I helped medevac a person just this week, they died a few days later. Covid. No vaccinations. Early-60s, male, not especially overweight, "acceptable" health history.
I think they thought it was all over too. Ooops.
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I helped medevac a person just this week, they died a few days later. Covid. No vaccinations. Early-60s, male, not especially overweight, "acceptable" health history.
I think they thought it was all over too. Ooops.
I wear a mask to the stores, half the time I don't know what the law even is anymore, but I think the "cost" of wearing a mask to the store (for what an hour maybe) is very low, so why not. I weigh getting covid as worse than that, no I don't mean dying, I mean being sick for say if I'm unlucky a couple weeks with a small potential of it becoming long covid that lasts a great deal longer. But what about everything else? Yea plenty of things may be harder than wearing a mask an hour in the supermarket. Just that decision is an easy one for me.
The claim is probably crossing the line into straight up misinformation. Immunity doesn't exist for this (I mean if we get nasal vaccines or something maybe, but currently). Infections don't provide it either. And vaccines may wane as does infection acquired protection probably. And what maybe only 1/4th of the population is triple vaccinated. If they are counting double vaccinated as vaccinated that's incorrect.Quote:
The claim is that 90% of the population is immune, either from contracting the virus or being vaccinated. That's not really true. Vaccination seems to prevent more severe infections, but is not exactly immunity.
More like: with triple vaccinations or infection there is decent immunity from the worst short term consequences for a period of time at any rate.
I read a piece a while back that there is no clear point when a pandemic becomes endemic. It becomes endemic when we decide to stop revolving our lives around it.Quote:
Originally Posted by rosarugosa
All the nervous people can relax because the health officials will undoubtedly try to reimpose restrictions in the fall when cases of this seasonal respiratory virus start trending up again. It won't be as easy to scare people this time though. There will be more resistance, and by then we should have many more scientific studies showing the complete uselessness of things like most masks. This opposition will slow things down until after the November election.
There are still many wearing masks in stores around here, and DH and I are among them, having done pretty much the same cost/benefit analysis as you did. The grocery store will never be my happy place of optimal comfort no matter what, so wearing a mask in stores isn't a burden for us.Quote:
Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore
We, too, wear masks when out in public. I see no reason to stop. Those who aren't wearing masks- that's why I wear one. No sense getting exposed to who knows what.
Your choice but I hope you don't have young children you are teaching to be afraid of fellow human beings, or to identify themselves as potential disease vectors. This is very damaging psychologically. We have enough body shaming without kids being afraid of their breath or other normal parts of their bodies.Quote:
Originally Posted by nswef
I think the idea that fellow human beings are not to be feared is debatable!
The thing I have noted throughout the last five years including Covid years is a general "I don't wanna" attitude concerning all sorts of choices...this is what we are teaching our children.
Covid protocols, even according to the liberal New York Times, were largely wasted efforts:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/b...ue-states.html
COVID 19 has been an ordeal.
This week in my county there were just 3 new cases.
All Bell full peal PLENUM
Belissimo!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pr5DZ9WJpE
Here in Texas on tv they are telling people if they test positive at home…. they don’t have to report it. So, what are the numbers really?
I'm able to find recent Covid hospitalizations and deaths by county. Those seem like as relevant as anything, anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by frugal-one
My daughter's partner, in the UK, just came down with covid. Vaxxed-and-booster, super healthy/fit, ~25 years old. Symptoms were a several-day bad cold and fatigue, then a bit of fatigue lingering for at least a week now after the peak symptoms calmed down. Self-quarantining to avoid killing elderly relatives they were going to be visiting this week.
First over half the covid hospitalizations in my state were revealed to be incidental, now today the state admitted that over 4,000 people they said died of covid died of something else.
And the FDA was forced to release damning information showing over 1000 people died from the Pfizer vaccines in a 3 month period. Austria has pulled it off the market.
I wonder how long it will take for someone here to come out of the darkness and join me in the light as the covid paranoia house of cards crumbles.
Facts:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...054-8/fulltext
Or Yppej:
Soviet agit-prop. (and badly mixed up at that, must be some corruption to the signal)
I am ignorant on these kits.Quote:
Originally Posted by frugal-one
How accurate at the test at home kits?
Are they the same thing that the government was giving out free, or is this an over the counter one that was developed?
Also what threats/punishment would they have to make people report it and how would they do the follow through? (medical staff, they can suspend licensing)
I would assume that there's nothing that health authorities can do if people don't report their at home positive test. I assume that the omicron wave was waaaaaay bigger than the reported numbers because so many people are doing home tests rather than going to the doc or a testing site. In the small kansas town where my cousin lives the health department a few weeks ago had to run a notice in the newspaper begging people to pick up the phone when they called. That they weren't trying to do anything nefarious, they were just calling to check and see how people were doing. The health department had also completely stopped doing any testing or reporting because the staff are all moonlighters from their day jobs at the hospital who were plenty busy with their day jobs at the time. (they were sending people as far away as denver (200 miles away) because their hospital and every other hospital in the area were overflowing with people seriously ill with covid.)Quote:
Originally Posted by ToomuchStuff
My anecdotal thoughts on the home covid tests (yes, the government home tests are the same ones you can buy at the drug store) are that they tend to have more false negatives than false positives. I know several people who had them show negative more than once but then tested positive when they went to a medical facility. I don't know anyone that thinks they had a false positive.
