#COVID19 #VariantDashboard – #UnitedStates
BQ.1.1 vs XBB.1.5: Tug of War!
TOP lineages (#15DAYTRENDS):
21.9% BQ.1.1
21.7% XBB.1.5
6.3% BQ.1
3.2% XBB.1
2.5% BQ.1.2
2.4% BQ.1.1.5
2.4% BQ.1.3Tracker: https://t.co/C4MNBUx4a2
Updated: 01/17/20231/n pic.twitter.com/HpRa3IcvCd
— Raj Rajnarayanan (@RajlabN) January 18, 2023
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What lessons have we learned from the #Covid pandemic in the last 3 years? Global public health experts at the Nat'l Univ of Singapore name several:
1.) Need for global cooperation
2.) Trust
3.) Pre-emptive investment
4.) Commitment to equity https://t.co/c3hcGsDK4T— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) January 15, 2023
Up until the last minute before China relaxed three years of severe covid restrictions, officials and state media were hailing the country’s “unswerving” commitment to a strict containment strategy and the “significant advantages of our socialist system.”
That same system then witnessed a chaotic reopening, with the abrupt abandonment of lockdowns, mass testing, quarantines and contact tracing. Sick patients have since overwhelmed hospitals, and funeral homes and crematoriums have been mobbed, while relatives outside China scrambled to send basic medications that were suddenly nowhere to be found…
The sudden policy reversal in early December and lack of preparation in a country that for years marshaled huge amounts of resources and personnel to enforce covid rules on 1.4 billion people has baffled residents and public health experts.
“There was no plan. No steps. No contingency plans. When Singapore reopened, it was in four stages. We’ve done it in one go,” Wei Jianing, a researcher at the Counselor’s Office, an advisory body of the State Council, said in a speech at an online forum Dec. 24. His comments were later censored on Chinese platforms.
Facing economic and social pressures, as well as an omicron variant that was already breaching covid defenses, China’s leaders had little choice about relaxing restrictions, but a potent mix of factors, including President Xi Jinping’s highly centralized decision-making, the party’s total mobilization for “zero covid,” and confused messaging, resulted in a rushed and chaotic reopening…
In November, after almost three years of zero covid that paralyzed the economy, authorities moved toward a gradual reopening with a 20-point plan for “improving covid control” aimed at toning down the most extreme measures.
It should have been a good time for the transition. Xi, recently reanointed as leader of the Communist Party and the military at a key party congress, was at the pinnacle of his power.
But local governments were confused. Up until then, upholding zero covid had been their chief political task. Some cities loosened restrictions; others maintained them or tried to do both. As outbreaks of the omicron variant spread in major cities like Beijing and Guangzhou, authorities re-tightened covid measures…
On Dec. 7, following the protests, which authorities stamped out through detentions and arrests, Beijing released another set of guidelines for local governments, abolishing mandatory testing and personal health codes, which were used to track coronavirus test results and gain access to shops and other public buildings. The new policy was not meant to signal a complete reopening, according to a State Council spokesperson at a news conference, but that the government would “take small steps” at opening up.
Yet local governments, reading it as a sign from the central government to end zero covid, raced to implement the new policy. According to Li Zhuoran, a PhD candidate in China studies at Johns Hopkins University who interviewed officials from three localities, the rushed reopening did not come from Beijing but from local governments jumping the gun.
“This was a sort of chaos,” Li said, adding that local authorities saw only two options: remaining closed or opening up. When the central government announced the opening — even though it was envisioned as a gradual process — officials rushed to comply. “They didn’t want to be left behind.”…
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Latest #SARSCoV2 sequence data from #China resembles known circulating variants. When compared against the 14.6M genomes in @GISAID database, all closely resemble known globally circulating variants seen in different parts of the world between July&Dec. https://t.co/kOxRo7phCZ pic.twitter.com/w834R9yzTK
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) January 18, 2023
India:
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There are now 10 lab studies that compared the bivalent BA.5 with the original booster. Overall they demonstrate improved neutralizing antibodies to not only BA.5, but also XBB and other new variants
I've updated the summary of the lab and clinical data https://t.co/tR5S4BBaYb pic.twitter.com/J7RHbFPLUP— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 18, 2023
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The benefit of vaccination after Covid to prevent #LongCovid, a ~40% reduction, across multiple organ systems (including lung, neurologic, diabetes)https://t.co/mktVsYMe9o @JAMANetworkOpen pic.twitter.com/d1HuxaLDKm
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 18, 2023
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To mask or not to mask?
