Steve Yun posted:

welp a friend got Covid at dragoncon, got shortness of breath, called sesamecare and got told to tough it out and that they’d prescribe him an inhaler

Oracle posted:

So the thing with all these online services is that they're basically portals doctors/NPs can sign up to provide care through, and YMMV as to the quality of a doc who is willing to sign up to a health care portal to take on patients sight unseen. I've heard of people being told they should take ivermectin through some of these more than once, for instance, and some seem like they just want to help people who might otherwise be shut out of the traditional health care system. Just note the ones that seem sane and reasonable, check ratings and see if you can't specifically choose them on a future visit vs letting the algorithm decide.

Indoor Dying posted:

Awesome that everyone has to play Wheel of Doctors

The Oldest Man posted:

RATs detect the nucleocapsid protein which is highly conserved; they still work just fine. The problem is people aren't swabbing right or are expecting miracles that they could never provide in terms of pre-symptomatic detection.

nexous posted:

we realize school shootings are a problem so we will be instituting mass bandage deliveries after a shooting. you’re welcome

Why Am I So Tired posted:

https://twitter.com/wsbgnl/status/1699255401165021547

lol

nomad2020 posted:

It took 3 years, but COVID finally caught me. Conveniently it caught me on a weekend where I was expecting to feel sluggish and hungover, so I didn't notice for a bit. It is not as mild as was advertised.

Zantie posted:

Washington state's weekly update, cobbled together from the state's excel reports Cumulative Counts and EpiCurve Counts.

Full set of images linked here: https://imgur.com/a/XWJQMDg

Recent Hospitalizations
Hospitalizations of Washington state residents dated by week of first admission due to confirmed or probable COVID-19.

pre:

Hosp.      Changes in state counts reported:			7-Day
week of:    4wk ago  3wk ago  2wk ago  1wk ago  This week	Total:
Sep 03            -        -        -        -       + 33          33
Aug 27            -        -        -       47      + 192         239
Aug 20            -        -       56      173       + 32         261
Aug 13            -       43      179       24        + 6         252
Aug 06           49      147       10        8        + 0         214
All Older       145       25       23        2        + 8          

Recent Deaths
Deaths due to confirmed COVID-19 are dated week of death.

[timg].png[/timg]

pre:

Deaths*    Changes in state counts reported:			7-Day
week of:    4wk ago  3wk ago  2wk ago  1wk ago  This week	Total:
Sep 03            -        -        -        -        + 0           -
Aug 27            -        -        -        -       + 17          17
Aug 20            -        -        2       11        + 5          18
Aug 13            -        -       18        7        + 1          26
Aug 06            -        8        8        3        + 0          19
All Older        15        9        2        -        + 2         

And now for the least useful metric...

Recent Cases (Molecular + Antigen)
Cases are dated as first specimen date of either PCR or antigen test unless greater than 90 days since previous positive, then it is considered a reinfection.

pre:

Cases      Changes in state counts reported:			7-Day
week of:    4wk ago  3wk ago  2wk ago  1wk ago  This week	Total:
Sep 03            -        -        -        -      + 931         931
Aug 27            -        -        -    1,165    + 2,505       3,670
Aug 20            -        -      878    2,261      + 118       3,257
Aug 13            -      405    2,304       69        + 9       2,787
Aug 06          610    1,619      128       17       + 15       2,389
All Older     1,593    1,589       65       13        + 4          

Steve Yun posted:

https://www.reuters.com/business/ae...%20July%2020%20(Reuters),to%20consider%20its%20own%20measure.

held up in the senate but overwhelmingly passed the house 351-69

Platystemon posted:

https://twitter.com/DeltaNewsHub/status/1699420223407841751

Delta hires Top. Men.

Bastard Tetris posted:

this too

fosborb posted:

well holy poo poo they actually did it. masks are back<sup>*

*</sup> for a single classroom that has 3 or more reported cases, for only the next 10 days, does not include shared meal time

Baddog posted:

At our school 2 kids in a van on a school trip tested +, so they said everyone who rode in that vehicle should wear a mask for a week.

Ehhh, I'll take whatever we can get at this point.

Tzen posted:

what up 3.5 crew, glad it was mild

oh you're saying it wasn't? no, it was mild you're fine.

Teabag Dome Scandal posted:

Hard candy has been helping with pax mouth during the day but does anyone have any suggestions on what to do when trying to go to sleep?

Teabag Dome Scandal posted:

Hard candy has been helping with pax mouth during the day but does anyone have any suggestions on what to do when trying to go to sleep?

