Jump to content

Covid-19 #37: Mississippi Worming


Fragile Bird

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Really, leaders of friendly nations should STFU about decisions each other makes on COVID policies. But it seems some, like Scott Morrison, feel the need to do so in order to deflect from his part in failing to keep COVID out of Australia with it seems the NSW govt now waving the white flag and admitting they will never get rid of it. And hence the rest of Australia will go that way too, sooner rather than later.

Morrison is saying NZ is dumb for still pursuing elimination. But it appears to me he wants us to fail, because if we succeed it means Aussie could have succeeded too if it had made different decisions. We may yet fail, but it would be nice if our friends would wish us well in our attempt, and offer sympathies if it doesn't work out. That's what friends are meant to do. But with friends like the Aus govt, who needs enemies?

Morrison is arm-wrestling the Western Australians over re-opening. Bashing New Zealand is really a way of him taking aim at the Eliminationist State Premiers, while trying to justify Gladys.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Ormond said:

And how on earth does this come up when one is dating? It doesn't seem to be a necessarily common conversation topic to me. I think your personal experience may be unusual. 

Could be an age gap thing? Because these kinds of conversations are fairly normal I would think once you're in a serious relationship, and I would think for most people once you're really considering marriage and starting a family you'd find that kind of stuff out about your partner, especially if you're smart and know what to look for. 

Also, about the percentage of people who would divorce someone for changing beliefs, I think that's probably way more common now than it was in the past. It would be interesting to see some data on the subject if it was available. I know a lot of my friends who got married young and then divorced fairly soon after have mentioned it as a reason why they left, i.e. "s/he is not the person I married three years ago."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

 

Be all of this as it may, I would ask people on both sides of this particular debate (not just the two folks quote above) to be mindful that someone who reads these threads just had to break up with their long-term live-in partner because the partner became an anti-vaxxer and being anti-vax endangers the boarder's health and life. A little compassion would go a long way, in this situation. :)

I wasn't aware of that. Sincere sympathies to the board member concerned. :crying:

Good news for us, 1.6% of the population got vaccinated in a single day yesterday. The biggest one day number since we started vaccinating. The bad news is 62 new cases reported today, the highest daily number since this outbreak started, the silver lining being no cases outside Wellington and Auckland so no geographic spread at this point. IF the outbreak is being contained with the lockdown, testing etc, then the peak daily case numbers should be between today and Friday. If case numbers keep going up beyond Friday I will start to be worried that containment and elimination is going to be more difficult to achieve than I thought, potentially unachievable. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

 Anti-vaxxers do tend to have more than one tell. Kick back and laugh:

 

 

Dumb as a post is an insult to posts.

Three headlines that may indicate achieving elimination this time challenging:

Quote

'Mountain Bikers, Officer Workers and Party-goers breach rules'

'Police Issue 328 Infringement Notices for Failing to Stay Home'

'Four-hour "test drive" ends with $300 Fine'

I myself am considering driving into the belly of the beast (Wellington) to retrieve an "important medical device" for my son on the weekend. Not sure if that will be a breach of the rules.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I wasn't aware of that. Sincere sympathies to the board member concerned. :crying:

Good news for us, 1.6% of the population got vaccinated in a single day yesterday. The biggest one day number since we started vaccinating. The bad news is 62 new cases reported today, the highest daily number since this outbreak started, the silver lining being no cases outside Wellington and Auckland so no geographic spread at this point. IF the outbreak is being contained with the lockdown, testing etc, then the peak daily case numbers should be between today and Friday. If case numbers keep going up beyond Friday I will start to be worried that containment and elimination is going to be more difficult to achieve than I thought, potentially unachievable. 

I'd be more generous. Since lockdown started on the 17th, I'd say we've got until the end of August to get the cases down.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

I'd be more generous. Since lockdown started on the 17th, I'd say we've got until the end of August to get the cases down.

I should have said "daily case numbers going up", total number of people infected will continue to go up for a while after the peak until recovery numbers get larger. An effective lockdown, based on the incubation period, should mean a peak of daily new infections by about day 10. Some people will still be brewing it for longer than 10 days, and some people will only have be exposed in the last few days. But really, there should be no new exposures after about today or tomorrow and the maximum exposure period should have been before the lockdown started...IF the lockdown has been effective in practice. If daily case numbers keep going up after Firday it means there is leakage happening, and quite significant leakage at that. I expect new cases to keep popping up in Auckland for at least another week, maybe more, and maybe a case or two in Wellington dribbling though for a while. The thing we need to keep fingers crossed about are the hundreds or thousands of people outside of Auckland that are supposed to be self-isolating. We are not out of the woods with those people until Friday or Saturday.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Padraig said:

That is the real question to me.  Whether a booster changes the odds of having a severe case.  That contradicts Pfizer's claims that there is only a moderate reduction in effectiveness against severe cases.  We'll see the academic research papers over the next few months I suppose.

