outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

To borrow an infamous phrase:

I don’t know how to put this in a half-acceptable way.

New Omicron variants are actively killing vaccinated and recently boosted 60-70 year-olds with very average comorbidites, as we speak.

It’s a bog-standard medical reality in our hospitals.
— Farid Jalali MD (@farid__jalali) May 13, 2022
― 龜, Friday, 13 May 2022 21:54 (yesterday) link

I'm not saying this isn't a concern or shouldn't be looked into, but who is this guy, where is his info from, what does "bog-standard medical reality in our hospitals" mean, and why is this the only guy I'm hearing about it from? We may very well see solid verification of this being a rising trend soon, but I'm really tired of these sorts of tweets getting treated as any kind of reliable source about anything.

Also, it seems more likely that (1) COVID is on the rise overall, and (2) 90+% of the elderly are now vaccinated, so you're going to see a greater share of deaths among the vaccinated than before. As opposed to oh shit this new scariant is no joke.

Let’s not call it the new scariant

I'm skeptical of all medical publications, but this article uploaded to JAMA today

man alive, if you can’t tell that numbers are up everywhere, then i don’t know what to tell you except don’t worry, they’re not going to shut down schools again because most of society has decided to go with your blinkered, selfish perspective.

But he did acknowledge COVID "is on the rise overall" tbh

true enough, Alfred. It’s just alarming to me that someone can say as much and then in the next breath use an explicitly anti-vax term like “scariant.”

Update on North Korea's COVID-19 outbreak:

- 174,400 new suspected cases, raising the total to 525,400
- 21 new deaths, raising total to 27
- Kim Jong Un says N. Korea facing "greatest turmoil" since founding
- No one in N. Korea is vaccinated
- Nationwide lockdown

— BNO|Medriva Newsroom (@medriva) May 13, 2022

"For two years, Mr. Kim strove to keep the pandemic at bay by physical means. He tightened border controls, essentially putting the whole nation in a quarantine. Inbound travel was all but prohibited, borders were guarded with a shoot-on-sight policy, and most trade with China was suspended."

this is the future liberals want

I don't think of "scariant" as an antivax term, but I'm not the one posting unsourced, unfounded claims that there's some bleak new medical reality that the vaccine and even boosters don't protect older people from the current subvariant.

in man alive's defense (and you know I've been one of his biggest critics here), I think that tweet was irresponsible because it makes it sound like vaccines and boosters are useless (which he does expand upon and say he's not saying in further tweets, but most people read the first tweet).

and he's using anecdotal data without further extrapolation.

so I peeled back the layer a little bit further, and found out he's one of the "Zero COVID" cultists that follows the rogue's gallery of unhinged lunatics like Zoe Hyde, Anthony J Leonardi (who has come under fire for saying SARS = basically HIV), and Dr. Lisa Iannattone, a dermatologist who had the audacity to misrepresent a recent COVID study and then when the author said she was misrepresenting her conclusions, basically said he was incompetent (even though he designed the study).

I think if he had said:

"Look, vaccines and boosters greatly reduce the risk of severe outcomes, but there are still some elderly folks who are still succumbing to the disease. that's why masking and ventilation are important as well, take care of yourselves" - rather than a panic inducing tweet like the elderly are dying en masse due to failing vaccines, suggesting it's more pathogenic like Delta, which all of the real world data (sans one study with hamsters which has been an outlier) has suggested otherwise.

like, shit's bad right now, but I get why this doc's tweets provoked such a reaction.

I'm a little frustrated that all of the data analysts I used to read that talked about waves and their trajectory just quit writing about COVID altogether, so wanting an analysis of when we might peak, etc, is completely absent now. and the wastewater data the CDC publishes is useless, or in many cases out of date, and I barely know how to interpret it anyway.

Exactly, xp

xp if my "it peaks in the uk ~2 months before the US" continues to be correct, it's going to peak in the US in about a month.

I'm looking more for my individual state since it is hitting different regions at different times, but agree with your general timeline for the US as a whole.

China didn't share their vaccine with NK? Seems kind of surprising.

The North Koreans didn't want it

Pyongyang turned down an earlier offer of 3 million Covid-19 vaccine doses of China's Sinovac Biotech.

So, is anyone NOT immunocompromised or over 50 and planning to get the second booster? I'm considering it.

I think they are testing a booster (they = Moderna and probably others) which is aimed at a broader range of variants, will probably stick it out for that one.

I am flying to Italy in late August and planning to get the second booster in mid-July or so.

