outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

"... but then I took an arrow to the knee"

Karl, I’m with you. Sounds like great news! Hopefully it pans out.

IL and Cook County just yesterday broke the daily record for # of new cases. (clicks play on Tony! Toni! Toné! 'Feels Good' cassingle)

JUST IN: Air travel is HIGHER than pre-pandemic levels. TSA says it screened more people at airports yesterday than on the same day in 2019. 2.08 million vs 1.94 million.

— Pete Muntean (@petemuntean) December 23, 2021

Not great.

great time to be a viral pathogen

This is good

I’ve been writing a small, practical, maximally chill omicron newsletter for friends and family for a few weeks. It’s not about policy or even really data, just neighborly summaries of useful stuff.

I’m opening it up to a wider group for awhile: https://t.co/CtgERjLR6q

— Erin Kissane (@kissane) December 23, 2021

(Erin was one of the volunteers providing reliable national data about the US while trump was obstructing his own agencies)

just got two texts from people who were at small gatherings I was at (both 6 people) saying they tested positive. my brother's girlfriend just tested positive too. just in time for Christmas!! feel like more people I know have tested positive in the last month than the rest of the pandemic combined. luckily no one has gotten all that ill. I feel like a have a little cold and a little sore throat, but nothing serious. we've all tested negative but I guess I'm just gonna assume I have it

sadly that's wise, until you get definitive confirmation :(. sorry to hear that, man.

really surprised I haven't seen more of my circle reporting infection - during Delta, they popped up every other day. I think Florida right now is seeing more explosion in South FL but Central Florida has been almost all Omicron for a while.

hoping you somehow manage to avoid it and that if you do get it, it's nothing serious and you can clear it fast.

we decided to keep our pre-k daughter out of school this week because the school had multiple exposures (in other classes) over the last few weeks and if she was exposed this week, we wouldn't be able to spend the next two weekends celebrating the holidays with our families. It was tough, especially for my wife to be home all day with her, though we know we're lucky that it was even feasible for us to do that.

guess what notification we got today from our principle?

Jesus, Eric Feigl-Ding is really leaning into the doom and gloom, huh? He’s loving this.

Not “vague”—➡️We are staring at a thermonuclear-level bad pandemic 2.0 HMOG wave with #Omicron heading straight at us with BILLIONS infected in the next 3 months (@IHME_UW)—while some hand-wave it’s slightly milder—all while many choose to stay ignorant of exponential math.🔥 https://t.co/V1lz8xusGO

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) December 24, 2021

I mean, Omicron does not look good but “thermonuclear”?

DeWald is pretty bad too, she follows lunatic crank AJ Leonardi and posts shit like EF-D often, even though she also makes salient points that often get buried BECAUSE of that.

EF-D needs to be deplatformed completely.

Particularly annoyed to see people like Judd Apatow signal boosting him tonight.

even Dr Peter Hotez shares his shit sometimes which drives me nuts, as the guy gets basic science wrong fairly often

i'm trying to tag some of his peers but they get tagged in so much they'll never see it.

a lot of them also have him blocked already

*posts some guy's tweets*

Really annoyed to see ppl platforming this guy's tweets tonight.

Yep, you got me. I’m properly called out. My posting itt reaches the exact same audience as Judd Apatow’s 2.4 million followers. People just love my posts that much.

You’re an asshole.

Yeah, that last part was unnecessary, it’s just been a long week and I have zero patience for people that only pop into threads with the sole purpose of trolling or policing posts for imagined lapses in posting etiquette. As if the true problem is my post citing one of his more egregious tweets and not the guy tweeting that shit out to his nearly three quarters of a million followers. Anyway, timely reminder that this place has some posters just intent on making sure ilx stays toxic.

lol you are such a baby

Bold move; smart move. https://t.co/hasVuzWfLz

— Georgia Ladbury 🍫☕ (@GeorgiaLadbury) December 24, 2021

I don't think feigl-ding is deriving those hyper-scary numbers from any reputable models. I think he just grabbed them out of his personal nightmare and was thoughtful enough to share his out of control anxieties with the rest of us.

But it's worth glancing at the idea that, if one's projection is for more than a billion people to be ill near-simultaneously, that outcome would indeed would cause massive hardships for the ill and the well alike. It would be trauma at a scale that would test every social and economic structure we depend on. Some of those might break in ways that would be very hard to fix.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled holiday cheer.

For a given value of "ill" that would seem rather unusually debilitating vs actual reports here tho

True that. But when you speak of billions, even minor percentages of the gravely ill run into awfully big numbers.

Yes, but they are absorbed into awfully big systems!

I dont think we gain anything by failing to acknowledge that for the vast majority of vaccinated healthy people getting covid is not at this stage something that will impact health systems, which is to all intents and purposes where our macro attn should be

Solid summary here from Don McNeil:

Just like last spring, NYC’s omicron wave “may prove a harbinger for the rest of the nation,” writes Donald McNeil Jr. “What happens in New York never stays in New York.” https://t.co/bXiGivLc2n

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) December 27, 2021

One explanation could be that they actually don’t have Covid, they have flu or a cold or an allergy. But that seems unlikely. We’re in the middle of a huge Omicron wave. As the old medical school axiom goes: “If you hear hoofbeats, think horses first, not zebras.” (ie, the obvious explanation is the most likely one.)

gotta disagree here. many doctors reminding people that normal colds still exist, and the flu vaccine has been ineffective against this year's strains. think it's a stretch to say tests are missing the virus just because someone is sick with something and test turns up negative - and should be also noted that rapid tests less accurate than PCR.

like, yes, these people should maybe still be cautious if their negative was an antigen, but if a PCR shows up negative, I'd just assume it was one of the less scary things.

