Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: December 13, 2023

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: December 13, 2023

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: December 13, 2023

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35Comments

  3. 3.

    Betty

    What a comprehensive collection of articles. Such excellent work, Anne. Anecdotal evidence of the rise in cases in Pennsylvania: 3 older family members with significant cases. They have all said they have been very sick and slow to recover.

  6. 6.

    Nelle

    Husband and I both self-tested positive on Sunday.  He had been at a walk-in clinic on Saturday and told he probably had a virus but not tested for Covid.  We’d been taking care of a toddler grandson who has RSV.  Now I wonder if he ( the little guy) has RSV and Covid at the same time.

    Worst head pain ever..like knitting needles were being driven at angles into my skull.  Thankful for ice packs.  Pain diminished about an hour after first dose of Paxlovid.

  7. 7.

    Rusty

    Paxton is working to kill as many of his constituents as possible, either with denial of healthcare for pregnant women or leaving as many unvaccinated as possible.  It’s Texas, so his chances for reelection are only increasing.  We have met the enemy and he is us.

  8. 8.

    bjacques

    A few of my friends here in NL got Rona’ed. None hospitalized as far as I know. Some work colleagues went to an event abroad that turned into a superspreader event. One lost the ability to smell vinegar for a couple of hours.

    I got my shot about 6 weeks ago, since anyone 60 or older, or with a pre-existing condition like asthma or immune deficiency can go straight to the government health website and make an appointment.

  9. 9.

    Lapassionara

    Thank you, AL. This is very helpful information. A major hospital here is now requiring masks again, evidently because of COVID and RSV. I still mask in stores, etc. One of the few.

  10. 10.

    lowtechcyclist

    PBS NewsHour:

    Just over 15% of U.S. adults have gotten the latest COVID-19 booster. Demand for the vaccine has dropped sharply since it was first introduced. That’s partly because the government’s response to COVID-19 has been so politically charged.

    I share Centrism Fan Acct’s ire.  Fuck this sort of refusal to say who is ‘politically charging’ the response.

    And I’m sure “Congress” can’t get its act together and pass a budget or aid to Ukraine.

    This is why I don’t give to PBS.

  11. 11.

    New Deal democrat

    One further update not in the article: as of last Friday, the CDC estimated that JN.1 made up 21.4% of all cases. That basically is the entire increase in cases since early November. XBB has finally faded to about 10% of all cases.

    Compared with 12 months go, new hospitalizations are down 33% (22,000 vs. 33,000). YoY deaths as of four weeks ago were down 40% (1300 vs. 2200). If this pattern holds through a peak in early January, we will crest at about 30,000 hospitalizations and 2500 deaths per week.Not great but the smallest winter wave yet.

    Also, wastewater trends vs. one year ago from the CDC are about equal nationally; higher than one year ago in the Midwest, lower in the West, and about equal in the Northeast and South.

  13. 13.

    hrprogressive

    For the first time in 4 years, I have spent significant (a few hours) time with family members without any masking in the last month, in one case with just my sibling, the more recent, both of my parents. Not exactly events one would call “superspreaders” but I consider both to be substantial steps.

    It’s been a week and a half since visiting my parents, and almost a month since my sibling stopped by, and no signs of any infection.

    Yes, I’m more than well aware that there have been substantial concerns about asymptomatic infection/spread, but I would like to note that after multiple rounds of vaccinations, and with the variant landscape much different in almost 2024 compared to 2020/1, I honestly think this is less of an issue now than it might have been. Immune response appears to appear prior to peak infectivity, at least that’s the last I knew about it – check out Michael Mina’s work if you can still find him, he brought this up when Omicron first burst onto the scene about 2 years ago.

    I say all of that to note that I actually asked my mother if they had ever had it, and was surprisingly told “no”. They haven’t lived nearly the same type of mostly-isolated lifestyle I’ve maintained, so I found that to be an interesting data point.

    I obviously think anyone can and should take the care they think is necessary for their own health. I’ve been doing this for years now, having abandoned pretty much my entire life at the expense of not catching it.

    I am very cautiously hopeful that the idea of either it becoming “seasonal” or at least peaking and troughing very sharply becoming more standard. The idea that it is “literally everywhere” the way it was 2 and 3 years ago does not seem to be quite the same dynamic anymore.

