You keep saying we aren't missing cases at a high level when the CDC said 2 weeks ago that we are missing as many as 8 for every one we catch... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/2020-11-25-covid-live-updates-n1248932
There’s so many cases being missed. Who knows how many kids in school catch it and never even know it
This is one thing that has worried me with the apparent lack of cases at our district's primary and elementary schools. I wonder how many had it and no one knew
I think RavenNoles 4th worst Champions League draw (for the worst group champion finisher) has impacted his covid judgement.
Cuomo did antibody testing after the nyc surge back in March/April where over 1000 were dying per day. Turns out the reason the death rate was so high was because almost 24% of nyc got it. That’s over two million cases in NYC alone in march/April. We still only have 800k positives in the state of ny for the whole year, at least 500k of which came after April. So NY at least is at a measured minimum of 2.5 million cases and it’s likely over 3 million. Even at 2.5 assuming we missed none ever outside of nyc and none since April in the state we’re still over 3x missed.
I think two things can simultaneously be true - we’re missing a shitload of cases (maybe around 8 for every 1 confirmed), but I don’t think we’ve been missing that many since the beginning, so a straight 8x number of total infections is not an accurate estimate either. I’m not suggesting anybody is doing that here, but maybe that’s what Raven is pushing back on?
NYC missed a fuck ton. The 10x number is likely low for NYC because there was zero access to testing in the beginning. People who were positive, symptomatic and wanted a test couldn’t get one for awhile. The CDC had it as 1 in 10. They revised it to 1 in 8. That link is as of the end of September and we had already moved from 1 in 10 missed to 1 in 8 missed. On September 30th we had 7 million cases. As of yesterday we have 15.6 million. I’m not saying 1 in 10 wasn’t accurate over summer or that slightly under 1 in 8 might have been accurate as of September 30th. 55% of the confirmed cases have been since that date. As we water down all of the missed cases from the beginning, the % of cases missed has gone down. are there testing shortages now due to the major increase in cases since thanksgiving? I haven’t seen evidence of that but if that’s happening again, the amount of missed cases will go up. We didn’t miss cases at a 8-1 clip from September to present. The fact that we moved from 10-1 to 8-1 shows that we were missing less cases over summer let alone when the virus briefly lulled before exploding again.
I'm skeptical of the 1 in 8 statistic as well, that would be almost 40% of the country and we might legitimately hit herd immunity after the winter.
Since NYC surged early they’re likely higher in missed cases than the rest of the country for sure, and yes the amount of missed cases is still going down. I think 1/8 is high, don’t we have a pretty good idea of infected death rates by now? Wouldn’t that be able to tell us fairly easily?
No chance you are still missing 7 in 8, you are still testing a load. They reckon here that we are catching 80% and we have similar level of testing, I would say that is very optimistic though and I’d still say less than half of cases are caught given the asymptomatic nature of so many infections amongst the young. The 18% from that Covid tracker looks to me to be a reasonable enough guess, you have about 5% diagnosed cases. Probably catching as little as 1 in 20 cases at the start in the likes of Boston and New York for a couple of weeks in March, now probably catching half.
"Previously, the CDC estimated that one of every 10 infections were being missed. The latest CDC calculation is meant to give a more accurate picture of how many people actually have caught the virus since the pandemic began. Of the 53 million estimated infections, the CDC says about 45 million were sick at some point and about 2.4 million were hospitalized."
It boils down to who is going to take the time to get tested. 75 million Americans suck Trump’s dick with delight, so unless they’re forced into a hospital from being sick, we can count them out from ever voluntarily getting tested for a hoax just to make the president* look bad. Then those who have no symptoms or extremely mild symptoms will just ride it out without noticing. Wasn’t the asymptomatic figure something like 46%? Only once we get through these funnels do we get to any testing access issues that don’t exist as much. Add to that the false negative rate from the tests themselves and false negative rates from people who get exposed and are tested too early. If they get back a negative and then get very mild or no symptoms, they are so unlikely to go get tested a second time. Ergo, vis a vis, heretofore prediction: 1 in 4 cases detected.
Might be a dumb question, but if someone was really sick, could they be given the shot to help them like a tetanus shot? Or is this strictly a preventative?
I know too many people to count who've had it in the last 2 months. Probably 40-60, maybe more? 3 dead, 2 in their 90s and 1 in his 70s. EDIT: Remembered another. 4 dead, 3 in their 90s.
