Coronavirus

[winterwx21]

23 minutes ago, BuffaloWeather said:

This dude is in better shape than 99.9% of people. He didn't die, but who would like to go what he had to go through?

Exclusive: Minnesota Wild's Marco Rossi on COVID-19 complications, 'I'm just happy that I'm still alive'

There continues to be one absolutely terrifying comment that still reverberates around his head. As the Minnesota Wild’s 2020 first-round pick attempted to negotiate with experts that he should at least be allowed to exercise and skate a little bit rather than be completely shut down for two months, it was explained bluntly to the teenage hockey star just how serious his medical diagnosis was.

“The doctors told me if I played one more game in the World Junior Championship, this could have ended completely different,” Rossi said Tuesday, his voice still quavering from the memory of how close he may have been to a tragic ending. “I’m thankful to God that he supported me. … I’m just happy that I’m still alive.”

Knowing Rossi was devastated by the realization that he was that close to potentially having his heart stop on the ice, Wild general manager Bill Guerin sent Rossi home to Austria to be with his parents.

Rossi was petrified. Anytime he was alone, he worried his heart was going to stop. After returning home to Austria, Rossi lived with his parents and each night begged his mother, Claudia, and father, Michael, to sleep in his room.

After being drafted by the Wild in October, Rossi signed his three-year, entry-level contract a few weeks later. The Wild assigned him to the ZSC Lions in Zurich, Switzerland, to allow him to play hockey and ramp up for a potential Wild training camp in the winter. He played one game, registered an assist but was then diagnosed with COVID-19. He experienced mild symptoms, including lower back pain. By the time he was cleared and ready to return, three other players tested positive and the team was put into quarantine.

Still, during his comeback attempt with the Lions, Rossi said he was absolutely exhausted. He figured it was because he was so used to pushing his body to great lengths and his body must have been shellshocked from not being allowed to do anything during his 10-day COVID-19 quarantine.

“My exhaustion (from Switzerland) always kept going. It didn’t stop. Like, it was never, ‘Now I’m back to 100 percent,’” Rossi said. “At the tournament, that was the highest point where I said, ‘OK, I can’t do it anymore. I’m so tired.’”

Dr. Bill Morice, the president of Mayo Clinic Laboratories and chair of Lab Medicine and Pathology at the Rochester, Minn.-based hospital, explained there are four ways to diagnose myocarditis: Blood work can show an elevation of some of the enzymes specific to the heart muscle that can leak into the blood if there’s inflammation; EKG abnormalities; imaging, like an MRI; and a heart biopsy, which is the most definitive but not commonly done.

After follow-ups to the initial bloodwork, Rossi and the Wild got definitive news that he indeed had myocarditis.

Neither the Rossis nor Payer are blaming the ZSC Lions or Team Austria for clearing Rossi to return after his bout with COVID-19.

“I don’t want to blame anyone,” Rossi said. “The COVID is so new to everyone, and nobody really knows what is the best reaction to do. … I’m just happy that I’m still alive.”

You always post something like this after I've pointed out the severe covid risk reduction from being in shape through exercise. I realize it is not 100% protection. There will always be some severe cases in people that are in shape. But it does greatly reduce risk. I've posted several studies that have showed that.

Myocarditis is a rare covid complication in athletes. There was a major study done that showed that it happened to 0.6% of athletes, so the number is very low. Much lower than the general population. Being in athlete level shape does give a high level of protection, but again there will always be some cases. You can get vaccinated and reduce the risk to just about zero, or get into shape and have a very low risk that you can live with. My main point is do not let yourself get out of shape AND not get the vaccine, because then the risk is much higher. It's very sad when you see the stories of young people dying.

[Hoosier]

9 hours ago, StormfanaticInd said:

 

I noticed that on a population basis, we are still running at a higher hospitalization level in IN than the country as a whole.  If our rate translated across the country, it would be the equivalent of ~36k people in the hospital.

[Scorpion]

People under 40 that get serious issues with this are either overweight or have birth defects, flu would probably be just as bad on them.

