It’s amazing how Southwest manages to have such low fares without compromising quality, reliability, or customer service, isn’t it?
People can speculate all they like, but based on how many double-boosted people I know who’ve had Omicron, and the record virus levels in sewage, my money’s on no protection.
At Trader Joe’s the other night I noticed a couple of checkers had filter masks with transparent panels in front. No reason it couldn’t work. Face shields without masks are just stupid.
I mean this respectfully, but to say no protection, regardless of the anecdata, I don’t think is fair re: BA.4/BA.5 reinfections on BA.1. We will see shortly but that’s not where wastewater levels are. If you’re seeing different data let me know, I’m definitely interested. The wastewater data is all over the place. Close to BA.1 levels in the Bay and Houston but not in Boston or LA for example. And hospitalizations, while increasing, aren’t at this past winter’s levels.
https://twitter.com/BiobotAnalytics/status/1549454290162315265
https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
https://www.lacsd.org/home/showpublisheddocument/4318/637938995583064138
We have seen covid waves at different times throughout the country and I think we still don’t know enough why some regions raise faster than other (as so many factors like age distribution, when people got their vaccine shots etc etc will play a role). A few posts up there is a screenshot of the SFO wastewater data and we are already higher than during the winter. LA (as written in LATimes article) has supply issues and can’t accurately report data but all available data indicates that “…the number of cases now probably is not all that dissimilar to what we saw during the massive surge in December and January.”
I hear you! And there are so many variables that affect these differential outcomes: vaccination, previous infection, age, behavior. Do you have a link to the LA wastewater issue, couldn’t find it in the thread?
Obviously BA.4/BA.5 are more infectious, immune evasive etc. This new wave is a real problem. But what I’m responding to, and this may be barking up the wrong tree, is the idea that vaccination and previous Omicron immunity provide no protection. The studies vary about how much each prevent symptomatic infection, but it is not nothing, and though hospitalization and wastewater are rising, they’re not at past winter (aka peak) levels.
I think we agree that previous infections and/or booster shots provide protection against infection, hospitalization and death but the margins are shrinking compared to previous variants.
Here is the link to the LATimes article
Thanks for that!
I’m talking about the SF Bay Area, where I am. Per the link above the wastewater levels just surpassed the January Omicron peak.
Vaccination rates are very high here. Hospitalizations relative to case rates are far lower than in previous surges, which is presumably a combination of continued vaccine effectiveness against serious illness and the current variants being more likely to be asymptomatic or cause mild illness.
Unusual big-picture article focusing mostly on what epidemiologists expect the next few years to look like.
Céline Gounder, an infectious disease epidemiologist and a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation [expects] 100,000 to 250,000 [deaths per year] indefinitely into the future. “And the question I have is, how much death are we OK with?” she asks. “Have we decided this is OK? And if so, why?”
Nothing in that piece about long Covid, about which:
… the USC study found no relationship in its sample between long COVID and age, gender, race or preexisting health conditions including cancer, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
It did note a higher risk in patients who had obesity prior to infection. And it also spotted some associations between specific symptoms people experienced during their initial infection and the likelihood of developing long COVID. Patients who reported sore throats, headaches and, intriguingly, hair loss after testing positive were more likely to have lingering symptoms months later.
I got the Eclipse mask. It’s the old model with the exhalation valve. As I expected, the medium/large is a bit small for my face (I wear a size 8 hat).
For those interested, another study analyzing protection from 3x vaccine + previous Omicron infection for BA.5.
I tend to like David Wallace Wells. He’s fair minded and serious wrt climate.
And crazy not to talk about LC. The last I saw, (trying to find the link) the incidence for LC in Omicron infected was something like 1 in 22, though obviously the definition hasn’t quite been codified yet.
Next try. This one has a lot of nice details.
If the new boosters are available by early to mid-September, the officials said, it is unlikely the administration would authorize a second dose of the current boosters for people younger than 50 … officials are waiting for information from the manufacturers on whether there would be an adequate supply of reformulated shots if the fall campaign began earlier than expected.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/22/booster-shots-coronavirus-under-50/
From Saturday’s article quoting L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer:
Should the mandate go into effect, Ferrer said her department will remind businesses that they’re obligated to offer employees masks and put up signs announcing the mask-wearing requirement, so customers and visitors will know a masking requirement is in effect indoors.
She said the county will not ask businesses “to be enforcers” of the mandate and said, “we understand, as there has been throughout the pandemic, that there are some people who will go ahead and … not be in compliance.”
So the concerns about enforcement expressed in this article seem misplaced:
Good article about long covid and ivermectin as a business model - something we will see much more in the future with a significant rise of long covid in the US
grifters gonna grift…
Ivermectin might be effective if you’ve misdiagnosed parasite infection as long Covid.
Having your medical license suspended isn’t great for business.
Infowars’ business was mostly selling snake oil for years before the pandemic.
That mask is great. I recommend it highly. The seal check button is genius: pressing it cuts off the filters, so when you breathe in you can feel how tight the seal is (very). Nothing pressing against my nose or mouth.
Only problem is that it pushes my bifocals up. I need a pair of single-focus distance vision lenses.
And it does have an exhalation valve, so not appropriate for places where everyone’s wearing masks.