Omicron anecdata?

[Amoret]

Mask Bans Slowly Spread [cough, cough] in States and Localities

"In the companion post to this piece (“Eight Reasons Mask Bans Are Beyond Stupid“) I dealt with the talking points that arise in anti-mask discourse generally. There are two key points: (1) “Health Masks” can be distinguished conceptually and visually from “face coverings” proper (balaclava, Klan hood), and (2) Health Masks do not conceal identity[1]. In this post, I will track how the anti-mask effort is working out, both in jurisdictions where mask bans passed (North Carolina, Nassau County, NY), and where they have only been proposed, with varying degrees of seriousness (New York State, Chicago IL, Los Angeles, CA)[2],[3]. Although the politics are enjoyably horrid, especially in Nassau County, I will present the text of the statutes or bills, and focus on two key issues: Health Exemptions, and Health Mask Removal."

[KSera]

1 hour ago, Amoret said:

Mask Bans Slowly Spread [cough, cough] in States and Localities

"In the companion post to this piece (“Eight Reasons Mask Bans Are Beyond Stupid“) I dealt with the talking points that arise in anti-mask discourse generally. There are two key points: (1) “Health Masks” can be distinguished conceptually and visually from “face coverings” proper (balaclava, Klan hood), and (2) Health Masks do not conceal identity[1]. In this post, I will track how the anti-mask effort is working out, both in jurisdictions where mask bans passed (North Carolina, Nassau County, NY), and where they have only been proposed, with varying degrees of seriousness (New York State, Chicago IL, Los Angeles, CA)[2],[3]. Although the politics are enjoyably horrid, especially in Nassau County, I will present the text of the statutes or bills, and focus on two key issues: Health Exemptions, and Health Mask Removal."

Yes whole thing has been so depressing and frustrating to me. The way people are treating other people is horrible. From the above:

Quote

 

 

Former Mayor Wayne Hall, an immunocompromised kidney transplant recipient, was the first to speak against the mask ban. The crowd loudly booed the elected official at the mere mention of COVID-19 remaining a threat to his health.

One co-writer of our Jews for Mask Rights open letter was booed during her testimony about her concerns about the bill and her struggle with Long COVID. The crowd yelled obscenities when she shared her fears about harassment – a valid fear, considering another co-writer had been harrassed for masking in NYC just that morning. The irony of a group allegedly “opposing hate speech” and “concerned with Jewish safety” mocking a mocking a disabled Jewish speaker was not lost on us.

 

😢

[Mom_to3]

Public comment on a HICPAC meeting regarding loosening of infection control in hospitals must be submitted by tomorrow. The membership on that committee is not promising (see the replied to the post - some of them have been on the news repeatedly dismissing covid concerns for years. See this old article by Erica Shenoy et al about why universal masking in health care facilities should be dropped https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M23-0793).

 

[mommyoffive]

https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/covid-wastewater-doesnt-mean-what?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1183526&post_id=147591398&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[mommyoffive]

https://caitlinrivers.substack.com/p/outbreak-outlook-aug-12?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1017072&post_id=147581183&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[KSera]

1 hour ago, mommyoffive said:

https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/covid-wastewater-doesnt-mean-what?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1183526&post_id=147591398&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

This is one that has to be read all the way to the end to get the right conclusion, the headline and initial graph appeared to be leading somewhere different.
 

The tl;dr is: wastewater and Covid hospitalizations appear to no longer be tracking closely like they used to, but that is because hospitals are largely not reporting Covid hospitalizations anymore and are not required to. The hospitalization rate is no longer very meaningful and can’t be compared to past levels of hospitalization when reporting was mandated.

[mommyoffive]

https://thosenerdygirls.substack.com/p/does-metformin-treat-covid-19-and?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=366170&post_id=147631244&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[Harriet Vane]

2 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

https://thosenerdygirls.substack.com/p/does-metformin-treat-covid-19-and?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=366170&post_id=147631244&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

When I had Covid this past spring I took berberine because of the possibilities of metformin. I have no idea if it helped or not but was willing to give it a shot.

