outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

we're all gonna get covid for christmas

Santa Baby.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/omicron-dominant-wastewater-samples-florida-173842553.html

interesting point in this article: omicron has overtaken delta in Orlando, but hospitalizations are all delta

Most likely because it takes a couple of weeks for
Infection to hospitalization and omicron is new in town

so glad the wife and I already decided we were staying around home for the holidays

This is where the calculus gets tricky for us. We skipped seeing my father-in-law for Christmas last year for obvious reasons, now that we are all vaxxed and boosted we had planned to go see him this year, but all the news this week makes us a little nervous. Thing for my wife, especially, is that he's 83. She, quite understandably, doesn't want to keep skipping seeing him because, well, he's 83.

My mom’s 93 and halfway across the country and I feel like I have no idea when I’ll see her

My sister and her family just flew in from….. South Africa

Haven’t seen them in 3 years

My mom’s 93 and halfway across the country and I feel like I have no idea when I’ll see her

Yeah, to be clear, not putting that out as a "woe is me" post, clearly a lot of people struggling far with far worse situations. Just frustrating how quickly risk calculus can change.

Shut down a job today because the third person on our interview docket had a weird persistent cough

new study, currently saying no evidence that Omicron is milder: https://www.ft.com/content/020534b3-5a54-4517-9fd1-167a5db50786

already dummies misinterpreting the study on both sides.

*This isn't saying "Omicron is definitely not milder", just that there's no evidence CURRENTLY to say that it is with confidence

*It acknowledges that hospitalizations/severe outcomes could likely be the case, just like in SA, but that the reason for it could be prior infection/immunity just as much as mildness.

--- btw could we have a new thread at some point? There's over 15k posts in this one!

holy FUCKING SHIT

i never noticed that

Posts are growing exponentially

If we don't get it under control, at this rate we'll hit 800,000 posts by next spring.

Tbf, the thread precedes covid by some span.

not sure covid is thread worthy

It's no ebola.

Stop posting. Flatten the curve.

This is the key part of the table from this Imperial study showing "no evidence" Omicron is less severe than delta. It's a simple logit regression.

Basically the results tell us "loads of young people got Omicron, and very few of them needed hospital treatment" https://t.co/0ae8L6ofxG pic.twitter.com/Y77di6XaKC

— Peter Sivey (@petesivey) December 17, 2021

bookmarks make all threads short of course. this is an interesting document of sorts.

"outbreak 2: omicron and on"

already dummies misinterpreting the study on both sides.

*This isn't saying "Omicron is definitely not milder", just that there's no evidence CURRENTLY to say that it is with confidence

the comical thing about all this is that the one thing we DO know is that omicron spreads so fast we are definitely gonna know one way or the other about its severity profile two weeks from now, so a huge amount of ink is being wasted arguing about it right now.

OK I guess not really "wasted"; certain aspects of policy response that have to be decided right now do depend on the answer to this question, I guess.

Not just so fast but apparently so easily, given the number of tales I've heard of even boosted people catching it. If you've gotten vaccinated, you've been boostered, and you wear a mask and you are reasonably cautious and it still breaks through, albeit with anecdotally mild symptoms, what else can you do?

Then again, as I understand it the majority of cases locally here have still been delta.

xxpost the thing that annoys me about that are all of the assholes who are like "WHY DON'T WE KNOW YET? OUR LEADERS NEED THIS INFORMATION TO ACT", as if we should wait until we know everything about Omicron before planning to deal with it.

the same people who scream "WHY DON'T WE KNOW WHERE THIS HURRICANE IS GOING YET, LIVES DEPEND ON IT" as if getting warning 5+ days in advance that your area might get hit isn't giving you ample time to prepare and evacuate if you need to, as opposed to waiting until the last minute to find out GPS coordinates for what street the hurricane is going to traipse down

i almost certainly have omicron - i live in london, where it’s rapidly taking over, i’ve been vaxxed and boosted and previously infected with the OG strain - yet my family members continue to test negative, with zero symptoms, including my mother in law who’s supposedly, ha ha, ha ha ha, going back to france on sunday, hahaha.

My wife (elementary school librarian) got new guidance on quarantining. It doesn't actually go into effect until mid-January, though!

btw could we have a new thread at some point? There's over 15k posts in this one!

― kinder, Friday, 17 December 2021 16:25 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a more radical solution to this, something along the lines of a circuit breaker where our "top" ten covid posters maybe take a two week break from blogging here idk

honestly if someone wants to threadban me from this thread, I would welcome it. I can't seem to stop myself, like a bad habit.

ha ha wait is this me

I have a more radical solution to this, something along the lines of a circuit breaker where our "top" ten covid posters maybe take a two week break from blogging here idk

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warehouse-13-artifact-database/images/8/80/Mccarthy_holding_list.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151221030058

Goddam it.
https://progressive.org/downloads/5270/download/Screen%20Shot%202017-01-03%20at%209.48.56%20AM.png?cb=c4a7db57c9e999ed5e304327da730ae3&w=640

(That's two posts, will that count against me?)

