The dregs of the 2019 pandemic have been firmly relegated to ‘just another chronic complaint, now’ status. There will be ongoing research, not least concerning those unfortunates who are living with Long Covid, but barring more flare-ups, looks like we’ll be seeing fewer news reports going forward.
US Covid hospitalizations are on the rise, now >20,000 new admits/week, and this wave is just getting started as the JN.1 variant becomes dominant and wastewater levels surging in the Midwest with other regions to follow.
The booster protects vs JN.1! pic.twitter.com/IvxASAY23s— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 5, 2023
After months of declining or roughly flat figures following late summer's COVID-19 wave@CDCgov is now assessing this week that
"COVID-19 activity is increasing again especially in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions"https://t.co/y3HztrK2Gs pic.twitter.com/nQ99itM7II
— Alexander Tin (@Alexander_Tin) December 1, 2023
Nationwide, we remain far from previous winter peaks of COVID-19
Only around 1 in 10 are in areas with enough COVID-19 hospitalizations to be deemed at "medium" levels by @CDCgov
Less than 2M are in "high" counties where agency urges maskinghttps://t.co/IpTLB1JkcN pic.twitter.com/Ytalofuydk
— Alexander Tin (@Alexander_Tin) December 1, 2023
December 4th Update:
As predicted, a huge jump in numbers this week. 40% ⬆️ over last week. Pirola ⬆️⬆️.
🔸850,000 new infections/day
🔸1 in every 390 new people were infected today
🔸1 in every 39 people currently infected pic.twitter.com/E87e2PiCRW— JWeiland (@JPWeiland) December 4, 2023
Weekly U.S. COVID update:
– New cases: 203,268 est.
– Average: 186,058 (+10,849)
– States reporting: 50/50
– In hospital: 15,290 (1,352)
– In ICU: 1,741 (+58)
– New deaths: 1,288
– Average: 1,273 (-11)1/6
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) December 4, 2023
Last night's update: More than 200,000 new cases https://t.co/4QgMGQJuaU
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) December 4, 2023
Deaths remain elevated from the wave in September with more than 1,000 new deaths for the 12th week in a row, or more than 17,000 deaths during the same period.
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) December 4, 2023
CDC has been monitoring increases in respiratory illness recently reported around the world. Here is the latest information on pediatric pneumonia in the United States: https://t.co/tAMxdxBJNL pic.twitter.com/kMJTDFYe26
— CDC (@CDCgov) December 2, 2023
… The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), an agency within HHS, has a stockpile of hundreds of millions of COVID tests. It is teaming up with the Department of Education to allow school districts to order tests directly to distribute to families.
HHS officials said schools could order tests at a rate they could expect to distribute them, but they did not specify a limit.
“I could imagine a situation where perhaps a fifth grade classroom, it has a COVID-positive student and then they send everyone home with a COVID test in the backpack from that fifth grade class,” O’Connell said…
It has also been sending free tests to long-term care facilities, food banks and other organizations working with vulnerable populations. A small number of schools that serve socially vulnerable students were previously able to order tests from the federal stockpile…
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#COVID19 cases are on the rise in many parts of the world.
Make sure you’re fully protected. #VaccinesWork to keep you safe. Check your vaccination status and consult your local health worker.https://t.co/J24IdagZVY pic.twitter.com/L7JnM9g5YJ
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) December 5, 2023
(link)
UK: Earlier lockdown in 2020 could have prevented about 90% of the death toll in the first Covid wave, or more than 30,000 lives – Matt Hancock. https://t.co/Lyo5Cswuq3
— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) November 30, 2023
Covid inquiry: Eight uncomfortable questions facing Boris Johnson https://t.co/75ZuWblmcF
— BBC Health News (@bbchealth) December 2, 2023
Canada: Very high levels of Covid in Ottawa and increasing since last week
https://t.co/ptWC6nfHiD pic.twitter.com/aQXfnjpEPr
— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) November 30, 2023
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The article below is paywalled, though the included illustrations & graphs are excellent. If anyone has an accessible copy, I’d be glad to share it:
Looking for a thorough, accessible summary of the scientific evidence in the search for the origin of SARS-CoV-2?