[mommyoffive]

https://longcovidweekly.substack.com/p/long-covid-weekly-103-long-covid?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=999185&post_id=147641449&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[iamonlyone]

11 hours ago, Harriet Vane said:

When I had Covid this past spring I took berberine because of the possibilities of metformin. I have no idea if it helped or not but was willing to give it a shot.

I did this too. Maybe it would be a good idea to order another bottle to have on hand.... Speaking of potential antiviral aids, what are the two types of allergy meds that might help? I remember reading a discussion, but I don't remember the details.

[Harriet Vane]

35 minutes ago, iamonlyone said:

I did this too. Maybe it would be a good idea to order another bottle to have on hand.... Speaking of potential antiviral aids, what are the two types of allergy meds that might help? I remember reading a discussion, but I don't remember the details.

I think one is fexofenadine? (Allegra) I remember reading that and being relieved, because I take fexofenadine for seasonal allergies.

[KSera]

48 minutes ago, iamonlyone said:

I did this too. Maybe it would be a good idea to order another bottle to have on hand.... Speaking of potential antiviral aids, what are the two types of allergy meds that might help? I remember reading a discussion, but I don't remember the details.

Taking both an A1 blocker and an H2 blocker is what appears to be the most helpful as far as antihistamines. The A1 blockers are the allergy meds like Allegra, Zyrtec, Claritin (also old-school antihistamines like Benadryl and hydroxyzine) and the H2 blocker usually used is famotidine/Pepcid. 

[Corraleno]

"The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has revoked the board certification of two physicians involved in the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). An ABIM spokesperson confirmed to MedPage Today that Paul Marik, MD, and Pierre Kory, MD, had their certifications revoked as of August 8.
<snip>

In 2022, Marik also let his medical license expire, after resigning from his position at Eastern Virginia Medical School. He had been enmeshed in controversy there, filing a lawsuit against Sentara Healthcare in Virginia over its ban of some COVID treatments.

That lawsuit was filed on the same day that the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine retracted an article that Marik co-authored on his MATH+ Hospital Treatment Protocol for COVID, which included ivermectin. The retraction notice cited a communication the journal received from Sentara that raised concerns about the accuracy of COVID hospital death data reported in the article.

Marik also had a run-in with the Virginia Board of Medicine in March 2021, when he entered into a consent order for allegedly prescribing controlled substances to a handful of individuals outside the limits of his license and "absent a bona fide practitioner-patient relationship."

Kory still holds active medical licenses in California, Michigan, New York, and Wisconsin..."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/111481

The FLCCC promoted their "MATH+ Protocol" as a near miracle cure that "The Government" was purposely withholding for nefarious reasons, but it turned out that the "data" Marik & Kory published was fake, and in reality the patients using their protocol had significantly worse outcomes than those getting the hospital's standard treatment — in fact, the closer the patient adhered to their protocol, the worse they did. Glad they've both been stripped of their Internal Medicine certifications, and I hope Kory's license gets revoked entirely.

Edited August 14 by Corraleno
fix link

[KSera]

1 hour ago, Corraleno said:

it turned out that the "data" Marik & Kory published was fake, and in reality the patients using their protocol had significantly worse outcomes than those getting the hospital's standard treatment — in fact, the closer the patient adhered to their protocol, the worse they did. Glad they've both been stripped of their Internal Medicine certifications, and I hope Kory's license gets revoked entirely.

What’s crazy is there are still people following their protocols and advocating others do the same. I have noticed they have added some things to the protocol that come from the experiences of those with long covid, but still the ivermectin and antibiotics without indication are there. 

[kbutton]

10 hours ago, Corraleno said:

The FLCCC promoted their "MATH+ Protocol" as a near miracle cure that "The Government" was purposely withholding for nefarious reasons, but it turned out that the "data" Marik & Kory published was fake, and in reality the patients using their protocol had significantly worse outcomes than those getting the hospital's standard treatment — in fact, the closer the patient adhered to their protocol, the worse they did. 

Is there an easy to read article about this part? Their advice was really popular here, but anything I share needs to be direct and not buried in data in a medical journal.

