outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

The online booking systems for CVS and Walgreens are garbage where I am. Ended up going to an urgent care and was surprised with a $25 charge. Oh well.

I think the vaccine itself is free, that's probably some sort of general co-pay for medical services. So far everything covid-related we've had to deal with here has been completely free, with the exception of home antigen tests. When I went in for a drive-through PCR test the other week they didn't ask for anything more than my name, address, phone number and email.

it'll be an interesting situation if i ever have to prove i have a booster. i have my original vaccination card, now torn in half and held together with tape, and then when I got the booster (at a CVS), i was like "should we add this onto my old vaccination card or is there a new one?" and he looked at the old card for a minute, then said "no, it doesn't look like there's a space for it. just hold onto the receipt and, of course, it'll in the CVS system". hahaha, right

I got a new card with my booster -- the aide just transcribed the first two vaccine info.

Depending on where you live your covid vaccination record is probably with the state too. Mine from https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/ has my booster within 48 hours. Admittedly I don’t get out much but I’ve never been anywhere the digital cars wasn’t accepted.

Anecdotal because we still have a handful at home and I haven't tried to source any myself for several months, but heard from several people this week that they are having a lot of trouble finding at home COVID tests.

Biden's personally delivering them iirc

Explains the Trans Am blasting Foreigner I keep seeing spinning around the neighborhood.

joe biden: america's sexy dad

What's hard for me is that I really can't make a rational case that I shouldn't dial back my interactions with other people, since there is a substantial chance -- I guess I'd say less than 50/50, but enough to pay attention to -- that my current vaccination status is not going to afford me much protection against omicron. Like, I am supposed to go see my over-75 parents in two weeks. Should I cancel it? They haven't asked me to or even raised the question. But until we know more about relation between omicron and existing mRNA vaccine, isn't there a real risk I pick it up and carry it to them?

And yet nobody around me is changing anything or talking about changing anything.

You can substitute "delta" for "omicron."

Are they vaccinated and boosted? Then, yeah, visit them. If you're eating indoors or hanging out in large parties indoors, I'd cool it in the days before visiting them -- the same precaution I took in August with delta and April with the other variants.

They're vaccinated and boosted, and so am I. And I don't think one can substitute "delta" for "omicron" because we have known for a while that current vaccines provide very good protection against delta. I don't want my parents to be exposed to delta but I like their chances if they are. Omicron I don't know.

The point is, we didn't know 100% in April and May as it spread. I mean, you do you. Has omicron spread enough that I'd worry about seeing my boosted parents? I wouldn't. You may think otherwiise.

Speaking for myself, I mask in my classrooms and any time I speak to a colleague at work -- we still observe those professional courtesies. I test myself voluntarily every Monday or Tuesday on campus. I hang out inside a coffee shop masked for three or four hours. I just left a meeting with students and their advisor at which every person -- let me stress, every person -- was unmasked in a classroom except me.

Those things, and avoiding crowded indoor settings where I'm unmasked, are my risk mitigation. They give me the confidence to visit friends and my parents indoors. It helps that Miami-Dade has averaged a 3% positivity rate for weeks (we'll see. I expect a spike).

Again, you asked for advice. I gave it to you.

It is appreciated

The omicron variant is likely to have picked up genetic material from another virus that causes the common cold in humans, according to a new preliminary study, prompting one of its authors to suggest omicron could have greater transmissibility but lower virulence than other variants of the coronavirus.

Researchers from Nference, a Cambridge, Mass.-based firm that analyzes biomedical information, sequenced omicron and found a snippet of genetic code that is also present in a virus that can bring about a cold. They say this particular mutation could have occurred in a host simultaneously infected by SARS-CoV-2, also known as the novel coronavirus, and the HCoV-229E coronavirus, which can cause the common cold. The shared genetic code with HCoV-229E has not been detected in other novel coronavirus variants, the scientists said.

The study is in preprint and has not been peer-reviewed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12/04/omicron-coronavirus-transmissible-cold-variant/

Encouraging

While we still need more data, see here stating that most patients contributing to the hospitalized numbers were hospitalized for another reason and found to be SARS-CoV-2 upon admission screen. H/T: @emilybethwong pic.twitter.com/786uPqHCOb

— Chise 🧬🧫🦠💉🔜 MFF (@sailorrooscout) December 4, 2021

🦠 There’s a lot we don’t yet understand about Omicron, including its impact on immunity and what it means for vaccines. New data will be emerging over the next few wks, which could be misinterpreted w/o context. What we might expect & how to interpret the emerging data? 🧵(1/n)

— Muge Cevik (@mugecevik) December 3, 2021

Yesterday, I walked into a Walgreen's 2 blocks away to schedule a booster, walked out an hour later injected with the requested Moderna booster (rather than a 3rd Pfizer shot). If only other preventative health care was this frictionless.

Why did you switch?

6 of 7 dentists back Pfizer

i got boosted today. pfizer on top of 2x AZ. i think the kids call this “candy flipping”. i don’t “feel it” yet though.

i hear that makes you hairier

strawberry fields forever

xp James: There are early studies that find mixing with a "heterologous" boosters has a greater on antibody titers, eg Table 2 in [this US study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8528081/). Benefits for mixing prime and boost vaccinations seem pretty minor if both are mRNA vaccines, but there's a great improvement when the J&J prime vaccination is followed by one of the mRNA vaccines as booster. J&J perhaps erred in not trialing a two dose regimen.

For those outside the US initially given the AstraZeneca vaccine, early studies indicate that boosting with the mRNA vaccines increases antibodies more than a AstraZeneca boost ([French study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04120-y), [Bavarian study](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949414), [Saarland study](https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1034243/v1/086afaa4-ca6d-43b3-a15d-17d60b8e7a0c.pdf?c=1636141249)), but the magnitude isn't as great as seen mixing J&J prime and mRNA boost in the US study.

