If you can catch Martin Barre performing, it’s amazing—he’s got a singer who does a great job covering Ian’s parts while still making the performances his own.

Pro tip for accessing the NYT articles now that they’ve dropped the paywall on the coronavirus content:

Many common domains have had “guest@“ accounts set up so that you can get past forced registration. Just yesterday I was able to get on using “[email protected]”, pw: guest

Hope that helps!

The threat of federal quarantine yesterday was absolutely ridiculous bc all three states are already on “essential workers only” lockdown. Anything stricter is pretty much unenforceable anyway—where I live, I can get up into Massachusetts from about 10-15 roads without breaking a sweat. There’s no way they can deploy enough LEO to shut down all of those roads. Not to mention blaming the spread on NYC when FL kept beaches open and NOLA had Mardi Gras. We live in a global world and the virus has had free range for at least 2 months now, so even if it originally was all NYC’s fault, it’s too late to isolate it here in this region. The biggest proof that it was ridiculous? They walked back the statement a few hours later and said “continue to follow the instructions of the governors”. I’m 2+ hours out of NYC, and while there are some idiots around (including some I’m related to, facepalm), the vast majority of folks are treating this very seriously and taking all of the recommended precautions.

As for why CT was included, the bulk of our cases are currently down in Fairfield county (ie NYC commuting region), where it’s getting as bad as NYC. Up here in Hartford county, we still are relatively light, though it’s definitely growing day by day.

A crazy fact from the local press conferences yesterday: Metro North Railroad (ie biggest commuter railroad) ridership is down 95%. You just have to look at that number to understand that people here are NOT carrying on like business as usual! I don’t think it’s possible to get lower than that, given the healthcare and other critical service workers that have to commute in daily!

The good thing up here is that the governors are working to coordinate their responses. There are still some minor variances—RI hunting down NYS license plates on Friday springs to mind—but they are trying hard to all stay on the same level of shutdown so that there’s no incentive to cross state lines. Except for the part where MA has legalized pot and CT hasn’t.

That situation is one of the exceptions and there are a few others, but overall they’ve aligned on when to go on shutdown, how to define “essential”, etc. As for the RI situation itself, all of the states involved had agreed to request a 14 day self-quarantine if you cross state lines. The part where RI varied is that they decided to go around specifically looking for NYC plates.

In the CT press conference yesterday, they said they were part of some trials for that treatment, but that they would let the doctors have space to try any treatments they thought might be effective rather than clamoring for one specific one that was still being assessed. I thought that was a good response.

Re: China...I have Chinese coworkers that I speak to regularly. Yes, they are back to work, albeit with some strict restrictions. No more than 50% of the office can come in each day with the rest working remotely. The retail stores are also limiting the number of shoppers allowed in the store at once

Their mortality numbers are most certainly understated, although the breathless “21 million!” or “30 million!” claims are also most certainly overstated. Pretty much every country has been understating deaths, sometimes to maintain a fiction and sometimes bc they are too overwhelmed to handle the testing needed to confirm some deaths. We’re seeing a pretty consistent result (minus successful social distancing and isolation efforts) across countries though, so it’s not like it’s “The Stand” and only .1% of us will be carrying on in a few weeks. Or if we’ve been lied to, and it *is* that bad, then a tiny handful of us will have the best collections ever!

(Now I’m imagining myself have the pick of any pin I want...but not having anyone around who can help me move them! )

The real metric that we should be looking at is whether any particular group *over-indexes*, but until we get consistent mass testing in place, I wouldn’t draw any conclusions from the data we’re seeing.

For example, just looking at the numbers above as well as the hospitalization rates quoted earlier, you may say that elderly people are way more at risk. But they are way more at risk for hospitalization/death on a daily basis than younger people are anyway. So you need to compare the average rates of hospitalization against the increased rates, and see which age group experiences a greater increase. And likewise, understanding how widespread the virus actually is will also help clarify what the actual danger is to us—right now we are mostly capturing data on only the worst outcomes.

Of course, data means nothing anyway. If the risk was essentially zero, but you caught the virus and died, it won’t make your loved ones feel any better to be told that your death was a mathematical outlier.

