doncha sometimes find that each time we've finally achieved some semblance of normalcy and peace, something happens that challenges that serenity? I sure do! But in all fairness, let's give ourselves a break -- this has been a steady, 4-year onslaught of chaotic BS. Covid was just icing on the exploding cake. Pretty insane.
Yes, this is how I often feel nowadays. It is like going through the stages of babyhood/childhood. with your child. You spend the fist 6 weeks of your baby's life trying to figure out how to parent them and as soon as you"master" the process they move on to a different stage. You must begin again trying to figure it all out. Once you "master" that next one they change yet again and you are befuddled for a bit... and it continues. They evolve and so do you.
But I liked learning through those stages.
These days it is like living in a fractured fairy tale story book, only it isn't funny. Well, sometimes it is funny. Laugh out loud funny. But the real life consequences are massive catastrophes.
Deetoo, I am sorry you had to deal with mixed up health records. Nobody should ever deal with that. Glad you are ok and that the other person was as well.
@deetoo yes, it's CYA for the facility, but I kinda feel a bit sorry for that doctor because that's a huge HIPAA violation. If there is an investigation (and I'm sure there will be) and it's found that she did not follow standard protocols, it could cost her license.
@tgraf66, this pandemic has made things strange and stressful for everyone. I do hope the doctor doesn't get in any serious trouble. What I hope does occur is that the facility tweaks some of their protocols, so this won't happen again. In the past the technician would take you into the office where the radiologists were located. At that point you would speak directly to the doctor and sign the form. The tech on the phone said the facility stopped having you sign the form because of Covid. I don't think that's smart because had they kept that procedure in place, I would have immediately seen the other name on the form.
Yesterday the National Cathedral's bell tolled 200 times. 1 toll for every 1,000 people killed during the Pandemic.
It took over 19 minutes for all 200 bell tolls to ring. That is a long time.
https://cathedral.org/event/covid-19-bell-toll/
I'm not sure what, exactly, you mean by covid split in the US to a more contagious version. Are you referring to the D614 mutation of the spike protein? If so, that mutation happened at the start of the outbreak, most likely still in China. It is what made covid so contagious by the time it got to the US. It also became the dominant strain almost instantly upon arrival.
Do you have a link or study name to what you found so I am able to read the study, if it is indeed new?
This is not the first time CDC has shown it's been influenced by financial and political rather than public health interests.
Assuming that testing is widely available in the US (means anyone who needs a test can get one), I wonder whether the White House is pressuring the CDC just to pleasure the President so that numbers don't go up?
The "so that numbers don't go up" would sound like speculation applied to any other WH administration, but given the President himself was recorded saying "I like the numbers where they are", suggesting that he liked to keep numbers as low as possible, there is a precedent.
Yesterday the National Cathedral's bell tolled 200 times. 1 toll for every 1,000 people killed during the Pandemic.
It took over 19 minutes for all 200 bell tolls to ring. That is a long time.
Really really brings its 'home' in a way other news bites couldn't . Something about 'hearing' it in such a different way that totally resonates at a primal, intrinsic level.
Reminds me of the impact of the cheering and clapping that New Yorkers do every night at 7 p.m.
It makes me think that even music must go to the most basic root of the sounds themselves. Harmonic convergence and all of its symbolism and a whole lot more.
I'm going to start paying attention to the sound created within the sound bites more closely. There's definitely messages in the mediums!
I
@mas1581. Sorry not to have included the link to a story that came out yesterday. 9.23.20 WAPO: Massive genetic study shows Coronavirus mutating and potentially evolving admit U.S. Spread.
One of the sequences they identified is more contagious and this is now happening when the virus is spreading within the U.S., thanks to the president and his followers.
Thats the one I read and referred to. Its just a simple mutation to make it more transmissible, which happened very early on in the virus timeline-probably while it was still contained in China. If you recall our phone conversation, I had said that it will most likely mutate to become more transmissible and less deadly, which will help its survival, and end up becoming one of our seasonal illnesses that we just deal with like the flu. Its mutating slowly, which does give more hope than I expected to a vaccine but our kids and grandkids will think little of it in the future just as we don't think that much of seasonal influenza viruses(one of which is a mutated version of the Spanish flu)
@mas1581 Thanks for clarifying. I do remember you making the point quite a while back of it mutating to a more transmissible, less dangerous seasonal illness. I am assuming you read yesterday's article about this new study, and am now wondering why it made headlines yesterday if it is old news. The article said it was a new study based on the spread in Houston, just released and not peer reviewed yet. So you are saying that that the particular mutation they identified is the same one identified back in China although it is here spreading through the Houston population. Some experts seemed concerned because as long as the U .S. fails to control the spread of Covid, it gives it more opportunities to mutate in new ways and we could end up with something that is both virulent and more transmissible instead of more transmissible but less virulent.
