30 thoughts on “C-19 Chat Post – December 13 2021”

  1. So question just for curiosity sake…anyone want to play?

    1) what mitigation strategies have worked best worldwide?
    2) which ones can we employ nationwide?
    3) and this is just one I struggle with….businesses don’t want to shut down and I sure understand why…especially mom and pop. What does more damage…limping along when we have huge numbers which will continue as long as covid is this active….or closing for a period and shaking the virus once and for all which may not be even close to a possibility. I actually may have answered my own Question but am really interested in thoughts

    1. We as a nation are very selfish.

      When a person won’t even wear a cloth mask to help out another, it says it all!

      Not to mention piss-poor leadship.

    2. Very sad indeed. We are the absolute WORST nation in the entire world. 🙁

      How did we get to this point anyway??

  2. Testing, contact tracing, and isolation. Best mitigation strategy; also least costly to economy. But, all three need to be systematically carried out.

    Next best mitigation strategy is indoor masking, physical distancing, ventilation, and crowd limits; more costly to economy, but not cost-prohibitive.

    By the way, that “game-changing” Merck pill … looks like a total bust. https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1470466951470206978

    I wish the word “game-changing” would be retired from the English language. While they’re at it, please get rid of “deep dive,” “paradigm shift,” “optics,” “in the weeds,” “30,000 foot view,” and “pain points.”

    1. Physical distancing and crowd limits are terms from 2020, no longer in use today in 2021. We have discovered that the virus travels a lot more than 6 feet, so what would be the point.

  3. Philip more on the tests. Seems they will go to neighborhoods that struggle financially. I don’t think he took from the tests for the general public. As it is they are not always easy to find.

  4. Philip, while distancing and crowd limits are not being used as NPI measures here in the U.S., they most definitely are outside our borders, including our Northern neighbor, Canada, but also many European and Asian countries. You are correct that the virus can travel more than 6 feet. But, distancing reduces the chance of transmission because the likelihood of the virus traveling more than 6 feet and infecting someone is much smaller than traveling, 1, 2, or 3 feet and infecting someone.

  5. Thank you Joshua for all of your information. Tragically, while we rail against severe mandates, we fail horribly to take the Very simple steps that might well avoid them.

    1. Specifically, the public health authority has been tracking Omicron cases, including a sample of 2,471 Omicron cases, 27 of which have already been hospitalized. Keep in mind, around 1,000 of these cases were identified in recent days. We know there’s always a lag between case identification and hospitalization. Most of the hospitalized from this sample are fully vaccinated (though it’s not known if they were boosted). In any case, this is worrisome. CDC is asleep at the wheel, per usual. We’re a laughing stock, at this point. We don’t do enough sequencing, we don’t track cases as carefully, and we provide vaccination status at discrete monthly intervals, not in real time or continuously.

  6. Hard to find good news, but there is some. Massachusetts wastewater samples in the Boston area suggest a dip in Covid-19 in the sewage. The fact that cases this weekend were the same as last is, I guess, a small piece of good news. Of course, this is all before the now predicted onslaught of Omicron. It seems like everyone thinks that’s coming, so I better not be stubborn in my resistance to this idea. The bad news in Massachusetts is that hospitalizations are at their highest level in 10 months; 2.5 times the number seen on November 1st. https://twitter.com/WWLP22News/status/1470518900106407940

  7. Across parts of Europe and the UK schools are shutting down in-person learning at least 1 week early (before the holiday break), and sometimes 10 days early. I’m not seeing any of that here in the US. That does surprise me, given the large number of cases in schools and the imminent arrival of widespread Omicron.

    By the way, yet another Massachusetts law enforcement officer – corrections officer in Essex – has died of Covid-19. I believe he was in his early 50s.

    1. I am sure my son knows the COs and my heart aches for those lost, their families, and their brother and sisters in blue. In the spring/early summer, there were no cases in my son’s facility. But courts, etc were opened and prisoners traveled and brought the virus back.

      As a whole …..We have failed far too many.

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