Anyone changing behavior due to the latest uptick in Covid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked that the school systems are not considering virtual options for at least the beginning of school. It’s going to be brutal and then it’s going to spread rapidly. I wish I could keep them home

We need the government to ban travel, or at least shutdown the airlines.

+1

Or at least make air travel limited for only essential needs. I think if we can minimize that plus keeping the kids home from school and then everyone stop mingling at stores/restaurants and just do doorsash and instacart, things will get better

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s scary out there these days. I thought it was all behind us. We’ve stopped going to the stores if we don’t need to - all Insta art/door dash/Amazon. We aren’t meeting friends unless outside.

Hahahhaa. You sound like a lot of fun. Glad people like you are staying home, don't have to deal with COVID KARENS in public.

People like you is the reason why Covid will always be around. If you would just stay home and mask up in the limited instances where you need to leave the home, it would be better.

I love this argument. All about moral superiority. Lady, even China with their massive lockdowns where they welded people into their homes could not stop the spread. Humans cannot stop nature. Virus is going to virus and no amount of hand sanitzer, masks, and weird covid rituals work.

Please girl. All the preventative measures work - that’s how things got better and will continue to do so. People should stay home and try not to socialize or go out to public places, especially those indoors, and schools should go virtual to minimize the spread. Doing so is best for the community as a whole. It’s not that hard to doordash and instacart everything! Spend more quality time with your immediate family!

The vaccines worked. That’s what got us out of this mess. Not masks. Not virtual school. Not a two week shutdown.

Not quite. Vaccines made us comfortable enough to leave our homes en masse and get infected, which provided some real immunity, which is what actually got us out of this mess. The reason cases went down is the reduction in available hosts because people built up infection-induced immunity.

Actually, the virus is mutating fast enough that your "immunity" doesn't protect you as much as you think. That's why people are having Covid multiple times, and sometimes getting sicker the more times they have it.

At least the vaccines and some immunity mean a significantly smaller number of people are dying.

Well, right, but that’s the point. Vaccine and infection-induced immunity made covid effectively equivalent to other common viral infections, like influenza.

Omicron is more equivalent to other viral infections like influenza because it is milder than ancestral strains. The CDC reviewed cases in December 2021 when both Delta & Omicron were circulating. They found that those infected with Omicron had substantially less severe outcomes than those infected with Delta, irrespective of vaccination status or prior infections:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1.full.pdf
"we identified substantially reduced risk of severe clinical outcomes among patients with presumed Omicron variant infections [versus Delta]. Within the subset of our cohort ... Omicron variant infections were associated with 52%, 53%, 74%, and 91% reductions in risk of any subsequent hospitalization, symptomatic hospitalization, ICU admission, and mortality, relative to Delta variant infections. … Reductions in disease severity associated with Omicron variant infections were evident among both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients, and among those with or without documented prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. ... Consistency of the association of Omicron variant infection with reduced risk of hospitalization across age and comorbidity categories, and regardless of prior immunity from vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infection, during the same month and in the same population, argues against host or behavioral factors as causes of the observed disease attenuation with the Omicron variant.”

Note the phrase “without *documented* prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.” Given the large percentage of asymptomatic cases, and the even larger number of symptomatic cases so mild no one would have thought to test, many people had undocumented cases.

It’s entirely plausible that Omicron is inherently less virulent, too, but no doubt immunity played a large role in less severe outcomes.

They address this in the study and conclude that immunity from prior infections was not the reason for Omicron's milder effects relative to Delta. They point to the fact that participants with a documented prior infection had a much less severe case if they subsequently contracted Omicron rather than Delta.

From the article: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1.full.pdf
"Although ascertainment of SARS-CoV-2 infection history is imperfect because many infections may have gone untested or may not have been documented in a patient’s EHR, prior infection among individuals with a history of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result should be accurately coded and false positive PCR tests are rare. Thus, the finding of a reduction in severity of Omicron in patients with known prior infection is compelling evidence of an intrinsically less severe infection, rather than only different (more immune) persons becoming infected with the Omicron variant."