Maybe you should threaten and punish Biden. His test to treat program is going to create a one stop shop at pharmacies. This empowerment of people to deal with covid outside traditional channels is obviously very frightening for you. Oh no, we're losing control!Quote:
Originally Posted by ToomuchStuff
Just before Christmas, I was notified of a close Covid exposure at work and to get tested. The drug store home test I used was negative but was still advised to to get a PCR test to be sure because of concern over false negatives in particular. PCR also negative but the turnaround was longer due to the surge in testing at the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by jp1
In England there are now more flu deaths than covid deaths because of 1) vaccinations and 2) omicron being less deadly.
The US should follow shortly if it isn't already there. Therefore we shouldn't have any covid mandates unless there is a corresponding flu mandate. (I believe in certain medical professions flu shots are mandated.) But covid is being exaggerated because that benefits certain people and entities.
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/64485785.jpgQuote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
"More than 18 million people - three times higher than official records suggest - have probably died because of Covid, say researchers.Quote:
But covid is being exaggerated because that benefits certain people and entities.
Their report comes two years to the day from when the World Health Organization first declared the pandemic.
The Covid-19 excess mortality team at the US's Washington University studied 191 countries and territories for what they call the true global death figure."
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-60690251
FAKE NEWS!!!! FAKE STUDY!!! FAKE SCIENCE!!!! RESEARCHERS BEEN PAID OFF FOR SURE!!! INJECT BLEACH A.S.A.P.!!! INJECT BLEACH!!!
It's a global study, it's not specific to the u.s. or parts of it. More covid deaths than flu deaths is just well I suspect it's playing with numbers. Of people infected with flu or covid perhaps more die with flu, but since many more people get infected with covid, the reality is you don't have more flu that covid deaths. There just aren't more flu than covid deaths. That's just false. But someday there might be, well very well, that's just speculation, but sure someday their might be .... (and maybe it's because someday we have a flu pandemic but anyway). I mean literally seems pretty crazy to make decision based on what might be (or might not be but might be) a temporary lull. Flu deaths aren't even known until after flu season.
I know no convincing yeppej, whatever she cares about it's not getting at the truth. It's some weird performative freedom and information be damned. Yea whatever, no thanks.
As of today the US is still averaging 1,292 covid deaths per day. At that rate we would have 471,000 deaths for the year. Flu deaths are nowhere near that level, ever, in the past 100 years. The absolute worst flu season in the US in any of our lifetimes was 1957 with 116,000 deaths. The population was half as much then but even adjusting for population that would be 232,000 deaths. For the years 2010-2020 the average flu deaths in the US was 34,200. 1/12 the current death rate from covid. But sure, if one wants to normalize the current death rate I suppose that one can make that choice. Personally I’m not willing to be so casual when discussing a disease that has, in just two years, killed roughly 1 out of every 338 Americans and is still today, at the low end after a big surge, killing us at a rate of nearly 500,000 per year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
I know there's a certain odd cachet in our small circle associated with belittling Jeppy, but she's right about this.Quote:
Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore
The original Financial Times story is behind a paywall but you can get a synopsis of it here: In England, COVID is now less deadly than the flu. But what about in the U.S.? (msn.com)
like I said (or maybe did, I think I edited my post too much lol) it's playing with numbers, even if a person who catches covid has less chance of dying of it than the flu if more people catch covid (look probably because transmissibility but I don't know the R0), thus you have more total deaths.
Omicron was less deadly than prior covid waves by that measure. In the U.S. insufficiently vaccinated as it is, there were more deaths due to Omicorn though because more people had it. I mean you can play some game, oh it doesn't really matter how many people die, the only thing that matters is deaths per people that catch it, but this tends not to match what people care about (it's not EVEN a useful measure if one was trying to figure their own odds with a positive covid test, it's too broad, that depends on vaccinations of course and then age and illnesses).
Yppej quickly goes from scanning headlines to drawing conclusions, generally incorrectly. And typically cherry-picking things to support their pre-existing biases.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
I spent several months in the UK during several of the waves. Their results are considerably more nuanced and depend on a few more things than Yppej's off-the-cuff quip. I believe I have mentioned here some of what I observed in the past.
And Yppej's "the covid is exaggerated because that benefits certain people and entities" is straight out of the Kremlin, and unsupported by fact.
If pointing that out is "belittling", well, so be it.
Safety tip though, the AstraZenica maths people are just a short walk from the Green Dragon pub (yes, *that* Green Dragon), which you may find of use some day if you are Doing Useful Things. I strongly suggest the pub *after* the maths.
I also suggest discounting pretty much everything Yppej says on the matter.
https://i.imgur.com/NmAD67E.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/J5Fg2Ao.jpg
BTW I hear covid somewhat increasing in the UK now. Go ahead make a grand prediction is it a bump or the start of a massive wave? Afterall, yeppej would ....
