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Delta Variant

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Re: Delta Variant

#431

Post by bigcorp-slave »

bamboozled wrote: post #414
bigcorp-slave wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing in there that’s an attack, but wow, you are an asshole. There is a good faith engagement and persuasion in there, and you respond with this? Fuck off, you’re what’s wrong with society.

> This guy is not the creator of mRNA vaccines, he’s just a guy who did something slightly related with mRNA forty years ago, and is now trying to ride the wave to money. He seems to give plenty of time to people who don't seem to have any money to offer. I don't know what evidence you have to support any of your claims. For all you know he is a really good, concerned person, why assassinate someone's character like…

Just Google his name. You are using polite words, but not engaging in good faith. It’s not worth wasting my time further with you. I guess I should have checked your history to see that you’re a dedicated vaccine denialist.

Re: Delta Variant

#432

Post by pasabagi »

spookthesunset wrote: post #399
paulddraper wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> picking CFR of course because it is the bigger number And it changed over time. You remember hearing news media 3% at the beginning of the pandemic? When did you hear them update it to Selective reporting all day long.

Plenty of people (like my folks) still think that covid has a 4% “kill rate”. “Well that is what the experts say” is what their source is. It’s disgusting how this whole thing is nothing but raw appeals to authority the entire way down. Thinking for yourself, expressing doubt or skepticism or having hope and optimism gets met with scorn, shame and ridicule.

Well, there has been a lot of 'skepticism' that amounts to cherry picking whatever facts allow people to believe what they please. I think the fact remains that COVID was and is extraordinarily dangerous, and that's evidenced by the enormous casualty figures, even in countries that were supposed to be well prepared.

I think there's a simple difference in scale between this other events, that makes it hard to assimilate - COVID was, statistically, the most deadly single natural disaster to happen to my country (the UK) in a century. That's hard to relate to, hard to make policy about, hard to put in perspective. Bear in mind the last pandemic (Spanish Flu) was before antibiotics, before oxygen, before all of the techniques that made COVID something you can treat to some degree of success in a hospital.

Re: Delta Variant

#433

Post by effie »

SZJX wrote: post #425
effie wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this is not U.S. specific, so it is not a political polarization in the traditional sense. The broader world-wide phenomenon, visible also here, is that most people got divided into two camps: 1) "COVID-19 is so dangerous that we must restrict freedoms", "the other camp is a harm to society's health" 2) "COVID-19 is not that dangerous, mortality below 2% (or even lower depending on how it is calculated)…

> Eventually Camp 2) will be seen as the correct one. That sounds somewhat overly deterministic. The situation is always evolving and you can’t predict what will really happen especially with new variants etc. Of course you may argue that no variant will ever be so dangerous as to warrant lockdowns in a country whose population is largely vaccinated, but a problem as this article pointed out (accurately or with exagg…

OK that's fair. Assuming the COVID disease impact does not get substantially worse than it has been, the camp 2) will be seen as the correct one.

I can't imagine why it would get worse. Immunity of people gets better with time, and so do treatments.

Re: Delta Variant

#434

Post by murgindrag »

blindmute wrote: post #430
murgindrag wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I empathize with most of what you wrote, but there are two errors: "I also know what to expect from a respiratory virus, because I've had those a number of times." No one whom I know who has had COVID describes it like any normal respiratory virus, and it attacks multiple systems. I'm terrified of brain damage, and before-and-after MRIs shows brain damage in >10% of people who contract COVID19. "If I get covid, darn…

>And if you kill a loved one by sharing COVID19? Or give them brain fog? That's not something I could live with. The odds of this are far less than the odds of me killing my wife by taking a drive with her. In the same way that I can live with the risk of driving a car with her in it, I can live with this risk. Of course if that actually happened I would feel terrible, in both cases. But life is about weighing risks,…

Your numbers are way off, as is your moral compass. I hope I never meet you, or anyone like you. To use your driving analogy, the way I respond to your message is if someone told me they drove around drunk and high, without headlights, and without really doing any car maintenance, and didn't accept any moral responsibility if they hit someone because car accidents happen, and sorry, that's life.

