Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I already got covid crushed in a high stakes playoff game last week.

My flex, Darrel Henderson, was put on covid list on Saturday, after the last waiver run. My opponent needed a running back and had the backup, Sony Michel. Then Higbee, my TE, was put on the list prior to Monday's game. I lost by 6pts.

Oh cruel fantasy gods!

 

Good. Nobody says to lock down. Once again, the hospitalizations are in overwhelming numbers among the unvaccinated. The vaccines and boosters are doing their jobs. They expose the immune system to the virus protein so it has memory and it produces the appropriate response upon infection. Our national problem is in dealing with those who don’t get vaccinated. Btw: my Rabbis brother was in a respirator with this last year. Got it again this week. Sean Payton. Got it a second time this week. So, the natural immunity crowd is getting its answer. The question is who will get really sick. Those who don’t get vaccinated are just playing the lottery. But, any statement that the vaccines doesn’t work or are “leaky” is just foolery. It just reflects ignorance of the nature of Coronaviruses. We have all gone about our business with colds and runny noses in our lives. This virus has not mutated enough that it can be classified as mild and it is not just an upper respiratory disease. I get a kick out of vaxed people telling unvaxxed people how bad the vaccines are. And, I long ago stopped caring about the unvaxxed who get very sick. It is the people who they expose and the societal cost that bothers me. We are never going to convince people who are so easily lied to.

 

My buddy is scrambling with his fantasy team for sure

 

I was going to post something about this. FSU/UCF hoops game cancelled. It seems like we're witnessing the beginning of a new surge and I wonder what the heck is going on. Don't think it's just as simple as Omicron or cold weather, but could be wrong. Looks like the northeast is getting slammed right now.

 

Only reason hospitals at this point are close to being full is because they fired a bunch of qualified people who wouldn’t be vaccinated. Their choice but they have to deal with the ramifications.

 

Not really true.

 

I have a niece who is a Covid nurse and she has to deal with 3 to 7 deaths every day for the past year. Makes it seem like this is common in every hospital but not true. She works at Princeton in Birmingham and they are the primary Covid unit in the state. I think there are 2 others so most hospitals across the state send their Covid patients to her hospital. If you get her side, it's Armageddon but in other hospitals like Grandview, it's business as usual.

 

Omicron looks to be good news. We can finally move away from the ridiculous mandates. I fear we are going to see a big decline in people taking vaccines with long term data now. Our public health officials are a complete disaster.

And natural immunity is still far superior. The fact some think it is not and a vaccine for a single strand that wanes almost immediately is shows the foolery that propaganda has caused. It is the way to scare people into boosters though…

 

What other reason is there that hospital beds available have gone down? Just for kicks? Some of you guys need to stop watching MSNBC non stop.

 

I found this video in this article pretty powerful.

'Right through my heart': This video capturing Gen Z's lost COVID youth has been viewed 14 million times

 

This is a terrible and disgusting post. Packed full of lies. Just disgusting.

 

Trolls are going to troll. but a worldwide spike in hospitalizations being characterized as good news is pathetic. The making up of crap is the poster's MO and to be expected if one reads any posts from that source. Regardless, it's still disconcerting that someone would continue to post such garbage.

 

Most major medical groups have lost only 1% to 2% of their work force due to mandates. December is also winter graduation season. Arizona State just graduated 300 this past weekend, and over 640 this calendar year. Degree plus license equals a job for just about everyone who walked across the stage. And that's just one school in the Phoenix metro area. The University of Arizona has a Nursing School that is moving from downtown Phoenix to the suburb of Gilbert because it needs more space.

There have been a few hospitals who are worried about losing too many employees. Because of this, they have temporarily halted any mandates.

Add it all up, and it's hard to place the entire blame on vaccine mandates causing a lack of hospital beds. The number of COVID hospital visits are on the rise, and in general, cold weather increases hospital visits 2% to 5% in normal years.

 

Just one hospital system. Keep thinking it’s not the mandate. The rest of us aren’t living in fantasy world.


Hundreds of hospital beds are empty because of the labor shortage

 

The mandate is part of it. But even your own article (dated Oct 3 by the way), says there are a number of people who left the profession due to poor working conditions and burnout.

