The machine they're raging against is a ventilator. https://t.co/hU4Ib72hoD
— Patrick Andelic (@pkandelic) October 8, 2021
Over 400m COVID shots given — and we're doing about 1m a day this week. https://t.co/FisrF80b9I
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) October 8, 2021
The number of Americans getting COVID-19 vaccinations has hit a three-month high and demand could spike as regulators mull Pfizer authorization for younger children. Some states are reopening mass vaccination clinics in anticipation. https://t.co/tdNIbLKNKK
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 9, 2021
The US had +109,570 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 yesterday, bringing the total to over 45.0 million. The 7-day moving average declined to under 100,000 new cases per day for the first time since August 4. pic.twitter.com/Q4RBmkP5e8
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) October 9, 2021
New hospital admissions in the US due to COVID-19 are down -12.6% from a week ago. pic.twitter.com/Nn098LwDNq
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) October 9, 2021
The US reported +1,891 new coronavirus deaths yesterday, bringing the total to 730,540. The 7-day moving average declined to 1,570 deaths per day. pic.twitter.com/IOMNElhdnc
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) October 9, 2021
The Delta wave deaths in the US and Canada
and a 17 per cent point difference in fully vaccinated of total population pic.twitter.com/hWn6R5Kr9B— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) October 8, 2021
President Biden said he had instructed the Justice Department to ‘deal’ with rising violence and unruly passenger incidents on airplanes, many involving the requirement to wear face masks https://t.co/qHv16PpNtV pic.twitter.com/H4VHVvo4hX
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 8, 2021
Nominee for understatement of the year. https://t.co/tcW2f4uT0x
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) October 8, 2021
U.S. will accept WHO-approved COVID-19 vaccines for international visitors https://t.co/aGkWO8OeAW pic.twitter.com/XNPyCFZF9e
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 9, 2021
======
Looks like @moderna_tx caved under @WhiteHouse pressure. So there will be doses contributed to COVAX. https://t.co/6rRcofwNaY
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) October 8, 2021
Tokyo daily coronavirus cases fall to one-year low 82 https://t.co/egfEvDA6YA pic.twitter.com/cclEPZc0o0
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 9, 2021
Singapore opens quarantine-free travel to major countries, eyes COVID-19 'new normal' https://t.co/wM23iaKyaH pic.twitter.com/sQMey9hj4a
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 9, 2021
Singapore PM says COVID-19 'new normal' could take up to 6 months https://t.co/Fp2RXhYGdS pic.twitter.com/HSyYTMDhp1
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 9, 2021
⚡️Russia on Saturday reported 29,2362 new coronavirus cases and a new record high of 968 daily deaths from Covid-19https://t.co/3tapTfDOMv
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) October 9, 2021
Russia broke another one-day coronavirus death toll record Friday, as more regions reimpose restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the virus and the Kremlin stops short of reintroducing nationwide measures https://t.co/ifvIqM9eQT
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) October 9, 2021
The figures revealed that August 2021 was one of the most deadly months since the beginning of the pandemic in Russia https://t.co/pRN0EiqquG
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) October 9, 2021
Vaccine tourism: Some Russians are going to Serbia to get their COVID-19 shots even though their country has its own coronavirus vaccine. AP's @JovanaGec and Daria Litvinova explain why. https://t.co/YiuY928zJQ
— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) October 9, 2021
The UK is Europe's Covid hotspot – does it matter? https://t.co/8IHFJLuvBX
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) October 9, 2021
BREAKING: Brazil's COVID-19 death toll tops 600,000, according to data from the nation's health ministry. That's second only to the U.S. Fatalities are down from their spring peak, but about 500 Brazilians have died of COVID-19 each day for the past month. https://t.co/vT0otCw68L
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 8, 2021
Canadian province of Ontario to further ease pandemic restrictions https://t.co/CzPI4oDbM4 pic.twitter.com/4A1Ad9r7eh
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 9, 2021
======
Here's why Covid vaccines didn’t win a Nobel.
