outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-65358308

There is no evidence that shielding benefited vulnerable people during the Covid pandemic, according to a study.
Swansea University compared 117,000 people shielding in Wales with the rest of the population of three million.
The study found deaths and healthcare usage were higher among shielding people than the general population.

Hmmm

You aren’t exactly comparing like populations here so surely higher deaths & healthcare usage to be expected anyway? But if infections weren’t lower in the shielding population that’s interesting/depressing (tho again the article says ppl would have picked it up at hospitals which makes sense)

speaking of: in the United States we're down to our lowest daily death rate since March 2020.

Meantime, still in double digits at my hospital in terms of patients admitted and in care. It's dipped into singles here and there this year but never completely gone. I'll be working there directly for the first time since March 2020 in a couple of weeks, but a combination of good ventilation, relative quietness and new building restrictions (as well as only working onsite four hours a day) means I'm reasonably sanguine, and of course I will keep masking regardless.

Fully admit that I’ve stopped masking as much as I was even a month ago— but found out a pal of mine got the vid this week after going to a rave last week. Not a behavior I would indulge in at this point, but it gave me pause about having drinks in a crowded bar last night.

Yeah I mean...I'm doing my live podcast recording event tonight, it could be fullish (maybe) and I'm masking, frankly. Just not interested in the risk, especially before an even bigger trip for the Pop Conference next week, and that applies to regular colds as well. People can do whatever, I guess, but I really don't see a downside for being practical (and now that we're moving into the warmer months, bring on outdoor dining and bars).

Went to the Chemical Brothers this week, the lowest-masked indoor environment I've been in for three years. Made my way to in front of the sound desk, and found it lined two-deep with all-masked punters.

The opposite in South Florida: we move inside after months of wonderful weather.

About the only place I don't mask, oddly, is when I eat indoors.

Concurrent headlines:

https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/cdc-says-tinnitus-not-linked-to-covid-vaccines-170952773612

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-vaccine-side-effects-tinnitus-may-linked-inflammation-rcna80675

I personally don't think it's related but the tinnitus in my left ear has gotten much worse over the last two months. My 3rd booster was last October, and that ear has had other weird tinnitus flipouts before.

(fuck you, Gary Numan, probably the main cause along with a few bad choices like accidentally being directly next to a main speaker for a snare hit soundcheck)

sorry for derail

I worked at a hearing charity for a while - iirc there are many procedures and medicines that can trigger tinnitus. It’s not unusual. I guess the volume of people getting vaccinated means the number of people with associated tinnitus is going to seem unusually high.

(I have tinnitus and have avoided some medicines like beta blockers because I’ve read that they can make your tinnitus worse. I don’t think it’s enough to make me avoid getting further vaccines but i can understand why it’s a bit anxiety inducing.)

I definitely have a slight tinnitus in one of my ears, possibly since one of my vaccines, though at this point who knows. I skimmed that article and it said people complaining were having serious serious tinnitus, like noise that drowned out other noises. Mine is nothing like that.

My tinnitus has gotten really bad over the past few weeks, but I assumed it was inevitable blowback from using earbuds an increasing amount on my walks over the past few years.

i have noticeable tinnitus that started right after getting covid, many months before i was vaccinated. i still have it.

Someone I know lost hearing in one ear and has permanent tinnitus, started not long after heart surgery. I do wonder if it's at all linked as Covid can affect the vascular system. Also what's involved in heart surgery - the blood gets pumped round your body for you - might have something to do with this, so potentially a blood issue.

^^ that was all years before Covid

this is just the playbook now— if conservatives don’t like results or facts, change the results or facts

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/25/health/florida-covid-vaccine-analysis-ladapo/index.html

He's a complete piece of shit. he's not even denying it on Twitter, just tripling and quadrupling down.

I fucking hate it here, lord if we can ever steal this state back from the crazies...well...I have no idea what that'd be like since my entire adult life has been with these assholes running the show

Still haven't, to my knowledge, gotten COVID. Despite extensive travel & routine indoor unmasked eating. I've certainly had colds (more proof that I'm not shielding myself from virus intake very thoroughly!) but each time I test and each time it's not COVID. It's to the point where I almost feel like it's weird.

I know several people who've never had it. I had a completely asymptomatic case (nothing: no sniffles, no runny nose, no cough, fever, etc.) in September I learned about a month later at my annual physical, nothing since.

I don't get it -- how can you find out at your physical that you had COVID a month ago?

My doctor pointed out that my white blood cell count was unusually low, suggesting my body was recovering from a viral or bacterial infection. She suggested an antibody test and, well, voila.

I'd had it three to four weeks earlier, which coincided with a weeklong period when thanks to Hurricane Ian most testing centers, including my university's, had shut down (at that point I got a PCR test once a week).

this is still something I don't understand: testing can differentiate antibodies due to infection from antibodies due to vaccination?

I had gotten my last booster in late May; this was mid-October.

the low white blood cell count + strong COVID antibodies led to an inexorable conclusion.

this is still something I don't understand: testing can differentiate antibodies due to infection from antibodies due to vaccination?

― underminer of twenty years of excellent contribution to this borad (dan m), Thursday, May 4, 2023 10:57 AM bookmarkflaglink

yes. there are separate tests that need to be run to see if your vaccination generated antibodies vs whether you have antibodies vs infection. I learned this when during my vaccine trial, my doc asked me if I wanted to do a test to see if I had antibodies for COVID, and it came back saying I didn't, and I freaked out until I noticed the test itself said it could only test for antibodies via infection and that from vaccine likely wouldn't show up. thanks doc!

