Quote
daspyknows

Quote
podiumboy
I think most of you people underestimate how many people are living normal lives and don't focus too much on Covid. I am out there living my life at 2019 levels of normalcy. So is everybody else in my area. Most people I know are vaccinated, and realize that there's nothing else they can do except get back to normal life. That is the majority.

I agree with you but also have no issue wearing a mask, showing vaccination status and requiring others to do the same to reduce the risk to all.

I have no problems with these things either. I’m happily vaxxed and boosted, and I have yet to enter a place that asked me to prove it. But if they asked, I have my shit ready to show them! And as far as masks, the only time in the past several months I have worn one is in a doctors office. If somebody asks me to put one on, I have no problem doing so. But I live in a semi rural Ohio area and nobody wears them here.

I am an “essential worker”, and as such I have not spent one day at home in the past 2 years. I have been out there everyday living my life as close to normal as I can. I think a lot of people who WFH underestimate the amount of people that were still out and about every single day.

Novax Djokovic still remains in immigration detention.


[www.bbc.com]

"If you don't c sharp you'll b flat". - Muhammad Ali.

And another:

Doubles star Renata Voracova suffers hotel detention fate

Is't a bit double. When Djokovic does his daily test and stays in his own bubble, he does nothing wrong..apart from putting himself at risk and get really sick. People that are vaxxed can also transmit the Virus. It would have been better if Djokovic either had stayed at home or get the vaccine and be a good example for the rest of the world instead of creating this pro and contra discussion in Australia.

"If you don't c sharp you'll b flat". - Muhammad Ali.

Quote
TheflyingDutchman
Is't a bit double. When Djokovic does his daily test and stays in his own bubble, he does nothing wrong..apart from putting himself at risk and get really sick. People that are vaxxed can also transmit the Virus. It would have been better if Djokovic either had stayed at home or get the vaccine and be a good example for the rest of the world instead of creating this pro and contra discussion in Australia.

well, you can't ban your own citizens from traveling to their home country for month and on the other hand let some multi-millionaire tennis player who doesn't show a proof of vaccination enter the country

Quote
podiumboy

Quote
daspyknows

Quote
podiumboy
I think most of you people underestimate how many people are living normal lives and don't focus too much on Covid. I am out there living my life at 2019 levels of normalcy. So is everybody else in my area. Most people I know are vaccinated, and realize that there's nothing else they can do except get back to normal life. That is the majority.

I agree with you but also have no issue wearing a mask, showing vaccination status and requiring others to do the same to reduce the risk to all.

I have no problems with these things either. I’m happily vaxxed and boosted, and I have yet to enter a place that asked me to prove it. But if they asked, I have my shit ready to show them! And as far as masks, the only time in the past several months I have worn one is in a doctors office. If somebody asks me to put one on, I have no problem doing so. But I live in a semi rural Ohio area and nobody wears them here.

I am an “essential worker”, and as such I have not spent one day at home in the past 2 years. I have been out there everyday living my life as close to normal as I can. I think a lot of people who WFH underestimate the amount of people that were still out and about every single day.

well, what you describe is exactly a population or a group of people who are at high risk. As long a no one gets infected everything is fine. But as soon as one or two members of the group get infected the whole (population) will get infected very quickly because there's no barrier within that group to stop spreading the virus

Those of you who have recovered from covid and have had a test showing you have antibodies and your doctor says to you that you are immunized: will you get vaccinated?

Quote
slewan

Quote
podiumboy

Quote
daspyknows

Quote
podiumboy
I think most of you people underestimate how many people are living normal lives and don't focus too much on Covid. I am out there living my life at 2019 levels of normalcy. So is everybody else in my area. Most people I know are vaccinated, and realize that there's nothing else they can do except get back to normal life. That is the majority.

I agree with you but also have no issue wearing a mask, showing vaccination status and requiring others to do the same to reduce the risk to all.

I have no problems with these things either. I’m happily vaxxed and boosted, and I have yet to enter a place that asked me to prove it. But if they asked, I have my shit ready to show them! And as far as masks, the only time in the past several months I have worn one is in a doctors office. If somebody asks me to put one on, I have no problem doing so. But I live in a semi rural Ohio area and nobody wears them here.

I am an “essential worker”, and as such I have not spent one day at home in the past 2 years. I have been out there everyday living my life as close to normal as I can. I think a lot of people who WFH underestimate the amount of people that were still out and about every single day.

well, what you describe is exactly a population or a group of people who are at high risk. As long a no one gets infected everything is fine. But as soon as one or two members of the group get infected the whole (population) will get infected very quickly because there's no barrier within that group to stop spreading the virus

But those that are vaccinated aren’t really at risk at all. All of my friends and family are “up to date” on vaccinations. I know several people who have been infected, myself included.

Quote
emotionalbarbecue
Those of you who have recovered from covid and have had a test showing you have antibodies and your doctor says to you that you are immunized: will you get vaccinated?

Had Covid in summer 2020, later test showed strong antibodies. Got my 3rd dose a month ago.

'Mild' Covid-19 doesn't always feel that way

"When we or when the CDC or the NIH says 'mild,' we really mean it didn't make you sick enough to go to the hospital," - Dr. Shira Doron

Many people are hearing from their doctors that they have a "mild" Covid-19 infection amid a surge of the highly contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus — but your illness may not feel as minor as "mild" sounds. It was true for Michelle Cordes, a dietician at a Chicago-area hospital. She's vaccinated and boosted, and she says she has done everything she can to avoid catching the virus, like wearing a mask and avoiding crowds. So when she didn't feel great on Dec. 30, she thought it was a cold or maybe allergies to the cat her daughter brought home from college. Just to be on the safe side, she took a home test and was surprised to find that she was positive for Covid-19. Her husband, son and father-in-law also tested positive. "We all developed a cough. We all had post-nasal drip. I had the itchy kind of throat, and my husband and I both had night sweats for like four nights in a row," Cordes said. "Mild" is a word that seems to fit Cordes' symptoms, compared with the ones she sees in her patients at the hospital, she said. But her illness didn't feel like a mild cold, either.

