COVID Vaccine (2)

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I took an unofficial survey of where you are in line in your county. In a county with about 900,000, I'm somewhere around 600,000.
 
The article points out that more testing would be required to evaluate that option.
 
Palmpilot said:
The article points out that more testing would be required to evaluate that option.
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The phase III trials are still enrolling, the EUA was issued after a interim analysis. As the disease continues to spread, there will be more and more patients in the trials who got infected between the first and second dose. At some point, there may be a big enough group to tell whether the efficiency after the first dose would be 'good enough' that the benefit of potentially doubling the vaccination rate could make up for a somewhat decreased protection.

The goal of the vaccine is not only to protect the individual but rather to push Rt down far enough below 1.0 that the disease disappears from a population during the spring. Just as a random set of numbers: Getting 80% of people vaccinated with a 60% single-shot vaccine over a period of 6 months may be the faster way to get there than getting 70% of people vaccinated with a 95% effective vaccine over a period of 9 months (with 20% of them lost to follow-up after the first shot).

It may also make sense to employ a different strategy based on relative risk of both exposure and acquiring the disease. So the 60 year old home health aide with diabetes should get both shots but a 25 year old member of the community only needs one etc.

There are people smarter than myself to do the actual numbers.
 
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Lindberg said:
In order to potentially vaccinate an extra 100 million Americans with the same number of shots. Seems like a good idea.
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We aren't getting enough doses for everyone?
 
Lindberg said:
In order to potentially vaccinate an extra 100 million Americans with the same number of shots. Seems like a good idea.
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Its a great idea and likely being done. But studies take time so I wouldn't expect a change in protocol anytime soon.
 
Lindberg said:
Can We Do Twice as Many Vaccinations as We Thought?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/...ccine-doses.html?referringSource=articleShare
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Published phase 1 trial data shows that one dose doesn't do much for you especially in older individuals. Preliminary phase 3 data suggests around 50% effectiveness, which is not very comforting. You need that booster dose to get a robust response.

Another factor is that one dose may not have the same durability of immunity as two.
 
I was scheduled for my vaccine on Tuesday, but around 4:45 PM a gentleman in a suit walked into my office and said “we have one dose left, do you want it?” I practically jumped out of my chair and said “The vaccine? Yes!!” He told me one of my coworkers had just received his shot and mentioned that I was anxious to get mine and if they didn’t use the dose they would have to throw it away.

He walked me down the hall to a large room that had a couple of chairs in front, about a dozen chairs in the middle spaced 6 feed apart and two people in the back sitting at computers. After filling out the consent form and reviewing the questions, one of the nurses had me roll up my sleeve and gave me the shot. They handed me a card with the time written on it and told me I had to wait 30 minutes before I could leave and that I could go speak to the ladies in the back and they would schedule the second shot for me.

As I sat down I was overcome with emotion (and maybe a little histamine release from the shot) and I remember thinking: This is how it ends. The final chapters of this outbreak are being written right now and the men and women in this room are the ones who will end this.

For the first time since February, I felt hopeful. Hopeful about kids going back to school and playing in the park. Hopeful about people going back to work and doing their jobs without having to worry about one of their coworkers or customers infecting them. Hopeful about running into someone and having a conversation without worrying about one of us getting sick.

The current surge we’re in is horrible and it’s certainly likely that things will be bad for a while with the combination of ignorance, defiance and pandemic fatigue that got us to where we are today, but at least there’s hope and there’s a way out and this is it.

Reading about the vaccine and seeing it on television was one thing, but actually getting the shot and seeing the people who are going to bring us out of this was something else entirely.

Due to social distancing I wasn’t able to give them a hug, but I made sure to thank everyone in the room and let them know how valuable what they’re doing is.

Seeing that they were all ready to go home, I offered to go back to the ER and promised I’d let someone know if I developed a reaction, so they wouldn’t have to wait and watch me stare at my phone for half an hour.

Keeping with the FAA guidelines I’m grounded for 48 hours, but that’s a small price to pay. I’ll sleep well tonight knowing I’m making COVID antibodies...

