Coronavirus Outbreak: Part 3

All of this. My younger one’s class went mask optional yesterday. She said only one other kid was wearing a mask (maybe 2). She’s in second grade, surely she can tell the difference between one and two kids?! I digress. Vaccines are just being rolled out for 5-11 year olds this week, and we still have strict quarantine rules in effect for non-vaccinated kids. In fact the masks saved us from quarantine again (at least quarantine, who knows on infection) just a few weeks ago. Why…?!!

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We did rapid antigen tests at a drug store but it wasn’t CVS. It took 20 minutes, but they made us wait there until it was done.

ETA it was in Canada, too. So maybe a useless reference.

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It turned out to be 1.5 hrs, but that may not be a normal timeframe b/c their computers were down. When I went to get my results it didn’t work and they had to so some weird fax thing to get them to me. Still, so much quicker than a PCR test.

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One thing I just don’t get is that my kids’ school has a large # of preK students and none of them are yet eligible for the vaccine. I would think they’d keep the masks on until those kids can have that option. But, to be fair, I have no idea how much grief they’re getting daily re: masking. It’s probably considerable.

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Fresh data from Denmark where there are lots of BA.2 cases…

So good-ish news.

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It’s odd that it’s taken hold in Denmark for a while now but hasn’t really caused a big spike anywhere else, even though it can be found pretty much everywhere.

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It might be a timing thing? BA.2 somehow managed to beat BA.1 to the punch before BA.1 was fully established in Denmark maybe? :woman_shrugging:


India looks like it may have skipped BA.1 almost completely and just went straight to BA.2.



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Wasn’t Denmark one of the early Omicron BA.1 countries though right after S. Africa? Or am I confusing it with somewhere else?

So. 1.8 million infections, 187 reinfections, and only 27 of those were B2 following B1?

I don’t know what that means on a more global scale, but it makes me feel better about being with the unmasked masses last week at Disney. I’ve been keeping my kids at a bit of an arms length and that (plus a negative covid test today) make me feel like I can drop that.

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Denmark was fairly early, unless you’re thinking of Norway, which was even earlier.

In Denmark, BA.2 swooped in before BA.1 was fully established.






By the time BA.1 got to 69%, BA.2 was already at 25% and it took the rest of the market share from Delta then began to squeeze BA.1 out.

In contrast, BA.1 had 97% of the UK before BA.2 started getting a toehold.

South Africa got BA.2 well after BA.1, so there it’s dragging out the tail of the Omicron surge.



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Not exactly. There were 1,739 that were known to be reinfections within the 20-60 day window. I’m not sure how meticulous their record keeping is to know how complete that data set is. Just 263 were successfully sequenced. Results below.

ETA: Note the bottom left box had the same variant in both tests. I’m guessing many of these are lingering PCR positives, not actual re-infections, but I haven’t read the whole paper to see if that’s addressed.

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Thank you for clarifying that for me! I see how I misinterpreted based on the abstract. I thought this was interesting

image

Half of those reinfections were O after Delta. That’s my box. :woman_facepalming:

Seems likely given the sample size that the other bottom box is those with continued positive results (although a reinfection not impossible with the same strain either).

Still be hopeful that we will not face round 3 of covid with the sub variant. :pray:t2:

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New variant prevalence released yesterday. BA.2 inching up.

Prior week for comparison:

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Update to Covid vaccination schedule (may reduce incidents of myocarditis)



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Not to start a political discussion, but :white_check_mark: off “Potential opening shots of WWIII fired” on your bingo cards. :cry:

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This never occurred to me as a thing to think about: there is a right way and a wrong way to store your covid at home tests:

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It’s just devastating. This type of upheaval just hasn’t happened in so long.

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The headline is a bit dramatic. :roll_eyes:

This part of the article is probably the really only part that’s significant:
According to Dr. Singh, you should go ahead and toss your tests in the trash if they’ve spent longer than a day outside of the acceptable temperature range described above. [35 to 86 degrees] “For tests that have been kept in a non-optimal location but it has been less than one day, it is recommended to return the test to a climate-controlled area that is at room temperature,” he says. “But again, the results of these tests may not be as accurate compared to tests that have always remained at a suitable temperature.”

And only one day is probably pretty conservative.

This is the go-to guy on testing questions:




45C = 113F

Someone linked this study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7962993/

It’s more significant for areas of the world where climate control isn’t a thing and daily temps are extreme.

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