alarumklok posted:

a storm of nuclear missiles flying over the oceans, air raid sirens ringing out across the nation. the last thing I hear before the planet's surface turns into a crater-pocked mockery of the moon is monica gandhi's head on TV stating skeptically: "but where are the deaths?"

Zugzwang posted:

It might also kill old Dem senators from GOP states, meaning they won’t be able to replace Breyer with a non-conservative. Which would be both and terrible.

mawarannahr posted:

Shear Modulus posted:

if joe biden's state of the union kills clarence thomas then I'll have to begrudgingly say biden did a good thing as president

Lacrosse posted:

This is the worst timeline so this will absolutely happen

Animal-Mother posted:

Thoguh posted:

I reminded several people about this and they had no recollection of it. Google returns almost nothing but local news stations. YouTube isn't in a hurry to find it.

gamer roomie is 41 posted:

I'm getting a second booster this afternoon, I chose Moderna because my all my past shots were Moderna. Should I mix it up this time with a little Phizer? Does it make a difference?

Guardian - NHS under pressure from new Covid wave across England, says Chris Whitty posted:

The sharp resurgence of the coronavirus underlined that the crisis “is not over”, Whitty added.

Speaking at the annual conference of the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Public Health, Whitty also said those hoping for an “end point” should not expect one, with coronavirus likely to remain a threat to public health for decades.
...
Asked by a delegate when the pandemic might end, Whitty said that while Covid would become less dominant over time, it would remain a significant problem across the world “for the rest of our lives”.

“Let’s have no illusions about that. I’m expecting it to be probably – in the UK – seasonal but interspersed at least for the next two or three years by new variants … I think we should just accept that is what we’re going to deal with and just roll with it rather than expect some end point.”

Lacrosse posted:

Unfortunately admitting to being quirky on the forums is a great way to get run out, but being in fandoms over the years is how I acquired my current friend group.

Calibanibal posted:

You can tell me what Fandom you are in. I won't judge you unless its like Fate/Stay Night or something

Crunchy Black posted:

so there's a new bad variant, huh?

Calibanibal posted:

You can tell me what Fandom you are in. I won't judge you unless its like Fate/Stay Night or something

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/24/why-dont-kids-get-covid-badly-scientists-are-starting-to-understand.html posted:

Why don’t kids get Covid badly? Scientists are unraveling one of the pandemic’s biggest mysteries
(..)
The study concluded that Covid “is very rarely fatal” even among those children with underlying comorbidities. Indeed, within the year that was studied, an estimated 469,982 children in England had Covid, meaning that a child’s chance of surviving an infection was found to be 99.995%.

Pediatric Covid case and mortality data from the U.S. show similarly low risks to children.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week that a total of 966,575 deaths had been caused by Covid in the U.S. during the pandemic. Between 2020 and 2022 there were 921 deaths among 0-17 year olds that were caused by Covid, out of 73,508 deaths in this age group that were caused by all causes.

Since the pandemic began, children have accounted 19% of all Covid cases in the U.S., according to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ latest state-based data summary published last week, but the academy said that “among states reporting, children were 0.00%-0.27% of all Covid-19 deaths, and 3 states reported zero child deaths.”

Children continue to represent around a fifth of all Covid cases; for the week ending March 17, children accounted for 18.3% of reported weekly cases. Children under the age of 18 make up 22.2% of the U.S. population.

Pink Mist posted:

I’m in the covid fandom. I anthromorphize each variant as an anime girl, and then do the same to respirators, and then draw their hatesex

moist turtleneck posted:

Falcon reply guy being smart as usual

https://twitter.com/CanadasHost/status/1507054386307948545?t=ljbZwS9mztfmx97hnurRwg&s=19

Kylaer posted:

Unfortunately, it's not. There's nothing about the Army one that makes it sterilizing, or any more effective than the ones already on the market against any particular strain. The distinguishing factor for it is that it has the ability to express a whole bunch of different covid spikes simultaneously, which would potentially allow it to induce a broad spectrum of immune response against multiple variants.

It doesn't address the rapid waning of the immune response or the fact that vaccination doesn't result in sterilizing protection.

Pingui posted:

I don't recall anyone mentioning this:

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

Fly Molo posted:

lol just a minor algorithm fix to reduce the death toll by 72,000+

it’s like job numbers, they’ll just keep revising the death toll downward after the fact to keep investors calm

quote:

The KHMU claims that between Monday and Tuesday, around 5%-6% of all staff at medical institutions were isolating after receiving a confirmed COVID diagnosis.

“Fourteen of the total 31 staff have come down with COVID in one ward, and there was a mass outbreak of 17 people including patient caregivers in another,” said Lee Cheol-jong, director of the union’s policy division at its Wonju Yonsei Medical Center chapter. “Twenty to 30 staff members are becoming infected every day, with as many as 170 catching COVID in a single week.”

