Wow, your kid’s high school. That would hit too close to home. If you hear more about underlying conditions or what exactly caused his death, I’d appreciate your sharing. I definitely feel for his family. Looking up his Go Fund page on Google it sounds like he was a really nice kid.
Finally, there might be an answer to my son’s continued breathing issues. If they know what they are dealing with, perhaps they can address it. I don’t know that this is it for him, of course, esp since he was never in the hospital, but it’s something to follow.
2 Likes
My 89 year old father who had Covid in the spring is being told by his doctors that his new frequent headaches are a result of the virus.
1 Like
I got looking at the following article from WI to see if it had more about the recent death. It doesn’t, but it had a surprising (to me) stat in it saying:
“the median age for hospitalized COVID-19 patients across the nation is now hovering around 40.”
It’s not backed up by a source. Does anyone else have one? Hospitalized doesn’t mean one will die, of course. Most don’t. But I would think it could mean a higher chance of having long lasting issues.
CDC changes quarantine guidelines.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/scientific-brief-options-to-reduce-quarantine.html
[quote] Local public health authorities determine and establish the quarantine options for their jurisdictions. CDC currently recommends a quarantine period of 14 days. However, based on local circumstances and resources, the following options to shorten quarantine are acceptable alternatives.
-
Quarantine can end after Day 10 without testing and if no symptoms have been reported during daily monitoring.
- With this strategy, residual post-quarantine transmission risk is estimated to be about 1% with an upper limit of about 10%.
-
When diagnostic testing resources are sufficient and available (see bullet 3, below), then quarantine can end after Day 7 if a diagnostic specimen tests negative and if no symptoms were reported during daily monitoring. The specimen may be collected and tested within 48 hours before the time of planned quarantine discontinuation (e.g., in anticipation of testing delays), but quarantine cannot be discontinued earlier than after Day 7.
- With this strategy, the residual post-quarantine transmission risk is estimated to be about 5% with an upper limit of about 12%.
In both cases, additional criteria (e.g., continued symptom monitoring and masking through Day 14) must be met and are outlined in the full text.[/quote]
It would have been better if they had announced this in early November and derived recommendations for being extra careful for some time before Thanksgiving family gatherings.
Many people probably found 14 days of quarantine before Thanksgiving unrealistic, but if they knew that they could get 80+% of the risk reduction with 7-10 days of quarantine before Thanksgiving (or a significant percentage of that risk reduction be eliminating their highest-risk-of-exposure activities for the 7-10 days even if the could not fully quarantine), they may have been able to do that and significantly reduce the risk of turning their Thanksgiving family gatherings into superspreader events.
Might just be me, but I suspect better than 90% of the people that traveled for Thanksgiving didn’t bother with isolation at all. As such, they’ll likely contribute to another surge in positive covid tests.
My motto is to continue dodging other people and maintain personal space, because others simply might not believe your or my theories as to transmission.
I wanted to tell someone the news that DH thinks hospitals and health systems in NY will most likely start getting their shipments of vaccine on December 10th. I’m beyond psyched that we have arrived at the beginning of the end.
8 Likes
Yep! A doctor friend who works in a major hospital in OH said they’ve been told to expect first vaccination on Dec. 11!
6 Likes
I think it’s interesting that none of the lists of who gets the vaccine first includes the military. Our son told us yesterday the Army will start administering the shots by yearend/January. That’s a LOT of vaccine for the lists to overlook.
Active duty US military includes about 1.4 million people. For comparison, there are about 16.9 million health care workers in the US.
Still seems a lot to me and they’re getting it in the first wave, so surprised there’s no mention on ordered lists.
I’ve seen “teachers” on some lists before the general public but I don’t know if that means college faculty or K-12 teachers. And, even if K-12 teachers get vaccinated before the end of the school year, is that enough to get those kids back to school? A lot still seems very unclear on the order of things.
Also, if people in nursing homes get the vaccine, do we think that means that families can then visit nursing homes?
I think the first priority for nursing homes is to protect a vulnerable population. Getting residents who live in a close situation plus their care givers makes less fatalities.
Then once they stop the infections in a vulnerable population, they will think about visitation. I would suspect that it will be awhile before close family members can go back to normal.
The first part of vaccination should be preventing deaths. The second part will be getting back to a more normal situation.
2 Likes
Approximate numbers of groups that may be prioritized:
Health care workers: 16.9 million
Active duty US military: 1.4 million
Nursing home residents: 1.3 million
Nursing home staff (other than health care workers): ???
Employees of essential industries (excluding health care workers): 38 million
K-12 teachers (including public and private): 4 million
K-12 staff (other than teachers): 4 million(?)
College faculty: 1.5 million (0.8 million full time, 0.7 million part time)
College staff (other than faculty): 2.0 million
Age 65+: 54 million (overlaps with the above groups)
There are also 2.3 million people incarcerated in the US. See Prisons Are Covid-19 Hotbeds. When Should Inmates Get the Vaccine? - The New York Times
I have to wonder if college faculty will get vaccines before K-12. If there’s no vaccine avail this spring for the under-18 crowd then it doesn’t help K-12 teachers to be vaccinated. If colleges can vaccinate their faculty and staff, it might go a long way to getting college kids back in classrooms.
Actually, it may be helpful to get K-12 (especially K-8) teachers vaccinated.
- K-12 (especially K-8) adapts worse than college to online/distance education, so even without a vaccine, some K-12 schools in COVID-19-careful areas are trying limited in-person education (often trying mitigations like distancing the desk setup, masks, shields, windows open, etc.).
- Teachers do most of the talking (which creates more virus-laden droplets if infected than merely breathing), so giving the vaccine to the teachers may reduce the risk of the classroom being a superspreader event, if the vaccine reduces asymptomatic contagious infections (not certain, but possible, perhaps even likely).
What about all the K-12 schools that are full time in person. Our schools have not shut down one day this semester.
That shouldn’t be a national priority.
2 Likes