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ASPartOfMe
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24 Aug 2022, 11:41 am

jimmy m wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
Is the virus really less severe or are symptoms less because of vaccines and most of us getting it, we have antibodies?

This will be the first fall of the pandemic with little or no mitigation measures. More packed indoors as the weather cools. In this part of the country, school starts after Labor Day


From what I read, the virus is less severe. So even though there are many times more infections, there are fewer people dying. This trend also applies to those who decide to remain unvaccinated.

The unvaccinated will still carry the brunt of the infection wave but they are not dying like they did with the initial wave in 2020.

[On a side note, I was put in a hospital in a COVID ward in the middle of the first big wave at the end of 2020. People were dying all around me. I didn't have COVID but the hospital took this approach to assume that I had COVID until they proved otherwise. I had my wife sneak in a UVC filter unit to purify the air in my room and no one in the hospital knew the difference. And I survived my stay in the COVID Ward.]

I thought about the unvaccinated having less severe symptoms then 2020. I would assume most of the unvaccinated have antibodies from getting previous infections. Not only are they more likely to get it and get it multiple times from not being vaccinated but people who do not vaccinate are much less likely mitigate in other ways.

Also the quiet part is that even in 2020 the vast majority of people who got it did not end up on ventilators, but enough did to strain the health care system. For example at this time 2 years ago the positivity rate was under 1 percent. At my alma mater they came back for fall semester and did what college age people do when let loose after 5 months of lockdown. Combine that with frat houses and dorms being petri dishes and the number of positive cases went from 0 to 700 in a week and a half forcing the school to shutdown. Nobody was hospitalized. A video went viral of people partying in the isolation dorm. They were probably asymptomatic which was not a surprise for that demographic at that time.


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ASPartOfMe
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24 Aug 2022, 5:32 pm

Life expectancy in NY dropped 3 years in 2020, CDC says
Behind a paywall

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Life expectancy across New York State dropped three years in 2020 — the steepest drop of all the states in the nation — largely due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said Tuesday.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that New Yorkers born in 2020 can expect to live 77.7 years. That’s down from 80.7 in 2019.

The CDC said life expectancy dropped for all states and Washington, D.C., between 2019 and 2020 “mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in unintentional injuries (mainly drug overdose deaths).”

Hawaii ranked No. 1 with an overall life expectancy of 80.7, followed by Washington state with 79.2. Mississippi ranked last with an overall life expectancy of 71.9.

In New York, which ranked No. 15, women fared better than men, with a life expectancy of 80.7 compared with 74.8, the report said.

In 2019, New York ranked No. 3 in the country, following Hawaii and California.

“I don’t think anybody should panic,” said Dr. Lawrence Eisenstein, vice president and chief public and community health officer at Catholic Health, about the drop in life expectancy. “We know that 2020 was a difficult year. New York was hit first and hardest.”

The state was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 and more than 73,000 New Yorkers have died from the disease since then, according to the CDC.

Experts said there are multiple factors that account for life expectancy, and the report focuses on averages and populations, not individuals.

According to the CDC, life expectancy at birth represents “the number of years that a group of infants would live if the group was to experience, throughout life, the age-specific death rates present in the year of birth.”

The pandemic created new stress for people around changes in housing and jobs, she noted, as well as highlighting existing health issues that were not being treated as people stayed home, away from medical care, because they were fearful of contracting COVID-19.

Dr. Peter Silver, chief quality officer and associate chief medical officer at Northwell Health, said it’s also important to look at the fatalities categorized as “unintentional deaths.”

“Deaths due to accidents and drug overdoses were up and that was probably brought on by the pandemic and the stress associated with it,” Silver said. “The scourge of firearm violence also increased in 2020.”

Silver pointed out that while the pandemic has continued since those early days of 2020, the incidents of severe illness, hospitalization and death have decreased thanks to vaccines, therapeutics and other treatments.

“Another question that we still haven’t answered is what the impact of long COVID will be,” Silver said. “We know there are people who were hospitalized in 2020 and 2021 who are still sick.”


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jimmy m
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24 Aug 2022, 8:08 pm

When you look at the death rate stats due to COVID in the U.S. they are way down. This is despite the fact that many, many people got COVID this year.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=vaccinations&tab=trend


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25 Aug 2022, 1:59 pm

Yahoo!, attributed to Insider:

"In one day, a man was diagnosed with monkeypox, HIV, and COVID-19"

8O


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26 Aug 2022, 7:44 pm


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naturalplastic
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26 Aug 2022, 8:11 pm

Double Retired wrote:


Gosh!

Like that businessman in Japan who...not only managed to survive the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but...was so dedicated that...he went back to work the next day, and...took his previously scheduled business trip...to Nagasaki!

Right in the middle of his presentation in front of the board of directors in Nagasaki he saw the same weird light come through the window - that the A bomb gave off at Hiroshima. And he dived under the table and survived the second A bomb.



jimmy m
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29 Aug 2022, 7:47 am

I went out to dinner and a concert with a close friend who got COVID about a month and a half ago. He looks like he is doing fine. So generally speaking this variant of COVID does not produce long lasting damage. Meanwhile another close friend came down with COVID about a week ago. This version of COVID is highly contagious.

Soon the temperatures will begin to drop as we enter fall. This should bring a slowdown to COVID infections. I believe this winter will produce some severe cold temperatures - an unusually cold winter. So the winter variant of COVID may be extreme or perhaps with everyone getting infected now, it may be hardly nothing at all. Time will tell.