Tzen posted:

it's incredible how bad his response has been, incredible, entirely predictable, and cruel
https://twitter.com/luckytran/status/1699564589426360424

Tzen posted:

I've been eating plain yogurt with honey prior to sleeping and it'll distract me from pax mouth long enough to fall asleep

fosborb posted:

well holy poo poo they actually did it. masks are back<sup>*

*</sup> for a single classroom that has 3 or more reported cases, for only the next 10 days, does not include shared meal time

quote:

Australia's Indigenous Voice referendum faces misinformation linked to COVID influencers
By Byron Kaye

BRISBANE, Australia, Sept. 7 (Reuters) - At a beachfront park in Brisbane's north, suspended Australian doctor William Bay told a gathering that an upcoming referendum to recognise the country's first inhabitants and enshrine an Indigenous advisory body in the constitution would "open a gateway to unending tyranny and lawlessness".

The proposal was "equivalent to Germany's Enabling Act of 1933, which turned Hitler into the Fuhrer", Bay said in the speech in August, which he posted on Facebook for his 14,000 followers. The advisory body could "control the parliament and the government, thus replacing our system of representative democracy", added Bay, who lost his medical licence in 2022 after protesting against COVID-19 vaccines.

Dozens of campaigners who built substantial audiences during the COVID era by opposing Australia's pandemic response have turned their focus to undermining the Oct. 14 referendum, analysis of social media posts by independent fact-checkers shows.

Many of their claims bear little resemblance to the proposal Australians will vote on: to establish a body called the Voice to Parliament to provide non-binding advice to lawmakers on matters concerning Indigenous Australians.

These influencers are playing an outsized role in the debate, spreading falsehoods that threaten to put the landmark vote at risk of failing, eight political analysts and anti-misinformation experts told Reuters. The direct link between COVID agitators and misinformation about the Voice has not been previously reported in detail.

Snowglobe of Doom posted:

Covid is so incredibly over in Australia that a lot of the anti-vaxx/anti-lockdown conspiracy freaks have moved on to making up conspiracies about the upcoming Indigenous Voice To Parliament referendum instead

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australias-covid-agitators-inject-misinformation-into-indigenous-voice-vote-2023-09-07/

Tzen posted:

https://twitter.com/luckytran/status/1699564589426360424

DickParasite posted:

I hate these loving losers so much.

Zantie posted:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-sars-cov-virus-covid-infect-sensory.html posted:

_{Sensory neurons infected with SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Credit: iScience (2023).}
(..)
Researchers puzzled over how SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, could be causing these symptoms, as early evidence suggested that the virus could not infect neurons or only infected them rarely. Viral diseases can impact cells without directly infecting them, such as through damage caused by the body's immune response to the virus. However, the timing of when most people developed neuropathies did not align with the peak of the immune response to COVID-19.
(..)
Their research, published in the journal iScience, shows that SARS-CoV-2 can infect sensory neurons, leading to changes in the cells' gene expression. These findings may help to explain how the virus causes symptoms in the peripheral nervous system, laying a foundation for researchers to develop treatments.

"There is clearly a clinical effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection on sensory neurons, such as on smell and taste, and we did not know what might be the cause," says Jaenisch, who is also a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Knowing that the virus can infect and probably alter the function of the cells gives us a hint of what the cause might be."

Flamier and colleagues differentiated induced pluripotent stem cells into human sensory neurons in the lab. They confirmed that the cells had differentiated into sensory neurons by checking that they expressed key genes specific to that cell type. Next, the researchers tested to see if the sensory neurons expressed ACE2, the gene encoding the protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to gain entry into human cells. They found that the sensory neurons did express ACE2, at a level comparable to other cell types known to be infected by the virus—a first indication that sensory neurons likely could be infected.

The researchers then exposed the sensory neurons to three strains of SARS-CoV-2, the original WA1/2020 strain, and the delta and omicron strains that caused surges in COVID-19 infection. The researchers sequenced RNA from the sensory neurons and found that all three strains of the virus infected some portion of the sensory neurons. omicron infected the lowest percentage of cells within the same timeframe, suggesting that it is slower than the other strains to infect sensory neurons. This finding could help to explain why omicron infection leads to lower rates of loss of taste and smell than the previous strains did, but further research would be needed to prove a connection.

Next, the researchers looked at how gene expression changed in infected sensory neurons. Each viral strain affected the expression of different genes, but overall, the most impacted genes were those involved in immune response. Additionally, genes involved in RNA synthesis and processing showed reduced expression. These are genes whose function the virus may co-opt to its own benefit, and so their reduced expression could reflect the cell attempting to defend itself against the virus.

