Deadly Wuhan Coronavirus

nivek

As Above So Below
COVID-19 long haulers are reporting an unbearable ringing in their ears that's still there months after they got sick

Evidence is mounting that COVID-19 could be linked to an unpleasant and potentially debilitating ringing in the ears.

The link between the persistent buzzing in the ears - also called tinnitus - and mental health was highlighted recently by Kent Taylor's death by suicide.

The 65-year-old founder of the restaurant chain Texas Roadhouse died on March 18 after what his family described as "a battle with post-COVID related symptoms, including severe tinnitus."

A UK charity reported a spike in queries related to tinnitus between May and December 2020, The Guardian reported, with 256% of its normal call volume in those months.

A preliminary study published on March 21 found that 15% of people who had COVID-19 reported having tinnitus. 7.6% reported hearing loss, and 7.2% reported vertigo, which is also related to the ears.

Dr. Kevin Munro, a professor of audiology at the University of Manchester, and lead author on the study, told The New York Times that within 24 hours of publishing the study, he received about 100 emails from grateful patients saying that their doctor were dismissive of their symptoms.

"We are waiting for a high quality, definitive study to confirm this number," Munro told Insider in an email.

To date, it is not clear if tinnitus is a consequence of COVID-19 infection.

"We know that some viruses can damage the ear so this is possible with SARS-CoV-2," Munro told Insider, using the scientific name for the coronavirus.

Measles, mumps and meningitis can also cause hearing difficulties.

But "tinnitus is often more bothersome when we are anxious and stressed and not sleeping well," Munro said, all of which have been on the rise during pandemic lockdowns.

Tinnitus is often characterised as a ringing in the ears, but can also sound like buzzing, hissing or clicking.

(More on the link)

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nivek

As Above So Below
COVID-19 long haulers are reporting an unbearable ringing in their ears that's still there months after they got sick

Evidence is mounting that COVID-19 could be linked to an unpleasant and potentially debilitating ringing in the ears.

The link between the persistent buzzing in the ears - also called tinnitus - and mental health was highlighted recently by Kent Taylor's death by suicide.

The 65-year-old founder of the restaurant chain Texas Roadhouse died on March 18 after what his family described as "a battle with post-COVID related symptoms, including severe tinnitus."

A UK charity reported a spike in queries related to tinnitus between May and December 2020, The Guardian reported, with 256% of its normal call volume in those months.

A preliminary study published on March 21 found that 15% of people who had COVID-19 reported having tinnitus. 7.6% reported hearing loss, and 7.2% reported vertigo, which is also related to the ears.

Dr. Kevin Munro, a professor of audiology at the University of Manchester, and lead author on the study, told The New York Times that within 24 hours of publishing the study, he received about 100 emails from grateful patients saying that their doctor were dismissive of their symptoms.

"We are waiting for a high quality, definitive study to confirm this number," Munro told Insider in an email.

To date, it is not clear if tinnitus is a consequence of COVID-19 infection.

"We know that some viruses can damage the ear so this is possible with SARS-CoV-2," Munro told Insider, using the scientific name for the coronavirus.

Measles, mumps and meningitis can also cause hearing difficulties.

But "tinnitus is often more bothersome when we are anxious and stressed and not sleeping well," Munro said, all of which have been on the rise during pandemic lockdowns.

Tinnitus is often characterised as a ringing in the ears, but can also sound like buzzing, hissing or clicking.

(More on the link)

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I still have a ringing in both ears, some days its louder than other days, this began about November last year, and last month I thought it was going away, it got very faint for a week of two but came back...

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nivek

As Above So Below
I still have a ringing in both ears, some days its louder than other days, this began about November last year, and last month I thought it was going away, it got very faint for a week of two but came back...

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I don't think I've ever had Covid-19, I don't believe that I've had Covid before but I also cannot explain the ringing in my ears that I never had until last year...I may get an antibody test to see if I've had Covid-19 in the past but didn't know it...

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nivek

As Above So Below
I don't think I've ever had Covid-19, I don't believe that I've had Covid before but I also cannot explain the ringing in my ears that I never had until last year...I may get an antibody test to see if I've had Covid-19 in the past but didn't know it...

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I should add that in 2019 I had a hearing test performed using noise canceling headphones in a booth, it was an annual requirement for the company I worked for back then, and there was no ringing in my ears during that time and I passed the hearing test, no issues...