What Covid-19 actually feels like can vary dramatically. Studies have shown that disease from Omicron is generally milder than from the Delta coronavirus variant, and some people have no symptoms or only brief, minor sniffles. But it can still cause serious disease, especially among the unvaccinated. There are 126,410 people currently hospitalized with Covid-19, about 89% of the way to last year's peak, according to US Department of Health and Human Services. But even disease considered "mild" can still be uncomfortable and prolonged. The National Institutes of Health's definition of "mild" Covid-19 includes symptoms that people are all too familiar with these days, like fever, cough, sore throat and fatigue. They're symptoms that Dr. Shira Doron has realized are nothing to, well, sneeze at. Use of the word "mild" "isn't meant to minimize your experience, said Doron, a hospital epidemiologist and infectious disease physician at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Even people with mild illness can develop what's called long Covid, with symptoms that stick around for six months or more. She thinks the "mild" term that experts prefer may need to be reframed. "When we or when the CDC or the NIH says 'mild,' we really mean it didn't make you sick enough to go to the hospital," Doron said. "But when you get a flu-like illness that puts you in bed, that's not mild to you." Cordes ended up sitting in her pajamas for three days, something she says she has never done before. "We've felt crappy and tired," Cordes said. "On Monday, we took our tree down, and by one o'clock, we were all exhausted." She feels better this week and is up to taking on a paper-shredding project, but she's not back at work yet.

More.> COVID19

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

I don't buy anyone having symptoms and thinking about their cat allergy first. That's too solid a rock to live under.

Quote
emotionalbarbecue
Those of you who have recovered from covid and have had a test showing you have antibodies and your doctor says to you that you are immunized: will you get vaccinated?

Yes

[www.npr.org]

Omicron could have a silver lining by boosting immunity, some experts say. But don’t bet on it.
The variant’s extraordinary transmissibility could enhance immunity as it rips through the population.

COVID19

As omicron sickens millions of Americans, some disease experts are peering into the future, speculating that the massive winter wave of infections from this new coronavirus variant might produce something beneficial in the long run. They note that omicron, while stunningly contagious, appears less likely to send someone to the hospital. The variant’s extraordinary transmissibility could boost immunity as it rips through the population and — once this tide of cases has ebbed — make the pandemic a less dangerous health emergency. The idea that omicron has a silver lining is not a fully formed scientific theory. It’s conjecture, in some cases unspooled on Twitter threads and floated in television interviews. At worst, it is “arm-waving,” to use the term that serious scientists employ as a pejorative. And even the experts promoting the idea concede that it is an educated guess — and is contingent upon the virus itself, which has repeatedly surprised experts and may generate new variants that are more dangerous than omicron. “Every prediction about the future has to come with the parenthesis that there could be another variant that screws this up,” said Robert Wachter, the chief of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who has used social media to share his speculation that omicron could carry long-term benefits. After this omicron wave subsides, he suggests, so many people would have some level of immunity to the virus that it would not subsequently deliver the same level of pain and suffering. In an interview, he said that in the past he would have submitted his thoughts to a peer-reviewed journal, a process that probably would have taken three months. In this health emergency, he went straight to Twitter. “It’s hard to say omicron is a lucky break, but it sort of is,” Wachter said in the interview. “Because the combination of significantly lower pathogenicity, and only modest immune evasion — and tremendous infectivity — leads to what would you call the opposite of a perfect storm.” This hypothesis has generated pushback from other scientists, who say too much remains unknown about the virus to make such a forecast. They note that every time the experts have suggested that the pandemic is nearing the endgame, the virus comes up with a new trick — in the case of omicron, packaging dozens of mutations that make the variant more infectious while also enabling it to slip past a key line of immune defense. Any broad immunity boost comes at a known, enormously high cost — health-care systems are teetering at the brink and medical workers are burned out. World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Thursday that omicron infections should not be described as “mild”: “Just like previous variants, omicron is hospitalizing people, and it is killing people.”

The coronavirus continues to mutate, and its spread in much of the world is made easier by the shortage of vaccines in many developing countries. There is no scientific evidence that the virus is settling into a permanently milder state. A new variant could conceivably combine omicron’s transmissibility with the higher disease severity caused by previous variants, including the still-circulating delta variant. Emory University biostatistician Natalie Dean said people thought the pandemic was waning last spring, and then delta came along. And then in the fall things looked better — and omicron appeared. “There’s always this threat of curveballs,” she said. Infectious-disease experts say the idea that widespread omicron infection will create immunity in a broad swath of the population, and a shield against future variants, is certainly plausible. But it’s unknown how durable that immunity would be or how well it would protect against a future variant. “The idea that mild infection can lead to better antibody levels and protection in the future from other variants is intriguing, but we certainly don’t have any data on this yet,” said Matthew B. Frieman, a virologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Monica Gandhi, a physician and colleague of Wachter’s at UC-San Francisco, said in an email that the spread of omicron could signal the approach of the “endgame” of the pandemic, with the virus becoming endemic — meaning it would continue to circulate at modest levels but not cause society-disrupting outbreaks. “Unless we have a new variant that is more virulent (which can occur if we don’t work hard on global vaccine equity), it looks like we could be approaching endemicity in the U.S. once the omicron surge is over,” she wrote. Any discussion of long-term benefits from omicron necessarily views the situation at the 30,000-foot level, because the country and much of the world is in the middle of a health crisis. In the United States, patients are flooding hospitals, with most of the country still facing what is likely to be the worst phase of the winter surge. Wachter acknowledges that omicron has attractive attributes for the long run but extremely bad attributes in the short run: “This is really awful for January. Our hospitals are being overrun.” Many people appear to be resigned to being exposed to the virus. That is an understandable response to news reports saying that omicron is a milder version of the coronavirus and that there’s probably no avoiding such a contagious pathogen.

