Covid 19 #26: Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

[Mlle. Zabzie]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I know, we both see this issue eye to eye.

Now this I disagree with. We just have to accept that many of our long term predictions are wrong, but we still need to make as many of them as possible to plan for future events. 

You do you.  My mental health requires 2 week increments.  

I mean, if I actually predict, e.g., this summer, I am thinking that it will feel surprisingly "normal", variants be damned.  I honestly think peoples' personal risk calculations will shift (and honestly rightly so) once their social circles are fundamentally vaccinated.  That visit to your parents?  Not risk free, but (1) it never will be (and having seen some predictions of 2024, no one is going to wait that long) and (2) you have to weigh never seeing them again in person versus a visit.  People are already making that trade off, even without vaccines, and it's honestly not wrong. That dinner with friends?  That small vacation out of your own four walls?  It is going to happen.  So, you see, that's my prediction, but it's utter horse$h1t and should be treated as such.  I have an EXCELLENT idea of what is happening in the next two weeks, a hazy idea of the next month, and gut feelings farther out than that.  That's it. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Like I said before, the US should start with donations to Mexico and Canada, maybe even token donations as first. You can make a strong case this is in the best interests of the US since there is quite a bit of traffic across the borders (leave aside that most legal traffic should be mostly COVID free because of testing requirements). Since the calculation appears to be political rather than humanitarian, this could be a good gauge of how a 5% donation would play among the general public. 

Then, it can be slowly increased to include the rest of the world, as well as freeing up some AZ assets in the US.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

39 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

No one discusses not helping their own before helping others. No one proposes giving all vaccine away to others and having none for themselves. This is about cooperating and sharing. To forbid all exports on vaccines and vaccine raw materials may help one nation in a short time frame. But cooperation and the reduction of trade barriers makes more vaccine for all in the long run. Perhaps today one nation has all the vials and the next all the syringes? A bann on export isnt helping anyone then is it?

 

People are explicitly saying countries should not help their own in a effort to help the greater good. Now is vaccination of all in the long, and even short term, best for everyone? Yes. But realism says governments must account for their own first.

28 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Oh please, stop with the bullshit. 
This just illustrates exactly what I’ve been seeing on US media. Absolutely nothing about the US role in world health, nothing. The only references in US media are to those greedy vaccine nationalist pigs in Canada, alternating with how badly Trudeau has failed Canadians, how poorly the vaccine roll-out is going in the EU, and how badly the US is doing in comparison with Israel and the UK. You probably don’t even notice those stories, because in fact there aren’t very many. The world is unimportant. 

I really don't mean to be rude, but I checked out on your post from the jump. I've literally not heard anyone say that about Canada, and if they did, they'd be speaking from a place of ignorance. That's why I said earlier that the hate for Canada here doesn't seem to be the same thing you're seeing north of the wall.

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To just shove it all under the carpet by saying “our political situation doesn’t allow it” is crazy because the even the idea of exporting vaccine is a forbidden topic. No one will touch it with a ten foot pile. There is no public discussion about it at all. Nothing. Zero. 

You've seen how our Senate works, no? 

33 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

You do you.  My mental health requires 2 week increments.  

I mean, if I actually predict, e.g., this summer, I am thinking that it will feel surprisingly "normal", variants be damned.  I honestly think peoples' personal risk calculations will shift (and honestly rightly so) once their social circles are fundamentally vaccinated.  That visit to your parents?  Not risk free, but (1) it never will be (and having seen some predictions of 2024, no one is going to wait that long) and (2) you have to weigh never seeing them again in person versus a visit.  People are already making that trade off, even without vaccines, and it's honestly not wrong. That dinner with friends?  That small vacation out of your own four walls?  It is going to happen.  So, you see, that's my prediction, but it's utter horse$h1t and should be treated as such.  I have an EXCELLENT idea of what is happening in the next two weeks, a hazy idea of the next month, and gut feelings farther out than that.  That's it. 

Is this where I get to point out I was the person, alone, saying over a month in advance, to watch the NBA, that it would probably have to shut down quickly, and that society would follow?

Did I have better bedside manner there than when @Karlbear took a loud victory lap after he (and I) years in advanced predicted the Trump Administration would end in some form of violence?