Dr @mvankerkhove and @DrMikeRyan explain ??#COVID19 pic.twitter.com/mNyGbrP61w— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 18, 2023
A long hunt for a #LongCovid validated treatment, for which there are none yet
A review of 388 registered clinical trials assessing 144 different interventions. Many candidates, as we recently reviewed, but trials are too small, equivocal https://t.co/TRg8r8o0C5 @CMIJournal pic.twitter.com/rMIrYedI3M— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 19, 2023
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Oxford researchers have shown that #COVID19 vaccinations protect against pregnancy complications.
The Omicron variant during pregnancy was linked to higher risks of maternal morbidity and pregnancy complications among symptomatic and unvaccinated women.https://t.co/e6Qz1rEuUV
— University of Oxford (@UniofOxford) January 18, 2023
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This is incorrect congressman. You may remember from medical school that masks reduce the spread of infections. In fact during COVID, masks have been shown to reduce the chance of infection by up to 83%. The better the mask, the better the protection. https://t.co/um0msLNnFh https://t.co/yvT5AA2HDo pic.twitter.com/0r101vifJ5
— Jonathan Reiner (@JReinerMD) January 17, 2023
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Reader Interactions
60Comments
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NotMax
Noting that reported COVID deaths worldwide on the cusp of totaling 7 million.
Actual numbers probably in the range of 30 to 50% higher.
New Deal democrat
Biobot updated yesterday, showing a continued decline in COVID nationwide to a level average for the last 9 months.All 4 regions participated, with the Northeast continuing to decline most sharply (but continuing to have the highest level on an absolute scale), and the Midwest only slightly. The West remained at lowest absolute level.
Confirmed cases nationwide have also continued to decline to 49,100, compared with their January 9 peak of 76,500, and their October low of 34,400. They confirm the Biobot data, as confirmed cases are highest in the Northeast and lowest in the West. They are declining in every region except the Midwest. Hospitalizations are down to 34,400 from their January 3 peak of 46,900, vs. their October low of 22,900. Deaths have climbed back to 569, just below their January 11 peak of 612.
Later this morning the CDC will update its variant proportions data, but it will almost be irrelevant, as the Holiday related winter peak is almost certainly behind us, having caused far fewer hospitalizations and deaths than in the previous two winters. This is what endemicity will look like; although it would be much better if we had a far better record of vaccination uptake. Via Eric Topol, there is more evidence that “hybrid immunity,” I.e., people who have been both vaccinated and infected, is the most robust of all conditions at lessening the chances of both future infections and hospitalizations:
https://mobile.twitter.com/BogochIsaac/status/1616076993724043265?cxt=HHwWgsDSydTduu0sAAAA
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reported 318 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, for a cumulative reported total of 5,033,943 cases. 317 of these new cases were local infections; one new case was imported. It also reported no deaths, for an adjusted cumulative total that remains at 36,923 deaths – 0.73% of the cumulative reported total, 0.73% of resolved cases.
27,255 Covid-19 tests were conducted on 18th January, with a positivity rate of 2.1%.
