Octopus Overlords

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration exempted more than 1,750 members of the Chicago Police Department from the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and has not moved to terminate a single police officer for failing to comply with the order in the more than two months since the final deadline passed, officials told WTTW News.

That amounts to approximately 14% of the 12,537-member Chicago Police Department, double the number of exemptions granted to any other city department. By comparison, 6.9% of the 4,801-member Chicago Fire Department were granted exemptions from the vaccine mandate, according to a WTTW News analysis of data provided by the mayor’s office.

malchior wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 9:50 am It almost like the politicians work for the police.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:15 am Against that kind of backdrop, removing 15% of a police force that is already hemorrhaging officers is pretty hard to see happening.

Isgrimnur wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:46 am

malchior wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 9:50 am It almost like the politicians work for the police.

Well, when they have no legal requirements to actually protect you...

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:05 amThe idea that they know they won't be fired for disregarding policy is outrageous - especially if they all agree to defy the order. That cannot be tolerated.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:05 am

LawBeefaroni wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:15 am Against that kind of backdrop, removing 15% of a police force that is already hemorrhaging officers is pretty hard to see happening.

This is why I'll never be put in an elected position. I'd fire them all and call in the national guard until we can hire officers that want to comply with rules and regulations regarding the workplace.

The idea that they know they won't be fired for disregarding policy is outrageous - especially if they all agree to defy the order. That cannot be tolerated.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:53 am

I clearly said it's why I'll never be elected.

Out today: a new PSA from @SesameWorkshop and @AdCouncil targeted for parents weighing whether to vaccinate their children against covid.

“I had a lot of questions,” says Louie, who’s Elmo’s dad on Sesame Street. “I talked to our pediatrician so I could make the right choice.”

Anthony Fauci says that he's experienced a rebound in Covid symptoms after taking a course of Pfizer Inc.'s antiviral Paxlovid.

The NIAID director, speaking at #FPGlobalHealth, says he's currently on his second course of the treatment. He tested + then - and then + again

Spitballing here, but maybe vaccination and Paxlovid isn't enough to get ourselves out of this pandemic?

stessier wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 3:51 am Didn't someone post an article about Paxlovid where that pattern (+ - +) was examined with its use and it was determined it wasn't a true rebound infection, but rather the body clearing out virus bits after Paxlovid use and that there wasn't viable replicating virus in the people tested? I swear I read that somewhere.

About 12 hours after his symptoms arose, Ho swallowed his first dose of Pfizer’s antiviral nirmatrelvir/ritonavir, better known as Paxlovid. By day 4, his symptoms had resolved and he tested negative for COVID-19. After testing negative again on day 5, he ended his isolation from his family but continued to test daily.

After 6 consecutive negative rapid antigen tests, plus a negative PCR test, Ho awoke feeling under the weather. “I tested myself immediately, and I was completely surprised that I was positive again,” Ho recalled. “The initial shock was, ‘Wow, this is positive. I’ve never seen this.’”

A PCR test confirmed the positive rapid antigen test, and it was “back to jail” for Ho. “If you’re positive, you have to assume you’re infectious to others,” he explained.

Ho likely is one of very few people who’ve relapsed after taking nirmatrelvir/ritonavir and then sequenced their own virus both the first and second time around. (At least 1 other leading virologist, Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, of the Baylor College of Medicine, has revealed that he also experienced a post-Paxlovid relapse.)

Both of Ho’s sequences were identical, ruling out a couple of possible explanations for his relapse, he said. It couldn’t have been due to a stroke of bad luck—a second SARS-CoV-2 infection just as he was getting over his first one. And it couldn’t have resulted from the virus becoming resistant to nirmatrelvir. If either were the case, the virus pair wouldn’t have been identical.

Paxlovid is the leading oral medication for preventing severe cases of COVID-19 in high-risk individuals. However, symptoms returned in some patients after treatment was completed, prompting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to issue a health advisory on this so-called “COVID-19 rebound.”

In a study published June 20, 2022 in Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine evaluated one such patient and found their symptom relapse was not caused by the development of resistance to the drug or impaired immunity against the virus. Rather, the COVID-19 rebound appears to have been the result of insufficient exposure to the drug.