WaPo article on Warp Speed https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/12/14/trump-operation-warp-speed-vaccine/ Spoiler How the ‘deep state’ scientists vilified by Trump helped him deliver an unprecedented achievement A $14 billion partnership between government and industry is spurring the quickest vaccine development in U.S. history. By Yasmeen Abutaleb, Laurie McGinley and Carolyn Y. Johnson Dec. 14, 2020 at 8:07 a.m. EST The timing of the hastily arranged White House “vaccine summit” last Tuesday bewildered many invitees. It was days before the authorization of the first coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and German firm BioNTech — and nearly a week before millions of vaccine doses would be loaded onto trucks bound for every state in the nation. Wouldn’t those milestones and the mass vaccination effort that followed be what the White House would want to spotlight? That was not what the president was interested in. As it became clear that vaccines would be a shining success in an otherwise calamitous pandemic response, he wanted to make sure his administration — and specifically Operation Warp Speed, its initiative to speed vaccines — got credit for an unprecedented scientific achievement. The Dec. 8 event began with a video that featured scientists and pundits warning that the administration’s goal of delivering a vaccine in less than a year was unrealistic. As music swelled to a crescendo, a narrator boasted about how it had in fact delivered that record achievement. Trump then took the stage to tout his administration’s success. “You saw that very few people thought that this was possible,” he told a small assembled audience. “Of course, they’ll be saying now, ‘We always told you it was so.’" FDA authorizes the first coronavirus vaccine, a rare moment of hope in the deadly pandemic “People that aren’t necessarily big fans of Donald Trump are saying, ‘Whether you like him or not, this is one of the greatest miracles in the history of modern-day medicine’ or any other medicine — any other age of medicine,” Trump added. In fact, the lightning-fast development of two leading coronavirus vaccines happened both because of and despite Trump — perhaps the most anti-science president in modern history, who has previously flirted with anti-vaccine views and savaged those who cited scientific evidence to press for basic public health measures in response to the pandemic. The lifelong businessman who refused to wear a mask himself was able to understand vaccines as something else entirely: a deliverable that he could make happen with money. And unlike a mask, a vaccine represented a display of American technological prowess, an appealing solution that didn’t require painful steps like closing small businesses. For the president, it exerted an increasingly strong pull as the election approached. “I do think the urgency for Operation Warp Speed was heightened by the fact that we were in the middle of an election year,” said Daniel Carpenter, a political scientist at Harvard University. “On the whole, it was a good thing — it led a potentially anti-science, anti-vaccine administration to push harder for a vaccine. What we will end up seeing in the long run is this is an unparalleled private and public sector mobilization that happened.” That mobilization, which is pushing out the first 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this week, is a testament to the power of science, and also of a global collaboration involving drug companies and government coordinated by political appointees and civil servants across the government — players and a process that Trump has at times disparaged. To many attendees of the White House summit — and even more who stayed away — that event underscored the awkward, often uneasy relationship between Trump and pharmaceutical companies, government regulators and scientists, even as they jointly pursued the goal of ending a pandemic that has killed more than 298,000 Americans and infected another 16 million. None of the companies that developed the most promising vaccines were present. Officials said they worried about participating in an event that might reinforce perceptions of political interference and suspicions of a rushed vaccine just as their shots were on the cusp of emergency clearance. Catch up on the top pandemic developments as vaccines begin to roll out with our free coronavirus newsletter White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern said Trump hosted the summit to build confidence in the vaccine and to “congratulate those involved in this miraculous achievement.” He added that drug company executives had stayed away to avoid contact with FDA regulators. The president’s bravado seemed to anticipate the FDA’s announcement three days later that it had cleared the nation’s first vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech — the administration’s biggest triumph to date in a pandemic response otherwise marred by dysfunction and lack of leadership: A second vaccine from Moderna is expected to be authorized later this week. Others could follow if clinical trials are successful. These accomplishments are remarkable, but they are not “miracles,” in the sense that they sprang fully formed from work that began last spring. They relied on basic research done over decades in government, academic and company research labs. Even the financial model used to insulate vaccine makers from financial risk traced back to an agency that Congress created in late 2006 to incentivize companies to develop urgently needed medicines. And the true test of Operation Warp Speed is about to occur as the administration tries to meet ambitious timelines that it has revised repeatedly. A key plank involves distributing the vaccine to millions of Americans in a matter of months, which began on Sunday. But potential supply problems already threaten the government’s ambitious vaccination schedule. Pfizer urged the government to purchase 200 million doses of its vaccine in the summer and this fall, an offer the government declined as recently as October over disagreements about delivery dates. The company has since told the government it may