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nivek

As Above So Below
Arrival of India’s ‘double mutation’ adds to variant woes, but threat posed remains unclear

The UK has found 77 cases of B.1.617, a variant with several concerning traits linked to a sharp surge in cases in India.

How worried should we be about the sudden surge in reporting of new variants of Covid-19 here and abroad? It’s a difficult question and the honest answer is that we will only know for certain in a couple of weeks.

On Monday, the government started surge testing across three big London boroughs after a significant community cluster of the South African variant was detected in Lambeth. Now more than a million Londoners have been asked to come forward and be tested in a bid to stamp it out, plus others living in certain postcodes in and around Birmingham.

Adding to our variant woes, Public Health England’s (PHE) latest data show the arrival of B.1.617 in Britain. Otherwise known as the Indian variant, this version of Covid is thought to be responsible for a sharp surge in cases, which has taken large parts of India to the brink – cases jumped by 70 per cent last week, with a whopping 873,296 new infections.

(More on the link)


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AD1184

Celestial
Arrival of India’s ‘double mutation’ adds to variant woes, but threat posed remains unclear

The UK has found 77 cases of B.1.617, a variant with several concerning traits linked to a sharp surge in cases in India.

How worried should we be about the sudden surge in reporting of new variants of Covid-19 here and abroad? It’s a difficult question and the honest answer is that we will only know for certain in a couple of weeks.

On Monday, the government started surge testing across three big London boroughs after a significant community cluster of the South African variant was detected in Lambeth. Now more than a million Londoners have been asked to come forward and be tested in a bid to stamp it out, plus others living in certain postcodes in and around Birmingham.

Adding to our variant woes, Public Health England’s (PHE) latest data show the arrival of B.1.617 in Britain. Otherwise known as the Indian variant, this version of Covid is thought to be responsible for a sharp surge in cases, which has taken large parts of India to the brink – cases jumped by 70 per cent last week, with a whopping 873,296 new infections.

(More on the link)


View attachment 13967
It is announced that India is to be added to the Britain's 'red list' of countries this Friday. This means that anyone arriving on or after that date has to undergo a 10-day supervised mandatory quarantine in a government-approved hotel. This decision has arrived very late, likely for political reasons in an effort to placate the Indian government. They should be forcing the quarantine on everyone arriving now, and tracing all recent arrivals from India they can find. Those forced into quarantine could have the government foot the bill, if their quarantine starts before Friday. That's a few thousand people, probably, meaning a few million pounds of public money would need to be spent, but what would be the cost of having the Indian variant spreading freely in Britain? Nobody knows, but it is not unrealistic that it could be very dire. The global spread of the UK variant has done untold damage so far.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
It is announced that India is to be added to the Britain's 'red list' of countries this Friday. This means that anyone arriving on or after that date has to undergo a 10-day supervised mandatory quarantine in a government-approved hotel. This decision has arrived very late, likely for political reasons in an effort to placate the Indian government. They should be forcing the quarantine on everyone arriving now, and tracing all recent arrivals from India they can find. Those forced into quarantine could have the government foot the bill, if their quarantine starts before Friday. That's a few thousand people, probably, meaning a few million pounds of public money would need to be spent, but what would be the cost of having the Indian variant spreading freely in Britain? Nobody knows, but it is not unrealistic that it could be very dire. The global spread of the UK variant has done untold damage so far.

The US is increasing the list of countries warning against traveling to because of Covid concerns, but I don't know what countries are banned from traveling here to the US...I don't know if we are allowing Indian travelers here although the India variant has been found in San Francisco already...This mutation could reset the entire pandemic if the vaccines fail to stop it, which is something they do not know yet, how effective our vaccines will be against this new variant...

U.S. will boost 'Do Not Travel' advisories to 80% of world

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nivek

As Above So Below
It's looking like herd immunity is off the table...I think the main problem that would be keeping us from achieving herd immunity is ourselves...It's people who are causing the most problems during this pandemic, not the virus itself, its just riding on our actions, it's people who are prolonging this pandemic, we are doing this to ourselves...We should have taken this thing seriously in early January, actually around when I started this thread...With these new mutations coming up continually and spreading quickly it may be two more years before we see an end to this pandemic...

Is herd immunity to COVID-19 possible? Experts increasingly say no.

