COVID-19 vaccines: medical concerns and recommendations

[Risto]

I found this site in an NPR article on “good masks that aren’t fake crap from Amazon”. There’s a variety of masks and manufacturers available. The Gersons I bought are made in USA and have worn well for me.

https://www.projectn95.org/

Also worth a look: https://www.armbrustusa.com/pages/mask-testing

I’ve ordered some USA made n95s from them.

[whomever]

Gen-u-ine 3M N95's are available from industrial supply places like McMaster, from hardware stores including e.g. Home Depot, etc. I think I saw some at NAPA the other day.

[4RNR]

Gen-u-ine 3M N95's are available from industrial supply places like McMaster, from hardware stores including e.g. Home Depot, etc. I think I saw some at NAPA the other day.

Home Depot, Lowe's... That's where I got mine before the winter of 2019/20

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[Dog Guy]

Thank you all for the mask feedback.

[theJanitor]

So in my small circle of acquaintances, over the past month, I've directly seen:

about 1 dozen coronavirus/covid infections
one person that died from covid complications recently. He was a bit overweight. He went down hard and fast.
one person that started coughing up blood the day after his Pfizer booster. He went to the hospital the other day, no update on him yet
one person that had a heart attack the day after his booster (uinknown brand) and died
my buddy's nephew (6yo) that had swelling in his brain right after the vax, he's getting back to normal after loss of balance, dexterity and speech)

[pangloss]

WOW the CDC really screwed the pooch with the variant proportions last week. They claimed Omicron had increased from ~3% of cases to 73% nationwide but today they revised that 73 down to 22% (well outside their 95% confidence interval). They now say Omicron currently accounts for 56% of cases nationwide.

That means Delta is still largely behind hospitalizations.

I don't understand how the CDC comes up with their numbers, but they would be doing themselves a favor if they were a little slower and a lot more accurate.

For the seven day period ending shortly before Christmas, we were 45-50% Omicron. Now, all COVID numbers are following a very sharp upward trajectory here. Testing is up a lot. Percent positive rate is 25-30% as of yesterday. I'm not nearly as concerned with these numbers as I was for Delta. The thing to watch is COVID hospitalizations. Omicron seems to be less virulent, but the antibody therapies are much less effective. The antibodies helped keep a lot of the people out of the hospital during the last wave. I don't know how all these factors will interact with each other for this variant.

Also, I predict the that areas which achieved high vaccination rates early and didn't have much of a Delta spike will have a more intense Omicron spike than areas that got hammered by Delta.

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[0ddl0t]

I don't understand how the CDC got its numbers either - I would have assumed they were random sampling from the positive tests, but apparently they added some other projections into the mix.

The other potential misstep the CDC just made is lowering the 10-day isolation down to 5. The CDC director just admitted today that this decision was largely based on people ignoring the 10 day isolation so they thought they would increase compliance with a 5 day recommendation instead. The first 5 days are the most contagious point so if they do increase compliance they might see a benefit. But if people who don't comply with a 10 day order don't comply with a 5 day order anyway, what do you gain? I guess I'm a little uneasy with the introduction of soft science - psychology - into a hard science field like infectious disease.

[0ddl0t]

Omicron seems to be less virulent, but the antibody therapies are much less effective. The antibodies helped keep a lot of the people out of the hospital during the last wave. I don't know how all these factors will interact with each other for this variant.

Back when Delta was first making waves there was a minor uproar that patients and doctors weren't allowed to see which variant they had been infected with. The short story is the sequencing tests had been approved for research but not for diagnostic/medical use. And at that time, your treatment would be the same no matter which variant you were infected with. So as far as I know, no one bothered to get that approval to use sequencing for medical use.

But now we have Omicron, which as you note doesn't respond well to 4 of the 5 antibody treatments:


With ~56% of infections currently being Omicron, we should assume a majority of today's hospitalizations are still delta. So ideally we should save sotrovimab - which is in short supply - for those who have been infected with Omicron. But this can't happen as long as doctors and patients are kept in the dark...

[Crow Hunter]

Got my Pfizer booster yesterday. I feel great other than shoulder feeling like I was hit with a baseball bat. My wife was feeling like crap yesterday and went to be tested. She has type B flu instead. 😷

[4RNR]

I guess I'm a little uneasy with the introduction of soft science - psychology - into a hard science field like infectious disease.

Been like that since the beginning.

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