Covid 19 CRISIS

Ok, so there are some who went in for reasons related something else.
"Some" was 51%.

And previously When tested for Covid weren’t separated, how does this make anything interesting?
It's interesting if you want accurate data on why those 11,548 people were hospitalized. Apparently, NYC thinks so also.

With the effects a lot of folks have had to the virus what’s wrong with testing them and having to take extra precautions to keep hospital staff and others safer?
I nor the article said anything was wrong with testing or having extra precautions.
 
This just once again shows us that Omicron is spread across the population to an insane extend.
 
So why can Portugal drop restrictions in the midst of the Omicron wave while Finnish hospitals fill up?
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Vaccination rate! With 95+% vax rate, I'd be going to a bar tonight. Alas, that's not the case.
 
If I were to wait for such a vaccination rate here, I'd never go out again.
Agreed, this does not make any sense. But then again, I am not passing judgement.
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I was not referring to my own feeling of security, to make that clear, but to the fact that with a higher vax rate bars would be open (since load on hospitals would be waaaaay lower), while in reality they are shut down in what I believe to be a futile attempt to slow down Omicron (which will not stop government ministers from taking credit once the wave peaks in a few days, probably over the next weekend).
I have long decided that being triple-vaxxed a breakthrough infection is something I will gladly accept as the price of having a social life.
 
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Meanwhile, we lost a local racer to Covid today. Of course he was a denier and most likely not vaccinated then.

Overheard dad talking with a race promoter earlier, one of his sponsors and friend lost his wife recently due to Covid. A quick look at his Facebook page found him to be a denier as well.

Sad that these folks put their life in the hands of idiots and pay the price for it.
This is the part that hurts the most, I think. This nonsense is so prevalent among car people here, and I don't understand it. I'm a hesitant to get back into events around here because I don't want to be near folks who are being reckless about this. It's yet another reason why I wish I could move somewhere else, where sanity and reason are the norm instead of the exception.

I wish there were consequences for the people who've actively used their platforms or positions of power to mislead, harm and/or ultimately kill others during this. Let them suffer instead of the regular folks who bought into their lies.

I second Chris's Exhausted Ben.
 
I agree, another year of the BS of how this is all fake, vaccines kill, etc. from racers is just going to be made even worse when one of their own was killed by Covid.

Dad talked to a racer that knew him well today. This dude's idea as to why he died? They put him on a ventilator. *Tired Ben*

Admittedly, this guy was at the Capital on January 6th, if that tells you anything.
 
I agree, another year of the BS of how this is all fake, vaccines kill, etc. from racers is just going to be made even worse when one of their own was killed by Covid.

Dad talked to a racer that knew him well today. This dude's idea as to why he died? They put him on a ventilator. *Tired Ben*

Admittedly, this guy was at the Capital on January 6th, if that tells you anything.

So that’s why grandma dies?
 
I agree, another year of the BS of how this is all fake, vaccines kill, etc. from racers is just going to be made even worse when one of their own was killed by Covid.

Dad talked to a racer that knew him well today. This dude's idea as to why he died? They put him on a ventilator. *Tired Ben*

Admittedly, this guy was at the Capital on January 6th, if that tells you anything.
Yikes to........all of that.

The amount of mental gymnastics it takes to blame the ventilator is just unbelievable. People don't get put on a ventilator out of nowhere, FFS.
 
"Why is Bear Grylls trending on Twitter today?"

Oh.

OH.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Y'know, if you're dead set on ruining everything for the rest of us, you DESERVE to drink pee.
 
We have the vax rate, and yet our hospitals are overwhelmed. Both from people going in with Covid, on top of the usual medical emergencies, and because so many workers in the sector are isolating with Covid themselves, that patient ratios are too high to receive the care in emergency and ICU that they are supposed to get, because the remaining staff have to cover the gaps.

Supply chains are screwed because so many truck drivers are out of action.

Still can't find a RAT unless you're queued up before the shops open, and even then retailers can charge whatever they want, so people can't afford them anyway, especially if they're off work because they are symptomatic. No test, no payments.

Our daily reported numbers are half what they were last week, but so is the testing, so those numbers are useless, while hospital cases, ICU and deaths continue to climb. 18 dead yesterday, 11 today.
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The driver that worked in the yard with a friend who tested positive the next day, received a positive result this morning, from a test on Saturday. So there's now no way I haven't also got it.
I'm asymptomatic, apart from my body aching, which could realistically be because I've been running everything for the last month, and working pretty bloody hard. I think he and I are lucky, that we both got boosted just after Christmas, so we're in the sweet spot for immunity from the vaccine. If this gives us Super-immunity for the next 6 months or so, that's a bonus.

But now I have to stay away from mother, who is going to have to stay away from Dad. Fanfuckingtastic. I've never cared too much about me getting it, but I don't want to pass it on to my parents.
 
