Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

(a mask)

will be interesting to see if the UK breaks its single day case record before or after restrictions are lifted on monday. i suppose they could break the record on the exact day, which would be a nice coincidence.

'Nice'

No surge in the fall comparable to last fall, scientists in the U.S. claim:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/health/delta-variant-uk-usa.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Given the level of vaccination in the US it seems almost unfathomable that there could be a surge comparable to last fall. Is that controversial?

What do we think about parents lying about their kids' age to get them vaccinated? I know at least two families who got their 11-year-olds the shot. One got caught, the other didn't.

xp

depends if you mean cases or hospitalization/death.

in terms of number of cases, exactly that is happening in the UK right now and there's no reason to think things will be different here. the UK has vaccinated a larger share of its population nationally and doesn't have huge swathes of the country with 20% vaccination rates. cases are already doubling every 1-2 weeks in the most vaccinated big cities in the US (e.g. LA, NYC). so it seems likely we'll be back up above 100k/day during august.

my guess is hospitalization/deaths will not be as bad as they were last winter, *averaged across the entire US*. seems like there will be regional hospitalization surges comparable to last winter though (i.e. overrun hospitals, etc.).

My COVID test was negative, so can go to Scotland after all... and stop cursing Astra-Zeneca... will carry on cursing the UK government though.

xpost I know of at least one under 16 kid that was able to wrangle an early shot. I do assume there are a few under 12 doing the same. I'm not sure if there's any risk involved. I guess that's why they're still studying! But it's not like something magical happens to your body between 11 and 12.

it's not like something magical happens to your body between 11 and 12

speak for yourself, josh

well, the shot should stunt that, but give you magnetic powers, so ... a wash.

Given the level of vaccination in the US it seems almost unfathomable that there could be a surge comparable to last fall. Is that controversial?

Given the level of vaccination in the US it seems highly probable that there could be a surge large enough to rank as one of the most significant public health emergencies in the history of the country.

are you expecting larger or smaller than the surge that occurred at the beginning of this year?

what caek said sounds right. cases will temporarily go over 100k/day, deaths/hospitalizations lower than during similar case loads because of vaccination. but probably not near our peak (251,000/day) - that was a horrifying time, and unless we truly are covering up a horrifying number of breakthrough cases rather than a number that is higher.

in the UK, cases have not stopped increasing, but the rate of increase has slowed a bit (at least per the stats folk). the re-opening plan might fuck that up some more, but many are holding steady to the idea that it could peak by late July.

you can't really accurately predict these things to the extent people want though. some surges we expected never really materialized in the past, whereas some were far worse than we ever feared they could be.

the level of vaccination will be over 50% fully-vaxxed probably within a month, as we're over 48% now. nowhere near enough to get 'herd immunity' but the disease is going to have a much harder time spreading than it did ay ear ago, where only people in clinical trials were vaccinated. that seems like a fairly uncontroversial thing to say.

that doesn't mean it's not a major problem but.......I know that's not what you're asking.

esp when you factor in natural infection, which is higher than in other countries cos we outright didn't give a fuck about stopping the disease in most of 2020

I agree with all this, I'm mostly wondering if sic believes this will be worse than the massive surge we had in the winter and if so, why?

what specific number of cases and/or rate of cases-to-deaths would you think of as nbd if not compared to last winter?

Did literally anyone say nbd

Moodles committed the mortal sin of ilx of asking an earnest question, I think, which must be answered with snark.

sic, the fact that we are having any surge whatsoever is extremely demoralizing, but you were responding to a comment that was specifically saying it probably wouldn't be comparable to the last surge, and it isn't clear if you are saying no, it will be comparable or worse, or if you are just saying any surge is bad regardless of size. I think there's a real difference between those because its a question that revolves around whether vaccines at a 50% level will be a mitigating factor or not.

i'd wait for caek to show up again at this point tbrr

we have him on retainer

I’m not snarking or arguing*, just mildly advocating against being inured to the situation, or only ranking things on a scale of what orange man did

*apologies to anyone who read either post as belligerent

Someone in my medias is spending a month vacationing in Hawaii and complaining about all the "hoops" she had to go through to get there, like "UGH THREE COVID TESTS" and meanwhile Maui is begging people to stay home and stop bringing the virus there.