not be able to supply substantial additional doses until late June or July, raising questions about the vaccination timeline. Officials insist they will have enough doses. This account of how government scientists, regulators, politicians and private industry managed to deliver a coronavirus vaccine in under a year, and the political turbulence that accompanied it, is based on interviews with more than 20 current and former senior administration officials and outside advisers and experts, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private discussions and speak candidly. A $14 billion investment The extraordinary vaccine initiative was propelled by a $14 billion investment from the federal government — which Trump supported and signed off on — that would become Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to hasten vaccines and treatments, in part by footing the bill to manufacture millions of doses before anyone knew if they worked. Pfizer made a point of not accepting government research funding, a decision its chief executive Albert Bourla said last month on ABC’s “Good Morning America” was “to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy that could come by accepting money.” But the company did benefit from the government’s zeal for a vaccine in other ways: It agreed to sell nearly $2 billion worth of vaccines to Warp Speed and was bolstered separately by a strong working relationship with federal regulators. By contrast, Moderna’s vaccine would have taken much longer without the government investment and its partnership with the National Institutes of Health. The federal government has invested $4.1 billion in Moderna’s vaccine, between research and development funding and the purchase of 200 million doses. Warp Speed was designed to be largely free of political interference and had leaders with deep experience in vaccine development and logistics, said several officials who were involved in the effort. In many ways, it was an example of how much more successful the government’s pandemic response might have been with clear leadership and officials empowered to follow the science, they said. “In twenty years, you’ll look back and it’s not going to be … a story about bleach or a whistleblower, or who wore a mask and who didn’t,” one senior administration official said. “It’s going to be about Warp Speed and the vaccine — a thing that comes along scientifically in less than one year that ends a global pandemic.” But the race to develop a vaccine also became intensely politicized by the president, with trust in a prospective vaccine plummeting apparently as a result. Trump recognized early that the pandemic would only truly come to an end when a vaccine became widely available — and then became fixated on delivering one before the Nov. 3 presidential election to convince voters he had the virus under control. That calculation led the president and top aides — especially Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — to apply unrelenting pressure on the FDA to clear a vaccine before the election. Even after Trump lost his bid, that campaign continued, culminating in an extraordinary threat on Friday, when Meadows ordered FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to submit his resignation if the agency did not clear Pfizer’s vaccine by day’s end. The agency pushed its timetable from Saturday morning to late Friday — a change that had no effect on the distribution plans that were set to begin Sunday. Earlier that same day, Trump had tweeted that the FDA was “a big, old, slow turtle” and badgered Hahn. “Get the dam vaccines out NOW, Dr. Hahn @SteveFDA. Stop playing games and start saving lives!!!” ‘A 15-year, overnight success story’ The public-private partnership created through Operation Warp Speed is not an idea the administration invented. For years, global public health leaders had talked about using government investment to reduce the financial risks that dissuade companies from developing needed products. That was also the model behind the creation of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) during the George W. Bush administration, with an eye toward working with private industry on bioterrorism countermeasures. Warp Speed harnessed those ideas on a massive scale for a different kind of public emergency and then partnered with a half-dozen companies and other government agencies to pull it off. “It’s a 15-year, overnight success story,” said Richard Hatchett, chief executive of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a four-year-old nonprofit that works to finance the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases. The idea took hold in February and March after government scientists realized that covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, was a “catastrophe in the making,” as one senior administration official recalled. But they quickly realized that some vaccine manufacturers did not share that sense of urgency. Unsure of how long the outbreak would last, some executives were reluctant to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars or more to develop a vaccine without knowing whether they would have a market when they finished. Some companies talked about beginning clinical trials in the fall, with the aim of having a vaccine ready by summer 2021. “The vaccine manufacturers were in a funk,” the senior administration official recalled. “We woke up to that and realized that is not going to fly.” In early April, Peter Marks, an oncologist who has worked in both academia and the drug industry and who heads the FDA division that regulates vaccines, began laying the groundwork for what would become Operation Warp Speed. He teamed up with Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, to write a proposal for HHS Secretary Alex Azar detailing a process that went from screening potential vaccine candidates to distributing the final product to an estimated 330 million Americans. The thought was that if the government could eliminate most of the financial risk of vaccine development, more companies would be inclined to take on the herculean challenge. The government would also help speed development by