Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

Remember Covid incubates for like a week though so the important thing is not how protected you are on thanksgiving but how protected you are now.

Slight caveat: Delta incubates a bit faster, i.e. 5-7 days.

Right. If you keep the kids secluded(ish) this weekend and do a rapid test or two next week then that’s the best you can do really (other than cancel thanksgiving).

Remember Covid incubates for like a week though so the important thing is not how protected you are on thanksgiving but how protected you are now.

Great point. I mean, she's going to school with other kids as usual, but she's been doing that all semester and the school just hasn't had outbreaks, and we don't have any plans to do anything outside our usual routine this weekend, so I feel pretty good about it now.

Vast majority at the airport wearing masks, most properly, though maybe not the guy with the "this mask is more useless than Joe Biden" mask. But it's 80 degrees in here and Thanksgiving morning and the people already stuffing their face with pizza, fried chicken and god knows what else they're selling here is grosser than covid.

Pizza and fried chicken are both good, actually

My 7yo got his 2nd shot an hour ago. Bracing for side effects.

Email/call from the high school tonight:

Dear xxx Staff, Students, and Families,
As we reported yesterday, we have seen a concerning uptick in positive cases of COVID19. As of today, we have seventeen (17) new cases in the past week. We have been in close communication with the xxx Department of Public Health about the situation. The health department has directed us to immediately cancel all clubs, athletics, and extra-curricular activities including practices and competitions effective Saturday, December 4 through winter break.

We understand that this announcement is disappointing and frustrating, especially as our winter extra-curricular activities were just getting underway. However, protecting the health and safety of our entire community is our utmost priority. As a result, we are working to gather more information, thoroughly determine the best course of action for the next two weeks, and get answers to the many questions that this announcement will generate. We greatly appreciate your patience as we do so. Please be on the lookout for more information coming from us this weekend.

People are PISSED. 17 cases? Seriously? It's a school of 3400+ kids. These kids (over 80% vaxxed) have gone through so much, and dealt with so much, for literally *years* at this point. And they on a Friday drop that they're cancelling all the stuff the kids like most for ... what? To what end? For what purpose? And, like, clubs and sports and the like are the problem, but not school itself? And what are all these kids going to do instead of their clubs? They're just going to hang out with their friends and do other things that might spread covid. It's all so frustrating. The communication on the national and local level has been so inconsistent, unclear and contradictory, with no expressed triggers or aims. Maddening.

Just saw that on the news tonight. That seems an… excessive step, especially given the vaxx rates.

All I know is that when the People's Republic of Oak Park revolt against over-regulation and over-precaution, you know you've gone too far.

Just got a clarifying email that somewhat justified the decision. Here's the meat of it, which can perhaps be extrapolated across the nation as a whole, given this is a high-vax area in a cautious state:

The number of new cases this week puts the high school community transmission rate at 425 cases/100,000 persons. This is four times higher than the overall local rate of 110/100K. (For reference, 100/100K is considered a high rate of transmission.)

This is despite having a high rate of vaccination for students and employees. Overall 81% of our students and 90% of our employees are vaccinated. Yet, of our positive cases right now, 76% are fully vaccinated. However, most students are six months past their vaccination date, their immunity may be waning, and they are not yet eligible for a booster shot.

In the midst of an outbreak, the number of positive cases changes rapidly. Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen a steady rise in cases, nearly 30 overall, with the majority occurring over the past week, and 8 cases over the past two days.

There are an average of 50-70 contacts that need to be traced for each positive case. This typically results in finding an even higher number of positive cases. As a result, we believe that 17 is not the final number of cases for last week, and new cases will continue to be identified.

Even though we added additional mitigations, our cases have continued to rise. Vaccinated close contacts--which formerly did not need to take any special precautions--are not allowed to participate in any activities unmasked and asked to eat lunch away from others. They also were advised to get a PCR test 5-7 days after exposure.

Certain mitigations recommended for schools simply aren’t feasible at the high school level. For starters, the size of many of our classrooms does not allow for optimal social distancing. Additional mitigations such as restricting students to one classroom, quarantining specific classrooms, moving to different start and end times, and adding additional teachers and classrooms to reduce class size aren’t possible.

The obvious question is whether this is happening now because omicron is already here and is spreading among vaccinated populations faster than previous strains were able to. (I mean, it's definitely already here in the US, the question is whether there's already a cluster in Oak Park.)

Yeah, I wonder. I guess they'd need to do some strain-specific tests first, right?

Some experts are saying we shouldn't consider two shots "fully vaccinated" anymore unless they were recent.

Key:

However, most students are six months past their vaccination date, their immunity may be waning, and they are not yet eligible for a booster shot.

That is a really good point and makes me wonder whether the cases are all students or whether the same thing is happening with boosted teachers.

Anyway I think most people including me are not really grappling with what it will mean if there's a strain that March 2020-level mitigation measures are not capable of containing.