Like, you want to believe the best of people and then they go and do things.

we stole the Kingdom of Hawaii, only fair we share our infectious diseases with them now too amirite

I think this is probably the correct and safe move here, but gotta admit that seeing more and more stuff pop up like this in the last week feels like a depressingly familiar path...

Unfortunately, with Covid infections rising in Austin, even some of the fully vaccinated getting infected, the uncertainty of the delta variant, and with Austin now in stage 3 on a collision course with stage 4 restrictions, we are going back to requiring masks at all times.

— Waterloo Records (@WaterlooRecords) July 15, 2021

I think businesses are going to need to require masks for the foreseeable future, the government isn't providing any other options besides leaving it up to them to manage it (just like businesses have to manage access to health care!)

same trend continues in the UK - the growth rate is slowing a bit, but....nonetheless, cares are still increasing.

If you haven't been following Delta in the UK closely, it looks like this, now >50 cases/100,000 people and still rising despite some slowing of growth pic.twitter.com/6YZuTA6vlY

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) July 15, 2021

weaker link between cases and hospitalization, but NOT a broken link, so obviously hospitalizations and deaths rise alongside cases, just...fortunately, not at the same rate they did pre-vaccine.

The main mitigating and positive factor is the weaker link between cases and hospitalizations/deaths now that there are a high level of vaccinations compared with prior waveshttps://t.co/pLudMPSPfj pic.twitter.com/O84J7eRqiW

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) July 15, 2021

heh, I've been going to Waterloo Records to browse used CDs and I've been wearing a mask anyway... good on them for not fucking around.

Yeah, I mean, I'm still masking up when shopping and in stores and I think its the right move. Just, still, seeing more mandates and restrictions kick back in is doing a number on the optimism of the last few months while things were heading in the right direction. Which isn't to say I was magically thinking "hey COVID is over", it's just the slowly sinking in of realizing that, thanks to numbnut assholes, we're gonna be in this for a lot longer than necessary.

i'm not getting into the over/under relative to last winter (nobody knows), but at a high level, the UK is on track to exceed their winter surge of cases and there's no reason to think the same thing won't happen here.

the vaccination rate is very low in some regions of the US, so seems quite likely that the subsequent hospitalization/death surge in those regions will be significantly worse than the (currently very small) hospital surge in the UK.

all of which is to say, it might be worse than last winter, it might not, but this is wrong:

Given the level of vaccination in the US it seems almost unfathomable that there could be a surge comparable to last fall. Is that controversial?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/nyregion/nyc-breakthrough-infections-vaccine.html

Vaccines offered powerful protection against the coronavirus in New York City, blunting the second wave of the virus and saving an estimated 8,300 lives between December of last year and July of this year, according to a new study by Yale University epidemiologists released by the city on Wednesday.

The study underscored that the real-world performance of the vaccines can meet and even exceed trial results in preventing virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the city said. Only 1.1 percent of the 500,300 virus cases during the first six months of this year were among people who were fully vaccinated, according to data from the city’s health department also released Wednesday in support of the study.

Yet the data was also a reminder the protection was not perfect. A total of 94 fully vaccinated New Yorkers died from the virus between January and mid-June, compared with 8,069 deaths among the unvaccinated, the city reported, though it did not include specific demographic information.

One important caveat is that most of the period of the study was before the Delta variant became the predominant variant in the city, according to the limited amount of genetic analysis of cases being done by the city each week. Studies suggest that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant, though cases among those who are vaccinated tend to be mild or asymptomatic, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist said this week. Because of vaccines, health experts don’t expect the recent increase in cases to reach the levels seen in New York City’s first and second waves.

The protection of vaccines remains powerful. A Public Health England analysis, which has not yet been peer reviewed, showed that Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 88 percent effective against symptomatic disease and 96 percent effective against hospitalization from Delta, just slightly lower than against older variants. Moderna also reported on early studies showing only a “modest reduction” of antibody protection against the Delta variant.

The data released Wednesday represented the most comprehensive look yet at breakthrough infections in New York City. In all, the city reported that about 5,300 fully vaccinated people were infected and 583 fully vaccinated people were hospitalized in New York with Covid-19 between January and June.

The picture is more complete than what is being released nationally, as it included mild cases, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is only tracking serious breakthrough infections that result in hospitalizations or deaths.