Undoubtedly

I’ll gladly « top » you all

#paymentfortoptenposters

I have a more radical solution to this, something along the lines of a circuit breaker where our "top" ten covid posters maybe take a two week break from blogging here idk

― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Friday, 17 December 2021 bookmarkflaglink

rude imo

Guys, this looks really bad

https://scontent-lga3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/262547195_254942183371341_4903698113448173654_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=bTDZ6vpffxsAX8QZWD0&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-2.xx&oh=03_AVKowKYNwxek7NkQ9AY1ot5-rdjbxWNObqDOAsh8NYKV1A&oe=61E1A18F

is that my posting frequency

That looks like my kid's homework.

She's done the projections, and it's even worse than we thought:
https://i.imgur.com/xbTsj9B.jpg

personally i'm taking the same approach to man alive's posts that he takes to good faith attempts to answer that same question he asks every two weeks, i.e. ignoring.

New York Reports Over 20,000 Covid-19 Cases, New Daily High

gonna post this very sane advice from former ILXor kate78:

"Hi friends! The number of deaths from COVID-19 surpassed 800k in the US yesterday, the very same day the UK had reported their highest number of cases ever (and that's *without* counting any reinfections) and some of you have been asking questions. My answers and thoughts:
On a scale of 1-10? As of today, I'm at about a 6.5 on omicron. I was 5.5 on Sunday and last week I was a 4.

If it's been 6 months since your last vaccination, yes, go get boosted now, don't wait. Yes, you can mix and match, but take what you can get. Appointments are getting scarce again; as ever, let me know if you need help tracking one down.

I know everyone's collected an array of cute cloth masks, but it's time to upgrade your game to an N95, KN95, or KF94. You can still wear the cloth masks over 'em. Find some here: https://www.projectn95.org/

Because it takes a few weeks for the data to catch up, the jury is still out on what exactly Omicron will do and how well current treatments and vaccines will end up working. While the picture becomes clearer every day, it doesn't look like we're gonna have a very fun winter. We do not yet know whether omicron is "the virus getting milder" or if this is what infection looks like within a highly immunized population. They're different things and it's probably the latter. Omicron is likely not milder in the unvaccinated (which includes little kids) or those with waning immunity (which includes older people).

But what does "milder" even mean? If you're vaccinated and you catch it, you will almost certainly fare better than if you were unvaccinated. However, lots of people with long COVID have had mild cases and we still know frighteningly little about just what the fuck is going on there (if I can look into my crystal ball for a sec, I think we're still years away from being able to assess the full extent of the long-term damage being done--physically, cognitively, neurologically, especially in kids--and we'll look back on this pandemic as a mass-disabling event).

Omicron really seems to be so much more infectious than previous variants and a variant that spreads more rapidly, even if it's "milder", has the opportunity to cause many more deaths and overwhelm the medical system. In the UK and Denmark, cases are doubling about every one and a half days, an almost perfect example of an exponential increase (schools there have begun to close early for the holiday break). If you get this, you will likely pass it along to other people, some of whom the infection will not be so mild. I really wish we could get away from some of the "whatever, it'll be mild, what me worry?" that I've been seeing. Your personal risk isn't the only thing that matters here.

Seattle, you are doing so much better than most other places on Earth right now: we wear masks, our adult vaccination rate is over 85%, and we only hang out indoors with other vaccinated folks, please continue to rock on. HOWEVER, omicron is circulating in the community, even among the vaccinated. Make good choices. Download the WA Notify app.

Some suggestions: swing by the drugstore and pick up some COVID tests to have on hand. These are very good at telling you if you're positive and less good at telling you if you're negative, but they're better than nothing. If you are planning on being in a crowd for the holidays, take it immediately prior to walking into the event. If you happen to test positive, the only place you should think of going is to get a PCR test. I only mention this because if you end up experiencing long-COVID symptoms, it might be helpful for future treatment to have an official test result with your name on it (for insurance or, god forbid, a disability claim). Obviously, if you are feeling at all unwell, take a test and isolate, even if you think it's just a cold. Data from the Zoe COVID symptom tracker study has indicated that people in London who are reporting typical cold symptoms are more likely to have COVID than a cold. Don't get on a plane if you can avoid it and maybe don't go to that holiday work potluck. Parents, perhaps you should prepare for a return to virtual learning for a bit.

As for my plans, I've starting shrinking my world for the winter: reducing my contacts, avoiding crowds, and not doing stuff like dining indoors. I've only been to one indoor rock show (back in September) and the next one I have tickets to is in March. I am not traveling for pleasure and have stopped traveling for work for the time being. International travel hasn't been a good idea since March of last year and remains not a good idea.

All usual and customary caveats apply! This post will probably be obsolete in a matter of days, if not hours! Hope this has helped a little and not freaked you out too much. Happy holiday and good luck! xoxo"

Epidemic curve in Johannesburg/Pretoria that was straight up and continues straight down suggests we’re missing something fundamental about variant. Either attack rate is narrowed to sub segment of population, we’re undercounting mild or asymptomatic infections, or something else pic.twitter.com/CBOZweAlcL

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) December 17, 2021

xpost good post, thanks for that

yr welcome!

addendum to the Gottlieb thing I just posted

boston sewer tracker shows the same pic.twitter.com/IjpZvCcgyl

— alex lanstein (@alex_lanstein) December 17, 2021

they should make the graph a little more brown