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Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of March 14
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!
Ed Yong: The coronavirus funding collapse is a disaster
as I've said before - Trump's legacy will be a ton of terrible things, mishandling covid will only be one of them. Biden may have mishandling covid as the single defining legacy of his presidency.
I don’t think you can out this on Biden, but on Congress, and probably just Manchin and/or the voters in WV.
I think it's a potential upcoming disaster for the US - the money hasn't run out yet, so Congress could allocate more money, in theory. And it's important to prepare for another wave, but we don't know it will happen. (Welcome to the "neglect" part of the panic-neglect cycle.)
It's more of an active ongoing disaster in other countries that are seeing COVID waves right now.
(Also, blaming it on Biden is odd because it's Congress's fault for not allocating the money.)
Much of the currently missing funding was for dealing with things now, not future waves. And even when COVID becomes endemic (not there yet), we'll need continued funding.
The most distressing part of this is that the CDC said "okay abled people, you don't have to wear masks, but don't worry disabled people, we have treatments" — and now monoclonal antibodies, Paxlovid, and Evusheld for immunocompromised people are at risk.
Edit: some programs are being cut starting next week, so I feel like that counts as a fairly immediate problem. Plus, if manufacturers of things like tests see there's no funding after a certain date, they'll stop making as many tests — so if even if there's more funding later during a surge, it'll take a while to ramp up production again. We've already seen this with past surges.
Yes, it's very important to ensure manufacturing doesn't stop. It seems like existing inventories won't run out immediately, though?
I would guess that tests will remain on shelves until there is sudden demand for them, and then they disappear again, unless someone learned from last time and there is another buyer.
Possibly manufacturing of medicines doesn't entirely depend on the US government:
More Than 30 Companies Will Soon Make Generics of Pfizer's COVID-19 Pill
White House begs Congress for Covid funding amid concern about Omicron sister variant
The US is making some similar mistakes as last June, it seems.
Looking at Washington Post numbers again:
US cases:
US Hospitalizations:
US Deaths:
Worldwide:
Things looked very bad in many countries until I realized that the Washington Post shows weekly totals outside the US, making it harder to compare. So, 100 per 100k on the US corresponds to 700 per 100k on their international page. I'm going to stop here and look into it more later.Edit: no, I had it right the first time. Things really are that bad.
For worldwide numbers, Our World In Data seems like a better place to look. They use "per million" instead of "per 100k" but I'm going to use "per 100k" since that's what I'm used to.
I use 100 cases per 100k as an arbitrary threshold of "that's really high." Many US states far exceeded this during the Omicron wave. But right now, there a lot of countries exceeding it: Iceland: 682, Austria 452, Netherlands 384, New Zealand 383, Switzerland 299, Hong Kong 288, Germany 234.
In some European countries, judging by cases the Omicron wave never ended, or there is a second peak. In Asia it's different, many countries kept COVID out for a long time but are succumbing to it now.
Many countries also have high hospitalization rates, but they are often different countries than those with high case rates and it's not easy to see the pattern. US hospitalization rates are now lower than most.
The Hong Kong death rate at 35 per million far exceeds others. For comparison, the peak in the US was 10 per million in early 2021 and the Omicron wave peaked at 7 per million.
On Twitter, John Burn-Murdoch compares Hong Kong to New Zealand stats.
4.7% fatality rate seems incredibly high, even for such high levels of unvaccination.
Princess Diamond had about 1% fatality rate.
Even the latest variants seemed to have about a 1-3% fatality rate in the unvaccinated.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e2.htm
As I understand it, it’s because COVID risk is much greater in the elderly, and there were some unfortunate myths that resulted in elderly people not being vaccinated. (So the average age of unvaccinated people is much higher there.)
As China’s covid outbreak expands, whole cities and provinces are sealed off and key industries closed (Washington Post)
[...]
When will one-way masking be safe enough for everyone?
I don't know about the specific numbers they use, but this seems like a good framework for thinking about the problem.
Yeah, it'd be nice if the guidelines were based more on this type of framework. It does kind of suck that it assumes "daily living" for immunocompromised people doesn't involve going go to work or school, though.
I'd also really like a framework where we assume that some places are absolutely essential (healthcare settings, supermarkets, pharmacies, etc) and keep mask mandates in those places longer.
I wonder if their numbers check out?
This is from November and Ukraine has worse problems now. But if you were wondering about vaccinations there:
Vaccine Hesitancy in Ukraine: The Sign of a Crisis in Governance?
[...]
I was shocked to see the US drop to 8th place and South Korea, Germany & Vietnam in the top 3 places (ordered by case numbers over the last month).
It strikes as odd that the death rate is so comparatively high in the US. I imagine it's vaccine avoidance causing that.
Also lack of access to healthcare in general, I assume. People who are already sick are at higher risk of severe outcomes, especially if they haven't been able to get adequate care for their chronic illness.