I mean, Canada’s still less then a third of our new cases per day per capita and still trending in the right direction.
Cases we are doing well. Vaccine rollout we are the nut low.
But cases are what actually matters!
That’s the nocebo effect you’re describing, where a negative expectation of an illness or treatment that can actually lead to worse results.
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Not in 9 months when you are all vaccinated and blocking Canadians from coming in because we are still months from herd immunity and our cases are now higher than yours in real numbers because nobody here is vaccinated.
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My experience in the other Washington (state) - they don’t check ID. They didn’t check anything nor ask me anything other than my name and DOB to make sure it matched what I had written on the intake forms.
What? Where are you getting this from? afaict, people are concerned about new variants but we’re all a long way from understanding how bad it’s going to be.
I still have people on my Facebook feed talking about not getting the vaccine because they had Covid already and cured it with HCQ, Zinc, and a Z-pack, and they’ve stocked up on those items in case they get it again.
Not surprisingly, they all do tons of “research” before forming their opinions on things. All you have to do is ask them for their research sources and they’ll happily point you to hours and hours of Youtube.
ETA: Here’s a recent post by one of them:
ETA2: replies - they’re just so fucking dumb. They’ll be the next ones on their death beds screaming about how it’s real and they should have listened:
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I’m not sure how to respond without seeming like I’m attacking you, so I want to emphasize that’s not what I’m doing here.
There’s no objective finding about covid in your post.
I know. I’m just suggesting that if someone comes to you with complaints of severe fatigue, brain fog, GI distress, at least consider the possibility that a) it’s not psychosomatic; and b) it could be a postviral flare.
Those people exist. Back before testing was really readily available here we had to get a test. The wifey accidentally switched the last two digits of my birth year when signing us up together so we could get tested at the same time. When we showed up to get swabbed together they tested her but refused to do mine as the info provided didn’t exactly match my drivers license.
As it turns out I was able to register for a time the following day. My results ended up coming back before hers too. Absolutely absurd system.
Hospitals are empty. Nothing to worry about until they start to fill up again.
Well you started this off with a claim that there was objective things that I was missing. I don’t think there is.
Frankly, I don’t especially care about the syndromes that you’re alluding to. Not because I don’t care about the people who have them, but because I work in the ER. Those syndromes are not medical emergencies or amenable to work up in the ER. I always refer someone like this to their PCP and encourage them to follow up.
There are most likely some people with some sort of vague post viral syndrome. However, if you’re familiar with the history of chronic fatigue, chronic Lyme, fibromyalgia and more you know that various conditions become trendy picks by patients and/or physicians for various reasons. Post covid stuff is setup perfectly for that, and psych issues are definitely rising right now.
As final thought on this, I want to state plainly that I don’t think people are making up their symptoms of post covid whatever regardless of their etiology. Their experiences are real, it just probably isn’t covid, imo, that’s causing them. This is also something that I suspect, and by no means know.
I wish you the best of luck with your issues, and apologize if it felt like I attacked you personally at all. That truly wasn’t my intention.
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Czech government in talks over further measures
The Czech government is continuing talks on a new lockdown as numbers of new infections spiral due to the spread of the UK variant. They’ll hold talks with opposition leaders ahead of another meeting this evening.
There is a proposal to close those school years that have stayed open and also pre-schools, which could further hit staffing at hospitals due to the number of doctors and nurses with young children - although arrangements are in place for them.
Testing in firms might also become compulsory for employees - the consensus appears to be that shutting down the economy such as through closing factories would be absolutely the last resort.
The number of free ICU beds continues to shrink as hospitals scramble to designate new Covid wards.
According to Our World In Data, the Czech Republic now has more new cases per million in the past seven days than any other country in the world, while in terms of overall deaths per million, the country is now in third place after San Marino and Belgium - ahead of the UK or Italy.
Reports in the media say France has offered the Czech Republic 100,000 doses of vaccine in solidarity, such is the gravity of the situation.
