Coronavirus: What questions do you have?

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Has anybody done a study on what percentage of the population have contracted Covid19 and experienced virtually no symptoms at all?
These people would have developed a natural immunity but might not even know they have it.
Yes, there was a good study done in Indiana last spring, so original wild type Covid, that showed about 40% of infections were asymptomatic and wouldn't have resulted in any reason to go get tested. These people were somewhat infectious but much less so than a guy hacking, sneezing and coughing up phlegm. Several other studies gave similar results. These were done by random sample testing of people. I have not seen yet a similar analysis since Delta became dominant.
 
Yes, there was a good study done in Indiana last spring, so original wild type Covid, that showed about 40% of infections were asymptomatic and wouldn't have resulted in any reason to go get tested. These people were somewhat infectious but much less so than a guy hacking, sneezing and coughing up phlegm. Several other studies gave similar results. These were done by random sample testing of people. I have not seen yet a similar analysis since Delta became dominant.

Read about the study on the CDC page here:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6929e1.htm?s_cid=mm6929e1_w
 
My neighbor who happens to be a surgeon was one of the first people I knew to be vaccinated. I think he received the Pfizer vaccine.
He just came down with the delta variant, even though he was really careful about his preventive practices. Nothing is 100%, and one can only dodge so many bullets before getting hit.
 
Why is the CDC not releasing more data on the viral loads and the type of strains harbored by vaccinated people? Why does the delta virus intensity seem to correlated global with vaccination rates? Is is possible that vaccinated people are the hosts and/or source of mutated Covid strains? Are vaccinated people the petri dishes of new Covid variants?
 
Hey John, did you get those questions from the articles posted on the Undercurrents blog?
You do realize that it's a garbage questionable website right?
Here's a few you missed:
Could vaccinations be causing a rise in infections?
Why is the truth about natural immunity banned?
Is it true that it's impossible for the Covid jabs to have a favorable impact?
On second thought never mind.
Chuck has better things to do with his time.
Like answer legitimate questions.
 
There is plenty of vaccines available.
Most of the unvaccinated people CHOOSE not to be vaccinated. There are some that want to be but can't due to chemotherapy, etc.
If you get sick and have chosen not to be vaccinated, DO NOT expect taxpayers to help pay for your care.
 
Hey John, did you get those questions from the articles posted on the Undercurrents blog?
You do realize that it's a garbage questionable website right?
Here's a few you missed:
Could vaccinations be causing a rise in infections?
Why is the truth about natural immunity banned?
Is it true that it's impossible for the Covid jabs to have a favorable impact?
On second thought never mind.
Chuck has better things to do with his time.
Like answer legitimate questions.
No, but I know it's fashionable now to attack free speech and those who speak. But now we attack free questions. Sad. But enjoy your role as a speech policeman. Did Chuck give you a badge for that?

Chuck is free to moderate my posts.
 
Perhaps the reason I have my views on the whole mask wearing/shutdown mandates is that of all the people that I know and have dealings and interactions with, only one of them even contracted Covid19 and he had, as the old saying goes, "One foot in the grave" already.

Our regional hospitals were never overrun with Covid19 patients and truth to tell, most of the people out this way had a very lackadaisical view towards all those things you were supposed to do to mitigate the spread of the virus.

We suffered two major outbreak sources, one was a funeral the other a wedding and of all the people contracting C19 from those two sources and passing it on to others, only a couple of them died.

There never seemed to be any tertiary infections from people shopping at WalMart or the grocery store or going to church etc.
And as two separate doctors have told me, virtually every person who contracted C19 and suffered severe symptoms from or worse yet, died from it were elderly and or had serious health problems to begin with.

Maybe if I lived in a region where people seemed to be dropping like flies from this virus I'd have a different opinion about its overall severity and the degree with which it can be passed on from one person to another.
 
Perhaps the reason I have my views on the whole mask wearing/shutdown mandates is that of all the people that I know and have dealings and interactions with, only one of them even contracted Covid19 and he had, as the old saying goes, "One foot in the grave" already.

Our regional hospitals were never overrun with Covid19 patients and truth to tell, most of the people out this way had a very lackadaisical view towards all those things you were supposed to do to mitigate the spread of the virus.

We suffered two major outbreak sources, one was a funeral the other a wedding and of all the people contracting C19 from those two sources and passing it on to others, only a couple of them died.