I think my favorite comment regarding conspiracy theories is “Anyone who thinks that 100 people are all keeping some massive secret has clearly never been a project manager.”

It’s already been pointed out that the Daily Mail is not a reliable news source. As to the claims that workers got infected there, it’s possible, but it likely would have been *after* the virus originated.

There’s a lot of research now that is pointing to the virus as being purely organic in origin. The non-technical reasoning is that the structure of the virus would appear “on paper” to not work, so no one would bother trying to develop it when there are other design paths that look to be more effective. Here’s a more technical article that explains it:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/the-new-coronavirus-was-not-genetically-engineered-study-shows#Two-possible-origin-scenarios

Gothamist had a story today that is staggering about how much the “at home” deaths have increased and how these aren’t getting counted for the most part.

https://gothamist.com/news/surge-number-new-yorkers-dying-home-officials-suspect-undercount-covid-19-related-deaths

ETA: Also there’s often a drop in reported numbers over the weekend bc there are less people processing in the various counties.

I have family down in NYC, and just the other night they were describing what it was like at their apartment buildings. My cousins live in a 1960’s era high rise complex in Hell’s Kitchen (it’s the complex of apartments that are subsidized for artists on 43rd St for those that know the area), so imagine two tall towers with about 500 apartments. They said that ambulances pull up to their buildings multiple times during the day, every day, and at least 4 of their friends had died. They also said that an unhappy side effect is that the junkies don’t have the tourist crowds to beg $ from, so when they leave the apartment to get supplies, the junkies beeline towards them to try and get money. Most of them are just desperate and don’t even really understand why the crowds aren’t around, but another resident of the apartment building was actually attacked and injured. My cousin is still recovering from a heart attack in February, so he’s highly at risk, but because he was recovering, they already were following a lot of the protocols (masks, etc) before it became widely recommended. Knock on wood, they seem to be doing ok. My brother is in LIC, also in a big apartment building, and their experience is a little more mundane. They go out once a day for a walk, but otherwise are just holed up in their apartment binge watching Netflix.

It’s strange though—I’m used to NYC feeling more perilous, but it feels strange bc we are having the exact same experience of hearing way more ambulances during the day. We live in a suburban town, but we are on the outskirts in the middle of a bunch of protected land, and the houses are pretty far apart, so normally we maybe would hear one every other week or so. Lately we hear them 2-3 times a day.

Found a third alternative use for the box from my GB! Had to cut it down after the last big use (solar eclipse viewer), but it’s still looking good!

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Over 5400 people died officially from Covid-19 on April 13th, and that’s with massive shelter in place restrictions. It also doesn’t take into account thousands of deaths where people died at home but weren’t counted bc they were never tested or officially confirmed to have the illness. Some days the official death toll has been over 7000 deaths. So officially, it’s already top 3 on your list. It’s also officially the number one cause of death per day in the US right now.
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-becomes-number-one-cause-death-per-day-us-surpassing-heart-disease-cancer-1495607

We have thousands of hospitals at max capacity and field hospitals being set up in multiple cities to handle the crush of critically sick patients WITH a lockdown in place. That fact alone should make it clear that this is NOT the same thing as these other killers. But beyond that, think about how these decisions get made. Countries and businesses shut down not bc they are scared and poorly-informed. They shut down bc they look at data that shows them it will be far worse *economically* if they DON’T shut down.

So sure, lockdown sucks, and bankruptcy is a very real danger for millions of people and businesses. But the alternative isn’t this false picture being painted of business as usual with some people unfortunately getting sick now and then. It’s hospitals unable to even try to treat hundreds of patients. It’s thousands of people getting critically sick and needing months of recovery...and going bankrupt because of that. OTOH, if we can get the numbers down enough before lifting the lockdown, and then lifting it slowly and strategically, we can avoid unnecessary deaths and ultimately keep more of the population healthy and productive.

Re: Point 3 - Social distancing saveS health care capacity which in turn saves people. If you go to a hospital that is over run, you won’t get optimal care and you may not be able to get necessary treatments like a respirator. That’s why they want to slow the spread.

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If someone is in need of a respirator, they will almost 100% will die without it. But if they are put on one, they have a (50?)% chance to live. So if the hospital can’t put you on a respirator, that’s a 100% chance you will die. But if they have one available, you have a chance to live.

