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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus & H5N1 Updates: September 18, 2024

COVID-19 Coronavirus & H5N1 Updates: September 18, 2024

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It would be nice if we could trust information coming out of Putin’s Paradise…

A real-life Typhoid Mary:

An Austrian woman was found guilty of fatally infecting her neighbour with Covid after she ignored quarantine rules and failed to wear a mask.

The 54-year-old from Carinthia was given a suspended sentence of four months and fined €800 (£675) for grossly negligent homicide…

The male victim, a cancer patient, died of pneumonia caused by coronavirus after getting infected in 2021, the court heard before handing down its sentence on Thursday…

Earlier this week, the judge had heard statements from the victim’s family. His son, wife and daughter in law said the neighbours had had contact in a stairwell on Dec 21, 2021.

At that time, the defendant would already have known she had Covid-19.

The family said she was standing in her doorway in the hallway of the apartment building, with the deceased standing opposite her.

“She looked really sick. I asked her if she had corona, but she said no and that she only had the flu,” the son said. He was worried because he knew how dangerous Covid was for cancer patients.

The defendant denied meeting the neighbour at all and claimed she was too sick to get out of bed that day…

But the woman’s doctor told police that the defendant had tested positive with a rapid test before telling him that she “certainly won’t let herself be locked up” after the result.

Instead she left her apartment and talked to people without a mask, ignoring her mandatory quarantine and positive test.

The Austrian news agency reported the verdict was not final.

It is the woman’s second pandemic-related conviction in a year.

She was given a three-month suspended sentence for intentionally endangering people through communicable diseases last summer.

A verdict of grossly negligent homicide was overturned at that time because of insufficient evidence over how the infection was spread, which led to the recent court hearing…

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When a guy ‘does his own research’, I suspect, if it were not Covid vaccination, the ex-husband would’ve found another excuse for murder. However…

Reader Interactions

35Comments

  1. 1.

    Quantum man

    Got my new covid shot yesterday. Just sore arm today. H5N1 plus second Trump presidency = nightmare scenario. God help us.

  2. 2.

    Matt McIrvin

    “These waves start near the southern U.S. border in July and August, when the weather is hottest and the humidity is high—factors that usually tamp down the spread of respiratory viruses. We don’t have a good explanation for why COVID-19 rates should increase in both the warmest and coolest times of the year.”

    As a non-epidemiologist, I always assumed it was just that COVID spreads when the weather drives people indoors. In the north, that’s in the winter and in the south it’s in the summer.

  4. 4.

    R-Jud

    I’ve just had COVID again, so no booster for me until later in the year. Flu vax is booked, tho.

    Thanks again for putting these together, Anne Laurie!

  5. 5.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Yarrow: I got mine last week and had some trouble sleeping, but I don’t think it was (primarily) the shot, I think it was the yellow pollen covering everything–I’m having a rough time with fall allergies.

  6. 6.

    Yarrow

    Saw this on Bluesky:

    My school district is offering a vaccination clinic and they’re offering monkeypox vaccines to adults and did I miss a new outbreak of monkeypox in the US or something
    — ex-Lethality Jane (@lethalityjane.bsky.social) September 17, 2024 at 8:13 PM

    She lives somewhere in the Pacific northwest. Washington state, I think. Are mpox vaccines widely available for everyone? I have not heard this before.

  8. 8.

    New Deal democrat

    We have lost another source of good data, as Biobot stopped updating their wastewater analyses on August 12. This leaves us with three CDC reports.

    And the news is not good. Wastewater shows that the summer wave never abated, but has plateaued for the last month at a level higher than one year ago, and about 60% of last winter’s peak. As was forecast from the trend in the preliminary death reports for each week in August, as of the week of August 24, we had over 1,000 deaths again for the first time since mid-March. The preliminary data for the weeks since then suggest that we are heading to about 1,200.

    And for the first time in 2 years, cumulative deaths for the past 12 months have headed higher, back to just under 60,000. The complete abandonment of any mitigation by basically everyone, plus a new very infectious variant is having its natural effect.

    Speaking of variants, the CDC analysis last Friday showed that the KP.2.x and KP.3.x strains now account for almost 90% of all cases. The silver lining is that this level of penetration has been when previous waves started to peak.

    Unfortunately, I suspect we stay near these levels until the Holiday get-togethers start at Thanksgiving, and then it is really off to the races. Stay safe!

  9. 9.

    Fair Economist

    @Matt McIrvin: The standard winter wave is a combination of low absolute humidity (which weakens mucosal defenses) and people being crowded together inside. The summertime southern wave is from just being crowded together inside, which is why it tends to be less intense.

  10. 10.

    New Deal democrat

    @Matt McIrvin:

    As a non-epidemiologist, I always assumed it was just that COVID spreads when the weather drives people indoors. In the north, that’s in the winter and in the south it’s in the summer.