There were 10,377 active cases yesterday, 13 fewer than the day before. 398 were in hospital. 19 confirmed cases were in ICU; of these patients, 15 confirmed cases were on ventilators. Meanwhile, 331 more patients recovered, for a cumulative total of 4,986,643 patients recovered – 99.1% of the cumulative reported total.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 9,169 doses of vaccine on 19th January: 137 first doses, 120 second doses, 1,220 first booster doses, and 7,792 second booster doses. The cumulative total is 72,703,713 doses administered: 28,124,736 first doses, 27,536,120 second doses, 16,294,882 first booster doses, and 747,975 second booster doses. 86.1% of the population have received their first dose, 84.3% their second dose, 49.9% their first booster dose, and 2.3% their second booster dose.
NotMax
@New Deal democrat
Funny (not in a ha-ha sense), the source I periodically track is reporting in excess of 1300 U.S. deaths over the past 24 hours.
Matt McIrvin
Well, after 3 years, we all got COVID. I guess XBB.1.5 was the one with my name on it. I had the bivalent booster back in September but the antibodies from that were surely gone by now, so my susceptibility is not surprising; I’m hoping the long-term immunity from all those shots does me some good.
So far, it’s like a bad cold with ~1 day of a mild fever which seems to be gone at the moment. Pulse ox is fine. My right ear hurts. It seems to have started in the ears instead of the throat for me. No loss of taste or smell.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Feel better. The new strains are more easily spread but less severe in terms of symptoms.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I suspect that’s not so much the strain as the fact that almost everyone has some immunity by now, whether from infection, vaccination or both.
New Deal democrat
@NotMax: That 1300 is for 1 day. I report the weekly averages. There is a pattern every week of most deaths being *reported* by the States on Wed and Thurs.
Hope that helps.
YY_Sima Qian
On 1/19 the China National Health Commission provided a summary of the state of the exit tsunami in China as of 1/17:
When we visited two major hospitals in Wuhan on 1/18 for some paperwork, both were very quiet. When my wife’s grandmother had to visit a hospitals for coughing & low grade fever (likely some kind of viral or bacterial infection), she had no problem getting a bed. My father in-law reported that there were many empty beds available. Hospitals around China have now established out-patient clinics specifically for post-COVID-19 sequelae.
On 1/19, Hong Kong reported 4,015 new positive cases & 45 new deaths. There have been 13,010 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
On 1/19, Macau reported 2 new deaths. The territory has not published reports on new cases since 1/13 There have been 119 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
On 1/19, Taiwan added 18,399 new positive cases & 48 new deaths. There have been 15,977 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
Matt McIrvin
…Biobot numbers for the north side of metro Boston show a surprising second peak developing after the rapid drop-off from Christmas. I think that’s what bit us.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Wish your case remains mild, & a speedy recovery!
New Deal democrat
By the way, I believe Powell is almost certainly wrong about the effects of COVID deaths on the labor market.
Why? All those people who died were also *consumers* of goods and services. Their deaths mean they can’t produce, but they also can’t consume. The effect should be close to a wash. Especially since COVID deaths skew so heavily towards the elderly. If I recall correctly, about 2/3’s of deaths have been among seniors.
The way COVID probably *has* affected the labor force is via long COVID. There are millions of people with levels of disability from this, and are still consumers, but have a restricted ability to work.
Princess
I cannot believe that man was Obama’s doctor.
in other news my unvaxxed in-laws are through Covid, sort of. The aged parent spent several days in hospital with hypoactive delirium and she’s still semi-cons ious but they’ll tell you it’s anything but the Covid. My guess is her days are numbered and they’ll have killed her through neglect but they’ll never recognize that.
jonas
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t know if the boosters ever substantially reduced one’s *susceptibility* — they just prevent serious illness if you do happen to get it. Looks like it’s done its job so far.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: From the numbers I’ve seen, the boosters do cut down on susceptibility to infection, but that wanes over a few months as the antibodies subside. It’s just that it’s no guarantee, even right after the shot–these variants are extremely contagious, some of the most contagious viruses ever seen.
rikyrah
Thanks for the information..
It is good for people to finally acknowledge that the COVID DEAD were employed somewhere.
