Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #90

[dmac55]

"Those that work the most have had the hardest time getting an appointment because you can't always log on at that exact moment."

NPR: Health Care Workers Describe Chaos, Anger For Hospital COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout.
As Hospitals Roll Out COVID-19 Vaccines, Health Care Workers Describe Chaos And Anger

 

[HongKongPhooey]

Which is of course not the same thing as "number of active cases." Usually, the number of active cases is at least 10X that of the hospitalized (and the ratio is an important thing to study - and know).

I'll post about California's stats here in a bit. It's been interesting.

Where do active case stats come from?

Actually maybe I dont want to know. Already depressing enough here right now and dreading the post holiday impact

 

[SouthAussie]

"Those that work the most have had the hardest time getting an appointment because you can't always log on at that exact moment."

NPR: Health Care Workers Describe Chaos, Anger For Hospital COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout.
As Hospitals Roll Out COVID-19 Vaccines, Health Care Workers Describe Chaos And Anger

I wonder why they are not vaccinating them as they show up for work.

At my DD's hospital, the vaccine trolley comes around and they get vaccinated while at work. Speaking of the annual flu shot - I imagine it will be the same/similar when we start our covid vacs. It all goes on record, so they know who they have vaccinated and who still needs it.

 

[CoverMeCagney]

Where do active case stats come from?

Actually maybe I dont want to know. Already depressing enough here right now and dreading the post holiday impact

I’m not sure, I’ve never looked at them until now! The USA shows nearly 8 million active cases (based on positive tests) and approx 11 million recovered cases, which doesn’t quite seem right.

 

[margarita25]

Some thoughts re: my above post worrying about if we’re going to be here a while like “1918”:

Reasons to be optimistic:

1. This is not 1918. We are over a hundred years ahead in science and technology.

2. We have the best scientists, doctors and organizations from around the world putting all their efforts into this, 24/7, sharing data globally...really brilliant minds and dedicated people...

3. In addition to the current vaccines, we have hundreds of other vaccine candidates on the horizon.

Wrt to my concerns about the mutations and vaccines:
a) We can test and identify these sequences, improve upon our genetic surveillance/sequencing - as Dr. Gottlieb, said, improvements need to be made in this regard. Through improved genomic surveillance, we can identify these new strains/variants/mutations/lineages wth you want to call them, and apply the latest science to current vaccine development research in real time.

Again, so far, thankfully, knock on wood, there is NO indication these current mutations will affect the efficacy of these current vaccines.

But the longer this thing runs rampant, and freaking “mutates”...

I am feeling very uneasy about all this, jmo, just sayin. Not that there wasn’t cause for concern before...

We know changes in the virus are normal and to be expected. That’s exactly what worries me.

I am all eyes and ears to see what happens in the UK with their lagging indicator, going forward.

Making note to look at variants within SARS and MERS.
(as a lay person of course)

—

Here’s another thing. By now we should be hearing more about the co-existence of Influenza and Covid-19. Note to pick up here also.

—

Already we’ve got 3 different mutations/variants, if I’m understanding correctly, which have shown themselves to be more infectious (614G, UK, SA).

What does this say about things going forward? Much anxiety here, jmo.

 

[margarita25]

Dbm consolidate

 

[dmac55]

"Doctors, nurses and other health care providers and institutions that fraudulently jump the coronavirus vaccine line will face a $1 million fine, revocation of all professional licenses and possible criminal prosecution, state officials said today."

Health care providers who jump the Covid-19 vaccine line in NY face $1M fine
Health care providers who jump the Covid-19 vaccine line face $1M fine

 

[I'm Just Here]

My RN sister gets her Covid 19 vaccine tomorrow. She has been reading up on it off of sites on the internet. The do not take Tylenol, Motrin or have had a flu shot or vaccines within the last 2 weeks. I hope people are getting information before it as it sounds like she's reading up on it. My RN daughter has hers in January, unsure of exact day. Both of them two different states have said their directors did the study and are all for it feeling it's safe.

