***NON-POLITICAL COVID-19 Discussion Thread***

[JakeF]

A couple of reminders...

Originally Posted by Bwana

Once again, don't come in this thread with some kind of political agenda, or you will be shown the door. If you want to go that route, there is a thread about this in DC.

Originally Posted by Dartgod

People, there is a lot of good information in this thread, let's try to keep the petty bickering to a minimum.

We all have varying opinions about the impact of this, the numbers, etc. We will all never agree with each other. But we can all keep it civil.

Thanks!

Click here for the original OP:

Spoiler!

Apparently the CoronaVirus can survive on a inanimate objects, such as door knobs, for 9 days.

California coronavirus case could be first spread within U.S. community, CDC says
By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA, JACLYN COSGROVE
FEB. 26, 2020 8:04 PM

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what could be the first case of novel coronavirus in the United States involving a patient in California who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did.

“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown. It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”

The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The CDC said the “case was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.”

Officials at UC Davis Medical Center expanded on what the federal agency might have meant by that in an email sent Wednesday, as reported by the Davis Enterprise newspaper.

The patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another hospital Feb. 19 and “had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to an email sent by UC Davis officials that was obtained by the Davis Enterprise.

The staff at UC Davis requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, but because the patient didn’t fit the CDC’s existing criteria for the virus, a test wasn’t immediately administered, according to the email. The CDC then ordered the test Sunday, and results were announced Wednesday. Hospital administrators reportedly said in the email that despite these issues, there has been minimal exposure at the hospital because of safety protocols they have in place.

A UC Davis Health spokesperson declined Wednesday evening to share the email with The Times.

Since Feb. 2, more than 8,400 returning travelers from China have entered California, according to the state health department. They have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and limit interactions with others as much as possible, officials said.

“This is a new virus, and while we are still learning about it, there is a lot we already know,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “We have been anticipating the potential for such a case in the U.S., and given our close familial, social and business relationships with China, it is not unexpected that the first case in the U.S. would be in California.”

It is not clear how the person became infected, but public health workers could not identify any contacts with people who had traveled to China or other areas where the virus is widespread. That raises concern that the virus is spreading in the United States, creating a challenge for public health officials, experts say.

“It’s the first signal that we could be having silent transmission in the community,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “It probably means there are many more cases out there, and it probably means this individual has infected others, and now it’s a race to try to find out who that person has infected.”

On Tuesday, the CDC offered its most serious warning to date that the United States should expect and prepare for the coronavirus to become a more widespread health issue.

“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”

According to the CDC’s latest count Wednesday morning, 59 U.S. residents have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus — 42 of whom are repatriated citizens from a Diamond Princess cruise. That number has grown by two since Messonnier’s last count Tuesday, although the CDC was not immediately available to offer details on the additional cases.

More than 82,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported globally, and more than 2,700 people have died, with the majority in mainland China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

But public health leaders have repeatedly reminded residents that the health risk from the novel coronavirus to the general public remains low.

“While COVID-19 has a high transmission rate, it has a low mortality rate,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement Wednesday. “From the international data we have, of those who have tested positive for COVID-19, approximately 80% do not exhibit symptoms that would require hospitalization. There have been no confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to date.”

CDC officials have also warned that although the virus is likely to spread in U.S. communities, the flu still poses a greater risk.

Gostin said the news of potential silent transmission does not eliminate the possibility of containing the virus in the U.S. and preventing an outbreak.

“There are few enough cases that we should at least try,” he said. “Most of us are not optimistic that that will be successful, but we’re still in the position to try.”

[Donger]

For whatever reason, Oregon seems to be doing probably the best reporting on breakthroughs and results:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...64yU46SmEZGhha

During the week of November 21–November 27, there were 4,134 cases of COVID-19. 2,948 (71.3%)were unvaccinated and 1,186 (28.7%) were vaccine breakthrough cases. The median age of breakthrough cases was 45 years. 28 (2.4%) breakthrough cases were residents of care facilities, senior living communities or other congregate living settings. 234 (19.7%) cases were 65 or older. There were 45 (3.8%) cases aged 12-17.

[jdubya]

Originally Posted by Chris Meck

If not getting the surgery can somehow kill other people, then sure.

