outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

When I did a rapid test at my sister's on Christmas Eve day, I absolutely had mixed feelings: I wanted a negative, simply so I could stay, but--knowing how relatively mild my symptoms had been the past week--part of me wanted a positive.

The twitter reaction as usual has been weird -- no one quoted "sought out" the virus. The people I know who've gotten omicron after three vaccinations aren't going to bars or restaurants and fucking hated missing Noche Buena and/or NYE. But this sense of ugh can co-exist with "Well, this anxiety's over for a while."

Not unfamiliar! A couple friends down for the holidays, in part facetiously, were like PLEASE GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY.

we absolutely thought this during the holidays, and i suspect a lot of parents did. getting it now would would be much much more disruptive and upsetting for all of us.

Yeah I don't think that sounds weird at all, I'm sure I'd feel some relief too and I'm not even sure why one would consider this "unexpected." Doesn't mean I'd seek it out.

i assume milo's point is that feeling this way is a privilege, which yes.

yes

-- bachelorhood

-- no children or dependents

-- flexible job

-- a tolerance for three-hour cinema should the need arise

I know a couple of families (double vaxxed kids/boosted adults) where one member got it and everyone hoped the rest would just get it right away as it would decrease the overall impact by serving their isolation periods concurrently instead of consecutively. In the end it was only the one person who got it anyway.

I don't think it's hard to understand those kinds of feelings. I was kind of freaked out why kids tested positive last spring, but they were both fine — one with mild symptoms, one none at all — and I was able to relax a lot more after that about them doing various social things. Now they're both vaxxed, boosted AND prior infected, which makes me even more relaxed. I would never have deliberately tried to get them infected, but knowing that they were and were fine has made the succeeding months that much less stressful.

Sorry, was freaked out when my kids tested positive ...

i assume milo's point is that feeling this way is a privilege, which yes.

Less about people feeling one way or the other more about the media taking this tack as Omicron rages and we’re essentially being abandoned by the government.

-- bachelorhood
-- no children or dependents
-- flexible job

Ditto--plus the timing of the positive, Dec. 24, would not have impacted my availability to work at all.

It just comes down to spending almost two years fearing this thing (which has, I realize, mutated more than once), thinking I had contracted the latest variant, and wanting to be able to say "Okay, that wasn't that bad, and maybe my immune system is such that any future infections will be comparable."

So, even though I believe I tested right at the very end of an Omicron infection, I was negative, so I still don't know for sure.

I think I mentioned it on this or probably another thread, but I have a good friend who was absolutely relieved when he and his whole family got it, despite their (relative) precautions. After so many months/years of literal fear for their lives, once faced with the most mild of symptoms they were thankful for the vaccine and for the chance to just (at least this time) get through it all unscathed.

At the booster clinic I worked over the weekend, we (staff and fellow volunteers) were discussing our own personal experiences, and how we'd all been fortunate that everyone we knew who caught it had mild or next to no symptoms. Then another volunteer offered that she had just gone to a funeral. For covid? we asked. She shook her head yes. Were they vaccinated? She frowned and shook her head no.

to paraphrase dorothy parker, i hate suffering through a contagious disease but I love the presumed resistance to reinfection

Hmm:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/17/all-covid-restrictions-in-england-could-end-in-march-under-no-10-plans

Don't see why not.

Attn. US posters: https://special.usps.com/testkits

Thanks, now I'll see if it works.

It puts you on an FBI watchlist

I'm glad it wasn't worse (Russians draining my bank accounts).

The FBI is now owned by Russian gangsters so...

At my place of employ, the key stats are now:

Total Number of Positive Patients: 65

Unvaccinated: 19
Primary vaccine series (2 doses): 33
Boosted: 13
COVID-positive but not admitted for COVID: 16
ICU: 10

The authorities have suggested that the first Omicron case in Beijing may have come from a package in Canada. They have since called on people across China to use caution when opening mail from overseas. In Beijing, mail is being subjected to at least four rounds of disinfection, even though experts say the risk of contracting the virus from surfaces, especially paper or cardboard, is very low.

Kinda hard to believe this is from January 2022 and not March 2020.

At that time though, we were really paranoid about the surface touching. Most agree now it was mostly a waste of time to disinfect everything compulsively (though washing hands probably still good)

I think that's jon's point

ohhh right

Yeah, Tracer's right. I just didn't realize people were still really even focusing on disinfecting mail, much less blaming it for transmission.

