outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

https://covidsafe.fyi/evusheld/guide/ might be useful

cases in FL down 4% from last week, which is really nbd as we've had bigger declines turn out to be false hope, and positivity rate is still high (though lightly declining).

buuuuut the bigger thing is new COVID hospital admissions, which declined (admittedly, less than 1%, but still a decline) from last week to this, which hasn't happened in a while.

the wastewater still flummoxes me on Biobot, as it shows it going down in most FL counties, but sometimes they run an update a day after the initial dump on Fridays that will suddenly show an inexplicable tick back up, only to show a drop again when the update comes out the next Friday. like it seesaws. but it appears to be in a decline.

had my heart broken too many times but hoping we can finally escape this mega-long wave for like a week or two.

A double-boosted friend of mine that recently recovered from covid almost immediately came down with pneumonia afterwards. I know that can be a thing, but this is the first time it's happened to anyone I know.

I got pneumonia when I was a kid from a sinus infection. Pneumonia can follow pretty much any kind of virus or respiratory infection.

i had walking pneumonia as a kid, they told me I had a 'patch over my heart', and my literal 7 year old self thought my heart was a pirate

The cheese is completely off her cracker now.

This was to test whether bleach could sanitize poop and pee to prevent rats from getting Monkeypox. An question to which the answer is already known

https://i.ibb.co/YdqNRZC/FZB3-A5-NWYAEg-TT4.jpg

Ammonia is a highly reactive compound that in the home setting is used as a cleaning agent. It has many other uses. It is highly toxic all by itself.

Ammonia is not urea. We do not use urea (or urine) to clean things.

(again, illustration is not a product endorsement) pic.twitter.com/ihv25EzKkF

— Denise Dewald, MD 🗽 (@denise_dewald) July 31, 2022

Please tell me she isn't planning to mix bleach and ammonia to see if that works better.

Gonna try injecting myself.

no, someone told her that you can’t put bleach on human waste and she went on a tweet bender explaining that urine is not ammonia

both cases and hospitalizations 7-day average down 6% from week prior in FL.

the latter is the real metric that makes me optimistic it's not a mirage again.

I wonder why/how I haven't gotten it yet? I should say why/how/whether, I guess, there's no way to know for sure, really, but at no point have I had characteristic symptoms.

I guess I am in a weird state where I feel like I'm not trying very hard not to get it -- I'm traveling a lot, I'm seeing people, I'm in lots of crowded rooms. But then again, I wear an N95 on the plane and when I go in a store, which I feel like almost no one else is, and I certainly eat outside when it's convenient, which it usually is this time of year. So... I'm not trying very hard not to get COVID, but maybe I'm nonetheless trying harder than the median person? I guess by "not trying hard" I mean "I'm not taking any actions that would be annoying or difficult for me."

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, July 1, 2022 10:36 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Still this. I've been on so many planes, trains, and busses since then, have been in so many crowded rooms where I was the only masked person.. starting to wonder whether there's just some real variation in how immune people are and I'm on the high end. It really does seem like there are people who are much more cautious than I am who are getting it (including getting it outdoors, where I've been taking zero precautions since summer 2020.)

There's no utility in wondering very much about it. At the level of individuals there are so many variables involved that it's anybody's guess who'll get it and who won't. You're helping yourself by masking indoors, but there's a big element of luck, too.

This is me.

xpost

it's me as well. i've never taken an antibodies test, so i wouldn't be surprised to learn that i got a very mild version of it at some point

I test sometimes twice a week, so I've been in the clear. In the last month I've eaten inside restaurants and hung out in people's homes, the latter a riskier choice (every person I know who's caught it did so in tight enclosed spces like offices, apartments, and homes). I know I'm riding on Month Two of heightened second-booster immunity that will disappear soon.

2 year old and 4 year old got first dose of moderna this weekend. a bit anticlimactic after all getting covid 8 weeks ago, but p nice nonetheless. we asked if we should wait (both are presumably benefiting from some 'natural' immunity for the time being, and the 4 year old eligible for the big kid's dose in 2 months), but the doctor said go ahead because it takes a few weeks to kick in, and the kids are about to get like 8 different colds when the new school year starts, so this is one less thing to worry about.

