As if sweating over whether or not United has cancelled our flights to Urbana, Illinois today, a trip to two locations reveals they have no cinnamon raisin bagels because of difficulty in getting ingredients. This pandemic and its impact is really getting out of hand and it must stop.

Our 6 year old grandson tested positive for COVID yesterday. This was not a home test; this was done at a clinic with a very accurate testing method. He has a horrible cough.

It’s along story, but our stupid soon to be ex son in law dropped him off yesterday, knowing full well he is sick and our daughter is the one who took him to be tested.

She is isolating with the kids at her place and me and my husband are isolating at our home. The idiot son in law hosted a party for his family at his house the night before, so they were all exposed to it. He wasn’t going to tell anyone, so our daughter sent a group text to everyone letting them know.

It makes me angry because he deliberately did this to us and he refuses to isolate with the kids. Our daughter is missing 10 days of work.

So, yeah: kids do get it and can be spreaders and it can have some real repercussions.

{Insert many nasty cuss words here about ExSIL} What a selfish ass. Make sure this is all documented and turned over to her divorce lawyer. He doesn't just hurt the kids and her, he hurts all the people she needs to be at work helping. And he knows it. I hope he is NOT allowed to see patients until he has at least one negative test.

>As a rhino virus mutates, it transmits more easily at the cost of becoming weaker.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Tell me about the milder versions of diphtheria, or polio, or measles, or smallpox, or ... And annual flu varieties oscillate up and down in severity, depending on the year.

There is nothing that says that a more transmissible virus is less virulent. That is basically luck of the draw. It's not like only so much can be crammed into a virus, and if there is more of one feature, there must be less of another to compensate.

Omicron does appear to be less virulent, though it has not been around long enough to have reliable statistics on survival rates. The denialists do seem to like 99.7% however. They used the same number as the survival rate for alpha. I guess the reasoning is that 99.9 sounds like a number that was just made up, but 99.7 percent sounds like somebody actually measured something.

Edit to add: oh, and survival rate varies dramatically, depending on age, comorbidities, vaccination status, gender.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2021 12:32PM by Brother Of Jerry.

One more thing - we don't yet know how much immunity omicron confers, but it is so contagious, that if it does confer substantial immunity, it may solve the herd immunity roadblock foisted on the rest of us by the anti-vaxxers.

If most of them get omicron, and if omicron confers immunity to covid in general (this is yet to be determined), herd immunity problem solved.

It also spreads so fast that the wave it causes is likely to be very steep but very short, as in South Africa. Let's hope.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2021 01:24PM by Brother Of Jerry.

I'm guessing we'll all get it eventually, I had the third and last booster two weeks ago, and I've decided I'm done with that, I think most people (who watch fox news) feel the same. After all the 6 weeks to flatten the curve now going on two years, and the "I feel your pain" rhetoric from our leaders, and 9 trillion spending spree, it's gotta be done already,...

DH and I are in our 70s. We've done everything we are supposed to do - 2 vaccinations plus booster, liberal handwashing, using hand sanitizer (we even keep a bottle of the stuff in the car) whenever we leave the house - even just to check the mail.

We don't go out much, and when we do, it's with masks.

I know I won't live forever. But I do NOT want to go out from covid.

From a Non-Fox news person, I'll take boosters until they stop offering them. We've been in Europe for most of December and it's interesting how different countries respond vs the US. Portugal being the best which is no surprise considering their vaccination rate. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

Maca Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> . . . 9 trillion spending spree. . .

Do you want to explain that to us? I don't think you can, but you're welcome to give it a try.

The South African research called it very mild, and has expressed shock that various jurisdictions are planning lockdowns and other harsh mitigations because of it. In fact, South Africa has ceased tabulation of Omicron cases.

The symptoms are: cough, sore throat, sinus discharge, congestion,fatigue--same as the common cold. Nobody likes getting a cold. We're down for a while, feel miserable, and some people suffer worse, and some people suffer very seriously. And yes, the common cold can kill. But we shouldn't over-react to it. (I had a hypochondriac roommate once--ugh!)

