How do we know a pandemic's over?

[dann]

Some people will argue the pandemic isn't over in 3...2...1...

Does it sound as if it's over?!
California:

COVID-19 has raged through California over the past few months, and with cases still headed skyward, the virus shows no signs of retreating.
(...)
In previous years, cases have peaked around July and August or even as late as September before quickly nosediving, CDPH data shows. However, this year’s wave is particularly unusual for a number of reasons. Though the exact cause is still unclear, Chin-Hong suspects that the oppressively hot weather, combined with devastating wildfires, could be to blame since people are forced to shelter together indoors. Summer travel certainly hasn’t helped, either, since more people are cramming into airplanes and spreading the virus to other parts of the globe.
Though not as severe as the January peak, current COVID concentrations are still higher than at this time last year, Amanda Bidwell, a wastewater researcher and Stanford data analyst, told SFGATE. The wave also started earlier; in 2023, wastewater concentrations began to rise in late June, she said, but in 2024, they started to rise toward the end of April.
California is still getting crushed by Covid. When will it end? (SF Gate, July 30, 2024)

 

[dann]

Fair is foul and foul is fair

This is an excellent debate. I appreciated Dr. Cifu's critique, but I share Dr. Prasad's concern with the study methods.
Like @VPrasadMDMPH, I believe avoiding getting sick is not necessarily good for your health.
Adam Cifu is Wrong About Masking
Adam Cifu is Wrong About Masking (Vinay Prasad, July 28, 2024)
Allison Krug MPH (X, July 29, 2024)

It must be true 'cause Prasad's grandfather told him to toughen up!

 

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

I was reminded of this thread when I was reading this (very long!) article:

An analysis of mis- and disinformation cannot be complete without also considering the role of the audience, in particular when people share information with others, where the distinction between mis- and disinformation becomes becomes more fluid. In most instances, when people share information, they do so based on the justifiable default expectation that it is true (Grice, 1975). However, occasionally people also share information that they know to be false, a phenomenon known as "participatory propaganda" (e.g., Lewandowsky, 2022; Wanless and Berk, 2019).
(...)
The circular and mutually reinforcing relationship between between political actors and the public was a particularly pernicious aspect of the rhetoric associated with Trump's big lie (for a detailed analysis, see Starbird et al, 2023). During the joint session of Congress to certify the election on 6 January 2021, politicians speaking in support of Donald Trump and his unsubstantiated claims about the election irregularities appealed not to evidence of facts but to public opinion. For example, Senator Ted Cruz cited a poll result that 39% of the public believed the election had been "rigged". Similary, Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is now Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, argued against certification of the election by arguing that "80 million of our fellow citizens, Republicans and Democrats, have doubts about this election; and 60 million people, 60 million Americans think it was stolen" (Salek, 2023). The appeal to public opinion to buttress false claims is cynical in light of the fact that public opinion was the result of systematic disinformation in the first place.
Liars know they are lying: differentiating disinformation from disagreeing (Nature, July 31, 2024)

Cynical indeed!

The best way to tell if a pandemic is over is to see whether anyone apart from the few people with covidphobia are doing anything at all about the virus.
(...)
I haven't seen a single one yet.
It's plain that only the phobics still think there's a pandemic while the other 99,99999% of the population ignores it. It's an endemic disease and worse than catching a cold, which is pretty much what it is now.
Won't stop the phobics crying about it, though...

 

[dann]

Olympic Contact Tracing: The Show Must Go On

A BBC reporter interviews a known Covid positive swimmer at close proximity at the Olympics ~ gets a 'nasty illness" some days later.
She continues to work though, albeit the 'star' apologises for 'sounding croaky" on air.
The [infection] show must go on. Show of Madness.
WicMar (X, Aug 3, 2024)

1/1 A short story in 4 tweets
#OlympicGames
#Paris2024
#AdamPeaty
#SharronDavies
#CovidIsAirborne
Prognostic Chats (X, Aug 2, 2024)

(with 10 sec clip of interview with swimmer Adam Peaty)

2/4

Team GB statement: Adam Peaty
Adam Peaty began feeling unwell on Sunday,
ahead of his Men's 100m Breaststroke final.
In the hours after the final, his symptoms became worse
and he was tested for COVID early on Monday morning.
He tested positive at that point.