Nobel prize insiders say timing & politics meant vaccines were an unlikely winner. But mRNA technology—which may soon find its way into the fight against cancer & other difficult disorders—should eventually win https://t.co/oUGTeOVjTO— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) October 8, 2021
In the lab: Oral & intranasal Covid vaccines are showing promising results in lab hamsters. SARSCoV2 gains entry through the nasal mucosa before entering the lungs & other organs. Mucosal immunity could be the most effective at controlling the viral spread https://t.co/IpqcJQuyqv pic.twitter.com/fIoPYKAzeu
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) October 8, 2021
A Chilean tree holds hope for new vaccines – if supplies last
Quillay trees are rare evergreens that have long been used to make soap & medicine.
Now two saponin molecules from the trees are being used for a #COVID19 vaccine from drugmaker Novavax.https://t.co/UlmoDXNDvP
— MicrobesInfect (@MicrobesInfect) October 8, 2021
SARSCoV2 infection & the severity of that infection are strongly associated w/ your nasal microbiota. A team of US & Canadian researchers examined how the microflora in the nasal passages influences coronavirus infection. Scientists studied older patients https://t.co/VThEYLQE3k
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) October 8, 2021
Strong condemnation by @hiltzikm of attempt to use Cell paper by @jbloom_lab et al. to conclude what they didn't conclude.https://t.co/YLzxg5SAQM
— Jon Cohen (@sciencecohen) October 8, 2021
======
Get tested. Wear a mask. Don’t get too close. Not your typical court orders, but that was the word from the Supreme Court to lawyers and reporters who returned to the high court this week for the first in-person arguments in more than a year and a half. https://t.co/EVQNb3YGz5
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 8, 2021
The sold out convention “Vax-Con ‘21” spread misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19. It also awarded chiropractors in at least 10 states continuing education credits to maintain their licenses. https://t.co/hexKMlLcmt
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 9, 2021
I have nothing but gratitude for my (long retired) chiropractor, but it’s hardly surprising anti-vaxxers have found a niche among its practitioners:
… At a time when the surgeon general says misinformation has become an urgent threat to public health, an investigation by The Associated Press found a vocal and influential group of chiropractors has been capitalizing on the pandemic by sowing fear and mistrust of vaccines.
They have touted their supplements as alternatives to vaccines, written doctor’s notes to allow patients to get out of mask and immunization mandates, donated large sums of money to anti-vaccine organizations and sold anti-vaccine ads on Facebook and Instagram, the AP discovered. One chiropractor gave thousands of dollars to a Super PAC that hosted an anti-vaccine, pro-Donald Trump rally near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
They have also been the leading force behind anti-vaccine events like the one in Wisconsin, where hundreds of chiropractors from across the U.S. shelled out $299 or more to attend. The AP found chiropractors were allowed to earn continuing education credits to maintain their licenses in at least 10 states…
“People trust them. They trust their authority, but they also feel like they’re a nice alternative to traditional medicine,” said Erica DeWald of Vaccinate Your Family, who tracks figures in the anti-vaccine movement. “Mainstream medicine will refer people out to a chiropractor not knowing that they could be exposed to misinformation. You go because your back hurts, and then suddenly you don’t want to vaccinate your kids.”
The purveyors of vaccine misinformation represent a small but vocal minority of the nation’s 70,000 chiropractors, many of whom advocate for vaccines. In some places, chiropractors have helped organize vaccine clinics or been authorized to give COVID-19 shots…
In a coronavirus milestone, San Francisco set to lift some indoor mask rules. Requirements to be lifted for gyms & offices next week — but only if everyone inside is vaccinated https://t.co/O5E5qjmDS3
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) October 8, 2021
Remember when DeSantis was mocking New York? Fun fact I had a “friend” tell me while I was working at a COVID Field Hospital in NYC in Apr ‘20 that it was unfair they had to lockdown because “New York elites” got sick. Anyway…nice work Ronny! https://t.co/FRsuuMfNWy
— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) October 8, 2021
NEW: Top anti-vaxxers RFK Jr. + Joseph Mercola speak to @RollingStone on Kyrie + Co. as their replacement influencers amid Silicon Valley crackdown on misinformation.
