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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: August 2, 2023

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: August 2, 2023

by | 47 Comments

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The pandemic might officially be over, but the endemic effects will be with us for a long time to come. Some good news, though:


COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: August 2, 2023
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Indonesia:

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Scandinavia:

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Seems like a win-‘win’!
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: August 2, 2023 13
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Idiocracy, now an instruction manual…

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  1. 1.

    NeenerNeener

    Monroe County, NY:

    15 new cases on 07/26/23.
    20 new cases on 07/27/23.
    17 new cases on 07/28/23.
    16 new cases on 07/29/23.
    14 new cases on 07/30/23.
    13 new cases on 07/31/23.
    16 new cases on 08/01/23.

    Deaths now at 2295, up 4 from last week.
    We’re having a mini-wave. Throughout July we were mostly in single digits for cases, and now we’re consistently low double digits again.

  2. 2.

    Dagaetch

    I don’t think I’ve said this before, but thank you, AL, for doing this. 3.5 years now. It is a true public service and I am grateful.

  3. 3.

    Facebones

    I can attest to vaccines reducing the severity of Covid infections. Last month I got my first bout of Covid after 3+ years of avoiding it. I felt crappy on Tuesday and took a test and it was positive. By Friday, I was testing negative. I felt sick for basically one day, and spent the time watching Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix

  4. 4.

    eclare

    @Facebones:

    So good to hear, I’ve had five shots.  Love Michael Connelly, I’ve watched the first season, going to start on the second.

  6. 6.

    Suzanne

    Believe me, it is deeply enjoyable to laugh at idiots drinking piss and then getting sick with Covid anyway.  But it points to this kind of broader weirdness I observe, which is that the people I know who are the most performatively into health stuff, like only eating organic food, or gluten-free, or supplements, or detailed workout regimens….. those are the people I know who are always low-grade sick and complaining about it. Most of the people I know who will, say, try to eat a salad most days but also occasionally have dessert….. those people are healthy. The people who work out 5 days out of 7, they’re fine.

  9. 9.

    p.a.

    Yes, thanks AL!

     

    That 43% excess death figure has been out there a while.  After all conservatism is a movement that thought fluoridated water was a communist conspiracy and the earth is 6,000 years old.  I believe in the Eisenhower years college PhDs in the hard sciences were about 50/50 Dem/Repub.  Now way more Dems.  Creeping, then galloping, stupidity.  If I don’t like the data it can’t be true.

  11. 11.

    raven

    We have a conspiracy nut at the dog park who started in this morning on the tick borne red meat allergy and vaccines! I just get up and walk away when he starts!

  13. 13.

    Lapassionara

    Many thanks, AL. I don’t know how you’ve managed to put together these high-quality posts all these years. They are so helpful.

  14. 14.

    jonas

    @raven: What’s the tick conspiracy? There actually is a kind of tick whose bite does trigger a severe allergic reaction to red meat in some people. Is he saying it’s been mutated to do that by Jewish Space Lasers or something?

  15. 15.

    delphinium

    @Suzanne:  Just saw an article the other day about a vegan influencer who died from malnutrition/exhaustion after switching to a very restrictive raw fruit diet. Anything too extreme or diets that depend on a lot of supplements just isn’t healthy.

  16. 16.

    p.a.

    @Kristine: It’s not just narcissists who can’t admit to a mistake.  Every grifter, cheat, scammer, casino, lottery, sports book etc relies on it.  Basic human nature.  And innumeracy certainly helps.

  17. 17.

    Anyway

    @raven:

    .. .on the tick borne red meat allergy

    I know someone who has that! He was a big beef eater and had to radically change his diet.

    The allergy was present pre-Covid so what’s the connection to vaccines?!

  18. 18.

    jonas

    @p.a.: I think as movement conservatism increasingly became synonymous with evangelical Christianity, it assumed a lot of the characteristics of religious fundamentalism, particularly hostility to modernity and the notion that taking things on faith, rather than believing your lying eyes, is a sign of loyalty and righteousness.

  19. 19.

    Shane in SLC

    Meanwhile, the spouse and I may have to cancel a trip to Oregon this weekend because one of our hosts has come down with Covid. Bummer.

  21. 21.

    Anyway

    @jonas:

    What’s the tick conspiracy? There actually is a kind of tick whose bite does trigger a severe allergic reaction to red meat in some people. Is he saying it’s been mutated to do that by Jewish Space Lasers or something?

    This is real but rare. Most likely in Southeastern US. There was looooong article on it in Slate a few years ago about how difficult it was to figure out the root cause. Not it’s established but still not very well-known. People spend hours in the ER before it is diagnosed.

    ETA – technically it’s “mamallian meat” not red meat. So poultry and seafood is ok

    https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/index.html

  22. 22.

    eclare

    @delphinium:

    And I saw a story in the news about a woman who followed some extreme workout/diet plan that required her to drink a gallon of water a day.  She ended up in the hospital for her sodium being too low.