The study was released because it showed that the dominance of the more more transmissible version is growing. I could be wrong on the numbers but early on, it showed 71%(I think) of the mapped genomes had the mutation and now it is 99%. Its really not a study that has any use for the lay public.
As far as it mutating more being more widespread, that is a legit concern, but most mutations either render the virus incompetent of reproducing or have no actual affect on its performance. I know movies like to make the virus mutation causing it to be much more deadly but in reality that almost never happens. Over time the mutations that survive and become common in the species are the ones that help it survive and reproduce. Killing hosts does the opposite.
Lets look at it as a an end game situation.
1. Covid mutates and gets more transmissible and deadlier. That wipes out half human population in a matter of a year. The virus then has only immune people to infect and it dies out almost instantly with nowhere to go.
2. Covid becomes more transmissible but becomes less deadly and only kills those previously weakened. 99% of the population survives and it now has billions of people left to infect with new people born every day to be hosts. It lives forever(or close to it). This is what happened with the Spanish Flu. Seemingly minor mutations(it mutates quicker than covid btw) coupled with a growing medical knowledge of it caused it to become less deadly and more transmissible and 100 years later it is still going strong and killing only those very weak to begin with. The quick mutation is also why there is a yearly minor change in the vaccine and we have to get a new one every fall but its only 25-50% effective in adults.
@mas1581 I did a quick scan and saw that people will eventually be immune to it with some side effects, i.e. becomes less virulent similar to the Spanish Flu. Eventually, it will no longer be deadly.
When I try to see when COVID is no longer a concern in the US, I see a calender with a 95% probability by mid-March of next year.
A recent ( September ) choir practice in Spain appears to have infected 30 of 41 members with Covid. They rehearsed indoors, windows closed with air-conditioning on.
https://news.yahoo.com/choir-practice-spain-infects-30-111822296.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=fb
@lovendures. I just read that story. What is so ironic about it is that they were rehearsing for an outdoor event. Why did they feel they had to rehearse indoors which is so unsafe? What are people thinking?
God help Florida. They are going to open bars and restaurants at full capacity.
Exactly what I thought Jeanne. We have known for MONTHS that this leads toa HUGE spread of the virus.
@jessi1978. I would call that a GOP election decision. They don't care what happens after November 3rd. They figure the numbers won't start skyrocketing and the hospitals filling to capacity until after the election.
Glad you're seeing next spring and its not a complete surprise to me. Covid is strange in how it affects people and much different than most other viruses. We have the numbers of confirmed cases, which covers about 3% of the US population-far from herd immunity with almost no chance of getting there naturally. That said, if you add asymptoxalic cases that have test at 10 to as high as 25x the confirmed numbers in small samples, we really have no clue how widespread it is, nor will we ever.
(Only speculation of a possibility with no actual proven facts to back it up other than deductive reasoning of one slimly possible explanation)What we are seeing is covid could be exposing 50-75% of the population by now and the only people testing positive or getting sick are those that can be infected. With such a transmissible disease and so many stupid people exposing themselves to superspreader events but not getting sick or even infected, it could be that a majority of the population is already immune. Coupled with finding shed viruses in sewage almost a year before it started with no uptick in related diagnoses(pneimonia/stroke/etc) during that time, it does allow for this possibility to be plausible.
If it is to be pretty much gone before the schoolyard is out, either a vaccine must be a lot more effective than any virology is expecting, or the population has to be already vastly immune. I hope you are right and we can move past this quickly-for all of our safety and sanity.
...finding shed viruses in sewage almost a year before it started...
This is very interesting to me. Not that they found shed viruses, but that they found them almost a year before this mess started. I may have mentioned this before, but I had some kind of respiratory disease that - now that I think about it - matched many of the Covid-19 symptoms, but I had it in January-February of 2019. Several of my colleagues at work had the same thing in the same time period, and it took nearly six weeks for the lung issues to go away after "recovering". It was just written off as some unknown flu at the time.