I took the point of the original question to not be about the virus spreading IN the factory, but rather questioning why the employees aren’t spreading the virus out in the broader community. My guess would be that they probably are but probably the plant is paying for tests do they know for sure. The families and friends may not gave access to testing if they aren’t sick enough.

It turns out that I’ve very likely been dealing with Covid-19 but didn’t know it. I had a slightly suspicious unspecified viral sinus infection after traveling at the end of January, and there were a couple of things out of the ordinary—I had a slightly unusual degree of chest tightness and the infection kept lingering on. Still, I get really bad illness-induced asthma after even the tiniest of colds which can last for months, so chest tightness and the dry cough that hung around wasn’t particularly noteworthy, and no one other than my husband got sick. It wasn’t until the other day when I noticed I was getting a pox-like rash and I stumbled across this story that I was like “Oh DAMN! I might have actually had it!”

https://time.com/5827912/coronavirus-skin-rashes/?amp=true

My doctor agrees that it is VERY likely Covid-19 (I’ve even since developed one little “Covid Toe“), but told me to wait to be tested until there are widely available antibody tests. While I’m not completely asymptomatic, I definitely have had pretty much the mildest case I think you can have without being symptom-free. Even so, there are some definite things that I think are hugely important to consider when everyone is shouting to reopen everything.

1. My “almost symptomless” case still drove me to go to the doctor twice. To put this in context, I am the sort of person who would rather google “self-amputation” than have to go to a doctor. Even if the vast majority of people get mild cases like me, that’s still a huge additional burden on health care systems beyond the critical cases, and we still don’t have enough PPE for the doctors!

2. This virus LINGERS! I’ve felt “off” for essentially 3 months. Not so off that I couldn’t work and I even ran a half marathon 2 weeks ago, but I’ve spent a lot of this time feeling like I was maybe getting sick again.

3. I’m hugely lucky that I don’t seem to have been a “super spreader”. I was with my elderly parents as I started feeling ill, and told them not to hug/kiss me, but didn’t take any additional precautions with them. I was at work for 6 weeks surrounded by 600 or so people. I was in multiple gyms, working out on treadmills and taking classes. No one other than my husband has gotten sick that I know of.

4. I’m concerned that I still don’t have immunity against the more virulent strains. And given how this strain made me feel, I really REALLY don’t want to deal with anything worse!

I’m not against a slow, methodical reopening, but I really feel like we really need to make sure even the regular doctor offices have the supplies they need to assess an increase in minor cases before we go crazy opening up all the things. And for the people who are still steadfastly in the “We don’t close for the flu!” camp, that standard is at least consistent—we don’t close for the flu, but we make sure the doctors have the supplies they need on hand to treat it.

The articles I’ve read say that it’s mostly 20-30 year olds who show these symptoms, so at least I can say I have the blood of a much younger woman, even if the rest of me feels my age!

It’s a fair question, and believe me I’ve been open to any possibility, but since I’ve had ongoing (mild) symptoms for 13 weeks straight, it’s not unreasonable to think the two are likely connected. If I was infected more recently I would expect at least my son or husband to be sick bc they’ve both been home with me the past 6 or 7 weeks. Back when I first got sick, my husband also got a really bad cold with a dry cough and a lot of fatigue, but hasn’t gotten sick since. And that bug was super hard for him to shake, same as it’s been for me, although he seems fully past it now. As for other people, I’ve read that some people stop being contagious as soon as a couple of days after they start having symptoms, and I was mostly at home the first 4-5 days, so that could be the reason why I didn’t see more people around me getting sick. I also shared these timelines and symptoms with my doctor, and he thought it was quite likely that I have been dealing with Covid-19 this whole time. That said, I will never be 100% positive and while I’ve been trying to be super careful maintaining social distancing, I have been out for the periodic grocery run so I certainly could have gotten exposed more recently.

