{"id":21018,"date":"2022-01-08T11:34:33","date_gmt":"2022-01-08T19:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=21018"},"modified":"2022-01-08T11:34:35","modified_gmt":"2022-01-08T19:34:35","slug":"omicron-surge-should-peak-shortly-in-bay-area-says-ucsf-prof-and-we-need-to-rethink-all-this-panicked-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/01\/08\/omicron-surge-should-peak-shortly-in-bay-area-says-ucsf-prof-and-we-need-to-rethink-all-this-panicked-testing\/","title":{"rendered":"OMICRON SURGE SHOULD PEAK SHORTLY IN BAY AREA, SAYS UCSF PROF \u2014 AND WE NEED TO RETHINK ALL THIS PANICKED TESTING"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

6 JANUARY 2022\/SF NEWS<\/a>\/JAY BARMANN<\/a> (SFist.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting the public to change its mindset about COVID at this late stage, and after this late Omicron wave, is going to be a challenge. But an emergency medicine specialist at UCSF is one of many experts saying that after this surge abates, we\u2019ve got to start living with this virus as like a weirder common cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UCSF Professor Dr. Jeanne Noble, who specializes in emergency medicine, spoke to ABC 7 Wednesday<\/a> about the state of the Omicron surge as she sees it. Currently, in UCSF hospitals in SF and Oakland, there are 44 total patients with COVID-19 \u2014 but only 13 of them were actually admitted for COVID-related illness, and the other 31 were admitted for another reason and subsequently tested positive. And of those admitted just for COVID, half are unvaccinated and the other half immunocompromised, she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, in other words, while we may hear of rare cases of the fully vaccinated having some serious outcome requiring hospitalization, it is far from the norm so far \u2014 especially with Omicron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is because, Noble tells ABC 7, \u201cthe virus replicates better in the upper airways, causing more of a common cold,\u201d and there is \u201cless replication in the lower airways causing less of pneumonia and serious disease.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was echoed in a series of tweets last week<\/a> from New York City ER doctor Dr. Craig Spencer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery patient I\u2019ve seen with Covid that\u2019s had a 3rd \u2018booster\u2019 dose has had mild symptoms,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cBy mild I mean mostly sore throat. Lots of sore throat. Also some fatigue, maybe some muscle pain.\u201d And he added that those with double-vaccination but no booster had similarly mild symptoms, maybe only slightly worse, but still none of the shortness of breath or difficulty walking across a room that was seen with earlier variants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd almost every single patient that I\u2019ve taken care of that needed to be admitted for Covid has been unvaccinated,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cEvery one with profound shortness of breath.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with other surges, medical experts have cautioned that the biggest concern is the overwhelming of hospitals and especially ICUs, but it is looking like that will not be a danger with this wave, at least in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Dr. Noble tells ABC 7 that after this surge peaks \u2014 likely in the next seven to ten days, she says \u2014 and cases drop off again, we have to start living our lives again and begin moving our mindsets beyond pandemic-era thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We especially need to stop freaking out over asymptomatic cases, and so long as people are fully vaccinated we need to \u201cpivot to living with COVID,\u201d Noble says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of us are still living in this sort of 2020 panic of a positive COVID test means significant illness, [but] it really doesn\u2019t mean that anymore,\u201d Noble says. \u201cAt some point, we\u2019re going to have to dial back our asymptomatic testing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is probably cold comfort for some, and especially to parents of unvaccinated small children \u2014 with reports like this one<\/a> of 49er Raheem Mostert\u2019s three-year-old son being recently hospitalized with severe COVID, though the child has since returned home. And nurses in the Bay Area have been saying, anecdotally, that the Omicron variant appears especially brutal on kids, for some reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there is still no data on how many fully vaccinated people end up with long COVID, either from this variant or another \u2014 which is reason enough for caution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New daily cases in SF \u2014 albeit with data still a week behind \u2014 show no sign of peaking just yet, with the seven-day average of new cases about triple any previous wave. We can cross our fingers that the peak is actually happening right now, though, or has already passed, and we\u2019ll see that in the data next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
via SF Dept. of Public Health<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 JANUARY 2022\/SF NEWS\/JAY BARMANN (SFist.com) Getting the public to change its mindset about COVID at this late stage, and after this late Omicron wave, is going to be a challenge. But an emergency medicine specialist at UCSF is one of many experts saying that after this surge abates, we\u2019ve got… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21019,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21018\/revisions\/21019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}