    Agreed. In fact at this point I would say it is patently obvious.

  11. 11.

    OGLiberal

    The big problem is basically all sides have decided this is over because they’re just tired of it.

    I get worried about ridicule or worse every time I go out in public with my mask on.  Thankfully, my co-workers seem to not care.

  12. 12.

    Fair Economist

    @New Deal democrat: I have been expecting that Covid incidence rates would climb as the circulating strains diversify, eventually to the point that people would get it every few months unless they took precautions (there seems to be some generic antiviral defenses that get activated on infection so people won’t get it every other week.) So far, diversification of *circulating* strains hasn’t happened. – it’s been largely one wave after another, not coexisting – but the current neverending wave makes me think it’s starting.

  14. 14.

    frosty

    @Quantum man:  @Yarrow: I got my latest COVID shot on Monday, along with flu. Shoulder was sore then yesterday evening (+30 hours) I was a little achy and run down. Crawled into bed and took an Aleve and I feel OK today. This one was had the least side effects of any of them.

    I haven’t been masking anywhere and no one else around here has either.

  15. 15.

    Mai Naem mobile

    If you don’t have insurance the COVID shots are ~$200 – not an insignificant amount of $$$. Good luck getting uninsured people to cough up $200. Back when the first COVID vaccine came out I used to tell people they could get the vaccines and I had several people whose first question wasn’t the safety or some anti-vaxx theory but the cost.

  16. 16.

    BellyCat

    Welp…. I finally went from NOVID to COVID two weeks ago. Was fully vaxxed and boosted (but had not yet gotten new fall booster which had not arrived in my area). The irony is that I likely got it when getting a routine annual medical checkup.

    The good news is that it felt like a mild cold — which I thought it was at first. The worst part was (and still is, lingering a bit) the cough. 

  17. 17.

    Anne Laurie

    @Yarrow: Mpox, formerly monkeypox, has a newly virulent / much more deadly strain circulating in central Africa, against which the available two-dose vaccine is (blessedly) very effective.  But the North Americans who need to be vaccinated are a relatively small subgroup, per the CDC:  basically men who have sex with men, and those in close household contact with those men.

    There’s still a relative shortage of the vaccine, and tragically still too much stigma against gay men & the people who love them, so our public health authorities are trying to publicize the need for vaccination in a very targeted way.

  18. 18.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Fair Economist: ​
     

    The summertime southern wave is from just being crowded together inside, which is why it tends to be less intense.

    Air conditioning reduces humidity in addition to cooling the air.

  19. 19.

    JML

    We have a flu/COVID shot clinic coming up on campus, but it’s not until next month. But the timing would still probably be pretty good for me with a bunch of work events coming up. Probably going to go towards the end of the day, and call in sick the next (even after taking a bunch of sick time off after mom’s death this summer I’m still sitting on like 600 hours of sick leave). I generally get the hangover/wiped out feeling the day after the booster, and while I could probably power through it…why, exactly?

  20. 20.

    Yarrow

    @Anne Laurie:  Thank you! That’s kind of what I thought, re who was at risk. The new more virulent strain circulating in Central Africa is a concern. Seems like it may not stay just there.

    It’s the school district offering the vaccines as part of a general clinic that was a surprise to me. That seems to be targeting the general population. Maybe they ask questions to keep it more targeted. When signing up for my Covid vaccine I looked through all the vaccines offered at the pharmacy clinic. I did not see mpox.

  21. 21.

    Yarrow

    AL, I also want to say thank you so much for continuing this series. I appreciate all the Covid updates. It has been and continues to be so helpful and informative. I also appreciate that you’ve expanded it to include H5N1 and that you’re following other things like mpox. Your threads are such a great resource. Thank you!

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    @Yarrow: It’s the school district offering the vaccines as part of a general clinic that was a surprise to me. That seems to be targeting the general population. Maybe they ask questions to keep it more targeted. When signing up for my Covid vaccine I looked through all the vaccines offered at the pharmacy clinic. I did not see mpox.

    As I said, it’s still in fairly limited supply, so not all pharmacies may have it on hand (though presumably they could get it, if a customer requested it).  The school district may be offering the shots ‘discretely’, to / for students who might fall into the target demographic… including, just possibly, kids who’ve been abroad to areas where the virus is more widespread or whose parents might’ve been on vacation there.  (It’s become a ‘hot tub party problem’ in some parts of tourist-intensive Europe, for instance.)

  23. 23.

    rusty

    Those pictures of Lesley Hu and President Biden just break me, what a horrible story.  All the misinformation has real life consequences.

  24. 24.

    hrprogressive

    I definitely appeared to avoid the C19 that the other adult in the house had, and they appear to have had a case that was really more of a nuisance than anything else.

    Yes, we are both well aware there are still a lot of long-term questions about potential risks down the line, but between multiple vaccinations and Pax, it appears that it was a minor issue, at least for now.