He is hopeful to be back in competition for the relay events
later in the swimming programme.
As in any case of illness, the situation is being managed appropriately,
with all usual precautions being taken to keep the wider delegation healthy.

Prognostic Chats (X, Aug 2, 2024)

3/4

With photo - before precautions were being taken

Prognostic Chats (X, Aug 2, 2024)

4/4

BBC's Sharron Davies battling nasty illness at Olympics as star issues apology
BBC swimming pundit Sharron Davies has revealed she is battling an infection while working in Paris for the Olympics

Prognostic Chats (X, Aug 2, 2024)

With plenty more swimming action to come from Paris 2024,
Sharron has a busy few days ahead of her at the Olympics, but she will be on air while battling illness, with her taking to X to reveal she was feeling under the weather.
Posting to her many followers, she wrote:
"Up with chest infection, again, got it last year in Denver, with ferocious U.S. air conditioning/temperature changes.
French pharmacy staff were lovely helping with a bucket load of drugs yesterday
but hard on a hot, absolutely crammed tube 4 x a day. So excuse the crackly voice."

Christine Loriol #DavosStandard (X, Aug 2, 2024)

The (air) condition that dare not speak its name!

Now in the news:
She had interviewed Covid swimmer Peaty face to face but 4 days later she's very sick with an "A/C cold" or "chest infection". She doesnt test but continues to interview Olympic athletes face to face and without mask bc she's tough.
Guenter GR (X, Aug 2, 2024)

 

[dann]

Some people will argue the pandemic isn't over in 3...2...1...

Estimated Covid Infections/Day U.S.

August 2nd update:
Estimated daily infections rise to 900,000 as KP.3.1.1 nears dominance with some speed.
900,000 new infections/day
1 in every 37 people currently infected
59% higher than 12 month avg.
JWeiland (X, Aug 2, 2024)

July 26th update:
Infections flat this week after weeks of increases. This may or may not be the absolute peak, as KP.3.1.1 will become dominant in the first week of August.
760,000 new infections/day
1 in every 44 people currently infected
37% higher than 12 month avg.
JWeiland (X, July 26, 2024)

See graphs in tweets!

 

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

More Olympics

“Our team USA campaign for the games actually is called Don’t Let A Cold Keep You from the Gold,” Dussliere said. “And so we’ve provided a little travel packet to all members of our delegation athletes and coaches with things like hand sanitizer and masks, eye masks, earplugs for sleeping on the plane, things of that nature, to help with their travel and to try to keep them healthy while they’re traveling.”
So unlike the Tokyo Games, where visual reminders of COVID-19 were everywhere—from the empty stands to the masks athletes wore on podiums—Paris kicked off looking a lot more like a pre-2020 Games. Dig a little deeper, though, and it’s a different story.
Paris 2024 Was Supposed to Be ‘Normal’—But You Can’t Compete With COVID (Self.com, Aug 2, 2024)

Athletes excited for post-pandemic Olympics in Paris (CBS Mornings on YouTube, July 25, 2024 - 4:24 min.)

2024 Olympics: Could it be a COVID superspreader event? (The Morning Show on YouTube, July 26, 2024 - 2 min.)

COVID cases popping up in France, and other health concerns around the Paris Olympics (9News on YouTube, July 27 - 4:44 min.)

The second video is great!

 

[dann]

Big mystery solved! (No, not really.)

Gayle Robin was surprised when her sister in California told her in early July she had tested positive for COVID-19.
"I thought, ‘Really? It's summer,'" the marketing and communications professional said in an interview from St. Catharines, Ont.
About a week later while camping, Robin woke up with a sore throat and felt achy later in the day. She thought it was "a summer cold."
"It never even occurred to me that perhaps it was COVID," she said.
Think you have a 'summer cold'? There's a good chance it's COVID-19, doctors say (CTVNews.ca, Aug 3, 2024)

Apparently, some medical professionals still haven't given up on the idea that it's just a question of time before we have herd immunity or "the population immunity built up":

Since COVID-19 is still relatively new (!), we don't have the population immunity built up that we do for flu and RSV, which have been around for a long time, said Razak, who is also an internal medicine specialist at St. Michael's Hospital.

