Coronavirus: What questions do you have?

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One thing folks may not understand. Hospitals may be at capacity and on divert, but many of them are at that state not because of covid, but because they have nursing shortages.
Ayup. My XYL is an RN. She's about to start doing travel nursing, as it pays more per week than she's been getting in two weeks. Only drawback, is she'll be gone for 13 weeks at a time. First stop, Worcester, Mass.
 
update on the numbers. The numbers in Georgia are rising again and we may have had a huge bump today. Prior to today, Influenza numbers were higher than Covid for many locations in the state but today we had over 1900 infections of Covid. Hopefully, it is a short and low spike.

Protect yourself and enjoy your holidays.
 
update on the numbers. The numbers in Georgia are rising again and we may have had a huge bump today. Prior to today, Influenza numbers were higher than Covid for many locations in the state but today we had over 1900 infections of Covid. Hopefully, it is a short and low spike.

Protect yourself and enjoy your holidays.
Ohio is currently averaging (7-day average) 7,621 new cases per day. Yesterday there was 8,707. Deaths are averaging 61 per day. Hospitals are virtually all on diversion, our newspaper headlines are that there are 9 to 12 hour wait times before being seen at local ER departments (in hospitals that, pre-covid, advertised ten minute waits). The Cleveland Clinic hospital system announced that they are postponing all "non-essential" surgeries (such as knee and hip replacements, or anything non-life threatening) because they're all over capacity. It's not a good time to get sick... with anything.
 
I've just started training and riding on an ambulance in upstate NY. We have 3 very local hospitals and one a bit further away (but still have patients request to go there). In the last few weeks, the further one has gone on diversion (not accepting any patients/ambulances) multiple times. We've shown up to one of the other local hospitals and all the ambulance parking spots are full. It has taken nearly an hour to get a bed for a patient so we can get our stretcher back and return to service (often we transfer the patients to a wheelchair so we can leave sooner). The ER is still set up with hallway "rooms".
We recently had a patient that despite having difficulty breathing who, due to recovering from major heart surgery, was told by their Doctor to NOT go to the ER for concern of picking up COVID (because in his/her condition it would most likely be fatal).
So things are not too great around here with a high number of COVID cases.....
 
Ugh. It sounds like it just keeps rolling along. Locally around here, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths remain low. Hospitals and ICUs are not near capacity. The local vaccination rates are very high, compared to the national average, and in my county, we’ve had a mask mandate since August sometime when the delta spike started in some parts of the country — masks required in indoor, public places, unless eating or drinking. I guess it’s working.
 
Yup.

And here's a notable quote from it:

Unvaccinated people make up 87 percent of COVID-19 patients who are in an intensive care unit in the state, she said, and 88 percent of COVID-19 patients who are on a ventilator are unvaccinated. More than 70 percent Michiganders age 16 and older have had at least one shot of a Covid vaccine, she said

The story is essentially the same everywhere: the unvaxxed are driving the pandemic and clogging the hospitals.
 
The story is essentially the same everywhere: the unvaxxed are driving the pandemic and clogging the hospitals.

It‘s been that way for months now. And they aren’t just driving the pandemic and clogging the hospitals for the rest of society, they are also dying, ending up disabled, or coming home from the hospital as frail shadows of themselves.
 
Does anyone have an estimate of how many “man-years” of life have been lost to the pandemic in the US?

I know that many of the dead were elderly, so not too many years of life left, or they were already sick with something else, and maybe their lifespan was already going to be diminished. But there are also people who likely had a lot of years left.

If 800,000 people have died and on average had about 1 year left to live if they hadn’t caught covid, that would be 800,000 years of life lost. Or “about a million” years. But it’s likely on average people died earlier than that with more years left. What do you think? Could it be 5 million years lost? Or 10 million?
 
Yup.

And here's a notable quote from it:

Unvaccinated people make up 87 percent of COVID-19 patients who are in an intensive care unit in the state, she said, and 88 percent of COVID-19 patients who are on a ventilator are unvaccinated. More than 70 percent Michiganders age 16 and older have had at least one shot of a Covid vaccine, she said

The story is essentially the same everywhere: the unvaxxed are driving the pandemic and clogging the hospitals.

But they're taking HCQ and vitamins and eating horse paste. Surely it can't be them!
 
I get daily FDA updates for devices and pharma.
This afternoon the latest update was the following, quoted from the FDA email message:

"The update added new information about tests with S-gene drop out, specifically:
  • Not all patient samples with the omicron variant display the mutation that leads to an S-gene drop out; and
  • The presence of the S-gene drop out detection pattern is not a definitive confirmation of the presence of the omicron variant."
That seems to indicate some tests may falsely report negatives/positives for omicron. We obviously have a lot to learn still about identifying this variant.
 
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Does anyone have an estimate of how many “man-years” of life have been lost to the pandemic in the US?

I know that many of the dead were elderly, so not too many years of life left, or they were already sick with something else, and maybe their lifespan was already going to be diminished. But there are also people who likely had a lot of years left.

