Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

This fight is for everything.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Let there be snark.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Friday / Saturday, Oct. 8-9

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Friday / Saturday, Oct. 8-9

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I have nothing but gratitude for my (long retired) chiropractor, but it’s hardly surprising anti-vaxxers have found a niche among its practitioners:

… At a time when the surgeon general says misinformation has become an urgent threat to public health, an investigation by The Associated Press found a vocal and influential group of chiropractors has been capitalizing on the pandemic by sowing fear and mistrust of vaccines.

They have touted their supplements as alternatives to vaccines, written doctor’s notes to allow patients to get out of mask and immunization mandates, donated large sums of money to anti-vaccine organizations and sold anti-vaccine ads on Facebook and Instagram, the AP discovered. One chiropractor gave thousands of dollars to a Super PAC that hosted an anti-vaccine, pro-Donald Trump rally near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

They have also been the leading force behind anti-vaccine events like the one in Wisconsin, where hundreds of chiropractors from across the U.S. shelled out $299 or more to attend. The AP found chiropractors were allowed to earn continuing education credits to maintain their licenses in at least 10 states…

“People trust them. They trust their authority, but they also feel like they’re a nice alternative to traditional medicine,” said Erica DeWald of Vaccinate Your Family, who tracks figures in the anti-vaccine movement. “Mainstream medicine will refer people out to a chiropractor not knowing that they could be exposed to misinformation. You go because your back hurts, and then suddenly you don’t want to vaccinate your kids.”

The purveyors of vaccine misinformation represent a small but vocal minority of the nation’s 70,000 chiropractors, many of whom advocate for vaccines. In some places, chiropractors have helped organize vaccine clinics or been authorized to give COVID-19 shots…

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  1. 1.

    lowtechcyclist

    The 7-day moving average declined to 1,570 deaths per day.

    Decline is good.

    But it’s still nearly two Jonestowns a day, or a 9/11 every other day.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reports 8,743 new Covid-19 cases today in its media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 2,332,221 cases. It also reports 78 new deaths as of midnight, for a cumulative total of 27,191 deaths – 1.17% of the cumulative reported total, 1.24% of resolved cases.

    Based on cases reported yesterday, Malaysia’s nationwide Rt is at 0.86.

    714 confirmed cases are in ICU, 304 of them on ventilators. Meanwhile, 14,422 more patients have recovered, for a cumulative total of 2,184,711 patients recovered – 93.7% of the cumulative reported total.

    10 new clusters were reported today, for a cumulative total of 5,580 clusters. 845 clusters are currently active; 4,735 clusters are now inactive.

    8,729 new cases today are local infections. 14 new cases today are imported. Today’s media statement does not include the usual state-by-state breakdown.

    The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 174,820 doses of vaccine on 8th October: 74,199 first doses and 100,621 second doses. As of midnight yesterday, the cumulative total is 45,379,299 doses administered: 24,384,831 first doses and 21,104,896 second doses. 74.6% of the population have received their first dose, while 64.6% are now fully vaccinated.

  3. 3.

    oldster

    Just coming by to say how incredibly valuable these daily round-ups are.

    Thank you so much, Anne, for providing this information from so many source, in one place.

  4. 4.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Chiropractors have long been an epicenter of quackery. A number of their offices have racks of brochures touting chiropractic as something effective in the treatment of maladies from the common cold to cancer. As a society, we fucked up by calling them doctors and granting an insurance code for reimbursement.

  5. 5.

    NeenerNeener

    Monroe County, NY:

    The Monroe County website says 215 new cases yesterday, 3.7% test positivity. NYSDOH says 253 new cases. Not seeing much improvement…

  6. 6.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Wow, Kyrie Irving is kind of nuts, from his Wiki page:

    In February 2017, Irving stated in an interview for a podcast that he believes that the Earth is flat. In a later interview, he was less forceful in advancing his flat Earth belief, encouraging people to “do their own research” into the topic. In September 2017, Irving denied these claims and said that media misunderstood him as he was joking. However, in a June 2018 interview, when asked if he would admit that the world is round, he said “I don’t know. I really don’t”, and added that people should “do [their] own research for what [they] want to believe in” because “Our educational system is flawed”. In October 2018, Irving apologized for his original flat Earth comments.

    Irving also stated that he believes in other conspiracy theories, such as the idea that John F. Kennedy was killed because he wanted to end the banking cartel.

