I have such a backlog of articles today that I think that an additional COVID-19 News Digest is warranted. I realize this isn’t at my normal time and place, but it takes awhile to write these, especially with little to no help. I don’t mean to complain, because your praise has been positive and has kept me going. It’s just covering this every day has started to wear thin on me.
This is a tweet heavy diary. I apologize to those not on social media, but this lack of links, analysis, and quotations makes this diary possible this evening. Expect the next few days to be tweet heavy until I catch up in real time.
Unmistakable sign #1 comes from New York, where cases are spiking once again.
That’s nearly double the cases as the previous week. We could be on the verge of “hockey sticking” in several states at the vanguard of the next wave. And New York isn't the only state where trends have noticeably changed:
Luckily, we’re stopping mass testing and viral tracing so that we can pretend like there’s nothing wrong going on!
Luckily, waste water cannot lie like the lack of tests can. The system has its own limitations of course, cue to the fact that water isn’t pulled from everywhere in the USA and it cannot tell us which part of the system is spiking the most in a megalopolis.
In the Atlantic, Dr. Katherine Wu writes about how letting our defenses down has left us woefully unprepared for another wave of infections. She doesn’t expect “return to normal” to last very long before businesses close once again due to so many out sick.
If you think that a prior infection makes you safe, think again after reading this study through the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs and another on Omicron antibodies being unprotective:
Correction: Omicron Infection + vaccines offers robust protection against BA.2.
Evidence: www.medrxiv.org/… Also, Omicron infection should protect you from the BA.2 subvariant
Breakthrough infections and re-infections are very high within the Armed Forces and VA system.
Omicron may protect us from BA.2 for now, but it doesn’t seem to protect as well against other variants. Get boosted now!
Americans as usual are bloody confused about what they want, just like spoiled children.
But no matter what, there is no going back to the before times:
Thank you for reading this far, and please help analyze and parse these articles as I just didn’t have the time I would normally devote to doing so. If I am misusing an article today, call me out on it!
Friday, Mar 25, 2022 · 1:04:25 AM +00:00
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bilboteach
ninkasi23 posts a study where getting vaccinated decreases Long Covid risk factors significantly.
Sort of good news/no news on Long Covid here from my local NPR affiliate:
Evidence grows that vaccines lower the risk of getting long COVID
The Israeli study, conducted by Edelstein and his colleagues, followed several thousand people who were unvaccinated, partially vaccinated and fully vaccinated. Those who tested positive were asked to self-report their symptoms between four and eight months after their initial infection.
Participants who had two or three doses of the vaccines were about 50% to 80% less likely to report seven of the 10 most common symptoms, which include shortness of breath, headache, weakness and muscle pain.
[. . .]
Because omicron only emerged at the end of last year, there aren't yet data on how many people have long COVID from the new variant, but Deeks says there are already some people who seem to be heading in that direction. "Without question, there are clearly people — I'm hoping not a lot — who got COVID a few months ago and are feeling ill today," he says.
Based on what's known about the variant, no one really knows for sure whether people who get omicron could be more, or less, prone to getting long COVID.