An observation on measuring recent death stats by state:

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This new variant does not care if you are vaccinated or not, if you are exposed to the virus, it will attack you. Now, both my wife and I are NOT vaccinated AND we both now are Covid positive(Tested) with the omnicron. No hospitals, no doctors, just OTC drugs and we are both fine. Yes, we are sitting home for New Years, but other than that, our lives did not stop. I quarantined myself to my office and ran my shop from there. My wife worked from home because she is on the 5 day protocol. I had a fever on and off for 36 hours and then just cold like symptoms. We will continue our stance of not being vaccinated.

I am medically obese. I have covid. Not vaxed, I am fine.

Still jibber jabbing plz keep it up don’t mine me.

Yesterday was day 10 for me with covid. Here is where I am at now.

1) The IV the VA gave to me has done nothing that I can tell.

2) I still drink Alka-Seltzer to ward of the chills. The chills have gotten more pronounced.

3) For last 3 nights I wake up in middle of night and my pajama top is soaked in sweat. I’ll change tops and all will be well until the next night.

4) Yesterday, my lungs cleared a little bit and I was able to cough up a huge chunk of white flim.

5) I am very weak. No stamina to do much besides lay in bed.

FOOD

I have not eaten very much in 10 days. 3 days ago I got some take-out Chinese fried rice from my favorite Chinese restaurant. There was very little flavor.

I like sugar. I have a sweet tooth. Yesterday was day 10 of my quarantine. I had to go get groceries.

I love egg nog. The holidays are here so I brought some home. It is almost too sweet for me to choke down.

Same for the container of apple juice I bought; That AJ was so sweet I could barely choke it down.

I also bought some 1% milk. I can taste the sugar in it.

I have not eaten enough yet to really get a good handle on food taste but it sure feels like I am one of those whose taster might be going bonkers.

Now I’m back to bed.

It's really too early to tell for the omicron variant, but the virus is working its way around the vaccines. It does appear that omicron is producing more asymptomatic cases, which is good for its victims but bad because of the increased spread.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-effective-are-covid-19-vaccines-against-omicron
"Best estimates suggest vaccines are around 30%-40% effective at preventing infections and 70% effective at preventing severe disease."

A booster shot increases the effectiveness to 70% against infection, but my understanding is that that is based on measuring increases in anti-body levels versus measurements in actual infections. Again, just too early to tell for sure and given the slow uptake on booster shots here in the U.S. it may be irrelevant.

Vaccines and boosters are the best defense against hospitalization and death.

This is your personal experience and that's great... but irrelevant.

Hospitalization rates are still on the increase, so a lot of people have not been so lucky. If 100 people posted their positive covid results here, ~85 of them would be similar to yours. A small number would not be so lucky but I don't think we'll see them posting from the ICU.

Breakthrough cases with alpha were rare but that was almost a year ago when we had the alpha surge. We’ve been dealing with Delta since and the breakthrough rate with that was around 20-30%. Omicron has many more mutations so higher breakthrough rate than Delta.

Bottom line is that coronaviruses in general commonly reinfect people. COVID will do the same. Again, the vaccines were not made to prevent infection as a primary goal. If you don’t believe me go back and look at the original studies and see what the main endpoints were. Infection rate wasn’t even studied. They looked at prevention of severe symptoms. That’s because they knew COVID would break through because that’s what coronaviruses do.

I mean it’s almost like they were experts in virology or something. Crazy I know…

So bottom line is that there will probably be a very high breakthrough rate with Omicron. Whether we see a significant difference in severity of symptoms between vaccinated and unvaccinated with Omicron remains to be seen. So far it seems Omicron causes mild symptoms even in unvaccinated patients.

They do genotyping on samples. This is done to get an idea of which strain is dominant at the time and it’s not reported to the patient mainly because it doesn’t really matter. Omicron and Delta are treated the same except for the monoclonal antibody issue. Basically two of our three monoclonals are worthless against Omicron and the third one is in VERY short supply so it’s being reserved for only the most severe cases.

Currently Omicron is the dominant strain overall so the most likely thing for people who got COVID in the last week or two is that they have Omicron.

That’s an amazingly good thing for all the unvaccinated people who have COVID right now, if this was another Delta spike they’d be in a much worse position. Of course the vast majority of them won’t understand this, they’ll take their mild symptoms as a sign they were right all along about COVID being “just the flu”.

Wow. Just wow.

Cotton your symptoms 1 to 5 suggest You may have the mother in law strain.
Just kidding hope you feel better!

Very sorry to hear of your ordeal, but it sounds like things are taking a turn for the better, if slowly.

I would recommend using Instacart to have groceries delivered to you. Used it the last time I had the flu... was a wonderful thing. No need to add additional stress if you can outsource logistics. Rest easy & hydrate!