    According to the Rolling Stone, Irving has shared and interacted with social media posts from a conspiracy theorist on Instagram, claiming that “secret societies are administering vaccines in a plot to connect Black people to a master computer for a plan of Satan”. Irving is part of a group of players spreading misinformation related to microchips and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

  7. 7.

    Matt McIrvin

    Is the pickup in new shots mostly due to fully vaccinated people getting boosters? If so, they might be of limited use in actually controlling the pandemic.

  9. 9.

    New Deal democrat

    Nationwide cases are now down 42% from peak, but that masks what has really happened. Cases are down a full 2/3’s in the South, and more if you delete the MidAtlantic States (DE, MD, and VA) and DC. Average cases in the South are now equal to the West and Northeast, and well below the Midwest. Cases are also down significantly in the West Coast States. Everywhere else, cases are virtually unchanged or rising, especially on the Northern border.

    The US experience thus appears to be about midway between that of Israel (down 75% from peak) and India (a rapid decline all the way to pre-Delta levels, vs. the UK (a rapid 40% decline followed by a rebound and a relatively steady rate since then).

    I am becoming increasingly concerned that, once the declines in the South and West Coast end, more or less at pre-Delta levels, the next winter wave will begin, probably in the next few weeks. And it will begin from already very bad levels.

    A few other notes. I am discounting the increase in vaccinations, which is mainly driven by people getting their booster shots, although a little is presumably also due to employer vaccine mandates.

    Also, I saw an article about how abrupt reversals in COVID cases have taken most observers by surprise. This is very similar to observers of economic trends. Almost always, observers expect present trends to continue. Better observers watch for leading signs of trend change. In economics, those are leading economic indicators. In the pandemic, that is the experience of States and countries where a wave struck first.

    In general, avoid observations that use the present progressive tense (I plead guilty- above I used the word “rising”. Instead I should have used the past perfect tense: “have risen.”) That’s because we don’t know if the present trend will continue or not, unless we are relying on leading indicators.

    Delta is extremely infectious, but the experience of the earliest places it hit is that for unknown reasons there is a subset of the population that is particularly susceptible to it, but it is something of a dud with the rest of the unvaxxed population. Hence, the phrase that it “burns through the dry tinder fast.”

  11. 11.

    Sloane Ranger

    Yesterday in the UK we had 36,060 new cases. This does not include figures from Wales due to an issue at Public Health Wales. Even without Wales’ cases, the rolling 7-day average is up 0.1%. New cases by nation,

    England – 32,157 (down 1148)

    Northern Ireland – 1276 (down 29)

    Scotland – 2627 (down 64)

    Wales – Did not report.

    Deaths – There were 127 deaths within 28 days of a positive test yesterday and Wales did not report due to the a above mentioned issue. The rolling 7-day average is down by 6.3%. 109 deaths were in England, 2 in Northern Ireland and 16 in Scotland.

    Testing – 962,225 tests took place on Thursday, 7 October. This is a decrease of 14.2% in the rolling 7-day average. The PCR testing capacity reported by labs on this date was 868,549.

    Hospitalisations – There were 6763 people in hospital and 808 people on ventilators on Thursday, 7 October. The rolling 7-day average for hospital admissions was down by 3.6% as of 4 October.

    Vaccinations – As of Thursday, 7 October, 49,1012,734 had received 1 shot of a vaccine and 45,107,185 had had both. This means that 85.4% of all people in the UK aged 12+ have had 1 shot and 78.4% had had 2.

  12. 12.

    Robert Sneddon

    Scotland — 2,417 new COVID-19 cases reported today. The test positivity rate is 8.1%. There were 18 new deaths reported overnight. ICU bed occupancy numbers are 61, down three from yesterday while hospitalisations are 943, down 14.

    There were about 7,500 vaccinations carried out in Scotland yesterday (Friday) with about 65% of these being first vaccinations. 91.6% of 16+ adults are now vaccinated with their first dose and 84.8% are fully vaccinated. 72.8% of 16 and 17-year-olds have now received their first vaccination, up 0.2% from yesterday. 33.4% of 12-15 year olds have now received their first vaccination, up 1.8% from yesterday.

  13. 13.

