COVID 46 - Please disperse, nothing to see here!

[Heartofice]

32 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

 

Eta: yes it's from January but thought it was relevant to current discussion

 

Isn't that a bit relevant though, considering Japan went from about 500 cases a day beginning of Jan to 95,000 a day a month later. Japan did well but it couldn't stop Omicron. 

[Padraig]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Isn't that a bit relevant though, considering Japan went from about 500 cases a day beginning of Jan to 95,000 a day a month later. Japan did well but it couldn't stop Omicron. 

The fact that its measures didn't work well against Omicron doesn't negate how well they worked up till then.  I imagine the latter was Larry's point.

It could have increased its restrictions significantly to fight Omicron too but it is a highly vaccinated country, while Omicron isn't as deadly as previous variants.   The cost of increasing restrictions significantly probably didn't seem worth the benefits.  And their peak for fatalities would be the same as many countries trough. So they continued to do very well (relatively).

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Padraig said:

The fact that its measures didn't work well against Omicron doesn't negate how well they worked up till then.  I imagine the latter was Larry's point.

It could have increased its restrictions significantly to fight Omicron too but it is a highly vaccinated country, while Omicron isn't as deadly as previous variants.   The cost of increasing restrictions significantly probably didn't seem worth the benefits.  And their peak for fatalities would be the same as many countries trough. So they continued to do very well (relatively).

Sure, but if you don't include what happened in January then you get a very different picture. Had Japan not gotten its vaccination programme up and running, but kept all the other measures then would it still be seen as a success. Omicron managed to evade pretty much all the measures such as masks and ventilation.

[Padraig]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Sure, but if you don't include what happened in January then you get a very different picture. Had Japan not gotten its vaccination programme up and running, but kept all the other measures then would it still be seen as a success. Omicron managed to evade pretty much all the measures such as masks and ventilation.

But why would they not vaccinate?   It allowed them to eventually relax restrictions.  That is one of their main features. 

Did Japan's restrictions prevent an Omicron wave?  No.  Did they reduce cases (and deaths) up to then.  Yes.   Would I thus say they were successful?  Yes. 

I'm not sure we are even disagreeing.

[Week]

This feels like a conversation that happens here on a weekly basis:

 

[Heartofice]

26 minutes ago, Week said:

This feels like a conversation that happens here on a weekly basis:

 

When SHOULD we stop talking about Covid?

[Week]

Reminder that this website is free and that you aren't forced to post in or read any specific threads.

[Larry of the Lawn]

15 minutes ago, Week said:

Reminder that this website is free and that you aren't forced to post in or read any specific threads.

Lol yeah right

[Heartofice]

17 minutes ago, Week said:

Reminder that this website is free and that you aren't forced to post in or read any specific threads.

Huh, you went out of your way to post up a thread about how some people think that Covid is over.. when do YOU think it’s over?

[Zorral]

Parents continue to die from covid, increasing the number of orphans -- who, if they are fortunate orphans, still have grandparents or other relatives to care for them.  Many don't have that.

Long covid continues to show up in those who are young/ish, fit and healthy who had 'mild' cases, and hangs on nobody knows for how long.  People who are very careful and have been very careful all along, like sf/horror author Charlie Stross, reported coming down with just two days ago, and feels worse than he's ever felt -- and he's not fit due to multiple chronic health issues.

Covid cases currently are increasing more or less by 10,000 daily in nations all over the world from China to the UK to the USA and Japan. 500 or thereabout deaths per day here, at the moment.  Hospitals in my region under terrible stress.  Friends and relatives are acquiring covid in the hospital, having essential treatments for cancer and other conditions postponed.  It's not over.

It's impossible to say or think or guess when covid is over.  Which has a lot to do with why I'm currently depressed, bitter and angry.

[Zorral]

A doctor here writes of what I've been experiencing with friends and relatives since 2020:

...  my patient didn’t die of Covid-19. Instead, he almost certainly died because of Covid-19.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/21/opinion/covid-deaths-million.html

Quote

 

But my patient didn’t die of Covid-19. Instead, he almost certainly died because of Covid-19.

