Shanghai Disney closing again in response to Covid outbreak

At the end of the day that has been one of the most interesting things about the last two years. Even before vaccines, when we all had an equal shot of getting the original strain (COVID Classic if you will), some individuals literally suffocated to death while others experienced symptoms less annoying than a ride on Rip Ride Rockit.

That's what I find more concerning than possible death. I know people with long-Covid symptoms, and that's a big pile of suck. Then you have stories like this guy from New Jersey who barely survived 49 days in the hospital and had a foot-long blood clot removed from his lung. Granted, he was not vaccinated, but that's some of the nasty things at the opposite end of nothing that the disease can do to you.

This feels like a footnote on two terrible years, but 14.9 million people extra died in 2020 and 2021, even though the official Covid count was 6 million in that time. That means global observation, at best, caught less than half of the deaths, and counting of infections was certainly much worse.

A comment on the seemingly-mild symptoms...

Ten days after my failed test, I was so wiped out that I took a day off from work. I was tired, I didn't feel like eating anything, I knew I had COVID, but apart from just wanting to sleep all the time I really didn't feel that bad. The warning signal was when I was having a conversation with my Mom that she felt was less than coherent. But apart from the fatigue, I felt fine. In particular, I didn't feel like I had any difficulty breathing.

She worked some kind of communications magic and summoned the paramedics. I walked to the ambulance under my own power, knew what was going on, and again, apart from fatigue, didn't really feel too bad.

My blood oxygen saturation was 63%.

The hospital treated the pneumonia aggressively, mostly with steroids. But I wonder how common my story really is. I had no intention of calling for help; I didn't think I was that bad off. But I ended up in an ICU on high-flow oxygen for almost two weeks, "struggling" to keep my O2 saturation near 90%. But it was a weird struggle because, again, I didn't find it that hard to breathe. It's just that almost any exertion caused my O2 to crash. This was not like the pneumonia or bronchitis I'd had in prior years, where breathing was a chore. This was just...weird.

Incidentally, while a full recovery from pneumonia takes months, and occasionally I get a reminder that I'm not 100% well, at this point it's close enough to barely notice that anything was wrong.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

That's scary stuff, glad your mom pulled the trigger. I bought an O2 meter right at the start of the pandemic, because early guidance suggested that if you go below 90% you need to go to the hospital. Turns out it's been useful to understand how allergies affect your oxygen, which is to say in our case, not at all.

My dad had a low-O2 situation several years ago. Scary as heck. One of the interesting things is that an individual brain seems to be not very good at self-diagnosis when it's starved for O2. My Dad said pretty much the same thing Dave said: he had little to no sense that anything was wrong despite appearing less-than-coherent to the rest of us.

The scoutmaster for our local troop had a similar experience to Dave but he could tell something wasn't right. I don't think he was in the hospital as long but he had oxygen when he first came home. He's fine now. I had a "cold" that just felt a little different and that was it.

Again, a more data driven approach to measuring outcomes:

"But Australia’s Covid playbook produced results because of something more easily felt than analyzed at a news conference. Dozens of interviews, along with survey data and scientific studies from around the world, point to a lifesaving trait that Australians displayed from the top of government to the hospital floor, and that Americans have shown they lack: trust, in science and institutions, but especially in one another."

That last sentence speaks volumes. I hate to rehash some of the negatives but I still wonder how American would have fared had, from the beginning, there been a unified message from our elected officials that the disease was serious, that masks and vaccines worked, and that we should trust the science.

I have to think that 1,000,000 death count would have been significantly reduced.

A lot of mental gymnastics were (are) done to reconcile the fact that we elected an idiot.

And we may again.

ApolloAndy said:

A lot of mental gymnastics were (are) done to reconcile the fact that we elected an idiot.

And then several millions more folks saw 2017 - 2020 and said to themselves, "Yup, more of that please!" I still think about that.

Also, as it has been abundantly clear of late, we've been electing idiots all over the place. What's the saying? Something along the lines of, "we get the government we deserve." Though I'm not sure it's that clear cut when one party is actively trying to restrict voting rights. Critical thinking definitely seems to be a dying skill.

