COVID-19 Coronavirus

U.S. COVID levels approach pandemic's 2020 peak.https://t.co/woNCt8bqQH

— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) September 16, 2023

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Free, updated COVID vaccines are available for everyone 6 months and up! Learn more 👇 pic.twitter.com/HtqbhFLVC2

— Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) September 19, 2023

People across at least 10 states have now been infected by BA.2.86, a highly mutated variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 that authorities have been closely tracking. https://t.co/aDyo2NFRWQ

— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 19, 2023

Home tests still work to detect #Covid, but there are a few reasons why your test may not pick up an infection. Nearly all of us have some degree of underlying immunity to the #coronavirus now & that can affect the performance of the test https://t.co/urJ5VTXyhL pic.twitter.com/pIR5N4S4Kc

— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) September 18, 2023

Here are the case and death numbers for last week. Early data suggests the current surge may have peaked for now https://t.co/hMEBQ5CQj1

— BNO News (@BNOFeed) September 18, 2023

Weekly U.S. COVID update:

– New cases: 243,847 est.
– Average: 227,732 (+24,100)
– States reporting: 50/50
– In hospital: 13,726 (+2,168)
– In ICU: 1,722 (+145)
– New deaths: 1,584
– Average: 1,042 (+190)

1/4

— BNO News (@BNOFeed) September 18, 2023

More than 20,000 Americans were hospitalized with COVID last week, the highest since early March pic.twitter.com/dWtOU5xwNf

— BNO News (@BNOFeed) September 18, 2023

STAT's @HelenBranswell joined this week's episode of "The Readout LOUD" #podcast to discuss Covid this fall and the rollout of boosters shots aimed at the latest viral variants. Listen: https://t.co/YQKUHBAEmg pic.twitter.com/wyjs2YzXQt

— STAT (@statnews) September 16, 2023

Covid is now endemic, and so is anti-science idiocy:

… Many U.S. states have ended their COVID-19 vaccine mandates. But America’s childhood vaccine mandates for school entry are also vulnerable. As researchers of vaccination social science, ethics, and policy, we have sometimes encountered an optimistic view that immunization in America will soon snap back to a pre-pandemic “normal.” But this hope ignores the cracks that were already present in America’s immunization social order before the pandemic, cracks that COVID-19 only widened. State-based conflicts over school enrollment vaccine mandates became increasingly political and contentious during the 2010s. Continued political polarization about vaccine mandates is likely to reduce immunization rates and precipitate the return of previously controlled diseases. That’s why it’s time to adapt to vaccine refusal and prepare to manage these outbreaks, rather than hope they can be prevented…

Democratic lawmakers have now eliminated nonmedical exemptions in California, New York, Washington State (for measles vaccine), Maine, and Connecticut. New national organizations, like the Safe Families Coalition, are pushing for similar changes in many other states. Where Democrats organized to abolish vaccine opt-outs, Republicans fought to protect or expand them. The fight continues, as Republicans look for ways to further weaken childhood vaccine mandates. A case in point: on 17 April this year a Republican judge in Mississippi reinstated a religious exemption to that state’s vaccine mandates that courts had overturned in 1979.

Attempts to scrap nonmedical exemptions inject new kinds of coercion into a fracturing immunization social order. This intensifies the politicization of school vaccine mandates and erodes public support for these critical policies. Conflicts about COVID-19 pandemic control measures were not outliers, but instead signs of a crumbling immunization consensus. The bitter truth is that nonpartisan vaccine policy was dead before the world had heard of COVID-19.

Removing nonmedical vaccine exemptions will not overcome vaccine refusal or prevent outbreaks. Only in states where Democrats control all levers of state power can such bills pass, given unified Republican opposition. These policies can deliver local increases in immunization rates. However, even in Democrat-led states, enforcement is likely to be uneven at best, and to be worse in communities where immunization rates are already low. For example, the leadership of private schools is unlikely to enforce strict vaccine mandates that they believe are inconsistent with their values, or that will cause them to lose substantial tuition revenue…

Given the prospect of uneven state and institutional support for vaccination, individuals and families must also brace themselves for more frequent disease outbreaks. Some new parents already prevent unvaccinated relatives from visiting their babies. Families will need to consider extending these forms of private immunization governance when states can no longer protect them.