Thank you to everyone who participated in the vaccine trials and let us get to this point. Hopefully the healing process can now begin.
 
gsengle said:
The alternatives are don’t get it or get it and risk having your medical revoked. The FAA isn’t sentimental about doing so. So what exactly is the down side?


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Are you just making this up? I work for the FAA and you certainly can get the vaccine. You are grounded for 48hrs after each injection that are 21 days apart. So if you can spare 4 days of your time, then you can get it.
 
Gmonnig said:
Are you just making this up? I work for the FAA and you certainly can get the vaccine. You are grounded for 48hrs after each injection that are 21 days apart. So if you can spare 4 days of your time, then you can get it.
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You may not have noticed but this thread started a month ago, when there was zero direction, zero opinion, zero information coming out of the FAA. The only info we had was attempting to interpret those usually confusing, oft contradictory rules in 14 CFR about experimental stuff that aren’t airplanes. It’s only been a week since the FAA posted the “yeah, sure” statement reguarding the shots.
 
Gmonnig said:
Are you just making this up? I work for the FAA and you certainly can get the vaccine. You are grounded for 48hrs after each injection that are 21 days apart. So if you can spare 4 days of your time, then you can get it.
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He wrote than on December 3rd. That was at a time when the FAA was still being coy and said they'd wait for the EUA to be actually issued before they announced whether or not a COVID vaccination under an EUA would result in your medical being suspended. It wasn't until December 11 that the EUA for the Pfizer vaccine was issued, followed shortly by the FAA's blessing (with caveats). I'm pretty confident that the FAA will reverse that decision in a heartbeat and retroactively suspend medicals for vaccinees if adverse reactions are identified in the future.
 
Gmonnig said:
Are you just making this up? I work for the FAA and you certainly can get the vaccine. You are grounded for 48hrs after each injection that are 21 days apart. So if you can spare 4 days of your time, then you can get it.
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As the person who started this thread to describe my experiences as a volunteer in the Moderna Trial, I did it spite of any actions from the FAA Medical Office that might result. I expected none since I fly using my PPL Privileges under Sport Pilot rules and thus no Medical. If I would have been banned from flying totally as a result of an “experimental drug”, that was a risk and I was prepared for that. I felt this was highly unlikely as it was the Phase III of the Trial.

If you work in the Medical Office, I hope you would work to establish a clear policy concerning allowing airmen participation in trials of drugs. If the policy is officially no flying under any conditions if they ever participated in a drug trial, this also needs to be clearly stated. If it is, I was unaware and in any event, I didn’t care.

if you don’t work in the Medical Office, I have no problem, and never had, with any actions of the rest of the FAA. I wish I could say the same for the Medical Office but my personal experience and the seeming totally illogical positions they take, apparently oblivious to modern medicine, makes this impossible. I wish you well in whatever work you do for the FAA.

Cheers
 
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NoHeat said:
“There is no current evidence to suggest the new strain causes a higher mortality rate or that it affects vaccines and treatments”
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Yup.

Give momma nature some time. She’ll decide if she wants the next one to.

Haven’t stopped “the flu” yet, but we also know it isn’t a singular disease.

This one’s showing signs of behaving the same way. Has been for months. Spain has 60% one variety and 40% another.

It’s either the same as it’s always been, or it’s not. If it’s the same thing, a new strain is just convenient for the politicians. Either one spreads the same.

One may wonder what a new emergency lockdown is accomplishing if your statements are true, since that would mean they’re the same — and no new action need be taken just because they’re different strains.

That isn’t logically sound as an excuse, especially if you’re correct about it and can back it with math and hard numbers.

They literally can’t say “we don’t know”. It’s truly entertaining. Embarrassing to call them professionals without ever seeing them exercise those words, though.

“We’re locking down for the new strain!”

“The one you said is identical to the old strain?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, so it’s really for whatever reason you can sell people this week and you really don’t know what’s effective for either one?”

