Luckily we have a bench, dumbells and a TRX in our basement gym. We have a stationary bike which I rarely use, but dh likes. But mostly we walked. If it wasn’t pouring we went out our front door. Lots of people were out there with us, but mostly we just crossed the street to avoid them. We used snow boots when there was snow on the ground. A couple of times we put on the snowshoes and went in the local woods, which was really cool. We got to tramp all over the marshy bits which you can’t do in the summer. When we got bored with the local walks we’d hop in the car and walk in fancier neighborhoods. Covid is the main reason I lost weight last year. We walked a lot!
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Same! I’ve been a consistent exerciser. Covid and having a wide open schedule stepped that up! Pardon the pun!
@suzyQ7 - I’m not a doctor and I don’t always understand all the terminology. From what I’ve read, though, I don’t think they know if the six women had low platelets before they were vaccinated or if it was induced by the CVST (or even if it was induced by the vaccine itself.)
And actually, one of the men in the J&J trial developed the same CVST-with-low-platelets syndrome while on the vaccine trial. In his case, they could determine that before vaccination, he did not have the anti-heparin antibodies in his blood, but they were in his blood after his vaccination. Which is odd, and suggests that the syndrome was triggered by the vaccine.
If you follow Kai Kupferschmidt on twitter, he explains a lot of the science going on with the J&J vaccine. He also reviewed the most recent ACIP hearings.
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One of my dogs nearly died of low platelets (thrombocytopenia) several years ago. Usually you have a lot of platelets and thrombocytopenia is not a common condition people usually have. My dog had immune mediated thrombocytopenia which means the immune system attacks and destroys the platelets. This causes bleeding because you need platelets to clot. In my dog’s case there was no cause found, but it is known to sometimes be caused by vaccines in both dogs and people. We were told never to vaccinate our dog again or she could suffer a recurrence. It is treatable. The dog was treated with steroids and the type of anti-rejection drugs used in transplant patients and she has lived a healthy life for 11 years since then. From what I have read, these rare blood clots associated with the J&J and Astra Zeneca vaccine are possibly a result of the destruction process of the platelets in these cases. Usually clotting and bleeding are opposite problems to have and why it’s important that these types of clots are recognized. If you treat someone’s blood clots with anti-clotting drugs when they already have low platelets it’s going to be bad news.
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Walking is great, and folks are now starting to recognize the common sense that infection transmission rates when outside is infinitesimal. (I never found any ‘science’ which demonstrated wearing masks outside did anything.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/13/covid-outside-safety/
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Probably depends on if your exercise activity is, or can easily be, outdoors (also, how weather tolerant you are). I did notice that in some outdoor locations (e.g. parks), more people were doing exercise activity compared to before COVID-19. There were also reports of outdoor exercise equipment (e.g. bicycles) being sold out.
Well I sure hope outdoor transmission is low because our state is having throngs of unmasked folks walking around Waikiki and other areas. It would be netter if they followed our state rules and wore masks but enforcement as gone down and many aren’t.
well this sucks. if you get covid while vaccinated you still have a 7 percent change of getting hospitalized and over a 1% change of dying. So much for less severe disease if you are in the 10% or so that get covid vaccinated.
We will never be done with this.
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Yeah, it’s seeming like for those who the vaxes don’t work, they really don’t work.
Fortunately for most, they seem to work. Herd immunity is what we’ll have to have. Hopefully enough will sign up.
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That page said that there were about 5,800 breakthrough cases out of (currently) 77 million fully vaccinated people. Since February 1 (when about 7 million were fully vaccinated), there have been 5 million cases in the presumed 255-327 million unvaccinated people.
Assuming midpoint numbers of vaccinated people over that time range, that means that 5,800 breakthrough cases out of 42 million vaccinated people is about 1 breakthrough case out of 7,200 vaccinated people, while 5 million cases out of 291 million unvaccinated people is about 1 case out of 58 unvaccinated people.