    And IIRC Schiavo was following some extreme diet that caused her to lapse into her vegetative state.

  23. 23.

    CaseyL

    I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned here on BJ, but speaking of strange disease pockets: there appears to be a lot of leprosy cases popping up in Central Florida.

    Leprosy is very hard to catch, and the vectors are well known.  What makes the Central Florida cases unusual is the victims claim not to have been around those known vectors.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    @Suzanne:

    But it points to this kind of broader weirdness I observe, which is that the people I know who are the most performatively into health stuff, like only eating organic food, or gluten-free, or supplements, or detailed workout regimens….. those are the people I know who are always low-grade sick and complaining about it.

    It’s possible the effect is real but you’re inferring the wrong direction of causality.  The natural conclusion is that being so health obsessed is actually hurting their health somehow.  It could be, though, that they’ve always had chronic health problems, and they’ve become obsessed with trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle as an attempt to combat their chronic problems.  Meanwhile, people who are naturally healthy can get away without all that stuff and still be fine.  I certainly don’t want to say that’s necessarily the situation, but it’s at least worth considering.

  28. 28.

    CaseyL

    @Roger Moore: ​

    These kinds of stories come up regularly. I still remember the “macrobiotics” craze back in the 70s-80s, when many people refused to eat anything but brown rice. They sickened and quite a few died.

    The conclusion I’ve drawn from these stories is that ANY dietary regime, taken to extremes, is unhealthy.

    Humans evolved to eat everything we could get our hands on, up to and including animals, and getting around that requires knowing enough about nutrition to do substitutions correctly. it’s not enough to simply replace animal proteins with plant proteins: you have to know which plants carry which amino acids, and how they interact to become “complete proteins.” If you’re going full vegan, it’s even more challenging.

    It’s also my observation – based on experience – that any radical change in dietary habits will result in a rapid and gratifying weight loss in the first three months. At that point, your metabolism adjusts to the new diet, and the weight loss plateaus and stops. Possibly even reverses (which is why fad diets are unsustainable).

    People who pursue “healthful diets” and get sick may also not know enough about their own particular metabolism or dietary needs to realize they’re missing one or more essential nutrients. Vitamin pills may help – if you’re eating foods that enable your body to metabolize those vitamins. But if you don’t know your own body’s specific needs, you probably don’t know which vitamins need help to be metabolized.

  29. 29.

    gvg

    @CaseyL: Uh huh, armadillos carry it quite commonly. They can give it to humans rarely by scratch or sometimes by being eaten. More of a problem in Brazil, but it does happen here. Its always been a very tiny rare event, but not new. I heard about it decades ago.

    Armadillos are dumb and shortsighted. They can be so focused on eating grubs at night that they wander right up to you or try to get into your house, and then smell you when they bump against you and panic. Thats when they might scratch you. Both relatives and I have had some funny in retrospect encounters. My uncle had to bat one out of his house 3 times.

  30. 30.

    Mel

    @Suzanne: It really does seem to be the case, doesn’t it?

    These are also what I think of as the  “blamer-shamers” – passive aggressively chiding people with unpreventable / chronic diseases for “not wanting to heal” (translation: seeing actual physicians and refusing to: drink urine, stick their feet into phony “ionic healing foot baths”, take unregulated, very questionably sourced “cures”, etc.).

    All the while, the blamer-shamer anti-vax crowd is blithely spreading everything under the sun, mild to serious, to everyone with whom they come into contact.

  31. 31.

    Geminid

    @jonas: Maybe a mad Buddhist scientist created that Rocky Mountain tick disease in a lab, to get people to switch from eating mammals to eating birds and fish. Bill Gates and the Dalai Lama probably ran the coverup.

  32. 32.

    Suzanne

    @Roger Moore:

    The natural conclusion is that being so health obsessed is actually hurting their health somehow.  It could be, though, that they’ve always had chronic health problems, and they’ve become obsessed with trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle as an attempt to combat their chronic problems. 

    Yeah, I have wondered about this. But I have noted that the health-obsessed people I encounter really sort into two camps. One is definitely the people who struggled with some medical issue, often difficult to explain, and who get into some extreme stuff in an effort to get relief. I have a distant relative who is one of this type, and she got Covid and ended up in the ICU on a ventilator. (Would not get vaccinated, of course.) The other type are more the “body-hacking” people and are usually very into their physical attractiveness or minutiae of their athletic performance, but didn’t have any specific health problems beforehand.

  33. 33.

    Yarrow

    @Facebones:  Not everyone has your experience. I have all the vaccines I’m allowed to have (5). I got Covid in June for the first time and I was SICK. Tested positive for 2.5 weeks. Four and a bit days of fever. Loss of taste and smell. Fatigue and brain fog were really bad.

