outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

(A follow-up from TPM Reader LF …)

In your recent post about Covid and school closures, I think you get something very right when you talk about the PhD and elite scolds demanding schools remain open no-matter-what. There is one element in all of this that I think you do not fully appreciate—the anger and legitimate fear that teachers have been living with for the entirety of the pandemic.

I am a college teacher, my partner teaches high school, my friends teach at every level of the educational system. During the pandemic, many have retired early or quit, many of those who have stayed have only done so because they are too young to retire and too old to do something else. Just to be clear, the kids are alright. Almost all teachers love teaching–given how shitty the job is, why else would we do it?

The problems with teaching are also the same as they’ve always been–the parents, the school board, the local and state governments. We get it, they pay us shit, dictate idiotic curriculum and blame us when their kids grow up to be queer/communist/atheists—same as it ever was. What is new is that we are now being asked—actually not even asked—told that we must be heroes.

Everyone talks about how schools are a young population, so schools are safer than most other institutions. Even you wrote something like that in a recent tweet.

“And despite the totally out of control spread of omicron now ripping through schools I think it makes sense to keep them open because of the mix of generally mild outcomes for kids and the availability of vaccines.”

What the fuck, am I chopped liver to you? From a teacher’s perspective, school is a place where you spend 8 hours in poorly ventilated, densely packed rooms with the least vaccinated people in America (the young). Last semester I taught a class with 150 people in a subterranean room—no mask mandate, no vaccine mandate, voluntary testing if someone had symptoms.

You wrote in your post today…

“We shifted back to in-person instruction once vaccines were widely deployed, backstopping the great majority of the people from bad outcomes from COVID infections. By the fall of 2021 we also collectively had much more knowledge about COVID, how to operate schools in relative safety with a mix of masking, ventilation and testing.”

While we may know about masking, ventilation, testing and vaccination—in many of the classrooms in this nation we are not requiring masking, ventilation, testing or vaccination. All of this discussion of masking, ventilation, testing and vaccination is little more than performative ethical posturing of the ‘think of the poor children’ crowd. As a teacher, I don’t care about the posturing. I care about what is happening in the room in front of me. This is a job safety issue, not a political issue. In most of the country masks and vaccines are not required. As for ventilation, I expect to see that fixed right after states and municipalities deal with the endemic asbestos and black mold problem that pervades schools across the nation.

So, I am furious, almost all the teachers I know are furious. I love teaching, but that doesn’t mean I want to risk my life to do so. At a minimum, I expect that all students be required to be masked and vaccinated to attend in person. Short of that, I’m gonna go remote whenever the case counts start going up. Fuck anyone who demands otherwise. Fuck ‘em twice if they tell me how much they respect teachers while the refuse enact even the most basic safety protocols that would make our jobs safer.

Warzone Workplace

Thus is v good to see. Lockdowns are done, we are v close to an end.

lol

no COVID in football stadiums if the fa cup match on tv was anything to go by

These two threads (one macro, one micro) don't leave me feeling very sanguine about now.

Watching national data

And being in the hospital this week

I see two things that appear contradictory

But both are true

1. Link between cases & hospitalizations is much weaker with Omicron than in the past

2. Our healthcare system is in trouble

Thread: the moment we are in

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) January 8, 2022

I’ve been tweeting about Covid for nearly 2 years. But this week it became personal when my 28-year-old younger son got it.
With his permission, I’ll describe his experience & how I approached his situation, given the realities of life and the rapidly changing evidence.(1/25)

— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) January 8, 2022

A friend of mine who is a pediatric nurse in Florida regarding Jha's post: "I had to close the thread." Said friend's been very, very open about how utterly horrible it's been.

fyi parents of under fives

Can confirm Moderna was asked to increase enrollment in their pediatric trial. End of Jan study close has been pushed out. This is really heartbreaking because Moderna already increased trial size last year (Pfizer didn’t). Rapidly increasing hospitalizations in <5 is concerning. https://t.co/sio0QCImrj

— Sabina Vohra-Miller (@SabiVM) January 8, 2022

I've seen a lot of tweets etc. noting increasing pediatric covid hospitalizations, but so far all of the ones I've seen quickly add a clarification that these are kids in the hospital *with* covid, often detected when they check in for something else, not *for* covid. Are there any numbers attesting to the latter?

I respect Bob Wachter, his thread has unnerved me. I have two visitors coming to stay with me next week, from NY and Sweden, and from their texts I think that they are imagining everything is going to be back to normal, that we'll go to Zuni and Spruce and Original Joe's and have fun like the old days

Haha…no

Basically my spots I’m going to over the next theee weeks: physical therapy twice a week (and a visit to my orthopedist), laundry, shopping and takeout once a week, and the corner store as needed. Otherwise, hunker down time.

I know this is off topic

I was taken to Zuni for lunch by my friend Roy from Seattle on my birthday in June 2021, we ate outside and we got to watch the historic streetcars go by on Market Street. Afterwards we got on the Cleveland car and rode to Fisherman's Wharf, my stop. He's 6 foot 4 and couldn't fit his legs into the seat, which delighted the other passengers

lol

― auld gang syne (k3vin k.), Saturday, 8 January 2022 bookmarkflaglink

A lot of triple vaxxed people here got it mild. Covid will be like cold next year.