 

[10ofRods]

Here’s a wild thought - this likely could very well not be the case, but considering the US only performs genomic sequencing/surveillance on a “fraction of one percent” of samples, it wouldn’t surprise me if the new UK variant actually came from the USA. Just a thought.

This has occurred to me as well. It's also possible that since we have so many new variants (just in California), that the ones under study could well include this particular one - but that the facts of it (rise in numbers) occurred in a context which makes it hard to decipher.

For example, if this version is in fact less virulent (causes less severe symptoms) but also more contagious, we'd have a whole bunch of people who don't feel sick, don't go for testing, or feel only a tiny bit sick - and reject the idea that it could be COVID, but there they are, passing it on (but...if they're passing on a less virulent COVID, that's overall a good thing).

-----

On the topic of active cases, I just wanted to say that as far as we know in California, we have nearly 1.3 MILLION active cases, meaning that's the number of currently contagious persons. You can have "long COVID" (and be very sick) but not be counted in this number.

I am boggled by that number. 1 in 30 people around me is shedding COVID. If 100 people go into the little pharmacy near me, 3-4 of them will be shedding COVID in that space (plexiglass makes no difference) and since it's a pharmacy, it's probably way higher (people are there buying OTC cold remedies from what I can tell).

Further, serology tests on antigens seem to show that at least ⅓ more people have COVID than we realize which would mean about 2 MILLION Californians have active COVID!!

It makes a difference to how we view going outside, of course. But if 1 in 20 people at the pharmacy has COVID and 5 of them are in there during the 8 hours that the store is open, given that there's heat and a closed environment in a small space - yes, I'm concerned. I want these numbers.

Further, we are at 0% ICU capacity in large parts of California - which is where the 1.3 million active cases are (and we all know that people suddenly need care as they go through their course of COVID).

By contrast, Texas (with ⅔ the population of CA) has only 300,000 active cases of COVID in their geographical very large state. UK is about twice the size of Texas in terms of population (2.5 bigger than Texas) so if it has only 600-700,000 active cases, that's still concerning in a small space like UK - but if it has an active case load like California's - that would mean UK has 2.3-2.5 million active cases in a much smaller space than California.

(93,000 square miles approximate for UK, 164,000 square miles for California - with UK having 150% the population that California does).

Contrast all of this to New York: 461,000 active cases. This has gone up quite a bit since Thanksgiving. I like to sort Worldometer by active cases rather than total cases, because we're not dealing with last February - April, we're dealing with right now.

New York has half the population of California, so if they were Cali, they'd have about 1 million cases of COVID - but they don't. And it's concerning. Higher population density, cold weather and yet...NY is doing way better than California, as judged by active cases which also predicts hospitalizations.

About 20,000 Californians are in hospital...like most of the US, we certainly weren't locally prepared for this number.

US as a whole has a tally of almost 8 million active cases (nearly all virologists who have looked at the issue think it's higher - California has lots of testing, most states do not, some states are discouraging testing).

 

[Marysmith]

This has occurred to me as well. It's also possible that since we have so many new variants (just in California), that the ones under study could well include this particular one - but that the facts of it (rise in numbers) occurred in a context which makes it hard to decipher.

For example, if this version is in fact less virulent (causes less severe symptoms) but also more contagious, we'd have a whole bunch of people who don't feel sick, don't go for testing, or feel only a tiny bit sick - and reject the idea that it could be COVID, but there they are, passing it on (but...if they're passing on a less virulent COVID, that's overall a good thing).

-----

On the topic of active cases, I just wanted to say that as far as we know in California, we have nearly 1.3 MILLION active cases, meaning that's the number of currently contagious persons. You can have "long COVID" (and be very sick) but not be counted in this number.

I am boggled by that number. 1 in 30 people around me is shedding COVID. If 100 people go into the little pharmacy near me, 3-4 of them will be shedding COVID in that space (plexiglass makes no difference) and since it's a pharmacy, it's probably way higher (people are there buying OTC cold remedies from what I can tell).

Further, serology tests on antigens seem to show that at least ⅓ more people have COVID than we realize which would mean about 2 MILLION Californians have active COVID!!

