COVID Developments and News

[p1l0t]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/e...d-testing.html

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[wbradley]

Maybe United backed down but Air Canada won't.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...es-2021-08-25/

Delta is simply allowing unvaccinated employees to pay an insurance upgrade for their declared higher risk lifestyle choice.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...ff-2021-08-25/

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by wbradley

Delta is simply allowing unvaccinated employees to pay an insurance upgrade for their declared higher risk lifestyle choice.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...ff-2021-08-25/

They aren't "allowing" they are requiring the fee, don't prove your vaccinated we're giving you a little extra baggage fee, and it's $2400 a year. For a good percentage of their employees that's probably a 5% or more pay cut.

Personally, I'm good with it, but folks will complain. Most companies already charge a fee if you smoke and some have other plans. Mine has a surcharge for smokers unless you "try" to quit every year through their program, and have a discount program that is worth about $700 a year if you pass a BMI and blood test, or earn enough points to show you are making an effort to get it under control. The smoking cessation program is legit, I know quite a few that have quit through it but I also know others that have done the program every year for 10 years. The credit portion, not so much. They don't make a true effort to help employees get better. You can fake your way through it, for the discount.

[wbradley]

Dadhawk, maybe that's a better system than the socialized system I live with after all.

At least the insurers make an effort to keep claims down through legitimate prevention programs

Only life insurance companies here might offer similar programs. Of course we get all the provincial government health PSAs and the most graphic cigarette labels anywhere. But in the end they don't really make it the patient's business how massively expensive health care can be especially with hospitalization.

[Dadhawk]

A follow-up to the pictogram I posted earlier. Below is this week's for our 3 primary care hospitals. A couple of things that stick out.

• The one vaccinated patient we had on ventilator last week is still in the hospital, but off ventilator.
• We have two additional vaccinated patients hospitalized.
• We had 16 deaths in the past week. All unvaccinated.

Not shown is our 3 hospitals are all significantly over capacity at 117%, 121% and 192%. Two have treatment tents set up in the parking lot. We've also turned some single rooms into doubles, as well as utilizing other spaces.

[wbradley]

I really feel for you and the people in the community having to plow through yet another wave when it could have been greatly reduced. That has to create some resentment in people. So horrible, people dying as a result of stubbornness or being misinformed. Like a bunch of lemmings jumping over a cliff..

On the other hand the funeral business is benefitting.

[dragoontwo]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

A follow-up to the pictogram I posted earlier. Below is this week's for our 3 primary care hospitals. A couple of things that stick out.

• The one vaccinated patient we had on ventilator last week is still in the hospital, but off ventilator.
• We have two additional vaccinated patients hospitalized.
• We had 16 deaths in the past week. All unvaccinated.

Not shown is our 3 hospitals are all significantly over capacity at 117%, 121% and 192%. Two have treatment tents set up in the parking lot. We've also turned some single rooms into doubles, as well as utilizing other spaces.

Out of curiosity, why are the unvaccinated and not fully vaccinated lumped together? Surely the not fully vaccinated people should have a bit more protection than those barebacking it. Is it a data point that they don't care to track?

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by dragoontwo

Out of curiosity, why are the unvaccinated and not fully vaccinated lumped together? Surely the not fully vaccinated people should have a bit more protection than those barebacking it. Is it a data point that they don't care to track?

Not 100% sure, other than those that are not fully vaccinated only have a low additional protection level (only about 50 to 60%) although it does reduce the likelihood of death or hospitalization and it would be complicated by when you got your first (and even second) shot as you are not considered fully vaccinated until 14 days after the second shot.

Here's one article I read that covers it.

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by wbradley

On the other hand the funeral business is benefitting.

i've known people in the funeral business. they were never lacking. some of them have said it's more consistent/reliable work than being an accountant...

[p1l0t]

"Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine—but no infection parties, please | Science | AAAS"
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021...ection-parties

So being vaxxed is obviously less risky (at least initially) than being unvaxxed. Natural immunity plus a vax is even better (at least initally) against a variant than just natural immunity. Still I debate the obsession with jabbing healthy low-risk people with it against their will other than for profits (both immediately and in the future).

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[weederr33]

Originally Posted by p1l0t

"Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine—but no infection parties, please | Science | AAAS"
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021...ection-parties

So being vaxxed is obviously less risky (at least initially) than being unvaxxed. Natural immunity plus a vax is even better (at least initally) against a variant than just natural immunity. Still I debate the obsession with jabbing healthy low-risk people with it against their will other than for profits (both immediately and in the future).

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I would argue many places are making it that way for liability reasons. In this day and age where everyone wants to sue, I could see this happening. They get sick and then blame their employer. But I can also see this on the other side. Moral of the story is, take horse medication.

[MuseChaser]

New study indicates that 1 out of 3 Americans had Covid by the end of 2020,which would bring the mortality rate down from 0.8% to 0.3%.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/926424

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03914-4

Original source of article above, with links to other interesting articles, including one estimating that there may be 10 times more active cases than reported...

https://www.publichealth.columbia.ed...id-19-end-2020

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by MuseChaser

New study indicates that 1 out of 3 Americans had Covid by the end of 2020,which would bring the mortality rate down from 0.8% to 0.3%.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/926424

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03914-4

Original source of article above, with links to other interesting articles, including one estimating that there may be 10 times more active cases than reported...

https://www.publichealth.columbia.ed...id-19-end-2020

Cool. Although, I don’t really know if it matters at this point. It will be good data to compare to the mortality rate of other variants if they can tease out that data, but that will be hard. If the Delta variant struck first then it would have likely killed more people, but the early variants already did that, so the early or overall mortality rate is not a great indication of the severity of any new strains.

