Yeah there’s a limited window of efficacy, similar to Tamiflu. Moreover, by the time one is at death’s door, there’s serious organ damage that’s been inflicted, so no magic pill is going to undo any of that.
Recent news from Alberta:>
Alberta hospitals burdened by COVID-19 patient readmissions
The weight of the fourth wave is crippling Alberta’s health care system, with hospital and ICU admissions exceeding those in previous surges.
Roughly 80 per cent of COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized in Alberta visited an emergency department within a month of being discharged and nearly 17 per cent were readmitted, putting more pressure on the health care system.
Alberta Health Services said its most recent statistics, from July, show an increasing number of recovered COVID-19 patients discharged from hospital went on to require additional treatment. The statistics also suggest a potential increase of long COVID, where people suffer from health problems months after clearing the virus.
“If you’re able to survive this infection, your life may still be changed in very significant ways,” said Alika Lafontaine, president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association and an anesthesiologist in northern Alberta.
What does this mean? Do they become reinfected or are they still struggling with the same infection? I’m hoping the latter!
I have a friend who was infected by her children back in Feb or March. She went to the hospital the first time because she couldn’t control her fever. Then about a week later she was admitted because her O2 dropped to dangerous levels. This was during the alpha surge in Michigan.
From my reading of the quoted part plus ‘The statistics also suggest a potential increase of long COVID’, I interpret it as saying, ‘Unvaccinated people are more prone to “long COVID” and need to return to the hospital.’
This is my take on the situation as well.
That’s a lot of people that are having serious longer term medical damage from Covid.
We’ve been having plunging case and death rates in California, and it’s probable that several bay area counties will lift the indoor mask mandate soon.
My guess as to the new rules: you will be able to unmask on the street, but will have to show proof of vaccination to unmask completely inside restaurants and other indoor venues.
237,089,319 total cases
4,840,904 dead
214,251,437 recovered
In the US:
44,918,565 total cases
727,710 dead
34,392,326 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Pfizer submitted an application for the FDA to authorize its COVID vaccine for kids aged 5-11
I’m sure there is a reason for it, but this is the type of thing I don’t understand.
The FDA has set a date of Oct. 26 for outside advisers to meet and discuss the Pfizer application, making it possible for kids to begin receiving the vaccines shortly afterwards.
I would think that getting and gathering the data is the time consuming part. This is still an emergency situation. Why aren’t these outside advisers all in the same hotel somewhere so they can meet and discuss the application anytime they want? With a team from Pfizer nearby on standby to answer any questions.
I think the application is thousands of pages and they need a few weeks to read and review it.
Yeah, I think people underestimate just how big applications are. Everyone from my generation (the paper generation) who worked in regulatory affairs and was involved in prepping/submitting an application had the same photo - one of them standing next to the application stacked on a fork lift truck, ready to be loaded for shipping.
Granted this isn’t a full application, but nevertheless these are large documents.
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And now Arizona hospitals are overwhelmed causing non-COVID patients to die. The man who died because he needed cardiothoracic surgery was murdered by anti-vaxers just the same as if one of them had shot him.
This is already extremely rapid. I think they have been receiving and reviewing data already, so they have front loaded as much as possible. (I seem to recall the FDA requesting that Pfizer increase a study size or duration or something like that a short while ago.) Now the application is formally in, and they need to look at everything in it to make sure there are no surprises, and see the final numbers, etc. Approval in the normal course can take years.
The emergency work the FDA is doing right now has been a heroic effort. The people who review this stuff have been putting in enormous amounts of time to do what’s necessary to get the vaccines available as quickly as possible. Considering that kids get less sick from covid, but could be more at risk from side effects or complications of the vaccine, they have to carefully evaluate, and not just rubber stamp this application. Taking a couple of weeks is likely truly the fastest they can possibly review everything.
That’s all very fair. With kids in grade school and at increased risk, I guess the verbiage just rubbed me a little bit the wrong way.
Paywalled.
Darn, sorry.
Smaller regional hospitals can’t transfer patients who need a higher level of care causing things like this:
At least two patients recently have died needing higher levels of care that nearby, larger hospitals were unable to provide, according to the chief medical officer at the 13-bed Copper Queen Community Hospital in Bisbee, a southern Arizona city of about 5,200 people.
One was a COVID-19 patient, and one was a non-COVID-19 patient in his 60s who needed cardiothoracic surgery, which is a specialty that’s not available in Bisbee, hospital officials said.
Also this:
Normally patients at the Bisbee hospital needing specialized care are transferred to larger, urban hospitals in Tucson or Phoenix, but that situation changed in September, Copper Queen leaders said.
“People are dying, and needlessly,” Copper Queen’s chief medical officer, Dr. Edward Miller, told the Cochise County Board of Supervisors during a Sept. 24 work session. “In my 38-year career, I’ve not seen that before.”
Problems at the Bisbee hospital are not occurring in a vacuum. Hospital leaders across the state are scrambling to find staff to take care of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients and delaying non-urgent surgeries to retain their staffed bed capacity. As a result, at smaller hospitals, patients needing higher levels of care aren’t always getting it.
They are “rationing care” in Idaho (aka “death panels”):
I know. I am worried sick about my 85 year old mother who lives in Boise. I’ve convinced her to come here for the next 6 or 7 months. I know its not much better here, but at least she will be living in a home with other people who want to keep her out of assisted living lest she die alone and neglected like so many others.
237,550,924 total cases
4,849,411 dead
214,648,398 recovered
In the US:
45,021,267 total cases
730,206 dead
34,479,131 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
After a respite of a few days as daily cases wound down, they seem to be on the rise again.
Montana has achieved a ne seven-day-average Daily new Case count of 1392 as of yesterday
Alaska hasn’t broken its record of 1317 on September 24, but is rapidly approaching it, with 1203 on October 7 and climbing rapidly
Maine, with 605 cases and rising looks poised to break its January 12 record of 625, which it almost did at the end of September.
Several states aren’t about to break their records, but are pretty high and suddenly are rapidly rising, including Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wyoming, South Dakota, Indiana, Utah, Colorado, Virginia, and New Mexico. These might ease off over the weekend, or they might continue up to new records. We’ll see after the long weekend.