View allAll Photos Tagged omicron
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
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Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
More than 750 athletes participated in the 2013 Hudson Valley Regional Special Olympics May 4 at West Point. Supporting the event were more than 1,000 cadets from 4th Regiment volunteering as sponsors and escorts as well as a dozen corps squad and competitive club cadet teams cheering on the athletes at Shea Stadium, Arvin Gymnasium and Gillis Field House. In its 29th year, the regional spring games were presented by Omicron Delta Kappa, the National Leadership Honor Society. Class of 2013 Cadet Matthew Walsh was the cadet in charge. U.S. Army photo by Mike Strasser/USMA PAO
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi greeting new members during the chapter's second ever Bid Day at TCU. For those of you who don't know what Bid Day is...and I didn't either...all the sororities assemble on the Campus Commons. Then the newbies are released one chapter at a time to run toward their new sisters. It's kinda like a cattle drive, but with a much happier ending.
I also rolled about 90 seconds of video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qnt0kMEWWQ&list=UUlJLPNVzTQB...
You can learn more about AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
OmiCron in the Fractal Forest (the interactive tech area of the Anon Salon NYE party, Sea of Dreams)
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
Why? Because I didn't do this during the first run of photos and because most of you don't know this is going to BrickCon :)
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OmiCron the Interface at the Rhythm Society's end of the world celebration on Dec 21st, 2012. Oakland CA
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
From left to right: Rek; the explosive expert, Slug; the Sniper, Ant; the comms expert and Spawn; the squad sergeant.
/clonetard
www.cnbc.com/2022/01/17/omicron-wave-shows-early-signs-of...
Omicron surge shows signs of easing in states hit early by the fast-spreading variant
KEY POINTS
■ The U.S. has reported nearly 800,000 cases per day on average over the past week, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
■ That's more than three times the level seen during last winter's previous record.
■ But there are signs of a possible turning point in the surge in places hit early by omicron.
Following weeks of soaring infections, the latest Covid surge is showing signs of slowing in a handful of areas hit earliest by the omicron variant — offering a glimmer of hope that this wave is starting to ease.
The U.S. has reported an average of nearly 800,000 cases per day over the past week, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, more than three times the level seen during last winter's previous record. But in a handful of states and cities, particularly on the East Coast, cases appear to have plateaued or fallen in recent days.
In New York, the seven-day average of daily new cases has been declining since hitting a record high of 85,000 per day on Jan. 9, according to Hopkins data. Cases there doubled during a number of seven-day periods in late December and early January, but are down sharply from last week to an average of 51,500. In New York City, average daily cases have fallen by 31% over the past week, state health department data shows.
"There will come a time when we can say it's all over," Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a press conference Friday. "We're not there yet, but boy, it's on the horizon and we've waited a long time for that."
New York is still reporting a high level of daily infections, ranking 15th out of all states, according to a CNBC analysis of population-adjusted case counts, down from the second-most just a few days ago. New Jersey also recently fell out of the top five, now ranking 20th, as the state has seen a 32% drop in average daily cases over the past week.
In late December, Washington, D.C. had the highest number of Covid infections on a per capita basis than any other state, peaking at an average of 2,500 per day. That's since dropped to 1,700, the data shows.
And in neighboring Maryland, daily infections hit a pandemic high on Jan. 8 but are down 27% from a week ago.
In Illinois, Dr. Khalilah Gates, assistant dean of medical education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said you can "already kind of feel" the stabilization of hospitalizations. As of Sunday, the state reported a seven-day average of about 7,200 patients hospitalized with Covid, according to Department of Health and Human Services data, up 4% over the past week, a more modest increase than the 30% weekly growth seen just two weeks ago.
"There's not that influx that we initially had in the beginning of the surge and things are kind of just puttering," she said. "And if that lasts for, you know, five to seven consecutive days, I think you start to breathe a little bit easier saying, OK, like we've kind of gotten over this surge, got through this surge as well."
Cases are also falling in South Africa and the United Kingdom, which are being closely watched as potential indications of what could happen in the U.S since they both experienced earlier surges. Hopkins data shows average daily infections are down 80% in South Africa from its peak on Dec. 17 and 42% in the U.K. from that country's peak on Jan. 5, though there is no guarantee the U.S. will follow the same trajectory.
