#hospitalizations

New data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has found that hospitalization rates for COVID-19 and other respiratory infections are still in the thousands, while vaccine rates drop. Nearly 60,000 people were hospitalized in what the CIHI calls “vaccine-preventable respiratory hospitalizations” across Canada in 2024. Influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) accounted for more than half of hospitalizations, while COVID-19 contributed to more than 40 per cent. This number of hospitalizations is “significantly more for our hospitals to handle,” Melanie Josée Davidson, director for the health system performance team at CIHI, said.

Read more.

(Turn away

If you could get me a drink

Of water 'cause my lips are chapped and faded

Call my aunt Marie

Help her gather all my things

And bury me

In all my favorite colors)

————

Whumpee had woken up a little bit ago.

They had been in a coma for almost a week, and their body was borderlining useless.

The nurses were doing some scans and checking vitals when the Doctor pulled Caretaker out of the room.

“Are they going to be okay?” Caretaker asked, hopeful. Whumpee wasn’t even supposed to wake up, so that meant they were getting better, right?

The belief in the early months of the pandemic that young people didn’t get COVID-19 was never true. But now the number and percentage of kids and younger adults contracting the virus have notably increased.

While young people are generally at a much lower risk of dying from Covid, doctors say they are increasingly witnessing them become severely unwell. Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, senior intensive care registrar, said the patients they were seeing were “getting younger and younger”.

“The vast majority of those requiring intensive care are unvaccinated: some of them will die. It is heartbreaking for us as NHS staff to watch people suffer unnecessarily knowing that this almost certainly could have been prevented by the vaccine,” she said.

Even if you don’t die, you could still end up in an ICU or even on a ventilator. 

The 2020 mindset that it was mostly old people ending up in hospitals is as out of date as a Trump tweet.

The latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows that coronavirus in England is now largely an infection among young adults, with cases in 16- to 24-year-olds almost six times more common than in 50- to 69-year-olds.

In the US, the percentage of people under 30 being hospitalized with COVID-19 has crept upwards.

At the start of 2021 the percentage of those hospitalized for COVID-19 who were under 18 was 3%. Hospitalizations for the 18 to 29 group was 5%. Combined, that’s a total of just 8% for the under 30 population.

But as of last week, the under-18 and the 18-29 groups each made up 8% of hospitalizations for COVID-19. That’s a grand total of 16% of those hospitalized being under 30-years-old. In other words, the under 30s percentage of hospitalizations for the virus has doubled in seven months. 

The easiest way to avoid hospitalization is to get vaccinated. Even if you come down with the virus after vaccination, it will be a milder case. On the other hand, unvaccinated people under 30 risk dying like this young man in Alabama.

Sidenote: this isn’t supposed to be a political blog, but I am very angry at the state of the world rn so fuck it.

My mom is a teacher. Her school district has been online this entire semester and students are supposed to come back this Monday (October 26). Their kids are doing a block schedule so only half of students are present on any given day so that they can social distance. The district also promised to provide the teachers with cleaning/sanitation supplies to keep them safe. Here’s what they got:

1 package of napkins (in lieu of paper towels) per teacher

1 bottle of alcohol-free hand sanitizer per teacher

That’s it. The first round of “hand sanitizer” that came through came in clear, unmarked bottles. Turns out it was hand soap. The cleaning supplies that came were unnamed but had an ingredients list. The science teachers looked through the list and realized that the cleaners contained toxic chemicals. Both were recalled by the district, and teachers are buying their own disposable masks for their classes. The admin is also allowing students to get schedule changes because they all want to be with their friends, even though they told teachers from day one that schedule changes would not be approved. The admin also said that they would put up social distancing markers in the hallway, which they did not.

This is unsafe enough, but also consider that the school almost didn’t reopen because the county they are in is a Covid red county (meaning the county has so many hospitalizations that there are no available ICU beds). According to national data, hospital records, and healthcare workers’ public testimony, we are a red county. HOW FUCKING EVER our stupid-ass governor (Kevin Stitt) refuses to officially label the county red. He is publicly disputing national data so that schools are forced to reopen. Doctors are turning away patients and telling them to commute hours away for treatment because there is no space, and Governor Stitt is forcing my mom’s school to open up.

PLUS some of the teachers/teachers’ families have preexisting conditions. One of her coworkers has an immunocompromised spouse, and one of the teachers, who is elderly, has type 1 diabetes (which research shows makes a person more likely to contract Covid) and MS (multiple sclerosis). They have both told their bosses they won’t come into work if more precautions are not put in place, and legit the district sent them a letter stating that they have provided protections (which are the two things I listed above) and expect the teachers to be in class on Monday.

Both are disputing and planning a walk-out.