    Ramalama

    Bloody Mercola, making it really hard for chiropractors who aren’t nuts. I followed his newsletter for a while, but he discovered the magic of bidets one time and then went weirdly on about bidets! bidets! bidets! Ugh, ‘Unsubscribe.”

    I only went to a chiropractor because my jaw unhinged and a chiro was cheaper than anything my TMJ specialist dentist offered or an MD (by more than $1K).

    Turned out great for me. I did get other benefits (ease from asthma for example), but I don’t eschew medicine.

  14. 14.

    dr. bloor

    Kyrie Irving is about to be an object example of how you can totally fuck over your life and career by not getting vaxxed. Did RFK say anything as to whether he shared Kyrie’s views about the shape of the Earth?

  15. 15.

    artem1s

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Wow, Kyrie Irving is kind of nuts

    nah, mostly he’s an attention whore who doesn’t care what kind of attention he gets. he sees LaBron doing charitable work and thinks ‘hey why are the cameras not pointed at me’. the flat earth thing was a great example of him not having any understanding of how conspiracies work and who is affected by them. he just knew he could get a rise out of the media if he kept saying goofy shit. this time his BS is probably going to boost reluctance and suspicion in populations that most need the vaccine. it’s possible he’s getting money from someone too. or may just be trying to get traded. he’s done this before. spouting nutty theories is a perfect gig for someone who is completely amoral. every time a celebrity sports figure comes out for vaccination, he gets an interview and clicks for being on the other side. he’ll wear out his welcome soon enough and move onto the next city and idiot thing to say in front of the cameras.

  16. 16.

    Ohio Mom

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
    For chiropractors, I think we also screwed up by making PT expensive and hard to access. First you have to go to a doctor (and pay for that visit) to get a referral — if you can convince the doctor to give you a referral.

    Then there are limits on number of PT sessions. I won’t count the copays for PT because you’d be paying for the chiropractor.

    If someone has a backache or other neuromuscular problem, chiropractors are a lot easier to get to. No gate keeper and there seem to be an awful lot of them, with large easy to spot signs over their storefronts.

    Just another aspect of our dysfunctional for-profit medical system.

  18. 18.

    Aaron Rodgers Mustache

    @artem1s: he’s also anasshole, based on his having gone maskless on his visit to the reservation. (his mom was indigenous.)

  19. 19.

    YY_Sima Qian

    On 10/8 China reported 0 new domestic confirmed cases & 0 new domestic asymptomatic cases.

    Fujian Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. 14 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 172 active domestic confirmed cases.

    • At Putian 9 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 48 active domestic confirmed cases in the city.
    • At Quanzhou there currently are 5 active domestic confirmed cases remaining.
    • At Xiamen 4 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 117 active domestic confirmed cases in the city.
    • At Zhangzhou there currently are 3 active domestic confirmed cases remaining.

    Heilongjiang Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. 12 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 64 active domestic confirmed & 6 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.

    • Harbin did not report any new domestic positive cases. 12 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 63 active domestic confirmed (50 at Bayan County, 6 at Songbei District, 2 each at Mulan County & Xiangfang & Echeng Districts, & 1 at Nan’gang District) & 2 active domestic asymptomatic cases (both at Bayan County) in the city. Xinglong Township in Bayan County remains at High Risk. 3 residential compounds & 1 village have been re-designated as Low Risk. 13 residential compounds & 1 residential building remain at Medium Risk.
    • Suihua did not report any new domestic positive cases. The currently are 1 active domestic confirmed & 4 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city (all at Beilin District).

    Yili Prefecture in Xinjiang “Autonomous” Region did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 1 active domestic confirmed (at Horgos) & 4 active domestic asymptomatic cases (2 each at Cocodala & Horgos) at the prefecture.

    At Yunnan Province all active domestic confirmed cases have recovered in recent days. There currently are 3 domestic asymptomatic cases remaining in the province, all at Ruili in Dehong Prefecture.

    At Henan Province there currently are 6 active domestic confirmed cases remaining, all at Shangqiu.

