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Omicron anecdata?


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3 hours ago, Mom_to3 said:

The outlook is very bleak, at least for the short to medium term

I agree with that, although I'm still hopeful that Covid can be beaten in the medium to long term. I just read that a quarter of people on a survey in the UK believe that 'covid was a hoax'. I think it's the 'was' that gets me. What part of Covid is in the past? Almost everyone in the UK has had covid and with the numbers of deaths, most people would know someone who has died from it. It is incredible, Orwellian, that people can be so easily led to believe that 'Covid never existed'. 

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6 hours ago, bookbard said:

I agree with that, although I'm still hopeful that Covid can be beaten in the medium to long term. I just read that a quarter of people on a survey in the UK believe that 'covid was a hoax'. I think it's the 'was' that gets me. What part of Covid is in the past? Almost everyone in the UK has had covid and with the numbers of deaths, most people would know someone who has died from it. It is incredible, Orwellian, that people can be so easily led to believe that 'Covid never existed'. 

I'm not sure that most people calling it a hoax believe covid never existed; I think a fair number of people think that yes, it exists, but no, it really is just a cold/flu and all the drama was a hoax. 

IIRC I don't know anybody who died from it (I've seen a few reports on a game I play of players who died of it, but I didn't ever talk to them), but I also don't know all that many people. A fair number of the people who knew someone who died from it might have known an elderly person who died from it who they might think might have died from the flu a month later if they hadn't gotten covid, kwim? 

Not that I believe it was a hoax; the excess deaths numbers are pretty clear, and a large number of deniers are clearly rather ignorant and/or batty. Even after the vaccines were out and it was pretty clear the odds of family or I dying from it were pretty low, it was still scary that hospitals were overwhelmed and people with other conditions sometimes didn't get needed care, which is something that a lot of deniers conveniently chose to ignore too. 

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The tl;dr on the Katelyn Jetelina post:

(1) The US, EU, and WHO have all agreed that fall boosters should be updated to the XBB variant.

(2) This will be a monovalent vaccine (will not include the Wuhan or BA strains).

(3) Novavax will have an XBB vaccine this fall.

Edited by Corraleno
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7 hours ago, crazyforlatin said:

Have we already discussed Enovid nasal spray from Israel?

I think a number of posters here use it, a friend of mine uses it. I did read a doctor on twitter who felt that you shouldn't use it too much, it could have some side effects. But I can't remember now where I read it, sorry!

205 deaths this week in Australia just as winter begins. Over 4,000 deaths this year. I got my 5th vaccine at the pharmacist this week, I was the only one wearing a mask. 

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1 hour ago, mommyoffive said:

I would love to find more info on the different nasal sprays.  Has there been any research on which one works or don't work.  

I see a fair bit of discussion on twitter about it. I occasionally use Flo travel nasal spray which has carrageenan in it. (Efficacy of a Nasal Spray Containing Iota-Carrageenan in the Postexposure Prophylaxis of COVID-19 in Hospital Personnel Dedicated to Patients Care with COVID-19 Disease - PMC (nih.gov))

I think the Enovid uses nitric oxide (which is why some scientists are cautious about longterm use). Here is a discussion which cites research: 

This study uses an iodine base: Study finds nasal spray could aid battle against COVID (uwa.edu.au)

The Finnish one uses some new kind of molecule: Finnish Researchers Develop Nasal Spray That Protects against COVID | Inside Precision Medicine

I do think that 'user error' will be a huge thing with nasal sprays. It's actually tricky to get it into the right spot! 

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People’s CDC COVID-19 Weather Report: June 19, 2023 (substack.com)

Title reads “CDC Wastewater Data Current SARS-CoV-2 virus levels by state.” A key on the right side defines current virus levels by category. White is a new site, dark blue is 0 to 19 percent, medium blue is 20 to 39 percent, light blue is 40 to 59 percent, orange is 60 to 79 percent, and red is 80 to 100 percent. A map of the United States contains dots corresponding to wastewater surveillance sites with each dot colored according to the key. Many dots are scattered across the East Coast and Midwest regions, mostly dark to light blue. A few red and orange dots appear in some states around metropolitan areas. Dots are fewer and farther between in the West, and they are mostly dark to light blue, concentrated around metropolitan areas. There are no dots in Alaska, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Hawaii has a few dark to light blue dots, and Guam has sites with no recent data.

