An endemic disease is a disease that is always present in a particular population/region. Ex. Flu, malaria, HIV, syphilis, and… COVID Am I missing something?
Go look up the definitions of these words and then read what Closi wrote again.
Endemic also means, particularly in the context of disease, widely present in the area.
Endemic for COVID, therefore, means that theres no locking it out because its everywhere.
And since COVID can jump species, its done. Game over. It will be with us forever.
In biological sciences we have to integrate multiple kinds of evidence — in vitro (or in larva? — in the mask) lab experiments, animal models, randomized controlled trials in humans, descriptive statistics of human populations, in silico simulation, etc. — because they all have their advantages and disadvantages. Lab/in vitro models are great because they allow for tightly controlled conditions and are clear tests of…
Margery Smelkinson (the author), Ph.D., infections disease expert focused on Covid 19 and affiliated with NIH, disagrees with your interpretation.
I think we should either evaluate arguments for ourselves, or rely on a broad consensus of experts in the field in question.
If we resort to argument from authority, but cherry pick our authorities to be those which agree with our preexisting views, then that won't get us very far epistemically.
In this case, I think both the broad consensus of experts as well as the balance of evidence/argumentation supports the efficacy of masks.
Our school has seemed to do OK keeping it from spreading between kids. But they also do weekly testing. And did surveillance testing at the end of winter break, which kept about 15% of the school's students at home for the first week back because they had covid. This statistic was also consistent with LA Unified surveillance testing after winter break - about 15%. Before winter break, some parents of 2nd graders had…
Our elementary school in Oregon has required masks. And I can't think of a kid who hasn't got it, including our own. It's run rampant through Oregon schools. By my assessment, masks do very, very little to stop the spread.
That's interesting. I'm in California, and I know a lot of kids that have caught it, but only 2 that can trace it back to the classroom.
We have caught about 3 things over the past ~year, but none of it covid (as far as tests showed) and all of them had obvious non-classroom links.
Two of them were sick friends. And the third was probably when our 3 year old licked a trashcan at the zoo.
No, Covid is low risk if you are vaccinated and elderly/at risk and extremely low risk if you are younger (vaccinated or not) It’s endemic. Its not going away. We are all going to get it. (Me: triple vaxxed, had covid 2x) Getting vaccinated is a personal heath decision (which I encourage) Time to move on.
Polio used to be endemic in the USA and now it has been eradicated.
Polio doesn't require boosters every three months and a redesigned vaccine every 18 (as they’re developing now)
> Try taking a 6 hour flight with a 2 year old that's required to keep his mask on the entire flight, and when he takes it off (because he's 2, of course he's going to take it off) the flight attendants threaten to turn the plane around and ban you permanently. Never heard about this, source? Toddlers tend to be somewhat exempt from mask mandates because they're toddlers and everyone understands when they don't compl…
Yeah. I have to assume user ngngngng is exaggerating to make a statement. I've flown in the past year and was annoyed that adult passengers in front of me weren't wearing their mask (or wearing it with their nose exposed). While the flight attendant told them a few times times to put their mask on correctly, the flight attendants were not going to "turn the plane around and ban [them] permanently".
We just flew out to California for Christmas. We had this happen, our 2 1/2 year old is a kid. He kept fiddling with his mask and the flight attendant got uppity with us over it. So no, this happens and it is ridiculous.
Who's going to teach them? Parents aren't going to have time or will miss critical areas. Teachers won't want to do it. If teachers do attempt it, it would likely be weeks or months of education down the drain since they'll be constantly taking breaks to correct students one by one.
Who, in a school, I wonder, could possibly teach children something.... ...yeah, it'd be teachers teaching the children, and it would take a lot less time than weeks or months.
No, no it would not. Most of it would be breaking thoughtless behavior. Johnny you have your fingers in your eyes again. Joan, did you wash your hands before and after smearing that lip gloss on? Etc...
It is all pretty much worthless considering all the unmasked children gathered for lunch.
In Taiwan we've been wearing masks for over 2 years with near zero complaint at school. I have to remind a few kids a day to put it over their nose. We've had Omicron here for awhile, but it's still only a trickle of cases, with no exponential explosion. The policies here, with contact tracing, quarantine and masks, have kept things open and people from dying. I don't understand the hesitancy.
Taiwan isn’t suffering from near 50% obesity though…
> They'd also know that pretty much the only condition we're treating nowadays is Covid. This statement might be true for your location but is not true in general. Here in New York City hospitalizations due to covid are not very high and going down quickly. Elective surgeries and procedures go on as scheduled. ICUs are not overrun with covid specific cases. Majority of the patients with positive PCR test are hospital…
NYTimes has a pretty good source on this. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-... I'll tell you that here in Chicago, based off data, and anecdotes: really depends on the neighborhood. Vaccinated areas? Doing fine. Undervaccinated areas? Not doing so well. Gosh, it's like vaccines work and that's the way out of this.
> Vaccinated areas? Doing fine. Undervaccinated areas? Not doing so well.
Not accurate AT ALL.
NPR has a better source that also gives COVID patient percentage.
Marin County, CA and Santa Cruz, CA county have 95% vaccination rates and are doing worse in ICU capacity than Escambia county, FL who has 55% vaccination rates.
For most ICUs running at 80 to 90 percent capacity is standard.
This plan would kill a large portion of immunocompromised people worldwide.
Why are the only deaths we seem to care about those that are Covid related? If we are worried about killing people worldwide, far more people die of hunger-related causes each day, but we aren't rebuilding our entire society to save those people. But I can't see a reason why deaths from Covid are more of a tragedy than those we left to starve. Or take smoking for instance - more people die each year from smoking than…
People are afraid to die, and some people will do anything to lower the risk (ironically, life is still 100% fatal). These people will get angry at you for something dangerous even if you don't endanger them!
If you rode motorcycles you'd encounter this safety fascism attitude quite a bit. Ive had ppl flip out on me just for mentioning I disagree with helmet laws, even though I ride with 100% safety equipment 100% of the time.
Yeah, but masks aren't doing much to prevent that. My kids go to an Oregon elementary school that requires full time masking and I can't think of a single kid who hasn't had it. COVID has run rampant through Oregon schools. I don't care what the lab studies show. Masks don't do shit in schools. The elderly and vulnerable need to get vaccinated, or be handled in a tent in the hospital parking lot. Stop punishing kids.…
Indeed. My twin brother lives just outside of PDX, and the schools were closed for a full year, then hybrid classes. His son was in kindergarten when it hit, just like my daughter. His son is severely delayed now. On top of all of that, they finally open the schools back up and shove the kids into useless masks. His son (Jack) needs speech therapy. When he goes, the instructor is wearing a mask. He can't see what her…
The strange part to me is that usually on policy issues there’s this band of reasonable behavior and people disagree on which end of that band we should fall, but if you’re honest you can understand the other side’s perspective. On COVID in Oregon, it’s the first time in my life I’ve felt like I’m looking at a completely different world than others. I’m just flabbergasted by the policy calls driven by COVID hysteria. I’m not some rabid right winger. (My wife and I are both triple vaccinated, AND we still recently got it!) I just feel totally, totally confused. We vacationed in Idaho over Christmas and it was like reorienting myself to reality. I have no idea what’s going on in Oregon, but I am confident that we have revealed a fundamental split in human psyches that some bad actor will exploit to terrible ends.