 

I’m sure people leaving because of burnout happened also for sure. But not to the extent of the mandate. Just brilliant move when you are already losing people lets go ahead and lose more people. I’m fine firing people who didn’t have covid, but those who have had a positive covid test should be exempt. Anyone arguing otherwise is just playing politics at this point.

 

Anyone who believes this is a fool. Link after link contradicts this.

I posted the Atlantic article referencing the UT Austin projections. And, another reflecting the UK experience and projections.

And anecdotal examples of reinfection: My Rabbi's brother, Sean Payton. Today, Kevin Durant.

From UF regarding Florida:

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article256682942.html

University of Florida researchers are projecting the highly contagious omicron variant will lead to about 40,000 new COVID cases a day in Florida by its February apex, around 75 percent higher than what the state witnessed during the peak of the delta variant.

Florida, like other parts of the country and in countries around the world, has seen its COVID cases spike in recent days. Florida reported 8,785 new COVID-19 cases and one new death on Thursday, the highest single-day report since 10,073 on Sept. 22, at the tail end of the delta variant. The surge in cases has caused the three-day average of cases to jump to 6,431, a 164% increase from the three-day average a week before.


Even though vaccine boosters lower the risk of transmission and severity, researchers noted that because “relatively few Floridians have received booster doses at this point” they did not consider boosters in their analysis.


The models predict that anywhere from 100-250 Floridians might be dying each day during the omicron wave, though that largely depends on the severity of omicron, which is not yet fully known. Public health experts say there’s still not enough data to know for sure and the models could change.

 

And then there is this on prior infection and vaccine:

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article256683497.html

Laboratory research on blood samples from 52 health care workers, half of whom were fully vaccinated and contracted COVID-19, found breakthrough infections generated more antibodies that were “as much as 1,000% more effective” than those produced two weeks after a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, according to an Oregon Health & Science University news release. Study participants were all OHSU employees.

But the findings suggest “breakthrough infections from the omicron variant will generate a similarly strong immune response among vaccinated people,” senior study author Fikadu Tafesse, an assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology in the OHSU School of Medicine, said in the release. The study was published Thursday, Dec. 16 in JAMA.

“You can’t get a better immune response than this,” Tafesse said. “These vaccines are very effective against severe disease. Our study suggests that individuals who are vaccinated and then exposed to a breakthrough infection have super immunity.”

“I think this speaks to an eventual end game,” study co-author Dr. Marcel Curlin, an associate professor of medicine at OHSU, said in the release. “It doesn’t mean we’re at the end of the pandemic, but it points to where we’re likely to land: Once you’re vaccinated and then exposed to the virus, you’re probably going to be reasonably well-protected from future variants.”

 

The line is clear. If you wouldn’t say it to their face then don’t post it.

 

And, in Denmark

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/18/omicron-variant-denmark/


In a country that tracks the spread of coronavirus variants as closely as any in the world, the signals have never been more concerning. Omicron positives are doubling nearly every two days. The country is setting one daily case record after another. The lab analyzing positive tests recently added an overnight shift just to keep up.

On her double-monitor computer, Grove Krause pulled up the institute’s latest projections, which scientists were still tweaking before releasing them to the public on Saturday. The range of possibilities is wide, but the very best scenario — which is unlikely, she said — shows daily hospitalizations matching the peak of last year. In most of the other scenarios, the numbers soar into the stratosphere.

And then there is the matter of infections. Before this wave, Denmark had never seen more than 5,000 cases in a day. On Friday, it logged more than 11,000 new cases. Within a week, in a moderate scenario, case numbers could hit 27,000. And into January? The institute’s estimates climb higher still, off the Y-axis.


Denmark’s hospitals have never had more than 1,000 covid 19 patients at any given time, last winter’s peak. But by early January, in a moderate scenario, hospitals could be seeing 500 new covid patients arriving every day. If omicron’s transmissibility winds up on the higher end, and it proves just as severe as the delta variant, with a strong ability to evade vaccines, daily admissions could reach 800.