Israel is having considerable morbidity and mortality, still likely less than previous waves but we are not done, despite   having their at risk population highly vaccinated (>90%  for over 60yo). What is going on there?

At the same time scientists are not very happy and many think is unnecessary. Even the GAVI (Bill Gates pet project) has said there are dangers in giving boosters to rich countries with many lacking vaccines.

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/if-were-not-careful-booster-vaccines-could-end-giving-coronavirus-boost

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Really, leaders of friendly nations should STFU about decisions each other makes on COVID policies. But it seems some, like Scott Morrison, feel the need to do so in order to deflect from his part in failing to keep COVID out of Australia with it seems the NSW govt now waving the white flag and admitting they will never get rid of it. And hence the rest of Australia will go that way too, sooner rather than later.

Morrison is saying NZ is dumb for still pursuing elimination. But it appears to me he wants us to fail, because if we succeed it means Aussie could have succeeded too if it had made different decisions. We may yet fail, but it would be nice if our friends would wish us well in our attempt, and offer sympathies if it doesn't work out. That's what friends are meant to do. But with friends like the Aus govt, who needs enemies?

Hopefully it's just that that and not more sinister motivations. There have been too many articles criticizing China and NZ for still pursuing the Zero COVID strategy. No, don't open your borders until we are not done with the pandemic, we don't know what the future may bring and once you let COVID in there is no way to root it out. Sure, vaccines will reduce mortality, but it will still be significant, see Israel.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Ormond said:

 

P.S. And I suspect the % of people who think they'd divorce a spouse it they developed any one belief different from theirs after marriage who would actually do it when push comes to shove is rather low

I fully agree, when you consider how many 'only aqaintences' will cover for a friend who has committed a heinous crime its a stretch to think someone would leave their life partner for being a bit conservative. However I don't think people just develop one belief. People in my experience are fucking morons most of the time, or not. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, rotting sea cow said:

Hopefully it's just that that and not more sinister motivations. There have been too many articles criticizing China and NZ for still pursuing the Zero COVID strategy. No, don't open your borders until we are not done with the pandemic, we don't know what the future may bring and once you let COVID in there is no way to root it out. Sure, vaccines will reduce mortality, but it will still be significant, see Israel.

 

It's only going to go from pandemic to endemic in the world. If a disease is endemic everywhere but here then when it gets here it will still cause an epidemic. The only question is whether the protection afforded by vaccination will largely eliminate the worst acute consequences of the disease and can significantly reduce the occurrence of the chronic forms. It is clear that until the maximum possible number of people are vaccinated we should maintain the current border policies. But elimination is not viable in the long term, I think. The dilemma we face is next year, when we have reached peak vaccination rate, what are we going to do? We will be at maximum vaccine induced immunity (with the almost certain need for 6 monthly or yearly boosters), immense public and political pressure to loosen the screws, and no capacity to substantially increase arrivals while maintaining any sort of quarantine system. I think if we want a chance to keep the monster at bay, long term, what we need is immunity passports for entry (not vaccine passports), which is to say a negative PCR test within 3 or 4 days of departure and an antibody test with a minimum circulating antibody titre taken within 14 days of departure, and a negative PCR test 3 days after arrival. Infection doesn't guarantee immunity and vaccination doesn't guarantee immunity. But a high titre of antibodies assures a strong current immune response to either vaccination or past infection, and it doesn't really matter which, immunity is immunity. But even then it will get in. Personally I would not object to a permanent state of being effectively free of the disease (controlling the border sufficiently to achieve that) with outbreak lockdowns happening no more than once per year, and only for a couple of weeks. But I think the appetite for COVID lockdowns indefinitely, even if less than once a year on average will be very low. Though I would like to see a survey of the population to see how people would feel about such a concept, while we are in the middle of this current lockdown.

Realistically, I think we will either allow the disease to establish here some time within the next year, because the govt won't be able to politically sustain elimination far into 2022, or the current govt will doggedly retain the policy and lose the next election and the new, right-wing govt will let it in because it ideologically does not support the measures needed to maintain an elimination policy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

 

Be all of this as it may, I would ask people on both sides of this particular debate (not just the two folks quote above) to be mindful that someone who reads these threads just had to break up with their long-term live-in partner because the partner became an anti-vaxxer and being anti-vax endangers the boarder's health and life. A little compassion would go a long way, in this situation. :)

I do not read every post on this board so I have no idea who you are referring to. I certainly am very sorry for that person and hope they are doing well emotionally and physically. But I don't see how what either I or I. C. wrote can be seen as incompassionate even if we had known about this. I don't think it's doing a favor to people who have had difficult or even traumatic experiences to avoid talking in general about subjects related to their trauma when one is doing it in a polite neutral way. I don't think anything we said implied that people in this situation who make the choice to leave a partner are in any way wrong for doing so. Everyone has to deal with their own particular situation in the way they believe is best for them and their loved ones. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Delta Airlines, likely in an effort to not piss off the Georgia legislature too much, is not implementing a vaccine mandate for its employees. Instead, they've announced that unvaccinated employees will face a $200 monthly surcharge on their health insurance premiums.

