Inside Medicine. What Are You Seeing? [COVID-19 medical news]

But how many are boosted in that UMich hospital chart?

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Has anyone seen any models showing when we will hit the peak? I assume it will be different in different parts of the country. S Africa’s peak was at about three weeks so NY should almost be there, no?

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That’s part of the data used in the modeling. Africa has a younger population and a lot of natural immunity. I saw a chart showing the number of it’s citizens with 1, 2, 3 and even 4 Covid infections. They shot up and shot down, relatively speaking. The last I checked, the UK hadn’t peaked yet. Older population, less immunity, natural or vaccine-acquired. People think we will behave more like the UK - similar stats. Omicron hit there before here, so if you watch for when they hit their peak, we should soon follow.

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UK maybe plateauing.

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It definitely seems to show the boosters help.

I love how they show comorbidities. Now if we can combine their chart with boosters and a list of who’s there because of Covid and who just happens to have Covid while there, it would be incredibly more helpful - esp if many hospitals started putting out charts.

Seeing data like this can be far more effective than reading data that isn’t well aligned.

My medical boy told me a month ago (so before this latest increase) that they only had one person there who had been completely vaxxed and had a booster. When I said, “Bummer, he drew the short straw,” he replied back with, “Oh, he wasn’t there for Covid. We just found out he had it by routine testing. He had _____, was treated, and released.”

He had been there for a different reason, but in any data chart it just shows someone fully vaxxed with boosters and hospitalized.

It can be super misleading IMO.

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Probably. I follow older S’ area in the DC area. Omicron started up there in mid December - as I’m assuming by their vertical spike in the graph. They’ve seem to have plateaued this week. Time will tell if it goes down or what.

In contrast, my area didn’t start spiking until two weeks later. We have a ways to go, especially since we are only 50% fully vaxd and 25% boosted vs their 75% fully vaxd and 35% boosted.

Meanwhile…this epidemic is also raging…

’ Then, in August 2021, JAMA pediatrics published an article that reviewed 29 studies with over 80,000 youth worldwide. They found that 25.2% of youth experienced depression, and 20.5% experienced anxiety during the pandemic worldwide, which is double that of pre-pandemic estimates (11.6% for depression pre-pandemic and 12.9% for anxiety pre-pandemic). Interestingly, the rates of depression and anxiety were higher later in the pandemic, particularly among older adolescents and girls. Also, interestingly, the rates of anxiety were highest among adolescents in Europe (34%) and North America (21%).’

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yeah, a neighbor’s 18-year-old HS athlete was hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy. He also tested positive for covid upon admission, so the community all thought, ‘OMG, this young in shape kid was hospitalized for 3 nights due to covid.’

Uhh, not necessarily, the tough kid was still working out the day AFTER his appendix burst (felt a sharp pain and just assumed it was a pulled muscle), went home to rest, cranked up to a 104 fever, and finally drove himself to the local walk in. Other than fever, completely asymptomatic for covid.

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London was a couple of weeks ahead of the rest of the UK and infections are now falling, but that’s offset at a national level by rising rates elsewhere. London was at its worst in the last two weeks before Christmas, I guess 1-2 weeks ahead of New York, which will probably be the first US state to peak.

That should be long enough to see hospitalization rates. If they correlate to infection at a much lower rate than previous variants did, this will be the beginning of the end of the pandemic.

Early in Omicron I posted, with a big IF caveat (and got a shouty cap smack down :rofl:) that a highly contagious, less virulent variant, that was shown to confer immunity to past variants, would quickly lead to herd immunity. This could be it. :crossed_fingers:

EDIT: Here’s the data. It looks promising thus far.

https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/coronavirus--covid-19--cases

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The Omicron wave will peak sooner or later at different times in different parts of world, and it may be the last of the most serious waves of Covid-19 infections, but it’s probably wrong, and certainly premature, to assume the virus will become something like another flu or common cold. We’ve consistently underestimated the ability of the virus to mutate and its transmissibility. If Omicron is among the most contagious viruses ever, another mutation will likely make it even more so, as viruses presumably don’t mutate to make themselves less infectious. A virus so infectious could still very well be much more menacing post-pandemic than flu. It also seems to be much less seasonal than the flu. Australia, which is in its summer season, is experiencing an infection rate, on a per-capita basis, that is even greater than what is currently in the US.

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Every year people die from things we consider innocuous, common cold and influenza among them. Just not many. If everyone gets this, and it isn’t as harmful as the original variants, it will eventually become endemic.

That’s what happened with the Spanish Flu. A version of the H1N1 that was novel at the time and caused havoc, still circulates today. We don’t give it a second thought.

The same mutations were happing throughout its evolution. We just didn’t have the science to know that.

Let’s hope that’s where we’re headed!

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Note that “endemic” does not necessarily mean “mild”. Smallpox, polio, measles, etc. were once endemic, for example. Influenza is still endemic, but is still serious enough to kill tens of thousands in the US every year.

Of course, in evolutionary terms, there may be some selective pressure against deadliness:

  1. A dead host may not be as effective at spreading virus than a living breathing host.
  2. The less deadly the disease is, the less people will be concerned about it, so the less people will try to stop it from spreading.

However, reduction of virulence is not guaranteed.

I had H1N1 a few years ago. Not fun! But I wasn’t terrified the way I would have been with COVID last year.

Indeed. One of the ways to define endemic is a R0 equal to 1. Even if it’s pretty virulent, it won’t wreak havoc. Combine the R0 of Omicron, estimated to be somewhere in the range of 10, with what looks like lower virulence, and it will become the dominant strain and hopefully burn itself mostly out.

Indeed…again. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: During my son’s 25 years, he has been blessed with Influenza A…twice, H1N1 and COVID. The severity with which each impacted him was the order that I listed them. A sucked, Swine Flu was a significant cold/mild flu, and COVID was a walk in the park.

I think we’ll get to where the circulating COVID strain is somewhere on the continuum of Influenza A to Common Cold. Some people will die, like they do from A and B, H1N1 and adenovirus/coronavirus common colds, but we’ll get back to where we don’t know anyone who does and it won’t rule the world.

All conjecture on my part. Fingers crossed.

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49% of NYC hospitalizations were due to CV only; the balance in NYC were with CV.

Central NY–80%
Capital Area–77%
Finger Lakes–67%

Other than NYC, all admissions were 61% & above due to CV or CV complications.

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Now they just need to let us know who’s unvaxxed/vaxxed/boosters, plus any co-morbidities, and we’d have the info many of us really want to see.

Each place seems to have their bit of helpful advice. Now they just need to put it all together.

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“Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine announced today that CORBEVAX™, a protein sub-unit COVID-19 Vaccine, whose technology was created and engineered at its Center for Vaccine Development (CVD), has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to launch in India with other underserved countries to follow.”

CORBEVAX™ is a protein subunit vaccine.

An NPR writer seems to be quite excited about it:

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“According to new state guidelines, health care workers who test positive for COVID-19 will no longer have to isolate or test negative and can return to work immediately If they are asymptomatic.”

And in Arizona:

" COVID positive staff who are improving, mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic do not require isolation but are required to wear N95 masks for up to 10 days of positive symptoms or testing. These measures are supported by the CDC.”

My DH’s step-mother is in Mayo Hospital here in AZ with Covid-19. She was admitted on Friday. She has Hodgkins Lymphoma and has been undergoing chemotherapy. She was told Mayo is out of Sotrovimab. So they are giving her Remdesivir instead. https://www.abc15.com/news/coronavirus/omicron-variant-treatment-difficult-to-find-in-the-valley