And why not? Just be patient! Building up immunity worked so well with other infectious diseases like TB, smallpox, polio, bubonic plague and HIV.

 

[The Atheist]

And why not? Just be patient! Building up immunity worked so well with other infectious diseases like TB, smallpox, polio, bubonic plague and HIV.

How typically and utterly dishonest of you to conflate covid with HIV and other far deadlier diseases.

 

[dann]

Unlike The Atheist, I don't resort to dishonesty, hyperbole and outright lies.

The very clear comparison, not conflation, in this case is that there is no reason to expect that infectious diseases will become mild. I have mentioned, more than once, I think, that even measles didn't evolve into the fairly mild disease it may appear to be today in our parts of the world. It became 'mild' by killing an awful lot of people until only those with some immunity and their descendants were left. How the measles affects isolated peoples like the Samoans, who didn't go through this weeding-out process, shows us that measles never mutated into a more benign version of itself.

Neither did "TB, smallpox, polio, bubonic plague and HIV."

That The Atheist would like us to conflate SARS-CoV-2 with the flu and the common cold - "Flu deaths here are ~500 a year, and omicron's going to be much lower than that." - is on him. The dishonesty of his hyperbolic predictions becomes apparent when they turn out to be conspicuously wrong.

 

[dann]

The Vertlartnic

Explained: Why You, A Person With Cancer, Aren’t Being Given Paxlovid, But Elite Athletes At The Olympics Are Being Pumped So Full Of It That It Leaks Out Of Their Eye Sockets.
The Vertlartnic (X, Aug 4, 2024)

The Vertlartnic satirizes the grotesque lack of proper pandemic precautions all over the Western world.
Lately, it has focussed on the Olympics:

Finally We Will Be Able To Enjoy An Olympics Unaffected By Oh, No, Hang On A Second…
The Vertlartnic (X, July 15, 2024)

Was It The Chicken Or The River Or The Air? Who Cares. There Are Plenty More Athletes Where That One Came From, And They’re All Willing To Eat, Drink, And Breathe The Filth.
The Vertlartnic (X, Aug 5, 2024)

Explained: Why You, A Person With Cancer, Are Called Anxious By Health Care Workers Because You Don’t Want Them To Give You Covid, But Elite Athletes At The Olympics Are Just Being Sensible Wearing Masks.
The Vertlartnic (X, July 22, 2024)

Why Are Olympic Swimming Records Not Being Broken This Year? And Why Does The Sun Come Up Every Morning? And Why Do Objects Go Downwards When I Drop Them?
The Vertlartnic (X, July 31, 2024)

There Was Lots Of Hand Gel At The Olympics. Why Didn’t It Stop Covid From Spreading?
The Vertlartnic (X, July 31, 2024)

We Don’t Think It’s At All Possible That Anyone Could Have Reasonably Foreseen Lots Of People At The Olympics Catching Covid. It’s A Complete And Total Surprise To All Sensible People.
The Vertlartnic (X, July 30, 2024)

Don’t Forget To Catch Your Quarterly Covid Infection To Top Up Your Immunity To Covid.
The Vertlartnic (X, July 28, 2024)

 

[dann]

Olympics

"Olympic dreams shattered"
"Covid causing havoc"
"Everyone's dropping like flies"

Yup. Normal normal normal.
Is anyone still mystified why the swimmers aren't breaking records?
Tern (X, Aug 5, 2024)

A short video clip (28 sec.) with the quotations.

More than 40 Australian Olympians have tested positive to Covid and other respiratory illnesses at the Paris Games.
Swimming Australia's head coach Rohan Taylor has revealed some swimmers raced with COVID during their nine-day program at the pool.
While some swimmers withdrew from races including Lani Pallister and Ella Ramsay, others competed with the virus.
COVID spreads among Australian Olympic team (ESPN, Aug 5, 2024)

If anybody is interested in how the virus spreads when swimming, this is your guy: "Aerosol scientist/Aerovirologist, Canadian and #Canucks fan living in the UK."

