Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On Covid

avc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 159 posts

Re: On Covid

#121

Post by theli0nheart »

eli wrote: post #119
theli0nheart wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a parent of young children, and we probably have more reason to feel "over it" than other folks. I spent the first two weeks of this year balancing full-time work with a kid at home because he tested positive. I got a fever for about a day, but that was it. But the disruption to my work and his education was far worse than any alternative. The entire class ended up getting sick with COVID anyways. We were triple…

I believe a higher percentage of ICU beds are occupied nationally than at any point in the pandemic: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/hospitalization-7-day-trend If ICU overflows are when we pull out all of the stops, can we pull out just some of the stops before it gets that dire? It's already not great. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/overwhelmed-by-omicron-surg...

> I believe a higher percentage of ICU beds are occupied nationally than at any point in the pandemic

According to the data you linked:

   COVID ICU Beds Occupied:

   January 17-23, 2022 : 26,236
   January 4-10, 2021  : 29,175
So there were 2,939 (or ~11%) more beds occupied due to COVID about a year ago.

Re: On Covid

#122

Post by zcw100 »

peteradio wrote: post #114
zcw100 wrote: post #58

"It is time to stop politicizing Covid." but their argument amounts to "you need to just stop fighting me and give me what I want". What exactly do we unlearn when he quotes, "unlearn many of the behaviors we’ve learned in the last two years"? What hardships are we going to go through if we continue to wear masks a little longer than necessary? Do I really need to shake your hand when we greet? Believe it or not peop…

Sounds like you are a customer for a new type of insurance policy which right or wrong discriminates against unvaccinated. Weirdly enough I think the unvaccinated would see their policies go down in price because we are by and large young. Are you sure you want to cleave populations in two based on that policy change, are you certain it will benefit you in the way you expect?

Ah, discriminates against the unvaccinated sort of like how they discriminate against smokers right now?...ya, I'm cool with that.

Re: On Covid

#123

Post by lupire »

eli wrote: post #65
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In declaring the statement 'false', the Facebook fact checker confirmed there is a longstanding scientific theory it is true and provided confusing would-be counter-examples of variants of viruses exhibiting treatment resistance and cross-species leaps. Omicron demonstrated that treatment resistance is really incidental to severity, and COVID already is a problem for humans -- the question clearly was not asked by a…

If you have an article or paper explaining how viruses evolve to be less severe, I'd be interested in reading it.

over HIV is an interesting case because it is "just a flu" for a few weeks, then remains contagious but isn't severe at all, until it develops into AIDS years later.

Re: On Covid

#124

Post by lupire »

mistercheph wrote: post #64
eli wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The virus, lacking feelings, doesn't particularly care how sick you get. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/08/facebook-p...

Woah, this politifact.com fact check sorted that out. I had gotten really confused into thinking the virus did have feelings. Thank you politifact.com political fact check fact check for checking that.

The article actually specifically endorses anthropomorphizing viruses, because "feelings" are just a human metaphor on top of real biologic and physical processes, as how water likes to flow downhill.

Re: On Covid

#125

Post by lupire »

the_snooze wrote: post #84
it_does_follow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have vaccines. Take the damn win. Unfortunately it's still not that simple. If you look at the death rates in very high vaccination rate states/countries you see the same pattern. For example, VT has the highest vaccination rate in the country, at >90% with at least one dose, and is experiencing this as it's worst wave [0]. There's no doubt that vaccination helps and reduces overall severity, but it is by no mea…

You have to disaggregate those statistics to account for vaccination status. Here's NYC's dashboard. Huge differences in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths between the vaxxed and unvaxxed population. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily Again, this is very simple. Given that the vaccines work, then this pandemic is over for those who are vaccinated. I'm quite happy to change my tune if it tur…

It's not over until the unvaxxed stop crowding hospitals, or we build more hospitals.

Re: On Covid

#126

Post by lupire »

jaywalk wrote: post #85
the_snooze wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to get more people vaccinated. Not to ask more of people who are already vaccinated. Vaccinated people have done their part effectively removing themselves as burdens on COVID wards. The leverage point is in getting more people into that protected population. Remember what this was called in the beginning? Novel coronavirus. The problem was that we were all immunologically naive to it, which resulted…

Prior infection gives far more protection than vaccination, and a combination of both is as good as it gets (although the addition of vaccination to prior infection gives much less additional protection than prior infection alone): https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm

Only if prior infection doesn't kill you or hurt you more than the later infection would.

Re: On Covid

#127

Post by lupire »

oxymoran wrote: post #92
mistercheph wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I would lock my children in a cellar for 15 years if that's what it took to protect those who have compromised immune systems. Talk about not being able to defend yourself!

Good lord. I know this is hyperbolic but do you have any idea the affect that 15 years of isolation would have on children? And you are willing to place the well-being of random strangers over your own children? You seem to think that your comment is morally superior, but that idea is abhorrent and evil to the idea of being a parent. You should be ashamed to be a parent. I would love to see how your children feel abo…

Don't feed the troll.

Re: On Covid

#128

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

throwawayboise wrote: post #54
CoastalCoder wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you can wear masks if you are uncomfortable on the plane or the subway. My understanding was that mask-wearing was mostly to protect others . Has that changed?

The change has been the realization that anything less than a properly fitting KN95 mask is basically useless.

According to this large randomised trial [1], simple interventions to increase the use of surgical masks reduced infection by 11%, and by nearly 35% in over 60s.

That doesn't seem useless.

Of course, if you're only talking about protecting yourself from others, then a KN95 mask is clearly the way forward.

[1] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...

Re: On Covid

#129

Post by CountDrewku »

riddleronroof wrote: post #112
afavour wrote: post #30

I've seen a few posts like this recently and I have to confess: I don't get it. What does "it is time to stop obsessing about Covid" mean? I have small children so I'm still living in some kind of COVID purgatory but for the majority of the population COVID hasn't really been an obsession for quite a while. People are dining indoors, they're traveling, socializing... life more or less is back to normal. Schools are s…

It’s because the authors don’t have under 5 kids. So they don’t care. Bitter lesson from last 2 years: no one cares about other’s misfortune at cost of self’s convenience.

Under 5 children are not susceptible to covid by any large measure and this has been the science since the beginning of the pandemic. If you have children without co-morbidities and you're running around in fear of them dying from covid you have health anxiety issues. Your fear is not justified by data whatsoever.

Re: On Covid

#130

Post by cameldrv »

"The current death rate of COVID in the US is about what a bad flu season would be."

Currently 2000 people a day are dying in the U.S. from COVID. That's an annualized rate of 730,000 deaths per year. The CDC estimates that the worst flu season in the last 10 years was 2017-2018 and that Flu caused 52,000 deaths.

That puts the current death rate of COVID at 14x where a bad flu season would be.

Perhaps it is his judgment that the level of attention COVID is getting is still not warranted, but one must start with the basic facts correct in order to make this judgment.

Post reply on HN