More on "dangerous" + "desperate" efforts to co-opt sports megaphone for conspiracies: https://t.co/G3CmRRFgJv
— Matt Sullivan (@sullduggery) October 8, 2021
lowtechcyclist
Decline is good.
But it’s still nearly two Jonestowns a day, or a 9/11 every other day.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reports 8,743 new Covid-19 cases today in its media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 2,332,221 cases. It also reports 78 new deaths as of midnight, for a cumulative total of 27,191 deaths – 1.17% of the cumulative reported total, 1.24% of resolved cases.
Based on cases reported yesterday, Malaysia’s nationwide Rt is at 0.86.
714 confirmed cases are in ICU, 304 of them on ventilators. Meanwhile, 14,422 more patients have recovered, for a cumulative total of 2,184,711 patients recovered – 93.7% of the cumulative reported total.
10 new clusters were reported today, for a cumulative total of 5,580 clusters. 845 clusters are currently active; 4,735 clusters are now inactive.
8,729 new cases today are local infections. 14 new cases today are imported. Today’s media statement does not include the usual state-by-state breakdown.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 174,820 doses of vaccine on 8th October: 74,199 first doses and 100,621 second doses. As of midnight yesterday, the cumulative total is 45,379,299 doses administered: 24,384,831 first doses and 21,104,896 second doses. 74.6% of the population have received their first dose, while 64.6% are now fully vaccinated.
oldster
Just coming by to say how incredibly valuable these daily round-ups are.
Thank you so much, Anne, for providing this information from so many source, in one place.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Chiropractors have long been an epicenter of quackery. A number of their offices have racks of brochures touting chiropractic as something effective in the treatment of maladies from the common cold to cancer. As a society, we fucked up by calling them doctors and granting an insurance code for reimbursement.
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
The Monroe County website says 215 new cases yesterday, 3.7% test positivity. NYSDOH says 253 new cases. Not seeing much improvement…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Wow, Kyrie Irving is kind of nuts, from his Wiki page:
Matt McIrvin
Is the pickup in new shots mostly due to fully vaccinated people getting boosters? If so, they might be of limited use in actually controlling the pandemic.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
I read that out of 1.12 million shots administered yesterday, 306,000 were new vaccinations
New Deal democrat
Nationwide cases are now down 42% from peak, but that masks what has really happened. Cases are down a full 2/3’s in the South, and more if you delete the MidAtlantic States (DE, MD, and VA) and DC. Average cases in the South are now equal to the West and Northeast, and well below the Midwest. Cases are also down significantly in the West Coast States. Everywhere else, cases are virtually unchanged or rising, especially on the Northern border.
The US experience thus appears to be about midway between that of Israel (down 75% from peak) and India (a rapid decline all the way to pre-Delta levels, vs. the UK (a rapid 40% decline followed by a rebound and a relatively steady rate since then).
I am becoming increasingly concerned that, once the declines in the South and West Coast end, more or less at pre-Delta levels, the next winter wave will begin, probably in the next few weeks. And it will begin from already very bad levels.
A few other notes. I am discounting the increase in vaccinations, which is mainly driven by people getting their booster shots, although a little is presumably also due to employer vaccine mandates.
Also, I saw an article about how abrupt reversals in COVID cases have taken most observers by surprise. This is very similar to observers of economic trends. Almost always, observers expect present trends to continue. Better observers watch for leading signs of trend change. In economics, those are leading economic indicators. In the pandemic, that is the experience of States and countries where a wave struck first.
In general, avoid observations that use the present progressive tense (I plead guilty- above I used the word “rising”. Instead I should have used the past perfect tense: “have risen.”) That’s because we don’t know if the present trend will continue or not, unless we are relying on leading indicators.
Delta is extremely infectious, but the experience of the earliest places it hit is that for unknown reasons there is a subset of the population that is particularly susceptible to it, but it is something of a dud with the rest of the unvaxxed population. Hence, the phrase that it “burns through the dry tinder fast.”
