BBC: China pneumonia outbreak: COVID-19 Global Pandemic

[tshile]

Yeah areas that were walk-in and get test immediate are 2.5+ hour waits. 
 

and yeah no tests in stores. 
 

of course we basically live in the same area… so yeah, same problems lol

[Fergasun]

I just read someone tweet out that said: "Omicron is the fastest spreading disease known to man".  Right now we think it is not as bad... but even "not as bad" with it spreading like crazy will hit people. 

[Springfield]

I saw a meme that said “When Covid is over” has the same energy as “When I hit the lottery”

[Cooked Crack]

21 minutes ago, Springfield said:

I saw a meme that said “When Covid is over” has the same energy as “When I hit the lottery”

Yeah, but I'm going to hit the lottery.

[China]

1 hour ago, tshile said:

@China

agreed. And I’m sorry. I’m just beyond pissed. My family’s Christmas is being ruined. My wife will be working all weekend. Despite starting vacation today. We’re supposed to go somewhere next week for a much needed get away. And I think I’m about to lose 2500-3000$ in flights and other reservations cause I don’t think she will be able to leave the area. 
 

i mean I think technically she can. But mentally she’s not capable of leaving while her people are in crisis mode. It’s not an option to her.

 

Im so ****ing tired of the nonsense. Im tired of it. Im tired of my family getting the **** end of the stick because people won’t get vaccinated, won’t wear masks, won’t social distance, try to fight masks in schools, and now are flooding the god damned hospitals over a mild variant because they have a ****ing cough. 
 

probably should just leave it alone and go cut some grass or dig a hole in the yard or cut down some trees. 

 

Sorry about what your wife is going through and all the repercussions it has on you and your family.  People suck.  Yard work is good.  Stay away from the gun collection .  

 

I hope you guys can manage to get away.  I know working through the holidays sucks.  I am in the process of working 54 days straight without a day off (including working Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, and with the cold I have currently) ending January 7th.  But at least my work is low stress compared to what your wife is going through.  Good luck.   and let me know if I need to send you a bottle or 2 of something (seriously).

[just654]

i am a Vol Fire Fighter in PG county. I don’t run as much as I used to but I still have friends in the department. All of them are sharing check lists on social media about what to go to the hospital for. It does seem that hospitals are being over run with people scared.

 

for me I have kinda just excepted that I will probably get it some time durning Christmas. I am vaxxed and boosted, same as my wife. My 3 year old is the only reason I am slightly worried this Christmas. But luckily most kids fly through it.

[LD0506]

[tshile]

Little new piece of info I forgot about:

~70% of Africa (or specifically the areas being studied) was estimated to have already had covid once before getting the omicron variant 

 

there is debate and pause about what that means for the other numbers (80% decrease in hospitalization, 30% decrease in death if hospitalized)

 

do with that what you will 

[TradeTheBeal!]

Couple of points, from some sharps I know.  
 

1.  The good news is the bad news.  With Omicron we’re gonna burn our way through 9 months of cases in 8-10 weeks.  If you’re boosted and healthy and don’t subject yourself to massive viral loads, you’ll likely see it through.  This vastly speeds up the idea of COVID becoming endemic in a manner similar to the flu.  And that’s good, BUT…

 

2.  Over the next 8-10 weeks, our healthcare will get overwhelmed and collapse.  Especially for the working class.  Meaning, even for the folks highly protected from Omicron, that it’s a really, really bad time to get into a car accident, or fall off a ladder or cut yourself in a kitchen, etc.  You do not want to have some rando misfortune ER visit for the next 90 days.

 

Be smart, be safe, make informed risk/reward decisions…and have a little fun!

[No Excuses]

I really really doubt that our healthcare system will collapse. There may be parts of the country that are strained but this will not look like the earlier waves even with a larger outbreak size. There are some voices in the public health community who have made COVID doomerism their identity and it’s time to start ignoring their advice.
 

The country overall is at 80-90% exposure through vaccines or infection. There are not that many pockets of completely unexposed localities left. We have already seen the need for mechanical ventilation down and ICU admission down for Omicron. Reports of people needing oxygen are also down by a good %. We have good antiviral drugs just approved, and several mAbs have shown to work against omicron.
 

Anyone saying that healthcare systems will collapse nationwide is completely bull****ting.