I’m glad to hear your girlfriend is doing well! My friend is 50 and end stage CF hoping for (but not likely to qualify for) a lung transplant. She doesn’t qualify for Trikafta bc she has a rare variant, but Kalydeco has helped a little bit. As you said, most CF patients are already practicing the extreme social distancing and cleanliness measures, but she’s shared some articles about a couple of CF patients who fared unexpectedly well. My friend has shared a couple articles with some unexpectedly good results for CF patients where they were speculating that bc CF patient lungs are already in a constant state of attack (and their bodies are used to it), they weren’t as susceptible to the cytokine storm as non-CF patients were. So there’s a little bit of potentially good news for folks who have to already deal with so much!

ETA: The local paper wrote a really nice article about my friend, if anyone is interested.
https://qcnerve.com/a-look-at-the-life-of-a-resident-at-risk/

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I’m a huge fan of vitamin D—I’ve gotten way healthier since I added it to my diet, and even when I get sick, my colds are milder and go away faster (hmm, like my super mild Covid experience??).

That said, it’s important to note that this study was specifically looking for correlations to test, which is why they’re warning people not to run off and down lots of Vit D. The example I’ve heard is that you can look at data and see that 75% of men who eat margarine in Maine are divorced. So there’s a correlation between margarine and divorce. However, if you tested it in a double blind study, eating margarine doesn’t *cause* divorce. (Ie correlation =\= causation). The connection with vitamin D *might* be direct, or it might be that both Vit D deficiency and Covid-19 are correlated to a third unknown influence. So more testing to come, to see what it all means.

But *independent* of the study and purely anecdotal, I highly recommend adding in vitamin D to your diet!!

It’s been almost a month since I posted this description of my “super mild” case. Guess what? I’m still experiencing occasional chest tightness and cough, almost 17 weeks after the date of my likely exposure. I’ve never had a “mild” cold or flu hang around or keep my asthma flaring up this long—not even my 2018 post-Pintastic walking pneumonia which took a month to get under control. In some ways my case was “no big deal” bc I never missed a day of work and I thankfully didn’t spread it beyond hubby, but I’ve spent FOUR months dragging this thing along with me.

It’s real easy to look at the worst case scenarios and think that since the odds are “low” that you’ll get hit that badly, you don’t need to worry about it. Well, the odds are MUCH higher that you’ll experience something closer to what I’ve been dealing with. And yes, it isn’t devastating...but it’s definitely mentally exhausting to constantly feel slightly under the weather for months on end.

I’m not against slow, measured progress to reopening things. But instead we have states going straight from full lockdown to allowing crowds to swarm to parks and beaches, or states using the nation-wide rates to justify reopening when their own infection rates are still increasing. Meanwhile we STILL haven’t gotten our PPE supply chain fully re-established and really don’t have a cohesive structure for nation-wide testing and contact tracing. So we still don’t have any way to isolate outbreaks or fully protect the doctors treating them. I just personally find it ridiculous that we can’t maintain some strict precautions even long enough to get those two things under control to make it safer for all. And yeah, you might not need major medical treatment if you do end up coming down with it, but feeling crappy for a third of the year is still pretty damn sucky in its own right.

This is a pretty good breakdown of why you should be skeptical about that story:
https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1278703871053963269?s=21

Per the link I shared, there are still few people going on record and zero attendees of these supposed parties. It definitely wouldn’t be the first time an urban legend gets reported as fact.

Lol, Connecticut “fashionable”.

There’ve been DECADES of people leaving CT in droves. We’re experts at it!

Two months ago, I posted this, and we still have ongoing issues with the PPE and testing supply chains, plus we’ve gotten less transparent with actual data, etc. This isn’t a completely unsolvable puzzle, but it is if no one actually takes the pieces out of the box and tries to put them together.

Oh and as an update? I’m still experiencing occasional minor asthma attacks or random aches. They may be unrelated, but since I haven’t had a break from these waves of minor crappiness every 2 weeks or so since the first exposure at the end of January, it’s hard not to see them all as being connected.

I work for a company based overseas, which I mention bc they take this VERY seriously. They’ve opened the local offices back up but the capacity is greatly reduced. No more than 15% are allowed to be there plus additional regulations about no cube neighbors being in on the same day. We’ve managed to stay fully productive working at almost 100% remote, so there’s no rush from management to get us all back in the office.

For me personally, I’ve gone back in 2x and somewhat enjoyed having the facilities to myself, so I could see popping in once in a while to get stuff done without distractions. Most of my work revolves around people management though, so if they aren’t there, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to be there either.