It makes a difference to how we view going outside, of course. But if 1 in 20 people at the pharmacy has COVID and 5 of them are in there during the 8 hours that the store is open, given that there's heat and a closed environment in a small space - yes, I'm concerned. I want these numbers.

Further, we are at 0% ICU capacity in large parts of California - which is where the 1.3 million active cases are (and we all know that people suddenly need care as they go through their course of COVID).

By contrast, Texas (with ⅔ the population of CA) has only 300,000 active cases of COVID in their geographical very large state. UK is about twice the size of Texas in terms of population (2.5 bigger than Texas) so if it has only 600-700,000 active cases, that's still concerning in a small space like UK - but if it has an active case load like California's - that would mean UK has 2.3-2.5 million active cases in a much smaller space than California.

(93,000 square miles approximate for UK, 164,000 square miles for California - with UK having 150% the population that California does).

Contrast all of this to New York: 461,000 active cases. This has gone up quite a bit since Thanksgiving. I like to sort Worldometer by active cases rather than total cases, because we're not dealing with last February - April, we're dealing with right now.

New York has half the population of California, so if they were Cali, they'd have about 1 million cases of COVID - but they don't. And it's concerning. Higher population density, cold weather and yet...NY is doing way better than California, as judged by active cases which also predicts hospitalizations.

About 20,000 Californians are in hospital...like most of the US, we certainly weren't locally prepared for this number.

US as a whole has a tally of almost 8 million active cases (nearly all virologists who have looked at the issue think it's higher - California has lots of testing, most states do not, some states are discouraging testing).

Horrifying and amazing job on this post. I am concerned as well with how long you are actually shedding for after you become positive. We are being told now were I live that we only need to isolate for 10 days after becoming positive or showing symptoms. Personally I don’t think that’s long enough and I see cases going up in my workplace and I believe it’s partially from people coming back so quickly.

 

[10ofRods]

Where do active case stats come from?

Actually maybe I dont want to know. Already depressing enough here right now and dreading the post holiday impact

In theory, when you test positive you count as 1 active case. Then, when you test negative (or after a certain number of days depending on medical system), the case is resolved or closed. The total number of people still in between those points is the number of active cases.

In my county, there are about 5000 active cases (rising by 1000 per day over the past 5 days!) which means in theory that 5000 people and their families/households/coworkers should n quarantine.

Like heck they are. No way. I'd be surprised if even the 5000 with the positive tests are quarantining.

(I'd love to know how many people follow the quarantine - I was able to interview about 20 COVID+ locals and all of them claimed that they quarantined from the point of time at which they knew...all of them thought they had had COVID for several days before being informed of results).

Sitting here in SoCal, I'm thinking an awful lot of people had COVID and did not get tested...

Horrifying and amazing job on this post. I am concerned as well with how long you are actually shedding for after you become positive. We are being told now were I live that we only need to isolate for 10 days after becoming positive or showing symptoms. Personally I don’t think that’s long enough and I see cases going up in my workplace and I believe it’s partially from people coming back so quickly.

Oh - I think so too! The actual longest record is something like 72 days...and there are several examples of 21-28 days in the literature.

Most people don't go for testing until they get symptoms (which is usually about 7 days after they contracted and probably after 5 days of actively shedding). So 10 days from that point of view would be 15 days of shedding (but surely, some people are still shedding after that period).

Where I live, only a handful of people go back to see if they've got a negative test after that period. Heck, the asymptomatic are still shouting in grocery stories that they "don't really have COVID" (and getting on airplanes).

 

[mickey2942]

Horrifying and amazing job on this post. I am concerned as well with how long you are actually shedding for after you become positive. We are being told now were I live that we only need to isolate for 10 days after becoming positive or showing symptoms. Personally I don’t think that’s long enough and I see cases going up in my workplace and I believe it’s partially from people coming back so quickly.

High Five! Yep. Where is the actual science on this? Yeah, I haven't seen any. Especially when it is based on "symptoms". How about asymptomatic people? Doesn't make sense to me.

 

[mickey2942]

"Those that work the most have had the hardest time getting an appointment because you can't always log on at that exact moment."