Marik also advocated for a sepsis protocol that ended up being specious too, IIRC. One of the main promoters of Covid conspiracy information around here in my former social circles knew about him from the sepsis stuff—I don’t know the timing of his sepsis protocol being tossed out relative to Covid to know if people should’ve already be wary of him or not.

[Corraleno]

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

Is there an easy to read article about this part? Their advice was really popular here, but anything I share needs to be direct and not buried in data in a medical journal.

Marik also advocated for a sepsis protocol that ended up being specious too, IIRC. One of the main promoters of Covid conspiracy information around here in my former social circles knew about him from the sepsis stuff—I don’t know the timing of his sepsis protocol being tossed out relative to Covid to know if people should’ve already be wary of him or not.

This is a good summary of why of the paper was retracted, with direct quotes from Sentara refuting Marik & Kory's data: https://retractionwatch.com/2021/11/09/bad-math-covid-treatment-paper-by-pierre-kory-retracted-for-flawed-results/

The most relevant bit:

"We have conducted a careful review of our data for patients with COVID-19 from March 22, 2020 to July 20, 2020, which shows that among the 191 patients referenced in Table 2 that the mortality rate was 10.5%, rather than 6.1%. In addition, of those 191 patients, only 73 patients (38.2%) received at least 1 of the 4 MATH+ therapies, and their mortality rate was 24.7%. Only 25 of 191 patients (13.1%) received all 4 MATH+ therapies, and their mortality rate was 28%."

[kbutton]

1 hour ago, Corraleno said:

This is a good summary of why of the paper was retracted, with direct quotes from Sentara refuting Marik & Kory's data: https://retractionwatch.com/2021/11/09/bad-math-covid-treatment-paper-by-pierre-kory-retracted-for-flawed-results/

The most relevant bit:

"We have conducted a careful review of our data for patients with COVID-19 from March 22, 2020 to July 20, 2020, which shows that among the 191 patients referenced in Table 2 that the mortality rate was 10.5%, rather than 6.1%. In addition, of those 191 patients, only 73 patients (38.2%) received at least 1 of the 4 MATH+ therapies, and their mortality rate was 24.7%. Only 25 of 191 patients (13.1%) received all 4 MATH+ therapies, and their mortality rate was 28%."

Shared both articles on FB. On top of the unnecessary deaths, these people are responsible for a ton of healthcare burnout—having to fight conspiracy theories and see people dying because they are listening to the conspiracy theories is damaging.

[Faith-manor]

2 hours ago, Corraleno said:

This is a good summary of why of the paper was retracted, with direct quotes from Sentara refuting Marik & Kory's data: https://retractionwatch.com/2021/11/09/bad-math-covid-treatment-paper-by-pierre-kory-retracted-for-flawed-results/

The most relevant bit:

"We have conducted a careful review of our data for patients with COVID-19 from March 22, 2020 to July 20, 2020, which shows that among the 191 patients referenced in Table 2 that the mortality rate was 10.5%, rather than 6.1%. In addition, of those 191 patients, only 73 patients (38.2%) received at least 1 of the 4 MATH+ therapies, and their mortality rate was 24.7%. Only 25 of 191 patients (13.1%) received all 4 MATH+ therapies, and their mortality rate was 28%."

I don't even know what to think anymore. This is nuts! But it isn't like any amount of data is going to move the needle on this. Public health is now a joke, and the public itself will not believe anything that flies in the face of what they want. I just feel so much like an alien visiting a burning planet.

[kbutton]

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

I don't even know what to think anymore. This is nuts! But it isn't like any amount of data is going to move the needle on this. Public health is now a joke, and the public itself will not believe anything that flies in the face of what they want. I just feel so much like an alien visiting a burning planet.

I think the loud people have quieted down. People aren’t dropping like flies from being vaccinated, so they can’t squawk about that. No one is going to recant their crazy, but I think people have mostly moved on. Public health is in tatters, but I think there is less of an interest in conspiracies and following people who attract attention. They are still against masking and public interventions, but so many people have finally just shut up. Maybe too many have long Covid to make an effort? IDK

[Corraleno]

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

the public itself will not believe anything that flies in the face of what they want.

