No info is posted about COVID hospitalizations among children:
Children 5 -17 yrs: U.S.
↗️ COVID Hospitalizations
While other age groups are seeing a decline in hospitalizations, school-age children's hospitalization levels are back up to late December/early January levels.
Why is this happening?
Due to the transmission in classrooms and homes.
Although we don't see the exponential growth resume after winter break by looking at wastewater and hospitalization data that encompasses all ages, we do see it in the
air sampling & PCR testing studies, and this hospitalization data. After the initial decline from winter break, by mid-January, the hospitalizations started increasing again.
Together, they show us that COVID is spreading in schools and that it leads to preventable acute illness, #LongCOVID, and hospitalizations.
Thanks for the feedback! I will be sure to post about age differences in the next state of affairs!! It's challenging to keep these under 1000 words ;)
I do have a graph of trends in recent hospitalizations in 5-17 year olds, which, after briefly declining, have trended upward again, but as it is a graphic and I don't have a link to it, I don't have a way of posting here. I could potentially email it to you, though for posting/comments, if I had a good address to send it.
My county has air samplers testing for COVID and influenza in schools. The data lags a little, but a couple weeks ago, 25 of 26 samplers detected COVID. Absences due to any illness are still pretty high in our schools.
I remember when we were concerned about kids missing school...
With the new CDC isolation guidelines, sick kids won't be missing school. They will just infect one another, as well as oft vulnerable teachers and their families.
I don't think that will make much difference when it comes to school. No one was paying attention to the guidelines before the change anyway, and I live in a state and city that had some of the strictest COVID restrictions and procedures a couple of years ago.
Kids stay home because they feel sick. I also think parents have been leaning more towards keeping slightly ill kids to school when, before the pandemic, they would have sent them because of all the publicity around illness during that time. This is a good thing because it slows the transmission of illness, but it does make it hard for teachers when a bigger chunk of students is absent more often.
Teacher absences and shortages of subs are an even bigger problem. This is because teachers are getting sick with COVID from kids, as well as through their own activities outside of school.
COVID restrictions need to be not mere guidelines. They need to be enforced with teeth, including fines and jail terms for sending sick children to school. But that can only happen if we mandate that employers provide paid leave to care for sick children.
That is what has been going on this whole school year- sick kids at school. Our school said kids should be at school unless they have fever or vomiting. No quarantines. It is ok to come to school if you are not feeling well.
Completely astonished that 20 to upwards of 30 percent of those surveyed had not heard of long COVID. That's an astonishing level of collective ignorance that we will be paying for as a society for decades to come, unless better treatments become more widely available and quickly.
Agreed. It concerns me that more and more of the populace seems to have just checked out on the information front. Perhaps they've given up thinking critically about what information sources are trustworthy (if they ever had that ability) or perhaps the anxiety caused by all the noise - misinformation and disinformation - in the infosphere has just overwhelmed them. I see this as a public mental health issue.
It’s also a glaring public health failure - maybe a measure of the success (?) with which the hazards of infection and esp. of repeated infections beyond those hazards in the acute phase were minimized by public health authorities, in order to keep people coming to work and spending in stores and restaurants. Is it coincidental that the age group with the least awareness is where most low-level public-facing service industry employees belong? I wonder.
I've seen that some politicians have minimized the hazards of COVID and encouraged people to go back to work and to get out there and spend! spend! spend! Aside from the complicit sh*ts behind the Great Barrington Declaration, Ladapo the moron, and their ilk I can't say that I've seen that public health authorities as a general class have been that kind of wrong.
I wish I were more confident that the overwhelming focus on only the acute phase effects were not a purposeful, cynical choice made behind the scenes for political and economic reasons, but with the changes in back to school protocols, the transitions in CDC isolation guidance from 10 days to 5 days to 1, the change in metrics for infection controls to hospital surge capacity vs new infections, the lack of funding for home testing etc., I think the evidence is strongly in favor of a conscious downplaying of known LC risks and the risks of repeat infections for short-term political and economic reasons - while all the time knowing that making our current and future workforce sicker and less able to function will create bigger problems down the line absent effective treatments for LC. I've just sat in on too many briefings and listened to too many news conferences talking about how young people and children tend to not get seriously ill to think the lack of awareness of LC risks is not a desired end on the part of those in authority generally, whether politicians or in PH.