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin: yes.
Sloane Ranger
Yesterday in the UK we had 36,060 new cases. This does not include figures from Wales due to an issue at Public Health Wales. Even without Wales’ cases, the rolling 7-day average is up 0.1%. New cases by nation,
England – 32,157 (down 1148)
Northern Ireland – 1276 (down 29)
Scotland – 2627 (down 64)
Wales – Did not report.
Deaths – There were 127 deaths within 28 days of a positive test yesterday and Wales did not report due to the a above mentioned issue. The rolling 7-day average is down by 6.3%. 109 deaths were in England, 2 in Northern Ireland and 16 in Scotland.
Testing – 962,225 tests took place on Thursday, 7 October. This is a decrease of 14.2% in the rolling 7-day average. The PCR testing capacity reported by labs on this date was 868,549.
Hospitalisations – There were 6763 people in hospital and 808 people on ventilators on Thursday, 7 October. The rolling 7-day average for hospital admissions was down by 3.6% as of 4 October.
Vaccinations – As of Thursday, 7 October, 49,1012,734 had received 1 shot of a vaccine and 45,107,185 had had both. This means that 85.4% of all people in the UK aged 12+ have had 1 shot and 78.4% had had 2.
Robert Sneddon
Scotland — 2,417 new COVID-19 cases reported today. The test positivity rate is 8.1%. There were 18 new deaths reported overnight. ICU bed occupancy numbers are 61, down three from yesterday while hospitalisations are 943, down 14.
There were about 7,500 vaccinations carried out in Scotland yesterday (Friday) with about 65% of these being first vaccinations. 91.6% of 16+ adults are now vaccinated with their first dose and 84.8% are fully vaccinated. 72.8% of 16 and 17-year-olds have now received their first vaccination, up 0.2% from yesterday. 33.4% of 12-15 year olds have now received their first vaccination, up 1.8% from yesterday.
Ramalama
Bloody Mercola, making it really hard for chiropractors who aren’t nuts. I followed his newsletter for a while, but he discovered the magic of bidets one time and then went weirdly on about bidets! bidets! bidets! Ugh, ‘Unsubscribe.”
I only went to a chiropractor because my jaw unhinged and a chiro was cheaper than anything my TMJ specialist dentist offered or an MD (by more than $1K).
Turned out great for me. I did get other benefits (ease from asthma for example), but I don’t eschew medicine.
dr. bloor
Kyrie Irving is about to be an object example of how you can totally fuck over your life and career by not getting vaxxed. Did RFK say anything as to whether he shared Kyrie’s views about the shape of the Earth?
artem1s
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
nah, mostly he’s an attention whore who doesn’t care what kind of attention he gets. he sees LaBron doing charitable work and thinks ‘hey why are the cameras not pointed at me’. the flat earth thing was a great example of him not having any understanding of how conspiracies work and who is affected by them. he just knew he could get a rise out of the media if he kept saying goofy shit. this time his BS is probably going to boost reluctance and suspicion in populations that most need the vaccine. it’s possible he’s getting money from someone too. or may just be trying to get traded. he’s done this before. spouting nutty theories is a perfect gig for someone who is completely amoral. every time a celebrity sports figure comes out for vaccination, he gets an interview and clicks for being on the other side. he’ll wear out his welcome soon enough and move onto the next city and idiot thing to say in front of the cameras.
Ohio Mom
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
For chiropractors, I think we also screwed up by making PT expensive and hard to access. First you have to go to a doctor (and pay for that visit) to get a referral — if you can convince the doctor to give you a referral.
Then there are limits on number of PT sessions. I won’t count the copays for PT because you’d be paying for the chiropractor.
If someone has a backache or other neuromuscular problem, chiropractors are a lot easier to get to. No gate keeper and there seem to be an awful lot of them, with large easy to spot signs over their storefronts.
Just another aspect of our dysfunctional for-profit medical system.
Aaron Rodgers Mustache
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: chiropractors are medically more dubious than dianetics.