Israel study finds Pfizer jab effective in all ages
A study involving almost 1.2 million people in Israel has found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 94% effective at providing protection against symptomatic Covid-19 across all age groups above 16 one week or more after the second dose was administered.
Researchers at Israel’s Clalit Research Institute and Harvard University also reported that people were 57% less likely to get develop symptoms and 74% less likely to require hospital treatment two weeks after the first dose, according to a paper published by the New England Journal of Medicine.
The results are in line with Pfizer’s own trial, but one of the study’s chief authors said it provided "scientifically validated real-world evidence of the effectiveness of the vaccine”.
The study was carried out in December and January. Some 596,000 participants were vaccinated. Each of them was matched to an unvaccinated “control” person of similar age, sex and health.
More than 110,000 people over the age of 70 and 40,000 people over 80 took part, and the researchers found the vaccine was equally effective among those age groups as in younger ones.
Israel has already vaccinated half its nine-million population, and hopes to have administered shots to everyone over the age of 16 by the end of March.
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China denies requiring anal swabs from US diplomats
There was an unusual moment today in China’s - normally quite austere - foreign ministry press briefing, when spokesman Zhao Lijian made a comment about anal swabbing for Covid-19.
Mr Zhao responded to a question on recent reports suggesting that US diplomats stationed in China had complained that they were made to undergo anal tests for Covid-19
He said that, as far as he was aware, “China has never required US diplomatic staff stationed in China conduct anal swab tests.”
Anal swabbing is still regarded as “controversial among experts” in China, but has been practised in parts of China since January.
Chinese infectious disease experts said last month that because the virus survives longer in the anus than in the upper body tracts, such tests were more accurate at detecting “silent carriers”.
However, given these tests are controversial, social media users in China are largely of the view that the US is trying to “smear” China with such reports.
Many on the Sina Weibo platform have been making jokes about how they perceive American officials to be so potty-mouthed when it comes to China, that it is only to be expected officials would mistake an oral swab for an anal one.
Link to above…
Thanks, and I apologize if I came across as attacking you as well. The objective things I was talking about were the general postviral symptoms/markers I mentioned, and I didn’t mean to say they are specific to covid.
If we’re only at the “concerned” stage of things, that makes me feel even worse. I was hoping we’d be at the “extremely concerned” or even “gravely concerned” stage. Honestly, I think we need to appoint Suzanne Collins to the COVID task force so that she can come up with some even more dramatic adverbs to stick in front.
This is a relatively recent bit on B1.1.7 from Ars. Key points:
“Across the US right now, we’re seeing a doubling of B.1.1.7 every 10 days,” says Karthik Gangavarapu, a computational biologist at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California. He’s part of a team of researchers that has been tracking the rapid spread of the extra-contagious lineage, which is still sometimes referred to as the “UK variant.”
After the UK sounded the alarm over B.1.1.7 in late December, Helix began sending every SGTF sample off to Illumina for sequencing. Back then, they’d find about 100 instances of S gene dropout every day. And most of them didn’t turn out to be B.1.1.7. But now, says Lee, in places like Florida and Southern California, all the S gene dropouts are B.1.1.7. It’s no longer feasible to sequence them all, because there are just too many—at least in those two locations, which represent about 50 percent of the tests Helix conducts. “In Florida, we’re seeing B.1.1.7 now representing about 15 percent of all new COVID-19 cases,” says Lee. “Six weeks ago, it was less than 1 percent.”
(The 15% figure is outdated–the most recent from Helix is 30%.)
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I think a lot of people have been dismissing 3rd wave talk because most places have seen steady drops since mid-January, which are only now starting to reverse. Nobody cares about data-driven predictions and there’s no interest in confirming them in advance. Nobody wants to hear bad news. We’re going to make summer travel plans instead and write articles about the new Roaring Twenties.
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The CDC has been warning since mid-Jan that B.1.1.7 could potentially lead to a new resurgence. I understand you’ve ideologically committed yourself ahead of time to believing that they’re cartoon supervillains because they didn’t use the precise wording you’d prefer. Still want to know where you’re getting this idea that it will come back every February?