Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

www.cnn.com

Omicron-specific Pfizer vaccine will be ready by March, CEO says

A US federal vaccine mandate goes into effect today for all businesses with 100 employees or more as coronavirus cases continue to increase across the country. Follow here for the latest news updates.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

So, how will variant specific vaccines work. Would you likely have to wait 6 months from your last shot or booster or will they start giving them to fully vaccinated people?
 
Dtknuckles said:
1 out of 10 students in LAUSD are positive. The student body is 300k plus some.
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I just ran across this article:

www.france24.com

40% of Israel could be infected with Covid-19 in current wave, says PM

Israel could see up to nearly 40 percent of the population infected by coronavirus during the current wave, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday, as testing facilities nationwide buckled.
www.france24.com www.france24.com

"Data presented at the cabinet meeting indicates that here, in Israel, between two to four million citizens in total will be infected during this current wave," Bennett wrote on his Twitter account.

A country of just 9.4 million, Israel has seen infections nearly quadruple over the past week compared to the previous one. The health ministry reported 17,518 new infections on Saturday.

^^ They are saying that up to 40% of Israel could have Covid. FOURTY PERCENT....
 
RenegadeMonster said:
www.cnn.com

Omicron-specific Pfizer vaccine will be ready by March, CEO says

A US federal vaccine mandate goes into effect today for all businesses with 100 employees or more as coronavirus cases continue to increase across the country. Follow here for the latest news updates.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

So, how will variant specific vaccines work. Would you likely have to wait 6 months from your last shot or booster or will they start giving them to fully vaccinated people?
Click to expand...

They'll have to work out and test a protocol. Minimum 2 weeks since any prior vaccination is standard. After that, they'll have to figure out what makes sense depending on what gives a good response and what's necessary depending on the situation. I imagine this will work somewhat like a booster, but it's also a different molecule that will produce new antibodies and not just boost the production of those made by previous shots.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
www.cnn.com

Omicron-specific Pfizer vaccine will be ready by March, CEO says

A US federal vaccine mandate goes into effect today for all businesses with 100 employees or more as coronavirus cases continue to increase across the country. Follow here for the latest news updates.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

So, how will variant specific vaccines work. Would you likely have to wait 6 months from your last shot or booster or will they start giving them to fully vaccinated people?
Click to expand...
My guess is that it would be similar to the flu vaccine--they create a seasonal shot based on the current variant that is circulating--but the problem is that this thing doesn't really act like the flu, nor is it all that seasonal and it keeps mutating--so we never know what we'll get next. Our vaccines aren't very good at keeping people from getting Covid, but they are good at reducing severe symptoms. So I'm not really sure, in practice, how well a "variant specific" covid vaccine will be since we haven't been very good at keeping covid from spreading and it is still mutating. I would think that this is like a dog chasing it's tail at this point.
 
nolalady said:
I just ran across this article:

www.france24.com

40% of Israel could be infected with Covid-19 in current wave, says PM

Israel could see up to nearly 40 percent of the population infected by coronavirus during the current wave, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday, as testing facilities nationwide buckled.
www.france24.com www.france24.com

"Data presented at the cabinet meeting indicates that here, in Israel, between two to four million citizens in total will be infected during this current wave," Bennett wrote on his Twitter account.

A country of just 9.4 million, Israel has seen infections nearly quadruple over the past week compared to the previous one. The health ministry reported 17,518 new infections on Saturday.

^^ They are saying that up to 40% of Israel could have Covid. FOURTY PERCENT....
Click to expand...

What does this look like? What impact does it have? We are at a point in LA where everything is open with masking and proof of vaccination. I think hospital capacity is high.

Do we just forever expand hospital capacity?

Does the virus become less deadly so that it doesn’t make sense to do all the preventative testing and quarantine?
 
Pfizer's latest estimate that the data for the 3-dose cohort in kids under 5 won't be available until April is so discouraging. April for the topline results means summer or later for rolling out doses. It feels impossibly far away, and families like mine just have to keep gambling and hoping for the best in the meantime. I don't know if it's seasonal anxiety or what, but this is the most angry/despondent I've felt since the pandemic started.

Oh, the government is going to mail us some rapid tests? That may or may not be useful to detect Omicron? Next month? Super.

