Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus (& H5N1) Updates: May 22, 2024

COVID-19 Coronavirus (& H5N1) Updates: May 22, 2024

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The good news: Both covid and ‘bird flu’ seem to be in a holding pattern at the moment. I’ll keep posting what I can find every Wednesday, but (Murphy the Trickster God willing!) that may be a lot of marginal cases and epidemiological speculation…



This is a really informative article — read the whole thing! “We Don’t Know How Bad Bird Flu Is Getting”:

The H5N1 influenza has killed tens of millions of birds over the last few years, and it’s not slowing down. Instead, it has confounded expectations by spreading into animals once thought immune, and even to at least one person in the United States. (There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and risk to the public is still considered low.) As with any viral outbreak, the pathogens themselves aren’t the only challenge. The sluggish, imprecise response to H5N1 from federal and state authorities carries unavoidable echoes of COVID. I spoke with epidemiologist and data scientist Katelyn Jetelina, who writes a popular public-health newsletter, to make sense of where bird flu might be going and how some agencies are repeating past mistakes…

On the communications front — I understand why public-health agencies wouldn’t want to freak people out unnecessarily. But this is a similar dilemma to the one they faced with COVID, which is how much to tell people. Instead of giving the public all the information they had and trusting them to make decisions, they parceled it out. There seemed to be a human-psychology element to the communication strategy, which was not a good idea.
It drives me insane. You have to give trust to gain trust, right? And honest, frequent, direct communication earns public trust and confidence. It’s that simple. But if communities are starved for good information during these sort of outbreaks or emergencies, it leads to unnecessary anxiety, confusion, and incredible frustration. And it just looks like they’re not credible or know what they’re doing.

So even if CDC has been better than with COVID, which was a very low bar, that doesn’t mean the other government agencies have been doing a good job at all. And on top of that, it hasn’t been a one-voice, coordinated front…

A big obstacle here is that the testing is voluntary on farms. There are misaligned incentives at play — why would you want to expose the fact that there’s bird flu all over your farm, right?
Exactly.

COVID was something people hadn’t nearly as much experience with. We know what flu is. Would making a vaccine for that actually be easier in that regard since we sort of have an idea of what we’re dealing with?
You make a really good parallel here — COVID was completely novel. The good news is we’ve been following H5 for the past 25 years, down to the point where we know exactly where on the virus it needs to mutate to become more human-to-human transmissible. In fact, we have a stockpile of vaccines against H5N1. Now, how fast we can create, manufacture, and distribute vaccines is a whole different question.

The bad news is we think the H5N1 is far more fatal than COVID-19. COVID, with just a 1 to 2 percent fatality rate, already overwhelmed our hospital systems. And so we really don’t want this…

Last year you said, “I do not think we’re at a phase where the public needs to be worried because there’s no action connected to that worry … right now the action is just to be aware.” Is that still pretty much where you are on this?
Yeah, 100 percent. I put out a newsletter last week because I keep getting this question from family and friends. “How concerned should I be?” And I am telling people that this should only take up 2 to 7 percent of headspace right now. It’s something to watch. But like I said a year ago, there’s nothing to do, really, other than don’t touch dead birds, don’t drink unpasteurized milk, and maybe call your congressman to encourage biosecurity support. Other than that, we really needed targeted communication to those that are at higher risk, and that’s farm workers right now.

A potential work-around:

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Due to a lack of updated public information, Biobot Analytics is transitioning its Covid-19 wastewater dashboard to focus on influenza types A & B and RSV as well. From the latest summary for the week of 5/13/24:

… Biobot’s national wastewater network showed declining national influenza A & B concentrations during week 19, while SARS-CoV-2 and RSV concentrations slightly increased. Nationally, major clinical metrics remain low for COVID-19, influenza, and RSV in week 18. The percentage of outpatient visits due to influenza-like illness (ILI) remains below the national baseline of 2.9%, currently at 2.1%. Overall, the illness burden due to respiratory viruses is currently low.

