Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

RenegadeMonster said:
Surprised no one brought this up yet, but late last week the CDC changed their guidance.

Most healthy adults no longer have to wear masks. Only those who are considered high risk should continue to wear masks.

Most states and cities have already lifted mandates before the CDC made these changes to their guidance.


What horrifies me, is the top question in regards to the CDC's new guidance people have is "Does this mean that the pandemic is over now?"

Cases are still high. Deaths right now are around the highest levels recorded during the pandemic so far. But the new guidance is all about the current trajectory looks good (new cases and positivity rates are on the decline), most people have either been vaccinated or have natural immunity due to prior infection. Overall the disease currently is less severe though for people should be able to make their own decisions as to whether or not they wear a mask.

But most people will take this as "we did it boys. It's officially over. We can return to normal".
Click to expand...
The CDC has lost all credibility in most scientists' eyes.
 
www.cnn.com

Hong Kong bet on zero-Covid. Now it's facing a 'preventable disaster' | CNN

Morgues are nearly at capacity, hospitals overwhelmed and, as fears grow of a citywide lockdown, panicked shoppers have stripped supermarket shelves bare.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

Hong Kong is apparently having a deadly outbreak.

When did this start to happen. How did we go from Zero Covid to the morgoes are full and out of hospital beds so fast? I wonder what the vaccination rate is.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
www.cnn.com

Hong Kong bet on zero-Covid. Now it's facing a 'preventable disaster' | CNN

Morgues are nearly at capacity, hospitals overwhelmed and, as fears grow of a citywide lockdown, panicked shoppers have stripped supermarket shelves bare.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

Hong Kong is apparently having a deadly outbreak.

When did this start to happen. How did we go from Zero Covid to the morgoes are full and out of hospital beds so fast? I wonder what the vaccination rate is.
Click to expand...
Vaccination rates last week : fully vaccinated 70%, boostered 24% in Hong kong
Edit: and here is am article discussion how that happened:
www.theguardian.com

‘No light at the end’: How Hong Kong’s Covid response went so wrong

A policy of admitting every positive case to hospital means thousands are being added to an already huge backlog every day
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Last edited:
Study links even mild Covid-19 to changes in the brain

Study: SARS-CoV-2 is associated with changes in brain structure in UK Biobank - Nature

Douaud and her colleagues evaluated brain imaging from 401 individuals who had Covid-19 between March 2020 and April 2021, both before infection and an average of 4.5 months after infection. They compared the results with brain imaging of 384 uninfected individuals similar in age, socioeconomics and risk factors such as blood pressure and obesity. Of the 401 infected individuals, 15 patients had been hospitalized.

The 785 participants were between the ages of 51 and 81 were all part of the UK Biobank, an ongoing government health database of 500,000 UK participants begun in 2012.
Click to expand...
Douaud explained that it is normal for people to lose 0.2% to 0.3% of grey matter every year in the memory-related areas of the brain as they age, but in the study evaluation, patients who had been infected with the coronavirus lost an additional 0.2% to 2% of tissue compared with those who hadn't been infected.
Click to expand...
While the areas of the brain most impacted appear to be related to the olfactory system, Douaud said it wasn't clear why that was the case.
Click to expand...
Isaacson said the study findings were noticeable for clinicians, but he added that the overall impact on individuals was difficult to determine and could be small. "It's really hard to know the long-term clinical impact and quality of life impact in a situation like this," he said.
Click to expand...
 
Heard this from someone who traveled to Florida recently.

The hotel they stayed out had signage stating "masks required". Yet only about 1/3 of the staff were actually wearing masks and fewer guests when in common areas.

When they asked the hotel about masks they were told this. "Our parent company, Hilton, requires us to put up the signs. You don't have to wear a mask though."
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Heard this from someone who traveled to Florida recently.

The hotel they stayed out had signage stating "masks required". Yet only about 1/3 of the staff were actually wearing masks and fewer guests when in common areas.

When they asked the hotel about masks they were told this. "Our parent company, Hilton, requires us to put up the signs. You don't have to wear a mask though."
Click to expand...
It's been like that in the entire South for like... the whole thing. Even before they repealed the mask mandates, it wasn't like someone was going to stop a maskless patron. No one wants to start a confrontation. So even when the city mandate was to wear masks and in buildings and there was signage everywhere AND all the staff were wearing masks, many folks down here just didn't and no one stopped them. =/
 
Max Sterling said:
It's been like that in the entire South for like... the whole thing. Even before they repealed the mask mandates, it wasn't like someone was going to stop a maskless patron. No one wants to start a confrontation. So even when the city mandate was to wear masks and in buildings and there was signage everywhere AND all the staff were wearing masks, many folks down here just didn't and no one stopped them. =/
Click to expand...
The city of NOLA being the one exception, but once you got to the suburbs, this was the case. Guess that’s why I got Covid twice.
 