1. Thank you for proving my point.

2. They can essentially tell via an additional test they can do from the same samples they get for the PCR testing. One problem with that though is limited capacity to test (can't test em all). This is relatively easy to solve. Test em all in time to be useful...another problem that I am not quite sure we could solve. Final problem, the logistical nightmare of conveying that information both to the patients and the infusion clinics so that Patient A goes to Clinic A for Infusion A.

So instead of all that, and since they know Omicron percentages skyrocket, they just set a cut off of "once we hit X omicron, within a few days/weeks it is all pretty much going to be omicron, so lets just assume it now". Because the treatment that does work for omicron, also works for delta...but the reverse ain't true. We have serious capacity issues at IV clinics, so it makes little sense to pump people full of monoclonals that may or may not do anything to help them.

Delta will be with us for awhile longer, and will still lead to quite a few more hospitalizations (lagging indicator and all that), but the preventative treatments need to look forward.

The beauty of the pills is that they don't care which variant and can be administered by the patient in their own home. Just got to get enough pills distributed. One of those same day pharma deliveries that I keep hearing about would work great for this.

Cotton,
Sounds terrible. Hoping this breaks soon for you.

Pedialyte would probably help keep you going with all that sweating.

That's your body telling you to stop drinking that poison. Lol. Stay away from sugar, especially when you are sick.

10 days is the standard for length of quarantine.

What? Speak English.

Well, according to your exact words, 85% are irrelevant. I will happily be irrelevant

Happy New Year to the whole lot of us!

Make sure you get some black eyed peas for luck and some greens for money for the New Year today! Here’s to a safe and prosperous 2022!!

Those that are sick, I wish you speedy recovery!
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Re: cdc changing/muddying up guidelines

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Unfortunately for me, I was given Regen-cov on the day that information came out and my symptoms have not let up.
I'm happy for those that are having mild to moderate reactions but I'm not one of them.

cottonm4 I am really sorry that you are feeling so poorly. Are you taking vitamin supplements? If not you should. It's a cold virus and although a really nasty one a cold virus none the less. If you can choke down Alka-Seltzer you can do a couple of Airborne tablets a day. You can also get some Cold-EEZE which contains zinc and suck on those lozenges. Also Quercetin is an ionophore that you can take. Ionophore is just a fancy word for this supplement. It just helps zinc enter the cells.

You have to eat as hard as it may be. Mom was right when she fed you chicken soup when you were sick. Chicken noodle, chicken corn, or at the very least just chicken broth. You should be able to stomach that.

A nurse told me when you sleep you should try to sleep sitting up or propped up to keep it from settling in your lungs. She also said you should get up and move around as hard as that may be. I don't know what truth there is to that but that's what she told me. You can always ask your doctor about that one or anything I posted here.

I wasn't going to post anymore on this topic but I hate to see you suffering. None of the things I listed are a magic bullet but they should help. In any event I truly hope you feel much better soon.

That was funny hehehe

So you are telling your patients that even if they are still symptomatic, then it’s perfectly acceptable to be in public after 10 days?

The standard for quarantine is 10 days. After 10 days from symptom onset you can come out of quarantine. Some people remain symptomatic longer than others.

I don’t make up the guidelines.

Why are you so dead set on being pissed off?

Tokyo stats from yesterday:

# of people hospitalized with severe COVID: 1

# of COVID deaths: 0

# of Tokyo elderly who died choking on mochi: 2

# of new COVID cases in Tokyo: 84

# of new COVID cases among U.S. Forces in Okinawa: 235

Omicron and kids hospitalizations. Couple locations.

My point is that the trend is similar regardless of France, UK (not shown), California, New York, Florida, Texas.

Looks like delta peaks will be surpassed. Probably because so many more are being infected all at once. We are compressing 2 yrs worth of infections into a few months. Even if overall more mild, that many more cases is resulting in more hospitalization.

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Taiwan is a good one to look at too. Amazing what a difference in cultural attitudes make during a pandemic. Pretty good for a country with a population of over 23 million.

taiwan covid (resized).jpg

You are N = 2. Your anecdotal experience being unvaccinated means little and it certainly is no indication of its potential severity as each person is different.

The hospitalization rate for Covid pre-Omicron was12-15%. With omicron it will likely be less. However, given it's high transmissability, there is a good chance the sheer number will overwhelm many healthcare and hospital systems throughout the country, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates... and you can take it to the bank that of those that end up hospitalized, 85%+ will be unvaccinated.

Continuing to downplay it because your experience has been on the mild side isn't helpful given over 800k of our countrymen have passed from this virus and millions more globally. Those in your camp are continuing to strain healthcare resources and providers and increasing healthcare costs for all of us. That is just the reality of the sitiation.