Still can't get a RAT. Still no obvious symptoms, so off to work I go. Gotta drive a bus for the next 3 days, because the driver that has the positive, can't work for the rest of the week.

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They’ve changed their graphic. Now that they figured out in NSW how to let people report their positive RATs, and told everyone they MUST do it, *surprised Pikachu* the numbers have blown out. Also, most deaths reported today are among the vaccinated; from the press conference I believe it was 14.

Read a great article this morning on just how badly miss-handled this bullshit has been here under the new premier. Unfortunately it was on mobile and I can’t find the link now.

So today, he announced that NSW has been a “success” in managing the tidal wave, when apparently no one could have foreseen the current situation unfolding prior to December 15 when they decided to abandon all measures.

Except literally everyone that had been yelling warnings that exactly this was coming.

His precious economy, is screwed, we’re spending less than at any point in lockdowns, and businesses that survived the lockdowns are now disappearing.

But at least there is a RAT (and a puppy) waiting for me at work today!

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Had a brief spook, thought I caught it while traveling and on job sites. I got a self test kit from a local pharmacy which apparently when you ask for one means nobody in line wants you to wait near them. I got passed through to check out before 2 people. :D

test was negative.
 
Also, most deaths reported today are among the vaccinated; from the press conference I believe it was 14.
Not replying to rants any more, just quickly pointing out a fact: With 95% VAX rate that hopefully is skewed towards 98% or more within the elderly and at-risk groups, this is to be expected. With next to no unvaccinated (who get even less due to their higher death rate), how shall they provide the majority of the dead? If your figure of 14 dead is correct at at 95% vaccination rate, 5% of the population provide over one third of the dead - corrected for population share that would be 152 unvaccinated dead vs 14 vaccinated.

EDIT: Nature has an article about our immune system being awesome: T-Cell response against Omicron stays basically unchanged/unharmed compared to OG covid.
T-cell levels do not tend to fade as quickly as antibodies after an infection or vaccination. And because T cells can recognize many more sites along the spike protein than can antibodies, they are better able to recognize mutated variants. “What sounds like a lot of mutations doesn’t dent the T-cell response,” says Burgers.

So far, computer and lab analyses suggest that this is the case for Omicron. Several research groups have cross-referenced the mutations in Omicron with sites in the SARS-CoV-2 genome that are known targets of T cells. They have found that the majority of sites that T cells recognize are present in Omicron1.

Other studies have analysed T cells taken from people who have either received a COVID-19 vaccine or been infected with a previous variant, and found that these T cells can respond to Omicron24. “The T-cell responses remain quite intact, that’s good news,” says Corine Geurts van Kessel, a clinical virologist at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

 
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First data on Omicron immune escape is in.

tl;dr: Bad, but not catastrophic, pretty much as expected from computer modeling.
Caveat: Very small study (12 samples, all vaccinated with BioNTech, five with prior infection)
What gives me the most hope is not only the clinical data coming in from South Africa and the UK, showing only mild infections in adults infected with Omicron. This may well be not because the virus itself has changed to causing less severe disease, but that it's key advatage over Delta is the ability to reinfect people - whose immune system then already know what to do and kicks the bugger right out again.
So, we are now about two months into the Omicron mess. What can we see?
  • It's milder. For the first time ever, we see a variant that is milder than what we had before. And by now evidence is rolling in that it is not only due to population immunity, but also through the virus' main attack having moved away from the lungs. That's great news, especially since it will be hard for a future variant that causes more severe covid to outcompete this.
  • Vaccines are holding up against severe cases: Close to no vaccinated end up in an ICU, only few vaccinated end up in hospital, and those who need care there need it for a shorter time. Never the less, just as with any illness, people will still die of Omicron: If your body is weakened, be it through cancer/cancer therapy/some other disease, or just old age, something normally completely harmless can and will kill you. This is why news of "OMG first vaccinated omicron death" does not scare me.
  • Sadly, it's also spreading like wildfire, and not only because of immune escape - case numbers are going through the roof despite severe undertesting even in the best-equipped nations. For our small town (630k people) of Helsinki, estimates go towards at least 10.000 daily infections - that's an easy 1.5% of the population. Looking at data from South Africa, New York City, or London, I expect Helsinki to be peaking within the next few days.
  • Experts increasingly sound like "this is so good at spreading, restrictions won't make a huge dent" - estimates go towards half of Europe having had it before the quarter is over.
  • Consequently, even the vastly lower hospitalization rate of Omicron leads to an overloaded healthcare system, amplified by staff absences. The next few weeks will be interesting, and not in a good way. Staying with Helsinki as an example: We have by far the best heathcare infrastructure of all of Finland, are already struggling now, and even with cases peaking within the next few days, the amount of hospital admissions will continue to increase for some time after that peak. Seeing that play out in rural communities will not be nice.
  • But with the level of background immunity, also covering a wider range of mutations, we will have after Omicron, any future wave most likely will play out in slow motion, so this may well be the last hardcore "pandemic winter".
 
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