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The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#491

Post by spideymans »

luckylion wrote: post #456
pohl wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even less popular opinion: fear is irrelevant. What we actually have is a cultural gap in how risk is assessed. Some only consider individual risk of death. Others also consider risk to beyond death, and beyond themselves. Casting the latter as afraid is unhelpful.

Casting those who have a higher risk threshold than you as "only considering individual risk", while the other, better people also consider others ... yeah, that's helpful.

“I’m young, so I have nothing to worry about”, is a sentiment I’ve seen expressed all to commonly.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#492

Post by [deleted] »

hackersword wrote: post #469
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…

Have you looked at the actual report and not the anti-vax site summation of the report? >. The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional. I'm not sure how 21% lower is considered "not statistically significant", in trying to suppress the spread, ANYTHING > 0% is helpful. Full stop. Other stand out qualifiers…

[deleted]

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#493

Post by mrkramer »

rossdavidh wrote: post #36

Good article, but doesn't mention the other reason that covid-19 is never going completely away: animal reservoirs. We know that dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, mink, white-tailed deer, a gorilla, and a tiger have been found to have been infected with covid-19. It is implausible that it will ever cease to have an animal reservoir, especially given the finding in Canada of 30% of white-tailed deer having it. Of dis…

>Good article, but doesn't mention the other reason that covid-19 is never going completely away: animal reservoirs.

You realize there are thousands and thousands of viruses that are circulating every day for billions of years. New epidemic or pandemic can happen anytime anywhere. You can only mitigate it not prevent it.

>It is implausible that it will ever cease to have an animal reservoir, especially given the finding in Canada of 30% of white-tailed deer having it.

>Of diseases that get as widespread as this, with animal reservoirs, I don't believe there is any case of eliminating it.

Exactly

>But, like vaccines can teach the immune system how to respond more intelligently (and less self-destructively) to covid-19, hopefully society can learn to respond more intelligently, and less self-destructively, to the fact that it's always in circulation.

For example society and in particular Institutes of Virology should take extra security precautions when experimenting with gain of function viruses.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#494

Post by Godel_unicode »

simonw wrote: post #458
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…

How is "the science here is still uncertain" an argument against masks in schools? If it turns out they are useful, wearing them will have been a good idea. If it turns out that they weren't useful, what harm has been caused? (I'm aware that there are people out there who think wearing masks for a year or two will scar children for life, but for the most part I don't think those people are arguing in good faith. The…

One possible harm I've seen postulated is moral licensing, i.e. wearing a mask makes people feel safer and thus makes them more willing to be indoors in close proximity for longer.

A counter-argument says that wearing a physical thing can act as a constant reminder of covid, causing people to act more responsibly.

Back on the harms side again, there's a possibility that teaching kids "just do this and don't ask questions" can have negative consequences. Again, the counter argument of letting them ask questions and carefully explaining what we do and don't know can be a positive.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#495

Post by thaumasiotes »

resource0x wrote: post #482

I have an idea: can someone write a script to compare current covid cases among countries as a function of vaccination rates. Same for deaths/1 miliion population. I don't have skills for that, but this is HN after all, so there should be someone... (One of the parameters should be a timeline of vaccinations - vaccines tend to wane over time, we have a chance to figure out to what extent).

> can someone write a script to compare current covid cases among countries as a function of vaccination rates

This isn't really a good idea, because cases as a function of vaccination rates won't tell you anything meaningful. Vaccinations aren't distributed at random - they are heavily skewed towards people at risk of serious health effects from the virus, and skewed away from people with low risk.

So if you were to tabulate that data, you'd be hopelessly confounded by the differing population structures among different countries.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#496

Post by commandlinefan »

adrr wrote: post #310
h3cate wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion but as countries get majority vaccinated they have to learn to not be as scared of it.

People aren’t scared up. Concern is around ICU usage and that elective surgery in hot areas are put on hold which include critical cancer removal surgeries. Also we have a large group of unvaccinated group which are under kids under 12. With life going back to normal, the standard diseases are back like RSV, paraflu and others. Get two at the same time and it’s a emergency room visit. Get 3 at the same time and it’s…

> mandating kids to wear masks in schools

There's no evidence that wearing masks prevents contracting Covid (or any other airborne virus). It does a bit toward preventing spreading it if you already have it, but if you already have it, the schools send you home anyway. It's also not as if masks are themselves neutral either - constant mask wearing is associated with higher rates of bacterial pneumonia. Even medical professionals never wore masks all day (until last year), just when they were performing surgery.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#497

Post by ericb »

hackersword wrote: post #469
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…

Have you looked at the actual report and not the anti-vax site summation of the report? >. The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional. I'm not sure how 21% lower is considered "not statistically significant", in trying to suppress the spread, ANYTHING > 0% is helpful. Full stop. Other stand out qualifiers…

Self-report is a notoriously bad way to "study" almost anything.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#498

Post by commandlinefan »

rayiner wrote: post #372
adrr wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren’t scared up. Concern is around ICU usage and that elective surgery in hot areas are put on hold which include critical cancer removal surgeries. Also we have a large group of unvaccinated group which are under kids under 12. With life going back to normal, the standard diseases are back like RSV, paraflu and others. Get two at the same time and it’s a emergency room visit. Get 3 at the same time and it’s…

> 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…

> leaning towards masks for kids in schools not being worth it.

The problem is that we're dealing with "if it save even one child's life it's worth it" (for any "it") reasoning, which is impossible to argue against.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#499

Post by linuxftw »

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…

> such as chicken pox, once caused epidemics with massive body counts

Never happened. Almost nobody ever died of chicken pox. Fear mongering like this is exactly why nobody trusts the CDC and FDA. It's all quackery.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#500

Post by timr »

hackersword wrote: post #469
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…

Have you looked at the actual report and not the anti-vax site summation of the report? >. The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional. I'm not sure how 21% lower is considered "not statistically significant", in trying to suppress the spread, ANYTHING > 0% is helpful. Full stop. Other stand out qualifiers…

> did not include an assessment of compliance (e.g., mask use).

This is not a rebuttal.

If you establish a policy, and people do not follow the policy, that's on you, not on the people. You don't get to compare your intervention against an ideal world and claim that "it would have worked, if only for those darned humans!"

> Basically was relying on self reporting. If a student contracted and was asymptomatic, not shown here, etc.

A great many of the pro-mask papers in 2020 that claimed to "prove" that masks work started from self-reported data (the infamous "hairdressers" CDC report comes to mind...if a customer was asymptomatic, they were ignored; there was no control, so it's impossible to know what would have happened otherwise; etc.) The standards for "proof" across the pandemic have been dismally low, and tribalism and politics have supplanted science.

The difference here is that we actually have examples from across the globe where kids weren't masked in schools, and no matter how you look at it, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. If we're going to be skeptical (we should!) let's be skeptical of every claim, and demand proof of effectiveness for our medical interventions before imposing them across all of human society.

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