National Security Council’s John Kirby urges caution regarding the WSJ report that the Department of Energy believes, with “low confidence,” that COVID-19 leaked from a lab:
“There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how COVID started.” pic.twitter.com/Gceirrwy6k
— The Recount (@therecount) February 27, 2023
“We” — not just Americans, but globally — are well and truly in the ‘post-pandemic’, a/k/a ‘Long Covid’ phase, which is liable to last even longer than the pandemic itself. Me, I’m planning to mask up around crowds and plan on a vaccine booster every six months for the foreseeable future, but of course I’m an elderly Cynic with multiple comorbidities.
Millions of workers are still missing from the U.S. labor force three years after COVID-19 surfaced, and economists are scratching their heads as to how big the gap actually is and where all these people went. https://t.co/qzndQDKYul
— The Seattle Times (@seattletimes) February 24, 2023
One immediate response was They’re dead, Jim. But given the current state of America’s low-to-middle-income population, this is also a very good hypothesis:
(link)
Lucira Health said on Monday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had granted emergency use authorization for its combination diagnostic test for COVID-19 and the flu, making it the first to be available over-the-counter. https://t.co/qm18FVKDq2
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) February 28, 2023
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"The scale of life expectancy and welfare losses underscores the pressing need to invest in health in the US to prevent further economic shocks from future #pandemic threats."https://t.co/lgeTFnMx6T— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) February 26, 2023
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But we aren't out of the woods, says @ProfAbdoolKarim.
Lots of infections worldwide means that Omicron may yet evolve into a highly immune-evasive variant. pic.twitter.com/ymjROMD4IC
— Amy Maxmen @[email protected] (@amymaxmen) February 27, 2023
🙏 @amymaxmen for highlighting! We need to keep talking about #COVID19, ⬆️ vaccination in at risk groups, improving clinical care, preventing infections,maintaining surveillance & sequencing, improving ventilation & IPC, tackling misinformation, building trust, investing in R&D…
— Maria Van Kerkhove (@mvankerkhove) February 27, 2023
It's conceivable that as many people in China have died from #Covid in the past few months as have died in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic. It is mindboggling.
What happens to a society when that happens and it's not acknowledged? https://t.co/xmgmXiy1BV— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) February 25, 2023
(link)
(link)
India saved over 3.4 million lives by und ..
Read more at:https://t.co/zyJMXGFcSA
— Akhilesh Sinha (@Akhilesh975101) February 25, 2023
(Can’t do an extract, but it’s worth reading: A Stanford study claims India’s 2020 mass-vaccination campaign saved more than three million lives *and* ‘a loss of USD 18.3 billion’ — a ‘net benefit of USD 15.42 billion after taking into consideration the cost of the vaccine campaign’.)
(link)
Genomics surveillance in SA is still very active, we are < 1 week turn-around time. Very important to understand how XBB.1.5 cause OR NOT cause waves in places with high population immunity. Of course, always great to boost the immunity & vaccine boosters widely available in SA.
— Tulio de Oliveira (@Tuliodna) February 28, 2023
#Covid_19 in Germany: 45786 new cases, 523 new fatalities and approx. 78700 new recoveries reported for the last 7 days; total vaccinations: 64872163 (77.9%)/63558205 (76.4%)/52128550 (62.6%) (1st dose/complete/booster) with data reported by @rki_de and @ProMED_mail as of 27 Feb pic.twitter.com/jdIVYviScq
— thelonevirologist (@thelonevirologi) February 27, 2023
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Covid-19 infection can cause quick and significant bone loss in severe and even mild cases. Some studies suggest that the disease also leads to an increased chance of osteoporosis, causing brittle and weak bones. pic.twitter.com/mNuybXf4wQ
— William Haseltine (@WmHaseltine) February 26, 2023
The accompanying editorial highlights the uncertainties and concludes:
"Given new and existing evidence, Covid-19 vaccination is likely to have some beneficial effect on #longCovid through reducing case severity as well as incidence."https://t.co/BEah5IdYI7 pic.twitter.com/NN2De1usrI— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) February 28, 2023
(link)
Patients with long covid may present in primary care with symptoms of palpitations (tachycardia) triggered by standing or minimal exertion.
This article summarises the key steps for diagnosis and management, and includes a #BMJInfographichttps://t.co/z9hLZTZU5M pic.twitter.com/UriFaXTggs
— The BMJ (@bmj_latest) February 24, 2023
More than half of #Covid patients suffer #LongCovid symptoms, according to a study in Japan. Scientists in Osaka surveyed patients after recovering from the infection & found >1/2 of respondents experienced long-term aftereffects, even a year later https://t.co/D3XfeuM7js pic.twitter.com/fv1uh4yjwU
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) February 25, 2023
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From what I can tell, there’s enough stigma around #LongCovid that the people with the biggest ‘public megaphones’ can indeed find it useful to blame their ongoing symptoms on anything *but* the pandemic. ‘Woman on a horse tampon commercials’ is a great metaphor — unless the reader already knows the code, it’s impenetrable…
I can understand an influencer not wanting to show weakness and risk losing followers (and income!). Image/self-image is obviously important. However, influencers with Long COVID and that have had bad impacts from COVID are best positioned to add some sanity to the discussion.