The recipe for a successful conspiracy theory is to (1) tell people what they want to hear; (2) convince them that believing this nonsense means they're smarter than everyone else because they now know the truth, unlike all those other poor deluded sheep, and (3) pre-install a refutation-of-any-refutation by portraying any authorities that could debunk the bogus claims as evil bogeyman who can never be trusted. That way the true believers will never have to face the fact that they were conned and are the opposite of "smarter than everyone else." 

So the fact there was zero evidence for the FLCCC protocol just proves there was a conspiracy to prevent the truth from being published because The Government/Hospitals/Doctors/Big Pharma don't want you to have a cheap effective cure.

Oh, now the data has been published? See, we told you losers we were right all along, even Big Pharma can't deny the truth now!

Wait, the hospital released the real data and the paper was retracted as a fraud? Obviously it's the hospital that's lying, not Marik & Kory, because everyone knows hospitals were paid millions of dollars by the government to kill covid patients!

Marik & Kory have been stripped of their Internal Medicine certifications and Marik can no longer practice medicine due to ethical violations? That just proves how far hospitals and The Government will go to persecute the Truth Tellers who won't bow to Big Pharma!

[mommyoffive]

Dumping this here because I haven't found the Mpox thread yet

https://caitlinrivers.substack.com/p/mpox-public-health-emergency-declared?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1017072&post_id=147715877&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[KSera]

20 minutes ago, kbutton said:

I think the loud people have quieted down. People aren’t dropping like flies from being vaccinated, so they can’t squawk about that. 

I still see a lot of people making the claims that all the mounting health impacts over the past several years are the results of vaccines, rather than the result of Covid itself. Despite the fact that the research is overwhelming on every one of these health impacts that vaccinated people have lower rates of these conditions than unvaccinated people do (though I also see vaccinated people thinking that means they don’t have to worry about those things, which isn’t true either).

This reminds me, I meant to post the study from a couple weeks agos showing lower mortality rates from non covid causes in people who had been vaccinated (I think there are several reasons for that. I don’t think I saw it shared here.)

 

[kbutton]

45 minutes ago, KSera said:

I still see a lot of people making the claims that all the mounting health impacts over the past several years are the results of vaccines, rather than the result of Covid itself. Despite the fact that the research is overwhelming on every one of these health impacts that vaccinated people have lower rates of these conditions than unvaccinated people do (though I also see vaccinated people thinking that means they don’t have to worry about those things, which isn’t true either).

This reminds me, I meant to post the study from a couple weeks agos showing lower mortality rates from non covid causes in people who had been vaccinated (I think there are several reasons for that. I don’t think I saw it shared here.)

 

Well, maybe I’ve just effectively purged my friends list, but it’s much quieter here. I’m not saying people don’t believe whacko stuff, but I think fewer people are following the extremists. They’ve seen that it’s not panned out.

I’ve seen this with other conspiracies. People just shrug and go on. They edit their behavior in their minds, don’t admit they were crazy, but stop talking about it all.

[Corraleno]

1 hour ago, KSera said:

I still see a lot of people making the claims that all the mounting health impacts over the past several years are the results of vaccines, rather than the result of Covid itself.

Yeah, I'm still seeing a lot of this, too. Maybe not quite as much as a year or so ago, but it's definitely still out there. Any news story about a celebrity or athlete having health problems will get a bunch of comments about the "clot shot." Also really common on news stories about higher rates of cancer in young people, even though that trend began long before the mRNA vaccines were available.

[bookbard]

54 minutes ago, kbutton said:

Well, maybe I’ve just effectively purged my friends list, but it’s much quieter here. I’m not saying people don’t believe whacko stuff, but I think fewer people are following the extremists. They’ve seen that it’s not panned out.

 

I think people are literally forgetting the covid years. I sometimes look back and can't quite believe it either. The schools shut overnight? Masking? It seems impossible that things could've changed so fast. Maybe it didn't happen . . . .

Maybe it's the way human brains work. It evidently happened with the Spanish flu. I feel like it the future it'll be like the covid years never happened. 

[KSera]

1 hour ago, bookbard said:

I think people are literally forgetting the covid years.

 

1 hour ago, bookbard said:

I feel like it the future it'll be like the covid years never happened. 

