outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

America, fuck yeah

in terms of wastewater and hospitalizations, the interesting thing is this wave (so far) is far below the fall/winter wave of November - February, and yet it feels omnipresent. It is making its rounds, has wreaked havoc on my team at work (and we're all virtual), and has hit quite a few friends. I think part of this 'weird' feeling is due to how low a level of transmission we were at from mid-April to early-July, so we had a bit of an unusual reprieve for months.

But it also illustrates how fucking infectious this damn disease is where, when it seems to be everywhere right now and infecting a lot of people, and yet Omicron's initial arrival was *15 times worse* in that regard.

just the shit we've been forced to endure the last three years is insane.

there's no system set up for informing the parents and no requirement to do so. and LAUSD has explicitly said it's ok to send your kids the school now even if they're a little under the weather. and kids are definitely sent to school when they're more than a little under the weather.

I still mask when I teach, the only person in a room seating 51 to do so. Still mask at Publix, Target, etc. -- this hasn't changed since March 2020.

To Neanderthal's point: it's hard to call this surge in cases a "wave" when no one masks, a near-blackout exists in news coverage; every story I've read has the caveat, "We're far, far below where we were last fall and the last two summers." Obv this could change. I can't wait for the new vaccine fast enough.

and that's fucked up what LAUSD did, ugh

we have a new superintendent (as of last year), who came from Miami where he was in the same role for Miami-Dade. He's been aggressively pushing attendance levels to reach 95%. there's also the thing that students aren't allowed to miss more than 7 days per semester. So when our son had a cold that knocked him out 3 days last fall, and then covid knocking him out for a week and a half, we started getting calls firmly reminding us about the attendance policy. all the while, they knew he had covid. so the messaging is terrible, and i don't doubt it puts the fear into parents.

we have a new superintendent (as of last year), who came from Miami where he was in the same role for Miami-Dade. He's been aggressively pushing attendance levels to reach 95%. there's also the thing that students aren't allowed to miss more than 7 days per semester. So when our son had a cold that knocked him out 3 days last fall, and then covid knocking him out for a week and a half, we started getting calls firmly reminding us about the attendance policy. all the while, they knew he had covid. so the messaging is terrible, and i don't doubt it puts the fear into parents.

Ah, the lovely Alberto Carvalho. I should point out that when Carvalho was in MDC he publicly resisted DeSantis' what-is-COVID-anyway directives.

i also should add that the attendance policy was in place pre-covid afaik, it's just that no accommodations have been made for the new reality.

i figured LAUSD wouldn't bring in a DeSantis stan! a destantis?

Not just America, sadly. In Australia, where we were famous for our anti-Covid measures, it’s just as laissez-faire now as it is in the US, which sucks. Daughter is in month 11 of her Long Covid, which also sucks.

sorry to hear that, James

as far as I can tell I’m in an area that’s low for the region in a region that’s low for the US. I did procrastinate making vacation plans — I was going to fly somewhere this week — and the time where I’d have booked at the last minute, I got spooked.

guess maybe I’ll do a little road trip, or maybe take a fall excursion after my next vax

it seems to be everywhere right now and infecting a lot of people, and yet Omicron's initial arrival was *15 times worse*

well, iirc there was a brief couple of days in the first omicron wave when the US registered over 1 million new cases a day!

I just tested positive today (South London). Didn't have any LFTs left so had to order online (Amazon).

Started to feel feverish and lightheaded on Wednesday evening and had 2 feverish days with lightheadedness, aching legs, sandpaper throat, and congested nose. Not much of a cough though.

What table was referring to:

Bread Loaf Writers Conference at Middlebury College in Vermont continues to operate, amid a Covid-19 outbreak that has resulted in 26 cases so far (over 10 percent of its 220 participants). Participants with Covid have been sent home. The organizers wrote in an email to attendees, shared online by a participant that contracted Covid, that the number of cases "seems to be leveling off." The conference spans ten days.

Organizers also explain a lack of daily communication about the number of cases, writing, "In our conversations with Middlebury's trusted medical advisors, we were strongly urged to turn the emphasis away from reporting the number of cases, which health departments stopped counting awhile ago, focusing instead on hospitalizations which provide a better estimate of how Covid-19 is impacting the community." But they do not note whether any participants have been hospitalized. The email explains that the conference did not require masking or testing in advance because they were following the college's guidelines, "which are consistent with other colleges and universities as well as the CDC and Vermont Department of Health." They write, "All of us lived through a traumatic pandemic--and not long ago--but we are no longer in a pandemic."

