How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

A place to find quick links to facts that support reality. Good for ending debates quickly, especially repeated debates.

Not intended as a place for discussion.
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Ulysses
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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Vrede too
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Ulysses
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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Studies Suggest Why Omicron Is Less Severe: It Spares the Lungs

Encouraging!
A spate of new studies on lab animals and human tissues are providing the first indication of why the Omicron variant causes milder disease than previous versions of the coronavirus.

In studies on mice and hamsters, Omicron produced less damaging infections, often limited largely to the upper airway: the nose, throat and windpipe. The variant did much less harm to the lungs, where previous variants would often cause scarring and serious breathing difficulty.

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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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White House to make 400 million N95 masks available for free

... The administration will start shipping out the masks, which are coming from the Strategic National Stockpile, at the end of this week. Masks will start to be available at pharmacies and community health centers by late next week, with the program "fully up and running" by early February, the official said....
:happy-cheerleaderkid: Thanks again, Joe!

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Vrede too
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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https://www.covidtests.gov/

I ordered one set of 4 free at-home tests, easy peasy.
"Orders will ship free starting in late January"

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Vrede too
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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COVID-19 by County

In Henderson County, North Carolina, community level is Medium.

If you are at high risk for severe illness, talk to your healthcare provider about whether you need to wear a mask and take other precautions
Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines
Get tested if you have symptoms
:think: I'll keep masking for now. Crap.

Image

Most of us live in high risk (orange), or maybe medium risk (yellow), with only GoCubsGo in low risk (green).

:problem:

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GoCubsGo
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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Vrede too wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:12 am
COVID-19 by County

In Henderson County, North Carolina, community level is Medium.

If you are at high risk for severe illness, talk to your healthcare provider about whether you need to wear a mask and take other precautions
Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines
Get tested if you have symptoms
:think: I'll keep masking for now. Crap.

Image

Most of us live in high risk (orange), or maybe medium risk (yellow), with only GoCubsGo in low risk (green).

:problem:
Mask fatigue in my area is real. We still have a mandate for a few more days, but I've been seeing people openly flouting it lately.

My comfort level is still not there. No indoor restaurants or movies for me.

Spring can't come soon enough.

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O Really
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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San Diego County has 92% with one shot, 82% with 2, but for some reason only 52% with booster. Mandatory masks for most places went off a week ago, "for the vaccinated," but of course without actually checking there's no way to police it. Nevertheless, even without the mandate, there's probably over half wearing masks in stores. That will likely go down.

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GoCubsGo
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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FWIW, I've been using a KN95 for a few months. It certainly feels more protective than surgical masks.

Boncare KN95 Face Mask 30 PCs, 5-Layer Black Face Mask for Men & Women Filter Efficiency=95%, Breathable and Comfortable https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08V59764B/re ... UTF8&psc=1

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Vrede too
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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GoCubsGo wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:52 am
FWIW, I've been using a KN95 for a few months. It certainly feels more protective than surgical masks.

Boncare KN95 Face Mask 30 PCs, 5-Layer Black Face Mask for Men & Women Filter Efficiency=95%, Breathable and Comfortable https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08V59764B/re ... 8AN4F8WFGC
Thanks.

More free COVID test kits are coming from the government. How to order yours by mail

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GoCubsGo
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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Ironic, I just ordered mine today.

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Ulysses
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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GoCubsGo wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:17 am
Vrede too wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:12 am
COVID-19 by County

In Henderson County, North Carolina, community level is Medium.

If you are at high risk for severe illness, talk to your healthcare provider about whether you need to wear a mask and take other precautions
Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines
Get tested if you have symptoms
:think: I'll keep masking for now. Crap.

Image

Most of us live in high risk (orange), or maybe medium risk (yellow), with only GoCubsGo in low risk (green).

:problem:
Mask fatigue in my area is real. We still have a mandate for a few more days, but I've been seeing people openly flouting it lately.

My comfort level is still not there. No indoor restaurants or movies for me.

Spring can't come soon enough.
Actually, if the map is correct, I'm living in a low risk area as well (SF Bay Area).

