The year started with a lot of promise on the COVID-19 front with the arrival of vaccines. Then came the variants. @AP journalists who covered the story say disinformation made their job harder. #2021Notebook https://t.co/EzGqxpKeR1
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 23, 2021
Hospitals, police departments, supermarkets and other critical services are struggling to stay staffed as the new omicron variant races through communities worldwide and keeps people off work.https://t.co/hAZQAo0pA5
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 24, 2021
Jill Biden has become the premier vaccine ambassador from a worried White House https://t.co/mdFdxQ8hnK
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 23, 2021
U.S. airlines scrap nearly 1,000 Christmas Day flights due to Omicron https://t.co/rgeNkCzN3G pic.twitter.com/mpRJRFqK1h
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 25, 2021
======
AP journalists around the globe tell the story of the second COVID Christmas, from overwhelmed hospitals and curbed religious observances to homilies of hope.https://t.co/OtuYSWOylw
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 25, 2021
Covid: Travel misery continues as 1,300 more flights cancelled https://t.co/m3eTgFU0bY
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 26, 2021
China's local COVID case count driven to 21-month high by Xian outbreak https://t.co/9PNuEhJXpX pic.twitter.com/Mrrmvi7j2I
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 26, 2021
Three members of @BTS_twt have been diagnosed with COVID-19 after returning to South Korea from abroad. Jin had mild symptoms while RM and Suga weren't exhibiting symptoms, according to the superstar group's management.https://t.co/mtyS6fooDs
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 25, 2021
Elephant Santas pass out face masks, hand gel in Thai school tradition https://t.co/vKe7mo8KIX pic.twitter.com/S2kMmhG4Sg
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 24, 2021
Australia’s most populous state has reported a record number of new COVID-19 cases and a sharp jump in hospitalizations. New South Wales reported 6,394 new infections, with 458 active cases in hospitals. https://t.co/rMgGBIFKO8
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 26, 2021
#2021 inReview: Throughout the year, the Kremlin grappled with the nation’s stubborn refusal to vaccinatehttps://t.co/M05OJmmeeh
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) December 25, 2021
Thousands of people across England have lined up on Christmas Day to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as the omicron variant fuels a surge in infections. https://t.co/p5A0hC1AvT
— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) December 25, 2021
South Africans cling to Christmas cheer as Omicron spreads https://t.co/eeyqIl7Vqu pic.twitter.com/0rO0DaQpf2
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 24, 2021
Dominican Republic reports first case of COVID-19 Omicron variant https://t.co/7IFCVaphix pic.twitter.com/8RrP6lzo36
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 26, 2021
======
Some news this Christmas Eve: A coronavirus outbreak aboard the USS Milwaukee, whose entire crew was “100 percent immunized,” has forced the ship to remain in port after a scheduled stop in Cuba barely one week into its deployment, the Navy says. https://t.co/tQ680kyc3Q
— Andrew deGrandpré (@adegrandpre) December 25, 2021
h/t commentor Another Scott:
In Cape Girardeau County, the coroner hasn’t pronounced a single person dead of COVID-19 in 2021.
Wavis Jordan, a Republican who was elected last year to serve as coroner of the 80,000-person county, says his office “doesn’t do COVID deaths.” https://t.co/bepdIjnmQq
— maryb2004 (@maryb2004) December 23, 2021
Covid is surging in NYC’s homeless shelters, prompting advocates to ask the city to move people to hotels to keep the fast-moving variant from overwhelming shelters. Cases more than doubled from 82 to 187 in a wk among residents in the main shelter system https://t.co/CUtlTg7Kt6
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) December 24, 2021
Texas has recorded more COVID-19 deaths in 2021 than in the first year of the pandemic, even though vaccines have been available for all adults since March.
??@zachdespart
??@godovasquez
??https://t.co/BCmGlDO5yD pic.twitter.com/UgxfIpedca— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) December 23, 2021
.@AP investigative intern @roselyn_romero began investigating fake vaccination cards after hearing colleges would require proof.
What she found was a cottage industry set up to help people circumvent proof of COVID-19 vaccination rules. https://t.co/EQVJ92xDhy
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 25, 2021
This is ridiculous. Polio had a 99.9% survival rate. It was asymptomatic in 72% of cases and very mild in 24%. Why would we risk a vaccine over natural immunity??
(Sarcasm. But the numbers are true.)
