Many had the expiration dates extended.
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Go to the CDC website, you will be able to look up your test by the lot number on the box and see the extended expiration date.
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I marked all the extended dates on the boxes we have a few months ago. I was just getting ready to throw some out when I thought to just check the CDC list. They have been extended even further! They are turning out to be quite shelf stable.
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Here is a list of COVID-19 tests with links to expiration date extensions:
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Marin County in California used to be a place filled with anti-vaccine people, to the point visitors would find it a good idea to check their vaccines and get any needed ones before visiting in case some anti-vaccine parentâs kid breathes measles or something on them.
But it is turned around and now has among the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the US.
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Did you wear a mask? I get that itâs hard to demand that people wear masks especially if you are living in an area where you think they might object. I greet everyone at the door with my mask on and most ask if they should mask up also. I also arrive at my clientsâ houses with my mask on. They usually ask if they should mask up and for the first two years of the pandemic I insisted on it. Now I usually just tell them itâs okay, but I am extra cautious.
Sorry I lost track, but if you mean at the hospital I didnât go. I do wear a mask whenever I go inside stores or doctor/dentist offices which I rarely do.
Weâve unfortunately had plumbers, electricians and other trades at our new house several times already and H or I greet them with a mask on just as you mentioned. So far, all have either pulled a mask from a pocket or returned to their truck for one.
IHME makes predictions about the coming winter.
Figures 4.1-7.1 starting on page 10 give some comparisons by country. Note that figure 6.1 shows that an estimate >90% of people in many countries, including the US, have been infected with COVID-19.
Table 3 on page 19 has a comparison of vaccine effectiveness, and a link to COVID-19 vaccine efficacy summary | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation with some text (which notes that it is from February 2022). Figures 12.1-13.1 starting on page 30 show vaccination rates.
Projections starting on page 23 indicate that IHME is not forecasting a big wave this winter, presumably due to so much prior infection and vaccination. However, some others consider that to be too optimistic.
More stuff from IHME: COVID-19 | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
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It is just amazing to me that it is projected that >75% of the worldâs population has had Covid at least once and >90% of Americans have had Covid at least once. The other shocking data point that I saw was that the infection-detection rate globally was close to 3% on October 17 and that the US infection-detection rate was almost as low in the graphic provided. The mask usage projections (very low) and infection-fatality rate (< 0.2%) was expected and all that was missing was the latest Long Covid data. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, that seems to be the main missing information that leads to uncertainty among people with respect to how serious COVID-19 may be now (for themselves or others around them).
But then that may be due to inconsistent definitions of âlong COVIDâ, especially without distinguishing between minor / severe / disabling levels of symptoms and how long (weeks / months / permanent) they last, as well as what individual conditions (pre-existing conditions, vaccination, prior infection) affect the risk.
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Remember at the beginning of the pandemic when the goal was to hit herd immunity?
I havenât read anything which discusses the benefits of having achieved this to some sort of degree.
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Why do you find that surprising? Covid is highly transmissible and the vaccine only helps to lessen the effect, not stop anyone from getting covid. There was/is nothing to stop it. (And there were plenty of scientists/doctors saying that that would happen.)
So far, knock-on-wood, me and spouse are in that 10%, at least as far as we know. Been thinking about getting that blood test to see if we had it but never knew it as we were asymptomatic.
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Seems like it is only partial at best, due to the high contagiousness and the virusâ ability to evade immunity from prior infection and/or vaccination at least partially (unlike for some other viruses where infection or vaccination gives long term sterilizing immunity), although prior infection and/or vaccination reduce the risk of severe cases in future infections.
Back in the beginning, the argument was whether to get to herd immunity quickly (let everyone get infected and accept some of them dying, needing hospitalization, or getting long COVID) or less dangerously (try to hold off the virus through social distancing, masking, etc. until vaccines can reduce the risk of dying, needing hospitalization, or getting long COVID). The US ended up with a poor compromise where many people still got COVID-19 during the pre-vaccine days despite restrictions that were enough to be a significant âlockdown burdenâ but not enough to bring Rt below 1.
Of course, the lack of information in the early days meant that a lot of choices and decisions that seemed reasonable then turned out to be the incorrect choices when better information was discovered (e.g. initially, it was thought that large droplets and surface contamination were bigger transmission factors than they actually were, while airborne transmission was underestimated). There were also situations where all possible choices were rather bad, such as K-12 schools where going remote without any preparation for such meant loss of learning, but going back to in-person also meant loss of learning because teachers who got COVID-19 were out for significant periods of time, as were students who got COVID-19.
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It is surprising to me because probably only 50-60% of the people in my âvillageâ have tested positive for Covid-19. So that means that upwards of 40% of the people I know have probably had an asymptomatic case of Covid or a mild case that was never confirmed. And the number was greater than 90% so we could be approaching 95% already (especially where I live which was one of the 1st places to open back up in the summer of 2020). In my immediate household only 1 out of 4 of us have ever tested positive, but it is way more likely that we have all had Covid at some point.
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Yes, it looks like they are estimating unknown (e.g. asymptomatic, or mild symptoms that did not lead anyone to check if it was COVID-19), unreported (e.g. home test positive, no contact with anyone who may add it to the stats), and unconfirmed infections, rather than only those that have been reported or verified.
CDC COVID Data Tracker says that 57.7% of Americans have been infected as of February 2022. Probably many more have been infected since then due to the contagiousness and immunity-evasiveness of various Omicron variants. Many of the people I know who got COVID-19 got it between February 2022 and now.
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My spouse and I have yet to test positive for Covid - as far as we know neither has gotten it. We are definitely in the small minority among our friends and colleagues - pretty much everyone who didnât get it before this year ended up with some variation of Omicron. That includes some family members as well (but not anyone living with us and not my 92 yo parents who live in a senior community in another state).
Given that I ended up in the hospital following the Pfizer booster last December, I have declined any additional Covid mRNA vaccinations. Did get my flu shot, though.
Yes, Covid is highly transmissible. The vaccines DO (still) prevent some cases in some people.
Beyond that, as you say the vaccines lessen the severity of covid casesâŠstill to this day. And that includes reducing risk of long covid, reducing hospitalizations, and preventing death in many of those who become infected.
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Recent article on Long Covid and a recently released study from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Here are some of the main findings on data collected from Feburary 2021 and July 2022 from 16,091 adults who tested positive of Covid-19 and defined Long Covid as a persistence of COVID-19 symptoms beyond 2 months.
17.9% women met criteria for Long Covid
10.1% men met criteria for Long Covid
14.7% overall met criteria for Long Covid
Prior vaccination status from participants:
Unvaccinated: 13434 participants
Partial Vaccination: 414 participants
Fully Vaccinated: 2243 participants
Predominant variant (% of participants caught Covid during particular predominant variant)
Alpha 7.1%
Ancestral 53.8%
Delta 15.1%
Epsilon 9.8%
Omicron 14.2%
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Does the report have anything to say about whether being vaccinated appeared to make long COVID less likely?
Here is the direct quote from the Conclusions section of the study. Since a large percentage of the actual participants were unvaccinated, that gives me some hope that the vaccines are reducing the risk of Long Covid.
âIn aggregate, the results of this cross-sectional study provide an estimate of the mean point prevalence of long COVID in a large, representative population sample of individuals in the United States, complementing studies using administrative claims, electronic health records, or COVID-19âfocused self-report apps and surveys. They support the potential protective association of vaccination in reducing but not eliminating long COVID risk. If confirmed in prospective studies, these results may facilitate risk stratification, with a goal of early intervention to minimize the effect of long COVID, and could contribute to efforts to prevent this syndrome altogether.â
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