Not to mention that I highly doubt that many state or city leaders have the will to impose any strict lockdowns or mandates that would come even close to March 2020 levels. Even setting aside the Texases and Floridas, I highly doubt even Pritzker, who I think handled the pandemic reasonably well (at least against the low bar or other American governors) has the political will to enforce any stay at home order.

My (perhaps naive) hope is that it’s a combination of waning vaccines and maybe Omicron is spreading faster, but is less serious. Hopefully we will know more in the coming weeks. I don’t doubt that it’s already here and I’m greater numbers, because we seem to be doing fuck all for following strains here until it’s well too late.

I have to say this is looking pretty ominous. R appears to be about 4x (!) that of delta (delta was 1.7x alpha and alpha was 1.5x the wild strain) and as others have said the political will is not there to mitigate any more. Difficult to see how we avoid a wave at least as big as (possibly much much bigger than) previous ones in terms of case numbers. Would be surprised if this didn’t result in similar scenes in hospitals to the last ones.

I just have to hold out hope hat the vaccines/booster combo is shown to hold up and perform well against Omicron, since we can't count on vaccination rates to help us out.

Because I mean, if not... what? We're completely fucked I guess.

Good evening!

Virologists I follow seem to be less worried (which isn't to say NOT worried but confident we're not back at square one immunity wise).

Not that you need to be to have a serious wave but there are other confounders that need answering like:

*Is it as virulent, more virulent, or less than other strains? (Sadly, this will probably take months to answer).

*Reinfection, how long ago did these reinfected get infected the first time? Which strain? Did they get vaxxed after? A recent study indicated 36% of infected don't create antibodies. And they don't necessarily last forever.

*Omicron didn't have much to replace as Delta was very limited at the time Omicron showed up. Reinfections happened at an alarming rate, but it's hard to extrapolate how it will react in a country like the US, where Delta is exploding in some regions, less so in others.

*It was easier to extrapolate what Delta might do elsewhere after it hit the UK as the UK had a higher level of vaccination at the time and cases were still growing at an alarming rate. South Africa has only 28% of it's population fully vaccinated, and much less boosted. So it's hard to map this to more vaccinated populations.

*Whether or not vaccine induced immunity is better than natural infection only also matters. A lot of studies seemed to say vaccine immunity was superior but now there are scientists publicly debating whether it truly is that much better to make a difference re: Omicron.

*How will boosters impact Omicron?

It's worrying but there are still a ton of unanswered questions. I don't think it's going to be a nothing burger but just gonna try and be patient.

That there are already voices claiming with firm confidence that the virus is more/less virulent is fucking stupid

One thing I think we can say with high confidence is that a lot of people globally who aren’t vaccinated and haven’t had covid before are going to get covid (possibly almost all of them) and the implications of that haven’t changed since 2020.

Yes that much is true

Okay folks, time for a South Africa update, focused this time on severity of disease.

First up, the report from hospitals in Tshwane (the district furthest along in Omicron wave) is essential reading, as is thread from @miamalan https://t.co/5GNwrNJHsk
https://t.co/2U0wkjNFgy

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) December 4, 2021

don’t worry guys

We're eight months into this pandemic, and Donald Trump still doesn't have a plan to get this virus under control.

I do.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 16, 2020

Okay folks, time for a South Africa update, focused this time on severity of disease.

First up, the report from hospitals in Tshwane (the district furthest along in Omicron wave) is essential reading, as is thread from @miamalan https://t.co/5GNwrNJHsk
https://t.co/2U0wkjNFgy
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) December 4, 2021
― Cool Im An Situation (Neanderthal), Sunday, 5 December 2021 01:23 (thirty-six minutes ago) link

I need to find an up to date source, but I think this thread is getting one very important thing wrong, or eliding one very important fact: as far as I can find, the Gauteng province vaccination rate is NOT high. It's high *for South Africa.* As of about two weeks ago, the *total number of doses administered* was 6,689,000. But the population is over 12 million.

This is arbitrary, but if you assume that, say, 3/4 of those doses have gone to people who have had their first and second, and the other 1/4 are first dose onlies, that's only 40% fully vaccinated at best.

Meanwhile, South Africa's total vaccination rate is 24%. I guess to be fair he also cites the high number of people who have already had COVID. But I thought the experts were saying natural immunity is lower than vaccine immunity. In any case, it doesn't seem like you can assume that it's immunity causing the lower severity rate vs mutations in the virus.

It's also interesting to me that they have a statistic for "incidental COVID admissions" (people who were admitted for other conditions and then a test showed they had COVID). And it's 3/4 of COVID hospitalizations. I wish they would report that statistic here. If those are included in "COVID hospitalizations" then it really exaggerates the severity of the wave.

in the UK you get pcr tested for free if you (say that you) meet certain conditions, eg having one of the three main symptoms.

in SA I believe there are no conditions but it costs approx $50 to test. this will exclude a lot of ppl from testing, so it's no surprise that it's not being caught (and a sample sequenced) until hospitalization.

