MCPS covid cases

[Anonymous]

The trolls were out in full force yesterday, it seems.

Omicron and Delta (to a lesser extent), both partially evade our vaccines and boosters, designed for the original strain.
This means that vaccine immunity wanes faster than we'd expect when infected with these variants.
For Delta, multiple studies have shown vaccine immunity to wane significantly by the 5th-6th month.
For Omicron, we don't have enough data, but some scientists believe vaccine immunity wanes significantly by the 3rd month, if that.

Therefore, what we need to consider is HOW RECENT our last shot was. It's not enough to have two doses. It's not enough to have a booster. What matters is that your booster is extremely recent.
This is even more important if the recipient is not healthy to begin with, or is elderly.

The UK has allowed boosters to be given 3 months away from the second shot.
Denmark allows a 4.5 months wait between the second shot and the booster.
I encourage anyone with a booster done more than 6 months ago to get another one, by hook or by crook.

Pfizer and Moderna are working on redesigned boosters, but they won't be ready until March, at the very earliest, and they need to be authorized, which the Biden administration is not ready to encourage right now, since it's still hammering away at the messaging that unvaccinated people need to get the already available vaccines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


The trolls were out in full force yesterday, it seems.

Omicron and Delta (to a lesser extent), both partially evade our vaccines and boosters, designed for the original strain.
This means that vaccine immunity wanes faster than we'd expect when infected with these variants.
For Delta, multiple studies have shown vaccine immunity to wane significantly by the 5th-6th month.
For Omicron, we don't have enough data, but some scientists believe vaccine immunity wanes significantly by the 3rd month, if that.

Therefore, what we need to consider is HOW RECENT our last shot was. It's not enough to have two doses. It's not enough to have a booster. What matters is that your booster is extremely recent.
This is even more important if the recipient is not healthy to begin with, or is elderly.

The UK has allowed boosters to be given 3 months away from the second shot.
Denmark allows a 4.5 months wait between the second shot and the booster.
I encourage anyone with a booster done more than 6 months ago to get another one, by hook or by crook.

Pfizer and Moderna are working on redesigned boosters, but they won't be ready until March, at the very earliest, and they need to be authorized, which the Biden administration is not ready to encourage right now, since it's still hammering away at the messaging that unvaccinated people need to get the already available vaccines.

You're ignoring the most important detail: the current vaccines work well to prevent severe illness well beyond 6 months. That's always been the main thing that we've needed from the vaccines, and is likely to be part of Biden's talking points in his address. Now that we have highly effective vaccines, we need to stop looking at case counts as the primary metric. Case severity is what matters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Vaccinated ARE getting covid. So just saying if you want protection, get vaccinated does not work anymore.

Are you a troll? Or just honestly dense? The vaccines strongly protect against serious illness— the main thing we need them to do. Did you really not know that?

Are you a troll? Telling people they can't spread the coronavurus just because they had a vaccine 8 months ago is irresponsible AF.

Who said they can't spread COVID? The vaccines reduce the risk of infection and transmission, but certainly there's always a risk. Particularly in older/sicker people with weaker immune systems.

The point is that people that have been vaccinated are strongly protected from developing severe illness *if* they get infected. This isn't April of 2020 anymore. There are lots of thing people can do to protect themselves.

You're going to have to move past your zero COVID mentality. COVID will be circulating for the foreseeable future. We'll no sooner eradicate COVID than the common cold.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You couldn't tell by the amount of people out this weekend. Malls, stores, restaurants are wall-to-wall.

The parking lot at Target was full - but we're going to close schools? Nope nope nope nope nope.

(However, it was definitely odd seeing that one guy with no mask, in the store I stopped into in the middle of my five-pharmacy trip to find some rapid home tests for my college kid who has a sore throat and is about to be kicked out of their dorm for winter break.)

You can order them from CVS and they will deliver in a day. Btdt. Maybe I am naive but I don't see the point in going to five pharmacies in the middle of a pandemic.

