outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Ordered.

Meantime finally got a vaccine appointment finagled -- next Friday but I can live with that (if I went for this Friday and I felt off that would mean missing the Church and the Third Mind at Hardly Strictly this weekend, which would be sad).

i couldn’t find one near me until a month out— going to try to get one a little earlier by searching around, but i guess i am okay with waiting!!

Seem to have avoided catching anything from the exposure mentioned upthread, thankfully. Though now my son was exposed yesterday, apparently. Tbh, it feels inescapable around here right now, I am personally aware of at least 15 people I know who either has it, or someone in their family has it. Pretty much everyone I work with seems to know multiple people with it as well.

Hey hey, you can get another batch of free tests if you're in the US

https://www.covid.gov/tests

I heard on the radio that so far only 11% of Chicagoans have gotten the most recent vaccine. That's a pretty low number, and Chicago has got to be among the most compliant, so I have to figure that a lot of places around the country have an even lower (fresh) vaccination rate. I guess we'll see soon enough just how effective or important up to date vaccines are when it comes to protection against serious illness.

thank you to whomever suggested reading Katelyn Jetelina. very interesting new article re: scientific discoveries: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/covid-19-research-roundup-jan-11

I'll second that recommendation. The author summarizes very recent Covid findings succinctly and in plain language.

I've got a hypochondriac friend (he always was) who still hasn't gotten COVID b/c he's a shut-in and rages against LONG COVID, and I always ask, "How many jabs have you gotten?" Well, all of them. (I actually have a couple more than he does). He won't hear me when I assure him that more jabs = less chance of Long COVID. Maybe this piece will help.

Completely anecdotal, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Back in early December I went to go watch a friend's band play in a local, small bar. It was unannounced and a pretty small bar, so I went (unmasked) figuring it was relatively low key and a rare risk I was willing to take. And it mostly was, the bar stayed pretty sparse, though near the end of their set the bar was crashed by a very large group of folks on some ugly sweater bar crawl type thing. It got crowded fast and I was kind of kicking myself for not at least having a KN95 in my pocket to pull out, as I usually do.

Fast forward to a few days later and my buddy texts me to tell me that the guy who owned the bar (a friend of his) heard that the travelling ugly sweater thing was rumored to have turned into a super-spreader and that we should test. Long story short, of the group of 8 people that we were with, 4 ended up getting (fortunately mild) cases of COVID. The other four of us never fell ill and never tested positive. The interesting part though, was confirming that of the 4 who tested positive, 2 had never gotten more than the initial two vax doses and the other 2 had only gotten the first booster. The 4 of us who never tested positive had all gotten each booster as they'd come available.

Coincidence? Luck? Probably. Maybe. But still served as a good reminder to stay current. (Also learned that folks I knew who I'd assumed were vigilant about boosters were actually not - fortunately they all agreed to get back to getting boosted.)

Two of my most COVID-conscious friends have not gotten the latest shot -- it's a new vax, not a booster, to be clear -- and look Quite Guilty when I remind them.

yea I just got the last shot 3 weeks ago, my wife and daughter had it shortly after, now my son does, but so far I'm feelin' fine

I feel a bit guilty about that, we were gonna get him a booster but just punted it down the road. my daughter I just assumed we didn't need one, since actually getting Covid is probably better for your immunity isn't it?

Not with these latest variants, I don't think.

Yes, thanks for clarifying that Alfred. Meant to say "each jab as they'd come available".

I mean, for sure you'll get some immunity for a couple months, hence why doctors recommend you don't get the vax after illness.

“It’s obviously detecting the amount of copies of the virus, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a direct match to the number of cases,” said John Brownstein, who directs the Computational Epidemiology Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital and has studied how to use surveys to estimate the prevalence of coronavirus in communities. “We just need to be careful about extrapolating these results to numbers that could create fear and anxiety.”

“It’s obviously detecting the amount of copies of the virus, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a direct match to the number of cases,” said John Brownstein, who directs the Computational Epidemiology Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital and has studied how to use surveys to estimate the prevalence of coronavirus in communities. “We just need to be careful about extrapolating these results to numbers that could create fear and anxiety.”

“The numbers are bigger, but is it meaningfully larger?” said Amy Kirby, who oversees wastewater surveillance at the CDC. “That will tell us there are more infections in those communities, but I don’t know if it’s going to have any impact. Our hospitals aren’t necessarily feeling greater stress than they did last year.”