I guess I'm just unwilling to dedicate any of my personal bandwidth to the trope that there is widespread deliberate effort to downplay the acute and/or long-term risks and effects of COVID in the service of some arcane political or economic agenda. IMO it's a non-partisan psychosocial issue that PH professionals are neither trained or equipped to address.
I see the fact that 20%-30% of the populace doesn't know about long COVID as a failure of that cohort, not of the "authorities" - the information is widely available but some people just don't care.
When I first saw the preliminary estimates of the rate of long COVID it was obvious that it would likely lead to the largest increase in the disabled population in history. I think the public health community and the public/private disability support establishment are simply paralyzed by the horror of it.
Personal anecdote - I stupidly went un-masked on a cross-country round-trip flight in December 2022, and caught COVID despite being current on boosters. Lab tested for XBB. Had a mild case but experienced persistent fatigue and brain fog for months afterward. I had chemoradiation for cancer of the head and neck in 2009 so I'm unsure if the brain fog is from the chemo or just old age, but the COVID infection could not have helped.
The more concrete issue for me is that at my regular visit with my PCP in March 2023 we discovered that my HbA1C had jumped from around 6 to over 8 and now I'm being treated for T2 diabetes. As annoying as that is for me personally, the fact that long COVID is likely increasing the general healthcare cost burden of diabetes bothers me more - and increased diabetes is likely a small part of the larger long COVID burden.
I'm T2 diabetic, too, and the bump in blood sugar levels is a definite thing. We've had it once, when our kids persuaded us to eat out with them on vacation, and I saw the same effect. I honestly don't know what to think anymore, and as regards our PH authorities and medical professionals, it could also be just another instance of their paying much more attention to the immediate versus the future as opposed to something more pernicious - our medical profession has never been great at diagnosing and dealing with chronic illness, and particularly where the symptomology is all over the map and where women have tended to be more affected than men. Unfortunately the effect of the collective ignorance will still be the same, in any case - I firmly believe there will be consequences that will not be fully appreciated for years to come, and one of the first questions to be asked on medical background forms will be "Were you ever diagnosed as having been infected with COVID-19?", with the follow-up being "How many times have you been infected with COVID-19?".
I find it very telling that COVID-19, the continuously leading cause of death by an infectious disease in the United States, only receives a few sentences at the end your report, whereas the infinitesimal amount of measles is up front and centered with several paragraphs. You cite a “lack of trust” as one contributing factor and I urge you to look in the mirror for an answer as to why nobody takes these public health threats seriously anymore. If 1,000 Americans are dying every week of COVID, and nobody with a platform in public health does anything to sound the alarm and advocate for mitigation (and in your case, rationalize the reduction of mitigations,) why the hell do you think they will care about any other diseases?!
I don't presume to speak for Dr. Jetelina, but public health professionals have been trying for three years to drive home the personal responsibilities that people have to prevent the spread of COVID. The data show that the vast majority of current COVID hospitalizations (and presumably deaths) are in people who aren't up to date on booster vaccinations - a mitigation Dr. Jetelina and other experts "advocate for" every day. People who aren't keeping up on vaccinations are likely not masking, isolating, or social distancing either - they have refused every bit of personal responsibility that public health professionals have been advocating for since 2020.
The reason for the focus on measles is that it is over ten times as infectious as COVID - it's the most infectious disease known. The case fatality rate in can be up to 15% - far higher than COVID. Individual immunity from vaccination (or from infection, in survivors) lasts for a lifetime, which means these days it's most easily transmitted in children. There's a high rate of blindness in children who survive a measles infection, and some who survive are crippled or later killed by encephalitis or pneumonia.
Don't know about you, but my system of values says COVID killing old people who refuse to vaccinate and practice other individual mitigations is less of a problem than measles killing and maiming children whose parents refuse to vaccinate. "Lack of trust" is a you problem.