— Sam Lord (@samjlord) December 25, 2021
It’s tough for @DougJBalloon to keep up, isn’t it? https://t.co/E2CYwwumRq
— Jerry Newmark (@jerryn13) December 25, 2021
West of the Rockies
The numbers (or vague reporting thereof), unfortunately, confuse some people. That US Navy ship, for instance… the basic fact sounds bad: everyone was vaccinated but the outbreak grounds the ship. Oh no! But is the grounding due to protocol or actual symptomatic people being unable to perform? Some readers (not here) might say, “Well, why should I get vaccinated since the vaccine obviously doesn’t work?”
OzarkHillbilly
Because, of course.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reports 2,778 new Covid-19 cases today in its media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 2,741,179 cases. It also reports 25 deaths as of midnight, for an adjusted cumulative total of 31,290 deaths – 1.14% of the cumulative reported total, 1.16% of resolved cases.
Based on cases reported yesterday, Malaysia’s nationwide Rt is at 0.88.
244 confirmed cases are in ICU, 101 of them on ventilators. Meanwhile, 3,539 more patients have recovered, for a cumulative total of 2,665,034 patients recovered – 97.2% of the cumulative reported total.
Two new clusters were reported today, for a cumulative total of 6,103 clusters. 218 clusters are currently active; 5,885 clusters are now inactive.
2,649 new cases today are local infections. 129 new cases today are imported.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 25,457 doses of vaccine on 25th December: 515 first doses, 1,244 second doses, and 23,698 booster doses. As of midnight, the cumulative total is 56,748,229 doses administered: 25,974,497 first doses, 25,580,473 second doses, and 5,389,370 booster doses. 79.5% of the population have received their first dose, 78.3% their second dose, and 16.5% their booster dose.
Baud
I’m trying to recall if the media has ever portrayed a GOP white house as “worried” about anything.
lowtechcyclist
This way of counting has been getting under my skin for awhile now. Comparisons between calendar 2020 and calendar 2021 counts don’t give an honest picture of what’s happening: there were zero Covid deaths in the U.S. in January and February 2020, while in January and February 2021 we were still very much in the throes of the horrible third wave of this plague, and not enough Americans had been vaccinated by then to meaningfully affect the numbers.
The implication is always that we’re doing even worse in 2021 despite the vaccine. That’s not the case; it really has cut into the death rate nationally. But the way to count is to have Covid Year 1 run from March 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021, and have Year 2 start on March 1, 2021.
True fact, though: while counting like this shows we’re doing better nationwide in Year 2, Texas really is doing worse. Per Worldometer, Texas has had 31,487 deaths so far in Year 2, but at this point in Year 1 they’d had only 27,154.
Florida is doing way worse in Year 2, despite DeathSantis’ best efforts to rig the numbers: 29,951 deaths so far versus 22,561 by this point a year ago.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Excellent point.
Cermet
I noticed West Virginia realized the CDC was way, way over counting the number of vaccinated and now submits accurate figures – so WV went from nearly leading all States in both partial and fully vaccinated, to now they are down where I always suspected they were. I was posting about those inflated numbers a week ago and wondering. Turns out the WV gov is honest and was not happy with the CDC creating those false numbers – now I wonder why the CDC did this?
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
I tend to think of TFG and TF3L* as oblivious to the worries of ordinary folk.
*this should be easy to figure out.
New Deal democrat
In South Africa, the Omicron wave went from onset to peak in about 30 days. Cases in the US are up 50% in the last 10 days. If we project that rate of increase over the next 20 days, that would give us an estimate of 400,000 cases a day by January 14, 30 days after the onset of the Omicron wave. (Personally I suspect this is going to prove a low estimate).
Trevor Bedford’s trendline projections estimate US cases today are roughly 130,000 Omicron and 60,000 Delta. Internationally his trendlines show Omicron knocking Delta down, but not out.
Deaths in South Africa declined yesterday at a level of about 4* their pre-Omicron rate. Deaths in the US have not started to rise meaningfully yet.
US statistics are going to be plagued by States’ idiosyncrasies in reporting, plus weekend and holiday distortions through the next several weeks. Good thing we’re not having an emergency or anything.
hells littlest angel
@West of the Rockies:
Curiously, nowhere does the article state that personnel were vaccinated — only “100% immunized,” whatever that means. “Some of the personnel who tested positive for the virus have displayed mild symptoms,” is as close as it gets to actual facts and figures.