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SabbraCadabra
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29 Aug 2022, 1:05 pm

kraftiekortie
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29 Aug 2022, 1:09 pm

Hospitalizations are steady, deaths are down, in New York State over the past few months.



ASPartOfMe
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30 Aug 2022, 5:53 am

SabbraCadabra wrote:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-data-shows-long-covid-is-keeping-as-many-as-4-million-people-out-of-work/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... -recovery/

https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/11/6151/htm

Please keep Long Covid in mind when making your personal mitigation decisions.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


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30 Aug 2022, 11:32 pm

China shuts world's largest electronics market as Shenzhen imposes more lockdowns

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Hong Kong (CNN Business)China's southern city of Shenzhen on Monday shut down the world's largest electronics market and suspended public transport nearby as authorities enforced neighborhood-wide lockdowns in response to a small number of Covid cases.

Huaqiangbei, a busy shopping area home to thousands of stalls selling computer components, mobile phone parts and microchips, is among three neighborhoods placed under a mandatory four-day lockdown in Futian district, according the district government.

Residents in those neighborhoods are forbidden to leave their homes except for Covid testing, which they are required to undergo daily until Thursday.

All businesses in the affected areas are shut down through Thursday, except for supermarkets, pharmacies and hospitals. Restaurant dining is also suspended, with only takeaways allowed.

China is one of the last places in the world still enforcing stringent zero-Covid measures, which rely on sweeping digital surveillance, mass testing, extensive quarantines and snap lockdowns.On Tuesday, Shenzhen, an international technology hub of 18 million people, reported just 35 infections, including 11 asymptomatic cases.

The heavy-handed approach has seen dozens of neighborhoods across Shenzhen identified as "high-risk areas," and placed under strict lockdown orders. Videos shared by residents on social media show metal barriers -- some topped with barbed wire -- erected outside residential buildings, blocking residents from leaving.

The districts of Luohu and Longgang also shut down all entertainment venues and public parks, and banned gatherings from conferences and performances to square dancing.

Authorities also suspended service at 24 subway stations and hundreds of bus stations across Shenzhen, including around the Huaqiangbei electronics market.

At a news conference Monday, Shenzhen officials said the outbreak is mainly driven by new subvariant Omicron BF.15, which they said is more transmittable and harder to detect.


FDA expected to authorize new omicron-specific COVID boosters this week
Quote:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week is expected to authorize the first updated versions of the COVID-19 boosters since the pandemic began.

The new shots are reformulated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. They're known as "bivalent" vaccines because they are designed to protect against the original strain and the highly contagious omicron variant.

Specifically, the vaccines are programmed to target the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants, which are the dominant strains infecting people and the most adept at sneaking around the immune system.

But the formulation of the boosters and the process for authorizing them has sparked debate among scientists.

For the first time, the FDA is judging how well the vaccines work without results from tests done directly in people. To save time, the FDA is initially evaluating the vaccines with tests in mice along with the results of tests that were done on people of an earlier version of a bivalent vaccine.

Some experts worry that mouse studies aren't very reliable at predicting how well vaccines work in people.

"It could be problematic if the public thinks that the new bivalent boosters are a super-strong shield against infection, and hence increased their behavioral risk and exposed themselves to more virus," says John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine.

But federal officials defend the decision.

The mouse studies suggest the new vaccines may be about 20 times more protective against omicron than the original shots, and about five times more protective than the first attempt to create omicron-specific bivalent vaccines, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told NPR in an interview.

"That makes us feel confident that they will do what they are intended to do, which is to produce a good immune response against the BA.4/5 variant, as well as refresh our overall response given the original component of the vaccine as well," Marks says.

The decision to rely on mouse studies became necessary after the FDA in June rejected new boosters that targeted the original strain of omicron, known as BA.1, and instead asked the vaccine companies to develop new shots targeting the strains that had replaced it.

Some scientists think there's the possibility that the new shots could also give people immunity that lasts longer than the original shots, and maybe even protect against new variants that emerge. But more research is needed to confirm that.

Some experts say the data from the BA.1 boosters indicate any potential improvement could be pretty modest at best.


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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


jimmy m
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31 Aug 2022, 8:08 am

I talked to a close friend that is recovering from the latest version of COVID. She got it about a week ago. She describes it as BRAIN FOG. It is like her mind is in a fog cloud.

She is recovering and getting back on her feet. For most (older) people there is two weeks of severe effects and then the body gets into a recovery mode.


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kraftiekortie
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31 Aug 2022, 8:11 am

In post-vaccination times, I've only encountered people (of all ages) who had COVID for a few days. Relatively severe symptoms for one or two days (like the flu, not like pneumonia), then steady and rather rapid improvement afterwards. Within a week the symptoms resolved themselves, and they went back to work with little or no ill effects.



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31 Aug 2022, 8:18 am

Seems to me from a personal perspective Covid has just become a regular illness. Serious for some but not for most. I know some older people who have all gotten it. Including an 85 year old who got long Covid. Sometimes he's under the weather. But when I saw him last week, he seemed spry as ever.

I still take precautions, but not to the extreme degree that I used to. As far as I know I've already had the asymptomatic type version. Maybe more than once.



kraftiekortie
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31 Aug 2022, 8:55 am

I had symptomatic COVID once.

I THOUGHT I had COVID a few more times; but I tested negative through various COVID tests every time.



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31 Aug 2022, 9:47 am

I think I might have gotten it in early Jan before the news came out about it. Whatever I had was unlike anything I've had before and fit the symptoms.