Covid-19 News and Information

[Canoe]

There is a new senate report out. A short 301 page read

“The preponderance of information supports the plausibility of an unintentional research-related incident that likely resulted from failures of biosafety containment during SARS-CoV-2 vaccine-related research."
https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...origins-report

[Pete]

Weekly update:

[Pete]

Weekly update:

[Pete]

Weekly update:

[gjl]

At this rate we should be at zero in 4 weeks.

[Urbanized]

Word Health Organization: COVID-19 no longer global health emergency: Link

[kukblue1]

I think at this point everyone has had it at least once. I finally got it in March and if it wasn't for the test I would of thought it was a very very mild cold and went about my day. Just because you don't think you got it doesn't mean you got it.

[oklip955]

I am still wearing an N95 and social distancing. Nope I have not had it and not had a cold or flu since the pandemic began. I avoid crowds. Older person who cannot be vacced for medical reasons so yes I still have to be careful.

[Bill Robertson]

I am still wearing an N95 and social distancing. Nope I have not had it and not had a cold or flu since the pandemic began. I avoid crowds. Older person who cannot be vacced for medical reasons so yes I still have to be careful.

I really, truly feel empathy for those in your situation. Because COVID will be endemic from now on. It will never go completely away.

[oklip955]

For most it is not a big deal. For some few it can be really bad. Thank you for the empathy. Its not just me, I bet there are a few more out there that still have to be careful. I wish life was back to normal for me.

[Dale]

I almost despair about the way in which three years of piped-in fear has broken so many people.

[gjl]

No numbers posted the last two Thursdays. Can we say Covid is officially over?

[baralheia]

No numbers posted the last two Thursdays. Can we say Covid is officially over?

Nope. The WHO declared an end to the global emergency situation, and the US ended the public health emergency as well - but COVID still remains as a global health threat and the pandemic is not over. The public health response is just transitioning from treating it as an emergency to treating it as an ongoing threat.

From https://www.statnews.com/2023/05/05/...lth-emergency/:

“It’s … with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news conference in Geneva. “However, that does not mean Covid-19 is over as a global health threat.”

The Covid-19 [Public Health Emergency of International Concern] has been in effect since Jan. 30, 2020. Since the start of the pandemic, the WHO estimates that at least 20 million people around the world have died from the new disease, though the official death toll is about 7 million.

“Covid has changed our world and it has changed us,” Tedros said. “If we all go back to how things were before Covid-19, we will have failed to learn our lessons and we will have failed future generations.”

Tedros and other WHO officials emphasized that while they were ending the PHEIC, the pandemic is not over. The WHO does not declare the start of a pandemic and it will not declare an end to it either. Still, a Covid-weary world will likely interpret this announcement that way.

“The emergency phase of this global crisis that we’ve all been facing for three-and-a-half years is over, but Covid is here to stay,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s Covid technical lead.

[...]

Tedros and members of his senior staff urged governments not to let down their guards but to work to improve the problems in health systems and response operations that the pandemic exposed.

“The battle is not over,” warned Mike Ryan, who heads WHO’s health emergencies program. “We still have weaknesses. And those weaknesses we still have in our system will be exposed by this virus or another virus. And they need to be fixed.”

[gjl]

I don't care what the WHO says about it. Look at the numbers posted 2 weeks ago and what the trend has been locally for weeks before that. It's not been a concern for me for months now. I was just wondering since the numbers had gotten so low that wherever Pete was getting them had maybe quit publishing them.

[Pete]

I don't care what the WHO says about it. Look at the numbers posted 2 weeks ago and what the trend has been locally for weeks before that. It's not been a concern for me for months now. I was just wondering since the numbers had gotten so low that wherever Pete was getting them had maybe quit publishing them.

They have stopped providing weely updates.

[Bill Robertson]

They have stopped providing weely updates.

A lot of states have. I used to look at the NYT and CDC websites every Friday after they updated. A few weeks ago the NYT started just copying the CDC data. Now the CDC had announced that they are ending reporting completely.

[Plutonic Panda]

I’ve heard reports there is an increasing likelihood of another large scale outbreak.

[kukblue1]

So is it true it's coming back? What are the current numbers for OKC? The news has been mentioning covid again.

[Sean21]

Why no vaccine guidance update? We need to get ahead of this.

[ChrisHayes]

So is it true it's coming back? What are the current numbers for OKC? The news has been mentioning covid again.

It's never going to go away. It never was. It'll just mutate and mutate.

[floyd the barber]

It's never going to go away. It never was. It'll just mutate and mutate.

I would not be surprised if we saw a resurgence in the winter months. From my understanding it is a distant (obviously more dangerous) cousin of the common cold.

*Not a epidemiologist.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

COVID-19 was a tragic killer. Nobody should downplay that. However, everything I continue to read says while coronavirus numbers may increase and wane with the seasons possibly, it is now at a pretty stable ‘watered down’ (yes, colloquially) phase and it is highly unlikely to return to anything close to the mass killer it was.

[Bunty]

I just hope Paxlovid will continue to work good in getting higher risk people over covid fast.

[Zuplar]

So is it true it's coming back? What are the current numbers for OKC? The news has been mentioning covid again.

I'm curious if you actually thought it ever went away? I mean my kids daycare just had an outbreak in June. Like others have mentioned due to almost everybody having either had it or the vaccine, it's fairly benign now for most people. When I had it a month ago it was just like a 2 day common cold. But at this point for most people Covid is not remotely the concern it was in the beginning.

[BoulderSooner]

I'm curious if you actually thought it ever went away? I mean my kids daycare just had an outbreak in June. Like others have mentioned due to almost everybody having either had it or the vaccine, it's fairly benign now for most people. When I had it a month ago it was just like a 2 day common cold. But at this point for most people Covid is not remotely the concern it was in the beginning.

i can't imagine taking a covid test at this point in time ..