If I’m reading the data from the study correctly, that’s a ridiculously improper argument to make based on the data. Look at Table S4, in the Prior Infection Status row. That claim appears to be based on 1 out of 43 non-Omicron patients having symptomatic hospitalization, versus 1 out of 508 Omicron patients (in both cases having a prior documented infection).

You obviously can't draw any conclusions from that. There's just not enough data. Any suggestion otherwise is completely irresponsible.

Am I misinterpreting that?

It is low but one could argue their view about the limited role of prior infections in their results in other ways as well. Prior, undocumented infections would likely have occurred in individuals contracting both Delta and Omicron in December, potentially moderating overall severity for both groups. However, in order to affect the outcomes of Delta relative to Omicron that this study examined, you'd have to argue that prior immunity disproportionately benefitted one group over the other. However, any infections prior to the December 2021 study would have been with Delta or earlier variants, so if anything, that should have moderated December Delta infections more than Omicron ones. Instead, outcomes with Delta were notably worse than with Omicron.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s scary out there these days. I thought it was all behind us. We’ve stopped going to the stores if we don’t need to - all Insta art/door dash/Amazon. We aren’t meeting friends unless outside.

Hahahhaa. You sound like a lot of fun. Glad people like you are staying home, don't have to deal with COVID KARENS in public.

People like you is the reason why Covid will always be around. If you would just stay home and mask up in the limited instances where you need to leave the home, it would be better.

I love this argument. All about moral superiority. Lady, even China with their massive lockdowns where they welded people into their homes could not stop the spread. Humans cannot stop nature. Virus is going to virus and no amount of hand sanitzer, masks, and weird covid rituals work.

Please girl. All the preventative measures work - that’s how things got better and will continue to do so. People should stay home and try not to socialize or go out to public places, especially those indoors, and schools should go virtual to minimize the spread. Doing so is best for the community as a whole. It’s not that hard to doordash and instacart everything! Spend more quality time with your immediate family!

The vaccines worked. That’s what got us out of this mess. Not masks. Not virtual school. Not a two week shutdown.

Not quite. Vaccines made us comfortable enough to leave our homes en masse and get infected, which provided some real immunity, which is what actually got us out of this mess. The reason cases went down is the reduction in available hosts because people built up infection-induced immunity.

Actually, the virus is mutating fast enough that your "immunity" doesn't protect you as much as you think. That's why people are having Covid multiple times, and sometimes getting sicker the more times they have it.

At least the vaccines and some immunity mean a significantly smaller number of people are dying.

Well, right, but that’s the point. Vaccine and infection-induced immunity made covid effectively equivalent to other common viral infections, like influenza.

Omicron is more equivalent to other viral infections like influenza because it is milder than ancestral strains. The CDC reviewed cases in December 2021 when both Delta & Omicron were circulating. They found that those infected with Omicron had substantially less severe outcomes than those infected with Delta, irrespective of vaccination status or prior infections:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1.full.pdf
"we identified substantially reduced risk of severe clinical outcomes among patients with presumed Omicron variant infections [versus Delta]. Within the subset of our cohort ... Omicron variant infections were associated with 52%, 53%, 74%, and 91% reductions in risk of any subsequent hospitalization, symptomatic hospitalization, ICU admission, and mortality, relative to Delta variant infections. … Reductions in disease severity associated with Omicron variant infections were evident among both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients, and among those with or without documented prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. ... Consistency of the association of Omicron variant infection with reduced risk of hospitalization across age and comorbidity categories, and regardless of prior immunity from vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infection, during the same month and in the same population, argues against host or behavioral factors as causes of the observed disease attenuation with the Omicron variant.”

Note the phrase “without *documented* prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.” Given the large percentage of asymptomatic cases, and the even larger number of symptomatic cases so mild no one would have thought to test, many people had undocumented cases.

It’s entirely plausible that Omicron is inherently less virulent, too, but no doubt immunity played a large role in less severe outcomes.