    Imported Cases

        

    On 10/8, China reported 17 new imported confirmed cases (2 previously asymptomatic), 22 imported asymptomatic cases, 1 imported suspect case:

    • Guangxi “Autonomous” Region (location not specified) – 3 confirmed cases, no information released
    • Ruili in Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan Province – 2 confirmed cases, both Chinese nationals returning from Myanmar, via land border crossing
    • Lincang in Yunnan Province – 1 confirmed case, a Chinese national returning from Laos, via land border crossing
    • Yunnan Province (location not specified) – 6 asymptomatic cases, no information released
    • Tianjin Municipality – 2 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from the Gabon & Senegal; 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Madagascar & Senegal; all via Paris CdG
    • Shanghai Municipality – 2 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese nationals each returning from Guinea (via Dubai) & Zambia (via Addis Ababa); 1 suspect case, no information released
    • Changsha in Hunan Province – 2 confirmed cases (both previously asymptomatic), no information released
    • Shenyang in Liaoning Province – 1 confirmed case, no information released
    • Yingkou Port in Liaoning Province – 1 confirmed cases, no information released
    • Dalian in Liaoning Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, no information released
    • Ningde Port in Fujian Province – 1  confirmed case, a crew member off a cargo ship w/ last port of call in the Philippines
    • Qingdao in Shandong Province – 1 confirmed case, a Filipino crew member off a cargo ship w/ last port of call in Hong Kong
    • Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 1 confirmed cases, a Chinese national returning from Germany
    • Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 4 asymptomatic cases, 2 Chinese nationals returning from Saudi   Arabia & 1 each from Malaysia & the UAE
    • Dongguan in Guangdong Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, both coming from Japan
    • Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 each coming from Egypt & Nigeria
    • Jiangsu Province (location not specified) – 2 asymptomatic cases, no information released
    • Chengdu in Sichuan Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Algeria

    Overall in China, 37 confirmed cases recovered, 9 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation (all imported) & 2 were reclassified as confirmed cases, & 455 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 766 active confirmed cases in the country (513 imported), 1 in serious condition (imported), 371 active asymptomatic cases (355 imported), 2 suspect cases (both imported). 25,625 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.

    As of 10/8, 2,218.826M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 1.263M doses in the past 24 hrs.

    On 10/9 Hong Kong reported 8 new positive cases, all imported (from Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Nepal & the Philippines).

    On 10/9 Macau reported 2 new domestic cases, a Mainland Chinese resident & a Vietnamese national, both are close contacts of a domestic case reported on 10/5.

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    Locally,

    Hawaii Department of Health officials […] reported seven new coronavirus-related deaths and 201 new confirmed and probable infections statewide, bringing the state’s totals since the start of the pandemic to 833 fatalities and 81,087 cases. Source

  22. 22.

    Barbara

    @Ohio Mom: Many states now permit self-referrals to PT for a short course of assessment and treatment.  My assistant got great relief from a chiropractor for a degenerative spinal condition when nothing else helped, but there is definitely a contingent that because of professional resentment, counterculture tendencies or both reflexively and vocally dismiss “mainstream” medicine.  This is sometimes paired ironically with a quest to expand scope of practice to include more medical interventions like prescribing and administering medicine. The discipline seems to be more varied in this regard than most.  The bullying friend portrayed in the first chapter of Seth Mnookin’s book on the anti-vaccine movement was a chiropractor.

  23. 23.

    sab

    Flu shot this year packs a wallop. Husband had senior version yesterday. Usually it’s a nothingburger. This year it was worse than the Covid Moderna. I am assuming they are expecting a brutal flu season if this is their shot. Get your shot. Shot might make you sick but it beats dying of flu.

  24. 24.

    VOR

    One positive outcome from COVID is all the research. mRNA is going to prove invaluable for many things. Finding things like these Chilean trees. New anti-viral medicine.

    Re: chiropractors. Back in college I worked as a waiter in a bar/restaurant. We had a bartender who was not really dumb, but profoundly uninterested in things and couldn’t seem to put 2 and 2 together. One day a regular called him “Doctor”. Turns out he was nearly done with his chiropractic training.

  25. 25.

    Bill Arnold

    The plateaued and smoothed reported deaths in Russia for July-Sept are, among other things, a deliberate insult to statisticians and non-Russian health authorities, IMO.  See the chart in the piece linked in the first Moscow Times tweet.
    The recent reported rises may prod some in the Russian population to get vaccinated.
    I do appreciate that Moscow Times usually leads these pieces with the updated-daily version of this, reporting the excess deaths estimate as well.

    Russia has confirmed 7,746,718 cases of coronavirus and 215,453 deaths, according to the national coronavirus information center. Russia’s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is 660,000.

