Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

“But what about the lurkers?”

We will not go back.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Books are my comfort food!

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

This blog will pay for itself.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

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

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

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

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

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

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: March 27, 2024

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: March 27, 2024

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: March 27, 2024


From the Washington Post, “Four years in, covid flags no longer fly. Families’ grief remains”: [unpaywalled Yahoo link]

The monument to grief on the National Mall was never built to last.

The sea of white flags, one for each covid victim, rustled in the wind and shimmered in the sunlight for a time, simply asking passersby to consider those who died too soon…

The urgency of remembering has only deepened for survivors as America moves further from the World Health Organization’s declaration of a coronavirus pandemic, four years ago this month.

To artist and former hospice volunteer Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, who is archiving 20,000 flags from the memorial with anthropology professor Sarah E. Wagner, the nation’s reckoning with loss is just beginning. Nearly 1.2 million people in America have perished, federal data shows.

“We’re running from a burning building. We’re not ready to stop and look back at the largest slow-motion casualty event in U.S. history,” Firstenberg said.

The flags were installed outside RFK Stadium in Washington from late October through November 2020 and on the Mall from Sept. 17 to Oct. 3 in 2021. The Washington Post talked to some of the people who dedicated flags about what the memorial, “In America: Remember,” meant to them…

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Reader Interactions

43Comments

  1. 1.

    TBone

    I am trying to be patient and stay positive that I will eventually get back to my baseline level of suffering (my “normal” long Lyme and old age ailments from the before time) but it’s tough to hang in there and try to stay mentally positive all the time.  Ach, everything is temporary!  So I tell myself 😁

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-covid-now-looks-like-a-neurological-disease-helping-doctors-to-focus-treatments1/

    Second go-round with long symptoms so, if they improved once, they will improve again. Right? Right???

  2. 2.

    New Deal democrat

    No variant update this week. Eric Topol reports a study showing increased viral shedding in wastewater from JN.1 compared with earlier variants, which could at least partially explain why the big increase in viral loads during winter did not result in an equal increase in hospitalizations and deaths.

    The trend in wastewater, hospitalizations, and deaths remains very positive.

    BIobot’s latest update shows a greater than 70% decline compared with the winter peak. The CDC’s latest wastewater update shows a nearly 80% decline. To get to last summer’s lows, there would need to be a 90% or greater decline.

    Hospitalizations declined another 3,000 to 10,700 as of March 16. Only two weeks in April 2022 and 3.5 months last year from late April to early August were lower.

    As of February 24, there were 1,190 deaths. This was lower than any time during the pandemic except for May through August of last year. The preliminary numbers from the three weeks since are lower than the preliminary numbers in the previous few weeks. If the trend holds, then by the time the week of March 16 is fully reported, it will show only about 750 deaths, which will be lower than any time except for late May through early August last year.

    If this trend does continue to hold, then for the first time since March 2020 I will resume full normal activities, including no longer masking in indoor public venues and indoor dining at restaurants.

  5. 5.

    Nelle

    My metro area has stopped the wastewater testing because the emergency is over.  Really?  Has Trumpian illogical infested all institutions?  No need to monitor rises and falls?  It is never coming back?  Grandson had covid last week, friends cancelled coming from another state for Easter.  She has Covid.  Last guests had covid three weeks prior.   Husband is sick but so far, testing negative.

    This week,  i tried to get the covid vaccine update reccomended by CDC but insurance refused to cover it.

  7. 7.

    TBone

    How TF is updating & reinvigorating vaxx boosters NOT COVERED by insurance any longer as preventative medicine to prevent future, even-more-expensive costs of illness?!?!

  11. 11.

    Fair Economist

    Still masking whenever practical. I’m astonished how casual most people are about something that is currently equivalent to a neverending flu season.

  12. 12.

    TBone

    Me too!  Also, anti-vaxxers can BITE ME. Measles AGAIN?  I want to break out my baseball bat.

  16. 16.

    RevRick

    I personally know two young women who are dealing with the ravages of Long COVID and one young man who committed suicide because he had it. One of the the women underwent a prolonged hospitalization with POTS, postural tachycardia syndrome.
    We tend to focus on the death toll, but we forget that there are countless others who are disabled because of how COVID has attacked their bodies.

