Covid 19 CRISIS

Is this delta or omicron driving this spike, @Misrabelle ?
They stopped sequencing most cases a few weeks ago, and I think they're only batch sampling a small number, but I think it's safe to say it's Omicron.
 
@Misrabelle given the spread of Omicron being super hard to slow down, it may even be (involuntarily) smart by your government to let Omicron pass in summer, when transmission is inherently lower, than locking down (partly) now and thus stretching the inevitable wave towards winter time.
 
Sure. None of us are advocating for lockdowns again, but the bare minimum that should have stayed in place - being masks indoors in public venues, and QR code check-ins. Literally a week after Omicron was declared a concern, our government just decided YOLO and scrapped the lot, against the Health experts' advice.
 
New lockdown here.

Restaurants dining room closed, not allowed to visit other people, curfew from 2200 until 0500 every day.
 
+1 more for the boosted crowd, went with Moderna for mix&match.
12 hour after the boost, it felt like the flu and couldn't move my arms above my head, let alone want to do such. 48 hours later, doing a bit better. Not quite back to normal, but getting closer. Would do again for a second booster in the future, if it helps to avoid a two week version going much worse (which it did in Jan 2020).
 
Sure. None of us are advocating for lockdowns again, but the bare minimum that should have stayed in place - being masks indoors in public venues, and QR code check-ins. Literally a week after Omicron was declared a concern, our government just decided YOLO and scrapped the lot, against the Health experts' advice.

Known as the US approach. Damn the virus, (economy) full speed ahead. Obviously it's worked well, I mean (so far) only 1 in 6 has gotten sick and 800,000+ have died. Nevermind what sort of long lasting health problems Some will have now. /s

Current numbers from the New York Times for the US. Look at the omicron spike. 😳





Screenshot_20211231-092855_NYTimes.jpg
 
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THL (Finnish public health authority) says we are on the same trajectory as Denmark and Norway. They expect the Omicron wave to be over within January (!).
 
Known as the US approach. Damn the virus, (economy) full speed ahead. Obviously it's worked well, I mean (so far) only 1 in 6 has gotten sick and 800,000+ have died. Nevermind what sort of long lasting health problems Sonne will have now. /s

Current numbers from the New York Times for the US. Look at the omicron spike. 😳





View attachment 3563490

Great, ain't it? /s
 
Known as the US approach. Damn the virus, (economy) full speed ahead. Obviously it's worked well, I mean (so far) only 1 in 6 has gotten sick and 800,000+ have died. Nevermind what sort of long lasting health problems Some will have now. /s
Based on the testing numbers and positive test rate from yestreday, it's now 1 in 5 people seeking PCR tests are positive. Which is completely ignoring those who were turned away from the queue to ease traffic congestion around testing sites, and those who got RATs to self test and avoid the queues. AND those who felt ill, but could get neither, so didn't test at all.

Doherty modelling predicted that for every 1 positive text, there are 4 cases that aren't being flagged.
Doctors have said that they're getting emails from superiors asking them to take nursing shifts on their days off.
Also, they've unofficially been told not to bother testing if they're close contacts unless they have symptoms. Because so many are out in isolation or unwell already. They should just continue working in full PPE.
ICU numbers jumped by 69 overnight. An ED worker in Sydney, said that almost every case in their ED right now is either Covid or Mental Health related.

Even the night that I called the ambulance for Dad, I was told there was a wait, as people were not being processed through the local emergency ward fast enough, so the ambulances were sitting in the waiting bay with patients waiting to hand over, and it was nearly an hour before they could get to Dad.

Our politicians are saying "the health system is coping", yet everyone who works in health is saying "No, it's not".
22,000+ cases announced today.
 
Asko Järvinen, chief physician for infectious diseases in the Helsinki and Uusimaa hospital districts points out something that's quickly forgotten in the face of "failing vaccine" storytelling and general doom:
Thank God, the majority of the population has been vaccinated. Without this, we would have no illness other than corona in hospitals if an outbreak [of Omicron size] were to occur. And I don't know if there would be enough space for all corona patients.

Other random Omicron facts from Finland:
  • We are probably nearing the peak of Omicron in the Helsinki area - daily case numbers have more than doubled from Christmas Eve to New Year's Eve, test positivity rate is 35%. With the reporting backlog from the weekend, I fully expect at least 20K cases to be reported today. Testing is overbooked until well into this week, and authorities say there is no use in ramping up testing since no matter how much we ramp up, it won't be able to keep up with demand
  • 20% of Corona patients admitted to hospital yesterday came for another problem and only got tested positive at check-in, which not only tells us reporting is skewed, but also that there's a lot more of Omicron going around than shows up in testing.
  • ICUs remain stable, slightly above the 50 patients/20% ICU capacity limit set for covid patients
  • As observed in South Africa, the Helsinki area (aka Omicron central) sees much shorter hospital stays, with some of those coming to hospital after Christmas already released before the weekend
  • With vaccination coverage reaching 90% of those over 12, weekly reports on vaccination status of those admitted to hospital has been ended - the final tally before Christmas still saw those less than 15% unvaccinated making up 57% of admissions.
 