footing the bill to manufacture millions of doses of vaccines without knowing whether they worked, so that normally sequential steps could be completed all at once. Marks said the most important step in the vaccine effort was “getting started early with a clear direction in mind and having good partners” in various companies that were motivated “to get to the same place.” Meanwhile, the virus was leaping from one continent to another, leaving a trail of carnage and spurring a torrance of research. Hundreds of academic teams, companies and government researchers were eager to apply different ideas to fight the virus, but there was also a clear need for a national strategy that could prioritize efforts. “Uncharitably, people might have called it a bit of a scattershot scenario — that was true for therapeutics and vaccines,” said Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. Collins called drug company executives, starting with Mikael Dolsten at Pfizer, with whom he had worked closely for years, to talk about creating a scientific public-private partnership to tackle the pandemic. Collins had crafted a similar partnership to speed up the development of new medicines, but that had taken months. This new one crystallized over two weeks in early April — and included a vaccine working group that began to hammer out some of the principles for how to rapidly test vaccines. The group calculated that trials with 30,000 people would have the statistical power to answer the most important questions about safety and effectiveness, and to get those answers quickly. They debated, and ultimately settled, on a single unified data and safety board for all the trials. That approach had been taken with some HIV trials, and would mean the same group of independent experts would be reviewing the totality of the raw data from all the trials — and might be able to detect any concerning safety trends or important patterns. Operation Warp Speed would ultimately bet on six efforts — Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca-University of Oxford, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, and Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline. Those that accepted research funding — all but Pfizer — could take advantage of a large network of clinical trials developed over decades by the NIH. Pfizer and Moderna gambled on a promising but unproved technology that relied on messenger RNA, spurring criticism for taking that approach at a time when a vaccine was desperately needed. In one meeting in late April, Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, expressed frustration that the leading vaccine candidates were not relying on tried-and-true technologies, according to four current and former senior administration officials. But Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, along with some other experts, was enthusiastic about including those vaccines in the government’s portfolio, since they were backed by years of research and might be developed much more quickly than conventional vaccines Pfizer and Moderna’s strategy paid off in November, with both companies reporting trial results that showed their vaccines were more than 90 percent effective at preventing disease. By contrast, the vaccine being developed by Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, using a proven technology, hit a setback last week when results showed the shot didn’t trigger strong responses in older people. The companies now project their vaccine won’t be available until the end of 2021. ‘I heard everybody explaining … why it will never work’ In April, after Marks and Kadlec gave Azar their proposal, the secretary presented it to the White House coronavirus task force. Some were skeptical about whether it would work and wary of the enormous price tag. Trump, however, was enthusiastic. Unlike other aspects of the response, he agreed to spend billions on the effort — even as he was publicly predicting the virus would soon be gone. The project was announced through a reporter at Bloomberg News, when officials were still casting about for a name. Initially, they called it MP2, shorthand for Manhattan Project 2.0. The name seemed fitting, one senior official recalled, because “it was the historic implication that this was to do something never done before … with the same commitment at the national level as the Manhattan Project.” But they soon realized that referring back to a nuclear bomb wouldn’t work for a vaccine. Marks, a Star Trek fan, and a small group of government officials had been privately calling the project Operation Warp Speed, based on the term “warp speed” popularized by the Star Trek series. In one internal email, Marks used the Star Trek logo with a needle in the middle of it. Scrambling just before the interview, the officials seized on the name and it stuck. Azar scouted for a drug industry veteran to run Warp Speed, calling Jim Greenwood to ask for recommendations. At the time, Greenwood, a former congressman, was president of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a trade group that represents biotech companies. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and one of his most trusted advisers, joined Azar and other health officials to interview four or five candidates. They landed on Moncef Slaoui, who had spent much of his career as a GlaxoSmithKline vaccine researcher and executive. Slaoui had led an effort to create a dedicated biopreparedness facility in 2016, a research organization that would systematically tick through every virus that had the potential to cause a pandemic and create vaccines for each one. The proposal flopped, but Slaoui remained convinced that a model that joined government and industry to counter such risks was essential. “I could have also sat on the sidelines and said why it would never work,” Slaoui said of his decision to join Warp Speed. “ … in the month of May when the operation was announced, I do not remember hearing a single expert say, ‘Yes, this is possible.’ I heard everybody explaining to us why it will never work.” On May 1, Azar met at the Pentagon with then-Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and a handful of aides to discuss how their agencies could work together, aware that HHS alone could not handle a logistics operation as complex as a nationwide vaccination effort. They agreed on Gen. Gustave Perna as the logistics chief, a man whose expertise would become critical in managing and coordinating one of the largest ever vaccine distribution efforts in American history. Tracking vaccine distribution, state by state At one point, when 60 electricians were needed at one facility, Operation Warp Speed used the Defense Production Act to get them. Slaoui and Perna were mostly walled off from the White House, as well as from Capitol Hill and the media, so they could avoid distractions. Still, Birx and Kushner sat on the board of Operation Warp Speed and attended meetings — a decision officials made intentionally to give the White House a seat at the table but not an outsize role. “It was recognized that having larger participation from other offices in the White House could be disruptive,” one senior administration official said. “Perna and Slaoui really wanted to be independent of the politics. They wanted to be able to chase the science and make bets,” a second official said. “In normal times, people will say you wasted a lot of money taking six or seven shots on goals with different types of vaccines. … but if we only get one of them, we got one at least.” A bruising year for the FDA turns more tumultuous After helping to launch Warp Speed, Marks quickly retreated to the FDA. He and Slaoui had clashed, according to individuals familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue. Marks also realized that he was most valuable to the vaccine effort as a regulator, not as a developer, he has said. And the FDA drew a bright line between its activities and those of Warp Speed to avoid conflicts of interest. As Marks and his veteran vaccine experts began working with the pharmaceutical companies on the regulatory requirements, they remained in constant contact in hopes of avoiding unnecessary speed bumps. “What helped at the outset was having clear guidance on what the expectations were,” Marks said. In June, the FDA issued guidelines that said any coronavirus vaccine would have to be at least 50 percent more effective than a placebo, or a saltwater shot, in preventing covid-19. The agency proposed updating that guidance in the fall, spelling out additional safety requirements to bolster public confidence in an emergency authorization. The idea enraged Trump and Meadows, who realized the criteria made it all but impossible for a vaccine to be authorized before the election. FDA ignored their objections and issued the guidelines, whose substance had already been conveyed to the manufacturers. The FDA had already endured a bruising year, under the leadership of a new and untested commissioner, Stephen Hahn, who came under constant pressure from Trump and the White House to authorize or examine treatments that had no proven effectiveness against covid-19. In a series of of high-profile missteps, the agency cleared the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine — then revoked that authorization — and initially took a hands-off approach to coronavirus antibody tests. On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Hahn overstated the benefits of convalescent plasma during a hastily arranged briefing with Trump, then apologized the next day. Trump continued to accuse the FDA of moving too slowly, even as the agency staff worked almost around-the-clock. Marks’s pandemic schedule, for example, involves getting up at 3 a.m., taking his dog Eddie for a walk, and beginning work at 4:30 on a torrance of emails and meetings before knocking off at 9 p.m. Dozens of others working on coronavirus vaccines have been maintaining similar schedules. As Trump pushed to get a vaccine before the election, public trust in the vaccine plummeted from more than 70 percent in May to just over 50 percent in September. ‘A historical moment’ By November, Americans had become inured to one grim milestone after another, as the nation set countless records for daily infections, deaths and hospitalizations and endured a bitterly divisive presidential campaign. Six days after a polarizing election called for Joe Biden, Pfizer reported astonishing news: Its coronavirus vaccine, the one that relied on a new genetic technology, was more than 90 percent effective. Those results also augured well for Moderna’s vaccine, which used the same technology and reported equally striking results only seven days later. Exhausted company and government scientists and regulators were elated. For the first time all year, they could envision an end to the pandemic. The idea that the country could have one effective vaccine by year’s end had seemed like a long shot. Now, it looked like it could have two. “I would say it’s a historical moment,” Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development, said in an interview. “Hearing that at the interim analysis we are over 90 percent effective — it was almost stunning to hear.” Trump, however, was furious The additional safety steps the FDA had taken to shore up public trust in the vaccine strengthened his conviction that the agency had conspired against him. Now he said the “medical deep state” had deliberately sought to sabotage his electoral prospects, and he demanded that Azar “get to the bottom” of what happened. His anger would grow to a fever pitch when Britain cleared Pfizer’s vaccine on Dec. 2. Meadows summoned Hahn to the Oval Office and asked why the United States had not been first. The pressure campaign culminated in the Friday threat to Hahn to clear the vaccine by day’s end or submit his resignation. The irony is that the quest for a vaccine needed no meddling. Back in May, when the vaccine trials were still in the planning stages and success was far from certain, Fauci had said he was tuning out politics. “I worry about a lot of things,” he said in an interview. “But I’m going to do the best possible science, to develop what I consider convincing evidence that it works and is safe, or does not work and is not safe.” Which is precisely what he and hundreds of other scientists did.