There never seemed to be any tertiary infections from people shopping at WalMart or the grocery store or going to church etc.
And as two separate doctors have told me, virtually every person who contracted C19 and suffered severe symptoms from or worse yet, died from it were elderly and or had serious health problems to begin with.

Maybe if I lived in a region where people seemed to be dropping like flies from this virus I'd have a different opinion about its overall severity and the degree with which it can be passed on from one person to another.

An anecdote isn't data, but my cousin caught COVID a year and change ago. He's relatively young (<40), with no major health or lifestyle issues. He was on a ventilator for a week or two and barely made it through. He wasn't (as far as I know) doing a lot of "high-risk" things--it was probably caught at church or in a grocery store.
 
Perhaps the reason I have my views on the whole mask wearing/shutdown mandates is that of all the people that I know and have dealings and interactions with, only one of them even contracted Covid19 and he had, as the old saying goes, "One foot in the grave" already.

Our regional hospitals were never overrun with Covid19 patients and truth to tell, most of the people out this way had a very lackadaisical view towards all those things you were supposed to do to mitigate the spread of the virus.

We suffered two major outbreak sources, one was a funeral the other a wedding and of all the people contracting C19 from those two sources and passing it on to others, only a couple of them died.

There never seemed to be any tertiary infections from people shopping at WalMart or the grocery store or going to church etc.
And as two separate doctors have told me, virtually every person who contracted C19 and suffered severe symptoms from or worse yet, died from it were elderly and or had serious health problems to begin with.

Maybe if I lived in a region where people seemed to be dropping like flies from this virus I'd have a different opinion about its overall severity and the degree with which it can be passed on from one person to another.

As someone who treats and transports patients, I have seen severe Covid cases, including fatal cases, among all age groups and among people who were otherwise healthy and those who had other, serious health problems beforehand. I've also taken care of people who had Covid and needed care for something unrelated and the Covid diagnosis was minor compared to the other problems.

Our regional hospitals were full for a while and at times a significant portion of the census was due to Covid. Nobody I talked to in the hospital could remember a time where that large of a portion of admissions were due to a single disease process. Some people were spending days in the ED waiting for rooms to become available, not just at our hospital but willing to be admitted to a different hospital in the regions. Some people never got a room spent their entire hospital stay in the ED, others had to be transported to any hospital capable of treating them with an available bed, even if it were a few hundred miles away.

Many people talked about mask and PPE shortages. We dealt with that and worked through it. Medications were in short supply. Our pharmacy did a fantastic job keeping us as stocked as possible, but the types of containers and concentrations they gave us weren't always the same. That may sound trivial, but in my work environment can be rather hectic with poor lighting and lots of movement. When things in our kits are different, it increases the risk of a mistake. We were also dealing with shortages in ventilator circuits and various parts that go along with them. Some of the shortages were due the fact that so many more ventilators were in use worldwide, but part of the shortage was due the government forcing the manufacturer to fill a large order for the "national stockpile" which was not distributed to hospitals before they filled our orders.

We're better now and the supply chain and available rooms is manageable. Our cases are increasing again and increasing in severity. As far as I know from the doctors I have spoken with the Covid admissions are still all among the unvaccinated group. Some hospitals aren't doing as well as ours, I've read about hospitals in Florida and Missouri cancelling elective procedures again due rooms not being available because of Covid admissions.
 
Okay folks... This thread was set up for the sole purpose of

A) asking Chuck a question and
B) hearing Chuck's answer.

While all/some of these discussions have been interesting and/or informative, as of late many of them have not aligned with point A or B. Let us... um... henceforth (that's a good word you don't get to use very often) limit our discussion here to those two points as much as possible. Now that I have returned to my "office" and in front of a computer on a regular basis again, I will be enforcing this more strongly and moving errant discussions to the COVID thread.

Please don't make me do that.

Thank you for your consideration.
 
My employer also announced proof-of-vax for returning to office. Mildly amusing to me since a) I've been jabbed since March and b) I've been going to work everyday anyway.

EDIT: And my choice of either long quarantine or test-with-short-quarantine whenever I travel outside the metro or have possible exposure.

There is a certain degree of liability reduction from vaccination.
 
Not true. You do NOT have to be vaccinated to receive VA benefits.

But you soon may not able to get benefits if they fire all fo the unvaccinated employees.
Chuck, I’m very sorry to hear about how difficult this is

I do have a question about the 25% of the positive tests being vaccinated. I think sometimes people see a statistic like that and say, “See, vaccines don’t work.”