Oof. This is hard to hear for the millions whose lives have been changed forever by it 😞. So many people won’t be able to forget it because they lost their ability to do the things they used to do because of covid.
 

Unfortunately, I don’t know that in the future it will be like it never happened, because unless something changes drastically very soon, all I see is ever increasing numbers of people suffering the health impacts of Covid and I feel like it’s inevitable at some point it will cross a line where it can’t be ignored. It’s affecting the number of people out of the workforce and the number on disability. Cognitive impairment builds with each infection (even mild ones). I fear where the longtail of this ends. Given the kind of impacts it has throughout the body, it feels like a much higher likelihood than I’m comfortable with that we’re going to see a down the line post viral syndrome separate from Covid, such as seen in the case of polio—>post polio syndrome, chicken pox—>shingles, hiv—>AIDS, etc. I hope that won’t be the case, since all the things we already know it does are bad enough, but I sure have no confidence that it won’t happen and of course nobody has any way to know at this point. When we were at this point in the course of HIV, no one knew yet that AIDS would be a thing. I expect it to take a decade or two at least for us to see if anything like that happens or not.

 

[Mom_to3]

Schools in the South shutting down or moving to online learning. Love the emphasis on wiping surfaces 4.5 years into this. Good luck with that! https://www.fox13memphis.com/education/mid-south-elementary-school-shut-down-due-to-covid-cases/article_e11d5882-59c2-11ef-a401-ef84f2d9c43f.html

Masks are at least mentioned in this one. https://web.archive.org/web/20240814005239/https://www.wsfa.com/2024/08/13/jag-high-school-goes-remote-classes-due-covid-outbreak/

And I agree with you, KSera. But I think a lot of people don't realize the problems they have may be due to covid (I often think of it when I hear of tests and various afflictions among our wider circle). For any one person, it's difficult to know, and they'd rather not consider it, because then they may actually have to do something (like...wear a mask).

[kbutton]

32 minutes ago, Mom_to3 said:

Love the emphasis on wiping surfaces 4.5 years into this.

While it’s sad that they don’t get it, there are plenty of other icky things where hygiene makes a difference, including the flu.

[bookbard]

1 hour ago, KSera said:

Oof. This is hard to hear for the millions whose lives have been changed forever by it 😞. So many people won’t be able to forget it because they lost their ability to do the things they used to do because of covid.

Sure. But that's the same with the Spanish flu, right - they reckon a lot of the subsequent heart disease and parkinson's (see Awakenings) was related to the Spanish flu. It didn't stop the world from erasing it from people's stories and histories.

Yes, the world is changed forever, and people will be forever traumatised by those years. But I still reckon that it will get erased in a way that other events do not. We have memorials for wars - but more people died from Covid than the wars - yet there is no memorial in Australia, not a place, not a day. 

[mommyoffive]

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/covid-19-is-now-the-10th-leading?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=281219&post_id=147706968&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[Spryte]

Anecdata: Monday I was at an annual doc appt, wearing my mask, and the doc said, “we are the last two standing in our masks!” and asked why I still mask, if we have a reason (she was also masking, and asked in a friendly, curious way). I told her, and asked the same. Whoa. She told me her daughter lost a kidney to Covid, and is now on a transplant waitlist. Something about high inflammation that would not come down. Her kid is a young adult. It was such a gut punch, I couldn’t think what to say or ask, so I don’t have more details. But this is my annual doc of maybe 3-4 years. She always masks, and now I know why. I have actually never seen her without a mask. She said she’s trying to tell more people about it now, so they understand what can happen.

On that note, unfortunately DD and I are sick at the moment, and have just ordered fresh Covid tests. Crossing fingers.

[mommyoffive]

@Spryte  Sending good thoughts your way and hope you both don't have Covid.

How scary about your doctor's dd.  

[KSera]

3 minutes ago, Spryte said:

She said she’s trying to tell more people about it now, so they understand what can happen.

That’s great that she is. Maybe people will pay more attention coming from a doctor. I find that most people have an inexplicable trust that bad things like that don’t happen to people like them. Even doctors seem to have that bias much of the time. 
 