It’s definitely not surprising, it’s just that that means we are including what are merely positive tests in the hospitalization rate. So that really distorts any assessment of the severity of a variant - if it’s more contagious it’s going to inevitably lead to more “COVID hospitalizations” if you define that as anyone hospitalized with anything who also has a positive COVID test.

Our high school, I suspect as compromise, is finally doing a bunch of shit they should have been doing from the start. They are providing KN95 masks for all kids and asking everyone to be more diligent about it. They are spacing people out at lunch and, because there really isn't enough space to do that, allowing all grades to go off campus to eat. And maybe most importantly of all, they are saliva testing all kids in PE today. The way it worked before was so dumb they might as well have done nothing (and functionally did). Before, saliva testing was opt-in (it still is!), scheduled during lunch, and - most pointless of all - optional. So kids first had to opt in to the program, then take time out of their lunch to wait in line to be tested. Needless to say, apparently approximately 100/3400 kids participated. Making everyone get tested during PE makes soooooo much more sense, and should hopefully provide a more accurate picture of the state of things. Reinstating sports and activities will be the reward for good results/habits.

Oh, love this final addendum to the latest memo:

One last note: We need students to respect each other’s privacy. It is not ok to pressure fellow students to reveal their vaccination status

Given how serious Omicron could easily be, some people might be breathing a sigh of relief if the worst possibilities are ruled out (I think they will be). But that still leaves a lot of possibilities most of which are Really Not Good. However this is not a thread about that 1/n

— Bill Hanage (@BillHanage) December 6, 2021

A little over a week since it was announced it is already clear that Omicron is really serious. Some important pieces of evidence have begun to coalesce. While the worst outcomes still seem unlikely, what we have is quite bad enough to be going on with, a thread, with nuance 1/n

— Bill Hanage (@BillHanage) December 5, 2021

1/zzzzzzzzz

Will you stop?

I'm just tired of the social media whiplash -

"Omicron is actually not as scary as it sounds, here's why"

*scroll*

"Here's why the news about Omicron is all terrible and scary"

Not that anyone is necessarily wrong, it's just all so fucking exhausting.

My point being, obviously, yes, I get that we don't know everything yet. Maybe both the optimists and the pessimists need to tone it the fuck down until we do know a little more.

I like doom and gloom as much as the next person, possibly more, but on that last point, check out this needlessly alarmist WaPo headline:

British vaccine developer Sarah Gilbert says next pandemic ‘could be worse’ than coronavirus.

Well, yeah.

I asked my mom, a retired but still licensed physician who spent most of her career working in low-income pediatric clinics, if we (the world) would have handled covid better had it been much more deadly, and her response was "we'd all be dead." Love ya, mom!

Stick with Peter Hotez imo. He's been ahead of the curve most of the pandemic. And isn't a doomer or a false-hoper

Q: Will we be made safer and saner by obsessive following of each new tweet and each potential new interpretation of a potential new development - plus the subsequent tweets saying why the previous new interpretation was wrong?

Or will we be better off just getting our shots and wearing our masks and keeping our distance as we have been all along?

Like, seriously, is there some different way I should go to the grocery store because of the new name of the flavor of thing we're all justifiably terrified about and doing our best to curtail?

Good read:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/omicron-variant-best-strategy-omicron-boost-original-vaccine-rcna7451

Okay I read that but really I just want to know whether to sometimes go to the grocery store because we need milk and I don't quite understand why delta means I probably can, but omicron means maybe I shouldn't... or... something?

Like, I am really not following what this stuff means in terms of how to live

wear a mask, get boosted, get milk

I mean, fuckin delta is still a big problem. Take the usual precautions.

Thanks, Alfred. Right, so, is there any reason for normal citizens to obsess over which variant is burbling where, and what the leading edge of science is saying about, like, any of this?

Because I don't have the time or energy to follow the twists and turns, and I don't quite understand how or why any normie non-scientist is supposed to keep up with it. Like, if any of you are doing so, um, cool, I guess, but I don't quite understand why this is where you're putting your mental energy rn

I like doom and gloom as much as the next person, possibly more, but on that last point, check out this needlessly alarmist WaPo headline:

British vaccine developer Sarah Gilbert says next pandemic ‘could be worse’ than coronavirus.

that headline is lifted from the guardian. when people complain about the nominally serious press in the US getting things wrong, i am always like "how many levels are you on you are like a little baby".

Alfred otm, really.

I do agree that obsessively following every new wrinkle, not to mention the thousand hot takes spurred by each new wrinkle, is probably doing all of our heads a disservice. I had consciously stepped back again in recent weeks and was fairly successful in doing so, but Omicron being omnipresent everywhere has made that even more difficult.

I sort of keep going back and forth between "things will be better again someday" and "well, I guess today is the new normal and I should adjust to that fact and plan accordingly". The latter is probably more healthy overall and avoids the false hope of the former, but it also means not planning to someday resume some of the things we still aren't doing (vacations, indoor concerts, indoor dining, etc.), which can lead to a different sort of despair.