  20. 20.

    TBone

    @RevRick: awwww thanks Rev!  I am pretty good at cheering up but every voice of encouragement is a welcome balm! 💙💜❤️

  21. 21.

    MazeDancer

    Continuing thanks, Anne Laurie.

    Yesterday, I needed to spend less than 5 minutes in an empty store buying bird food. (Birds gotta eat!). Just a clerk there.

    Then, I spent another 5 minutes in an empty store picking up a new replacement iPad from the one I unalived by accident. (50 bucks. Let’s hear it for AppleCare.) Again, one clerk.

    Decided I would try heavily spraying nose with alleged preventative nasal spray and risk no mask. And not really talk.

    We’ll see if that was stupid. Or really stupid.

  22. 22.

    Dennis Doubleday

    @eclare: It’s a bit risky, though. The Trump campaign could come back with the 800,000 dead during the Biden admin. Yes, it’s 3 years instead of 1, but there has also been a vaccine for almost all his time in office.

    I support Biden over Chaos&Corruption, and he has been a better President than I expected on most issues. But he has basically adopted the Trumpian “Nothing to see here, stop the tests and it will go away” approach to pandemic management, all the way down to apparently telling his CDC director to never mention masking as a preventative. She confines herself to insipid “wash your hands” messages

    Thank you to Anne Laurie for continuing to provide these updates when most are happy to ignore it.

  23. 23.

    Kristine

    Adding my thanks to all the others for continuing this coverage, AL.

    Got a booster yesterday—Moderna this time. So far, some mild chills and aches a few hours after and a sore arm today. My goal is to keep getting the shot every six months. I really wish the nasal spray version would be approved.

    I may be courting trouble but I will admit I haven’t masked in months. I’m still a borderline hermit—I go out a handful of times a week to shop and have yet to brave any sort of large gathering or concert. That will change in October when I attend World Fantasy Convention in Niagara Falls. It’s a drivable distance so no airports or planes. But, hotel and small rooms filled with people. I know I’ll be seeing one friend who is immunocompromised so I will be masking as needed at least. Wondering if that will be enough.

  24. 24.

    UncleEbeneezer

    I still get damn near into a state of quiet rage any time I think about or encounter the people who refused to get vaccinated.  Like people who refused to vote for Hillary in 2016 (lots of overlap there), I don’t think I will ever stop hating these people.  I know it’s pointless and bad for my own mental health but I just can’t get over it.

  25. 25.

    Chris T.

    @TBone: I went to a Bruce Hornsby concert at Zellerbach Hall (UCBerkeley) a while back. Most of his stuff is somewhat freeform jazz piano, not as “mainstream” as “The Way it Is”, but I liked it a lot. He’s extremely talented, and if you like that kind of tinkly-rambly-jazzy piano you should check out his other work.

  26. 26.

    Juju

    @Nelle: who is your insurance carrier?  That seems odd that they won’t cover the booster. You’d think they’d rather cover a booster than possible doctor visit or worse.

  27. 27.

    Juju

    @TBone: When you see the deaths from Covid listed, the majority of those people are not vaccinated, or have not updated vaccinations., at least that’s what my brother, a doctor, says.

  28. 28.

    Juju

    @Dennis Doubleday: Biden is not at fault for those deaths that occurred after a vaccine became available. The majority of the population who died after the vaccine was available declined vaccination. They have no one to blame but themselves.

  29. 29.

    glc

    @TBone: That’s a pretty old article, though it doesn’t look notably different from what I’d expect to see today. As it’s paywalled, I’ll add a direct link.

    I’ve got a neighbor who is dealing with this without any particular treatment, so I’m curious to know what has been learned about treatment so far.  There’s some discussion in the article but I would imagine something has been learned since then.

  30. 30.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Juju: I don’t think this is true.  I remember reading or watching an explainer from an epidemiologist, public health expert or science writer (maybe Ed Yong?) about why headlines touting the fact that “more Vaccinated people were dying of Covid, than un-Vaccinated” were not making any big point about the ineffectiveness of the vaccines, because that is exactly what you expect once the majority of people (especially elderly people in nursing homes etc.) are vaccinated.  As much as vaccination efforts have been disappointing the number of people who got the vaccine in the US is still 3-4 times that of the number that didn’t.  Most deaths will be of people who are vaccinated because most people are vaccinated.  It’s simple statistics in a world where no vaccine is 100% effective.