To my knowledge, we have just one Omicron fatality, in the UK--and they're not releasing any information (i.e. comorbidities) for some unfathomable reason. (CNN's report of one in Texas turned out to incorrect.)

ValkerieQueen, sorry about your grandson. Look after him, put up with the household quarantine,* and do be concerned but don't worry: statistically, he'll come out just fine. When you separate out comorbidities, children's covid cases are few and tend to be very mild. And yes, Nightingale, there are exceptions. There will always be unfortunate, tragically exceptional cases. Even with the common cold. But children are mostly exempt from infection and contagion, absent other issues (such as marginalized access to healthcare, which is why BIPOC children dominate the Covid case count.

*Household quarantines make sense. Large lockdowns don't.

You do realize that it takes about four weeks from time of infection before someone dies of covid, don’t you?

The WHO announced omicron was a variant of concern on Nov 26. Do the math.

We don’t know the fatality rate yet.

"CNN's report of one in Texas turned out to incorrect."

Where did you read that the Texas death wasn't Omicron? The only correction I've seen was an allegation that the death was of someone who had been vaccinated. County health officials corrected that misinfo to confirm he was in fact unvaxed.

"VERIFY reached out to the Texas Department of State Health Services to confirm the information released by Harris County Public Health. An official with the state’s health department confirmed the person was a man who was unvaccinated."

https://www.king5.com/article/news/verify/coronavirus-verify/omicron-covid-first-death-united-states/536-c0059248-a1a2-4557-8bd5-97a066d6a842

---

"The first confirmed death in the U.S. from the Omicron variant was reported in Texas' Harris County on Monday.

"Why it matters: The man who died was in his 50s, unvaccinated and had previously been infected with COVID-19, per a press release."

https://www.axios.com/first-confirmed-us-omicron-death-texas-006fb75d-0a84-45bb-b1db-816ba5ca0226.html

The Texas death was reported everywhere, not just on CNN.

Your nonsense, caffiend, looks increasingly conspicuous now that even Trump is urging people to get vaccinated.

I'm confident you vaccinated your children so they could go to school and then to college. Some of those diseases are less dangerous than COVID, so the question is what about the latter has you so exercised?

Secondly, it is common for viruses to grew less virulent with the passage of time but it is almost as common for them to grow more dangerous. We've seen that with COVID. You keep telling us that Omicron represents a diminution in danger but forget that Delta was more harmful than the previous mutations. Why do you ignore data showing that the virus can go either way?

Thirdly, we've had experience with two other coronaviruses this century: SARS and MERS. They killed one in thirty and one in ten sufferers. What that tells us is that COVID has the potential, like the rest of its genetic family, to mutate into something far more harmful that what we've seen so far. Why do you ignore that?

If you don't want to get vaccinated, that's fine. But the parroted propaganda isn't persuasive. You are cherry-picking your evidence, and that is patently irrational.

>To my knowledge, we have just one Omicron fatality, in the UK

UK has reported 14 deaths as of 2 days ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-says-14-deaths-129-hospitalised-by-omicron-2021-12-22/

Germany has one as well

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/special-focus/covid-19/international-update-germany-confirms-first-death-attributed-to-covid-omicron-variant/

Allow me to be the first liberal to agree. It's milder. Great news. The dramatic music with ominous intro's regarding case counts are missing the mark. Right now, it's a positive development.

How does it feel to be right for a change?

