Lmfaooooo
i still need clarity on the vaccine passport issue before seriously considering getting it.
What exactly does having this vaccine get us right now? lol It sounded like it was going to make life easier and the ability to get out and do a lot more⌠but it seems like we are still doing the same shit, just adding a vaccine to the list while still having to do everything the same.
It gets you a far less likely chance to get covid and spread it to your friends/family. Covid is no joke, and these variants are worse. I just watched a coworker catch it here at the office from another infected coworker, bring it home and give it to his wife, daughter, daughterâs boyfriend, sonâs wife and her son (his grandson). Somehow his son didnât get it. His wife ended up in the hospital and got so bad the doctors were debating putting her on a vent. Not sure if you know what that means, but with covid if you go on a vent your odds have improved compared to the 60% chance you were going to die last year. Now itâs only a 40% chance once you go on the vent youâre going to die in the hospital. Thankfully later in the day when they were debating a vent she started improving. Got to come home and start her long lung recovery after 3 weeks in the hospital, 2 of which were in the ICU.
So if youâre still thinking youâre young/healthy and will just take your chances, go do some reading about whatâs going on in Europe with B.1.1.7, which just became the dominant strain here. Itâs hitting young healthy people hard too.
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Weâve sheltered and protected WFH younger people and the virus, being a virus, hasnât been killed off enough in that time, so now we are faced with the virus mutating to now infect that protected younger group of people. Yay human beings!
Thinking we could control a virusâŚlolololol.
Pretty good article in the Buffalo News today. Iâm going to copy/paste it since their paywall is so hit and miss.
Medical leaders in Western New York believe that the more contagious British variant now causes most new cases of Covid-19 in the region.
Major hospitals are treating twice as many Covid-19 patients â almost all of them unvaccinated â than this time last month.
And if you get hospitalized with the new coronavirus in coming weeks, you will still be treated by staff in full personal protective equipment and will not be allowed visitors â unless you are near death.
These are among the realities as the region finds itself inside in a new wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
âWe were all starting to kind of take a sigh of relief and then all of a sudden, we noticed that the community rates started popping right back up,â said Dr. Samuel Cloud, an associate medical director and emergency department physician at Erie County Medical Center.
Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations have risen sharply in recent weeks in the Western New York region, which covers Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, and Allegany counties for the stateâs Covid-19 tracking and coordination efforts. The average number of new daily cases reported over the seven-day period ending on Saturday was 634, an increase of 132% from the recent low average of 273 cases as of March 12.
Risk of infection remains high. There are still roughly 941,000 people, or 68% of the population, yet to have tested positive for the new coronavirus or be fully vaccinated for greater protection.
The best lines of defense, doctors say, continue to be getting a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as you can and using familiar infection-control measures, particularly when around those that you cannot be sure are fully immunized. Three leading physicians and a public health official said those steps will be important in coming weeks to prevent the spread of several more contagious variants of concern, particularly of the British B.1.1.7 variant, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week is the dominant form of the virus across the U.S.
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Doctors see the Covid-19 vaccine as key to ending what they hope is the last peak of coronavirus cases in the region.
âI canât underscore this enough,â said Dr. Kevin Shiley, an infectious disease specialist at Catholic Health, after visiting patients in a Covid-19 unit Monday morning at Mercy Hospital in South Buffalo. âThese are truly for people, particularly people at high risk, life and death decisions.â
Here are the key things to know about the latest coronavirus wave to hit the region.
Western New York is in a new pandemic peak
The latest climb in Covid-19 hospitalizations mirrors the early months of the pandemic â but the death rate is lower.
Still, the average 634 new daily cases over the last week remains well below those of the second wave of late fall and early winter, which peaked at 1,097 on Jan. 11.
The percentage of those who test positive for Covid-19 also has gone up since mid-March, but remains lower than the January peak. That seven-day average reached 8.8% on Jan. 5, just after the holiday season, and fell as low as 1.6% on March 12 before rising to 4.9% as of Saturday.
Hospitalizations, while also lower than in the second peak, are another troubling trend, though the picture looks different than both previous spikes.
Kaleida Health reported 136 Covid-19 patients hospitalized in its four hospitals Monday, including eight at John R. Oishei Childrenâs Hospital and 29 in intensive care. That compares to 51 patients a little more than three weeks ago, including 13 in intensive care.
Catholic Health reported 109 patients spread out Monday among its five hospitals, including 25 in critical care. The regional hospital system had 53 patients exactly one month earlier, with nine in critical care.
Erie County Medical Center reported 49 patients hospitalized Monday with Covid-19, including eight on ventilators. A month earlier, it had 25 inpatients, including six on ventilators.
âOur single highest day so far during the pandemic was on January 4, 2021 when we had 75 Covid-19 positive inpatients with four of those patients on ventilators,â ECMC spokesman Peter Cutler said. âBy contrast, our single highest census day last spring during the first phase of the pandemic was 43 positive inpatients with 21 of those patients on ventilators.â
The hospital patient mix differs, but risks remain the same
Those hospitalized today are significantly younger than the patients seen in the early days of the virus. In Erie County, for example, 51% of patients were 64 or younger as of Saturday, compared to 38% as of Dec. 14.