I have allergies a lot during the year, usually during this time (but this year, somehow, avoided it) - and it has similar symptoms!

The above actually reflects my experience exactly

me and my partner both started having mild cold/flu symptoms last Sunday. At that point, we showed negative on antigen tests but she had a PCR test on the Monday as she was supposed to be travelling back to England for Christmas.

By Tuesday, we were both getting positive antigen results but there's a major testing backlog here so it took until Wednesday to get her PCR result back...which was negative. Completely threw us but obviously couldn't risk going to our respective families for Christmas just in case. Neither of us have been able to book a PCR since due to the aforementioned backlog but every single antigen test we've done since then has been positive.

Again, symptoms have been very mild throughout but it seems extremely unlikely that every single antigen test - on two different people - would be showing false positives.

well definitely, in your case, I would assume positive for sure (glad to hear it has been mild!).

in the article, though, they were talking about people who were sick who were taking antigen tests and showing up negative, and the author surmising it couldn't possibly be something besides Omicron causing the illness. Like...the common cold season, where colds most frequently occur, is considered from September to April in the US, and loooooots of people get sick in December, it seems farfetched to be suggesting "antigen tests may not properly detect Omicron" because a bunch of people with symptoms that could apply to multiple illnesses don't test positive. like there are other illnesses! it seemed a weird point.

I'm sure in some (or many) cases they are false negatives, because we know antigen tests are less reliable, but they certainly aren't all false negatives.

I should have linked to info on the author of that article. He received the 2021 Pulitzer for his COVID coverage for the NY Times, was one of the first to sound the alarm about COVID-19’s severity, and has been covering infectious diseases since 1995.

although it's not "proven," it's not the author making it up, he links to others explaining why there may be an immune response before tests can detect it. no one is saying it's not possible people might test if they have a cold and get a negative result. the scientists have definitely considered that people may have colds. my bf is going through the same thing. definitely exposed, sick, has tested negative twice.

Teardown time. OKSO this is a home test for that pandemic thing that I don't want to mention. It's a Fancy one: No screen, only one button. It bluetooths to your phone. pic.twitter.com/2I1EcvZesd

— foone (@Foone) December 26, 2021

(open the thread)

That particular test sucks. I got two boxes both of which came up as recalled. Then when I checked again as I tried to figure out how to get my money back said not recalled. Then every time you use it even to just run through to get to the “this has been recalled” notice you have to watch an annoying video. I threw them in the trash.

🚮

Symptoms are starting v early w Omicron (for a number of reasons I’ve discussed)

This means that there is a chance the virus isnt yet growing in the nose when you first test

Virus may start further down. Throat swab + nasal may improve chances a swab picks up virus. https://t.co/NfxHqjKpIo

— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) December 27, 2021

I have to say that the new CDC guidelines are making people quit at my husband's place of work— politicians and the wheels of capital once again sacrificing healthcare workers for the sake of mammon and "going back to normal."

Should mention, too, that every single department in his hospital is running at half the staffing they need already.

(I told him about man alive's posts the other day, and he said, "if that asshole returns, make sure you get him banned again" lmfao)

ugh, do you mean the returning to work after 7 days with a negative test?

returning to ilx after a 7 day flag post ban

in general i would think it's possible for the time period to change based on evolving science reasons but in this case they were so transparent about the reasoning behind it being not that. it's garbage.

lol, y'all reminded me that man alive's 7-day ban expires today

NEW YORK – U.S. health officials on Monday cut isolation restrictions for Americans who catch the coronavirus from 10 to five days, and similarly shortened the time that close contacts need to quarantine.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the coronavirus are most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop.

The decision also was driven by a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, propelled by the omicron variant.

Early research suggests omicron may cause milder illnesses than earlier versions of the coronavirus. But the sheer number of people becoming infected — and therefore having to isolate or quarantine — threatens to crush the ability of hospitals, airlines and other businesses to stay open, experts say.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the country is about to see a lot of omicron cases.

If the CDC has changed their policy to make quarantine half as long that probably means there'll be a study in a couple of weeks that shows quarantine should be twice as long.

Airline CEOs are hitting back huh?

Oh, I have no doubt. Hospital groups too.

Serious question, though: is this decision reflecting the lived experiences of ILXors and their friends/relatives? Everyone I know infected in the last two weeks has already stopped feeling anything more serious than a runny nose in the 4-6 day range.

I can imagine the toll the 10-day period took on people who can't work from home.

Severity is not directly the issue. Quarantine isn’t rest up for x days. It’s don’t see other people for x days.

Anyway this was not a given and is extremely good news

Had been biting my nails waiting for data like this: Omicron infection boosts immunity against Omicron… and also props up your Delta immunity. Should be really good cross-protection in combination with vaccination. https://t.co/CnkkHopJBZ

— Dr Ed (@notdred) December 27, 2021

There is some science behind the 10 day isolation period being outdated. This came out weeks ago, and Wu is a fine COVID writer. Leading resources like Dr Rasmussen and Muge Cevik cited.

There ARE exceptions naturally - some people infectious longer than 10 days esp in immunocompromised or severe cases

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/12/fully-vaccinated-covid-isolation-breakthrough-transmission/620919/