It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like COVID!

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I heard the song,”It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like COVID” and I can’t get it out of my head. Right after the crowds gathered for Thanksgiving, I watched as the hospitalization numbers ticked upwards. Seems like everyone is partying mask less like it is 1999. Everyone seems to be over COVID but COVID continues to spread. It doesn’t matter how many times you have been vaccinated, the virus keeps finding ways to elude the immune system. Repeated infections are resulting in increased risks of fatal outcomes. Rather than boosting immunity repeated infections are destroying the immune response to COVID and other viruses like flu and RSV. Blood clots, heart failures and a huge rise in cases among children should have people concerned but the Who’s in Whoville keep going about their life blissfully unaware, while pressing together in tight crowds for comfort.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Medical Association warn that the surge in RSV, flu and COVID is threatening the upcoming holiday season. Thanksgiving has jump-started a new surge of COVID all across America. For weeks, RSV has been sending lots of babies and young children to emergency rooms and intensive care units. On top of that, Flu hospitalizations doubled in just one week and are at the highest they’ve been this time of year in a decade. When everyone masked up the last several hears and flu literally disappeared. No that all masking and distancing has been abandoned the viruses hare having a field day.

Nearly 9 million flu cases, 70,000 flu hospitalizations and 4,500 flu deaths have already been reported so far this year, including 14 deaths among children. And now COVID looks like it’s surging, too. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky says COVID hospitalizations jumped 15 to 20% in just a week, raising fears that deaths could start rising, too.

The simple mitigation measure to keep you and your family safe have never changed, though some have chosen to make your health a political issue. Social distance. Wash your hands a lot. Wear a good fitting KN95 mask, especially around family and friends. Open windows as much as you can, and stay home if you’re sick. And get both a flu shot and one of the new COVID boosters. Most of all, think for yourself, since there is so much misinformation on social media.

 

 

Choose

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“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a Covid-19 briefing July 16, 2021. More than 97% of people getting hospitalized with Covid-19 now are unvaccinated, Walensky said.

And 99.5% of deaths are among the unvaccinated, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said July 18, 2021. The U.S. is now averaging about 26,000 new cases per day — up 70% from the previous week, Walensky said. Hospitalizations are up 36%, and deaths are up 26%, to an average of 211 per day.
Vaccinations have virtually stalled in the United States. Thought there is plenty of vaccines available, medical misinformation has convinced about half the country to avoid the jabs.  “We’re not just battling the virus,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We’re also battling the trolls and conspiracy theorists that push misinformation and undermine the outbreak response.” Misinformation is the pandemic within the pandemic that is convincing people that death is preferable to trusting science.
This is, what experts anticipated in low-vaccination parts of the world. In the U.S, however, unlike much of the rest of the world, vaccines are free and readily available. All of these cases and deaths are preventable.

Maskless!

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On May 13, 2021, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky informed the fully vaccinated that they can go without masks both outdoors and indoors in many circumstances. State and local officials are having to decide whether to follow suit. This marked a major turning point in America’s COVID Crisis. To date 585,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. That is more casualties than in WWI, WWII and Vietnam combined.

“We are asking people to be honest with themselves,” Walensky said on NBC’s Meet the Press which aired Sunday. “If they are vaccinated and they are not wearing a mask, they are safe. If they are not vaccinated and they are not wearing a mask, they are not safe.”

This decision was based on the current state of the pandemic in the U.S., along with evidence that vaccines are extremely effective in the real world. “That science, in conjunction with all of the epidemiological data that we have, really says now is the moment,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told NPR on May 13, 2021.

The CDC’s recommendation has created some confusion because it does not lift local mask mandates. States, municipalities and businesses can make the choice whether or not to follow it. There is no way to track if people have had the vaccine. Vaccine passports have been adopted in other countries but some Americans thin it would infringe on their freedoms.

“This was not permission to shed masks for everybody everywhere. This was really science driven, individual assessment of your risk,” Walensky said May 16, 2021  on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” For now, when you leave home, it makes sense to bring a mask with you in case the place you’re going still has a “mask required” sign on the door.

CDC Lifts Masking for the Vaccinated

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Back in January of 2021 before the historic roll out of vaccines in the United States, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings discussed safety measures he was taking to keep constituents safe. He initiated ‘COVID Strike Teams’ which would inspect businesses to see if they were maintaining coronavirus safety measures.

As Orange County approached 52,000 coronavirus cases, 11 bars in one day were found to not have no face masks, no social distancing, no hand sanitizers and no disinfecting. The strike teams had saw 86% compliance in visits to 4,910 businesses. Businesses were instructed on ways they can operate their business more safely and if they remained repeat offenders they were fined.

People who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 do not need to wear masks or practice social distancing indoors or outdoors, except under certain circumstances, the director of the CDC announced May 13, 2021. “If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a White House Covid-19 briefing. “We have all longed for this moment when we can get back to some sense of normalcy.”

On May 12, 2021, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order, which essentially dissolved Orange County’s Strike Teams of authority. “I find it somewhat hypocritical that the governor provided clemency for fines or violations of local laws but let stand fines imposed by the state of Florida. Frankly, that simply is not right,” Demings said. He has decided to lift mask requirements outdoors but said the county needs to reach a 70 percent vaccination rate before masks can be removed indoors too. The 70 percent vaccination rate is an ambitious goal for the area as inoculations have slowed.