A little context is great. This sign/meme is funny, yes but it was in place as early as Spring of 2019. Making fun of Texas for its poor covid performance is allowable. Besmirching the good name of Buc-ee’s I will not stand for.
siap CAW CAW sorry not sorry ‘I really need a miracle today’: Republican who denied COVID begs for prayers after hospitalization Spoiler Cases of the novel coronavirus are increasing at a rapid rate across the U.S. Despite this, some individuals are still refusing to wear masks. As a result, many of those who once denied the severity of the virus are now suffering the consequences of doing so after infection. While some have expressed regret and have warned others to not take the virus and safety measures lightly, others—like Donald Trump—are continuing to deny its severity despite multiple hospital visits. Longtime COVID-19 denier and Tennessee state Rep. David Byrd is another Republican who once dismissed the virus as a hoax only to contract it. Byrd, who is currently hospitalized, is at risk of being put on a ventilator, the Tennessean reported. The controversial Republican posted on Facebook Thursday begging friends for prayers and a “miracle” after being hospitalized over the weekend with pneumonia following a positive COVID-19 test. "I really need a miracle today!!" Byrd wrote Thursday. "My doctor said if my oxygen level doesn't improve then he has no choice but to put me on a ventilator. So please pray that God will breathe His healing spirit into my lungs!!" Byrd tested positive for the virus less than two weeks after attending a meeting with almost 70 House Republicans in attendance in the House chamber on Nov. 24. During the meeting, the 63-year-old representative was seen without a mask on the House floor. But it doesn’t end there: Days before the meeting, Byrd even hosted a dinner with a number of his fellow caucus members at a restaurant to kick off a series of Republican retreat events. According to NBC News affiliate WBIR, one of the events was overnight. Not only has Byrd been spotted without a mask on multiple occasions but in June he also voted in support of a House resolution that insisted that "mainstream media has sensationalized the reporting on COVID-19 in the service of political agendas,” the Tennessean reported. Byrd is the second Republican Tennessee House member to be hospitalized after contracting the virus. Rep. Mike Carter, who also voted in support of the same legislation, was hospitalized earlier this year with COVID-19. Byrd, a former teacher and principal, is not only a conservative COVID-19 denier but a sexual predator. The representative was accused by three former students in 2018 of sexual assault committed in the 1980s when he served as a coach for the Wayne County High School girls basketball team. To date, Byrd has still not denied the allegations and instead when asked about them diverted to a statement regarding not conducting any misconduct as a state legislator. Prior to issuing his statement, Bryd was asked to resign by other members of the Tennessee house following a secretly recorded phone conversation obtained by NBC News affiliate WSMV, during which Byrd apologized to one of his accusers. However, he refused to resign and claimed that he would fight the allegations. “I wish I had a do-over because I promise you I would have corrected that and that would’ve never happened,” Byrd said in the phone call. “But I hope you believe me when I say that it’s one of those things that I think about it all the time, and I always ask forgiveness for it and I hope you forgive me.” From denying sexual assault to denying a deadly virus, who knows what else Byrd has denied in the past. Asking for prayers should be the least of his worries. But unfortunately, Byrd isn’t the only Tennessee native with a following who has consistently deemed the virus fake news. Conservative pastor Greg Locke also refuses to wear a mask and has expressed no plans to take a vaccine. “There’s no pandemic,” he told CNN. “I’m 44-years-old. We’ve not had one in my lifetime … this is not it.” Who knows what it will take for some conservatives to understand how deadly this pandemic really is and what the consequences of their actions are.
let's give it up for president t! https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/science-covid-19-manhattan-project/617262/
Yep, Moderna published their first big results of the Phase 3 portion when there were 95 COVID-19 cases. Just a few weeks later they already had something like almost 200 cases between the placebo and vaccine groups lol.