Just...super.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Pfizer's latest estimate that the data for the 3-dose cohort in kids under 5 won't be available until April is so discouraging. April for the topline results means summer or later for rolling out doses. It feels impossibly far away, and families like mine just have to keep gambling and hoping for the best in the meantime. I don't know if it's seasonal anxiety or what, but this is the most angry/despondent I've felt since the pandemic started.

Oh, the government is going to mail us some rapid tests? That may or may not be useful to detect Omicron? Next month? Super.

Just...super.
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My wife and I were chatting with friends over FaceTime the other night and it was the first time I heard that I was supposed to swab my throat and then my nose. Or maybe it was vice versa I was simply stunned that was even a thing.

We also found out that the other wife tested positive for the antibodies (not the vaccine proteins) so she must have been sick and not known it. I think we are at the point where nothing is in our direct control (short of becoming a hermit) and you have to accept that you have done the best you can with what you have been given. Should there be more? Sure. But I'm not doing the mRNA research or manufacturing tests or really doing much of anything.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than at some point you gotta just sit down, have a beer, and smile about something.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Pfizer's latest estimate that the data for the 3-dose cohort in kids under 5 won't be available until April is so discouraging. April for the topline results means summer or later for rolling out doses. It feels impossibly far away, and families like mine just have to keep gambling and hoping for the best in the meantime. I don't know if it's seasonal anxiety or what, but this is the most angry/despondent I've felt since the pandemic started.

Oh, the government is going to mail us some rapid tests? That may or may not be useful to detect Omicron? Next month? Super.

Just...super.
Click to expand...


I’ve sent my kid to school everyday. They do have social distancing protocols in place (minimal) as well as a heath screening which at this point is voluntary. They did have enough staff to do it properly, but they turned down the money from Uncle Sam.

At the same time I work at a school (1400 students). We get tested every week and have pretty good adherence to mask mandates.

Since fall my life has gotten back to normal. We go places and don’t think too much about the virus. Both my wife and I are vaccinated per mandate from our work. I did have the one scare with testing positive, but the stress from that was mostly family logistics not health. None of my family tested positive and none of the people I came into contact with tested positive.

I don’t know if it’s just the time wearing down general my general concern for this problem or just the evidence of my life pointing towards me being less concerned about the whole Covid thing.
 
folsom_lives said:
My wife and I were chatting with friends over FaceTime the other night and it was the first time I heard that I was supposed to swab my throat and then my nose. Or maybe it was vice versa I was simply stunned that was even a thing.

We also found out that the other wife tested positive for the antibodies (not the vaccine proteins) so she must have been sick and not known it. I think we are at the point where nothing is in our direct control (short of becoming a hermit) and you have to accept that you have done the best you can with what you have been given. Should there be more? Sure. But I'm not doing the mRNA research or manufacturing tests or really doing much of anything.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than at some point you gotta just sit down, have a beer, and smile about something.
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No, I know, and I'm trying not to let myself just be paralyzed by it all. The part that is frustrating me is that society bent over backwards to protect "the most vulnerable" in the early days of the pandemic, but since then we've decided there's "no appetite" for those kinds of measures anymore. "Vaccines are available," so kids should be in school. "We're all going to get it eventually, might as well just accept that." "Most young kids don't even get that sick."

I don't know. The defeatist shrugs, the throngs of people flooding into town for college football while the National Guard has to be deployed at the local children's hospital, reduced isolation requirements, the goddamn high school principal revealing to some of the students that * HE'S * NOT * VACCINATED *, are just so dissonant. We did what we were supposed to do! We masked! We got our shots! We stayed home! We gave up time with family and friends! And now...what? Maybe he'll get it and maybe he won't, good luck?

I know my family is still lucky. Nobody has been sick, we're all doing okay, blah blah blah. I'm just frustrated by the situation at large and having trouble not seeing it through the lens of my own kid. Our daycare provider texted us over the weekend and said that she and her older daughter have completed their 10-day isolation after getting sick, but now her younger daughter is positive and symptomatic.

...But she feels guilty for being closed down last week, so she's going to go ahead and be open this week and just tell her daughter to stay in her room during the business day. And the other parents said, OKAY.