“Shhh. Hush. Don’t be bothering everyone with logic. Most of them will believe the new strain thing. They’re not good at logic or math.”
 
denverpilot said:
And theeeeere’s the mutation...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...gency-lockdown-as-u-k-fights-new-virus-strain
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There are actually quite a few variants. Unless these variants are in the receptor binding domain, AND they don't somehow efficiently prevent neutralizing antibody binding without also negatively affecting receptor binding necessary for replication, these variants will likely be largely inconsequential for vaccine effectiveness of severity of disease. So far nothing raises an alarm. This RNA virus has a proofreading rna polymerase donuts mutation rate is actually quite low compared to, say, influenza.
 
Mmmm. Donuts. :)

I just laughed hard at a new meme floating around that says why would someone trade a 99.9% chance of survival for a 95% one. LOL.

Efficacy is apparently a difficult concept for many of the people waking around with a government issued piece of paper that says they understand basic math. Hahaha.

The comments section was hilarious.
 
It's important to realize that even a tiny reproduction rate advantage in a host (even a few tenths of a percent) will result in a strain nearly completely taking over after a few dozen replication cycles. Emergence of new strains can occur from relatively inconsequential changes in efficiency. That's how microbial evolution works.
 
denverpilot said:
I just laughed hard at a new meme floating around that says why would someone trade a 99.9% chance of survival for a 95% one. LOL.
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um, you might want to check the math on the "99.9% chance of survival for a 95% one" claim. Unless I'm confused, one is a claim of survival (probably not quite that high) and one is a claim of protection from infection. Apples and color.
 
Bob Noel said:
um, you might want to check the math on the "99.9% chance of survival for a 95% one" claim. Unless I'm confused, one is a claim of survival (probably not quite that high) and one is a claim of protection from infection. Apples and color.
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I'm pretty sure that's why he was laughing at it.
 
Bob Noel said:
um, you might want to check the math on the "99.9% chance of survival for a 95% one" claim. Unless I'm confused, one is a claim of survival (probably not quite that high) and one is a claim of protection from infection. Apples and color.
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Duh.

That’s what made the meme funny, and the comments that went with it. Because they’re idiots.

You’re not confused. Haha. (But I really didn’t think I had to spell it out quite that bluntly.)

Even funnier that meme is all over social media this morning.

The majority of them even have diplomas. :)

That may be the confusing part. Assuming they can do basic math. My dogs are smarter.

LOL

Remember, we’re well into the “my opinion is more important than the truth” world now. An entire generation raised that way are “adults” now.

* I suspect the meme maker was being ironic and is an awesome social media troll. I sure hope so, anyway! Hopefully they’re enjoying a good laugh as it spreads. It’s so easy to “encourage” that aforementioned mentality. Fun even. Pick a popular opinion, write some non-sensical fake math “proof” of it, and they’ll lap it right up and “share” it everywhere.

Anyway... back to more interesting convo. I just truly enjoy idiots and the internet... :)
 
denverpilot said:
The majority of them even have diplomas. :)
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The depressing thing is that 2/3 of the graduates (basically the non-STEM majors) of the highly regarded college I worked at are virtually incapable of even simple math like converting recipes for a different number of servings. My research students routinely regaled me with stories of their roomies asking for their help to convert cups to ounces to teaspoons, etc. For the most part, the only truly liberally educated students at our institution were STEM majors. It wasn't always this way in higher ed.
 
chemgeek said:
My research students routinely regaled me with stories of their roomies asking for their help to convert cups to ounces to teaspoons, etc.
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Your research students get to work within the elegant simplicity of the metric system. The English system is a train wreck, as I'm reminded again today in doing some holiday food prep. It drives me nuts to see cup as a unit of measure for both weight and volume.

Yeah, I can work out a conversion if I know what ingredient I'm dealing with (I was once a research student at a highly regarded college in your neck of the woods).
 
GaryM said:
Your research students get to work within the elegant simplicity of the metric system. The English system is a train wreck, as I'm reminded again today in doing some holiday food prep. It drives me nuts to see cup as a unit of measure for both weight and volume.

Yeah, I can work out a conversion if I know what ingredient I'm dealing with (I was once a research student at a highly regarded college in your neck of the woods).
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Where is cup used as a measure of weight?
 
