Medical Discussion of Coronavirus

[snowcanyon]

Are you against religious exemptions as being cuckooish or only against cuckoo religions. Who are we to say that this religion gets a right and a pass on religious exemption whereas another one is a "cuckoo" and does not.

BTW, I am against all religious exemptions. If we allow it, then given to Satanism and pastafaranism as well as to Christianity and Hinduism.

Agreed. My point was that they won't accept patient religious requests for vaxed staff, only staff requests not to be vaxed. Which is insane.
And I agree on all or none for religions. And if they accept all, the whole thing falls apart, so they should accept none.

[Perry Ict]

I don't find that surprising. Even if we had 100% vaccination rate there I would expect 2-3% positive rate

1. Asymptomatic infection
2. Mild infection in people with falling immunity levels.
3. Delta and now Omicron will still infect vaccinated people. Especially if very few have had booster doses

What I would be supervised would be if any vaccinated student was in ICU, intubated or died of COVID

Exactly. And in my opinion, unless vaccinated students ended up in an ICU (hopefully not), this should not be a big news story, nor should it be a reason for hysteria, which our news media and some public officials seem to be seeking, for some reason.

[CordMcNally]

This doesn't appear to have household spread ongoing which is important to see as dead-end infections from a point of contact. ie R0 is doing relatively okay at this time. Hopefully Omicron doesn't change that. College students all return this week in full force so holding our collective breath..

Wouldn't it be better for society as a whole if Omicron was much more infectious but much more milder and it ran through our population quickly? It seems like that's about our only hope to end this as it's becoming clear that vaccines, mask mandates, travel bans, etc. aren't going to do it.

[jacoavlu]

how long until unboosted are lumped with unvaccinated? i would guess we’re getting close

and it has begun

[StarTrekDoc]

Wouldn't it be better for society as a whole if Omicron was much more infectious but much more milder and it ran through our population quickly? It seems like that's about our only hope to end this as it's becoming clear that vaccines, mask mandates, travel bans, etc. aren't going to do it.

Absolutely would be awesome to have it mutate to equal our current daycare snot coronavirus.

Sooner the better.

Trying not to off another couple hundred thousand Americans would be nice while we're waiting for nature to work her magic.

[xraygoggles]

Recently crossed 800k confirmed deaths in the US. The real number is likely higher, but still quite a morbid statistic. & still only 60% of American adults fully vax with 2 dose...

[Tim]

Absolutely would be awesome to have it mutate to equal our current daycare snot coronavirus.

Sooner the better.

Trying not to off another couple hundred thousand Americans would be nice while we're waiting for nature to work her magic.

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status...992416257?s=20
https://news.yahoo.com/an-explosion-...154703602.html
An explosion of likely Omicron cases at Cornell shows what's next for the U.S.

One week, 10 times more spread. I don't think we have an appreciation of how quickly it will spread. At the same time, the wishes for less severe illness looks like your wish is coming true. We will know by New Years Eve. Happy New Years, just in case.

[K82]

Recently crossed 800k confirmed deaths in the US. The real number is likely higher, but still quite a morbid statistic. & still only 60% of American adults fully vax with 2 dose...

It has certainly taken many lives but I don't think we really know how many. I know for a fact that one of the hospital systems we cover is calling a death due to Covid if they test positive for Covid at death, even if the death was entirely unrelated, for example MVA. As I understand it there are financial incentives for the hospital if you call it a Covid death. If true, this incentive is making the data murky.

[K82]

I got my Covid booster a couple days ago and it has been miserable. Shaking chills the first night. Prominent muscle pain that is persisting. Even my eyeballs hurt for awhile. Any theory as to why some people get these side affects and others don't have any? I got my initial Pfizer shot around a year ago, I thought my immune response would be minimal at this point. This is how I reacted after the second dose a year ago but not the first. I presume I still have fairly strong immunity to the virus after a year or my side effects would be less severe.

[Bellescamp]

It has certainly taken many lives but I don't think we really know how many. I know for a fact that one of the hospital systems we cover is calling a death due to Covid if they test positive for Covid at death, even if the death was entirely unrelated, for example MVA. As I understand it there are financial incentives for the hospital if you call it a Covid death. If true, this incentive is making the data murky.

