Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of September 27

The Public Continues to Underestimate COVID’s Age Discrimination

In mid-September, King County, Washington, in which ­Seattle is located, released an eye-popping slide about vaccine efficacy and breakthrough prevalence: Vaccines had reduced the risk of infection from COVID sevenfold, county data showed, and reduced the risk of hospitalization and death 41-fold and 42-fold, respectively.

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But in small type, King County included some other data that paint what seems at first blush like a very different picture: Fully 25 percent of deaths were among vaccinated people, the county reported. How can this be? If the vaccines are so effective that they reduce mortality 42 times over, how could the vaccinated account for such a large proportion of the deaths? The answer is actually quite simple: the overwhelming age skew of the disease, which — in the time of vaccines, breakthrough cases, and Delta — we are still, as a public, hugely underestimating and which is governing the post-­vaccine pandemic landscape as clearly as it did the pre-vaccine landscape. And while encouraging further vaccination remains by far the best tool we have in fighting the pandemic to an endgame détente, we should also be clear along the way about the continuing risks to the vaccinated elderly and what might be done to protect them.

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On the other end of the age spectrum, the same skew is more comforting. Recent data from the U.K. illustrate the phenomenon neatly: unvaccinated children are safer from COVID-19 death than vaccinated adults of any age.

What Do We Do With All This Rage?

From my vantage, the primary feeling during the early months of the pandemic was a mix of pure anxiety and fear. As the months went on, a dominant feeling of exhaustion layered atop the anxiety/fear. In the mid-summer delta surge, it felt like the new predominant layer was hopelessness — that the pandemic was unending. Lately, I feel the new top layer is an acute anger.

And, frankly, I’m less interested in what the proper response to all this trauma ought to be. What I can’t seem to get past though is the sheer amount of anger out in the world right now. Whether that anger is righteous, productive, or completely and totally unjustified obviously matters in terms of how much credence to give it. And yet, when it comes to our collective misery, it doesn’t really matter where the rage is coming from — we feel it all the same.

A pill can reduce deaths by half in new coronavirus patients, company says

Among patients taking molnupiravir, 7.3% were either hospitalized or died at the end of 30 days, compared with 14.1% of those getting the dummy pill. There were no deaths in the drug group after that time period compared with eight deaths in the placebo group, according to Merck. The results were released by the company and have not been peer reviewed. Merck said it plans to present them at a future medical meeting.

Pretty impressive results, hopefully they hold up under peer review.

A Connecticut doctor who gave patients blank, signed COVID-19 exemption forms has surrendered her medical license

She had been "providing fraudulent vaccine exemption forms through the mail related to COVID-19 vaccines, general vaccines, COVID testing, and medical opposition to wearing facial masks," the investigation said. Patients, when they received these forms, only had to fill out their name and date and then select a reason for a mask exemption, records show.

She sent out these forms without ever having physically examined the patients, the board said. Patients who wanted an exemption waiver had to mail her a self-addressed and stamped envelope to receive one.

National Guard activated to assist beleaguered hospitals in rural California (LA Times)

The California National Guard has dispatched medical teams to three beleaguered hospitals in Northern California and the Central Valley, where exhausted healthcare workers are weathering another surge of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

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The deployments come as rural areas of Northern and Central California face their most intense COVID-19 surge yet. The population’s vaccination rate lags far behind that of the rest of the state, despite highly effective and free vaccines being available for months. Local health officials have battled widespread distrust of the vaccines, skepticism about the coronavirus and anger over mask mandates and lockdowns.

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“It’s more due to the fact that there’s such a shortage of nurses nationwide,” Wolcott said. “We’ve had so many nurses leaving to travel to places like Florida, Louisiana and Texas.”

Another Central Valley hospital, Kaweah Health Medical Center in Visalia, is paying $250 to $300 per hour for travel nurses to address staffing shortfalls, chief executive Gary Herbst told The Times this week.

The pandemic has “exacerbated a staffing shortage that is impacting healthcare providers across the state, prior to the state’s vaccine requirement,” said Chad Burns, a spokesman for Dignity Health, which runs Memorial and Mercy Southwest in Bakersfield and Mercy in Redding. Another Dignity spokesperson, Christine McMurry, told the Record Searchlight that the Fawn fire, which forced some staff members to evacuate, had left the Redding hospital shorthanded.

San Juan Island is just this side of the US border from Victoria, BC. Population ~7,000.

There's boats and private planes, but the only way to get on the island by car requires a one-hour ferry ride from Anacortes. Reservations for the ferry are strongly recommended and during tourist season will sometimes sell out weeks in advance.

Two anti-maskers were just permanently trespassed from the only grocery stores on the island.

2021 Nobel Prize in fucking around and finding out.