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COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Discuss anything that doesn't fit elsewhere on the site. As a reminder, religion, politics and weaponry are prohibited.
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BostonCharlie
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by BostonCharlie »

Way to go EU! (source: WSJ, paywall)
The European Union said it has hit its target of fully vaccinating 70% of adults against Covid-19 by the end of summer—albeit with wide variations between different countries—showing how the bloc’s vaccination campaign has gathered momentum after a slow start earlier in the year.

...

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Tuesday that more than 256 million people in the 27-member bloc have received two doses of vaccine, equivalent to 70% of the adult population. In the U.S., 63% of people 18 or over are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U.K. has fully vaccinated 77% of those aged 16 and over.
Meanwhile:

Americans Are Stocking Up on Toilet Paper Again (paywall)
The situation isn’t as dire as it was early in the pandemic, when panicked customers cleared shelves as they stockpiled large quantities of paper towels and toilet paper, according to industry data, manufacturers and retailers.

...

Massachusetts-based grocery chain Roche Bros. Inc. has been struggling with securing a steady flow of toilet paper over the past month, said Arthur Ackles, the company’s vice president of merchandising and buying.

“Customers are asking a lot of questions,” said Mr. Ackles, who said Roche Bros. was notified of limits by P&G last week. Certain items have already been unavailable for a few days in recent weeks, and Mr. Ackles is worried that other disruptions could lead to panic buying.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by BostonCharlie »

This lengthy article (paywall) describes what some schools and organizations are doing to help kids as they return to school. Here are some numbers:
While fewer children are being seen in hospital emergency rooms during the pandemic, a greater share of visits are for mental-health reasons. Between mid-March and mid-October 2020, the number of mental-health related ER visits per 100,000 total visits rose from the year-earlier period by 24%, from 782 to 972, for 5- to 11-year-olds and by 31%, from 3,098 to 4,051, for 12- to 17-year-olds, according to data from the CDC.

The mental-health fallout is hitting kids from all backgrounds, and school psychologists are bracing for what they see as an unmanageable wave of need. The National Association of School Psychologists is advising schools to wait until at least a month into the school year to do schoolwide screenings of students for mental-health problems, to give kids time to adjust and to give some of the schoolwide programs time to work, said Katherine C. Cowan, the organization’s director of communications.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by The Sultan of SoWhat »

BC, you do an admirable job of keeping us informed.

Thanks!
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by The Sultan of SoWhat »

Los Angeles Times
Coronavirus Today

August 31, 2021

Good evening. I’m Karen Kaplan, and it’s Tuesday, Aug. 31. Here’s the latest on what’s happening with the coronavirus in California and beyond.

Nearly 40 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, and more than 636,000 became sick enough to die. Those numbers are astronomically high, but they still leave well over 290 million of us with no clear idea of what it’s like to have the virus raging inside our bodies.

Karen Gallardo does — not because she’s been sick herself, but because she’s a respiratory therapist who’s been caring for COVID-19 patients at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura for nearly a year and a half.

In an eye-opening essay, she describes what happens if you develop a serious case of COVID-19, starting with symptoms that are bad enough to bring a patient to the emergency room and ending with his or her very last breath:

Stage 1: You come to the hospital because you’re having trouble breathing on your own. The medical team puts you on supplemental oxygen and admits you to a ward, where you’re given monoclonal antibodies, antivirals or other treatments. If all goes well, your ability to breathe will recover in a few days and you’ll be sent home.

Stage 2: The breathing treatments don’t work and you feel like you’re drowning. You can’t go to the bathroom or even sit up on your own. Doctors transfer you to the intensive care unit.

Stage 3: A machine forces air into your lungs through a bulky face mask wrapped tightly around your face. Even so, the number of breaths you need to take to get your required oxygen leaves you utterly exhausted.

Stage 4: Still unable to get enough oxygen into your body, you are sedated, then paralyzed, so a tube can be threaded into your airway and connected to a ventilator. But first, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to call your loved ones in case it’s their last chance to hear your voice.

