Covid-19 #42 Nu Tsunami Incoming

[Heartofice]

32 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

How much is supposed to be "enough" ?

Well enough to be a reasonable marker that you aren’t as infectious as someone who has a negative test.

 

32 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Turns out AZ isn't that great a vaccine

None of the vaccines are great against  Omicrom, AZ so far looks to be spectacularly bad against infection ( that might change because sample size looks small) but it does make you wonder why the EU spent so much political capital trying to save face by going to war with AZ.

29 minutes ago, Ormond said:

No knowledgable person ever expected Covid-19 to be a virus one could completely "get rid of" like smallpox, and I don't think I ever heard any expert claim that.

But that’s doesn’t mean a lot of people don’t think that it does. Why talk about how to protect people who can’t get vaccinated unless you are under the assumption that the virus will disappear? The virus will be with us possibly forever and will come and go in waves much like the flu, even with very high vaccination rates.
I personally don’t have an unrealistic view of vaccines because my main point is that they are good at one thing specifically, preventing death and serious illness. Introducing rather draconian measures which don’t even appear to be all that effective because they are based on an unrealistic view of what vaccines do, makes little sense.

As for other points, yes there are times when going on a war footing is a sacrifice that makes sense. Lockdowns are demonstrations of that and we’ve experienced that. But to justify them you have to be able to show that 1) the need is great and 2) that they actually work. 

[Zorral]

So many more thousands of cases of hospitalizations and deaths for those who are unvaccinated vs. the much lower numbers for those who are vaccinated isn't proof that vaccination has any effective impact on the rate of infection, spread and severe cases, hospitalization and death.  Who knew that is what the numbers tell us!  

[Pebble thats Stubby]

My cousin can't get treatment for her cancer.  There are many like her.

With my cousin the cancer has reached a stage where she will never recover.  It is just a matter of time, the more frequently she gets treatments the longer she will have.  Others are not at this stage yet but will be if treatment is delayed.

Vaccines might not be great a stopping you catching Omnicom but they are much better at preventing you needing to go to hospital and taking a bed away from a cancer or other patient.

 

If you have chosen not to get a vaccine and end up in hospital you are partially responsible for the early death of anyone who cant get treatment for something else.

 

The only way to protect people like my cousin is to make sure there are beds, staff and resources for their treatment.   We can do that one of three ways.  1) magically increase resources beds and staff.  Thus takes time we are talking years.  So not really an option.  2) stop treating people with covid in hospital and just letting them die.   I don't believe this is an acceptable option.  3) reducing the ammount of people who need to go to hospital with covid.

 

3 is really the only thing we can do.  And vaccination is a fantastic way to do it.  But so is lockdown like March 2020 with no let off for Xmas. 

 

So what is the least bad option coercive vaccination? Total lockdown for all? Or telling the not actually dying yet to fuck off and die?    Or is there another option?  Pleading to get vaccinated has not made enough people get vaccinated to prevent hospitalization. 

 

[williamjm]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

At least the way the story is pitched, never 'heard' BJ sound worried about covid before. 

He has sounded worried about Covid plenty of times before, in most cases it is usually a few days after he has assured us all that everything will be fine and Covid isn't really a big problem any more.

[mormont]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I picked an exaggerated example to illustrate that yes, you could get a lot of people vaccinated but the cost of doing so would make the overall decision a poor one. The principle is the same. Whether its a realistic prospect or not is irrelevant, and it isn't a straw man.

Exaggerating to make a point in this way is in fact the definition of a straw man.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Which vaccine mandates do you face to get goods and services in the UK currently? 

Already answered. If I want to fly to certain countries, I must be vaccinated against particular diseases, and that has been true for decades.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Right, so are the merits of vaccine mandates in the UK more beneficial than the costs? I would suggest they aren't. For a couple of reasons. Firstly it isn't clear that vaccines prevent infection enough that getting people to show their passes is any good measure of a person's infectiousness. Secondly it doesn't seem like they had any real noticable effect to transmission if you use the UK as an experiment, in fact Scotland thinks they didn't work.