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AD1184

Celestial
There are a range of basic reproduction numbers for SARS-CoV-2 given on this Wikipedia page:

Transmission of COVID-19 - Wikipedia

Ranging from 1.4 to 5.7. The basic reproduction number (R₀, or R-nought) is the number of secondary infections from a single case, on average, in an immunologically naive population (i.e. at the very start of the epidemic, when no one has yet had the virus). From this value the herd immunity threshold is calculated.

From the herd immunity threshold, a certain required rate of vaccine coverage is implied, given the vaccine's effectiveness in preventing infection. For a range of R numbers, and a range of vaccine effectivenesses, I have created the following table:

upload_2021-4-20_22-46-17.png

The first column gives the R₀, in increments of 0.1, between the extremes of values on the Wikipedia page. The second column gives the herd immunity threshold at the corresponding R₀ level. The last four columns give the required vaccine coverage for the total population, at four different values of effectiveness (60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%). Coverage values greater than 100% are obviously impossible to achieve.

You may notice that the required vaccine coverage passes 100% when the herd immunity threshold passes the vaccine effectiveness. e.g. For a 60% effective vaccine, the coverage required for a 60% immunity threshold is 100%. In other words, the vaccine effectiveness must exceed the herd immunity threshold for the vaccine to have a chance of being able to grant herd immunity.

The Kent variant of SARS-CoV-2 was said to increase the transmissibility of the disease by 36% over the previous dominant strain of Covid, which is presumably the one whose R₀-vales are given in the Wikipedia page. This would put the range of R₀ between 1.9 and 7.8. The recent Indian strain is said to be out-competing the Kent strain in India, so may have an even greater R₀. Continuing the table down to R₀-values up to 7.8, the picture becomes more apocalyptic:

upload_2021-4-20_22-59-34.png

Not everyone will be medically eligible to be vaccinated. Complicating the picture are those who are either anti-vaccine, or vaccine-hesitant.
 
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nivek

As Above So Below
Yes apocalyptic indeed...

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India's COVID tsunami is the worst in the world. Why that should concern Americans.

In America, it’s easy to believe — and likely correct, given the country’s rapid pace of vaccination and high level of prior infection — that the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

But in India right now, every day is worse than the last.

“In the last 24 hours alone, [India has] had 300,000 cases, and that’s most certainly an undercount,” said Dr. Kavita Patel, a Yahoo News medical contributor. “In some parts of India, like Mumbai and New Delhi, as high as 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 people are testing positive, [and that’s] actually, again, an underestimate. As a result, India’s hospitals are completely full. There is now rationing of everything, including doctors, nurses, oxygen, beds, supplies.”

More than one year into the pandemic, the deepening disparities between two of the world’s largest countries should remind optimistic Americans that the light at the end of their own tunnel remains a long way off for most of the planet’s population — and that it’s probably time for the U.S. to start thinking about how it can help end the pandemic elsewhere too.
At its peak this winter, the U.S. was recording an average of 260,000 new COVID-19 cases each day. Yet after skyrocketing 122 percent over the last 14 days, India’s daily case counts have already crossed that threshold twice this week. The curve is so steep, it’s almost vertical.

If the virus continues to spread at the same clip, according to Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan, India could be averaging half a million new daily cases within the next month — a figure that no other country has ever come close to. Deaths are likely to follow: Over the past two weeks alone, they have soared 128 percent.

f5e423a0-a2bd-11eb-adfe-eac7c18cdfa0


At this point, India accounts for about 1 in every 3 new cases globally. Its rate of spread is the fastest in the world. And the tsunami shows no sign of subsiding anytime soon.

But the bigger problem is that these terrible numbers tell only part of the story. For one thing, India is currently testing at a much lower rate (about 1 test per 1,000 residents per day) than the recent high-water marks in Western countries such as the U.S. (5.5), France (8) or the U.K. (21). Meanwhile, in Delhi, one of India’s hardest-hit areas, test positivity reached 30 percent this week, prompting a six-day lockdown. The combination of inadequate testing and high positivity suggests that hundreds of thousands of infections are going undetected each day.

Many — perhaps most — COVID-19 deaths are being missed as well. India is currently averaging more than 1,100 daily deaths, the second-highest level in the world after Brazil. But as Ramanan Laxminarayan, an economist and epidemiologist who is the founder and director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, explained in a recent interview with the New Yorker, “We don’t know the cause of death for four out of five people in normal times” in India because “only one in five deaths is medically recorded” — and “that has continued during COVID.”

