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The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#591

Post by monkeynotes »

tialaramex wrote: post #565
autokad wrote: post #521

There is lots of competition for the top of the stupidity list. NYC locking down all summer and then 'opening up' in September seemed top of the list to me. It's not that I thought they should have stayed locked down the entire time, its that they should have opened in the summer so they could lock down in the winter if they really needed it. But seriously though, locking down in the summer to only open up in flu sea…

> Or maybe the whole 'if we just lock down for two weeks, this will be over' tops the list of stupidity New Zealand had 26 deaths in over a year of the pandemic. Not 26 per 100k population. Not 26 per day. Twenty six people full stop. Because in fact "We go hard and we go early" works. Right now they are locked down (since last week) because they had one case in their community, but of course it isn't ever one case a…

My household has had zero cases per capita. Population count and relative isolation make a huge difference.

You can't directly compare NZ with places like Germany or the US.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#592

Post by rayiner »

JeremyNT wrote: post #415
rayiner wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It boggles my mind why there is pushback on mandating kids to wear masks in schools. It really shouldn’t if you’re an educated person who is following what scientific authorities are saying. The science here is still uncertain, but leaning towards masks for kids in schools not being worth it. See: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/the-science-of-maski... > At the end of May, the Centers for Disease Control an…

Notable is that the article is referring to a pre-delta study of elementary aged school children (elementary school normally caps out at around age 11 in the US). Young kids have long been known to be less prone to infection, less prone to suffering ill effects from infection, and less prone to spread the disease. Delta doesn't really change much of that, they are not the primary victims nor spreaders. It's the older…

Right, but the CDC guidance recommends masking elementary-age children (2+). We’d be having a different conversation if the CDC guidance was 12+ like several European countries.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#593

Post by monkeynotes »

autokad wrote: post #521

There is lots of competition for the top of the stupidity list. NYC locking down all summer and then 'opening up' in September seemed top of the list to me. It's not that I thought they should have stayed locked down the entire time, its that they should have opened in the summer so they could lock down in the winter if they really needed it. But seriously though, locking down in the summer to only open up in flu sea…

> better f'ing demand they have enough hospital beds

I am pretty sure people not getting sick in the first place is the priority, rather than making enough infrastructural medical capacity for something that is preventable. It's not like you can just magic up more doctors either.

> you want to lock down then we need a metric that you are trying to achieve by the lockdow

Well, this is obviously the vaccine

> Germany masked, distanced, and locked down better than anyone could expect, and here they are sitting with 4 million cases, 100k dead and are still in the pandemic. They don't even share a porous border with Mexico/South America

Are you saying you advise lockdowns (especially in winter) and then saying lockdowns are ineffective?

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#594

Post by xdennis »

creamynebula wrote: post #282

Specially given that after a year and a half we still don't seem to ponder that livestock, hunting, deforestation, and all sorts of animal experimenting mean another deadly disease could slip up anytime as it just did.

I don't think it's clear that the origins of covid are natural. This has become less controversial recently.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#595

Post by kansface »

gowld wrote: post #531
autokad wrote: post #521

There is lots of competition for the top of the stupidity list. NYC locking down all summer and then 'opening up' in September seemed top of the list to me. It's not that I thought they should have stayed locked down the entire time, its that they should have opened in the summer so they could lock down in the winter if they really needed it. But seriously though, locking down in the summer to only open up in flu sea…

Blaming the US Southern border for coronavirus spread is a racist and Republican (anti-immigration excuse-making) trope.

A quick search shows ~20% of immigrants being deported testing positive (up to 25%). There are something like 200K immigrants currently encountered by border patrol per month. Naively that's 50K people coming to the US each month with covid who are poor (probably can't self quarantine), live in dense, multi generational households and exist outside of the law. Realistically, we'd expect that ICE (deportation) contributes to the spread. At any rate, I don't see how illegal immigration could be qualified other than a significant vector in the spread of covid.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#596

Post by tialaramex »

itsoktocry wrote: post #574
tialaramex wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or maybe the whole 'if we just lock down for two weeks, this will be over' tops the list of stupidity New Zealand had 26 deaths in over a year of the pandemic. Not 26 per 100k population. Not 26 per day. Twenty six people full stop. Because in fact "We go hard and we go early" works. Right now they are locked down (since last week) because they had one case in their community, but of course it isn't ever one case a…

> Not 26 per 100k population I know people like to think that doing the per-capita calculation puts every country on an even footing for comparison. But it's kind of silly to straight compare countries with vastly different geographies and economies, regardless of population normalization. > I think there's a fair chance they'll beat it again If they are locked down, again, 16 months into this thing, they never beat…

> If they are locked down, again, 16 months into this thing, they never beat anything.

They eliminated this virus across Aotearoa. We didn't eliminate it everywhere else (actually almost anywhere else) and infected people continued to arrive at their border, eventually one of those infections (from Australia) leaked into their community about two weeks ago.

Unless your point is some purely nihilist position like "In the end nothing matters" (then why are you posting?) they beat this and now they're going to have to do it again.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#597

Post by anonymouse008 »

bialpio wrote: post #386
anonymouse008 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only people that need to be scared of it are the unvaccinated We often overlook those who were previously infected. I believe this is a common mistake that makes for inaccurate groupings, which negatively affect the common good.

Can you elaborate a bit on how they are overlooked? You can still get vaccinated after recovering (high-profile example: D. Trump), and the recovered that have been processed by health care system can for example get the same QR code that the vaccinated get in the EU (helps with travel I believe).

The most prominent example I can offer is when speaking about hospitalizations.

Headlines and policy have adopted the narrative that the unvaccinated are driving the most severe cases. Those previously infected are not acknowledged and could significantly overlap with the unvaccinated population.

Those who have previously had an infection with mild to no symptoms should be acknlowedged as a third group in evaluating public health policies (vaccinated, previously infected, and unknown exposure).

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#598

Post by johnnyanmac »

autokad wrote: post #521

There is lots of competition for the top of the stupidity list. NYC locking down all summer and then 'opening up' in September seemed top of the list to me. It's not that I thought they should have stayed locked down the entire time, its that they should have opened in the summer so they could lock down in the winter if they really needed it. But seriously though, locking down in the summer to only open up in flu sea…

>Or what about the fact we are 2 years into this and we still haven't built a significant amount of hospitals?

I don't think 2 years is enough to just "build new hostipal", let alone staff them, supply them to hospital standards, and start taking business.

It's not land that's short, it's talent.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#599

Post by JamesSwift »

bingohbangoh wrote: post #179
001spartan wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Returning to normal is a terrible idea when COVID patients are overwhelming hospitals across the world. How can things be normal if our healthcare systems are nearing collapse? You might be willing to accept the risk of getting sick on your behalf, but by advocating a return to 'normal' before we have the capabilities to deal with this virus, you are advocating for putting even more stress on healthcare systems acros…

Are they really overwhelming hospitals? This keeps being repeated but most hospitals operate at about 80% capacity as-is. Places in Tennessee and Florida are currently, with COVID-19, operating at about 80%. [0] If we look at Israel, which has a very high vaccination rate, we see that they're supposedly running out of hospital space. [1] But the article linked doesn't say _anything about their actual numbers atm_ and…

Anecdotal, but an acquaintance here in Florida had to wait over 14 hours to get an emergency appendectomy (and over 12 hours to get from check-in to a bed in the ER) recently, due to both COVID protocols as well as COVID workload.
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