The authors said the rebound of COVID-19 symptoms following the end of Paxlovid treatment is likely due to insufficient drug exposure: not enough of the drug was getting to infected cells to stop all viral replication. They suggested this may be due to the drug being metabolized more quickly in some individuals or that the drug needs to be delivered over a longer treatment duration.

In the future, Carlin said he hopes physicians will be able to test whether patients require a longer duration of Paxlovid treatment or if they might be best treated by a combination of drugs. In the meantime, Paxlovid users should be aware of the possibility of symptom rebound, and be prepared to wear masks and quarantine again if symptoms return.

Further research is necessary to measure how often rebound occurs, what patient populations are most susceptible and if returning symptoms can lead to more severe disease.

“The goal of Paxlovid is to prevent serious illness and death, and so far no one who has gotten sick again has needed to be hospitalized, so it's still doing its job,” said Smith. “We simply need to understand why the rebound happens in some patients and not others. More research is needed to help us adjust treatment plans as necessary.”

stessier wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 3:51 am Didn't someone post an article about Paxlovid where that pattern (+ - +) was examined with its use and it was determined it wasn't a true rebound infection, but rather the body clearing out virus bits after Paxlovid use and that there wasn't viable replicating virus in the people tested? I swear I read that somewhere.

Instead, a detailed look at their immune responses found that rebounds were associated with a surge in antibody and cellular immune responses specific against SARS-CoV-2. At the same time, rebounds were accompanied by downward trends in markers of innate (non-specific) immune responses, as well as levels of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid bits in the blood.

Together, the findings suggest that the rebounds could be partly due to reignited immune response as the body works to clear cellular debris and viral scraps from a quickly smothered infection. Or, as the authors put it: "rebound symptoms may in fact be partially driven by the emerging immune response against residual viral antigens possibly shed from dying infected cells due to cytotoxicity and tissue repair throughout the respiratory tract."

The country's top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, has been struck by a phenomenon that appears to be becoming more common in the latest stage of the pandemic—rebounding bouts of COVID-19 after a course of the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

In an interview Tuesday at Foreign Policy's Global Health Forum, Fauci recounted the progression of his infection to his current rebound, which he said has been much worse than his first round with the disease. Fauci—the director of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical advisor to the president—is 81 years old and has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and boosted twice.

He first tested positive on a rapid antigen test on June 15 and experienced "very minimal symptoms." But his symptoms worsened and he began a five-day course of Paxlovid. "And I felt really quite well," Fauci said, adding that he just had mild nasal congestion and fatigue. When he had finished the five-day course, he had reverted to negative on antigen tests for three consecutive days. But, "then on the fourth day—just to be absolutely certain—I tested myself again, and I reverted back to positive … and then over the next day or so I started to feel really poorly, much worse than in the first go-around."

Fauci subsequently went back on Paxlovid for another five-day course. "Right now, I'm on my fourth day of a five-day course of my second course of Paxlovid," he said Tuesday. "And, fortunately, I feel reasonably good, I mean, I'm not completely without symptoms, but I certainly don't feel acutely ill."

I am also aware that it would be a moral crime to transmit the coronavirus to Fauci. So when I got covid two weeks before our interview, I obsessively parsed the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: As long as I waited 10 days after my first positive test, I could still meet Fauci in person, right? No, I was informed by Fauci, via a member of his communications team. I would need to test negative three days in a row and wear a mask, even outdoors.

Vladimir "Zev" Zelenko (1973 – June 30, 2022) was an American family physician and author known for promoting a three-drug combination of hydroxychloroquine, zinc sulfate, and azithromycin as part of an experimental outpatient treatment for COVID-19 that he called the Zelenko Protocol. He also promoted unfounded medical advice, conspiracy theories, and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination.

NBC News confirms: Dr. Lisa Gwynn, a pediatrician with the University of Miami Health System, has been removed from a state-appointed board for publicly criticizing Florida's decision to delay access to the COVID vaccine for children under 5.

Adults snapped up COVID-19 shots in the first wave of vaccinations in early 2021, coveting them so much that Florida police caught two women who dressed as grandmothers to hop the line.