Hopefully it still works out for them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Fez said:

Delta Airlines, likely in an effort to not piss off the Georgia legislature too much, is not implementing a vaccine mandate for its employees. Instead, they've announced that unvaccinated employees will face a $200 monthly surcharge on their health insurance premiums.

Hopefully it still works out for them.

I’m ok with this solution.  It’s a pretty big penalty. I would be even more ok with it if the penalty scales up for executives.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Fez said:

Delta Airlines, likely in an effort to not piss off the Georgia legislature too much, is not implementing a vaccine mandate for its employees. Instead, they've announced that unvaccinated employees will face a $200 monthly surcharge on their health insurance premiums.

Hopefully it still works out for them.

I just saw this story and came to post it. Between 17,000 and 18,000 employees are not vaccinated, meaning $3.4-$3.6M in revenue per month, which will be used to offset the Covid-related health costs the airline has been paying for. Delta (the irony!) is self-insured for health costs, which are running at $40 M plus for Covid-19.

The comments to the story are pretty revealing about the divide in the US, everything from I’m flying Delta now to damn corporations making a profit off of illness.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, L'oiseau français said:

I just saw this story and came to post it. Between 17,000 and 18,000 employees are not vaccinated, meaning $3.4-$3.6M in revenue per month, which will be used to offset the Covid-related health costs the airline has been paying for. Delta (the irony!) is self-insured for health costs, which are running at $40 M plus for Covid-19.

The comments to the story are pretty revealing about the divide in the US, everything from I’m flying Delta now to damn corporations making a profit off of illness.

As a point of fact, almost EVERY large business in the US self-insures and hires, e.g., and HMO or PPO to administer/aggregate for pricing.  I’m relatively confident they have some stop-loss policies (most places do), but I’ve been through this in a fair bit of detail and it totally makes sense.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

As a point of fact, almost EVERY large business in the US self-insures and hires, e.g., and HMO or PPO to administer/aggregate for pricing.  I’m relatively confident they have some stop-loss policies (most places do), but I’ve been through this in a fair bit of detail and it totally makes sense.  

Yes, the US companies I’ve worked for were all self-insured. The $200 amount is perfectly justifiable considering the experience of costs they’ve paid out. Some of the commentators have snarked, wait until the lawsuits start, and others are predicting they’ll lose a lot of employees. I assume some employees will sue, just like the medical staff at that Texas hospital did in response to the requirement that they be vaccinated, and I assume they’ll lose.

However, since the nature of insurance is to spread risk and vaccinated people can still get sick, I wonder if some court will order the company to spread the surcharge cost to all employees. With 75,000 employees and a $40 M cost, that would mean about $45 a month per employee.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are some very flawed studies on cholesterol and health. When I was “ diagnosed”with high cholesterol at a thin 25 and I was put on a diet with no eggs, etc. and I was told to eat hydrogenated margarine instead of butter and to avoid olive oil and any mono saturated fats as well as saturated fats. It didn’t work. You heard me. Then we we were told that there was good and bad cholesterol.

The Mediterranean diet was then praised. ( now we like olive oil) Curiously, French people have lower heart disease rates. It was said that wine is protective, maybe, but many eat cream, butter, cheese, eggs, pork, various organ meats, among lots of other things. I would be happy to be “put on” a Mediterranean/French Japanese diet! One doctor said that “ I should have been dead at 30” and I’m now old. I didn’t take cholesterol medication, not because I’m against any medication. One of my doctors said that it affects mitochondrial function ( side effects)and that I was not a man who has just had a heart attack. I looked into my particular case and studies that were not U.S. based. Years later, I have a very low score for plaque formation. My immediate relatives suffer from longevity. 

 

Please consult a qualified professional:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, fines are not the solution here. That's an interesting way to get around the GA no-requirement rules, but ultimately the virus doesn't care if someone pays more and gets sick and spreads it. The point is to stop the spread, not stop the financial bleeding. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

Sorry, fines are not the solution here. That's an interesting way to get around the GA no-requirement rules, but ultimately the virus doesn't care if someone pays more and gets sick and spreads it. The point is to stop the spread, not stop the financial bleeding. 

The financial bleeding is a side effect. The hope is that the fine will incentivize at least some people to finally get the damn shot. Just like the individual mandate with the ACA.

Though the cost probably should be hirer than $200/month, since I suspect too many of the anti-vaxxers will stomach the cost (assuming they don't just refuse to pay and dare Delta to send them to collections). I'd have done something truly unaffordable for nearly all of them, like $1000/month.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...