[Fragile Bird]

Well, there’s a huge housing boom going on in the US right now. New home prices are soaring because the price of lumber is up by 60%. I want to renovate my kitchen by taking down a wall and people have suggested I wait a year if I can because prices will fall. Where does the US get a lot of lumber? From Canada. So you want our lumber but the forestry workers should cut down the timber and get sick from Covid to make Americans happy. And many of those houses will be finished, but will be missing appliances because of component shortages from overseas.

Canada just approved the J&J vaccine, which is  a sick joke, because of course there is no vaccine. J&J will make 100 M doses before any of it leaves the US. 
 

Canada should forbid all travel to the US until all Canadians are vaccinated.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

18 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Like I said before, the US should start with donations to Mexico and Canada, maybe even token donations as first. You can make a strong case this is in the best interests of the US since there is quite a bit of traffic across the borders (leave aside that most legal traffic should be mostly COVID free because of testing requirements). Since the calculation appears to be political rather than humanitarian, this could be a good gauge of how a 5% donation would play among the general public. 

Then, it can be slowly increased to include the rest of the world, as well as freeing up some AZ assets in the US.

Should is the key word. Should the U.S. be doing more? Yes, of course. Is it good politics at home? Absolutely not. 

You have to keep in mind people here still think we're something special, and a political solution that disrupts that is not practical, even if it would be the ethical decision. And that will govern many politicians decisions.

[Ormond]

12 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

I’m going to get murdered here for this, but how can you have SMOKERS and OBESE PEOPLE as a priority group?

Why am I last in line because of someone’s poor lifestyle choices??

I'm sorry, but obesity is not a "poor lifestyle choice" to the extent that smoking is.

There are hundreds of genes that have some connection with weight and obesity. These include many that are not directly involved with "metabolism". Some of them, for example, are involved with "activity level" -- the extent to which one unconsciously "fidgets". Some people are almost constantly moving part of their bodies even when they are resting; others have bodies that barely move at all and only burn extra calories through exercise when they consciously think about moving. It turns out that many people who say they never "exercise" but nevertheless are not overweight are high fidgeters, making continual unconscious small body movements throughout the day, and burning up several hundred more calories per day than low fidgeters.

That is just ONE of many, many different unconscious biological factors involved with obesity. Not all of them are from one's genetic constitution at birth. If one was obese as a child, not matter what % of that was genes vs. environment, there are biological changes in one's body that make it much more difficult to not be fat as an adult. Some of these are "epigenetic" factors that have switched certain genes on or off, a process which is also unconscious.

I say all this as someone who has lost over 70 pounds in the past year and presently is just two pounds into "obesity" as defined by weight and height charts. I have been really lucky in that the combination of Covid social distancing and retirement have allowed me to both increase exercise by walking for an hour six days and week and to limit my calories by always eating at home instead of in restaurants. I know it will be MUCH more difficult for me to maintain a lower weight in a couple of months when the social distancing stops and I am back to eating with friends in restaurants again. I will have to very consciously THINK about this all the time, while I certainly know many people who don't have to consciously think about this stuff at all who can maintain a reasonable weight. 

And of course especially for blue collar people a lot of the environmental factors that maintain obesity are not matters of choice they way they are for those of us who literally have more choices in life because we have higher incomes and more education. People who have to work more than one job to support their family, for instance, are now MORE likely to be obese than those who work fewer hours, because even most "blue collar" work in the USA no longer involves heavy calorie-burning labor.

Of course there are great individual differences in how much of one's weight status is biology vs. environment. This probably varies at least between 20% on the low end and 80% on the high end. But there is no way one can look at any individual person, whether overweight or underweight, and know where that person is on that spectrum. 

Finally, obese people who get more negative comments from others about their "lifestyle choices" actually have a harder time losing weight than do those who aren't harangued about this. 

Sorry to derail the Covid thread, but this is a personal issue for me and a place where I know some of the relevant scientific research. 

[Fragile Bird]

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

I really don't mean to be rude, but I checked out on your post from the jump. I've literally not heard anyone say that about Canada, and if they did, they'd be speaking from a place of ignorance. That's why I said earlier that the hate for Canada here doesn't seem to be the same thing you're seeing north of the wall.

You've seen how our Senate works, no? 

I said you probably don’t even see the stories. There is this thing called the internet where companies who use it have learned to target their audience. I subscribe to the NYT and the WaPo and they target Canadians with every story that has the word Canada in it. Those stories probably don’t even show up on your feed.

