The Chinese disease in the news

[Legion]

A coronavirus infection isn’t what it once was.

Studies suggest that, compared with Delta, Omicron is a third to half as likely to send someone to the hospital; by some estimates, the chance that an older person will die of covid is now lower than the risk posed by the seasonal flu.

Should we be focused on case counts at all? Some, even including Anthony Fauci, now argue that hospitalizations are now the more relevant marker of viral damage.

But that figure, too, is not quite what it seems.

Many hospitalized covid patients have no respiratory symptoms; they were admitted for other reasons—a heart attack, a broken hip, cancer surgery—and happened to test positive for the virus.

There are no nationwide estimates of the proportion of hospitalized patients with “incidental covid,” but in New York State some forty per cent of hospitalized patients with covid are thought to have been admitted for other reasons.

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services reported that incidental infections accounted for roughly two-thirds of covid admissions at its hospitals.

Pediatric covid hospitalizations have also reached record levels, probably because Omicron’s transmissibility means that many more kids are contracting the virus; there’s little evidence that the variant is causing illness in them, though.

Clarifying the distinction between a virus that drives illness and one that’s simply along for the ride is more than an academic exercise.

If we tally asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic infections as covid hospitalizations, we risk exaggerating the toll of the virus, with all the attendant social and economic ramifications.

If we overstate the degree of incidental covid, we risk promoting a misguided sense of security.

Currently, the U.S. has no data-collection practices or unified framework for separating one type of hospitalization from another.

Complicating all this is the fact that it’s sometimes hard to distinguish a person hospitalized “with covid” from one hospitalized “for covid.”

For some patients, a coronavirus infection can aggravate a seemingly unrelated condition—a covid fever tips an elderly woman with a urinary-tract infection into delirium; a bout of diarrhea dehydrates a man admitted with sickle-cell disease.

In such cases, covid isn’t an innocent bystander, nor does it start the fire—it adds just enough tinder to push a manageable problem into a crisis.

It is a positive development that we’re able to engage in this discussion at all.




https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/24/do-the-omicron-numbers-mean-what-we-think-they-mean

[Legion]

When Daniel Storm found out he had Covid-19, he was shocked.

He had been so careful, barely socializing and always wearing a mask whenever he left the house. He had received his Covid vaccinations and booster.

His PCR test results arrived by email on Jan. 8.

As he stared at the word “positive,” Storm, 52, of Wilmington, North Carolina, said he felt angry and disappointed.

Then, relief washed over him.

“I feel like I’ve been kind of walking on pins and needles,” Storm said.

Getting the news about his case — which ended up being an asymptomatic one that he discovered by testing on a whim — enabled Storm to isolate at home and then feel more relaxed, both for himself and for those around him.

As the pandemic enters its third year, many with recent Covid diagnoses are finding that contracting the illness they worked so hard to dodge for so long has brought them an unexpected reprieve from anxiety — instead of compounding it further.

Psychologists say it’s an example of anticipatory anxiety, where the dread you experience before an event ends up being worse than the event itself.

As a result, many, particularly those vaccinated and boosted, say getting Covid despite their best efforts to avoid it has felt like an opportunity to surrender.

“We don’t have to be worrying and waiting anymore,” said Sarah Moon, of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, who has gotten her booster shot and just tested positive Friday after her 4-year-old, Mira, had Covid earlier in the week.



https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/recently-contracted-covid-unexpected-emotion-relief-rcna11922

[Wolverine]

Have to keep it on the front burner for the mid terms, need to try and beat conservatives over the head with!

[Legion]

Have to keep it on the front burner for the mid terms, need to try and beat conservatives over the head with!

That was the plan all along. Until they find a way to make election cheating legal and questioning their tactics illegal at the federal level, it will continue.

[Legion]

WTF DID THAT OLD MEGALOMANIAC JUST SAY?

The C.D.C.’s New Challenge? Grappling With Imperfect Science



The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was long revered for its methodical and meticulous scientific approach.

Agencies in other nations modeled themselves after the world’s most highly regarded public health authority, even adopting the name.

The agency has issued recommendations based on what once would have been considered insufficient evidence, amid growing public concern about how these guidelines affect the economy and education.

The agency’s director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, has sometimes skipped much of the traditional scientific review process.

The science is incomplete, and this is our best advice for now.

In recent interviews, some officials at the C.D.C. privately described the decisions as demoralizing, and worried about Dr. Walensky’s increasing reliance on a small group of advisers and what they saw as the White House’s heavy political influence on her actions.

There are policy considerations in a pandemic that are “not the sole purview of C.D.C.,” said Dr. Richard E. Besser, who served as interim chief of the agency during the H1N1 influenza virus outbreak of 2009. He added, “I think we need some more clarity”.

Dr. Walensky and the C.D.C. declined requests for comment on new tensions in the agency’s decision-making. But the director has frequently cited "rapidly evolving science" as justification.

In August, Dr. Walensky joined Joe Biden in supporting booster shots for all Americans, well before scientists at the Food and Drug Administration or at her own agency had a chance to review the data.

Some researchers bristled at being left out of the decision-making process and were enraged by the agency’s public statement the next day that the change was “motivated by science.”

Under strict orders to not talk about the new recommendations, C.D.C. staff members were silent.

“We would have appreciated more opportunity for input and heads up,” said Scott Becker, chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

MY WIFE IS A DOCTOR, SO DO WHAT I TELL YOU OR ELSE

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/health/cdc-omicron-isolation-guidance.html

[Lionfish]

Have to keep it on the front burner for the mid terms, need to try and beat conservatives over the head with!

It should not make it even through March. This thing is dying faster than the ratings at CNN or Brands poll numbers.

[Legion]

It should not make it even through March. This thing is dying faster than the ratings at CNN or Brands poll numbers.

I suspect they will try to keep it going.

[The Anonymous]

I suspect they will try to keep it going.

Is that so

[Lionfish]

I suspect they will try to keep it going.

Agreed, but the people are really waking up to this fraud. Every day it moves further down the list of Brandon fuckups.

[Legion]

Agreed, but the people are really waking up to this fraud. Every day it moves further down the list of Brandon fuckups.

The media needs to keep the panic porn proliferating.

[Legion]

[Lionfish]

The media needs to keep the panic porn proliferating.

I think the public is also awakening to the farce the "media" has made of themselves. Look at the ratings.

[Legion]

I think the public is also awakening to the farce the "media" has made of themselves. Look at the ratings.

I have. Someone is propping the media up financially.

[Legion]

It’s a cult.

Fauci on “believers and non-believers”:

@14:30


https://www.weforum.org/events/the-d...19-what-s-next

[Legion]