Coronavirus: What questions do you have?

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Another update: Most hospitals in our local area are shutting down elective surgeries and routine clinical visits to make way for COVID testing, treatment, and to protect clinical staff. I think admissions are lagging and will be less but 1 admission in 100 people with 70 times the infection rate and less protective measures could surpass delta.
Case rates in NY are still increasing; Worldometer data shows the 3-day averaged case rate is now over 4X the highest peak prior to Omicron. According to the Governor, vaccinations in NY are now over 90% of the total population, yet we seem to be a major disease factory. Unofficial local reports indicate that much of the new cases are now among the younger (school and college age) demographic, but I can find no official numbers differentiated by demographic. My hypotheses is that most of the spreading is taking place in crowded local bars around college campuses. Do you have any hard data for Omicron by demographic?
 
Case rates in NY are still increasing; Worldometer data shows the 3-day averaged case rate is now over 4X the highest peak prior to Omicron. According to the Governor, vaccinations in NY are now over 90% of the total population, yet we seem to be a major disease factory. Unofficial local reports indicate that much of the new cases are now among the younger (school and college age) demographic, but I can find no official numbers differentiated by demographic. My hypotheses is that most of the spreading is taking place in crowded local bars around college campuses. Do you have any hard data for Omicron by demographic?
Today's newspaper says that 50,866 positive cases in Ohio in the month of December were in children (presumably under 18). Since Ohio has been averaging about 20,000 cases per week, 50k is at least half.
 
Today's newspaper says that 50,866 positive cases in Ohio in the month of December were in children (presumably under 18). Since Ohio has been averaging about 20,000 cases per week, 50k is at least half.
In Nov that number was 300,000+ cases in Ohio <18. So down considerably. Also your math is a little askew. 20,000 is the average over a week per day. And is not constant throughout the month. If I am reading the Ohio website correctly and that is a big if, children represent about 15%.
 
In Nov that number was 300,000+ cases in Ohio <18. So down considerably. Also your math is a little askew. 20,000 is the average over a week per day. And is not constant throughout the month. If I am reading the Ohio website correctly and that is a big if, children represent about 15%.
Oops. You're right. 20k has been our daily number not monthly. So that puts children in the neighborhood of 10 percent. But, how many of those children go home, or to school, and infect adults? We have some schools in the area closing because they don't have enough teachers to staff them, if that helps.
 
NY is now over 80K new cases per day, averaging over 3 days. It's necessary to average because some days are over double others due to how they are reported. It's been increasing very fast so the total over the last 30 days is probably approaching a million; total in NY for the entire epidemic is now over 4 million. I have no credible data for the college-age (18-24 yr olds) demographic, but I am hearing that it is well over 50% of the total in certain areas. If you examine the data by county it is apparent that counties with a large college-age population have the highest rates of increase since Omicron arrived. So, I'm wondering if college-age kids (who are less likely to be vaccinated than the general public, and more likely to be partying) are doing more than their share of the spreading.
 
School sent home a notice about strep, flu, AND covid so I issued NAAT tests to the kiddos, one of whom popped hot.

Now I get to stay home until everyone is asymptomatic and passes NAAT, then a countdown until I ( boosted ) get to return to the office.

Is 10-days-after-confirmed-negative still the belt-and-suspenders guidance?
 
School sent home a notice about strep, flu, AND covid so I issued NAAT tests to the kiddos, one of whom popped hot.

Now I get to stay home until everyone is asymptomatic and passes NAAT, then a countdown until I ( boosted ) get to return to the office.

Is 10-days-after-confirmed-negative still the belt-and-suspenders guidance?

I think the new length of quarantine is however long it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.
 
Moving target...........I thought it was only five days now.......
 
Chuck, what if anything can you tell us about the "Army" vaccine being developed? I read something a while back that it should remain effective against new variants. Different technology, I gather? After the military has been inoculated will this vaccine be made available to the general public?
 
Chuck, what if anything can you tell us about the "Army" vaccine being developed? I read something a while back that it should remain effective against new variants. Different technology, I gather? After the military has been inoculated will this vaccine be made available to the general public?
While we wait for Chuck, here is good info:

https://www.defenseone.com/technolo...ctive-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/
https://www.cnet.com/health/army-va...l-future-coronaviruses-what-you-need-to-know/
https://www.army.mil/article/252890..._pan_coronavirus_vaccine_development_strategy
 
Chuck, what if anything can you tell us about the "Army" vaccine being developed? I read something a while back that it should remain effective against new variants. Different technology, I gather? After the military has been inoculated will this vaccine be made available to the general public?