Also might want to consider the meaning of “survival.” Buddy of mine is a cardiologist; back in October told me a story about a new patient of his. Seems this lady got Covid in May. Mid-40’s, good physical condition, business owner, no elevated risk factors. She self-treated, no hospitalization, just stayed home. A couple weeks later she was over it and her routine was back to normal. After a few months her condition began to decline. When she came to his practice, she could no longer walk from her office to her secretary’s desk without running out of breath. Prognosis unknown at that time. There’s not enough knowledge yet about long term treatment of Covid related inflammation in the pericardium, lungs, and other organs. Scary stuff.

Another local person that had considered Covid to be a hoax, contracted the infection, survived, but now has to drag an oxygen bottle around everywhere. He has a new name for the disease: Russian Roulette. The cylinder might have more chambers, but one is still loaded. Hopefully, if you get Covid, you’ll survive and be fine. But there are significant risks. You don’t want this.
 
WillFly4Food said:
Also might want to consider the meaning of “survival.” Buddy of mine is a cardiologist; back in October told me a story about a new patient of his. Seems this lady got Covid in May. Mid-40’s, good physical condition, business owner, no elevated risk factors. She self-treated, no hospitalization, just stayed home. A couple weeks later she was over it and her routine was back to normal. After a few months her condition began to decline. When she came to his practice, she could no longer walk from her office to her secretary’s desk without running out of breath. Prognosis unknown at that time. There’s not enough knowledge yet about long term treatment of Covid related inflammation in the pericardium, lungs, and other organs. Scary stuff.

Another local person that had considered Covid to be a hoax, contracted the infection, survived, but now has to drag an oxygen bottle around everywhere. He has a new name for the disease: Russian Roulette. The cylinder might have more chambers, but one is still loaded. Hopefully, if you get Covid, you’ll survive and be fine. But there are significant risks. You don’t want this.
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I take care of pediatric patients and we’ve seen the same thing. Fatalities are almost unheard of, but there are numerous cases of myocarditis and encephalitis with effects that are lasting months and possibly leading to permanent disability.
 
Lindberg said:
Where is cup used as a measure of weight?
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This...
Everskyward said:
I think the trouble is not so much in defining a cup, as the confusion between fluid ounces (a cup is 8), and ounces used in weight.
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"A pint's a pound the world around"
2 cups to a pint, ergo a cup is 8 ounces or 2 girls.
 
WillFly4Food said:
But there are significant risks.
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Not busting your butt tooooo hard, but two anecdotal stories of really common side effects of ALL respiratory illnesses — you just don’t hear about them very often with the others — isn’t going to fly with this group, without putting some numbers behind it as “a significant risk”.

Which is one of the reasons this particular discussion group has been great compared to most places.

They’re going to make you slow your roll and show your math.

What percentage have side effects, and how common would those side effects be with ANY respiratory illness, but largely ignored without the big fat Covid spotlight on them? We generally don’t do chest CTs for all the others. We’re likely watching imagery far more with Covid at the moment.

And where do we draw the line between similar damage caused by other diseases that nobody ever got any follow up imagery or similar and had no idea for decades they even had damage?

Lots of us with that. Myself included. Cant even tell which illness bout caused it, the one at three months old, or the one two years ago. Because we never looked.

Quite a bunch of math problems with that “significant” word in “significant risk”. Going to have to quantify it for this crew with some real numbers.

Which is a good thing. No cause for NEW alarm just because standard Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon math is kicking in now, as predicted by all the other math.

This group will keep ya honest. If it truly is a “significant” risk above and beyond that we’re already in a global pandemic, the numbers will show it. :)

It’s kinda like that headline we just discussed yesterday about the UK locking down “because of a new strain”... nope, the math doesn’t support that as the actual reason. But it’s a convenient one for their politicians to use...

We should make sure the same isn’t happening with any new “fear” reason given. In fact, we must. Simply because we know they’ll do stuff like that.

It’s unlikely higher than normal side effects of respiratory illnesses cause are the real mathematical reason you don’t want it. You simply don’t want it period.

Just like you don’t want the first strain or the tenth. :) Same risk. So far. So says the math.