Ken
So hypothetically, if someone had a rich uncle, they could visit Cape Girardeau County and smother the old man with a pillow, then talk about COVID symptoms when the coroner’s people showed up, and there’d be no investigation? Sweet.
Peale
@Ken: he was coughing and coughing while cleaning his gun. I begged him to stop. Then he coughed so hard he Shot himself in the back 5 times.
Geoduck
I admit, I didn’t know those Polio facts. Hadn’t ever thought about how deadly it actually was.
Wvng
The Sam.Lord tweet about polio vaccines generated a heated and outraged Twitter response by people who utterly failed to understand the point he clearly, and pointedly, was making. It turns out that a LOT of people just don’t get sarcasm, and a LOT of people are incapable of connecting dots. Which explains much.
YY_Sima Qian
On 12/25 China reported 158 new domestic confirmed (none previously asymptomatic) & 1 new domestic asymptomatic cases.
At Hulun Buir in Inner Mongolia “Autonomous” Region 38 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 185 active domestic confirmed cases remaining (182 at Manzhouli & 3 at New Barag Right Banner). 7 sub-districts are currently at High Risk. 2 townships & 2 sub-districts are currently at Medium Risk.
At Heilongjiang Province 2 domestic confirmed cases recovered & 4 domestic asymptomatic cases were released from isolation. There currently are 6 active domestic confirmed (all at Harbin) & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases (at Heihe) remaining. All areas in the province is now at Low Risk.
Shaanxi Province reported 157 new domestic confirmed cases (155 mild & 2 moderate). There are currently 499 active domestic confirmed cases (4 serious) in the province.
Yuncheng in Shanxi Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently is 1 active dome asymptomatic case remaining, a person recently arrived from Xi’an in Shaanxi.
At Shanghai Municipality here currently are 6 active domestic confirmed & 2 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining. 1 residential compound is currently at Medium Risk.
At Wuxi in Jiangsu Province there currently are 2 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining.
Zhejiang Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. 1 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 478 active domestic confirmed cases in the province.
At Tianjin Municipality there currently is 1 active confirmed case in the city, part of the transmission chain from Shaoxing in Zhenjiang.
At Suzhou in Anhui Province there currently is 1 active domestic confirmed case in the city, part of the transmission chain from Zhejiang. 1 village is currently at Medium Risk.
Guangxi “Autonomous” Region reported 1 new domestic confirmed & 1 new domestic asymptomatic cases, There currently are 12 active domestic confirmed & 6 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
Guangdong Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 28 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
At Chengdu in Sichuan Province there currently is 1 active domestic confirmed case in the city, a quarantine hotel worker.
Xiamen in Fujian Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently is 1 active domestic confirmed case remaining, a quarantine hotel worker.
At Dalian in Liaoning Province 5 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 3 active domestic confirmed cases remaining.
At Rizhao in Shandong Province 1 domestic asymptomatic case was released from isolation. there currently are 3 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining.
At Chongqing Municipality there currently are 2 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining.
Henan Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. 1 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 23 active domestic confirmed (21 at Zhengzhou & 2 at Zhoukou) & 2 active domestic asymptomatic cases (both at Zhoukou).
Yunnan Province did nor report any new domestic positive cases. 2 domestic asymptomatic cases were released from isolation. There currently are 28 active domestic confirmed & 14 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
Imported Cases
On 12/25, China reported 48 new imported confirmed cases (6 previously asymptomatic), 28 imported asymptomatic cases, 0 imported suspect cases:
Overall in China, 76 confirmed cases recovered (23 imported), 11 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation (8 imported) & 6 were reclassified as confirmed cases (all imported), & 2,439 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 2,011 active confirmed cases in the country (721 imported), 9 in serious condition (3 imported), 504 active asymptomatic cases (466 imported), 3 suspect cases (all imported). 54,407 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.
As of 12/25, 2,758.094M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 12.217M doses in the past 24 hrs.
On 12/26, Hong Kong reported 9 new positive cases, all imported (from Pakistan, Nigeria, South Africa & the US).
Wvng
@Geoduck: I was part of that cohort getting polio vaccines. Polio was very scary. One person in an iron lung is terrifying. Evrryone wanted to avoid that. I really would have thought that news of young men needing lung transplants because of covid would have galvanized a lot of people to get vaccinated, and yet here we are.
sdhays
That NYT headline is breathtakingly bad. I had to do a double take to make sure it wasn’t the pitchbot.
