Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #105

[beatrixpotter]

Supply shortages due to Covid? What are you doing, if anything?
As a small family, I have been stocking up a bit. Here in Southern California I have been to several major markets with empty shelves for items.
I'm not going crazy, but, I am buying extra non perishable items like rice and pasta on my shopping trips.
As a restaurant owner, we are experiencing unavailability of certain critical ingredients. As well as astounding price increases.
Sometimes, we just have to tell a customer, I'm sorry, we've had to take this off our menu because we cannot. Obtain it now.
Meat and Seafood are the hardest hit at the moment.
As a small business owner, my job is to predict future problems and try to get in front of them.
I can absolutely inform you, that restaurant owners are scrambling.
I would love to believe that our problems sourcing our food items will be over within 30 days.
However, I do not believe that for a minute.
As a family, we are not into hoarding.
We are okay with buying some back ups.

I feel like as a mother of a large family I've had to practically take on an extra part time job the past 2 years of predicting and planning ahead for needs for my family due to shortages. But I keep at it and have never regretted it. I'd have so much anxiety if I was constantly waiting last minute to see if the store had what we needed. No panic buying here.

Our local Walmart is constantly out of things. I never know what I will get in my order. I basically always buy a little extra of something though. An extra bottle of Dawn, another bag of cat food etc. I also tend to order two varieties of an item from them since if I order just one they rarely replace it with another variety when they inevitably cancel it on me.

I knew when we would be traveling and bought covid tests ahead of time. I pick up extra things I know we'll need for holiday meals ahead of time. My husband wanted pineapple upside down cake for his birthday. So I bought 2 jars of maraschino cherries instead of just the one I needed. I am buying clothes and shoes ahead for the next season. I was done Christmas shopping and had almost all presents wrapped by Thanksgiving. I buy my garden seeds months ahead of time and almost always in bulk now. I get a better price on it all that way. And if the seed companies start limiting sales this spring like they did the last two springs I'll be fine. No worries. No delays in starting my plants on time.

This summer I almost wondered if I was being foolish to even buy any more masks. Would we even be wearing masks now that we were all vaccinated? That seems so silly now. This week the company I've been buying from canceled our next shipment. And I noticed on the website they had suspended all orders temporarily due to being so overwhelmed. (most all of the masks are out of stock) But phew. I still have masks in stock and bought them before the prices were all jacked up online.

We had gotten into the bad habit of waiting till the last minute for everything and always only buying what we needed at the time. But we all spent years assuming whatever we were going to need would be on the shelves at a local store or 2 days shipping from Amazon. That is not the case now and it's not predicted to return to normal any time soon even.

So instead of just keeping money in the bank I now keep planning ahead of time. If I know I or my children or my parents are going to need it in the near future I don't consider it hoarding. I'm hedging my bets against inflation this way as well. We are almost guaranteed everything is going to continue to go up in price. I buy it early and at a cheaper price. And I'm really really thankful we can afford to do this at this time in our lives. My elderly parents can not. So I buy things for them too I know they will need. My mother was asking me about masks yesterday and I felt really good knowing I'd bought her masks she could use that were in the style comfortable to her. (Ear loops if you were wondering. lol She won't wear the N95 because she doesn't like the straps going around her head.)

 

[Cool Cats]

But it's not just the amount of hospitalized patients who happen to have covid that increases cyclically. It's the drastically increased rate in hospitalized patients. Do people honestly think that a couple of weeks into each new wave of covid cases the hospitals just happen to have increased rates of hospitalized patients who incidentally have covid on top of some other reason for hospitalization? Increased rates of patients in the ICU who just happen to have covid? Hospitals massaging the stats to make it look bad? How is that not a conspiracy theory?

This is exactly the theory repeatedly put out by people who downplay covid for the last 2 years. "Eh, people aren't there because of covid. They just happen to have covid."

I follow some pages locally for my state and have for nearly 2 years now. I know when the cases start to go up just from looking at how busy the hospitals start to become. It's this insane and consistent pattern of the hospitals suddenly being overwhelmed and needing to divert for almost everything. Last week it was hands down the worst I had ever seen it. 5 straight pages of hospitals listed in red and on various diversions. What exactly is going on then that suddenly loads of sick people (but not because of covid) need to start packing the hospitals coincidentally in each wave?
Georgia Coordinating Center

Yes hospitalizations are going up with people sick from Covid.

Americans are being hospitalized with COVID-19 at record rates now. People who get very sick and are hospitalized with severe coronavirus symptoms largely have one thing in common: They are not vaccinated.

But there are people in the hospitals not sick with Covid who are counted as if they are sick with Covid.

Say you have 50 people so sick with Covid they have to be admitted to the hospital.

Then you have 50 people not sick with Covid admitted to the hospital for other things and they test positive.