This group continues to dig out the numbers consistently. Other more public mathematicians and groups have been silenced by the mob who says their opinions are more important than math.

So since I like the math better I say, show numbers. Have had quite enough of the mob overrunning the more public math experts I was attempting to follow. Nothing personal.

Twenty mob mentality folks posting the latest new fear that was ALWAYS predicted by the math, upset that the mathematician did the math and said, “Yeah, not statistically significant compared to all the others we have numbers for.”

Made them cranky enough they made commercial websites kick off the rational person to make them feel more comfortable there.

Pandemic math is uncomfortable. Who knew? ;-)

Toss some real numbers. We like ‘em here. Truly.

Plus this group here is already all members of a club that the rest of the world and the media always portray as taking “significant risk”, eh? Ha.

We’re all going to die in aircraft accidents. And take out at least one bus load of children and nuns on our way out because of our utter recklessness. Hahaha.

Good thing we have math that shows where to really drop over 90% of that particular risk! We also have a minority who don’t believe that math even. :)
 
denverpilot said:
Not busting your butt tooooo hard, but two anecdotal stories of really common side effects of ALL respiratory illnesses — you just don’t hear about them very often with the others — isn’t going to fly with this group, without putting some numbers behind it as “a significant risk”.

Which is one of the reasons this particular discussion group has been great compared to most places.

They’re going to make you slow your roll and show your math.

What percentage have side effects, and how common would those side effects be with ANY respiratory illness, but largely ignored without the big fat Covid spotlight on them? We generally don’t do chest CTs for all the others. We’re likely watching imagery far more with Covid at the moment.

And where do we draw the line between similar damage caused by other diseases that nobody ever got any follow up imagery or similar and had no idea for decades they even had damage?

Lots of us with that. Myself included. Cant even tell which illness bout caused it, the one at three months old, or the one two years ago. Because we never looked.

Quite a bunch of math problems with that “significant” word in “significant risk”. Going to have to quantify it for this crew with some real numbers.

Which is a good thing. No cause for NEW alarm just because standard Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon math is kicking in now, as predicted by all the other math.

This group will keep ya honest. If it truly is a “significant” risk above and beyond that we’re already in a global pandemic, the numbers will show it. :)

It’s kinda like that headline we just discussed yesterday about the UK locking down “because of a new strain”... nope, the math doesn’t support that as the actual reason. But it’s a convenient one for their politicians to use...

We should make sure the same isn’t happening with any new “fear” reason given. In fact, we must. Simply because we know they’ll do stuff like that.

It’s unlikely higher than normal side effects of respiratory illnesses cause are the real mathematical reason you don’t want it. You simply don’t want it period.

Just like you don’t want the first strain or the tenth. :) Same risk. So far. So says the math.

This group continues to dig out the numbers consistently. Other more public mathematicians and groups have been silenced by the mob who says their opinions are more important than math.

So since I like the math better I say, show numbers. Have had quite enough of the mob overrunning the more public math experts I was attempting to follow. Nothing personal.

Twenty mob mentality folks posting the latest new fear that was ALWAYS predicted by the math, upset that the mathematician did the math and said, “Yeah, not statistically significant compared to all the others we have numbers for.”

Made them cranky enough they made commercial websites kick off the rational person to make them feel more comfortable there.

Pandemic math is uncomfortable. Who knew? ;-)

Toss some real numbers. We like ‘em here. Truly.

Plus this group here is already all members of a club that the rest of the world and the media always portray as taking “significant risk”, eh? Ha.

We’re all going to die in aircraft accidents. And take out at least one bus load of children and nuns on our way out because of our utter recklessness. Hahaha.

Good thing we have math that shows where to really drop over 90% of that particular risk! We also have a minority who don’t believe that math even. :)
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Chronic oxygen dependence in previously healthy individuals is definitely not a side effect of common respiratory illnesses. And yes, chest CT is utilized for diagnosis and management of complicated respiratory infections and lung disease. We do image COVID and the CT findings have been fairly well described. And if you want to throw numbers around, look at the ICU bed utilization in any metropolitan area. That will provide a more accurate narrative.
 