Long term, we were having issues with crowding in the offices anyway, so I could see them continuing this arrangement for longer than the pandemic might require. It saves them lots of $$ with not having to get a larger space (plus all the amenities like coffee, toiletries, etc). I’m enjoying being at home and avoiding the 40 minute commute, but I do miss having access to my double monitor setup and the big printers.

Connecticut is moving back into the yellow, and while there are proportionally less anti-maskers around here, the problem I’m seeing is that everyone has been extending their “bubbles” too fast. The recent protests about high school football and indoor dining in restaurants are a great example of how little things seem like they shouldn’t be an issue, but when everyone relaxes, there’s just too much contact going on.

And to restate my opinion, I’m not against reopening things, but we STILL don’t have easily accessible rapid testing, comprehensive contact tracing, or our PPE supply chain fully reestablished. If we could knock out those three things, all of which are entirely achievable, we could reopen but be vigilant about shutting down outbreaks quickly and effectively. But instead of focusing on the obvious solution, a third of the population won’t even accept that there’s a problem to fix, and another third think that it’s been long enough that they should be fine dropping the protocols. It’s very hard to bring something under control when two thirds of the community are actively doing things that make things worse.

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To me, these stats strengthen the argument for mask wearing. By most accounts, the “viral load” received by an individual has a direct correlation to the potential severity of the infection. Medical professionals are the most likely to be exposed to high viral loads.

A mask may not provide 100% protection from C19, but it can help reduce the viral loads being spread, which in turn reduces the overall numbers of severe cases.

Ok, so as a sort of thought exercise, say Biden takes over the nation in late January. What are the top things he should prioritize in regards to the pandemic? In my mind, I’m thinking establishing a national buying collective of PPE and also facilitating improvements to broadband access. There’s also something about a more cohesive testing and reporting structure.

Love your suggestions! As I was thinking through it myself, I was getting stuck on the thought that I’d still want the federal response to be things that would genuinely be useful (ie a national mask mandate at this point would just cause more friction than actually help), and let the states flex restrictions as needed. I think your ideas are perfect that way!

Science works by developing and testing hypotheses, and slowly refining opinions, so of course there can be different opinions. However, as these hypotheses are tested, the results start to point to specific facts and you start to gain a general consensus, minus the occasional “flat-earther” outlier. If you’ve followed this thread from day 1, you can see that PantherCityPins has consistently presented the current general consensus and shared additional context from his experience. Yes there are doctors and nurses and scientists who may disagree with the conclusions he shares, but as we get more and more results collected and the facts become clearer, there is less and less evidence supporting those outlying opinions.

Even *if* the vaccine directly caused this death, look at the odds. A handful of bad reactions out of millions of doses already administered. Meanwhile I’ve seen reports in hot spots of anywhere from 1 in 30 to as high as 1 in 5 *currently* infected, depending on location. So, not counting people who were sick back in April or whenever. Out of every 100 people who get sick, something like 10-15 will need hospitalization, 1-2 will die, and 20 or so will deal with long-term after effects.

If you’re going to worry about dying bc of taking the vaccine, it’s like worrying about getting hit by lightning while walking down the middle of the highway. You wouldn’t want that particular outcome for sure, but it’s pretty unlikely to happen to you. And meanwhile you’re exposing yourself to a much more likely threat.

The explanation I saw last spring (ie early on) was that the structure of virus indicated it wasn’t man made. The reason they felt so sure was because the way the virus is constructed, it used elements that bioengineers would have dismissed as ineffective. I haven’t come across any similar technical details to justify why anyone feels it’s lab made.

Here’s the full explanation:

Scientists have said that if the virus was made in a lab then its structure would reveal that it would have been created from viruses that are already known and there would be signs of manipulation.

“These two features of the virus, the mutations in the RBD portion of the spike protein and its distinct backbone, rules out laboratory manipulation as a potential origin for SARS-CoV-2,” Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research and one of the authors of the paper, said in a news release in March.

https://apnews.com/article/9391149002

Holy cow, the CT vax portal is such a mess to navigate! I’ve come across at least three separate systems that you need to register for and look at to see if any appointments are available—you could do just one but then you miss out on the other options. My 87 year old parents were in the first group but they haven’t gotten vaccinated yet bc their appointments aren’t until Friday. Meanwhile my husband just became eligible on Monday and it took me until today to book him an appointment, but luckily I was able to get him something for Next Weds to get the J&J vaccine. And of course there are people who qualified and got the shot on Monday.