Six medical experts who advised President Biden during the transition from the Trump administration published articles Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association that urged the Biden administration to shift its strategy, ending the current cycle of unending emergency and adjusting to the reality of coronavirus infections as a “new normal.” One article suggested that the administration cease tracking covid deaths independently from those caused by other potentially lethal respiratory viruses, including flu. “The ‘new normal’ requires recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more. COVID-19 must now be considered among the risks posed by all respiratory viral illnesses combined,” wrote Ezekiel Emanuel, Celine Gounder and Michael Osterholm, prominent disease experts who have been outspoken throughout the pandemic. The administration’s pandemic guidance has shifted slightly: It still emphasizes vaccinations and booster shots, and common-sense measures including mask-wearing and avoidance of indoor crowds, but people also should live their lives and not isolate themselves. And scientists as well as government officials are generally emphatic that schools remain open for in-person learning. “My attitude has been that I’m respectful of the virus — I’m taking reasonable precautions — but I’m not going to the end of the earth to avoid it,” said Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine. “We’re all going to get this thing eventually.” Vaccines usually prevent severe outcomes from omicron, particularly after a booster dose. And a number of treatments remain effective against omicron, though they are in short supply as demand surges.

So far, there has not been a sharp increase in the number of deaths, and this is now many weeks into the omicron wave. It remains unclear why omicron infections are typically less severe than those caused by delta. Some of it is probably attributable to widespread immunity from vaccination and previous infections. But the variant itself appears to operate differently. Laboratory experiments suggest that although omicron can multiply faster than delta and is able to sidestep key parts of immunity, its ability to invade lung cells and cause lethal pneumonia has been hobbled. There is no guarantee that the next variant will do the same. And omicron still packs a punch. “It’s not like omicron is running through the population and nobody is getting hospitalized,” said Michael Diamond, a virologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “People are getting sick and still dying.” He is not ready to embrace omicron as a blessing in disguise. “Yes, we will generate more immunity in the population, so maybe we will be poised better against a future variant — maybe. It remains to be seen,” Diamond said. In a massive team effort, Diamond and collaborators scattered across the United States and Japan infected mice and hamsters with omicron and discovered a consistent, striking pattern: The omicron variant clearly causes less severe disease in rodents. The results, published in a not-yet-peer-reviewed study, show that omicron is biologically different from the variants that came before. But there are limitations to such experiments. Mice are different from humans, and their milder disease was measured in weight loss. Mice infected with previous versions of the virus lost weight, but mice infected with omicron did not. In hamsters, which develop respiratory illness analogous to what humans experience when infected, omicron is less likely to proliferate and cause damage in the lungs — instead tending to cause milder, upper-airway infections. “Something is different about the ability to replicate in animals, and it seems to be slower and not able to infect the lung at the same level as the other variants,” Diamond said, calling that finding unexpected. But he said he is cautious about extrapolating too far from the animal data. Just because omicron is mild in rodents doesn’t mean it would be mild in people, too.

Why is omicron less adept at infecting the cells deep in the lungs? Converging lines of evidence from multiple laboratories show that omicron uses a different method from previous variants to enter cells. At the University of Cambridge, scientists built miniature models of human lungs in a dish and found that harmless replicas of the omicron virus were less able to infect cells than delta was. They traced that trait back to its inefficient ability to enter cells by interacting with a protein called TMPRSS2, which is abundant in the cells of the lung. Omicron also shows less aptitude for fusing cells together, which creates masses that are a hallmark of severe covid-19 in autopsies. Other scientists have used different experiments to arrive at similar conclusions. That could explain why this version of the virus appears less likely to cause lethal pneumonia and might more closely resemble an upper respiratory infection, like a cold. This quirk of omicron may just be a bit of luck — not a sign that all future variants will follow omicron’s path.“I’m worried about people getting the wrong idea about this, because what we have observed is something that has happened in omicron. I don’t think this is the way all viruses are going to go necessarily from now on,” said Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge. Barney Graham, a scientist recently retired from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases whose work laid the foundation for many coronavirus vaccines, said it is increasingly difficult to tell whether changes in disease severity can be traced to the virus itself or the presence of prior immunity. And Graham said he is worried that a virus that is milder in adults may not also be milder in children. “Younger children have smaller airways, so they can experience the same thing as adults in a different way. So if the virus is still infecting the airways, readily infecting the airways, then the very young children with small airways may have more trouble clearing that,” Graham said. Graham said he is optimistic overall. His hope is that as the virus evolves, it will be boxed into a corner. The mutations that give the virus an edge against human immunity could come with an Achilles’ heel, hindering its ability to spread. Over multiple waves of disease, the coronavirus could cease to be a pandemic contagion and instead be more of a seasonal threat. But how many waves would that take? He doesn’t know. The challenge is to minimize the threat of future surges by increasing vaccinations globally. “Within the next three to six years, I think everyone on Earth is going to be exposed and to some level infected with the virus,” Graham said. “It’s inevitable.”

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Quote
Hairball
Omicron could have a silver lining by boosting immunity, some experts say. But don’t bet on it.
The variant’s extraordinary transmissibility could enhance immunity as it rips through the population.