  31. 31.

    glc

    @Juju:

    Biden is not at fault for those deaths that occurred after a vaccine became available.

    The idea that from a public health standpoint, when an epidemic is taking place and a vaccine is available, nothing more needs to be done, is indefensible. We have really regressed a great deal from our previous understanding of public health.

    This issue became political and the CDC is treating it as such. There are lots of things broken in the federal government currently that Biden is not focused on fixing, and this is a significant one.  As a political choice it makes a good deal of sense, and one has to have priorities, but it is still a choice, and responsibility is incurred.

    An immunocompromised person who cannot be vaccinated is not at fault for dying from a  contagious disease. They are casualties of a policy that views public health measures aimed at reducing community spread as excessively onerous. The same applies to those who are not eligible for the spring booster, or cannot afford it, or cannot find it (there is a great deal of confusion about this even on the part of pharmacists).

  33. 33.

    Juju

    @UncleEbeneezer: I probably should have used chosen not to get vaccinated rather than declined. For your information, immunocompromised people are typically the first people on the list to get vaccinations, since they are the people who really need to be vaccinated to survive. Sometimes they need additional vaccine doses to get where you or I would be with just one dose. Live vaccines are not good for the immunosuppressed. The covid vaccines are not live vaccines.

  36. 36.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Juju: Oh believe me, I know.  MIL was a double-lung-transplant survivor (she died last year and Covid was likely a contributing factor though not the official cause of death- she was vaccinated) and I have a couple good friends who are immunocompromised and were all thankfully at the front of the line for the Covid vaccines because these vaccines were safe for them.

    Yes, I figured that “chosen” is what you meant, but I felt it worth mentioning the statistics of vaccinated people dying more than unvaccinated, just in case, because it’s still a bullshit talking point that Republicans love to spout.

  37. 37.

    Juju

    @UncleEbeneezer: I was going by what my brother mentioned when we were having a discussion about the number of Covid deaths per week.  It comes to around 30,000 a month in total. He mentioned that the majority of his patients who have died since the vaccine became available were people who chose not to be vaccinated for whatever reason.

  38. 38.

    Juju

    @UncleEbeneezer: By the way, I replied to the wrong person. I meant to reply to glc. I noticed after I posted. The part about the immunocompromised was directed at glc. I was too late to fix it. Sorry.

  40. 40.

    Mel

     

     

    @TBone: It’s another, typical right hand / left hand clusterfuck. The FDA and CDC have stated that people “at high risk” can get an additional updated booster if they wish, if it has been at least four months since they received their updated booster, based on “medical guidance”. There is language about age being a factor if you are over fifty, then in another location in the CDC info it gives “over 65” as a factor. The info says that high risk patients can “choose” to get an additional updated booster, but then mentions “informed medical” decision making in conjunction with a “provider”, but doesn’t specify if the “provider” is a physician, a pharmacist, a tech…

    The government info also states that a high-risk patient can self-attest to their qualifying for the additional booster, and that they do not need to provide any proof of or description of their specific illness / high risk condition(s) or any approval from a physician.

    So…. patients can choose on their own to get the booster and are “entitled to” do so, but the documents make it unclear as to whether a doctor, pharmacist, or tech can use “informed medical” assessment to refuse a high-risk patient a booster or not.

    Patients are not required to provide physician referral or approval for the booster, nor are they required to disclose details of their high-risk health conditions to obtain a booster, but what if a pharmacist or technician refuses to give a booster without forcing a patient to do just that, even if the pharmacist or tech is not qualified to understand the full risk impact complex  or rare high-risk conditions?

    And, of course, nobody is mandating that insurance companies or state / local health agencies actually cover the recommended additional booster for higher risk people, most pharmacists are totally unaware of the recommendation in the first place, and the list of what qualifies a person as “high- risk” or “ moderately to severely imuunocompromised” is abysmally incomplete and confusing.