Look no further than @KenyonWallace's excellent new piece in the @TorontoStar. Kenyon did a great job distinguishing the science from the speculation 👇🏼 https://t.co/MqXFzP2thX
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) December 4, 2023
Unfortunately, those are all reasons why collaborations aren’t happening any time soon.
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) December 5, 2023
Getting fully vaccinated dramatically reduces the risk of Long COVID. Rates of Long COVID are finally going down & here's what we know so far: https://t.co/FfOSbPtWCC on @sciam
— Laura Helmuth (@laurahelmuth) December 1, 2023
… Widespread microstructural alterations were seen in people with long COVID neurologic symptoms and in people who had COVID but recovered, reported Alexander Rau, MD, of the University Hospital Freiburg in Germany, at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
“We did see a signature in the brain microstructure that is associated with COVID-19 infection, but the pattern is different among those people with long COVID-19 and those who do not have long COVID-19,” Rau said.
Conventional MRI showed no brain volume loss in these patients. “While comparing their structural or conventional brain scans, we did not find any lesion or alteration that could explain the severe symptoms in patients with post-COVID syndrome,” Rau pointed out…
The researchers found distinct brain networks that correlated with long COVID symptoms, after adjusting for age and sex. Altered brain microstructure in the mesiotemporal cortex was associated with cognitive dysfunction. Patients who had problems with their sense of smell had microstructural changes in the olfactory cortex, while those with fatigue had altered microstructure in the brain stem, including the ascending arousal network.
“We can see there is an altered microstructure that is associated with COVID-19 infection, and when we take our findings along with data from other sources, we see that this is compatible with accelerated aging, rather than with neurodegeneration,” Rau said. “However, this is most speculative. To make this conclusive, we need a lot more research.”…
Rau said the next step is to perform longitudinal scans to see whether alterations persist and uncover prognostic factors that may identify who will recover from long COVID.
“We also need to corroborate the information from the scans with other bio data, such as obtained from blood draws, to gain a more profound insight in being able to predict which patients will have a post COVID-19 condition,” he added.
Fully agree with @PeterHotez
During Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen vaccine inequity and vaccine hesitancy and the combination is lethalhttps://t.co/nRTO21wZ9l pic.twitter.com/Gq6V1mRcSh
— Madhu Pai, MD, PhD (@paimadhu) December 5, 2023
New research shows that being overweight hampers the body's immune response to #SARSCoV2 https://t.co/atVBWyvVae via @medical_xpress
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) December 3, 2023
Bad news / good news:
University of Queensland-led research shows being overweight can impair the body’s antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 infection but not to the protection offered by vaccination.
Research lead, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences Ph.D. candidate Marcus Tong, said the finding built on the team’s existing research on how COVID-19 affects people who are overweight. The research is published in Clinical & Translational Immunology.
“We’ve previously shown that being overweight—not just being obese—increases the severity of SARS-CoV-2,” Mr. Tong said.
“But this work shows that being overweight creates an impaired antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 infection but not to vaccination.”…
Dr. Short said from a public health perspective, this data draws into question policies around boosters and lockdowns.
“We’d suggest that more personalized recommendations are needed for overweight people, both for ongoing COVID-19 management and future pandemics,” she said.
“Finally, the data provides an added impetus to improve SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in low-income countries, where there’s a high percentage of people who are overweight and are dependent on infection-induced immunity.”