— Ruse City (@rusecity) February 25, 2023
And there is so much bad-faith posturing by people who should know better, including the Very Rational All-Purpose Explainer Oozlum Bros like Nate Silver, who’s so determined to declare himself retroactively correct in all dimensions he’s rapidly spiraling in ever-tighter circles:
as far as I can tell, the actual reason is that there never has been as much (or any?) evidence of a lab leak, certainly not relative to the amount of evidence that covid-19 originated and spread the way viruses typically do https://t.co/VAHnJFQeHp
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) February 28, 2023
Of course, because humans, things can & will always get weirder…
Of interest: some of the most extreme anti-masker/anti-vaxxer folks now say they WILL start masking…around vaccinated people…..in order to protect themselves from….vaccine shedding 🤷♂️ https://t.co/KDnKOhhvlj
— Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH (@GYamey) February 26, 2023
On The Road – lashonharangue – Namibia – Part 2
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
80 new cases on 02/24/23.
81 new cases on 02/25/23.
66 new cases on 02/26/23.
57 new cases on 02/27/23.
55 new cases on 02/28/23.
Deaths now at 2196, up 10 since last Thursday.
Hospital beds: we’re at 5% available now, including 18 ICU beds among 4 hospitals. The largest hospital still has no regular available beds, but it does have 8 available ICU beds (out of 130).
Hey, if the numbnuts are afraid that I’m shedding vaccine and that makes them mask up around me, I’m all for it. I wonder if I should wear a sign announcing that I’m vaccinated.
Baud
I see no reason not to mask in crowded spaces. It protects you from other viruses too.
Princess
Looking at that list of symptoms in the Osaka long Covid story — basically it feels like they’re attributing any symptom of any kind at all to Long Covid? How do they tell if, say, weight gain is caused by having had Covid or just from … eating too much. Asking for a friend.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reported 206 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, for a cumulative reported total of 5,042,791 cases. 201 of these new cases were local infections; five new cases were imported. It also reported one death, for an adjusted cumulative total of 36,958 deaths – 0.73% of the cumulative reported total, 0.73% of resolved cases.
8,759 Covid-19 tests were conducted on 27th February, with a positivity rate of 1.6%.
There were 9,248 active cases yesterday, 29 more than the day before. 340 were in hospital. Seven confirmed cases were in ICU; of these patients, three confirmed cases were on ventilators. Meanwhile, 176 patients recovered, for a cumulative total of 4,996,585 patients recovered – 99.1% of the cumulative reported total.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 811 doses of vaccine on 28th February: 65 first doses, 52 second doses, 230 first booster doses, and 464 second booster doses. The cumulative total is 72,795,388 doses administered: 28,130,317 first doses, 27,542,047 second doses, 16,313,580 first booster doses, and 809,444 second booster doses. 86.1% of the population have received their first dose, 84.3% their second dose, 50.0% their first booster dose, and 2.5% their second booster dose.
Suzanne
I’m not masking unless in a place that specifically requires it. My office is in a rented suite, and there are other tenants in the building that are various healthcare services, so masking is required in the public areas of the building (but not within our suite). But I still see occasional people masking, and I don’t have a problem with it, because I was taught to mind my own business.
I have gone twice now to a local picture frame shop, at which the proprietor has created a full glazed enclosure in front of his counter, floor to ceiling, with a door, pass-through, and speaker. Truth be told, it makes it a bit difficult to pick out picture frames and mat colors, because I can’t get close to the samples and there’s glass in the way, which might distort the colors. But he does a good job, so I have gone back.
OzarkHillbilly
Is English their 2nd language? Leave out the word “believes” and what you are left with is that they have very little confidence in the lab leak theory. Why is that so hard to parse?
And oh yeah, Christopher Wray has decided to weigh in. I wonder where he studied epidemiology.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I thought the FBI had previously taken that position. I’m not sure why they are weighing in on a scientific question, but it’s not news.
gene108
@Baud:
I’m surprised more people haven’t kept masking in public. It’s such a simple way, as you point out, to avoid all sorts of respiratory illnesses.