The American population has different vaccination rates, levels of previous exposure to the virus and degrees of underlying health conditions, so the trajectory of omicron could vary.
To be sure, cases are rising in the majority of states with 23 reporting record-high infection levels as of Sunday, Hopkins data shows. And even so, U.S. cases are undercounted due to the availability of at-home test kits for which results are not typically reported to state or federal agencies.
That rise is particularly visible in Western states, where average daily cases are showing some signs of slowing but have still grown 14% over the past week. That has led to a "skyrocketing" of Covid admissions at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dr. Michael Daignault said on CNBC's Worldwide Exchange Friday morning.
"We had that delta surge, it was a surge and then a plateau and then the omicron kind of took off from that delta crest," said Daignault, an emergency physician at the hospital.
The increase prompted New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on Thursday to issue emergency orders to combat the fresh surge of cases.
A steep spike
Experts predict the omicron wave will fall almost as quickly as it rose, leaving the U.S. with relatively low cases of Covid sometime in February or March, with cities hit the earliest likely reaching that point sooner.
While the threat of a new variant could always change the forecasts, it's possible Americans could see a bit of a reprieve as a large swath of the population retains some immunity from recent infection.
"Sometime towards the beginning of March, mid-March, we should be in a very good position," said Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. "April, May, we're going to have very few cases reported."
Still, just how quickly cases fall once they reach their peak depends on how much a community abides by public health measures after that period.
"It depends on how high the peak is. And on whether or not when people see the case count numbers coming down, if they kind of loosen things up," said Aubree Gordon, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Hospitals overwhelmed
There is a growing body of evidence that the omicron variant, while more contagious, doesn't make people as sick as the delta variant.
Still, there are a record 156,000 Americans in U.S. hospitals with Covid, according to a seven-day average of HHS data, up 17% over the past week. A significant portion of Covid hospitalizations appear to stem from people admitted for other reasons who test positive for the virus once they're in a facility.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" last week that about half of the city's hospitalizations are people who have been diagnosed after they were admitted for something else. NY Gov. Hochul on Sunday reported 42% of the New York's hospitalized Covid patients were admitted for something other than the virus.
Even if the omicron variant causes less severe disease, hospitals can still be strained due to the high volume of patients combined with staffing shortages.
"The rate limiting factors are still the incredible speed of this variant, the amount of patients that are coming to the ER or requiring admission," said Daignault, the L.A. doctor. "And even if we peak at the end of January, you still have the back end of that surge for the rest of February."
Daignault suspects that many of the ICU patients in his hospital right now are sick with the more virulent delta variant. Cases of delta may also be what is contributing to a rise in daily Covid deaths in L.A., he said. Still, the CDC recently estimated omicron now accounts for 95% of new cases.
Nationwide, cases and hospitalizations have surpassed last winter's peak, but there are about 87% as many ICU patients with Covid. The U.S. is reporting a seven-day average of nearly 1,800 Covid deaths per day, according to Hopkins data, which is on the rise but roughly half of the peak levels seen at this time last year, before vaccines were widely available.
While vaccines, particularly without a booster shot, appear to offer less protection against infection from omicron, they do seem to be holding up against severe disease and death, for which they were originally designed to prevent. So while that means vaccinated people may be contributing to the rise in cases, the unvaccinated are really the ones driving hospitalizations.
Still, the high transmissibility means many healthcare workers have become infected with the virus and forced to isolate, driving some hospitals to their limits even sooner.
Though a peak in cases provides a light at the end of the tunnel of this surge, hospitalization and death counts lag behind increases in infections. The full effects of the omicron spike are yet to be seen.
Nurses hold national day of action Jan. 13 to demand employers, Biden administration protect RNs, health care workers
Registered nurse members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest union of RNs, hold actions across the country on Thursday, Jan. 13 — including a candlelight vigil in Washington, D.C. for nurses who lost their lives to Covid-19, and a national virtual press conference — to demand the hospital industry invest in safe staffing, and to demand that President Biden follow through on his campaign promise to protect nurses and prioritize public health.
NNU nurses emphasize that in recent weeks, the Biden administration has ripped away critical protections from health care workers and the public, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) weakening Covid isolation guidelines and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announcing that it intends to withdraw critical Covid protections for health care workers—right when the Omicron variant is exploding across the country and hospitalizations are skyrocketing. Nurses emphasize that being left unprotected by the government and by their profit-driven hospital employers which have failed to invest in safe staffing and provide critical health and safety protections, has created such unsafe working conditions that nurses are being driven away from the profession.