Cervieres said:
Chronic oxygen dependence in previously healthy individuals is definitely not a side effect of common respiratory illnesses. And yes, chest CT is utilized for diagnosis and management of complicated respiratory infections and lung disease. We do image COVID and the CT findings have been fairly well described. And if you want to throw numbers around, look at the ICU bed utilization in any metropolitan area. That will provide a more accurate narrative.
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I won't pretend to know the details, but the chest imaging was one of the things that caused a medical doctor in China to ask "is this a new disease?". It apparently looked different from that of common respiratory illnesses. That's the dude who got in trouble, then was exonerated. Just something that supports what you are saying.
 
Cervieres said:
Chronic oxygen dependence in previously healthy individuals is definitely not a side effect of common respiratory illnesses. And yes, chest CT is utilized for diagnosis and management of complicated respiratory infections and lung disease. We do image COVID and the CT findings have been fairly well described. And if you want to throw numbers around, look at the ICU bed utilization in any metropolitan area. That will provide a more accurate narrative.
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Any metropolitan area? Not sure what it has to do with side effects but ours continue to be ridiculously low.

We’ve had the discussion here already about using percentages for that Covid ICU utilization number being utterly broken as a metric, also. Ward sizes are changed to meet actual demand.

As my wife’s hospital boss put it, “Of course we’re at 80%. We’re always shooting for 80%.”

In recent internal hospital meetings with the metro equivalent of CEO and CFO — staff asked why the press doesn’t get it. They said they have no idea why the press doesn’t get that, but at least the State stopped panicking in the joint meetings starting about a month ago.

He said they basically hadn’t bothered listening to a single medical professional in the meetings from Mar-Nov. Your local mileage may vary, but that’s the word from the two guys who sat in every single meeting with the State officials here.

If the press would ask the hospital what “80%” actually means, or just look at the raw data, they’d see it. They’d rather sit a few miles away and listen to the Governor instead of driving over, as best anyone can tell, out of mass laziness. It’s a ten minute drive and the hospital’s PIO phone isn’t ringing.

200 reporters at each political presser and not a single one has asked for a presser from the hospital company yet... going on 9 months.

Kinda says something, at least about quality of coverage and even raw ability to do basic math (again). But what can they do? Press doesn’t want the story, they don’t call. Oh well.

But the local reporter shops do have a big economic problem, they had to lay off half of all their newsrooms starting with the older and better paid reporters three months ago. We know one of those personally and he’s not surprised at all. Local ad revenue is gone. Was done without fanfare. They all did it so they didn’t do the usual reporting of it on each other pretending one was in better shape than the next. Just, gone.

Same fate as the newspapers, just delayed.

As long as the Governor feeds their young reporters who are left and the automated distribution headline machines, whatever headlines get what few ad clicks they get, there’s not really any interest in following up on anything he says.

They don’t even notice the statistical analysis flaw. And their audience doesn’t care anyway.

Couldn’t tell ya really why they can’t figure out a percentage of a constantly changing resource isn’t a correct measure.

See: Fluid ounces story above, I guess. (Shrug.) My gas tanks are somewhere around 55% utilized every month, too. Isn’t much of a measure as to when I desperately need to buy gas. LOL

All we know is the actual numbers are low and have been as a ratio of population for the entire time. Which would indicate... not a “significant risk” of the side effects, if that’s how one wants to measure it.

Wife’s hospital had ALL of the Covid patients for SIX major in-network hospitals throughout from March to present, also. Them being at “80%” is meaningless without mentioning the other five at “0%”.

If someone feels “significant risk” is two digit patient counts over a six hospital network... mmm-kay.

You did say ANY metro. Ha. I just happen to flat out KNOW ours.

Some metros are worse. No doubt. We simply haven’t been.

The worst hospital has been the “free” one dead center in the middle of downtown and even they haven’t gone above three significant digit ICU patient counts in their Covid ICU (which the hospitals keep pointing out aren’t even in the same place in the building in most of them), in any month yet.

Linear graph says they’ll get there. Probably by June. Even with vaccinations. That also hasn’t changed since the Mar-April trend lines. Vaccination count doesn’t affect the rates much at first.