Matt McIrvin
The dismaying thing seems to be that vaccination does help protect against Long COVID but… not nearly as much as we’d like. And it seems like the risk of getting some debilitating symptom the next time doesn’t go down with repeated infections–so the burden of this on our society is just going to slowly linearly increase. Suppose almost everyone gets one or two “mild” cases of COVID every year–it’s like everyone playing Russian roulette with long COVID. Is there some point, 10 or 20 years down the line, at which civilization just starts breaking down because most of the population is stroking out or has chronic fatigue?
It does make me think the Zero COVID people who say we need to reconfigure our whole society to have much less human contact, for the indefinite future, have a point–though this will never happen.
rikyrah
One million DEAD from COVID
MILLIONS MORE permanent disabled by LONG COVID
And economists wonder where the workers are?
DA PHUQ 😡
OzarkHillbilly
I applaud the behavioral scientist who came up with this idea as a way to get GOPers to mask up anyway.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
On phucking Fox News.
Biden needs to fire this muthaphucka 😡
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I hadn’t heard anything more than that they thought the lab leak theory was plausible, but it wouldn’t surprise me to have missed a more assertive statement. Some times I check out from the news for days at a time.
New Deal democrat
Last Friday the CDC variant update showed something remarkable. The XBB&.1.5 variant is so dominant that it makes up 86% of all cases. I don’t think any previous variant achieved that much pervasiveness. BQ.1&.1.1 make up 12%, and everything else the final 2%.
Despite that, Biobot’s update Monday showed the lowest level of COVID since last April, with the exception of the first half of October, equivalent to about 175,000 average daily “real” cases. This is mainly due to a big decline in the Northeast, which is at its lowest level since last April, while the other 3 regions remain higher than October levels.
At 32,800, confirmed cases are also at their lowest level since last April. Hospital admissions have declined to 24,300, only 1,400 above their October low, which was the lowest level since last May. Deaths have also declined to 264, their lowest level except for one day since last May and June.
Spring was the lowest season for infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in both 2021 and 2022. We’ll see if we get the same respite this spring. We’ll also see what happens when, for the first time in 2 years, seniors are not being asked to get a new shot within 6 months of their last one.
Finally, a couple of weeks ago I did some back of the envelope calculations of how big a threat endemic covid was to seniors. These calculations are approximate.
– There are about 63 million seniors in the US. About 3.2 million died last year.
– Of that 3.2 million, about 100,000 deaths were from COVID, and about 70,000 of those were unvaccinated seniors.
– Less than 10% of seniors are unvaccinated.
– That means, last year about 1 in 4.5 unvaccinated seniors died of COVID.
– Last year about 1 in 90 vaccinated seniors died of COVID.
– Take those statistics and apply them to the entire next 10 year period, and it means unvaccinated seniors are very likely to ultimately die of COVID, while vaccinated seniors still have a significant chance – perhaps as high as 1 in 10 – of ultimately dying of COVID.
WV Blondie
Well, since I live in WV and my community is rapidly being overrun by MAGAts (pronounced “maggots,” for those who wonder), I’ll keep my mask handy and wear it in all public buildings and businesses. And if the MAGAts want to see it as inspiration to wear theirs to avoid “vaccine shedding,” I’m fine with that.
Ohio Mom
The thought that the loss of child-caring grandparents is at least one of the reasons we are missing workers is very interesting. Someone should compare the U.S. numbers to European countries that have real child care systems in place, not this your-on-your-own-crap we embrace.
New Deal democrat
OK I am stepping in here on the canard that COVID killed the labor force.
The large majority of deaths from COVID have been seniors who were out of the labor force anyway.
The core labor force consists of people aged 25-54, and the Census Bureau updates the % of that age group who are in the labor force every month as part of the jobs report.
In January, 80.2% of all people age 25-54 were in the labor force; that is, either employed or unemployed but actively looking for work. That is the *highest* level since 2001 with the sole exception of one month in 2007 and 5 months between October 2019 and February 2020, where it reached a high of 80.5%. That’s about 400,000 more workers than at present.
The far likelier impact on the labor force is long COVID – but again, even that does not affect the above numerical analysis, showing that the prime age labor force is back to within 0.3% of its 20+ year peak.
OzarkHillbilly
@New Deal democrat: But but but businesses are having to raise their pay above slave wages to attract new employees and this cuts into their profit margins.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: In “Region 1” (New England) XBB.1.5 is now 96-98% of all cases. Its relative dominance has just increased as the winter wave declines.
YY_Sima Qian
Uhh! It appears that China is really only updating on a monthly basis. The hospital based data has a lot of limitations, undercounting being only the most obviously, but can still show trends. Now we will have to rely on anecdotes, vibes & feels.
Losing elderly caretakers of young children will likely have an even greater impact in China, where grandparents taking care of pre-primary school children while the parents are working elsewhere is pretty common. However, I think the tweet overestimates the impact. The 80 & 90 y.o. who make up the bulk of the dead elders were not doing much caretaking.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat:
Careful: About 1 in 4.5 unvaccinated seniors who died died of COVID. That changes the prognosis a bit, doesn’t it?