You're forgetting the Spanish flu of 1918.Quote:
Originally Posted by jp1
No I’m not. That ended more than 100 years ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
So now "the science" figures since they can't vaccinate animals, which are a reservoir for covid and other diseases, they will engineer a viral vaccine that creatures can pass to each other.
Because this couldn't evolve and get out of control like the virus did in the Wuhan lab, right????
Wuhan lab, eh? The last I saw, scientists had generally ruled that out.
Washington saw a decline in COVID cases in the last few days. Good news.
Yes, ruling it out is likely, but we will never really know given the lies that come out of China.Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
The big improvement in The Science in recent many months is that reasonable people were allowed to examine the Wuhan-lab leak theory without jeering at them.
Science is the best tool we have, but it's subject to all the same human frailties (politics, greed, ambition, envy...) as other human endeavors.
Much like the Hunter Biden laptop story. Banned in social media one day, grudgingly allowed the next.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
Maybe “the Science” has become one of those rhetorical devices like “experts say” or “violating norms”. A vague but important-sounding smokescreen from which to attack uncongenial arguments.
The degree to which it was ever banned is probably way overstated, I think the Wuhan-lab leak theory has gone in and out of favor at times, sure there were times it was out of favor. The arguments against it were mostly that the characteristics of the virus meant it couldn't be a lab leak. Is almost anyone who would want to opine on that actually remotely qualified to? In most cases no. The degree to which China lies, oh please, all governments lie.
But it also struck me as not the most relevant question either, I think what many people wanted was better policy responses to the coronavirus. And some endless debate about orgins is just oh so fascinating, hey look at that squirrel over there, when the point is dealing with it now. Unless you are going to go full conspiracy, the virus was deliberately developed and released, not by accident, to say kill off some surplus population. And then well it is a simple explanation of why policy responses have been so bad. But hmm. But if it was a lab leak it could happen again. Yea maybe, I don't see whether it happened or not as being that informative of the possibility of a lab leak in the future. I mean the virus could have nothing to do with a lab leak, and study of gain of function and loose procedures could still have the possibility of leading to a lab leak sometimes in the future. I guess if everyone knew it was a lab leak and it was accidental, it would have some positive inhibiting effect, of the "omg what have we done, we need to stop this from happening again!" sort.
So people who said "listen to the science" I think mostly wanted better policy responses. I mean we had advocacy of utterly unproved medicines (hydroxychloroquine for one) coming as a response from the white house while people were getting sick and dying. Of course we did also have actual vaccine development.
If you're going to be dismissive of everything you disagree with you should at least include the ultimate in meaningless dismissive statements. "cancel culture"Quote:
Originally Posted by LDAHL
But seriously, the reason some people have become dismissive of "the science" is because for the last two years we've watched "the science" happen in real time. In broad public view. Prior to covid "the science" happened in academic journals and academic conferences and the only people who paid attention were the academic people who work in that field. By the time "the science" was presented to the public years and years of study, discussion, revision, further study, further discussion, and finally, broad consensus was reached and the results would be shared with the broader public. Covid brought that normally messy process out into public from the start, on a very condensed timeline.
honestly does much if any of this have anything to do with actual science or are we just talking about politically appointed talking heads discussing "the science", and others who are bribed political operatives. Blaming scientists for what those people do, doesn't seem a fair critique of science.Quote:
But seriously, the reason some people have become dismissive of "the science" is because for the last two years we've watched "the science" happen in real time. In broad public view.
And otoh this seems a highly romanticized and idealized view of science, almost a fairy tale. Like I don't think that's how almost anything happens in an often messy field like medicine, which is kind of what we are dealing with. It's not that noone is working on any actual science. If it's funded they are. But treatment decisions may be made on incomplete information etc..Quote:
Prior to covid "the science" happened in academic journals and academic conferences and the only people who paid attention were the academic people who work in that field. By the time "the science" was presented to the public years and years of study, discussion, revision, further study, further discussion, and finally, broad consensus was reached and the results would be shared with the broader public.
And then issues of replicability have been raised (even in actual not just social science) but I don't know how significant that is. The problem is then scientists find themselves dealing with dishonest actors that just want to raise doubt like with tobacco or climate change (merchants of doubt). Anyway I think all anyone wanted out of "follow the science" from Trump was: do something to control this @#$# virus, don't just push a bunch of cures that don't work like so much snake oil!
According to this article, J&J has impressive staying power:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/20/healt...ine/index.html
If it came across that I think science happens in a leave it to beaver world of politeness and perfect honesty then i failed to make my point. My point was simply that before covid science didn’t happen on the front page of every newspaper. Now it does. Sometimes honestly and messily. Sometimes dishonestly because it’s a politician or partisan hack media figure with an agenda. But to the average person it can easily end up looking like no one knows what the eff they are doing so why trust any of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore
If only it were out in the open. The CDC is hiding data and medical practitioners are having to get data from places like Israel.Quote:
Originally Posted by jp1
The reason? The data shows people, with a few rare immunocompromised exceptions, do not need boosters if they are under age 65, but the CDC is looking out for the interests of Big Pharma.