Given the unusually high number of swimmers catching Covid in the Olympics, many have hypothesized as to why. I’ve seen a few people point to some work we published on how environmental factors affect SARS-CoV-2’s aerostability.
Some thoughts. Thread:
Al Haddrell (X, Aug 3, 2024)

 

[dann]

Some people will argue the pandemic isn't over in 3...2...1...

The new significant wave. It's hard to believe the we're well into our 5th year of this virus and not taking the requisite steps to gain control.
Including updates on the new boosters and #LongCovid.
In Ground Truths (link found in my profile)
Eric Topol (X, Aug 5, 2024)

See graph in tweet.
I don't find it hard to believe, but I wish the BS bubble making it possible will burst in the near future.

Mask bans are passing as the U.S. DROWNS in Covid & record communicable disease…
Mask bans are passing after tuberculosis increased 26% among US children under age 5. Drug-resistant pertussis is skyrocketing, measles, mycoplasma—to name a few. It’s shameful & disgusting.
Laura Miers (X, Aug 6, 2024)

It's official: Mask ban in Nassau County, New York passes along party lines, 12-0 (7 abstentions). It makes wearing a mask a misdemeanor (with unclear health and religious exceptions) and gives police the power to fine people wearing a mask $1,000 and sentence them to jail time.
Dr. Lucky Tran (X, Aug 6, 2024)

This is absurd. Mask ban will endanger people’s health and lives
Prof. Akiki Iwasaki (X, Aug 6, 2024)

Indeed! But it helps reassure people whose pandemic anxiety is triggered when they see somebody wearing a face masks or a respirator.

 

[dann]

Correlation of wastewater measures and COVID ED visits:

1-2 I've had people tell me that wastewater is a poor measure of COVID in a community. This is the entire US.
I have multiplied the % of COVID ED visits by 10 to get the two measures on similar visual scales.
If you are curious, the r-value is 0.71.
Michael Olesen (X, Aug 4, 2024)

See graphs in tweet.
See also Same data, with positivity added and

Update:
I'm working more on correlations and saw I had calculated the wrong column. My eyes were bleary last night and it was hard to tell the difference between E and F when using a small laptop screen.
The correlation coefficient is actually 0.89, which is quite stunning.
Michael Olesen (X, Aug 5, 2024)

 

[dann]

Some people will argue the pandemic isn't over in 3...2...1...

California:

California’s summer COVID surge has proved to be particularly strong and enduring, surprising experts with its tenacity as it storms into a third month.
The strength of this summer’s COVID surge probably is largely related to the ever-more infectious subvariants that continue to emerge as the coronavirus evolves, said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious disease at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. A dizzying number of related subvariants — collectively dubbed FLiRT — have emerged in recent months. One in particular, KP.3.1.1, has been picking up steam at a startling pace and has become the most common strain nationwide.
“KP.3.1.1 seems to be the most adept at transmission,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases expert at UC San Francisco. “And it’s the one that people think will continue to take over, not only in the United States, but ... around the world.”
(...)
“This is not a benign wave,” wrote Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, in a blog post published Saturday. “It’s a major wave now ... we haven’t yet reached the plateau.”
(...)
Because the FLiRT subvariants are related, it’s likely that being infected with one will provide some protection against the others — at least for a time.
But if you’re further removed from a brush with COVID, the rise of KP.3.1.1 heightens the risk of infection, as it has evolved to be even more contagious, Chin-Hong said.
California COVID surge is surprisingly stronger, longer-lasting than experts had expected (LA Times, Aug 5, 2024)

If I understood earlier reports correctly, the updated vaccines this fall will nevertheless be targeting KP.2 instead of the "even more contagious" KP.3.1.1.
Anyway, KP.3.1.1 may already have been replaced by then by an even more immune-evasive variant, surprising the experts.


ETA: San Diego County
Test positivity July 27: 20.4%.
Hospitalizations: "Data only available through April 30, 2024."
Deaths: "12 total deaths fiscal year-to-date." "fiscal year 2024-25 is defined as June 30, 2024 - June 28, 2025."
I can't find the influenza numbers for 2024-25.

 

[dann]

Some people will argue the pandemic isn't over in 3...2...1...