From the wikipedia article on polio, opening paragraph:

Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus.[1] In about 0.5 percent of cases, it moves from the gut to affect the central nervous system, and there is muscle weakness resulting in a flaccid paralysis.[1] This can occur over a few hours to a few days.[1][3] The weakness most often involves the legs, but may less commonly involve the muscles of the head, neck, and diaphragm.[1] Many people fully recover.[1] In those with muscle weakness, about 2 to 5 percent of children and 15 to 30 percent of adults die.[1] Up to 70 percent of those infected have no symptoms.[1] Another 25 percent of people have minor symptoms such as fever and a sore throat, and up to 5 percent have headache, neck stiffness, and pains in the arms and legs.[1][3] These people are usually back to normal within one or two weeks.[1]


So there you have it, polio was the common cold (if that) for the vast majority (99.5%) of people that caught it. Of the one half of one percent that did have neurological infection, a substantial majority recovered. So by caffiend's epidemiologist-issued-by-google standard, polio was not a big deal.

I had a bad case of Mormonism once. I think I'd rather have Covid.

I'm in Utah, where about a quarter of the population is opting for the package deal, Mormonism AND Covid. Such a deal, eh?

It's tough to beat if you have a death wish.

watch out exmos ~


in this thred ~


the sky is falling ~

As I just pointed out above, covid has a death and disability rate very much in the same ballpark as polio. Do you think the fear of polio (which I well remember, being old enough to remember public swimming pools being closed when there was an outbreak) was overblown?

We have been losing 1,000 people a day to covid. It was over 3,000 a day last December, which made it the number one cause of death in the nation for several months, beating all heart disease combined, and all cancers combined.

How bad does something have to be before you would consider it bad?

Even if omicron turns out to be 90% less lethal than delta, that would still be 100 deaths a day, about the same number as what we lose to auto accidents per day in the US. Should we stop trying to prevent vehicular deaths? 99.999% of everybody that gets in a car arrives alive and well at their destination. Seat belts - Pfffft.

Plus we don't know the long-term effects of covid. Polio could rear its ugly head years later and weaken or destroy muscles in people who had recovered from the initial infection. I think it is entirely possible that people who had lung scarring from covid, but recovered, will have COPD or a similar problem later in life, and will be disabled, and/or have their lives shortened.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2021 04:25PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Plus COVID is an ongoing threat. The longer it goes uncontained, the greater the risk of a much more dangerous disease evolving. It's only a hop, skip and a jump from COVID to SARS and MERS.

This head-in-the-sand stuff is astoundingly myopic.

Most excellent comments overall and especially using polio as an example of a dread disease that was conquered via vaccine.

Not all that long ago in the history of humankind kids lived (or died) in iron lungs due to polio paralyzing their own. Mass mandatory vaccination campaigns saved countless lives.

Why would we suddenly rear up and refuse to accept a successful vaccination against a virus that's caused a 2-year, and counting, pandemic?

Although Canada has reached the point of over 81% of the total population from ages 5 upward being vaccinated, and in British Columbia it's nearly 79%, we have 400,000 people in BC who have not been vaxxed. Health experts are saying the new variant Omicron is so highly transmissible and it's taking only a few days from someone being infected (perhaps in early stages, unknown to them) to them passing it on three-fold at least, infecting others and then they infect more others and so on and so on. "Wildfire" is the description used for where we're at with it now. And BC knows a lot about wildfires after the horrific fire season we've just endured. They've also almost given up on contact tracing now as they can't keep up, they say, despite having over 2000 contact tracers hard at work. The advice now is if you feel sick at all, with any symptoms at all, assume you have Omicron until you test negative. The testing sites are overrun too so now they will only test people who do exhibit symptoms. They are also implementing measures to curb any stockpiling of home test kits that has been going on.

This is a real-life experience of being in an all-for-one and one-for-all situation. I guess it depends on how much you care about other people whether you will observe the recommended measures to ameliorate or limit or eradicate the pandemic.