It's like a whole different universe here, then. I think today was the first time I went to a store and saw anything less than 95% of the people masked. Even last week it was still almost everyone masked up with the mandate gone. Today it was still over half.
 
Had a doctors appointment at 8:00am this morning.

I put a KN95 Mask on (brand new, clean / fresh) when entering the building. I did not grab one of their tissue masks at the door. Get to the desk to check in and got chastised about my mask and not following directions.

They made me replace my mask or put a tissue mask on over my mask. I was like I just put this on, it's better than your masks. But nope. Rules are rules and this is to ensure I'm wearing a fresh mask.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Had a doctors appointment at 8:00am this morning.

I put a KN95 Mask on (brand new, clean / fresh) when entering the building. I did not grab one of their tissue masks at the door. Get to the desk to check in and got chastised about my mask and not following directions.

They made me replace my mask or put a tissue mask on over my mask. I was like I just put this on, it's better than your masks. But nope. Rules are rules and this is to ensure I'm wearing a fresh mask.
Click to expand...
I hate rules like these, but I understand them. It's because you can't trust people to be honest about these things. It's a sad state of affairs when in order to ensure that everyone follows the rules you need to unnecessarily police those who are following the rules.
 
Kids have been without masks in school for a couple weeks and I knew it was inevitable, boom Covid. Been miserable for a few days. My kids have bounced back much quicker than my wife and I. I guess 2 years avoiding it was a good run.
 
Mtcvinyl said:
Kids have been without masks in school for a couple weeks and I knew it was inevitable, boom Covid. Been miserable for a few days. My kids have bounced back much quicker than my wife and I. I guess 2 years avoiding it was a good run.
Click to expand...
In totally related news, we are seeing an uptick in the B2. Omicron variant.

I have lost all faith in the CDC. For reference:
Government scientists confirmed Tuesday that there has been an uptick in the presence of Covid-19 in wastewater samples across the U.S.

later in the article:
“It’s too early to know if this current trend will continue or whether we’ll see a corresponding increase in reported cases across the country,” Kirby said. [Kirby being the CDC rep here]

Riddle me this, when has an uptick in covid in wastewater samples not precipitous of an outbreak in an area? We figured out that we needed to monitor wastewater because it gave us the best picture of disease burden in communities, since we are incapable of doing any other public health surveillance. How is our number one and only surveillance for covid infections suddenly become unreliable?

So stupid.

article link: CDC confirms an uptick in Covid virus found in wastewater
 
Looks like cases in the US were on a upward trajectory last week. Not a surge. An Average of 300 additional daily positives over the prior week. Probably likely due to mask mandates being lifted.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Looks like cases in the US were on a upward trajectory last week. Not a surge. An Average of 300 additional daily positives over the prior week. Probably likely due to mask mandates being lifted.
Click to expand...
Right now we are seeing upward trajectory of cases, but not an upward trajectory of hospital cases. The reason cases are exploding across Asia now, is because they were good with containing and limiting spread of Covid by doing localized lockdowns in the past, so most of the population didn't contract the disease--which seems to be something that only Asian countries are able to collaborate well. In China, they kept Covid at bay for as long as they could, and now this very virulent strain is getting everyone sick because it's impossibly hard to not have it transmit across a population, even a very careful population. I expect to see the same sort of death trends over there that we saw here. I am wondering if over here we are approaching some sort of heard immunity. I know that the whole idea of herd immunity by illness is controversial, but I wonder if that's what's happening over here.
 
nolalady said:
Right now we are seeing upward trajectory of cases, but not an upward trajectory of hospital cases. The reason cases are exploding across Asia now, is because they were good with containing and limiting spread of Covid by doing localized lockdowns in the past, so most of the population didn't contract the disease--which seems to be something that only Asian countries are able to collaborate well. In China, they kept Covid at bay for as long as they could, and now this very virulent strain is getting everyone sick because it's impossibly hard to not have it transmit across a population, even a very careful population. I expect to see the same sort of death trends over there that we saw here. I am wondering if over here we are approaching some sort of heard immunity. I know that the whole idea of herd immunity by illness is controversial, but I wonder if that's what's happening over here.
Click to expand...

It seems to be. We’ve been rolling back on everything since the start of February, upto mandatory mask wearing ending on 28/2. There are still reasonably high case numbers but the deaths and hospital/ICU numbers are stable and low. I don’t know if our vaccine take up percentages differentiate us and the UK from a lot of other developed nations that haven’t had as high a proportion of the population take it up though 🤷🏻
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top