I don’t give a shit about the 50-50 split in the Senate, if you never bring up the topic it will never be discussed. Biden doesn’t have to talk about it, lots of other people could raise the issue. Grow a spine, why don’t you.

[Altherion]

13 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

I’m going to get murdered here for this, but how can you have SMOKERS and OBESE PEOPLE as a priority group?

Why am I last in line because of someone’s poor lifestyle choices??

Because the primary purpose of the vaccine order is to prevent the hospital system from being overwhelmed (which fortuitously coincides with preventing people from dying). On average, smokers and the obese are more likely to go to a hospital than other people their age. Of course, the system is not perfect -- a 20 year smoker is probably at considerably less risk than, say, a 63 year old with no qualifying conditions -- but it's the best the government could do on short notice.

It's emphatically not about getting back to normal until everyone (or at least enough for herd immunity) get them. I can tell you this from personal experience because several people in my family are either medical professionals or over 65 and they got the vaccine as soon as they could, but since they live with other people who are not yet eligible, they still can't do most of the things considered risky for everyone else.

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

To just shove it all under the carpet by saying “our political situation doesn’t allow it” is crazy because the even the idea of exporting vaccine is a forbidden topic. No one will touch it with a ten foot pile. There is no public discussion about it at all. Nothing. Zero. 

What is there to discuss? More than half a million Americans have died of this disease and even now, after the case rate has significantly dropped, there are still over 60000 new confirmed cases per day. One of the few things Republicans and Democrats agree on is that the we're not going to export vaccines until all Americans who want it have been vaccinated.

[Larry of the Lawn]

16 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well, there’s a huge housing boom going on in the US right now. New home prices are soaring because the price of lumber is up by 60%. I want to renovate my kitchen by taking down a wall and people have suggested I wait a year if I can because prices will fall. Where does the US get a lot of lumber? From Canada. So you want our lumber but the forestry workers should cut down the timber and get sick from Covid to make Americans happy. And many of those houses will be finished, but will be missing appliances because of component shortages from overseas.

Canada just approved the J&J vaccine, which is  a sick joke, because of course there is no vaccine. J&J will make 100 M doses before any of it leaves the US. 
 

Canada should forbid all travel to the US until all Canadians are vaccinated.

it's not even a housing boom, it's more like a renovation boom 

@Tywin et al.politicians make decisions all the time that aren't for the benefit of their voters.  Ned Lamont is fucking letting CT restaurants open to 100% capacity two weeks from today.  If everyone stayed the fuck home we could share a very small percentage of vaccines.  

 

 

 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Yeah exactly, You can't have Texas (and everyone's favorite whipping boy, Mississippi) have everything open up leading to increased deaths and necessitate vaccines for all of us, when being more prudent and consistent within the entire US would free up more vaccines for elsewhere in the world. 

Right now this discussion is academic for me since the 46+diabetic co-morbidity still means my turn will be in May or later. I can play hypothetical games all I want with available doses and where to send what.

[Fragile Bird]

1 minute ago, Ormond said:

 

I say all this as someone who has lost over 70 pounds in the past year and presently is just two pounds into "obesity" as defined by weight and height charts. I have been really lucky in that the combination of Covid social distancing and retirement have allowed me to both increase exercise by walking for an hour six days and week and to limit my calories by always eating at home instead of in restaurants. I know it will be MUCH more difficult for me to maintain a lower weight in a couple of months when the social distancing stops and I am back to eating with friends in restaurants again. I will have to very consciously THINK about this all the time, while I certainly know many people who don't have to consciously think about this stuff at all who can maintain a reasonable weight. 

Way to go, Ormond! Super good news! I started putting on weight once I got deeply involved in my work, not exercising (or not seeing results when I did) and eating too much rich food. Yes, restaurant meals and dinners with friends filled with appetizers, wine and desserts. I have been in the obese category at times (and boy do I feel it when I’m there) but mainly at the higher level of overweight. However, at my last live annual exam I asked about my height and discovered that over the years I’ve shrunk an inch in height, which explained why I had become uncomfortable even when just adding my usual 6 or 8 winter pounds. I’m working hard to get closer to the “normal” range.

