L

ladyMccormick

Audiophyte
For what it's worth, as far as I can tell, the CDC's website has consistently stated for quite some time that "If you have a fever, cough or other symptoms, you might have COVID-19. Most people have mild illness and are able to recover at home." (emphasis added).

Here's a snip from today:

View attachment 53210

Here's a snip from the Wayback Machine from 7/1/20:

View attachment 53211

I picked July 1, 2020 in an effort to find a somewhat random day relatively early in the pandemic (it was the first and only day I checked on the Wayback Machine).

With regards to the CDC, I don't see a lot of "wear masks or you'll die" type stuff. It seems to me that some of the alleged fear-mongering I see is a bit of a straw man.

Personally, I view COVID as being somewhat like dog sh*t. Just because you're not afraid of it doesn't mean you want to eat it.
I have these symptoms for two days, but my covid test result was negative. :oops:
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
Here are some of the most recent numbers for cases, hospitalizations, and deaths per 100,000 (age-adjusted) out of New York City:

NYC1.png


NYC2.png


NYC3.png



Edit: These numbers don't actually look all that new. I'll try to find something more up to date.
 
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Dan

Dan

Audioholic Chief
It sure seems like we are past the peak in the DC area for now. Two hospitals where I get the daily census data are down to about half of where they were two weeks ago. The smaller community hospital still has about 30% of it's beds tied up with Covid, in o county with one of the highest vaccination rates in the country.
 
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M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
It sure seems like we are past the peak in the DC area for now. Two hospitals where I get the daily census data are down to about half of where they were two weeks ago. The smaller community hospital still has about 30% of it's beds tied up with Covid, in o county with one of the highest vaccination rates in the country.
Interesting. The number of new cases had been skyrocketing in the DC area. It's good to hear that some of the hospitals are starting to get some reductions.

It appears to me that the U.S. overall might (emphasis on "might") be past or near the peak in new cases:

1642782667109.png
 
Dan

Dan

Audioholic Chief
We were skyrocketing. It's hard to know the peak until you are past it but it is trending down here and in the East Coast in general from what I hear but many hospitals are still overburdened. The word is that it is shifting to the south and Midwest so overall national numbers may still be going up.Below is a roughly 100 bed community hospital with a large ER for the size of the place.

1642784080698.png
 
GO-NAD!

GO-NAD!

Audioholic Spartan
According to Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) - Our World in Data, there has been a slight drop in new case numbers in the US over the past few days, while in Canada, we are at about half our peak 10 days ago.*

However, hospital cases are still climbing rapidly in both countries. That may be due to the lag time from infection to requirement for hospitalization.

*I don't know about the US, but where I live, some (a lot? a few?) cases are no longer being captured in official statistics, because people who test positive from rapid tests conducted at home are not being counted, as reporting positive results to public health authorities is voluntary.
 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
Last I heard they had not confirmed Meat Loaf's cause of death so who know if this is true .....

 
D

Dude#1279435

Audioholic Spartan
Nothing like having a swab up your nose. Yay!:confused:
Anyway tested negative. :)
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
Thanks. I hope that will help but I'm afraid they will have to come out with a new shot every year. :(
I’ve often noticed people saying this. Considering all the rapidly appearing SARS-CoV-2 mutations we've seen, it's easy to think this. But it's not quite correct. It's enough to make me launch into yet another virology lecture.

What’s different about influenza? Why is it that there is a new influenza vaccine every year, yet we have the same polio, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), chicken pox, or other vaccines year after year? How does SARS-CoV-2 fit in to this?

Influenza A viruses each contain eight separate strands of RNA (called viral ribonucleoprotein complexes (vRNPs). See them depicted in green in the diagram below. Each RNA strand encodes different viral genes. A functional influenza virus particle must have all eight vRNPs. These eight strands of RNA are important, and I’ll come back to this later.
1642792231866.png

In the schematic diagram of Influenza A virus structure, the envelope of the virus particle contains three trans-membrane proteins. Two of these surface proteins are called hemagglutinin (HA, or H) and neuraminidase (NA, or N). They are important because these proteins are most often recognized by our immune system, as a result of infection or vaccination. (Other proteins encoded by the virus genome: M1, M2, PB1, PB2, PA, NS1, and NS2/NEP, are shown in the diagram, but I won’t mention them further.)

Different Influenza A viruses encode for different HA and NA proteins. For example, the H5N1 virus designates a subtype that has a type 5 HA protein and a type 1 NA protein. There are 18 known types of hemagglutinin and 11 known types of neuraminidase, so, in theory, 198 different combinations of these proteins are possible.

During influenza infections, it is common to have more than one strain at a time in an infected person or animal. During virus replication, the eight RNA strands from these different strains can easily mix. As long as the new virus particles have a copy of eight strands, it doesn’t matter which strains they came from. As a result, new strains can easily appear, with new combinations of HA and NA.

Each year when new Influenza A vaccines are made, the world’s virologists have to decide which strains are coming next. They don’t choose only one strain. Usually 3 or 4 likely candidates are picked, and they develop vaccines against each. When you get a flu shot, it contains a mixture of these. As you might guess, some years this can lead to more effective vaccines, and other years, the vaccines are less effective.