Well I came down with covid just as my wife was recovering. Been in bed for two days straight now with crazy body aches, chills, restless legs, night sweats but no fever and massive migraine. Just zapped of all energy couldn’t even sit up to drink water barely.

Been doing imask protocol and finally up and moving around today a bit. I’ve definitely had worse bugs in my life. Happy to say it was very mild for both my wife and I but that is to be expected for under 40 and in good health.

I read a study out of the UK a few days ago that said with a booster it appears 70-75% are protected from developing symptoms from omicron. 10 weeks after the booster, that number drops to 45-50%. It appears to still protect the vast majority from severe disease or hospitalization despite how heavily mutated it is ftom the Wuhan strain.

From what I'm reading, in New York and other parts of the world where omicron is overwhelmingly dominant, those primarily being hospitalized are unsurprisingly unvaccinated. That tells us there is a good amount of protection from the vaccines preventing severe disease or hospitalization despite thwle mutated variant and potential for breakthrough.

Japan has really nice numbers and are STILL 100% masks required by law outdoors and public places. At the store, work, on the sidewalk, in the park, at the beach, EVERYONE has a mask on except to eat. (I watch streamers on twitch from Japan and am not exaggerating.)

When they have a surge, all bars are closed, and restaurants are not allowed to serve alcohol. Makes sense but most here would not comply with a public health law like that.

Have to wonder if they are just delaying the Omicron surge? No crystal ball to see who is right, but it will be fascinating to look back and see someday!

1/3/2022 data for Japan:
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It's great that you and your wife have recovered well, but like Utesichiban just stated: "The hospitalization rate for Covid pre-Omicron was 12-15%. With omicron it will likely be less. However, given it's high transmissability, there is a good chance the sheer number will overwhelm many healthcare and hospital systems throughout the country, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates... and you can take it to the bank that of those that end up hospitalized, 85%+ will be unvaccinated."

I'm not sure I can add much to that. Your "but that is to be expected for under 40 and in good health" may be true for an individual, but when we have so extremely many infected people and with this virus, it is to be expected that still quite some 'under 40 and in good health' who are not vaccinated do end up in hospital and that's a problem at the moment, for there are too many. Sure, vaccinated ones as well, just WAY less. And elderly as well, and more than the younger, but still: I think when you can contribute to the whole group to contribute to keep hospitalisation down, that's a good thing to the. The 'but I was fine' is nice and all, but it doesn't look at the bigger picture.
To go back to an old example for safety: most drivers never have accidents and don't need safetybelts or airbags anyway, and I hope you're convinced of the use of those.
And yes, you can sometimes (or often) wonder 'how far do we have to go to avoid all risks in life', but in my opinion if hospitals are being overwhelmed and normal healthcare can't be given anymore for quite a lot of people and ICUnurses and doctors are getting burnouts and wonder why most of the people lying there and ask if there isn't 'something more that can be done for them', didn't just get the vaccination... for me: I can't think of a reason not to get vaccinated.
I can imagine not agreeing with how things are handled by having a different point of view for what is right, but is that really worth refusing a vaccine for knowing all we know about it? How well it works and the very little side-effects compared to the extremely bigger chance of those same side-effects by catching covid. Can't someone just be very, very clear about all the things you may think is wrong, and still think 'it's still better for our society to get the vaccine'? That's the part that I don't get.

Unvaxxed, got covid (most likely Delta), generally healthy, overweight, 43 years old.

Used the FLCC protocols, vitamins, quercetin, ivermectin plus NAC prior and during infection. Felt average for a week, but still functioning, another 10 days felt tired. But have made a full recovery. Also took probiotics to aid recovery.

In my LIVED experience the vitamins etc helped immensely.

I know healthier people than me who were vaxxed but no vitamins etc and they struggled heaps.

This was the same for my wife, who suffered less than me but is healthier also unvaxxed.

My 7 and 9 year old got it and had virtually Zero covid effects. In my opinion you are MAD to vaccinate children.

I think therapies would be more effective than mRNA vaccines especially for younger people.

And keep in mind the Australian Federal government has set up a compensation scheme for the 79000 people and counting who have suffered SEVERE adverse reactions to the Vax. Up to 600k AUD. They will also pay for funerals...

I think sick people should stay home, but apparently I'm in the minority in this thread.

1. Good for you but on a global scale, vitamin regimes aren’t really making much of a dent in hospitalizations. YMMV. Our experience: My wife has had a couple dozen of the vitamin regime folks that made their way through the hospital network. Not all left in the vertical position.

Vaccines work at preventing severe disease.

Ivermectin doesn’t help. Might as well be carrying around a tiger rock to prevent confrontations with tigers.

