Lafayette Parish’s chief death investigator, Keith Talamo, acknowledged that most people who die at home are pronounced dead over the phone. He said his office lacks the resources to test every death for COVID-19. And, in a significant departure from widely accepted death investigation practices, Talamo said he typically writes down “what the families tell us” and doesn’t push further.
In and around Jackson, Mississippi, deaths from heart attacks at home doubled in 2020 and are on pace to hit a similar level in 2021. The Rankin County coroner said he wrestles with family members who first argue against citing COVID-19 on death certificates, then reverse course when they learn that the federal government pays for burials of people who die from the coronavirus.
And in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, coroner Wavis Jordan said his office “doesn’t do COVID deaths.” Jordan does not investigate deaths himself. He requires families to provide proof of a positive COVID-19 test before including it on a death certificate.
Booster protection wanes against symptomatic Omicron infections, British data suggests.
The new report from Britain, which included data on people who had received the AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna shots, confirmed that the vaccines — both the initial two-shot series and booster doses — were less effective and waned faster against Omicron than against Delta.
Among people who received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, a booster with one of the mRNA vaccines, made by Pfizer and Moderna, was 60 percent effective at preventing symptomatic disease two to four weeks after the shot. After 10 weeks, however, the Pfizer booster was just 35 percent effective. The Moderna booster was 45 percent effective at up to nine weeks. (The AstraZeneca vaccine is not authorized in the United States, but the Johnson & Johnson shot uses a similar technology.)
For people who were given three Pfizer doses, vaccine effectiveness dropped from 70 percent one week after the booster to 45 percent after 10 weeks. Pfizer recipients who received a Moderna booster, on the other hand, seemed to fare better; their vaccine regimen remained up to 75 percent effective at up to nine weeks.
What's especially sad about this is the cold fact that gustatory and olfactory senses (taste and smell) are so intrinsically tied to memory. Losing that for good is really like losing a part of you. Imagine growing up from birth without those senses— you might genuinely live a life less attached to your childhood and loved ones because of it.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
(Mother Jones) Now, after three coronavirus-sparked health crises in the last 20 years—SARS, MERS, and COVID-19—researchers are working to develop so-called universal coronavirus vaccines for the next outbreak. …Kevin Saunders, the director of research at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, points out that hundreds of thousands of Americans died from COVID-19 infections while vaccines were being developed and approved. If we have a universal coronavirus vaccine ready to go in the future, even if it isn’t perfect, he says, it could cut down on hospitalizations and deaths, and buy researchers time to hone a virus-specific vaccine.
Indeed, many coronavirus vaccines are already in development, some with promising results in animal models. Many of these vaccines, including the one Saunders and his colleagues are working on, present our bodies with a specific segment of the spike protein that’s shared among many coronaviruses, an “Achilles heel,” as he put it. In Saunders’ vaccine, copies of this critical piece of the spike protein are fused to a protein nanoparticle like darts in a soccer ball. It’s a design that’s been used to fight viruses like influenza, RSV, and HIV. The first broadly protective coronavirus vaccine to be tested in humans, developed by researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, uses a similar technology. Their vaccine, like others in the pipeline, focuses on one branch of the coronavirus family: SARS-like viruses. But the “ultimate goal,” according to Kayvon Modjarrad, an infectious disease researcher at Walter Reed who co-invented the vaccine, is a shot that covers all coronaviruses.
…The price tag for developing a universal vaccine of any sort is likely “$100 million to $200 million over several years,” according to scientists at Scripps Research. Similarly, Dr. Anthony Fauci told the New York Times in July that building a stockpile of universal vaccines could cost “a few billion dollars” a year over several years (and that’s not including the cost of promoting the vaccines and convincing the public to actually take them).
Sure, making new vaccines won’t come cheap, but it’s a relatively small price to pay when the alternative is a pandemic: By one estimate, this pandemic will cost the world as much as $16 trillion in economic damage over the next decade.
(Asahi Shimbun) Tokyo’s first community spread of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus was confirmed on Christmas Eve, Governor Yuriko Koike said at a news conference.
The COVID-19 patient has no history of traveling abroad, and the infection route remains unknown, Koike said on Dec. 24.
In response to the report, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said free COVID-19 tests will be made available for everybody in the capital.
The government earlier said the free tests will be provided in Osaka, Kyoto and Okinawa prefectures.
Previously, six people in Tokyo were confirmed infected with the Omicron variant. Five of them were entrants from abroad and one was in close contact with an Omicron-infected person.
The linked article includes an interesting electron microscope image of the COVID-19 Omicron variant.
Totally mild, we're beating this virus's trashy weak ass badly! 100%, undoubtedly! No questions asked!!
lol fair.
It really just doesn’t make sense to me. America has been willing to endure the equivalent of Axis losses at Stalingrad or both sides combined at Verdun for… what? I don’t understand a society that shuns collective sacrifice but then, as you said, is willing to do all this for Applebees.
You could ask a Poilu why he was holding on to his shellhole in Verdun. Whatever you believe about it, there was a feeling that the French Third Republic warranted the cost in human life. Trading lives for meters of French soil - even at an appalling rate - had a logic to the people ordering the sacrifice, those taking part in it, and those at home. The morale of the French Army and public was resolute, even at the height of the fighting at Verdun, and only started to buckle in 1917 when asked to make costly and unsuccessful attacks after being promised decisive victory by Nivelle.
In short - no price is too high for the right cause, but the same sacrifices can’t be asked to achieve nothing. If people feel ably led, they’ll go into the maelstrom, if they don’t, they’ll stay in their trench.
So - what about the economy is worth 800k American lives? Not just to those demanding it, but to those dying for it and others watching. When you see those kind of losses, you have to ask why. It’s easy enough to see why those who benefit the most are content to demand others die to uphold the social order, but I’m struggling to see what the economy offers the people being told to go boldly forth.
What do they think they’re dying for?
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