At the same time, Laxminarayan continued, “the levels of testing are so low that the people who didn’t get tested and then died of a stroke or a heart attack that was likely COVID-related would not be reported as a COVID death.”

The undercount, in other words, is probably huge.

(More on the link)

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nivek

As Above So Below
Yes apocalyptic indeed...

India's COVID tsunami is the worst in the world. Why that should concern Americans.

In America, it’s easy to believe — and likely correct, given the country’s rapid pace of vaccination and high level of prior infection — that the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

But in India right now, every day is worse than the last.

“In the last 24 hours alone, [India has] had 300,000 cases, and that’s most certainly an undercount,” said Dr. Kavita Patel, a Yahoo News medical contributor. “In some parts of India, like Mumbai and New Delhi, as high as 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 people are testing positive, [and that’s] actually, again, an underestimate. As a result, India’s hospitals are completely full. There is now rationing of everything, including doctors, nurses, oxygen, beds, supplies.”

More than one year into the pandemic, the deepening disparities between two of the world’s largest countries should remind optimistic Americans that the light at the end of their own tunnel remains a long way off for most of the planet’s population — and that it’s probably time for the U.S. to start thinking about how it can help end the pandemic elsewhere too.
At its peak this winter, the U.S. was recording an average of 260,000 new COVID-19 cases each day. Yet after skyrocketing 122 percent over the last 14 days, India’s daily case counts have already crossed that threshold twice this week. The curve is so steep, it’s almost vertical.

If the virus continues to spread at the same clip, according to Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan, India could be averaging half a million new daily cases within the next month — a figure that no other country has ever come close to. Deaths are likely to follow: Over the past two weeks alone, they have soared 128 percent.

f5e423a0-a2bd-11eb-adfe-eac7c18cdfa0


At this point, India accounts for about 1 in every 3 new cases globally. Its rate of spread is the fastest in the world. And the tsunami shows no sign of subsiding anytime soon.

But the bigger problem is that these terrible numbers tell only part of the story. For one thing, India is currently testing at a much lower rate (about 1 test per 1,000 residents per day) than the recent high-water marks in Western countries such as the U.S. (5.5), France (8) or the U.K. (21). Meanwhile, in Delhi, one of India’s hardest-hit areas, test positivity reached 30 percent this week, prompting a six-day lockdown. The combination of inadequate testing and high positivity suggests that hundreds of thousands of infections are going undetected each day.

Many — perhaps most — COVID-19 deaths are being missed as well. India is currently averaging more than 1,100 daily deaths, the second-highest level in the world after Brazil. But as Ramanan Laxminarayan, an economist and epidemiologist who is the founder and director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, explained in a recent interview with the New Yorker, “We don’t know the cause of death for four out of five people in normal times” in India because “only one in five deaths is medically recorded” — and “that has continued during COVID.”

At the same time, Laxminarayan continued, “the levels of testing are so low that the people who didn’t get tested and then died of a stroke or a heart attack that was likely COVID-related would not be reported as a COVID death.”

The undercount, in other words, is probably huge.

(More on the link)

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Another really bad day in India and as the article above states, these numbers are likely just a fraction of the reality of the situation given the minimal testing and reporting throughout the entire country...Overall in the world almost a million new infections recorded, the more people who get infected per day the higher the chance of a very contagious or deadly mutation or both to emerge...This is not good for any of us...

Screenshot_20210422-225109.jpg
 

JahaRa

Noble
There was an article in yesterday's local paper that our state is getting another surge of cases. One county has been shut down again and others have been put back on restrictions.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
There was an article in yesterday's local paper that our state is getting another surge of cases. One county has been shut down again and others have been put back on restrictions.

It doesn't really show that on Worldometer...It kind of shows a stability in New cases, not going down but not going up in the count...

Screenshot_20210423-140842.jpg
 

nivek

As Above So Below
This is an interesting read, seems there's always one dominate respiratory infection and when Covid took over and the Flu disappeared...When Covid diminishes will the Flu come back with a vengeance or will it return more passive?...

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The Flu Vanished During COVID. What Will Its Return Look Like?

(Excerpts)

“We do not know when it will come back in the United States, but we know it will come back,” said Sonja Olsen, an epidemiologist at the CDC.

Experts are less certain about what will happen when the flu does return.

If immunity to the flu declined during the pandemic because of the lack of exposure to the latest flu strains, more people than usual may be susceptible to the virus.