Lol this is my life right now. My wife is currently at her sisters with her parents and grandparents showing up shortly. Told them best of luck. They’re then going to a cabin to meet up with my parents, my brother’s family and his mother in law. I’m the asshole for staying home with my dog.
Not sure of the legality of it but she signed a paper and took a picture that if our son gets sick during all of that then I get full custody after the divorce. Prolly should of had a lawyer witness it.
Yeah it was done jokingly but not really because I’d absolutely divorce her over it. There’s no way I could live with it. I pleaded for them not to do it but I’m the odd man out so nothing I can do. Edit: has anyone else dealt with anything like this? I think I’m the only one with the wife who’s lost her give a fuck regarding covid and currently taking our 6 month old son on a tour de force of covid parties.
from a wife perspective? no from a family perspective? yes Thanksgiving my mom's side was still getting together and I told them I'm not going and they should cancel. 10 days later, her significant other tested positive and I'm just gonna assume my mom tests positive now.
I’m the only holdout hence why it’s just me and the dog at home by ourselves. I caved and went to thanksgiving but it was a cluster fuck and I told her that as lucky as we got at thanksgiving I don’t think we can do it again. You can have everyone tested and everything but it’s like 20 people. That’s saying all 20 quarantined and didn’t go to the store for food or whatever. Too many variables.
I'm going to risk being shouted out of the thread with what may be a stupid question: my family (parents, two brothers + families) are planning on getting together for Christmas Eve. My wife and I are on the fence right now as to whether to participate or not. My parents have both had the virus in the past six weeks (confirmed w/testing), my wife and I have both had it in the past six weeks (confirmed w/testing), and one of my brothers + fam have almost certainly all had it (not confirmed). All mild cases with few to no symptoms. There would be 13 people there in total. Does the fact that most of us have had it and recovered in the past several weeks change the calculus at all on getting together? Am I being a selfish idiot for even considering it? The only reason it's even under discussion is because we've already had it.
I think it does. I think you are more likely to be in better shape and at overall lower risk for an issue.
got it, thanks. so the end of the second quarter is roughly in line with what i'd expect given other info... assuming no delays and issues, July may be normal
pperc or RonBurgundy Are you aware of any instances of grand mal seizures being associated with Covid? My niece (14) had one on Saturday morning. My sister (her mom) has epilepsy so we were expecting my niece to be diagnosed with it today, but they tested her for Covid and she tested positive and sent her home. They said they'll look into any associations with seizures and Covid but didn't think there were any. No other symptoms but her dad (my BIL) is diabetic.
Fauci has been pretty conservative in his estimates so if he’s saying March or April I tend to believe him
Visit from Santa infects 75 https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/14/europe/belgium-santa-nursing-home-scli-intl/index.html
An 8th grader at my aunt's school had covid, recovered, and was back at school for a day or two and had a seizure.. and another one after he got to the hospital. Hadnt had any seizures prior to this one, but not sure if the doctors were able to say whether it happened due to the prior covid infection
I've recently come down with non-covid related breathing problems, and have been unable to see a single doctor in person (despite 4 negative test results) because breathing problems=covid. I was told to get a Covid test so I could see the Doc, it came back negative, and the office manager still said I couldn't come in. Been dealing with this shit for 3 weeks, and I've only been able to manage telephone sessions that do fuck all because how is she supposed to listen to my chest over the phone? I've been short of breath for weeks now, and my sleep has gone to shit because my body feels like it's not getting enough oxygen and I keep waking up. I caved and went to the ER, but the nurse practitioner just sent me away with some antibiotics that did nothing. I'm not sick enough for the hospital, but I'm apparently too sick to go to the doctor or urgent care. I really feel for all the people that can't get regular medical care because of this shit. Needed to vent.
Vent away. I really hope you can get some help and I hope it's nothing serious. Hang in there! Reach out if you need anything