Are other states this difficult to deal with??!!

It’s not the lines or waiting that bother me. It’s the fact that they let every healthcare group in the state just set up their own system, instead of having everyone coordinate through VAMS. It’s turned into a game of “who’s on the right portal when it’s being updated”. Elderly people like my parents and people who are dealing with other health concerns are exhausted by it and are giving up, which is leaving them way more vulnerable than younger, healthier folks who don’t mind jumping between tabs and hitting refresh a gazillion times.

I’m sorry that she is struggling so much. Keeping your sister in my thoughts.

I had Covid over a year ago now, and these are my reasons for getting the vaccine as soon as possible (Scheduled for next week!!!)

1. I never was officially confirmed, just presumed positive
2. I’ve dealt with ongoing mild symptoms, and the vaccines seem to help with that
3. From what I’ve read, reinfections, though rare, tend to be more severe
4. While there’s less effectiveness, the vaccines do seem to offer some level of protection against the new variants, and I would be susceptible for those since I had “Original Flavor” Covid
5. Being vaccinated may be a prerequisite for some leisure activities so I might as well have it done now instead of when I want to go do something.

Those are my reasons, if that helps you with your decision making.

Today both me and my 87 year old mom are getting our first shots together. (She had an earlier appointment but had to miss it bc she was hospitalized at the time) A couple of my much older sibs in other states are still not scheduled yet, and my kiddo needs his jab(s), but definitely can feel the momentum continuing to speed up!

I’m assuming they mean natural immunity, ie IIRC with Covid was initially estimated at ~20% who wouldn’t contact it despite being exposed. Or another way to put it: the survivors in the Stand who were the .1% that never got sick instead of the 99.9% who caught Captain Trips and died.

(I’m not sure if the 20% figure actually includes some asymptomatic people or not—I heard it very early on, so it might not be accurate)

I’m so sorry, Dave. I know words on a message board don’t mean much but I’m keeping your family in my thoughts tonight.

This is really promising news for people like me!! Especially in combination with other reports that the vaccines help mitigate many of the Long Covid effects too!

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56538983

For the past 7 months or so, my son has maintained a tight bubble with 3-4 coworkers. They play D&D together, but they’ve been super careful that if any of them are around any new people, they shift to Zoom for a couple of weeks instead of hanging out in person.

My husband is fully vaxxed, I got my first shot a week ago, and I’d managed to score my son his first shot yesterday. We found out Weds night that one of his friends had exposed the entire group on Saturday, bc he went back to in person classes, but it didn’t register in his mind that he was around new people bc he’d been doing zoom for so long. And as you’ve probably already guessed, there was an outbreak at his school and he carried it in to their bubble.

Net result? Two people in the group definitely infected, 3 others now needing to isolate and get tested (and losing hours at work). My husband should be protected by his vaccine, and I’m hoping (based on the article I shared last week) that I’m at least partially protected too. My son had to cancel his appointment and get a nose swab instead, and all three of us need to keep isolating. (If my son is positive, we’ll get tested, but he’s thankfully not showing any symptoms right now). Luckily my next shot is after the 14 day quarantine window, so I don’t need to reschedule yet, but if my son does have it, that’s another potential blow.

And this whole mess is exactly what you are warning about. The first kid let his guard down and stopped perceiving that he was at risk for exposure, which in turn affected the other kids who had been so careful for so long, and we’re just becoming eligible to get their shots.

I had noticeable fatigue about 36 hours after my first Pfizer shot, and my arm was mildly sore. BTW, you can log how you feel after the shots with the CDC so that they can get better info on how prevalent different side effects are.

https://vsafe.cdc.gov/en/?fbclid=IwAR08Wc8Py55t2PBkLm54a_yHNQRyAiUEk99X5NXxFatIplYvxgBF7ppaNxM

My husband got it at the start of March. Had some fatigue and a headache starting about 36 hours later, and it lasted for 1.5 days. Nothing since.