It is a good vaccine that appears to have good coverage. I am interested to see how well it covers the general public.
 
Friend of mine says he's got liver problems after taking Moderna vaccine. How common is that? Is it life-threatening if he doesn't already have any sort of liver disease?
 
Oops. You're right. 20k has been our daily number not monthly. So that puts children in the neighborhood of 10 percent. But, how many of those children go home, or to school, and infect adults? We have some schools in the area closing because they don't have enough teachers to staff them, if that helps.

Most adults tend to catch COVID from other adults, but child to parent or child to teacher is not insignificant.
 
Friend of mine says he's got liver problems after taking Moderna vaccine. How common is that? Is it life-threatening if he doesn't already have any sort of liver disease?

I want to start this off by indicating how rare serious complications are:

Vaccine-related serious adverse events were 0.6% in the vaccine group and 0.5% in the placebo group. That means it is only 0.1% high in the group that received the vaccine versus saline injection. That is very small. I have only seen about a few of what people would consider serious and all went away within 6 months.

Liver issues after Moderna are exceptionally rare. I have never seen one despite being responsible for reviewing or organizing over one million doses of COVID vaccinations. I have seen mostly myocarditis but that is rare also. Nearly every side effect found is more common with the live viral infection than the vaccination.

Life-threatening? That would depend on the true cause and the nature of the liver disease. The liver is a resilient and complex organ. I am not second-guessing Moderna as the cause, but unless there is a systemic reaction (?autoimmune) that injures the liver, there is nothing in the vaccine that is inherently hepatoxic. That being said, there have been approximately 50 liver injuries reported after vaccination with Pfizer, Moderna, AZ, and J&J.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8372667/
 
California is getting hit by the omicron spike, just like everywhere in the country now. I knew it was coming, but I was still surprised to hear that in California, 38 percent of hospitals are in crisis and 43 percent expect a crisis this week. And I was SUPER surprised to hear that the state Department of Public Health has begun allowing health-care workers with asymptomatic covid cases to return to work immediately without isolating! Those who are exposed and asymptomatic need not test or quarantine!

It doesn’t sound great to me. Apparently they are so concerned about staffing shortages that they are letting some infected or exposed people without symptoms back to work. But it seems to me that will just lead to more staffing problems if the rest of the workforce gets infected. Yikes!

What do you think, Chuck?
 
California is getting hit by the omicron spike, just like everywhere in the country now. I knew it was coming, but I was still surprised to hear that in California, 38 percent of hospitals are in crisis and 43 percent expect a crisis this week. And I was SUPER surprised to hear that the state Department of Public Health has begun allowing health-care workers with asymptomatic covid cases to return to work immediately without isolating! Those who are exposed and asymptomatic need not test or quarantine!

It doesn’t sound great to me. Apparently they are so concerned about staffing shortages that they are letting some infected or exposed people without symptoms back to work. But it seems to me that will just lead to more staffing problems if the rest of the workforce gets infected. Yikes!

What do you think, Chuck?

I do not like it. I can see returning in 5 days to non-patient care. We have to protect our most vulnerable. It makes me uneasy.
 
I think this spike will be fast on and fast off. I think most states are nearing the peak.
I sure hope so. Ohio is peaking higher than last year. Reported cases, *might* be peaking but hospitalizations and deaths are continuing to climb despite all the yakitty yak about Omicron being "less deadly." Also interesting, the data is showing that while hospital admissions for those aged 70+ are still lower than last year, admissions for EVERY OTHER AGE GROUP are substantially higher and those "under 18" and "18 to 39" are nearly double last year's surge.

As a side note, Friday is the funeral of the closest friend that I've lost to Covid during the pandemic. I would describe him as a "reluctant skeptic" and just wasn't convinced that he needed the vaccine because he was healthy and had zero comorbidities. I tried to convince him several times, especially after my wife had been in the ICU for 2+ weeks, but he resisted.
 