All your bluster boils down to “public health officials tried to explain the issues but people are too dumb to listen!” This is a failed and wildly conceited form of paternalism— not to mention completely blind to the plight of disabled and immune compromised people who are vulnerable and burdened with the risk no matter how many precautions they personally take.
People aren’t listening precisely because public health careerists fall in line with the institutional bipartisan party politics of national and local agencies desperate for normalization and the public see that as a tacit form of permission to ignore the pandemic and get back to work and maximal economic consumption.
It’s a very convenient form of manufacturing consent. Instead of engaging in any form of sustained advocacy or taking any professional risk to denounce minimization, we see time and time again that public health officials would rather join the race to the bottom and try to “meet people where they are”— instead of recognize that they are instrumental in silently pointing people where they have ended up.
Don’t know about you, but I find it curiously myopic and selective to fixate on a potential future problem of measles instead of address the current pandemic that is also having a negative impact on children’s health and see them as inextricably connected as failures. “Lack of trust” is a problem you don’t have to help rationalize, but thanks for the comment, John!
"Bluster"? Yeah, that's projection. Are you disabled or immunocompromised? I bet not, but whatever - you seem like the type of anon who would lie about it online. Talk about paternalism - more projection.
"People aren't listening..."? Really? Perhaps it's you that isn't listening, because "blah blah careerist blah blah institutional blah blah normalization blah blah maximum economic consumption (I especially like that one) blah blah manufacturing consent blah blah race to the bottom blah blah blah dee dee blah blah."
Apparently your myopia prevents you from seeing that there's actually more than one thing that public health professionals need to address at a time. I'm thankful that the ones I know, as well as Dr. Jetelina, actually can chew gum and type - and the simple truth is that in their professional circles there's an ongoing discussion of how to improve their individual and collective communication skills.
But hey - keep up that oh so productive outrage, keyboard warrior!
There are other things that need to be addressed besides Covid but Covid deaths are almost certainly the highest of all those diseases right now and should be highlighted more than they are now. The acceptance of the new “normal” is disheartening.
When I see my PCP we discuss infectious disease risk (all ILI, including COVID), but truth be told we're more focused on heart disease and cancer. I agree that the number of deaths due to COVID is an ongoing tragedy. I have yet to see anyone explain how making it the number one topic in every current communication from the professional public health community will change the behaviors of the people who seem committed to increasing their risk of death by refusing to vaccinate and practice other mitigation strategies. My frustration with this mindset is obvious.
I am completely in accord with your frustration over the "mindset". But I am even more concerned about the impact of those people's behavior on others. If it were only a matter of risking death themselves, I wouldn't mind so much, but the total disregard for any obligation to their community is infuriating. Regarding the public health expert commentary on social risks of illness, I think that not focusing the most, not all, attention on the Covid situation is tantamount to being complicit in the blitheful spirit of ignoring the current risk of the situation, especially when changing people's behavior could save so many lives of others. The mass media has virtually dropped the topic - it's no longer part of the "news cycle". I realize the task may be hopeless - reaching the "unbelievers" with very vocal warnings - but the alternative, trying to avoid stridency, that seems to have been chosen, really is less useful because it is a source of "confirmation" to those who want an excuse for not addressing the problem. That mindset has been adopted by virtually all our leaders in every sphere, especially politicians who are reluctant to lead, but follow the large majority of a selfish public. Why "rock the boat" is the prevailing attitude and I feel even our public health authorities have fallen back in the face of public pressure to conform. That is human nature and the natural tendency of institutions as well.
lol. Look, I’m sorry I triggered you so much, John. Yes, I am immunocompromised and disabled, but I appreciate your automatic disbelief that people have different risks and privileges than you and aren’t trying to push a failing Substack brand. That’s typical of people who pretend to be “progressive”— especially those with vineyards. Best of luck with your oh so fruitful retirement berating people in the comment section! 👍
Given a choice between an advanced degree in communication or advanced degrees in statistics and life sciences, I hope Dr. Jetelina opts for statistics and life sciences, otherwise she would be claimed by the advertising industry. At this point, the population that grasps her messaging and reasoning are probably 99% vaccinated and wearing a mask in appropriate circumstances. The rest are the providence of political authorities.