I am technically not immunocompromised, given my latest blood work, just on the low side of normal. I have Covid currently so think I will wait a bit, but I will definitely get a booster before the cold weather hits again in the fall.

How are you getting on with covid, table?

Thank you for asking, I am doing okay— it seems the worst of the symptoms have gone away, with the main remaining symptom a sort of unpredictable fatigue. I go from feeling relatively normal— I even lifted some weights last night during an energetic period, for example— to feeling like I’ve been hit by a bus and needing a good 45 minute nap.

Hope that’s as bad as it was. I had the fatigue for a couple of weeks after, but it’s entirely gone now, I stupidly worked during most of it cos wfh and it honestly was very coldlike, but in retrospect I was so tired after I should have rested. Go easy on yourself!

I am rather lucky at the moment, in a way, as I am looking for work while still facilitating a workshop per week, so I have minimal work to keep me too busy. I plan on resting as much as possible, which I am very good at lmfao.

Third round of at-home tests in the US available:

https://special.usps.com/testkits

Thanks, Ned!

yes, thank you.

Ordered!

U.S. monkeypox case reported, as Spain, Portugal report infections in growing outbreak https://t.co/t3ZZDcuSEx via @HelenBranswell

— Adam Feuerstein (@adamfeuerstein) May 18, 2022

U.S. monkeypox case reported, as Spain, Portugal report infections in growing outbreak https://t.co/t3ZZDcuSEx via @HelenBranswell

— Adam Feuerstein (@adamfeuerstein) May 18, 2022

Spreading already

that's what infectious diseases do. i'll worry more when health authorities indicate it is spreading faster than containment measures are controlling.

What are the current containment measures?

Avoiding close personal contact. They think it might be spreading via sex which would be new but it's a theory

Own the libs by having monkey sex monkey pox parties

I was making a joke about the repeated post, Aimless.

I think most of us already know to avoid him, but Fiegl-Ding is wholeheartedly jumping onto the misinformation doom train with monkeypox. What's more sad is the legions of replies to his tweets that are thanking him for being such a wise sage over the last two years.

yeah, he's a piece of shit and a liar. ffs it already has a vaccine that can be administered up to 4 days after exposure, you're not contagious until after you have symptoms, and deaths almost never happen in "first world" countries like his own (for lack of a better term). for his followers, though, he has to keep the threat of death in the US afloat because they would naturally not care if you told them that deaths are more likely in lesser-developed countries. these cultists are always very US centric..

btw, he's part of a cult of insanity that includes (in case you want to block any of these voices on Twitter):

Denise DeWald
AJ Leonardi
Zoe Hyde
Alex Meshkin

Already had a couple of those blocked, but I'm adding the others. The only reason I even knew about the latest EFD thing was my wife had to set a FB acquaintance straight who shared his recent misinformation about monkeypox.

Touch of this going around too

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/23/un-denounces-homophobic-and-racist-reporting-on-monkeypox-spread

I've had a HUGE problem with the way the media is portraying this. last thing we need is more othering and stigmatizing.

don't read the tweet responses - twitter experts already think they are experts on Monkeypox.

Good Morning
- Monkeypox doesn't have a doubling time of 3days.
- It's likely been circulating in Europe since April.
- Incubation is long, suspicion was low thus allowed for stealth transmissions.
- Most cases are mild.
- Close contacts facilitate transmission.

— BK Titanji #IAmAScientist🇨🇲 (@Boghuma) May 24, 2022

people also falsely claiming it's 'airborne' like COVID rather than it could theoretically be spread by aerosols but person to person contact is main method of spread. and much less likely to wildly mutate as it's a DNA virus , not RNA.

people also falsely claiming it's 'airborne' like COVID rather than it could theoretically be spread by aerosols but person to person contact is main method of spread. and much less likely to wildly mutate as it's a DNA virus , not RNA.

difficult to take seriously. makes me think of monkey tennis.

is that a Wii game

there was a tennis-a-like that was part of super monkey ball.

but 'monkey tennis' is one of alan partridge's suggestions for new shows he pitches at the tv exec after he loses his own show

i did not know the cdc is suggesting/semi-recommending people wait for a second booster based on the possibility of a new vaccine:

Even if you are eligible for a 2nd booster, you may consider waiting to get a 2nd booster if you:

Had COVID-19 within the past 3 months
Feel that getting a 2nd booster now would make you not want to get another booster in the future (a 2nd booster may be more important in fall of 2022, or if a new vaccine for a future COVID-19 variant becomes available)