OT: Coronavirus Thread (MOD Warning Post #19)

[g00n]

You tried every trick in the book and nothing worked.

Oh well.

 

[twabby]

Unsurprisingly, COVID is linked to damage to the cardiovascular system. Even in "mild" cases:

Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19 | Nature Medicine

The broader implications of these findings are clear. Cardiovascular complications have been described in the acute phase of COVID-19 (refs. 6,7,8). Our study shows that the risk of incident cardiovascular disease extends well beyond the acute phase of COVID-19. First, the findings emphasize the need for continued optimization of strategies for primary prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infections; that is, the best way to prevent Long COVID and its myriad complications, including the risk of serious cardiovascular sequelae, is to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first place. Second, given the large and growing number of people with COVID-19 (more than 72 million people in the United States, more than 16 million people in the United Kingdom and more than 355 million people globally), the risks and 12-month burdens of cardiovascular diseases reported here might translate into a large number of potentially affected people around the world. Governments and health systems around the world should be prepared to deal with the likely significant contribution of the COVID-19 pandemic to a rise in the burden of cardiovascular diseases. Because of the chronic nature of these conditions, they will likely have long-lasting consequences for patients and health systems and also have broad implications on economic productivity and life expectancy. Addressing the challenges posed by Long COVID will require a much-needed, but so far lacking, urgent and coordinated long-term global response strategy9,10.

Also someone should tell our politicians in charge about the bolded, because they sure don't give a shit if we all get infected.

As another reminder: many more states are planning on dropping mask mandates in the coming months as omicron dies down. Surely, this will have no negative consequences.

 

[g00n]

Unsurprisingly, COVID is linked to damage to the cardiovascular system. Even in "mild" cases:

Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19 | Nature Medicine



Also someone should tell our politicians in charge about the bolded, because they sure don't give a shit if we all get infected.

As another reminder: many more states are planning on dropping mask mandates in the coming months as omicron dies down. Surely, this will have no negative consequences.

It's interesting that the results were almost the same for the usual demographic splits, but you may be exaggerating when you say "even with mild cases" as the elevation was significantly lower for those who weren't hospitalized or in the ICU:

Translation: even though they say there were increased risks for all groups including the vaccinated it's clear you should GET VACCINATED & BOOSTED since that's your best defense against hospitalization and long-term effects of COVID.

Maybe someone should compare these stats to "long-term effects of the vaccine"?

Also:

"This study has several limitations. The demographic composition of our cohort (majority White and male) might limit the generalizability of study findings. We used the electronic healthcare databases of the US Department of Veterans Affairs to conduct this study, and, although we used validated outcome definitions and took care to adjust the analyses for a large set of pre-defined and algorithmically selected variables, we cannot completely rule out misclassification bias and residual confounding. It is possible that some people might have had COVID-19 but were not tested for it; these people would have been enrolled in the control group and, if present in large numbers, might have biased the results toward the null. Our datasets do not include information on causes of death. Finally, as the pandemic, with all its dynamic features, continues to progress, as the virus continues to mutate and as new variants emerge, as treatment strategies of acute and post-acute COVID-19 evolve and as vaccine uptake improves, it is possible that the epidemiology of cardiovascular manifestations in COVID-19 might also change over time"

The COVID positive group came from those who tested between March 2020 and January 2021, before vaccines became widely available. We have to wonder how many also SHOULD have gone to the hospital but didn't.

I think this study is fairly decent and I don't doubt the findings are relevant but maybe they don't portray as bleak a picture for vaccinated, non-hospitalized people as you might think.

 

[twabby]

GET VACCINATED & BOOSTED since that's your best defense against hospitalization and long-term effects of COVID.

No it's not. Avoiding the virus is the best defense.

 

[g00n]

Weird that the median in the distribution for non-hospitalized cardiac arrest HR above is BELOW ONE vs the control group.

Explain that?