The 50 not admitted for Covid get counted as Covid hospitalizations and this is what is misleading.

 

[Deleted member 158085]

I don't care why our hospitals are full - if it's full of patients there with or for covid. The situation of hospitals being full/overwhelmed still boils down to "no room at the inn." So God help you if you are in a car accident or have a heart attack and need a room.

With or for, who cares? We know that if not for COVID, hospitals all over the country would not be in this predicament.

And those truths are not sensationalism but just the terrible facts. I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime, so yeah, COVID is the reason some people cannot get the health care they need. That should scare people

 

[katydid23]

I will give my onco a call in the morning…..see if I can somehow get a test fast. I’m just dreading going to a medical facility right now. And not feeling very strong. I’m 53.
I wish this pandemic would be over! It’s hard just having to go through chemo and isolate yourself, but add in not being able to see friends/family is just awful. Thinking is it safe to have the hospital transportation come and get me? Would it be better if my daughter with little ones in school take me? Just all these things go through my mind. Thank You

I think LaborDayRN had a good idea---so maybe you can call your Onco----see if your daughter can go pick up a specimen collection container----and bring it to you----then after you fill it, it can be dropped back at DR office or at the testing lab?

I am so sorry you are having to deal with this health crisis during a global pandemic. What a difficult situation. Sending good thoughts and prayers your way!

 

[Cool Cats]

Desperate No-Vaxxers Paying COVID-Positive People $150 for Dinner and COVID Infection

ROME—The messages started popping up on Telegram a few days after Italy announced a new vaccine mandate requiring everyone over age 50 to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or risk hefty fines and even termination from their jobs.

The only alternative to getting vaccinated is having recovered from the infection, which must be registered on a person’s national health card.

“I am urgently looking for a positive and I am willing to pay,” one desperate anti-vaxxer wrote, according to Italian police who are cracking down on the clandestine COVID meetups and other scams ahead of the Feb. 1 deadline for the over-50 vaccine mandate.

Soon after the announcement of the new law, enterprising opportunists started offering COVID parties where people who tested positive for the disease mix and mingle with those who want to catch it—one racket in Tuscany even includes a truffle dinner with Barolo wine, along with a positive-testing infection for around $150.

Other scams have also emerged. Two people were arrested in Rome after one man who was COVID positive used the health card of someone who wanted to skirt the vaccines to get tested at a pharmacy. When the COVID-positive man opted to pay with his own credit card—which obviously did not match the health card of the man who wanted a positive COVID diagnosis attached to his—the pharmacy conducting the test reported them both.

 

[tabitha111]

I bought a pack of Aura 3M masks from Home Depot about a week ago (picked up curbside) wish I would have bought 2 or 3 now...as they are impossible to find. Also luckily I bought 3 packs of KN95 masks from bonafidemasks.com before they got backlogged.
It's reading forums like this that get my butt in gear to get stuff in before the general public it seems.
I too do Walmart delivery orders to stay ahead of what limited supplies I need (things like laundry stuff and frozen dinners)...so far I've had very few substitutions or not in stocks- except I can not for the life of me get Amy's Chili Mac frozen meals- never ever in stock even when the page shows they are! It's my fav.
Update on our community: yesteday the girl that delivered my breakfast told me that they have many, many residents getting meals delivered now, much more than in the past- she wishes management would do sometihng about it - like go to only meals delivered vs. eating in the dining room. I don't see that happening. I did ask if all those people were ill and she said "yes"....ugh

 

[CSIDreamer]

Well, you know "we" can't say a word. And honestly, this pandemic has been very stressful for kids. I guess part of the problem for her, on campus is how cruel and devisive it has been. Wear a mask? Get derided. Don't wear a mask, get just as much drama. The politics have been crazy. And school is on, then off, back and forth...
As omicron spreads, will colleges go online, require COVID booster shots? What we know

The bullying is out of control. It's just awful. I'm becoming more and more "allergic" to name calling the longer this goes on. I cannot imagine being as young as your daughter.

 

[Sundog]

Yes. It is frustrating. As we know, once you take a semester off...it just becomes that much harder to go back.

I'm sorry to hear that your daughter left college this semester. The stressors for students are through the roof since the start of the pandemic, and so many students have dropped out or stopped out largely due to the impacts of the pandemic.

In the fall of 2020, before the pandemic hit in spring 2021, the retention rate for students at our university was about 80 percent. In the fall of 2021, after the pandemic started, our student retention rate had fallen to about 74 percent.

In the spring of 2021 we started a campaign to re-enroll the 2,500 students at our university who had dropped out or stopped out during the pandemic, and it is ongoing. The students are contacted by individual advisors and work with them personally to sort through their individual, specific needs based on why they left the university, and connect them with the resources they need at the university in order to work toward returning. So far approximately 20% have re-enrolled in summer 2021 and/or fall 2021.