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Omicron cases are increasing, but the death are stabilizing in the US. It might be a good idea to just keep the current status quo and let the wave pass.

Joe Rogan interviewed Robert Malone, claimed inventor of mRNA vaccine, he makes a good point that the mRNA vaccine could potentially make things worse.

 
Omicron cases are increasing, but the death are stabilizing in the US. It might be a good idea to just keep the current status quo and let the wave pass.
See here. While I hope you are right, I do not see it as a given yet.

Joe Rogan interviewed Robert Malone, claimed inventor of mRNA vaccine, he makes a good point that the mRNA vaccine could potentially make things worse.
Malone's claims have been debunked as pseudosicence a lot of times. Here's a very opinionated Forbes piece on him, that also links to fact-checking on his claims.

I think after a year of use and lots and lots of data to prove that the vaccines work, save lifes, and do not have all these made-up side effects we can put the "they make things worse" claims aside for good. Unless, of course, you are Joe Rogan.

Also, the whole "mass psychosis" storytelling is, once again, US bias: The partisan debate of the US is not universal, and even in those countries divided by partisanship over covid like Germany, the debate is split along different frontlines in the US.

This can serve as a good measuring stick to the credibility of any covid-related claim: The virus and the vaccines are the same everywhere. So does the claim hold true outside the political context it originated in, in this case, the US? If not, it's not covid, but something else that's at play.
 
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Who debunked him? The same Big Tech who censored him? He actually addressed the so-called fact checkers and what credentials those people have. Two years into the pandemic it's pretty obvious that the vaccines have not worked as intended, it's time to listen to some dissenting voices.
 
Who debunked him? The same Big Tech who censored him? He actually addressed the so-called fact checkers and what credentials those people have. Two years into the pandemic it's pretty obvious that the vaccines have not worked as intended, it's time to listen to some dissenting voices.
It is obvious from observation (i.e. looking at cases and severity of those in the general vaccinated/unvaccinated populace) that this is not true. But since you obviously have decided that any data I could come up with comes from sources you do not trust, let's agree to disagree here.
 
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Some people (me included) hoped that the vaccines would be the fix that made everything go away. Obviously this isn't the case, but it has helped keep people out of hospitals and turn many a severe covid case into a little flu.

Of course we're going to have vaccinated people in hospitals since we, the vaccinated, are in the vast majority. There are many of us (including me) that haven't had to seek medical care. I don't know if I've had it or not, I haven't even had as much as the sniffles since the pandemic began unless you count the side effects I got from the first booster. Those were fixed with a nights sleep.
 
Some people (me included) hoped that the vaccines would be the fix that made everything go away. Obviously this isn't the case, but it has helped keep people out of hospitals and turn many a severe covid case into a little flu.
I of course hoped, before Delta came around, that we can actually eradicate covid, go to (close to) zero cases, and thus be out of this shit within months.
But nevertheless, the vaccines, by doing just what you said, are making it go away: Once we are at a place where immunity is spread out enough that it does not wane/gets penetrated by a variant for all people at the same time, but across half a year or even a year and a half, this will fade into the background, like the flu does.
 
Who debunked him? The same Big Tech who censored him? He actually addressed the so-called fact checkers and what credentials those people have. Two years into the pandemic it's pretty obvious that the vaccines have not worked as intended, it's time to listen to some dissenting voices.

Not worked, how?
 
Using https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/ and a broad thumb, I'm estimating roughly these case fatality rates for the different waves:
W1, Feb-May 2020, 180k cases, 9k deaths allowing for a few extra weeks --> 5%
W2, Oct 2020-mid-Feb 2021, 2M cases, 61k deaths --> 3%
W3, mid-Feb 2021-May 2021, 1.5M cases, 20k deaths --> 1.3%
W4, August 2021-mid-Dec 2021 [ignoring recent cases because their outcome isn't fully known yet], 2.9M cases, 20k deaths --> 0.7%

I think the attribution of deaths to cases by shifting the data by a few weeks is accurate enough given the large number of samples the recent waves have provided us with. W1 was under-tested for cases, no idea by how much, and treatment may have been less ideal back then so I'll ignore W1. Test coverage between W2 and W4 hasn't really changed much, and breakthrough medications haven't really hit yet.

Going from 3 to 0.7 is a significant improvement.
What changed?
Lots of people got vax'd.


Edit: This is vax'd and unvax'd people's data mixed together - plenty sources confirm the vax-only data is another significant step better, the roughly 4x reduction in overall death rate is already achieved with the poor German vax rate.
 
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