Update on Omicron • Hacker News Board

Re: Update on Omicron

#731

Post by bigbillheck » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

impendingchange wrote: post #643

bigbillheck wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wasn't? The known coronaviruses in the 1980s were four of the ones that cause the cold, but virology hasn't stood still since.

The definition of the Coronavirus in the AMA medical Encyclopedia textbook. https://www.bitchute.com/video/UvuXzdVwj3ed/ Proved right again.

I guess HPIV, Hendra virus, and Nipah virus don't exist because they're not listed under paramyxovirus.

There's a bunch of other stuff that's wrong (for starters, the locations of rubella, dengue, yellow fever) or missing (papillomavirus can cause cancer and not just warts).

Re: Update on Omicron

#732

Post by tomp » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

chimprich wrote: post #705

techdragon wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years isn’t an inconceivable time to build additional hospital capacity and attempt efforts at preventing normal causes of medial and nursing school drop outs in order to bolster the number of adequately trained medical professionals available to staff those hospitals. In fact a lot of countries have an artificial cap on the number of doctors and nurses which is driven by various medical professional associations…

> Two years isn’t an inconceivable time to build additional hospital capacity The limiting factor is medical professionals, not adding buildings. You can't train a doctor in 2 years. > preventing normal causes of medial and nursing school drop outs in order to bolster the number of adequately trained medical professionals What's the drop-out rate? How would you "prevent" this? Do people drop out because they can't co…

> You can't train a doctor in 2 years

Why not? Do you really need a "doctor" to treat COVID, or just a "person trained in treating COVID and putting people on the respirator"?

Case in point, in Italy in 2020, at the peak of the first wave ("Bergamo"), they fast-tracked final year medical students. Looks like the change is permanent [1]. So clearly "you can't doctor in X years" (AFAIK 6-7 years in most of Europe) was wrong before the pandemic. We can and should do better.

[1] https://pmj.bmj.com/content/96/1137/375

Re: Update on Omicron

#733

Post by ryathal » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

periheli0n wrote: post #670

irthomasthomas wrote: post #664

Reminder that face coverings/surgical masks have very little impact, and may even be worse than no mask. Wear N95 respirator masks if you worried, those have been shown to reduce exposure by about 44% (edit sorry 44% is how much got through, so I guess that makes a 66% improvement). https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577.long "Results The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm, with t…

Cloth masks may not help much to protect those who wear them, but they reduce the amount of aerosol they emit, and reduce the likelihood of spreading the virus.

Cloth masks become saturated and actually emit more and smaller particles.

Re: Update on Omicron

#734

Post by noahmasur » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #466

noahmasur wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their point was that you need to have EVERYONE vaccinated in order to reduce spread and protect people for whom vaccines are ineffective.

If you're talking about herd immunity, you might not be as up to date on the newest variants. We could theoretically reach herd immunity against the original covid-19. But there was no practical way to get to herd immunity with delta without mandating three vaccine shots at gunpoint which would be about as popular as burning Medicare to the ground. With Omikron herd immunity is impossible. 100% vaccinated population…

We may not be able to achieve full herd immunity, but better herd resistance may be the only way to help those who can't benefit from the vaccine.

If the Delta and other contagious variants are spreading more in communities with lower vaccine adoption, then I think it would stand to reason that immunocompromised people would be safer in communities with higher vaccine adoption.

Re: Update on Omicron

#735

Post by lobocinza » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

junon wrote: post #726

mathverse wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical community should not be the only one making decisions that have such a massive impact on society. >I'm merely pointing out the selfishness in your stance and how harmful it is to the overall efforts of the medical community. That's not bad faith. We've all had an absolutely shit time. You're not special. Why is your right keeping families separated not selfish?

> Medical community should not be the only one making decisions that have such a massive impact on society. Perhaps not when it's economic, technological, wartime, etc. Sure. But when it comes to the healthcare of everyone (not just the individual), they absolutely should. The problem is that politicians seem to think they know more about healthcare than the experts do. > Why is your right keeping families separated…

> Perhaps not when it's economic, technological, wartime, etc. Sure. But when it comes to the healthcare of everyone (not just the individual), they absolutely should. The problem is that politicians seem to think they know more about healthcare than the experts do.

In pandemic times medical community matters more but nobody should be the only one making decisions about the life of others. People on the front-line lack insight about everything else that's happening. And experts on other fields and even politicians know things that epidemiologists don't. This has gone too far.

There are many bright individuals around the world that could contribute to this fight but as long as their opinion goes against the built consensus they will stand no chance of getting heard. As a global society we are committing all in to a local optima that sucks.

For the last two years I tried my best to stay at home and used respirators even at outdoors. Please see that politicians are the ones that benefits from this new status quo because on this long lasting and seemingly eternal crisis they have absolute power over people freedom to travel, to gather and to express on public. This being the new normal scares me.