  26. 26.

    sab

    I have a Covid horror story to share from my niece by marriage. Her husband has a small pack of friends he has known since forever. One of them did well in law school and went off to DC to be a hot shot DC Republican lawyer. Apparently he drank the kool-aid.  Wife is a nurse and vaxxed. Kids are all vaxxed. He wasn’t . ” “I run marathons”. 50 years old.  Diagnosed on Tuesday, died on Saturday.

    She will have to move back to Ohio because she cannot afford the mortgage on their DC house without his salary. Also too kids have no money for college now.

  27. 27.

    Scout211

    @sab:

    I got the regular flu shot and had no reaction.  On the other hand, my Moderna and my Shingrix reactions were awful.  My husband got the senior version flu shot and had no reaction.  He also had no reaction to either Shingrix or Moderna shots.  I told him I didn’t think this is actually a good sign, but he was relieved about it because he can’t take any NSAIDs or Tylenol due to his kidneys.

    At our age, if it’s not one thing it’s another. Rinse and repeat.

    As for our younger family members, my youngest grandchild was told not to come back to preschool/daycare until she either had a negative COVID test or quarantined for all of next week.  My SIL is away for work so this is a bit of a challenge for my daughter, a school teacher. Trying to find a testing site near them has testing hours after her work and has available appointments has been tough.  She finally got an appointment on Monday, in another town.

  29. 29.

    Ruckus

    @Aaron Rodgers Mustache:

    Come on now.

    Some percentage of chiropractors actually can help people.

    dianetics only helps itself.

    (Full disclosure – I have a secondary history with dianetics – a family member 1000% fully within the grasp, for over 5 decades. I have forgotten far more than anyone should ever have to know. And yes I worked at the forgetting.)

  30. 30.

    Ruckus

    @Geo Wilcox:

    I only know half of your equation so I can’t completely verify but I’ve had a couple of really good massage therapists work on injuries decades ago and over those decades those injuries/issues never came back. And one of them got me out of getting a new knee 25 yrs ago. Grateful doesn’t began to cover it.

  32. 32.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid: ​
     

    Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reports 8,743 new Covid-19 cases today in its media statement….

    Hey, Amir, I’m not keeping close track, but isn’t that half or less than the totals not that long ago for your area? That would be pretty god news if so!!

    I seem to recall numbers in the very high teens of thousands…

    And best of luck all you guys in SE Asia!!

  33. 33.

    sab

    @sab: Spouse has been reacting to shots that do nothing to me. I haven’t had mine yet. Maybe he is allergic to something in it. He got really sick last time he had flu and shingrix. We blamed shingrix. Maybe it was flu shot.

  34. 34.

    Ruckus

    @Bill Arnold:

    We have a horrible death rate in this country we are over 730K.

    Russia, with a population less than half of ours is 660K.

    I think I’ve got this right that their death rate is twice ours.

    China has 3 times our population but has less than 5K deaths. They have been a bit harsher at lockdowns, are used to masks. Strange how well that works.

  35. 35.

    Bill Arnold

    @Scout211:

    he was relieved about it because he can’t take any NSAIDs or Tylenol due to his kidneys.

    That about acetaminophen(paracetamol) is surprising. Poked a bit; most of the research suggests that it is reasonably safe for kidneys. There’s a 2020 metanalysis that shows some negative effect on kidney function, but the more mainstream current view seems to be that it’s OK if dosage is kept down and intermittent – here’s a recent discussion piece: Controversies in acetaminophen nephrotoxicity (Woo Yeong Park, 2020 Mar 31)

    To be clear – my mother’s kidneys were damaged by NSAIDs for arthritis. She started with Motrin when it first came out – miracle drug. Every decade or so she was moved to a stronger NSAID, and they did damage, uncovered late when tests found < 10 percent kidney function. She went on a strict kidney diet, very well disciplined, and lasted another 10 years, becoming thoroughly addicted to narcotics in the last several years of her life (methadone, Fentanyl patches).
    (Acetaminophen(paracetamol) has its downsides; liver failure is a shitty way to die.)

  36. 36.

    Barbara

    @sab:  My dry cleaner has 4 kids between 12 and 22. Her son, @18, nearly died, sustained significant organ damage and faces prolonged rehab. They are so grateful he is alive but they cannot fathom why he got so sick when the rest of them only had mild cases. The variability of Covid seems to be much greater than average. It is true arrogance to assume that “you” are stronger than others when it comes to combating Covid. Did he make the same kind of assumptions when it came to life insurance?

