Coronavirus

[G. Keenan]

The music teacher at my wife's school lost the Covid battle today. Refused to vaccinate, and ultimately declined a ventilator, because her husband advised her to "fight thru it". Not cool.

What an honest to God shame. It didn't have to be like that for her. That is really sad. May some kind of grace find her family.

[GeddyWrox]

I know it's hard to draw specific conclusions from data like this, but this sure looks to me like vaccinations are helping tremendously (based on decreased death rates per case).

Some of this might be Omicron's purported decrease in severity. But recent news has said people over-estimated how quickly Omicron was taking root here, and that a majority of cases were still Delta.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I know it's hard to draw specific conclusions from data like this, but this sure looks to me like vaccinations are helping tremendously (based on decreased death rates per case).

Some of this might be Omicron's purported decrease in severity. But recent news has said people over-estimated how quickly Omicron was taking root here, and that a majority of cases were still Delta.

I kind of touched on this a bit some time ago, not sure which thread, about Delta/Omicron. The CDC came out and said they did overestimate the case% that was omicron in the December 12-18(roundabout) range when they said it was iirc 73% overall in America. I pointed out the Texas/Oklahoma/Arkansas/Louisiana/New Mexico region was estimated to be at 92% omicron, but outside of major cities in Texas, the daily cases hadn't gone vertical yet which is pretty clearly the sign omicron has hit. /humblebrag

On your graph, pretty easy to see when omicron took over. There's still some delta in there most likely but the majority, as of today, likely the vast majority (80%+) is going to be omicron.

Average time to hospitalization has decreased from 17 (delta) to10 (omicron) days I heard. Stands to reason, death would come sooner as well. There's, again from what I heard, 11% less likely hospitalization for the unvaxxed for O vs D and a quicker release for those that are released from the hospital, but once hospitalized the death rate for the unvaxxed was similar. Regardless, that vertical face of daily cases is not going to be accounted for with deaths I don't think.

Looking at NYC, which is seeing a massive surge that started somewhere around the beginning of December, daily deaths have gone from 0.8 (?) to 2.6 (?) though I imagine that will increase a bit. But, yeah, not a big upswing. That's about the most vaxxed, most previously infected are of the US, I have to think.

[MrCrowesGarden]

Just more of a rant that I need to get out. We have an audio operator at work who missed nearly an entire calendar year because of COVID. He's only been back to work within the past month. He spent several months in the hospital, including 65 days on a ventilator. I know he still has breathing issues, and I sometimes see him wearing a nasal cannula at work.

But whenever I run a COVID story, whether it's about cases, or vaccines, or masks, or testing, he makes some snide comment about it. I don't [expletive] get it. I guess if you want to be anti-vax, I think you're an idiot but whatever. How the [expletive] can you be against testing

[stlouie_lipp]

I had it in February and have subsequently received both jabs. I've been debating on getting the booster, so I went and got an antibody test. I still have them, like a lot of them. Makes me wonder if I got Covid again sometime along the way and was asymptomatic. Maybe I'm just superhuman.

[CardsofSTL]

I had it in February and have subsequently received both jabs. I've been debating on getting the booster, so I went and got an antibody test. I still have them, like a lot of them. Makes me wonder if I got Covid again sometime along the way and was asymptomatic. Maybe I'm just superhuman.

Those damn 5G tracker nanites from the vaccine are self replicating!!! DOOOOOOOOOOM

[IMADreamer]

Rough day today, we lost a good friend to covid. He was elderly, he had Covid last year and spent nearly three weeks on a ventilator. He improved and got out of the hospital. He was able to get his vaccine and was enjoying time with his family. He never fully recovered as it did a real number on his lungs. About a week ago he got pneumonia and ended up back in the ICU on a vent. He just never was able to recover. He was a good man, a mentor, and friend. He was a giant in our world and it will never be the same without him.

[Arthur Dent]

Sorry to hear that, IMA. Not sure if I mentioned this before but my father in law went through a similar situation of just never really recovering from COVID. He didn’t get all the way to the ventilator stage, but the virus nevertheless did awful damage to his body and destroyed his quality of life which just spiraled downward. His death certificate doesn’t say COVID, but it was a huge contributor. I do wonder what the scale is of these sorts of not death but close COVID cases.

[GeddyWrox]

GDI, I'm sorry IMA (and Dent). That's awful.

[mikechamp]

This is from England, but since they seem to be ahead of us in terms of a wave, I thought it might provide some insight (or validation) of what we will see or are seeing here. Clicking on the link to the article will allow you to see the graphs accompanying the article.

Omicron stats are huge, but look beyond them

Covid infections have risen to unprecedented levels in recent weeks because of the Omicron variant. But, as early evidence suggested it would, this variant is causing milder illness, for now at least. A fall in the proportion of detected cases ending in hospital shows this. It is now five times lower than it was a year ago. This is largely thanks to a huge amount of immunity that has built up across the population either through vaccination or infection. And with better treatments for those who do become ill, one way or another everyone is less at risk to some degree than they were previously.

But the sheer weight of infections means while Omicron is milder, patient numbers in hospital have been going up.

But to fully understand what's happening you need to look beyond the headline figures.

For one thing, a growing proportion of hospital patients with Covid are being treated for something else. They just happen to have the virus.

Yet, as the chart above shows, the absolute number in hospital with Covid, and therefore severely ill, is still climbing. And even those who are not in primarily for Covid add pressure to the NHS because of the need for extra infection control measures.

Another sign of how Covid has changed is that the patients who are being treated for it are not getting as sick. But make no mistake, the pressures on the front line are severe.

The number of people coming to hospital ill with Covid is well above what the NHS would normally get for all types of respiratory infections combined - and the numbers are rising. How high they will go is still uncertain. Much depends on whether there will be a big wave of older, frail patients being admitted if Omicron infections move from younger people into older age groups.

There is growing confidence this may not happen though as hospital bosses are reporting even the outbreaks in care homes are not translating into the hospital admissions you would expect. What's more, London as a whole may have already peaked. The boosters, it seems, are holding up.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59862568