    The CDC gives a list, but then puts in a series of important (but largely useless  for the patient in real-world interactions with insurance and medical providers) CYA disclaimers:  “[This] list of underlying medical conditions is not exhaustive…” “This list should not be used to exclude people with underlying conditions from recommended measures for … treatment of Covid-19.” “Having multiple conditions [is] also associated with severe Covid-19 illness.” “Patients with one or more of certain underlying medical conditions are also at higher risk.” “The information* is intended to help healthcare professionals make informed decisions…” “ A person with a condition that is not listed may still be at greater risk of getting very sick from Covid-19.”

    So, the list is supposedly intended to increase risk awareness amongst providers and patients, and to help providers increase access to treatments, and is clearly stated: to be incomplete, to not consider the impact of multiple listed or unlisted health conditions (does state that multiple health problems clearly increases risk of severe Covid but gives no provider guidance on how to progress with such patients), to not include rare or less common conditions that still greatly increase risk but “might not” be listed (and most are not), simply b/c they weren’t looked at in large research trials, etc.

    Yet, most major health systems where I live are ignoring the explanatory text of the document and its supplements, and are using just the bare bones, “incomplete”  list of conditions to make final decisions about life-saving / life-threatening issues like allowing or fighting for coverage for the additional boosters, trying to get approvals, first for Evusheld in years past, and now for Pemgarda.

    It took me numerous months, hours of reading and printing out and highlighting journal articles to finally convince my previous immunologist to apply for Evusheld, despite my having several conditions on the “suggestive of increased risk of severe illness or death” list, two genetic hypercoagulation disorders and a history of clots (there’s that “rare or less common conditions” that don’t appear on the list but will kill your ass if you get Covid caveat that the CDC so blithely mentions and then shrugs off without a further thought), and a rare autoimmune condition that targets the cardiovascular system.

    Internist: Absolutely, get Evusheld, you have a condition on the big list, three on the suggestive list, three rare conditions that will definitely make Covid likely to kill you, and several underlying issues as well. But, I can’t get it ordered for you, b/c our health system is only approving requests for “listed” conditions and only the specialists can make the requests. So have your specialist request it, and tell them that I am on board with using it.”

    Specialist: No, I agree that you really need it, but i the CDC says it’s only for the conditions in the list. “

    Me: (banging head against wall for the umpteenth time): “Read.the.actual. whole.CDC. statement.”

    Months, endless articles and highlighted CDC statements later:

    Specialist: “Oh. Okay. You definitely need it according to the CDC! But we still shouldn’t try, b/c the CDC says you should have it, but nobody says that the insurance company has to cover it, so they won’t.”

    Me: “Can we not even TRY?!?! I haven’t been allowed to leave the house except for tests for 10 months…”

    Funnily enough, despite the prior specialist’s insistence that insurance wouldn’t approve it, when the documentation was submitted, they did. That damned list would have stood as her reason for not even trying, since she either misunderstood the info, didn’t bother to read the entire thing, or relied on other doctors’  initial misinterpretations of it to guide her rather,  than reading it herself for clarification.

    Either way, what a mess.  It leaves people who are already dealing with way too many health traumas having to fight, interpret, and struggle on another front just to gain basic access to preventatives in order to try to prevent adding another illness to their burden.

    Preaching to the choir, I know, as you are all too familiar with the situation, but it is just so frustrating that we have to constantly face these bullshit brick walls when all we’re trying to do is stay safe and stay alive.

    And wtf with the CDC’s “no need to isolate for five days, just get right back out there and infect everybody!!!” nonsense?

  41. 41.

    TBone

    @Mel: good fucking grief!  I ran into (decades-long) hurdles headlong with Lyme and no longer possess the stamina required for these long, complicated battles with the system.  I am simply so disgusted and enraged for you (spitting mad) and with the entire clusterfuck!  I finally gave up on medical treatment but I hope you are able to persevere and be the victor SOMEHOW and my ceaseless prayers are up for all of us.  THIS is why Jesus’s middle name is FUCKING.  I can’t handle being gaslit anymore so I just refuse to participate.

    Gah!!!!!!!!!  JFC!!!!!

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