The really frustrating part of this whole thing is that it's NOT ABOUT YOU.

It's about spreading it to other people who might die.

If everybody who CAN get the shot gets the shot, then this is the flu.

And I could get back to my life.

The only one not letting you get back to your life is.....you and your local officials. .....not me

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by Chris Meck

If not getting the surgery can somehow kill other people, then sure.

The really frustrating part of this whole thing is that it's NOT ABOUT YOU.

It's about spreading it to other people who might die.

If everybody who CAN get the shot gets the shot, then this is the flu.

And I could get back to my life.

Is this the we must protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated speech?

[OnTheWarpath15]

Update: He's not getting better, and it's likely he goes on a vent soon. So likely that the doc bent some rules and allowed myself and my sisters to visit this morning. Mom still has two days of quarantine before she can go.

I know this might be skirting - or flat blowing over the line - so if I'm in the wrong here, just delete the rest of this mods, but...

This all could have been avoided, but like so many others, he thought information from Facebook/The Internet carries more weight than from ****ing professionals.

I hope those of you who are vaxxed and reading this realize how important getting those shots were to you and your families.

And I hope those of you who aren't vaxxed (and can be safely) will reconsider. My stepdad realizes now that he made a huge mistake, and now it's too late.

Don't do this to your families. Get the goddamn shots. Please.

[Bugeater]

Ugh...I am sorry to hear that...shit is all hitting close to home this fall.



And anyone is free to voice opinions in here, the ones I booted earlier were repeatedly blowing up the thread with the same bullshit time and time and time again.

[Bearcat]

Best of luck to your stepdad and family, OTWP.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Bugeater

Ugh...I am sorry to hear that...shit is all hitting close to home this fall.

....

I'm thinking it's a delta thing (and now omicron), but for the first year of this whole thing I didn't know anybody or even hear of anybody who got seriously ill. I saw the fatality numbers rising, but it was people outside my social sphere. Over the past six months, I've been hearing more and more about it hitting on a second-order basis, where friends of mine know people personally who were seriously ill. I think maybe alpha was really hitting the older vulnerable population hard and I don't know many people like that, whereas delta has been having an impact on a more broad age range.

[Monticore]

Originally Posted by Chris Meck

It seems pretty clear, doesn't it?

It seems even more clear when you factor in that only the vaccinated are aloud into high risk indoor environments (work/restaurants/arenas/movie theatres ) .

['Hamas' Jenkins]

A study in Israel following 843,000 participants over 50 years old demonstrated a 90-percent reduction in mortality for booster recipients. It was published in NEJM today.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

A study in Israel following 843,000 participants over 50 years old demonstrated a 90-percent reduction in mortality for booster recipients. It was published in NEJM today.

Link:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.105...=featured_home

and another published today:

Protection against Covid-19 by BNT162b2 Booster across Age Groups

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.105...=featured_home

[TimBone]

Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath15

Update: He's not getting better, and it's likely he goes on a vent soon. So likely that the doc bent some rules and allowed myself and my sisters to visit this morning. Mom still has two days of quarantine before she can go.

I know this might be skirting - or flat blowing over the line - so if I'm in the wrong here, just delete the rest of this mods, but...

This all could have been avoided, but like so many others, he thought information from Facebook/The Internet carries more weight than from ****ing professionals.

I hope those of you who are vaxxed and reading this realize how important getting those shots were to you and your families.

And I hope those of you who aren't vaxxed (and can be safely) will reconsider. My stepdad realizes now that he made a huge mistake, and now it's too late.

Don't do this to your families. Get the goddamn shots. Please.

Man....Sorry to hear about all of this, OTWP. His condition, falling prey to the misinformation...all of it is just terrible.

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I'm thinking it's a delta thing (and now omicron), but for the first year of this whole thing I didn't know anybody or even hear of anybody who got seriously ill. I saw the fatality numbers rising, but it was people outside my social sphere. Over the past six months, I've been hearing more and more about it hitting on a second-order basis, where friends of mine know people personally who were seriously ill. I think maybe alpha was really hitting the older vulnerable population hard and I don't know many people like that, whereas delta has been having an impact on a more broad age range.

