Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday unanimously voted in favor of using the same coronavirus strain for the initial COVID-19 vaccine doses and the boosters, to simplify the vaccination regimen in the United States. https://t.co/Hrxq2VlTpd
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) January 27, 2023
True numbers of #COVID19 cases in USA are GROSSLY understated due to home testing — perhaps by 80%https://t.co/0CNMo9yVQi
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) January 26, 2023
Good to see: the US has passed through its peak of the XBB.1.5 wave with a >30% reduction of hospitalizations in the past 2 weekshttps://t.co/OYKQV32gvz
This reflects a high level of infection and vaccine-induced immunity relative to a troublesome variant pic.twitter.com/j21ful3M9i— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 25, 2023
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Trust me, older people are massively dying in China, especially in rural areas. Nobody knows how this most populous country and world's second largest economy is really doing, not even that guy in Beijing, because nobody dares to tell him the truth.https://t.co/Yg7WNNVqQD
— Yaqiu Wang 王亚秋 (@Yaqiu) January 25, 2023
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North Korea, back in pandemic news…
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SARS-CoV-2 variant update for the United Kingdom:
XBB.1.5 "Kraken" lineage (9%) is rising rapidly, challenging the incumbents CH.1.1 "Orthrus" (20%) and BQ.1.1 "Cerebrus" (16%).
Growth predicts XBB.1.5 taking over in late Jan. Faster in Scotland.https://t.co/jgbM0TG87f pic.twitter.com/eSpYB1b3EF
— Mike Honey (@Mike_Honey_) January 25, 2023
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CDC: Bivalent #Covid vaccination stops illness caused by the Kraken variant, XBB.1.5. Both Pfizer & Moderna produce bivalent Covid booster vaccines. Pfizer lab data show better antibody neutralization of the latest variants after the bivalent shot https://t.co/DZEGsWCPZ5
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) January 26, 2023
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A major study finds that having COVID-19 makes you much likelier to suffer over twenty different heart conditions, including heart failure and strokes.
“It doesn’t matter if you are young or old, diabetic or not, obese or not, if you smoked, or didn’t.” https://t.co/5eAF4ym2WH
— Shailja Patel (@shailjapatel) January 24, 2023
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Real airborne mitigation guidance from an engineering org in a layperson-friendly format, nicely done👍🏻
Via @OhCasavant https://t.co/IG2Q2YQK90
— Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 (@RealSexyCyborg) January 26, 2023
From the .pdf:
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Vaccination with booster was associated with nearly half the frequency of #LongCovid compared with unvaccinated or 2-shots, without a booster pic.twitter.com/9TLe76NNKJ
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 26, 2023
Some people are conspiracy junkies…
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… while others, like Emerald Robinson, are grifters.
Antivaxxers are convinced Damar Hamlin is being hidden away by Pfizer, and most believe recent public appearances by him are actually a body double.
They're demanding he personally reassure them with a video that he's not being played by an actor.
I'm serious, by the way. pic.twitter.com/QnNxgzPGjw
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) January 25, 2023
You probably know everything in the argument below, but remember: Sharing is caring!
On conspiracy theories pic.twitter.com/iF6IWVlE8h
— ًً (@politicalplayer) January 25, 2023
On The Road – Steve from Mendocino – French Basque Country #7Reader Interactions
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NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
73 new cases on 01/24/22.
99 new cases on 01/25/22.
114 new cases on 01/26/22.
New Deal democrat
Biobot updated yesterday, showing small to moderate declines nationwide and in all four regions. With the exception of the Northeast, they are at close to average levels for the last nine months.
Confirmed cases have also continued to decline to 41,500, a level lower than average for the last 9 months. The decline includes all four regions. Because home testing has been rampant for the last year, not just the trend but also the level is also probably comparable for that time period. The jurisdictions with the highest number are all include NY, NJ, southern New England, several States in the Southeast, and PR, where XBB has been most prevalent. The States with the lowest number are the northern Mountain and Great Plains States, where XBB has been least prevalent.
