9 votes

Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of December 6

This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

16 comments

  1. [4]
    spit-evil-olive-tips
    Link
    How to get the free at-home Covid tests promised by White House cool, so...basically, there's a plan, or really a plan to release details of the plan...in mid-January. (I've been rewatching Veep,...

    How to get the free at-home Covid tests promised by White House

    The White House has said that the 150 million Americans who have private health insurance will be eligible for full reimbursement after they buy at an-home Covid test.

    It's unclear exactly when the new coverage will kick in, and previous tests you've bought likely won't be eligible for reimbursement, Dawson said.

    Details of the new plan are thin, with the Biden administration promising more guidance by mid-January. But here's what we know as of now.

    cool, so...basically, there's a plan, or really a plan to release details of the plan...in mid-January.

    (I've been rewatching Veep, and it continues to be a documentary about how the US federal government works)

    that "more guidance" will come two weeks after a ton of people will be travelling for the holidays. so these free-with-reimbursement tests will be just in time to test for the big wave of resulting covid cases. not in time to be effective at preventing any cases by making it easy for people to find out they're covid-positive before they travel.

    You'll likely have to put in some legwork to get repaid, Dawson said.

    Many people may not even be familiar with their provider's reimbursement policy. (You can start learning about it by contacting your plan.)

    "Insurers will generally have a physical mailing address," she said. "They may also have an option for e-submission, meaning you can upload it to their site or email it in."

    To send in a more straightforward receipt, Donovan recommends asking the cashier to ring the tests up separately from additional purchases.

    Corlette hopes the government's guidance in January requires insurers to reimburse people within a certain timeframe.

    "Some companies can take a long time to cut those checks," Corlette said.

    today, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about this, and why they're doing this reimbursement crap instead of just making them free.

    her response was to ask, mockingly, "should we just send one to every American?". and the journalist responds, "uh...maybe?"

    (as that tweet points out, the UK will send you a pack of 7 at-home tests for free, with the only limit that you can make 1 order per day)

    back in 2020: Trump administration scrapped plan to send every American a mask in April

    Biden is handling covid better than Trump, but...that's a low bar. perhaps the lowest bar in the history of using "low bar" as a metaphor. Biden's handling of covid has still been atrocious.

    8 votes
    1. skybrian
      Link Parent
      Hard-Hit New Hampshire Snaps Up Free Home Covid Tests as U.S. Dawdles [...]

      Hard-Hit New Hampshire Snaps Up Free Home Covid Tests as U.S. Dawdles

      New Hampshire is conducting a groundbreaking experiment in offering free at-home rapid Covid tests to all residents, and one outcome is already clear: Demand is sky-high.

      Within a day of the Nov. 29 blanket offer to send eight tests via Amazon.com Inc. trucks to the door of any resident, all 800,000 had been snapped up. As the state leads the nation in per-capita cases and hospitals overflow, officials are promising another round.

      [...]

      Governor Chris Sununu has faced bitter opposition to vaccination campaigns and mask mandates in New Hampshire, a state of 1.4 million with a flinty libertarian streak. But the tests-for-all-takers program is a winner, he said.

      “It was so successful, we’re going to do it again,” Sununu, a Republican, said in an interview. A federal program supplied the 800,000 tests from Quidel Corp., but, “if we have to pay for it ourselves, we have funds, and we’ll do it,” he said.

      3 votes
    2. skybrian
      Link Parent
      Biden health team ruled out free Covid tests for all over cost, logistics […] […] […]

      Biden health team ruled out free Covid tests for all over cost, logistics

      The cost of regularly sending all Americans at-home tests could quickly skyrocket and become unsustainable, officials said, pointing to the nearly $50 billion “test and trace” program that the U.K. put in place for a country that’s one-fifth the size.

      Congress did allocate roughly $48 billion earlier this year for Covid-19 testing. But only $9.4 billion remains uncommitted, and there are already plans to spend that amount in the coming months, the HHS spokesperson said.

      That means the White House would need to go back to lawmakers for more money to fund any kind of tests-for-all system, effectively ruling out quick action and threatening to bog the administration down in another partisan funding fight.

      […]

      Administration officials worried that large percentages of rapid tests in areas hardest-hit by Covid-19 would go unused because of skepticism over the federal response, eating up supply that could be directed elsewhere.

      There is similar skepticism over whether most Americans prefer taking regular rapid tests, rather than seeking out more accurate PCR tests when needed.

      […]

      The current supply of over-the-counter tests is also a practical barrier. The number of at-home tests being manufactured per month is expected to reach 200 million this month, 240 million in January and 300 million in February, according to a readout of a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call with states obtained by POLITICO.