  37. 37.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ruckus:
    Excess deaths in the US are around 1M, so Russia is less than 2X as bad as we are. I have no idea how much China is lying about its deaths numbers but China takes the suppression approach seriously and has the political and enforcement infrastructure to do so. If there are serious (and costly) long term sequelae for recovered COVID-19 patients, China will be in a much much much better position than most other countries.

  38. 38.

    Cermet

    @sab: Well, at least he had life insurance … uh, wait; no he didn’t. I guess being 50 and healthy, who needs it? Well, that is exactly the opposite of what any rational person thinks relative to life insurance …oh, wait; he was a thug voter. That explains all of it.

    Never want anyone one to die needlessly – but he was supposed to convince others to drink the kool aid, not be stupid enough to drink it himself.

  39. 39.

    Ruckus

    @sab:

    I’ve had 3 Pfizer shots. The first and third were nothing. The second was a very bad, very hazy 2 days, woke up the third like nothing had happened. Shingles shots, nothing. Flu shots, when I used to take them, every one horrible for 1 to 3 days. It was so bad I stopped taking them a few years ago. I’m seriously thinking of taking this years shot, because of my age.

  41. 41.

    Ruckus

    @Bill Arnold:

    I understand our Covid death toll is a bit over 730K, not over a million.

    Where are you getting your number of over a million?

    I’m not saying you are wrong, I’d just like to know if our official numbers are complete crap and off by over a quarter of a million. I mean I bet I don’t trust the Russian numbers any more than their citizens seem to but their official numbers are lower than the Moscow Times numbers, which is what I used.

  42. 42.

    Ruckus

    @Bill Arnold:

    Damage from acetaminophen may be partially from dosages as well as usage. I’ve had a number of joint issues over the last 30 yrs, damage from a severe vehicle accident and under docs orders I took a lot of acetaminophen daily for a while. This was of course before the concept of kidney damage from such large dosage had arisen because most usage prior had been rather low, over the counter levels. My kidney function is OK but lower than it could be and that may be the reason. I had a large bottle of 800mg pills. Hey it worked for the pain…..

  45. 45.

    Ramalama

    @sab:

    Diagnosed on Tuesday, died on Saturday.

    That is awful. Given how quickly it hit him, took him away, I wonder if he didn’t even follow any basic masking or distancing protocols. It seems as if the length of exposure to the virus determines the impact. So sorry for your family.

  47. 47.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Ruckus: The published figures of ca. 730,000 are cases where someone provably died from or while having COVID-19. There’s also the excess deaths number, a statistical effort based on the death toll from the past five years. For the US the ongoing excess death number from January 2020 to the current day is either approaching or exceeds a million.

    It’s complicated, fewer people driving during the lockdowns meant fewer road accident deaths, overloaded hospitals meant serious illnesses that might have been treatable became fatalities. COVID-19 is to blame though even if some of the deaths are not directly linked to the disease (healthcare worker suicides, for example).

     

    The UK’s excess deaths total for the same period is about 20%-25% greater than the recorded COVID-19 death numbers, about the same ratio the US is seeing.

  48. 48.

    Robert Sneddon

    @sab: I am assuming they are expecting a brutal flu season if this is their shot.

    The health services in the UK are predicting a Flu Season From Hell this year after we missed it last year due to lockdowns, masking, hand sanitising etc. There was also a big push to get vulnerable people vaccinated last year and this year’s vaccination program is casting an even wider net and pushing people hard to get vaccinated against the flu. The medical advice is that the flu vaccination can take place at the same time as any COVID-19 vaccine including boosters, there doesn’t need to be a gap between shots.

     

    The UK goverment has Plan A and Plan B ready for this winter, in part determined by how bad the flu hits along with an expected wave of COVID-19 cases. Plan A is keep things running, Plan B is local lockdowns, masking mandates and restrictions on access to public spaces based on a vaccine passport of the sort the EU is already implementing. It’s all based on how well the medical services can cope with the load but there’s no optimism that it’s all going to be fine, the forecast is that it’s going to be bad. The hope is that it won’t be disastrous.

  49. 49.