Experts say this reflects the initial focus in the vaccine rollout of getting doses to the elderly and others most likely to become seriously ill from the virus. People younger than 50 became eligible just two weeks ago and those 16 and older became eligible more recently.
The virus now is taking a toll on younger people, officials said, with new cases among 20-somethings in Erie County more than doubling during March.
Over the same period, elderly residents in their 70s and 80s â among those most at-risk for severe complications â saw a more moderate increase, from 104 to 145 weekly cases.
The average age of those dying from Covid-19 in Erie County also has fallen, from 81 in January, to 76 in February and again to 74 in the first part of March.
âWeâve even recently had patients in their 30s in the ICU very sick with Covid,â Cloud said.
Cloud and other physicians said they also are seeing more patients than in recent months who need higher levels of oxygen support.
Despite their ages, those in need of hospitalization most often have other medical conditions, said Dr. John Sellick Jr., an epidemiologist who oversees infectious disease control at Kaleida Health and the Buffalo Veterans Affairs Western New York Health System. Those include obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic kidney, heart and lung disease.
The contagion is different
Sellick blames the âhairpin turnâ to higher case numbers to the greater amount of Covid-19 variants flowing into the region from travelers to and from other states, including Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan â which along with New York now account for the greatest recent boost in coronavirus cases.
The British variant is about 50% more virulent than the earliest forms of SARS-CoV-2, he said, and likely more damaging.
Catholic Health, Shiley said, has been able to track the rise in variants of concern with Thermo Fisher polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing used mostly with nursing home patients, outpatients and staff. The test examines three different genetic targets, including the spike protein considered key to coronavirus contagion. Fuzzy results for that protein suggest a variant is at play, though the testing canât decipher which one, Shiley said.
More sophisticated genetic sequencing conducted at specialized labs, including at the University at Buffalo, only has the ability to examine about 1% of confirmed virus cases nationwide. The British variant is by far the most common variant of concern.
Hospital precautions remain the same
If you get hospitalized with the new coronavirus in coming weeks, you will be treated by staff in full personal protective equipment and will not be allowed visitors â unless you are near death or have a developmental disability that requires a caregiver to help communicate your needs.
Hospitals in the region have set up special units or zones to separate Covid-19 patients from everyone else in the hospital, except those caring for them. ECMC had nine such zones during the height of the second peak and two four weeks ago. It now has six and is planning for a seventh, Cloud said.
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Full protective gear and other precautions are still the reality facing Covid-19 patients. Hegarty-Snyder gives her patient Linda LaForte saline after an injection of medication, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021.
Sharon Cantillon / News file photo
âEvery single staff member in our units is dressed in full gear," said Catholic Healthâs Shiley. "That includes a specialized gown and a respirator, eye protection and gloves, so you donât really see our faces very well.â
Vaccines are making a difference
âIâm not admitting patients who are vaccinated,â Cloud said of his duties in the ECMC emergency room, though he has seen some visitors with mild cases in the ER who have had their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
He is not alone.
âErie County hospitals have reported to us that none of the patients hospitalized with Covid-19 have been fully vaccinated,â said Kara Kane, county Health Department spokeswoman. âTo us, that indicates the Covid-19 vaccine is preventing more serious illness that could require hospitalization, particularly in the older adults.â
The latest peak underlines the need for everyone to get a Covid-19 vaccine, said Shiley, who was discouraged while leaving the Covid-19 unit at Mercy Hospital on Monday morning after several conversations with new patients who had yet to get one.
âWhen we kind of get into the reasons as to why,â he said, âitâs largely been folks that had chosen not to.â
Western New York is not yet out of the woods
âIf people get vaccinated, keep wearing their mask, maintaining distance, avoiding the big crowds, we will chop off this spike,â Sellick said.
As vaccine rates climbed past 50% in Israel, Cloud said, case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths dropped rapidly.
âWeâre so close to the finish line,â he said. âItâs really incumbent upon everybody to be really responsible, particularly people who havenât been vaccinated, younger patients, middle-aged people that might have concerns about the vaccine. Theyâre still very vulnerable to this, and even more vulnerable than they were months ago because these new variants are more transmissible.
âIf people are responsible, Iâm cautiously optimistic that a month from now weâre going to start to see the numbers really drop.â
Erie County to require vaccine proof to attend Bills games. Canât wait to see the lawsuits on this one.
Doc on the TV was just saying we donât have good enough data to determine if itâs safe to take the vaccine after an infection when antibodies are already present.
@JayS youâre probably the only person i know who is has experienced serious covid cases that iâve heard of. and since i know youâre not a cuck i do take it seriously. thatâs pretty much all i have to say.