(I don't know specifics beyond that though)

COVID hospitalizations in FL right now are the lowest since like....summer of 2020 I think.

^^ I noticed this phenomenon and wondered what was responsible? People don't give a shit about vaccinations or masking anymore yet our numbers have leveled off if not dropped to early summer '20 levels.

built-up immunity from repeat infections, residual immunity from vaccinations (even if not up to date), lots of vulnerable have already died, etc. plus (knock on wood) each new subvariant that emerges as dominant seems to create less of a spike.

Yeah this was always supposed to happen, it's not weird! The only question is how much pain and death did we undergo on the way here (answer: substantially more than necessary.)

(but substantially less than we would have had we just let 'er rip before vaccines existed)

thanks for the antibody detection points

one thing that has surprised me lately regarding numbers is even though a lot of the main data points have been turned off/made illegal/ignored is that wastewater testing numbers continue to be freely available. feels like a nice bit of backup that yes, things have cooled down substantially (at least in my corner of WI).

I know one person taking part in an ongoing study who has never had it - no antibodies, no nothing. I suspect a lot of other people are in Alfred's situation, but antibody tests (to varying degrees of specificity) are not really standard things that people get.

I had a very mild case back in March 2020, discovered when I donated blood a few months later, since the Red Cross was testing everyone for antibodies at that time. Every few weeks I went in for a blood draw, and we were not surprised to see (as expected) the antibodies gradually begin to fade, but to suddenly, a few months later, see them spike up again. We figured that was my body reacting to another exposure, even though I had no symptoms.

last day for US people to purchase 8 monthly rapid tests reimbursed by insurance

(also congrats the covid emergency is over. what a time!)

I weirdly have a big of nostalgia for the early days, awful as it was... the world just got so quiet for awhile

File under anecdotal: My kids school just had their first in-class COVID outbreak since wk1 January 2023 fwiw.

Yeah, at least for those of us who could work from home, there was a feeling of weightlessness, that you didn’t have to do anything other than survive- no pressure to maximize weekend activities during or compete for the best holiday travel destination. It was ok just to stay home. For introverts especially, a lot of pressure was removed.

xp

i was miserable and drank all day for months

xp Yeah, anecdotally at least these last few weeks have been as crazy as any during the last 3 years. More of my friends have gotten it in the last month than any time I can recall, the elementary school in the small town in western Mass. that I travel to for work frequently shut down last week because so many teachers were sick. Complete and irresponsible folly to declare anything "over" at this point.

I recently rediscovered a bunch of photographs I took in May 2020. I walked all around the neighborhood and took pictures of every "we're closed due to covid" sign on businesses in the area. Some were handwritten, some basic word processor documents, many in multiple languages, some were extensively branded (like the Wells Fargo bank branch, etc). Looking back over them now, I was surprised and how many were really optimistic in tone! Like, "we will be back in ________ days/weeks, be safe, take care of each other, wash your hands, stay 6ft apart" and so on. It was also clear that the optimism was misplaced, like the date for reopening was the end of April, and it was a couple of weeks into May when I took the photos. Also this was in Minneapolis, so a couple of weeks later the cops murdered George Floyd and things changed a lot, again.

my only social activity in the summer of '20 was meeting two buddies by the lake after work, where we'd each drink our own six pack & flask while sitting in a big wide triangle.. then just walking home alone, there was nothing else going on

speaking only for the US, new hospitalizations and existing hospitalizations with COVID nationally are the lowest they've been in the time period that the CDC has data available (August 2020 - present). and weekly deaths are the lowest since the pandemic began.

that's not exactly grounds for celebrating when you consider the millions that died or got hospitalized or have long COVID due to the haphazard way we managed the pandemic, particularly in its earliest phases. and it's a complete travesty how many people died overseas while we sat on stockpiles of vaccines that nobody has wanted (the bivalent uptake is embarrassingly bad).

but it does show how things have sort of turned a corner in terms of severe outcomes, that was somewhat unthinkable a year ago.

the nation was obviously divided before the pandemic, but Trump's mishandling of the early days did more to cement that polarization than anything else - sowing mistrust of Fauci, promoting horse de-wormers, all that bullshit
Rather than using a national tragedy to unite a people, he employed it as a wedge for political purposes.. in that sense, we really are worse off than prior to covid

I was miserable the spring and early summer of '20.

it doesn't even just boil down to not being able to see people for me - I was terrified for the majority of my friends and family for how they were going to be financially impacted as all of the legislation was being worked out. and then the unemployment snafu in FL impacted so many on top of that.

frankly thankful as fuck that pretty much everyone I know turned out ok. I really didn't expect the enhanced unemployment to pass with a Republican Senate and though it was imperfect and implemented horribly (esp in Florida), it saved most of my friends and family who were furloughed from utter ruin.

my second kid was born march 12 2020, so i have a lot more photographic evidence of that time than most people, but i can't remember it at all.

It was a really uncertain time and I don't do well with uncertainty. Luckily my kids' grandparents never got it (?) that we know of. Unluckily a good friend died from it at the end of 2020, so on top of grieving for him that really highlighted the unpredictability of it. I was able to stay fairly cautious and didn't get covid until this year.

caek, the early months of a second child do seem to pass by in a blur anyway, everything is so up and down! I can't imagine having a newborn in covid though. My eldest kid was only a few months into school when they shut the schools - that was terrifying tbh.