New study — the first quantification of infectivity of #SARSCoV2 in aerosols sampled from 16 individuals, directly from exhaled air. "The highest infectivity was found for samples collected close to symptom onset and during singing…calculating the time needed for a… pic.twitter.com/s0Hp8rDekU
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) December 5, 2023
Prevalence of cardiac manifestations of #LongCovid from a meta-analysis of 150 reports with partitioning by quality https://t.co/KxTf9bodWJ pic.twitter.com/exnI7yAyqZ
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 2, 2023
The JN.1 variant’s rise here is helping to fuel a significant wave, reflected by wastewater data and case modeling by @JPWeiland 👇
We’re lucky that the booster provides protection against it, but too few (-16% of eligible) have taken advantage to date https://t.co/moo9fp8XLA— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 5, 2023
(link)
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Dr Fauci to appear before ?@COVIDSelect? committee next year >>> pic.twitter.com/x9PmnfCKYs
— Max Cohen (@maxpcohen) November 30, 2023
"San Francisco Bay Area's COVID death rate was among the lowest in the nation. Here's why
– nation’s first regional stay-at-home order
– long-lasting mask mandate.. for nearly two years
– residents ..largely agreeable with the health ordershttps://t.co/uyQlBE2vST— Yaneer Bar-Yam (@yaneerbaryam) November 30, 2023
Deaths in prisons across the United States increased by 77% during the first year of the #COVID19 pandemic—3.4 times the increase experienced in the general population—according to a new @ScienceAdvances analysis. https://t.co/7lnZSiYOyi pic.twitter.com/Opx69mBk1C
— Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine) December 5, 2023
The looney state of Texas is suing Pfizer over claims about the mRNA vax. The state's atty gen'l Ken Paxton (who has been charged w/ crimes over the years), contends Pfizer violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act w/ unsupported claims https://t.co/BoQjLQyizB pic.twitter.com/cUdBsy0ngh
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) December 4, 2023
Quite remarkable that Ken Paxton is suing Pfizer for claiming that its vaccine was 95% effective against "infection" when Pfizer never made any such claims. And the rest of the press release is of course filled with antivax nonsense. https://t.co/5KqGvrM3rN
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) December 1, 2023
No surprise, though. Ken Paxton's entire shtick is announcing lawsuits or investigations that he knows will amount to nothing, but that will play well on right-wing media. It's faux law enforcement via press release.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) December 1, 2023
On The Road – Captain C – Amsterdam, October 2023, Part 1
NotMax
Thanksgiving travel and gathering boomlet?
New Deal democrat
The CDC won’t update its variant information until Friday, but there’s a pretty good chance that after almost a year, XBB has been replaced by JN.1. Significantly, JN.1 is a throwback to the direct BA.2 line, rather than a continuation of the BA.5 line.
Which may have something to do with the fact that BIobot’s wastewater analysis (no mirrored at the CDC) shows particles have increased by nearly 10% nationally in the past week to a level about 15% higher than one year ago. The hardest hit area is the Midwest, already approaching its worst levels last December. The Northeast and South are also higher but the West remains at levels below all last winter and early spring.
Hospitalizations have also increased to 19,500, close to their highest level since early spring, and about 70% of their level one year ago. Deaths also started higher during the week of November 11, preliminarily to just below 1,200, about 55% of their equivalent level one year prior.
Deaths peaked early last January at close to 3,900. 55% of that would be about 2,000. 70% of that would be about 2,750.
It’s likely that the virus ran up against a wall of resistance after a year of BA.5 variants, making BA.2 direct descendants more viable. That plus almost total abandonment of mitigation measures like mask-wearing have probably opened the door to a heightened winter wave compared with recent trends.
Cervantes
I got my shot on Monday. I experienced the dread soreness at the injection site, so it was probably a mistake.
Matt McIrvin
So far, the wastewater counts in the Boston area look like a repeat of last winter but the impacts are much lower (cases, deaths, hospitalizations). I assume the number of infections is actually about the same but fewer are bad enough to warrant medical notice.
Ramalama
That piece about San Francisco Bay having the best outcomes doesn’t mention the big pink elephant in the room: AIDS. We gay people trusted Tony Fauci when he was one of few medical people doing anything to help the population of gay men dropping like flies from AIDS in SF.
Provincetown had a similar – no death result – on some version of the virus after the vaccines came out. All the queers got vaxxed and no one died with whatever outbreak was happening. Maybe a year ago?
sab
@Ramalama: That’s a very interesting point.
gene108
They take Paxton’s lawsuit too lightly given the current state of the courts where enough conservative judges are more interested in advancing right-wing policies than follow traditional jurisprudence.
I’m assuming Ken has shopped for the right judge to give him an initial win.
Lifeinthebonusround
@Ramalama: I lived in SF from ‘82 to ‘96, and you’re totally correct. All of us who survived AIDS are still keen to survive COVID, so we all got vaxxed ASAP, many of us still stay cautious about social gatherings, in a couple of hours I will get the updated Novavax. My straight friends who didn’t have that earlier lived experience are a lot more casual about their own safety now.