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: What did the seniors who lived die of?
stinger
Over the past several months, I’ve visited a local hospital quite frequently. At the beginning of that stretch of time, patients/families weren’t required to mask; later, they were. Then after a while, they weren’t again. All based on local COVID rates. And throughout, every medical and non-medical hospital staff member masked at all times. They were protecting patients against other airborne diseases as well as COVID.
Common sense/follow the science — it’s not like masking is hard!
Cameron
I can’t see going maskless any time in at least the next few years. As an Old with COPD who lives in an area over which breezes blow lovely Red Tide goodness and in which the state government is in aggressive denialism about COVID, I have a hard time seeing the happy ending here.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin:
This has been my main worry as China inevitably had to exit “Dynamic Zero COVID”. If Long COVID is really caused by the spike protein molecules entering different systems (especially the brain & the nervous system) of the human body, then even a mild infection helped by vaccination and/or prior infection would still give the virus plenty of time to replicate, leaving plenty of spikes in the body even after recovery, & then it really becomes Russian Roulette.
We need pharmaceutics that actually neutralizes the spikes protein molecules, as well as vaccines that are actually effective in block transmissions.
That is why I will still wear N95/KN95 masks everywhere, except sparsely populated outdoor environments, & even then I still pull my mask from my chin if someone is going to walk pass me. I hope to keep the frequency of infection to once every 2 years or so, as oppose to twice a year.
dmsilev
With regards to the anti-vax nuts, LG&M has a post up just now about the latest idiocy:
YY_Sima Qian
@New Deal democrat:
Repeated infections should be offering some protection, no? Then again, for the unvaccinated seniors, it will be like having flu twice a year… & that’s bad enough.
Suzanne
As for all of this “where did the workers go?” stuff….. my thought is that there’s probably a fair amount of people who have just dropped out of the workforce, because working isn’t that profitable to them. It costs money to work outside the home, to commute, to have someone care for your kids or your parents (who might have long COVID), to buy lunch, maybe to buy work clothes. I would be willing to bet that there are a fair number of people for whom it literally doesn’t pencil out to work. I would be interested to see someone study that.
I mean, we could pay people to be caretakers for their families. Just going to throw that out there.
frosty
If I read this right, then India has 240 new infections and Germany has 45,000? Given the different size of their populations, something is wrong with these numbers.
YY_Sima Qian
@OzarkHillbilly: When it comes to China, I think Christopher Wray believes he is J. Edgar Hoover reborn.
WereBear
@Princess: It is my contention, with my husband and I dealing with CFS/ME for over twenty years, that it’s a Long Viral Syndrome. It IS a mitochondrial disorder, as described by Dr. Sarah Myhill.
Our doctor approved her recommendations and Mr WereBear is seeing progress.
frosty
@rikyrah: Da PHUQ indeed! Some of this ain’t rocket surgery; I guess it’s beyond some trained economists though.
YY_Sima Qian
@frosty: India is not testing PCR, & is not reporting RAT, just like how the Chinese National Health Commission was reporting only hundreds of daily cases when all of the models (including the provincial/central governments’) showed tens of millions of daily infections. The numbers aren’t even useful to assess trends. Chinese data were not useful for assessing trends until early Jan., well after the exit tsunami had peaked in terms of infections.
Anne Laurie
Maybe it’s an anti-theft system — I’ve heard many stories of customers pilfering ‘the samples’ because, y’know, it’s not like they’re worth anything (if you don’t count the owner / employees having to cut & replace them.
“The virus” is definitely being used to rejigger customer service, some ways more visibly than others.
Cameron
If Jesus wanted people to submit to the mRNA vaccine, He would have gotten the jab himself. And there’s no – repeat, no – evidence He ever did. What do you have to say to that, libtard? Haw, haw, haw, pwned again!
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin: Good correction.
Of the roughly 6 million unvaccinated seniors, 70k died of COVID in the last year. That gives a roughly 1 in 10 chance of dying of COVID if the present situation continues over the next 10 years.
New Deal democrat
@Suzanne: “probably a fair amount of people who have just dropped out of the workforce, because working isn’t that profitable to them.”
I agree. I looked at this even before COVID and it was apparent that the cost of child care alone made both spouses working an unprofitable, or barely profitable, situation for many couples.
COVID gave them the chance to try out the alternative scenario, and I’m sure a large number liked it.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Naomi Wu is a prepper w/ a propensity toward polemics/hyperbole (although I always find her worth reading when it comes to COVID-19, DIY/maker tech & general life in China), I think her focus & her recommendations wrt to air quality standards is absolutely on point wrt to actually “living” w/ COVID-19. Upper room G-UV should be ubiquitous, indoor N95/KN95 masking should be habitual.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat:
Sure, but the point made in the OP was that some of those seniors were providing unpaid child-care assistance to people who were in the core labor force. I know this is happening in my family.