Europe is on par with San Diego's 20.4% positive tests:

“COVID-19 is still very much with us,” and circulating in all countries, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of WHO told journalists in Geneva.
“Data from our sentinel-based surveillance system across 84 countries reports that the percent of positive tests for SARS-CoV-2 has been rising over several weeks,” she said. “Overall, test positivity is above 10 per cent, but this fluctuates per region. In Europe, percent positivity is above 20 per cent,” Dr. Van Kerkhove added.
New waves of infection have been registered in the Americas, Europe and Western Pacific. Wastewater surveillance suggests that the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 is two to 20 times higher than what is currently being reported. Such high infection circulation rates in the northern hemisphere’s summer months are atypical for respiratory viruses, which tend to spread mostly in cold temperatures.
“In recent months, regardless of the season, many countries have experienced surges of COVID-19, including at the Olympics where at least 40 athletes have tested positive,” Dr. Van Kerkhove said.
COVID-19 situation update - WHO - 06 August 2024 (United Nations Office at Geneva)

 

[dann]

Is it possible that the new guy actually gets science unlike all the other nincompoops who let themselves be advised by weird neoliberal 'epidemiologists'?!

There are more than 400,000 people with Long Covid in Minnesota—the home state of Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz—according to the state’s health department. A post-viral illness with serious impacts to quality of life and ability to work, Long Covid is also a workers’ rights issue: not being able to rest during and after a Covid infection makes people more likely to develop it.

Under Walz’s leadership, in May of last year, Minnesota became the first state to dedicate funding to Long Covid and associated conditions, including myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Billy Hanlon, the Minnesota ME/CFS Alliance‘s director of advocacy and outreach, says that Walz was instrumental in pushing for the legislation.

ME/CFS and POTS are not new conditions, but patients with both have long experienced their symptoms being dismissed by physicians. A 2016 study estimates that around one in four people with ME/CFS are largely confined to bed by their symptoms.
Tim Walz is leading the way on Long Covid funding (MotherJones, Aug 6, 2024)

 

[SteveAitch]

There's only one way to be sure a pandemic is over.

Everybody's dead but you. And you're feeling a bit iffy...

 

[dann]

While we're waiting for herd immunity by infection + vaccination - any day now ...

How typically and utterly dishonest of you to conflate covid with HIV and other far deadlier diseases.

I already commented on The Atheist's complaint in post 1,069, but I just saw this:

We've been exposed to measles for at least 900 years, but it has never evolved to become mild. We had smallpox for 1,700 years -- never became mild. Rabies has been around for 2,000 years -- still not mild. Hepatitis B for 5,000 years -- not mild.
Smallpox and other viruses plagued humans much earlier than suspected (Nature, July 23, 2024)
T. Ryan Gregory (X, Aug 8, 2024)

Photo text from the article in Nature: "Remains of a smallpox carrier buried in Öland, Sweden, between AD 800 and 1050."

T.Ryan Gregory: "Professor of evolutionary biology. I would like there to be less death, pestilence, war, and famine. Assume sarcasm. No one could have foreseen this. He/him."

 

[The Atheist]

While we're waiting for herd immunity by infection + vaccination - any day now ...

We've been exposed to measles for at least 900 years, but it has never evolved to become mild.

As well as English, you don't quite get irony, do you?

We absolutely removed measles as a disease by herd immunity plus vaccination, and only a small group of idiots means it's still around.

Nice of you to walk back on your attempted and idiotic conflation with HIV, though.

 

[dann]

Some people will argue the pandemic isn't over in 3...2...1...

Greece:

* A reduced activity of the virus was recorded, following the increasing trend of the last weeks. The positivity in all tested samples remained stable compared to the previous week.
* 833 new imports were recorded showing a decrease. The average weekly number of new admissions over the previous four weeks was 739, and the number of admissions in the corresponding week in 2023 was 469.
* The number of new intubations was nine. The average weekly number of new intubations over the previous four weeks was 12, and the number of intubations in the corresponding week of 2023 was eight.
* The number of intubated patients with COVID-19 infection is 25.
* The number of deaths was 40. The average weekly number of deaths in the previous four weeks was 34 and the number of deaths in the corresponding week in 2023 was 27.
Corona virus: 833 hospital admissions, 40 deaths, 25 intubated (News Bulletin 24/7)