#ProtectNurses
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi greeting new members during the chapter's second ever Bid Day at TCU. For those of you who don't know what Bid Day is...and I didn't either...all the sororities assemble on the Campus Commons. Then the newbies are released one chapter at a time to run toward their new sisters. It's kinda like a cattle drive, but with a much happier ending.
I also rolled about 90 seconds of video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qnt0kMEWWQ&list=UUlJLPNVzTQB...
You can learn more about AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
LEGO 75314 The Bad Batch Attack Shuttle
Star Wars 2021
The Bad Batch
Hunter
Wrecker
Tech
Echo
Crosshair
Gonk Droid
Clone Force 99
Havoc Marauder
Omicron-class Attack Shuttle
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi greeting new members during the chapter's second ever Bid Day at TCU. For those of you who don't know what Bid Day is...and I didn't either...all the sororities assemble on the Campus Commons. Then the newbies are released one chapter at a time to run toward their new sisters. It's kinda like a cattle drive, but with a much happier ending.
I also rolled about 90 seconds of video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qnt0kMEWWQ&list=UUlJLPNVzTQB...
You can learn more about AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/01/us-covid-case-cou...
US experts question whether counting Covid cases is still the right approach
Case counts ‘don’t reflect what they used to’, experts argue, as data suggests Omicron is less severe but more contagious
Some US infectious disease experts and public health officials are questioning whether to continue using the number of coronavirus cases as a metric for determining which mitigation efforts are appropriate, as data suggests Omicron is less severe but much more contagious than previous variants.
Those experts argue that the US has reached a stage in the pandemic where reports of dramatic surges in case counts prompt unnecessary worries and that government officials and the public should instead review death and hospitalization data when considering precautions.
Case counts “are causing a lot of panic and fear, but they don’t reflect what they used to, which was that hospitalizations would track with cases”, said Dr Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.
However, other infectious disease experts say that while they are encouraged by data from South Africa showing that its recent Omicron wave was not accompanied by a significant increase in deaths, the virus continues to strain hospitals in the US, therefore the number of Covid cases remains a vital measurement.
The US on Thursday had more than 580,000 new Covid cases, the second time this week that the country has broken its record for daily Covid cases, according to New York Times data. But over the past two weeks, while the number of Covid cases in the United States has increased by 181%, the number of hospitalizations has increased by 19% and the number of deaths has decreased by 5%.
“It seems to be less virulent for two reasons,” said Gandhi. “One, we seem to have so much more immunity in December 2021” than during previous waves, and “there are now five laboratory studies that show that it doesn’t seem to infect lungs very well”.
In reporting data on Covid, health departments should now take the same approach as they do with influenza, Gandhi said. That means releasing hospitalization and death data but not numbers concerning case counts because, like with the flu, it’s not possible to eliminate the virus, therefore we should only focus on its severity, she said.
“Once you have accepted the virus is endemic, just like influenza, then you never track cases because we never screen like this for any other viruses, we track what is causing disease and getting people hospitalized,” Gandhi said.
Other countries are now implementing an approach that is not focused on case counts. For example, in Canada, which has also seen record numbers of Covid cases recently, Dr Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, said at a news conference Thursday that the government agency would no longer focus on daily case counts.
“We no longer need to identify and have public health manage every single case of the variant because for most people, that will result in relatively mild illness, so we need to focus our efforts and resources on our most vulnerable groups,” said Strang. “Omicron is all around us and we have to recognize that you could be exposed anywhere … It’s about managing and slowing down the spread but not eliminating it.”
The Philippines government also announced this week that it would stop posting case updates on social media, which was similar to an approach employed by Singapore, according to Hawaii Public Radio.
But in the US, there are parts of the country where hospitals remains overwhelmed, largely because of unvaccinated patients with Covid. In Maryland, for example, which saw a more than 500% increase in Covid cases and 50% increase in hospitalizations, at least six hospitals have implemented crisis-mode standards of care, according to the Baltimore Sun.
