#us covid cases

[halorvic]

The danger is clear and present: COVID isn’t merely a respiratory illness; it’s a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body’s organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long COVID is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long COVID is now being considered a long-term chronic illness — something many people will never fully recover from. Dr. Phillip Alvelda, a former program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office that pioneered the synthetic biology industry and the development of mRNA vaccine technology, is the founder of Medio Labs, a COVID diagnostic testing company. He has stepped forward as a strong critic of government COVID management, accusing health agencies of inadequacy and even deception. Alvelda is pushing for accountability and immediate action to tackle Long COVID and fend off future pandemics with stronger public health strategies. Contrary to public belief, he warns, COVID is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if things continue as they are, with new COVID variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long COVID. Let’s repeat that: At the current rate of infection, most Americans may get Long COVID.

[...]

LP: A recent JAMA study found that US adults with Long COVID are more prone to depression and anxiety – and they’re struggling to afford treatment. Given the virus’s impact on the brain, I guess the link to mental health issues isn’t surprising. PA: There are all kinds of weird things going on that could be related to COVID’s cognitive effects. I’ll give you an example. We’ve noticed since the start of the pandemic that accidents are increasing. A report published by TRIP, a transportation research nonprofit, found that traffic fatalities in California increased by 22% from 2019 to 2022. They also found the likelihood of being killed in a traffic crash increased by 28% over that period. Other data, like studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, came to similar conclusions, reporting that traffic fatalities hit a 16-year high across the country in 2021. The TRIP report also looked at traffic fatalities on a national level and found that traffic fatalities increased by 19%. LP: What role might COVID play? PA: Research points to the various ways COVID attacks the brain. Some people who have been infected have suffered motor control damage, and that could be a factor in car crashes. News is beginning to emerge about other ways COVID impacts driving. For example, in Ireland, a driver’s COVID-related brain fog was linked to a crash that killed an elderly couple. Damage from COVID could be affecting people who are flying our planes, too. We’ve had pilots that had to quit because they couldn’t control the airplanes anymore. We know that medical events among U.S. military pilots were shown to have risen over 1,700% from 2019 to 2022, which the Pentagon attributes to the virus.

[...]

LP: You’ve criticized the track record of the CDC and the WHO – particularly their stubborn denial that COVID is airborne. PA: They knew the dangers of airborne transmission but refused to admit it for too long. They were warned repeatedly by scientists who studied aerosols. They instituted protections for themselves and for their kids against airborne transmission, but they didn’t tell the rest of us to do that.

[...]

LP: How would you grade Biden on how he’s handled the pandemic? PA: I’d give him an F. In some ways, he fails worse than Trump because more people have actually died from COVID on his watch than on Trump’s, though blame has to be shared with Republican governors and legislators who picked ideological fights opposing things like responsible masking, testing, vaccination, and ventilation improvements for partisan reasons. Biden’s administration has continued to promote the false idea that the vaccine is all that is needed, perpetuating the notion that the pandemic is over and you don’t need to do anything about it. Biden stopped the funding for surveillance and he stopped the funding for renewing vaccine advancement research. Trump allowed 400,000 people to die unnecessarily. The Biden administration policies have allowed more than 800,000 to 900,000 and counting.

[...]

LP: The situation with bird flu is certainly getting more concerning with the CDC confirming that a third person in the U.S. has tested positive after being exposed to infected cows. PA: Unfortunately, we’re repeating many of the same mistakes because we now know that the bird flu has made the jump to several species. The most important one now, of course, is the dairy cows. The dairy farmers have been refusing to let the government come in and inspect and test the cows. A team from Ohio State tested milk from a supermarket and found that 50% of the milk they tested was positive for bird flu viral particles.

[...]

PA: There’s a serious risk now in allowing the virus to freely evolve within the cow population. Each cow acts as a breeding ground for countless genetic mutations, potentially leading to strains capable of jumping to other species. If any of those countless genetic experiments within each cow prove successful in developing a strain transmissible to humans, we could face another pandemic – only this one could have a 58% death rate. Did you see the movie “Contagion?” It was remarkably accurate in its apocalyptic nature. And that virus only had a 20% death rate. If the bird flu makes the jump to human-to-human transition with even half of its current lethality, that would be disastrous.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

[aropride]

one of the best phrases covid's given us so far is "open the schools" it's so fucking good

[milkweedman]

Fig and apple pie with pecan-cardamom crust. The figs and the apples were both foraged, which is always fun. Smells super good !

It was supposed to be in a pie tin, but I had 3/4 of a pound of figs rather than the half pound the recipe called for. And then needing to scale the recipe complicated the already confusing situation of reading while dyslexic. So I largely gave up on reading, and this is more inspired by the recipe than anything else, but here it is nonetheless: Fig, Apple, and Walnut Tarts. Anyway, it ended up too big to fit in a pie tin, hence the cobbler dish.