Stage 5: If several days on a ventilator have not turned things around for you, doctors may try to get you on an ECMO machine. These machines will oxygenate your blood for you, bypassing your lungs so they might have a chance to heal. But community hospitals like Gallardo’s don’t have them, and you might not be stable enough for a transfer to one that does.

Stage 6: Now your medical team has its hands full dealing with the consequences of your COVID-19 treatment. Tubes are inserted into your chest cavity to clear out the air that has leaked there. Your kidneys can’t keep up with all the drugs you’ve received, so you may require dialysis. Because you’ve been sedentary you may develop a clot, which could cut off blood flow to vital organs or result in a heart attack or stroke. You may need to be revived with CPR.

Stage 7: If your family decides you have no chance to recover, they’ll have a final FaceTime call with you. The breathing tube will be removed and the ventilator shut off. Someone from the medical team will be there to hold your hand until your breathing stops.

“I’ve been at this for 17 months now,” Gallardo writes. “It doesn’t get easier.”

If this sounds like a situation you’d rather avoid, she has some simple advice: “Get vaccinated.”

The patients she sees who have been vaccinated rarely progress beyond Stage 1.

“If only that were the case for everyone,” she writes.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by The Sultan of SoWhat »

And then there's this:

From The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... GTUK_email

A 17-year-old in hospital with coronavirus has said she has been targeted by anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists on social media after urging young people to have the vaccine.

Maisy Evans said she has been accused of being a “liar” and an “actress paid by the government” by online trolls.

The teenager has had symptoms including dizziness, shortness of breath, headaches, a loss of smell and taste, as well as suffering a Covid-related blood clot on her lung. She tested positive for the virus on 14 August, three days after having her first Pfizer jab.

However, doctors have insisted her illness and her blood clot are unrelated to the vaccine.

Evans, from Newport, south Wales, told Sky News: “I’ve had to deal with a lot of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists which is deeply frustrating.

“I’ve been called a liar, an actress paid by the government to push certain agendas, Satan, a Nazi, evil, and so many more things.

“It’s totally uncalled for.”

Evans was admitted to hospital on 25 August and after undergoing numerous blood tests, X-rays and CT scans, a Covid-related blood clot was discovered on her right lung.

The former member of the Welsh youth parliament is being treated at the Grange university hospital in Cwmbran.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Spirit of the Watch »

I honestly can't believe some of my coworkers are going from anti-Covid vaccine to anti-vaxxer.

I think what happened is a few senior employees where always hardened anti-vaxxers and slowly they latched onto these people and turned them over to their cause.

Now my hospital is requiring vaccinations and some of these people, including atheists, are claiming a religious exemption. One person even found a CDC study review (it was over how the United Kingdom would separate refugees with diseases like Tuberculosis from the general populace) and started claiming the U.S. government is using this as a cover to break up the family unit. Another dolt claimed the vaccines are being microwaved beforehand. Plus the general never-ending blood clots and what not.

It was a real let down when the hospital said they'd fire them, then allowed everyone to claim a religious exemption to bypass it.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Sussa »

Spirit of the Watch wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 12:16 pm It was a real let down when the hospital said they'd fire them, then allowed everyone to claim a religious exemption to bypass it.
My company is requiring any employee who needs to go into a hospital as part of their job to be vaccinated because the hospitals are requiring it. Anyone requesting a religious exemption will be asked to provide documentation, possibly from their religious leader. Even with the exemption, they will need to change roles if they are not vaccinated, and if there are no suitable open positions, well... the official communication was *slightly* nicer than "don't let the door hit you on the way out." Not sure exactly what documentation would be acceptable, but it may be enough of a threat to keep people from BSing an exemption.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by BostonCharlie »

In Harris County, which includes Houston, hospitals are discharging covid patients faster than they are being admitted. I hope other metros are seeing such positive trends.

hospital_pop_delta.png
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Stretch44 »

New study out today from the CDC on vaccine effectiveness. Interesting info for 120 days after receiving a second dose of Pfizer and Moderna. Pfizer dropped to 71%. Moderna dropped to 92%. There were not enough participants to give numbers for J&J at 120 plus days.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/ ... mm7038e1_w
Last edited by Stretch44 on Fri Sep 17, 2021 4:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Spirit of the Watch »

Hospital staff must swear off Tylenol, Tums to get religious vaccine exemption
"Thus," Troup went on, "we provided a religious attestation form for those individuals requesting a religious exemption," he said. The form includes a list of 30 commonly used medicines that "fall into the same category as the COVID-19 vaccine in their use of fetal cell lines," Conway Regional said.