      […]

      Some administration officials and close Biden allies have shared in the frustration over testing, privately deriding the reimbursement plan as an unforced error. They also pointed to the White House’s decision earlier this year not to invest more heavily in building a broader national testing apparatus, including in finding ways to ramp up manufacturing of at-home tests.

      2 votes
  2. kfwyre
    Link
    Local case rates are starting to get really bad for me. They are back up to where we were this same time last year (we we had a huge December - January spike). The good news is that...

    Local case rates are starting to get really bad for me. They are back up to where we were this same time last year (we we had a huge December - January spike).

    The good news is that hospitalizations and death rates aren’t tracking with that — a testament to the vaccines guarding against the worst outcomes — but I’m not going to lie, seeing the chart for cases spike up for my area is making me nervous in a way I haven’t felt in a while.

    8 votes
  3. skybrian
    Link
    Michael Mina on Twitter has some testing advice Also, apparently recently expired tests should work though not recommended.

    Michael Mina on Twitter has some testing advice

    Do NOT use rapid tests in the cold.

    If using rapid tests this holiday season and asking ppl to test before a gathering… or any time…

    Suggest they be done before leaving the house, or in the car, etc. Someplace >55 F

    Also, apparently recently expired tests should work though not recommended.

    6 votes
  4. skybrian
    Link
    Denmark sees ‘concerning’ jump in omicron cases — a warning sign for Europe

    Denmark sees ‘concerning’ jump in omicron cases — a warning sign for Europe

    The number of confirmed cases in the country rose from 18 on Friday to 183 on Sunday, reflecting both the speed at which the variant has spread and the sensitivity of Denmark’s virus surveillance system.

    The northern European country is a leader in the sequencing of variants, acting as an early-warning system for the continent. The rise in confirmed omicron cases there could be an indication that the variant has spread more widely throughout Europe than previously known.

    5 votes
  5. skybrian
    Link
    Large field hospital study shows rapid COVID-19 test compares solidly with PCR detection […] […]

    Large field hospital study shows rapid COVID-19 test compares solidly with PCR detection

    "We found that virus was accurately detected by the rapid antigen test in 87% of patients with COVID-19 symptoms and in 71% of those who were asymptomatic -- rates that surprised us because they were so high," says study lead author Zishan Siddiqui, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "This is a significant finding because the rapid test offers a number of advantages over the PCR test, including time savings, both in sampling and processing; cost savings; and most importantly, ease of distribution and application -- basically anywhere -- which can help overcome COVID testing disparities in medically underserved communities."

    […]

    To do this, the researchers administered both the rapid antigen and PCR detection methods to just over 6,000 people who came to the Baltimore field hospital for COVID testing between Dec. 23, 2020, and Jan. 11, 2021. Participants were screened for possible exposure to the coronavirus and COVID-19 symptoms. Staff members performing the tests were trained exactly the same and monitored during test administration to ensure quality control and reliable results.

    "What we determined was that while the PCR test may be a better test from a clinical perspective -- as it's basically 100% accurate at detecting SARS-CoV-2 -- the rapid antigen test appears to be better from a public health standpoint because of its ease of use, and the fact that it proved to have sufficient accuracy, specificity and reliability for detecting the coronavirus in a high-volume setting," says study senior author James Ficke, M.D., professor of orthopaedic surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the BCCFH for 16 months. "The field hospital was the perfect place to determine this because we could see how well both tests worked for a large number of people in a short amount of time."

    […]

    The rapid antigen test used in this study is the BinaxNOW COVID-19 Antigen Test manufactured by Abbott Laboratories.

    5 votes
  6. skybrian
    Link
    Unrepresentative big surveys significantly overestimated US vaccine uptake I shared a link to another article explaining the "Big Data Paradox." This paper only goes to May 2021, but they shared a...

    Unrepresentative big surveys significantly overestimated US vaccine uptake

    Increasing data size shrinks confidence intervals but magnifies the effect of survey bias: an instance of the Big Data Paradox. Here we demonstrate this paradox in estimates of first-dose COVID-19 vaccine uptake in US adults from 9 January to 19 May 2021 from two large surveys: Delphi–Facebook (about 250,000 responses per week) and Census Household Pulse (about 75,000 every two weeks). In May 2021, Delphi–Facebook overestimated uptake by 17 percentage points (14–20 percentage points with 5% benchmark imprecision) and Census Household Pulse by 14 (11–17 percentage points with 5% benchmark imprecision), compared to a retroactively updated benchmark the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published on 26 May 2021.

    I shared a link to another article explaining the "Big Data Paradox."

    This paper only goes to May 2021, but they shared a graph showing what's happened since then on Twitter.