    I tried to get another vaccine in the spring because my last one was September 2022 and was told no. I didn’t qualify. So instead I got a Covid infection and lost over a month to being quite sick and risk Long Covid and other health complications.

    I’m pretty angry about our current vaccine policy that doesn’t allow adults to get vaccinations if they want them, with of course a certain number of months in between. Old people and immunocompromised can. Not everyone can. Bad policy.

    Just a warning for people that just because you’re vaccinated if you get Covid you may not have a low grade case. I still have some lingering issues so may have ended up with some Long Covid.

  35. 35.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

     Bill Gates and the Dalai Lama probably ran the coverup.

    A good start, but you gotta work Soros in there somewhere. ;-)

  36. 36.

    trollhattan

    I’d read the whole thing (thanks for keeping tabs, Anne Laurie!) but am feeling like shit because I have COVID.

    Caught it on vacation (Portland, the big one) but think it was the spouse having rebound COVID on the trip, as she became really sneezy for most of the time and we were driving. Is there a better place to catch something? I’d say phone booth but there aren’t any.

    Doctor congratulated me on being the unusual holdout 3.5 years in. Am on Paxlovid, which he advised has a 5-10% rebound rate after symptoms are gone.

    In sum, will advise five jabs might well fend off most exposures but assuredly not all. Can describe symptoms as flu-like and not the “mild cold” some report, i.e., feel shitty, with temperature spikes, congestion, cough, sinuses running like Niagara Falls, but at least not bedridden.

  38. 38.

    trollhattan

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​Yet another reason to bash Texas: Lone star tick. Thanks a lot, Abbott.

    IIRC tick range will expand into new areas where they can now survive winter, similar to various mosquito species. Yay!

  39. 39.

    Yarrow

    @Facebones:  Not everyone with five vaccines gets a mild case. Maybe mild by the “I’m not in the hospital on a ventilator” standard, but I tested positive for 2.5 weeks, had almost 5 days of fever and it took a month before I was mostly functional again. I think I still have some lingering symptoms, which sucks.

    Not happy about our vaccine policy that only old people and immune compromised can get vaccines at this point. If you’ve had five, I mean. Can’t get a sixth.

  40. 40.

    Mel

    @Roger Moore: I think there is a lot of truth in that.
    The biggest problem lies, though, in the fact that a lot of the extreme behavior (vaccine refusal, sending sick kids to school, vaccine refusal and then hosting measles parties and covid parties and chicken pox parties to try to infect themselves and then spread diseases to others around them,  putting not just themselves but their children on grossly limiting diets or denying them foods like whole grains or tomatoes without any evidence of allergy testing because “gluten us bad” and “nightshades are poison”, etc.) ends up impacting the entire community and beyond.

    It’s possible, for sure, that some of the people doing extreme things have experienced illness and are desperately trying to find a solution. But, speaking as someone who has spent the last 20 years of her life fighting three serious autoimmune illnesses, the vast majority of people I know who are chronically ill will do almost anything to try to protect people around them from getting sick.

    We know what it is like to lose it all: your income,  your dreams of having a family, friends who can’t deal with or understand the hard changes that illness brings to one’s life, your sense of your body as a friend, not a constant enemy, your hope.

    Early on, a couple of years in to this decades long mess, I went through a desperate, panicked attempt to “find a cure”. Endless vitamins, supplements, hair testing, “clean diets”, energy healing, hypnosis, etc. You name it. The wake-up call for me came when a dear friend, who was a medical practitioner and damn well knew better, told me that both a) “The Secret” says that if bad things like getting sick happen to someone, it’s only because they deserve it and are “asking the universe for it”, and b) even our friend with late stage breast cancer was “not really sick, but only believes [she] is sick, but would be well if [she] just stopped believing that cancer is bad.” (For the origins of that gem, see the horrifying Byron Katie, who also appears to believe that the Holocaust wasn’t a tragic genocide but rather a failure of the persecuted to see it in a positive light, and that sexual abuse survivors are to blame for their abuse and ensuing mental health concerns).

    The above claptrap came from a person with three advanced degrees in science. (She had no problem charging both of us for acupuncture and energy healing, though – funny how action and belief failed to intersect there…) I think that is likely the kind of individual to whom Suzanne  is referring.

    Of course, none of what I tried “cured” me, because what I had was a case of a post-infectious syndrome (same thing as long Covid, just different trigger infection) which caused autoimmune diseases for which I carry genetic markers to kick into high gear.

    It’s complicated by a genetic immune deficiency that makes it hard to use the immunosuppressive meds that could treat my autoimmune conditions.

    Acupuncture helped a bit with pain and vascular headaches. Eating a healthy diet never hurts. I did have an underlying anemia that had a medical cause and was treated. Some wisely chosen alternative and nutritional modalities can be a helpful part of a fuller plan to address overwhelming health issues.