I ordered some from cvs the other day, but the only ones in stock had a wide window for delivery- anywhere between Dec. 21-28. We aren’t leaving to visit family until the 27th so chances are they will arrive but not necessarily helpful for those who need them sooner. I was not finding many online options that would have guaranteed delivery before Christmas.

Judging by the traffic this weekend I think a lot of people were out shopping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Vaccinated ARE getting covid. So just saying if you want protection, get vaccinated does not work anymore.

Are you a troll? Or just honestly dense? The vaccines strongly protect against serious illness— the main thing we need them to do. Did you really not know that?

Are you a troll? Telling people they can't spread the coronavurus just because they had a vaccine 8 months ago is irresponsible AF.

Who said they can't spread COVID? The vaccines reduce the risk of infection and transmission, but certainly there's always a risk. Particularly in older/sicker people with weaker immune systems.

The point is that people that have been vaccinated are strongly protected from developing severe illness *if* they get infected. This isn't April of 2020 anymore. There are lots of thing people can do to protect themselves.

You're going to have to move past your zero COVID mentality. COVID will be circulating for the foreseeable future. We'll no sooner eradicate COVID than the common cold.

Come back when you need care at a hospital and they turn you away because there’s no room or too many staff sick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Vaccinated ARE getting covid. So just saying if you want protection, get vaccinated does not work anymore.

Are you a troll? Or just honestly dense? The vaccines strongly protect against serious illness— the main thing we need them to do. Did you really not know that?

Are you a troll? Telling people they can't spread the coronavurus just because they had a vaccine 8 months ago is irresponsible AF.

Who said they can't spread COVID? The vaccines reduce the risk of infection and transmission, but certainly there's always a risk. Particularly in older/sicker people with weaker immune systems.

The point is that people that have been vaccinated are strongly protected from developing severe illness *if* they get infected. This isn't April of 2020 anymore. There are lots of thing people can do to protect themselves.

You're going to have to move past your zero COVID mentality. COVID will be circulating for the foreseeable future. We'll no sooner eradicate COVID than the common cold.

Come back when you need care at a hospital and they turn you away because there’s no room or too many staff sick.

Is this a curse?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Vaccinated ARE getting covid. So just saying if you want protection, get vaccinated does not work anymore.

Are you a troll? Or just honestly dense? The vaccines strongly protect against serious illness— the main thing we need them to do. Did you really not know that?

Are you a troll? Telling people they can't spread the coronavurus just because they had a vaccine 8 months ago is irresponsible AF.

Who said they can't spread COVID? The vaccines reduce the risk of infection and transmission, but certainly there's always a risk. Particularly in older/sicker people with weaker immune systems.

The point is that people that have been vaccinated are strongly protected from developing severe illness *if* they get infected. This isn't April of 2020 anymore. There are lots of thing people can do to protect themselves.

You're going to have to move past your zero COVID mentality. COVID will be circulating for the foreseeable future. We'll no sooner eradicate COVID than the common cold.

Come back when you need care at a hospital and they turn you away because there’s no room or too many staff sick.

Fortunately, the vaccines are still highly effective at preventing serious illness, especially if you got a booster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You couldn't tell by the amount of people out this weekend. Malls, stores, restaurants are wall-to-wall.

The parking lot at Target was full - but we're going to close schools? Nope nope nope nope nope.

(However, it was definitely odd seeing that one guy with no mask, in the store I stopped into in the middle of my five-pharmacy trip to find some rapid home tests for my college kid who has a sore throat and is about to be kicked out of their dorm for winter break.)

You can order them from CVS and they will deliver in a day. Btdt. Maybe I am naive but I don't see the point in going to five pharmacies in the middle of a pandemic.

PP you're responding to. Because I had to go pick up my kid, and my kid had suddenly developed symptoms. Fortunately my kid was able to find a rapid home test on their own, and the test was negative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


The trolls were out in full force yesterday, it seems.