These two threads (one macro, one micro) don't leave me feeling very sanguine about now.

🐦[Watching national data

And being in the hospital this week

I see two things that appear contradictory

But both are true

1. Link between cases & hospitalizations is much weaker with Omicron than in the past

2. Our healthcare system is in trouble

Thread: the moment we are in
— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) January 8, 2022🕸]🐦

🐦[I’ve been tweeting about Covid for nearly 2 years. But this week it became personal when my 28-year-old younger son got it.
With his permission, I’ll describe his experience & how I approached his situation, given the realities of life and the rapidly changing evidence.(1/25)
— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) January 8, 2022🕸]🐦

I read that whole thread waiting for a reveal which never came - there was some interesting info in there but feels like his main point could have been made in one tweet (this is a rubbish illness to have and it’s easier to catch than ever)

Actually idk what his point is either but that seems to be the only takeaway

I've held my tongue a lot when it comes to #COVID19 and the emotional strain it puts on staff, but I feel like tonight is a good night to speak on it. For those who don't know, I work as a resident chaplain at IU Health and my unit is currently the Medical ICU. #Thread

— Rabbi Mike Harvey (@RabbiHarvey) January 9, 2022

That thread is sad. My friend has an immunocompromised cancer-survivor father for whom the vaccines produced no antibodies. He has no protection at all, and that thread underscores the worst case scenario for him. That said:

We are swarmed with the unvaccinated.

The unvaccinated are fucking it up for *everybody.* Clogging up the works, consuming valuable limited space and resources, not just in hospitals but *everywhere.* But alas, that's not news.

Well that ain't good:

On Monday, some SFDPH-affiliated sites will temporarily reduce testing hours due to challenges beyond our control. Please check your health system first for testing. Do not go to the ER for tests. SF testing sites with updated hours are at: https://t.co/BpmMAW3Jxy

— SFDPH (@SF_DPH) January 9, 2022

(My own local testing spot was free and easy walk-up pre Christmas. Between Christmas and New Year's the lines started appearing and now it'll be even worse.)

The first thread mirrors what is going on in the UK too but I read the second one and I’m kind of feeling …what is this man’s problem? His low risk son has a mild case of covid? He called his son’s doctor to ask about the possibility of a antivirals that he notes in the same thread are prioritised for immuno suppressed patients, which afaict his son is not? What?!

― mardheamac (gyac), Sunday, January 9, 2022 4:52 AM (six hours ago)

it’s prob just how things get magnified in importance when they happen to us/our loved ones. like, my niece made some bitchin’ macarons the other day! this was very exciting for us but if i tweeted abt it who tf would care.

another element could be the “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” school of public messaging, & some degree of frustration at not getting through to so many anti-vaxxers or people who just aren’t paying attention. parables are 1000% more grokable than statistics. someone whose eyes glaze over at numbers might read this story of a dad being scared for his son and could be nudged to be a little more cautious.

Or could take the lesson that right now, if you're vaxxed, covid is not necessarily the end of the world, and that people like Wachter may be a little hyperbolic. If you're not vaxxed, no rambling anecdote from someone on twitter is going to change your mind. The assholes that made it this far unvaxxed are already crowing. "See? See!? The vaccines won't keep you from catching covid, nyah!" And at this point honestly, if that's the message they're taking away, that's fine with me, as long as they catch covid ASAP. If they're going to be sucking the life out of civilization anyway, I'd just as soon they get it over with.

yeah a depressing amount of people are weirdly aggressive & antagonistic about… their right to get sick? and make other people sick? they won’t be reached, sure. but there are still some folks who are plain oblivious, or just haven’t gotten around to their booster/2nd dose bcuz work & family & general chaos, and 1 more attempt to reach them couldn’t hurt

& right, we been marinating in all this for 2 yrs now so it seems ludicrous that anyone could have dodged this psychotic maelstrom of info, disinfo, politicization, conspiracies, panic, apathy, grift and so on

but people’s capacity to not notice stuff is vast. i’m not noticing a ton of important stuff this very moment, and hope to continue not noticing, because everything i have noticed so far is already more than i can handle

The people who haven't got the vaccine will not get one now, pretty much. It's all about how our health and social care systems are able to cope with that.

Not sure about that, I know a couple of people who aren’t vaccinated and have had it bad, anyone bad enough to go into hospital and survive it is hopefully going to want to avoid that experience, you’d imagine. And even a mild unvaccinated size can be very unpleasant. There’s always going to be a hard core of people you can never reach but it’s about reaching those that are hesitant for various reasons and I think there will be a longer tail on vaccine take up.

if you're vaxxed, covid is not necessarily the end of the world, and that people like Wachter may be a little hyperbolic.