Aaron Rodgers Mustache
@artem1s: he’s also anasshole, based on his having gone maskless on his visit to the reservation. (his mom was indigenous.)
YY_Sima Qian
On 10/8 China reported 0 new domestic confirmed cases & 0 new domestic asymptomatic cases.
Fujian Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. 14 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 172 active domestic confirmed cases.
Heilongjiang Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. 12 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 64 active domestic confirmed & 6 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
Yili Prefecture in Xinjiang “Autonomous” Region did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 1 active domestic confirmed (at Horgos) & 4 active domestic asymptomatic cases (2 each at Cocodala & Horgos) at the prefecture.
At Yunnan Province all active domestic confirmed cases have recovered in recent days. There currently are 3 domestic asymptomatic cases remaining in the province, all at Ruili in Dehong Prefecture.
At Henan Province there currently are 6 active domestic confirmed cases remaining, all at Shangqiu.
Imported Cases
On 10/8, China reported 17 new imported confirmed cases (2 previously asymptomatic), 22 imported asymptomatic cases, 1 imported suspect case:
Overall in China, 37 confirmed cases recovered, 9 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation (all imported) & 2 were reclassified as confirmed cases, & 455 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 766 active confirmed cases in the country (513 imported), 1 in serious condition (imported), 371 active asymptomatic cases (355 imported), 2 suspect cases (both imported). 25,625 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.
As of 10/8, 2,218.826M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 1.263M doses in the past 24 hrs.
On 10/9 Hong Kong reported 8 new positive cases, all imported (from Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Nepal & the Philippines).
On 10/9 Macau reported 2 new domestic cases, a Mainland Chinese resident & a Vietnamese national, both are close contacts of a domestic case reported on 10/5.
NotMax
Locally,
Geo Wilcox
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You get better results from a massage therapist than a chiropractor any day of the week.
Barbara
@Ohio Mom: Many states now permit self-referrals to PT for a short course of assessment and treatment. My assistant got great relief from a chiropractor for a degenerative spinal condition when nothing else helped, but there is definitely a contingent that because of professional resentment, counterculture tendencies or both reflexively and vocally dismiss “mainstream” medicine. This is sometimes paired ironically with a quest to expand scope of practice to include more medical interventions like prescribing and administering medicine. The discipline seems to be more varied in this regard than most. The bullying friend portrayed in the first chapter of Seth Mnookin’s book on the anti-vaccine movement was a chiropractor.
sab
Flu shot this year packs a wallop. Husband had senior version yesterday. Usually it’s a nothingburger. This year it was worse than the Covid Moderna. I am assuming they are expecting a brutal flu season if this is their shot. Get your shot. Shot might make you sick but it beats dying of flu.
VOR
One positive outcome from COVID is all the research. mRNA is going to prove invaluable for many things. Finding things like these Chilean trees. New anti-viral medicine.
Re: chiropractors. Back in college I worked as a waiter in a bar/restaurant. We had a bartender who was not really dumb, but profoundly uninterested in things and couldn’t seem to put 2 and 2 together. One day a regular called him “Doctor”. Turns out he was nearly done with his chiropractic training.
Bill Arnold
The plateaued and smoothed reported deaths in Russia for July-Sept are, among other things, a deliberate insult to statisticians and non-Russian health authorities, IMO. See the chart in the piece linked in the first Moscow Times tweet.
The recent reported rises may prod some in the Russian population to get vaccinated.
I do appreciate that Moscow Times usually leads these pieces with the updated-daily version of this, reporting the excess deaths estimate as well.
sab
I have a Covid horror story to share from my niece by marriage. Her husband has a small pack of friends he has known since forever. One of them did well in law school and went off to DC to be a hot shot DC Republican lawyer. Apparently he drank the kool-aid. Wife is a nurse and vaxxed. Kids are all vaxxed. He wasn’t . ” “I run marathons”. 50 years old. Diagnosed on Tuesday, died on Saturday.
She will have to move back to Ohio because she cannot afford the mortgage on their DC house without his salary. Also too kids have no money for college now.