Omicron and Delta (to a lesser extent), both partially evade our vaccines and boosters, designed for the original strain.
This means that vaccine immunity wanes faster than we'd expect when infected with these variants.
For Delta, multiple studies have shown vaccine immunity to wane significantly by the 5th-6th month.
For Omicron, we don't have enough data, but some scientists believe vaccine immunity wanes significantly by the 3rd month, if that.

Therefore, what we need to consider is HOW RECENT our last shot was. It's not enough to have two doses. It's not enough to have a booster. What matters is that your booster is extremely recent.
This is even more important if the recipient is not healthy to begin with, or is elderly.

The UK has allowed boosters to be given 3 months away from the second shot.
Denmark allows a 4.5 months wait between the second shot and the booster.
I encourage anyone with a booster done more than 6 months ago to get another one, by hook or by crook.

Pfizer and Moderna are working on redesigned boosters, but they won't be ready until March, at the very earliest, and they need to be authorized, which the Biden administration is not ready to encourage right now, since it's still hammering away at the messaging that unvaccinated people need to get the already available vaccines.

You're ignoring the most important detail: the current vaccines work well to prevent severe illness well beyond 6 months. That's always been the main thing that we've needed from the vaccines, and is likely to be part of Biden's talking points in his address. Now that we have highly effective vaccines, we need to stop looking at case counts as the primary metric. Case severity is what matters.

I'm not ignoring that fact, but did not touch upon it because it's very, very risky to assume that the Omicron will affect our immune system in the same way other variants have done. I strongly disagree that all we need are hospitalization and death numbers, and not case numbers, because even though Omicron might be milder than Delta, we are still in a Delta wave, and case numbers still act as a valuable early indicator of the coming trend in hospital saturation.

"Case severity", which is not an actual metric, is by definition a lagging indicator.
Lagging indicators such as hospitalization data and mortality are obviously not the numbers we want to rely on if our goal is to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.

Hence our great need to continue watching case numbers (that Hogan continues not to provide, pretexting a cyberattack) and our great need to vaccinate and boost as much of the population as we can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


The trolls were out in full force yesterday, it seems.

Omicron and Delta (to a lesser extent), both partially evade our vaccines and boosters, designed for the original strain.
This means that vaccine immunity wanes faster than we'd expect when infected with these variants.
For Delta, multiple studies have shown vaccine immunity to wane significantly by the 5th-6th month.
For Omicron, we don't have enough data, but some scientists believe vaccine immunity wanes significantly by the 3rd month, if that.

Therefore, what we need to consider is HOW RECENT our last shot was. It's not enough to have two doses. It's not enough to have a booster. What matters is that your booster is extremely recent.
This is even more important if the recipient is not healthy to begin with, or is elderly.

The UK has allowed boosters to be given 3 months away from the second shot.
Denmark allows a 4.5 months wait between the second shot and the booster.
I encourage anyone with a booster done more than 6 months ago to get another one, by hook or by crook.

Pfizer and Moderna are working on redesigned boosters, but they won't be ready until March, at the very earliest, and they need to be authorized, which the Biden administration is not ready to encourage right now, since it's still hammering away at the messaging that unvaccinated people need to get the already available vaccines.

You're ignoring the most important detail: the current vaccines work well to prevent severe illness well beyond 6 months. That's always been the main thing that we've needed from the vaccines, and is likely to be part of Biden's talking points in his address. Now that we have highly effective vaccines, we need to stop looking at case counts as the primary metric. Case severity is what matters.

This
If 99.9 percent of vaccinated people get cold symptoms and nothing else then it can become non issue

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


The trolls were out in full force yesterday, it seems.

Omicron and Delta (to a lesser extent), both partially evade our vaccines and boosters, designed for the original strain.
This means that vaccine immunity wanes faster than we'd expect when infected with these variants.
For Delta, multiple studies have shown vaccine immunity to wane significantly by the 5th-6th month.
For Omicron, we don't have enough data, but some scientists believe vaccine immunity wanes significantly by the 3rd month, if that.

