44 Comments

Will Paxlovid actually ever be available to non-at-risk groups? Seems unlikely anyone young-ish and healthy will be able to get it, since supply is so limited and might continue to be for a few years at least.

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Why do you think we should be spending vastly more on testing if you also think almost everyone will get omicron?

(I agree with every other recommendation of yours btw! Great post)

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minor correction on point 9 ---- 3 feet is quadruple the risk.

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Can you elaborate on 21 - I've been reading your recent posts and a bunch of other sources I like (trvrb, stat, wallace-wells) , feel should be not too far from the frontier in terms of information set, yet not sure I understand this inevitability.

My current stance (not well thought out but not appearing implausible) is that it should be relatively straightforward to 1 sit out the high tide for a few weeks, 2 then with much lower cases level live through another couple months with a few precautions and 3 then get the omicron booster.

Which of the 1-2-3 do you think is likely to go bad? Do you think omicron booster deliveries starting March-April are plausible?

I live alone, have no friends and let's assume can work from home at least thru 1. I have some concerns about pure "action on the distance" transmission a la that quarantine neighbors case - either from my neighbors doorway or just hvac, but for now have no reason to expect it to be more than marginal risk. But beyond that, if I stay inside, get food delivered, spend a bit of time outside in not very crowded places, doesn't seem like there is much risk? Even grocery shopping in person with cloth mask not sure is that dangerous - my feeling is that it takes some deeper exposure like norwegian wedding to actually get a significant fraction of the congregation in trouble, if being present in the store with an infectious gal somewhere for half hour was enough we'd see much faster blowup in cases than we do; but, thinking of n95 or delivery.

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I love this post. I just want to say how much I have enjoyed and been informed thanks to reading your posts for several months now. Thank you!

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Dec 28, 2021·edited Dec 28, 2021

How much Zinc and Vitamin D are you talking about?

Unrelated, and not at all Evidence Based (because who would study the most impactful health intervention known wrt a pandemic) but there's no time like today to work on your cardiovascular capacity. 15 minutes of HIIT a few times a week for the sedate-but-healthy is all it takes to have appreciable improvements. I still haven't seen any "Is being well trained protective against severe COVID" but lets say its not. All you've done is channeled your anxiety into an intervention that will reduce *other* respiratory illness severity (flu is well studied IIRC), will probably help your mental health (typical outcomes are better than SSRIs for depression and anxiety), and it requires 0 equipment.

You don't need to go Full Tabata and copy his brutal protocols. Like seriously, it doesn't take much: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111489

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Thank you for these posts, they really are a great synthesis of the best information publicly available.

I had a question about 51 -- I'm not sure what you meant by "If there is sufficient overshoot on immunity things might collapse further." I'm guessing that I'm just missing some epidemiological context that would help me understand this, but would you mind expanding some more on this?

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Meanwhile in Germany, the Minister of Health in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's largest state, stated that "the new thing about Omicron is that it also spreads by air", shifting my model of what exactly is going wrong away from questionable policy choices and towards sheer incompetence.

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+ Expect that you will be exposed. Sarscov2 is airborne and widespread.

+ If young and male research aspiration as part of injection technique. Data is Denmark vs Norway. 2.4x reduction in risk of myocarditis in Denmark where aspiration is standard practice.

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Can you clarify how people are supposed to get fluvoxamine? And also, if someone is already on fluvoxamine should they be concerned about a supply crunch?

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What about taking more than 3 doses of vaccines?

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We now think that touching objects (Fomites) is not worth worrying about for Covid. One question I have is whether this is specific to Covid or if this also applies to Colds and Flu. Are those also 99% airborne viruses that people falsely think are transmitted by touch? Is there something special about Covid that makes it hard to transmit by touch?

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Dec 31, 2021·edited Dec 31, 2021

I've seen some people suggest the opposite of trying to wait out the January wave. (I'm being vague because I don't want to give ideas.)

It strikes me as nuts and antisocial, but what are the other arguments against it?

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Could you link me to some sources substantiating that p100 is really necessary above a well-fitted n95? Or is it more just based on first principles: more infectious with less viral load means a more serious mask is in order?

I tried to find some but couldn't. Thanks!

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