I’m sorry— I have no idea what you’re asking me or who Paul is! I’m not new to Substack per se, just tired of silently lurking while I watch the most infuriating pandemic minimization from a once useful source of information.
Ah— okay. Well, I find Dr. Eric Topol’s Substack useful for general updates on COVID science. As far as up to date infection data, check out Dr. Hoerger’s Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative for biweekly COVID forecasting and wastewater data.
Media attention has dwindled to next to nothing. However, dedicated researchers around the world are still paying close attention. The nextstrain.org website has up-to-date information on new strain emergence (https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global/6m) back to the beginning.
I don't think the media will report on any of this until a new, more virulent strain emerges, one that bypasses existing population immunity.
Something worth mentioning with poor vaccine uptake is the method of distribution and lack of oversight therof. My husband and I dutifully scheduled our booster (maybe we've had7-8 Covid shots now) with CVS two weeks ago. We went this morning at the scheduled time (after numerous reminder texts) only to get to the pharmacy desk and be told ‘we’re out of pfizer, call back tomorrow’. There a
Was a large sign that said ‘WALK INS WELCOME’. So I guess they gave our shots away and forgot to tell us.
Hell of a way to manage a vaccine fatigued population but a good explaination of poor vaccine uptake. We’ll go back, but so many will or can not.
Let’s give CVS and Walgreens credit for mismanaging distribution.
Thanks for providing an avenue for my frustrations.
Invaluable, as always. So grateful to you for all you do. Very worrying about measles, covid vax uptake, and decreasing vax uptake generally. These are worrisome times, for sure.
Meanwhile, we're on track to miss another opportunity to promote childhood vaccination in the U.S. The expanded child tax credit passed by an overwhelming margin in the House. It's currently stalled in the Senate. This would be a golden opportunity to follow Australia's lead, and introduce a "no jab no pay" policy - make any expanded child tax credit contingent on making sure your kids are caught up on all their recommended vaccines.
@DM. Unfortunately on both left and right you find a lot of anti vaxxers. Neither Trump nor Biden fall into that category. But RFKJr, erstwhile Dem, does, as one example.
We have to ask why there has been such widespread distrust in the vaccine. In part it is due to the awful messaging from the govt, for example, Fauci’s pronouncement that masks were useless, something he knew to be a lie, and which in the end he had to take back. The same problem exists with our msm which has told big lies repeatedly, eg., WMD in Iraq. What effect do you suppose that has on credibility in other areas?
An enthusiastic thank you from a (fairly) knowledgeable subscriber. I like to keep up with many aspects of biology (my major at UC Davis); your postings help me do so.
If you want to get Republicans to get the vaccine for Covid, then remind them that Trump’s “Warp Speed” initiative sped up the development and deployment of the vaccines.
This is not done by the media, I presume, because it might promote Trump. But public health - and the truth, so often sacrificed to politics by bot Parties in the US in this pandemic, are more important.
Interestingly, at one point Trump himself brought up the Warp Speed success at one of his rallies. It met with waves of boos at reference to the vaccine, so he abruptly dropped it and it's never been mentioned by him or his campaign since, to the best of my knowledge.
just a big thank you for all the information you give us that no one else is supplying
I rely on your reporting to access risk factors
No info is posted about COVID hospitalizations among children:
Children 5 -17 yrs: U.S.
↗️ COVID Hospitalizations
While other age groups are seeing a decline in hospitalizations, school-age children's hospitalization levels are back up to late December/early January levels.
Why is this happening?
Due to the transmission in classrooms and homes.
Although we don't see the exponential growth resume after winter break by looking at wastewater and hospitalization data that encompasses all ages, we do see it in the
air sampling & PCR testing studies, and this hospitalization data. After the initial decline from winter break, by mid-January, the hospitalizations started increasing again.
