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Boston-area residents now pooping out record amount of Covid-19; numbers don't bode well for next couple weeks, hospitals running out of room
By adamg on Wed, 12/08/2021 - 5:59pm
Samples from the MWRA's Deer Island treatment plant now show higher levels of Covid-19 viral particles than even during last winter's surge.
The numbers are considered predictive - what will happen with actual Covid-19 test rates in four to ten days - because people often start excreting the virus before they realize they need to get tested.
The one saving grace: People who are fully vaccinated are less likely to get sick enough to die. But there are still several hundred thousand Massachusetts resident who are not fully vaccinated.
The Deer Island plant handles sewage from Boston and surrounding communities. In the graph, orange shows results from the MWRA's southern district - roughly, south of Rte. 9 - with the green representing results from its northern sewers.
Meanwhile, hospitalization rates in Massachusetts continue to increase:
Bostonscigirl reports:
Family member has been sitting in ER waiting room at Boston hospital for 11 hours- needs to be admitted for non-covid issue but no beds. Doesn’t even get a temporary bed in ER. Getting treatment so far while in waiting room.
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Comments
Question for the public health folks
Can't vaccinated, non-symptomatic people have the virus in their system?
Technical question - can you have the virus present in your system (including fecal 'output') and not be 'infected'? Is there anything below non-symptomatic positive test?
You're asking if there are
You're asking if there are asymptomatic covid carriers? Yeah, that's kind of been the whole deal for the past 2 years, man. People don't realize they have covid, because they don't have any symptoms and they end up spreading it to a bunch of other people. If you're vaccinated and get a break through case, you'll most likely be able to fight it off quicker than if you weren't vaccinated and therefore you'll have a smaller window of time when you can transmit it to other people.
Not really sure what you mean by having it in your system but not being infected. If you have it in your system, you are infected with it.
I think
they are asking if there are non-transmitting infections that would still be detectable through certain routes, like in feces.
Or really the question is do we know at what level of infection someone must be at to transmit the virus, and if they are below that level, are they still excreting markers of the virus in their feces?
This is correct
Much better put, thank you.
I think these markers spiking are only worrisome if it means we're about to see a wave of breakthrough infections, etc...
Edit: obviously the ERs being full is bad, etc... but that's not necessarily a sign that we're going to be in a disaster in 7-10 days.
I have no idea, but... maybe not good?
We're at 94.5% hospital bed occupancy and 91.1% ICU capacity in metro Boston — 92.6%/85.4% statewide.
In the last reported week, 11,321 breakthrough cases, and 273 new hospitalizations of fully-vaccinated people. Over that same time, 30,148 people tested newly positive — so 18,827 not-fully-vaccinated. Total of 857 hospitalizations, during that time which makes 584 not-fully-vaxxed. That's 2.4% of diagnosed breakthrough cases resulting in hospitalization, and 3.1% of the not-fully-vaxxed people with positive tests. Yeah, base rate fallacy and all of that (with a significant majority of the state fully vaccinated, this works out to more than 5× more likely to end up in the hospital if not fully vaccinated, so OMG get your shots), but... if these numbers keep going up like they look like they're going to, even if everyone were to be fully vaccinated... still that doesn't seem like enough beds.
Seems very likely
Intramuscular vaccination does not create what's called "sterilizing immunity" against respiratory infections (wherein the virus can't even gain a foothold.) My vague understanding is that it works to activate T cells and produce IgG antibodies, but not the IgA antibodies that are needed to fight the virus in your upper respiratory tract. So a vaccinated person still needs to mount a proper immune response against the "covid head-cold" and develop the IgA antibodies, after which point yeah, there should be sterilizing immunity.
During that head-cold phase, which could be pretty mild, they're going to be swallowing viruses (embedded in mucus) and pooping those out. (I've also seen speculation that SARS-CoV-2 can replicate to some degree in the gut lining as well, but I'm unsure on that.) Even after the antibodies are in full production, they're still going to be shedding virus to some degree, and those viruses will be more and more covered in antibodies that make them incapable of binding to cells -- but they'll still be carrying the RNA that the Biobot Analytics folks will be able to detect.