Next step.. acknowledge the effect of the LONG COVID DISABLED on the job market.. Those who can no longer work.
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
43 new cases on 01/17/22.
70 new cases on 01/18/22.
101 new cases on 01/19/22.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I think I may have a new rule for traveling to the US: expect to be exposed. Over the holiday I went to a funeral, and at a gathering of friends following the funeral I got exposed. (Luckily we dodged the bullet, based on tests taken several days later.) So … that’s something new to add to my packing list: half a dozen self-tests. In addition to enough FFP2/KN95 masks to last a week beyond my expected travel duration.
Luckily I can get both easily here.
Cameron
Waiting for the hammer to fall here in FL. Snowbird season is upon us, almost nobody wears a mask, guv and his pet SG claim vaccine is dangerous to young men, my fellow Olds don’t seem too entranced with the bivalent booster (had to beg LOML, who’s usually smart on such things, to get hers). Might as well get an N95 stapled onto my head…
lowtechcyclist
@JamesSurowiecki:
I’m sure the Covid deniers are hot on the trail of the real killer.
DrDaveChemist
@New Deal democrat:
There are also probably a significant number of folks who decided to retire earlier than they might have otherwise when the pandemic hit. Anecdotally, I have two friends in their early sixties who could still be working but decided that they didn’t need the hassles of commuting and spending their days on the job when they could be at home and pursuing other interests.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
This. Unfortunately our health care ‘system’ (have to use that word very loosely) is not particularly good at identifying and counting those people, let alone helping them.
OzarkHillbilly
What’s to brag about? The fact that I do more to protect your family than you? Hmmmm… putting it that way, maybe it is something to brag about.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: This is one of those things where you have to speak wingnut to even figure out what they’re saying.
The Republican party line is basically Ron DeSantis’s, that the vaccines have been proven to be worthless because vaccinated people got sick anyway, and clearly vaccine proponents were lying all along. Lahren is implying that even liberals know this now, kind of like the way fundamentalists know that atheists really believe in God and Jesus and are just pretending.
lowtechcyclist
@New Deal democrat:
I’m not so sure that it’s a wash. Two things come to mind:
1) Your productivity tends to gradually increase for most of your working life, but your consumption gradually decreases over most of that same span. And persons in the workforce dying of Covid (or getting disabled by it) are largely in the latter half of what would have been their working years. So we’re losing more productivity than consumption.
2) We’re in a global economy. When I buy something through Amazon, who the hell knows where it was made. The lost consumption due to American Covid deaths is still more here than elsewhere, but a lot of it is elsewhere. But the lost production due to American Covid deaths is all happening here.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: COVID mostly kills old people, and old people consume more than they produce–especially health care. BUT… COVID obviously creates massive demand for health care. Just not from dead people.
Matt McIrvin
(And that last observation reminds me of the reports from the early pandemic about how the ICUs were filling up with younger people. One of the things going on there was the grim fact that older patients were vacating beds by dying.)
WereBear
@rikyrah: Something tells me that despite this being so infamous and now being studied along with other post-viral syndromes which have been going on at least since the Fifties of last century…
What are they going to do about it?
Our track record with chronic illness isn’t good. Partly because we subject so much of the population to incredible stress, malnutrition from living in food deserts, and lack of accessible nature and recreation.
Are they battling the usual disability bullshit even so? I’m sure they are.
WereBear
Exactly. I was laid off from an industry I knew would take at least a couple of years to get back up. I was already aware of the employment chances of the over-50s in “normal” circumstances.
My doctor said he’d fight for me to get disability, but I know that takes a ridiculous amount of stress and time, with no income. So early retirement it will be: that was instant and online.
And it was the same amount of income. I was lucky in that timing, if not anything else. :)
New Deal democrat
The CDC has now updated its variant information. XBB&.1.5 now make up a little over 50% of cases nationwide, varying from over 85% in the Northeast to only 12% in the Northern Plains. It is also a plurality in the Southeast and Central South. BQ.1&.1.1 makes up 40% of cases nationwide, is close to 50% throughout the West and about 40% in the Southeast and Central South. The remaining 8% of cases nationwide are everything else.