As a baseline number, about a half-million Americans died of COVID already. For comparison, there were about 40k car deaths in the US. For someone like yourself, taking no precautions, the odds of catching COVID19 are way more than 10x of a fatal car accident.

The more critical problem is a systemic one. If no one takes precautions, nearly 10 million people in the US will die. If everyone does, virtually no ones needs to die. It's like polluting or littering.

And COVID19 isn't flu. The flu doesn't leave a quarter of people with brain fog 9 months later.

Re: Delta Variant

#435

Post by rajin444 »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #313
rajin444 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not literally true. Exponential goes forever. A vrius will not. Where it stops is incredibly complex. It's exponential to a point, and where that point is is extremely important.

Exponential spread does not mean "spreads forever"...good grief, stop playing pedantic games.

I'm not being pedantic. You have no idea what kind of spread any given strain of covid (or any virus) is going to have. You're trying to over simplify an extremely complex interaction. It could stop at 1 or it could stop at 1,000,000,000.

Back to your original post:

> They aren't even in the same realm of concern for public health.

They are depending how much a virus spreads. You're relying on an implied "exponential = huge and scary" to give your argument weight. Can you say how pervasive the spread of the delta variant will be?

Re: Delta Variant

#436

Post by paulddraper »

pasabagi wrote: post #432
spookthesunset wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people (like my folks) still think that covid has a 4% “kill rate”. “Well that is what the experts say” is what their source is. It’s disgusting how this whole thing is nothing but raw appeals to authority the entire way down. Thinking for yourself, expressing doubt or skepticism or having hope and optimism gets met with scorn, shame and ridicule.

Well, there has been a lot of 'skepticism' that amounts to cherry picking whatever facts allow people to believe what they please. I think the fact remains that COVID was and is extraordinarily dangerous, and that's evidenced by the enormous casualty figures, even in countries that were supposed to be well prepared. I think there's a simple difference in scale between this other events, that makes it hard to assimila…

> COVID was, statistically, the most deadly single natural disaster to happen to my country (the UK) in a century

Technically true because of the "natural disaster" qualifier, but the world wars killed 890k and 450k Brits.

And smoking killed 750k in the last decade. And now that's been overtaken by obesity.

COVID won't even come close to touching that.

Manmade disasters have fearful consequences too. Perhaps that makes it easier to "relate to."

Re: Delta Variant

#437

Post by murgindrag »

blindmute wrote: post #429
ithkuil wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I take pretty strong precautions, including proper masks Will you take this strong precautions forever? I may be wrong (because what do I know?), but my assumption is that COVID will become endemic and sooner or later we'll all get it. I don't know that for sure, I didn't spend a lot of time following the numbers and reading right and left about this topic. I just can't devote significant time into doing a "proper…

To be clear, it's not that I think people are dying en masse from vaccines and being covered up. What I'm mainly concerned about are permanent side effects and long term dangers. Now, regarding long term side effects, there are a lot of "alternative news" sources, and random internet anecdotes, which claim relatively common heart problems following vaccination, and some stories of healthy people dying a few days late…

I'd like to disagree, but I can't. What I can say is:

1) I know enough about molecular biology to tell you the vaccine is safe. You pick up novel stuff all the time. In abstract, we don't know a pebble in your backyard doesn't have some odd chemical which will end humanity, but the odds of that are astronomically low. There just isn't any voodoo in the vaccine.

2) In this case, the claims from "alternative news" are nonsense. With hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine administered, there will be instances of virtually everything happening after the vaccine. That's not to say they're always nonsense -- I read a variety of media -- but in this case, they are.

3) Doctors who fear vaccines are crackpots.

4) You're absolutely right about institutions lying. You're not only right about researchers not being able to get a message out contradicting the party line, but worse, their career would be destroyed. It's the story of the boy who cried wolf.