It's also a case of remembering where we were at the start - what the objectives were - and that may cut down on clashing swords - maybe. The main point of the measures taken early on by public health was to avoid overloading the health care systems in various countries. In the example above of BC having 400K unvaxxed individuals, if only 5-10% of them were to contract the virus, which is highly possible, or even a larger percentage, statistically and through experience we know that so many people would be ill enough to require hospitalization they would completely swamp our hospitals and especially the ICUs. There is also a limit to numbers of available staff and even those individuals are running close to empty now, after two years of a relentless disaster-zone situation. So the crucial resources, health care centres, numbers of beds, ICU capacities, and available expert staff, are being strained to the max and beyond. That is **exactly** the situation those in charge of the public health response have been trying to avoid since Day 1.

Large numbers of people refusing to be vaccinated are the biggest cause of prolonging the pandemic. The consequences are incalculable and devastating, not only re the people who are dying unnecessarily, including the young, many who were vaxxed but crossed paths with an unvaxxed infected person, but with the toll this is taking on HCWs and facilities as well as the massive ocean of grief of all those who have lost loved ones. Another most consequential side effect of the lack of hospital space is the need to cancel scheduled surgeries, even if that in itself poses a potential danger to the patient. A surgery can be labelled "elective" but it doesn't mean it's less important nor less serious. Some people are left feeling that if they could have had investigations and/or surgery sooner, or at all, their outcome would have been better. For instance, even cancer patients are having investigations postponed and feel the delay is robbing them of a chance for recovery. My friend's husband is in that situation. He has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and is left wondering whether if they could have scheduled his imaging etc sooner he would have had a better chance of survival because the diagnosis would have been made earlier. It's one thing to have to come to terms with a tough diagnosis but when you think it didn't have to be that way it bites even more deeply and can make it harder for both patient and family to accept.

It's easy to get lost in dueling stats and opinions. I'm hoping that more people will stop and think about the basics that we knew from the beginning: it was always a race to develop a vaccine to prevent exactly what is occurring now - the development of variant after variant because we never reached the high rate of vaxxed population needed to stop the monster in its tracks.

Not to mention the unvaxxed pops of all too many "second and third world" countries.

We won't be safe until everybody's safe. That's not all that strange a concept and it's fairly easy to comprehend. The question is: How much do we care about others?

In all the traipsing through religion in its various manifestations that I've done in life, for who knows what reason, with far more negative experiences than positive ones, the major lasting principle that appeals to me is the injunction to Love One Another.

Or at least care whether they live or die. If you can prevent the spread of contagion, thereby showing grace and compassion to others and maybe saving yourself at the same time, what's stopping you?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2021 05:26PM by Nightingale.

Ah, you did the long post, so I can do a short one this time. :)

A doubling period of 1.5 to 3 days is spectacularly rapid growth of infection. So rapid, I was assuming it was a typo, or poor data. It couldn't actually be that fast.

Apparently it is that fast. It would only take 25 doublings from an initial single infection to infect the entire US population - 330 million or so. That would only take 50 days at a rate of doubling every 2 days. That is obviously impossible, so I expect the wave will have to drop off substantially after a month or so, because the virus will not be able to find sufficient people to infect.


Bit of good news - I have a long-time friend who was resisting getting the booster because she had a nasty neurological reaction to the second shot (it happened at the same time, but that could have been coincidence, she has some sort of autoimmune disorder).

She also has two grandkids under age 4, and a daughter who works in a hospital and is authorized to insert ventilators on covid patients. Chances of being exposed to covid are absurdly high if she is around the grandkids.

She decided to get the booster Monday (with much arm twisting from friends and daughter). Felt headachy for a day and a half, doing fine now. Whew. Merry Christmas.

Remember when Ziller's posts used to involve pole dancing?

In ~ B4 ~

https://i1.wp.com/politicallyincorrecthumor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wife-husband-dog-stripper-pole.jpg?w=490&ssl=1

Note to kentish: I know this thread didn't go the way you expected.

But that's the way it goes sometimes around here!

Merry Christmas anyway. :)

And To you nightingale I am sitting in O,Hare waiting a second flight and the bagel shop is closed lol

Travel safe, kentish. Hope you have a great trip.