I did read one study that..

sidebar here, good lord am I tired of hearing about medical studies

..seemed to indicate the efficacy of a vaccine booster lasts a lot longer following actual illness

yeah i think the four of us are basically immortal right now.

by the time I'll need a booster again, hoping the Moderna bivalent boosters will be available. thankful that mom and dad's boost came later than mine.

Can someone clear up the booster sitch for me? I'm supposed to be teaching in person at the end of the month, and would like a second booster because I'm slightly immunocompromised, but I'm not sure I can get one and the guidelines are somewhat confusing?

You can get one with your condition. If you can't -- which I don't see happening -- just lie. I did.

No one will check papers.

Or, you know, turn 50.

Nah. Why?

For the boosters, baby!

I'm double boosted. I'm waiting for those omicron boosters this fall.

I think that's the other thing— should I wait for that or just get another shot now?

Fwiw I definitely had one of the spring Omicron variants.

Florida down 20% in cases from the average a week ago.

hospitalizations down 2% from last week, probably going to keep dropping.

xpost really not looking forward to getting another one and having to work through flu-like symptoms during our busy period but i'm def waiting for the bivalent.

the question is, do they truly arrive in September and early or late? historically these things seem to always show up later than planned.

table, in your shoes, I'd get it. I also teach face-to-face soon. Then in four months you can get the new booster.

Oof, okay. Thanks for the tips, y'all, I haven't really been paying attention, just been staying careful.

I don’t know if these are street dates or you need to add a couple weeks for approvals

From Dr. Anthony Fauci re: timeline for bivalent BA.4/5 boosters for the fall:

"@pfizer will have it by first or second week in September and @moderna_tx will likely have it by the end of September, the beginning of October"https://t.co/UUMbnQy1gR https://t.co/NOAAqAN27j pic.twitter.com/7MY61kpzHA

— Alexander Tin (@Alexander_Tin) August 10, 2022

GIMME

Yes! It coincides with my four-month second booster anniversary.

pretty close on mine too.

my COVID study ends that month. blows my mind that it's been two years already.

Pretty cool.

Eh, I might just wait. I don't want to get two boosters in less than a month's time.

Nor should you!

Four-month interval the norm, I've read.

Yeah I got my last one start of April so the timing here couldn't be better. (If it's anything like previous rollouts we'll get offered it extremely quickly -- my age and where I work certainly helps.)

Guess I'll just wait for that one then, though it'll be about 10 months since my last booster by that point. Still not eligible for that second booster, I know I can just go get one, but I guess I'd kept thinking wider approval was just around the corner and I kept procrastinating for that.

Yeah, because I'll have had my first booster about 10 months by the time these new bivalent boosters come out, and because I certainly got BA4 or BA5 in May, I'm just going to wait—

any lingering symptoms, table?

The only one I’ve noticed is that when I am rather active, sometimes a wave of fatigue will come over me that I cannot snap out of— I don’t remember this happening so dramatically before I had Covid. For example, I had to pull over on the highway this past week because I couldn’t keep my eyes open, T had to take over for me. That would never have happened a year or so ago, and that was my main symptom when I had Covid, too.

Otherwise, all’s the same here!

jfc cdc

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/11/health/cdc-covid-guidance-update/index.html

I mean, maybe not completely wrong from a scientific basis, but hoo-boy is this going to be misused and abused by people who don't want to be even temporarily inconvenienced.

this is an appeasement move. scientifically I don't think a 'we're out of the woods' really makes sense now, I mean BA.5 seems to have peaked in the US, but substrains are showing up almost as quickly. would think we'd want to wait for the bivalent booster before removing things like test-to-stay or distancing.

these kids have grandparents, some unvaxxed, etc etc

Case rates are receding faster than hospitalisation and deaths; the US is likely seeing the seasonal summer easing now, slightly delayed this year by widespread lifting of remaining mitigation mandates before spring. No subvariants currently seem to be as much of a menace as BA.5, so hopefully outdoorsy-ish weather will keep the trend going until the typical Thanksgiving spike.

congratulations on defeating covid, everyone. mission accomplished

I guess my biggest immediate concern is that the quarantine thing is, per the other covid thread, going to give companies even more reason to refuse time off to sick and exposed employees.

I mean, these new guidelines are bullshit, but at the same time I'm surprised the CDC mentioned the six-feet thing. Does it matter how far apart we are now that we've known since summer '20 that this is an airborne/aerosolized virus?