 

[g00n]

No it's not. Avoiding the virus in the first place is.

No shit, sherlock. I knew you were going to zero in on that one little phrase.

Sorry we are not locking down because there's a 20% increase chance of heart flutters sometime in the next year.

Some have speculated in the past that some of these possible risks might be explained by other effects of the pandemic INCLUDING being locked down, and associated stress, as well as the trauma and stress of being infected and/or hospitalized/drugged/etc.

I don't doubt there are likely some weird effects long-term from COVID but I'd want to see more data on OMICRON. I also want to see how many people were reinfected, and better measures of viral load.

 

[twabby]

Sorry we are not locking down because there's a 20% increase chance of heart flutters sometime in the next year.

 

[twabby]

The hubris and disregard for the lives of our children is stunning, though not surprising.

As a reminder, only about 19% of children 5-11 were fully vaccinated as of a few weeks ago. But it’s ok because the 81% who aren’t vaccinated may only experience some heart flutters and mild heart failure, if they survive the acute phase of COVID-19.

 

[g00n]

View attachment 505370

You didn't have to change any, flutter was already in there.

Also what about this?

Seriously, seems weird

 

[twabby]

You didn't have to change any, flutter was already in there.

Also what about this?

View attachment 505440

Seriously, seems weird

There’s nothing weird about it. The 95% confidence interval of [0.71, 1.17] includes hazard ratios of greater than 1.

 

[g00n]

There’s nothing weird about it. The 95% confidence interval of [0.71, 1.17] includes hazard ratios of greater than 1.

But also less than 1, with most of the range below 1. Seems odd for something so drastic as cardiac arrest that there's even the possibility the control group was more prone than the COVID group.

Unless I'm reading that wrong.

 

[twabby]

But also less than 1, with most of the range below 1. Seems odd for something so drastic as cardiac arrest that there's even the possibility the control group was more prone than the COVID group.

Unless I'm reading that wrong.

It’s likely because cardiac arrest, myocarditis, and cardiogenic shock are rarer occurrences. It’s why the confidence intervals are wider as well.

Because they are so rare, it’s possible that sheer randomness of the sampling process can explain why the sample of those who had from mild COVID suffered cardiac arrest at a lower rate than the control group.

 

[g00n]

It’s likely because cardiac arrest, myocarditis, and cardiogenic shock are rarer occurrences. It’s why the confidence intervals are wider as well.

Because they are so rare, it’s possible that sheer randomness of the sampling process can explain why the sample of those who had from mild COVID suffered cardiac arrest at a lower rate than the control group.

This seems weird to be given how common heart problems are among the population, and how other truly weird shit like Bell's Palsy was showing up after vaccination and it was freaking people out, even though it was occurring about the same rate as expected in the genpop.

Either way, seems like an outlier given the way nearly all the rest of the arguably rare conditions were slightly boosted for that group or close to 1.

Maybe being less prone to cardiac arrest predisposed one to be less likely to be hospitalized or progress to severe COVID, and like you said the confidence intervals and sampling made it look strange.

 

[twabby]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/02/11/covid-boosters-omicron-protection/

Seeing as booster shots have been available since September and with no plans to authorize an additional booster shot currently, it's insane to me to continue to pursue a vaccination-only strategy as we are currently doing when many people are now 5 months out from their booster and protection is waning among the boosted population. In addition, according to the CDC website one can only get their booster 5 months after completing their initial 2-dose regimen of Moderna or Pfizer, yet at 5 months there is only a 54% hospitalization risk reduction for those who have only completed a 2-dose course according to the CDC data in the linked article.

In addition, it appears that vaccines for 6 months to 5 year olds have been delayed to at least April (and probably later) after initially receiving perhaps some good news several days ago. Yet even in the face of this, we are lifting mask mandates in ostensible "we follow the science" states, despite the fact that ~2,500 people a day are dying on average. Cases are declining, but there's nothing that suggests we aren't just going to enter another vicious cycle of death when the Rho variant emerges in a few months.