We are not talking about “giving up.” Governments should continue to promote vaccine acceptance and enforce vaccine mandates. The right kinds of outreach can sway some people who are on the fence about vaccinating. But these efforts alone are unlikely to be sufficient to prevent future outbreaks. Adapting to the times we live in is the only way forward.

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The chief of the World Health Organization urged Beijing to offer more information on the origins of COVID-19 and is ready to send a second team to probe the matter, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. https://t.co/SBvIBNnUHT

— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) September 17, 2023

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Italy: Covid data to 10th September 2023

"An incidence of diagnosed and reported cases of 44 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, an increase compared to the previous week (31 cases per 100,000 inhabitants).

English: https://t.co/8bQZiz7L1m

Italian: https://t.co/WcRJIBuWuW pic.twitter.com/stKEYavAnZ

— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) September 17, 2023

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#Covid has changed & so has our immunity. Our B & T cells—keepers of immune memories—aren’t as blind to the virus as they were in 2020. CDC has screened blood samples & estimates 97% of the US population has some immunity via vaccination, infection or both https://t.co/fR0oQkjzFG pic.twitter.com/F2Cf0EgQRg

— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) September 17, 2023

(Gift link)

https://t.co/DyEKg8nv82 by @ronlin @latimes pic.twitter.com/bE9HEcltJo

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) September 17, 2023

Important update on myocarditis from Covid mRNA vaccines for people age 12-39 who received bivalent boosters:
only 2 cases among over 550,000 people dosed
Presented at CDC meeting todayhttps://t.co/kJ7kL83ynF pic.twitter.com/hRSMJZSBwk

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) September 13, 2023

Understanding myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome—an elusive condition that often follows an infection and shares many similarities with #LongCovid—could improve long #COVID19 research, a 2022 #SciencePerspective argued. https://t.co/MzFGyQYFkG #ScienceMagArchives pic.twitter.com/JfnhNqkhV6

— Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine) September 16, 2023

Since we’re coming up on deer season…

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Reminder, there are a number of groups on local, state, and national level advocating for stronger COVID prevention efforts, providing free masks and tests, tracking places with COVID protections, and more! Learn more on the directory we put together at https://t.co/SRlgfBGECW https://t.co/8BWKYUHi3L

— Myra Batchelder #KeepMasksInHealthcare (@myrabatchelder) September 11, 2023

Dangerous sign. The @US_FDA was right to assert lack of any evidence of benefit for ivermectin. But the court ruled in favor of doctors prescribing whatever they wanthttps://t.co/B8nFquydXF pic.twitter.com/ZXSLZOEyjQ

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) September 15, 2023

No, Pfizer's #Covid vax doesn't cause 'VAIDS.' That's NOT a real condition. A stupid anti-science post on X stated Sept 12 that Pfizer's shot causes “vaccine-induced AIDS.” It included a photo of a child whose face is covered w/ sores. Total fiction. https://t.co/BumEWLOYis

— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) September 19, 2023

The cost of covid vaccines is not a barrier to universal health care and if you think it is, you’re a moron.

— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) September 14, 2023

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Among people who are still paying attention to Covid-19, there’s been a recent surge — not just in viral activity but in the concern once again being paid to Covid…

“I see so many people say: ‘Remember, Covid’s not over,’” Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center, told STAT.

“Covid’s never going to be over. You need to set expectations accordingly. It is never going to be over.”

Covid is now like influenza, RSV, rhinoviruses, and a large number of other pathogens that will at some point or points in a year increase in transmission activity and then decline, ceding the stage to something else that can make people cough, sneeze, run a fever, feel lousy, and sometimes require medical care and can on occasion lead to death. To be sure, Covid currently is the worst member of that gang, still killing more people a year than influenza, which previously wore the worst actor badge.