I sure hope so. Ohio is peaking higher than last year. Reported cases, *might* be peaking but hospitalizations and deaths are continuing to climb despite all the yakitty yak about Omicron being "less deadly." Also interesting, the data is showing that while hospital admissions for those aged 70+ are still lower than last year, admissions for EVERY OTHER AGE GROUP are substantially higher and those "under 18" and "18 to 39" are nearly double last year's surge.

As a side note, Friday is the funeral of the closest friend that I've lost to Covid during the pandemic. I would describe him as a "reluctant skeptic" and just wasn't convinced that he needed the vaccine because he was healthy and had zero comorbidities. I tried to convince him several times, especially after my wife had been in the ICU for 2+ weeks, but he resisted.

Sorry to hear about your friend.
 
@cwbullet My daughter is 12 and fully vaxxed with Pfizer. She is now eligible for a booster. Considering that omicron is pushing delta out, and my daughter had a pretty severe reaction to her second shot, is it still worth it to get her a booster? People I know who have had boosters recently are still getting omicron.

Thanks.
 
@cwbullet My daughter is 12 and fully vaxxed with Pfizer. She is now eligible for a booster. Considering that omicron is pushing delta out, and my daughter had a pretty severe reaction to her second shot, is it still worth it to get her a booster? People I know who have had boosters recently are still getting omicron.

Thanks.
I had a reaction to the first shot, headache, general malaise, etc. for 24 hours. A milder reaction to the second, feeling generally "off" with a borderline migraine for 12-24 hours. With the booster (all shots Moderna FWIW), I didn't have any reaction at all except site tenderness. I'll let Chuck weigh in, but the literature is still saying that while the current boosters are not as effective on Omicron as they were/are on the earlier variants, they are still more effective than your average flu shot (more than 65 percent, I think) so still worth having to a) reduce the chances of illness and b) reduce the severity of illness if caught.
 
One wonders what this is doing to countries that have little to no public health resources.
Or what it is doing in countries that simply won't report what is going on.

Is North Korea still telling the world that they have no reported/documented cases of Covid19?
 
FYI we are now exceeding the hospitalisation levels seen during the pandemic also. Lots of staff shortages here for health workers too. I think only 25% of hospitals in crisis mode currently.

Lots of shortages of staff across all industries due to isolation of cases and primary contacts.

I have had two Pfizer shots so far, with no significant ill effects from the vaccine. The good news is that it has almost totally eradicated my hypersensitive hayfever I have had for a couple of decades really bad. I have a booster booked for 19th January.
 
One wonders what this is doing to countries that have little to no public health resources.
Or what it is doing in countries that simply won't report what is going on.

Is North Korea still telling the world that they have no reported/documented cases of Covid19?

Yes, that still appears to be the party line. Worse, the rules/edicts being sent out are described as "increasingly... unreasonable." At least one official who broke the anti-virus rules was executed. Worse, at the moment, it appears that Kim Jong Un may be prepared to lose more of his subjects to starvation, due to trade restrictions, than he otherwise might have from COVID.

https://thediplomat.com/2022/01/nor...es-undermine-kim-jong-uns-goal-to-end-hunger/

Also: https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...s-rule-breaker-says-south-korean-intelligence
 
I had a reaction to the first shot, headache, general malaise, etc. for 24 hours. A milder reaction to the second, feeling generally "off" with a borderline migraine for 12-24 hours. With the booster (all shots Moderna FWIW), I didn't have any reaction at all except site tenderness. I'll let Chuck weigh in, but the literature is still saying that while the current boosters are not as effective on Omicron as they were/are on the earlier variants, they are still more effective than your average flu shot (more than 65 percent, I think) so still worth having to a) reduce the chances of illness and b) reduce the severity of illness if caught.

It depends on what you mean by effective. It still lowers the risk of acquiring an infection with omicron. That effect is suspected to be short-lived. I have had severe side effects and I will still each recommended booster.

I would individualize the recommendation for children under 13 by discussing it with a PCM. My cousin recently inquired about boosting his 8-year-old. I had him talk to a pediatrician. The benefits are less clear in children under 12. 12 and above had shown benefit.
 
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Long days this past 2 weeks. Although the numbers if plateauing, I do not think we are out of this spike yet. GA is averaging over 20K a day x 7 days. We are starting to see some local admission.
 
Chuck, any idea how the annual death rate for the regular flu and the Omicron variant compare?

I have it stuck in my head from the start of the pandemic that COVID was somewhere between 5-10 times more deadly than the flu.
 
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