Omicron anecdata?

[mommyoffive]

https://peoplescdc.substack.com/p/peoples-cdc-october-14-2024-covid?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1004289&post_id=150232562&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[mommyoffive]

https://longcovidweekly.substack.com/p/long-covid-weekly-113-big-news-week?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=999185&post_id=150237689&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[Amoret]

Series on how the pandemic ends from Arijit Chakravarty (via thread reader app). The first of five threads in the series is linked below. The others are forthcoming.

It's been ~5yrs since 𝑆𝐀𝑅𝑆-𝐂𝑂𝑉-𝟐, the virus that causes 𝐂𝑂𝑉𝐈𝐃, made its fateful jump into humans. Now seems as good a time as any to ask "is it over yet?" (For the 10th time, but who's counting?)

Let's talk about how this ends, shall we?

....

Pandemics lie at the intersection of history and biology, as they are usually marked by the emergence (or re-emergence) of a pathogen into a human population. So, to answer the question "how does this pandemic end", we can look to two bodies of knowledge for our answer. (12/)
First, we can ask the question, "What does biology teach us about the emergence of novel pathogens?", dipping into evo theory in humans, mammals and other living creatures. (13/)
Next, we can ask,"What does history teach us about pandemics?", focusing our attention on a few pandemics that have been well studied (The Black Death, Influenza 1918, Smallpox in the New World -actually an epidemic), & looking at the implications for human societies (14/)
In the 3rd 🧵 in the series, we'll ask the questions: "How predictable has the evolutionary trajectory of 𝑆𝐀𝑅𝑆-𝐂𝑂𝑉-𝟐 been so far?", showing that much of where we are today was precisely predictable from first principles, as we and others pointed out years ago. (15/)
In the 4th 🧵, we look at what the future holds, discussing specific predictions for the outcome of the pandemic with the current course of (in)action.

(Spoiler alert: It's looking pretty bad. TL;DR is that the current "plan" has significant unmitigated tail risks).
(16/)
In the 5th and final 🧵, we will ask the question "How do we win against 𝑆𝐀𝑅𝑆-𝐂𝑂𝑉-𝟐?", leveraging our understanding of the biology and history of pandemics to propose practical changes that can be made to the current course of action (17/)
As an epistemological aside, most of what we will discuss relies on deductive reasoning to infer what can or might happen.
Emergence events are very rare in the historical record, making the question of what always or never happens unanswerable given the small sample size. (18/)

[bookbard]

New study found no developmental delays in toddlers post Covid: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20241015/Study-shows-no-developmental-delays-in-toddlers-post-COVID-19-infection.aspx As in, there was no association between having covid and subsequent developmental delays when tested on a particular screener. 

I keep thinking about that because our previous discussions. I still personally feel that there's so much entwined with poverty and increasing gap between rich and poor and the overall change in society over the last 5 years, with a perhaps increasing reliance on screens as we discussed earlier. I also wonder if we are getting sick more frequently and that in itself is not good for anyone - for one thing, it's days off from normal stimulation. 

[KSera]

21 minutes ago, bookbard said:

New study found no developmental delays in toddlers post Covid: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20241015/Study-shows-no-developmental-delays-in-toddlers-post-COVID-19-infection.aspx As in, there was no association between having covid and subsequent developmental delays when tested on a particular screener. 

This sounds hopeful, but also a little surprising considering the brain impacts already known. Though perhaps in kids as young as this (17-23 months old), neural plasticity allows for the brain to recover better than it does in older children and adults. I did notice some potential confounders in reading the link. First is the fact that the group that had covid was on average of higher SES and education level parents than the one that did not--that doesn't match up with other covid statistics, and leads me to wonder if the kids in the "covid" group were those more likely to have been tested for covid while they are sick. I would need to see more details to know if all kids were tested regularly throughout the study, or if this was by parent request, but can't access the full study.

[mommyoffive]

https://peoplescdc.substack.com/p/demand-covid-vaccine-access-at-least?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1004289&post_id=150308048&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=q2z70&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

[Amoret]

CDC Announce That Summer Wave Of Winter Viruses Is Over And We’re Now Moving Into Fall Wave Of Winter Viruses pic.twitter.com/5fgaLlAHjI

— The Vertlartnic (@TheVertlartnic) October 16, 2024

[Mom_to3]

telehealth prescribing extensions - new restrictions proposed. See 

 

[KSera]

2 hours ago, Amoret said:

CDC Announce That Summer Wave Of Winter Viruses Is Over And We’re Now Moving Into Fall Wave Of Winter Viruses pic.twitter.com/5fgaLlAHjI

— The Vertlartnic (@TheVertlartnic) October 16, 2024

Vertlartnic has been prolific the last week. 