But when we’re looking at Covid, it’s important to remember that we are in a markedly different phase in our experience with SARS-2 than we were even a year ago, experts insist. Yes, the number of new hospital admissions is rising, and the number of deaths may follow. But they are far below the figures of previous years. In the last week of August 2021, there were nearly 86,000 new hospital admissions. Last year at the same time, the number was 37,000. This year it was 17,400…

Epidemiologist Bill Hanage noted that already this year, there have been roughly 100,000 Covid deaths in the United States — and there are 3.5 months left in the year. If half that number of people were to die during a flu season, it would be deemed a disastrous flu year.

“And yet, by comparison with what’s happened in the past, [Covid] is so much better,” said Hanage, who is associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health. “And I think we need to hold in our heads the fact that those things are both true.’’…

Coming to grips with what life is going to be like with Covid as a part of the respiratory diseases mix could help us make better, more sustainable decisions about what we are and are not willing to do to try to mitigate its damage, the experts said. And toning down reactions to blips or upticks in cases could help avoid further Covid burnout that could prove counterproductive down the road, they suggested.

“My worry is if every time we see a new variant or an uptick in cases, making it overblown and freaking out about it, then nothing happens, then when the real thing comes and it is time to really bring back that pandemic playbook … people will not hear the warning bells,” Lessler said.

Hanage agreed. “It may be the case that at some point we might want to dust off that [pandemic control] advice. But saying it at the moment is just going to devalue that currency,” he said.

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This week, more than 250,000 new COVID cases were reported in the U.S., the highest since February

— BNO News (@BNOFeed) September 11, 2023

Forecast out to mid October:

Prediction is difficult at the moment with a lot of factors at play, so this is a range for now. Peaks are always hard to predict.

Lower model run peaks this week. FLip is growing, but not fast enough to peak later than late Sept. pic.twitter.com/6idiApRyyP

— JWeiland (@JPWeiland) September 11, 2023

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UK heads towards winter wave levels of Covid in September.

🚨 According to the ZOE Covid tracker, there are now over 100,000 symptomatic cases being recorded every day in the UK.

H/t @gwladwr pic.twitter.com/gbWEmRWnZ4

— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) September 8, 2023

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In case anyone is interested in recent work on immunity resulting from breakthrough infections in vaccinated people – so called 'hybrid' immunity – here's a recent paper pic.twitter.com/O5m5XS53Tk

— Bill Hanage (@BillHanage) September 12, 2023

#Covid can trigger antibodies linked w/ auto-immune disorders, causing blood clots & other complications, new research shows. Natural production of auto-antibodies—those aimed against your own tissues—increases w/ age. SARSCoV2 exacerbates that production https://t.co/X62l2wpGnN

— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) September 12, 2023

Here's an update on the reported samples of the new BA.2.86.* "Pirola" variant, vs the overall sample counts.

Denmark and now the UK have reported the most samples so far, with the highest frequency reported from South Africa. pic.twitter.com/ZX6wHjy0oZ

— Mike Honey (@Mike_Honey_) September 11, 2023

#SARSCoV2 can infect sensory neurons, explaining why some people lost the senses of taste & smell. "There's clearly a clinical effect of SARSCoV2 infection on sensory neurons, such as on smell and taste," said Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch whose lab led the study https://t.co/6SLITPdX8g

— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) September 7, 2023

Giving a booster dose of mRNA #Covid vaccine prompts a strong T cell response in immunocompromised people, according to Swedish research. That means people w/ an impaired immune system can achieve a relatively robust response against #SARSCoV2 if exposed https://t.co/Rw0weE3EjF pic.twitter.com/aKj60kwPv2

— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) September 8, 2023

It’s encouraging to see more coverage about COVID’s long-term effects on the heart being featured prominently. Not enough people know about this due to disinformation & gaslighting. We need to spread the word so everyone can take steps to protect themselves & their communities. https://t.co/CW9ckW7n7F

— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) September 12, 2023

“The majority of these occurred in people 65 and older . But heart-related deaths also increased dramatically in younger adults. In fact, a study found that the sharpest rise in deaths from heart attack during that period occurred in 25- to 44-year-olds.”

— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) September 7, 2023

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Florida: 43 of 67 counties reported 'moderate' levels of new weekly hospital admissions for COVID-19

'Moderate' levels are between 10 and 19.9 new hospital admissions per 100,000.https://t.co/V3dpKi5Tab

— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) September 12, 2023

Next up: banning non-lead paint https://t.co/JO9Lvc67aM

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) September 10, 2023

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JD Vance makes his case against mask mandates by claiming that kids "need us not to be chicken little about every single respiratory pandemic." pic.twitter.com/CJRT6H1Oqy

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 7, 2023

In one action-packed speech/tweets, Rand Paul manages to name-check four shitty, anti-vaccine cranks. pic.twitter.com/68hIpSdL9E

— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) September 12, 2023

Literally no body benefits from like vaccine development being crippled to pander to Facebook influencers. There’s basically no constituency that gains, just morons who think they do.

— William B. Fuckley (@opinonhaver) September 8, 2023

Just slightly more disturbing than the crying toddler were the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died alone in ICUs after saying goodbye to their family and friends over FaceTime. https://t.co/0zgAOo3TNQ

— Jonathan Reiner (@JReinerMD) September 12, 2023

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: September 13, 2023Post + Comments (59)

U.S: Covid in wastewater at highest level since February 2023https://t.co/l72x8Njccm pic.twitter.com/WWW4UGRcVJ

— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) September 1, 2023

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“Federal data suggests that the current increases have stayed far below earlier peaks and notable surges. But judging by word of mouth among family, friends and coworkers, it can seem like everyone knows someone who’s sick with Covid-19 right now…”https://t.co/nCG5Dn470F

— Project N95 (@projectn95) September 1, 2023

Remember, sharing is caring:

… Tracking Covid-19 trends has always had its challenges. But the rise of rapid home tests — and general waning of public interest in testing at all — has all but erased the ability to grasp current case counts nationwide. The CDC officially stopped reporting aggregate Covid-19 case counts months ago, noting that data had become less representative of actual infections or transmission levels over time.

As case counts started to become less reliable, some experts first pointed to hospitalization metrics as a reasonable substitute to gauge transmission. Hospitals were regularly testing all patients, whether they were coming in for Covid-related symptoms or for something else entirely, and they are required to report positive cases. The idea was that case rates in a hospital could serve as a proxy for case rates in the broader community.

There were about 15,000 new hospital admissions for Covid-19 in the week ending August 19, according to CDC data — less than half of what the numbers were at this time last year and lower than they were for about 80% of the pandemic…

Weekly hospital admissions have nearly doubled over the past month, including a 19% bump in the most recent week, CDC data shows. And a sample of laboratories participating in a federal surveillance program show that test positivity rates have tripled in the past two months.

There are some hopeful signs: Biobot data shows that wastewater levels may be starting to flatten, and relatively low hospitalization rates suggest that there may be a lower risk of severe disease for many.

But despite the clear signs of a summer surge, the US has been living in a “fantasy world” where people pretend Covid-19 is “not relevant,” Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Task Force coordinator during the Trump administration, told ABC’s “Start Here” podcast.

Precautions like masking and staying up-to-date on vaccinations are especially important as this rise in Covid-19 carries into the broader respiratory virus season, experts say.

“With every respiratory disease season — whether it’s Covid, whether it’s influenza, whether it’s RSV — those increases can impact different individuals in different ways, and there are always severe outcomes associated with respiratory disease season,” Hamilton said.

“Now is the time for us to be practicing good respiratory etiquette. Now is the time for us to remind ourselves to think about our own individual health status and those individuals that we may be around.”

