He did test positive on a pcr. Starting paxlovid tonight.
Meanwhile in my house, we seem to have acute gastroenteritis. which is the worst.
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Ugh sorry. DH is just getting over it.
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Ugh - that’s the worst.
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I haven’t seen any clear indication, either. Given the uncertainty there, I’ll probably get more than I normally would before the emergency order ends - I got some at Walgreens recently that expire in Oct too.
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Bingo card check.
Tamarins found in closet during ongoing Dallas Zoo hijinks
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Our insurance will not pay for the free tests. But, our local health dept still provides them for free and they are available to pick up at our county libraries. Maybe that’s all of MD? Not sure.
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I’m shocked.
Booster jabs will no longer be available to healthy under-50s from February 12, with Brits having just 12 days to book a slot.
Offers of first and second doses will also be withdrawn later this year.
Health Minister Maria Caulfield said the decision was taken “as the transition continues away from a pandemic emergency response towards pandemic recovery”.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advised ministers on the latest move, said the vaccine rollout should now become “more targeted”.
It added “emergency surge vaccines” will be held on standby in case of a deadly new variant.
(I wonder what the case fatality ratio would have to be for a variant to be considered “deadly.”)
All over-50s and Brits with long-term illnesses could be part of the autumn rollout again, lining up with flu vaccines.
Spring boosters are only likely to go to care home residents and people with weak immune systems.
So the general UK population is expected to just get Covid a couple of times a year? With no chance for a vaccine targeted at similar variants? Isn’t it less expensive to distribute the vaccine, decrease transmission modestly, and avoid some of the downstream effects of infection, like strokes, heart conditions, and Long Covid? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and all that?
And I guess young people who haven’t yet been eligible for the vaccine will remain entirely unvaccinated until they’re in their 50s?
I really cannot understand the logic here.
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Maybe they will come to the US-FL to get a jab like they did at the beginning of all this. Obviously that would only apply to those that can afford to travel here. And, I assume, US pharmacies would give the shot to anyone willing to pay.
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So I had put a 6 month bookmark on this to circle back to see how it played out…
Current dominant variants:
BQ.1/BQ.1.1 - descendent of BA.5
XBB.1.5 - descendent of BA.2
So, closer to BA.4/5 than BA.1. I don’t know that I’ve seen any head-to-head data on the BA.1 bivalent vs the BA.4/5 bivalent though. I believe they’ve both been used in some places (UK and Canada, I think?) so might be floating around eventually if it’s not already.
Unfortunately, the massive amount of new cases is promoting evolution of any variant that can evade the vaccines and/or previous infections. Infinite dice rolls to find weaknesses.
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We’re not going to talk about H5N1 and mammals, ok? We’re just not. 
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Just this morning I saw an article somewhere (CNN?) that there’s a new variant of concern that is derived more from Delta than Omicron and it’s of concern because Delta was more deadly a variant. However the article pointed out that it’s hard to compare apples to apples when immunity levels were not the same with Delta as they are now, and they also pointed out that the current booster provides some protection as this newer variant (currently 2% of cases?) inherits at least somewhat from Omicron.
Man I’m so tired of all this.
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Just to clarify, the CDCWHO hasn’t declared any new variants of concern. For what it’s worth, all of Omicron is still labeled a variant of concern. Simplifies things, no? 
But there are several being watched causing new concerns. Perhaps this is the one you saw something on? It’s still Omicron, but has a mutation similar to Delta.
There is some speculation that CH.1.1 can’t compete with XBB.1.5, so is only gaining ground when it finds someplace where XBB.1.5 hasn’t taken hold yet (for instance, many places in Europe but not so much much in the US). 
This is last week’s breakdown. It will be interesting to see if it gained ground when the new data comes out tomorrow.
^ See? Everything is a “VOC”
Yes. Very much this.
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I assumed VOC was a unit of measure in the science world since it applies to all of them. 
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Orthrus?? Wherever do they get these names? I wonder why they picked that one. What did it have in common with Orthrus, the two-headed dog who guarded Geryon’s cattle and was killed by Heracles as Heracles was trying to fulfill his 10th labor? Or what did it have in common with a genus of jumping spiders (also named after the two-headed dog)?
Personally, the 12-year-old me thought of “Or thrust.” Now, that could be an interesting thing to consider in terms of a new mutation of this $ virus.
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Yep, that’s the one!
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I prefer names to the letters and numbers. Easier to remember.
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Usually someone on twitter suggests the name and then it catches on.
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Yep, the names are crowd sourced beyond the umbrella Greek letters. The WHO just calls it all Omicron and uses the alphanumeric designations for the multitude of variants. There was a huge twitfest recently when somebody went off the deep end on how people should NOT be giving the variants scary nicknames. 
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I mean do we want them called Pooh and Mickey instead?
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Oh, please no.
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