2. See my recent post on child hospitalizations. Yes, on the individual level, it is unlikely a child will have severe disease, but zoom out and it is a massive problem for the hospitals. You can’t just put a 5 yr old in an adult icu. Also, any child is hospitalized for any cause warrants investigation and prevention recommendations implemented. Kids shouldn’t be in hospitals. (This is also why there are not very many pediatric hospital beds…they usually aren’t needed).

3. We have discussed the Australian VAERS before. 79000 complaints is not equal to 79000 compensation level injuries.

I know two children that were vaccinated and they had no issues whatsoever. So, by your exact same logic we have no reason not to vaccinate everyone.

Congrats with your recovery.
My first thoughts:
1) you're willing to accept the possible side effects of ivermectin and perhaps quercetin, but you don't trust the vaccines which are studied globally by many, many scientists and organisations?

2) I had to look up FLCC. Just some info from a lazy Wikipedia search:

In January 2021, the FLCC presented findings on the use of the anti-parasite drug ivermectin against COVID-19 to the National Institutes of Health, which ruled there was "insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19" without clinical trials.[4] A 2021 review article by FLCCC members on the efficacy of ivermectin, which was provisionally accepted by Frontiers in Pharmacology, was subsequently rejected on account of what the publisher called "a series of strong, unsupported claims based on studies with insufficient statistical significance" meaning that the article did "not offer an objective [or] balanced scientific contribution to the evaluation of ivermectin as a potential treatment for COVID-19".[12] The FLCCC review article included a study from Egypt that was later retracted after anomalies were found in its data and concerns were raised about plagiarism.

and

The FLCCC has said “vaccination is part of the solution”, but COVID-19 vaccines are not listed in its preventative protocols.[14] In August 2021 one doctor, Eric Osgood, resigned from the FLCCC because the group "may be contributing to people making the choice not to get vaccinated". Osgood commented: "If you're going to have a page that's dedicated to 'How do you prevent yourself from getting COVID?' that page can't not have vaccines at the top of it".[3]

Susanna Priest, editor-in-chief of Science Communication, has said the FLCCC's messaging is discouraging vaccination thereby prolonging the pandemic.[3]

3) About the 79.000 claims:
Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration has received almost 79,000 reports of adverse side effect from 36.8 million doses of vaccine, according to its website. The most frequent reported side effects include a sore arm, headache, fever and chills.
source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-16/australia-faces-compensation-bill-for-vaccine-side-effects-smh

So it's not like those less than 0.5% of vaccinated people who are claiming have died (family members), have big complaints like long covid, had hospitalisation for weeks, or even ICU. Ok, there may be a few in total, but to me your 79.000 sounded like something big, but their complaints look to have been no more or less than what you suffered from covid, and you and your wife, and some others here who thankfully recovered well are nowhere near enough to take conclusions, like you seem to do with your 0.5% of the vaccinated people (or in your case a conclusion of how unvaccinated people revover without trouble: most do, but it's not about 'most of', it's about quite small percentages, but on a very, very large group).

4) I don't think anyone here will disagree that eating enough vitamines by either normal food, or some extra with pills will help (be careful not to take too many of some vitamines though). Living healthy, eat well, exercise, perhaps being able to run a marathon ( I wish I could): that all helps a lot.

PS(edit): if contamination for Omicron isn't slowed down much by the current vaccines, I can imagine we'll have a healthy discussion about the vaccination of children. I do think I heard more and more children are being hospitalised as well. If that's a big enough percentage, vaccinations would be a good thing, if not, we might better not vaccinate children yet, but wait untill when / if there's a new vaccine that slows spread enough. That's my (so far quite unfounded) opinion at the moment, without having read much/enough sources yet.

The main reason has to do with culture war in my opinion. Americans hate being told what to do by the government. Toss in the fact that Trump wanted to limit the amount of money the pharmaceutical companies could make off of drugs, CDC lying about masks(they were worried about hospitals not having enough supplies), and the vaccine gets approved days after the election. Well all those things plus the general messaging, galvanized a large portion of the population against taking the vaccine.

If we were honest with each other, we'd admit there would be a large portion of people in the opposite direction if Trump was in office, that would resist.

The vaccine is a my tribe vs your tribe issue now. Toss in foreign manipulation via bots via social media and the infighting gets worse.

Just my opinion of things.

Those protocols aren't readily available to everyone in the USA. Different hospitals do different treatments here.

My friend had covid, the hospital gave him an oxygen monitor, sent him home. No vitamins, no recommendations other than if you can't breathe come back to the ER. That's not good care in my opinion but the industrialization of medicine never has been about getting better, only making money.

If anything we all agree our healthcare system is broken and we should improve it.

In a slightly different angle this weekend, my family debated whether viruses are "Alive".

Any thoughts?