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Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
61–70 of 175 posts
Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
#62[flagged]
Science has meant that for over a decade since it started deplatforming any scientist who studied the link between race and intelligence. And before anyone says "why does it matter, only racists would care about that", it matters because some social scientists are claiming that the disparity in outcomes for different races across society is due to society being unfair/biased, but such outcomes would be expected even in a perfectly fair society if the distribution of heritable traits correlated to economic success (e.g. IQ, time preference) was different across different races.
Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can literally plug your last sentence directly into Google and get good information.
I did that and clicked through the first 5 links. Doesn't sound that obvious to me. I found this one interesting: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10446908/ > More studies found that masks (n = 39/47; 83%) and mask mandates (n = 16/18; 89%) reduced infection than found no effect (n = 8/65; 12%) or favoured controls (n = 1/65; 2%). Seven observational studies found that respirators were more protective than su…
> ... Due to a paucity of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), observational studies were included in the analysis ...
I doubt that study will be conclusive, there are so many possible confounding factors that are hard to account for. Particularly the tactical problem where wearing a mask obviously can stop someone getting COVID in any given encounter, but it is much harder to check if it stops them getting COVID during the pandemic.
If we have a control that moves the world from someone gets COVID during the pandemic to ... someone still gets COVID during the pandemic but a month later then it is unclear what mandates are doing. It'd take more than a study abstract to determine that, it'd take a lot of reading through the specifics to see what is going on.
Changing an exponential process that doubles every week to every 2 weeks is basically doing nothing. Half the population will still be infected in the last step. If spreading the infections over 2 weeks instead of one is important then that might be a win, but everyone seemed to abandon flattening the curve pretty quickly as a strategy.
Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
#64[flagged]
It’s funny because a few of the comments are fairly tame and completely apolitical, but they get flagged anyway because someone reads, “I still want to know what the science is on masks…” and interprets that as “fuck masks!!!”
Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
#65At large, covid was never dangerous to children and (healthy) (non-senior) adults. The fear of whole working populations becoming crippled and unable to work due to „long covid“ (mostly just good old PVFS/SEID/CFS) was quickly disproven. Policies never reflected that, disproportionately harming the young mentally, physically and economically. The damaged trust in governments and public health organisations was immens…
>At large, covid was never dangerous to children and (healthy) (non-senior) adults. We didn't know that in the first place though. We expected it, but I shared the sentiment of better be safe then sorry. At least for 2020. I think after that it got handled extremly badly. I can only speak of germany from personal experience though. While I still can understand _some_ of the decissions made by politics, I think they w…
COVID is in a group of viruses with not dissimilar characteristics. It wasn't a completely unknown virus.
Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
#66I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusio…
It's pretty much a no-brainer. Do masks reduce emissions of airborne infectants? Yup. Can you tell, at any point in time, if you are asymptomatic but contagious and emitting infectants? Not without testing frequently, which I'll venture you don't. Can you tell who around you is immuno-depressed and might suffer debilitating consequences from being infected? Nope. And finally, is wearing a mask when you're out in public onerous? Nope!
So there you have it. At very little cost to yourself, you can help protect strangers around you. I promise you those strangers to whom it makes a difference will notice, and you will have their gratitude.
Mind you, if you are only asking from the angle of your own personal well-being, and making a difference to strangers at very little cost to yourself is not something that you can find much interest for, then it's a different question entirely.
Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seemed entirely appropriate and exactly on point from my PoV: On 24 March, Western Australia closed its borders to the rest of Australia, and on 1 April, the state implemented borders between regions in the state. By mid-April 2020, the state had eliminated community transmission of COVID-19, becoming one of the few places in the world to do so. Elsewhere (the UK and US in particular) looked like a total clusterf*…
> During May 2022, Western Australia experienced sharply rising cases amongst the highest per capita cases seen anywhere in the world throughout the pandemic. Just delaying it to 2022 according to those same articles, as it had already exited the evolutionary fit population’s memory everywhere else in the world
And you bet your ass I'd rather be in the hospital with covid in 2022 than 2020.
Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
#68I skimmed the article but did not find my question answered: what's the current view on whether the political and social response was properly done?
Properly done with what the consensus opinion was at the time the decisions were made, or properly done in hindsight and colored with political bias? It's weird to me how quickly folks forgot the depth of our ignorance during the beginning of covid. Do you remember when we all started washing our groceries when we got home because we weren't even sure if covid survived on surfaces? Remember when we were desperate to…
>We probably kept it all going too far for too long.
That's where I've landed looking back on it. The first month or so of staying home, being overly cautious, and "flattening the curve" made sense given the unknowns. But limiting outdoor gatherings in some contexts but not others (no-go on outdoor parties, but George Floyd protests are fine), keeping kids in Zoom school through 2021, and continued neuroticism even after vaccines were widely available---all that left a sour taste in my mouth.
Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seemed entirely appropriate and exactly on point from my PoV: On 24 March, Western Australia closed its borders to the rest of Australia, and on 1 April, the state implemented borders between regions in the state. By mid-April 2020, the state had eliminated community transmission of COVID-19, becoming one of the few places in the world to do so. Elsewhere (the UK and US in particular) looked like a total clusterf*…
> During May 2022, Western Australia experienced sharply rising cases amongst the highest per capita cases seen anywhere in the world throughout the pandemic. Just delaying it to 2022 according to those same articles, as it had already exited the evolutionary fit population’s memory everywhere else in the world
that only happened because everybody else fucked up - which is of course predictable, you can't assume 192 countries will do the exact right thing all at the same time. so I agree, they just delayed the inevitable.
Re: Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can literally plug your last sentence directly into Google and get good information.
I did that and clicked through the first 5 links. Doesn't sound that obvious to me. I found this one interesting: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10446908/ > More studies found that masks (n = 39/47; 83%) and mask mandates (n = 16/18; 89%) reduced infection than found no effect (n = 8/65; 12%) or favoured controls (n = 1/65; 2%). Seven observational studies found that respirators were more protective than su…
Honestly I think the best advice is to assume masks don't do anything. The point isn't to suggest people run around having parties during a pandemic. The point is to suggest people use distancing as their primary mode of protection. Being outdoors is an excellent defense, as is shown in the data generated by the NFL during the pandemic.