Scout211
@sab:
I got the regular flu shot and had no reaction. On the other hand, my Moderna and my Shingrix reactions were awful. My husband got the senior version flu shot and had no reaction. He also had no reaction to either Shingrix or Moderna shots. I told him I didn’t think this is actually a good sign, but he was relieved about it because he can’t take any NSAIDs or Tylenol due to his kidneys.
At our age, if it’s not one thing it’s another. Rinse and repeat.
As for our younger family members, my youngest grandchild was told not to come back to preschool/daycare until she either had a negative COVID test or quarantined for all of next week. My SIL is away for work so this is a bit of a challenge for my daughter, a school teacher. Trying to find a testing site near them has testing hours after her work and has available appointments has been tough. She finally got an appointment on Monday, in another town.
Cermet
@sab: I had the flu shot and – absolutely nothing; unlike the Pfizer which gave me chills and fatigue.
Ruckus
@Aaron Rodgers Mustache:
Come on now.
Some percentage of chiropractors actually can help people.
dianetics only helps itself.
(Full disclosure – I have a secondary history with dianetics – a family member 1000% fully within the grasp, for over 5 decades. I have forgotten far more than anyone should ever have to know. And yes I worked at the forgetting.)
Ruckus
@Geo Wilcox:
I only know half of your equation so I can’t completely verify but I’ve had a couple of really good massage therapists work on injuries decades ago and over those decades those injuries/issues never came back. And one of them got me out of getting a new knee 25 yrs ago. Grateful doesn’t began to cover it.
sab
@Cermet: Oldster flu shot or the usual one?
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Hey, Amir, I’m not keeping close track, but isn’t that half or less than the totals not that long ago for your area? That would be pretty god news if so!!
I seem to recall numbers in the very high teens of thousands…
And best of luck all you guys in SE Asia!!
sab
@sab: Spouse has been reacting to shots that do nothing to me. I haven’t had mine yet. Maybe he is allergic to something in it. He got really sick last time he had flu and shingrix. We blamed shingrix. Maybe it was flu shot.
Ruckus
@Bill Arnold:
We have a horrible death rate in this country we are over 730K.
Russia, with a population less than half of ours is 660K.
I think I’ve got this right that their death rate is twice ours.
China has 3 times our population but has less than 5K deaths. They have been a bit harsher at lockdowns, are used to masks. Strange how well that works.
Bill Arnold
@Scout211:
That about acetaminophen(paracetamol) is surprising. Poked a bit; most of the research suggests that it is reasonably safe for kidneys. There’s a 2020 metanalysis that shows some negative effect on kidney function, but the more mainstream current view seems to be that it’s OK if dosage is kept down and intermittent – here’s a recent discussion piece: Controversies in acetaminophen nephrotoxicity (Woo Yeong Park, 2020 Mar 31)
To be clear – my mother’s kidneys were damaged by NSAIDs for arthritis. She started with Motrin when it first came out – miracle drug. Every decade or so she was moved to a stronger NSAID, and they did damage, uncovered late when tests found < 10 percent kidney function. She went on a strict kidney diet, very well disciplined, and lasted another 10 years, becoming thoroughly addicted to narcotics in the last several years of her life (methadone, Fentanyl patches).
(Acetaminophen(paracetamol) has its downsides; liver failure is a shitty way to die.)
Barbara
@sab: My dry cleaner has 4 kids between 12 and 22. Her son, @18, nearly died, sustained significant organ damage and faces prolonged rehab. They are so grateful he is alive but they cannot fathom why he got so sick when the rest of them only had mild cases. The variability of Covid seems to be much greater than average. It is true arrogance to assume that “you” are stronger than others when it comes to combating Covid. Did he make the same kind of assumptions when it came to life insurance?
Bill Arnold
@Ruckus:
Excess deaths in the US are around 1M, so Russia is less than 2X as bad as we are. I have no idea how much China is lying about its deaths numbers but China takes the suppression approach seriously and has the political and enforcement infrastructure to do so. If there are serious (and costly) long term sequelae for recovered COVID-19 patients, China will be in a much much much better position than most other countries.