I hope the college is able to reach out to your daughter this semester and talk about an eventual return to campus in summer 2022 or fall 2022. Even if she takes one course each semester, she has her foot in the door and it will make her ultimate return easier and more likely, as you know. If there is another institution she is more comfortable with, perhaps she could take a few courses there that are transferable to her current program, so that she has options to return and get credit for those courses.

It's so hard for young people right now.

 

[WichitaFalls]

Omicron variant will 'find just about everybody,' Fauci says, but vaccinated people will still fare better - CNN
As the Omicron variant spreads like wildfire across the United States, it's likely just about everybody will be exposed to the strain, but vaccinated people will still fare better, the nation's leading infectious disease expert said Tuesday.

"Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody," Dr. Anthony Fauci told J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Those who have been vaccinated ... and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death."
More at link above.
In contrast, those who are not vaccinated are "going to get the brunt of the severe aspect of this," he added.

 

[155etta]

I had my 2nd chemo last Thursday. Have Breast cancer, second dx. I might have a UTI, or just bladder irritation from the chemo. But I’m TERRIFIED to even go get a test at the dr’s office right now. Some hospitals around here are canceling surgeries it’s so bad. Hubby had to travel this week for work.

Please do not put off a test for a UTI.

 

[CSIDreamer]

Omicron variant will 'find just about everybody,' Fauci says, but vaccinated people will still fare better - CNN
As the Omicron variant spreads like wildfire across the United States, it's likely just about everybody will be exposed to the strain, but vaccinated people will still fare better, the nation's leading infectious disease expert said Tuesday.

"Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody," Dr. Anthony Fauci told J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Those who have been vaccinated ... and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death."
More at link above.
In contrast, those who are not vaccinated are "going to get the brunt of the severe aspect of this," he added.

Has he ever said what % of the population he expects to get Omicron? My brain translates "just about everybody" to at least 70% of the population. Just my brain doing its thing, calculating to roughly 231 million cases of Omicron. JMO

 

[WichitaFalls]

Has he ever said what % of the population he expects to get Omicron? My brain translates "just about everybody" to at least 70% of the population. Just my brain doing its thing, calculating to roughly 231 million cases of Omicron. JMO

Not that I've heard. "Just about everybody" sounds pretty bleak and makes me wish I could sleep through the next six weeks. MOO but we're in a pretty bad phase COVID wise.

 

[Sundog]

Please do not put off a test for a UTI.

I was surprised to fnd out that our physicians in Ohio can prescribe medications for UTI following a telehealth appointment, based on the symptoms described by the patient, and the physician's office will send the prescription directly to your pharmacy. No need to go into the doctor's office to test during the pandemic, especially now during the surge.

 

[Yesiamapirate]

Omicron variant will 'find just about everybody,' Fauci says, but vaccinated people will still fare better - CNN
As the Omicron variant spreads like wildfire across the United States, it's likely just about everybody will be exposed to the strain, but vaccinated people will still fare better, the nation's leading infectious disease expert said Tuesday.

"Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody," Dr. Anthony Fauci told J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Those who have been vaccinated ... and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death."
More at link above.
In contrast, those who are not vaccinated are "going to get the brunt of the severe aspect of this," he added.

I have felt this way for quite some time. Very few people can totally lock themselves in and avoid all contact with people.

 

[angelainwi]

Great. My daughter has dropped out of college. Since Spring Semester 2020, it has just been one drama after another on campus. They can't even commit to in person classes for next semester, which is supposed to start next week. Looks like she is not the only one...

College enrollment plummeted during the pandemic. This fall, it's even worse

I feel your pain. My daughter dropped out of college in the beginning of Spring semester 2021, it was just too much, the uncertainty, the constant changing of online/in person, having to test every week and more. She naturally has anxiety and this just ramped it up to more than she could take.

My daughter was lucky and got a full-time job in healthcare and is making really good money and enjoying it. Not sure if she will return to college or not, only time will tell

 

[Sundog]

Anti-COVID nasal spray could protect against infection for up to 8 hours: researchers

 

[Arkay]

Yes hospitalizations are going up with people sick from Covid.

Americans are being hospitalized with COVID-19 at record rates now. People who get very sick and are hospitalized with severe coronavirus symptoms largely have one thing in common: They are not vaccinated.

But there are people in the hospitals not sick with Covid who are counted as if they are sick with Covid.

Say you have 50 people so sick with Covid they have to be admitted to the hospital.

Then you have 50 people not sick with Covid admitted to the hospital for other things and they test positive.

The 50 not admitted for Covid get counted as Covid hospitalizations and this is what is misleading.