[Elessar78]

19 minutes ago, No Excuses said:

I really really doubt that our healthcare system will collapse. There may be parts of the country that are strained but this will not look like the earlier waves even with a larger outbreak size. There are some voices in the public health community who have made COVID doomerism their identity and it’s time to start ignoring their advice.
 

The country overall is at 80-90% exposure through vaccines or infection. There are not that many pockets of completely unexposed localities left. We have already seen the need for mechanical ventilation down and ICU admission down for Omicron. Reports of people needing oxygen are also down by a good %. We have good antiviral drugs just approved, and several mAbs have shown to work against omicron.
 

Anyone saying that healthcare systems will collapse nationwide is completely bull****ting.

Except the word out of SA was that Omi is more likely to re-infect those with prior infection. 
 

In the summer 2021 surge, they were flying people across the country in search of beds. If all areas light up, then there’s nowhere to ship them.

 

Oxygen and other related drugs are finite. Collapse is prob a strong word but it could but it could likely end up as it can’t function on a very basic level. 

[No Excuses]

5 minutes ago, Elessar78 said:

Except the word out of SA was that Omi is more likely to re-infect those with prior infection. 
 

In the summer 2021 surge, they were flying people across the country in search of beds. If all areas light up, then there’s nowhere to ship them.

 

Oxygen and other related drugs are finite. Collapse is prob a strong word but it could but it could likely end up as it can’t function on a very basic level. 

The reinfection of past cases or breakthroughs is partially why this wave is milder. Pretty much every COVID wave from here on out in the US will be variants with strong immune evasion.
 

Collapse is not happening nationwide. Parts of the country still coping with delta hospitalizations may have a tough time. But Omicron is hitting places fast but also leaves fast too. And we are not seeing apocalyptic hospitalization scenarios anywhere in the world where the outbreak is on a downtrend already.

Edited December 24, 2021 by No Excuses

[TradeTheBeal!]

Optimism is good.

 

Pragmatism is better.  Prepare for a long Jan/Feb.

[China]

With omicron, you need a mask that means business

 

With another coronavirus variant racing across the U.S., once again health authorities are urging people to mask up indoors. Yes, you've heard it all before. But given how contagious omicron is, experts say, it's seriously time to upgrade to an N95 or similar high-filtration respirator when you're in public indoor spaces.

 

"Cloth masks are not going to cut it with omicron," says Linsey Marr, a researcher at Virginia Tech who studies how viruses transmit in the air.

 

Omicron is so much more transmissible than coronavirus variants that have come before it. It spreads at least three times faster than delta. One person is infecting at least three others at a time on average, based on data from other countries.

 

"It's very contagious," says Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. "And the kind of encounter that you could have had with prior versions of the virus that would have left you uninfected, there's now a good chance you will get infected from it."

 

True, a cloth mask can be a "marginally OK to maybe a decent filter," Marr says. But with something as highly transmissible as omicron, just "OK" isn't good enough.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[The Sisko]

17 hours ago, tshile said:

@China

agreed. And I’m sorry. I’m just beyond pissed. My family’s Christmas is being ruined. My wife will be working all weekend. Despite starting vacation today. We’re supposed to go somewhere next week for a much needed get away. And I think I’m about to lose 2500-3000$ in flights and other reservations cause I don’t think she will be able to leave the area. 
 

i mean I think technically she can. But mentally she’s not capable of leaving while her people are in crisis mode. It’s not an option to her.

 

Im so ****ing tired of the nonsense. Im tired of it. Im tired of my family getting the **** end of the stick because people won’t get vaccinated, won’t wear masks, won’t social distance, try to fight masks in schools, and now are flooding the god damned hospitals over a mild variant because they have a ****ing cough. 
 

probably should just leave it alone and go cut some grass or dig a hole in the yard or cut down some trees. 

As I’ve mentioned a few times here, I used to be a Respiratory Therapist. I changed careers about 12 years ago due to burnout and other factors. When COVID hit, I felt a little guilty that instead of yearning to be back on the front lines helping out, I instead was breathing a sigh of relief. After seeing all the anti mask/vax and other BS around COVID, the guilt about that feeling went away. Were I your wife, I’d take the vacation. It may be awhile, y’all will lose a lot of money and most of the critically ill people she’d be working with are likely to have brought it not only on themselves, but others as well by not being vaxed. More importantly, if COVID had taught us anything, it’s that nothing’s guaranteed and we need to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible to spend time with family.