[winterwx21]

Here in NJ they lifted the mask mandate yesterday. I went to Shoprite today, and they are still requiring customers to wear masks. I didn't see 1 customer without a mask today. I heard Stop & Shop is doing the same thing. Stores in this area are being extra cautious, and I think that's fine. Nothing wrong with being cautious for a little longer. We are down to just a few hundred cases being reported per day in NJ, a huge drop from the 4 to 5 thousand that were being reported per day a couple months ago. I would think when we get into the middle of summer and cases are down to just a handful per day, the stores with stop requiring masks. I did go to the bakery today as well, and they removed the mask requirement. For now it's gonna a mix in this state with some businesses requiring them and some not.

[Jonger]

2 hours ago, Scorpion said:

People under 40 that get serious issues with this are either overweight or have birth defects, flu would probably be just as bad on them.

Probably. I personally don't know anyone who developed more than a stuffy nose for a couple days. 

[TimB]

2 hours ago, Scorpion said:

People under 40 that get serious issues with this are either overweight or have birth defects, flu would probably be just as bad on them.

Yeah, but do you hear about overweight people under 40 dying from the flu all the time?

[TimB]

4 hours ago, winterwx21 said:

You always post something like this after I've pointed out the severe covid risk reduction from being in shape through exercise. I realize it is not 100% protection. There will always be some severe cases in people that are in shape. But it does greatly reduce risk. I've posted several studies that have showed that.

Myocarditis is a rare covid complication in athletes. There was a major study done that showed that it happened to 0.6% of athletes, so the number is very low. Much lower than the general population. Being in athlete level shape does give a high level of protection, but again there will always be some cases. You can get vaccinated and reduce the risk to just about zero, or get into shape and have a very low risk that you can live with. My main point is do not let yourself get out of shape AND not get the vaccine, because then the risk is much higher. It's very sad when you see the stories of young people dying.

Because you’ve pointed this out more times than your heart beats per minute, which admittedly isn’t very many, but still.

[winterwx21]

10 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

Because you’ve pointed this out more times than your heart beats per minute, which admittedly isn’t very many, but still.

It's just a shame seeing these stories of young people dying because they didn't realize that they were at higher Covid risk due to their health, so I feel it's important to hammer the point that it's critical for young people to get into shape if they don't want to be vaccinated. BuffaloWeather always responds with these posts about rare cases where athletes get more sick, like he doesn't understand that a very significant risk reduction through exercise is a very important thing for people that won't take the vaccine. These rare severe cases are going to happen, but you'd much rather have a very tiny risk than a much more significant risk. So I'm not sure why he keeps responding to my posts this way.

[winterwx21]

25 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

Yeah, but do you hear about overweight people under 40 dying from the flu all the time?

You're definitely right about this. Covid is much much worse than the flu for young people that are overweight and have underlying health conditions.

[Hoosier]

Sounds like the Pfizer vaccine is somewhat less effective (though still offering good protection) against the variant out of India.  Quite possibly also the case for Moderna since that vax is similar.

[Malacka11]

I just feel like the whole mantra of people needing to lose weight to prevent death from Covid, no matter if it's valid or not, is a moot point because if you're already overweight then that means you're living with the fact that your lifespan is being dramatically shortened day by day, and that you're susceptible to a host of severe illnesses (diabetes, heart disease); ergo, Covid is not going to be the tipping point that convinces them to radically change their lives.

[schoeppeya]

8 hours ago, Malacka11 said:

I just feel like the whole mantra of people needing to lose weight to prevent death from Covid, no matter if it's valid or not, is a moot point because if you're already overweight then that means you're living with the fact that your lifespan is being dramatically shortened day by day, and that you're susceptible to a host of severe illnesses (diabetes, heart disease); ergo, Covid is not going to be the tipping point that convinces them to radically change their lives.

I think this is a good and valid argument here. But it’s also frustrating for people that do take care of themselves that their lives have been so impacted primarily (decisive word, I know) for those who don’t. 

[TimB]

11 minutes ago, schoeppeya said:

I think this is a good and valid argument here. But it’s also frustrating for people that do take care of themselves that their lives have been so impacted primarily (decisive word, I know) for those who don’t. 

Same reason it’s completely rational for people who got the vaccine, no questions asked, to be resentful of people who won’t get it.

[schoeppeya]

27 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

Same reason it’s completely rational for people who got the vaccine, no questions asked, to be resentful of people who won’t get it.