Hospitalizations have also continued to decline sharply, now at 30,200. This is still a little above average for the last nine months. Deaths have declined to 526, after making a nine month high of 626 only two days ago. Any number over 500 is high for the last nine months.
The CDC will update its variant prevalence data later this morning, but it almost won’t matter. The population has been so thoroughly exposed to infection and vaccination that even XBB couldn’t create a wave as big as last summer’s BA.2.12.1, let alone Omicron or Delta. This is what endemicity will be like (but could be much less problematic if older people were completely vaxxed and boosted).
Baud
Hmm.
Lapassionara
Can someone explain the Damar Hamlin body double thing to me? I have no idea why this could have occurred to someone.
New Deal democrat
@Baud: I think they should demand that he personally come over and tackle them into a bloody pulp.
eclare
Trae Crowder is great. I didn’t realize the rumor going around was that the NFL was using a body double for Damar. The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Jesse
With testing down radically in many places in the world, for several months now, I wonder why bother publishing some of these numbers today. 120 cases in India, a country of more than a billion people? That’s the same as in Monoe county, NY. Who believes that?
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reported 172 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, for a cumulative reported total of 5,035,377 cases. 171 of these new cases were local infections; one new case was imported. It also reported three deaths, for an adjusted cumulative total of 36,936 deaths – 0.73% of the cumulative reported total, 0.73% of resolved cases.
11,858 Covid-19 tests were conducted yesterday, with a positivity rate of 1.0%.
There were 9,627 active cases yesterday, 156 fewer than the day before. 369 were in hospital. 13 confirmed cases were in ICU; of these patients, 10 confirmed cases were on ventilators. Meanwhile, 325 more patients recovered, for a cumulative total of 4,988,814 patients recovered – 99.1% of the cumulative reported total.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 5,074 doses of vaccine on 26th January: 84 first doses, 80 second doses, 740 first booster doses, and 4,170 second booster doses. The cumulative total is 72,732,083 doses administered: 28,125,601 first doses, 27,537,046 second doses, 16,299,287 first booster doses, and 770,149 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 2.4% their second booster dose.
Amir Khalid
@Lapassionara:
There may be jackals old enough to remember the “Paul is dead” meme from the late 1960s. This looks similar.
Matt McIrvin
@Jesse: I’ve regarded case numbers in the US as worthless for some time. You can only really do long-term comparisons using things like wastewater counts, deaths and hospital admissions.
Matt McIrvin
Using the same vaccine for initial shots and boosters makes sense. In my very nonexpert opinion, though, it seems to me that if they want to conserve stocks when they switch from one vaccine variant to another, it’d make more sense to do the reverse of what they did with the bivalent booster: START using the new vaccine for initial shots, and use the older version for boosters. That would minimize the effect of immune imprinting, where the immune system preferentially reacts to neutralize the version it was exposed to first.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@New Deal democrat: Definitely down for some Office Linebacker action on those fools.
Matt McIrvin
My recovery is still coming along–I feel fine except for some lingering congestion and lots of mucus in my nose and throat, and my voice still has a Little Rascals Froggy quality. Going by CDC recommendations I should be able to be out and about with a mask over the weekend.
I didn’t lose smell and taste but there is a mild alteration in my sense of taste: anything sweet has a sort of malted quality to it. That may just be from the persistent crud in my nose. It’s not unpleasant.
eclare
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️:
That was great! Never heard of it.
Kay
Yes, they sure are. This is the best thing I’ve ever read on conspiracy theories – Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth by Elizabeth Williamson
It’s about Sandy Hook but it applies to all of them, I think. You can’t respond to them. All responding/explaining does is increase their numbers and make the adherents to the theory more obsessive and abusive.
lowtechcyclist
@Jesse:
Nobody, I’d hope, because that’s just plain impossible. Hell, a mere 12,000 cases would probably be impossible in a nation with 1.4 billion people.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Ah yes, I remember it well.
lowtechcyclist
@Amir Khalid:
Turn me on, dead man!
