I'm over the "pandemic of the unvaccinated and undervaccinated" stuff but ONLY 11% HAVE RECEIVED THE BIVALENT BOOSTER.
Boosters will save more American lives than our military ever could. You shouldn't be able to turn on anything with out a reminder to get that bivalent booster. https://t.co/EDkVyIf7j5
— L O L G O P (@LOLGOP) November 28, 2022
It doesn't help that the @CDCgov still defines "fully vaccinated" as 2 shots, when it would now have taken 5 shots to counter the waning immunity/protect vs severe Covid for people age 50+
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) November 28, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Nov. 24-25
Fauci: "My message, and maybe the final message I give you from this podium, is that please, for your own safety, for that of you family, get your updated Covid-19 shot as soon as you're eligible." pic.twitter.com/I2dfcvL1Lx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 22, 2022
Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, who has served under seven presidents, used his valedictory at the White House podium on Tuesday to urge Americans to get updated coronavirus booster shots.
Fauci, 81, has announced he will leave government service next month, stepping down as President Biden’s top medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he has led for 38 years…
“When I see people in this country — because of the divisiveness in our country — not getting vaccinated for reasons that have nothing to do with public health, but have to do because of divisiveness and ideological differences, as a physician, it pains me, because I don’t want to see anybody get infected,” he said Tuesday. “I don’t want to see anybody hospitalized, and I don’t want to see anybody die from covid. Whether you’re a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat, it doesn’t make any difference to me.”
At one point, Fauci acknowledged how those who wear masks are often singled out, joking with a reporter: “I mean, you’re absolutely right. I mean, I know sometimes when you walk in and you have a mask and nobody has a mask, you kind of feel guilty. You shouldn’t feel guilty. You look terrific, right?”…
Fauci previously told The Post he is not exiting the public square but hopes to teach, lecture and write while inspiring and teaching a younger generation of scientists. He initially planned to retire at the end of Trump’s presidency but remained in place when Biden asked him to join his administration. Fauci spoke with pride and a sense of accomplishment about his more than two years overseeing the White House’s response to the pandemic.
“What I would like people to remember about what I’ve done is that every day for all of those years, I’ve given it everything I have and I’ve never left anything on the field,” he said Tuesday.
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Nov. 21-22
Wondering how to manage your risk of contracting Covid at this point, as holiday gatherings approach? We asked 34 infectious diseases experts how they're comporting themselves. Some surprises here for me. https://t.co/mpurY7JEvG
— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) November 21, 2022
Late Night Open Thread: Contagions, Viral & Financial
What do absurd pandemic prevention policy proposals have to do with the catastrophic collapse of crypto markets?
Quite a lot, actually, and it all comes back to this guy:https://t.co/F9cFm99tfY
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
It’s all fun & games, if you’re Sam Bankman-Friend and his polycule buddies, or the hordes of entranced journamalists who fell for his ‘Effective Altruism’ blather. But it’s a real tragedy if, for instance, you were one of the West Africans caught up in SBF’s ‘evangelical’ ‘multi-level-marketing like’ promotions.
And then there’s the broader social contagion, one not-very-visible part of which Dr. Rasmussen explains:
This dude is Sam Bankman-Fried AKA SBF. Until last week, he was the billionaire head of FTX, a crypto exchange, and was known for being an “effective altruism” philanthropist. Effective altruism is the idea of using evidence & reason to benefit the most people.
That all seemed to go fine for SBF until there was the crypto equivalent of a bank run and he went bankrupt overnight. Now there’s a whole lot of EA longtermist pet projects that are suddenly without funding.
So why am I talking about this? I’m not a billionaire. I’m a boring academic virologist on the Canadian prairies. Why should I care about the self-regarding strategies tech bros use to make themselves feel better about being unrepentant wealth-hoarding capitalist moneyphages?
Well, because SBF decided, in between meetings spent playing League of Legends and being inappropriately barefoot that one of these projects was to end risky pathogen research. And he was willing to spend cash, though evidently without due diligence on how that money was spent.
One example was funding a company called SecureBio. SBF donated $1.2 million to them for pandemic preparedness & defense. On the surface it appears they are doing wastewater surveillance. In reality they insist that essentially all virology is just bioterrorism waiting to happen. pic.twitter.com/nMNsmqkq3D
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) November 17, 2022
Late Night Open Thread: Contagions, Viral & FinancialPost + Comments (36)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Nov. 17-18
The 1918 pandemic changed America, especially when it came to women's rights. The question now is how will #Covid transform the United States? https://t.co/9TgIVPWmRB
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) November 15, 2022
A @KFF tracker shows more than 160K Covid deaths have been in people 65 and over, and nearly 50K have been in people under 65. https://t.co/vMJz2nMzYp
— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) November 15, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Nov. 14-15
Remind your holiday contacts now…
Get the updated COVID vaccine ahead of the holidays to protect you and your family.
Visit https://t.co/5SMDHKKWeY for more information. pic.twitter.com/MnwOOJ4hqv
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 10, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Nov. 10-11
The risk of death, hospitalization and serious health issues from COVID-19 jumps significantly with reinfection compared with a first bout with the virus, regardless of vaccination status, a study published on Thursday suggests. https://t.co/ALql3SJ3Yj
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) November 11, 2022
Mitigating factors, *but*…
The risk of death, hospitalization and serious health issues from COVID-19 jumps significantly with reinfection compared with a first bout with the virus, regardless of vaccination status, a study published on Thursday suggests.
“Reinfection with COVID-19 increases the risk of both acute outcomes and long COVID,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “This was evident in unvaccinated, vaccinated and boosted people.”
The findings were drawn from U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) data collected from March 1, 2020 through April 6, 2022 on 443,588 patients with one SARS-CoV-2 infection, 40,947 with two or more infections, and 5.3 million noninfected individuals. Most of the study subjects were male.
Reinfected patients had a more than doubled risk of death and a more than tripled risk of hospitalization compared with those who were infected with COVID just once. They also had elevated risks for problems with lungs, heart, blood, kidneys, diabetes, mental health, bones and muscles, and neurological disorders, according to a report published in Nature Medicine…
Experts not involved with the study said the VA population does not reflect the general population.
Patients at VA health facilities are generally older, sicker people and often men, a group that would typically have more than normal health complications, said John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.
The researchers said cumulative risks and burdens of repeat infection increased with the number of infections, even after accounting for differences in COVID-19 variants such as Delta, Omicron and BA.5.
However, Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease epidemiologist and an editor-at-large at Kaiser Health News, said there seemed to be a “plateauing effect with multiple infections,” with less of a jump in risk after the second infection.
“The good news there is that the better people are protected with immunity, likely the risk of developing some of the complications will be lower over time,” she added…
Still, Al-Aly cautioned that people should not let their guard down.
“We had started seeing a lot of patients coming to the clinic with an air of invincibility,” he told Reuters. “They wondered, ‘Does getting a reinfection really matter?’ The answer is yes, it absolutely does.”
Ahead of the fast approaching holiday season with travel and indoor gatherings, “people should be aware that reinfection is consequential and should take precautions,” he added.