They address this in the study and conclude that immunity from prior infections was not the reason for Omicron's milder effects relative to Delta. They point to the fact that participants with a documented prior infection had a much less severe case if they subsequently contracted Omicron rather than Delta.

From the article: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1.full.pdf
"Although ascertainment of SARS-CoV-2 infection history is imperfect because many infections may have gone untested or may not have been documented in a patient’s EHR, prior infection among individuals with a history of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result should be accurately coded and false positive PCR tests are rare. Thus, the finding of a reduction in severity of Omicron in patients with known prior infection is compelling evidence of an intrinsically less severe infection, rather than only different (more immune) persons becoming infected with the Omicron variant."

If I’m reading the data from the study correctly, that’s a ridiculously improper argument to make based on the data. Look at Table S4, in the Prior Infection Status row. That claim appears to be based on 1 out of 43 non-Omicron patients having symptomatic hospitalization, versus 1 out of 508 Omicron patients (in both cases having a prior documented infection).

You obviously can't draw any conclusions from that. There's just not enough data. Any suggestion otherwise is completely irresponsible.

Am I misinterpreting that?

It is low but one could argue their view about the limited role of prior infections in their results in other ways as well. Prior, undocumented infections would likely have occurred in individuals contracting both Delta and Omicron in December, potentially moderating overall severity for both groups. However, in order to affect the outcomes of Delta relative to Omicron that this study examined, you'd have to argue that prior immunity disproportionately benefitted one group over the other. However, any infections prior to the December 2021 study would have been with Delta or earlier variants, so if anything, that should have moderated December Delta infections more than Omicron ones. Instead, outcomes with Delta were notably worse than with Omicron.

But when there’s literally only one case leading to hospitalization in both Omicron/Delta groups, you can’t say it was notably worse. That gives you no information on the frequency of severe cases.

Part of me continues to wonder if I’m misreading that table, because it would be such an obvious flaw to their analysis/conclusions.

[Anonymous]

It looks like they walked that claim back in a later revision to the paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v3.full-text

They clearly still believe the Omicron variant is inherently less virulent, but they acknowledge the limitations of their data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s scary out there these days. I thought it was all behind us. We’ve stopped going to the stores if we don’t need to - all Insta art/door dash/Amazon. We aren’t meeting friends unless outside.

Hahahhaa. You sound like a lot of fun. Glad people like you are staying home, don't have to deal with COVID KARENS in public.

People like you is the reason why Covid will always be around. If you would just stay home and mask up in the limited instances where you need to leave the home, it would be better.

I love this argument. All about moral superiority. Lady, even China with their massive lockdowns where they welded people into their homes could not stop the spread. Humans cannot stop nature. Virus is going to virus and no amount of hand sanitzer, masks, and weird covid rituals work.

Please girl. All the preventative measures work - that’s how things got better and will continue to do so. People should stay home and try not to socialize or go out to public places, especially those indoors, and schools should go virtual to minimize the spread. Doing so is best for the community as a whole. It’s not that hard to doordash and instacart everything! Spend more quality time with your immediate family!

The vaccines worked. That’s what got us out of this mess. Not masks. Not virtual school. Not a two week shutdown.

Not quite. Vaccines made us comfortable enough to leave our homes en masse and get infected, which provided some real immunity, which is what actually got us out of this mess. The reason cases went down is the reduction in available hosts because people built up infection-induced immunity.

Actually, the virus is mutating fast enough that your "immunity" doesn't protect you as much as you think. That's why people are having Covid multiple times, and sometimes getting sicker the more times they have it.

At least the vaccines and some immunity mean a significantly smaller number of people are dying.

Well, right, but that’s the point. Vaccine and infection-induced immunity made covid effectively equivalent to other common viral infections, like influenza.