Therefore, what we need to consider is HOW RECENT our last shot was. It's not enough to have two doses. It's not enough to have a booster. What matters is that your booster is extremely recent.
This is even more important if the recipient is not healthy to begin with, or is elderly.

The UK has allowed boosters to be given 3 months away from the second shot.
Denmark allows a 4.5 months wait between the second shot and the booster.
I encourage anyone with a booster done more than 6 months ago to get another one, by hook or by crook.

Pfizer and Moderna are working on redesigned boosters, but they won't be ready until March, at the very earliest, and they need to be authorized, which the Biden administration is not ready to encourage right now, since it's still hammering away at the messaging that unvaccinated people need to get the already available vaccines.

You're ignoring the most important detail: the current vaccines work well to prevent severe illness well beyond 6 months. That's always been the main thing that we've needed from the vaccines, and is likely to be part of Biden's talking points in his address. Now that we have highly effective vaccines, we need to stop looking at case counts as the primary metric. Case severity is what matters.

I'm not ignoring that fact, but did not touch upon it because it's very, very risky to assume that the Omicron will affect our immune system in the same way other variants have done. I strongly disagree that all we need are hospitalization and death numbers, and not case numbers, because even though Omicron might be milder than Delta, we are still in a Delta wave, and case numbers still act as a valuable early indicator of the coming trend in hospital saturation.

"Case severity", which is not an actual metric, is by definition a lagging indicator.
Lagging indicators such as hospitalization data and mortality are obviously not the numbers we want to rely on if our goal is to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.

Hence our great need to continue watching case numbers (that Hogan continues not to provide, pretexting a cyberattack) and our great need to vaccinate and boost as much of the population as we can.

Much of mcps is vaccinated. Find a new talking point to justify your lack of care for anyone other than yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


The trolls were out in full force yesterday, it seems.

Omicron and Delta (to a lesser extent), both partially evade our vaccines and boosters, designed for the original strain.
This means that vaccine immunity wanes faster than we'd expect when infected with these variants.
For Delta, multiple studies have shown vaccine immunity to wane significantly by the 5th-6th month.
For Omicron, we don't have enough data, but some scientists believe vaccine immunity wanes significantly by the 3rd month, if that.

Therefore, what we need to consider is HOW RECENT our last shot was. It's not enough to have two doses. It's not enough to have a booster. What matters is that your booster is extremely recent.
This is even more important if the recipient is not healthy to begin with, or is elderly.

The UK has allowed boosters to be given 3 months away from the second shot.
Denmark allows a 4.5 months wait between the second shot and the booster.
I encourage anyone with a booster done more than 6 months ago to get another one, by hook or by crook.

Pfizer and Moderna are working on redesigned boosters, but they won't be ready until March, at the very earliest, and they need to be authorized, which the Biden administration is not ready to encourage right now, since it's still hammering away at the messaging that unvaccinated people need to get the already available vaccines.

You're ignoring the most important detail: the current vaccines work well to prevent severe illness well beyond 6 months. That's always been the main thing that we've needed from the vaccines, and is likely to be part of Biden's talking points in his address. Now that we have highly effective vaccines, we need to stop looking at case counts as the primary metric. Case severity is what matters.

I'm not ignoring that fact, but did not touch upon it because it's very, very risky to assume that the Omicron will affect our immune system in the same way other variants have done. I strongly disagree that all we need are hospitalization and death numbers, and not case numbers, because even though Omicron might be milder than Delta, we are still in a Delta wave, and case numbers still act as a valuable early indicator of the coming trend in hospital saturation.

"Case severity", which is not an actual metric, is by definition a lagging indicator.
Lagging indicators such as hospitalization data and mortality are obviously not the numbers we want to rely on if our goal is to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.

Hence our great need to continue watching case numbers (that Hogan continues not to provide, pretexting a cyberattack) and our great need to vaccinate and boost as much of the population as we can.