[autogeneity]

so the data science company that previously accidentally considered me for a software engineering role sent me a new challenge to complete for the data science role...

except the challenge they sent me last time also involved data science work

...and this one seems about a million times easier?

I am so nervous that I'm somehow doing it completely wrong because all I really did was fit a curve (quadratic) (simple regression) and then chucked the data in a graph and applied dijkstra. whereas last time I spent days looking at complicated statistical models?

I feel like this can't be right and yet. I can't see where I might be wrong. both my steps and my results make sense.

[ashmp3]

no but i love it when ana and I are rebloging the same thing always on the same wavelength you just know the tags are about to be so insane but so on point so true two yappers with vision i am giggling it’s like when you’re hanging with your friends and you keep saying EXACTLYYYY BUKVALNOO DOSLOVNO!!!

[thedreadvampy]

how I announce a positive COVID test to my household:

[savage-rhi]

.Magenta.

[tomorrowusa]

Fact checking Donald Trump is a full time, even overtime job. He told over 30,000 lies just during his term.

The problem with live news coverage of Trump is that he gets to spew lies and that the factchecking has to wait until he shuts his porcine mouth or producers cut him off.

Low information voters are therefore likely to hear Trump's semi-coherent rants but miss any attempts to call out his lies.

Having said that, MSNBC on Super Tuesday night did a decent attempt at countering a few of Trump's main lies.

Joy Reid is pointing something out that Democrats need to do much more. Trump TOTALLY botched the US pandemic response right from the start. A reminder of what Trump said at CNBC on 22 January 2020 – the day the first COVID-19 case appeared in the US.

Of course it wasn't just fine under Trump.

The Obama administration, which limited the 2014-2016 Ebola pandemic in the US to under a dozen cases, had put together a pandemic playbook. You can read it here. Trump totally ignored it. He spent 50 days after the first US COVID case doing typically idiotic Trump stuff like criticizing 2020 Oscar Best Picture winner Parasites. And afterwards he became preoccupied with quack cures for COVID as it spread throughout the US.

People who claim they had it better under Trump are hoping that the memories of voters are as impaired as Trump's cognition.

We need to be prepared to offer clear fact checks to anybody hearing Trump's lies. Of course convincing MAGA zombies is a waste of time. But when around low information voters who may not be part of the Trump cult we need to be able to offer convincing short refutations. Pointing out that Trump did nothing for the first 50 days of COVID in the US is a good start. So speak up!

Trump's lack of a competent COVID response led to a cascade of acute economic problems which took several years to sort out.

[c0rpsedemon]

ok fr last one but there's actually a bootleg of my school's anastasia and i'm linking it bc you all NEED to understand that my infatuation with this one girl's voice which started when i was in the 6th grade and still hasn't really worn off isn't based on nothing

[flaskoflethe]

Well, got prescribed cypionate. No idea how much it'll cost, or if insurance will cover it but I kind of don't care? I went through the fucking wringer to get data to prove what I was on wasn't ideal for me. This isn't metaphorical; 2 hours after injection, my levels are ~300. A day after, 500. 2 days after (nominally ~2 hours after peak), 600! 3 days later, 250. Not sure what my actual trough value is yet, but given I get severe nausea below ~350? I'd have to be injecting daily, and that's just not safe for me.

So, fuck it! Cypionate's curves look much smoother, and depending on how I metabolize it I might actually be finally getting close to successfully fine tuning some aspect of my biology :3

[glitterinlowgravity]

I hate apple

[queerofthedagger]

how do people have covid and then go 'oh this wasn't that bad i'll just go on being not careful' like mine is relatively mild in terms of how bad it could be and i was already still masking and shit and i'm like. no one's ever anywhere going to see me without a mask and a spray bottle of disinfectant EVER again this is terrible oh my gOD

[3gremlins]

me, having a small coughing fit: this is it, i finally got The Plague.

also me, looking at my daily pills: oh i forgot to take my asthma meds yesterday and today, it's just my lungs getting mad oops

(let this be a reminder to you too, did your remember to take your meds today?)

[izzy-b-hands]

"they're just coming up alongside us now."

"That seems...bad."

"I mean, they have to get close enough to us to do any damage, so it's fine."

Paraphrased quotes from the 5 hour long Sea of Thieves stream with Pat and Simone that sound like me writing dialogue between Ed and/or Izzy and Stede lmaooooo

[cthulhubert]

Ill once more. The most striking thing is that over the past four days my weight has increased by 2%. Inflammation presumably.

The brain troubles also stand out, like I'm really "mentally clumsy".(Then again... maybe I'm as clumsy as usual but noticing it more because I'm on the look out for it? It's not like I keep tabs on base rates of typos and time-to-remember-facts; and I wonder, wouldn't keeping those would interfere with and change the processes themselves? This sort of thing has always been fascinating to me, so at least I've got that silver lining.)