I mean -- WHAT.

There's no right answers in any of this. Everybody's in a tough spot. Some of the other parents NEED our daycare to be open, and they need the service their money is paying for. It's the same at the macro level. I know. I get it. Still sucks.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
No, I know, and I'm trying not to let myself just be paralyzed by it all. The part that is frustrating me is that society bent over backwards to protect "the most vulnerable" in the early days of the pandemic, but since then we've decided there's "no appetite" for those kinds of measures anymore. "Vaccines are available," so kids should be in school. "We're all going to get it eventually, might as well just accept that." "Most young kids don't even get that sick."

I don't know. The defeatist shrugs, the throngs of people flooding into town for college football while the National Guard has to be deployed at the local children's hospital, reduced isolation requirements, the goddamn high school principal revealing to some of the students that * HE'S * NOT * VACCINATED *, are just so dissonant. We did what we were supposed to do! We masked! We got our shots! We stayed home! We gave up time with family and friends! And now...what? Maybe he'll get it and maybe he won't, good luck?

I know my family is still lucky. Nobody has been sick, we're all doing okay, blah blah blah. I'm just frustrated by the situation at large and having trouble not seeing it through the lens of my own kid. Our daycare provider texted us over the weekend and said that she and her older daughter have completed their 10-day isolation after getting sick, but now her younger daughter is positive and symptomatic.

...But she feels guilty for being closed down last week, so she's going to go ahead and be open this week and just tell her daughter to stay in her room during the business day. And the other parents said, OKAY.

I mean -- WHAT.

There's no right answers in any of this. Everybody's in a tough spot. Some of the other parents NEED our daycare to be open, and they need the service their money is paying for. It's the same at the macro level. I know. I get it. Still sucks.
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Got this alert on my phone AS I was typing this post.

apple.news

Why More Americans Are Saying They’re ‘Vaxxed and Done’ — The Atlantic

COVID has always divided Americans. The Omicron wave is even dividing the vaccinated.
apple.news apple.news
 
Dtknuckles said:
What does this look like? What impact does it have? We are at a point in LA where everything is open with masking and proof of vaccination. I think hospital capacity is high.

Do we just forever expand hospital capacity?

Does the virus become less deadly so that it doesn’t make sense to do all the preventative testing and quarantine?
Click to expand...
This is where I'm at right now.
I have a degree in public health and I don't know what the answer is either. This thing is so insane--but to think that it is so contagious that it spread through a population that is notoriously well vaxed and the saturation levels could be somewhere around 20-40% of the ENTIRE POPULATION....what does this even mean?? How do we get through this with crazy numbers like this? And yeah, does any of what we are doing make any sense anyway?

Indymisanthrope said:
No, I know, and I'm trying not to let myself just be paralyzed by it all. The part that is frustrating me is that society bent over backwards to protect "the most vulnerable" in the early days of the pandemic, but since then we've decided there's "no appetite" for those kinds of measures anymore. "Vaccines are available," so kids should be in school. "We're all going to get it eventually, might as well just accept that." "Most young kids don't even get that sick."

I don't know. The defeatist shrugs, the throngs of people flooding into town for college football while the National Guard has to be deployed at the local children's hospital, reduced isolation requirements, the goddamn high school principal revealing to some of the students that * HE'S * NOT * VACCINATED *, are just so dissonant. We did what we were supposed to do! We masked! We got our shots! We stayed home! We gave up time with family and friends! And now...what? Maybe he'll get it and maybe he won't, good luck?

I know my family is still lucky. Nobody has been sick, we're all doing okay, blah blah blah. I'm just frustrated by the situation at large and having trouble not seeing it through the lens of my own kid. Our daycare provider texted us over the weekend and said that she and her older daughter have completed their 10-day isolation after getting sick, but now her younger daughter is positive and symptomatic.

...But she feels guilty for being closed down last week, so she's going to go ahead and be open this week and just tell her daughter to stay in her room during the business day. And the other parents said, OKAY.

I mean -- WHAT.

