38 thoughts on “C-19 Chat Post – December 24 2021”

  2. The following was on the crawl space on WCVB Ch. 5 news this morning:

    According to an ABC news exclusive: 30,000 Covid-19 deaths since Thanksgiving!

    Did I see this correctly???

    1. Close to 30 days have passed since Thanksgiving.

      1,000 deaths per day, nationwide.

      Unfortunately, mathematically, that makes some sense.

    1. Indeed. It blew my mind to see the Massachusetts numbers
      yesterday, until I looked at New York! OMG, nearly 40,000
      new cases there yesteday.

      Omicron it running wild across the country! And at the worst
      possible time of year. I fear the numbers will go much higher
      after Christmas and New Years.

  5. Our 2 daughters tested positive for Covid yesterday.

    Happy to report they are experiencing very mild symptoms and are acting like teenagers, driving me crazy 🙂 🙂 🙂 they are vaccinated 🙂

    I’m under the weather myself with a soar throat and runny nose, but I tested negative yesterday. Planning to retest in 4 days.

    1. Oh no! So sorry to hear. Hopefully, their symptoms will
      remain mild. And even though you tested negative, those tests
      are not 100%. I would not wait 4 days. 36 hours should do it.
      And I hope you wife doesn’t contract it as well. Hopefully she will be tested as well.

      1. Thanks JpDave.

        Yes, she tested yesterday too and came up negative.

        Yeah, we have spent time talking about the accuracy, because in hindsight, we think one of our daughter’s may have had it 5 day’s ago and at the time, we now wonder if the negative she got was a false negative. She’s actually feeling better already.

        Thanks for that 36 hr recommendation, I will tell my wife.

    2. So sorry about your daughters and yourself for that matter. Hope everyone gets better soon.

      I guess it’s safe to to say it was caught at school.

      Do your daughters go to the same school as where you teach? Just curious.

      1. Thanks Philip.

        One is at middle school with me and our oldest is at the high school.

        Probably caught at school. I’m guessing there could be a lot of people walking around school, asynptomatic and unknowingly positive.

        1. Exactly and that is the problem.

          So far, the evidence suggests that Omicron is milder
          than Delta, however, it does appear to be affecting
          young children far more severely that delta
          And it still crushes older persons. All in between
          “appear’ to be faring better.

          I wish we could get the definitive word on that.

          I we could be assured no one would be hospitalized from
          omicron, then we could all just catch it and be done with it!

      1. Thanks Vicki ! I’m confident we’ll all be ok.

        We’ll be celebrating a bigger family Christmas probably in January now, but if that’s our biggest issue, then things are really good.

          1. It seems that our schools are the “super spreaders” this year. Kids are likely passing the virus on to their parents and others in the household. Maybe that accounts for many of the current cases?

            A number of colleges/universities going remote for at least January.

  6. It will be interesting if the First Night celebration in Boston will be scaled back as well. I haven’t heard any word one way or the other.

    Joshua, if you were Mayor, would you scale back or keep the activities as normal?

  7. Tom, take care. Sore throat is a typical Omicron symptom (not seen as much with previous variants), but of course you could also simply have a cold. The protections offered by vaccines for you and your family are so important now that this next wave is upon is. As Trump said in recent interviews (I’m glad he said it), vaccines have saved millions of lives and also cut down on the severity of illness.

    Unfortunately, Omicron is already impacting the U.S. in ways it has not in the U.K. We’ve crossed the 1,500 deaths a day (7-day average) threshold once again. The relatively steep upward curve is concerning. This steep increase in deaths, my friends, is not happening in other countries. See tweet below. I expected this to occur here, however, and wrote a piece in Forbes the other day. We have many more unvaccinated folks than the U.K. and other peers, and we also have a chaotic, fragmented healthcare system – which includes our relatively poor test accessibility – and many more people with serious underlying health conditions. In addition, we have practically no mitigation measures in place. https://twitter.com/VincentRK/status/1474392564958744582

    Philip, if I were mayor I would scale back the first night celebrations, but I would also impose capacity and gathering limits in indoor spaces. Even though we’ll all probably be getting this variant at some point, having a concentrated surge like this is putting severe strain on our healthcare system. With that strain, we put all patients at risk of sub-optimal treatment.