Yes, if you get a breakthrough case after vaccination, there is the possibility of it being bad. But the risk of getting a breakthrough case after vaccination is much lower than that of getting a case when unvaccinated.
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It is pretty well known that outdoor is much less risk than indoor.
It still might not be a great idea to go into a densely packed outdoor location, especially if stationary (where you could be long-term exposed to the same other nearby people who may be exhaling virus), if you want to avoid COVID-19 exposure. But a similar situation would still be riskier in an indoor or enclosed location.
People I know are careful to avoid Waikiki when tourists are awake and go early when they’re still sleeping so it’s uncrowded, regardless of mask wearing or not. I still hope our state doesn’t have huge spreading events as many are still trying to get vaccinated as it was 50+ and may still be (I stopped tracking it).
About 77 million people in the US are fully vaccinated. 396 of them have been hospitalized with Covid, and 74 of them died. As far as I’ve read, the deaths are happening in the elderly who have underlying conditions. Their immune systems have gone into what is known as immunosenescence and they don’t have a robust response to vaccines.
There are also a lot of Americans on immunosuppressive medications due to autoimmune disease or organ transplant, and others undergoing treatment for cancer. Most doctors highly recommend that this population get the vaccine, but they admit that it may be less effective for them. This is currently being studied to see whether certain medications prevent a proper immune response while others might be okay, and whether it makes sense for patients to take a medication break to let their immune systems bounce back before getting the vaccine.
I still feel very optimistic that the end of the crisis is near. 74 vaccinated people have died in about 3 months. This February, an average of 2,400 people died of Covid every single day.
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From the Hartford Courant this afternoon…
“ Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla predicted Thursday that people who have received the company’s COVID vaccine will “likely” need a third booster shot within a year to maintain protection against the virus.”
The article goes on to say that Moderna is also considering this.
Honestly, I have no problem with this.
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Seems like it is about a booster of the same vaccine, according to this press release: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-initiate-study-part-broad-development . Separately, they are also looking into a modified vaccine for variants of concern.
I am sure it will become like the annual flu shots - you get a booster every year and it will target the variants they feel you will need for that year.
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I thought I saw something in the news about a company (in San Francisco?) developing an oral vaccine or booster.
Probably you mean this (company web site): https://www.ora-vax.com/
It is a joint venture between (company web sites) https://www.oramed.com/ and https://www.premasbiotech.com .
None of the companies appears to be based in San Francisco.
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There are also two oral SARS-CoV-2 vaccine products already in human trials (in addition to a phase III trial studying the oral polio vaccine for sars-cov-2)
One from one of Patrick Soon-Shiong’s companies, ImmunityBio: ImmunityBio Announces Positive Interim Phase I Safety Data of hAd5 T-Cell COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate in Oral and Sublingual Formulations - ImmunityBio
And this oral vaccine candidate from Vaxart: Safety and Immunogenicity Trial of an Oral SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (VXA-CoV2-1) for Prevention of COVID-19 in Healthy Adults and Boost (VXA-CoV2-1.1-S) at 1 Year Post Initial Vaccination in Subset of Subjects - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov
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It’s also associated with a recent viral infection. My D2 was diagnosed with thrombocytopenia when she was 6 months old or so. She had recently had a viral infection with fever (not crazy high though). My DH was changing her diaper and told me she had a “rash.” When I looked, I saw that it was actually bruising where the diaper was snug around her legs. I almost had a heart attack, thinking it was leukemia or something.
Her doctor said we would watch her and do follow ups every few days. Of course, that very day, she began crawling. I put pillows all around the brick fireplace hearth and removed the coffee table from our family room. I was terrified she would hit her head on something.
Within a week or two, her platelet count had completely recovered. That was a very scary thing for me-I was in nursing school and knew only just enough to be terrified and not enough to understand the odds of her being ok.
She has never had another recurrence of this problem, but I admit I’m relieved she had the Pfizer rather than the J & J.
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