Wife’s place will reach triple digits sometime around end of Jan by the numbers. Nobody there is particularly surprised or concerned about it. They have five other hospitals they can re-open at and a sixth nearing the end of construction that stopped briefly until outpatient revenue numbers could be watched for a few months.

Are there metros that haven’t bothered building significant hospital infrastructure since the 50s? Definitely. Quite a few of them without land to put them on due to population density, too. Which pretty much sucks in an outbreak of a thing that thrives on population density...

It’s the old, “It’s hard to catch or spread Covid when you can’t hit your neighbor’s house with a rock” thing. Around here, you’ll still most likely catch it at one of the “deemed essential” pot shops. LOL.

I joked elsewhere today, “Since the pot shops were essential, does that mean pot shop workers get vaccinated first?” Consistency and all... you know. The Governor said they couldn’t be closed. Hahaha.

Which pretty much shows at what level he values math over pot shop tax revenue. Guess which one wins? Hahaha.

* I love the pot shop thing. It’s hilarious. Perfect example of utter irrational shenanigans. It’s not like liquor where the detox centers would be over-run instantly by all the functional alcoholics in our society.
 
Cervieres said:
Chronic oxygen dependence in previously healthy individuals is definitely not a side effect of common respiratory illnesses. And yes, chest CT is utilized for diagnosis and management of complicated respiratory infections and lung disease. We do image COVID and the CT findings have been fairly well described. And if you want to throw numbers around, look at the ICU bed utilization in any metropolitan area. That will provide a more accurate narrative.
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The initial descriptions of how this looks on chest CT and how frequently it leaves the patients with scarring came out of China in March. While lots of trees have been cut down for publications about this since, they haven't really added anything that we didn't know in March.

We are currently in week 7 of a local wave and we are starting to see the Post-acute issues. And as mentioned, those are not the nursing home patients. Those are the 'younger' covid patients in their late 50s to 70s who frequently didn't even require ICU admission. According to one of our pulmonologists, it is a good time to get into the home health and home oxygen business.

The cardiac stuff is very concerning. While I know that imaging findings don't necessarily indicate actual inflammation and the studies probably over-estimated the true incidence, if the numbers are 1/3 of what is published, it's still going to bad. 20 years from now we will talk about the 'infectious myocarditis outbreak of 2020' rather than covid.

Locally, we seem to be turning a corner, at least we start to see patients who don't have covid hitting the hospital again. For a few weeks it was just demoralizing to go to work as there was seemingly nothing else on the floors.
 
denverpilot said:
Any metropolitan area? Not sure what it has to do with side effects but ours continue to be ridiculously low.

We’ve had the discussion here already about using percentages for that Covid ICU utilization number being utterly broken as a metric, also. Ward sizes are changed to meet actual demand.

As my wife’s hospital boss put it, “Of course we’re at 80%. We’re always shooting for 80%.”

In recent internal hospital meetings with the metro equivalent of CEO and CFO — staff asked why the press doesn’t get it. They said they have no idea why the press doesn’t get that, but at least the State stopped panicking in the joint meetings starting about a month ago.

He said they basically hadn’t bothered listening to a single medical professional in the meetings from Mar-Nov. Your local mileage may vary, but that’s the word from the two guys who sat in every single meeting with the State officials here.

If the press would ask the hospital what “80%” actually means, or just look at the raw data, they’d see it. They’d rather sit a few miles away and listen to the Governor instead of driving over, as best anyone can tell, out of mass laziness. It’s a ten minute drive and the hospital’s PIO phone isn’t ringing.

200 reporters at each political presser and not a single one has asked for a presser from the hospital company yet... going on 9 months.

Kinda says something, at least about quality of coverage and even raw ability to do basic math (again). But what can they do? Press doesn’t want the story, they don’t call. Oh well.

But the local reporter shops do have a big economic problem, they had to lay off half of all their newsrooms starting with the older and better paid reporters three months ago. We know one of those personally and he’s not surprised at all. Local ad revenue is gone. Was done without fanfare. They all did it so they didn’t do the usual reporting of it on each other pretending one was in better shape than the next. Just, gone.

