Coronavirus (Los Angeles, San Francisco, August: schools, university, closing)

[CA4Now]

A new project from researchers at UC San Francisco in collaboration with the California Department of Public Health draws the clearest picture to date on what the state might have looked like had the vaccines never materialized.

In the first 10 months of their availability, COVID-19 vaccines prevented an estimated 1.5 million coronavirus infections, nearly 73,000 hospitalizations, and almost 20,000 deaths in California, according to a study published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open.

https://www.latimes.com/science/stor...id-19-vaccines

[beachGecko]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

Yowza. I work with teenagers who are probably just entering the peak of their physical strength. You should have seen how sick they were when Omicron hit in January.

My partner got COVID back in January 2022 after a flight back from Mexico for NYE. She’s 29. Given the timeframe it was likely Omicron.

She was sick for a week. Fatigue, body aches, sniffles. These are typical Flu like symptoms and not to be alarmed over.

She had 2 doses of the vaccine, Pfizer, second dose being August 2021. I didn’t catch it despite being unvaccinated and spending my time taking care of her, including 1 week in the same bed. She tested + twice, strangely the second test she took when she was already feeling better was a ‘strong’ positive and the test she did the day she was destroyed was a ‘weak’ positive.

I’m guessing you work at a University so all those kids were required to get vaccinated.

When the original Wuhan version was circulating it was affecting kids far less than milder Omicron when a large % of kids were vaccinated. Food for thought.

[jmking]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

IMO, you're wearing masks, don't you think? I absolutely believe that's the reason I haven't gotten it.

In crowds, perhaps. I've seen plenty of people ware masks in their cars, walking in the country by themselves, sitting on the beach with no one around or even remotely close to them with the wind blowing in their face from the ocean waves. Those masks do nothing if not in a crowd. Now, not touching your face, not washing or applying disinfectant to your hands is very effective.

[beachGecko]

Originally Posted by jmking

In crowds, perhaps. I've seen plenty of people ware masks in their cars, walking in the country by themselves, sitting on the beach with no one around or even remotely close to them with the wind blowing in their face from the ocean waves. Those masks do nothing if not in a crowd. Now, not touching your face, not washing or applying disinfectant to your hands is very effective.

There are many anecdotes of people claiming they wear masks religiously catching the virus and the opposite- people never (or only in specific circumstances they’re required to) wearing masks and never catching the virus.

A lot of factors to untangle including lifestyle (social distancing too? ) and health as well as good ole’ fashion luck.

Florida for example had an all-cause excess mortality of 18.8% over the years of 2020/2021 which is exactly the same for California. New Mexico has the highest all-cause excess mortality in the USA.

[goodheathen]

A few points:
Exercise alone is a very ineffective long-term strategy to not be overweight. And most people realize that they're overweight.

Iron excess tends to be hereditary, but it's underdiagnosed and when it is diagnosed, apparently physicians tend to assume it's inherited when sometimes it isn't. Something has to be done about nutrition in the USA for immunity and other areas where it matters more, but I don't think targeting iron for self-treatment is a smart investment.

Any research that calls people asymptomatic with COVID-19 without going through a checklist of possible symptoms and without investigating health post-infection is nearly worthless.

Anyone who argues against widespread vaccination for the virus makes himself untrustworthy on any health topic.

[cleosmom]

Originally Posted by goodheathen

Anyone who argues against widespread vaccination for the virus makes himself untrustworthy on any health topic.

Thanks for your opinion.

You are correct that exercise alone won't make one healthy, a component, a valuable one at that!

[beachGecko]

Originally Posted by goodheathen

A few points:
Exercise alone is a very ineffective long-term strategy to not be overweight. And most people realize that they're overweight.

I disagree. Of course by 'exercise' I mean really exercise, not get on an elliptical and casually go through 30 minutes. But we can leave that topic for another day.

but I don't think targeting iron for self-treatment is a smart investment.

This is what the UK is doing currently. Also a famous doc out of Israel was advocating the same thing to be done there (not sure if it's being done).

Any research that calls people asymptomatic with COVID-19 without going through a checklist of possible symptoms and without investigating health post-infection is nearly worthless.

Let's not focus on the asymptomatic part. The study was demonstrating that the pandemic began far earlier than December 2019, and the asymptomatic part was really incidental. Perhaps they had mild symptoms and simply forgot to report it when asked? Point is however, even if not asymptomatic, it was mild enough to be forgettable in 100% of the 1000 or so participants they detected antibodies in, with an average age in their 50s.

Anyone who argues against widespread vaccination for the virus makes himself untrustworthy on any health topic.

