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The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#831

Post by tunesmith »

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…

Every tool in the quiver is about reducing Rt below 1. If it's above 1, cases double every few days. If it's far about 1, it's hardly any days, if it's just above 1, it's more days. But either way, the cases are still doubling at some rate, not just spreading but growing.

So every single tool in the quiver is about reducing Rt below 1. A lockdown will give you a few points. Vaccines will give you more. Masks give you more. Social distancing give you more. None of them get you all the way there. Some are more temporary than others, so have to be implemented at the right times.

So...

> they don't do very well at stopping spread, so why all the fuss to force people to get vaccinated?

The do help limit spread. Going from "they don't stop spread entirely" to "why force people to get vaccinated?" is like saying "body armor doesn't prevent being killed, so soldiers shouldn't wear them". Plus, there's the aspect of it being contagious - vaccines make it less contagious overall. Vaccines reduce Rt.

> we still haven't built a significant amount of hospitals?

The goal was never to permanently increase supply of hospitals, it was to reduce the demand for them, by putting measures into place to reduce Rt.

> anti-mask at the beginning

During that time, scientists thought that COVID was chiefly droplet-transmitted, so the emphasis was on distance, washing hands, hand sanitizer, etc. In an environment where people were already hoarding toilet paper, then if it had been true that droplets were the only source of transmission, masks were overkill, wouldn't do a lot to reduce Rt, and also had the risk of limiting supply to people who needed them. After it became clear that it was also aerosol-transmitted, the scientific recommendations changed, because then it was clear that masks would help reduce Rt.

As for Germany... Delta has a higher Rt than the Wuhan strain. Their lockdowns were effective.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#832

Post by evdubs »

peteretep wrote: post #775
collaborative wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing that still bothers me is that we don't yet know how quickly this coronavirus evolves, and from what we know it very likely escaped from a gain-of-function laboratory that specializes in quickly mutating viruses. I didn't see Delta coming. I want to believe that this is the worst of it. But this coronavirus has so far kept us on our toes so it may well have a few more surprises in store

> it very likely escaped Do you have a source for “very likely”? I’m at “plausibly escaped from” so far and would be interested in evidence that changes that in either direction.

Maybe not "very likely", but Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the 13 member team at the WHO investigating the origin of COVID-19, recently said [1], "An employee of the lab gets infected while working in a bat cave collecting samples. Such a scenario, while being a lab leak, would also fit our first hypothesis of direct transmission of the virus from bat to human. This is a hypothesis that we consider to be likely."

Further, from the article, "But the WHO scientist pointed out that none of the types of bats suspected to have been the reservoir for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 lives in the wild in the Wuhan region.

"'The only people likely to have approached these types of bats are employees of the city laboratories,' he said."

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/13/who-scientist-puts-...

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#833

Post by dunco »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #753
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…

As others have pointed out they're able to totally control their border and quarantine every single arrival. But more importantly, how will it end for them? Australia and New Zealand are among the worst corona zealot nations. New Zealand just shut down everything over a single case and the PM told people to not even talk to each other anymore. How will they get out of this? If they looked at the facts they'd understa…

you misunderstand the zero covid strategy. The endgame is not zero covid forever. The endgame is zero-covid until we get as many people vaccinated as possible. This is the best result that can be achieved. less deaths, AND less economic disruption.

"They might as well do it now" is misguided. Would you prefer to release a virus into an unvaccinated or fully vaccinated population?

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#834

Post by hammock »

burlesona wrote: post #737
habosa wrote: post #700

At this point we almost know too much about the spread of this disease. Never in history have we tested so much for one thing. Never in history have we really worried about asymptomatic cases of anything. This is probably the first time in history that the whole world has the same scary thing as their front-page news. It's going to be really, really hard for us to shake the mindset that thousands of covid cases === d…

I don’t know if that’s true. Case in point, the reason that Florida is drowning in COVID right now is that the majority of people there don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s the same thing and many other parts of the country. There are still a lot of people who are freaked out, but most ordinary people are starting to tune out the news and lose interest because the media calls to be scared and panic just make them numb e…

>the reason that Florida is drowning in COVID right now is that the majority of people there don’t think it’s a big deal.

Source?