So my question is, what percentage of the people you are actually seeing hospitalized have been vaccinated? I have heard that when a breakthrough infection occurs, the vaccine is still very effective at keeping the vaccinated person out of the hospital and preventing them from dying. Is that what you are seeing? Are 25% of your covid hospitalizations vaccinated to match the 25% of your positive tests who are vaccinated? Or is the vaccine keeping those people out of the hospital?

The vaccines work. 100% of the fatalities in our system and 99.99% of the fatalities in GA are unvaccinated. Out of 18000 deaths, 24 are vaccinated. The rest were unvaccinated. That is huge! Since we started vaccinated, less than a handful of the covid admissions were vaccinated and even less of those were intubated. The vaccine works at it intended mission.

The real problem is a lack of understanding. What is Immunity? No vaccine prevents exposure to the virus. You will be exposed to measles, mumps, polio, COVID, and flu. Vaccines assist in fighting off the virus and may limit or reduce symptoms. That is what immunity is. The reason why people are having symptoms after immunization is because this is one heck of a virus. Delta is producing 1000 times the viral load and overwhelming our immune systems. It is better able to penetrate our defenses, but the vaccine is still effective at preventing or reducing deaths and hospitalizations.
 
The vaccines work. 100% of the fatalities in our system and 99.99% of the fatalities in GA are unvaccinated. Out of 18000 deaths, 24 are vaccinated. The rest were unvaccinated. That is huge! Since we started vaccinated, less than a handful of the covid admissions were vaccinated and even less of those were intubated. The vaccine works at it intended mission.

The real problem is a lack of understanding. What is Immunity? No vaccine prevents exposure to the virus. You will be exposed to measles, mumps, polio, COVID, and flu. Vaccines assist in fighting off the virus and may limit or reduce symptoms. That is what immunity is. The reason why people are having symptoms after immunization is because this is one heck of a virus. Delta is producing 1000 times the viral load and overwhelming our immune systems. It is better able to penetrate our defenses, but the vaccine is still effective at preventing or reducing deaths and hospitalizations.

Thanks, Chuck. That’s what I have heard reported, but I wanted to double-check with someone who has direct experience with it.
 
But they will never be able to do that anymore than they can stop people from dying from the flu.
So I ask again; what exactly is the goal that has to be reached before all this hysteria comes to an end?
It’s a legitimate question. I like @kuririn ‘s answer.

but a reasonable goal is to get the “R” value below 1. If we do that, the plague dies out. If we don’t, it goes on and on and on.

The two easiest ways to do this are vaccination (not perfect, but still pretty good for the mRNA vaccines, although durability may be waning and resistance is likely inevitable) and masking. Social distancing is a misnomer, we should call it physical distancing as there are OTHER ways to remain “social” like FaceTiming and zoom, but it is a little harder. Lockdowns and business closures are by far the most costly economically and personally.

maybe because the military made me a “sheeple” who learned to follow instructions, or perhaps because one of the reasons I joined was to protect my fellow citizens (take your pick) I continue to be amazed at the resistance to mask wearing. I am boggled that people care so little for their fellows that the minimal inconvenience of wearing a mask outweighs the very real possibility that a person not willing to be so mildly inconvenienced to wear a mask correctly could very likely result in permanent injury or DEATH of someone else.

it’s a good thing this generation wasn’t the one around when Hitler came to power. That generation of American made the sacrifices across the board required to take that monster down. It cost over 400,000 lives

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/s...tarters/research-starters-us-military-numbers
(note, may not be accurate but works for a starter)

and it wasn’t just the military, it was the civilians back home that bought bonds and tended victory gardens and gathered scrap metal and built the ships and tanks and planes and Jeeps.

Covid has killed over 600,000 and counting. And we can’t even get people to wear a mask?! Really?!

I was proud to serve my country, and I am trying to stay proud of being an American, but this kind of selfishness makes it really hard to hang onto that pride.

we Americans boast about our freedoms, and rightfully so. But what those of us living now fail to understand is that WITH those freedoms come RESPONSIBILITIES.

at first I thought we as a nation had failed to teach that to our kids. Now I find that my generation apparently failed to learn it ourselves, so no wonder so many of our kids don’t get it.

100% vaccinating and 100% masking around non-household contacts and the infection and Death rate drop to near zero, the exceptions being imported cases and even those should be rare if we require vaccination and masks for incoming people. It’s not that hard.
 