    Jim Appleton

    I led the news cycle for about fifteen minutes several years ago. Oil train. Google Jim Appleton OPB.

    Local Riverkeeper exec director drove up to me a few days later, rolled down the passenger window and I started asking him about a group that went through town the day before.

    After a minute or so, director starts nodding his head and rolling his eyes toward the guy in the passenger seat about two feet in front of me.

    I look at him, make eye contact, don’t recognize, go back to asking about inane topic.

    Finally director raises a hand and points. A right hand extends out the open window.

    “Hi Jim. Bobby Kennedy. I asked Brett if I could meet you.”

    Riverkeeper is his baby.

    That was before I knew enough about his antivacc to lose much respect.

  50. 50.

    TallTom

    @Ruckus: When you look at the number of deaths per year in a country, the number is generally fairly stable, year over year. With the pandemic, there are higher deaths than normal (excess deaths), These deaths have been attributed to other caus es than COVID, (heart failure, kidney failure, pneumonia, etc.), but the root cause is COVID.

  51. 51.

    Matt

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    In a later interview, he was less forceful in advancing his flat Earth belief, encouraging people to “do their own research” into the topic.

    Dude pulled down $33m in salary last year, and he couldn’t help folks “do their own research” by chartering a jet and flying to the EDGE? Could livestream the whole thing!

    Oh of course, because (((THEY))) would somehow prevent it. Faintly scratch the surface of a flat-earther, find a plain-vanilla antisemite.

  52. 52.

    Ruckus

    Thank all of you for your answers about excess deaths.

    I believe that my answer still holds because I was comparing Covid deaths to Covid deaths, not excess deaths to excess deaths. And the estimates for excess deaths are just estimates. Covid deaths that we see are never going to be accurate to the decimal point but we are talking the reasonably same counting process across countries. Even the ones lying about it, like Russia, which is why I used the newspaper numbers for Russia, they seem to be more realistic. And I’m not trying to minimize the excess numbers, just to make a semi reasonable counting of the pandemic. Yes our response is crap, because of trump, because of his followers, because it had gotten twisted so far out of reality without any sort of proper response until President Biden.

    To me the worst part of the worlds response is that we weren’t the worst country. We were bad because our leader was a wack job deluxe and we got well behind the curve, from which it is very, very difficult to then get in front of. The second part is that we have given well over a billion vaccine doses away to countries that need it and can’t afford it. That’s a decent president. Can we do more? Very likely yes and very likely we are.

  54. 54.

    Ramalama

    @Jim Appleton: Damn!

    We could smell smoke from far far away when Lac-Mégantic, Quebec caught on fire, was set on fire, by the rail crash and the oil catching fire. That town was burnt to a crisp.

    Now a days it’s kind of the home of a really nutty political party that’s as Frumphy as a Canadian Quebecois town can get.

  55. 55.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ruckus
    Re excess deaths, The “The Economist” tracker is very useful:
    Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries – In many parts of the world, official death tolls undercount the total number of fatalities
    It is updated often.
    Basically, some areas with very low actual SARS-CoV-2 infection rates have had negative excess deaths, or negative excess deaths for part of the pandemic, due among other reasons, to lower deaths caused by air pollution and traffic/road accidents.
    Some countries lie, a lot. Russia is not the worst. The US is pretty good but undercounts some, up to 30 percent by a few estimates, less by most.
    See in particular the 3d and 4th column of the table “Excess deaths since country’s first 50 covid deaths”. They don’t explicitly show the ratio (the level of lying) but it’s easily computed. (screen scrape the table, make a csv file, import into a spreadsheet. Or maybe they have a spreadsheet available; haven’t looked.)

  56. 56.

    Bill Arnold

    @sab:

    So we should all mask? That helped enormously with flu last year.

    I am definitely not Robert, but yes, we know what to do. Flu season was knocked out for two winters in the southern hemisphere, and one in the northern hemisphere, by NPIs such as masking (also distancing and shutdowns/partial shutdowns, and perhaps handwashing), even though flu vaccination rates were similar (in the US at least.)
    Also, get a flu vaccination and encourage other people to too. Anything to get R below 1 especially in your community.

  57. 57.

    Jim Appleton

    @Ramalama:   Mosier was a lot different.  We easily and safely put out a small oil fire, about 30k gallons as opposed to several million in Lac Mégantic.

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