If 800,000 people have died and on average had about 1 year left to live if they hadn’t caught covid, that would be 800,000 years of life lost. Or “about a million” years. But it’s likely on average people died earlier than that with more years left. What do you think? Could it be 5 million years lost? Or 10 million?

I do not. No idea how you would do that. It is not really clinically relevant.
 
I get daily FDA updates for devices and pharma.
This afternoon the latest update was the following, quoted from the FDA email message:

"The update added new information about tests with S-gene drop out, specifically:
  • Not all patient samples with the omicron variant display the mutation that leads to an S-gene drop out; and
  • The presence of the S-gene drop out detection pattern is not a definitive confirmation of the presence of the omicron variant."
That seems to indicate some tests may falsely report negatives/positives for omicron. We obviously have a lot to learn still about identifying this variant.

Not sure what that means. I did ask my subject matter experts. They shrugged their shoulders.
 
I do not. No idea how you would do that. It is not really clinically relevant.
This is likely the sort of research project that will, one day, be a thesis project for a doctorate in sociology.
 
This is likely the sort of research project that will, one day, be a thesis project for a doctorate in sociology.

Perhaps so. But to most of us, about as relevant as how many person-years of life are spent on X or Y activity. Maybe useful info to some theoretician, but the regular guy? Forget about it. :)
 
Perhaps so. But to most of us, about as relevant as how many person-years of life are spent on X or Y activity. Maybe useful info to some theoretician, but the regular guy? Forget about it. :)

The socioeconomic impact would be useful to us regular guys. Aside from the death toll from covid, you also have the reduced life span, people who may have been otherwise independent and now require long term care, and people forced out of the workforce due to permanent complications from the disease.

I think the the direct impacts from death and disability die to covid as well as the indirect impacts from job loss in some fields, growth in others and industries making adaptations to abut. work from home and other measures will be studied quite a bit.
 
Update: In the Southern US, we are at a crossroads. The numbers are increasing and may skyrocket in the coming weeks or it might peak where we are. It really depends on public activity and the infectivity of Omicron over the next 6 weeks. This is the first time where I feel unarmed to make a prediction.
 
Not sure what that means. I did ask my subject matter experts. They shrugged their shoulders.
I interpret it to mean that S-gene dropout is not a suitable criteria for distinguishing omicron from other variants.
So any such tests that have been used to declare specific omicron infection need to be backed-up with a more reliable method.
Presumably this is a result of scrutiny of recent test results.
 
Update: In the Southern US, we are at a crossroads. The numbers are increasing and may skyrocket in the coming weeks or it might peak where we are. It really depends on public activity and the infectivity of Omicron over the next 6 weeks. This is the first time where I feel unarmed to make a prediction.
My wife spent the beginning of last week converting her med-surg unit to a COVID unit.
Last I heard they are now full and diverting.
 
My wife spent the beginning of last week converting her med-surg unit to a COVID unit.
Last I heard they are now full and diverting.

The north and Midwest are getting hammered in locations. It is mostly Delta. I hope this ends soon - fingers crossed.
 
So far, Omicron is not affecting the US significantly. Georgia is reporting more than 1,000 new cases of COVID-19 are reported daily in Georgia, 99% of which are the Delta variant. I did a little research this morning and this is similar in all states that I reviewed. Some do not release data, but I am sure the same is true.

Will it? Your guess is as good as mine.
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-nears-800-000-virus-130041903.html

So you don't smoke or drink or use drugs.
You exercise and eat right, and then along comes Covid19 and it makes you wonder what it was all for.

I suppose being healthier gives you a better chance of surviving, but still.

It does make you wonder if in the near future Covid19 won't become one of the top five killers of the elderly.
 
I wonder if we will ever get factual numbers out of China, Russia, N. Korea, Iran most of the African Continent etc. even India, though for different reasons
 
I wonder if we will ever get factual numbers out of China, Russia, N. Korea, Iran most of the African Continent etc. even India, though for different reasons

To get factual numbers, you have to test enough people so you answer is ”no”.
 
I wonder if we will ever get factual numbers out of China, Russia, N. Korea, Iran most of the African Continent etc. even India, though for different reasons
There's a big difference between some of those. China likely knows, or could have known, but chooses not to tell the truth in order to save face. Generally speaking, much of Africa simply doesn't have the infrastructure, medical capacity, or money to count deaths, let alone virus cases. North Korea and India, to varying degrees, are likely to have both problems. Russia just doesn't play nice with others so I could be either of those, or both, or something else altogether.
 
There's a big difference between some of those. China likely knows, or could have known, but chooses not to tell the truth in order to save face. Generally speaking, much of Africa simply doesn't have the infrastructure, medical capacity, or money to count deaths, let alone virus cases. North Korea and India, to varying degrees, are likely to have both problems. Russia just doesn't play nice with others so I could be either of those, or both, or something else altogether.

Pretty good summary. I have a friend who immigrated from Russia. It is amazing how little many of their citizens knew about the west during the Cold War. I have no idea how much on information gap there is today.
 
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