Baud
@Kay:
Makes sense, but it’s hard for liberals to not respond to things.
Baud
RIP Paul McCartney. Live and let die, one last time.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah.
I wouldn’t even know where to go to get an “official” COVID test these days. I used to get updates from the County Health Department every day.
Barbara
“The current Beyonce of the basement set.” That’s great.
Kay
@Baud:
There’s a zombie-like quality to them. They just keep coming.
One of the Sandy Hook fathers was a sporadic Alex Jones – Alex Jones curious- listener prior to the mass murder so believed he could reach them. Persuade them. His ideological connection to them didn’t matter at all. It made them more suspicious.
OzarkHillbilly
Breaking news: A whole lot of people are truly moronic.
Baud
@Kay: In my own non-expert opinion, the key is to talk about them but not talk to them. It’s a little like how scientists dealt with the “creation science” BS. Explain the science to ordinary people, but don’t debate the fake science people as if their ideas are worthy of it.
Patricia Kayden
It’s good to see that BJ is still doing updates on COVID. We are still going through a pandemic. It is far from over.
Ken
So when we ran out of Greek letters, we switched to Greek monsters? I don’t recall an announcement.
kalakal
@Matt McIrvin: Good to hear you’re still progressing in the right direction
kalakal
@Ken: When they start using Linear B you know it’s trouble
raven
I have no idea what to do with all this information? I went to LA for the Natty, masked in the airport about not on the plane and I tested negative.
Princess
The story about Long Covid and heart disease is interesting but I don’t know what to do with an observational study that basically only studies white men in this day and age. Also, a huge increase in a tiny risk is still a tiny risk.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@eclare: Oh yeah!! He was all over the place for a hot minute.
Kay
@Baud:
Oh, that’s good. Now that you say it I realize that’s how the author of the book handled it.
Scout211
A recent law passed in California that was designed to punish doctors who spread misinformation about COVID-19. Wednesday a Judge put a hold on the law while several doctors have sued the state.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I think case numbers have never been that great, because there are so many asymptomatic cases. I’m going to keep beating the drum for wastewater testing, because it doesn’t rely on anyone doing anything other than using the bathroom. In my city it probably even picks up all the surrounding smaller towns, because the majority of those people work in my city during the week.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Baud:
Goddammit, Baud, I fell for it and had to go check BBC, CNN, and Reuters before I realized you were joking.
May your prayers be answered and may you find yourself nominated in 2024.
On the Bloom County Meadow Party ticket.
For Vice-President.
:P
Wapiti
My dad is in a nursing home after a fall; of course his new roommate brought in the covid. So dad gets moved while they test him and wait for symptoms, if any. Some of my sibs have had the virus, and are not pleased with the exposure risk and the chance of long covid or the increased risk of heart issues.
Going to the hospital is a risk; I think it was that way before covid, too.
Baud
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Always read the whole thread first.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: You can see it just by looking at this winter’s wave. Going by case counts, the 2022-23 COVID wave hardly even existed. It was a tiny blip. Going by hospital admissions, it was huge, about half as big as the 2021-22 Omicron wave (though I suspect that ratio is slightly exaggerated by the exhaustion of hospital capacity in 2021-22). By wastewater, it was maybe a quarter the size of the 2021-22 wave, which is still considerable.
The best hypothesis that fits the facts is that the official case counts are bad numbers and are not getting most cases. You can also see that from the rates of test positivity, which are quite high, implying that people are not getting tested unless they feel sick.