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Folks... I am going to repeat what peartree said.
This thread was set up for the sole purpose of

A) asking Chuck a question and
B) hearing Chuck's answer.

If you post other than a question to chuck, it will be moved to corona virus form.
 
Question for Chuck
Do we have numbers on the infectiousness of Delta compared to the earlier strains?
I've seen numbers from 50x to 1000x (viral load).
Also what are the per capita case mortality numbers of the two?
I'm trying to get a handle on the degree of infectiousness and lethality of Delta.
 
@timbucktoo and @Peartree Thanks for cleaning it up.

Do we have numbers on the infectiousness of Delta compared to the earlier strains? I've seen numbers from 50x to 1000x (viral load).
The data are very preliminary but this variant is scary. If I were not vaccinated, I would run to my immunization site which is 8 miles away. Partially joking. The virus produces 1000 times the viral load of prior variants and is more easily brought into our cells in a faster manner. It is overwhelming our immune system. It 50-68% more infectious. I hope this answers your question.

Also, what are the per capita case mortality numbers of the two? I'm trying to get a handle on the degree of infectiousness and lethality of Delta.
This question is one I cannot answer with certainty but we will all know in 4-8 weeks and some of us will experience it first hand. I suspect there will be no difference for the immunized and a higher fatality rate for those that are not, but that is an educated guess.
 
This question is one I cannot answer with certainty but we will all know in 4-8 weeks and some of us will experience it first hand.

We had a meeting with our medical director last week, and he mentioned they are planning for cases at our hospital to peak again in October. The hospital also resumed the "Covid Command Center" to monitor every and give us advice on our care.

Do you think the waves will start hitting earlier? Do you think hospitals will be more prepared this time around?
 
We had a meeting with our medical director last week, and he mentioned they are planning for cases at our hospital to peak again in October. The hospital also resumed the "Covid Command Center" to monitor every and give us advice on our care.

Do you think the waves will start hitting earlier? Do you think hospitals will be more prepared this time around?

I think it will peak earlier this time, but that is a guess. I think we are looking at a peak in deaths in 3-6 weeks. I think more of our families will be on divert this summer to early fall. I pray I am working. I am seeing more facilities stressed than one year ago. Maybe we have lost our resiliency.
 
The numbers are very concerning. I ran a site and tested less than 30 on Saturday, but 25% we positive and 40% of the positives were vaccinated.
 
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Chuck I have no problem wearing a mask if necessary - though I think we have often emphasized here that the mask must be worn effectively. I have N95 respirators that I know how to use, and to me that is far more effective than 90-95% of what I see out there. But suppose I'm out and about (vacinnated, by the way), and some unwary delta victim blasts an enormous load of virii my way. So a question and an observation: Can the virus also enter via the eyeballs/tear ducts? I've seen people wearing these plastic face shields, but my personal experience with those (industrial setting over a period of 5+ years) is that they are virtually useless for very fine airborne particulates - their only real purpose is direct spray or (in our case) heat deflection.
 
The numbers are very concerning. I ran a site and tested less than 30 on Saturday, but 25% we positive and 40% of the positives were vaccinated.
What proportion/percentage of the positive vaccinated patients were symptomatic?
 
What proportion/percentage of the positive vaccinated patients were symptomatic?
My guess is that they wouldn't have come in for a test if they didn't have symptoms (unless there was some sort of random testing going on).

I'm curious to see Chuck's answer.
 
What proportion/percentage of the positive vaccinated patients were symptomatic?

Two weeks ago, 1-2% of the positives were vaccinated. Now it is more like 20-25%. We rarely test asymptomatic unless it is for travel, so any data in the area is inaccurate. That being said, 5-8% of our tests in asymptomatic are positive and it is not much different in the vaccinated asymptomatic testings. If I remove the administrative testing and travel tests, asymptomatic testing of exposures is about 8-10%.
 
Datapoint to share:
Today, a local physician had an encounter with a woman who was a fulminant antivaxxer. She was upset that her son's college was requiring the vaccine. She wanted the physician to write a letter saying that her son should not have the vaccine. The doc called me asking for advice. I suggested he not write the letter and to just explain that it is her right to not be immunized, but there is no right to a college education or job. Wish her good luck and end the encounter. They had to call the cops (reportedly).

Our country has gone crazy.
 
GA is already over a 2000 test per day average. I am concerned about the rate of increase. I hope this is a short-lived spike.
 
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