Omicron is more equivalent to other viral infections like influenza because it is milder than ancestral strains. The CDC reviewed cases in December 2021 when both Delta & Omicron were circulating. They found that those infected with Omicron had substantially less severe outcomes than those infected with Delta, irrespective of vaccination status or prior infections:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1.full.pdf
"we identified substantially reduced risk of severe clinical outcomes among patients with presumed Omicron variant infections [versus Delta]. Within the subset of our cohort ... Omicron variant infections were associated with 52%, 53%, 74%, and 91% reductions in risk of any subsequent hospitalization, symptomatic hospitalization, ICU admission, and mortality, relative to Delta variant infections. … Reductions in disease severity associated with Omicron variant infections were evident among both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients, and among those with or without documented prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. ... Consistency of the association of Omicron variant infection with reduced risk of hospitalization across age and comorbidity categories, and regardless of prior immunity from vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infection, during the same month and in the same population, argues against host or behavioral factors as causes of the observed disease attenuation with the Omicron variant.”

Note the phrase “without *documented* prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.” Given the large percentage of asymptomatic cases, and the even larger number of symptomatic cases so mild no one would have thought to test, many people had undocumented cases.

It’s entirely plausible that Omicron is inherently less virulent, too, but no doubt immunity played a large role in less severe outcomes.

They address this in the study and conclude that immunity from prior infections was not the reason for Omicron's milder effects relative to Delta. They point to the fact that participants with a documented prior infection had a much less severe case if they subsequently contracted Omicron rather than Delta.

From the article: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1.full.pdf
"Although ascertainment of SARS-CoV-2 infection history is imperfect because many infections may have gone untested or may not have been documented in a patient’s EHR, prior infection among individuals with a history of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result should be accurately coded and false positive PCR tests are rare. Thus, the finding of a reduction in severity of Omicron in patients with known prior infection is compelling evidence of an intrinsically less severe infection, rather than only different (more immune) persons becoming infected with the Omicron variant."

If I’m reading the data from the study correctly, that’s a ridiculously improper argument to make based on the data. Look at Table S4, in the Prior Infection Status row. That claim appears to be based on 1 out of 43 non-Omicron patients having symptomatic hospitalization, versus 1 out of 508 Omicron patients (in both cases having a prior documented infection).

You obviously can't draw any conclusions from that. There's just not enough data. Any suggestion otherwise is completely irresponsible.

Am I misinterpreting that?

It is low but one could argue their view about the limited role of prior infections in their results in other ways as well. Prior, undocumented infections would likely have occurred in individuals contracting both Delta and Omicron in December, potentially moderating overall severity for both groups. However, in order to affect the outcomes of Delta relative to Omicron that this study examined, you'd have to argue that prior immunity disproportionately benefitted one group over the other. However, any infections prior to the December 2021 study would have been with Delta or earlier variants, so if anything, that should have moderated December Delta infections more than Omicron ones. Instead, outcomes with Delta were notably worse than with Omicron.

But when there’s literally only one case leading to hospitalization in both Omicron/Delta groups, you can’t say it was notably worse. That gives you no information on the frequency of severe cases.

Part of me continues to wonder if I’m misreading that table, because it would be such an obvious flaw to their analysis/conclusions.

My reference to 'notably worse' is their overall finding for hospitalizations (with no documented prior infection): delta 186/16,886 and omicron 83/51,625. This notably worse outcome for delta vs omicron seems unlikely to have been affected by prior immunity as that factor would have impacted both categories, with the effect potentially cancelling when comparing one relative to the other. I think that would have been a stronger way for them to have expressed their view that prior immunity was not driving their results; not sure why they chose to argue it as they did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It looks like they walked that claim back in a later revision to the paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v3.full-text

They clearly still believe the Omicron variant is inherently less virulent, but they acknowledge the limitations of their data.

Thanks for the link to the updated paper. As you note, they continue to find that hospitalizations, ICU, and death totals were substantially lower for Omicron than Delta.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It looks like they walked that claim back in a later revision to the paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v3.full-text

They clearly still believe the Omicron variant is inherently less virulent, but they acknowledge the limitations of their data.

