obviously] already the dominant strain, but seems to be posing milder effects, although more dangerously contagious -versus- Delta.

I’m hoping that Omicron makes its initial wave as quickly as possible, but doesn’t pose the severity that Delta has.

Our local healthcare professionals are basically projecting that Omicron will basically be like a tidal wave and then flatten out. If that is the case, I’d rather have that in our community versus what Delta was capable of. Of course, as already from others, it’s still too certain to say. The holidays will really be an interesting metric to see how things manifest.

The only other concern I have, and I don’t haven’t read/heard too much literature, is how Omicron is affecting young children.
 
400 said:
Problem is people still need to isolate if testing positive, and that include health workers.
www.bbc.co.uk

Omicron: Rising numbers of NHS staff off work because of Covid

NHS Covid absentees in England are up 54% and having a "real-time impact on service", health leaders say.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
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Which poses a problem, because we’re seeing so many asymptomatic people, they don’t know that they’re positive, therefore; they just continue spreading it. For some, they have symptoms just as mild as a headache or an irritated throat, thus they probably don’t see the means of getting tested and just go about their day. This is one of the problems in our communities, is even the unvaccinated, may not be always devastated by contracting C/19.
 
CNebs said:
1918 - Spanish Flu pandemic
Your grandma survives and passes the antibodies to your mom
Your mom continues to be exposed to variants over time and passes the antibodies to you
You are born with a level of immunity to better deal with the derivatives over time
Booster to help with potential strains of concern and for those that have weakened immune systems. So yes it’s not critical to be vaccinated. You are though potentially protecting others. Again showing compassion and empathy for others.
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Not sure what you're talking about. Maternal antibodies passed through the placenta and breast milk are passive immunity and typically disappear within months to a year or two after ending breastfeeding. One must be infected or vaccinated to generate their own active immunity and antibodies (B cell antigen stimulation, class switching and affinity maturation).
CNebs said:
2019 - COVID
NO ONE’S IMMUNE SYSTEM HAS BEEN EXPOSED!
Hence a novel virus.
Vaccines to help get back to normal quicker and other protocols such as proper masking.
Imagine if this virus had the capacity like other pandemics and you had a up to 90% die off rate. Look at the Native Americans and small pox being introduced, their population was reduced from 11 million to 1 million thanks to settlers. Smallpox still has a 30% die off rate. Let’s use round numbers 8 billion people and let’s propose COVID had a 30% die off rate that’s a 2.4 billion die off rate. Are we all really ok with that risk in the future with another virus our bodies have never seen before?

Your “fixed it” didn’t fix much at all.
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Native American populations were close to a hundred million, and the total number of deaths from European diseases is about 56 million. Smallpox doesn't have a "30% die off rate." Where did you get this number? Variola major virus had a case fatality rate of up to 20% and variola minor virus had a CFR of about 2%. Variola minor was the predominating strain of the virus because any virus that kills 20% of its infected hosts typically go extinct in local populations quite rapidly. Viruses that kill 1% to 2% and which efficiently transmit person to person (nearly always respiratory route) are the ones that usually result in pandemics.
 
Cave Man said:
Variola minor was the predominating strain of the virus because any virus that kills 20% of its infected hosts typically go extinct in local populations quite rapidly.
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This is why O is spreading so rapidly. Highly infectious and it allows the host to stay active, possibly not even knowing they are infected. Any other successful variant will need to be better at likely both of these traits, being highly infections alone won't allow it to spread if the victims are sick and dying.
 
Why are we not stressing the anti-virals that are starting to flood the market. I have been vaccinated but would rather have had an anti-viral as a prophylactic , gotten a mild case of covid, stayed out of the hospital and developed a natural immunity. And not have to an 80 year old 400k plus a year bureaucrat solve my health problems.
 
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AJK13K said:
Why are we not stressing the anti-virals that are starting to flood the market. I have been vaccinated but would rather have had an anti-viral as a prophylactic , gotten a mild case of covid, stayed out of the hospital and developed a natural immunity. And not have to an 80 year old 400k plus a year bureaucrat solve my health problems.
Click to expand...