Cermet
@sab: Well, at least he had life insurance … uh, wait; no he didn’t. I guess being 50 and healthy, who needs it? Well, that is exactly the opposite of what any rational person thinks relative to life insurance …oh, wait; he was a thug voter. That explains all of it.
Never want anyone one to die needlessly – but he was supposed to convince others to drink the kool aid, not be stupid enough to drink it himself.
Ruckus
@sab:
I’ve had 3 Pfizer shots. The first and third were nothing. The second was a very bad, very hazy 2 days, woke up the third like nothing had happened. Shingles shots, nothing. Flu shots, when I used to take them, every one horrible for 1 to 3 days. It was so bad I stopped taking them a few years ago. I’m seriously thinking of taking this years shot, because of my age.
Cermet
@sab: Sorry, for the delay; standard shot; so might make a big difference
Ruckus
@Bill Arnold:
I understand our Covid death toll is a bit over 730K, not over a million.
Where are you getting your number of over a million?
I’m not saying you are wrong, I’d just like to know if our official numbers are complete crap and off by over a quarter of a million. I mean I bet I don’t trust the Russian numbers any more than their citizens seem to but their official numbers are lower than the Moscow Times numbers, which is what I used.
Ruckus
@Bill Arnold:
Damage from acetaminophen may be partially from dosages as well as usage. I’ve had a number of joint issues over the last 30 yrs, damage from a severe vehicle accident and under docs orders I took a lot of acetaminophen daily for a while. This was of course before the concept of kidney damage from such large dosage had arisen because most usage prior had been rather low, over the counter levels. My kidney function is OK but lower than it could be and that may be the reason. I had a large bottle of 800mg pills. Hey it worked for the pain…..
Platonicspoof
I received the Fluzone HD (high dose) vaccine two weeks ago – no side effects at all, not even swelling at injection site.
Ramalama
@Barbara: Is it this book – The panic virus : a true story of medicine, science, and fear – ?
Ramalama
@sab:
That is awful. Given how quickly it hit him, took him away, I wonder if he didn’t even follow any basic masking or distancing protocols. It seems as if the length of exposure to the virus determines the impact. So sorry for your family.
Barbara
@Ramalama: yes
Robert Sneddon
@Ruckus: The published figures of ca. 730,000 are cases where someone provably died from or while having COVID-19. There’s also the excess deaths number, a statistical effort based on the death toll from the past five years. For the US the ongoing excess death number from January 2020 to the current day is either approaching or exceeds a million.
It’s complicated, fewer people driving during the lockdowns meant fewer road accident deaths, overloaded hospitals meant serious illnesses that might have been treatable became fatalities. COVID-19 is to blame though even if some of the deaths are not directly linked to the disease (healthcare worker suicides, for example).
The UK’s excess deaths total for the same period is about 20%-25% greater than the recorded COVID-19 death numbers, about the same ratio the US is seeing.
Robert Sneddon
The health services in the UK are predicting a Flu Season From Hell this year after we missed it last year due to lockdowns, masking, hand sanitising etc. There was also a big push to get vulnerable people vaccinated last year and this year’s vaccination program is casting an even wider net and pushing people hard to get vaccinated against the flu. The medical advice is that the flu vaccination can take place at the same time as any COVID-19 vaccine including boosters, there doesn’t need to be a gap between shots.
The UK goverment has Plan A and Plan B ready for this winter, in part determined by how bad the flu hits along with an expected wave of COVID-19 cases. Plan A is keep things running, Plan B is local lockdowns, masking mandates and restrictions on access to public spaces based on a vaccine passport of the sort the EU is already implementing. It’s all based on how well the medical services can cope with the load but there’s no optimism that it’s all going to be fine, the forecast is that it’s going to be bad. The hope is that it won’t be disastrous.
Jim Appleton
I led the news cycle for about fifteen minutes several years ago. Oil train. Google Jim Appleton OPB.