    Since I tested negative and didn’t ever display symptoms, I’m going to move forward with getting the next booster. Which, unfortunately, I think will be less and less popular as people stop caring about COVID, which will have the knock-on effect of continuing to prolong the semi-pandemic we remain in.

    As I mentioned in last week’s update, I’m much more concerned about H5N1 now, and that Missouri case doesn’t make me feel any better about where we are headed.

    With the way COVID was politicized, and how many people were willing to get sick and die to “own the libs” with a virus that “only” had a 1% mortality rate…I shudder to think of a similar world with an H5N1 that has somewhere between 30 and 50% mortality…

    Yeah. Not great.

  25. 25.

    Matt McIrvin

    @New Deal democrat: Biobot is still supplying data to their government clients, and I’ve been watching Massachusetts. The summer wave has been, as one would expect from the discussion above, much less intense here than it was in the South and West. But it might be rising to a second peak in some areas, going purely by wastewater. I haven’t seen that in the case counts though.

  26. 26.

    Fair Economist

    @lowtechcyclist: Yes, A/C reduces humidity; but only to the saturation point of air coming off the cooling coils, generally in the 50’s or so. In the winter, humidity is capped at the saturation point of the outside air, and can be much lower. So winter indoor air is much drier than you’ll ever get with A/C.

  27. 27.

    Fair Economist

    @Yarrow: My understanding is that currently Mpox vaccines are recommended only for a few groups, notably sexually active nonmonogamous gay men. My husband and I have been monogamous for decades but I’m stewing on the possibility of us lying to our doctors and saying we sleep around to get the vaccine. If it does manage to start spreading via the general population in the developed world, there’s going to be a panic, and there’s not remotely enough vaccine. It’s already spreading in the general population in Africa.

  28. 28.

    Anne Laurie

    @Fair Economist: If it does manage to start spreading via the general population in the developed world, there’s going to be a panic, and there’s not remotely enough vaccine. It’s already spreading in the general population in Africa.

    It’s going to take a lot of bad breaks for that to happen (which is why I haven’t discussed mpox, except in  comments like this).  Right now, best scientists can determine, the virus is *not* airborne — it’s spread by skin-to-skin or skin-to-contaminated-surface contact (remember fomites?).  Which is why it has been devastating in very poor sub-tropical African countries, where people are crowded together & don’t have sufficient access to sanitary precautions.  In Europe, it’s been spread — not all that widely or well, so far — by people with active infections (open sores) using hot tubs or saunas in ‘public sex party’ tourist venues.  A few people, including some young children, caught the virus from household members who shared towels or the like.

    So, unless you’re having hot tub parties with swingers, or with people who’ve visited affected areas recently, I think it is *very* unlikely you’ll be exposed to the current viral clade.  And if the mpox virus continues to evolve towards wider virulence, I’m pretty sure that first-world science agencies will have every incentive to keep upgrading the vaccines, and the treatments!

  29. 29.

    Tony G

    I just got off the phone with noted epidemiology expert RFK Junior.  The solution to this problem, apparently, is: 1) Announce that it is all a hoax perpetuated by Anthony Fauci and the Deep State  2) Adamantly oppose any science-based treatments or vaccines.  Problem solved!

  30. 30.

    Manyakitty

    At this moment, I am reviewing study documentation for an H5N1 vaccine trial for work. Fingers crossed.

  31. 31.

    MattF

    Got my Covid (Pfizer) and flu shots last Friday, currently snuffling due to allergy, I guess. I know there will soon be a new free set of test kits— will order them when available.

    ETA: COVID kits available Nov. 20.

  33. 33.

    bluefoot

    I got my COVID booster yesterday morning, Moderna.  Spent the day with a sore arm, progressively more tired and then full body muscle aches.  Took some Advil and went to bed early. Woke up today with only the sore arm.  I have some professional and personal gatherings coming up starting at the end of the month though October so I hope this helps.

    I really need to get back into the gym, but I haven’t felt comfortable to go, even masked.  My siblings who got COVID all have had bizarre and in some cases serious long-COVID symptoms even though their COVID cases were mild and all are vaccinated.  So I am trying my best to avoid getting it.

  34. 34.

    rikyrah

    AL,

    Just wanted to thank you for this beat. The information that you have given us throughout has meant a great deal.

    As I dealt with my own battle with COVID, so much of what I knew and the questions I knew to ask were because of your posts.

     

    You rank right up there with me alongside  the Biden/Harris administration, which got those vaccines, boosters and tests to us…

  35. 35.

    VFX Lurker

    I’d like to second all of rikyrah’s post upthread. My husband and I both knew to get Paxlovid right away because of your informative posts.

    We got our flu shots last Saturday. We’ll wait until mid-October (two months after infection) to get our COVID vaccines.

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