Why? We cannot vaccinate for every virus, that would not be good for the body. I think you will agree that if we attempted to vaccinate for every single known virus to man, that would be not only a waste, but not healthy.

So we need to have some criteria for vaccinations. From a medical standpoint, we first need to do no harm. People who are not at risk, it's really quite debatable what effects if any they get from the vaccine. Then we need to consider the risks of the vaccines. We need to consider the efficacy of the vaccines.

Usually, widespread vaccination is considered in cases vaccinations can lead us to herd immunity. But we, and the rest of the world saw, with these vaccines, herd immunity is not achievable. So why widespread vaccinate?

[goodheathen]

Originally Posted by beachGecko

I disagree. Of course by 'exercise' I mean really exercise, not get on an elliptical and casually go through 30 minutes. But we can leave that topic for another day.



This is what the UK is doing currently. Also a famous doc out of Israel was advocating the same thing to be done there (not sure if it's being done).



Let's not focus on the asymptomatic part. The study was demonstrating that the pandemic began far earlier than December 2019, and the asymptomatic part was really incidental. Perhaps they had mild symptoms and simply forgot to report it when asked? Point is however, even if not asymptomatic, it was mild enough to be forgettable in 100% of the 1000 or so participants they detected antibodies in, with an average age in their 50s.



Why? We cannot vaccinate for every virus, that would not be good for the body. I think you will agree that if we attempted to vaccinate for every single known virus to man, that would be not only a waste, but not healthy.

So we need to have some criteria for vaccinations. From a medical standpoint, we first need to do no harm. People who are not at risk, it's really quite debatable what effects if any they get from the vaccine. Then we need to consider the risks of the vaccines. We need to consider the efficacy of the vaccines.

Usually, widespread vaccination is considered in cases vaccinations can lead us to herd immunity. But we, and the rest of the world saw, with these vaccines, herd immunity is not achievable. So why widespread vaccinate?

It's stupid of me to spend more than a few minutes even acknowledging a nonsensical argument that there's some appreciable risk to any sizable categories of vaccine recipients versus the risk of the virus itself (including several days of severe fatigue in many infected people young and old and Long-Covid evidently here and there in all age groups). Stupid too to think that society can function close to normally when a few percentage points of it are quite ill. Unlike for example the occasional polio victims, people dead from COVID-19 aren't around as reminders, so it didn't happen, huh?

As for herd immunity, it's an oversold idea that probably hasn't panned out with most viruses (hence, almost none eliminated), but at least until Omicron, vaccines were significantly slowing the spread by making freshly jabbed people unlikely to be infected for months until antibody levels dropped.

Plus, a vaccinated population means that if another, nastier variant comes about and hasn't particularly evolved to evade immunity, it can't spread as much and can't do as much harm as it otherwise would. I think it was Romania that got jumped by the relatively mild Omicron due to vaccine hesitancy.

[beachGecko]

Originally Posted by goodheathen

It's stupid of me to spend more than a few minutes even acknowledging a nonsensical argument that there's some appreciable risk to any sizable categories of vaccine recipients versus the risk of the virus itself (including several days of severe fatigue in many infected people young and old and Long-Covid evidently here and there in all age groups). Stupid too to think that society can function close to normally when a few percentage points of it are quite ill. Unlike for example the occasional polio victims, people dead from COVID-19 aren't around as reminders, so it didn't happen, huh?

As for herd immunity, it's an oversold idea that probably hasn't panned out with most viruses (hence, almost none eliminated), but at least until Omicron, vaccines were significantly slowing the spread by making freshly jabbed people unlikely to be infected for months until antibody levels dropped.

Plus, a vaccinated population means that if another, nastier variant comes about and hasn't particularly evolved to evade immunity, it can't spread as much and can't do as much harm as it otherwise would. I think it was Romania that got jumped by the relatively mild Omicron due to vaccine hesitancy.

I went to Egypt in May 2021, when they were barely vaccinated (I think like 5%, now they're 30%) and they were fully back to normal, even nightclubs open.

Florida of course opened, more or less, in October 2020. I went to a nightclub then. And Florida functioned completely normally.

Of course, I had a unique opportunity to go between countries during the pandemic, in many cases travel opportunities not available to others. And I can say that the restrictions or number of vaccinations did not seem to influence how society functioned.

[goodheathen]

Egypt, probably a young, low-risk population, like South Africa. I'm tired of comparisons with Florida, and I don't believe anyone who says things are fine there. More importantly, this is California, and it's been demonstrated repeatedly that at minimum the probably most important part of the state, Los Angeles, cannot function normally during major surges, dragged down most by unvaccinated people.