Re: Delta Variant

#438

Post by pasabagi »

paulddraper wrote: post #436
pasabagi wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there has been a lot of 'skepticism' that amounts to cherry picking whatever facts allow people to believe what they please. I think the fact remains that COVID was and is extraordinarily dangerous, and that's evidenced by the enormous casualty figures, even in countries that were supposed to be well prepared. I think there's a simple difference in scale between this other events, that makes it hard to assimila…

> COVID was, statistically, the most deadly single natural disaster to happen to my country (the UK) in a century Technically true because of the "natural disaster" qualifier, but the world wars killed 890k and 450k Brits. And smoking killed 750k in the last decade. And now that's been overtaken by obesity. COVID won't even come close to touching that. Manmade disasters have fearful consequences too. Perhaps that mak…

I guess for me it seems different to normal public health stuff because of the speed - but perhaps your second world war figure is exactly what I am getting at. COVID is on the same scale as the UK's losses in the second world war - it's worse than the blitz, for example, but less deadly than the entire british involvement. The second world war caused seismic political and cultural changes in the UK. It's probably the most significant moment in the UK's history since the napoleonic wars.

Now, I don't think casualty figures alone provoke the kind of reassessment and realignment that made WW2 such a watershed, but honestly, I think they probably should.

Re: Delta Variant

#439

Post by murgindrag »

ithkuil wrote: post #422
murgindrag wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think OP's logic requires side effects of vaccines to be anywhere close to COVID19 causalities. It's a personal decision. Without vaccines, at present, my risk of COVID19 would be marginal at best: - I live in an area with a high vaccination rate, and a low incidence rate - I take pretty strong precautions, including proper masks (which are probably more effective than vaccines), and pretty strong social dist…

> I take pretty strong precautions, including proper masks Will you take this strong precautions forever? I may be wrong (because what do I know?), but my assumption is that COVID will become endemic and sooner or later we'll all get it. I don't know that for sure, I didn't spend a lot of time following the numbers and reading right and left about this topic. I just can't devote significant time into doing a "proper…

I think I will take strong precautions forever, if needed.

I think COVID19 spread because, at every point, people said "It can't be that bad," and it turned out it was. Our response was characterized by wishful thinking.

People can and do catch COVID19 multiple times, and that will only increase as it mutates. Let's start with your assumptions and go one level deeper:

1. COVID19 is highly transmissible

2. COVID19 will become endemic

3. You'll be exposed to COVID19 multiple times

With vaccine breakthrough rates of 5% for the original, and perhaps 20% for delta, and more with growing mutations, you'll catch COVID19 multiple times. Each time, you'll lose a little bit of gray matter in the brain, and sustain other damage. By the time you're old, you'll be a drooling, exhausted zombie idiot.

This makes a lot of additional assumptions, a key one being that breakthrough and brain damage are random events (as opposed to e.g. at-risk individuals), but it is a plausible scenario. We can argue about whether it's 20% odds or 80% odds, but it's definitely not 5% or 95%.

From my perspective, social distancing, masking, and similar just aren't that bad relative to even a moderate risk of the alternative. Proper masks are $2 (ones that filter down to <300nm), mildly uncomfortable, and more effective than vaccines. If we assume independence, proper mask+vaccine+modest social distancing reduces odds of infection to be infinitesimal. I don't believe in independence, but they certainly reduce R0 below 1. Why not?

Re: Delta Variant

#440

Post by a0-prw »

murgindrag wrote: post #329
blindmute wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unvaccinated and probably will remain so for this particular vaccination. I don't truly believe that the risk of the vaccine outweighs the risk of the virus to me. It's more that I weigh the risk of covid at around zero, and the risk of vaccine at a question mark. I cannot trust the institutions pushing this vaccine at all. At worst, I trust the opposite of what they say about anything politicized. But let's jus…

I empathize with most of what you wrote, but there are two errors: "I also know what to expect from a respiratory virus, because I've had those a number of times." No one whom I know who has had COVID describes it like any normal respiratory virus, and it attacks multiple systems. I'm terrified of brain damage, and before-and-after MRIs shows brain damage in >10% of people who contract COVID19. "If I get covid, darn…

I know a fairly large number of people who have had it. Zero hospitalisations, zero deaths, zero long term effects.
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