***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.”

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

I know of 3 people who were in ICU because of COVID, 2 of whom have since died. All 3 of them were vaccinated.

It isn't some black and white issue like you're making it out to be. Vaccinated people are getting sick too.

By the way, I got my information from the health care professionals directly. They TOLD ME why they're so overrun. So if you have issue with that, I'll give you their contact info and you can take it up with them.

We have ICU beds open here. We don't have doctor's offices.

So just so we are clear it is the media's fault that they are so busy? And just to clarify I wasn't talking about general practice I was talking about ICU, critical care, etc. Unvax are consuming almost all the available beds and ICU. Don't take my word for it.

From January 11th, 2022

https://www.kansascity.com/news/coro...257186137.html

Of the hundreds of people being treated for COVID-19 in local hospitals right now, nearly all are unvaccinated, Kansas City area hospitals report.

On Monday, 108 of 119 active COVID-19 cases — a pandemic high for The University of Kansas Health System — were unvaccinated, hospital officials reported. That’s nearly 91%.

Liberty Hospital also reported a record number of COVID patients Monday with 58, topping the previous high of 49. Two-thirds are unvaccinated, a hospital spokeswoman said.

None of the 27 COVID patients at Children’s Mercy on Monday were vaccinated, said a hospital spokeswoman.

Also on Monday, AdventHealth Shawnee Mission and University Health (formerly Truman Medical Center) reported that 77% of their COVID patients are unvaccinated. Only one of nine at AdventHealth South Overland Park is vaccinated.

At HCA Midwest Health hospitals, which include Overland Park Regional and Research medical centers, more than 80% of COVID patients are unvaccinated, a hospital spokeswoman said. And 89% of COVID patients in ICU are unvaccinated.

During a Monday briefing, KU’s chief medical officer, Dr. Steve Stites, expressed frustration that some people continue to underplay the severity of the pandemic and argue that vaccines don’t work.

“Really? Well 90% of our patients here are unvaccinated,” he said. “I mean, why do we keep having to have the same silly fight when the data is so overwhelmingly clear about the question?

“It’s like folks don’t want to believe that COVID is real and it’s some made-up conspiracy.”

A group of medical officers from Kansas City and out-state Kansas hospitals reported basically the same thing last week when they briefed the public on the crisis they’re facing — packed emergency rooms, lack of beds and staffing shortages that compromise the care they can deliver.

Last week, North Kansas City Hospital reported that 85% of its COVID patients were unvaccinated; it was 79% at Olathe Health.

The sickest patients, in the ICU and plugged into ventilators, “are by and large unvaccinated,” said HCA medical officer Dr. Kim Megow.

“People that have waved the flag of personal choice are extending this pandemic,” said Dr. Kevin Dishman, chief medical officer for Stormont Vail Health in Topeka. “We must do everything we can to protect ourselves and protect each other. That is how we will get through this pandemic.”

[Pitt Gorilla]

Our middle son started coming down with something on Friday. We didn't know what was up, but he had a fever, cough, and runny nose, so we took him to the doctor. Everyone in our house is vaccinated for covid, including boosters for the wife and I. Nobody else got sick.

Turns out, he had Influenza A, with all of the rest of us having a flu shot...except for him.

Kinda crazy, but the probabilities bore out with our crew.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by dirk digler

So just so we are clear it is the media's fault that they are so busy? And just to clarify I wasn't talking about general practice I was talking about ICU, critical care, etc. Unvax are consuming almost all the available beds and ICU. Don't take my word for it.

From January 11th, 2022

https://www.kansascity.com/news/coro...257186137.html

Every geo is a bit different. We don't have a shortage of ICU beds here so it's not our issue.

And yes, it's the media's fault, at least here. The local media starts every newscast with the number of new cases and deaths. EVERY newscast.

They don't ever mention declines, overall percentages, or anything like that. Just new cases and deaths.

And then people rush out in a panic to get tested.

You may very well have a point when it comes to the KC metro. Here, it's not like that. Not at all.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

Our middle son started coming down with something on Friday. We didn't know what was up, but he had a fever, cough, and runny nose, so we took him to the doctor. Everyone in our house is vaccinated for covid, including boosters for the wife and I. Nobody else got sick.