Healthcare workers point out the large discrepancy between government reports on hospital bed utilization rates and the situation on the ground. For several days the government has claimed that just over 60% of beds for severe patients are currently occupied, but while there may be beds to spare, staff numbers are unable to keep up.

Busan Medical Center, a dedicated COVID-19 hospital, currently has an average of 170-200 COVID patients across 300 or so hospital beds.

(...)

“More than 60%-70% of the patients in the COVID ward are severely ill, either suffering from mental health issues, dementia or bedsores, or in long-term care, bedridden, or requiring oxygen or dialysis,” said radiologist Jeong Ji-hwan, who heads the union’s chapter at the Busan Medical Center. “There are many severe patients who require care, but we are short on staff, so most nurses are unable to even order food during working hours because they don’t have time to eat.”

Healthcare workers have criticized the government’s policy of shortening the isolation period for infected workers to 3-5 days in lieu of bringing in reinforcements.

“There isn’t enough staff, so they are telling us to isolate for just three days before coming back to look after patients, but nurses aren’t machines. We are people too,” said Bae Na-yeong, a nurse who runs the union’s chapter at Kyung Hee University Hospital at Gangdong.

quote:

The Education Ministry said Wednesday that 379,983 kindergarteners, elementary, middle and high school students in Korea were confirmed of COVID-19 from March 15 to Monday. A total of 1.05 million students have tested positive since the new semester began earlier this month.

Even amid the virus crisis, more schools are continuing to hold in-person classes. As of Monday, students at 18,197 schools -- 89.5 percent of 20,326 schools across the nation -- are attending face-to-face classes every day. Some 1,982 schools have gone hybrid, while 119 schools held online-only classes.

(...)

The ministry said 32,117 faculty members were confirmed of COVID-19 in the past week.

“It’s not just about the teachers, too. Food service workers, janitors and other faculty members are being infected, making it impossible for schools to function normally,” said the teacher who asked to remain anonymous.

Some schools have reported cluster infections among food service workers. Left with no choice but to send students home early with the lunch service coming to a sudden halt, the burden is passed on to parents.

(...)

The Education Ministry and education authorities, however, are continuing to push for a return to normal, which mean schools continue to run face-to-face classes unless infection numbers reach a certain threshold.

Education Minister Yoo Eun-hye said earlier this month that attendance guidelines are unlikely to change, as “compared to other facilities, schools have been safe with tight quarantine protocols.”

Authorities are going forward with the self-testing scheme, claiming it can prevent the spread of the virus at schools.

quote:

A woman surnamed Koh running a clothing store in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, also attested to this growing sentiment among small merchants that there is “no need” to get diagnosed.

She said the owner of a coffee shop near her store had recently gone through the process of testing, diagnosis and week-long mandatory quarantine at home.

“He had mild symptoms and recovered faster than expected during a mandatory self-isolation period. Without special treatment offered by public health centers under the current self-care system, there seems to be no good reason to shut down the store, taking the risk of losing money,” the 38-year-old Koh said.

Unlike in the early stages of the pandemic when hospitalization, or admission to non-hospital treatment centers was the norm for COVID-19 care, South Korea now tells most patients to take care of themselves independently at home. Only those categorized as high-risk groups are offered daily monitoring by phone and hospital beds, if deemed necessary.

For the seven-day home care period, the government offers cash assistance, but the amount has been sharply cut as skyrocketing caseloads have put a strain on budgets.

The total financial assistance for COVID-19 positive persons is revised down to 100,000 won ($82.50) starting March 16, from the previous 244,000 won, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

(...)

For a woman surnamed Jeong, it is the sick leave system at her workplace that makes her avoid getting infected, or if infected, getting diagnosed. As a hotelier, she can’t work from home.

“If I test positive for COVID-19, I have to spend some of my annual paid holidays for a quarantine period, as my company doesn’t grant infectious disease emergency leave,” said Jeong, 31, who is going to tie the knot this fall.

“I had cold symptoms a couple of days ago, but I just took some pills and didn’t take a rapid antigen test,” she said. With her wedding and honeymoon already planned out, she said that she didn’t want to waste her leave days on being stuck at home.

quote:

A quiet change to how the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publicly reports Covid death details underscores the need for the agency to communicate clearly and transparently about rapidly evolving science, experts say.

The past two years have created numerous communication challenges for the agency, which works with massive amounts of data from scores of different sources, including states and territories.

“Mistakes are inevitable because humans are fallible, but there should always be an effort promptly to explain what happened and what’s being done to prevent it from happening again,” said Tom Frieden, a former CDC director and the president and CEO of Results Save Lives.