Are antivirals available to the general public right now (given that you have a script)? As far as I know they may not be physically available for general purchase until production is ramped up.

Also, where I am, one would have a hard time getting an appointment for a prescription within the window. Doctor's offices are severely backlogged. Hospitals are starting to get full again (with COVID patients), and there are LONG lines for Urgent care facilities.
 
It appears like the virus is everywhere right now. If you randomly test someone, you are much more likely to get a positive than any other time in the pandemic. The good news is that the vast majority of infections seem to be resolved with minor cold like symptoms.

Here is my question related to COVID hospitalizations. I assume everyone admitted to the ER or Hospital gets a PCR test. So, if a patient is admitted to the hospital with an unrelated issue (e.g. physical injury) and tests positive for COVID, does this count as a COVID hospitalization? Are we counting the number of people in hospitals with COVID or the number of people in hospitals because of COVID?

Again, given the fact that the virus is ubiquitous, if we are simply count those admitted with COVID rather than because of COVID, then we could be overstating the impact of the virus on our health care system.

Perhaps someone on this thread knows the answer to my question. I do not.
 
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Mainsail said:
Are we counting the number of people in hospitals with COVID or the number of people in hospitals because of COVID?
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I believe this was addressed in the past couple of days by Dr Fauci on one of the news channels. He admitted that in the case of the high count of children in hospital, this is "with covid" and he said we lack the granularity to tell the difference from "from covid". I assume this would apply to adults as well.
 
Hunter5117 said:
I believe this was addressed in the past couple of days by Dr Fauci on one of the news channels. He admitted that in the case of the high count of children in hospital, this is "with covid" and he said we lack the granularity to tell the difference from "from covid". I assume this would apply to adults as well.
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Thanks for the clarification.

So, it sounds like we need to take the hospitalization figures with a grain of salt.

What got me thinking about it was my friend who was in the hospital during the weekend with dizziness. He could not get the scan he needed because the hospital was too busy with gun shot wounds suffered during New Years. It is possible that many of the wounded were admitted "with COVID". During the holidays, there are lots of trips to the hospital and ER. If the virus is wide-spread, we are likely admitting lots of patients "with COVID" but not necessarily "because of COVID". This could really skew the hospitalization numbers.

I hope the same ambiguity in the data does not apply to COVID deaths. If so, that would be a real hit to the credibility of the data related to this pandemic.
 
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AJK13K said:
Why are we not stressing the anti-virals that are starting to flood the market. I have been vaccinated but would rather have had an anti-viral as a prophylactic , gotten a mild case of covid, stayed out of the hospital and developed a natural immunity. And not have to an 80 year old 400k plus a year bureaucrat solve my health problems.
Click to expand...
Because the effectiveness and side effects from anti-virals compared to vaccinations favor vaccinations by a wide-margin.
 
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Mainsail said:
What got me thinking about it was my friend who was in the hospital during the weekend with dizziness. He could not get the scan he needed because the hospital was too busy with gun shot wounds suffered during New Years. It is possible that many of the wounded were admitted "with COVID". During the holidays, there are lots of trips to the hospital and ER. If the virus is wide-spread, we are likely admitting lots of patients "with COVID" but not necessarily "because of COVID". This could really skew the hospitalization numbers.
Click to expand...
Hospitals do categorize admissions by "with" or "because". As long as you read beyond the headline the information is reported. The Northeast U.S. was still dealing with a Delta surge when Omicron hit, so that is complicating the numbers of "because" admissions as well, since most infections are not sequenced.

From what I've read, it looks like a month or so from now, Omicron may flip us from pandemic to endemic in the U.S. (barring a new variant). Fingers crossed!
 
Mainsail said:
It appears like the virus is everywhere right now. If you randomly test someone, you are much more likely to get a positive than any other time in the pandemic. The good news is that the vast majority of infections seem to be resolved with minor cold like symptoms.

