[Tom]

Walked in for my booster today at Costco Issaquah. Also figured I might as well get the seasonal flu vaccine at the same time. Super easy. There was a 30-minute or so wait but I had some stuff to return and some shopping so was really only waiting for 10 minutes or so.

[Joey]

COVID increasing rapidly in China. Story from NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/12/15/1143002538/china-appears-to-be-facing-what-could-be-the-world-s-largest-coronavirus-outbrea

[Now I Fly]

Tested negative yesterday, 17 days after first symptoms.

[Joey]

COVID variant XBB.1.5 rapidly becoming dominant in the USA At the end of this post is a link to the CDC web page that updates each week and shows which COVID variants are causing most of the cases. Data is shown for the USA divided into 10 regions. Variant XBB.1.5 is deep blue on the map. If you open the CDC web page and scroll down to the map of the USA, then you can point your mouse (or tap) that deep blue color in any of the ‘pies’. A graph will appear showing case counts due to XBB.1.5. Eric Topol reports: “If XBB.1.5 has such rapid growth advantage over BQ.1.1, that isn’t a good sign. Last week, David Ho’s lab at Columbia University published a paper in Cell entitled “Alarming antibody evasion properties of rising SARS-CoV-2 BQ and XBB subvariants.” We had known from Yunlong Cao’s lab that XBB and BQ.1.1 were among the most immune evasive variants seen to date, but this new paper established that the immune evasion for XBB.1 is more than BQ.1.1. Today, Yunlong Cao just posted new data (bottom panel below) to show that XBB.1.5 is not more immune evasive than XBB (good) but it has tighter bind to its ACE2 receptor, which would explain its higher level of transmissibility. ... JP Weiland compared the effective reproduction number (Rt) for XBB.1.5 with XBB and multiple other variants over time since each started spreading (below New York data). ‘XBB.1.5 appears faster and more sustained than ANY of the variants since Omicron's first wave[BA.1] last January.’” Link to Eric's substack article: https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-new-variant-alert Open CDC variant tracker: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions

[Malachai Constant]

I think we picked up a dose of XBB.1.5 while in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan, or Japan. We were fully vaccinated and boosted. When we got back we developed upper respiratory symptom and then tested positive. Symptoms lasted over a week and we tested negative at two weeks. Symptoms relatively mild. We had wore n95 masks while traveling. Take care

[neek]

Been keeping an eye on that one. It looks really good at evading immunity. Case rate is exploding and everyone's traveling. I fully expect to get sick within the next month. I don't know how you're so sure of which variant you had though. Glad it wasn't too serious.

[Malachai Constant]

Seemed likely we were only 10 miles from China in NVN and Cambodia is filled with foreign Chinese and many were coughing. Taiwan and Japan are hot spots according to NYT. We had Omercon lash year about this time and should be quite resistant to it. We had the bivalve to booster a month before the trip.it started with diarrhea for 1 day then the congestion started never bad and no further down than the throat.

[zimmertr]

After that news report about > 50% of passengers flying from China to Italy testing positive for COVID last week we made the call to start masking again. We had COVID in August so our natural immunity is probably waning by now and I expect things to explode in the next two weeks. That flight home from Detroit in an N95 last night sucked. I guess this is life now.

[Joey]

I had COVID once early in 2022 and do not want it a second time. While my case was mild, getting it a second time has a significant consequence. Quoting the article: "Nov. 11, 2022 – Getting COVID-19 a second time doubles a person’s chance of dying and triples the likelihood of being hospitalized, a new study found. Vaccination and booster status did not improve survival or hospitalization rates among people who were infected more than once." https://www.webmd.com/covid/news/20221111/repeat-covid-infection-doubles-risk-of-death

[Bosterson]

Wait, it sounds like the conclusion of that study is that getting COVID is riskier than not getting COVID.

[Randito]

[Joey]

About 30 seconds into the video the speaker from the World Health Organization states that XBB.1.5 "is the most transmissible subvariant which has been detected yet." https://twitter.com/i/status/1610690289110482946

[BigBrunyon]

I walked in there I told him "you need to FIGURE THIS OUT!!!" I had the Main Appointment Times!!!

[Jumble Jowls]

I'm always skeptical of any article by Ya-hoo!, but this is a very good article about XBB.1.5. https://news.yahoo.com/people-havent-had-covid-likely-144149735.html

[Chief Joseph]

Pretty sure I had that, was sick most of the month of November, mostly a dry and then wet cough. A friend of mine was just as sick if not sicker than me even though he had all the vaccines, boosters, etc.