Together, they show us that COVID is spreading in schools and that it leads to preventable acute illness, #LongCOVID, and hospitalizations.
Thanks for the feedback! I will be sure to post about age differences in the next state of affairs!! It's challenging to keep these under 1000 words ;)
I do have a graph of trends in recent hospitalizations in 5-17 year olds, which, after briefly declining, have trended upward again, but as it is a graphic and I don't have a link to it, I don't have a way of posting here. I could potentially email it to you, though for posting/comments, if I had a good address to send it.
My county has air samplers testing for COVID and influenza in schools. The data lags a little, but a couple weeks ago, 25 of 26 samplers detected COVID. Absences due to any illness are still pretty high in our schools.
I remember when we were concerned about kids missing school...
With the new CDC isolation guidelines, sick kids won't be missing school. They will just infect one another, as well as oft vulnerable teachers and their families.
I don't think that will make much difference when it comes to school. No one was paying attention to the guidelines before the change anyway, and I live in a state and city that had some of the strictest COVID restrictions and procedures a couple of years ago.
Kids stay home because they feel sick. I also think parents have been leaning more towards keeping slightly ill kids to school when, before the pandemic, they would have sent them because of all the publicity around illness during that time. This is a good thing because it slows the transmission of illness, but it does make it hard for teachers when a bigger chunk of students is absent more often.
Teacher absences and shortages of subs are an even bigger problem. This is because teachers are getting sick with COVID from kids, as well as through their own activities outside of school.
COVID restrictions need to be not mere guidelines. They need to be enforced with teeth, including fines and jail terms for sending sick children to school. But that can only happen if we mandate that employers provide paid leave to care for sick children.
That is what has been going on this whole school year- sick kids at school. Our school said kids should be at school unless they have fever or vomiting. No quarantines. It is ok to come to school if you are not feeling well.
YLE, we are looking forward to your take on Spring booster for senior citizens.
Measles? Measles?!? How is it we are talking about a measles outbreak in 2024!?! Misinformation is its own epidemic ...
Think Migrants crossing the border. Think no one in more than 40 years has had a measles shot.
About misinformation..... Katelyn has all along been battling exactly that.
Completely astonished that 20 to upwards of 30 percent of those surveyed had not heard of long COVID. That's an astonishing level of collective ignorance that we will be paying for as a society for decades to come, unless better treatments become more widely available and quickly.
Agreed. It concerns me that more and more of the populace seems to have just checked out on the information front. Perhaps they've given up thinking critically about what information sources are trustworthy (if they ever had that ability) or perhaps the anxiety caused by all the noise - misinformation and disinformation - in the infosphere has just overwhelmed them. I see this as a public mental health issue.
It’s also a glaring public health failure - maybe a measure of the success (?) with which the hazards of infection and esp. of repeated infections beyond those hazards in the acute phase were minimized by public health authorities, in order to keep people coming to work and spending in stores and restaurants. Is it coincidental that the age group with the least awareness is where most low-level public-facing service industry employees belong? I wonder.
I've seen that some politicians have minimized the hazards of COVID and encouraged people to go back to work and to get out there and spend! spend! spend! Aside from the complicit sh*ts behind the Great Barrington Declaration, Ladapo the moron, and their ilk I can't say that I've seen that public health authorities as a general class have been that kind of wrong.
I wish I were more confident that the overwhelming focus on only the acute phase effects were not a purposeful, cynical choice made behind the scenes for political and economic reasons, but with the changes in back to school protocols, the transitions in CDC isolation guidance from 10 days to 5 days to 1, the change in metrics for infection controls to hospital surge capacity vs new infections, the lack of funding for home testing etc., I think the evidence is strongly in favor of a conscious downplaying of known LC risks and the risks of repeat infections for short-term political and economic reasons - while all the time knowing that making our current and future workforce sicker and less able to function will create bigger problems down the line absent effective treatments for LC. I've just sat in on too many briefings and listened to too many news conferences talking about how young people and children tend to not get seriously ill to think the lack of awareness of LC risks is not a desired end on the part of those in authority generally, whether politicians or in PH.