That's news to me and since I deal with vaccine passport requirements in my day job, I really would know if that were true.

The rest is just factually incorrect. It's perfectly clear that vaccines do work well enough that vaccine passports work: they don't and can't entirely prevent outbreaks, but they can and do reduce the number of outbreaks on a population level to a manageable level. Even with the new variant, the vaccines need a boost but with that they do work well enough.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

So what is the answer here? 

I'd be intrigued to hear your answer.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

However vaccination is a way to protect yourself unfortunately rather than anyone else.

The facts do not agree.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Thats why we need to make sure we protect the people who are most vulnerable to the virus, the elderly and people with existing conditions.

OK, but how do you propose this is done, if you truly believe vaccines can't do it?

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Agree, but it doesn't seem like you have any real issue with vaccine mandates, I suspect because you have a sneering dislike of anyone who refuses to be vaccinated and so any harsh measures against them are fair (I also have a sneering dislike of anti vaxxers but still think mandates are a bad idea however). 

You'll have to speak for yourself re: sneering dislike. I acknowledged that many of them have a sincere belief, and wished that they could be afforded the chance to live by it.

ETA - I'll admit to a strong reaction to folks like the ones my colleague had to deal with yesterday, chanting 'child killers' at NHS vaccination staff and trying to break into the vaccination centre, but they're the extreme. Not all vaccine refusers behave like that.

 

[Rippounet]

26 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

As for other points, yes there are times when going on a war footing is a sacrifice that makes sense. Lockdowns are demonstrations of that and we’ve experienced that. But to justify them you have to be able to show that 1) the need is great and 2) that they actually work. 

That's fair, but I think the need does not have to be demonstrated in this case. As to whether the measures taken work, well, our societies are confronted with a crisis in which every little thing helps, and it does not seem unreasonable to ask individuals to understand that doing our best to protect millions from the disease trumps the comforts of individuals.

I, for myself, take the view that, historically, individual liberties can (and should) be restricted in times of crisis, if it is in order to save lives. I think that the very fact that so many people question the need for drastic measures shows that people now have unrealistic expectations when it comes to their "liberty," to the point where they lack any kind of perspective, reason, or even empathy for the people in worse situations than theirs (like @Pebble thats Stubby 's cousin).
I see this as part of a much larger problem, where people have internalized the idea that "there is no such thing as society," and now have to be reminded that this was never a realistic view of human... societies to begin with, that do exist, which implies that difficult decisions do have to be taken at times. I'm not saying restricting liberty is always the right choice, and certainly we should always question the measures taken by our "leaders," but in this case, I think it's obvious that the need is there at least, so all we can do is try to trust our scientists (if not our politicians).

[Mlle. Zabzie]

In better news, my office is 97% vaccinated (double tapped - obviously not that rate of boosters, which we aren't tracking (yet)).  

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Well enough to be a reasonable marker that you aren’t as infectious as someone who has a negative test.

Unfortunately, that is a fairly low bar because a negative test is not, in and of itself, proof that the person being tested is not currently infected. The problem is that the tests we currently use are only able to reliably detect the virus about 5-7 days after infection. Thus, without a quarantine period prior to the test, the negative result indicates that the subject is either not infected or was infected less than about a week ago. Since the incubation period is shorter than that by at least a couple of days, it's entirely possible that someone tests negative and is nevertheless contagious.

[Zorral]

Where I Live [which is Michigan, btw], No One Cares About COVID

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/where-i-live-no-one-cares-about-covid/620958/

Quote

 

... outside the world inhabited by the professional and managerial classes in a handful of major metropolitan areas, many, if not most, Americans are leading their lives as if COVID is over, and they have been for a long while. ....

Indeed, in my case, when I say for a long while, I mean for nearly two years, from almost the very beginning. In 2020, I took part in two weddings, traveled extensively, took family vacations with my children, spent hundreds of hours in bars and restaurants, all without wearing a mask. ....