There are no financial incentives for coding Covid. You must be trolling or have no idea what you are talking about. I’m signing these death certificates. I don’t get no bonus nor does the hospital. Good god just stop. Globally we are grossly under reporting deaths from this.

[K82]

There are no financial incentives for coding Covid. You must be trolling or have no idea what you are talking about. I’m signing these death certificates. I don’t get no bonus nor does the hospital. Good god just stop. Globally we are grossly under reporting deaths from this.

There certainly are financial incentives for coding Covid, here is a reference to that in USA Today:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...us/3000638001/

That article doesn't address coding deaths as related to Covid but there is additional Medicare reimbursement for Covid. If there is no financial incentive, why would a hospital system code a death as Covid when it was not the primary cause of the death?

Anyway, sorry to offend you, certainly not intended. I didn't think it was a controversial post. There have been a ton of patients that have sadly died as a result of this miserable disease. As to how many, I don't think we will ever really know. Does it really make any difference if its 800K, 1 million or 500K? It's too many.

[MaxPower]

Certainly not trolling. I apologize if I offended in any way. I had heard that there were increased federal funds related to Covid positive related deaths but I don't know that for sure, as I stated in my post. If there is no financial incentive to label them Covid deaths, than why would any facility code a death unrelated to Covid as a Covid death? This I know has been occurring.

Say “I’ve never filled out a death certificate” without saying “I’ve never filled out a death certificate.”

This preposterous line of thought was touted by Covid deniers basically since the beginning of the pandemic, and as the excess death numbers will easily show, we actually probably underestimated the number of covid deaths.

[Antares]

So back to medical: It's now three weeks since holiday and we have seen only a small blip upwards covid in the county. Typically 300-500 per day over the preceeding months and now off the 1 week post peak for 800-1000 to 500-700 range.

This doesn't appear to have household spread ongoing which is important to see as dead-end infections from a point of contact. ie R0 is doing relatively okay at this time. Hopefully Omicron doesn't change that. College students all return this week in full force so holding our collective breath..

I don’t usually post in this thread, but this thought, only two days ago, looks ironic from here. We are on the threshold of the largest wave we have yet seen in this country. Omicron will soon be everywhere. NYC is the bellwether for massive spread as it was in the initial outbreak. We are seeing tremendous increases in cases, positive tests. Exponential spread with something this contagious is going to be FAST. The only question now is that of severity.

[Kamban]

I don’t usually post in this thread, but this thought, only two days ago, looks ironic from here. We are on the threshold of the largest wave we have yet seen in this country. Omicron will soon be everywhere. NYC is the bellwether for massive spread as it was in the initial outbreak. We are seeing tremendous increases in cases, positive tests. Exponential spread with something this contagious is going to be FAST. The only question now is that of severity.

And both the mRNA vaccines are only 1/3 or less effective with neutralizing antibodies against Omicron with the 2 dose schedule. And you really need the 3rd dose to get the immunity.

Yet I see less than 1/3 of my eligible patients and staff get the booster shot. Something tells me that this is not going to end well. And I have a former worker who refused to take any vaccine now in a small hospital ICU with COVID pneumonia. The two larger health systems refused to give her monoclonal Ab because, according to her hubby, she had pneumonia. And yet, while calling him to express our wishes for a recovery he was nattering on and on about how people who took vaccines will have heart issues in 5 years.

Talk about total denial and obliviousness to the immediate danger on hand.

[CordMcNally]

I don’t usually post in this thread, but this thought, only two days ago, looks ironic from here. We are on the threshold of the largest wave we have yet seen in this country. Omicron will soon be everywhere. NYC is the bellwether for massive spread as it was in the initial outbreak. We are seeing tremendous increases in cases, positive tests. Exponential spread with something this contagious is going to be FAST. The only question now is that of severity.

The good news is that South African deaths and hospitalizations are incredibly low compared to their other waves so we'll see. One would have thought we would already be seeing large increases there at this point if it was going to get a lot worse with respect to those outcomes.