I don't know if it's a saying, but I say it all of the time. But I think apathy is dangerous when the moral equivalence of the two sides does not exist even if we believe both kind of suck. No one is going to suffer because they have voting rights or access to healthcare.

Some republicans may suffer if everyone has voting rights and access to healthcare.

just finished my first cruise since the pandemic. 11 days with the last 6 being sea days (no touching land after day 5) Hawaii to Vancouver (YVR). Captain made the 1% announcement indicating that Covid was onbard (though he didn't acknowledge the 1% threshold) on about day 7, by day 8 he was was requiring, but not enforcing, masks in all public spaces. Lots of isolation for the last 5 days, one fourth of one deck was out of commission for isolation, and lots of other guests isolating in their own cabins (not sure if the isolation wing was full, but assumed to be). Lots of Trump Humpers maskless still by day 11, even though it was obvious there was a significant outbreak.

All of the procedures that have been put in place are failing with the current environment/variant/unmasking. Lots of hacking and coughing on board, passengers at nearby tables for dinner early in the cruise disappearing on the latter days, ships crew noticeably absent (i'm talking the guest facing activities team people/entertainers), and admissions that 'fill in the blank crew member" was a "Close Contact".

The huge "Broadway!" production show (with 16 cast members), got trimmed to "an intimate Broadway Cabaret" as at least 4 of the dancers, were in isolation, probably more). Other entertainers (A "Michael Buble" style review with different cast) were similarly impacted, that one was trimmed from 3 to 2 singers, etc.

One in our group tested positive on land upon arrival and we were all masked the entire trip. I mean entire trip. Delta airlines agent at YVR had spent the entire day rebooking people due to failed tests that were required to get back into the US. She hinted that one of the 4 boats docking in YVR that day came in at close to 50% positive rate. I know that sounds extreme, but she had spent the entire morning rebooking pax, and from the sounds of all the hacking and coughing in that airport, and our experience on our ship, which wasn't the one in question, it's totally reasonable.

The Cruise industry is at the beginning of another crisis wave.

Which line was that? I wouldn't generalize about it being a crisis. Long at-sea trips are inherently more likely to spread everything.

We are seeing evidence of a spike down here in SFla. Local schools are seeing growing student and teacher absences (at peak testing time, unfortunately). I heard a neighboring school had 42 seniors out for Covid a week and a half after their Senior Prom. Just this morning we heard an announcement that at least one local hospital is reinstituting restrictions on visitors.

The problem, in my mind, is that we really have no idea how much community spread there is. At-home testing is great but since an individual isn't going to call the health department to let officials know they are positive any kind of positivity rates you are seeing are meaningless.

Of course, this all is moot if illness is relatively minor and people don't end up in the hospital. Problem is, these lax habits are now commonplace...and will continue to be commonplace as the next variant(s) hit us. And, if the variants are more contagious/concerning, we won't be able to respond quick enough, nor will there be much will to absorb more restrictions.

My doctor started requiring masks again (though local hospital-system offices never stopped), which is certainly an indicator. OC has 180 hospitalized cases, and 300 reported new cases daily. With home testing widely available, certainly the actual number is exponentially higher. What's not great at this stage isn't so much that waning immunity may lead to non-serious infection, it's that it's super contagious despite people generally staying home when they're sick. Pre-pandemic, some years I would get through flu season without getting sick, but your likelihood of exposure is so much higher with this thing. We're doing boosters next month, prior to our cruise in July. Simon hasn't had one at all yet, and now that he's 12 it also won't be the pediatric dose. Diana is old enough, and I'm "obese," so we're eligible. The science doesn't show a slam dunk improvement in immunity, but it's improved enough that I think it's worth it.

I'm not worried about immunity. At 50+ I just want to make sure that, if/when I get Covid, I only have to deal with "mild" symptoms.

This was Celebrity. Others in port that day were Royal and Holland America.

Yes, 11 day cruise helps to spread, but the current cruise (the one after that) is sounding like a nightmare. A Cruise Critic thread indicating that the captain had closed all the bars on ship. I can't independently confirm that, but if so, ouch.