YY_Sima Qian
On 1/25 the China CDC provided a summary of state of the exit tsunami in China as of 1/23:
A big surprise is that 150M people had done PCR tests as late as 12/9. Another is that on 12/19 1.89M had bothered to upload their RAT results onto an online system, possibly due to workplace requirement. As both the populations taking PCRs & uploading RAT tests post-opening are probably not random samples representative of the overall population, the numbers should not be taken at face value, though trends may still be instructive. In addition, the China National Health Commission had been reporting daily increased in the mid- to high thousands for confirmed cases throughout Dec. (it had stopped reporting asymptomatic cases), but now the China CDC is reporting they were receiving far larger number of positive PCR/RAT results through the system, & even that number is a significant undercount compared to actual infection (because the vast majority of people did not bother w/ PCRs, & most who took RATs never bothered to upload the results). The deaths remain from hospitals only, thus severely undercount compared to reality. The trend may still be instructive. If anything, one might expect the drop off in COVID-19 related deaths at hospitals to be slower than the actual curve. As the infection & hospitalization tsunami recedes, & the health care system not as overwhelmed, an increasing percentage of COVID-19 cases would become hospitalized & die.
Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macau do not appear to be publishing daily data dumps, so I am using data from Worldometer.
On 1/26, Hong Kong reported 2,401 new positive cases & 28 new deaths. There have been 13,258 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
On 1/26, Macau reported 3 new positive cases & 2 new deaths. There have been 120 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
On 1/26, Taiwan added 19,142 new positive cases & 21 new deaths. There have been 16,189 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
Soprano2
@Lapassionara: I think it comes from the same place as the “crisis actor” allegations. It’s insane is what it is.
Matt McIrvin
@Wapiti: In hindsight I’m amazed that I managed to get both a colonosopy and a total knee replacement done in February 2021 without catching Covid in the hospital. The protocols they were using felt patently inadequate to control infection, and I was not yet vacccinated–they were rationing the stocks and none of this made me eligible for a shot. But that was still the era of original wild-type Covid and Alpha, which were much less contagious than today’s Omicron-derived variants.
Obvious Russian Troll
@Lapassionara:
For a normal person, the fact that Damar Hamlin is alive would be an indication that just maybe the COVID vaccine did not kill him. These people can’t admit they were wrong, so they have to explain away the evidence somehow. Clones are an old standby dating back at least to the sixties, as Amir Khalid pointed out.
It’s what happens when you start out with a position (“COVID vaccines are evil!”) and try to fit everything you see to support it.
At this point, poor Hilary Clinton has been executed and replaced by a clone thousands of times.
Chris T.
@Ken: Presumable “Cerebrus” is a typo for “Cerberus”, but if it were properly Greek, that would be “kerberos” (my Greek is weak even if I could type it without typos with the font selector thingy, so I won’t attempt to write it properly as κε…οσ).
So… Latin-ized Greek monsters?
Anne Laurie
I’m assuming the study spun off the tiny percentage of young men who got (& recovered from) myocarditis after getting vaxxed. The Nature article says that, nope, getting the disease is *still* way more risky than getting a booster.
Also suspect the news is being boosted, right now, because the conspiracy-of-the-moment (as noted at the end of my post) is that Damar Hamlin ‘died’ from heart failure because he was vaccinated, not because of commotio cordis. Advanced conspiracists claim Hamlin didn’t even have to be vaxxed himself — just being in contact with vaccinated individuals who ‘shed vaxx particles’ is potentially deadly.
That’s what Silk claims killed her sister Diamond — not chronic high blood pressure, but ‘particles’ from us impure science-y persons.
Hand to goddess, they call themselves ‘purebloods’, as though that term didn’t have a malign history even Harry Potter readers could understand!
Matt McIrvin
@Lapassionara: QAnon was also full of claims that various people were really dead or imprisoned and had been replaced by doubles, possibly vat-grown clones. I think a lot of people just have a need to live in an exciting world of fantasy, and to be possessors of important secret knowledge. The more outrageous and implausible the story is, the better it works as fantasy to such people. It’s like cosplaying as a superhero.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Ha! I recall the quaint days when Alpha was considered scarily transmissive…
Matt McIrvin
@Anne Laurie:
That always struck me as a particularly blatant example of the “no, YOU” move that these people do all the time. “I’m not promoting a deadly contagious pandemic, YOU’RE the one shedding a deadly contagious vaccine!”