At Johns Hopkins Bayview medical center, which saw a 360% increase in patients hospitalized with Covid in December, that means rescheduling elective surgical procedures and opening additional space to treat Covid patients.
Justin Lessler, an epidemiology professor at the University of North Carolina, still sees case counts as an “important leading indicator”, he said. “With Omicron are surges are so big, even if it’s on average … much less severe than previous variants, the sheer number of cases is such that hospital systems are going to be overwhelmed and there is risks to individuals because it’s so likely you will be infected.”
Mara Aspinall, a biomedical diagnostics professor at Arizona State University, also said case count data remains important because it prevents the public from overreacting or underreacting to the pandemic.
“The challenge we have had this whole time is finding that balance between keeping our physical health in check, but our mental health and the economy moving forward, and it’s all with the best information” that we are able to do that, Aspinall said.
For Gandhi, that balance lies in health departments tracking case counts internally and only alerting the public on hospitalizations and deaths.
“The reason we tracked cases is because we were hoping we could eliminate the virus, but it’s not in the nature of the virus to eliminate it,” said Gandhi. “The country hasn’t totally transitioned to this idea that we can’t eliminate it.”
OmiCron in the Fractal Forest (the interactive tech area of the Anon Salon NYE party, Sea of Dreams)
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/high-...
High-pressure oxygen shows promise in long COVID; earlier Omicron infection may protect against subvariants
July 14 (Reuters) - The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review.
High-pressure oxygen treatment may help long COVID
Patients with long COVID may see some improvement after breathing pure oxygen in a high-air-pressure environment, according to data from a small Israeli trial.
Researchers randomly assigned 73 patients with post-COVID symptoms lasting at least three months to receive hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) or a sham treatment. Patients in the HBOT group spent 40 sessions breathing pure oxygen in a chamber in which the air pressure was two-to-three times higher than normal, allowing the lungs to receive more oxygen than they normally would. Shortly after the last treatment, the HBOT group showed "significant improvement" compared to the sham group in thinking skills, energy, sleep, psychiatric symptoms, and pain, according to a report published on Tuesday in Scientific Reports. Symptomatic improvement was associated with magnetic resonance imaging evidence of structural and functional brain healing and improved delivery of oxygen-carrying blood to the brain, the researchers said.
HBOT is often used to treat wounds that are not healing well and has recently been tested as a treatment for traumatic brain injury, but this is the first randomized trial to test it for long COVID. Larger studies are needed to confirm the findings and to identify patients who might benefit, the researchers said.
Earlier Omicron infection may protect against BA.4/BA.5
Young and middle-aged adults who were infected with earlier versions of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus are likely to have "strong" protection against reinfection with the currently dominant Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, researchers say.
That will not be the case if they were infected with a variant that circulated before Omicron, however, according to a study from Qatar. Researchers there found that after taking vaccination status into account, infection with a pre-Omicron version of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be only 15.1% effective at preventing a symptomatic BA.4/BA.5 reinfection and 28.3% effective at preventing any BA.4/BA.5 reinfection. A previous Omicron infection, however, was 76.1% effective against symptomatic BA.4/BA.5 reinfection and 79.7% effective against any BA.4/BA.5 reinfection. The study did not assess the severity of reinfection. In a report posted on medRxiv on Tuesday ahead of peer review, the researchers point out that the findings may not be applicable in older people, given that in Qatar only 9% of the residents are older than 50.
The study also showed that protection from infections with earlier pre-Omicron variants was weaker against BA.4/BA.5 than it was against BA.1/BA.2, "indicating that these two new variants have greater capacity to escape the immune-system response," said study leader Laith Jamal Abu Raddad of Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar.
COVID-19 vaccines linked with longer periods for some women
COVID-19 vaccination may be associated with short-term lengthening of the menstrual cycle for some women, according to a new study.
The findings are drawn from 3,858 female nurses in the United States and Canada who have been filling out questionnaires about their periods twice a year since 2011. As of December 2021, 91% of them had been vaccinated against the coronavirus. Before the pandemic, 15% reported irregular cycles; that rose to 22.7% in 2021, the researchers reported on Wednesday in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Vaccinated women had a 54% higher risk of increased cycle length compared to unvaccinated women, regardless of vaccine type and even after taking pandemic stress and health-related factors into account, the report said. On closer analysis, vaccination was only associated with change to longer cycles in the first six months after vaccination and among women whose cycles were short, long or irregular before vaccination, not among women with normal length, regular cycles.
