Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Republicans do not trust women.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

This really is a full service blog.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

You cannot shame the shameless.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

No one could have predicted…

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: December 20, 2023

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: December 20, 2023

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We’ve definitely entered a holiday *reporting* lull, and I hope it continues through the next weeks into the new year….


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… In a fresh surge, Singapore recorded 56,000 more cases in a week, leading the Health Ministry to issue an advisory for citizens and travellers. An estimated number of 56,043 cases COVID-19 cases were recorded in the week of December 3 to 9 2023, rising from 32,035 cases in the previous week, according to the ministry.

Chinese mainland detected seven mild and asymptomatic cases of contracting the COVID-19 subvariant JN.1 in about a month, with at least 40 other countries reporting the subvariant, as of December 10. According to a Beijing-based immunologist, more cases of the JN.1 variant are expected as the virus has no boundary. But it is not a concern of the public because new variants of the novel coronavirus can appear in the future, Global Times reported.

The infections in China are at a low epidemic level with no unknown viruses or bacteria found during the monitoring of respiratory pathogens in China, according to Chinese health authorities, a Global Times report stated. The World Health Organization (WHO), according to the report, on November 21, adjusted BA.2.86 from a variant requiring global surveillance to a variant requiring attention, evaluating the risk of clinical severe infection as low and the overall assessment of public health risk as low.

In the United States, seventeen states have reported “high” or “very high” levels of respiratory illness activity as Covid-19 and other flu hospitalizations increased, ABC News quoted new federal data. In the fourth consecutive week (ending December 9), COVID-19 hospitalizations rose to 23,432, according to data updated last Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)…

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Grifters gonna grift:

Among the aftereffects of the pandemic: There’s gonna be more attention paid to a lot of other ‘ordinary’ infections…

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Reader Interactions

32Comments

  2. 2.

    Van Buren

    This month, 3 of my 20 students have had COVID, and the head of our PTA, who has 4 kids in the school and is in the building daily, had it. The principal sent an email saying that she sees too many teachers sitting at their desks and not interacting with students. She may regret that, seeing as how substitutes are impossible to find.

  3. 3.

    sab

    My rwng sibling who didn’t much believe in covid except when he could blame fauci, actually caught covid and also has long covid.

    His long covid fucked up his hearing. Pitch is off for everything. Women now are so high only dogs can hear them. He has to mostly lipread, but lots of people wear masks.

    I am torn between serious sympathy and hilarity. He is my brother,  but ignore other people and medical reality and actual reality kicks your ass.

    Sympathy for others has never been his thing.

  4. 4.

    lowtechcyclist

    @sab: ​
     

    I’d ask whether long Covid has changed his views on Covid to be more in line with the science, but with such people, even the clue stick of finding out after fucking around never seems to make much of a dent in their craniums.

  6. 6.

    sab

    @lowtechcyclist: We are no longer on speaking terms so I do not know and do not care what he thinks. He doesn’t care at all about family I love, so f*** him. Blood relationship only goes so far.

  7. 7.

    lowtechcyclist

    I was today days old when I learned who Noah Rothman is, but people like him keep reminding me that there’s eight billion people already born into the world, and the ‘pro-lifers’ rarely give a damn about the lives of any of them.

  8. 8.

    sab

    @lowtechcyclist: He works for a mutual fund guy  who is also a self-help guru. I think bro has been sucked into a cult, and since getting rich was a life goal that he has achieved, no way to get him out of the cult.

  10. 10.

    J.

    My husband gave me Covid for Hanukkah. He got it on a business trip to Texas. We both got the latest booster as soon as it was available in September and have never had Covid. (I am basically a hermit who works from home and my husband also works from home.) The spouse wore a mask in the airport and on the plane. Then he was in meetings at a hotel with no more than a couple of dozen people for two days, none of whom appeared sick or have since become sick, as far as he knows. But he started coughing just over 24 hours after he got home and then tested positive. And I started to feel sick three days later. We are both okay, though I felt like death for a couple of days. Just glad we were both boosted so neither one of us got really sick or had to go to the hospital. We will now be wearing masks in public again. Get those boosters people and wear a mask! No fun being sick for the holidays.