And before anyone squawks again about BMI being useless, it works very well for me as a guideline, thank-you very much. If it doesn’t work for you, use something else.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I said you probably don’t even see the stories. There is this thing called the internet where companies who use it have learned to target their audience. I subscribe to the NYT and the WaPo and they target Canadians with every story that has the word Canada in it. Those stories probably don’t even show up on your feed.

NYT, WaPo, WSJ, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, not to mention the Miami Herald and the Star Tribune for local stuff, to name a few papers I look at online regularly, plus my sometimes hourly checks of CNN's online site. There isn't any anti-Canada articles other than when your PM does something dumb (and he otherwise gets a lot of positive press, at least over the last several years).

Quote

I don’t give a shit about the 50-50 split in the Senate, if you never bring up the topic it will never be discussed. Biden doesn’t have to talk about it, lots of other people could raise the issue. Grow a spine, why don’t you.

It's brought up privately, but given the margins, it's bad politics to die on that hill. We may want to fight every fight that seems righteous, but doing so will just exhaust you and you'll end up washed before half the battles you could even dream of begin.

9 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

 

@Tywin et al.politicians make decisions all the time that aren't for the benefit of their voters.  Ned Lamont is fucking letting CT restaurants open to 100% capacity two weeks from today.  If everyone stayed the fuck home we could share a very small percentage of vaccines.  

And I would just say I always argued in favor of draconian measures in the short term to allow normalcy, or some sense of it, to return faster. For example, why the fuck did we have a college football season? I graduated from a university in a major power five division that had some preseason rankings, but why? And why did they ever let fans in? What the actual fuck? 

At the end of the day, greed still wins. It sadly always will, until we as a whole become better.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

I actually wish vaccine eligibility was based on something more clear and easy to understand.  I COMPLETELY understand the appeal of getting "the most vulnerable" people vaccinated first.  It's very appealing and for all the right reasons.  However, who is actually "the most vulnerable" under current US guidelines is so broad to be almost meaningless in the US.  It does not help that under our system each state was permitted to set its own criteria (I think there were ways around that - think the FDA should have set clear parameters as a condition to the emergency use authorization, but that's just me).  I think Connecticut has it right basing it strictly on age.  Wouldn't help me much, but boy is it easy to understand and administer.  Alternatively, I'd be ok with a strict lottery at this point - again, clear rules and easy to understand.

[Fragile Bird]

Something I meant to mention earlier this week and forgot because of other stuff going on.

Remember how Canada got attacked by taking up the COVAX allotment we were entitled to? How the Guardian crowed about Canada being the only G-7 country to do so (never mind Japan and the US have their own factories and Japan hadn’t approved any vaccines at the time). How people posted they lost faith in humanity because of that?

Well it turns out that the most of the vaccine had a 30 day expiry on it, 300,000 of the 500,000 doses we’ve now received have to be used by April 2, and the rest has a 60 day expiry (maybe more, reports are contradictory).  Funny, I’m cynical enough to suspect the EU countries that didn’t take the vaccine didn’t do so because it wasn’t acceptable to receive doses with such short expiry dates, not because they were holier than Canada.

I have a suspicion this is vaccine that was supposed to go to South Africa and was rejected by that country, and has been sitting around in a warehouse for months. I bet it will all be administered within two weeks.

[ljkeane]

13 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I think Connecticut has it right basing it strictly on age.  Wouldn't help me much, but boy is it easy to understand and administer.  Alternatively, I'd be ok with a strict lottery at this point - again, clear rules and easy to understand.

Age is also one of the biggest risk factors anyway. So while you might want to break it down more by other factors if that's not logistically feasible doing it just by age groups is a pretty solid way of going about it. Apparently in the UK it's something like one life saved for every 160 people in their 80s vaccinated compared to something like one life saved for every 50,000 vaccinations outside the priority groups (people under 50 without underlying conditions).

[Zorral]

9 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

These were my thoughts when I saw the news. I didn't read the article but from what I saw there are too many confounding effects to make clear conclusions. Notice, it's very likely that obesity makes things worse, but doing bad science about it will not get us anywhere.

 

It's the same attempting to unravel / understand why Haiti is just not suffering from covid-19.  It just isn't.  Everything is totally open -- well as much as can be in the incredibly volatile and violent conditions of the people attempting to oust the profoundly corrupt and murderous guy who won't leave the presidency.  We live streamed a concert last night from Port-au-Prince.  Nobody is wearing masks, everybody is dancing and singing and parading and eating together. Nobody we know is sick or has gotten sick.  We know a lot of people who live in Haiti.