New Deal democrat
@lowtechcyclist: What Matt McIrvin said.
Also, people retiring early due to disability goes to my second point, because, well, they’re not dead!
soapdish
Has anyone seen any info on if/when we should be getting a second bivalent shot?
WereBear
I am very pleased with the masks my neighbor and I got with a bulk buy from greensupply.com.
All sorts of wonderful colors and the most comfortable. They have ear loops, my favorite kind.
I still have my cloth mask with the pocket for my disposable paper ones, and I do double up. But switched since this shape hooks under my chin securly. This lets me talk without the mask crawling all over my face.
I leave them all over like reading glasses since I always wear one as a default. I might take it off during out slowest seasons, when the restaurants empty out, but ironically we suspend this during the holidays.
YY_Sima Qian
I find almost all commentaries on China’s exit from “Dynamic Zero COVID” fail to account for the transmission dynamics of the virus.
Here are the things that the CCP regime could have done to be better prepared for the eventual exit:
Doing the above could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives (my WAG) through the exit tsunami, that is solely on the CCP regime, & IMHO that is where criticism & condemnation should be focused. The reason I put access to BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine last is because Hong Kong’s data has already shown 3 doses of Sinovac is equally effective as 3 doses of BioNTech in preventing hospitalization among the > 80 y.o. cohort. Data out of Singapore showed a bigger gap (4 doses of Sinovac equals 3 doses of BioNTech), but the Singapore study fails to disaggregate by age group, & there it was mostly the elderly that took the Sinovac vaccine (being skeptical of the new mRNA technology). The vaccine skeptics in China would have been even more hesitant w/ the mRNA vaccines, given their worse safety profile (which is not to say they are unsafe) compared to the inactivated whole virion vaccines. Those who refused domestic vaccines in order to wait for the Western mRNA vaccines was a very rare breed. Access to the BioNTech mRNA vaccine would have helped at the margins, but would not have been a game changer.
The main tools used by the Chinese government to contain Omicron outbreaks have been regular mass screening, rapid & thorough contact tracing, rigorous isolation of positive cases & quarantine of close contacts, health codes restricting intra-regional movement, & large scale soft/hard lockdowns & restrictions on inter-regional movement as back stop. None of the tools are viable once prevalence in the community reaches a certain level, indeed they become a waste of resources at that point.
There are aspects that were decided by the viral variants (Omicron BA.5.2 & BF.7) & their incredibly rapid transmission dynamic (R0 estimated to be 10 -18, Rt in urban China certainly very high due to the density & the prevalence of multigenerational dwellings), that there is little the Chinese government could have done to mitigate:
When China started to open in early Dec., schools were still in remote learning, masking mandates remained in place, WFH encourage, many manufacturings were operating in “closed loops”, & people largely stayed home as cases surged. Interregional travel complete collapsed. Mobility indices in Chinese cities post-opening in early to mid-Dec. were lower than during mid- to late Nov. under the widespread soft lockdowns. None of that stopped the BA.5.2/BF.7 from sweeping across the population of any given city in ~ 2 – 3 weeks. Not sure what the Chinese government could have done to mitigation transmission, short of continuing w/ soft lock downs, which was clearly untenable, too many among the population were no longer willing to be compliant.
The Chinese government could not reasonably have expanded ICUs to an adequate extent to accommodate the exit tsunami, in 1 year or 3, since modeling suggested that peak ICU demand would be ~ 10 – 16X of China’s 2019 ICU capacity (5 – 8X of China’s Dec. 2022 capacity). This is also driven by the transmission dynamic of the virus (BA.5.2/BF.7 causing very short but incredibly intense peaks). There is no universe where China (or any other country) could have increased ICU capacity by 10 – 16X in 3 years; the physical space & the equipment would have been mission impossible, the attendant staff even more so. As it was, China managed to double general ICU capacity from 2019 to Dec. 2022, & even managed to surge another 50% in early Jan. (by temporarily converting specialize ICUs), I actually considering it a real unheralded accomplishment, but that meant ICU demand still outstripped supply by 3 – 5X at peak.