I doubt this is the primary thing going on but it is likely a contributor.
Nelle
@Ohio Mom: I wonder how many of us are caring for grandchildren on a regular basis. I’m frequently meeting people here who have moved here, as we did, to help with grandchildren. Generally, we have the two youngest, ages 4 and 8 months, two long days per week. Sometimes, though, there are sick kids and snow days. We recently had a five day week.
We had no help from grandparents. Even when I taught full time, I was on campus two days a week and did the rest of the prep and grading at home. Paid for some childcare. We looked at the pressures on young working parents, and thought we could ease pressure. I’m seeing more and more people doing the same.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: I find that interesting too, I have thought all along that a big part of the missing workforce is women with school-age children who had to drop out because of remote schooling and repeated kid exposures resulting in kids having to stay home for 3-4 days even though they aren’t sick. I hadn’t thought about the free child care aspect of the deaths of grandparents, though.
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: Could part of the problem be that the number of people in that cohort has declined due to restrictions on immigration the past several years? Because hiring struggles are still real. A guy who is going to quote me on fixing a problem in my bathroom said he’s gone from having 5 employees to having just him and his dad. I look around and see employers are still struggling to hire people, even with increased wages.
And ugh, during Bill Maher’s last podcast he yet again repeated the lie that “natural immunity” from having had Covid is more protective than getting vaccinated. He claimed there was a new study that proved this, although there was no information about who did the study or what it actually said. They really want to cling to the idea that Covid is no worse than a cold, and that having had it protects you from getting it again although it’s been amply demonstrated that this isn’t true.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: But then how do those people survive? In my experience you have to have money to live, and in order to get money you have to either work or be on enough aid that you can pay your bills.
delphinium
@Suzanne: That’s what I was wondering as well-is there an accounting of older people who retired early rather than continuing to work during COVID or people who may have reduced their hours from full to part time for various reasons.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Some of them have working spouses or partners–losing an income makes it harder to pay the bills and is a drag on the wider economy, but they can survive for a while.
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: I have two nieces and two nephews. All are married. One has no children. Two of the wives with children work at home, and the third one just stays at home and doesn’t work at a job, although that may change in the next couple of years as all of their children will be in school. They all say that the cost of childcare is prohibitive if you can even find it, and then they’re worried about the quality of the care their children will get. They’re all in situations where only one spouse has to work outside the home. So actually only one of those people is out of the workforce. I think Covid also rearranged what people are doing, and gave people the opportunity to try doing things they ordinarily never would have tried.
New Deal democrat
@Soprano2: The decline in immigration could very well be a big part of the problem in some sectors, like building trades.
Probably the biggest part is simply that, even after adjusting for inflation, real sales increased 20%(!) from before the pandemic after the 2021 stimulus, before settling back to being 10% higher in real terms. To service that extra demand, you usually need about 1/2 the rate of increase in employees, i.e., a 5% increase from before the pandemic to now.
And that extra 5% of extra available bodies doesn’t exist. This has created what I call a game of “reverse musical chairs,” where some chairs are always unfilled, and with each passing round the “losing” employers have to increase the rate of pay, so that somebody else loses in the next round. And on and on.
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: Yep. We could use another server at our pub, but it’s hard to find and hire people still. There are still problems with turnover and being able to find people even with increased wages.
Soprano2
I think the truth is that the labor market shortage has a variety of causes – early retirements, women leaving the workforce due to remote schooling/lack of childcare, the years-long clampdown on immigration, and excess deaths from Covid. I think it’s hard for a lot of people to wrap their minds around the idea that there can be several causes, thus the dumb “no one wants to work” canard even in an area like mine where unemployment is under 4% and has been for 2 years! I always ask where are all these people who don’t want to work, and they never have a good answer.
schrodingers_cat
Where did all the workers go? In addition to COVID related casualties (death or long COVID) and those who dropped out for whatever reason post COVID add reduced immigration (and temporary workers) to the list.
Immigration was negatively impacted due to the Orange Error’s policies and COVID-19. I don’t know whether the numbers have bounced back to what they were before 2017.
Suzanne
@Anne Laurie: No, it’s not an anti-theft thing. The owner wears a N95 mask, even behind the barrier. He’s taking his health seriously, and I respect that.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Everyone in my family masks up every time we are out in public or at work. We live in a largely conservative area so as you can guess people are largely unmasked here. Interesting that Covid can lead to brittle bones. I had Covid back in early 2020 and broke a rib with one sharp cough last December (and still healing). Our neighbor is a pharmacy assistant and has had Covid three times this winter. Luckily her and her husband are vaxxed and boosted, so it while it was rough she did well in recovering. Her husband caught it once and it too was mild. She masks at work but her coworkers not so much, nor the customers.