COVID19

As omicron sickens millions of Americans, some disease experts are peering into the future, speculating that the massive winter wave of infections from this new coronavirus variant might produce something beneficial in the long run. They note that omicron, while stunningly contagious, appears less likely to send someone to the hospital. The variant’s extraordinary transmissibility could boost immunity as it rips through the population and — once this tide of cases has ebbed — make the pandemic a less dangerous health emergency. The idea that omicron has a silver lining is not a fully formed scientific theory. It’s conjecture, in some cases unspooled on Twitter threads and floated in television interviews. At worst, it is “arm-waving,” to use the term that serious scientists employ as a pejorative. And even the experts promoting the idea concede that it is an educated guess — and is contingent upon the virus itself, which has repeatedly surprised experts and may generate new variants that are more dangerous than omicron. “Every prediction about the future has to come with the parenthesis that there could be another variant that screws this up,” said Robert Wachter, the chief of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who has used social media to share his speculation that omicron could carry long-term benefits. After this omicron wave subsides, he suggests, so many people would have some level of immunity to the virus that it would not subsequently deliver the same level of pain and suffering. In an interview, he said that in the past he would have submitted his thoughts to a peer-reviewed journal, a process that probably would have taken three months. In this health emergency, he went straight to Twitter. “It’s hard to say omicron is a lucky break, but it sort of is,” Wachter said in the interview. “Because the combination of significantly lower pathogenicity, and only modest immune evasion — and tremendous infectivity — leads to what would you call the opposite of a perfect storm.” This hypothesis has generated pushback from other scientists, who say too much remains unknown about the virus to make such a forecast. They note that every time the experts have suggested that the pandemic is nearing the endgame, the virus comes up with a new trick — in the case of omicron, packaging dozens of mutations that make the variant more infectious while also enabling it to slip past a key line of immune defense. Any broad immunity boost comes at a known, enormously high cost — health-care systems are teetering at the brink and medical workers are burned out. World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Thursday that omicron infections should not be described as “mild”: “Just like previous variants, omicron is hospitalizing people, and it is killing people.”

The coronavirus continues to mutate, and its spread in much of the world is made easier by the shortage of vaccines in many developing countries. There is no scientific evidence that the virus is settling into a permanently milder state. A new variant could conceivably combine omicron’s transmissibility with the higher disease severity caused by previous variants, including the still-circulating delta variant. Emory University biostatistician Natalie Dean said people thought the pandemic was waning last spring, and then delta came along. And then in the fall things looked better — and omicron appeared. “There’s always this threat of curveballs,” she said. Infectious-disease experts say the idea that widespread omicron infection will create immunity in a broad swath of the population, and a shield against future variants, is certainly plausible. But it’s unknown how durable that immunity would be or how well it would protect against a future variant. “The idea that mild infection can lead to better antibody levels and protection in the future from other variants is intriguing, but we certainly don’t have any data on this yet,” said Matthew B. Frieman, a virologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Monica Gandhi, a physician and colleague of Wachter’s at UC-San Francisco, said in an email that the spread of omicron could signal the approach of the “endgame” of the pandemic, with the virus becoming endemic — meaning it would continue to circulate at modest levels but not cause society-disrupting outbreaks. “Unless we have a new variant that is more virulent (which can occur if we don’t work hard on global vaccine equity), it looks like we could be approaching endemicity in the U.S. once the omicron surge is over,” she wrote. Any discussion of long-term benefits from omicron necessarily views the situation at the 30,000-foot level, because the country and much of the world is in the middle of a health crisis. In the United States, patients are flooding hospitals, with most of the country still facing what is likely to be the worst phase of the winter surge. Wachter acknowledges that omicron has attractive attributes for the long run but extremely bad attributes in the short run: “This is really awful for January. Our hospitals are being overrun.” Many people appear to be resigned to being exposed to the virus. That is an understandable response to news reports saying that omicron is a milder version of the coronavirus and that there’s probably no avoiding such a contagious pathogen.

Six medical experts who advised President Biden during the transition from the Trump administration published articles Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association that urged the Biden administration to shift its strategy, ending the current cycle of unending emergency and adjusting to the reality of coronavirus infections as a “new normal.” One article suggested that the administration cease tracking covid deaths independently from those caused by other potentially lethal respiratory viruses, including flu. “The ‘new normal’ requires recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more. COVID-19 must now be considered among the risks posed by all respiratory viral illnesses combined,” wrote Ezekiel Emanuel, Celine Gounder and Michael Osterholm, prominent disease experts who have been outspoken throughout the pandemic. The administration’s pandemic guidance has shifted slightly: It still emphasizes vaccinations and booster shots, and common-sense measures including mask-wearing and avoidance of indoor crowds, but people also should live their lives and not isolate themselves. And scientists as well as government officials are generally emphatic that schools remain open for in-person learning. “My attitude has been that I’m respectful of the virus — I’m taking reasonable precautions — but I’m not going to the end of the earth to avoid it,” said Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine. “We’re all going to get this thing eventually.” Vaccines usually prevent severe outcomes from omicron, particularly after a booster dose. And a number of treatments remain effective against omicron, though they are in short supply as demand surges.

So far, there has not been a sharp increase in the number of deaths, and this is now many weeks into the omicron wave. It remains unclear why omicron infections are typically less severe than those caused by delta. Some of it is probably attributable to widespread immunity from vaccination and previous infections. But the variant itself appears to operate differently. Laboratory experiments suggest that although omicron can multiply faster than delta and is able to sidestep key parts of immunity, its ability to invade lung cells and cause lethal pneumonia has been hobbled. There is no guarantee that the next variant will do the same. And omicron still packs a punch. “It’s not like omicron is running through the population and nobody is getting hospitalized,” said Michael Diamond, a virologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “People are getting sick and still dying.” He is not ready to embrace omicron as a blessing in disguise. “Yes, we will generate more immunity in the population, so maybe we will be poised better against a future variant — maybe. It remains to be seen,” Diamond said. In a massive team effort, Diamond and collaborators scattered across the United States and Japan infected mice and hamsters with omicron and discovered a consistent, striking pattern: The omicron variant clearly causes less severe disease in rodents. The results, published in a not-yet-peer-reviewed study, show that omicron is biologically different from the variants that came before. But there are limitations to such experiments. Mice are different from humans, and their milder disease was measured in weight loss. Mice infected with previous versions of the virus lost weight, but mice infected with omicron did not. In hamsters, which develop respiratory illness analogous to what humans experience when infected, omicron is less likely to proliferate and cause damage in the lungs — instead tending to cause milder, upper-airway infections. “Something is different about the ability to replicate in animals, and it seems to be slower and not able to infect the lung at the same level as the other variants,” Diamond said, calling that finding unexpected. But he said he is cautious about extrapolating too far from the animal data. Just because omicron is mild in rodents doesn’t mean it would be mild in people, too.