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: That’s interesting, because our local plants both show continuing declines. Perhaps we’re an outlier.
Also, I’m not a bit surprised that Paxton is wasting the money of Texas citizens on a performative lawsuit. He can go on Faux News and bloviate about how he’s “holding Pfizer accountable” and other such crap. It’ll play well with them, not so great with everyone else.
hrprogressive
When I got my XBB shot, the person at Walgreens told me it was “much more popular” than last year’s BA5 shot, and they had actually run out of it. This was in September.
Yet the claim is that only 16% of people have had it so far?
So I guess the 2022 shot was less than that, even?
I don’t understand it. I get that heading into 2024 we seem to be in a much better place than heading into 2022 when Omicron first leveled almost everyone it could find with illness if not necessarily worse outcomes. But the idea that people wouldn’t continue to get a damn shot to keep themselves from likely having one of those “worse outcomes” is ludicrous.
This is yet another update where there doesn’t really seem to be any great news here, although the decline of prevalence of Long COVID is positive. It’s one of the chief reasons I still generally do my best to avoid things I used to do, but even I will admit I’ve taken a few smaller steps towards not living a pandemic life anymore.
I also know people who haven’t been living that type of isolated life for a lot longer who haven’t even had Round 1 yet, so…maybe it isn’t quite as prevalent as it used to be.
I’m still really skeptical and really cautious, but the signs of “not being as bad as it used to be” do appear to be there.
Marmot
Ain’t it the truth. That criminal is a drain on the whole country, never mind the state.
Marmot
@gene108: I bet you’re wrong. Even conservatives can read.
Ramalama
@Lifeinthebonusround: Well congrats on surviving. My uncle + his husband lived in Oakland during that whole time, and lost more than half of their friends. What a harrowing time for them. There was also family drama due to my grandparents not being the most open, so they suffered a lot more than need be. They’ve also been on top of health practices during this whole damned pandemic.
JML
I was getting my booster this week. So of course I tested positive on Sunday. That said, it’s definitely been less severe for me this time. Hooray for vaccination!
There’s definitely been less pressure and activity around getting boosters here, IMHO, though. Some of it’s been combined with the pop-up flu shot clinics they do, and I wonder if that’s made it easier for some people to ignore?
Dagaetch
@AnneLaurie here is an accessible version of that article! https://archive.is/zDwEw
skerry
I have managed to avoid getting Covid, but I have the flu – even after getting the vaccine. This is the sickest I can remember being. I’m better than I was but not close to being well.
Manyakitty
@Dagaetch: thanks. Informative.
jonas
I returned from a trip to Austria a few weeks ago and could already tell things were getting dicey — two people I had planned to meet up with canceled because either they or a family member had come down with Covid. Another had only recently gotten over an infection, for the second time. Most countries in the EU were recommending the updated vaccine for those 65 and over and/or with comorbidities this fall, but not really pushing them otherwise. I think they’re revisiting that recommendation now.
My impression is that a lot of governments in Europe feel like they’re on thin ice with voters already over the economy, the migration crisis, the Ukraine war and everything, and don’t want to come storming back out of the gates now with onerous Covid regulations and requirements that will piss people off, so they’re being very cautious.
jonas
@skerry: I’ve gotten the flu vaccine every year for probably 20 years now and I’ve probably gotten the flu 2-3 times in that period, and boy did it suck every time. Whether the other 17 years where I skirted the flu were due to the vaccine, though, I have no idea. I do know it’s a tough vaccine to create, given how mutable influenza is, so it’s kind of hit or miss from year to year. I assume Covid will be similar going forward.
narya
First off, thanks, AL, for these posts–I really appreciate the work you put into them.
I got the new Covid vax practically the day it was available, and I’m very glad to see it appears to be effective against the current circulating variant(s). (I’m certain it prevented an infection in my friend, who played cribbage one night w/ a friend who tested positive the next morning.) Now I just have to get off my ass and get the flu/RSV vaxxes.