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#835

Post by ajsnigrutin »

paulddraper wrote: post #657
beloch wrote: post #489

"The transition to endemic COVID-19 is also a psychological one. When everyone has some immunity, a COVID-19 diagnosis becomes as routine as diagnosis of strep or flu—not good news, but not a reason for particular fear or worry or embarrassment either. That means unlearning a year of messaging that said COVID-19 was not just a flu. If the confusion around the CDC dropping mask recommendations for the vaccinated earli…

> Flu is endemic, but another 1918 could happen at any time. True, though usually viruses mutate into less virulent forms. There's good reason to suspect that long-term COVID will be on the order of influenza or the common cold -- common and mild for most patients. > Turning vaccines into a political wedge issue is one of the stupidest things I've seen in my life. Probably, but even the question of whether vaccines s…

> There's good reason to suspect that long-term COVID will be on the order of influenza or the common cold -- common and mild for most patients.

In slovenia, by some estimates of our expert group, half the country got infected by covid (~1mio), 4450 died, almost half of them in old age/nursing homes, and out of all that, only 4 were under 35yo, only one (out of those 5) under 25, and we count every death within 28days of infection as a covid death (even suicide or a car crash).

For a large percentage of the population, it already is common and mild.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#836

Post by hammock »

SamBam wrote: post #45
cm2187 wrote: post #16

That's why I don't really understand why there are still covid restrictions in countries that are close to full vaccination, like the UK. There isn't really a next step after having vaccinated the population, it is "steady state". So do they want us to have these restrictions (countries you can't travel to, endless testing, mask requirements) forever?

Since no one under 16 has been vaccinated yet, about 70% of the population is vaccinated (44M out of 67M). That might be barely enough for herd immunity for some diseases, but the case numbers in the UK are still very high and trending back upward, showing that this isn't enough for herd immunity for Covid. Hospitalization rates are also back up to significantly higher than they were this time last year. And that's w…

>That might be barely enough for herd immunity for some diseases

How can herd immunity be achieved with a leaky vaccine?

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#837

Post by ajsnigrutin »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #588
beloch wrote: post #489

"The transition to endemic COVID-19 is also a psychological one. When everyone has some immunity, a COVID-19 diagnosis becomes as routine as diagnosis of strep or flu—not good news, but not a reason for particular fear or worry or embarrassment either. That means unlearning a year of messaging that said COVID-19 was not just a flu. If the confusion around the CDC dropping mask recommendations for the vaccinated earli…

> Turning vaccines into a political wedge issue is one of the stupidest things I've seen in my life. Something tells me that this is just history repeating. The difference here is the same as your metaphor; the world is a village and now its much easier to see that one conspiracy nut every village has that gets outcasted. The problem of course is that now those nuts can band together in the thousands thanks to worldw…

The problem is, that the media is creating the wedge. Instead of a huge spectrum of pro- and anti- people, they combine them into two groups.

I'm vaccinated, and I don't care if others don't get the vaccine. Forcing people to get vaccinted is imho stupid. And we've already taken away a year from young people to "save grandma", and now grandma can get vaccinated (or possibly die, if she doesn't want to), and we're again locking down the kids, creating long-lasting problems, especially mental ones.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#838

Post by MichaelZuo »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #226
MichaelZuo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which towns in Canada are dumping untreated sewage into the water? As far as I'm aware every province has an environmental ministry that doesn't grant exemptions from sewage treatment. So if it's still ongoing...

In my city we JUST started treating our sewage: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-sew...

Thanks for the info, that is genuinely surprising. And Victoria is not some poor town either. I guess there wasn't much incentive to improve given the consequences of inaction were dumped literally on someone else's doorstep.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#839

Post by dunco »

amatecha wrote: post #623
dstaley wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or what about the fact we are 2 years into this and we still haven't built a significant amount of hospitals? If I understand correctly, there isn't a lack of literal beds/space; it's a lack of personnel. Basically hospitals are unable to staff themselves at the levels needed to accomodate being basically 100% full. This is compounded by the fact that hospitals are struggling to retain healthcare workers, who are b…

Unfortunately, there is absolutely a lack of beds. Someone I know was in emergency last week (totally unrelated to pandemic) and had to wait an entire day before actually being properly admitted to a ward because there were no beds available for them. So they layed in an emergency room "booth"[0] for close to 24 hours, until a bed became available. There are lots of news articles about the lack of beds/capacity all o…

"beds" and capacity can be synonymous in casual medical conversation. If the staff had plenty of literal beds, but no staff for them, they might still tell you that they had no beds, because they are just saying they don't have the capacity.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#840

Post by dunco »

kansface wrote: post #595
gowld wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) contrib…

kind of like saying a river is making the ocean wet. . .
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