 

This week, Biobot shows a small uptick in wastewater levels in the northeast, and other regions remain relatively stable. Of course, local wastewater may be more valuable to follow rather than regional levels.

 

Title reads “COVID-19 Wastewater Levels As of June 16, 2023.” A map of the United States in the upper left corner serves as a key. The West is green, Midwest is purple, South is pink, and Northeast is orange. A graph on the bottom is titled “Wastewater: Effective SARS-CoV-2 virus concentration (copies / mL of sewage).” The line graph shows by region dates between May 7, 2023 and June 11, 2023 with regional virus concentrations decreasing in May and continuing into June. A key on the right side states concentration as of June 14, 2023: 188 copies / mL (Northeast), 116 copies / mL (Midwest), 147 copies / mL (South), and 222 copies / mL (West).

 

The New York Times just reintroduced its COVID Tracker. It is using CDC data to produce its data, largely focused on daily COVID admissions and deaths (which we know are grossly underreported). 

 

Title reads “Current hospitalizations COVID-19 patients per 100000 people.” A key at the top shows a color scale, with yellow as 0 to 15, light orange as 16 to 30, orange as 31 to 45, red as 46 to 60, dark red as 61 to 75, and purple as 75 and above. Gray means no data. A map of the United States shows clusters of hospitalization counts. Much of the map is gray. There are scattered clusters of yellow in most states, except Montana and Wyoming. Some areas have higher reported cases, including Springfield, Oregon in dark orange, Roseville, California in orange, Taos, New Mexico in orange, Rochester, Minnesota in orange, Florence and Loris, South Carolina in dark orange, and Ketchikan, Alaska in orange.

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1 hour ago, Mom_to3 said:

Interestingly, severe thirst (for a short time) has been one of the big side effects for vaccination in my family...

Yes true for me too. Second vaccine the headache was insane until I started superhydrating. For the third one I started drinking a tonne from when I had it and it wasn’t so bad.

Isn’t thirst a symptom of diabetes? And diabetes is an issue for some post covid?

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18 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Yes true for me too. Second vaccine the headache was insane until I started superhydrating. For the third one I started drinking a tonne from when I had it and it wasn’t so bad.

Isn’t thirst a symptom of diabetes? And diabetes is an issue for some post covid?

Yes - we started super-hydrating, too, for the vaccinations (including waking up the kids at night once to get a drink for the first night). This really seems to help with side effects overall.

And yes, and yes (actually, diabetes risk is quite substantially increased after a covid illness, including in kids...). Haven't seen anything about what causes this odd thirst after the vaccination - and it's a really short-lived side effect, so am not really worried about it.

Just a quick depressing slide about how we are so behind in terms of shots. The vaxx-only strategy is pretty much a failure (but I will still line up to get the new booster in the fall. We should have had an XBB shot by now already - the advantage of the MRNA vaccines was supposed to be that they could be adapted within 3 months or so, and now we are updating at the same speed as flu vaccines, even though the flu changes much more slowly).

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1669366459678752768/photo/1

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39 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

Has anyone used a personal air purifier for airline travel? 

I have bought one for air travel so I will tell you how it goes (later on this year). I have no idea how it will work but I thought better than nothing for when I have to eat during the flight. 

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On 6/19/2023 at 1:53 PM, mommyoffive said:

People’s CDC COVID-19 Weather Report: June 19, 2023 (substack.com)

Title reads “CDC Wastewater Data Current SARS-CoV-2 virus levels by state.” A key on the right side defines current virus levels by category. White is a new site, dark blue is 0 to 19 percent, medium blue is 20 to 39 percent, light blue is 40 to 59 percent, orange is 60 to 79 percent, and red is 80 to 100 percent. A map of the United States contains dots corresponding to wastewater surveillance sites with each dot colored according to the key. Many dots are scattered across the East Coast and Midwest regions, mostly dark to light blue. A few red and orange dots appear in some states around metropolitan areas. Dots are fewer and farther between in the West, and they are mostly dark to light blue, concentrated around metropolitan areas. There are no dots in Alaska, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Hawaii has a few dark to light blue dots, and Guam has sites with no recent data.

