bedpan posted:

I can inhale covid 19 just fine without having to use an inhaler

Steve Yun posted:

not sure but as a side note can you imagine the antivax nonsense they would say about this

The Oldest Man posted:

All he's doing here is saying "the people who die don't matter" with extra words.

Gunshow Poophole posted:

yeah they're counting on everyone's memory span extending at most one year / infection into the past

we've been swimming in ~*acquired immunity*~ for 2 years now lmao

The Oldest Man posted:

All he's doing here is saying "the people who die don't matter" with extra words.

https://6abc.com/school-district-of-philadelphia-covid-protocols-philly-schools-health-and-safety-guidelines-masks-in-isolation/13716302/ posted:

School District of Philadelphia releases 2023-2024 COVID protocols

The School District of Philadelphia has released its COVID protocols for the 2023-2024 school year.

Masking will be optional for students and staff except when determined necessary to fight an outbreak.

Those who have been exposed to COVID will be encouraged to wear a mask for 10 days.

Students who test positive will be required to isolate at home for at least five days and participate in virtual learning.

They will also need to wear a mask for five days after returning.
(..)

Pingui posted:

Very surprised the protocols go this far:

tangy yet delightful posted:

To nitpick this part, and hope for those kids and parents that it's further elaborated on, "Students who test positive will be required to isolate at home for at least five days and participate in virtual learning."

If my kid is sick I am not going to make them do school work while at home sick. gently caress you school.

The Oldest Man posted:

Just another incentive to never, ever let a test near your child

tangy yet delightful posted:

To nitpick this part, and hope for those kids and parents that it's further elaborated on, "Students who test positive will be required to isolate at home for at least five days and participate in virtual learning."

If my kid is sick I am not going to make them do school work while at home sick. gently caress you school.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/29/well/live/covid-test-expiration.html posted:

Wait, Is That Rapid Test Really Expired?
As Covid cases rise, at-home tests are a critical tool to keep yourself and others safe. Here are answers to a few common questions about when and how to use them.

Since the public health emergency expired, lab P.C.R. tests — the gold standard for detecting Covid-19 — have become more expensive and less accessible for many people. That largely leaves us with at-home rapid tests. As cases climb in some areas and reinfections crop up, here’s a refresher on how to use the tests most effectively.

Do expired tests still work?
Before you rip open a test that has been in your medicine cabinet since 2020, check the expiration date. If the test has expired, you can’t always trust the result.

“I don’t think it’s like having an old Ibuprofen or something,” said Dr. Marc Sala, co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Covid-19 Center. “I think you really need to take that seriously.”

That said, the Food and Drug Administration has extended the expiration dates for certain brands of tests. You can check a test by finding the lot number (typically found right by the expiration date) and cross-referencing it at this F.D.A. website. [ed. link is at the bottom of this post to ease finding it again]

Can heat damage at-home tests?
Extreme heat can mess with tests. According to the F.D.A., at-home tests work best when you use them in an environment that’s between roughly 59 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit. If a test is delivered to you on a sweltering day, for example, the agency recommends bringing the package inside and waiting at least two hours before opening it. And always make sure the control line — which typically appears next to the “C” — shows up when you use a rapid test; otherwise, the test may be damaged or faulty.

I was exposed. When do I test?
If you have Covid symptoms and someone you had been spending time with is now positive, test immediately. Symptoms can include a runny or stuffy nose, fatigue, headaches, brain fog, sneezing or coughing, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.

If you were exposed to Covid and don’t have symptoms, the F.D.A. says to wait at least five days before testing because swabbing too early can give you a false negative [ed. for the purposes of this thread, assume you are positive and test multiple times instead of waiting]. You should isolate as much as you can while waiting, and wear a mask when you are around other people.

If you have to spend time with someone who is immunocompromised or otherwise more vulnerable to the virus, like an older relative, consider testing before coming into contact with them, Dr. Sala said. While symptoms are a good indicator that you have Covid, there are still large swaths of people who get infected and never show any signs, he added.

The more immunity you’ve built up, the more subtle the symptoms often are, Dr. Chin-Hong said.

Symptoms also might come on sooner for people who have been vaccinated and previously infected, said Dr. Michael Mina, a former Harvard epidemiologist who is now the chief science officer for eMed, a telehealth company. “Especially people who have been recently boosted,” he said, “if they get infected, they might become symptomatic 24 hours post-exposure, 48 hours post-exposure — really fast.”

It’s also possible to first test positive after the five-day mark. There’s “wide variation” in when people test positive on a rapid test, Dr. Mina said. He estimated that roughly 30 percent of people test positive within three days after an exposure, another 30 to 50 percent within five days after, and about 20 percent test positive around day six or seven.