Although the virus was able to infect sensory neurons, the researchers found that it could not make new copies of itself inside them. When SARS-CoV-2 infects other cell types, such as lung cells, it creates lots of new copies of itself, ultimately killing the host cell and allowing the virus to keep spreading and infecting more cells. However, the infected sensory neurons neither died nor emitted any copies of the virus. Flamier is now working on figuring out how the cells achieve this.
(..)

https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(23)01767-4 posted:

Highlights
•Sensory neurons can be infected by SARS-CoV-2
•Infectability differs between WA1/2020 strain as well as the delta and omicron variants
•Infected sensory neurons synthesize SARS-CoV-2 RNA but do not produce progeny virion

Summary
COVID-19 has impacted billions of people since 2019 and unfolded a major healthcare crisis. With an increasing number of deaths and the emergence of more transmissible variants, it is crucial to better understand the biology of the disease-causing virus, the SARS-CoV-2. Peripheral neuropathies appeared as a specific COVID-19 symptom occurring at later stages of the disease. In order to understand the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the peripheral nervous system, we generated human sensory neurons from induced pluripotent stem cells that we infected with the SARS-CoV-2 strain WA1/2020 and the variants delta and omicron. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, we found that human sensory neurons can be infected by SARS-CoV-2 but are unable to produce infectious viruses. Our data indicate that sensory neurons can be infected by the original WA1/2020 strain of SARS-CoV-2 as well as the delta and omicron variants, yet infectability differs between the original strain and the variants.

Graphical abstract

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4190949-covid-spike-casts-spotlight-on-americas-elderly-political-leaders/ posted:

COVID spike casts spotlight on America’s elderly political leaders
(..)
The average age of senators is 65, the highest on record.
(..)
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), who is 78, has suffered three COVID-19 infections in the past year. Still, the No. 2 Senate Democrat told reporters Tuesday that he doesn’t think there will be any additional precautions in the chamber.

Durbin acknowledged he is concerned about attendance issues, as an ill-timed absence could cost Democrats a key vote given the party’s slim majority. But he indicated it’s not a new issue and leadership can devise workarounds.
(..)
Aside from vaccines and antivirals, the other tool experts and officials stress is testing.
(..)
COVID-19 testing sites in the Capitol complex closed at the end of May.

Limited COVID-19 tests may still be made available for members who want them as part of their official duties or travel, but otherwise offices rely on tests in the community, which are no longer widely available for free.

Adalja said it makes sense that Congress doesn’t offer tests.

“Offices never had testing for influenza. Offices never had testing for RSV. Offices have never had testing for strep throat,” he said. “COVID-19 is increasingly being handled like other respiratory viruses.”

quote:

Adalja said it makes sense that Congress doesn’t offer tests.

“Offices never had testing for influenza. Offices never had testing for RSV. Offices have never had testing for strep throat,” he said. “COVID-19 is increasingly being handled like other respiratory viruses.”

bedpan posted:

at each crucial point, the steps needed to be taken to control and defeat a pandemic were ignored in favor of the worst thing to do at any given point

gradenko_2000 posted:

someone add "literally Howard Stern" to the spreadsheet

Pingui posted:

rockear posted:

"Consider wearing a mask, especially in a crowded indoor setting"

I love this language. It always sounds to me like they're asking you to momentarily consider, in the abstract, the concept of mask wearing, before continuing normally with your day. As if engaging this thought process has its own protective qualities.

rockear posted:

"Consider wearing a mask, especially in a crowded indoor setting"

I love this language. It always sounds to me like they're asking you to momentarily consider, in the abstract, the concept of mask wearing, before continuing normally with your day. As if engaging this thought process has its own protective qualities.

Tzen posted:

it's incredible how bad his response has been, incredible, entirely predictable, and cruel
https://twitter.com/luckytran/status/1699564589426360424seeing this clip today and i was just doing some of this

tenderjerk posted:

trump did a better job with covid and he hosed up the supply chain very badly towards the start and later told me i should maybe (safely, mildly) inject bleach

Lib and let die posted:

[Twilight zone guy]: Consider if you will, wearing a mask.

Tzen posted:

it's incredible how bad his response has been, incredible, entirely predictable, and cruel
https://twitter.com/luckytran/status/1699564589426360424seeing this clip today and i was just doing some of this

NeonPunk posted:

Please don't spread misinformation in the Covid thread. Trump has never said to inject bleach ever. He specifically said 'disinfectants' which is different from 'bleach'

Tzen posted:

it's incredible how bad his response has been, incredible, entirely predictable, and cruel
https://twitter.com/luckytran/status/1699564589426360424seeing this clip today and i was just doing some of this

Real Mean Queen posted:

I hate this pobody's nerfect bullshit around masking. "There's this perfect person just off camera that wants me to do this, but folks, I'm just like you, I like to not wear a mask and I like to eat ice cream and I love my country, and if that's wrong I don't want to be right"

Like, bro, that guy you're folksily defying doesn't exist, and if he did he'd work for you. This isn't some cute little foible, you didn't sleep in half an hour on a Saturday or have a french fry, this is fairly important