May be an over generalization but I don’t think most the people who aren’t getting the vaccine support restrictions. That’s not true in reverse.

[TimB]

4 minutes ago, schoeppeya said:

May be an over generalization but I don’t think most the people who aren’t getting the vaccine support restrictions. That’s not true in reverse.

 My point is, nearly everyone would like life to get back to some semblance of normal at some point. Yeah, some of us (including me) would love to work mostly from home forever or not have people halfway up our ass in every public place we go to, but for me personally, people refusing to get vaccinated are prolonging the amount of time until I get to travel internationally again and prolonging the time I have to worry about the virus mutating into some form that my vaccine isn’t resistant against. So yeah, just as healthy people are resentful of overweight people, vaccinated people have just as much of a reason to be resentful of unvaccinated people. The logic is the same.

[mattb65]

2 hours ago, TimB84 said:

 My point is, nearly everyone would like life to get back to some semblance of normal at some point. Yeah, some of us (including me) would love to work mostly from home forever or not have people halfway up our ass in every public place we go to, but for me personally, people refusing to get vaccinated are prolonging the amount of time until I get to travel internationally again and prolonging the time I have to worry about the virus mutating into some form that my vaccine isn’t resistant against. So yeah, just as healthy people are resentful of overweight people, vaccinated people have just as much of a reason to be resentful of unvaccinated people. The logic is the same.

More of a reason to be resentful.  Getting vaccinated is a much easier life change than changing from an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy one. 

In the former you need to take a short amount of your day, endure a minor pain in the arm and maybe a couple days of feeling yucky. In the latter it's often an every day struggle and often comes with a lifetime of baggage for why someone has become unhealthy that needs to change. 

[StormfanaticInd]

Reporting is  low this holiday weekend but the numbers are very encouraging 

[StormfanaticInd]

I believe most of the deaths being reported now are backlogs from earlier in the year 

[TimB]

1 hour ago, mattb65 said:

More of a reason to be resentful.  Getting vaccinated is a much easier life change than changing from an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy one. 

In the former you need to take a short amount of your day, endure a minor pain in the arm and maybe a couple days of feeling yucky. In the latter it's often an every day struggle and often comes with a lifetime of baggage for why someone has become unhealthy that needs to change. 

Correct, but I was trying to toe the line here and take a middle ground.

[Hoosier]

35 minutes ago, StormfanaticInd said:

I believe most of the deaths being reported now are backlogs from earlier in the year 

Could be, though the definition of backlog has some subjectivity.  I think we'd all agree that anybody who died 3 or 4 months ago and is reported now is a backlog, but what about 1 month ago?  

[winterwx21]

2 hours ago, mattb65 said:

More of a reason to be resentful.  Getting vaccinated is a much easier life change than changing from an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy one. 

In the former you need to take a short amount of your day, endure a minor pain in the arm and maybe a couple days of feeling yucky. In the latter it's often an every day struggle and often comes with a lifetime of baggage for why someone has become unhealthy that needs to change. 

A lot of people are not getting vaccinated because they're naturally immune due to previous Covid infection. Is there reason to be resentful of these people? It makes no sense to me taking a shot that you don't need. There have been studies that have come out lately that have shown that natural protection from previous infection is long lasting. In fact there was a study that came out in the last week where they looked at the bone marrow samples of recovered patients, and it found that they still had protection 11 months later. This is great news for people that already had Covid. I do not like that health authorities are trying to push people that are already immune naturally to still get the vaccine. Makes little sense to take a shot that you don't need.

And as far as the healthy lifestyle, to me it doesn't seem like a struggle. 5 days a week of doing about 1 hour of intense exercise. That's what it took for me to lose 30 pounds. There are 168 hours in a week, so 5 hours set aside for exercise in a week doesn't seem like that much to ask to me. It's not as if you have to exercise for hours every day to lose a significant amount of weight.

[schoeppeya]

2 hours ago, mattb65 said:

More of a reason to be resentful.  Getting vaccinated is a much easier life change than changing from an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy one. 

In the former you need to take a short amount of your day, endure a minor pain in the arm and maybe a couple days of feeling yucky. In the latter it's often an every day struggle and often comes with a lifetime of baggage for why someone has become unhealthy that needs to change. 

