Coronavirus

Shellhead wrote: Twice as many masked people at the gym last night, so about 10% instead of 5%. Two of them (a couple) were even double-masking. On the other hand, there were also a couple of unmasked old guys who were coughing a lot. I might need to stop going to the gym for a while.

Step one when I move back home this summer is buy a dumbell set, a pullup/dip station, and a bench. My oldest turns 13 this spring going to start him off right and have him join me starting on his birthday. I'm hoping Omi burns through the US real quick before I come back at the start of Feb for a vacation.

Big breakout at work. Our shipping team has 27 people, and 5 of them tested positive for Covid last weekend. Nearly everybody at work is wearing a mask today. I am not, but I am holed up in my office working on quarterly and annual payroll taxes today. If I need a mask, I have several fresh ones in a desk drawer.

Slightly more mask usage at the gym last night. Per CDC guidance, I don't wear a mask when I am in the pool or hot tub, but now I have less respect for the CDC's current guidelines. I already stopped using the sauna last fall, and might need to stop using the hot tub for a few months. I am reluctant to stop working out at the gym, because it's so cold outside at this time of year and I want to drop some pounds that I put on during the holidays.

Million cases today, we are IN IT. I'm back in the classroom next week, though I am going to cancel a conference trip I had planned.

Speaking of being "in it", I was talking to my brother today and he said he personally knew about 20 people that got covid over the holidays. Thats A LOT. its wild that I see advertisements for like gaming conventions early next month and stuff...

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence around the idea that the actual number of covid cases in the US is absolutely mind boggling. No one is really even testing anymore and we still have these numbers.

I'm most worried about what happens to me if I have some other dangerous thing happen to me that sends me to the hospital; I don't know if I'd get in.

A friend of mine ran into that exact challenge this week. She and her husband were hosting the hipster board game group that I joined a few years ago. A few months ago, she developed a serious medical issue that had nothing to do with Covid and got hospitalized for several days in the ICU. The medical problem recurred last weekend, but there wasn't an available ICU bed for her until today, so they kept her in a regular hospital bed while waiting. Around the same time, her fully-vaccinated and boosted husband (she is also fully vaxxed) came down with Omicron and now their toddler also has it.

On a related note, our governor called out the National Guard weeks ago to help in hospitals across the state, because so many hospital workers have gotten sick.

The Ohio National Guard is being deployed to hospitals to help out, but around 47% of them can't even help because they aren't vaccinated.

It's just insane.

My daughter's hospital is over 50 cases as of yesterday (200 bed facility) plus another 12 suspected cases. They've closed down all the "elective" surgeries which includes heart bypasses and the like.

I have a lot of friends that have contracted it in the last two weeks and I'm surprised that I haven't contracted it with the close contact with my daughter. She works with Covid patients every day now and takes all the precautions, but the thing is going around like crazy at the moment.

All I know are vaccinated and they haven't gotten serious illness from the infection, but it keeps it banging around like a pinball all over the place. In theory this spreads immunity in the community, but I'd just as soon settle for my measly vaccination plus booster immunity instead.

I'm not even sure the immunity in the community part is valid, given how quickly the thing is mutating. Like many others have said, polio and smallpox weren't stopped by "herd immunity". They were stopped by a vaccine. Given the nature of the virus, it's likely that we'd still end up in a situation with an "annual flu shot" or some such thing, but the number of cases and their severity would both be drastically reduced and it might be something that could be considered controllable (instead of breaking the healthcare system) if so many people would just think about someone other than themselves for two seconds.

We had 16 regular employees and 2 managers at our Ohio facility. One manager quit just before Christmas and the other one just caught Covid. Only 2 of the 16 employees have been working there for more than 6 months. We will probably need to send one of our owners or a middle manager from our HQ to take charge for the next 10 days, but we are also short-staffed here with 5 sick workers.

Had a scare here, my elder boy was in a car for 90 minutes with a friend who tested positive three days later. He went to get tested, but came back as Not Detected, so that was a relief. He was in quasi-isolation, and we were in quasi-quarantine while we waited for results.

Saw that 1M cases number and am just floored. The CFR is like 1.5% in the USA. 15,000 Americans tested positive for the virus that's going to kill them within six weeks yesterday. FIFTEEN THOUSAND. DEAD. FROM YESTERDAY.

62 in her hospital today.

From what I heard omicron is far less dangerous. Unlike delta that makes a base of operations inside the nasal cavity and drops down into the lungs, omicron does not. Ergo less ventilators and less deaths. It both infects and burns out faster than delta. While a previous delta infection doesn't really protect against omicron, the reverse seems to be true (but hard for scientists to confirm given the difficulty in separating out populations for data analysis). Less than half become hospitalized than delta (could be less), vaccinated cuts that by another 60%, boosted by something like 86%. Unfortunately the hospitals get so full because this is going through like wildfire.

The CDC was considering cutting the guidelines to 5 days before omicron, but with a negative test. What they left out of the guidelines is the negative test, that is the big sin. That's where the politics jumps in to pollute the science, they are worried there won't be enough tests for people to follow the guidelines so they altered the guidelines. I can see how one would lose faith in the guidance.

The reality is everyone will have to end up getting it at some point. Even China with it's zero tolerance policy or they will be fighting this forever at a permanent economic cost. Not that the Western world's policies are good, seems like too far in the other direction. Hopefully future mutations are based off of omicron.

City manager emailed to say that 20 employees in the last week have tested positive. That's 1/6 of our workforce! We're on the cusp of not being able to provide adequate public services because so many people are out. Departments are being instructed to take whatever measures they can to rotate as few people through the office as they can get away with and get everyone with the ability to work remotely back at home through the end of the month at a minimum.

protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-utilization

You can put in your zip code and see how hospitals around you are doing. Two nearest to me have full ICU beds but 15 miles out has a couple free as of 1/3/22 when the data is from.