NPR: Health Care Workers Describe Chaos, Anger For Hospital COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout.
As Hospitals Roll Out COVID-19 Vaccines, Health Care Workers Describe Chaos And Anger

Validation of exactly what I have seen on Social Media. I chose not to comment on the absolute pontificating about the "Vaccine" and how wonderful it is...they are proudly showing their pictures on Social Media. Raspberry award.

 

[Marysmith]

In theory, when you test positive you count as 1 active case. Then, when you test negative (or after a certain number of days depending on medical system), the case is resolved or closed. The total number of people still in between those points is the number of active cases.

In my county, there are about 5000 active cases (rising by 1000 per day over the past 5 days!) which means in theory that 5000 people and their families/households/coworkers should n quarantine.

Like heck they are. No way. I'd be surprised if even the 5000 with the positive tests are quarantining.

(I'd love to know how many people follow the quarantine - I was able to interview about 20 COVID+ locals and all of them claimed that they quarantined from the point of time at which they knew...all of them thought they had had COVID for several days before being informed of results).

Sitting here in SoCal, I'm thinking an awful lot of people had COVID and did not get tested...



Oh - I think so too! The actual longest record is something like 72 days...and there are several examples of 21-28 days in the literature.

Most people don't go for testing until they get symptoms (which is usually about 7 days after they contracted and probably after 5 days of actively shedding). So 10 days from that point of view would be 15 days of shedding (but surely, some people are still shedding after that period).

Where I live, only a handful of people go back to see if they've got a negative test after that period. Heck, the asymptomatic are still shouting in grocery stories that they "don't really have COVID" (and getting on airplanes).

Here you cannot get tested again for 90 days if you are positive as you will have a “false positive”! !!

 

[ilovewings]

Some thoughts re: my above post worrying about if we’re going to be here a while like “1918”:

Reasons to be optimistic:

1. This is not 1918. We are over a hundred years ahead in science and technology.

2. We have the best scientists, doctors and organizations from around the world putting all their efforts into this, 24/7, sharing data globally...really brilliant minds and dedicated people...

3. In addition to the current vaccines, we have hundreds of other vaccine candidates on the horizon.

Wrt to my concerns about the mutations and vaccines:
a) We can test and identify these sequences, improve upon our genetic surveillance/sequencing - as Dr. Gottlieb, said, improvements need to be made in this regard. Through improved genomic surveillance, we can identify these new strains/variants/mutations/lineages wth you want to call them, and apply the latest science to current vaccine development research in real time.

Again, so far, thankfully, knock on wood, there is NO indication these current mutations will affect the efficacy of these current vaccines.

But the longer this thing runs rampant, and freaking “mutates”...

I am feeling very uneasy about all this, jmo, just sayin. Not that there wasn’t cause for concern before...

We know changes in the virus are normal and to be expected. That’s exactly what worries me.

I am all eyes and ears to see what happens in the UK with their lagging indicator, going forward.

Making note to look at variants within SARS and MERS.
(as a lay person of course)

—

Here’s another thing. By now we should be hearing more about the co-existence of Influenza and Covid-19. Note to pick up here also.

—

Already we’ve got 3 different mutations/variants, if I’m understanding correctly, which have shown themselves to be more infectious (614G, UK, SA).

What does this say about things going forward? Much anxiety here, jmo.

I love your optimism--- However, despite all of our wonderful technology (and thank goodness for it), there is a percentage of citizens of this country with their absurd defiance of rational restrictions ( such as masking, not gathering and not travelling), that is resulting in a failure to contain this evil virus. There is also a level of ignorance that is startling and selfishness, that I don't believe was as prevalent in 1918. This virus could be so much more contained, but won't be because of those factors.

 

[acutename]

In theory, when you test positive you count as 1 active case. Then, when you test negative (or after a certain number of days depending on medical system), the case is resolved or closed. The total number of people still in between those points is the number of active cases.

In my county, there are about 5000 active cases (rising by 1000 per day over the past 5 days!) which means in theory that 5000 people and their families/households/coworkers should n quarantine.