I don't know what the relative rates are, though. How many average vaccinated cases of covid-19 does it take to match the viral output of one average unvaccinated case of covid-19?
Only sinful (unvaccinated)
Only sinful (unvaccinated) ought to worry.
If they were worried
they would be getting vaccinated.
And then, the exceptionally small number of people with real medical contraindications to our available vaccines would be the only ones unvaccinated; hopefully the 99.9% or whatever it would be that are vaccinated would be enough to give them reasonable protection, along with hopefully better and better post-infection treatment options if they did become infected.
But breakthrough infections can still be fatal, albeit at significantly lower rates than infections in those with no prior immunity. The higher the prevalence of infections in a community, the higher the risk to everyone. Low vaccination rates are the highest risk, but increasing infection rates still increases risk even in a population with a high vaccination rate.
Maybe it's time to stop
Maybe it's time to stop covering medical bills of not fully vaccinated.
I'd consider that inhumane
because I don't believe anyone should be saddled with crippling debt in order to receive necessary medical care, no matter the cause.
Not sure
Crippling debt, no. But there should be some additional consequences for the burden the unvaccinated-by-choice place on everyone else when they get sick.
Maybe they should loose their right to vote for a while...
Disenfranchising voters?
Also not something I'm going to support.
I'm not opposed to reasonable consequences, but what is reasonable? They are already facing a significantly higher risk of serious illness and death, whether or not they believe that to be the case, and that is a direct consequence they may have to face. For many of them, that consequence may be what finally changes them; I wish it did not have to get that far along for them to change course.
We're only as strong as the weakest link, and unless you are willing to cut the weak links out of the chain and leave them behind, we're stuck carrying them with the rest of the chain. But people are not pieces of metal.
I wasn't serious about the disenfranchisement
Although it's a nice daydream for the fools to stay home on election day.
I don't know what the right answer is. People who reject vaccines and get sick deprive others of hospital services. That alone has had a real consequence to say nothing of the heighten chance of spreading the virus to others.
I'm not as comfortable for universal mandates as some but if you opt to go without and get sick there should be some reprocussions beyond your own illness. This is much the same as people who don't buy insurance shouldn't expect to get a new home even if they are rescued during a fire.
Well…
They can pay higher premiums.
Can they?
Legally, can the insurance companies charge more based on vaccination status?
We'll start small
Only bad flavors of jello for non-vaxed patients.
Uh...
...there are good flavors of jello?
Duh
Stargate taught me the blue jello is the best.
Except there is this free
Except there is this free medicine that one could get that could stop them from getting said crippling debt. It's time people stop making excuses for those that have chosen to keep us in this predicament.
We get vaccinated for the ppl that can't due to real heath issues. It's being called being part of a civilized society that helps others that in turn benefits all. Something people have forgotten about in this country.
The Grinch
Welp its the grinch that stole christmas is here again.
But serious question.. As someone who has friends and family in New Hampshire, I have been watching their infection rate sky rocket there. Far faster and sooner than here in MA.
But funny how now its sky rocketing.
Just curious... anyone think that maybe SOME of this are people who LIVE in NH and WORK in MA (and go poo here) may be driving the numbers up too?
NH has a vax rate of about 50% , far lower than here.
Vermont too
And their vacation rate is the best in the nation.
Time to move to VT
I could use a better vacation rate.
Wasn't last year much worse?
Wasn't last year much worse?
the chart
read the chart at the top.. it goes back to March 2020
so no, it wasn't worse in Dec of 2020.
yeah. and....
While I like (well, not LIKE, but you know) this chart because it seems way less likely to be affected by things like "who decides to get tested", it's not alone. If you look at average reported cases by week, we're almost exactly where we were one year ago. It's not as bad as it got in January yet... but that's not really comforting.
Spring '20 wave saw ~4000 hospitalized
The very first wave that hit us peaked at around 4000 hospitalized and ~200 deaths/day in late April 2020.
It matters a lot *who* gets infected, and that first wave seemed to hit especially heavily in long-term care facilities.
Covid
Let's all come together and poop less in order to bring down these Covid numbers.