Thinking of you all!!

CDC's Cohen: "Our treatment, which is Tamiflu, which we have both doses in stockpile and around the country, works." https://www.npr.org/2024/04/03/1242585330/bird-flu-avian-cows-eggs-milk-idaho-kansas-texas-michigan-new-mexico-cdc I seem to remember that in H7N9 cases in China (and to a lesser extent in the Swine flu outbreak of 2009) they were giving double the dose of Tamiflu, and mortality was still incredibly high.

^That study might be used by insurance companies to deny payment for Paxlovid...I am already hearing of people being denied repeat Paxlovid for infections that are just a few months apart.

Don' worry! Ashish Jha is on it - it's all good and we are in competent hands:

For a while I was wondering why I was no longer able to use Google search's "cached" feature. Well, it turns out they have deliberately removed it. I am very disappointed by this - and also worried; now that we use the internet more and more, it will be so easy to forget what was written and published, in a world where everything is currently changing. Yahoo still has cached, and there is wayback machine etc. but still...

Is there any way you could reply and say that it might have been a mistake, surely she intended to send this to her daughter (the one who appears to be graduating soon), as your son is far too young to think about job options (and was very confused about this text)?

I had vestibular neuritis after a very(!) mild cold over a decade ago. I did not need any meds in the immediate phase - except for the episode that landed me in the ER, it was manageable - but I did require a few sessions of physical therapy eventually. Once you feel better (I would not start in the acute phase) - you can get some ideas online; the exercises are pretty easy to do at home (and a therapist would tell you to do them at home). Good luck!

Yes, I came here to post about this - you need to look at the expert reactions to this, which Amoret's twitter feed linked to https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/expert-reaction-long-covid-may-be-no-different-to-other-long-term-virus-effects. I also suspect this timing of the release of this publication Long Covid Awareness Day is the start of an attempt to cancel long covid, just as they are cancelling everything else - covid precautions, data collection, testing, air filters (yes - some employers threw out their air filters at the end of the public health emergency!) etc. Is it sad that I went to check if Ashish Jha retweeted this Guardian article? And while he has (not yet) done that, he did retweet a series of tweets by someone that includes gems like "immunity prevents most of the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, from heart problems to longCOVID." and " they have remained in the fear of the virus, the zeroCovid movement...They keep their fear in denying immunity and its effects, which now make SARS-CoV-2 comparable with other respiratory viruses." And even if it is the case the rate of long covid is just like the rate of "long flu" - I don't know many people who catch the flu every single year multiple years in a row (what is the average number of covid infections for Americans up to now, approximately 3 years after we abandoned most precautions?). Covid is just so much more infectious...

I see a lot of posts online that claim you don't need an international passport to purchase a ticket... "

Outbreak in an apartment building in Canada, probably via air flow (not direct contact). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/covid19-outbreak-at-a-residential-apartment-building-in-northern-ontario-canada/E73BCBBF22BC3915686C12EB8A054BE0

A report on one hypervaccinated individual.

I came to post the report about the White house dropping the testing rule. It would be interesting to see what other precautions they still take (ventilation, far UV etc.), and I am sure he just received another booster...

Yes - I am devastated. I knew it was coming, but still (I had hoped/expected that there would be a public comment period beforehand). I looked at the website, and it appears that the at risk categories "for respiratory illnesses" have changed - "just" older, younger, immunocompromised and pregnant people, or those with disabilities. https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/risk-factors/index.html As recently, this was the list for covid https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html Again, I ask, what am I missing? This will make it virtually impossible to negotiate any kind of accommodations from work, friends, businesses, doctors... Also, while the recent paper showed good short-term protection from covid from hospitalization for the recent booster, we did recently have a study that showed that protection from hospitalization the bivalent shot was quite poor just a few months out. Of course, as others have said, the continued focus on just hospitalization/death is very misguided. Plus, to change guidance in part because people don't have at-home tests for other respiratory illnesses - they DO exist in other countries (and some, like Lucira right at home, though they are very expensive here). What we should have done if we wanted to make guidance more uniform across diseases is to invest in rapid (and cheap!) at home tests for multiple diseases, so that you can stay home and keep others safe while you are infectious - whether it is covid or flu or RSV. Another part that is neglected in this change in guidance is that if/when covid mutates into an (even more) virulent form that evades vaccination/prior immunity (even more), this relaxed guidance will be disastrous. So many flaws with this. Of course, Ashish Jha is fully on board with this. Is he hoping to lead the CDC in the future?

As I understand the rules (I actually went back to the CDC page), high risk) does not count, unless you are moderately to severely immunocompromised? Yet at the same time, we know that vaccines don't protect more than a few months at most, and with covid circulating year round, it is a very uncomfortable place to be. DId anybody see the tape of the meeting? I would be tempted to take a look at the evidence presented. And Eric Feigl Ding reports that there is an embargo on a CDC message - presumably to lower the isolation guideline for respiratory viruse/covids. For release at 1pm EST on a Friday afternoon (as usual when they try to relax protections), and a couple of days after the latest vaccine recommendation (to prevent protest by the elderly, who count at the polls).

There could be biases in both directions - those with some concerns about long covid would be more likely to take the test than those who recovered after a few days of a "cold". And of course those most severely affected can't even manage to do this. These studies are a very strong indication that this will be quite devastating at the population level (and, in my eyes, even at the individual level. If after a decade of "minor" infections you lose 10IQ points - that is pretty significant and certainly a plausible extrapolation. And likely quite a bit worse than the effects of lead poisening. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/nearly-half-of-the-us-population-exposed-to-dangerously-high-lead-levels#:~:text=Deficits greatest for those born in 1966–1970&text=The researchers report two main,IQ points per U.S. adult. Alarm bells should be ringing...but instead our CDC announced the oldest can take a second shot because it reduced death and hospitalizations. What if we want help preventing long covid in the young and middle aged??