 

5 minutes ago, Spryte said:

On that note, unfortunately DD and I are sick at the moment, and have just ordered fresh Covid tests. Crossing fingers.

Oh darn! I hope it turns out to be something else. The rapid tests are being realllly slow to pick up infections these days, so if you get a negative, I’d wait a number of days to test again if you need to ration tests. How’s your mom?

[kbutton]

7 minutes ago, Spryte said:

She said she’s trying to tell more people about it now, so they understand what can happen.

Her story is really sad, but it has the right ingredients to move at least some people—she’s a doctor, and they experienced actual harm. Someone masking and NOT having serious problems from Covid makes people lose their minds and cry, “Paranoia!”

I really think if healthcare professionals masked all the time in a clinical setting, it would make such a difference, but having the majority not mask does not help the few who do mask make a difference without a really good story behind it.

 

[Spryte]

1 minute ago, kbutton said:

Her story is really sad, but it has the right ingredients to move at least some people—she’s a doctor, and they experienced actual harm. Someone masking and NOT having serious problems from Covid makes people lose their minds and cry, “Paranoia!”

I really think if healthcare professionals masked all the time in a clinical setting, it would make such a difference, but having the majority not mask does not help the few who do mask make a difference without a really good story behind it.

 

Yes, I agree. It’s unfortunate that she is the only doc in a very large, very busy practice who is masking. There was literally no one else in a mask. It must feel lonely at times.

 

7 minutes ago, KSera said:

That’s great that she is. Maybe people will pay more attention coming from a doctor. I find that most people have an inexplicable trust that bad things like that don’t happen to people like them. Even doctors seem to have that bias much of the time. 
 

 

Oh darn! I hope it turns out to be something else. The rapid tests are being realllly slow to pick up infections these days, so if you get a negative, I’d wait a number of days to test again if you need to ration tests. How’s your mom?

We will serial test. We ordered a lot of tests with our last mask order, so we are set for testing.

Thanks for checking my mom. She’s doing very well — and has been released from the isolation area. She seems to be back to her normal, I think. No more coughing. She even played cards and won a necklace on her first day back, so she seems much better! I’m so relieved.

[kbutton]

9 minutes ago, Spryte said:

Yes, I agree. It’s unfortunate that she is the only doc in a very large, very busy practice who is masking. There was literally no one else in a mask. It must feel lonely at times.

I think DH is about the only one that masks at work unless the patient has symptoms that call for respiratory protocol. I am not sure if respirators are still required once you know a patient has Covid, but there is other stuff too, like TB that requires it. I suspect they are highly encouraged to mask around anyone with respiratory symptoms, but that might be more for staffing reasons, sad to say.

[Laura Corin]

I apologise if this has been discussed recently,  but what is the latest on when to vaccinate for winter? The UK is recommending combining with flu vaccine and having both from October onwards. 

I had Covid last December. No vaccination since.

[KSera]

2 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

I apologise if this has been discussed recently,  but what is the latest on when to vaccinate for winter? The UK is recommending combining with flu vaccine and having both from October onwards. 

I had Covid last December. No vaccination since.

When will reformulated shots be available there? And how often are you “allowed” to get one?

Edited August 16 by KSera

[KSera]

Julia Doubleday penned another excellent piece about the striving to pretend Covid no longer affects our lives and in the process, the way it prevents the disabled and at risk from participating in society (note: everyone is now potentially a person at high risk):

Out of control COVID means permanent segregation for many disabled people

Quote

What is more painful than not being able to rejoin the world is the lack of anger from those who cosplay 2019 without us. The back to normal fantasy isn’t harmless, though its victims are always just out of sight. It’s a machine running on bodies; our eyes, ears, stomachs, brains, hearts, immune systems, livers, and kidneys. If you don’t stop feeding the machine, eventually it will be your body too. 

There is no neutrality in this fight; if you don’t stand up for disabled people’s right to public spaces, you are advocating for COVID’s unchallenged right to reign over them all.

 

[Laura Corin]

6 hours ago, KSera said:

When will reformulated shots be available there? And how often are you “allowed” to get one?