Why is omicron less adept at infecting the cells deep in the lungs? Converging lines of evidence from multiple laboratories show that omicron uses a different method from previous variants to enter cells. At the University of Cambridge, scientists built miniature models of human lungs in a dish and found that harmless replicas of the omicron virus were less able to infect cells than delta was. They traced that trait back to its inefficient ability to enter cells by interacting with a protein called TMPRSS2, which is abundant in the cells of the lung. Omicron also shows less aptitude for fusing cells together, which creates masses that are a hallmark of severe covid-19 in autopsies. Other scientists have used different experiments to arrive at similar conclusions. That could explain why this version of the virus appears less likely to cause lethal pneumonia and might more closely resemble an upper respiratory infection, like a cold. This quirk of omicron may just be a bit of luck — not a sign that all future variants will follow omicron’s path.“I’m worried about people getting the wrong idea about this, because what we have observed is something that has happened in omicron. I don’t think this is the way all viruses are going to go necessarily from now on,” said Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge. Barney Graham, a scientist recently retired from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases whose work laid the foundation for many coronavirus vaccines, said it is increasingly difficult to tell whether changes in disease severity can be traced to the virus itself or the presence of prior immunity. And Graham said he is worried that a virus that is milder in adults may not also be milder in children. “Younger children have smaller airways, so they can experience the same thing as adults in a different way. So if the virus is still infecting the airways, readily infecting the airways, then the very young children with small airways may have more trouble clearing that,” Graham said. Graham said he is optimistic overall. His hope is that as the virus evolves, it will be boxed into a corner. The mutations that give the virus an edge against human immunity could come with an Achilles’ heel, hindering its ability to spread. Over multiple waves of disease, the coronavirus could cease to be a pandemic contagion and instead be more of a seasonal threat. But how many waves would that take? He doesn’t know. The challenge is to minimize the threat of future surges by increasing vaccinations globally. “Within the next three to six years, I think everyone on Earth is going to be exposed and to some level infected with the virus,” Graham said. “It’s inevitable.”

Thanks Hairball for this very interesting overview!

It tells about hope and uncertainty among experts on the future relation between humans and virusses.
Hope is important for the spirit of us humans but can also puts our minds to sleep. “We” also thought that “we” had influenza under control but than came 2017/2018 out of the blue. The biggest (mini?) influenza pandemic since WW2. It officialy killed 61.000 people in the USA alone. Existing well worked out vaccins didn’t work for many! So even if the optimistic virologists and epidemic experts are right about omikron (and I hope so) “immunity” has a dangerous side to it. It can blindfold us. With all the knowledge “we” have, virusses are unpridictable in their behaviour and potentially just as dangerous as a possible nucliar war.
When the human race as a whole ignores to see those dangers it will be doomed. But as long as those “in power” have a good future for mankind in mind there is hope

I'm a GHOST living in a ghost town

Cheers georgie, and stay safe.

In other related news, first there were the counterfeit proof of Vaccine cards, and now there's this:

Officials are warning the public about fake Covid-19 testing kits. Here's how to spot them

Covid-19 cases continue to rise dramatically, leading to brutally long lines at testing sites and empty shelves at stores where at-home rapid test kits were once in stock.
Now an additional problem has emerged: The Federal Trade Commission is warning about fraudulent testing kits being sold online to desperate customers.
"It's not a surprise that, according to the US Food and Drug Administration, fake and unauthorized at-home testing kits are popping up online as opportunistic scammers take advantage of the spike in demand," the FTC said in a press release this week.

More. > Fake Covid Test Kits

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Novak Djokovic’s visa cancellation quashed, tennis star to be released from detention

Novak Djokovic wins case to be released from detention

He's arrested now.

[firstsportz.com]

Quote
terraplane
Novak Djokovic’s visa cancellation quashed, tennis star to be released from detention

Novak Djokovic wins case to be released from detention

The core of the decision by the Judge was to do with the fact that he'd been promised until 08:30 to allow time to get advice, there was a change of shift, and that promise was broken.

There are millions of people in Australia who will raise a hollow laugh at that given that (for example) there were people detained in the same hotel as Djokovic who are in proper international legal terms REFUGEES and should be treated as such, but they have been detained for over NINE YEARS.

The Australian Govt's treatment of Refugees (a legal term) is disgusting beyond my ability to express.

Novak has shown how if you are rich and famous you can get away with just about anything, but if you are not, then you are downtrodden and (metaphorically, but sometimes literally) abused.

(By the time most people read this it's well possible that another arm of the Australian Govt will have turfed him out of the country anyway.... )

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Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

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DandelionPowderman
He's arrested now.

[firstsportz.com]

Nothing in the news here yet that I can see. It would be a bad look - government ignoring its own judicial system.

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CaptainCorella

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terraplane
Novak Djokovic’s visa cancellation quashed, tennis star to be released from detention

Novak Djokovic wins case to be released from detention

The core of the decision by the Judge was to do with the fact that he'd been promised until 08:30 to allow time to get advice, there was a change of shift, and that promise was broken.

There are millions of people in Australia who will raise a hollow laugh at that given that (for example) there were people detained in the same hotel as Djokovic who are in proper international legal terms REFUGEES and should be treated as such, but they have been detained for over NINE YEARS.