Thanks for the link to the updated paper. As you note, they continue to find that hospitalizations, ICU, and death totals were substantially lower for Omicron than Delta.

It's not entirely unsurprising. We put evolutionary pressure on the virus to develop a more contagious but less virulent strain. The mitigation procedures enacted would favor a more contagious virus, and with less virulence we stopped adding mitigations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Too late - youngest kid just tested positive. I really hope it won't be a long-drawn out thing where each family member tests positive one after the other for the rest of the summer. So irritating!!!

We don’t test any more. Then there’s no long drawn out anything. It’s just a cold.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked that the school systems are not considering virtual options for at least the beginning of school. It’s going to be brutal and then it’s going to spread rapidly. I wish I could keep them home

We need the government to ban travel, or at least shutdown the airlines.

+1

Or at least make air travel limited for only essential needs. I think if we can minimize that plus keeping the kids home from school and then everyone stop mingling at stores/restaurants and just do doorsash and instacart, things will get better

+2

I mean it worked in 2020, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked that the school systems are not considering virtual options for at least the beginning of school. It’s going to be brutal and then it’s going to spread rapidly. I wish I could keep them home

We need the government to ban travel, or at least shutdown the airlines.

+1

Or at least make air travel limited for only essential needs. I think if we can minimize that plus keeping the kids home from school and then everyone stop mingling at stores/restaurants and just do doorsash and instacart, things will get better

+2

I mean it worked in 2020, right?

That just shows we really need to commit to it this time. Think about everything that stayef open in 2020. Grocery stores, manufacturing, hospitals, emergency services, etc. Shut it all down this time. Nobody leaves their house for 6 weeks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked that the school systems are not considering virtual options for at least the beginning of school. It’s going to be brutal and then it’s going to spread rapidly. I wish I could keep them home

Thanks for the giggle, I needed this today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked that the school systems are not considering virtual options for at least the beginning of school. It’s going to be brutal and then it’s going to spread rapidly. I wish I could keep them home

It’s sarcasm. A two second google search would show lots of virtual options, both with public and private accredited schools. Anyone can choose to keep their kids home for any reason. One of mine went virtual for health, non covid, reasons last year. It’s good we have so many options now for legit reasons that we didn’t before so these people whining are just trying to stir the pot.

[Anonymous]

I'm considering wearing a mask when I fly next month, but that's about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked that the school systems are not considering virtual options for at least the beginning of school. It’s going to be brutal and then it’s going to spread rapidly. I wish I could keep them home

We need the government to ban travel, or at least shutdown the airlines.

+1

Or at least make air travel limited for only essential needs. I think if we can minimize that plus keeping the kids home from school and then everyone stop mingling at stores/restaurants and just do doorsash and instacart, things will get better

+2

I mean it worked in 2020, right?

That just shows we really need to commit to it this time. Think about everything that stayef open in 2020. Grocery stores, manufacturing, hospitals, emergency services, etc. Shut it all down this time. Nobody leaves their house for 6 weeks.

Exactly. I work at an inpatient care facility and they made me come to work. Ridiculous. There’s no reason the patients couldn’t have taken care of themselves. I mean all the psych meds are right there in the Med room! C’mon. If we take it seriously this time it can be done. We can and will completely eradicate this virus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked that the school systems are not considering virtual options for at least the beginning of school. It’s going to be brutal and then it’s going to spread rapidly. I wish I could keep them home

We need the government to ban travel, or at least shutdown the airlines.

+1

Or at least make air travel limited for only essential needs. I think if we can minimize that plus keeping the kids home from school and then everyone stop mingling at stores/restaurants and just do doorsash and instacart, things will get better

+2

I mean it worked in 2020, right?

That just shows we really need to commit to it this time. Think about everything that stayef open in 2020. Grocery stores, manufacturing, hospitals, emergency services, etc. Shut it all down this time. Nobody leaves their house for 6 weeks.

Amazon could use drones to deliver one bag of rice and one bag of beans to every household once per week.