My 8 year old granddaughter woke up with congestion and a cough yesterday. Just before school finished for the break, her school sent word that they had an outbreak of covid. So she had a PCR test, and my daughter is still waiting for her results. My husband and I are stuck in limbo waiting to find out if we can join them or not.
All of our kids and their families live in and around Edmonton, a 3 hour drive away for us. We were to go yesterday, but this has stranded us at home, at least temporarily. Like everyone, we have been so looking forward to this Christmas, after having to be apart from each other last year. We didn’t even put up a tree! This is our new normal I guess...
So tonight I’m sitting in my living room, with no tree up, and presents stacked on the floor ready to pack in the car. Hoping we’ll be doing that tomorrow. In the meantime I think I’ll break out a glass of wine and maybe a butter tart. And why not, some shortbread cookies too.
Merry Christmas RFM!

"Note to kentish: I know this thread didn't go the way you expected. But that's the way it goes sometimes around here!"

It's never too late @ nightengale~ It still has a chance, lol
I have arrived! There MIGHT be hope. Nope. There must! Or bust.

The effects of c-19/20/21/22... will be here for some time, and some say eternity.

It has minor - and sometimes MAJOR - effects on MANY facets of our lives Physically, Socially, Financially, Emotionally, Spiritually/ Religiously... on a periodic - and sometimes DAILY - basis, AND it's not going to end any time soon.

It's also going to change/ has changed the way people interact, how much something costs, how serviced are rendered, when/ if things arrive on time, people's/ company's dependability, how horribly, or nicely, people might treat one another, what is expected...

That's the thing. What can you expect these days?

Keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.
Hope you arrive safely, and you sleep soundly.
The elves bring joy & toys to the girls & boys.
Expect nothing and go with the flow. Be the flow.

Merry X-mas everybody ° snow or no snow °

Had my yearly checkup the other day. The doc casually stated that this one is virulent enough that he thinks that a large majority of unvaccinated people will get it this winter.

"What, me worry?" - Alfred E. Newman

This was a post meant to be irony and my comment focussing on the fact has seemingly disappeared. The only one who got it seems to be Nightingale. Scots and English united by the irony gene if nothing else.

Wales got it but I would rather have scones :)

I would like to think that Mexico gets it, but perhaps I'm only seeing it in a microcosm...or a mirror.

Sometimes a point made ironically is so important that it must ineluctably be taken seriously.

Irony trumps all in a word seemingly gone mad.

Just so. Irony requires predictability.

True

kentish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... our flights got cancelled... AND then we couldn't have our favorite bagels, ALL because of the pandemic.

This pandemic and its impac, is really getting out of hand and it must stop. >

Hold on tight. It may be with us for a while... Unless it stops! That's how it goes!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/anti-vax-podcaster-reportedly-ventilator-030107384.html

Doug Kuzma doesn't care if his bagels have raisins.

I'm starting to get really frustrated. Maryland is one of the states where Omicron is escalating rapidly. Our hospitals in central Maryland are nearing capacity (two of them can no longer function as trauma centers,) and a number of ambulances are being diverted an hour or two hours away. Thankfully, lots and lots of people want to be tested. But there are still too many enraged toddlers in adult clothing who think that a universal, temporary mask mandate would be *too much.* One sterling member of the public thinks that hospitals can somehow magically "increase capacity" instead. With what workers? Can registered nurses somehow be mass produced in short order? I'm at a loss as to why wearing a mask for a few weeks is too much to ask.

One local ICU nurse stated that 75% of his unit consists of Covid patients. And yet a certain segment of the public isn't willing to do even a small, harmless thing such as wearing a mask in public to help our hospital staff.

How are things now? Nothing to do with COvideos-
Hope the trip back was/ is smooth.

Supply chain issues, and worker - and pay/ compensation - issues, and profit issues are all tied up (pandemic exposed this), and going to get worse before they get better.