There are things that the Chinese government could & should have done to be more transparent w/ data through the exit tsunami, failure to do so is probably due to a combination of bureaucratic incompetence & intentional obfuscation:
Even if China had prepared as well as Singapore, there would be ~ 300K deaths from the 1st couple of waves post-exit. Doing as well as Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia & South Korea, there would be ~ 500 – 700K deaths from the 1st couple of waves post-exit. It was unlikely that China could have performed as well as these other former Zero COVID countries, due to lower vaccine uptake among the most vulnerable (at least compared to Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand & Australia, China in late Nov. 2022 was probably fairly close to Taiwan in Apr. 2022), & lower & less evenly distributed medical resources. My WAG is ~ 1M excess deaths in Mainland China by Apr.
Criticism toward the CCP regime, whether from Western MSM or the Western China Watching community, have largely focused on the greatly stressed health care system & the huge wave of deaths, which was baked in & impossible (IMO) to prevent upon exit from DZC, or failure to import Western mRNA vaccines, which IMHO is the least impactful among the things the Chinese government could have & should have done to reduce severe outcomes & deaths. As is so often the case, the CCP regime’s critics are myopically focusing their fire on the wrong things, while overlooking the regime’s actual crimes & failures.
Matt McIrvin
@soapdish: In my personal sick-with-COVID opinion, the time when we SHOULD have gotten a second bivalent shot is in the past. But I don’t make the rules.
Matt McIrvin
I’ve been speculating about why Paxlovid isn’t more widely prescribed than it is, and actually getting COVID makes me realize that one of the big problems I hadn’t appreciated is just that short time window for using it. It can be hard to even get to talk to a doctor within 5 days unless it’s a grave emergency–if you’re not lucky enough to get sick on Monday, you’ve got a weekend falling into that interval somewhere.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: COVID made all the cracks in our system meet.
JM
@soapdish What I’ve read says you are eligible for a booster after 2 months of previous vaccine. My wife and I both got a second bivalent booster a couple weeks ago after getting one in Sept. It does seem weird that it isn’t advertised more obviously. But had no issue with insurance and was no cost at Walgreens.
rikyrah
@WereBear:
thanks for the link to the site.
I have masks everywhere: pockets, purse, bag, desk at work.
StringOnAStick
@DrDaveChemist: I am one of those who chose to retire early rather than run the gauntlet in dentistry; my husband retired early too. Everyone I used to work with at my old dental office has had Covid at least twice, a couple have had it 3 times. I’m glad I left.
Matt McIrvin
@JM: My reading of this
https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/moderna-covid-19-vaccines
is that the FDA only ever authorized a single dose of the bivalent booster–you can get it 2 months after your last dose of the monovalent booster or the primary vaccination series. But if you have no trouble getting additional doses, that’s actually good news.
Bill Arnold
@New Deal democrat:
Did you read the axios piece? It’s basically powerpoint style. Early retirement was the biggest effect.
Miss Bianca
@YY_Sima Qian: I really hope you’re planning to publish this comment somewhere other than just this “Upper 10,000” blog.
West of the Rockies
Late to the thread, but does anyone know: are those dying of Covid in the US mostly the unvaccinated?
Nicole
@Matt McIrvin: I’m glad it’s been mild so far. I had a lot of congestion with my 2nd bout (last May) that lingered for months afterwards; my eustachian tubes popped every time I yawned. Annoying, but a doctor visit verified there was nothing wrong with my hearing, which was my big worry.
Warm compresses for an earache feel nice, in my humble opinion. Wishing you a super speedy recovery!
