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Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 86

By January 12, 2022Commentary

Well, the panic will subside in a week, I predict, although it does seem an increasing proportion of the population is done caring in any event.  I detect potential signals that cases are or have peaked in Minnesota, as the percent change in WOW numbers appears to be declining.  But given the haphazard nature of DOH processing and various data dumps, hard to have a high level of confidence in that guess.  And it is possible that a lot of contacts over the holidays is what was really responsible for the surge, it seems pretty fast and brief in time and highly coincident with holiday breaks.

There was a DOH briefing last week in regard to the Omicron surge.  I am slow to write these up because it is just painful.  DOH stated the obvious, there are more cases than they can identify and they are slow in processing right now.  90% of cases were said to be Omicron.  DOH itself is having an outbreak and you can assume all those people are vaxed and boosted.  They are concerned about a hospital surge just from the sheer number of Omicron cases even though it appears to have a lower rate of hospitalization.  But in a question they refused to say how many hospitalizations are actually for treatment of CV versus incidental.  These people are the worst at just being interested in the message.  And the message is the same stupid, futile things that have failed all along–more and more testing, more and more isolation, wear masks, stay home, test some more, mask some more.  Blah, blah, blah.  Nobody is or should listen to any advice from the this group.  They lied again about pediatric hospitalizations, I spent a whole post debunking that bullshit.  So instead of welcoming Omicron as the harbinger of endemicity, we got the usual terror campaign about overrun hospitals and the need to stay in the basement.

And here is a hilarious note from today’s situation report.  Among the deaths reported was one from a year ago–January 2021.  How are you still attributing deaths from a year ago to CV-19, how can it possibly take that long?

First up, a meta-review of research on household transmission and vax status.  The secondary attack rate was higher for Alpha than Delta, so all that nonsense about how much more transmissible Delta was, may not have been accurate.  Vaccines appeared to lessen the risk both of transmitting to someone else in the household and being transmitted to.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Here is a meta-review of vaccine use in children and adolescents which completely whitewashes legitimate safety concerns, particularly compared to the benefits in children at low-risk from CV-19, and which ignores the very small numbers used for trials compared to the numbers used for adults, where CV-19 risk is much higher.  All except one of the researchers were from Iran and I don’t believe the disclaimer that they had no conflicts.  (Medrxiv Paper)

A study from the Kaiser system showing Omicron cases were much milder than Delta ones, far less risk of hospitalization and of ICU use.  Somewhat buried is that prior infection appears more protective than vaccination, particularly against Delta.  But vaccination was still associated with reduced infection and hospitalization even among Omicron cases.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This study was done in regard to reinfections in the pre-vaccine phase of the epidemic.  Protection against reinfection was very high, and against symptomatic infection, even higher, at 77% lower risk compared to those without a prior infection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Research from Japan finds that over 50% of adults without a prior confirmed infection had antibodies in their saliva that reacted against CV-19.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Join the discussion 6 Comments

  • Margaret Starry says:

    Can you help me find the Minnesota totals for how much they (hospitals and clinics) get from the American Rescue Act and CARES Act totals and/or per Covid patient? I’ve seen that they get outrageous amounts of money for each test and case and want to be more specific. They are killing people for profit and to prevent the SS and Medicare pay outs.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      I don’t know if that is specifically published anywhere. If you Google you can find how much more Medicare was paying hospitals for a CV-19 diagnosis. It is a lot. I don’t think they are killing people, but they do have every incentive to test a lot and call as many patients as possible CV-19 ones.

  • Rob says:

    Harbinger of endemicity indeed.

    That’s why I don’t believe “the holidays” had anything to do with this. It’s endemic – and there is always the big wave of respiratory illness the 4 weeks before and after the winter solstice (more apparent in the Great Lakes region where the sunniest days are also the coldest).

    I think humans instinctively know we need to gather around the winter solstice for survival, and we just built holidays around it.

  • guest says:

    What kind of source data does the MDH receive before it transforms it into MDH custom reports?
    I’m wondering most is whether MDH provides data at the level of ICD 10 codes, and if the data they receive already has been anonymized to some extent, yet necessarily has to include data elements that would be considered Personal Health Information (PHI).
    Then the next question is, what is the primary reason MDH has for NOT sharing de-identified source data with independent researchers who would like to analyze the data? (Maybe there is a valid reason; I’m not aware of it.)

  • Andy J Kornkven says:

    “Vaccines appeared to lessen the risk both of transmitting to someone else in the household and being transmitted to.”

    This seems to be a very important issue, as it validates discriminating against unvaccinated; such as when Fauci tells us to only enter gatherings where we know the vaccination status of everyone there, not to mention the vax-only restaurant law now in the Twin Cities.

    Is there indisputable proof that unvaxxed are more likely to spread the virus than unvaxxed? If so, to what degree, and how is this determined? Is it taken into account that vaccinated are more likely to be asymptomatic, and thus spreading the virus unknowingly, while the unvaccinated are more likely to know they’re sick are act accordingly?

    • Kevin Roche says:

      I think if you are doing an actual surveillance study, you would see lower rates of infection in the vaxed, but not by much, but you would see a big gap in serious illness

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