Covid links
Fauci: 'Open Question' Whether Omicron Ends Pandemic
"It is an open question as to whether or not Omicron is going to be the live virus vaccination that everyone is hoping for because you have such a great deal of variability with new variants emerging," said Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the White House.
Fauci said his definition of "endemicity" is when a virus is not eliminated but is "non-disruptive" to society.
Fauci said he hopes Omicron, which is highly transmissible but doesn't cause severe illness like Delta, leads to such an endemic. But that would only be the case "if we don't get another variant that eludes the immune response to the prior variant," he added.
Death From COVID-19 Very Rare in Fully Vaccinated Adults: Study
HOWEVER:
While the findings are relevant to infections during periods of pre-Delta or the Delta variant, the researchers have a caveat: The "findings might not be applicable to the risk from SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.529 (Omicron) variant or future variants."
Omicron Variant Wave Over in South Africa
Is COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Just Needle Phobia?
...We don't talk too much about the fear of needles, but it honestly may be the elephant in the room here. What got me thinking about this was this study, appearing in JAMA Network Open, that looks at the effects of placebo in randomized trials of vaccination. What struck me most was the startlingly high rates of adverse responses to placebos - often called the "nocebo" effect. Remember, vaccine trials occur in healthy individuals; the placebo adverse event rate should honestly be pretty low....
Poor Memory and Attention Persists Months After Mild COVID Recovery, from the UK:
Long-COVID is now recognised and accepted as a clinical entity with fatigue, cough, and headache being common symptoms. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) offers guidance for the management of long-COVID, with the NHS providing specialist long-COVID clinics.
In December 2021 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that 1 in 5 people with COVID-19 develop longer term symptoms. Around 186,000 people experience health problems for up to 12 weeks, with the ONS estimating that around 1 in 10 (9.9%) of people who had COVID-19 remained symptomatic after 12 weeks.
Life, death and ‘hugs and prayers’: A story of covid in rural Michigan
LEWISTON, Mich. - The conversation at the card table inside the Lewiston 50 Plus Club turned one recent afternoon to the coronavirus pandemic, as it had so many times the past two years.
Just days earlier, the club’s president - and one of its most devoted euchre players, Danny Burtch - died of covid-19 after a weeks-long bout with the virus.
...
As health-care leaders pleaded with Michigan residents to take the virus seriously and to get vaccinated, Burtch was among several thousand mostly unvaccinated patients who flooded the state’s hospital wards during the fall and early winter. For weeks, Michigan led the country in covid-19 deaths, and the 71-year-old retired electrician, with no major health complications before contracting the virus, was among them.
Two years into the pandemic, the story of Danny Burtch is the story of incalculable loss and of hard choices: whether to be vaccinated, whether to leave the isolation of home for fellowship, whether to partake in a beloved game of cards....
~~~
As I was saying--you can't make this stuff up--
Hong Kong hamster massacre: Residents resist ‘zero covid’ city’s pet project
HONG KONG - When they came for the hamsters, it proved to be the last straw for long-suffering residents of Hong Kong.
The city has endured, and largely complied with, extreme and often baffling pandemic rules. Schools and gyms are closed, and restaurants must shut at 6 p.m. Air travel with most major hubs has been severed. Playgrounds are sealed off with tape.
But when the government announced a cull of 2,000 pet hamsters, a line was crossed. The rodents could carry the coronavirus, officials said, and transmit it to humans.
Now, an underground railroad is emerging to save abandoned hamsters, with foster carers taking them in and concealing them. Pet owners are in uproar at the government’s plan, which experts say is rooted in knee-jerk panic rather than science. The hamsters are casualties of Hong Kong’s “zero covid” policy, which many here see as a futile political quest.
This entry was originally posted at https://med-cat.dreamwidth.org/3397686.html. You can comment here, or there using OpenID if you prefer.
"It is an open question as to whether or not Omicron is going to be the live virus vaccination that everyone is hoping for because you have such a great deal of variability with new variants emerging," said Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the White House.
Fauci said his definition of "endemicity" is when a virus is not eliminated but is "non-disruptive" to society.
Fauci said he hopes Omicron, which is highly transmissible but doesn't cause severe illness like Delta, leads to such an endemic. But that would only be the case "if we don't get another variant that eludes the immune response to the prior variant," he added.
Death From COVID-19 Very Rare in Fully Vaccinated Adults: Study
HOWEVER:
While the findings are relevant to infections during periods of pre-Delta or the Delta variant, the researchers have a caveat: The "findings might not be applicable to the risk from SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.529 (Omicron) variant or future variants."
Omicron Variant Wave Over in South Africa
Is COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Just Needle Phobia?
...We don't talk too much about the fear of needles, but it honestly may be the elephant in the room here. What got me thinking about this was this study, appearing in JAMA Network Open, that looks at the effects of placebo in randomized trials of vaccination. What struck me most was the startlingly high rates of adverse responses to placebos - often called the "nocebo" effect. Remember, vaccine trials occur in healthy individuals; the placebo adverse event rate should honestly be pretty low....
Poor Memory and Attention Persists Months After Mild COVID Recovery, from the UK:
Long-COVID is now recognised and accepted as a clinical entity with fatigue, cough, and headache being common symptoms. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) offers guidance for the management of long-COVID, with the NHS providing specialist long-COVID clinics.
In December 2021 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that 1 in 5 people with COVID-19 develop longer term symptoms. Around 186,000 people experience health problems for up to 12 weeks, with the ONS estimating that around 1 in 10 (9.9%) of people who had COVID-19 remained symptomatic after 12 weeks.
Life, death and ‘hugs and prayers’: A story of covid in rural Michigan
LEWISTON, Mich. - The conversation at the card table inside the Lewiston 50 Plus Club turned one recent afternoon to the coronavirus pandemic, as it had so many times the past two years.
Just days earlier, the club’s president - and one of its most devoted euchre players, Danny Burtch - died of covid-19 after a weeks-long bout with the virus.
...
As health-care leaders pleaded with Michigan residents to take the virus seriously and to get vaccinated, Burtch was among several thousand mostly unvaccinated patients who flooded the state’s hospital wards during the fall and early winter. For weeks, Michigan led the country in covid-19 deaths, and the 71-year-old retired electrician, with no major health complications before contracting the virus, was among them.
Two years into the pandemic, the story of Danny Burtch is the story of incalculable loss and of hard choices: whether to be vaccinated, whether to leave the isolation of home for fellowship, whether to partake in a beloved game of cards....
~~~
As I was saying--you can't make this stuff up--
Hong Kong hamster massacre: Residents resist ‘zero covid’ city’s pet project
HONG KONG - When they came for the hamsters, it proved to be the last straw for long-suffering residents of Hong Kong.
The city has endured, and largely complied with, extreme and often baffling pandemic rules. Schools and gyms are closed, and restaurants must shut at 6 p.m. Air travel with most major hubs has been severed. Playgrounds are sealed off with tape.
But when the government announced a cull of 2,000 pet hamsters, a line was crossed. The rodents could carry the coronavirus, officials said, and transmit it to humans.
Now, an underground railroad is emerging to save abandoned hamsters, with foster carers taking them in and concealing them. Pet owners are in uproar at the government’s plan, which experts say is rooted in knee-jerk panic rather than science. The hamsters are casualties of Hong Kong’s “zero covid” policy, which many here see as a futile political quest.
This entry was originally posted at https://med-cat.dreamwidth.org/3397686.html. You can comment here, or there using OpenID if you prefer.