The NHS formulation for this autumn is Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Comirnaty® Original/Omicron BA.4-5, available from October.  I'd be buying privately and could have the jab anytime. I'll walk into the pharmacy to see what formulation they are using for private patients - I can't see it online.

As it's private,  I can have it anytime and theoretically repeat every three months, although a six-month gap is advised.

[Ausmumof3]

On 8/15/2024 at 11:25 AM, bookbard said:

Sure. But that's the same with the Spanish flu, right - they reckon a lot of the subsequent heart disease and parkinson's (see Awakenings) was related to the Spanish flu. It didn't stop the world from erasing it from people's stories and histories.

Yes, the world is changed forever, and people will be forever traumatised by those years. But I still reckon that it will get erased in a way that other events do not. We have memorials for wars - but more people died from Covid than the wars - yet there is no memorial in Australia, not a place, not a day. 

I think you’re right. Also there’s a lot of wars recorded in history and only a handful of plagues. And yet we know they happen fairly often. So maybe this is just something humans do. Because war can be made into songs and glory and stories and disease is just dirty and sordid and depressing?

[KSera]

7 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

As it's private,  I can have it anytime and theoretically repeat every three months, although a six-month gap is advised.

Tricky timing for you then. I would have suggested doing it in June for summer wave protection and then again before the holidays. As it is, I might look at when you’re likely to have the most exposure and do it a few weeks before that. If you have constant high levels of exposure, I would just do it now since it’s been eight months at this point since your body last saw it and protection via either vaccine or disease just doesn’t look to last very long.
 

 

On 8/14/2024 at 6:55 PM, bookbard said:

Sure. But that's the same with the Spanish flu, right - they reckon a lot of the subsequent heart disease and parkinson's (see Awakenings) was related to the Spanish flu. It didn't stop the world from erasing it from people's stories and histories.

I guess so. It feels different to me, but perhaps that’s only because I’m living it. Thinking further though, it seems like the impact on society may be greater now with most women part of the workforce. The things that will happen to people due to Covid when they’re old aren’t going to bother society as much as all the working age people unable to work. And I don’t even know what to expect from society-wide cognitive decline. I don’t know if that has happened to people before or not. One of the big differences with Covid vs so many of the other epidemics people have had is that it doesn’t sweep through doing damage and then that’s that. With covid, people just keep getting it over and over and over, doing more damage with each infection, with no end in sight at this point. I don’t know if I can think of a parallel with another disease. 

[Laura Corin]

27 minutes ago, KSera said:

Tricky timing for you then. I would have suggested doing it in June for summer wave protection and then again before the holidays. As it is, I might look at when you’re likely to have the most exposure and do it a few weeks before that. If you have constant high levels of exposure, I would just do it now since it’s been eight months at this point since your body last saw it and protection via either vaccine or disease just doesn’t look to last very long.
 

Thanks. I work in a university that doesn't have summer schools,  and open windows are the norm in summer. Covid has been about, but I've been lucky. 

The new students arrive on 9 September,  and I usually pick up some kind of respiratory illness in that period. I was considering vaccination right now, but with a 3-4 month efficacy period, I'm not sure if that makes sense.

[Mom_to3]

1 hour ago, Laura Corin said:

Thanks. I work in a university that doesn't have summer schools,  and open windows are the norm in summer. Covid has been about, but I've been lucky. 

The new students arrive on 9 September,  and I usually pick up some kind of respiratory illness in that period. I was considering vaccination right now, but with a 3-4 month efficacy period, I'm not sure if that makes sense.

It might make sense to go ahead and get a shot a couple of weeks before the semester starts. Crowded classrooms are a big exposure, and considering how infectious the latest variants are and how high current wave is, you are almost certainly going to be exposed. I am sorry that the UK is not updating their vaccines...

[Corraleno]

11 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

The NHS formulation for this autumn is Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Comirnaty® Original/Omicron BA.4-5, available from October.  I'd be buying privately and could have the jab anytime. I'll walk into the pharmacy to see what formulation they are using for private patients - I can't see it online.

As it's private,  I can have it anytime and theoretically repeat every three months, although a six-month gap is advised.