FWIW, we just found out yesterday that my Brother-in-law has it. We pushed him to get vaxed so fortunately his symptoms are pretty mild, even though we’re pretty sure he didn’t get boosted. He’s only had some chills and general malaise so I advised him to run out to the ER right away.😉😁 j/k

[TradeTheBeal!]

Big airport fun.

 

 

[China]

Chinese city of Xian punishes officials for allowing virus to spread from quarantine hotel

 

The northern Chinese city of Xian has punished officials for mismanaging a quarantine hotel where the Covid-19 outbreak that prompted a lockdown of 13 million residents originated.
The city reported 49 new cases on Thursday, bringing the total number of Covid-19 cases to 255.

The outbreak spread after staff at the quarantine hotel became infected while disinfecting the rooms of passengers on a flight from Pakistan, but the authorities have been unable to establish a clear chain of transmission for some later cases.

The city imposed a lockdown on 13 million residents starting on Thursday, with one person from every household being allowed to go outside for grocery shopping once every two days.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[No Excuses]

Hospitalization data from SF and NYC showing no sign of an unmanageable surge:

 

 

[Springfield]

Spent about an hour last night calling employees of my business to tell them that they were exposed to not one, but two people, who tested positive for Covid at our Christmas Yankee Swap on Thursday night. Not the ideal way to spend Christmas Eve. And of course we were supposed to have 3 different families come over to our home this morning for Christmas brunch and 2 of the 3 cancelled.

 

My wife was also exposed at a work meeting on Wednesday.

 

This Christmas ****ing blows.

[The Evil Genius]

General Q - are people not wearing masks anymore (at work) in your state? 

 

I'm still one of the 10% at my job who comes in more than 1x a week (or month) but we are still required to mask up. Can't even imagine having (or being allowed to have) some type of work party, indoors or not, during these times. 

Edited December 25, 2021 by The Evil Genius

[Springfield]

My wife works in an animal hospital. She’s required to mask up at all times.

 

I work in an auto shop. We are required to mask up in customer facing positions. We were lax with the rules when numbers were low. Now that numbers are high, we are more strict.

 

I think most transmission don’t occur at work, but at social events where people won’t likely wear masks.

[Sticksboi05]

At this point if people are working without masks, it's borrowed time until an outbreak. And state leaders need to make it clear, cloth mask and mediocre paper surgical masks that you get at CVS are not enough anymore.

 

It's gotta be KN95, N95, KF94 are the equivalent. At the VERY least a medical-grade surgical mask ATSM 3.

[The Evil Genius]

[China]

 

[China]

Deflated health care workers and desperate patients clash over alternative Covid treatments

 

Dr. Jack Lyons remembers the pandemic's early days when grateful communities banged pots and pans to honor frontline health care workers.

 

But now, faced with hostility just for trying to save his patients' lives, he says that, sadly, those days are long gone.

 

Lyons is one of the many doctors and nurses tackling the rise in Covid-19 cases that are flooding hospitals as the Omicron variant rapidly spreads throughout the country.

Now health care workers fighting on the front lines of the pandemic are also coming face to face with patients who dismiss and even threaten them over how they are being treated for the virus.

"Folks act as if they can come in the hospital and request any certain therapy they want or conversely decline any therapy they want with the idea being that somehow they can pick and choose and direct their therapy. And it doesn't work," Lyons told CNN from the CentraCare hospital he works at in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

 

As the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which has become the dominant strain in the US in a matter of weeks, drives up case counts, a newly fueled wave of misinformation about the pandemic and the vaccines designed to end it continues.

From groundless conspiracy theories that the vaccines contain microchips or alter people's DNA to deliberate falsehoods about vaccine deaths and mask side effects, the pandemic misinformation industry is thriving.

This dangerous misinformation has also led to a slew of lawsuits being filed against hospitals demanding unproven medical treatments, like Ivermectin. Health care providers are reporting growing hostility between medical workers and patients and their families.

It's a constant dose of harassment and vitriol.

"They insult your intelligence, they insult your ability, and most hurtful, they say that by not using these therapies you are intentionally trying to harm the people we've given everything to save," Lyons said.

 

Click on the link for the full article