About 14 hours post second shot for me and my 87 year old mom. My mom had a surprisingly strong reaction within a few hours—aches, chills, fatigue, nausea. I’m thinking perhaps it was quick bc she’s been under treatment for lung cancer, so maybe her body is primed for a fight?

I have relatively minor aches, chills, fatigue. I could totally work if I had to but I’m chillaxing in bed bc I can. I’m hoping it doesn’t get worse, but I guess I will see over the next day or so.

I spoke too soon—was sick as a dog with chills, aches and nausea for about a day but feeling much better now. So just 12 days to go until I’m fully vaxxed!

Nothing personal on our end, and not fear-based, but we simply don’t want to socialize as much as we were doing pre-pandemic bc we’ve come to appreciate having a much simpler life. We’re dreading a “return to normal” bc we really like all the time we’ve spent just doing things as a family.

First, very sorry to hear about the degree of damage your girlfriend’s brother is dealing with. My good friend just went through a double lung transplant and it’s a very intense process.

As for visitors in hospitals, both my mom and my MIL have been in the hospital recently and the rules have been one visitor at a time. Regarding Covid infectiousness, when I was trying to find out why I didn’t spread it to my entire office after working while sick, I came across some research that indicated that 80% or so of people stop being contagious after symptoms appear. So perhaps that may explain why it’s okay for him to get visitors now?

I hope you can get vaccinated sooner rather than later so that you can feel less “under siege”. Good luck, and I hope your girlfriend’s brother continues to heal.

And he’s going to have to deal with being immunocompromised for the rest of his life as a result as well. My friend who had a transplant in December for CF is on super strict lockdown right now bc of the numbers of people around her who, like this guy, refused to get vaccinated. She got vaccinated but her immune system is shot from the meds she has to take, so she’s extremely vulnerable. Trust me, the people who live with these conditions are VERY AWARE of how little they matter to their fellow citizens who don’t want to mask up or get vaccinated.

Any discussion of the relative “deadliness” between the 1918 flu and Covid needs to take into account the tools modern medicine has that they didn’t have (or in some cases had, but didn’t use yet) back then such as ventilators, oxygen therapy, and various antiviral drugs. Without those tools, we’d be looking at a much higher death rate for Covid overall.

This article was written in 2019, so “just” comparing the seasonal flu that year to the 1918 pandemic, but I found it a really interesting article in light of the discussions that we’ve been having in this thread.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/healthblog.uofmhealth.org/wellness-prevention/think-flu-season-bad-flash-back-100-years%3famp

When looking at studies, it’s super important to understand whether the results were achieved in the lab vs whether they were observed in actual clinical trials.

Basically lots of substances show promise for killing viruses etc under lab conditions, but when tested in live creatures (animal or human) often show completely different results. So yes, you can find studies that show that lots of things were effective at destroying (Covid, cancer, etc), but when you look closely, it’s almost always recorded in a laboratory. When these substances move into actual human trials, only a tiny fraction of the substances being tested continue to prove effective. That’s why so many “promising” cures end up being abandoned.

Prefacing by pointing out I’m not a trained scientist, but as I’ve mentioned before in this thread, I’ve had Covid, so I’ve followed the discussion on natural immunity post-infection closely. Antibodies themselves only show up for maybe 2-3 months max. After that the speculation has been that T-cells retain the info about whether or not you will fight off Covid again. From what I’ve read about secondary infections, this natural immunity is not as consistently effective as the mRNA based immunity—hence all the reinfections we were hearing about in mid-2020. What currently seems to be the most consistently effective is bolstering natural immunity with vaccine-based immunity, although from what I’m reading about the booster shots, that serves a similar purpose.

Someone like me who had alpha would only show antibodies for a very brief time (if at all—not everyone even showed them), so in a scenario where we are willing to lean on antibody tests in lieu of vaccinations, how would we even monitor it? Would the results only be considered valid for 2-3 months while one demonstrates a positive result? What then? The vaccines have a demonstrated and monitored high level of effectiveness for 6+ months PLUS they are demonstrating a significant effectiveness over many of the variants, which is why they are being relied on over just antibody results. Sure, that level isn’t 100%, but it’s far higher than natural immunity on its own.