The Bottom Line: As we address the evolving H5N1 situation, leveraging every public health tool, including wastewater monitoring, is crucial for staying ahead of potential public health threats. This is especially important as national requirements for reporting hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and influenza ended on May 1st, 2024. It is important to understand that, currently, H5N1 does not pose a significant risk to human health. However, closely monitoring this situation is essential. Our recommendations to keep yourself and loved ones healthy remain the same: if you feel unwell, minimize contact with others, consider wearing a mask in crowded areas, and stay current with vaccinations and boosters. Taking these precautions can help keep you and your loved ones healthy…

COVID-19
Wastewater data show that COVID-19 activity and community viral load slightly increased during week 19 but remained low overall. As of week 19, the national SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentration average is 226 copies/mL.

Clinical metrics showed that the COVID-19 disease burden decreased nationally in week 18. Test positivity held steady in week 18, currently at 3.1%. Deaths due to COVID-19 also held steady and currently represent 0.7% of all deaths in the US. This is the first week that we don’t have any updates to hospitalizations data as the CDC has removed this from the public dashboard. At this point in time, it is unclear if public reporting of COVID-19 hospitalizations will be reinstated for next year’s respiratory season. In its absence, hospitalization reporting from COVID-NET, an enhanced surveillance system covering 13 states, will be our best bet at understanding hospital burden due to influenza. COVID-NET reports that the hospitalization rate per 100,000 persons in the US went from 1.2 in week 17 to 0.7 in week 18…

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Excellent news, if it tests out:

People who were repeatedly vaccinated for COVID-19 — initially receiving shots aimed at the original variant, followed by boosters and updated vaccines targeting variants — generated antibodies capable of neutralizing a wide range of SARS-CoV-2 variants and even some distantly related coronaviruses.

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— Elizabeth (@elizajody.bsky.social) May 18, 2024 at 7:40 PM

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COVID wastewater data in NYC is at sustained historical lows, and I think that's pretty neat

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— Cooper Lund (@cooperlund.bsky.social) May 15, 2024 at 12:07 PM

Reader Interactions

17Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I’ve been forgetting my mask recently. Gotta stay focused if I want to keep triggering people.

  2. 2.

    Manyakitty

    A friend of mine came home from a work meeting in Vail with the dreaded ‘roni. Until this she was a Novid like I am. Gotta see about that next booster.

  3. 3.

    lowtechcyclist

    This is the 44th week in a row with more than 400 new COVID deaths in the U.S., or 58,430 deaths during the same period.

    According to the CDC, there hasn’t been a single week with fewer than 400 new COVID deaths between the last week of March 2020 and the week of April 20, 2024. So that latter week was about the 212th week in a row with more than 400 new Covid deaths in the U.S.

    CDC says the week of 4/20, the most recent week they don’t regard their data as provisional, had 443 Covid deaths, down from 532 the previous week. So there’s a good chance that either the week of 4/27 or 5/4 will turn out to have been the first week with fewer than 400 Covid deaths since March 2020. That would be quite a milestone.

  5. 5.

    New Deal democrat

    As indicated above, it looks like we are going to lose Biobot as a source of COVID information. On their way out the door, they tell us that it had a .96 correlation with hospitalizations, which have also been discontinued by the CDC.

    The CDC is still updating their wastewater monitor, which showed a slight increase last week to the levels of two weeks prior – still a 90% reduction from the Holiday peak.

    The one piece of excellent news is that deaths made an all time pandemic low of 443 the week of April 20. The previous record had been 492 last July 8. Even better, the preliminary death counts for the next three weeks are also at sequential new lows for the preliminary data as well. In other words, we should set new all time lows each week for the next three weeks as well, possibly as low as about 250.

    Variant proportions won’t be updated until Friday. That will probably show the new KP.1&2 subvariants becoming a majority of all infections.

    The latest forecast for the next 6 weeks by JP Weiland is that the new variants will increase cases by 50% from current levels (or to 85% below the Holiday peak rather than 90%):

     https://www.threads.net/@jpweilandmodels

    The overall lull will probably last until indoor summer get-togethers spread the new subvariants more efficiently.  Hopefully Biobot and the CDC will reinstitute more reporting during such waves. The longer term trend is that COVID continues to transition to a semi-seasonal disease with more flu-like fatality rates.