Expect more delays, cancellations, higher prices, lower standards of service, more rudeness and apathy, anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness, desperation, hunger, separation, loneliness, weirdness, gratitude, thankfulness, kindness, helpfulness, consideration, forgiveness and forgetfulness... and everything at either end of the spectrum.

Let's get used to it/ put up with it/ do something (or nothing) about it/ correct it/ figure it out/ get through it.

Take care everyone. Wishing all the best!

Write if you need more than the best.
That could probably be arranged (rearranged?).

While it's true that this variant is weaker, it has a very high transmission rate. South Africa peaked a few days ago with a positivity rate of over 30%. That's an unprecedented number. While most people will survive Omicron, the long-term effects of having Covid are largely unknown. I'd rather not get it. And I'd rather not pass it on to my elderly family members and my toddler grandniece.

I spent some time lurking on nurse's forums. What they say is that if you survive a Covid hospitalization, you might not want to. The damage can be that bad. Survivors might have permanent lung damage, lose limbs, or be out of work for a year or more.

Experts in South Africa say that the U.S. is 2-3 weeks behind them. So, Omicron may peak here in early to mid-January. My thinking is, let's practice some common sense over the next few weeks so that we can get over this hump. Get the booster, wear a mask when out and about, try to avoid large gatherings. It's not difficult.

Amen and Amen to every point. Thank you summer.

You really really really do NOT want to get infected and it is in our own hands to at least try to avoid it. And if not for oneself, think of others. While you may not contract a serious illness from this virus, others you infect could. How many people would I like to take a chance on infecting or even causing death? Rational answer: Zero.

Who goes out of their way to catch the "flu"? Not my idea of sanity. However "mild" the symptoms may be I vastly prefer not to experience them at all.

Out of the blue 3 Christmases ago I caught flu from an unknown source. Just from being out and about in the community, as nobody at home was ill. I had never had flu before in my life to the point I always declined to get a flu shot, even when I was working in a hospital where it was mandatory for active duty staff. I was more concerned with (the vanishingly small) potential side effects from the flu shot as I felt invincible to the germ itself. I was fortunate not to get the flu for many seasons, until I did. Unexpectedly and frighteningly, it nearly killed me. Literally. I was hospitalized for a week and missed Christmas and New Year's. I couldn't eat for weeks. I was also exposed to TB in the hospital and had to go through a series of tests and MD visits for a while afterwards, monitoring my health to ensure I hadn't contracted it. Fortunately, I didn't, but it was the last straw for me with an already seriously negative hospital stay over and above just my illness, such as medication errors and atrociously terrible and cold food. No wonder I couldn't eat. I ended up clashing with an MD over a difference of opinion and I signed myself out. Likely I'm now labelled in their books as a "difficult" patient.

It was also my Mom's last Christmas. And I missed enjoying it with her. It's still a struggle even this year to try and celebrate the holidays and look happy for family's sake because I miss my sweet, fun mom and her joy in artistically decorating a tree and the house and her amazing holiday meals that I can't begin to replicate due to possessing no kitchen talent. At all.

Plus, while I was in hospital she tried to do an activity that I would have helped her with and she ended up falling and breaking her shoulder. It caused a lot of pain and disability during her last few months. It hurt me to think that too could have been avoided. I just happened to breathe in the infected air that caused such negative outcomes.

So. Yeah. Repercussions can bite you hard. And no. Not one of us is invulnerable and in charge of the universe.

Sometimes you have to learn that the hard way. If not for yourself, for the sake of others, please check the sources of your information and weigh all sides of an issue. And think twice about who you trust and whether they're honestly qualified to render advice in certain areas.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2021 01:09PM by Nightingale.

It'a a little early in the game for non-medical scientists to be declaring this on par with the common cold. And the experts aren't saying that yet conclusively.

Summer is right. The lasting "gifts" from covid including omicron will not be known for a long time.

Thanks for keeping us updated on what social media is saying but I'm not buying it even if it come with a grain of salt.