The Australian Govt's treatment of Refugees (a legal term) is disgusting beyond my ability to express.

Novak has shown how if you are rich and famous you can get away with just about anything, but if you are not, then you are downtrodden and (metaphorically, but sometimes literally) abused.

(By the time most people read this it's well possible that another arm of the Australian Govt will have turfed him out of the country anyway.... )

I agree that Australia's treatment of refugees is appalling.

Ikea cuts sick pay for unvaccinated UK staff who are self-isolating

Retailer says it will pay £96.35 a week rather than average £400 but will consider mitigating circumstances

Jasper Jolly
@jjpjolly
Sun 9 Jan 2022 19.14 GMT

Furniture retailer Ikea has cut sick pay for unvaccinated UK staff who are forced to self-isolate because of close contact with someone with Covid-19, it has emerged.

Unvaccinated workers at Ikea are only eligible for statutory sick pay of £96.35 a week during 10 days of isolation, compared with weekly pay of more than £400 before tax for an average worker on the shop floor.

However, managers at the retailer, which employs 10,000 staff in the UK, will consider mitigating circumstances.

Some employers have experimented with incentives for workers to get vaccinated, including free time off during work hours, but Ikea and utility company Wessex Water, have joined supermarket Morrisons in imposing a financial cost on those without an exemption who decline to be vaccinated.

People in England who are fully vaccinated – with at least two doses of most of the approved vaccines – are not required to self-isolate if they have been in close contact with someone infected with Covid-19. However, unvaccinated people contacted through the government’s test-and-trace system must still self-isolate by law. Other nations of the UK have set similar rules.

Ikea’s policy was first introduced in September, while Wessex Water will implement the cut on Monday. The Mail on Sunday first reported the policies.

Wessex Water, which serves 2.8 million customers in the South West of England, has taken action after enduring record Covid-19-related absences during the past week. Workers self-isolating because they are infected with Covid-19 will still be paid their full wage.

An Ikea spokesperson said: “We appreciate that this is an emotive topic and all circumstances will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, anyone in doubt or concerned about their situation is encouraged to speak to their manager.”

A Wessex Water spokesperson said: “The vast majority of our workforce has been vaccinated and it’s important as a company providing essential services with key-worker employees [that] the remainder get vaccinated to protect themselves, customers and their colleagues. To make it easy for our staff, vaccine appointments can be booked in work time.

“Absences due to Covid have doubled in the last week, so we need everyone to be available so we can continue to provide uninterrupted essential water and sewerage services.”

Wessex Water said that throughout the pandemic it had not furloughed staff, and anyone who had to self-isolate after contracting Covid received full pay.

In some countries, including the US, companies have insisted that staff receive coronavirus vaccines or else pay monthly fees, in the case of Delta Air Lines, or even lose their jobs at employers such as United Airlines, tech company Google and Citigroup, one of the world’s largest banks. French president Emmanuel Macron has also pledged to “piss off” unvaccinated people (who are not exempt) by making daily life slightly more difficult for them.

Employment experts have suggested that “no jab, no job” policies would be difficult for companies in the UK to enforce because of stronger worker protections and rules against discrimination. However, UK care workers have been obliged to be vaccinated since November.

[www.theguardian.com]

As an ER Doctor, I Fear Health Care Collapse More Than Omicron (New York Times)

By Craig Spencer
Dr. Spencer is an emergency room doctor in New York City.
Jan. 10, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

As the Omicron tsunami crashes ashore in New York City, the comforting news that this variant generally causes milder disease overlooks the unfolding tragedy happening on the front lines.

As an emergency room doctor fighting this new surge, I am grateful that vaccines and a potentially less lethal variant have meant that fewer of my patients today need life support than they did at the start of the pandemic. In March 2020, nurses and doctors rushed between patients, endlessly trying to stabilize one before another crashed. Many of my patients needed supplemental oxygen and the sickest needed to be put on ventilators. Many never came off them. Our intensive care units filled beyond capacity, and yet patients kept coming.

...

Yet these tools are still not enough to slow the rapid influx of patients we’re now seeing from Omicron, and the situation is bleak for health workers and hospitals.

In New York City, hospitalizations have tripled in the past few weeks alone. New Jersey is seeing its highest number of hospitalizations of the whole pandemic. In all, nearly every state and territory is seeing Covid admissions on the rise.

For most people — especially the vaccinated — Omicron presents as a sore throat or a mild inconvenience. But among the many patients in our hospital, the situation is serious. On a recent shift, I still saw “classic” Covid-19 patients, short of breath and needing oxygen. All of them were unvaccinated. I also saw elderly patients for whom Covid rendered them too weak to get out of bed. I treated people with diabetes in whom the virus caused serious and potentially fatal complications.

...

It’s understandable that people are tired of Covid-19. Health workers are, too. But leaning too heavily on us and our hospital beds is foolhardy. A highly contagious variant like Omicron, even if it causes milder illness, can still risk precipitating the failure of our health care system. Collective actions over the coming weeks — the distribution and use of high-quality masks, staying home if not feeling well and getting vaccinated or a booster if eligible — could help prevent hospitals and health care workers from sliding into crisis. It’s not March 2020. But it shouldn’t have to be for us to take this seriously.

Bjornulf

US averaging 700K new COVID cases per day

COVID19

The U.S. is now averaging more than 700,000 new coronavirus cases per day, a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows.