The trend with this data is for articles to conpare the mortality rate to the seasonal flu, which is pointless because we don’t have robust data on tge flu prepandemic. We weren’t mass testing the whole country. We weren’t screening every admission to hospitals for the seasonal flu. In all likelihood, the seasonal flu would have a huge number of asymptomatic cases, which would lower the mortality rate of the seasonal flu and make this pandemic look far worse, but we really don’t need this type of data to assess the severity because we have a death toll, and we have lived this pandemic out.

What we do know if roughly 650k+ have died, which is around 0.2% of the US population, and the death toll is most likely short of the true death toll. If we had no vaccine and no new variants then 0.3% is about one million people. We hit 1,386 new deaths a few days ago. A thousand a day is 365k a year, so we could still hit that 0.3% soon, despite the vaccine and our efforts to fight this disease unless boosters and vaccination rates improve. Without the vaccine, would we hit over a million? I think it would have been likely. We already have mortality rates in cities or towns that are higher than 0.3%, so that suggests the mortality rate is higher. New Jersey is at 0.3% and is still adding deaths despite the 60% fully vaccinated and 70% partial vaccination rate. It isn’t a lot, but I think my point is that we shouldn’t be dismissive about the severity of this virus.

[Irace86.2.0]

Wife hospitalized for covid gets home to find husband dead from the same virus: ‘It was like walking into a horror movie’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...-dead-husband/

These stories humanize this pandemic and highlight the gamble unvaccinated people face.

Lisa Steadman could not wait to go home to her husband.
The nail technician had spent more than a week in a Central Florida hospital recovering from a serious case of the coronavirus while Ronald Steadman, who had also contracted covid-19, battled a milder case from home.

During many of their check-in phone calls, she relayed to him how scared she was of dying alone in the hospital. Her health was improving and so was his, he reassured her. Soon, they’d be back together at the Winter Haven, Fla., home they were in the middle of renovating.

But Ronald, 55, did not appear to be home when Lisa returned on Aug. 11.
“Ron? Ron?” Lisa, 58, yelled while searching for him throughout the house.
Eventually, the barking of their three dogs led her to their bedroom.
When Lisa cracked open the door, she found Ron unresponsive on his side of the bed and their three dogs in distress. By then, his body had already began decomposing, she told The Washington Post. The dogs looked as if they had not been fed or given water for at least two days, she said.
“I just went hysterical," Lisa said. “It was like walking into a horror movie. That’s what I see now when I think of him.”

Neither Ron, who died of covid-19 complications, nor Lisa had been vaccinated, Lisa said. Both had agreed they would wait longer to schedule their shots. Lisa rarely got sick and only left her house for work, and Ron, who was in charge of running the couple’s errands during the pandemic, always wore his mask and stayed away from large crowds, Lisa said.
“Both of us thought that [the vaccine] came out so fast. How could they have done so much testing on it? I was just cautious about it,” she said. “It’s not that I was against vaccines."
The couple, who met through a Christian dating website after losing their previous partners, was part of the tens of millions of Americans who have not yet received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, which are available free to anyone 12 and older. Like the Steadmans, many people remain reluctant about the shots. Others have put off getting inoculated.
Nearly 52 percent of Floridians are fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by The Post. In the past week, new daily reported cases and deaths in the state rose nearly 10 and 66 percent, respectively, The Post’s coronavirus tracker data shows.

Health officials continue to stress that the vaccines significantly lower one’s chance of becoming severely ill or dying of the virus as the highly transmissible delta variant spreads across the country.
Ron, a mechanical and electrical engineer, was the first one to test positive on Aug. 1, Lisa said. Doctors at the urgent care site he visited sent him home with medications and asked him to return if his condition worsened. Two days later, Lisa, who had gone to the emergency room because she started exhibiting symptoms, also tested positive. She was sent home, only to return days later after her oxygen levels dropped to 80 percent and she lost consciousness at home.
The couple kept in touch throughout much of her hospital stay, Lisa said. How are the dogs doing? How do you feel today? Have you called your family? the couple would ask each other, Lisa said. After nearly a week in the hospital, Lisa reported feeling better. Ron was also improving, she said.

Days before she was expected to be discharged, Ron told her that his phone was not working properly. At one point when Lisa could not reach him, she called the Winter Haven Police Department to go check on him, she said.
Police called her back to report that her husband was doing fine, which the department confirmed to The Post. So when her phone call went straight to his voicemail on Aug. 10, Lisa didn’t think much of it. After all, Ron had said his phone wasn’t working and was known for being a deep sleeper. Police had already reassured her that he was doing okay. She told herself they would be reunited the next day when she was discharged.
“I thought he was just going to be fine and that his phone wasn’t working," she said.
Local authorities later told her that he was likely already dead.
Lisa, who would have celebrated the couple’s fourth wedding anniversary on Oct. 28, said she expects to get the vaccine in September — a decision she had already made before leaving the hospital.
She has been hurt by comments on social media criticizing her decision not to get the vaccine earlier.

“I did what I thought was best for me,” Lisa told The Post. “Even if you don’t agree with me that I didn’t get the shot earlier, you don’t say, ‘I bet you wish you would have gotten the vaccine so your husband wouldn’t be dead.'”
She added: “We wanted to make sure [the vaccine] was safe.”
She plans to finish the home the couple was remodeling in honor of her husband. That’s what he would have wanted her to do, she said.
“That was Ron’s dream,” Lisa told The Post.