Also I got my free test kits weeks ago. And bought some additional test kits from Costco earlier. All my tests, either via home or at a clinic, have been negative for the past year. I'm starting to wonder if I might be covid-immune (some people are). But I also follow all masking rules. And I'm fully vaccinated (Pfizer/boost). I'll get the 2nd boost shot when it becomes available.

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O Really
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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Ulysses wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 2:39 am

Actually, if the map is correct, I'm living in a low risk area as well (SF Bay Area).

The map was somewhat outdated when published. A few days later, CDC re-rated SD County down from "high"
Dunno about you, but your area should be low.

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Ulysses
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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O Really wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 10:46 am
Ulysses wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 2:39 am

Actually, if the map is correct, I'm living in a low risk area as well (SF Bay Area).

The map was somewhat outdated when published. A few days later, CDC re-rated SD County down from "high"
Dunno about you, but your area should be low.
Yes, I think most of the SF Bay Area is relatively low risk, as the map seems to indicate. I think I've seen maps with that info, but not lately.

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Vrede too
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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CDC director clears up confusion on 2nd Covid boosters

... "If you've had omicron disease in the last two or three months, that really did boost your immune system quite well," Walensky said, adding that these individuals could wait another two to four months before their second booster....
IIRC Whack9 likely got COVID pre-omicron.

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Vrede too
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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How Australia Saved Thousands of Lives While COVID Killed 1 Million Americans

If the United States had the same COVID death rate as Australia, about 900,000 lives would have been saved.

For many Americans, imagining what might have been will be painful. But especially now, at the milestone of 1 million deaths in the United States, the nations that did a better job of keeping people alive show what Americans could have done differently and what might still need to change.

Australia offers perhaps the sharpest comparisons with the American experience. Both countries are English-speaking democracies with similar demographic profiles. In Australia and in the United States, the median age is 38. Roughly 86% of Australians live in urban areas, compared with 83% of Americans.

Yet Australia’s COVID death rate sits at one-tenth of America’s, putting the nation of 25 million people (with around 7,500 deaths) near the top of global rankings in the protection of life....

So what went right in Australia and wrong in the United States?

It looks obvious: Australia restricted travel and personal interaction until vaccinations were widely available, then maximized vaccine uptake, prioritizing people who were most vulnerable before gradually opening up the country again....

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.

When the pandemic began, 76% of Australians said they trusted the health care system (compared with around 34% of Americans), and 93% of Australians reported being able to get support in times of crisis from people living outside their household.

In global surveys, Australians were more likely than Americans to agree that “most people can be trusted” — a major factor, researchers found, in getting people to change their behavior for the common good to combat COVID.

But of greater import, interpersonal trust — a belief that others would do what was right not just for the individual but for the community — saved lives. Trust mattered more than smoking prevalence, health spending or form of government, a study of 177 countries in The Lancet recently found....

In New York, a city of 8 million people packed closely together, more than 300 health care workers died from COVID by the end of September (2020), with huge disparities in outcomes for patients and workers from one hospital to another.
:cry:
In Melbourne, a city of 5 million with a dense inner core surrounded by suburbs, the masks, a greater separation of patients and an intense 111-day lockdown that reduced demand on hospital services brought the virus to heel. At Royal Melbourne, not a single worker died during Australia’s worst institutional cluster to date.
:clap:
... “It was a somewhat authoritarian approach,” said Dr. Greg Dore, an infectious diseases expert at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. “There were lots of mandates, lots of fines for breaching restrictions, pretty heavy-handed controlling, including measures that were pretty useless, like the policing of outdoor masking.”

But, he added, the package was effective because the vast majority of Australians stuck with it anyway.

“The community coming on board and remaining on board through the tough periods of 2020 and even into 2021 was really, really important,” Dore said.

Now, more than 95% of Australian adults are fully vaccinated — with 85% of the total population having received two doses. In the United States, that figure is only 66%....
:angry-banghead:

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Vrede too
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Re: How to know and avoid Corona Virus risks

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Biden administration makes 8 more free Covid tests available to US households as it calls on Congress to pass additional funding

The Biden administration is opening CovidTests.gov for a third round of orders while reiterating its calls on Congress to act on additional Covid response funding....
It literally only takes seconds to order.

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