outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

I'm as skeptical about Cuba's claims as I am about Florida's #bothsides

tbh i'm more skeptical about florida's numbers.

portugal is wild. did not see that coming a couple of months ago.

We beat em but are sadly unreported

Why do this?

https://detroit.chalkbeat.org/2021/11/17/22788007/detroit-public-schools-remote-learning-friday-december-covid-spread

Spread is not going to be materially affected by 3 off-days, "deep cleaning" is not going to do anything about COVID -- why give up three days of in-person instruction? I don't get it.

My gut says it's a way for them to spin staff shortages into something else. Chicago Public Schools suddenly announced a "vaccine awareness" day, during which they did absolutely nothing to help get more kids vaccinated (less than 2% of the students in the district did get vaccinated that day). It later came out that they didn't have enough teachers and subs to open that day.

Apparently Seattle did the same thing with a Friday off, but they were at least upfront about staff issues being the reason.

Well, that makes sense, there's a very notable sub shortage in my (well-resourced relative to Detroit) school district too.

That's a thing that i think goes under-reported - it's largely subs and aides that are desperately needed and of course, underpaid. In my district they don't even get health insurance.

It goes under-reported because fixing it would cost money and it's much easier to say "critical race theory is what's holding our schools back and we can solve it by flushing the wrong kind of books out of the library"

God, don't remind me. We were just talking about shoring up a policy in preparation for the kinds of book burning attacks that have been happening the past two years.

Well, there's also the whole, "we fund our public schools in way that is completely insane and unjustifiable" issue, which isn't talked about *at all*.

There we go. FDA clears Moderna and Pfizer's Covid vaccine booster shots for ALL U.S. adults. Just like that. https://t.co/i3o2juKoPs

— Chise 🧬🧫🦠💉🔜 MFF (@sailorrooscout) November 19, 2021

we've got another 'covid winter' comin' up. i'm glad I sneaked in getting some minor medical needs attended to between July and October.

Let's hope it's a spike (which I expect) and not a surge. Looks like Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Michigan are doing worst.

Illinois isn't quite as bad as those states yet, but not quite as high yet. It's not surprising, given other countries, but still frustrating. Just glad my son's sequence has started and my wife and I will both be boosted by Monday. All we can do at this point.

What do you guys reference for nationwide metrics? I’ve been

*only checking nyc figures on gothamist for awhile

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-18/covid-delta-sub-variant-is-spreading-fast-in-u-k-survey-shows

That represents a 2.8% daily growth rate for sub-variant AY.4.2 over the course of the REACT survey, from Oct. 19 to Nov. 5, the researchers said. Still, the new sub-variant seemed less likely to cause symptomatic Covid.

iiiiinteresting

Whoa. Get boosted.

Slides for ACIP meeting are up. Pfizer's 3 dose vs. 2 dose study is up: https://t.co/A2UABg1QSz pic.twitter.com/rL3hDkPdWp

— Edward Nirenberg (@ENirenberg) November 19, 2021

xpost of course the news bytes regarding delta sub-variant is the 'more contagious', people neglecting quotes like the following

Christina Pagel, director of the Clinical Operational Research Unit at University College London, told CNBC there’s no reason to be concerned over the variant yet.

“Delta compared to alpha was around 60% more transmissible, it was doubling every week,” she said. “This is going up by a percent or two a week — it’s much, much slower. So in that sense, it’s not a big disaster like delta was. It will probably gradually replace delta over the next few months. But there’s no sign it’s more vaccine resistant, (so) at the moment I wouldn’t be panicking about it.”

or the possibility that it's making people less sick (which admittedly they say it's too early to say for certain)

The "boosters approved for all adults" thing is funny to me, in my world every adult has already gotten the booster because nobody at Walgreens cares whether you're formally "eligible" and I just can't see the slightest moral issue with "taking somebody else's spot" at this point, it's easy as heck to get these appointments.

the vast majority of people who have got the booster already were in fact eligible but many didn't know it because of the CDC's inscrutable recommendations that recommended boosters for like 90% of the population using incomprehensible language.

it's easy as heck to get these appointments.

not in my neck of the woods

What do you guys reference for nationwide metrics?