The list includes Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, aspirin, Tums, Lipitor, Senokot, Motrin, ibuprofen, Maalox, Ex-Lax, Benadryl, Sudafed, albuterol, Preparation H, MMR vaccine, Claritin, Zoloft, Prilosec OTC, and azithromycin.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09 ... exemption/

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Post by Spirit of the Watch »

Illinois Man Turns Down Treatment After Bat Bite, Dies a Month Later From Rabies
There is no effective treatment for rabies once symptoms begin, and only a handful of people are known to have survived the final stage of infection. But there is a widely available vaccine that can work even after a confirmed exposure to the virus, so long as it’s taken in the weeks before symptoms start. Exposed people are also given a large dose of antibodies against rabies collected from the blood of immunized people or animals.
https://gizmodo.com/illinois-man-turns- ... 1847767191

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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by balcorn80 »

We had an experience here in my home... My 8 year old was sent home to quarantine for 10 days because someone in his 4 person lunch pod(only time they don't have masks on) tested positive.
Only problem, in my eyes, was I had 2 other boys still going to and from school.

Link never tested positive. But if he had, he would have been sending the virus back and forth with his brothers for a few days.

I expressed this concern to my superintendent, who said it was a valid concern. But they did it this way to interrupt as few kids schooling as possible. Which makes sense. But it's also something I see happening multiple times. Could make for a long year.

In our high school the policy is if you're vaccinated and get exposed, you don't have to stay home. We also have a huge 'anti-covid restrictions' contingency here. And the school doesn't ask for verification of vax status.
So when the volleyball team had an outbreak, all these kids, who sit around the locker room talking about how their parents say vaccines are dumb, and so do they, and that they aren't vaccinated,
Most of them don't quarantine because they say they are vaccinated. So frustrating...

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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by BostonCharlie »

I have been called out on my current travel plans: fly out of state to visit family and friends in various locations for several days, then return home in time for a wedding. It's like I am asking to be a super-spreader. The funny thing is that it didn't occur me until my mother pointed it out. I was like, yeah, don't want to be that guy at the wedding who ended up testing positive for covid. Cancelling the trip won't be a big deal. American Airlines will keep my fare money safe for a year -- isn't that nice?
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by BostonCharlie »

Some highlights from this interesting WSJ article (paywall):
During the 2020-21 school year, the rate at which students learned nationwide was slower across all student groups, regardless of race, ethnicity or income level, compared with historical averages before the pandemic, according to a July report by NWEA, an Oregon-based nonprofit education-services firm. Math achievement was as much as 12 percentile points lower in the spring of 2021 compared with a typical year. Reading achievement declined by as much as 6 percentile points compared with before the pandemic, among all students. The results come from about 5.5 million third- through eighth-grade students in 12,500 public schools who took the assessments in 2018-2019 and in the 2020-2021 school year.

But the drop in reading scores among Black and Latino fourth-grade students was, on average, double that of white and Asian-American students. At the same time, among fourth-graders—a critical juncture in education—students from high-poverty schools experienced three times as much learning loss in reading compared with those enrolled in low-poverty schools.
Students who aren’t reading at grade level by third grade are more likely to drop out of high school and end up in prison, decades of research has shown. By fourth grade, students must be able to use their literacy skills to learn other subjects, such as math, social studies and science, educators say.
Ms. Layne saw early this school year how remote learning had stymied her students’ growth. One day, she asked the children to do some writing. Soon after, she heard a synchrony of chimes go off around the room.

“What are you guys doing?” asked Ms. Layne, looking around the room confused.

The students responded: “We’re writing our answer.” The students had turned on microphones to speak into their iPads, which then typed out the text for them—something they routinely did during remote learning last year.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by balcorn80 »

The talk-to-text thing is the worst habit my boys picked up...
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