According to Reuters, the UK has authorized the updated JN1 shots for fall:
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/uk-regulator-authorises-pfizer-biontech-shot-jn1-covid-variant-2024-07-24/

I would wait for the new shots if you can. I had hoped to be able to travel at the end of this month, but decided to wait for the release of the new JN1/KP2 vaccine rather than get another booster of the outdated version. 

[Amoret]

The US Government Is Shutting Down A Key Covid Website

Today "the US government agency responsible for biomedical and public health research, The National Institutes of Health, will shut down its Covid-19 ‘special populations’ website.

This site hosts a huge amount of information about how to treat covid and long covid in the immunocompromised and in people with HIV, cancer and similar immune supressing conditions - so-called ‘special populations.’

The site is going totally offline."

Edited August 16 by Amoret

[Mom_to3]

It looks like the FDA is again going to drag their feet on Novavax even though they were ready months ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/08/16/new-covid-vaccine-pfizer-moderna-flirt-variant/

"The mRNA shots manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna designed to target the KP.2 variant can hit the market within days of approval by the Food and Drug Administration. A third protein-based vaccine made by Novavax, preferred by people who are cautious about mRNA vaccines or who have had bad reactions to them, will probably take longer to be approved and will be distributed in subsequent weeks, according to the federal health official."

What is going on? Are they on purpose trying to get Novavax out of business? Every year they delay Novavax, and this time, Novavax and Moderna at least have been ready for quite a while.

We waited for Novavax last year (even despite the uncertainty about when it was going to be approved), but this year, I feel very uncomfortable, as covid levels are so much higher than the last couple of falls around here that it will certainly create a mess on college campuses.

Does anybody know what's going on here? For several in my family, Novavax has been a much easier shot than the other vaccines...

 

 

[KSera]

23 minutes ago, Mom_to3 said:

Does anybody know what's going on here? For several in my family, Novavax has been a much easier shot than the other vaccines...

I have all the same thoughts and frustrations you do. It really feels like they’re doing it on purpose. Novavax submitted way ahead of the others. It seems like they have some kind of preferential system for Pfizer, followed by Moderna. The Novavax shot is much preferred by many with long COVID because their the mRNA shots send many into a crash cycle while Novavax typically doesn’t. It sucks to leave those people having to choose between making their illness worse or being unprotected longer. 😞

[Corraleno]

1 hour ago, Mom_to3 said:

Does anybody know what's going on here? For several in my family, Novavax has been a much easier shot than the other vaccines...

One of the advantages of mRNA vaccines is that they can be quickly adapted to target new strains. All three manufacturers started out developing fall vaccines based on the JN1 variant, but then at the end of June the FDA announced that "if feasible" manufacturers should target KP2 instead. KP2 is one of the descendants of JN1 with what they call FLiRT mutations, which seem to make it both more contagious and more infectious (which is likely the reason behind this huge summer wave).

Pfizer and Moderna were able to quickly pivot to KP2, and that is what will soon be approved and released. Unfortunately, Novavax said there was no way they could have a KP2 vaccine available that quickly, they have already been manufacturing the JN1 version and that is what they will release once it's approved. They claim that their studies show the JN1 vaccine does offer protection against KP2, but AFAIK there aren't any studies comparing the efficacy of their JN1 to the KP2 mRNA vaccines.

So this year the question of which one to get is a little more complicated, because the issue is not just whether it's worth waiting a little longer for a vaccine with fewer side effects, it's also whether the lower side effects are worth the trade-off of getting a vaccine that does not target the "FLiRT" variant that is currently dominant.

[Mom_to3]

^I agree, the trade-off is less obvious this year. BUT people should have the option to make that choice for themselves. We have an option to mask or not to mask (well, except in areas with mask bans), so why should we not have an option to decide amongst safe vaccine options? They should at least be upfront about what is causing the delays - time for some investigative journalism... Since variants change so quickly, longer term efficacy is also important, beyond the short term boost in protection.

And beyond that, to me it is disappointing that we don't have more information about the relative longer-term efficacy of the various vaccination options. On that note, does anyone have a link to the manufacturers' presentations to the FDA earlier this summer?

Edited August 19 by Mom_to3