41–50 of 296 posts
With a minuscule fatality rate at this point, all these measures seem like a massive waste of energy and resources. Masks, vaccines, dividers, hand sanitizer… none of it actually stops transmission. Spare everyone from this godawful ceremony.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are some realistic alternatives?
Going back to normal and stopping the theater.
In the US, omnicron is going fast. Hopefully, and I say this with week old information in a huge information-differential environment that evolves hourly, omnicron itself is a step towards mitigation.
Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…
> All staff members preparing to depart to the station had to undergo a PCR test in Belgium two hours before leaving for South Africa, take a PCR test five days after their arrival in Cape Town, where they also had to quarantine for ten days. Another test was required when leaving Cape Town for Antarctica and another PCR test had to be undergone five days after arrival. This is clear evidence that the current paradig…
I completely disagree with your statement. The goals of the current paradigm of dealing with the pandemic is to minimize the strain on various processes from a public health perspective. Anything moving the needle is effective. That's why guidelines are like 'gatherings of 20 people or more'. It's to minimize spread, not completely obliterate it.
Comparing this incident with public health directives is disingenuous at best. It's the exact same line of thinking about masks. Oh, masks aren't 100% effective in preventing infection. Therefore, they're useless so nobody should wear them, ever.
We've also sent some people to the IIS and they didn't test positive. What does that say about the current paradigm?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is being 99.9% effective just isn't good enough. One person slips through and it's all over. It isn't realistically possible to keep covid out of areas.
What is good enough though? I always thought the whole prevention thing is because we want to “flatten the curve”, remember? Not to prevent every single infection, which is impossible.
If you're on an Antarctic base where medical facilities are meager and the time and cost for evacuation is high, zero infections is likely the goal.
As an extreme example, the US grounded an astronaut for being exposed, not infected, by measles:
Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…
Strep can lay ‘dormant’ in people for a while. Two months after the original outbreak and lockdown my daughter got strep. We hadn’t seen a soul. Dr said one of us was likely the carrier.
> All staff members preparing to depart to the station had to undergo a PCR test in Belgium two hours before leaving for South Africa, take a PCR test five days after their arrival in Cape Town, where they also had to quarantine for ten days. Another test was required when leaving Cape Town for Antarctica and another PCR test had to be undergone five days after arrival. This is clear evidence that the current paradig…
Two options: quarantine bubble failure or incubation longer than .. 15 days? Both are possible, though the former is more likely. 5 day intervals for incubation seem too short for 100% safety. I believe omicron has some data points of longer incubation already.
Another point is that there are animal reservoirs for SARS-CoV-2. We've known this since well before the zero-covid debacle, making such a plan was doomed to fail, as it did. It's likely that the virus can live in intestinal tracts of animals, including humans, for long periods without being detected and destroyed by the host's immune system. This makes the use of negative nose/throat swab tests as a guarantee of no subsequent infection a fallacy.
The way we deal with COVID is to stop testing asymptomatic people and use the plethora of effective early treatment protocols we've developed since as early as December 2019 to vastly reduce the need for hospital treatment in those that do develop symptoms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going back to normal and stopping the theater.
Everyone wants this. We should do it slowly, but we should do it. In the US, omnicron is going fast. Hopefully, and I say this with week old information in a huge information-differential environment that evolves hourly, omnicron itself is a step towards mitigation.
Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…
Really? Do you have a reference for that? It doesn't match the experience of myself and others that I know. Everyone I know was talking about how great it was that they hadn't had a cold for so long, during the lockdowns.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
New Zealand has done a pretty good job over the last two years. Whether the costs outweigh the benefits is a separate question
They had 1000 community cases today https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...