Here is my question related to COVID hospitalizations. I assume everyone admitted to the ER or Hospital gets a PCR test. So, if a patient is admitted to the hospital with an unrelated issue (e.g. physical injury) and tests positive for COVID, does this count as a COVID hospitalization? Are we counting the number of people in hospitals with COVID or the number of people in hospitals because of COVID?

Again, given the fact that the virus is ubiquitous, if we are simply count those admitted with COVID rather than because of COVID, then we could be overstating the impact of the virus on our health care system.

Perhaps someone on this thread knows the answer to my question. I do not.
Click to expand...

Our hospitalization numbers are stable with some Federal help which is a good thing as we were at 0.4% ICU capacity for a few days. We're about 9% now. Our active infection numbers are stable just below 10,000 but I think that the actual numbers are several times that as people that test at home and isolate don't count in the numbers. It's quite hard, though not impossible, to find test kits. We have mask mandates back in place and I think that people are generally being careful. It seems like there is less antivax activity - at least in the news; maybe people are taking it more seriously now. Vaccination numbers continue to inch up.

This thing shoots up like a rocket and then dies quickly and I hope that's the case here.
 
I am not vaccinated and yet to get sick, coworker has vaccine and 2 boosters and has been sick twice already. now I hear there is a "flu-rona" going around :rolleyes:
 
jkcerda said:
I am not vaccinated and yet to get sick, coworker has vaccine and 2 boosters and has been sick twice already. now I hear there is a "flu-rona" going around :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

About 15% of my state has been infected so lots of people haven't gotten it so far - at least by official numbers.

There's also a genetic lottery and a lottery over your physical condition.

I suppose that some may have had SARS earlier in the century and had some immunity.

A lot of people haven't been so lucky despite taking some precautions.
 
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Ran across an interesting peer-reviewed study published in Nature Medicine looking at the long-term immunity from various coronaviruses. It seems to suggest immunity gained from any coronavirus is temporary.

From the Abstract:
A key unsolved question in the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the duration of acquired immunity. Insights from infections with the four seasonal human coronaviruses might reveal common characteristics applicable to all human coronaviruses. We monitored healthy individuals for more than 35 years and determined that reinfection with the same seasonal coronavirus occurred frequently at 12 months after infection.
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From the results:
We show that reinfections by natural infection occur for all four seasonal coronaviruses, suggesting that it is a common feature for all human coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. Reinfections occurred most frequently at 12 months after infection, indicating that protective immunity is only short-lived.
Click to expand...

Paper:
www.nature.com

Seasonal coronavirus protective immunity is short-lasting - Nature Medicine

The durability of immunity to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is unknown. Lessons from seasonal coronavirus infections in humans show that reinfections can occur within 12 months of initial infection, coupled with changes in levels of virus-specific antibodies.
www.nature.com www.nature.com
 
poorcody said:
Hospitals do categorize admissions by "with" or "because". As long as you read beyond the headline the information is reported. The Northeast U.S. was still dealing with a Delta surge when Omicron hit, so that is complicating the numbers of "because" admissions as well, since most infections are not sequenced.

From what I've read, it looks like a month or so from now, Omicron may flip us from pandemic to endemic in the U.S. (barring a new variant). Fingers crossed!
Click to expand...
Fauci seems to be saying that hospitals do not make that distinction in the data reported.

From the Newsweek article linked below, "Fauci suggested that some of the children currently being treated at medical facilities were hospitalized with COVID as opposed to "because of COVID."

He added that some children who are currently listed as being in hospital with COVID may actually be receiving treatment for "a broken leg or appendicitis," rather than for a severe reactions to the virus."

fauci-children-hospital-covid-omicron-1664676

Edit: Perhaps the data is available somewhere, but it is very confusing the way it is reported in the media. I would hope the decision-makers have access to proper data rather than hyped up news reporting.
 
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