Local Riverkeeper exec director drove up to me a few days later, rolled down the passenger window and I started asking him about a group that went through town the day before.
After a minute or so, director starts nodding his head and rolling his eyes toward the guy in the passenger seat about two feet in front of me.
I look at him, make eye contact, don’t recognize, go back to asking about inane topic.
Finally director raises a hand and points. A right hand extends out the open window.
“Hi Jim. Bobby Kennedy. I asked Brett if I could meet you.”
Riverkeeper is his baby.
That was before I knew enough about his antivacc to lose much respect.
TallTom
@Ruckus: When you look at the number of deaths per year in a country, the number is generally fairly stable, year over year. With the pandemic, there are higher deaths than normal (excess deaths), These deaths have been attributed to other caus es than COVID, (heart failure, kidney failure, pneumonia, etc.), but the root cause is COVID.
Matt
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Dude pulled down $33m in salary last year, and he couldn’t help folks “do their own research” by chartering a jet and flying to the EDGE? Could livestream the whole thing!
Oh of course, because (((THEY))) would somehow prevent it. Faintly scratch the surface of a flat-earther, find a plain-vanilla antisemite.
Ruckus
Thank all of you for your answers about excess deaths.
I believe that my answer still holds because I was comparing Covid deaths to Covid deaths, not excess deaths to excess deaths. And the estimates for excess deaths are just estimates. Covid deaths that we see are never going to be accurate to the decimal point but we are talking the reasonably same counting process across countries. Even the ones lying about it, like Russia, which is why I used the newspaper numbers for Russia, they seem to be more realistic. And I’m not trying to minimize the excess numbers, just to make a semi reasonable counting of the pandemic. Yes our response is crap, because of trump, because of his followers, because it had gotten twisted so far out of reality without any sort of proper response until President Biden.
To me the worst part of the worlds response is that we weren’t the worst country. We were bad because our leader was a wack job deluxe and we got well behind the curve, from which it is very, very difficult to then get in front of. The second part is that we have given well over a billion vaccine doses away to countries that need it and can’t afford it. That’s a decent president. Can we do more? Very likely yes and very likely we are.
sab
@Robert Sneddon: So we hould all mask? That helped enormously with flu last year.
Ramalama
@Jim Appleton: Damn!
We could smell smoke from far far away when Lac-Mégantic, Quebec caught on fire, was set on fire, by the rail crash and the oil catching fire. That town was burnt to a crisp.
Now a days it’s kind of the home of a really nutty political party that’s as Frumphy as a Canadian Quebecois town can get.
Bill Arnold
@Ruckus
Re excess deaths, The “The Economist” tracker is very useful:
Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries – In many parts of the world, official death tolls undercount the total number of fatalities
It is updated often.
Basically, some areas with very low actual SARS-CoV-2 infection rates have had negative excess deaths, or negative excess deaths for part of the pandemic, due among other reasons, to lower deaths caused by air pollution and traffic/road accidents.
Some countries lie, a lot. Russia is not the worst. The US is pretty good but undercounts some, up to 30 percent by a few estimates, less by most.
See in particular the 3d and 4th column of the table “Excess deaths since country’s first 50 covid deaths”. They don’t explicitly show the ratio (the level of lying) but it’s easily computed. (screen scrape the table, make a csv file, import into a spreadsheet. Or maybe they have a spreadsheet available; haven’t looked.)
Bill Arnold
@sab:
I am definitely not Robert, but yes, we know what to do. Flu season was knocked out for two winters in the southern hemisphere, and one in the northern hemisphere, by NPIs such as masking (also distancing and shutdowns/partial shutdowns, and perhaps handwashing), even though flu vaccination rates were similar (in the US at least.)
Also, get a flu vaccination and encourage other people to too. Anything to get R below 1 especially in your community.
Jim Appleton
@Ramalama: Mosier was a lot different. We easily and safely put out a small oil fire, about 30k gallons as opposed to several million in Lac Mégantic.
Ol'Froth
Chiro has ALWAYS been a scam.