His thread is exactly about how it's not the end of the world and you don't need to beg borrow or steal monoclonal antibodies for a thirtysomething with a mild case, it will be fine! Like the entire thread is statistics about how unlikely death or even serious illness is for someone in his son's situation. Is he worried about Long Covid? "A little," he says, "the literature is a mess.. It seems like vax lowers the risk. So it’s a concern, but there’s not much we can do but wait & see." Does he think his son made a big mistake by going to the movies? He says no, it seemed like a "fairly safe encounter," and his advice in the face of the more contagious omicron is to hunker down "a bit." He calls it "an experience best avoided if you can."

And people are dragging him like he held a funeral for his son and think we need to lock down! When he is very clearly saying "Vaccines are great and reduce this to something you should worry about but not to excess, take reasonable short-term measures during the weeks of this surge but this is not the apocalypse."

He could have just said that instead of a 25 post draaaaaama.

I’ve seen governments and non-profits reporting success penetrating unvaxxed populations that aren’t white Christian Identarians. Those people are hopeless and never getting vaxxed but the Hispanic guy down the block will if someone he trusts talks to him directly about it.

See, this is the kind of hyperbolic stuff I was talking about:

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-health-pandemics-rochelle-walensky-0f9d46ab55b0f2f6951ffddd6ca8a511

Headline: "Hospitalizations skyrocket in kids too young for COVID shots."

But then you read the article, and the stats as cited just do not bear out the headline. It's more like "covid cases rise in kids who are hospitalized," and even then the numbers are low and the certification criteria pretty generous. I mean, thank goodness, but headlines like this one are just not helpful.

To their credit NBC last night ran a story questioning exactly that.

Basically my spots I’m going to over the next theee weeks: physical therapy twice a week (and a visit to my orthopedist), laundry, shopping and takeout once a week, and the corner store as needed. Otherwise, hunker down time.

Great wisdom.

A lot of triple vaxxed people here got it mild. Covid will be like cold next year.

isn't this assuming that every new strain will be mild?

This strain has been more mild than Delta.

There is the theory that viruses by design *want* to be milder, because it's harder to spread when you seriously sicken or kill off your host. Which is why some were/are in a sense rooting for Omicron to stay dominant and prevent potentially stronger strains from gaining a hold.

This strain has been more mild than Delta.

I am aware yes, but not sure this guarantees every next one will progressively be milder than that. Hadn't heard of this theory, how much consensus is there around that?

There is the theory that viruses by design *want* to be milder, because it's harder to spread when you seriously sicken or kill off your host.

short incubation period and high transmissibility unfortunately means the virus has plenty of time to spread to a new host before you finally cark it.

For sure. Anyway, here's a couple of articles I saw that addresses this from a couple of perspectives:

https://news.northeastern.edu/2021/12/13/virus-evolution/

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/09/1071663583/viruses-evolve-and-weaken-over-time-what-does-that-mean-for-the-coronavirus

When syphilis emerged in Europe, it ran through its course in a year or two. Now it takes 20-30 years for the third stage to arrive.

On the other hand, those Europeans were really ruttin'.

LAVINE: Omicron is really way, way better at transmitting in this current human population than, for example, delta was in the population that it was transmitting in - not knocking delta here, but I'm just saying omicron is fantastic at transmitting in this population.

https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/alien-ash-robot.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646&h=431&crop=1

A lot of triple vaxxed people here got it mild. Covid will be like cold next year.

This may be reassuring for the vaxxed, but it ignores the enormous unvaxxed population. A big surge in cases among them can overwhelm the health system to the breaking point. Colds do not threaten the health system with collapse.

it also ignores the fact that we seem to have gotten incredibly lucky with omicron, and there's no reason to think that will continue to be the case with future variants (and lots of reason to think it won't be, since it hasn't been true of most variants).

on the other hand, i think we may be reaching the point where the anti-vaxxers + the "vaccinated and done" (i.e. i got vaccinated, and i'll get boosted again if you tell me to, but i'm done with not going out) are well over 50% of the population in both the US and UK, so in that sense i do think the pandemic is "over" for a lot of people intellectually.

Well, yeah, for a lot of bosses the pandemic has been "over" for at least six months, if not a year, in some places.

there are different grades of 'over'. i'm still masking up in public confined spaces and sanitising my hands regularly, for example

you should wash your hands but that has nothing to do with covid (which is airborne).

but I'm sure we all fondly remember the "everyone stop touching your face!" era.

Yes, it was a relief to move past that once it was confirmed that hand-to-face transmission was wildly unlikely.

Seattle has mask and vax mandates to enter any business with seating, and mask dispensers by the door on trains, buses and trams. “I’m still masking in crowded spaces” reads as “my locality is treating it as over” imo

Yep, that’s certainly a fair read as far as my locale goes. I’m masking in public AND most of my community is acting like it’s over. Even though we literally just set a one-day case record and hospitalizations are going up. Oh and also our local health department decided that NOW is the time to switch from daily case reporting to weekly.

Is it possible omicron spreads via other methods than just aerosols?

lads we got there

A popular far-right and anti-vaccine leader has a new remedy for followers who fall sick with Covid-19: drink their own urine.https://t.co/v6PhSnScQs

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) January 10, 2022