The country reported about 4.91 million cases in the week ending Saturday. That's more cases in seven days than in April, May, June and July 2021 combined. At the latest pace, eight Americans are testing positive every second. Each of the last five days ranks in the top five of the entire pandemic for highest case counts."I would not be surprised at all if we go over a million cases per day," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president's chief medical adviser, told News 4 New York in an interview Saturday. For perspective, at one point in June the U.S. average daily caseload over a week was just above 11,000. And while the prevalent omicron variant is milder on a per-case basis, fast-swelling numbers of new cases are burdening hospitals. A federal report released Saturday shows about 138,000 COVID-19 patients in hospital beds, up 32% from the previous week. But Fauci told the TV station the dismal numbers could start to decline by month's end. "I can’t predict accurately, because no one can. But I would hope that by the time we get to the fourth week in January ... that we will start to see this coming down," Fauci said.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

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Hairball
US averaging 700K new COVID cases per day

COVID19

The U.S. is now averaging more than 700,000 new coronavirus cases per day, a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows.

The country reported about 4.91 million cases in the week ending Saturday. That's more cases in seven days than in April, May, June and July 2021 combined. At the latest pace, eight Americans are testing positive every second. Each of the last five days ranks in the top five of the entire pandemic for highest case counts."I would not be surprised at all if we go over a million cases per day," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president's chief medical adviser, told News 4 New York in an interview Saturday. For perspective, at one point in June the U.S. average daily caseload over a week was just above 11,000. And while the prevalent omicron variant is milder on a per-case basis, fast-swelling numbers of new cases are burdening hospitals. A federal report released Saturday shows about 138,000 COVID-19 patients in hospital beds, up 32% from the previous week. But Fauci told the TV station the dismal numbers could start to decline by month's end. "I can’t predict accurately, because no one can. But I would hope that by the time we get to the fourth week in January ... that we will start to see this coming down," Fauci said.

Because enough people haven't taken it seriously, there's no stopping the onslaught now.

Only two positives. One, it seems to be less severe (though that doesn't mean it's still not bad). Two, because it is so communicable, it'll be over fast.

I only hope that people that would otherwise have survived don't now die because they don't access to medical facilities because of the sheer volume.

It'll be a rough ride for the next few weeks.

A friend & her whole extended family have got omicron. Her kids & young grandkids are constantly in & out of there. Most are vaccinated. She said it's like a bad cold. Scary how quickly it spread though.

Sorry but, Novak, Kyrie Irving, Aaron Rogers and all these other prima-donna anti-vaccine athletes are selfish @#$%&!

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crholmstrom
A friend & her whole extended family have got omicron. Her kids & young grandkids are constantly in & out of there. Most are vaccinated. She said it's like a bad cold. Scary how quickly it spread though.

I now have several extended family members testing positive, all vaxxed, all ok. I have a high school friend that died several weeks ago, anti vaxxer.

I realize this is only anecdotal info however I'm "seeing it" as it's being described.

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bv

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NashvilleBlues
[www.nytimes.com]

A variant found in France is not a concern, the W.H.O. says. (New York Times Jan. 5, 2022)

The World Health Organization says that it is monitoring a coronavirus variant detected in a small number of patients in France, but that, for now, there is little reason to worry about its spread

The B.1.640.2 variant was first identified in October and uploaded to Gisaid, a database for disease variants, on Nov. 4. Only about 20 samples have been sequenced so far, experts said this week, and only one since early December.

Abdi Mahmud, a Covid incident manager with the W.H.O., told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that the variant had been on the agency’s radar since November, but added that it did not appear to have spread widely over the past two months.

“That virus has had a lot of chances to pick up,” he said.

By contrast, the Omicron variant, which was first uploaded to Gisaid on Nov. 23, has more than 120,000 sequences in the database. (The vast majority of Omicron cases have not been sequenced.) It has been detected in at least 128 countries, according to the W.H.O., and is fueling record-high case numbers in many parts of the world.

What are you able to tell us at the moment, Bjornulf, about that undergroup of Omicron, the socalled, BA. 2, that apparently is even more rapidly spreading in Denmark and parts of Sweden?

CDC warns Americans not to travel to Canada

COVID19

Americans should avoid traveling to Canada because of the new wave of Covid-19 cases the country is experiencing, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said Monday.
The CDC put Canada in its highest-risk category: Level Four, citing a "very high" risk of Covid-19 infection for travelers heading north. Canada previously had been in Level Three high-risk category. Canada requires Americans on nonessential trips to be vaccinated, and will require essential travelers – such as medical personnel and truck drivers – to be vaccinated as of this Saturday. However, "because of the current situation in Canada, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading Covid-19 variants," the CDC said in its Monday announcement. "Travelers should follow recommendations or requirements in Canada, including wearing a mask and staying six feet apart from others." It would be better still for Americans to stay home, the agency added. "Avoid travel to Canada," the CDC said.

The elevated travel warning comes as Canada, like the United States and much of the world, experiences a dramatic spike in Covid-19 cases thanks to the highly infectious Omicron variant. Canada has been reporting more than 40,000 new Covid-19 cases a day since Jan. 4, according to the Our World in Data Coronavirus Data Explorer. That's more than 10 times the number of daily infections a month ago. And even before the Omicron wave, the Canadian government tightened its controls on international travel, reinstituting a requirement that returning Canadians show proof of a negative PCR test for Covid-19 as of Dec. 18. "The government of Canada continues to advise against all nonessential international travel," the Canadian government said in a tweet last week. Amid that warning, the Covid-19 infection rate in the U.S. remains nearly twice as high as it is in Canada. That is one of several reasons why Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat, lashed out at the CDC's recommendation against traveling north. "This is exactly what the president says not to do," Higgins said. "This is panic stuff, when you have four levels, and the fourth level is deep red. You know, that says: 'Oh, my God, we're doomed again.' " Higgins said he feared the CDC recommendation could lead to a border shutdown like the one in place for the first 17 months of the pandemic. And to hear Higgins tell it, the warning against travel to Canada is just part of a larger failure by the CDC to deliver the most important information to Americans regarding Covid-19. At this point in the pandemic, he said, the CDC should focus on telling Americans to get vaccinated, to get booster shots if they are vaccinated and to wear N-95 masks, which offer far greater protection against infection than cloth or surgical masks. Higgins said the agency is losing credibility by consistently warning Americans against travel, instead of focusing on the need to take those protective measures. "This is the largest public health agency in the world, and people are tuning it out," Higgins said. "Why? Because its information has been conflicting and confusing. And this flies in the face of the primary message that they should be sending to Americans and that is: get double vaxxed, get boostered and wear these masks." The CDC is delivering most of that message, but it was secondary to the travel warning it issued for Canada on Monday. "Do not travel internationally until you are fully vaccinated," the agency said. "Getting vaccinated is still the best way to protect yourself from severe disease, slow the spread of Covid-19 and reduce the number of new variants.