I continue to mask on public transportation and in stores, too.
bluefoot
@Ramalama:
I can’t second this enough. When that potential mass exposure event happened in Provincetown in summer 2022, people tested and reached out to their contacts right away. I was a tertiary contact of someone who had been there, and I was contacted in less than a day. Thankfully my city was still doing free PCR testing, so I tested right away. Pretty much everyone in my circles was fully vaxxed and no one tested positive those few weeks.
What I really appreciated about that whole incident was that there was fast, open communication, and no shame around reaching out to potential contacts. just matter of fact: this happened, I was exposed so may have exposed you, we all are getting tested and isolating.
TF79
@skerry: That’s a drag. I’ve also managed to avoid Covid so far, but got laid up with the flu last week despite having got my flu shot. It was pretty mild though (and very mild compared to the year I got the flu without the flu shot), so hopefully you recover quickly.
H.E.Wolf
I very much appreciate these posts.
My great-great-grandmother’s diaries have details about the 1918 influenza pandemic, and its effects on her community in southern MA.
If I hadn’t been already, that would have been enough to make me very pro-vaccination.
Matt McIrvin
@hrprogressive: As far as I know, the vast majority of Americans have never gotten a single COVID booster. They got one or two shots way back in 2021 and that was it. Those are most of the “fully vaccinated” people who keep getting sick.
That said, by now most of the population has “hybrid immunity” where they have the shots *and* had at least one infection, and that combination does seem to mitigate the effects of getting infected again. I think that’s what we’re seeing.
NoOneOfConsequence
You know what’s stupid about this?
Paxton is a fucking ATTORNEY GENERAL, okay? He is part of a state, with a health department.
(imitates dialing) Duh, hullo, uh, health deportment? Department, wahtevs. Does infection with covid provide you with eternal immunity? What? Whuddya mean it don’t? CHICKEN POX means you won’t get… shingles? I ain’t got not roof with no shingles, you moron! ANYWAY: didn’t Fpizer lie about this 95% effectiveness? What? DUDE! Stop talking crazy! I graduated from LAW SCHOOL! That makes me better than that Mike guy on Suits! Yeah, I bet you didn’t think I knew he never went to law school! Anyway… I’m filing this suit, because… don’t call my misrepresentation GROSS! It’s not gross at all! (slams phone down)
I don’t know how to pantomime Paxton proceeding to threaten to file meritless suit. Here’s hoping he tries it – Pfizer might well go to the bar over this. (The bar should have already taken action, in a non-corrupt state, but, hey, corruption is as American as modern day Republicans.)
Tony G
What’s interesting to me is the fact that many people — even intelligent people — now speak of the covid pandemic as a thing of the past — even while many people are still dying from covid every day. I guess that’s human nature — at least in the United States: When a terrible thing is no longer new, it just becomes the accepted norm. Like deaths from gunshots or car crashes.
Martin
Keep wearing that mask. ⅓ of my wife’s choir has caught it since Thanksgiving. It’s now tearing through her church.
Mask + ventilation is how you avoid it.
SomeRandomFellow
@Tony G: Well, “epidemic” means a massive surge, usually one that’s unexpected. So, if a mumps variant evaded the immunity, that would cause an epidemic, that you want to contain, so there’s no exposure to anyone who wasn’t exposed in the first wave.
Do it right, the disease dies. Do it like Covid-19, and, well, it blows up, and becomes a pandemic.
Well, now, it’s no longer a pandemic – the same sorts of precautions are useless. So, in that sense, yes, the pandemic is over. Just, we’re stuck with Covid-19 because a lot of right wingers didn’t want to do unpopular things – plus other reasons, but remember that, some of ’em fought those trying to save lives.
A surge can be thought of as a mini-epidemic, but, really, it’s just “a disease you don’t want to catch,” now – it doesn’t really merit epidemic status, in all the places I know about (which is surprisingly few).
glc
@hrprogressive: This is a late reply, but the business about “running out” seems more likely to reflect the fact that the pharmacies have to pay for the shots in advance now and don’t get refunds on those not sold. So it is in their interest to stay behind the demand rather than ahead of it. (This is said without looking at any actual numbers.)
Anyway, I stopped by here to drop off another link while I have it in front of me (Ed Yang op-ed).
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/opinion/long-covid-reporting-lessons.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FE0.2XkN.KUlg0YJKb-s5&hpgrp=k-abar&smid=url-share