Like heck they are. No way. I'd be surprised if even the 5000 with the positive tests are quarantining.

(I'd love to know how many people follow the quarantine - I was able to interview about 20 COVID+ locals and all of them claimed that they quarantined from the point of time at which they knew...all of them thought they had had COVID for several days before being informed of results).

Sitting here in SoCal, I'm thinking an awful lot of people had COVID and did not get tested...



Oh - I think so too! The actual longest record is something like 72 days...and there are several examples of 21-28 days in the literature.

Most people don't go for testing until they get symptoms (which is usually about 7 days after they contracted and probably after 5 days of actively shedding). So 10 days from that point of view would be 15 days of shedding (but surely, some people are still shedding after that period).

Where I live, only a handful of people go back to see if they've got a negative test after that period. Heck, the asymptomatic are still shouting in grocery stories that they "don't really have COVID" (and getting on airplanes).

it was actually the CDC that recommended the 10 day quarantine in some circumstances:

CDC currently recommends a quarantine period of 14 days. However, based on local circumstances and resources, the following options to shorten quarantine are acceptable alternatives. Quarantine can end after Day 10 without testing and if no symptoms have been reported during daily monitoring.Dec 2, 2020

Options to Reduce Quarantine for Contacts of Persons with ...

if, as some sources have said, viral shedding mostly occurs before people are symptomatic, by the time you are quarantined, you are not even that infectious (damage is done) IMO. If you are quarantined just because you were around some one who tested positive and you are not getting sick, the 10 days could be reasonable, IMO.

The 72 day shedding person was an immuno compromised cancer patient who never had symptoms .... go figure.
Asymptomatic coronavirus patient shed virus for 70 days ...
www.businessinsider.com › Science › News
Nov 8, 2020 — On average, COVID-19 patients shed infectious virus particles for about eight days. But 70 days after her diagnosis, the patient was still shedding ...

When you start getting long viral shedding periods, I am not sure how they can tell one infection from a reinfection.

 

[weepingangel]

They shortened it recently IMO. because people weren’t complying with the 14 days and/or so they’d lose less time at work

it was actually the CDC that recommended the 10 day quarantine in some circumstances:

CDC currently recommends a quarantine period of 14 days. However, based on local circumstances and resources, the following options to shorten quarantine are acceptable alternatives. Quarantine can end after Day 10 without testing and if no symptoms have been reported during daily monitoring.Dec 2, 2020

Options to Reduce Quarantine for Contacts of Persons with ...

if, as some sources have said, viral shedding mostly occurs before people are symptomatic, by the time you are quarantined, you are not even that infectious (damage is done) IMO. If you are quarantined just because you were around some one who tested positive and you are not getting sick, the 10 days could be reasonable, IMO.

The 72 day shedding person was an immuno compromised cancer patient who never had symptoms .... go figure.
Asymptomatic coronavirus patient shed virus for 70 days ...
www.businessinsider.com › Science › News
Nov 8, 2020 — On average, COVID-19 patients shed infectious virus particles for about eight days. But 70 days after her diagnosis, the patient was still shedding ...

When you start getting long viral shedding periods, I am not sure how they can tell one infection from a reinfection.

 

[acutename]

They shortened it recently IMO. because people weren’t complying with the 14 days and/or so they’d lose less time at work

yes, I remember reading that, but that reason makes no sense if you go back 4 days early and infect a bunch of coworkers....

 

[Marysmith]

They shortened it recently IMO. because people weren’t complying with the 14 days and/or so they’d lose less time at work

IMO I was suspicious of this too...

 

[weepingangel]

More at links

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9086235/amp/Republican-Louisiana-Congressman-elect-Luke-Letlow-41-ICU-COVID.html

Republican Congressman-Elect Luke Letlow, 41, Transferred To ICU With Covid

TOPLINE

U.S. Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R-La.), who disclosed Friday that he had tested positive for Covid-19, has been moved to the intensive care unit of the hospital where he is being treated in Shreveport, Louisiana, in one of the most serious coronavirus cases yet involving any current or incoming U.S. lawmakers.