I don't care why our hospitals are full - if it's full of patients there with or for covid. The situation of hospitals being full/overwhelmed still boils down to "no room at the inn." So God help you if you are in a car accident or have a heart attack and need a room.

With or for, who cares? We know that if not for COVID, hospitals all over the country would not be in this predicament.

And those truths are not sensationalism but just the terrible facts. I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime, so yeah, COVID is the reason some people cannot get the health care they need. That should scare people

When I was a teenager, a friend of mine broke her leg. At the hospital it was discovered that she had bone cancer and I think that's what led to her leg breaking easily. It also saved her life. Her leg was amputated but she survived.

So, should she have been listed as an orthopedic patient or a cancer patient?

IMO if someone comes to the hospital for something else, but is discovered to have Covid, then they have Covid and SHOULD count in those statistics.


Unlike my friend's bone cancer, Covid is infectious. This is not new news. Anyone with Covid, regardless of why they went to the hospital, has to be handled with all the protocols required, and that becomes an enormous stressor in every way for all patients and hospital staff.

The silver lining is yes, perhaps they didn't feel deathly ill due to their Covid and something else brought them to seek hospital care. IMO that does not mitigate the fact that they are highly contagious anyway and have to be treated as such. They can and do spread it and that affects nurses, etc. who then end up needing to isolate, leading to shortage of care for all. Also, of course, other vulnerable patients could get Covid from the patient and for them, it may turn into serious illness or death.

My sister's sister-in-law died yesterday. She'd just turned 61. She was an RN in charge of lung cancer clinical trials at a world-renowned hospital in Manhattan. As a nurse she was working all the time since Covid---all hands on deck. She did not do the simple thing she knew to do, which was to have a colonoscopy. She was just too exhausted to bother and was needed at the hospital. So three months ago she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Her hospital, her place of business, pulled out all the stops for her but it was too late.

She did not have Covid, but yet the prevalence of Covid led her to be too overwhelmed to take the measures she'd normally take. To our everlasting regret.

 

[mickey2942]

I feel your pain. My daughter dropped out of college in the beginning of Spring semester 2021, it was just too much, the uncertainty, the constant changing of online/in person, having to test every week and more. She naturally has anxiety and this just ramped it up to more than she could take.

My daughter was lucky and got a full-time job in healthcare and is making really good money and enjoying it. Not sure if she will return to college or not, only time will tell

It is heartbreaking. I remember my college years, parties, dorm living, dances, casual friendships. None of that is really part of campus life now. Sure, live in the dorm, straight to your room with your mask. Don't forget to get tested each week. Do you have your vaccine card?

My daughter had to eat alone, at a table in the cafeteria. Everyone at their own isolated table. No wonder she was done with "college life". Go to your room, alone, hook up to your online class. The whole experience was crushing her. The way she described it at Christmas made it sound more like solitary confinement in a prison.

She is working full-time now, living in an apartment. Maybe she will go back. Or not.

 

[Sundog]

When I was a teenager, a friend of mine broke her leg. At the hospital it was discovered that she had bone cancer and I think that's what led to her leg breaking easily. It also saved her life. Her leg was amputated but she survived.

So, should she have been listed as an orthopedic patient or a cancer patient?

IMO if someone comes to the hospital for something else, but is discovered to have Covid, then they have Covid and SHOULD count in those statistics.


Unlike my friend's bone cancer, Covid is infectious. This is not new news. Anyone with Covid, regardless of why they went to the hospital, has to be handled with all the protocols required, and that becomes an enormous stressor in every way for all patients and hospital staff.


The silver lining is yes, perhaps they didn't feel deathly ill due to their Covid and something else brought them to seek hospital care. IMO that does not mitigate the fact that they are highly contagious anyway and have to be treated as such. They can and do spread it and that affects nurses, etc. who then end up needing to isolate, leading to shortage of care for all. Also, of course, other vulnerable patients could get Covid from the patient and for them, it may turn into serious illness or death.

My sister's sister-in-law died yesterday. She'd just turned 61. She was an RN in charge of lung cancer clinical trials at a world-renowned hospital in Manhattan. As a nurse she was working all the time since Covid---all hands on deck. She did not do the simple thing she knew to do, which was to have a colonoscopy. She was just too exhausted to bother and was needed at the hospital. So three months ago she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Her hospital, her place of business, pulled out all the stops for her but it was too late.

She did not have Covid, but yet the prevalence of Covid led her to be too overwhelmed to take the measures she'd normally take. To our everlasting regret.

I'm sorry to hear of the loss, she was only 61. My condolences to you and your family.

 

[tabitha111]

My parents (89 &91) along with my disabled sister (61) got their boosters today --finally! What's the first thing they do afterwards? Go out to eat at a restaurant! I swear they make all of us so worried all of the time.....and a resident's son just passed from Covid, she got the news yesterday.