[kbutton]

https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/01.wnl.0001051276.37012.c2?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2d__79Y9gr6dxuE0WolY8u2sHMwj6r4UO-3lTvcXjUt2MSI3mJm8ca_Zk_aem_GnVb8YXGg3PWiHUVx8fpYQ
 

Did we have this one here yet? Driving with acute Covid is akin to driving drunk or with a seizure disorder. I read the synopsis, not the study.

I told DH we’re saving this for if/when he gets Covid again to justify his taking time off to recover. The one time he had it, his immediate supervisor swore at him over the phone and demanded he come in to work the next day (and thankfully, his brain fog had substantially improved overnight). At that point, the official policy was still to use your own judgment, but encouraging not coming in. 🤨

[KSera]

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/01.wnl.0001051276.37012.c2?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2d__79Y9gr6dxuE0WolY8u2sHMwj6r4UO-3lTvcXjUt2MSI3mJm8ca_Zk_aem_GnVb8YXGg3PWiHUVx8fpYQ
 

Did we have this one here yet? Driving with acute Covid is akin to driving drunk or with a seizure disorder. I read the synopsis, not the study.

I told DH we’re saving this for if/when he gets Covid again to justify his taking time off to recover. The one time he had it, his immediate supervisor swore at him over the phone and demanded he come in to work the next day (and thankfully, his brain fog had substantially improved overnight). At that point, the official policy was still to use your own judgment, but encouraging not coming in. 🤨

I don’t think I saw it here, but I read it elsewhere a few days ago. This is one I really would like to see the full study for because the abstract seems contradictory as far as whether it’s talking only about the acute Covid infection time or about post Covid in general. Because it says on the one hand that there was no correlation with long Covid status, but on the other hand that the study has implications for evaluating driving safety in patients with long covid. I can say that there are a lot of people with long covid who can no longer drive due to their brain fog (which is a stupid name for it—it’s cognitive impairment). I do think we’ve talked on this thread about other studies showing rises in car accident rates rising along with the population gradually becoming infected with Covid. 

[kbutton]

17 minutes ago, KSera said:

I don’t think I saw it here, but I read it elsewhere a few days ago. This is one I really would like to see the full study for because the abstract seems contradictory as far as whether it’s talking only about the acute Covid infection time or about post Covid in general. Because it says on the one hand that there was no correlation with long Covid status, but on the other hand that the study has implications for evaluating driving safety in patients with long covid. I can say that there are a lot of people with long covid who can no longer drive due to their brain fog (which is a stupid name for it—it’s cognitive impairment). I do think we’ve talked on this thread about other studies showing rises in car accident rates rising along with the population gradually becoming infected with Covid. 

Does the link in the article not go to the study?

There was a lot of speculation during lockdown that much of the bad driving was due to lack of policing—police all but stopped pulling people over here.

[KSera]

Just now, kbutton said:

Does the link in the article not go to the study?

No, for me it’s just going to a print version of the abstract. 
 

 

Just now, kbutton said:

There was a lot of speculation during lockdown that much of the bad driving was due to lack of policing—police all but stopped pulling people over here.

That’s what was speculated here as well, but the problem has continued waaaaay past the temporary decrease in pulling people over several years ago. I’ll see if I can pull a study. 

[KSera]

4 minutes ago, KSera said:

That’s what was speculated here as well, but the problem has continued waaaaay past the temporary decrease in pulling people over several years ago. I’ll see if I can pull a study. 

Haven’t yet found the other ones I’ve seen, but at least this one is indicating fatalities going back down. I don’t know about crashes themselves though. https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2023-Q2-traffic-fatality-estimates

[kbutton]

1 minute ago, KSera said:

That’s what was speculated here as well, but the problem has continued waaaaay past the temporary decrease in pulling people over several years ago. I’ll see if I can pull a study. 

Driving here is ridiculous, but it is NOTHING compared to during lockdown. We had pairs of trucks doing figure eights together around lines of cars while driving at high speeds. The same trucks over and over on the same stretch of interstate right when we would be coming home from tutoring. It was over the top. Now people are our normal local blend of stupid, inattentive, and aggressive/entitled in the same way they were before Covid, just in increasing numbers.

[KSera]

So it looks like things are improving, but are still much worse than prepandemic. They got even worse in 2021-22 than in 2020, but also there were more cars on the road than in 2020.  But also far more people had Covid 2021-22 than in 2020. 
 

Quote

 

Preliminary analysis from the National Safety Council shows motor vehicle fatalities in the United States remain at a devastatingly high level, as an estimated 44,450 people died in traffic crashes in 2023. While it marks a 4% decline from 2022, compared to pre-pandemic 2019, it’s a 13.6% uptick, further demonstrating the seriousness of this public health crisis.

US traffic fatalities peaked in early 2022. Remember what else was happening early 2022

 

I can’t find the graph I was looking for though. I though there was one overlaying crashes and Covid rates.