I'll go with that, because my first thought was what we all stopped doing over the summer...but that probably isn't it at all....YOU SHUT UP DONGER, THOSE STUPID MASKS DON'T WORK ANYWAY!

[Chiefnj2]

Originally Posted by Donger

Link:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.105...=featured_home

and another published today:

Protection against Covid-19 by BNT162b2 Booster across Age Groups

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.105...=featured_home

I don't think there is much debate that the vaccine helps against severe illness. The question is how long it lasts - even the booster. The new question is how does omicron change everything?

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Chiefnj2

I don't think there is much debate that the vaccine helps against severe illness. The question is how long it lasts - even the booster. The new question is how does omicron change everything?

I would guess that it will last at least six months, but I haven't seen any studies on that. Since Israel was the first to go full out with the second booster, maybe we'll learn from them.

Nothing definitive yet on Omicron, but I haven't heard of a single fatality recorded from that variant yet, vaccinated/previous infection or not. Has anyone else? I realize that it's pretty new to the "game."

[Donger]

I read this over lunch. It's quite preliminary and has a small sample size, so please keep that in mind:

Studies suggest sharp drop in vaccine protection vs. omicron — yet cause for optimism

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsan...se-for-optimis

With the omicron variant continuing to spread in a number of countries, including the U.S., scientists have been anxiously awaiting data to answer this question: How well will the vaccines work against this new variant?

On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, scientists in South Africa and Germany released preliminary results from two small studies that begin to provide answers.

The studies haven't been peer-reviewed. But together, their data strongly suggest the vaccines will be much less effective at stopping infections from the omicron variant but will still likely offer protection against severe disease. The study in Germany also indicates that a third shot, or a booster, will partially recover the effectiveness of the vaccines, at least for a few months.

In the South African study, researchers at the Africa Health Research Institute took blood from about a dozen people who had been vaccinated with two shots of the Pfizer vaccine and looked to see how well their antibodies kill the virus. In the experiment, everyone's antibodies were able to neutralize an earlier version of the virus quite well.

But against omicron, that ability dropped dramatically. On average, the antibodies were 40 times less potent against omicron than against the variant circulating in the summer of 2020.

And that's a lot. "It's astonishing ... in terms of the reduction," says Pei-Yong Shi, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston who has been doing similar experiments to determine the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against the coronavirus.

"We seem to see a drastic reduction in neutralizing activity, far more than with previous variants," virologist Florian Krammer, who's at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, wrote on Twitter. "Little activity was left in vaccinated individuals."

These findings confirm what scientists have been predicting since omicron was first detected several weeks ago. The virus contains many mutations already known to weaken the power of the antibodies made by the immune system.

Based on the results of this preliminary study, scientists say it's likely we'll see a lot more breakthrough infections with the omicron variant. And South Africa is reporting a lot of reinfections.

But the news isn't all dire. The vaccine isn't just about protecting against infections. It's also about protecting against severe disease and death. And there's reason to believe the vaccines will still do that, even with the omicron variant. Most of the people in the South African experiment did retain some ability to kill the virus. And scientists say even just a little bit of antibody activity can be enough to prevent someone from ending up in the hospital.

Also the immune system has other tools besides antibodies that can ward off severe disease. In particular, the T cells can clear out the virus after an infection. And scientists think those may hold up better against omicron than antibodies will.

On top of all that, the study from Germany shows that a third booster shot, with either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, increases the neutralizing ability of the antibodies to levels seen with the delta variant, at least for several weeks after the booster.

In that study, researchers at the Goethe University in Frankfurt looked at antibody potency against omicron and delta a half-month and three months after a third booster. In the short term, the antibody potency jumped up to the levels seen with delta in about half of the people. But after three months, most people's antibodies had declined to the level seen without the booster.

The vaccine manufacturer Pfizer also released a press statement Wednesday supporting these new findings.

"Preliminary neutralisation studies indicate that 2 doses of vaccines may not be sufficient to prevent *infection* w/ omicron (not severe disease), but regular boosters will help restore this decline to an extent," Dr. Muge Cevik, who's an infectious disease researcher at the University of St. Andrews, wrote on Twitter.