Hoosier

There are a lot of stories out there from doctors and nurses about people in their 20s, 30s, 40s coming into the hospital sicker now than before. It's hard to quantify it exactly but I am not going to dismiss that.

I think a case can be made that Delta is more dangerous to unvaccinated people than previous versions of covid. Is it a tad, 1.5 times, 2 times, I don't know. But it is misleading to act like it's doubly dangerous to everybody.

It could be true. May start seeing a growing percentage of cases in vaccinated people. Cases in vaccinated people could even approach or exceed the percentages in unvaccinated people in areas with extremely high vaccination rates. That's what happens when the vax doesn't stop transmission and the pool of unvaccinated people shrinks to very low levels.

I disagree a bit. I think the case metric still has its place, but is not as important as it used to be and shouldn't be driving public policy. It's useful for hospitals to get an indicator that hey, we could start seeing more patients down the line. Also, it helps give some clue how much immunity we are gaining as a population.

Quite the case number if it pans out. Seems high but this isn't some random guy on twitter suggesting it.

So annoying. One time me and another car got to the stop sign at the same time and we both started to go. Go, stop, go, stop, go, stop... happened several times. What I usually do now when it looks like I may get to the stop sign at the same time as someone else is slow down or speed up a touch so that it is clear who got there first.

There's a lot to be learned about long covid but I think it's pretty clearly a real thing. Some of the symptoms are hard to explain away as just "all in someone's head"

We gotta get more quality data on Ivermectin. It's a little hard to trust as I suspect there is a big overlap between the proponents of that and hydroxychloroquine and not getting vaxxed, despite vaccination demonstrating overwhelmingly clear benefit at reducing severe disease/death.

Not too thrilled locally as I currently expect the brunt to remain north, but we'll see how it evolves. At least it'll be something to watch tonight.

The UK has something like 90% of their age 50+ vaccinated. So even after adjusting for population differences, I think we will fare somewhat worse than they did, but the fatality numbers here will look a lot better than the previous waves.

From where?

We will be throwing in an extra variable of schools reopening on a widespread basis, so will be interesting to see how that factors in. Maybe a slower drop than otherwise? Who really knows.

I think it depends on what you mean. Assuming a person has not really changed their habits of going out and about, the chances of encountering the virus are higher now than in May in virtually the entire country. It's pretty much basic math.

This article on breakthroughs breaks it down in a simple way that is easy to understand https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/anatomy-of-a-vaccine-breakthrough/619562/

This must be rare given the age... 33 year old died from a breakthrough covid case. https://www.wdsu.com/amp/article/we-are-going-to-miss-her-nola-business-owner-dies-from-covid-19-family-says-she-was-vaccinated/37138394

That is actually the warmest temperature this year at ORD.

Phin, I'd like to.think you are too smart to fall for that talking point. Many others will probably use it to show how "the vaccines are failing" though. It comes down to share of people vaccinated vs unvaccinated in the more vulnerable age groups. The image below explains the general concept fairly well.

The vaccines are ostensibly harmless for the vast, vast majority (I say that since long term data will have to be collected) but we shouldn't pretend like a tiny sliver of people don't have really serious side effects. I'm not a fan of having vaccine mandates, certainly not at the govt level and even those that are employer/school based, but I understand there is a lot of precedent especially for the latter. I'd probably get more onboard with vaccine mandates if the legal protections against these entities were removed. I say this as someone who is fully vaxxed against covid.

I'm not sure how this is all going to work as long as there isn't an official recommendation in the US to get a booster yet. What if somebody walks in to a vaccination site and is like "I want a booster now." How is that gonna be handled? And if it does get recommended only for certain groups, say immunocompromised or anybody over 65, there's going to be people who don't qualify who are going to be upset.

Your side effects and progression sound similar to mine. Had 2nd Pfizer on June 14 and started getting aches and some chills and just an overall ill feeling when I was getting ready for bed that night. Tossed and turned a lot. The 15th was not pleasant. Was able to function but just did not feel well. I was about 80-90% back to normal when I woke up on the 16th. Soreness in arm took 4 days to completely go away.

I do watch the numbers regularly. Believe it or not, it is possible to post about rising numbers without freaking out. I'm simply making observations. I am not in here advocating for a return of restrictions/mask mandates.

Kinda hard to believe that national average cases per day were not that far above 10k as recently as late June. Not necessarily shocking to see rising numbers, but if you expected it to increase this much this fast, good for you but you're probably lying. Fwiw, the highest daily case number in the 2020 summer surge was near 80k. May beat that at some point at the rate things are going. Yeah, things are more open now, but the southern US in particular wasn't exactly locked down nor having severe restrictions in the summer of 2020. I'm not sure how much more "open" they are now compared to last year at this time.

I think we need more evidence to sort it all out. Whether it's more deadly overall or just more deadly to the unvaccinated than previous covid variants are two different questions. It seems like it's a pretty clear no on the first question, but more unclear on the second one.

Well, we were told there were no issues with KLAF.

Would be interesting to see an age breakdown of deaths in FL. Obviously a very large senior population but you'd assume at least 3/4 of them have been vaccinated.