    Here’s the thing, though- knowing what serious and chronic illness feels like – the terror of what happens from something as simple as a cat scratch or catching a cold that someone healthy could clear in a few days, for example- most chronically ill people will go out of the way to try to keep from harming others, from making anyone ill. You just never know who could be hurt beyond measure by getting a respiratory infection, for example, or who is caring for a vulnerable person and could harm them by unknowingly bringing something infectious home, or what elderly or vulnerable dependent person could have an underlying health issue wherein extreme diet changes could lead to severe illness.

    So, the people who go to extremes with their own personal diet, or try every “natural cure” under the sun for a serious or chronic illness – well, I understand that. They’re scared, they’re looking for help and hope in a situation that feels terribly hopeless. As long as they are not forcing that on their families or children, as long as they  don’t refuse vaccinations without real medical justification, etc.,  if it gives them hope and they have the money for it (it’s not cheap…) , then to each their own.

    What Suzanne said that  resonated so intensely with me, though, was about the extremists who feel entitled to push their views, their lifestyles, and the resulting consequences on to everyone around them.

    That’s when it gets scary. That’s when it becomes much less about what you and Casey both absolutely identified as either honest attempts to improve one’s  own health, matters of personal choice,  or personal lifestyle adjustments (diet etc) according to valid differences in people’s dietary needs, and much more about virtue signalling, magical thinking, narcissistic behavior, and  damn the consequences inflicted on others.

    Sorry for the lengthy response. I’m staring down a big surgery in a few weeks amidst an uptick in Covid cases in my area,. None of the surgical staff is required to be vaccinated, and nobody is required to mask outside the obvious masking in the surgical suite. Because my hubby is on immunosuppressants for arthritis, I don’t want him to risk his health spending hours sitting in a packed hospital waiting room and, so I’m going to be alone for the duration of the surgery and stay, and my local friends are either refusing to mask at this point, or have very valid reasons to avoid hospital exposure. So, for that and a lot of reasons, this topic has been heavily on my mind.

  41. 41.

    Mel

    @trollhattan: I’m so sorry that you’re sick. Power to the Paxlovid!

    And, yep- f##ck those damned ticks. A tick- borne infection is what started my illness.

  42. 42.

    Mel

    @jonas: Alpha-gal syndrome. It can cause mild to very serious reactions in affected people who eat meat, esp. red meat. At its worst, it causes severe anaphylaxis.

    The causal factor is a prior tick bite exposure. Some people who have had ticks bites develop it, and some do not; likely it comes down to genetic predisposition.

    There is antibody testing that can be done to rule it in or out if someone has symptoms and a history if tick bite exposure.

  43. 43.

    lee

    Not too long ago I was checking covid deaths in the US and they were around 300-500 daily.

    Did they suddenly drop or are we at the ‘meh’ stage?

    The vast majority of the deaths are of the unvaccinated.

  44. 44.

    VFX Lurker

    @Mel:

    Sorry for the lengthy response. I’m staring down a big surgery in a few weeks amidst an uptick in Covid cases in my area,. None of the surgical staff is required to be vaccinated, and nobody is required to mask outside the obvious masking in the surgical suite. Because my hubby is on immunosuppressants for arthritis, I don’t want him to risk his health spending hours sitting in a packed hospital waiting room and, so I’m going to be alone for the duration of the surgery and stay, and my local friends are either refusing to mask at this point, or have very valid reasons to avoid hospital exposure. So, for that and a lot of reasons, this topic has been heavily on my mind.

    Argh. Wishing you an uneventful, boring, dull surgery with the best possible outcome.

  45. 45.

    NorthLeft

    Regarding the lack of public inquiries in Canada about the COVID pandemic response; I don’t see it ever happening because not one of those governments (federal, provincial, regional, municipal) wants to do it.
    Personally, I see it turning into a chaotic free for all with anti-vaxxers, libertarians, RWNJs, and other assorted idiots using those platforms to savage the governments (all of them), scientists, doctors, the health care workers and system, public health officials, etc.  The federal government in particular won’t because they are a minority and are not interested in giving the Conservative Party the opportunity to use an inquiry to their advantage.

    A PUBLIC inquiry to investigate and critique the response is absolutely essential IMO, but we don’t live in a world where that can be done productively.

    I think the health care system should conduct their own private inquiry and report their findings to the government for potential action.

    I wish it could be done transparently, but that just can’t happen these days.

  47. 47.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lee:

    The vast majority of the deaths are of the unvaccinated.

    Is that still true? While the probability of death is much higher for the unvaccinated, my impression was that vaccination of seniors was high enough that these days, most of the people dying are “fully vaccinated” by the CDC’s increasingly obsolete definition: that is, they got two shots, probably way back in 2021 (but perhaps not any boosters at all).

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