I guess I'm just unwilling to dedicate any of my personal bandwidth to the trope that there is widespread deliberate effort to downplay the acute and/or long-term risks and effects of COVID in the service of some arcane political or economic agenda. IMO it's a non-partisan psychosocial issue that PH professionals are neither trained or equipped to address.
I see the fact that 20%-30% of the populace doesn't know about long COVID as a failure of that cohort, not of the "authorities" - the information is widely available but some people just don't care.
When I first saw the preliminary estimates of the rate of long COVID it was obvious that it would likely lead to the largest increase in the disabled population in history. I think the public health community and the public/private disability support establishment are simply paralyzed by the horror of it.
Personal anecdote - I stupidly went un-masked on a cross-country round-trip flight in December 2022, and caught COVID despite being current on boosters. Lab tested for XBB. Had a mild case but experienced persistent fatigue and brain fog for months afterward. I had chemoradiation for cancer of the head and neck in 2009 so I'm unsure if the brain fog is from the chemo or just old age, but the COVID infection could not have helped.
The more concrete issue for me is that at my regular visit with my PCP in March 2023 we discovered that my HbA1C had jumped from around 6 to over 8 and now I'm being treated for T2 diabetes. As annoying as that is for me personally, the fact that long COVID is likely increasing the general healthcare cost burden of diabetes bothers me more - and increased diabetes is likely a small part of the larger long COVID burden.
I'm T2 diabetic, too, and the bump in blood sugar levels is a definite thing. We've had it once, when our kids persuaded us to eat out with them on vacation, and I saw the same effect. I honestly don't know what to think anymore, and as regards our PH authorities and medical professionals, it could also be just another instance of their paying much more attention to the immediate versus the future as opposed to something more pernicious - our medical profession has never been great at diagnosing and dealing with chronic illness, and particularly where the symptomology is all over the map and where women have tended to be more affected than men. Unfortunately the effect of the collective ignorance will still be the same, in any case - I firmly believe there will be consequences that will not be fully appreciated for years to come, and one of the first questions to be asked on medical background forms will be "Were you ever diagnosed as having been infected with COVID-19?", with the follow-up being "How many times have you been infected with COVID-19?".
Your posts are invaluable.
I find it very telling that COVID-19, the continuously leading cause of death by an infectious disease in the United States, only receives a few sentences at the end your report, whereas the infinitesimal amount of measles is up front and centered with several paragraphs. You cite a “lack of trust” as one contributing factor and I urge you to look in the mirror for an answer as to why nobody takes these public health threats seriously anymore. If 1,000 Americans are dying every week of COVID, and nobody with a platform in public health does anything to sound the alarm and advocate for mitigation (and in your case, rationalize the reduction of mitigations,) why the hell do you think they will care about any other diseases?!
I don't presume to speak for Dr. Jetelina, but public health professionals have been trying for three years to drive home the personal responsibilities that people have to prevent the spread of COVID. The data show that the vast majority of current COVID hospitalizations (and presumably deaths) are in people who aren't up to date on booster vaccinations - a mitigation Dr. Jetelina and other experts "advocate for" every day. People who aren't keeping up on vaccinations are likely not masking, isolating, or social distancing either - they have refused every bit of personal responsibility that public health professionals have been advocating for since 2020.
The reason for the focus on measles is that it is over ten times as infectious as COVID - it's the most infectious disease known. The case fatality rate in can be up to 15% - far higher than COVID. Individual immunity from vaccination (or from infection, in survivors) lasts for a lifetime, which means these days it's most easily transmitted in children. There's a high rate of blindness in children who survive a measles infection, and some who survive are crippled or later killed by encephalitis or pneumonia.
Don't know about you, but my system of values says COVID killing old people who refuse to vaccinate and practice other individual mitigations is less of a problem than measles killing and maiming children whose parents refuse to vaccinate. "Lack of trust" is a you problem.
All your bluster boils down to “public health officials tried to explain the issues but people are too dumb to listen!” This is a failed and wildly conceited form of paternalism— not to mention completely blind to the plight of disabled and immune compromised people who are vulnerable and burdened with the risk no matter how many precautions they personally take.