Rapid tests are most reliable when you have symptoms, said Dr. Prabhat Jha, a professor of global health at the University of Toronto. “If I’ve got an active symptom, I’ve got a runny nose, and then I test and it’s negative, I can be more sure that it actually is a true negative,” he said.

But one negative rapid test doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. You need to test again, typically 48 hours after the first test, depending on the instructions that come with your particular at-home test, said Dr. Heba Mostafa, director of the Molecular Virology Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. If you do not have symptoms, the F.D.A. recommends testing at least three times after exposure, 48 hours apart. If you’re symptomatic, two tests may be sufficient.

I think I’m having Paxlovid rebound. Should I test?
Paxlovid rebound occurs in a minority of cases (it’s also possible to have a return of Covid symptoms even if you didn’t take an antiviral). In general, people who experience Paxlovid rebound will have a resurgence of symptoms between two and eight days after they recover, Dr. Mostafa said.

If you have symptoms within that time frame, you should test, Dr. Mina said, because rebound cases can be contagious. “If you are positive on a rapid test,” he said, “you should just assume you’re infectious. Period.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-covid-variant-ba286-2023-what-to-know-experts/ posted:

New COVID variant BA.2.86 spreading in the U.S. in August 2023. Here are key facts experts want you to know.
(..)
Do COVID tests pick up the new COVID variant BA.2.86?
Current COVID-19 tests are expected to still work for BA.2.86, early analyses suggest.

"Based upon available information at this time, the FDA believes that most existing tests used to detect COVID-19 appear to be effective with this variant," FDA spokesperson James McKinney said in an Aug. 28 email.

McKinney said the FDA is continuing to study the performance of current COVID-19 tests, including through an ongoing relationship with a National Institutes of Health program that manually rechecks tests against new samples of the virus. Health authorities also do detailed computer modeling that can predict when variants might evade current tests.

Tests found to have reduced performance for BA.2.86 will be listed on the FDA's website, McKinney said.

"The agency will update this page when significant new information becomes available, including when the FDA's analyses identify tests for which performance may be impacted for known SARS-CoV-2 variants," McKinney said.

In 2021, the NIH's effort had flagged early signs that the real-world performance of tests was slipping for new Omicron variants. The FDA ultimately began to urge Americans to do repeat testing with at-home COVID-19 rapid antigen tests, after NIH-backed scientists confirmed an increase in false negative results.
(..)

Lib and let die posted:

one of the essays in Prof. Wolff's book is adapted from this early-pandemic video from d@w, it's very prescient to the discussions happening today re: conceierge care and narcan availability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUb6m7iFmpY

Raskolnikov2089 posted:

I know nothing about this aside from it being posted in my "still coviding" group:

https://www.covidtrialandyou.com/en-US/

Astrazeneca therapeutics trial for the immunocompromised.

Baddog posted:

recent Fauci BBC interview

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-66643426

We're gonna go through more surges, its not seasonal, but almost everyone has some degree of "herd immunity" and (minimizingly) "the vulnerable will fall by the wayside". I swear to god I can remember that in 2019 saying poo poo like that would have been shocking as hell to people.

Zantie posted:

Rosalind posted:

You joke but thanks to the dystopian wonder that is Amazon Pharmacy:

Zantie posted:

Compared to Dr. Birx's recent interview, in which she doesn't just shrug in the face of it all:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-former-health-adviser-believes-current-covid-response/story?id=102646852

Among some of the things she said, just pulling out some quotes from a longer interview. Emphasis is mine.

"Now we're living in this, a bit of a fantasy world, where we're pretending that COVID is not relevant. But I can tell you, if you can hear my voice and you know two or three people who have COVID, that means that 5 to 10% of your friends already have COVID. That means that there is a lot of COVID out there, and we're not testing for it and we're not telling people to get tested."

"Well, the important thing is, this is the booster that would have been appropriate for the summer wave. This booster is most likely not going to work with the winter wave, because we already have a pretty significant escape mutant or escape variant out there that's beginning, just like the current variant, began like eight weeks ago. We are already beginning to see some evidence of a new variant for which the vaccine probably is not well matched... So right now, we should be making the vaccine against this very new variant, the [B.]2.86, so that it is ready in January to really combat what we know will be the winter wave. Now, what's interesting is this summer wave and each summer wave seems to be coming about two weeks later, and that resulted in our winter wave last year being in January rather than primarily December. And so we should expect that late December, early January wave. And so we should be making vaccines right now for that wave."