I don’t think “people” are

Don't see why not.

things like this prob

and this

https://news.yahoo.com/omicron-survives-longer-plastic-skin-184539113.html

ladies and gentlemen. . . . the new york times

Feast your peepers on this . . . this magisterial To-Be-Sure sequences pic.twitter.com/Qtn6Lx67Xc

— Jacob Bacharach (@jakebackpack) January 25, 2022

🤔

Consider me quad-boosted: https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvn743/oral-cbd-prevented-covid-19-infection-in-real-world-patients-study-suggests

so what's up with variant BA2?

this is a very good (long) article about how this will all end:

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/what-now-how-pandemics-end

I thought for a moment that the US was upper-middle income on that map, and I was googling the World Bank before I realized it's Mexico

I like fat Japan / UK and butterfly Australia too

Oh so it turns out natural immunity (after an infection) is better than vaccines after all:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-high-cost-of-disparaging-natural-immunity-to-covid-vaccine-mandates-protests-fire-rehire-employment-11643214336

Hopefully this means that we are nearing the end, but of course mutations could derail that.

i don't have a WSJ sub - can you post some more of that?

Psh, just playing into the hands of Big Natural Immunity.

just reading about the author of the WSJ op-ed - marty makary. not trying to pre-but whatever it says, but he is enough of an outlier on covid that a GOP governor, Glenn Youngkin, picked him as his lead adviser. to me that's a warning sign, but i'm one of those weirdos who thinks the GOP actually tries to kill people on purpose

Wen and Makary have often faced off over pandemic policy, including in a closed lecture to retired general Wesley Clark’s leadership institute in August and around the same time in dueling pieces in U.S. News, in which Makary said, “I’m pro-vaccine but blanket requirements outside of health care go too far.”

He said people who choose not to get vaccinated “are making a poor health decision at their own individual risk” but “pose no public health threat to those already immune,” and likened the decision to smoking or not wearing a helmet when cycling.

Yet Makary has been criticized for overstating the protection of previous infection and undervaluing masks, especially for children.

In a Post op-ed last fall, he interpreted several well-known studies to say that “emerging science suggests that natural immunity is as good as or better than vaccine-induced immunity,” expressing frustration with the Biden administration for arguing that vaccine-conferred immunity is preferable to “immunity caused by natural infection.” He has often said one dose of a two-dose RNA vaccine regimen made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna may be all that is necessary for children who have had the coronavirus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late last year found that immunity after infection and vaccination lasts for at least six months but that vaccines offer more consistent protection and a huge boost in antibodies for previously infected people, which is especially true with the omicron variant. Public health experts also say the coronavirus is just as contagious in children as in adults, if not more so, although kids as a whole have a lower chance of being hospitalized and a lower mortality rate.

Makary co-authored a commentary for the Wall Street Journal in August that detailed what the authors said were possible adverse affects on some children who wear masks long-term — from difficulty breathing and seeing to acne and increased levels of carbon dioxide in the blood. (The CDC has reported that pediatric cases of the coronavirus rose more sharply in places without school mask requirements.)

“Any child who wants to wear a mask should be free to do so. But forcing them to make personal, health and developmental sacrifices for the sake of adults who refuse to get immunized is abusive,” Makary and his co-author, H. Cody Meissner, wrote, adding that the mandatory vaccination of teachers would help.

In a recent appearance on Fox News, Makary said, “What we’ve tragically called a breakthrough infection” is actually the “normal virus landing in someone’s nasal system. You test positive, but you’re still protected with the vaccine.” He called the CDC-recommended N95 face masks “hard to wear” because they may leave an indent on some people’s faces, saying that they should be limited to nursing home staff. He also said he preferred rationing a limited supply of tests to blanket testing.

Virginia Democrats, through spokesman Jayce Genco, called the appointment “dangerous, irresponsible and deeply troubling” and proof that Youngkin will govern from the far right, which “will prolong the pandemic and cost Virginians their lives.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/15/youngkin-makary-covid-vaccines/

He said people who choose not to get vaccinated “are making a poor health decision at their own individual risk” but “pose no public health threat to those already immune,” and likened the decision to smoking

trying to figure out whether he doesn't know you're not allowed to smoke in school, or whether he thinks you should be allowed to smoke in school

and i'm curious what the actual WSJ op-ed says, because it leads by saying the CDC recently released data from CA and NY showing that natural immunity was 2.8x more effective in preventing hospitalizations than the vaccine, and 3.3-4.7x effective in preventing infection altogether.

Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated. But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear. By firing staff with natural immunity, employers got rid of those least likely to infect others. It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology.

For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused. Finally last week, the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination.

Yet the CDC spun the report to fit its narrative, bannering the conclusion “vaccination remains the safest strategy.” It based this conclusion on the finding that hybrid immunity—the combination of prior infection and vaccination—was associated with a slightly lower risk of testing positive for Covid. But those with hybrid immunity had a similar low rate of hospitalization (3 per 10,000) to those with natural immunity alone. In other words, vaccinating people who had already had Covid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization.

Similarly, the National Institutes of Health repeatedly has dismissed natural immunity by arguing that its duration is unknown—then failing to conduct studies to answer the question. Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99% of them up to nearly two years after infection. We also found that natural immunity developed from prior variants reduced the risk of infection with the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the two-dose Moderna vaccine against infection (not severe disease) declines to 61% against Delta and 16% against Omicron at six months, according to a recent Kaiser Southern California study. In general, Pfizer’s Covid vaccines have been less effective than Moderna’s.

The CDC study and ours confirm what more than 100 other studies on natural immunity have found: The immune system works. The largest of these studies, from Israel, found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic illness.

None of this should surprise us. For years, studies have shown that infection with the other coronaviruses that cause severe illness, SARS and MERS, confers lasting immunity. In a study published in May 2020, Covid-recovered monkeys that were rechallenged with the virus didn’t get sick.

Public-health officials have a lot of explaining to do. They used the wrong starting hypothesis, ignored contrary preliminary data, and dug in as more evidence emerged that called their position into question. Many, including Rochelle Walensky, now the CDC’s director, signed the John Snow memorandum in October 2020, which declared that “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.”

Many clinicians who talk to other physicians nationwide had have long observed that we don’t see reinfected patients end up on a ventilator or die from Covid, with rare exceptions who almost always have immune disorders. Meanwhile, public-health officials recklessly destroyed the careers of everyday Americans, rallying to fire pilots, truck drivers and others in the supply-chain workforce who didn’t get vaccinated. And in the early months of the vaccine rollout, when supplies were limited, we could have saved many more lives by giving priority to those who didn’t have recorded natural immunity.

The failure to recognize the data on natural immunity is hurting U.S. hospitals, especially in rural areas. MultiCare, a hospital system in Washington state, fired 55 staff members on Oct. 18 for being out of compliance with Gov. Jay Inslee’s vaccine mandate—and that was in addition to an undisclosed number of staffers who quit ahead of the vaccination deadline. The loss of workers contributed to a full-blown staffing crisis.

It got so bad that the hospital summoned staff who were Covid-positive to return to work even if they were sick, according to an internal memo obtained by Jason Rantz of KTTH radio. The memo stated that “positive staff with mild to moderate illness” could work, so long as they wear appropriate personal protective equipment, don’t take breaks with others, and agree to stay home “if symptoms worsen.” Managers were recommended to assign Covid-positive staff to Covid-positive patients and vaccinated patients, but not immunosuppressed patients.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services took the hospital mandate national by decreeing that all medical facilities under its jurisdiction require vaccination for employees, including those with natural immunity. The Supreme Court upheld the rule on Jan. 13, the same day it issued a stay against a similar mandate from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which OSHA formally withdrew Tuesday.

Connecticut has suspended its vaccine mandate for state employees, and Starbucks is rehiring employees fired for being unvaccinated. Other states and businesses should follow their lead. Politicians and public-health officials owe an apology to Americans who lost their jobs on the false premises that only unvaccinated people could spread the virus and only vaccination could prevent its spread. Soldiers who have been dishonorably discharged should be restored their rank. Teachers, first responders, and others who have been denied their livelihood should be reinstated. Everyone is essential.

Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and author of “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How to Fix It.”

Here is the link: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm

Wesley Clark has a leadership institute

I must start one.

FWIW Mr Makary's book seems like an indictment of the US healthcare system, which I'm 100% down with indicting.

I just want my overly-anxious friends and family to relax a bit once they've had COVID, and not keep telling me that getting COVID doesn't matter. I seriously thought vaccines were better until today.

I'm not excited about the article framing, though, which is of the let's-get-everyone-back-to-work-ASAP variety.