    Hopefully better shots and treatments continue down the line too so we can firmly put it in the category of “no longer running our lives”. Hopefully.

  18. 18.

    Yarrow

    Ooooh! Maybe Ken Paxton can have Texas offer a $10K bounty on anyone who’s had a Pfizer vaccine.

  19. 19.

    JMG

    Alice and I both tested positive the Monday after Thanksgiving. Her PCP recommended paxlovid, mine did not. We are both totally multiply vaxxed. Both of us recovered at the same pace pretty much. I wake up congested and am sleeping a bit more, an hour or so later in the morning, but am otherwise functional and fine. Worst effects were in the first couple days when it was a combination of a bad cold and being very very sleepy most of the time. I guess we’re in the official stats since we both reported to our doctors.

  20. 20.

    Yarrow

    @catclub:  I read somewhere recently that Covid viral load now peaks on day 4 or 5. Something like that. People test early and are negative but may not test again on day 4 or 5 so might miss that they have Covid. Also, you might just have a cold.

  21. 21.

    satby

    Last week I got the Novovax covid vaccine, since my previous ones were Pfizer and Moderna and I wanted to mix the boosters. Easy to just walk into a Costco or CVS to get one near me without an appointment, and had no reaction other than very slight soreness at the injection site. Did not get the flu shot at the same time, will do so next week, but it was nice to not have a day down due to a reaction.

  22. 22.

    Soprano2

    It seems that every time there is a new mutation of Covid, it follows a familiar pattern 1) Oh no, a new variety, this one could be really really dangerous, then 2) New variety, not much different than the old variety, and not more dangerous, about the same.  No wonder people don’t listen anymore.

  24. 24.

    currants

    AL, can’t thank you enough for this continuing aggregated information. It’s invaluable. Thank you.

  25. 25.

    New Deal democrat

    @Soprano2: Yeah, pretty much.

    I’ve been beating the drum with friends and neighbors that a real winter wave has started again, and they should expect to hear more acquaintances fessing up to getting COVID again.

    I continue to mask up indoors in public (for not getting seasonal flu as much as for COVID), and I won’t eat indoors at any restaurants until this wave has passed.

  26. 26.

    Marmot

    So I don’t have to look it up, the self-replicating RNA strand in that vaccine includes an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase? Same strand?

    Edit: Fuck Paxton. Let Texas vote.

  27. 27.

    sab

    @glc: Thanks for the link.

    I have a RWNJ relative with long covid. It fucked up his hearing. The pitch of everything is off. Women’s voices are now out of his hearing range so he has to lip read. Weird.

  30. 30.

    raven

    @New Deal democrat: Well I guess I shouldn’t be upset that my visiting SIL is insisting on us testing and we have to eat in a restaurant that has little enclosed  greenhouse kind of things 4 people can eat in.

  32. 32.

    Matt McIrvin

    @New Deal democrat: As I keep saying, the wastewater counts here still look like a replay of one year ago but the counts of *impacts* (“cases”, hospitalizations, deaths) are all maybe 1/3 of last year. Which says to me that this winter’s version is spreading about as well but for whatever reason (whether it’s the virus or the patients) is less severe.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: Local statistics suggest to me that this wave’s is *less* dangerous, though that may be us developing long term resistance and not the virus getting less deadly.

  34. 34.

    Martin

    It’s tearing through communities near me. Thankfully high vaccination/previous infection rates seem to be keeping hospitalizations manageable.

    The end-state was always going to be that everyone gets it, multiple times, with each booster/infection making the next case a bit milder, but there’s still the problem of long covid that they are getting a bit more insight on but appear to be no closer to curing. This is the part of covid that accumulates over time. So it’s still best to avoid it, even if your boosters would typically result in a mild case.

    These local waves are really making me upset because we knew that the endemic phase would go like this but as soon as we rolled out of pandemic we tore down all of the policy mechanisms that would allow us to manage it. Endemic means that you need all of the prior lockdown/mitigation strategies, you just don’t need them all the time. You tip them up and tear them down based on the case rate, but my wife’s school completely removed the ability to protect students. She’s in the choir which has a known high transmission rate due to singing involving deep breathing and projecting air with them in close proximity, but when rates go up the instructor can’t require they wear their singing masks any longer. So everyone catches it.

    It’s this determination to constantly do dumb shit that makes me so angry and just want to disengage.

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