Novax Djkcovid? And I used to be such a fan of his...
Saw this graph from this article. Can't vouch for its veracity, but might be useful for trying to figure out when to test:
There was a good article in The NY Times taking about saliva vs nose tests:
I thought the CDC director said the PCR tests can read positive for up to 12 weeks after infection.
Apparently true but it's the tail of the bell-curve (i.e. not common):
www.13newsnow.com
I appreciate your passion, and you make some good points. However, it is worth noting that numerous experts do see Omnicron as a milder form of the disease, and believe this variant may well be "good news" in the longer term.....that is a few weeks or a month out.
www.vox.com
You're being kind. Instead of "individualistic" I would say "self-centered". It has less to do with distrust of government, and more to do with arrogance, and the stupidity of assuming you're smarter than the experts. Many Americans don't get that it's not about the individual, and not just on the issue of stopping the spread of a pandemic. It's the "me generation" gone amok.
I disagree. I think there are plenty of smart responsible citizens that have been fully compliant with CDC guidance and fully vaccinated, but have grown skeptical of government officials and experts. See my post before yours. I think it is dismissive to just write these folks off as self-centered, and when we are dismissive of legitimate credibility concerns, we reduce the chance that government officials will learn from their mistakes. Officials and experts are not above question. Can I not question guidance that seeks to restricts school sports, band, choir and yelling on campus, while allowing 100K people to cram into a stadium for a pro football game. Does this pass a basic logic tests?
I do think you're on to something. As we've gotten further into this, I'm starting to see more and more stories about people who did everything "right" and "played by the rules" starting to get fed up lately. When you start to lose the people who were following along, that's the beginning of the end. I work in healthcare, so I'm not doubting or skeptical of science. What I AM skeptical of...and have been for quite a while...is responses and messaging. I fully understand and EXPECTED guidelines to change as we learned more, but the speed of these changes has been hard to keep up with. One particular guideline that I have a problem with...is the guideline regarding COVID-positive healthcare workers being allowed to work. I understand that there's a shortage in the field but this is by far one of the dumbest changes in my opinion. Especially now that there seem to be some isolated (mostly anecdotal so far, it seems...so take this with a grain of salt) stories about hospital patients catching COVID from their care teams. We all know that unvaccinated healthcare workers were either fired or are on leave. Which leaves those of us who are fully vaccinated (and in many cases boosted) as the only ones left.
It is almost guaranteed that successive variants will be milder. The two ways a new variant forces out the previous one is through being more highly contagious so that it can infect more hosts, and by being less deadly so that the hosts are free to infect others. The virus doesnt consciously figure this out, but natural selection will prefer these sort of characteristics over those with less. Now a very highly contagious disease might also be more deadly such as Delta was, but odds are that a less deadly one will ultimately win the competition for who can infect the most of the population.
I think it is Australia who have more vac'd people in hospital than unvaccinated although with high vaccination rates the odds would most likely tilt in that direction since it does not stop infection.
Exactly, in the US, over 90% of the population over 65y.o. have been at least partially vaccinated. Clearly, the elderly are most likely to have severe symptoms. So, while I believe the vaccines are highly effective in preventing severe symptoms and death, the majority of serious cases will continue to probably be elderly, who are likely vaccinated. The CDC director recently pointed out that of the vaccinated that are hospitalized over 80% are elderly with numerous comorbidity (more than 4 chronic illness). In the US, the average life expectancy is about 77 y.o., so if you are this age and have high blood pressure, lung disease, heart disease, and some other chronic illness on top of all of that, guess what? COVID might kill you even if you are vaccinated. The problem is that this group of people are always at higher risk of dying. Even a common cold or flu could do it.
I agree. You'll notice that my post says "many Americans". I didn't intend to paint everyone with the same brush. So, focusing on those you describe is being kind. There are many who don't fit into that category. But, I concede that my post was not entirely written in a way to convey the differences.
Actually, I think the main theme of your original post was correct. The attitude toward vaccination exhibited by "many" Americans is very self-centered without concern for the social, common good.
Absolutely. You can not paint all the vaccine hesitant or those to push back against mandates as just being self centered and irresponsible. Many are genuinely fearful of largely untested vaccines, long term side effects and reports of immediate and sometimes deadly reactions. Others question why alternative treatments are virtually banned and ridiculed while they are used effectively in other places. The attacks on previously respected people who have spoken out with alternative views sit very badly with many open minded people. The list goes on and on.
It sounds like you are saying essentially that we are overcounting COVID deaths because some/many deaths would have occurred anyway by other means... ? The Economist magazine has been doing detailed research tracking long-term deaths before and after COVID started ("excess deaths"). They find that we are probably undercounting deaths caused by COVID (directly and indirectly):
Well, I was sharing the CDC directors explanation for why vaccinated people are in the hospital or maybe even dying. Her reasons were age and comorbidity.
And for instance Gibralter which is supposed to have > 100% vaccination rate, then 100% of the people in hospital with covid would be already vaccinated.
I am not sure how you reach that conclusion. Every person entering the hospital is tested and if they are positive, and die, then the death has been listed as a covid related death and shows up in the numbers. CDC director more or less admitted that and said they are trying to separate this better for Omicron, and Dr. Fauci also confirmed it at least in regard to children in hospital. No reason to suspect adult cases would be any different.
If you want to consider heart attacks, drug over doses, suicides, domestic and other violent deaths as being "indirectly due to C" then I would agree, but these are likely more associated with mitigation, mandated or otherwise, and overall stress rather than the disease itself.
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