The federal push to vaccinate children has been a much tougher slog, with parental anecdotes and federal data showing interest drops off below age 12 even, as President Biden cheers the recent authorization of shots for 18 million kids aged 6 months to 4 years.

...

Over three-quarters of U.S. adults are fully vaccinated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that as of June 28, nearly 60% of the 25.3 million U.S. residents aged 12 to 17 were fully vaccinated. By contrast, less than 30% of the 28.7 million U.S. residents ages 5 to 11 were fully vaccinated.

It is a vast gulf in percentages, even though the 5-11 group is slightly larger and started getting shots five months later than the 12-17 group.

...

“The numbers are not good. Only 30% of parents are vaccinating their 5- to 11-year-olds and that number is down to only 11% in many southern states,” said Peter Hotez, an infectious diseases expert at the Baylor College of Medicine. “Likely the percentage of those younger than 5 years old will be even lower, in which case we’re looking at single digits numbers for the South.”

The slippage in younger groups underscores the challenge the White House faces in getting widespread vaccine coverage — a marquee initiative for Mr. Biden, who is trying to reduce severe outcomes as the country attempts to live with the virus.

More than half of Canada's AstraZeneca vaccine doses expired, will be thrown out

Smoove_B wrote: Tue Jul 05, 2022 2:38 pm

More than half of Canada's AstraZeneca vaccine doses expired, will be thrown out

Human beings are the goddamn worst!

LordMortis wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 10:12 pm They forgot to put an envelop with my summer taxes, so I had to go to to City Hall to pay them. Though "strongly recommended" and even provided, I was the only person wearing a mask worker or citizen. The greeter/guard guy that was at the desk to make masks available wasn't wearing a mask.

Kraken wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 11:39 pm

LordMortis wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 10:12 pm They forgot to put an envelop with my summer taxes, so I had to go to to City Hall to pay them. Though "strongly recommended" and even provided, I was the only person wearing a mask worker or citizen. The greeter/guard guy that was at the desk to make masks available wasn't wearing a mask.

Or you could've, y'know, used your own envelope. Like I had to do with my trash bill last week. Fortunately Town Hall has a tax collector drop box so I didn't have to invest in a stamp.

Kraken wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 11:39 pm

LordMortis wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 10:12 pm They forgot to put an envelop with my summer taxes, so I had to go to to City Hall to pay them. Though "strongly recommended" and even provided, I was the only person wearing a mask worker or citizen. The greeter/guard guy that was at the desk to make masks available wasn't wearing a mask.

Or you could've, y'know, used your own envelope. Like I had to do with my trash bill last week. Fortunately Town Hall has a tax collector drop box so I didn't have to invest in a stamp.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 3:02 pm Seat belts are *strongly recommended*
Helmets on bicycles and motorcycles are *strongly recommended*
Not smoking indoors is *strongly recommended*
Putting your garbage in the proper container is *strongly recommended*
Washing your hands after using the bathroom and preparing food for a customer is *strongly recommended*

People don't want to be told what to do and yet also can't be trusted to do the right thing.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 3:23 pm A lot of those are enforced by law and carry civil penalties. In some states/cities.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 4:51 pm At the risk of being a buzzkill (why stop now?), you don't know if you actually have immunity unless you had a blood titer for antibodies. While it's likely you have some immunity, the actual level is an unknown.

I know you're going to be surprised, but I'm going to recommend you still wear a mask - and not just for your own benefit.

TL;DR
The amount of virus we receive can determine the severity of disease. This “infectious dose” is affected by how much virus is in the particles we inhale as well as how long we inhale them. Its impact is modified by our pre-existing immunity. Physical distance between us and the infectious source reduces the risk of us getting a dose. Masks also reduce the size of and even prevent us from getting a dose altogether. Cleaning or refreshing the air we breathe also reduces the infectious dose. We can exert some control over our risk of infection.

If you want to avoid getting sick from respiratory viruses -it’s up to you. The help from professional expert bodies is largely gone now.

So you can:

Wear a good mask well – reduce the particles you inhale. Masks matter.
Don’t spend long inside crowded stuffy spaces – limited time = limited dose
Advocate for cleaner air. The purity of our air is as important to our health as the cleanliness of our food and water