I hope the assholes who insist on spreading this shit around get it good and hard. They deserve it.
Bill Arnold
New large retrospective study. Increases in cardiovascular mortality during COVID-19 waves.
Excess cardiovascular mortality across multiple COVID-19 waves in the United States from March 2020 to March 2022 (Nature Cardiovascular Research, 27 February 2023)
Give this link to anti-vaxxers, and when they reflexively talk about “vaccine injury”, say something about 2020 (no vaccines) and causality . Maybe Obama’s time machine. They already have theories cooked up, about how it was lack administration of ivermectine/Hydroxychloroquine or doctors doing mass killing for political gain or whatever.
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
If working wasn’t profitable, then they’re surviving the same way they did before….. some combination of aid, sharing money within the family, relying on one person’s income, maybe some under-the-table work. But the advantage to them is maybe some reduced stress and sanity. If the income you get from work outside the home doesn’t cover your costs, why do it?
delphinium
@Soprano2: Ugh Bill Maher-talk about someone who needs to leave the workforce. From my limited reading, those who got at least 2 vaccinations and had a bout of COVID seemed the most protected; additional research is definitely needed (considering the differences in people’s immune systems, different types of studies, and other factors) but getting vaccinated helps. And as you said, people obviously get COVID multiple times (personally know several people who have gotten it twice so far).
Barbara
@Princess: It’s going to take a while to sort out the impact of Covid itself, the socio-economic and mental health knocks of the pandemic, and just life, in general. During any three year period, one would expect some people to gain weight, be diagnosed with arthritis, cardiovascular disease or some other chronic condition. Maybe these consequences were accelerated or intensified by Covid, maybe they were just random and the person would have experienced them anyway. I think that doctors right now are just focusing on the rate of change, and the lack of any other reason for the change in the person’s life except for having had a case of Covid. We might never really work it all out.
Barbara
@Bill Arnold: When my brother was dying of cancer, my sister talked to several doctors, and one told her that one reason it’s so hard to predict the trajectory of terminal cancer is that cancer is really hard on the body and can trigger heart attacks and strokes — in other words, you might die of something other than cancer, but cancer was definitely the reason for your death. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least that Covid has the same effect, but especially on cardiovascular systems, given its propensity for blood clots and breathing problems.
Bill Arnold
@OzarkHillbilly:
The DOE national labs have a lot of opinionated and very intelligent employees, so that’s an insult to most of them.
Might have been these guys: Z-Division
Redshift
I know it’s pretty much a dead thread, but has anyone seen an article with a good explanation of how we have “population immunity” that blunts the new waves so they’re smaller, when there are all these articles about how immunity wanes and is mostly gone in a few months (somewhat longer for infection-acquired immunity)?
I’m guessing it’s something about the different kinds of immunity and antibodies, but I can’t find a clear explanation.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Anne Laurie:
Wait, wut? People are putting frames together with mismatched pieces?
different-church-lady
I’m increasingly disgusted when statisticians do things like calculate the economic impact of human tragedy. It’s like they’re just admitting we have no other worth than to get our souls ground up in a machine of capitalism.
Redshift
@delphinium:
You said it. The goal isn’t to get “the best immunity,” it’s to NOT GET COVID. If you get immunity from infection, you’re already one strike down, if not worse. If you can’t grasp that, you shouldn’t be a professional opinion-haver.
different-church-lady
@Redshift:
You do have to admit that if you die from COVID, it is impossible to die from it again.
WereBear
I agree. They are admitting it.
jonas
@New Deal democrat: If we look at the labor force participation rate, though, we’re still about 2 percentage points off pre-pandemic levels. In a labor force of about 165 million, that’s a couple of million people short. See the FRED graph using the civilian labor force figures vs. job openings here. There are undoubtedly people here with much, much better statistics-fu than I, but we’re still in the throes of a pretty significant labor shortage, imo. But why? As folks have been pointing out, the majority of Covid deaths were among seniors, most of whom were no longer in the labor force. The shortages seem to be concentrated in lower-wage sectors (hospitality, maintenance, etc.) where losing childcare would be really hard to manage. That’s why I’m really intrigued by this suggestion that while Covid deaths were concentrated among the elderly, where that came back to bite the economy was in the loss of an enormous pool of free childcare for working-class parents. I hope some journalists or labor market researchers start doing some work to move past anecdata on this and figure out how significant it might be.