On the day that Australia's two largest cities went into lockdown, our national leader went on Kyle & Jackie O's radio show to talk about whether he ever shat his pants at Engadine Maccas. They didn't even raise it. He did.

— marquelawyers (@marquelawyers) July 15, 2021

A friend's sister in Singapore was phoned up yesterday to be informed that, as she had recently been in proximity to someone who had COVID, she would be picked up by the authorities from her flat and taken to a hotel room to isolate for ten days. She was given TEN MINUTES to pack. She protested this, saying that as a diabetic, she would need 45 minutes to gather her stuff. This was refused, and she was given 30 minutes. Exactly 30 minutes later, the vehicle was outside her door. Once in the room, she was fitted with a tracking wristband, to ensure that she didn't leave.

how do the lockdown precautions factor into the numbers? I know the UK was in some form of lockdown last winter (that was delayed and wasn't absolute), whereas the US was largely not (some states locked down, some just imposed restrictions on capacity/hours of operation, some didn't do shit).

is the thought that due to the much larger virulence of Delta than the dominant strain of virus last winter (which, at least in the US, wasn't even the Alpha yet), that even with 50%+ of the US vaccinated + high natural infection, we'd still have a real chance to hit 250,000 cases a day? Last year I know that mostly occurred due to a combination of people traveling, gathering indoors more frequently due to weather, gathering en masse due to holidays, and many states not wanting to re-instate restrictions.

just trying to make heads or tails of the consensus, which there doesn't seem to be any (not that this is surprising, it's a novel virus with a newly attacking variant).

long but good thread on new study

We hear often about how delta is more transmissible, but we don't hear much about why that's the case or how that impacts exposure risk.

A new study by Li and colleagues is out on Virological that provides some insight:https://t.co/EiwAJmrgcI

— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) July 15, 2021

suggests, among many other things, that incubation period is reduced, meaning virus is detected sooner in tests and victim is 'infected' sooner after exposure than previous strains

thanks for that

Good Bob Wachter thread on the state of things in SF. As he says, caution, not panic.

If you're wondering how bad Delta really is, even in highly vaccinated SF (76% of >age 12 fully vaxxed) & still w/ a lot of masking (most folks in stores), we're seeing a pretty steep Covid uptick. Daily cases up 4-fold (10->42; Fig L), hospital pts doubled (9->19; R)(Thread 1/4) pic.twitter.com/6JC2UlA0Sf

— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) July 15, 2021

LA county is requiring indoor masking again

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-15/l-a-county-will-require-masks-indoors-amid-covid-19-surge

here's why, from my own personal dashboard, i.e. a shitty graph i made

https://i.imgur.com/iXbStMO.png

note: LA county is more vaccinated than the US on average, and probably has more "natural immunity" than the US on average, so that this is happening here is not good.

the good news is there's nothing like a huge surge in cases to help trials for under 12s wrap up quicker than the current ETA, "midwinter"

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vaccines-kids-under-age-12-expected-mid-winter-fda-official-n1274057

this is a disaster of "messaging"

thank u based boris for ur freedom

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/16/englands-covid-unlocking-a-threat-to-the-world-experts-say

Wrapping up our first real trip, in Georgia, I was getting coffee in the lobby behind a family of four, all masked (kids too young to be vaxxed). They made it to the elevators before me, so I gave them some space; there's a sign requesting one family per ride, though I haven't seen it enforced. While they were loading on, an unmasked guy slipped in, but before the door closed they actually stopped it and asked him to leave. He politely told them he was vaxxed, but they held firm, and ... he listened and just took the next one (with me). And he didn't so much as grumble or shoot a glance. It was heartening to see, actually, the way it should work: respect the wishes of those most at risk.

Btw, all the anti vaxxer Covid deniers that claim it's no worse then the flu, I wonder how they would respond if you told them you were wearing a mask because you didn't want to catch the flu?

With inchoate fury? Because freedoms?

free to be me and flu

I mean, there's an awful lot of competition, but the enraged anti-maskers are very close to the top of the bugshit insane heap. It's like some dude in a sleeveless t screaming at people in deep winter for wearing a parka. No part of me understands the anger. Which I reckon, if only on this one point, puts me in the same boat as them.