"A normal menstrual cycle is characterized by tightly regulated inflammatory and immune mediators" that may be temporarily affected by the body's immune response to the vaccines, the researchers said. They call for monitoring of "menstrual cycle health in vaccine clinical trials and increased attention to sex-based differences in vaccine response."
www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/menstruation-changes...
Menstrual changes after Covid vaccines may be far more common than previously known
A study found that 42% of people with regular menstrual cycles said they bled more heavily than usual after their Covid vaccination.
When adults gained access to Covid vaccines last year, most knew to expect headaches, fatigue and soreness as side effects.
But some researchers think it’s time to add another common one to the list: temporary menstrual changes.
An analysis published Friday in the journal Science Advances found that 42% of people with regular menstrual cycles said they bled more heavily than usual after vaccination. Meanwhile, 44% reported no change and around 14% reported a lighter period. Among nonmenstruating people — those post-menopause or who use certain long-term contraceptives, for example — the study suggests many experienced breakthrough or unexpected bleeding after their Covid shots.
The survey included over 39,000 people 18 to 80 years old who were fully vaccinated and had not contracted Covid. The study authors cautioned, though, that the percentages do not necessarily represent the rate of menstrual changes in the general population, since people who observed a difference were more likely to participate. The survey’s aim was simply to provide evidence for future studies, not to establish cause and effect.
More than 750 athletes participated in the 2013 Hudson Valley Regional Special Olympics May 4 at West Point. Supporting the event were more than 1,000 cadets from 4th Regiment volunteering as sponsors and escorts as well as a dozen corps squad and competitive club cadet teams cheering on the athletes at Shea Stadium, Arvin Gymnasium and Gillis Field House. In its 29th year, the regional spring games were presented by Omicron Delta Kappa, the National Leadership Honor Society. Class of 2013 Cadet Matthew Walsh was the cadet in charge. U.S. Army photo by Mike Strasser/USMA PAO
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
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The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
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Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
More than 750 athletes participated in the 2013 Hudson Valley Regional Special Olympics May 4 at West Point. Supporting the event were more than 1,000 cadets from 4th Regiment volunteering as sponsors and escorts as well as a dozen corps squad and competitive club cadet teams cheering on the athletes at Shea Stadium, Arvin Gymnasium and Gillis Field House. In its 29th year, the regional spring games were presented by Omicron Delta Kappa, the National Leadership Honor Society. Class of 2013 Cadet Matthew Walsh was the cadet in charge. U.S. Army photo by Mike Strasser/USMA PAO
OmiCron in the Fractal Forest (the interactive tech area of the Anon Salon NYE party, Sea of Dreams)
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
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Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
f/11 iso 6400 plus 1.3EV au flash soit 7.3EV on voit bien la diffusion qui se fait sentir et le grain qui apparaît
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi greeting new members during the chapter's second ever Bid Day at TCU. For those of you who don't know what Bid Day is...and I didn't either...all the sororities assemble on the Campus Commons. Then the newbies are released one chapter at a time to run toward their new sisters. It's kinda like a cattle drive, but with a much happier ending.
I also rolled about 90 seconds of video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qnt0kMEWWQ&list=UUlJLPNVzTQB...
You can learn more about AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
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Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
Koni-Omega Microfilm Camera HK-35
Manufactured by Konishiroku Photo Industries (distributed by Berkey Photo) fitted with Omicron 70mm f/5.6
© Dirk HR Spennemann 2012, All Rights Reserved
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
www.wsj.com/articles/as-omicron-surged-covid-19-spread-th...
As Omicron Surged, Non-Covid-19 Patients Contracted Virus in Hospitals in Higher Numbers
In January a record number of people in hospitals had coronavirus infections they caught while there, Wall Street Journal analysis finds
As the Omicron variant surged through communities across the U.S., it also spread inside hospitals and infected non-Covid-19 patients, reaching a record number, a Wall Street Journal analysis of U.S. government data found.
The daily total of patients with Covid-19 that they caught in hospitals reached a record of about 4,700 during the Omicron wave in January.
thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/594522-a-test-to-determine...