(If it’s any consolation, even a more recent booster might not have made a difference; my second bout came 5 weeks after a booster, so I should have been right in the antibody sweet spot.)
Nicole
@West of the Rockies: At this point, no, I think the majority dying from Covid have received at least their first series of shots, but that’s not any indication that the vaccines aren’t effective; it’s an indication that the majority of the nation has received at least their first series of shots. It’s a pretty small pool of completely unvaccinated at this point, and a lot of them have already had at least one bout of Covid, so there’s some immunity even among the unvaxxed. That said, your own individual risk of a serious case is much less if you are up-to-date on your shots.
What it does show is that catching Covid is still a risk for elderly and immune-compromised, even when they are vaccinated, so mask-wearing is probably something that should be pushed again, even though it makes people mad.
West of the Rockies
@Nicole:
Thank you for the info. Me and mine are fully vaxxed and boosted (and have had bouts). I live, however, in an under-vaccinated red county in northern California, so perhaps it’s time to again mask up. 😷
What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?
@Matt McIrvin: My wife and son tested positive for Covid on Monday morning. My son tested negative yesterday but my wife is still testing positive today. We’ve been testing me and my 82 year old mother in law daily also and so far neither one of us has tested positive, which hopefully means we aren’t going to get it this go round at least. My son (adopted from South Africa last year) picked it up at school, we think and had symptoms for a couple of days before we tested…he’s had some congestion and coughing on and off since we came home from SA which we think is allergy related, so we didn’t pick up on the fact that he was actually sick right away (didn’t help that his energy level seemed normal for the duration). My wife’s case seems mild and she’s feeling better day by day. Not sure how much longer I should keep testing myself – I’m assuming I’d be testing positive by now if I’d gotten it and neither one of them is likely to be infectious at this point.
TKH
@West of the Rockies: According to Daniel Griffin on This Week in Virology, the answer is NO. Most people who die in the giant NY hospital system he is the Head ID doc in are vaccinated, but have upwards of one comorbidity and often many. Many of those could be saved if they got Paxlovid in a timely fashion, but there is severe underprescription going on.
For all of us: Have a plan for when you get infected on how you get tested and on Pax. Make sure your doctor is up on current treatment guidelines more so than his golf game. If your doctor does not “believe” in Pax it’s time for a new doctor!
Bill Arnold
@lowtechcyclist:
The real puzzle for them is 2020. I see basically (3) choices (1) Time Travelling Vaccines retroactively causing “vaccine injury”, i.e. large scale blatant causality violation, (2) there was no COVID-19-caused mortality in 2020, or ever, (3) both 1 and 2.
Any more?
I remember the various news reports and anecdotes in spring 2020 of people in cities with COVID-19 waves dying mysteriously at home of heart attacks and strokes. Of doctors alarmed about the weird blood clots that they were seeing in COVID-19 patients. Etc.
Matt McIrvin
@Nicole: The maddening thing is that while most Americans are “fully vaccinated”, only a smallish minority are up-to-date on shots. Less than a quarter of Americans got the bivalent booster last fall, and it’s only 27% even in Massachusetts. I’d guess the overwhelming majority of people who are dying did not get a booster last fall. But this virus is rough on seniors even if they are up-to-date.
I scored a telemedicine appointment today with a nurse who’s seen me a few times before, and he said it didn’t seem like my case merited Paxlovid, chances of progression to something serious were very low. So that’s that, I guess.
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Arnold: I think mostly they pick (2) with a side order of conspiracy theory–people were dying “with COVID” not “of COVID” and the whole medical establishment was faking numbers and misattributing deaths to get money, etc., etc.
Of course the overwhelming evidence is that it’s the other way around–COVID deaths were recorded as other things in places where that had become politically expedient. There were counties where no one ever died of COVID.
Matt McIrvin
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?: My daughter tested positive on Monday, has had nasty cold-like symptoms and some fever since then. My wife and I wondered why weren’t sick for a few days, then we got sick. I tested myself on Wednesday and Thursday, and it was remarkable how in 24 hours I went from a completely negative antigen test to one that was so emphatically positive that the test stripe popped up a minute or two into the 20-minute wait, before the control stripe even appeared.