You’re talking about something that would have made the pandemic orders of magnitude less consequential- the pandemic cost us hundreds of thousands of lives it didn’t need to, and we won’t really know the economic implications of the policies we’ve executed for the next few years and even decades. And in the end, the vaccine might as well be a band aid for a lot of people in our country. And they will continue to slap more and more band aids on until there’s one that doesn’t work and being fat will still kill them in the end. 

[schoeppeya]

5 hours ago, TimB84 said:

 My point is, nearly everyone would like life to get back to some semblance of normal at some point. Yeah, some of us (including me) would love to work mostly from home forever or not have people halfway up our ass in every public place we go to, but for me personally, people refusing to get vaccinated are prolonging the amount of time until I get to travel internationally again and prolonging the time I have to worry about the virus mutating into some form that my vaccine isn’t resistant against. So yeah, just as healthy people are resentful of overweight people, vaccinated people have just as much of a reason to be resentful of unvaccinated people. The logic is the same.

It’s not. You’re missing the point completely, actually. I think at this point anybody who isn’t vaccinated is probably screaming for things to get back to normal faster than anyone. 
 

On the bright side, the pandemics pretty much done with as far as my little world is concerned. Feels good. 

[Hoosier]

18 minutes ago, winterwx21 said:

A lot of people are not getting vaccinated because they're naturally immune due to previous Covid infection. Is there reason to be resentful of these people? It makes no sense to me taking a shot that you don't need. There have been studies that have come out lately that have shown that natural protection from previous infection is long lasting. In fact there was a study that came out in the last week where they looked at the bone marrow samples of recovered patients, and it found that they still had protection 11 months later. This is great news for people that already had Covid. I do not like that health authorities are trying to push people that are already immune naturally to still get the vaccine. Makes little sense to take a shot that you don't need.

And as far as the healthy lifestyle, to me it doesn't seem like a struggle. 5 days a week of doing about 1 hour of intense exercise. That's what it took for me to lose 30 pounds. There are 168 hours in a week, so 5 hours set aside for exercise in a week doesn't seem like that much to ask to me. It's not as if you have to exercise for hours every day to lose a significant amount of weight.

I know the P.1 variant (Brazil) has shown more of an ability to reinfect people who previously had covid.  That variant has not really taken off in a big way in the US so far though.  Personally I don't think "I already had covid" is a solid reason to never get the vaccine, but for people who had covid, maybe delaying it is warranted.

As far as overweight people, I think we have to separate this out.  If you're massively obese (I'm talking like 300-400 pounds), there's not much of an excuse for that.  I don't care if you're poor and only have access to crappy quality food.  You're not going to get to that level unless you're frequently in a huge calorie surplus.  A lot more people are moderately overweight, and for some of them, it's not so easy to drop the pounds for various reasons.

[TimB]

On 5/30/2021 at 4:09 PM, schoeppeya said:

It’s not. You’re missing the point completely, actually. I think at this point anybody who isn’t vaccinated is probably screaming for things to get back to normal faster than anyone. 
 

On the bright side, the pandemics pretty much done with as far as my little world is concerned. Feels good. 

So you would say that “fat people are making this last longer than it needs to” is somehow a MORE logical position to take than “unvaccinated people are making this last longer than it needs to”? Yeah, we’re done here. Agree to disagree.

Edit: Oh God, THIS was my 1000th post. Figures.

[TimB]

51 minutes ago, winterwx21 said:

A lot of people are not getting vaccinated because they're naturally immune due to previous Covid infection. Is there reason to be resentful of these people? It makes no sense to me taking a shot that you don't need. There have been studies that have come out lately that have shown that natural protection from previous infection is long lasting. In fact there was a study that came out in the last week where they looked at the bone marrow samples of recovered patients, and it found that they still had protection 11 months later. This is great news for people that already had Covid. I do not like that health authorities are trying to push people that are already immune naturally to still get the vaccine. Makes little sense to take a shot that you don't need.

And as far as the healthy lifestyle, to me it doesn't seem like a struggle. 5 days a week of doing about 1 hour of intense exercise. That's what it took for me to lose 30 pounds. There are 168 hours in a week, so 5 hours set aside for exercise in a week doesn't seem like that much to ask to me. It's not as if you have to exercise for hours every day to lose a significant amount of weight.