A test to determine COVID immunity could reshape US policy
By Robert Redfield and Marc Siegel, opinion contributors
Two years into the COVID pandemic, and we still don’t have a way to determine for sure whether the immunity you gain from either an infection or the vaccine is sufficient to protect from reinfection or from serious illness. We call it a correlate of protection. We can still only guess.
Don’t get me wrong, the biotechnology of detection has brought us a long way in two years, the PCR test we developed in early 2020 has remained a very valuable tool even against the highly mutated emerging variants, and repeated rapid testing is accurate especially when you have COVID-type symptoms.
But what is still lacking is a simple test to determine effective antibodies against COVID-19, including the current omicron variant. This is especially important now that we know many hospitalized patients are not only unvaccinated, but have previous infections from delta, alpha, or the original SARS-COV-2 strains.
Consider that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and seroprevalence data, approximately 145 million Americans had been infected by October with about an additional 125 million infections since. Most estimates suggest that we officially diagnose about 1 in 4 infections. Officially, there have been more than 77 million cases, but the real number is probably closer to 270 million, which means that reinfection is playing a substantial role.
With omicron predominating, we had been averaging over 500,000 daily cases since early January with the numbers now finally decreasing dramatically to less than a third of that. The numbers were clearly slowed by existing immunity even though we can’t measure it.
We still haven’t passed through the powerful omicron wave yet. Close to 85,000 COVID patients are still filling our hospitals. Multiple studies from the United Kingdom, Kaiser Permanente and CDC have shown that vaccinated and recently boosted patients have approximately 90 percent less of a chance of being hospitalized. Unfortunately, according to recent CDC data, only 42 percent of all adults nationwide who are eligible have received a vaccine booster, an inadequate number.
It is clear our hospitals have filled with people who have had COVID previously as well as people who aren’t sufficiently protected by the vaccine — due to either immune evasion or waning. This is on top of the core group that have had neither vaccine nor previous infection.
It is also clear that previous infection with COVID provides a valuable source of immunity against reinfection, but this protection doesn’t last forever and doesn’t always protect us against the immuno-evasive omicron variant. A new study from Qatar just published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that previous infection provided 60 percent protection against omicron with substantial protection against hospitalization, but we haven’t seen the same pattern here in the U.S.
As a country, our approach has been too narrow and rigid. On the one hand, we don’t acknowledge that recent infection provides protection, the way Israel does. On the other hand, we narrowly stick to the view that the vaccine provides complete protection when it does no such thing, especially against omicron.
Israel, on the other hand, acknowledges the protective quality of recent infection and accepts positive antibody titer tests to document that for entry from travelers. We have seen this policy successfully applied to our patients traveling to Israel for several months, and its lacking here in the U.S. has deepened the divisiveness as those recovering from infection are marginalized despite having some degree of immunity.
We need a titers test to measure antibodies instead of more political rhetoric. We need to develop a cut-off point for antibodies, no matter how you got them, whether via infection or vaccination, that we can all agree to rely on as a marker of immunity. In the meantime, we can tell you that a low antibody to the nuclear capsid after you were sick with COVID means that you probably didn’t retain sufficient immunity from your infection and that a low spike antibody protein means you probably need an additional booster. But what number is sufficient to say you are protected against an omicron infection? We don’t know, but we have the technology we need to establish this.
It is time to prioritize the conduct of clinical studies to validate the level of COVID-19 immunity that correlates with protection. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky mentioned in an interview on Doctor Radio Reports last week that work is ongoing on this, but we think progress is too slow.
One example we propose is conducting a prospective study of cruise ship crew members. Presently most crew members are tested for COVID-19 infection two times per week. Our plan would be to couple this with monthly blood and saliva samples which would be stored and then evaluated after infections were diagnosed comparing those who experienced infection with those who did not. In this way, we could determine a cutoff number of antibodies above which you are likely protected, whether it's from vaccination or a recent infection.
We have a good idea of how prevalent the virus is. The omicron variant is clearly dropping. We need to shift the focus to a greater understanding of how protected we are from it and other variants that may emerge.
Marc Siegel, M.D., is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health. He is a Fox News medical correspondent and author of the new book, "COVID; the Politics of Fear and the Power of Science."
Robert Redfield, M.D., is an American virologist and senior public health adviser to Governor Hogan and the state of Maryland. Redfield served as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry from 2018 to 2021.