Matt McIrvin
See, that’s me under normal conditions. I might have detected COVID symptoms earlier if I didn’t have some of them basically all the time.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Matt McIrvin: Well I guess maybe I’m not entirely out of the woods yet, maybe. I plan to keep testing for the next few days just to be sure.
CaseyL
Well, I have up until now received all six of my shots via Employee Health here at UW Medicine. But it’s 4 months since my last booster, so I took a chance to schedule another one at a pharmacy nearby, and the appointment went through with no trouble.
So I guess I’ll be getting another shot just because I can..
(…and because I’m 65+ and am a diabetic.)
rikyrah
@TKH:
I know that’s right.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
I wish a muthaphucka would tell me that my case didn’t merit Pax.
Phuck Outta Here!
pasiphae
@YY_Sima Qian: “The reason I put access to BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine last is because Hong Kong’s data has already shown 3 doses of Sinovac is equally effective as 3 doses of BioNTech in preventing hospitalization among the > 80 y.o. cohort. Data out of Singapore showed a bigger gap (4 doses of Sinovac equals 3 doses of BioNTech), but the Singapore study fails to disaggregate by age group, & there it was mostly the elderly that took the Sinovac vaccine (being skeptical of the new mRNA technology). ”
Your post is really interesting to me. I have friends in China, and had no idea that the Sinovac was this effective. Thanks too for the rest of your comment.
YY_Sima Qian
@pasiphae: Hong Kong & Singapore data are based Omicron infection. The gap was huge Wuhan Variant or Alpha, & possibly Delta. The mRNA vaccines had something like 70 – 80% neutralizing efficacy against the earlier variants, ~ 95% efficacy against symptomatic infection. The Chinese inactivated whole virion vaccines had ~ 75 – 85% efficacy against symptomatic infection, & neutralizing efficacy < 50%. (There was a commonly cited Stage III trial in Brazil that produced ~ 50% efficacy against symptomatic infection for the Sinovac, but that trial was done on medical staff & the trial had lower threshold for “symptomatic” than other trials around the world.) 1 shot of BioNTech or Moderna mRNA was as good as, if not better than, a full course of 2 shots of the inactivated whole virion vaccines, & 1 shot of the inactivated whole virion vaccines had no discernible efficacy against symptomatic infection (might have had some effect against severe outcomes).
If the exit wave in China had been the Wuhan/Alpha/Delta Variant, I would have placed access to the BioNTech mRNA vaccine 2nd in importance. Then again, against the Wuhan/Alpha/Delta Variants China could have sustained “Dynamic Zero COVID” almost indefinitely at acceptable socio-economic cost.
IMO the world missed a huge opportunity in 2020 – 2021. The mRNA vaccines had miracle like performance against the then prevalent variants. If most of the world had only maintained significant NPIs until a worldwide effort to roll out the mRNA vaccines, we could have suppressed COVID-19 to very low levels. IP would have had to be waived & licensed manufacturing setup in as many places as possible. The governments of the world could have pooled funding under UN auspices to suitably compensate BioNTech/Pfizer & Moderna. Cold chain transportation & storage was solvable if there was enough political will (including will to collaborate).
Instead, the developed West had priority access to mRNA vaccines for a long time. Vaccine CT became weaponized in service of great power competition, which then increased vaccine skepticism everywhere. It is not a coincidence that both Beta & Omicron came from the underserved Southern Africa, w/ their high percentage of immunocompromised population (due to the AIDS epidemic). Eventually SARS-CoV-2 evolved to Omicron, which in turn became a gumbo soup of rapidly evolving strains, & the mRNA vaccines (even bivalent ones) were no longer game changing weapons. Now the world has to live w/ endemicity at a high level, & even mRNA development remaining a step behind viral evolution.