There's no right answers in any of this. Everybody's in a tough spot. Some of the other parents NEED our daycare to be open, and they need the service their money is paying for. It's the same at the macro level. I know. I get it. Still sucks.
Click to expand...
This, so much of this. My dad is a transplant patient so we were extra careful. We stayed away and masked up but even my dad is getting lax about masking up and he and my mom went on a river cruise down the Nile a few weeks ago. Though my favorite was when the school called us to tell us that my son was exposed to Covid in his class. I asked what needed to be done with his siblings and the school said that they were fine to go back to school. My boys share a room, so it makes no sense to not also quarantine my other boy, but that's the current policy. Nothing makes sense and they keep changing how long you have to quarantine for which just makes for more confusion.

The child care, to me, is the WOOOORRRRSSTTT. My job expects me to be there, but my kids' school may or may not be allowing them to come. It's not as bad as it was at the very beginning, but the inconsistency and constant juggling that we have to do as parents is burning me out.

Dtknuckles said:
In some ways I feel the idea that if you didn’t get vaccinated I don’t have a lot of empathy for you, but when I think of the other powerless people in their lives (children) that instinct recedes a bit.
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The number one predictor as to whether someone is vaccinated is whether or not they have heath insurance--those with health insurance of any kind (including Medicare and Medicaid) have much higher rates of vaccination than those with no insurance coverage. When these people were asked why they did not get a vaccination although it was free, the number one reason they stated was that they were afraid that if they had a negative reaction to the vaccination they would not be able to go see a doctor. The second reason stated was that they were afraid to miss work if they got sick due to the vaccination. When I read this, it got really hard for me to not have empathy for them. If we had nationalized healthcare like other first world economies, we would have a much higher rate of vaccination because we would have less people who were afraid to get it.
 
The CDC is expected to change their guidance again, this time on masks.

Their new guidance is expected to be to wear N95 or k95 masks if you can and to not wear cloth masks.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
The CDC is expected to change their guidance again, this time on masks.

Their new guidance is expected to be to wear N95 or k95 masks if you can and to not wear cloth masks.
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Vow, that's surprisingly late. That recommendation has changed over here last winter and mask mandates have been medicinal or n95 make since then
 
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15 minutes after dropping off my 3yo at daycare today I get the call that he was in close contact with a kid that tested positive. With all the conflicting recommendations going around I don't even know what to do.

I went and picked him up and now we wait? I guess this is just a waste of a potential work day. I know it's no different than if he became ill at school, but still, he's not ill he was just next to someone who was.

The funny thing is, when I dropped off this morning more than half the cubbies were empty so I knew it was only a matter of time before he would be a close contact.

Working parents are really getting screwed here. I thank god my employer likes me and doesn't keep my productivity under a microscope. Otherwise I feel I would have been fired 10 times by now.
 
ayayrawn said:
Not only much too late, but also expensive and hard to find. Great stuff.
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Does not exist to buy in stores around here. You can get them from Amazon. But I here it's hit or miss whether you can find it in stock at all and very expensive. You also run the risk of getting cheap shit from China.

I'm good with my bamboo cloth mask. I'm not going out anywhere other than grocery shopping.
 
My wife bought a bunch of these (https://lutema.com) when we were supposed to travel for the holidays. Since our plans were wrecked by covid, we now have a whole bunch of "good" masks. They are a bit expensive, but (supposedly) tested and manufactured in the US.

Not a ringing endorsement of the masks, but I'm on day 5 of quarantine over here, and my 10 year old tested positive yesterday...she has a scratchy throat but is otherwise just bored. We took her for a PCR yesterday a.m. after the antigen was negative. She hasn't been in school since Thurday (Friday was a snow day here), so thankfully she has no close contacts.

The tricky part, which makes me feel extremely irresponsible: her 8 year old sister (also vaccinated) tested negative on an antigen and has zero symptoms, so she's at school (masked, etc.). She had a PCR at school yesterday (every Monday), so I guess we'll see, but what would you do??
 
ayayrawn said:
Not only much too late, but also expensive and hard to find. Great stuff.
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Right. Back at the end of summer, I got a bunch for our Labor Day trip. Our local grocery store had a giant bin full of KN95 masks. I think it was a 5 pack. Same grocery store now only has non-medical grade paper masks. You can still get some on places like Amazon but it's not cheap and the people who need them probably can't afford disposable masks that cost $3-$5 each.
 
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