In contrast to the eight separate RNA strands in Influenza viruses, coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, have only one large RNA strand. All its essential genes are coded by this one strand. See RNA genome in the diagram below.
1642792480853.png

When these viruses replicate, the new virus particle must have a copy of the single RNA strand. Yes, many mutations do occur, but coronavirus doesn’t have the eight strands that Influenza A has, along with its ability to trade strands during mixed infections.

I condensed information and took the diagrams from three different Wikipedia pages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthomyxoviridae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus_2
 
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M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
I’ve often noticed people saying this. Considering all the rapidly appearing SARS-CoV-2 mutations we've seen, it's easy to think this. But it's not quite correct. It's enough to make me launch into yet another virology lecture.

What’s different about influenza? Why is it that there is a new influenza vaccine every year, yet we have the same polio, or measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccines year after year? How does SARS-CoV-2 fit in to this?

Influenza A viruses each contain eight different strands of RNA (called viral ribonucleoprotein complexes (vRNPs). Each RNA strand encodes different viral genes. A functional influenza virus particle must have all eight vRNPs. These eight strands of RNA are important, and I’ll come back to this later.
View attachment 53279
Here’s a schematic diagram of Influenza A virus structure. The envelope of the virus particle contains three trans-membrane proteins. Two of these surface proteins are called hemagglutinin (HA, or H) and neuraminidase (NA, or N). They are important because these proteins are most often recognized by our immune system, as a result of infection or vaccination. (Other proteins encoded by the virus genome: M1, M2, PB1, PB2, PA, NS1, and NS2/NEP, are shown in the diagram, but I won’t mention them further.)

Different Influenza A viruses encode for different HA and NA proteins. For example, the H5N1 virus designates a subtype that has a type 5 HA protein and a type 1 NA protein. There are 18 known types of hemagglutinin and 11 known types of neuraminidase, so, in theory, 198 different combinations of these proteins are possible.

During influenza infections, it is common to have more than one strain at a time in an infected person or animal. During virus replication, the eight RNA strands from these different strains can easily mix. As long as the new virus particles have a copy of eight strands, it doesn’t matter which strains they came from. As a result, new strains can easily appear, with new combinations of HA and NA.

Each year when new Influenza A vaccines are made, the world’s virologists have to decide which strains are coming next. They don’t choose only one strain. Usually 3 or 4 likely candidates are picked, and they develop vaccines against each. When you get a flu shot, it contains a mixture of these. As you can easily guess, some years this can lead to more effective vaccines, and other years, the vaccines are less effective.

In contrast to Influenza viruses, coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, have only one larger RNA strand. All its essential genes are coded by this one strand. See RNA genome in the diagram below.
View attachment 53280
When these viruses replicate the new virus particle must have a copy of the single RNA genome. Yes, many mutations do occur, but coronavirus don’t have the eight strands that Influenza A has, along with it ability to trade strands during mixed infections.

I condensed information and took the diagrams from three different Wikipedia pages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthomyxoviridae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus_2
Yer a handy guy to have around swerd!
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
Nothing like having a swab up your nose. Yay!:confused:
Anyway tested negative. :)
"Negative" is good in this case!

I'm guessing this isn't like having a swab up your nose, but at least you are not (presumably) going to need one of these:

>>>CHINA has brought back its "undignified" anal Covid swabs just two weeks before the Beijing Winter Olympics begin.<<

 
Old Onkyo

Old Onkyo

Audioholic General
I think the government giving away millions of tests is a waste of time and money. I have had 3 Covid tests during the pandemic. most people are not shoving that swab halfway through their brains. If you think false negatives are a problem now…..
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
I think the government giving away millions of tests is a waste of time and money. I have had 3 Covid tests during the pandemic. most people are not shoving that swab halfway through their brains. If you think false negatives are a problem now…..
I've had three tests at clinics. During the first two it felt like the person was trying to gather brain cells (it also felt like they may have succeeded)(that's a joke). For the third one they handed me the swab and said it only needed to go in about an inch (that was not much of an issue).

From what I've read online, the deeper swabs do seem to be more accurate:

>>>There are three main kinds of Covid nasal swab tests: nasopharyngeal (the deepest), mid-turbinate (the middle) and anterior nares (the shallow part of your nose). Early in the pandemic, the deep nose swab was administered widely and aggressively to adults because the method worked when testing for influenza and SARS. Though the science is evolving, experts tend to agree that the deepest swab is the most accurate.

According to a review of studies published in July in PLOS One, a science journal, nasopharyngeal swabs are 98 percent accurate; shallow swabs are 82 percent to 88 percent effective; mid-turbinate swabs perform similarly.<<<

 
highfigh

highfigh

Seriously, I have no life.
Nothing like having a swab up your nose. Yay!:confused:
Anyway tested negative. :)
I make one of my eyes twitch to let them know it's deep enough. o_O

Might not be a bad idea to get a retest- one of mine came back 'inconclusive' and the next was negative, only a couple of days later. While I felt a bit better on the day of the negative test, I still felt very tired. The woman and her daughter behind me were far worse to experience, IMO.
 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
when the argument over who should make the choice, parents or officials when it comes to kids wearing masks in school, here is but one reason why some parents should never have been ............

 

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