Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

It's called Money. Look into it. Maybe research the word psychosomatic and report back to me. Like I said, let me know when there is a RCT on the efficacy of "long covid". I'll wait.

 

You mean like this study, which looked at just under 4,200 long haul cases of all ages. Their conclusion was about 13% of all who recover from COVID have what they consider to be long haul symptoms. This include kids. In older people, there were factors such as symptoms and BMI that could be used to predict potential long haul problems. But in kids, long haul was much harder to predict. Guess according to you, all these 4,200 people had some psychosomatic issue and should have seen a counselor, eh?

 

How would you do an RCT of "long Covid?" Do you even know what an RCT is? That would mean that you would randomly assign people to conditions. You want researchers to randomly give people Covid?

 

Who would have guessed this?
Oh, pretty much everyone.

Unvaccinated make up more than 99 percent of new COVID cases in May, June according to NCDHHS | myfox8.com

Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated

 

Easy. Test 10k random kids at 1,3 and 6 month intervals. A lot of kids won't even know they had covid and that's a plus for this study. Do serology testing and then chart who is reporting symptoms and see what comes of it. This isn't rocket science.

 

Great study. Where is the testing on people who didn't have covid and see if they showed symptoms? That's why that study doesn't mean much to me. We just went thru the craziest isolation period in a hundred years so if you don't think that caused psychological issues then you it's pointless to discuss anything further with you.

Here is a study showing there is no difference in children after 6 months with covid and without.

“sero(+) children, all with a history of pauci-symptomatic C19 infection, did not report long COVID more frequently than sero(-) children”


Long-term symptoms after SARS-CoV-2 infection in school children: population-based cohort with 6-months follow-up

 

There was an interesting article in Wired magazine (July/August) about the origins of the CDC and WHO recommendations on Covid prevention, specifically wearing masks. (I read the print version, so no link.) CDC and WHO originally recommended hand washing and social distancing, but not wearing a mask. These recommendations were based on research conducted in the 1940's through the early 1960's, primarily by a Harvard engineer named William Wells and his wife (a doctor). Ironically, it was not the research that was faulty, but the understanding of it after Wells died in 1963. Seems there was a lack of reading comprehension in the scientists that cited Wells' research in future studies.

The big argument about how to deal with a virus is whether it is transmitted only in droplets, or can be transmitted as an aerosol. Droplets fall to the ground in a matter of seconds, and aerosols can stay aloft for hours. If it is transmitted as a droplet, then six feet of social distancing is probably good enough. If it is transmitted as an aerosol, then sixty feet of distance (in an enclosed space) may not be enough.

Well's research involved funneling exhaust air from the tuberculosis wing of a Baltimore VA hospital to a room with 150 guinea pigs, and seeing if they got sick, which a few did, month after month. The public health authorities decided that the illnesses might be a coincidence. So they set up another room with 150 more guinea pigs, but added UV lights to kill any germs in the air. None of this group got sick.

Wells did another experiment where he sprayed rabbits with a tuberculosis mist that was less than 5 microns, and another mist that was greater than 5 microns (without specifying what the particle size was), and the ones with the small particle size got sick, while the others did not. So the public health authorities concluded from these tests than anything below 5 microns was an aerosol, and anything greater was a droplet. They ignored his other research where he set the threshold at 100 microns. When coronavirus was first evaluated, apparently it was defined as traveling in particle sizes between 5 microns and 100 microns, which caused them to conclude that it traveled in droplets, not aerosols. Hence, no need to wear a mask if you are more than six feet away. Then people started getting sick from across the room, the other side of a restaurant, etc. Hundreds of thousands of people dead in the U.S., because the "experts" had poor reading comprehension.

 

What do you believe RCT means?

 

That's a part of why we had to sanitize all the surfaces at the beginning. It had been widely accepted that covid was a droplet and not an aerosol, so when people got sick breathing the same air, but not actually being in close contact, it was assumed that they must have picked it up by touching something infected.

 

What i described is about as close as you can get when comparing "long covid".

 

What you described is not a Randomized Controlled Trial. Many of your posts make more sense knowing that you didn't understand what RCT stands for.

 

Great news for schools.

CDC Recommends Schools Open Fully Immediately, Says Vaccinated Teachers And Students Don’t Need Masks

 

That isn't an RCT. It isn't rocket science. This is basic statistics and research design knowledge.