More here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/01/12/covid-surge-january-2024/

good article, thanks. kind of confirms what others have pointed out - it can point out when a wave is starting and ending, but it can't really be extrapolated to volume by itself. especially when the amount of viral particles shed might differ by variant.

current wave seems very uneven across the US - wastewater much more widespread in the Northeast and Midwest than in the South and West, but again, not sure how much of that is down to transmission being higher or "the Northeast has cities that have many more wastewater sites that report".

apparently Florida's not doing too badly

yeah too many of us died already

Not enough of the right people.

otm

I got the new vax as soon as it was available this past fall and I got Covid anyway. (Sad trombone).

wastewater drops for second straight week, though most largely noticeable in the Northeast.

next week will show if it's a post-holiday correction due to people gathering and traveling less, but the epis I read seem to think peak could have been reached, with high transmission for another month but steadily declining.

These people are nuts https://t.co/dXOR74tIDy

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) February 22, 2024

our Surgeon General is a complete sellout quack

That sounds like a YOUsles problem and not a MEasles problem.

.....

lol did you just post measles?

last time I was in FL I only caught Heffalumps and Woozles

extremely fucked up.

my 6 year old asked me what is the most dangerous virus and we had an age appropriate conversation about how "danger" is a combination of how prevalent it is, how contagious it is, and how sick it makes people who get it, and then I told him about a bunch of viruses and he concluded that measles is in fact the most dangerous virus, which, he's not wrong!

Yeah, in that letter from the FL doctor it says that something like 90% of those unvaccinated get it when exposed. That's crazy. Even crazier if you still send your kid into that maelstrom.

So I'm guessing these monster parents faked their kids' proofs of vaccination? In Florida the MMR vaccine is required in every public school.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Herd_immunity_threshold_vs_r0.svg/1920px-Herd_immunity_threshold_vs_r0.svg.png

measles is fucked up

Iirc all 50 states have proof of vax requirements.

yeah I think it's just not enforced in many states at this point. fwiw it is extremely enforced in NYS. our kid had to stay home for a day while they figured out a clerical error that caused his record to say he wasn't vaccinated.

There's a "hippy" county north of us that is known for being vaccine-skeptical which has had multiple measles outbreaks over the past decade, I seem to recall one such outbreak contributed to the death of a child in leukemia-remission due to his immuno-compromised state (could be remembering this wrong though).

i was shocked to discover a friend of mine i've known for over a decade is completely anti-vax (kids aren't covid vaxxed for example), which somehow jibes with his entire family always being sick with something or other. i shouldn't assume everyone in California of all (hippie new age crystal healing) places is toeing the scientific facts line as much as i am, but it was still surprising.

In the UK we had an email round from school about increased measles. Not necessarily in our area but wtf people

My partner works in a quite tony London private school, apparently it is riddled with California-adjacent antivax types

CDC officially drops five-day covid isolation guidelines

Americans who test positive for the coronavirus no longer need to routinely stay home from work and school for five days under new guidance released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Not like many of the sick were anyway.

I'm getting a second shot of the latest one in a couple weeks. No reason other than that I did the same last March and the year before.

they're already suggesting that for elder folk so I'm probably gonna do it too since I live w/ my mother still. she can't get another shot right away since she just beat the 'VID

(somehow I never got it)

How long should one wait to get re-upped if they already got the latest vax?

I got mine in September the first week they became available, so it's been six months.

My general understanding from what I've gleaned over the 4 years (!!) of confronting this virus is you've got a much better chance of beating it when you have lots of antibodies already active from a recent vax. If your immune system has to fire up and manufacture antibodies 'from scratch' the virus generally multiples too fast for your system to prevent an infection and you get sick. ofc, your system can have active antibodies from a recent infection, too, but that's not as good as a vax, because even though you'll 'recover' from the infection the virus tends to hide itself in your tissues and linger, so any new infection has an automatic head start and your new infection may be worse than your previous one, not better.

So, vaxxing may not be perfect, but it's still provides the very best protection from the disease that's possible.

I will say that per Katelyn Jetelina's last update, the durability on this most recent vaccine according to preliminary data is better than previous vaccines/boosters, with less waning, so the 'every six month' thing might not be as necessary, even though they are definitely suggesting it for people who are elderly or immunocompromised.

though since so few are taking the vaccines (tragically)...if you want it, go get it, and you will be able to get it easily.

Ya mind posting her update? Thanks.

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/acip-cliff-notes-feb-28