Turns out, he had Influenza A, with all of the rest of us having a flu shot...except for him.

Kinda crazy, but the probabilities bore out with our crew.

Keep an eye on that.

My niece tested positive for influenza A last Monday but when the rest of us got COVID, we had her tested too (because she wasn't improving very much, if at all, by the end of the week).

Turns out she had BOTH. Poor kid.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Keep an eye on that.

My niece tested positive for influenza A last Monday but when the rest of us got COVID, we had her tested too (because she wasn't improving very much, if at all, by the end of the week).

Turns out she had BOTH. Poor kid.

We had him tested for both. Like the rest of us, he also doesn't ever get very sick. Once we got the word (and he had been fever free for 2 days), we rushed him to his basketball game to play. He's fine.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

We had him tested for both. Like the rest of us, he also doesn't ever get very sick. Once we got the word (and he had been fever free for 2 days), we rushed him to his basketball game to play. He's fine.

My niece is fine now too.

Let me tell you, having to quarantine in place for 10 days is bad enough but having to do it with a 10-year old that was in bed for 5 days and now full of piss and vinegar is something altogether different.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

My niece is fine now too.

Let me tell you, having to quarantine in place for 10 days is bad enough but having to do it with a 10-year old that was in bed for 5 days and now full of piss and vinegar is something altogether different.

Yeah, got to get that kid outside.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

Yeah, got to get that kid outside.

Yeah, that's the triple whammy.

We got about a foot of snow the other day and now it's 4 degrees actual temp, without the wind (which is roaring).

So going outside is impossible.

[htismaqe]

It's funny, though.

My daughter is home schooled and for her, quarantine meant missing some work but otherwise, her schedule wasn't affected.

My niece goes to public school and getting her to do work here at home is like trying to train a dog with ADHD. Without the structure she's subjected to daily at the school district, she's completely lost. No ability to "self start" at all. She just sits there and waits for us to tell her what to do, despite having a printed syllabus to follow. She's over 2 weeks behind and at this rate, she'll never catch up before the end of the school year.

I have to think there's more (possibly dozens more) in her school that have the same problem.

[IA_Chiefs_fan]

Originally Posted by Dunit35

I’ve been a LEO for 10 years. I had to take a call of a 10 year old girl that died of Covid today. She was deceased before I arrived. Myself and FIRE did chest compressions but it was already too late. Doctor said she threw a blood clot. No pre existing conditions. She was feeling better. No fever, couch, just body aches. I feel miserable for the parents.

I have 9 and 7 year old daughters and this is the first time a call has gotten to me. I never want to take another call like it again.

I'm sorry for that family and for you having to deal with it :-(

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Every geo is a bit different. We don't have a shortage of ICU beds here so it's not our issue.

And yes, it's the media's fault, at least here. The local media starts every newscast with the number of new cases and deaths. EVERY newscast.

They don't ever mention declines, overall percentages, or anything like that. Just new cases and deaths.

And then people rush out in a panic to get tested.

You may very well have a point when it comes to the KC metro. Here, it's not like that. Not at all.

Probably right. And btw here is the link to Iowa's Covid dashboard. Unvaxed account for 72% of ICU beds.

https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/

Throughout his life, Dale Weeks was characterized by family and friends in Iowa as “a good neighbor,” someone who would do anything for anyone. So when he was diagnosed with sepsis last month, the retired schools superintendent and his family hoped he would get immediate care and be okay to reunite with them for the holidays.

But at a time when unvaccinated covid-19 patients have again overwhelmed hospitals because of the fast-spreading omicron variant, finding an available bed at a large medical center able to give him the treatment he needed proved to be difficult. Weeks was being treated at a small, rural hospital. He had waited 15 days to be transferred to a larger hospital with better treatment options, because facilities throughout Iowa did not have an open bed for him as a result of the latest hospital surge of unvaccinated patients, his children told The Washington Post.

“It was terribly frustrating being told, ‘There’s not a bed yet,’ ” Jenifer Owenson, one of his four children, said Tuesday. “All of us were talking multiple times a day, ‘Why can’t we get him a bed?’ There was this logjam to get him in anywhere.”