 

This week, Biobot shows a small uptick in wastewater levels in the northeast, and other regions remain relatively stable. Of course, local wastewater may be more valuable to follow rather than regional levels.

 

Title reads “COVID-19 Wastewater Levels As of June 16, 2023.” A map of the United States in the upper left corner serves as a key. The West is green, Midwest is purple, South is pink, and Northeast is orange. A graph on the bottom is titled “Wastewater: Effective SARS-CoV-2 virus concentration (copies / mL of sewage).” The line graph shows by region dates between May 7, 2023 and June 11, 2023 with regional virus concentrations decreasing in May and continuing into June. A key on the right side states concentration as of June 14, 2023: 188 copies / mL (Northeast), 116 copies / mL (Midwest), 147 copies / mL (South), and 222 copies / mL (West).

 

The New York Times just reintroduced its COVID Tracker. It is using CDC data to produce its data, largely focused on daily COVID admissions and deaths (which we know are grossly underreported). 

 

Title reads “Current hospitalizations COVID-19 patients per 100000 people.” A key at the top shows a color scale, with yellow as 0 to 15, light orange as 16 to 30, orange as 31 to 45, red as 46 to 60, dark red as 61 to 75, and purple as 75 and above. Gray means no data. A map of the United States shows clusters of hospitalization counts. Much of the map is gray. There are scattered clusters of yellow in most states, except Montana and Wyoming. Some areas have higher reported cases, including Springfield, Oregon in dark orange, Roseville, California in orange, Taos, New Mexico in orange, Rochester, Minnesota in orange, Florence and Loris, South Carolina in dark orange, and Ketchikan, Alaska in orange.

We are at 2 hospitalizations per 100,000 in my county and our close neighboring county. That's down 30% from previous week. I just checked because my youngest is sick and spiked a fever tonight. She has never had COVID. She will test tomorrow. 

@mommyoffive thanks for posting these.

Edited by popmom
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11 hours ago, popmom said:

We are at 2 hospitalizations per 100,000 in my county and our close neighboring county. That's down 30% from previous week. I just checked because my youngest is sick and spiked a fever tonight. She has never had COVID. She will test tomorrow. 

@mommyoffive thanks for posting these.

Hoping your dd is feeling better.

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I can’t figure out how to insert a new quote while on my phone…the whole article is worth reading and not long.
 

📣 Important: We must clarify that the #COVID19 vaccine does NOT cause #AntiphospholipidSyndrome.

“My husband can’t watch soccer games anymore, and for a year I wondered if the COVID-19 vaccine was to blame.

His first stroke happened a few days after a COVID vaccination. It flummoxed everyone: He had no previous health problems, and the vaccine he got wasn’t associated with #stroke. As a health researcher and vaccine proponent, I had a hard time making sense of it.

Our road to the truth began when my husband’s recovery suddenly took a turn for the worse; I found him lying on the concrete with his eyes closed at a Halloween party. A brain MRI later showed he had experienced a second small stroke.

This led to a fresh round of tests and eventually a formal diagnosis: #antiphospholipid syndrome, or #APS. His diagnosis has been like strapping on a headlamp in the woods at night: Things are still dark, but at least we can see where we’re heading.

He’s on blood thinners to prevent further strokes. He finally got a COVID vaccine booster and sailed through it. It turns out that a COVID infection raises your risk of stroke, so we’re grateful he has that protection.

Human brains tend to latch on to heuristics — decision-making shortcuts that simplify things, often in misleading ways. If one thing immediately follows another, for example, we assume they’re related.

One famous heuristic is Occam’s Razor: the idea that other things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one. The problem is that what’s simplest depends on the available information. Making matters worse, other heuristics can cause us to ignore information that’s right in front of us. Confirmation bias, for instance, leads us to filter out or downplay new information that doesn’t fit with our prior judgments.

#AutoimmuneDiseases run in my husband’s family. With hindsight, that’s the simplest explanation for what happened. But in the days following his vaccination, we couldn’t see it.