 

Here comes the coup de grace that shows how stupid everyone else is about covid -- especially about masking! -- and how very very very cool he is.  Notice, he says not a word about people unable to receive necessary medical care in Michigan due the disaster covid's made on the hospitals and medical people.  Or even that people are dying -- except in one place and just shrugs and says though vaguely aware like everyone he knows, the numbers are meaningless.

Quote

 

... But I am afraid that the future, at least in major metropolitan areas, is one in which sooner or later elites will acknowledge their folly while continuing to impose it on others. I, for one, would not be surprised if for years to come it were the expectation in New York and California that even vaccinated workers in the service industry wear masks, the ultimate reification of status in a world in which casual dress has otherwise erased many of what were once our most visible markers of class.

After all, you never know how they spent their Thanksgiving.

 

Matthew Walther is editor of The Lamp, a Catholic literary journal, and a contributing editor at the American Conservative.

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Where I Live [which is Michigan, btw], No One Cares About COVID
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/where-i-live-no-one-cares-about-covid/620958/

I love how the implicit message here is that people in large cities are the unreasonable ones, and that the "pragmatic" rural approach to life is that it should go on. It's even cute that he clearly says that alcoholism is a fact of life.
Which would be fine, except this is the same kind of person who will be relying on health services when shit hits the fan, whether because of Covid or because drinking alcohol on a daily basis mechanically causes quite a few health issues down the line.
I guess in the US, where healthcare is privatized anyway, this can somehow be defended on some level. If this was written by a French citizen, I'd see this guy as a selfish moron who does not deserve access to public healthcare.

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

AZ so far looks to be spectacularly bad against infection ( that might change because sample size looks small)

Without a booster sure. Then its efficacy shoots up like 72 percent. Could go up. 
 

Until then I’m all for denying you some services and goods until you get a booster shot. 

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

it does make you wonder why the EU spent so much political capital trying to save face by going to war with AZ.

Yes liberal eu bad. Won’t even let Poland toss gays off roof tops.

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

I love how the implicit message here is that people in large cities are the unreasonable ones, and that the "pragmatic" rural approach to life is that it should go on

It seems this unfortunate choice of a piece to run by the Atlantic is making the internet break. Even Guns, Lawyers and Money put up a diatribe -- and the commentators have quite a bit to say about the privileged white guy in whose life the pandemic has no bearing.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/12/one-cancelled-right-wing-speaker-is-a-tragedy-one-million-deaths-is-a-statistic

Also one really does wonder why the Atlantic Monthly gave the space and dollars to this jerkwaddie's ravings?  Someone did a google on the guy and learned he home schools his kids in some bubble private home school situation -- meaning the parents are paying somebody.

In the meantime, NYC, one of those handful of coastal cities of elites, the only place anybody cares about safety protocols, vaxing and masking, he sneers,  at this moment (it will change!) has the lowest rate of everything covid related going on, as well as the highest rate of vaxing and boosters, and masking too, I would guess.

But as you know, coz the writer told us, numbers are "meaningless to me."  He'd better tell his rosary beads devoutly in prayer neither of his kids has a sudden medical emergency out there in covid overwhelmed rural Michigan.

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

21 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It seems this unfortunate choice of a piece to run by the Atlantic is making the internet break. Even Guns, Lawyers and Money put up a diatribe -- and the commentators have quite a bit to say about the privileged white guy in whose life the pandemic has no bearing.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/12/one-cancelled-right-wing-speaker-is-a-tragedy-one-million-deaths-is-a-statistic

Also one really does wonder why the Atlantic Monthly gave the space and dollars to this jerkwaddie's ravings?  Someone did a google on the guy and learned he home schools his kids in some bubble private home school situation -- meaning the parents are paying somebody.

In the meantime, NYC, one of those handful of coastal cities of elites, the only place anybody cares about safety protocols, vaxing and masking, he sneers,  at this moment (it will change!) has the lowest rate of everything covid related going on, as well as the highest rate of vaxing and boosters, and masking too, I would guess.