So that you don't make the same mistake again, an RCT is when a researcher randomly treats one group of subjects and doesn't treat or gives a placebo to another group. You then compare the outcome variable amongst the two groups. What you described is not that. You described a longitudinal observational study.

 

Thanks for coming out, 95

 

But you took that comment and applied it to your singular situation. When you consider the collective, there is a compounded sense of liberty. Look at what is going on in S. Korea, Australia, and some other places where spikes are causing tighter restrictions. Right now the virus cases are increasing again.

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
date.....7-day avg
6-25......11,993
6-26......11,879
6-27......11,882
6-28......11,844
6-29......12,265
6-30......12,550
7-1........12,809
7-2........13,637
7-3........13,340
7-4........13,254
7-5........11,797
7-6........12,914
7-7........15,263
7-8........16,208

As an individual, I agree with @duchen that the vaccine is liberating. For the collective, it's even more so. It means safer communities. It means restaurants at full capacity. Sports games with fans (see Japan). Concerts - hell, we haven't had concerts in over a year. Now we in the U.S. are liberated to do so and that, thanks to the folks who cared enough to get vaccinated. Do you still wear a mask when you go to indoor public places?

 

yes the infections are rising due to the varient, but not even near to 3 months ago even. last day over 20,000 was may 28, 6 weeks ago.

 

Correct - because....................? More people have been vaccinated! We have a clear path out of this forsaken virus. The fact that some healthy people still resist it is confounding.

 

no bueno

Citing rise of delta variant, Los Angeles reports 165 percent increase in Covid cases (msn.com)

LOS ANGELES - Despite beating back some of the highest coronavirus rates in the country earlier this year, Los Angeles County is once again seeing an uptick in new infections.

Public health officials reported a 165 percent increase in confirmed cases over the last week, with 839 new infections recorded as of Thursday. Fully vaccinated residents make up just a small fraction, 0.06 percent, of these new infections, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

“The data makes it increasingly clear that vaccines remain the most important tool we have to keep Covid-19 transmission and the incubation of variants low," Barbara Ferrer, director of public health, said in a statement. "Overall Covid-19 trends are going in the wrong direction for everyone, and are particularly concerning given the proliferation of the Delta variant."

 

From your link. The limitations of the report:

While nobody doubts the existence of even severe forms of long COVID in children4, the estimates on prevalence range from 95% of children reporting symptoms within 8 months of follow-up3, to 1.8% of schoolchildren at 2 months in a large surveillance2 or to full recovery in all children with predominantly mild disease5. Initial SARS-CoV-2 infection severity, different methodological approaches (clinical assessment versus self-report), definition of cases (diagnosed versus suspected cases), variable follow-up times, and prevalence of pre-existing clinical conditions likely contribute to the variability of long COVID reported in children. Longitudinal data on large population-based samples are needed to better understand its potential impact on health-related quality of life and activities in daily living including going to school.

Strengths of our study include the large, representative, randomly selected sample of school children and inclusion of a population-based seronegative control group that could be ensured thanks to the longitudinal design. Limitations include the relatively small number of seropositive children, possible misclassification of some false seropositive children, potential recall bias, parental report of child’s symptoms, and lack of information on symptom severity. (emphasis added)
​

The "control" group is quite difficult to control. Especially when symptoms of long haul COVID include many of the same symptoms of a common cold. If the "control" group that never tested positive had more normal interactions than the positive group. Most elementary school kids usually have 6-8 colds a year because of all the germs present in a normal school year.

I find it odd that there were no kids with long haul symptoms 6 months after recovery. Stories like these aren't that hard to find on the web. Fascinating, many of the parents were told the issues were pysosimatic for weeks, if not months, until there was a property diagnosis.

Speaking of proper diagnosis, several b issues with the control group in your study. For example, how do we know kids in the control group never had COVID-19? If a kid is asymptomatic, and is told his long haul symptoms are in his/her head, a COVID test might not be ordered for months. At which point, even some antibody tests may come up negative.

In addition, how much normal interaction did the study group have? Elementary school kids can get up to 6 or more colds a year, and many of the symptoms are the same as some long haul symptoms.

Last, as this Canadian article states, we need more research. I'd also ask, any one think the rash the girl in this article had was a psychosomatic symptom?

 

I read this a while back. Not sure when. But it was eye opening