Chris T.
@OzarkHillbilly: Obviously Cape Girardeau County should just stop reporting any deaths, which will bring everyone back to life.
Feathers
@Wvng: When future generations do an analysis of what went wrong, patient privacy laws being used to block reporting, especially photos and video, of what was happening in the hospitals will be seen as a huge factor. I know that seeing the overwhelmed hospitals in Italy with the desperately ill filling the hallways made a huge impression on me. Yes, patient privacy is important, but in crisis’ it can have a high cost. I find the people most loud about its importance also refuse to acknowledge there is any cost.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Dodged a bullet yesterday. About two hours before the family Christmas dinner I get a phone call that my nephew and his fiance had been exposed at his fiances dinner to someone with Covid. So no family get together. The funny irony is my nephew is positively paranoid about Covid. But everyone involved is vaccinated, no one is showing symptoms, so it should be alright.
Peale
@Feathers: I’m going to be writing a series of blog posts on COVID nostalgia for a course I’m taking on media and popular culture, where I speculate about how this period will be “misremembered.” I think future historians will probably be cutting through a lot of ideals that made this a wonderful time. The liberal narrative is already set…we were all prepared to come together to help the frontliners and then the conservatives destroyed the consensus. The conservative narrative is also set. We were all minding our own freedom when jealous layabouts tried to take it away. But you’re right. There will be no images of patients involved because they largely disappeared from public consciousness. It’s like having a WWI nostalgia trend without any machine guns and corpses. Just heroic Hemingway types driving ambulances around France for no reason at all.
Nicole
Sigh. Christmas dinner last night with my family, and my brother, who I’m pretty sure hosted Christmas Eve dinner with his wife’s family, flat out refused to do a rapid test before coming down to have dinner with 3 elderly relatives in addition to the rest of us- he’s just over a “cold” that his son currently has. And was REALLY aggressive about his refusal, telling me we all needed to “calm down” over everything. I tried to stay as mild as I could in response (in the hopes he’d come around; we even have rapid tests here I offered him) but I’m positively stewing. He doesn’t get to tell me to calm down. He didn’t have Covid, he didn’t live through March-April 2020 in NYC, he didn’t watch his partner have to say goodbye to their father over Facetime because they couldn’t be with them while they died. And so he went unmasked through the visit, while half of us masked and my 11-year-old hid upstairs most of the visit to minimize exposure to someone in a closed space whose current status is unknown. I’m aware that even should he or his kid be carrying Covid it’s not likely to be serious for those of us under 60, but our mom is 73, my uncle is a cancer survivor and for FUCK’S SAKE IF YOU’RE SO SURE YOU ARE SAFE TO BE AROUND WHY WON’T YOU TAKE A FUCKING FREE RAPID TEST WE OFFERED YOU? Same for his wife and kid, both of whom also refused to test (well, I let the kid off the hook as he’s 12. BUT THEY BROUGHT HIM WITH AN ACTIVE ILLNESS OF SOME KIND).
This may have permanently changed my opinion of him. He was one of my favorite relatives prior to this. I’m really sad about this today. Anyway, just needed to vent.
opiejeanne
@lowtechcyclist: The first announced deaths in the US were February 16, 2020. There are some earlier deaths that were identified later as Covid-19.
opiejeanne
@opiejeanne: Ok, so it was only a “handful” of deaths compared to where we are now, but they were 4 miles from my house and we watched the infections blowing up all around us, and not just in nursing homes. Whole fire stations were out of commission because they were the first responders to the nursing home illness, seemingly healthy people walking into the ER with blood oxygen at 50% and dead within a couple of hours. That was in February, 2020.
The Moar You Know
@opiejeanne: Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island, died in late December 2019 of COVID. It was here a lot earlier than anyone realized.
opiejeanne
@The Moar You Know: I seem to remember that there were deaths at least as early as November 2019.
And as it’s getting light out at 7:39, I can see that the world is white. We got our Christmas snow a couple of days late, tried to hope it into snowing on Christmas Eve and failed. It’s coming down steadily, big flakes and lots of them. I probably won’t still think so by the end of March, but watching it snow is magical.