I bounce around, but I look at covidactnow.org pretty much daily.

http://www.covidactnow.org sorry

not in my neck of the woods

Same here. To be clear, it wasn't as difficult as it was back in March and April or anything, but I was really surprised by how difficult it was compared to what I'd heard. It took me a week of searching, on and off, to find one that didn't require a 20-30 minute drive and time off of work. Even then the first appointment I could get was a week out (this Sunday, finally). The Walgreen's within a 10 mile radius had nothing open until the week after Thanksgiving and our local health system had nothing until after Christmas! I think my timing landed right when it opened up for the 5-11 crowed, which was good news and certainly explained some of the difficulty, but it took much more patience and hunting than I expected.

another source for nationwide metrics, recommended to me by a statistics professor:

https://globalepidemics.org/key-metrics-for-covid-suppression/

Also, jumping back to yesterday's discussion about school shortages. We JUST NOW got an email that our district has to abruptly cancel school Monday and Tuesday of next week (we were already off Wednesday) due to staff shortages.

So, uh, yeah. There are definitely bigger problems and more important things in the world right now, but struggling to find childcare for two days on a Friday afternoon (along with every single parent in the entire city) is not something I needed to add to the pile.

That sucks, jvc. Tbh I think it's a little crazy that workplaces expect people to show up the week of Thanksgiving. It has always seemed a wasted week to me— school never had much going on, and neither has work. Why keep up the charade?

Oh I don't disagree but, well, long story and I have to be here at least the first two days of the week.

Oh I totally get it. I also have to work on Monday and Tuesday. It's still absurd.

My university is fully open until Thursday. I usually cancel Wednesday class.

Students start break on Wednesday, but we're open that day still for staff.

I cancelled class Wednesday because I teach at 8:30 and there's no way any of my already sporadically-attending students were going to show up for that.

Good thread

Trying to keep objective.
But looking at the numbers around boosters, my main concern is that the results are being absurdly undersold.
Most people are sick of COVID, sick of being told what to do, and are thinking of boosters are a nice-to-have.
They are transformative.
(1/4) pic.twitter.com/coSDo7YtpD

— Paul Mainwood (@PaulMainwood) November 18, 2021

Moderna Booster Update: 8+ months

People question long term data on the vaccine. I'm the longest term data there is at 20+ months post vax.

8+ months ago I was boosted.

I now had a 2nd LabCorp test my blood for antibodies, and I am STILL off the charts still at >2,500U/ml pic.twitter.com/hlrzuMjVjk

— Neal Browning (@NealBrowning) November 16, 2021

wow, thanks

That is what I like to hear.

xp Yeah thanks for posting that.

Holy fuck

What really sucks is that while "we need more data before issuing boosters" is a reasonable position (and my position), a lot of blue-check voices started to say they were immoral or completely unnecessary.

So you got people who don't want them cos "the vaccine clearly doesn't work ", but also people who won't because it's unethical to hoard vaccine, or think only immunocompromised or elder people need them.

Agree that they have to fix the messaging because I was one of those people that was convinced they were a bad idea not that long ago

I would be totally fine with annual boosters, but unfortunately we live in a society. So the prospect that recurring boosters might not be necessary is extremely good news.

Definitely

lol caek

probly be mixed into the flu shot eventually or can mrna not do that or whatever?

shit can we get the vaccine mixed in with molly

where we at with those pills anyways?

My husband and I got our booster and our flu shots at the same time this evening. One in each arm, and the shoulder in my flu arm is killing me.

i was actually surprised how much my arm hurt after the flu shot too, as it hadn't happened in previous years

I had the flu/booster combo in different arms too — the flu arm hurt most at first, but the COVID arm hurt more the second day. Felt fine otherwise tho. But people’s reactions to the booster seem to vary widely.