Same fate as the newspapers, just delayed.

As long as the Governor feeds their young reporters who are left and the automated distribution headline machines, whatever headlines get what few ad clicks they get, there’s not really any interest in following up on anything he says.

They don’t even notice the statistical analysis flaw. And their audience doesn’t care anyway.

Couldn’t tell ya really why they can’t figure out a percentage of a constantly changing resource isn’t a correct measure.

See: Fluid ounces story above, I guess. (Shrug.) My gas tanks are somewhere around 55% utilized every month, too. Isn’t much of a measure as to when I desperately need to buy gas. LOL

All we know is the actual numbers are low and have been as a ratio of population for the entire time. Which would indicate... not a “significant risk” of the side effects, if that’s how one wants to measure it.

Wife’s hospital had ALL of the Covid patients for SIX major in-network hospitals throughout from March to present, also. Them being at “80%” is meaningless without mentioning the other five at “0%”.

If someone feels “significant risk” is two digit patient counts over a six hospital network... mmm-kay.

You did say ANY metro. Ha. I just happen to flat out KNOW ours.

Some metros are worse. No doubt. We simply haven’t been.

The worst hospital has been the “free” one dead center in the middle of downtown and even they haven’t gone above three significant digit ICU patient counts in their Covid ICU (which the hospitals keep pointing out aren’t even in the same place in the building in most of them), in any month yet.

Linear graph says they’ll get there. Probably by June. Even with vaccinations. That also hasn’t changed since the Mar-April trend lines. Vaccination count doesn’t affect the rates much at first.

Wife’s place will reach triple digits sometime around end of Jan by the numbers. Nobody there is particularly surprised or concerned about it. They have five other hospitals they can re-open at and a sixth nearing the end of construction that stopped briefly until outpatient revenue numbers could be watched for a few months.

Are there metros that haven’t bothered building significant hospital infrastructure since the 50s? Definitely. Quite a few of them without land to put them on due to population density, too. Which pretty much sucks in an outbreak of a thing that thrives on population density...

It’s the old, “It’s hard to catch or spread Covid when you can’t hit your neighbor’s house with a rock” thing. Around here, you’ll still most likely catch it at one of the “deemed essential” pot shops. LOL.

I joked elsewhere today, “Since the pot shops were essential, does that mean pot shop workers get vaccinated first?” Consistency and all... you know. The Governor said they couldn’t be closed. Hahaha.

Which pretty much shows at what level he values math over pot shop tax revenue. Guess which one wins? Hahaha.

* I love the pot shop thing. It’s hilarious. Perfect example of utter irrational shenanigans. It’s not like liquor where the detox centers would be over-run instantly by all the functional alcoholics in our society.
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It’s great that your area isn’t affected and you can be dismissive. The ICU census at my hospital has been nearing capacity this week and we have the convention center standing by as a field hospital. Whether or not it will be needed will play out in the next few weeks. It’s not just that we need the beds for COVID patients, but that all of the other patients needing ICU care don’t have anywhere to go. The county fairgrounds had to be converted to a makeshift testing facility because all of the clinics were overwhelmed with people seeking tests. My friends and colleagues in Utah, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are all having the same experience and those are just the people I keep in touch with. I’ve intentionally stayed away from these kinds of posts, but enough is enough with the idea that there is some exaggeration of the seriousness of this event or that the problem is actually infrastructure related, young reporters, or whatever other conspiracy theory is popular that particular day.
 
Science time. Feel free to ignore pedantic B.S. The reason COVID is so successful at colonizing humanity is it can bind very very well and very tightly to an epithelial protein called ACE2. It does this through its coat protein.

Vaccines work by training the immune system to respond to antigens. What has been used for antigen for all the incoming vaccines is the same coat protein the virus uses to bind the ACE2 receptor. Still with me?

Any change to this coat protein that results in an escape from immune surveillance will almost certainly denigrate its ability to bind ACE2. That is, if it goes stealth it looses its secret weapon and won't be infectious anymore. The vaccines will work, the virus can't escape.

And having vaccines after only a year, while the world is in the grip of the pandemic is nothing short of miraculous.
 
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