Bill Arnold
@different-church-lady:
Here’s an distilled example of that. Not a bad (morality sense) paper in the context of such papers, TBH. The bean counter set will need to agree on such a foundation to do proper accounting of the costs of human-caused global heating. Bean counters allied against Fossil Fuel interests would be a formidable ally. Also applies to deadly pandemics like SARS-CoV-2 (an easy-mode pandemic, TBH).
Income Elasticity and the Global Value of a Statistical Life (2017, W. Kip Viscusi and Clayton J. Masterman)
some_doc
This is the least mysterious mystery ever. Maybe it’s only a mystery to economists?
Some of this will take a few years yet to be reflected in the relevant national longitudinal studies, but it will be obvious soon enough.
New Deal democrat
@jonas: The definition of the Labor Force Participation Rate is “the number of people in the labor force as a percentage of the civilian noninstitutional population […] the participation rate is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work.”
In other words, this includes many millions of people in their late 60s, 70s, and 80s.
That’s why using the prime age data is more pertinent.
Bill Arnold
@Soprano2:
I would bet real money that he (Bill Maher) did not read that paper, let alone the other papers reporting work in the same area with contradictory results. The epistemic bubble that he is willingly cocooned in in cherry picks the rapidly-increase body literature, and often/usually misrepresents the studies that they cherry-pick.
dm
Interested in wastewater results for other viruses than just SARS-Cov-2?
https://data.wastewaterscan.org/
For a sewage-treatment plant near you!
Mimi Haha
Biden needs to fire this muthaphucka
And punch him in mouth too,
JustRuss
@delphinium: Another factor I haven’t seen mentioned: My mother passed just before Covid and left me a not-huge but substantial inheritance, enough that I can afford to retire sooner than I had planned. Presumably many of those older seniors who died during the pandemic left similar estates. So even if the 25-54 year old workforce is at full strength, a significant number of 55-65 year olds may have bailed out, especially if they lost their jobs during Covid and aren’t willing to go on the hunt again. I was job hunting at 55, it’s not fun.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: My impression is that Biden has not been in a hurry to reverse all of the Trump- and COVID-era immigration restrictions; probably he knows this is not a political winner.
He’s getting it from both sides though– right now, the left (including mainstream center-left) is accusing him of just continuing Trump’s xenophobic regime while the right bashes him for opening the borders wide. Hard to find a palatable policy when a large chunk of the electorate is divorced from reality.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: I don’t know of a good explainer that puts it all in one place–what I know, I gleaned from following scientists on social media. Maybe the people with career knowledge here can chime in.
My non-expert impression is this: what declines over a period of months after an infection or vaccination is neutralizing antibodies. Those both prevent the viruses from operating directly, and flag them for destruction by immune cells.
What persists over the longer term, and can even strengthen with time, is a kind of immune memory in T- and B-cells. That gives you the ability to rapidly ramp up production of antibodies again when presented with a new infection. But it doesn’t prevent the infection from happening in the first place.
There’s also a distinction between mucosal and humoral immunity (I think?)–the shots don’t do that much to bolster the first line of defense in your mucous membranes, whereas an infection actually does. One of the reasons people are trying to develop nasal-spray vaccines is the idea that they might beef up that type of resistance to a degree that injected vaccinations don’t. But progress has been difficult.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: My impression from the gathering literature is that “long COVID” is actually a bunch of different things. It’s long-term physical organ damage, it’s autoimmune effects, it’s live viral reservoirs in the body. Different people have any one of those things or maybe a combination of them. COVID is just a disease that hits the body really hard and attacks the circulatory system. It’d be remarkable if many different forms of long-term damage weren’t happening.
The good news is that many of these symptoms do seem to decline over a couple of years. But I have a hard time believing that all of them will behave the same way.
Matt McIrvin
Locally, Massachusetts wastewater counts continue to decline to levels we haven’t seen since almost a year ago when the big Omicron wave cleared, but there’s been a modest increase in hospitalizations and a tiny increase in deaths. I suspect this is the delayed effect of some of the bounces in the infection rate that happened weeks ago.
Fair Economist
@New Deal democrat: I know 2 people knocked out of the labor force by being killed by COVID. One was 50’s, one mid-60’s but working and expecting to continue for the indefinite future.
Fair Economist
@Redshift:
What we are seeing is that there is a fairly high level of ongoing infection. The waves are getting smaller, but by the lows increasing almost as much as the high dropping. This fits in well with degrading immunity over time – at any given point most have had an infection recently enough for strong immunity but a minority have aged out and are susceptible. This demographic situation is more favorable to a steady level of infection, as we are increasingly seeing.
Here in LA the hospitalization numbers have been flat as a pancake for over a month – at a substantial rate.
Kent
I have had the whole COVID caused the tight labor market discussion with a MAGA cousin of mine who owns a chain of laundromats and can’t find decent employees. Of course being an anti-vax COVID denier he was unwilling to entertain the notion that COVID is the reason he can’t find workers.