In the case of vaccines, a lot of people seem to have quit listening. Although certainty about the safety of COVID vaccines has increased as studies have accumulated (including studies in children ), COVID vaccination rates have plateaued. Now, the uptake of other childhood vaccines has slipped. Vaccine misinformation swirling around the internet makes forgoing those vaccines seem like the safer bet, but doctors view it as a slow-motion disaster.

I often think about a soft-spoken paediatrician I taught, Dr Panda, whose voice grows forceful when talking about a young patient’s death from a vaccine-preventable disease. When counselling vaccine-hesitant parents, she hopes that if all the data she has to share about vaccine safety doesn’t move them, her story of the lost child will.

The simplest explanation may often be the right one, but it can also be tragically wrong.”

https://cutt.ly/kwtooLmx

#COVIDVaccine #APSawareness #VaccineSafety #HealthJourney #ListenToExperts #StayInformed #VaccinesSaveLives

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On 6/20/2023 at 11:33 PM, bookbard said:

I have bought one for air travel so I will tell you how it goes (later on this year). I have no idea how it will work but I thought better than nothing for when I have to eat during the flight. 

This is purely an anecdote of course, but we have made several transatlantic flights in the last few years, and haven’t caught Covid yet. We wear KN95 or N95 masks and breathe in, lower mask, take a bite or drink, put mask back up while chewing. I also breathe out strongly while putting my mask back up.  Has worked so far, or maybe we’ve just been lucky. 

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3 hours ago, TCB said:

This is purely an anecdote of course, but we have made several transatlantic flights in the last few years, and haven’t caught Covid yet. We wear KN95 or N95 masks and breathe in, lower mask, take a bite or drink, put mask back up while chewing. I also breathe out strongly while putting my mask back up.  Has worked so far, or maybe we’ve just been lucky. 

This. We also only ate or drank mid-flight. We watched our CO2 monitor and chose the best times. None of us have had Covid yet. 

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So just had someone tell me that she and her two teenagers all got sick - only the youngest tested positive on RATs (can't get PCRs now, grr). The one who tested positive had a quick dark line and had worse symptoms but had never tested positive for Covid before. The other two had previously had Covid but had mild symptoms. They still don't know if all three had Covid - either time.

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1 hour ago, bookbard said:

So just had someone tell me that she and her two teenagers all got sick - only the youngest tested positive on RATs (can't get PCRs now, grr). The one who tested positive had a quick dark line and had worse symptoms but had never tested positive for Covid before. The other two had previously had Covid but had mild symptoms. They still don't know if all three had Covid - either time.

Do you know how often the older kids tested this time? I'm hearing of quite a few people who are vaccinated and have had covid already only testing positive briefly when they get covid again. There was an article about it quite awhile back as well.

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9 minutes ago, KSera said:

Do you know how often the older kids tested this time? I'm hearing of quite a few people who are vaccinated and have had covid already only testing positive briefly when they get covid again. There was an article about it quite awhile back as well.

yeah, good point, I'm not sure.  The mother was really badly affected last time so I think she may have been vigilant. It's interesting that I know a number of locals who have been affected by covid - shingles, chronic fevers, heart issues - but it would be invisible to the average person. It's only through conversation that it comes up. 

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Not Covid related but kinda. I’ve been sick the last few days and used one of those dual purpose covid/influenza RATs and it came up with a very faint positive for influenza b. It was handy because no aches or fever meant I wouldn’t have been thinking influenza at all. Knowing that it likely was flu not just a common cold made me more cautious about passing it on. I hope eventually we can have affordable tech to do a single test for a number of more potentially serious respiratory infections, so that appropriate infection controls can be applied. 

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1 hour ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Not Covid related but kinda. I’ve been sick the last few days and used one of those dual purpose covid/influenza RATs and it came up with a very faint positive for influenza b. It was handy because no aches or fever meant I wouldn’t have been thinking influenza at all. Knowing that it likely was flu not just a common cold made me more cautious about passing it on. I hope eventually we can have affordable tech to do a single test for a number of more potentially serious respiratory infections, so that appropriate infection controls can be applied. 

Yes, that would be very nice!  