"Because let's remember, the protection against infection is extraordinarily short-lived. And so the protection from either prior infection or the vaccine is short-lived. In some cases, maybe as short as four weeks. In other cases, it may be 3 to 6 months. But we know across the board, natural immunity and vaccine-induced immunity against infection wanes substantially in three to six months."

"I think we wanted to make it like flu, because that was easier. But it's never going to be like flu."

"So what the federal government needs to do is lay out the plan that says, 'We’re not done with COVID, COVID’s not done with us. 250,000 Americans died in 2022. We’ve got to do a better job in 2023. And this is part of our better job.'"

"I'm all for not mandating, but educating. But then you have to give people the tools and the data that they need in order to make their decisions and empower them to make the decisions that's right for their family. And we're just not alerting people to when they need to worry."

Zantie posted:

"I think we wanted to make it like flu, because that was easier. But it's never going to be like flu."

Baddog posted:

recent Fauci BBC interview

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-66643426

We're gonna go through more surges, its not seasonal, but almost everyone has some degree of "herd immunity" and (minimizingly) "the vulnerable will fall by the wayside". I swear to god I can remember that in 2019 saying poo poo like that would have been shocking as hell to people.

Fansy posted:

I hate when advocates say they're against mandates. Grow a spine or don't mention the word.

The Oldest Man posted:

There's no fundamental way to make more covid cases not equal more covid deaths unless we get a much better (but still non-sterilizing, I guess) vaccine or something about the virus's evolution pushes it to be less intrinsically severe.

The Oldest Man posted:

This is funny retrospectively because almost everywhere in the US, the data available about flu transmission in the community is now better than what's available for COVID even though COVID is both more common and more dangerous.

RealityWarCriminal posted:

one year ago;

The Biden administration said Tuesday that it is rolling out the newest Covid-19 booster and anticipates that going forward, Americans can expect to get annual updates to the shot just like they do for the flu vaccine.

“This week, we begin a new phase in our COVID-19 response. We are launching a new vaccine – our first in almost two years – with a new approach. For most Americans, that means one COVID-19 shot, once a year, each fall,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.

Petey posted:

did i miss anything of clinical significance (read that i would update the google doc for) in the last 1000 posts

hosed with the start of semester; covid going around and the student email lists are lighting up urging each other to mask and test, but none of them can find free antigen tests anymore

Parent posted:

Coaches, [player] is sick. Not making practice

Platystemon posted:

I’m really interested how much we could reduce morbidity and mortality if we actually did what we have the pretences of doing—monitoring variants and speculatively producing millions of doses of (mucosal?) vaccines within weeks, multidrug antiviral regimens that everyone can take, prophylactic and therapeutic monoclonal antibodies that work on circulating strains, assigning rooms full of PhDs to investigate leads like nasals sprays.

Cleaning the drat air is still the the low‐hanging fruit, but even within the confines of the pharmaceutical‐only paradigm, there’s a ton of stuff that we could be doing that we just aren’t.

RealityWarCriminal posted:

3 to 6 months lmao

quote:

I caught it again this year on February, and ever since then it's just been reinfection after reinfection. I'm now on my 5th covid reinfection, 4 of them were throughout this year only. It seems I keep getting it every 2/3 months.

Rick posted:

A year or so ago the thread was big on comparisons between Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and commercial air purifiers and the Corsi-Rosenthal boxes generally did as well or better.

Is that limited to covid sized particles though? And I'm assuming quality of construction is big in this too.

In a recent in-my-apartment test the C-R box was just blowing the burnt vegetable oil smell around and around all night that my extremely overpriced commercial purifier zapped in ten minutes when I finally moved it into the living room. Maybe C-Rs are not meant to stop VOC though? Or maybe my construction just sucked?

Rick posted:

A year or so ago the thread was big on comparisons between Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and commercial air purifiers and the Corsi-Rosenthal boxes generally did as well or better.

Is that limited to covid sized particles though? And I'm assuming quality of construction is big in this too.

In a recent in-my-apartment test the C-R box was just blowing the burnt vegetable oil smell around and around all night that my extremely overpriced commercial purifier zapped in ten minutes when I finally moved it into the living room. Maybe C-Rs are not meant to stop VOC though? Or maybe my construction just sucked?

Rick posted:

A year or so ago the thread was big on comparisons between Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and commercial air purifiers and the Corsi-Rosenthal boxes generally did as well or better.

Is that limited to covid sized particles though?

Rick posted:

C-Rs are not meant to stop VOC though

Zantie posted:

Washington state's weekly update, cobbled together from the state's excel reports