People aren’t listening precisely because public health careerists fall in line with the institutional bipartisan party politics of national and local agencies desperate for normalization and the public see that as a tacit form of permission to ignore the pandemic and get back to work and maximal economic consumption.
It’s a very convenient form of manufacturing consent. Instead of engaging in any form of sustained advocacy or taking any professional risk to denounce minimization, we see time and time again that public health officials would rather join the race to the bottom and try to “meet people where they are”— instead of recognize that they are instrumental in silently pointing people where they have ended up.
Don’t know about you, but I find it curiously myopic and selective to fixate on a potential future problem of measles instead of address the current pandemic that is also having a negative impact on children’s health and see them as inextricably connected as failures. “Lack of trust” is a problem you don’t have to help rationalize, but thanks for the comment, John!
Very well expressed
"Bluster"? Yeah, that's projection. Are you disabled or immunocompromised? I bet not, but whatever - you seem like the type of anon who would lie about it online. Talk about paternalism - more projection.
"People aren't listening..."? Really? Perhaps it's you that isn't listening, because "blah blah careerist blah blah institutional blah blah normalization blah blah maximum economic consumption (I especially like that one) blah blah manufacturing consent blah blah race to the bottom blah blah blah dee dee blah blah."
Apparently your myopia prevents you from seeing that there's actually more than one thing that public health professionals need to address at a time. I'm thankful that the ones I know, as well as Dr. Jetelina, actually can chew gum and type - and the simple truth is that in their professional circles there's an ongoing discussion of how to improve their individual and collective communication skills.
But hey - keep up that oh so productive outrage, keyboard warrior!
There are other things that need to be addressed besides Covid but Covid deaths are almost certainly the highest of all those diseases right now and should be highlighted more than they are now. The acceptance of the new “normal” is disheartening.
When I see my PCP we discuss infectious disease risk (all ILI, including COVID), but truth be told we're more focused on heart disease and cancer. I agree that the number of deaths due to COVID is an ongoing tragedy. I have yet to see anyone explain how making it the number one topic in every current communication from the professional public health community will change the behaviors of the people who seem committed to increasing their risk of death by refusing to vaccinate and practice other mitigation strategies. My frustration with this mindset is obvious.
I am completely in accord with your frustration over the "mindset". But I am even more concerned about the impact of those people's behavior on others. If it were only a matter of risking death themselves, I wouldn't mind so much, but the total disregard for any obligation to their community is infuriating. Regarding the public health expert commentary on social risks of illness, I think that not focusing the most, not all, attention on the Covid situation is tantamount to being complicit in the blitheful spirit of ignoring the current risk of the situation, especially when changing people's behavior could save so many lives of others. The mass media has virtually dropped the topic - it's no longer part of the "news cycle". I realize the task may be hopeless - reaching the "unbelievers" with very vocal warnings - but the alternative, trying to avoid stridency, that seems to have been chosen, really is less useful because it is a source of "confirmation" to those who want an excuse for not addressing the problem. That mindset has been adopted by virtually all our leaders in every sphere, especially politicians who are reluctant to lead, but follow the large majority of a selfish public. Why "rock the boat" is the prevailing attitude and I feel even our public health authorities have fallen back in the face of public pressure to conform. That is human nature and the natural tendency of institutions as well.
lol. Look, I’m sorry I triggered you so much, John. Yes, I am immunocompromised and disabled, but I appreciate your automatic disbelief that people have different risks and privileges than you and aren’t trying to push a failing Substack brand. That’s typical of people who pretend to be “progressive”— especially those with vineyards. Best of luck with your oh so fruitful retirement berating people in the comment section! 👍
Given a choice between an advanced degree in communication or advanced degrees in statistics and life sciences, I hope Dr. Jetelina opts for statistics and life sciences, otherwise she would be claimed by the advertising industry. At this point, the population that grasps her messaging and reasoning are probably 99% vaccinated and wearing a mask in appropriate circumstances. The rest are the providence of political authorities.