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Worth reading the whole thing:

…. Long COVID has been pushing the limits of hospital systems everywhere, not just at Yale. As Americans emerged from the most acute phase of the pandemic, as mask and vaccine mandates lifted and life returned to a semblance of normal for the people who had contracted COVID and recovered, primary-care physicians started to say, “‘I’m not interested in long COVID,’ or ‘I don’t treat long COVID. Let me refer you to a specialist,’” said David Putrino, who runs the new chronic-illness recovery clinic at Mount Sinai. For their part, Putrino added, the specialists were saying, “This is not what my practice is. This is not an emergency anymore.” Patients all over the country reported monthslong waiting times for appointments at long-COVID clinics. All the while, scientists and pundits heaped skepticism on the very notion of long COVID, arguing that infection made people stronger, that new variants posed no threats, that the danger of long COVID was overblown — implying that what patients were suffering from was all in their heads.

Forgotten in this debate are the 65 million people worldwide for whom the pandemic remains a torturous everyday reality. Absent the kind of long-term studies that can provide more definitive answers on what long COVID is and how it can be treated, these people are in desperate need of clarity from someone devoted to their care. Spatz and her colleagues were proposing an alternative model: a clinic led by an internal-medicine doctor with a full hour to listen to each patient. This physician would create a treatment plan, communicate extensively with the patient’s primary-care team, and refer out to subspecialists when necessary. It wasn’t glamorous. It might never produce patents or profits or win prizes.

As Sanders listened to her friend unspool this idea, her excitement mounted. Hearing patients’ complicated problems and solving them was her sweet spot, the talent and interest upon which she had built a storied career. Now 67, she has long been known as the Arthur Conan Doyle of medical diagnosis, “a paragon of the modern medical-detective storyteller,” as the celebrated surgeon Atul Gawande once described her. In addition to teaching internal medicine at Yale, she writes “Diagnosis,” a monthly medical-mysteries column for The New York Times Magazine, which was the inspiration for the long-running television series House. She has written two books on diagnosis and in 2019 was featured on a Netflix docuseries also called Diagnosis.

Sanders, energetic and brusque, had been casting about for her next challenge. And here, unexpectedly, it was. “I was like, Yes! This is what I’ve been looking for,” she tells me. The Monday after the party, Sanders sent an email inquiring about the position. “I was really the only qualified person who applied for the job,” she says. Among the ambitious academics at Yale, evaluating frustrated patients for long COVID — and then treating their ever-changing and unremitting symptoms — was not seen as an auspicious professional trajectory. But in their lack of interest, Sanders saw a path forward beyond diagnosis: As an internal-medicine doctor, she was already an expert at managing chronic disease. “There are no antibiotics for diabetes. There’s no magic pill for hypertension,” she says. She has spent more than two decades not offering cures but helping people improve their imperfect health. She could aim these skills at a new subset of patients suffering from this novel disease…

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: September 6, 2023Post + Comments (38)

… The CDC’s immunization panel is scheduled to vote on the vaccines at a Sept. 12 meeting, a notice posted on the federal register website showed.

Vaccine makers such as Pfizer (PFE.N) and its German partner BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE), Moderna (MRNA.O) and Novavax (NVAX.O) have created versions of their shots aimed at the XBB.1.5 subvariant of the virus.

CDC Director Mandy Cohen said earlier this month the vaccines were anticipated to be available by the third or fourth week of September, after being recommended by the CDC and authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration…

26 states are currently seeing a 20%+ surge in #Covid cases.

How do you know if those #Covid19 home tests in your cabinet are still useful?
https://t.co/xA1bj8nWOj

— Michael Conn (@michaelconn_ny) August 29, 2023

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WHO: Latest global Covid case numbers

*Excludes ALL of the Americas.

An entire continent engages in concealing vital medical data.

https://t.co/omCjlUL54N pic.twitter.com/gWXCq6ihQJ

— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) August 27, 2023

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