News roundup for Fri, Dec 31, 2021

5 Comments on News roundup for Fri, Dec 31, 2021
Are cruise ships with Covid outbreaks allowed to dock in Mexico.

Huge, December wildfires in Colorado have forced the evacuation of two towns with populations of tens of thousands of people. Wind gusts are very high and are driving multiple, fast-moving wildfires. The traffic to evacuate is at a standstill in places:

Renewables power about 20% of our energy grid. Researchers at Stanford used modeling to show that with increased wind, water, solar, and energy storage capacity, the US could reach a 100% renewable grid with grid stability superior to what we see now by 2050.  A large investment in these technologies would be required for these predictions to work.

In good news, the US is banning surprise medical bills from emergency rooms where folks get charges from out-of-network doctors whom they did not choose. Some routine care is also covered by the bill.

The world has 285.5 million COVID cases. The world has gained 7.3 million cases in the last week. There have been over 5.4 million deaths in total. The US has had a cumulative 54.7 million cases—over 2.1 million cases were added in the last week. Over 844,000 Americans have died—about 10,000 in the last week. The US is still leading global daily case gain followed by India, Brazil, the UK, and Russia. The US added over 465,000 new cases Wednesday, some of which are data from previous days being added after holidays. These data dumps have been happening frequently:

In spite of data dumps, we’re still surpassing previous peaks:

https://twitter.com/MtnMD/status/1476325283573555202?s=20

Hospital systems are collapsing all over again all over the US as COVID cases fill up hospital beds:

As variants spread, Israel is testing a fourth COVID vaccine dose:

Pediatric COVID cases are spiking in the US and it’s probably due to Omicron:

Omicron pushing Delta out would be great. But Omicron hybridizing with Delta would not be so great. Omicron has already picked up genetic bits from a non-COVID coronavirus:

The CDC has made a potentially disastrous recommendation that COVID-positive but asymptomatic people may shorten isolation to five days. I’m not sure how much of this decision is based on science versus pressure from the airline industry. As we’ve mentioned in previous roundups, more and more data has come out about viral persistence and viral shedding in those infected with COVID. I know I would not want coworkers showing up while still producing a bright pink line on a lateral flow test:

In news of decent CDC recommendations, the agency warns people to stay off cruise ships no matter what. For those unwise enough to cruise and unlucky enough to contract COVID, you can always dock in Mexico:

I’ve heard many people quip that very few people die from COVID. Let’s keep the numbers in perspective:

Stephanie Arnold | cosmicpixle

Stephanie Arnold is an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and a doctoral candidate in UA Tuscaloosa’s DNP program. Stephanie moonlights from time to time at UCLA teaching mental health nursing. She also likes making cold-process soap.

  • 5 Comments
    • Karl Winterling January 1, 2022

      The estimated fatality rate is 0.2% assuming that most positive cases are not reported. But that’s including lots and lots of young and healthy people. If you look at unvaccinated people who are older or have health conditions, the fatality rate is much higher.

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      • Eric Karl Winterling January 1, 2022

        0.25% of the entire US population has been confirmed to have died from COVID so far. And of course, the real death toll is higher than that, due to COVID deaths that weren’t confirmed. So even if we pretended that every single person in the country was infected, 0.2% would still be a low estimate. And the deaths haven’t stopped.

        The intent of that fake statistic is to convince people that our current top cause of death isn’t actually dangerous at all. Complete BS.

        And of course, talking only about deaths is also a distraction, because the number of people with long term disabilities due to COVID is far greater than the number of deaths.

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Eric January 1, 2022

        The morbidity will be incredible. 

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      • Karl Winterling Eric January 2, 2022

        You can ALWAYS say a medical problem is psychogenic or “they would have died anyway.”

        Dealing with these problems (like COVID and global warming) using an honest “root cause” approach will be very expensive and will likely involve some type of reordering of the social order to be less hierarchical. We’ve made significant progress on social issues (not so much economic inequality, which got worse) since 1960 but never had a “clean break” from harmful social attitudes.

        People should have a right to decide their own personal preferences and how they want to live, but we’re all part of something greater than ourselves and our selfish actions can hurt other people.

        Besides, it looks like as much as 20% of men who’ve had COVID get some form of “mild-moderate” erectile dysfunction for at least a few months. That isn’t a “mild” impact like getting a cold. Even “mild” ED isn’t really harmless because it can damage relationships and hurt a person’s self-confidence.

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      • Cia Karl Winterling January 5, 2022

        That’s 0.2% of infections, often given as even lower than that, 0.02%, which in most cases are asymptomatic, the infection fatality rate. The case fatality rate in those diagnosed because they had symptoms is 2%, higher in some countries, like Mexico at about 10% case fatality rate. A fatality rate higher than anything the US has seen in many generations.

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    • Karl Winterling January 4, 2022

      Also, if you have a BlackBerry, it will lose the ability to call emergency services tomorrow. Get something like a prepaid Android burner phone if you need a backup phone to put in your bug-out bag.

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      • Gideon ParkerStaff Karl Winterling January 4, 2022

        I’m sure there are people that keep an old Blackberry around just to be able to call 911 or as a backup device. Good to know it will stop working soon.

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