Coronomonomania Lives Forever, Part 233 (Last One for 2023 and I Wish Forever)

The title of the series says it all, and it does for real.  We have an increasing number of hospitals and other medical facilities requiring mask wearing, because of a supposed surge in some new variant of CV-19.  A reader who is a medical professional wrote me recently to describe the resurgence of this lunacy in his hospital.  I fear that we will have learned nothing from the epidemic, including the futility of masking.  And I would sincerely like to see some actual research done on the value of masking and whether it may not actually enhance transmission by serving as a concentration point and breeding ground for CV-19.  Our supposed health experts, however, have their feet dug in on this one, and don’t really care to have any evidence that might upset their beliefs and their desire to dictate the public’s actions.

The underlying issue is the failure to recognize that CV-19 has just become another seasonal coronavirus or for that matter, respiratory virus, that will cause colds and occasional more serious illness in those already in poor health.  Coronaviruses rarely cause hospitalization and death and are less pernicious in that regard than are influenza viruses or respiratory synctial viruses, as reflected in a new study from Sweden.  The authors examined hospitalizations for pneumonia, which is a typical result of any severe respiratory virus infection, based on type of virus, in children 18 and under.  The study started with any ER visit for a respiratory illness and tracked subsequent hospitalizations, ICU use and all-cause mortality, based on virus type, which included the Omicron CV-19 variant.  Influenza and CV-19 had similar hospitalization rates among these children, while RSV had far higher rates.  Children with influenza tended to be older which may have affected the comparisons.  The bottom line is that CV-19 has a low morbidity burden in children, far less than RSV and similar to flu.    (JAMA Study)

This study from England also compares CV-19 with other respiratory infections, in the overall population but in regard to longer-term symptoms, using an ongoing surveillance study.  The research found that for the most recent CV-19 variants, the likelihood of reporting longer-term symptoms was similar to that for other respiratory viruses, in contrast to the early variants, which appear to have had higher rates, but that is likely due to in part to reporting and examination bias.  (Medrxiv Paper)

If you want to know what is happening in health care, the best source is the extremely large claims and electronic medical records databases that basically cover every American.  A study proposes that one way you could track trends in CV-19 hospitalizations would be to use claims databases.  Yep, and trends on everything else as well.  And although the CV-19 fanatics wouldn’t like this, that data can also help you identify which hospitalizations are actually for treating CV-19, and which were for some other purpose and the CV-19 was incidental, or even contracted in the hospital.  (Medrxiv Study)

This meta-analysis study examined what factors might account for differing levels of severe disease across geographic areas.  Africa had hugely lower rates than most of the developed world, likely due to a substantially lower average age and greater exposure to all kinds of pathogens, which might boost overall immune responses.  Age was far and away the most correlated factor for case and death levels, with more testing supposedly also associated with lower levels, but I am dubious.  There was no correlation between age-adjusted vax rates and case and death rates.  (Medrxiv Paper)