It’s like a flowchart of odds, where vaccine gives you benefits at almost every step. Unvaxxed are more likely than vaxxed people to initially catch Covid. They’re more likely to need hospitalization, and they’re more likely to need intubation or to eventually die from Covid. When vaxxed people catch a Covid variant, they can transmit it as easily as a vaxxed person, so at that one specific point, there’s little difference (hence continuing to wear masks, take precautions, etc). But for every other point along the Covid journey, there are measurable benefits to being vaxxed.

Much of the data has been previously linked in this thread, but this visualization is the best I’ve seen lately about the effectiveness of the vaccines.

https://www.jointcommission.org/-/media/tjc/documents/covid19/covid-numbers-perspective-8-30-21.pdf

I got my Pfizer booster yesterday, and just to share for anyone else looking for first hand reports, I previously have had Covid. On Shot 2 I had a moderate flu for about 36 hour. This time I’ve had some minor aches and pains—I’m taking it easy but not bc I have to…bc I *want* to.

I got the shot at CVS here in CT, and as long as you were more than 6 months out, they weren’t asking any other questions about it.

Around here it’s approved at 6 months out too, I believe for all of the vaccines.

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Having been on the support team for my friend who had a double lung transplant last year, a lung transplant is only done as a last resort because of all the types of transplants, it has the worst odds of success. If they are doing them for Covid patients, those patients would literally die otherwise.

My friend needed a transplant because of Cystic Fibrosis, so not due to “lifestyle factors” but many people on the list are there because of conditions brought on by smoking. They don’t screen out people for those choices, so I don’t see them screening people out for needing a transplant bc they weren’t vaccinated. But it’s a self teaching lesson because they will end up spending the rest of their lives as extremely immunocompromised people. Vaccines may be the only thing that gives them any level of protection.

I’ve posted a few times about the long lasting effects of my “mild” case from Feb 2020. Just yesterday I was struggling to catch my breath after walking briskly up one flight of stairs. I run around 10-12 miles a week these days, so I’m not out of shape. I just can’t handle hills and stairs the way I could pre-Covid. There’s a WIDE range of outcomes that fall under “recovered”, and even what seems like an incredibly mild leftover symptom sucks massively if you’re the person experiencing it.

Seeing all the discussion of the adverse events logged against vaccine recipients reminds me of a story about a well-to-do woman who wanted to learn how to forage mushrooms. She found a large patch of a harmless mushroom and decided to gather and cook them up for a dinner party she was having that night. But, since it was the first time she’d ever gathered mushrooms, she wanted to be extra careful, so after the dish was cooked, she fed a little bit to her dog. The dog ate it all quickly and wagged his tail wanting more. He continued to act normally so she turned her focus back to the guests who were just starting to arrive. The dinner party was a hit, and the guests all commented on how delicious the mushroom dish was. As they relaxed at the end of the night with dessert and port wine, one of the maids came in and whispered to her “Ma’am, your dog just died!” The woman stood up horrified and announced to her guests that everyone had to go to the hospital right away!

The next morning, after a long night of discomfort with her and all the guests getting their stomachs pumped, the woman was finally back at home trying to recover. The maid came back in and said “ Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but the gentleman who hit your dog with his car last night is here to apologize to you.”

My husband works at a NY based college and yesterday they decided over the course of the day yesterday to make all finals remote and to close the buildings for the balance of the year. This is after they started to see a significant uptick in positive cases, so very similar to what your neighbor is reporting.

Found out on Thursday that I was in “close contact” with someone on Tuesday who subsequently tested positive. (We were both masked and kept at least 4 feet between us, but we did talk a bit) It was my 87 year old dad’s first Xmas since my mom passed and the plan was to have him over to celebrate, so we had to make the thankless choice between calling everything off of relying on multiple rapid tests to decide. We know that it was too early to get a definite positive, but we kept a close eye for faint positives, and luckily the tests all remained clear so Dad came over for the day.

The next few months are going to suck though bc my FB feed is going buck wild the past three days with ppl testing positive. I don’t see how I can avoid more incidents like this. At $7/test x 3 people in the house, it’s going to get pretty costly to make sure things are safe for my dad.