Since late last year, Orange County’s Strike Teams have fined 28 businesses for not following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Under the governor’s new order, none of those businesses will have to pay those fines. “There is nothing unprecedented about local governments trying to provide for and protect its residents during a pandemic,” Demings said. Demings says the Strike Teams have helped boost compliance in businesses to 99% countywide. “We’re going to still send our Strike Teams out and we will still maintain a list of those who are non-compliant,” Demings said.

On May 13, 2021 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order granting pardons to Florida residents and businesses charged with violating local COVID-19 safety protocols. The executive order covers criminal penalties for things like refusing to practice social distancing or adhering to mask mandates. Jerry Demings wife, Val Demings is considering running for the Florida Governors position to unseat the incumbent, Ron DeSantis.

Little Shop of Vaccines

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Covid-19 cases are surging around the world, fueled by highly contagious variants of the coronavirus that continue to spread quickly. Covid-19 deaths have surpassed 3 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

India on April 18, 2021 reported 261,500 new cases of Covid-19, the fourth consecutive day of more than 200,000 infections and the highest since the start of the pandemic, according to a CNN tally of figures from the Indian Ministry of Health. They also reported 1,501 new deaths, the highest in almost 10 months.

In Florida COVID-19 cases have  surged since spring break and deaths from new variants are rising. As of April 15, 2021, there were 5,177 cases that involved variants of concern in the state — six times higher than what was there in mid-March, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The Sentinel obtained the figures through a lawsuit it filed against the Florida Department of Health.

Cases across the United States continue to climb despite the epic vaccine roll out by the new administration. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said earlier this month that hospitals are seeing more younger un-vaccinated adults  are being admitted with Covid-19 as more contagious variants spread. In Michigan, where Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are rapidly increasing, case rates are at an all-time high for those age 19 and younger, according to state data published April 6, 2021.

States have begun to lift health safety measures to quickly allowing the virus to spread. Controlling the spread of the virus is as simple as following health measures like mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing. However politicians insist on making these safety measures a political flashpoint, claiming they are an infringement on civil liberties. Experts spanning law, public health and privacy policy say it’s a false choice.

 

Breakthrough Cases

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The CDC has reported 5800 breakthrough cases of COVID-19 out of the nearly 77 million people who have been fully vaccinated. 65 percent of the cases were in women, and just over 40 percent were in people ages 60 and up. About 29% of those experiencing breakthrough infections experienced no symptoms, however, seven percent of people were hospitalized, and 74 people died.

It is unclear why asymptomatic individuals were tested for Covid-19 after being fully vaccinated. It could be that some employers, such as health care systems, require regular testing.

People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after they receive their second dose of a two-dose vaccine, such as the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna vaccines, or two weeks after a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. (Use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is currently paused in the U.S. as federal health officials investigate cases of rare blood clots linked to the shots.) In clinical trials, the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines were found to be around 95 percent effective against Covid-19, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 72 percent effective against moderate-to-severe illness in its U.S. trial.

“I would encourage people to continue, once they’re vaccinated, to use all the prevention measures that we’ve been talking about when they’re outside their home, including masking and distancing and whatnot. And all of that should be active in the workplace,” the CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said during a briefing for the press on April 12, 2021. These breakthrough cases are another reason that people should continue to wear masks, social distance and wash hands since research is not yet in on weather they could pass the disease on to others.

Vaccination remains critical to ending the pandemic. “It does not reduce the risk to nil, but it does reduce the risk to something that we can handle.”

Mad Mask Abbott

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Texas Governor Mad Max Greg Abbott announced on March 2, 2021 that the states mask mandate would be lifted and all business could open at 100% capacity starting March 10, 2021. The CDC had warned the day before that states should not ease public health safety restrictions. As of March 1, 2021, only 6.57% of Texans have been fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins University.

COVID case numbers have fallen since the insanely high numbers of January driven by the holidays, New Years Eve and the Super Bowl. However the number of new cases have leveled off at about the worst of the summer surge which was the worst imaginable horror at the time. Since new cases of COVID-19 have been leveling off at about 50,000 new cases a day, there is a risk that there could be a 4th wave driven by states lifting health guidance too early. New variants of the virus are spreading and some are resistant to the vaccines being distributed. In Brazil, people who recovered from the COVID virus at the beginning of the pandemic are getting re-infected. The second infections are more severe and deadly.

A team of researchers in Houston, Texas, has sequenced the genomes of SARS-CoV-2 isolated from 20,400 COVID-19 patients treated at a single health system there, and they’ve found cases of all the major variants that public health experts say could increase the transmission of the virus or the severity of infection.

Ironically President Joe Biden‘s fast vaccine roll out is partly the cause of governor Abbott letting his guard down. President Joe Biden slammed Abbott on March 3, 2021 for putting lives at risk by clinging to “Neanderthal thinking” rather than heeding advice from the nation’s top scientists. “I think it’s a big mistake,” Biden told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers. “We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way in which we’re able to get vaccines in people’s arms….The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime, everything’s fine, take off your mask. Forget it. It still matters.”

Biden noted the death toll, 511,874 Americans at last count. “We’re going to lose thousands more…. We’ll not have everybody vaccinated until sometime in the summer,” Biden said. “It’s critical, critical, critical, critical that they follow the science. Wash your hands, hot water. Do it frequently, wear a mask and stay socially distanced. … I wish the heck some of our elected officials knew it.” To date, Texas has lost 43,266 lives.

“We at the CDC have been very clear that now is not the time to release all restrictions,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asked about Texas’ change of policy during a White House briefing. “The next month or two is really pivotal in terms of how this pandemic goes.”