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People’s CDC COVID-19 Weather Report: June 26, 2023 (substack.com)

 

This week, Biobot shows a plateau in the South and slight decreases across other regions, including a slight decrease nationally. This is not a reason for complacency, though. Nationwide wastewater levels remain about 3.4 times higher than the previous low point in May 2021 (40 copies/mL May 26, 2021 and 136 copies/mL June 21, 2023)

image.png.41ac79501acf6dc568904752f52d305b.png

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20 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

Research has shown that certain groups are not as vulnerable to UNS. These include neurodivergent personality types like autistics, introverts, and highly sensitive people.”

Does anyone know if there’s been any actual research on neurodivergence and Covid precautions? I’ve certainly seen anecdotally that people I know on the spectrum are much more likely to still be taking precautions than the general public. I have not seen any research on it though. Autism has been one of the risk factors for poorer Covid outcomes from fairly early on, so I’m not sure if it’s due to that,,due to an increased ability to make independent decisions even when it goes against the crowd, or some other factor. 

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On 6/26/2023 at 10:25 PM, Ausmumof3 said:

I’ve been sick the last few days and used one of those dual purpose covid/influenza RATs and it came up with a very faint positive for influenza b.

Ausmumof3, I dreamt about you last night - hope you are ok, the flu can be pretty serious (I dreamt you left your purse at my place and I had to return it!) 

My daughter has woken up with cold symptoms, ugh. We did go to a family thing on the weekend. I have tested, negative so far, I guess we will see how we go. 

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20 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

I 🩷 Jessica Wildfire. Her “Girl Who Cried Wolf” post today really hit the nail on the head! 

Edited by I talk to the trees
Nail! Hit the *nail* on the head. Tyvm, autocorrect, but I know what I wanted to say!
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13 minutes ago, bookbard said:

Ausmumof3, I dreamt about you last night - hope you are ok, the flu can be pretty serious (I dreamt you left your purse at my place and I had to return it!) 

My daughter has woken up with cold symptoms, ugh. We did go to a family thing on the weekend. I have tested, negative so far, I guess we will see how we go. 

I am OK thank you 😊 pretty close to fully recovered, just a slight lingering cough. 
 

That is a funny dream - I do tend to leave things places so not that unrealistic 😂

I hope your DD is OK and it’s just a cold.

 

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1 hour ago, KSera said:

Research has shown that certain groups are not as vulnerable to UNS. These include neurodivergent personality types like autistics, introverts, and highly sensitive people.”

Does anyone know if there’s been any actual research on neurodivergence and Covid precautions? I’ve certainly seen anecdotally that people I know on the spectrum are much more likely to still be taking precautions than the general public. I have not seen any research on it though. Autism has been one of the risk factors for poorer Covid outcomes from fairly early on, so I’m not sure if it’s due to that,,due to an increased ability to make independent decisions even when it goes against the crowd, or some other factor. 

Interesting.  I have never seen anything on this.

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1 hour ago, KSera said:

Research has shown that certain groups are not as vulnerable to UNS. These include neurodivergent personality types like autistics, introverts, and highly sensitive people.”

Does anyone know if there’s been any actual research on neurodivergence and Covid precautions? I’ve certainly seen anecdotally that people I know on the spectrum are much more likely to still be taking precautions than the general public. I have not seen any research on it though. Autism has been one of the risk factors for poorer Covid outcomes from fairly early on, so I’m not sure if it’s due to that,,due to an increased ability to make independent decisions even when it goes against the crowd, or some other factor. 

Autism seems to help my son feel comfortable bucking some social stuff, but honestly, it's probably more due to his concern for his brother with pulmonary issues that he masks all the time. He'd probably take some individual risks otherwise, though he didn't feel all that great when he had covid (moderately uncomfortable version of mild covid) and wouldn't mind missing out on future bouts. 

His ex-GF believes that she's on the spectrum, and she wasn't thrilled with his continued masking, though she did mask if she was in our home.

I'd say that the autistic adults I know seem to go with whatever their politics dictates by age category, which is consistent with everyone else around here (with the oldest groups having been more likely to mask when told to do so and not see it as political even if they are conservative). 

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