re: Covid In Georgia - 2021 The Reckoning

Yeah, it has been studied for a while but with little success prior to this from what I have read. Which is why they had not been approved for use on humans until this Emergency Exemption.

the GA numbers are out for the day. Not good. Huge spike in new cases. The numbers for the weekend were very low so I expected a larger dump this week, today was it. Hopefully tomorrow's will be much lower. This is why we follow 7 day moving averages.

Hospitalizations are still flat, but there is a week or two lag behind rising cases and rising hospitalizations.

There also seems to be a disproportionate amount of the very rural counties that are coming down with it. The counties that are basically pine trees and hunting leases.

Commentary not my own. Just sharing what I received from a neighbor who works at one of the Atlanta children's hospitals.





Definitely some large spikes there, and less than ideal timing as normal time for RSV with kids to rise. Kind of wish Cobb would at least have left mask policy in place for kids under 12.

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It's respiratory virus season. People should buckle up...this is going to be an annual thing.

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We're a little early on it, but yes there's a good chance that respiratory virus season may just be longer going forward. School started back up this week here in ATL. Not sure about everywhere in the state.


Best graphic I could find on typical peaks.

The first red flag in that graphic is the language. Throwing in "it's gonna get worse". Followed by "Get your shots. Wear your masks." It's captioned as an editorial instead of a graph for people to make their own decisions.

The second red flag as I mentioned above is the lack of the Y axis numbers.

I love data and I love science. I hate fake bullshite though.

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The first red flag in that graphic is the language. Throwing in "it's gonna get worse". Followed by "Get your shots. Wear your masks." It's captioned as an editorial instead of a graph for people to make their own decisions.

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As I said to begin with, this wasn't something from a scientific article, it was shared from one physician to *his friends and neighbors*, and I happened to see it from my neighbor who works with him. It's not something that was put together with a "mass audience" in mind. If I had to take a wild guess, it was primarily to encourage some of the nurses that he works with and parents in his neighborhood who have kids who attend the same school as his own. Yes, it has a perspective/POV, but to act like anything that isn't put together in a vacuum is somehow inaccurate or suspect is a little asinine, no?

At this stage, a lot of the advice out there for vaccine skeptics is to ask their physician or doctors that they know, and this would be where this message qualifies... educating and informing people that he knows where he stands... he believes that masks and vaccines lessen risk, and he'd like to see fewer kids sent to the ICU where he works. Not sure how "it's gonna get worse" is anything other than a factual assessment of most likely outcomes given that kids who may have been home during the summer are about to get thrown into the germ factories we call public schools and after school programs, in many cases with zero distancing and zero mask policies (at least in our county schools). Just from the Kindergarten/1st grade Meet/Greets they did in Cobb I believe there were 2 separate outbreaks already (uncertain on case numbers... something my wife shared with me).

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Also the ICU's at Egleston and Scottish Rite are always "near" capacity. They are designed to run at capacity.

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The second red flag as I mentioned above is the lack of the Y axis numbers.

I love data and I love science. I hate fake bull shite though.

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While I don't disagree, and would love to see the Y axis numbers, these 2 statements also contradict one another. Even without the Y axis numbers, assuming they are not some kind of reverse logarithmic scale, you're looking at 5 months (December-April) where the ICU would have been operating at ~37% capacity (despite a pretty big surge in hospitalizations nationally during part of the same time period - Link.)

You've known my posting track record for a long time. I'm big on data. Big on science. If there is good data to prove the opposite, I'm all for hearing it. But to date, most people have leaned on the "it's not really a risk for kids" but what we're seeing now, is that it is indeed impacting kids at a higher rate than it was previously, which is at least a small concern for me as a parent of 2 young kids that can't get vaccinated even if we wanted them to at this stage.

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We’d get the COVID “letter” which was some kid was around somebody that was exposed…but nothing ever happened.

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Yes, generally speaking, the versions of the virus that were going around last school year were less of a concern for most kids. And even still, it's not like the Delta variant is just wiping out kids left and right, but it's certainly a bigger risk than what we had seen previously as well.

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My issue is now I don’t believe any of the sources that give us data. They’ve admitted the tests were over cycled (?) until Jan 1st which produced false positives…so after they adjusted the numbers dropped. Now everyone’s being scared again with this new data. Is this also being manipulated. To what gain?

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Do you have any specific sources here to help provide context here? How much adjustment are we talking?

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Why is RSV spiking?

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This is the one that is blowing my mind right now... normally wouldn't see these kind of rates until late fall.

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We’re in a full blown propaganda campaign with misinformation, political influence and no real source of objective data to make a decision.

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At this point, it's certainly a challenge. The CDC has mismanaged their role so hard from the beginning that it's hard for anyone to take anything they put out at face value. It also doesn't help that a pretty large percentage of the US population seems to struggle with basic scientific principles and understanding how to interpret and apply statistics... on both sides of the political spectrum.

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there have been 8.8 million shots in GA which is 80%

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I believe that number is the literal number of shots administered, so for those who received a two-shot regimen of Pfizer or Moderna, 2 displayed shots are being consumed by only 1 person.

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looking more deeply.... the mostly white and totally republican counties of Greene, Forsyth, and Cherokee are in Tier 2 of the mostly vaccinated counties (as a percentage of population). And the beat goes on

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I’m not defending blacks who refuse to get the vaccine, but you fail to mention, for example, that Clayton county, which is the most black county in the state, is also the third-highest vaxxed. Gwinnett, DeKalb, Fulton, Chatham, and Douglas are also in Tier 2.

My conclusion based on a cursory view of the maps is that the larger trend is counties with higher levels of wealth and education are more vaccinated and not so much by their racial composition. Some outliers to be sure, but in general.

double post

The purple parts are also a lot higher, almost double over winter months. I can't read what the purple is. Anyone know? Can you ask your friend to ask his neighbor?



ETA- Red Flag #3: First you got it from your neighbor. In a later post it's your neighbor's co-worker. Now I wonder if it was really your neighbor's co-worker's neighbor and whatnot.