  6. 6.

    New Deal democrat

    @lowtechcyclist: I noticed a while back that final death tallies seemed to be about 2-2.5x the first provisional week.

    So here are the first provisional numbers for the next three weeks:

    4/27 – 184

    5/4 – 153

    5/11 – 141

    Which means that the final tally for the week of 5/11 could easily be under 300.

  8. 8.

    Soprano2

    @New Deal democrat: Our wastewater reporting shows still low levels, but I noticed that several cities in the state have quit reporting. I figure this will continue until only the larger cities are still sampling and reporting. I don’t like it but can understand it, when communities feel Covid is no longer a big issue they decide they can spend that time doing something else, even though it doesn’t take that much time to do it.

  9. 9.

    cain

    My wife was telling me that infections were on the rise and that here in Portland there are more people masking than before.

  10. 10.

    dnfree

    I’m here to report on our experience with travel groups. Being older (and fully vaccinated as of last fall), we decided this year to try to get in some trips while we still can. The groups we traveled with were relatively small, many of the sites we visited were outdoors or in large, relatively unpopulated cathedrals. Even some of the restaurants were outdoors. We masked in airports and on planes, but did not mask on the small tourist buses, which contained maybe 15-20 people, fellow tourists and guides and the bus driver.

    Our trip in February resulted in both of us getting Covid, fortunately relatively mild cases but with a longer period to recover our energy levels. (We were not the only ones.) Because of having had Covid in February, we didn’t get spring vaccinations, because you’re supposed to wait three months. We left for our second trip at approximately the three-month mark in May.

    Well, someone on the bus was coughing a lot, and by the last day he notified the group that he had tested positive. My husband got it (symptoms and tested positive) and I apparently did not (no symptoms, tested negative), although I felt overly tired. So–two trips, two exposures that resulted in illness. And we’re the people still masking in grocery stores and at meetings!

    Now we’re about to embark on our third scheduled trip, which has a larger group (more than 30 tourists). The Covid policy for the company provided seems to be “don’t ask, don’t tell”. It says the company will not ask anyone to test, will not provide tests if they are requested (if you want to test yourself, you have to get your own test), anyone who tests positive should just wear a mask, and anyone who leaves the tour for any reason can’t rejoin it. The goal seems to avoid liability for the company, as far as I can tell.

    So even small group tours don’t seem to be “safe” yet, despite the reduction in overall cases.

  11. 11.

    Manyakitty

    @raven: they’ve been moderately miserable for me. Maybe I’ll see if I can get one Saturday afternoon and use the long weekend to recover.

  12. 12.

    Tenar Arha

    @raven: My sympathies I’ve had the weekend vaccine blues once or twice. This time though I got mine a week ago Sunday, and was like your bride, nothing really. The reaction from the adhesives in the bandaid was bad though. ETA I finally realized I’m allergic to adhesives 🤦🏻‍♀️

  13. 13.

    Gretchen

    Thanks for continuing to do this, Anne Laurie. I appreciate the info.

    When I went to the ER recently, they asked if I’d had the flu vaccine and RSV vaccine, but not covid booster. I thought that was odd. Are people getting mad at even being asked?

  15. 15.

    VFX Lurker

    @Gretchen:

    When I went to the ER recently, they asked if I’d had the flu vaccine and RSV vaccine, but not covid booster. I thought that was odd. Are people getting mad at even being asked?

    My parents did not know about the 2024 additional spring booster until I told them. They both got the spring booster on their own.

    Bummer that the ER is not asking for COVID booster info. It’s a missed opportunity to keep patients up-to-date on their fall and (if they qualify) spring boosters.

  16. 16.

    VFX Lurker

    @dnfree: So–two trips, two exposures that resulted in illness. And we’re the people still masking in grocery stores and at meetings!

    Argh. Wishing you a good time for your third trip.

Comments are closed.