I would guess that, of people who are unvaccinated, there is a greater portion whose reason is “because Bill Gates/ liberals/ microchips/ that chemical in fireflies/ some gobbledygook I read on Facebook” than whose reason is “because I’m healthy and don’t think I need it”. You’re giving the human race a lot of credit here.

[winterwx21]

7 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

I know the P.1 variant (Brazil) has shown more of an ability to reinfect people who previously had covid.  That variant has not really taken off in a big way in the US so far though.  Personally I don't think "I already had covid" is a solid reason to never get the vaccine, but for people who had covid, maybe delaying it is warranted.

As far as overweight people, I think we have to separate this out.  If you're massively obese (I'm talking like 300-400 pounds), there's not much of an excuse for that.  I don't care if you're poor and only have access to crappy quality food.  You're not going to get to that level unless you're frequently in a huge calorie surplus.  A lot more people are moderately overweight, and for some of them, it's not so easy to drop the pounds for various reasons.

No question it's difficult for some people for a number of reasons, and that's why I would never judge all people for failing to lose weight. Some people have health problems that prevent them from being able to exercise. Others have very difficult jobs where they work tremendously long hours, and that makes it very difficult to exercise. There are healthy food issues, as you said. So some people certainly have valid reasons, but of course there are many people that do not have valid reasons and could lose the weight if they wanted to. It's a shame that so many of these people have died because they didn't understand that they were at greater severe Covid risk due to being out of shape.

A huge problem has been the lack of messaging from health authorities during this pandemic. Recently I posted the study done in California where they looked at nearly 50,000 people that got Covid, and found that the people that were physically inactive had much higher rates of hospitalization and death than people that were consistently physically active. Dr. Robert Sallis, a family and sports medicine physician, was the lead author of the study. He is one of many doctors that have been VERY upset with the health authorities for not getting the message out during the pandemic. Here are a few quotes from Dr. Sallis...

"The bottom line from our data is that physical inactivity is the biggest modifiable risk factor of severe Covid," Sallis says.

"Unfortunately, most of the messaging has been around just hide in the house, wear a mask, distance and wait for a vaccine," Sallis says. "And that's been a huge mistake. We speak very little, which is typical in health care today, about personal responsibility, and people need to take control of their health and the best way to do it is by being active."

"A message that physical activity could protect you from ending up in the hospital, in my view, could have saved lives over the past year, but I would also say it's not too late to get started."

 

So many other doctors are making similar quotes. It's just really a shame that a pandemic of this horrific level didn't have to happen. The state of health is very sad, and a big problem is many doctors themselves are in denial about this problem and refuse to get the message out.

[schoeppeya]

21 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

So you would say that “fat people are making this last longer than it needs to” is somehow a MORE logical position to take than “unvaccinated people are making this last longer than it needs to”? Yeah, we’re done here. Agree to disagree.

Why don’t you argue against what I’m saying instead of what you think I’m saying. Overweight people are one of the primary reasons (the foremost reason, actually) this pandemic was so impactful in the first place. 

[schoeppeya]

28 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

I would guess that, of people who are unvaccinated, there is a greater portion whose reason is “because Bill Gates/ liberals/ microchips/ that chemical in fireflies/ some gobbledygook I read on Facebook” than whose reason is “because I’m healthy and don’t think I need it”. You’re giving the human race a lot of credit here.

You're wrong here and overgeneralizing a demographic that you disagree with politically. 

[schoeppeya]

41 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

I know the P.1 variant (Brazil) has shown more of an ability to reinfect people who previously had covid.  That variant has not really taken off in a big way in the US so far though.  Personally I don't think "I already had covid" is a solid reason to never get the vaccine, but for people who had covid, maybe delaying it is warranted.

As far as overweight people, I think we have to separate this out.  If you're massively obese (I'm talking like 300-400 pounds), there's not much of an excuse for that.  I don't care if you're poor and only have access to crappy quality food.  You're not going to get to that level unless you're frequently in a huge calorie surplus.  A lot more people are moderately overweight, and for some of them, it's not so easy to drop the pounds for various reasons.

Like too much food and not enough exercise?