Conference organizers did not respond to PL's request for comment.

Just to say that if I get a shred of pushback about wearing a mask this fall, whew

One of friend’s partners got there two days ago— to Bread Loaf, that is— and guess what? They now have Covid!

Conference spaces are the worst -- worse than restaurants and even classrooms.

My partner is headed to a conference in November in San Francisco. She's pretty nervous about it, been avoiding planes and begged out of one major conference a couple months ago. She feels the pressure to go to this one though so she is doing it. Gonna wear N95s and eat outdoors.

Fortunately I'm not longer the only one wearing masks in a lot of places, usually there's at least...one other person now.

https://thenib.com/temperature-check/

To be clear, I attended a music conference in April, but because the overwhelming majority of attendees -- maybe 100% -- were libs, many of us masked in smaller rooms and I didn't feel a single moment of pushback.

oh, boy : https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/08/25/covid-variant-ba-2-86-pirola/

I mean...get vaccinated and new careful

*be careful

Yeah that's the latest one (though not what's causing the uptick because it's not very widespread yet).

Should be noted little is known about it yet and ease at evading immunity plus ease of transmissibility are different things and it is the latter that is of yet currently unknown

If I follow, this new variant is easier to catch but not more dangerous, and that vaccinations will still protect against severe sickness - is that right?

That's what the article says.

Hope there's a vaccine with the effectiveness of the flu vax at some point. I'd certainly like to unmask a bit more and relax (though I've enjoyed not even catching a cold since 2019 so maybe i'd mask in stores anyway idk?)

I don't think sterilizing immunity is ever coming for COVID given the unusual ease in which it mutates, but technically the flu vaccine doesn't provide that either - but their primary goals are different. Flu to prevent outright infection, COVIDs to prevent severe disease.

Determining efficiency of COVID vaccines at preventing infection going forward is also getting more difficult due to move from lab testing to at home testing and the number of people who no longer test at all. And efficacy looks like it's dropping against severe disease and hospitalization a bit paradoxically - immunity from previous infection and vaccination has already caused a significant reduction in the proportion of COVID cases that result in severe disease or hospitalization, so the shot itself provides a smaller reduction because the number of hospitalizations have already gotten quite low.

During the peak of the pandemic, about 25% of hospital beds in the US were occupied by COVID patients. It's something like 1.5% now.

This new variant is one to watch because they're worried it could have the same antigenic drift that Omicron did from original Wuhan (which doesn't necessarily mean ANOTHER Omicron scenario, but could). But this summer, prior to uptick, the prevalence of the disease had truly shrunk to lowest since April of 2020.

Even the fall/winter wave, which was expected to be very bad due to the emergence of another subvariant (I've forgotten which one) did materialize, but nowhere near at the levels feared in terms of hospitalization, death, wastewater, etc.

So there is evidence that things are getting closer to endemicity (which we still haven't reached due to the rate of mutation), but we do have to hope this new subvariant doesn't undo that to any degree.

I'm a bit more positive in this case because when Omicron was discovered (quickly), the outbreak from it was already widespread and had been for a while in Africa, and there was a lot of sequencing early on, so it was plainly obvious what was about to happen to most experts.

Less is known now because no major outbreak has (of yet) been attributed to it, so they're basing almost everything on its viral makeup and mutations, whereas during Omicron they had that PLUS emerging real world data.

That's not to downplay worries because it could be a bastard but we know much less than we did about Omicron at this point, and last fall/winter's variant, which didn't quite have the antigenic drift from Omicron like this one, had people expecting much worse.

Good summary: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/a-new-variant-ba286

I'm going to mask more often (if not quite as assiduously as I did in 2021 and 2022) and encourage my family to mask more often (which they won't).

But I'm not going to worry until it seems pertinent to worry. I'm tired of being anxious and repeated worry-cycles over the past few years have never helped!

(NB I don't consider sensible mask-wearing to be "worrying".)

...although regrettably my new work experience position is in a cramped social care centre with no windows!