Fair Economist
@lowtechcyclist: Nice analysis, accurately reflect the situation.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@The Moar You Know:
Actually, according to Wikipedia she died in December of 2020
Anonymous At Work
Nit-pick about the Moscow Times article. It’s not that that Russians are refusing to vaccinate per se as much as they are refusing to trust Putin’s vaccine as legitimate.
Has it held up to any international scrutiny?
Ruckus
@Geoduck:
I was 5 when the polio vaccine came out. I knew how bad polio was. I know of 4 people within 5 miles of me growing up who had polio. One I know now, she lives in my complex, one I grew up with, both affected in one or both legs. Two were mothers of friends, both affected in the upper bodies, had iron lungs in their front rooms. (Those things were too big to do more than get them through the front doors, so that’s where they stayed.) That’s just one person’s experience as a very lucky observer. I’d bet good money that those 2 kids I knew spent most of their childhoods without mothers. At my 50th HS reunion we talked about this and everyone, and I mean everyone went through what I did, we caught all of the diseases that had no vaccines. Except for smallpox. We all saw what vaccines did for the world. And some of us actually paid attention. And as a side story, I spent 9 days in a hospital in boot camp from being inoculated for who knows what, they wouldn’t tell us. I’d still get inoculated for a new disease such as Covid without hesitation, because I’ve seen how much better life is for everyone, including myself.
Ruckus
@Peale:
How about pictures like the one from the Houston Chronicle above with the dead body wrapped in a body bag? There are photos like this in many places. Sure they don’t show the actual body but there have been many showing temporary morgues with lots of bodies in body bags, all lined up, or pictures of trenches with caskets in mass graves, or statistical charts showing the numbers of Covid dead per country, or state or… We have over 800,000 dead in this country, Russia has over 800,000 dead with a population of less than half ours. A nice chart showing the world wide statistics might be a good addition. Just suggestions, ignore me if they aren’t suitable.
Another Scott
@Anonymous At Work: My understanding is that the vaccine “works”, but:
Sorry, no linkies. Should be easy to find them though.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Nicole:
I’ve been thinking about this entire concept of people refusing Covid. Not just the vaccines but the basic facts about the disease. Or any disease when you come to think about it, I don’t know how old you are but when I was born there was only one vaccine – smallpox. Everyone knew about disease, not the actual details but we all knew that people died from them, and that we all got sick all the time. And I know that everyone in my circle knew this because we all talked about it at my 50th HS reunion 5 yrs ago. We talked about it because no matter what else we did or did not have in common, we all had illness and common diseases and not just most of us, all of us. We lived in a small town, most of us went through K-12 together. (Yes LA county, CA used to have small towns. Now the only way to know the town limits is the signs but still, back then it was obvious. My HS had been, before I attended, the HS for 3 towns. We had a dairy, with cows visible and detectable by smell next to my grammar school playground.) Most people much younger than I am missed a lot of that because vaccines for many of those illnesses we all got came along in fairly rapid fashion, chickenpox excepted. The concept that everyone got sick became less of an issue because of vaccines. If someone is under 50, or an idiot, they likely don’t know/remember all of this. It’s just not normal life any longer, at least in many countries.
LiminalOwl
@opiejeanne: An old friend of mine went to the ER on December 18, 2019 with what he was sure was pneumonia; he had been sick for a couple of weeks already. Doctors told him it was only asthma, but that night he was back, via ambulance, at the hospital. Where he died on January 2, 2020, after continued illness that baffled the docs because tests couldn’t identify the pathogen.
As soon as I read of Covid, I had suspicions, and I believe his widow agrees with me. But for the longest time, when I told this story, people said I was imagining things, because Covid “wasn’t in the US until February.”
dopey-o
I still remember a classmate from 4th grade with his obnoxious, uncomfortable leg braces. Big chunky shoe on his right foot, because polio had made one leg shorter. We had long conversations because we had to walk home so slowly.
But these mooks today, they know better. “No vax for you. Come back, 1 year. If you live.”
Nicole
@Ruckus: I think I was part of the first generation that did not get the smallpox vaccine. And you’re right, I think not having grown up with a knowledge of childhood illnesses makes a difference. I think it’s the reason so many right winger seniors I know are vaccinated; they can still remember polio. My brother is vaccinated though, so I don’t know what caused this knee-jerk reaction but man, it made me incredibly anxious. If he had just said “sure, we all tested negative” I would’ve believed him. But he was so cagey about it then blew up at me and it put me on high alert. Anyway, he stormed off home a day early today.