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nivek

As Above So Below
Covid pandemic over in Britain, say experts

Britain is no longer in a pandemic, experts have said, as new data showed the vaccination programme is reducing symptomatic Covid infections by up to 90 per cent.

In the first large real-world study of the impact of vaccination on the general population, researchers found that the rollout is having a major impact on cutting both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases.

Sarah Walker, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Oxford and Chief Investigator on the Office for National Statistics Covid-19 Infection Survey, said that Britain had ‘moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation’ where the virus is circulating at a low, largely controllable level in the community.

The new research, based on throat swabs from 373,402 people between December 1 last year and April 3, found three weeks after one dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca jab, symptomatic infections fell by 74 per cent and infections without symptoms by 57 per cent.

By two doses, asymptomatic infections were down 70 per cent and symptomatic by 90 per cent.

(More on the link)

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AD1184

Celestial
Covid pandemic over in Britain, say experts

Britain is no longer in a pandemic, experts have said, as new data showed the vaccination programme is reducing symptomatic Covid infections by up to 90 per cent.

In the first large real-world study of the impact of vaccination on the general population, researchers found that the rollout is having a major impact on cutting both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases.

Sarah Walker, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Oxford and Chief Investigator on the Office for National Statistics Covid-19 Infection Survey, said that Britain had ‘moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation’ where the virus is circulating at a low, largely controllable level in the community.

The new research, based on throat swabs from 373,402 people between December 1 last year and April 3, found three weeks after one dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca jab, symptomatic infections fell by 74 per cent and infections without symptoms by 57 per cent.

By two doses, asymptomatic infections were down 70 per cent and symptomatic by 90 per cent.

(More on the link)

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I think this is premature. A large amount of that reduction in cases occurred during a severe lockdown, lasting until the 29th of March. Some restrictions were lifted on that day, but not many. Some more were lifted two weeks later on the 12th of April, but there are still a lot of things that you cannot do. The extent to which the vaccines alone are reducing the rate of new infections is not known. A lot of experts are predicting another massive outbreak in the summer, even though the vaccinated fraction of the population will be even greater by then. Crucially, the effects of new strains that have arisen since the January lockdown is not known. What happens when they are allowed to circulate freely when all restrictions are lifted, even if most people are vaccinated by then?
 

nivek

As Above So Below
There's many vaccination clinics that sit empty now on the days of open vaccinations, not many people are going to get the vaccines around here...I drove by the local clinic yesterday when I drove into town, its a drive thru clinic and no cars in line...No one was getting vaccinated when I passed the place which is a huge difference from a month ago when there were long lines of people waiting...A friend who lives in a bigger city an hour away from me told me the same thing is happening there...I think part of the reason for this are the poor decisions in stopping the J&J vaccine briefly, it put an unwarranted scare into people and many are shying away from getting any vaccine, I don't know for sure...

In my county new infections numbers are minimal and have been that way for a month or so which may be part of the reason many more people are not wearing masks...There's also been a lot less testing than previously, the testing drive thru center has been emptier than it usually has been too...

When I go to the local grocery, 50 percent or more of the customers are maskless now...Some may be vaccinated people who think they are fine now, I don't know...Maybe many people are thinking the pandemic is ending around here too, I don't know and don't understand these signs I'm seeing...

I know I'm making some assumptions here but there's been some changes in people's behaviour regarding the pandemic and its a bit concerning...I think its premature to be shedding the masks and cease being tested...I'm going to the drive thru testing on Monday and get tested even though I'm vaccinated now...I haven't felt sick or anything but there's been some people who have gotten too close to me in the checkouts in the shops, maskless people...It doesn't hurt to get a free test for piece of mind, I think regular testing should continue until this is over...

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nivek

As Above So Below
I think this is premature. A large amount of that reduction in cases occurred during a severe lockdown, lasting until the 29th of March. Some restrictions were lifted on that day, but not many. Some more were lifted two weeks later on the 12th of April, but there are still a lot of things that you cannot do. The extent to which the vaccines alone are reducing the rate of new infections is not known. A lot of experts are predicting another massive outbreak in the summer, even though the vaccinated fraction of the population will be even greater by then. Crucially, the effects of new strains that have arisen since the January lockdown is not known. What happens when they are allowed to circulate freely when all restrictions are lifted, even if most people are vaccinated by then?

I agree its a bit premature considering new variants keep emerging and most of the rest of the world remains unshielded by prior infection or immunization...New mutations emerging is the most concerning to me...

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