Re: Update on Omicron

#736

Post by esyir » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #569

esyir wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You made a bad argument and got called on it. That's as far as it goes. No need to be a victim. No need to double-down with more bad arguments. You don't even have a damn argument here. You've lobbed personal attack after personal attack without any backing. I'm going to quote paraphrase the zen of python here on this. Be explict. Tell me exactly which part of my argument you're dismantling, rather than yelling "YOU…

Well, so much for any pretense that you're an objective, non-tribal commentator, amirite? Obviously, there's a lot of hostility just beneath the surface. Unfortunately, you seem to have bought into exactly the right-wing persecution narrative I mentioned, which is designed to produce the emotional effect you're exhibiting here. > reddit front page popular posts will give you a fantastic slice To start detoxing, maybe…

I think enough people here thought otherwise, seeing that the previous comment is flagged.

> mean, you offering Reddit comments as proof of anything reveals just how susceptible you are to manipulation. It's bad. Really bad. Your reality is skewed.

For all the ills of social media, they're very much a reflection of their readers. It's easy to say bots bots bots, but I'd bet that the vast majority of those are very much real people. If you think reddit and twitter aren't major players in the public zeitgeist, I don't know what to say. The same applies to facebook.

It's also easy to say "I rebutted your argument" without actually doing so. That you didn't do so, despite all attempts to make it convenient (point by point logical chain), instead resorting to the standard non-answers and personal attacks.

If your best response to this is effectively "no u brainwashed", that says more about you than it does about me.

Re: Update on Omicron

#737

Post by disambiguation » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

throwawaye3422 wrote: post #663

I am so tired of this bullshit, it's so damn tiring. Everything feels, just so very useless, its just sad to see how much this thing has effected everyone, everyone I love, every stranger I see, we are all getting pushed to the limits, people are depressed some people are suffering in silence while governments and organizations like the WHO are not telling us exactly what's going on, they change the narrative everyda…

a lot of people feel this way.

the only scrap of solace i've personally found in all this is that at least in historical terms, this isn't too bad as far as generational trials go.

if once upon a time we made it through great wars, then we can make it through this.

Re: Update on Omicron

#738

Post by lobocinza » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

chimprich wrote: post #695

mathverse wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How was the government supposed to convince anti-vaxxers to do what they believe contains micro chips or what they believe is worse than the virus itself? This isn't on the government, this is on anti-vaxxers for swallowing garbage information, hook line and sinker. This is solely on the government. It's immoral to keep vaccinated people in uncertainty and include them in any sort of lockdowns. >And you didn't lose…

Threats don't disappear just because you feel the solution is inconvenient to you.

Covid is not the only threat. And what is being labeled as convenience sometimes is just physical/mental health. How I'm supposed to exercise, be healthy and productive by staying indoors all the time? Also, am I supposed to substitute IRL social activities with video calls and social media?

Don't get me wrong, I know there's some sort of middle ground but I wanted to provide food for thought.

Re: Update on Omicron

#739

Post by oigursh » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #352

ageofwant wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to low trust in government after decades of corruption and mismanagement of basically everything who can blame them ? And who stepped into into this void of authority... Facebook, bastion of truth and science and critical thinking. America's inability to curb its own propaganda machines and its capitalism uber alles rhetoric and group-think boomerangs right back. This pandemic has certainly shaken a lot of nuts o…

Ahh yes, lets blame capitalism for all things. You do realize that capitalism created the vaccine in the first place? That with out capitalism you would have no vaccine to complain about people refusing to take? I really am tried to seeing capitalism blamed on all the worlds problem when it has been capitalism more than anything else that has brought both peace and prosperity to the world

Oxford University was going to open source its vaccine, then the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation stepped in and convinced them to sell exclusive rights to AstraZeneca.

https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1353330538292121602?lan...

Re: Update on Omicron

#740

Post by chimprich » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #702

danaris wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Getting out", as in going outside unmasked, abandoning precautions, if done en masse, will kill many, many people. To believe otherwise is, as someone else further down said to another person who, like you, wants to just pretend this is all over, magical thinking.

There's tradeoffs for everything. We weren't all grandma killing fascists in the previous years for not locking ourselves in our homes and wearing masks and not going to large gatherings and shutting down businesses in response to influenza. Yet the flu killed many many people every year. We're not hateful anti science bigots for daring to drive automobiles despite that statistically contributing to killing many many…

> We're not hateful anti science bigots for daring to drive automobiles

In most developed countries there are strict rules about driving. You are expected and required to drive according to certain rules to keep other people safe. There are rules for driving because the right of other people to not get injured or killed are considered more important than your right to do what you feel like.

Do you think restricting your right to drive drunk on a pavement is "strange collectivism"?