As for why Moderna? Maybe I just wanted to try all the flavors.

Oops on the formatting.

early studies indicate that boosting with the mRNA vaccines increases antibodies more than a AstraZeneca boost

I should hope so after getting delta a few weeks ago after 2 AZs. I fucking knew when they told me I was getting AZ back in spring that it was going to be the shit one. of course it's anecdotal but everyone I know who's had breakthrough infections had AZ. nobody I know who got Pfizer has had covid at all.

cool, cool

Jen Psaki somewhat mockingly asks reporter at the White House Daily Press Briefing if the US should be sending out rapid #COVID19 tests to every household.

In the UK you can order 1 pack (containing 7 tests) everyday. https://t.co/ErnSsiLxxl pic.twitter.com/L7ruKWdy5n

— Matt Karolian (@mkarolian) December 6, 2021

I HATE HER SO MUCH

"We share the same objective, except we've all decided that fealty to an unrestrained free market of rent-seeking ghouls is more important than ending the pandemic."

"Early data from the Steve Biko and Tshwane District Hospital Complex in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, which is at the centre of the outbreak, showed that on December 2 only nine of the 42 patients on the Covid-19 ward, all of whom were unvaccinated, were being treated for the virus and were in need of oxygen.

The remainder of the patients had tested positive but were asymptomatic and being treated for other conditions."

"The pattern of milder disease in Pretoria is corroborated by data for the whole of Gauteng province. Eight per cent of Covid-positive hospital patients are being treated in intensive care units, down from 23 per cent throughout the Delta wave. And just 2 per cent are on ventilators, down from 11 per cent.

Although the total number of Covid-positive patients in Gauteng’s hospitals is approaching the level it reached at the same stage of the Delta wave, researchers said a large proportion received treatment for other conditions. And the number of Covid patients in intensive care is one quarter of what it was three weeks into the Delta outbreak."

www.ft.com/content/d315be08-cda0-462b-85ec-811290ad488e

Good news is better than bad news

But look, it's good to read whatever tea leaves there are in the cup, but inside of a month we are going to have very good worldwide data about how many thousands of people infected with omicron are doing

So if Omicron does turn out to be milder, does that mean it would be in countries' best interest to reverse their travel bans? Is it better for it to spread more widely and out-compete the more deadly strains?

travel bans are a pretense

A pretense I guess unless you have travel plans.

most experts are pointing out it still wouldn't be good for the entire world to have the same cold at the same time. people could still be hospitalized! even if it was a much milder form of COVID, heavy transmission could lead to a run on hospitals.

courting an epidemic disease instead of evading it is never a good idea

that's not what my friend the psychologist's chiropractor said

before farting and laughing

the ft article glosses over an important point.

the average age of people with omicron in SA is lower than the average age of people with delta, because we (the world, including SA) vaccinated a bunch of older people since the delta wave.

effectively they're looking at a bunch of older people getting very sick with delta and a bunch of younger people getting less sick with omicron and concluding that the difference is due to omicron being milder than delta, rather than the patients being younger.

i mean it might be due to omicron being mild! i don't think anyone can say at this point. but that's the kind of extremely confounding variable you'd home to see the FT mention more prominently than "may be a bit skewed" near the end of the article.

unfortunately Fauci has already started jumping on some of these reports and is having his words twisted by the likes of the NY Post (for obvious reasons). he said it's almost certain that Omicron isn't more severe than Delta (which even that seems a little early to say), but that it remains to be seen if it's less severe.

Post runs an article saying Fauci said "it's almost certainly less severe". and that'll be the takeaway for millions of people, who are already saying "well this shit's milder, so I guess we can breathe".

why is he speaking so soon? well, because you have a lot of blue check scientists spouting doomerism that is being circulated and sending people into a panic, so they're forced into the situation of "do we let that become the narrative, or do we counter it with positive things we might know", but idk that rushing into suggesting it's milder is the right counter-strategy, esp since once people hear that, they'll throw their masks away (again).

meanwhile Delta is still ripping the globe a new asshole.

I think it was YMP who recently pointed out that journalists will always target a storyline that changes rapidly over stories that are slow-moving, no matter if the slow one is hugely important and far-reaching. Delta has become a static storyline. Omicron is the hot new story that changes daily.

effectively they're looking at a bunch of older people getting very sick with delta and a bunch of younger people getting less sick with omicron

The article is looking at 42 people, not a bunch, and from that small a sample you can't presume the population involved, there just isn't enough information.

lot of chatter around how we may see a hybrid wave of Delta-Omicron in many communities currently facing a hefty Delta wave\. Hotez is championing that ,as well as a few others.

and that'll be the takeaway for millions of people, who are already saying "well this shit's milder, so I guess we can breathe".

Given so many tens of millions here didn't give much of a shit about delta or its antecedents, even before the vaccine, I'm not sure what difference it makes if the latest variant is stronger *or* milder.

Agreed, I'm so cynical, but it really does seem like there is ~30% (or more, depending on the region) of this country that will just never get vaccinated, no matter what.

COVID speculation is exhibit A in my case that everyone needs their gahdamn twitter access taken away from them immediately and forever afterward. You might as well gaze into your tv static and divine the latest variant news.

There sure seems to be a whole ton of optimism in the touring world, it seems like 4-5 major tour announcements a day for the past week or so.

Not that I blame any touring artists for putting this on hold for so long and not having anything to plan, but it's still weird to switch tabs between COVID updates and new tour announcements.