Some of the early polio vaccines that used live attenuated virus actually were mildly contagious, and doctors actually saw the resulting “contact immunity” as a public-health side benefit. But, of course, that can’t happen if the vaccine isn’t even made from a virus, let alone a live one that is capable of reproducing.
Chris T.
@Obvious Russian Troll:
The local PBS station recently had their pledge drive Dr Who marathon, and ran the episode “The Face of Evil”, which has a great quote:
(Tom Baker’s Doctor is of course one of those awkward facts, at this point in the narrative…)
Matt McIrvin
@Obvious Russian Troll: There’s a side effect of certain brain disorders, known as the Capgras delusion, in which people become convinced that their loved ones and friends have been replaced with exact duplicates. It seems to be the result of physical damage to parts of the brain involved in emotional response–the patient intellectually knows that these people are exactly like the people they love, but they can’t feel the feelings they usually do around them, so they get a powerful emotional sense that these are not actually the same people. It must be utterly terrifying.
But, of course, most of the people who believe these conspiracy theories do not have the Capgras delusion. They believe it about people who they don’t know anyway. It’s more like an exciting, schlocky science-fiction story they’ve decided to buy into.
CaseyL
The nitwits who infest us would not matter a tittle if the RW Propaganda machine weren’t succoring them, pun intended.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris T.: After all, The Doctor always makes a point of becoming an awkward fact, if there is any possibility of doing so.
sdhays
@Scout211: If the plaintiffs win, it seems to me it could have some ramifications regarding state laws that aim to control what doctors tell women regarding abortion.
Assuming the ruling is applied consistently…
Torrey
@Baud:
Coming soon to an SNL skit near you.
Miss Bianca
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: IKR? I had a little panic clutch in my heart until I realized…it’s Baud. :)
ETA: Actually just watched Live and Let Die for the first time a couple weeks ago – it’s a pretty great Bond! Plus the killer title track, of course.
J R in WV
@Baud:
That’s how I get to be last so often…
Last?
JeffH
@Chris T.: One of the many, many great lines written by the late Chris Boucher between his work on Doctor Who and his time as script editor on Blake’s 7. (Blake’s 7 is a fascinating mix of brilliance and extreme cheese…)
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
Every animal is born not knowing jack, other than how to breathe. Not all of them know that.
The kicker is that some animals never learn anything more. That doesn’t hurt much in a lot of animal societies.
In some animal societies, like humans, it does matter. That doesn’t change that some animals never learn jack. Humans are animals. Some of them are as dumb as rocks. But less useful.
J R in WV
@JeffH:
Oh, darn !
Curses. Foiled again ;~)
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
Naw.
Some people are just STUPID.
They don’t think they are, because they are STUPID.
Stupid can’t be fixed in someone who is so stupid that they think they are smart.
And because STUPID is contagious humans can over come actual learning and become STUPID. There is no medicine that can overcome learned STUPID. It is a deadly disease, caused by STUPID.
It’s the circle of life. The bottom part of that circle but still, it is part of it.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
You must be younger because I got my first shot in January 2021. Geezers were first on the list and damn it I qualified. Not that I minded all that much BTW. It’s just that having the federal government put one in the geezer category sort of makes it undeniable. I bet the white beard does as well.
barbequebob
@Amir Khalid: “He blew his mind out in a car, He didn’t notice that the lights had changed”
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Or at least get to be part of the Anti-Kitten-Burning Coalition, as Fred Clark might say.
kalakal
@JeffH: Avon was a great character
lowtechcyclist
@sdhays:
You wouldn’t do that – you wouldn’t make an ass out of u and me.
pasiphae
@YY_Sima Qian: Really helpful information for those of us with loved ones in China! Thank you.