My last vax was booster November, I'm wondering whether to get a new one now, or hold out for the New Improved shot in the fall.

*My last booster was November, I mean

Chuck otm about worrying.

I'd wait until the booster.

Still haven't to my knowledge had COVID, wonder whether I ever will. Will be getting another booster this fall when the new ones are out.

i scheduled my dad for a vaccine today, but the pharmacy told him that new vaccines are expected next month and to just wait: https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/25/health/covid-vaccine-release/index.html

i haven't kept up on vaccines since getting my bivalent one back in 2022 that addressed omicron. have there been any new vaccines since the omicron bivalent one?

No, but getting a second bivalent jab since then proved easy.

xp - nothing new released since the initial bivalent vaccine

but the pharmacy told him that new vaccines are expected next month and to just wait

this is the current conventional wisdom https://www.nytimes.com/article/covid-booster-fall.html

i turned 65 a few days ago which i think entitles me to another jab, but i think i'm going to wait for the new vaccine, although it seems like the disease has already moved on from there. decisions decisions.

i will admit to being somewhat petrified of "long vax," which is apparently a thing. although "rare."

although it seems like the disease has already moved on from there. d

What I've read suggests the new booster will offer enough protection against the new variant

I can't get any vaccines for awhile because of my cancer treatments (and haven't had any for quite awhile), so I will simply not get covid.

Well I’ve got it again, number two, even though
I’ve been masking more often for the past couple weeks. Not often enough I guess! We’re on holiday at a rental apartment, so that’s complicated too :/

https://open.substack.com/pub/yourlocalepidemiologist/p/ba286-update

Somewhat more reassuring news on latest variant

My mom finally tested positive for the first time, after coming back from a trip to the UK. She's probably already on the tail end of the infection (whose manifestation was clouded by jet lag), and so far she says she's had worse colds; very mild symptoms, no fever, etc. Hopefully it stays that way! She'd steadily let down her guard over the years, as far as masking goes, but at a certain point it may be have been inevitable, given she's a big traveller. As a retired pediatrician her armchair theory has been that she has been exposed to countless coronavirus strains over the decades, giving her some latent protection.

My friend is a paediatric consultant and is one of the only few people I know to have never tested positive, despite working in a hospital throughout (and testing throughout). So poss something in that theory! Although tbf all of her colleagues have had it over the past couple of years, some badly.

seems like there's an outbreak at my wife's workplace, fella came into work feeling under the weather, "feel weak, like i got hit by a truck, but i tested negative so it seems ok!" and sat in on an all-day conference. her closest co-worker came down with it over the weekend and is going thru hell at present. similar to her boss and his recent experience: throat feeling like it's got broken glass shredding everything, difficulty drinking and eating, fever, exhaustion, etc.

the local nextdoor remains lit with antimaskers, claiming they're ineffective, claiming it's all about control. it's like 2021 again.

Does your wife's job offer sick leave? If so, absolutely no reason why even someone with a legit cold should be showing up -- or at least wearing a mask.

they're not even really keeping track of who comes in! it's very hybrid-friendly. my wife's co-worker (who caught it) heard him say that and yelled at him to go home. he talked to him for perhaps thirty seconds.

i think some people are just in denial about what they might have and of course i guess if the test says negative they just assume, even when they're not always helpful.

zero reason why anyone feeling slightly under the weather shouldn't wear a mask around others. this is one of the reasons i keep wearing one: i don't trust everyone around me to do the right thing (and based on the number of hacking coughs and sneezes in grocery stores, maybe i'm right.)

Alfred, you are 100% correct of course, buy I have known and worked for a frightening number of middle managers who, even here in 2023, do not share that view. Not my direct manager, but another in my department even said in an all hands meeting, "I know it's that time of year, but if you can walk, you can come in to work". I was appalled that this was met with complete and utter silence by the two senior leaders in the room.

Point being, I've known some smart people with good intentions that feel either directly, or indirectly, brow-beaten, shamed or threatened to feel like they MUST come into the office.

Distressingly, yet another lesson that should have been learned from the pandemic, but has already been forgotten because... well, capitalism.

"similar to her boss and his recent experience: throat feeling like it's got broken glass shredding everything, difficulty drinking and eating"

yeah, this is me on day 8