  11. 11.

    Geo Wilcox

    @J.: My husband caught it on a trip to see his family and brought it home. We spent days together in a hotel room visiting my daughter as well as driving in a smallish car there and back. I never got it. Luckily we have a three story house and plenty of room to isolate. I got the top floor and he the basement. On the first floor we wore masks whenever we were on it to make meals. He got Paxlovid and felt a lot better and tested negative a week plus later.

  12. 12.

    Gvg

    @sab: seems like there ought to be an app for that, to bring pitch down an octave at a time and feed to an earphone? Check with both an ear doctor and musicians.

  13. 13.

    New Deal democrat

    Biobot updated yesterday, indicating a further increase in our ongoing winter wave, to a level equivalent to 85% of last winter’s wave this same week. The primary culprit is the Northeast, where levels are 10% higher than one year ago, and rising sharply. Particle levels are also increasing in the South, steady in the West, and declining in the Midwest. The Midwest is at a level equivalent to last year, but the South and West are only at about 80% of last year’s levels.

    Hospitalizations are still only about 2/3rd’s of last year’s levels, at 23,400, and deaths as of 4 weeks ago were at 60% of last year’s equivalent level, at 1,300. If these trends hold, in early January trends should peak at 30,000 hospitalizations and 2,300 deaths weekly. If so, this will be the lowest winter wave of the virus so far.

    Although the CDC won’t update variant information until Friday, if the latest trend continues, JN.1 will constitute about 40% or more of all cases, accounting for virtually the entire increase in this wave. The good news, as indicated above, is that there does not appear to be any increase in virulence, as the virus continues to encounter a population that has been vaccinated, previously infected, or both. It’s worth noting that the CDC warning about hospital capacity appears to be mainly caused by this year’s flu rather than COVID.

  14. 14.

    J.

    @Geo Wilcox: I’m glad you didn’t get sick! Pretty amazing. My husband isolated, mostly, but refused to wear a mask inside the house initially. He has since apologized.

  15. 15.

    Matt McIrvin

    The story seems to be the same here in Massachusetts as it’s been: the wastewater chart looks almost like a repeat of last year, but the impacts (“case” counts which at this point are probably only getting worse-than-usual cases; death counts; hospitalizations) are only at about 1/3 of last year. That says to me that the currently ascendant strain is about as good at spreading as XBB was but for whatever reason, these are less severe infections. Maybe more to do with the population having more long-term resistance than anything else.

  16. 16.

    Soprano2

    Our wastewater monitoring shows spikes at both plants, which doesn’t surprise me. Our parking lot is half empty because so many people are out sick with various illnesses; not just Covid, but other stuff too. It’s a good thing we aren’t having our employee Christmas breakfast until the new year. So far I’m not sick, knock on wood.

  17. 17.

    eversor

    We should not be vaxing people as we still have Christianity.  If we must give out medicine people should sell their homes and possessions and become vagrants to pay for the shot like Christ himself instructed, the government should not do it and we still have Christianity so that is the solution.  Also as per Christianity as wives must submit to their husbands only the man of the house should decide.

    Let’s Christian this up!

  20. 20.

    Soprano2

    @NotMax: I hope not! We usually go out somewhere. Sometimes we go to Hemingway’s; the restaurant at the original Bass Pro. They have an amazing breakfast buffet.

  21. 21.

    gvg

    My parents currently have it. Mother was exposed last week outside to someone not feeling well whom she made take a covid test (positive). Outside is supposed to be almost always safe. She had also been to various meetings and people had flu. So, Saturday was nephews 16th birthday. She wasn’t feeling well but tested negative and came out to say hello then went to bed. His mother the doctor said it was fine, very low odds of covid. Family socialized including grandfather. Doctor sister also said mom should get tested for flu and strep and get meds so Sunday mom went to a clinic and was tested. Flu was negative, Covid was positive. She got Paxlovid and started treatment and dad moved to the other side of the house (too late). I started isolating and masking but after I had grocery shopped. Cancelled plans. Notified work. Protocol is mask and avoid people. Critical work date coming up. Decided close office and mask outside. I have a hepa filter in my office anyway. Tuesday morning notified dad is sick, sister is coming to take care of both, and nephew will stay with me. He has school but she can transport him masked. I live close to parents. Dad has trouble filling his prescription for Paxlovid because the pharmacies are out. This is a metro area with a population of around 300,000.  By that night, my sister is beginning to feel ill. I still feel ok, but probably won’t. Work switched me to remote for the rest of the week.