But as you know, coz the writer told us, numbers are "meaningless to me."  He'd better tell his rosary beads devoutly in prayer neither of his kids has a sudden medical emergency out there in covid overwhelmed rural Michigan.

 

Cynically they published because they knew it would get a lot of clicks.  I read it this morning.  I thought it was written to elicit, and would elicit, a lot of high dudgeon outrage (not unreasonably! the guy is an out of touch lunatic!).  Look, I'm way more pragmatic than a lot of people, but he's not pragmatic, he's a proverbial ostrich.  Covid is here to stay - I'm anti-lockdown at this point, because I think the cost-benefit tilts towards no lockdown.  I am VERY pro vaccine, pro booster and pro mask, because cost-benefit tilts towards these very simple interventions for continue to proceed with public life.  But this summer, will my views on masks change?  Maybe!  Later this winter, could my views on lockdowns change?  Perhaps!  That's pragmatism. Knowing that you need to make decisions and policies for the moment in a fluid situation. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Small tales on chess and covid at the amateur level.

New season started in September. Back then it was under 3G restrictions (vaxxed, recovered, tested).

After two rounds infections went up, and omicron became a thing.

Tougher restrictions followed in the league. It's 2G now (basically only vaxxed and recovered are allowed). Now one of our younger players got hit by those new restrictions. vaccine wasn't mandatory for the under 18 y.o. and he was/is getting tested at school regularly anyway. So he figured he could get by fine without it. Nope. Kinda annoying for him and us, that he can't play. I hope he gets vaxxed now and will thus be eligible again in January. If he were a bit younger (under 15 y.o.) he'd still be exempt from the 2G restrictions.

[Zorral]

This comment makes 400 for the thread.  Quickly, you quick thinking people -- New Thread/New Title!

In the meantime these meaningless numbers:

"As U.S. Nears 800,000 Virus Deaths, 1 of Every 100 Older Americans Has Perished
They are among the most vaccinated groups, but people 65 and older make up about three-quarters of the nation’s coronavirus death toll."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/covid-deaths-elderly-americans.html?

[The Anti-Targ]

Where do you get proof of infection and recovery from COVID-19? That seems like a somewhat easier thing to fraudulently obtain than a vax pass.

+2 to vaccine mandates being effective. My brother (business is not a govt vax mandate sector), after doing their own risk assessment decided all staff must be vaccinated. One staff member is in an anti-vax family, but they had a calm and friendly conversation with said staff member and they decided they liked their job more than they liked remaining unvaxed. So they decided in secret to get vaxed so the family wouldn't find out (rather sad the anti-vax families will get angry with family members who decide to get vaxed, while at the same time demanding that its a my body my choice decision and people should not get up set at their decision to remain unvaxed, but we all know why they are like that). A friend also uses part of the business space for his own small business, and my brother said it was not really suitable for him to keep using that space while unvaxed because he comes in contact with staff all the time. This friend was only unvaxed because he is very overweight, and his dad died rather young of heart attack, and he worried about vax side effects, all of his family is already double vaxed. The friendly conversation was enough to get him past his worry and get his first jab.

[The Anti-Targ]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

This comment makes 400 for the thread.  Quickly, you quick thinking people -- New Thread/New Title!

In the meantime these meaningless numbers:

"As U.S. Nears 800,000 Virus Deaths, 1 of Every 100 Older Americans Has Perished
They are among the most vaccinated groups, but people 65 and older make up about three-quarters of the nation’s coronavirus death toll."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/covid-deaths-elderly-americans.html?

"Lies, damned lies and COVID-stats"?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

I started one, blame for the thread title should obviously lie wiht Zorral for not starting one herself.

[Zorral]

Ya, just as I did this one, somebody else gets a turn to do the new one.  Thank you for doing it!  

And aren't we going to have A Parteeeeeeeeeeeeeee when we don't need any more covid threads!