    2. Well Joshua, I hope I get to be the lone person who doesn’t catch this variant. I’ve been fully Covid-19 vaccinated, along with flu shot, tetanus, and two shingles. My next Pfizer dose (#4) is expected in March. Frankly, I don’t see how any bacteria germ can get to me.

      Joshua, is it really inevitable EVERYONE gets this variant eventually regardless of full vaccination along with masks/mitigation? :-O

  8. Vicki, I am at a public school. You may have misunderstood me though–I am not saying that it is easy and that things are back to “normal”. In fact, it may be the hardest year ever. We don’t have substitutes; every day coverage is an adventure. The kids have always done all sorts of things–but I think I’m seeing more behavior, although I am old and cranky so who knows. But, I do think schools should be open.

  9. Philip, I overstated/exaggerate by saying “everyone” may get this variant. But, it is likely to infect the majority of the population, including the vaccinated. The latter will be protected from severe illness, with some exceptions.

    Dr. Gottlieb is now seeing what I saw a week ago and have been tracking since: Omicron is causing steep increases in pediatric hospitalizations. https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1474452361821274114

    1. Agree. My wife and I were screaming at him for that.

      I saw somewhere and don’t know the accuracy, but there was a report that the Gov has yet to sign a contract for the purchase
      of these tests.

    1. Thanks for asking. Spoke to her today. She’s still “lethargic” and runs out of energy easily. But she has no more cough, fever, etc … It’s been 2 weeks since she got sick. Hopefully she’ll gain more energy going forward.

      On a different note, the U.S. just passed 70,000 hospitalizations for the first time in 3 months. Our hospitalization and death curves are markedly different from Denmark, the UK, France, and other countries. Curves there are edging upward, to be sure, but ours (just like in previous waves) has a greater slope. Obviously not good, and an indictment on our `public health’ `system.’ The single quotation marks are purposeful. We don’t really do public health in America. We also don’t have a healthcare system. Much of what we do is unsystematic, ad hoc, geared toward individual care (and insurance dollars!), and ultimately unsustainable for a great nation like ours. We need to seriously rethink our entire healthcare enterprise. It’s too profit-driven, with most of the dollars going towards acute (rather than preventive or even chronic) care with advanced super technologies for individual patients.

        1. Yes Joshua, very well stated indeed. As for your daughter’s energy level, can a doctor prescribe something? Of does she have to gain it back on her own?

  16. Loved Joshua’s comment regarding the need to rethink / revamp our entire health care system – as that was the basis for my PPE (Politics, Philosophy & Economics) thesis in…. 1998. Sigh. My takeaway then in 1998 as it still is now – 25 years later – is that politically and philosophically we as a society choose to view health care as a consumer good rather than a human right and the intense force of the insurance lobby and the economics behind the for profit medical industry and insurance industry coupled with our near hysteria regarding anything we view as “socialized medicine” will act as insurmountable barriers to real change. I continue to hope I will be proved wrong someday….

    Overheard in a store today (so unsure if it’s accurate) that Acton closed the schools early dismissal today because 48 percent – yup 48 percent is what the parent said – of the school tested positive. I didn’t ask which school but YOW!! I do know as of Tuesday Acton had well over 100 students in the schools who had covid (my ex husband lives in town and got a notice – I think it was 148 students as of Tues) so I guess it’s possible inow half of the student body is infected.

    As a mom I am moving firmly into the “close schools until after the surge” camp. My son is very sheltered at a local private school that can afford tiny cohorts of 8 boys in separate areas on campus but that is exceptional and even with that I am not looking forward to sending him back on 1/3. This variant is really hitting our kids hard. Frightening stuff.

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