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

7 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Age is also one of the biggest risk factors anyway. So while you might want to break it down more by other factors if that's not logistically feasible doing it just by age groups is a pretty solid way of going about it. Apparently in the UK it's something like one life saved for every 160 people in their 80s vaccinated compared to something like one life saved for every 50,000 vaccinations outside the priority groups (people under 50 without underlying conditions).

It just makes so much sense to me.  It’s easy to explain and communicate.  It protects people in need.  But whatever, we are where we are now in the states with a 50 state smorgasbord of criteria and conservative Catholic bishops telling parishioners not to take J&J.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

29 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Age is also one of the biggest risk factors anyway. So while you might want to break it down more by other factors if that's not logistically feasible doing it just by age groups is a pretty solid way of going about it. Apparently in the UK it's something like one life saved for every 160 people in their 80s vaccinated compared to something like one life saved for every 50,000 vaccinations outside the priority groups (people under 50 without underlying conditions).

And then there come's the scenario I'm in. I'm a healthy 32 year old who works out almost daily, doesn't drink much anymore, or at least tries to, barely smokes these days, and yet I got both my shot before one of my parents got their first. It's just because of a technicality. And when I put off the first shot so that more needy people could get it, I realized quickly that exactly no one else in the hospital I work at did the same. They all signed up immediately. It's why I took @Mlle. Zabzie's advice the moment the next round of vaccine appointments were made available.

What really upsets me is the stories of vaccines that have been tossed away. I get the comparison to having to throw away meat that is about to spoil, but I think they do it in part because if you give someone their first jab, you ethically have to give them the second, even if their first was a vile that would have otherwise been thrown away.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Ormonds post on the factors of obesity leveled on tutorial.

Very interesting information. I had no idea about the effects of fidgeting on calorie burning or how active vs inactive rest periods will play a role in calorie burning.

Good food for thought.

[Padraig]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well it turns out that the most of the vaccine had a 30 day expiry on it, 300,000 of the 500,000 doses we’ve now received have to be used by April 2, and the rest has a 60 day expiry (maybe more, reports are contradictory).  Funny, I’m cynical enough to suspect the EU countries that didn’t take the vaccine didn’t do so because it wasn’t acceptable to receive doses with such short expiry dates, not because they were holier than Canada.

What EU country didn't take vaccines?  Some of the EU countries haven't used all their vaccines yet but that was related to the restriction on using it on those over 65.  Those restrictions are being steadily removed.

It is safe to say that all vaccines produced for the EU will be used by EU countries.

I would suggest you got the South African AZ vaccines but those weren't via COVAX.

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Yeah exactly, You can't have Texas (and everyone's favorite whipping boy, Mississippi) have everything open up leading to increased deaths and necessitate vaccines for all of us, when being more prudent and consistent within the entire US would free up more vaccines for elsewhere in the world. 

A 100% this.  The worse you behave, the more you need all the vaccines!  What a system.  You'd really wonder when US fatality figures will recede. 

Sharing doses is all about how you frame the story.  2k dying every day is hard to ignore though.  I hope the figure declines enough for people to have a rethink.

5 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

The whole vaccine debate seems a bit pointless to me. It is not about morals(you just need to look at the pay warlords to abuse refugees and prosecute people that want to save lives route the EU has chosen in the mediterranean). The EU is bad at dealing quickly with crisis situations and because of that realpolitik failed it this time and the UK, US and Isreal succeeded.

I don't think that is completely true.  One of the biggest challenges around the EU is its sheer size.  Vaccinating 450m people was always going to take a reasonably long time.  While the US is huge too, that's still 120m less people to vaccinate.  The US also benefited from American companies developing the first 2 solutions and a  British focused company developing the third.  Now, you might argue that the EU needed to be more creative but Pfizer used German technology for its solution.  So even that argument is not correct.

The EU does need to learn things from this but I don't think its a simple "EU bad" v "Others good" narrative.

3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

I'm not entirely clear whether the US (or the UK for that matter) are actually doing that, they might have just bought up all the supply from their domestic producers.

Is there an appreciable difference?  If you say you will buy everything that a factory produces?