“You have to over-communicate, basically,” he said. “Any time there is something that needs to be corrected, be upfront about it: here’s what happened, here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know.”

Last week, after reporting from the Guardian on mortality rates among children, the CDC corrected a “coding logic error” that had inadvertently added more than 72,000 Covid deaths of all ages to the data tracker, one of the most publicly accessible sources for Covid data.

The agency briefly noted the change in a footnote, although the note did not explain how the error occurred or how long it was in effect.

A total of 72,277 deaths in all age groups reported across 26 states were removed from the tracker “because CDC’s algorithm was accidentally counting deaths that were not Covid-19-related”, Jasmine Reed, a spokesperson for the agency, told the Guardian.

The problem stemmed from two questions the CDC asks of states and jurisdictions when they report fatalities, according to a source familiar with the issue.

One data field asks if a person died “from illness/complications of illness,” and the field next to this asks for the date of death. When the answer is yes, then the date of death should be provided.

But a problem apparently arose if a respondent included the date of death in this field even when the answer was “no” or “unknown”. The CDC’s system assumed that if a date was provided, then the “no” or “unknown” answer was an error, and the system switched the answer to “yes”.

This resulted in an overcount of deaths due to Covid in the demographic breakdown, and the error, once discovered, was corrected last week. The CDC did not answer a question on how long the coding error was in effect.

A general view of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
A general view of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Photograph: Tami Chappell/Reuters
“Working with near real-time data in an emergency is critical to guide decision-making, but may also mean we often have incomplete information when data are first reported,” said Reed.

The death counts in the data tracker are “real-time and subject to change”, Reed noted, while numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics, a center within the CDC, are “the most complete source of death data”, despite lags in reporting, because the process includes a review of death certificates.

Reporting on causes of death is difficult even in non-pandemic times, experts said.

“It’s really hard to get accurate numbers,” said Glen Nowak, a former director of media relations at the CDC and co-director of the Center for Health & Risk Communication at the University of Georgia’s Grady College. “It’s not just with Covid – it happens with pretty much any infectious disease or even foodborne illnesses and waterborne illnesses, where there’s a large outbreak.”

There are a few reasons for that. Healthcare providers usually report the initial data, but treating patients is a more pressing priority. Death certificates take time to complete, and the cause of death may be subject to political pressure or difficulty determining the underlying reason or reasons. States and other jurisdictions may have lags in sending the data to the CDC; currently, one-third of deaths are reported after 10 days. Then the CDC processes the data, which can also be an involved process.

Most CDC data comes from state and local governments, and the quality can vary widely “because there has been a decades-long under-investment in public health at the national, state, city and local levels,” Frieden said.

“The public health and healthcare system we have in this country makes it extraordinarily difficult to collect data well.”

The CDC estimates that more than 968,000 Americans have died of Covid, and this change does not seem to have affected that estimate. The tracker shows demographic data on about 785,000 deaths, which means there may be more than 180,000 deaths not yet tallied in these breakdowns.

The recent change to demographic data shows the difficulty of offering up-to-date assessments while data reporting and analysis have lagged in the face of a massive outbreak. Data on the same topic across the CDC can also vary depending on the source and how numbers were calculated.

“The level of precision that you see in these numbers makes you think that they must be really super accurate,” Nowak said. Instead, they are informed estimates that help contextualize the scope of Covid compared with other illnesses.

“I don’t think public health and others do a good-enough job of reminding people that these numbers have significant margins of errors,” Nowak said. “The caveats need to be clear that these are our best estimates based on the data that has been reported to CDC.”

As the scientific evidence accumulates, adjustments and changes are inevitable and frequent. But significant changes in calculations and records need to be explained clearly, particularly in an emergency where the public is frequently attuned to data – and to unexplained changes – like this.

“The best practice, really, is to have virtually daily briefings, so that you’re updating daily about what you’re seeing and you’re answering questions daily,” Frieden said. That’s how the agency addressed past outbreaks of Ebola, Zika and H1N1, also known as swine flu.

These briefings should be held by the scientists with expertise in many areas, not just the director of the CDC, he said. The current CDC administration has “gradually been getting back in the habit of doing that, and I hope that trend will continue”.

The CDC is a government agency that provides data to inform national policy, and public health policies often have some political component, Frieden said. It can never be apolitical. “But you should never have any concerns about the accuracy of the data.”

silicone thrills posted:

toggle posted:

is this the covid is over victory thread?

Koirhor posted:

U-DO Burger posted:

i cannot wait for posters to confuse clarence thomas with ben carson

The Saucer Hovers posted:

Ice Phisherman as a person and fellow human i wish you all the best but as a poster ive never stopped hating your posts. terrible stuff.