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I try to make my decisions on science and logic not political bias. Like almost everything now covid has unfortunately become political. GENERALY if youâre conservative you tend to fall into the âeverything should be open, itâs just the flu, Iâm not getting the vaccineâ camp and if youâre liberal you fall into the âshutdown everything, everyone is gonna die, Iâll gladly be the first to take any drug the government says is safeâ camp. How strong your political leanings seem to drive how far into each camp you go, with obvious exceptions here and there. Iâm always going to be a conservative but I donât agree with this current camp of people saying we need to stop wearing masks and just go back to normal. I donât see how any person could look at how these variants are spreading and think thatâs a good idea. If youâre still saying masks are useless despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary you need to do some serious self reflection about if you get your opinions from facts or from political bias.
Another way I look at things is I look in my local circles for friends who would have more info on a topic than I do. I have a lot of friends in healthcare and all but one of them have gotten the vaccine and are recommending people get it. The one that didnât? She got covid. Never found out how many people she gave it to.
The US crossed the line where B.1.1.7 became the dominant strain in late March/early April just as virologists predicted. These arenât uncharted waters weâre heading into regarding what that means. You only need to look at how the B.1.1.7 surge has played out in Europe to see where weâre heading if we donât get more people vaccinated since they crossed that dominant strain line in December/January.
Just to play point/counter-point, Iâm in the no mask group. You mention the stats regarding the variant but my skepticism around this comes in knowing the largely publicized COVID stats throughout the past year have been wildly inflated. When I cared enough about looking at the stats on a monthly basis through the CDC (several months ago) there were something like 250K âdeathsâ due to CV but only ~15K of those were no co-morbidity, 90K+ had a co-morbidity of the flu and several thousand others, the co-morbidity was more than likely the actual cause of death.
Shit before you had to wash all surfaces and now a fraction of a percentage point chance to get CV through surface transmission.
Can it kill, yes but so does the flu yet nobody died of the flu last year. I have had 2 70+ year old friends pop positive, with and without symptoms, but they didnât die. I live in FL and my parents came down from NY a couple weeks back, it was like they live in a different world in NY. They both got vaccinated and they are right leaning but their mindset was so different towards the whole thing.
Personally, I donât trust the stats and my professional life revolves around numbers and stats so itâs hard for me to buy in.
i am in and will remain in the no mask camp as there is plenty of science supporting that masking healthy people does not serve any purpose.
even the CDC hsa flip flopped on it and a recent report from them suggested only a 1% positive impact from masks with the margin of error being larger than that. inconclusive either way.
generally speaking, the media has no credibility and neither do many doctors or largely all politicians and this was the whole point of the psy-op from the start anyways.
watching the various vaccines get started and stopped so publically is simply a continuance of the psy-op on the most vulnerable people⌠the elderly who still trust the news and who now cannot make a proper decision either way.
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Iâve been testing my ability to go places where masks are ârequiredâ, while not wearing a mask. Not to be an asshole, but to see how reactions, if any, are towards me.
Made it through Target, whole 20 min shopping trip, including self check out, and no one single person scoffed, gasped or asks me about the mask. I had one in my pocket ready to go if I was asked by staff or was in close proximity to another person. I socially distanced myself the whole time.
Itâs interesting, while in FL I didnât wear a mask the entire time outside of in the airport and no one said anything either.
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Props to you, I still feel like Karen is going to come out of left field and beat my ass for not wearing one if I walked into a store.
I got to enjoy the maskless situation when I went to ND/SD back in September at the height of all of this. It was a real eye opener to say the least. Especially the bar in Medora, ND where it was a seat yourself situation while sharing tables with other patrons. lol Not one table was open so we shared a table. (No masks to be found)
Live in the camp of âIf you are in the high risk group, or have to be in close contact with the public as part of your daily life then go ahead and get vaccinated and mask up if it makes you or the people you are in contact with feel more comfortableâ.
I agree that the number of actual cases reported has been so drastically over-inflated that one cannot rely on this data any longer. I also keep in mind that I live in a county with over 1 million people, and the daily number of cases is 200-300 âreportedâ. The odds of me coming into contact with an infectious person are so low that I feel no need to get vaccinated or mask up.
As Z28 said it is crazy to see the fear that friends back in NY live in. While here in my world people are respectful of common sense approaches to mitigating infection risk while getting on with life.
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this conflict over masks and vaccines only reinforces for me that we are no where near the end of this. it is going to further consume us for years to come and the conflict will continue to be stoked by media and politicians.
theyâre also going to continue to pile on the race-baiting, gun-rights impairment etc. etc.
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Had my second vaccine Monday, first day mild shivers for a couple hours, second day okay.
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Got my second yesterday. Just general muscle soreness both times.
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i wouldnt even call those side effects⌠itâs just par for the course when getting a needle. reassuring.
Clorox gonna be pissed:
âItâs not mainly happening by touching contaminated surfaces. We can stop doing all the hygiene theater,â Milton said.