CDC encourages you get a Covid-19 vaccine booster dose if you are eligible. People who are not fully vaccinated should follow additional recommendations before, during and after travel." The warning also encouraged travelers to wear masks if they travel overseas, but the agency did not encourage the use of any particular kind of mask. Also on Monday, the CDC raised its travel warning to Level Four for the Caribbean island of Curacao. That, along with the warning about Canada, brought the total number of Level Four nations to 81. Besides Canada, many other popular travel destinations are ranked as Level Four very high-risk countries that should be avoided. The list includes Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Iceland and Peru. Mexico – traditionally the top foreign travel destination for Americans – is rated as a Level Three high-risk country, as are the Bahamas, Egypt, Israel and Thailand. American travelers face a Level Two moderate risk of Covid-19 infection in tourist destinations such as Costa Rica, Jamaica and New Zealand, the CDC said. And only a few major travel destinations – such as the British Virgin Islands, Japan and Morocco – are rated as low risk. The CDC adopted its four-level system for rating travel risks in November 2020. The ratings are based on Covid-19 case counts.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Quote
Hairball
CDC warns Americans not to travel to Canada

COVID19

Americans should avoid traveling to Canada because of the new wave of Covid-19 cases the country is experiencing, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said Monday.
The CDC put Canada in its highest-risk category: Level Four, citing a "very high" risk of Covid-19 infection for travelers heading north. Canada previously had been in Level Three high-risk category. Canada requires Americans on nonessential trips to be vaccinated, and will require essential travelers – such as medical personnel and truck drivers – to be vaccinated as of this Saturday. However, "because of the current situation in Canada, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading Covid-19 variants," the CDC said in its Monday announcement. "Travelers should follow recommendations or requirements in Canada, including wearing a mask and staying six feet apart from others." It would be better still for Americans to stay home, the agency added. "Avoid travel to Canada," the CDC said.

The elevated travel warning comes as Canada, like the United States and much of the world, experiences a dramatic spike in Covid-19 cases thanks to the highly infectious Omicron variant. Canada has been reporting more than 40,000 new Covid-19 cases a day since Jan. 4, according to the Our World in Data Coronavirus Data Explorer. That's more than 10 times the number of daily infections a month ago. And even before the Omicron wave, the Canadian government tightened its controls on international travel, reinstituting a requirement that returning Canadians show proof of a negative PCR test for Covid-19 as of Dec. 18. "The government of Canada continues to advise against all nonessential international travel," the Canadian government said in a tweet last week. Amid that warning, the Covid-19 infection rate in the U.S. remains nearly twice as high as it is in Canada. That is one of several reasons why Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat, lashed out at the CDC's recommendation against traveling north. "This is exactly what the president says not to do," Higgins said. "This is panic stuff, when you have four levels, and the fourth level is deep red. You know, that says: 'Oh, my God, we're doomed again.' " Higgins said he feared the CDC recommendation could lead to a border shutdown like the one in place for the first 17 months of the pandemic. And to hear Higgins tell it, the warning against travel to Canada is just part of a larger failure by the CDC to deliver the most important information to Americans regarding Covid-19. At this point in the pandemic, he said, the CDC should focus on telling Americans to get vaccinated, to get booster shots if they are vaccinated and to wear N-95 masks, which offer far greater protection against infection than cloth or surgical masks. Higgins said the agency is losing credibility by consistently warning Americans against travel, instead of focusing on the need to take those protective measures. "This is the largest public health agency in the world, and people are tuning it out," Higgins said. "Why? Because its information has been conflicting and confusing. And this flies in the face of the primary message that they should be sending to Americans and that is: get double vaxxed, get boostered and wear these masks." The CDC is delivering most of that message, but it was secondary to the travel warning it issued for Canada on Monday. "Do not travel internationally until you are fully vaccinated," the agency said. "Getting vaccinated is still the best way to protect yourself from severe disease, slow the spread of Covid-19 and reduce the number of new variants.

CDC encourages you get a Covid-19 vaccine booster dose if you are eligible. People who are not fully vaccinated should follow additional recommendations before, during and after travel." The warning also encouraged travelers to wear masks if they travel overseas, but the agency did not encourage the use of any particular kind of mask. Also on Monday, the CDC raised its travel warning to Level Four for the Caribbean island of Curacao. That, along with the warning about Canada, brought the total number of Level Four nations to 81. Besides Canada, many other popular travel destinations are ranked as Level Four very high-risk countries that should be avoided. The list includes Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Iceland and Peru. Mexico – traditionally the top foreign travel destination for Americans – is rated as a Level Three high-risk country, as are the Bahamas, Egypt, Israel and Thailand. American travelers face a Level Two moderate risk of Covid-19 infection in tourist destinations such as Costa Rica, Jamaica and New Zealand, the CDC said. And only a few major travel destinations – such as the British Virgin Islands, Japan and Morocco – are rated as low risk. The CDC adopted its four-level system for rating travel risks in November 2020. The ratings are based on Covid-19 case counts.

Stuff like this from the CDC is adorable. It's like the person that's in charge of this doesn't look at the daily stats.