Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I don’t think Santa requires households to prove negative test results before visiting your house

 

Not yet...

 

Again, scare tactics and either intentional or accidental ignorance. From the sourced report on the Chinese vaccines (see quoted below).

Despite what everyone on both sides of the vaccine debate seem to parrot in the press and on-line media, there is so much more to the immune response than whether or not you produce "neutralizing antibodies". Are people getting severely sick and dying? Who cares at this point if people are being called "infected" by a PCR test that had to be run out to 40+ cycles to amplify the RNA enough to detect it?

I saw a NY Times headline about how Omicron was deadly and we should not dismiss it. I agree, we should treat viruses with proper respect and a prudent response. However, when one read the article, it discussed 7 deaths in the UK. You had to go down several paragraphs to find the statistic that those 7 deaths were out of over 24,900 cases in the UK which were attributed to the Omicron variant. That would be a 0.028% mortality rate. Shouldn't the headline really have said, "Hardly any deaths to date in UK, but data collection is still early on"? Probably would not have been scary enough to make people read the story then??

I get it, everyone has their agenda, but anyone who is honest here will admit that it is entirely too early to be making some of these statements, even if you are Dr. Fauci. And, he knows better, he is just trying to sway public opinion/policy.

Hong Kong researchers find that two doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine are inadequate against Omicron.

 

South Africa isn't seeing a spike in deaths or hospitalizations evidently. US news right now, as per usual, is fear porn.
South Africa Hospitalization Rate Plunges in Omicron Wave

 

I was making the same point.
I listen to a Dr on YouTube who has been excellent from the start of this.

He was going over a study yesterday that showed Omicron replicates much slower in the lower parts of the lungs which is a great sign.
However it replicates much much faster than delta in the bronci parts of the lungs which is what makes it much more transmissible than Delta.

 

I didn't know that.

Kinda bolsters Phil's point. Even with children dying, everyone got the polio jab.

Something about America is different now

 

Most likely if you have omicron you aren't going to the hospital anyway.

 

When you lose CNN and Stelter, you know the whole school closures issues is over.

 

Unfortunately our Christmas traditions involve several houses. And my son and I have quarantined in our rental house which happens to be temporarily empty so we aren't even together. It is right next door though, bit until we know everyone else's status we are staying clear.

 

And that is most likely attributable to the fact that South Africans infected with Omicron tended to be young and a significant percentage probably had natural immunity as the result of previous Covid infections.

 

Natural immunity for the WIN!

 

And the same applies to immunity from vaccinations. Although I have been double-vaxxed and boosted (in effect, triple-vaxxed), there is still a fair possibility that I will be infected from Omicron and most likely the symptoms of the infection will be similar to those of a bad cold or a mild case of the flu.

 

Probably the biggest difference is impact to children. In one single year (1952), more than 3,000 children died from Polio (this would be like more than 6,300 with today's population). By comparison, over a nearly 2-year period, fewer than 800 children have died from COVID. We trust adults to be responsible enough to make these decisions for themselves (for better or for worse). We also know more about risk factors for children and more granulated age-breakdowns of risk for children (i.e. 5-11 with no risk factors are significantly safer than 16-18 with risk factors), where I'm not sure if that was (or is) a known aspect of Polio.

Then you get into the whole trust of the government element and corporate greed element. I think it's healthy to have the kind of skepticism that we have in our country (short-term struggles, but long-term gains), and the government's role should be to help folks navigate information vs. misinformation without blocking access to desired details with what amounts to a "just trust us" label.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

And everyone still lined up to take a leaky vaccine and stopped polio in its tracks.

 

Yeah, sorry, my post was not to quibble with you. It is just that as a naive person, I have spent nearly 2 years listening to as many experts in the field as I can and what they say often seems different than the mass media, internet or other accounts and I just get a little frustrated. I understand that public health officials want to "color the discussion" to encourage their desired outcome, but it gets so difficult to listen to them after while.

I think my post probably looked like it was attacking you, and that was not what I mean to do, so apologies for that.

 

How many of those with healthy skepticism died?

 

Good question. To the obese, diabetic, elderly, and/or vitamin deficient, what was your concern about getting vaccinated (insert other risk factors as we learn more about them)? To those that left behind children, I'd want to know what factors they considered and how they arrived at their risk assessment. My point is that as long as we can learn from both the reason for the decision and the result of the decision, then our society will be better for it.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Thanks for sharing. A level headed approach (still listening). Supports vaccination (including for children); looks to focus more on serious cases than just cases; gives credit to Trump administration; gives credit to Biden administration; expresses an understanding for why a mass vaccination plan for adults is problematic and is very understanding of the problems that we have faced in the campaign.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

I guess the big question now is how many experimental shots is everyone willing to take for covid? 3, 4, 5 per year with no huge curb on transmission?

 

has he checked with fauci?