 

[g00n]

Deaths in MD seem to have dropped to pre-Omicron surge levels in the last week. Hopefully it continues to decline. Looking at S. Africa they still had a baseline level after the Omicron phase, probably due to unvaxxed. Remains to be seen if we'll do the same.

Not actually sure what this means practically. Deaths and hospitalizations dropping quickly suggests the plummeting case counts are legit and not a function of non-reporting.

People are wanting this to be over and some are probably jumping the gun, again. I'm still masking indoors until Spring at least. Team N95.

 

[g00n]

Per these studies just released, as expected the vaccines increase the T-cell response sufficiently to fight Omicron even though the virus has mutated beyond the ANTIBODY defenses erected by the vaccine.

COVID-19 vaccines induce immune response to Omicron

So all that shit about "the vaccines don't work, look at the infection rates" was exactly as described: the virus mutated beyond the original strain just enough to get past the vaccines and cause infections, but once in the body the long-term T-cell defenses prevent severe illness.

This is very, very good news... if you've been vaccinated.

 

[usiel]

So one of my former group leads where I work were catching up a couple of days ago and asked how her brother was doing who lives over in China with his Chinese wife with basically the low down in how life is atm over there related to covid. Hilariously even China has to deal with antivaxers:

life is basically normal there

the only problem is they can't leave lol

well they can, but it's a hassle and a half to come back... there are way fewer flights and they're like 3x the price and they would have to do a gov-controlled 3 week quarantine where they basically lock them in a hotel room with room service and have a doctor check on them once a day

but yeah super robust big-brothery contact tracing has essentially stamped out the virus within China; when it crops up here and there they do total local lockdown and isolate all cases so it doesn't spread

the international border is essentially closed

they're still trying to get everyone vaccinated; there are anti vaxxers there too so they are trying to incentivize by paying people to get vaxxed

but everyone is back to work and school and going to shows and restaurants and all that, no masks anywhere

 

[g00n]

So one of my former group leads where I work were catching up a couple of days ago and asked how her brother was doing who lives over in China with his Chinese wife with basically the low down in how life is atm over there related to covid. Hilariously even China has to deal with antivaxers:

Some of the recent stories out of Hong Kong are not good by comparison. Vax rates very different, as are some of the policies.

No way we could close our borders entirely as China has done.

 

[twabby]

So one of my former group leads where I work were catching up a couple of days ago and asked how her brother was doing who lives over in China with his Chinese wife with basically the low down in how life is atm over there related to covid. Hilariously even China has to deal with antivaxers:

That sounds lovely. I wish we would do that *sigh*

 

[g00n]

That sounds lovely. I wish we would do that *sigh*

You realize this does not mean "life as normal", right?

 

[usiel]

Not surprising a wealthy communist country can do stuff to mitigate a pandemic versus some western democracies.

Kinda curious what kinda of idiocracy we'll see next time with an even more lethal pandemic.

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

So one of my former group leads where I work were catching up a couple of days ago and asked how her brother was doing who lives over in China with his Chinese wife with basically the low down in how life is atm over there related to covid. Hilariously even China has to deal with antivaxers:

jeez, we would have a Civil War if they did that here….

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

Not surprising a wealthy communist country can do stuff to mitigate a pandemic versus some western democracies.

Kinda curious what kinda of idiocracy we'll see next time with an even more lethal pandemic.

Too many Braveheart watchers lol…..”take my life not my freedom”!

 

[usiel]

Too many Braveheart watchers lol…..”take my life not my freedom”!

Heh. Well unfortunately remember it was purposefully made into a culture war issue starting as soon as late April after the initial March shutdown. Doesn't mean that I don't think that red states would eventually still be early pushers to relax the shutdowns

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

More contagious version of omicron spreads in U.S., fueling worries — NPR