    An aunt who did not come to the birthday party has a kidney infection due to a kidney stone. Christmas has been put off by agreement.

  23. 23.

    Greg

    If we accept that Trump saying that immigrants are “poisoning” the blood of Americans is meant with the most generous interpretation of that comment (believe me, I don’t take that interpretation) that it is about infectious disease, why is he not calling for “herd immunity” as he did at the beginning of COVID? Shouldn’t his previous position demand that we get more of that disease here to make us more resistant to that disease?

  24. 24.

    Yarrow

    @gvg: Yikes! That’s a lot. Covid is so contagious. I hope everyone in your family is okay. Good luck staying clear of it.

    Covid is mostly airborne transmission but according to public health studies it can linger in the air after someone leaves. So, for example, if someone goes into a public restroom that’s empty they can still be exposed because someone who had it just left. In places with poor air circulation/filtration it can linger longer. That’s why outdoors is safer because there is more opportunity for air to circulate.

    I really wish Covid had been a catalyst for improving indoor air quality. It would help so many people not get sick – not just with Covid but with lots of things. Oh well.

  25. 25.

    Nelle

    We are totally vaccinated but on alert for RSV as we were caring for 17 month old grandson, who was ill with that.  Then had one day with the 6 y.o. granddaughter, who had a serious headache.  Husband was dragging around but not talkative.  Three days after the headache kid, I got one that felt like knitting needles through the skull at various angles, but mostly right where the grandchild was holding her head. I tested positive for Covid that afternoon, as did my husband. Three days later, so did my sister, who is staying with us, as well as did my son and DIL.  All threecwomen got Paxlovid (nearly instant relief of most symptoms). The two men had waited too long.  We’re all vaccinated and all testing negative now.

  26. 26.

    catclub

    @Greg: why is he not calling for “herd immunity” as he did at the beginning of COVID?

     

    Did he?  I know others, and other conservatives called for that, but I have no memory of Trump saying that, or calling for it.  Too intelligent.

     

    ETA: Now, sticking a lightbulb up your ass, he was right there.

  28. 28.

    Avalune

    I caught it for the first time this year – just after Thanksgiving. And my kid got it. Leto somehow managed to avoid. He’d also had his booster – I didn’t get mine yet because the VA decided they weren’t giving them to spouses anymore and I hadn’t gotten around to scheduling vis CVS so that’s on me.

    At work a whole department is out with covid on one campus. Also half another department and several other people in various departments. I know we have one bringing their covid to work today because they don’t have paid leave and the college will only let them work from home for 2 days – despite it being entirely possible to do it the whole week and we have no classes, therefore no students and no real need to be all hands on deck. So maybe some others will end up getting sick as a result.

    We’ve always had various super spreader events at work but this winter seems especially bad.

  29. 29.

    Bill Arnold

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I was today days old when I learned who Noah Rothman is

    I gave him grudging credit on Twitter for being part of a successful GOP effort to differentially kill 100-200K GOP voters.

  30. 30.

    RaflW

    For whatever reason, the pie filter had a name in it last night, and today it didn’t.

    But I corrected that asap.

  31. 31.

    something fabulous

    Anecdote from Europe: Brother Fabulous, higher-risk with respiratory things and lots of travel, finally caught, it for the first time, while at home (rather than flying or gallivanting) in Paris last week. Light case, didn’t even know he he’d had it except for pre-emotive testing for an event. No idea where he got it, seems to be going around at higher rates again in his area too.

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