The Coronavirus Is Here Forever • Hacker News Board

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#681

Post by megablast » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

monkeynotes wrote: post #591

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…

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.

Of course you can. They just did compare them.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#682

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

> The server is hurting today

I get the tech hipster ethos that it's cool to just run one big ass server and supposedly avoid a lot of complexity cost. But it's the year two-thousand and twenty-one. The fact that the most well-known tech forum in the world either can't or won't set up autoscaling is an indictment of the entire tech industry. We're living in the binary age, but we still need humans to push the bits around by hand, like 1960's operators juggling wires on a switchboard.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#683

Post by cpuguy83 » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #405

Aeolun wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re spending the whole day in a classroom together the effect of masks is going to be minimal.

Masks is too broad of a term as being used. There are OSHA environments where proper N95-type masks can protect you from aerosol risks for 8 hours a day. The likelihood that a cloth mask can do that in a classroom however… Best mitigator would be good HEPA room air purifiers, ideally multiple per classroom.

We seem to be forgetting something here: the aerosols we are protecting from are from other peoples nose and mouth, which are covered by a cloth mask which vastly reduces how much makes it into the air.

There is no "best" here, mitigations all mitigate different things and work together to provide a safer environment.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#684

Post by kansface » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

mike00632 wrote: post #663

kansface wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) contrib…

Shouldn't you think about a control group? Legal immigrants? Law enforcement gatherings? Prisoners? Local area positivity rate?

Maybe if their rate of infection were significantly lower than the local population, you could argue that we would be decreasing the percentage of the infected population which doesn't feel particularly compelling to me... but we'd really need to know how much each group contributes to the spread. My expectations is that illegal immigrants make larger contributions than average given their density in living arrangements, lack of access to health care, inability to take sick days, etc.

I think we are only in the business of arguing the counterfactual of what percentage of them get covid from interactions with law enforcement vs otherwise.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#685

Post by partiallypro » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

xadhominemx wrote: post #511

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will always be sceptical of deviations from the status quo and politicians will always be there to capitalize on those fears for substantial gains of power. We have the most educated populis in human history and we're still seeing these problems. I'm not sure how you could fix vaccines becoming a political issue without major changes to the political structure.

Vaccine refusal has not become a major partisan political issue in any other country. It happened here because of the shameless cynicism of the Republican Party and aligned media apparatus.

You must be joking? As bad as (some) Republicans are let's not forget Biden, Harris, Schumer, etc saying they wouldn't take the "Trump Vaccine." Not only did that put distrust into the hearts of people on the left, it also gave ammunition for the people on the right. It should have never been a political issue. Unfortunately this is a bipartisan problem (though right now it's more prevalent on the right, I suspect if Trump had won the number on the left would balloon,) a lot of people on the West Coast you'd otherwise call "liberal" are anti-vaxxers and have been for decades. It's a weird coalition of people on the left and right.

Now outside of the US, anti-vaxxers are in every country including Germany, Australia, the UK. It's a global problem. It's actually the "third world" that seems to have less vaccine hesitance. Probably because they've seen the recent benefits of vaccines and they have less access to misinformation.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#686

Post by darkarmani » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #516

martin_bech wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The masks part is easy.. it has no effect.. We have been on and off masks here in Denmark, and it seems to have no effect on spread. Also mostly you get covid when not wearing one.. from a family member or a friend..

> it seems to have no effect on spread We wore them for a year. Covid is still here. It won't go away if we wear them for another year. It won't go away if we wear them for another ten years.

> We wore them for a year. Covid is still here.

That sounds like an argument against bullet proof vests. People still die while wearing them. LEO have been wearing them for years. Obviously, they don't work.

You don't understand the actual goal of wearing masks: protected people and reducing the spread of covid. It's not going to magically eliminate covid when half the country doesn't actually wear them.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#687

Post by spookthesunset » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

gilbetron wrote: post #437

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…

So the CDC are not educated nor intelligent, I guess? "Due to the circulating and highly contagious Delta variant, CDC recommends universal indoor masking by all students (age 2 and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-... Also, the very study NYMag talks about still recommends: "Because universal and corr…

CDC doesn't make public policy. Nowhere did you mention what the harms of this forced mask use could be on kids. Even if masks offered some protection it has to be balanced against all manner of long term social, language and developmental effects caused from wearing a mask.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#688

Post by Tobani » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #642

craftinator wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just boggles my mind that with modern understanding of how these things work (and we have a MUCH more complete understanding than they had during the early 1900's), we repeat this ignorant mistake.

"Masks aren't effective" "Masks are effective" "Vaccinated don't have to wear masks" "Vaccinated should wear masks" "COVID is not airborne" "COVID is airborne" "COVID came from a wet market" "COVID came from a lab" "If you caught it, you have immunity" "If you caught it, you might not have immunity" It's not difficult to understand why there is so much confusion. Our government was and has been quite inept at its mes…

Almost all of the statements were true. They just needed more context with them.

> "Masks aren't effective"

The point of the (non n-95) masks is not to protect the wearer. They didn't want everybody to cause a run on the n-95 masks for healthcare workers. The cloth masks may not very effective at protecting the wearer.

> "Masks are effective"

Masks are very effective when the infected wear them. Everybody should wear them because they don't know if they're infected or not.

> "Vaccinated don't have to wear masks"

Currently we don't believe vaccinated people. If you get vaccine you don't have to wear a mask.

> "Vaccinated should wear masks"

Unvaccinated people were the first to go everywhere with out masks. That carrot didn't work.. Everybody put them back on.

> "COVID is not airborne"

This could be true!

> "COVID is airborne"

But it catches a ride on water droplets!

> "COVID came from a wet market"

I haven't seen this as part of government messaging

> "COVID came from a lab"

I haven't seen this as part of government messaging

> "If you caught it, you have immunity"

For some amount of time, yes

> "If you caught it, you might not have immunity"

Yep we've got new variants that yo _might_ not be immune to.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#689

Post by phh » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #563

xadhominemx wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccine refusal has not become a major partisan political issue in any other country. It happened here because of the shameless cynicism of the Republican Party and aligned media apparatus.

Same in France: Macron, the entire government and their health advisors said the following: - Everyone should go to the opera/cinema to fight Covid (7th March 2020) - Lockdown for everybody (20th March) (I guess people caught it in the theaters…) - Masks are useless, absolutely useless for the general public (June 2020), - Masks are mandatory (September), - Blocking borders is useless, Covid will be here, - Borders b…

Overall I agree, however:

> But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines,

What does that even mean? You're in France, you'll be treated no matter whether someone is responsible or not. I don't think you can be liable of something going wrong if you did everything properly (which is the case).

Everyone, governement and research companies, followed all the laws. Legal responsability exist only if you didn't respect the laws. If they didn't follow the laws, they won't be exempt from lawsuits.

So. What does "But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines," mean?

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#690

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #596

itsoktocry wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 point is that you can't just draw a line around obvious failure modes and say they're not part of the strategy. If you compare the median global response to "we beat the virus with a single lockdown!", that sounds like an obvious winner, but it's a much more equivocal story if you compare it to "we'll be doing snap lockdowns 1-2 times a year for the foreseeable future, and even then we may need to give up on elimination if one of the lockdowns doesn't work".

(As someone mentioned upthread, this shouldn't be seen as a slight against the people or leadership of New Zealand, who generally seem to understand that lockdowns weren't meant to be a one-and-done measure.)