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On Covid

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Re: On Covid

#51

Post by seanmcdirmid »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #5
shafyy wrote: post #3

> And you can wear masks if you are uncomfortable on the plane or the subway. We’ve normalized mask-wearing in the US now and that is a good thing. I really hope he's right and it's normalized, but I do fear that many people will go back to not staying at home and not wearing masks when they feel sick. And people who do wear masks, will do so catching lampooning gazes from others.

> 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?

You can actually get some protection wearing and N95 mask. Though those aren’t popular in the west because they often have exhalation valves that make people paranoid (the CDC says they are ok since they allow for a better seal and are filtered).

Re: On Covid

#52

Post by throwawayboise »

elliottkember wrote: post #4

> First, we have less severe variants now. Please don't assume that future variants will be less and less severe. It's what we all want to hear, but this "covid is over" mentality is what will help produce the next, possibly really nasty, variant.

Since nothing we've done has prevented the evolution of variants, why do we think we have any control over whether there will be more?

Re: On Covid

#53

Post by the_snooze »

it_does_follow wrote: post #44
the_snooze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the technology to make COVID just a nuisance to broad swaths of the population. Let them live their lives. Now is absolutely the time to quit the tut-tutting. I don't understand why people are so against taking an easy W like this.

Because it's not an "easy W" and treating it like it is causes more deaths. Have you even looked at the current situation we are in? Death's are continuing to climb and we're soon to be what is in the second most severe wave of the pandemic [0], and in a week we'll see if we start to compete for the worst wave. I don't know how people can rationally talk about this being a "mild variant" and encouraging people to get…

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 in bad outcomes. Vaccines (and to some extent prior infection) make us no longer naive. That's the way out.

We have vaccines. Take the damn win.

Re: On Covid

#54

Post by throwawayboise »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #5
shafyy wrote: post #3

> And you can wear masks if you are uncomfortable on the plane or the subway. We’ve normalized mask-wearing in the US now and that is a good thing. I really hope he's right and it's normalized, but I do fear that many people will go back to not staying at home and not wearing masks when they feel sick. And people who do wear masks, will do so catching lampooning gazes from others.

> 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.

Re: On Covid

#55

Post by wokwokwok »

refurb wrote: post #29
eli wrote: post #9

Thousands of Americans are losing their lives every day to Covid. New cases are MUCH higher than they were at any point in 2020 or 2021 (though it looks like we may finally have crossed the peak of this wave). I'm sorry, but it isn't over yet. I wish it was. However wishing it or asserting it doesn't make it true. This was a sensible argument to make in July 2021 when vaccines were more effective and cases were liter…

Thousands of people die everyday during bad flu epidemics like 2018 when 80,000 Americans died over a ~6 month flu season. We didn’t keep kids from school, we didn’t panic when hospitals were overwhelmed, we didn’t shut down businesses.

800000 people have died over the past two years in the US alone.

That’s an order of magnitude difference.

That’s why the response was an order of magnitude more substantial.

I’m baffled you think this is somehow surprising.

Re: On Covid

#56

Post by peteradio »

basisword wrote: post #20

Maybe he’s right. Hopefully he’s right. But personally, I feel like this is just more shortsightedness. I’ve lost track of the number of times my employer thought it was time to get back to the office - only for restrictions to be increased a month later as cases rise. This cycle repeats and people seem to not learn. They get overly optimistic and then kicked in the teeth. Yes, things are better than they’ve been but…

I think there is reason to be a bit more hopeful in America at least when you consider a few things:

1) Natural immunity is quite robust: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...

Now, that is according the CDC whose governance has sought to give the impression that natural immunity is not so great (perhaps for generally good reasons). But now they see fit to give the impression that natural immunity is pretty substantial, clearly giving much more immunity weight than vaccine alone. So that is some clear signal just reading between the lines.

2) Seroprevelance indicating natural exposure is quite high overall in the U.S. and especially so in some regions, see for yourself what that looks like in your own region: https://covid19serohub.nih.gov/ (nucleocapsid is proxy for exposure and recovery)

Now, you might look at those numbers and see only 30% or so, but realize this is end of October statistics. Many (dare I say all?) regions in the U.S. have seen en exceptional wave since those statistics were collected. I would be confident to say 50% - 100% increase in statistics of recovered.

edit: I'm just some guy on the internet so if you think this stuff is wrong or misrepresented, call my ass out. If you are not capable of parsing the references I give you, assume I have bad intentions.

Re: On Covid

#57

Post by eli »

refurb wrote: post #29
eli wrote: post #9

Thousands of Americans are losing their lives every day to Covid. New cases are MUCH higher than they were at any point in 2020 or 2021 (though it looks like we may finally have crossed the peak of this wave). I'm sorry, but it isn't over yet. I wish it was. However wishing it or asserting it doesn't make it true. This was a sensible argument to make in July 2021 when vaccines were more effective and cases were liter…

Thousands of people die everyday during bad flu epidemics like 2018 when 80,000 Americans died over a ~6 month flu season. We didn’t keep kids from school, we didn’t panic when hospitals were overwhelmed, we didn’t shut down businesses.

What kids are being kept from school?

Re: On Covid

#58

Post by zcw100 »

"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 people don't want to stay at home, not be able to work and they definitely don't like being sick and dying. Know when we'll go back to normal? When people stop dying so much.

This is going to have massive long term effects and I'm not talking about anything from having worn a mask. I'm talking about the long term effects of the virus. I'm positive you'll be seeing advertisements for the next 40 years for "Covid treatment centers of America".

If this person really wants to get back to normal maybe we should start by passing legislation now to deny Mediare benefits to anyone suffering from Covid complications who refused to be vaccinated. I'd be happy to support conservatives in saying, "Why should I be taxed to pay for the results of your decision?" or allow covid complications be be considered a preexisting condition for unvaccinated. Why should I have to pay through my insurance premiums for your ER visit?

Re: On Covid

#59

Post by mistercheph »

bairrd wrote: post #38
refurb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thousands of people die everyday during bad flu epidemics like 2018 when 80,000 Americans died over a ~6 month flu season. We didn’t keep kids from school, we didn’t panic when hospitals were overwhelmed, we didn’t shut down businesses.

Flu season doesn't lead to insanely high excess death rates, and overwhelm hospital capacity, making things like biking now a much higher risk activity as any visit to a hospital due to a broken bone or something is far more likely to result in a lack of proper treatment. That we are in 2022 and still discussing this leads me to, very grimly, believe that we are in some period of hyper-darwinism, where this train of…

Yes, maybe after that it will come for people who can't tell plural from singular. I am all for grammatical punishments of the most grim variety.

Re: On Covid

#60

Post by throwawayboise »

wokwokwok wrote: post #17

> It is time to stop obsessing about Covid. It is time to stop politicizing Covid. It is time to stop tweeting about Covid. It is time to stop reading about Covid. It is time to start healing and it is time to start moving on. Is it? I mean, I’d like that to be true too. …but are things not still a bit too screwed up to be pretending everything is fine quite yet? > The current 7-day moving average of new deaths (1,74…

The political divisions over masks, vaccines, lockdowns, etc. are a feature not a problem to the political class. Politicians salivate when they find issues that can drive wedges between groups of people. COVID will be over when it's no longer politically useful (i.e. when everyone becomes tired of it and it no longer works as a wedge).
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