When Weeks was finally able to have surgery more than two weeks later, his condition from sepsis had worsened. Weeks died Nov. 28 of complications after surgery. He was 78.

Anthony Weeks, his son, said that the family believes their vaccinated and boosted father was the latest indirect victim of the pandemic — and that he would have survived his sepsis diagnosis if he was immediately admitted to a larger medical center that had an open bed.

“The frustrating thing was not that we wanted him to get care that others weren’t getting, but that he didn’t get care when he needed it. And when he did get it, it was too late,” he said. “The question comes up of: ‘Who was in those beds?’ If it’s people who are unvaccinated with covid, then that’s the part where it really hurts.”

[displacedinMN]

.ST PAUL, Minn. — Emerging data on the omicron variant in the Twin Cities has some researchers optimistic that we've hit our peak.

The source? Our sewage.

Since early in the pandemic, the Metropolitan Council's metro wastewater plant, has monitored the sewage of nearly two million Minnesotans in the Twin Cities, to measure levels of viral COVID RNA.

The wastewater sampling helped the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Department of Health track the emergence of the delta variant more than a week before it showed up in testing last summer. In recent weeks, the Met Council has also used the sewage data to chart the striking rise of the omicron variant, while also making the information publicly available online.

"Within a few weeks, 95% of the viral RNA we were collecting was omicron," said Steven Balogh, research scientist at the metro wastewater plant. "It was a real shock to me, and I think to most people looking at this, how fast it went."

But in the last week, Balogh was surprised again, in a good way. The amount of viral COVID RNA detected in metro wastewater suddenly began to drop.

"It's been a very steep decrease, so it's not just like kind of going down," Balogh said. "It's going down rapidly."

But he says that doesn't mean COVID is on the run for good.

"It's kind of too early to say just what that drop means," Balogh said. "We've seen it so many times go down and then turn around and go back up. Especially with delta, we were seeing a lot of ups and downs, so I wouldn't say that we're out of the woods. What I would say is that, at the moment, it looks very good that the wastewater signal is going down."

But Balogh says, even with the big drop, the viral RNA in sewage right now is still at a troubling level.

"Within the past couple weeks, we've seen the highest levels that we've seen at any time in the pandemic," he said. "It's been about three times higher than we had seen previously, so we've got a long way to go."

But at a time when testing data is delayed, and at home options make case numbers more unreliable, he says it's reassuring that we still have a reliable way to understand what's happening beneath the surface.

"It's an objective measure of what's going on in the community," Balogh said. "It's comprehensive. It includes everybody."

The University of Minnesota is tracking wastewater across the entire state, and researchers there say not all communities saw a drop in wastewater COVID levels last week. They hope to have more information on statewide trends on Thursday.

[Sure-Oz]

Originally Posted by IA_Chiefs_fan

In the past six months I've lost five people from my circle to COVID. One was the daughter of a friend and she was in her early twenties. I also had a coworker who damn near didn't survive it but thankfully she did. In my previous 44 years I've never lost anyone to the flu. So my anecdotal evidence says **** that "barely worse than the flu" nonsense. Plenty of hard evidence says it too.

Same. No one I've ever known died of the flu. I lost my uncle and some coworkers and nearly one if my friends parents cause of it and him being vaccinated likely saved his life.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Well, that's good news (that we've hopefully peaked).

[Monticore]

What hospitalization data really say about COVID-19 vaccines


https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canad...MtC?li=AAggNb9

“From the imaging point of view, the holy-smokes pneumonias are in the unvaccinated population,” said the Ontario Medical Association board member. “The more mild pneumonias are in vaccinated patients…. People tend to recover faster from it and it does less damage to their lungs.”

So the rate of unvaccinated people in ICUs in Ontario adjusted or “standardized” for age is 254 per million, compared to 22 fully vaccinated

If I could go out and have a heart-to-heart talk with every single person who is unvaccinated and explain to them what the potential negative consequences to being unvaccinated are,” said the radiologist, “a significant number of people would be saved a lot of suffering.”