    3 votes
  7. cfabbro
    Link
    Covid-19 patients at this hospital are dying 'at a rate we've never seen die before' -- and it's taking a toll on health care workers

    Covid-19 patients at this hospital are dying 'at a rate we've never seen die before' -- and it's taking a toll on health care workers

    But this week Michigan had more patients hospitalized for Covid-19 than ever before. Covid-19 hospitalizations jumped 88% in the past month, according to the Michigan Health & Hospital Association.

    "We have more patients than we've ever had at any point, and we're seeing more people die at a rate we've never seen die before," said Jim Dover, president and CEO of Sparrow Health System.

    "Since January, we've had about 289 deaths; 75% are unvaccinated people," Dover said. "And the very few (vaccinated people) who passed away all were more than 6 months out from their shot. So we've not had a single person who has had a booster shot die from Covid."

    It's not just Michigan that's facing an arduous winter with Covid-19. Nationwide, Covid-19 hospitalizations have increased 40% compared to a month ago, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

    This is the first holiday season with the relentless spread of the Delta variant -- a strain far more contagious than those Americans faced last winter.

    Health experts say the best protection against Delta is to get vaccinated and boosted. But as of Thursday, only about 64.3% of eligible Americans had been fully vaccinated, and less than a third of those eligible for boosters have gotten one.

    3 votes
  8. cfabbro
    Link
    Canada's first homegrown COVID-19 vaccine shows high efficacy

    Canada's first homegrown COVID-19 vaccine shows high efficacy

    Canada's first homegrown COVID-19 vaccine has shown high efficacy against infection during Phase 3 clinical trials, the drugmakers behind the plant-based shot reported Tuesday, fuelling hopes it could soon get a stamp of approval for use.

    Medicago, a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Quebec City, and British-American vaccine giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are now gearing up for their final regulatory submission to Health Canada.

    The vaccine's overall efficacy rate against all virus variants studied was 71 per cent, with a higher efficacy rate of 75 per cent against COVID-19 infections of any severity from the dominant delta variant, the companies said in a news release.

    The results followed a global, Phase 3, placebo-controlled study of the two-dose vaccine that was launched last March. The newly discovered omicron variant — recently confirmed in various countries around the world, including Canada — was not circulating during the trial period.

    If licensed in this country, the shot would be the first COVID-19 vaccine using virus-like particle technology and the first plant-based vaccine ever approved for human use, Brian Ward, medical officer for Medicago, said during a recent interview with CBC News.

    "This would be a first for the world," he added, "not just for Quebec and Canada."

    The shots use Medicago's plant-derived, virus-like particles — which resemble the coronavirus behind COVID-19 but don't contain its genetic material — and also contain an adjuvant from GSK to help boost the immune response.

    3 votes
  9. skybrian
    Link
    UK Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid's oral statement to Parliament on COVID-19 and Plan B made on 8 December 2021 For more data on doubling times, here is Trevor Bedford on Twitter

    UK Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid's oral statement to Parliament on COVID-19 and Plan B made on 8 December 2021

    The rate of growth in S-gene drop-out cases in England is similar to that observed in South Africa.

    Although there are only 568 confirmed Omicron cases in the UK, we know that the actual number of infections will be significantly higher.

    The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) estimates that the number of infections will be around 20 times higher than the number of confirmed cases and so the number of infections is closer to 10,000.

    UKHSA estimate that at the current observed doubling rate of between 2.5 and 3 days, by the end of this month infections could exceed a million.

    For more data on doubling times, here is Trevor Bedford on Twitter

    2 votes
  10. skybrian
    Link
    Interview: Colorado Gov. Polis leaves mask mandates to local officials, says the state shouldn’t ‘tell people what to wear’

    Interview: Colorado Gov. Polis leaves mask mandates to local officials, says the state shouldn’t ‘tell people what to wear’

    Ryan Warner: We often ask listeners to submit questions and for the last few months, the majority have asked why you won't impose a statewide mask mandate. We've recently seen a surge in cases and a shortage of hospital beds. Is there anything that would prompt you to return to a statewide order?

    Gov. Jared Polis: Our top goal is always to follow the science, and there was a time when there was no vaccine, and masks were all we had and we needed to wear them. The truth is we now have highly effective vaccines that work far better than masks. If you wear a mask, it does decrease your risk of getting COVID, and that's a good thing to do indoors around others, but if you get COVID and you are still unvaccinated, the case is just as bad as if you were not wearing a mask. Everybody had more than enough opportunity to get vaccinated. Hopefully it's been at your pharmacy, your grocery store, a bus near you, [or at] big events. At this point, if you haven't been vaccinated, it's really your own darn fault. Everybody had more than enough opportunity to get vaccinated. Hopefully it's been at your pharmacy, your grocery store, a bus near you, [or at] big events. At this point, if you haven't been vaccinated, it's really your own darn fault.

    1 vote