Part of the reason we are still in a delta wave is because we chose to flatten the delta curve than get it all over with quickly. Not saying that was right/wrong, but areas that did that now have to contend with omicron/delta at the same time. Will be interesting to see how states like TX/FL do that tone because they already had a delta peak. Will they just have a milder omicron wave? I’m just interested to see how it all plays out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Part of the reason we are still in a delta wave is because we chose to flatten the delta curve than get it all over with quickly. Not saying that was right/wrong, but areas that did that now have to contend with omicron/delta at the same time. Will be interesting to see how states like TX/FL do that tone because they already had a delta peak. Will they just have a milder omicron wave? I’m just interested to see how it all plays out.

We don't have any idea whether we're still in a delta wave or not. Actually, we don't even have any idea whether we're in any wave or not, because we haven't seen any data since December 4. Evidently Governor Hogan does not find this particularly concerning. (Also, he had a positive test this morning.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


The trolls were out in full force yesterday, it seems.

Omicron and Delta (to a lesser extent), both partially evade our vaccines and boosters, designed for the original strain.
This means that vaccine immunity wanes faster than we'd expect when infected with these variants.
For Delta, multiple studies have shown vaccine immunity to wane significantly by the 5th-6th month.
For Omicron, we don't have enough data, but some scientists believe vaccine immunity wanes significantly by the 3rd month, if that.

Therefore, what we need to consider is HOW RECENT our last shot was. It's not enough to have two doses. It's not enough to have a booster. What matters is that your booster is extremely recent.
This is even more important if the recipient is not healthy to begin with, or is elderly.

The UK has allowed boosters to be given 3 months away from the second shot.
Denmark allows a 4.5 months wait between the second shot and the booster.
I encourage anyone with a booster done more than 6 months ago to get another one, by hook or by crook.

Pfizer and Moderna are working on redesigned boosters, but they won't be ready until March, at the very earliest, and they need to be authorized, which the Biden administration is not ready to encourage right now, since it's still hammering away at the messaging that unvaccinated people need to get the already available vaccines.

You're ignoring the most important detail: the current vaccines work well to prevent severe illness well beyond 6 months. That's always been the main thing that we've needed from the vaccines, and is likely to be part of Biden's talking points in his address. Now that we have highly effective vaccines, we need to stop looking at case counts as the primary metric. Case severity is what matters.

I'm not ignoring that fact, but did not touch upon it because it's very, very risky to assume that the Omicron will affect our immune system in the same way other variants have done. I strongly disagree that all we need are hospitalization and death numbers, and not case numbers, because even though Omicron might be milder than Delta, we are still in a Delta wave, and case numbers still act as a valuable early indicator of the coming trend in hospital saturation.

"Case severity", which is not an actual metric, is by definition a lagging indicator.
Lagging indicators such as hospitalization data and mortality are obviously not the numbers we want to rely on if our goal is to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.

Hence our great need to continue watching case numbers (that Hogan continues not to provide, pretexting a cyberattack) and our great need to vaccinate and boost as much of the population as we can.

PP here. Sure, I agree that we should be looking at case numbers. But not as a primary metric. As you said, we should be using case numbers to predict where hospitalizations will go. But it is important to remember we're at a different point in the pandemic now that the county is highly vaccinated. Case numbers will not impact hospitalizations to the same degree as they did in 2020.

And no, we're not simply "assuming" things about Omicron. The available data shows that Omicron is certainly no more virulent than Delta. And the available real-world data, both among US cases and the large number of cases in South Africa, strongly suggests Omicron is less virulent. Or, at least, that vaccinated and previously-infected populations have how risk of hospitalization.

[Anonymous]

McKnight announced that if 5% of staff/students test positive MCPS/health department will think about closing the individual school.

Makes some sense to me, but it puts a lot of faith in testing. Only half of families have consented to testing in schools. Lots of families won't bother consenting or getting testing in clinics. I assume a tested 5% really represents a much higher actual number of infected individuals.

Also, Hogan just tested positive....