So I proposed the alternate answer was the job creating genius of Joe Biden and the Biden Administration.
[crickets]
while I watched his head explode.
trollhattan
My county will let their covid dashboard lapse after today because the CA covid emergency declaration expired yesterday. They have yet to add the final Mar 1 updates, but here are some numbers, which won’t change much:
Total cases: 369,208
Total deaths: 3,705
Max case rate (per 100k): 252 on 1.10.22
Max daily deaths count: 24 on 12.7.20
Max % positive tests: 60.6% on 1.13.22
Max positive count: 4,295 on 1.7.22
Individuals vaccinated: 1,156,732
Partly vaccinated: 84,181
Fully vaccinated: 1,072,551 (of an estimated 1,589,000) county population
Boosted: 677,592 (note: your commie, ghey-lovin’, gun-hatin’, sheeple right here)
Max hospitalizations: 657 on 1.25.22
Max ICU cases: 130 on 1.18.21
The period prior to wide testing availability and vaccination rollout was something I wish to never revisit. Which is not much of an insight but I think will also be swept under a rug if we don’t keep it in our collective memory.
trollhattan
@Kent: Gosh, can’t imagine a jerb more fun than being on-site at a laundromat five days/week.
gvg
@Soprano2: It does not have to be dead either. People know grandparents are more vulnerable to DYING and that kids are likely to pick that and other things up in school. some grandparents are not willing to risk their lives to take care of kids and some parents aren’t willing to risk their own parents lives. My parents did a lot of care of my nephew when he was little as mom was a school teacher and community college professor retired and he was dyslexic and needed extra help. With the pandemic they had to stop. My sister his mom is a hospital doctor who had patients and coworkers die of Covid and so she wasn’t fooling herself. Actually he had a year and a half of internet schooling living with grandparents and rarely seeing mom, but when he had to go back to regular school he became a latchkey kid for the first time with paid drivers, neighbors she found. Lots of other people made other arrangements and for many it was someone not working.
Kent
@trollhattan: It is actually easy work. You mostly just kick back and supervise and watch TV or net surf while people do their laundry. And you just make sure the place stays tidy.
I would take that over flipping burgers at McDonalds or working as a Wal-Mart cashier any day.
gvg
@different-church-lady: No, it helps in certain types of arguments. It is not the only reason people are valuable, but it is a measurable one and well there are some people and some situations were that is the argument you need to make. Say you are trying to persuade the board or a manager of a company to do something or implement something. This gives them an excuse, a cover if they want to do it they can use it as a justification.
gvg
@jonas: Maybe the lower tiers are taking better jobs too. That is the way it should work in a widespread labor shortage. People should not have to stay in lower level jobs. I am not saying it IS happening, just that it could and some should be. It ought to be normal for the lowest level/paying jobs to have the biggest shortages right?
gvg
I think the labor shortage is just the one that was predicted since I was a kid in the 70’s. The baby boomers are retiring. I am about 5 years away and I am the tail end of what some models called the baby boom.
Secondary factor, they have been quietly cutting immigration since the 80’s at least mostly by cutting funding so there were no workers to process your applications and making so many rules that you couldn’t figure out how to apply, had to hire lawyers and it was still years and luck. The last few years I have run across cases where they have denied spouses of American citizens which I just find outrageous. That should always be approved, unless you can prove something really serious. People have no idea how much immigration has been cut. Those doofuses whining about illegals are pikers, compared to the nicer citizens who vaguely worried about American made goods and factory’s and let this happen without understanding what we got from immigration.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: The other thing is that almost nobody is completely immunologically naive–they’ve got that T- and B-cell memory. So when they do get infected, they’re less likely to get seriously ill or to die. Though changes in lethality are hard to calculate because testing is so bad and cases are probably being massively undercounted.
But it’s interesting to look at, say, the wastewater counts for Boston and compare it to the deaths. The initial Northeast COVID wave in spring 2020, in the wastewater counts, was a blip that would barely register by today’s standards. But the death rate was monstrous. One thing that changed was that the virus mutated into forms that reproduce much more rapidly, which boosts the wastewater counts. But I don’t think the lower lethality is really a change in the virus so much as that people are either vaccinated, have already been infected, or both.
NotMax
Unsure whether this has been mentioned. Preface it with saying it is still relatively early days and much more research is needed to either bolster or refute preliminary findings.
Catching COVID may increase chances of developing an autoimmune disease, study says
LarryB
I can’t say how much I appreciate your continuing with these regular updates. I’ve been tracking covid and long covid news almost daily for 3 years now…relying heavily on the medical folks on Twitter. Now that Elmer Mushface is destroying that resource, Balloon Juice and a couple of newsletters are critical. Thanks again.