Yo, Jay -
You must be new in this substack. (is it you, Paul?) Read the previous posts.
Do you know of a "mo betta da kine" source of concise information, written in plain language?
I’m sorry— I have no idea what you’re asking me or who Paul is! I’m not new to Substack per se, just tired of silently lurking while I watch the most infuriating pandemic minimization from a once useful source of information.
Do you know of a more complete, easily understood, source of the status of communicable diseases info than Dr Katelyn's posts ?
Ah— okay. Well, I find Dr. Eric Topol’s Substack useful for general updates on COVID science. As far as up to date infection data, check out Dr. Hoerger’s Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative for biweekly COVID forecasting and wastewater data.
I follow Eric Topol too, but didn't know about Dr. Hoerger. Where can I find his biweekly information?
Check him out at the link below! I also recommend The People’s CDC as well.
https://www.pmc19.com/data/index.php
https://peoplescdc.org
We don't hear about new Covid variants anymore. Has the virus stopped mutating significantly? Has research into the virus stopped?
Media attention has dwindled to next to nothing. However, dedicated researchers around the world are still paying close attention. The nextstrain.org website has up-to-date information on new strain emergence (https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global/6m) back to the beginning.
I don't think the media will report on any of this until a new, more virulent strain emerges, one that bypasses existing population immunity.
Something worth mentioning with poor vaccine uptake is the method of distribution and lack of oversight therof. My husband and I dutifully scheduled our booster (maybe we've had7-8 Covid shots now) with CVS two weeks ago. We went this morning at the scheduled time (after numerous reminder texts) only to get to the pharmacy desk and be told ‘we’re out of pfizer, call back tomorrow’. There a
Was a large sign that said ‘WALK INS WELCOME’. So I guess they gave our shots away and forgot to tell us.
Hell of a way to manage a vaccine fatigued population but a good explaination of poor vaccine uptake. We’ll go back, but so many will or can not.
Let’s give CVS and Walgreens credit for mismanaging distribution.
Thanks for providing an avenue for my frustrations.
Great info as always, thank you! Any info on the efficacy of the Novavax vaccine?
Invaluable, as always. So grateful to you for all you do. Very worrying about measles, covid vax uptake, and decreasing vax uptake generally. These are worrisome times, for sure.
Meanwhile, we're on track to miss another opportunity to promote childhood vaccination in the U.S. The expanded child tax credit passed by an overwhelming margin in the House. It's currently stalled in the Senate. This would be a golden opportunity to follow Australia's lead, and introduce a "no jab no pay" policy - make any expanded child tax credit contingent on making sure your kids are caught up on all their recommended vaccines.
@DM. Unfortunately on both left and right you find a lot of anti vaxxers. Neither Trump nor Biden fall into that category. But RFKJr, erstwhile Dem, does, as one example.
We have to ask why there has been such widespread distrust in the vaccine. In part it is due to the awful messaging from the govt, for example, Fauci’s pronouncement that masks were useless, something he knew to be a lie, and which in the end he had to take back. The same problem exists with our msm which has told big lies repeatedly, eg., WMD in Iraq. What effect do you suppose that has on credibility in other areas?
Doing a bit of Geneology this evening, one of my ancestors:
Born: 20 December, 1892
Died: 23 April, 1918 (25 years, 4 months, 4 days)
Death was due to measles and pneumonia.
Why people want to go back to burying their children is a mystery to me.
An enthusiastic thank you from a (fairly) knowledgeable subscriber. I like to keep up with many aspects of biology (my major at UC Davis); your postings help me do so.
If you want to get Republicans to get the vaccine for Covid, then remind them that Trump’s “Warp Speed” initiative sped up the development and deployment of the vaccines.
This is not done by the media, I presume, because it might promote Trump. But public health - and the truth, so often sacrificed to politics by bot Parties in the US in this pandemic, are more important.
Interestingly, at one point Trump himself brought up the Warp Speed success at one of his rallies. It met with waves of boos at reference to the vaccine, so he abruptly dropped it and it's never been mentioned by him or his campaign since, to the best of my knowledge.