It is unclear exactly how many people like Lucas died as a consequence of the pandemic’s disruption of health care. Their stories drew too little public attention, and their deaths, in the shadows, will probably remain uncounted forever. The pandemic limited access to mental health services and routine care, leaving their depression and hypertension untreated. We may never know how many people with chest pain died away from the hospital because the news that night was filled with images of Covid patients gasping for air in crowded E.R. hallways. But health care systems and government officials still must make every effort to understand the reasons these people died shadow deaths if there is to be any hope of preparing a humane and equitable response for the next public health emergency.

Between March 2020 and January 2021, over 500,000 more people in America died than had in the same period a year earlier, an estimated 28 percent of them from causes other than Covid, such as heart attacks, strokes and Alzheimer’s. Visits to clinics providing primary and specialty care plummeted, often in concert with stay-at-home orders. Patients of color suffered a disproportionately high number of excess deaths because of longstanding barriers to care made worse by the pandemic.

In the eyes of many, the pandemic transformed places of care into places of contagion. More than 40 percent of adults surveyed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided in the early months of the pandemic, as my patient had, to forgo medical care because they feared exposure to the virus; 12 percent even avoided emergency care.

Some patients suffered evolving symptoms until a crisis arose. Many felt forced to self-triage. My patients’ decision making suddenly required intense cognitive gymnastics: I have to get a CT scan before chemo, but what if I come home with Covid and infect my family? If I go the E.R. with stomach pain, and they’re busy, do I wait it out or come home to avoid getting infected?

While fumbling through the dark landscape of tragedy, my colleagues and I have often mourned the stories of patients who sought out medical care despite their fears about contracting Covid, only to become casualties of an overburdened system. Early in the pandemic, a colleague told me about an elderly patient with heart disease who died in the emergency room while waiting nearly a day to be admitted to a hospital filled with Covid patients. During the 2020 winter surge in Los Angeles, another patient developed a terrible headache at home, and by the time paramedics arrived an hour later, blood had flooded her brain. She never regained consciousness.

.... The families of these people suffered the singular ache of wondering whether they had pushed their loved ones hard enough to go to the hospital or advocated sufficiently for them to get the care they needed. Their doctors often wondered the same. ....

I’ve thought about whether listening to patient stories earlier in the pandemic might have improved health care systems’ responses to their needs during these tumultuous years. In April 2020, leaders at Adventist Health Lodi Memorial, a community hospital in central California, noticed that visits to the emergency room dropped by around 50 percent shortly after California issued its first stay-at-home order. Paramedics reported a record number of cardiac arrests outside the hospital, and patients with strokes almost uniformly waited to seek help until the severity of their symptoms worsened. ....

 

In the meantime a significant portion of our populations perversely persist in the pretense there is nothing going on, and toddle behind us like an unpleasantly spoiled 4 year old demanding the the attention they desperately crave, for their denial of this and so many other matters.   

Now that is something I, for one, cannot comprehend. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

The same asses at work who got covid over the fall and winter while not masking or vaxxing are now the same people claiming Covid is over or in some cases they now claim they never contracted it.

Am fairly certain the same crowd will be getting their next infections in the coming seasons and then .....rinse, repeat.

They are so insulting, I remember each and every one of the germ spewers, I've been steadfastly keeping my distance as they repeat there lying ass tales.

Sadly a good portion of them are management!

[The Anti-Targ]

Surely, COVID will never be over. I don't think any health authority or WTO is talking about COVID fading away to nothing. So the question is whether COVID will ever not be a disease of significant public health concern. I'm not sure it will ever get to that point, certainly not unless something significantly milder than Omicron comes along. I think I've mentioned once or twice many threads ago that in the livestock world there are a couple of coronaviruses, and vaccination / long term (life long) immunity are not strong features of those livestock diseases. If COVID was to fade away to irrelevance strong immunity that lasts at least a few years, preferably longer would need to be a feature. It seams it is not.

 

[VigoTheCarpathian]

12 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Huh, you went out of your way to post up a thread about how some people think that Covid is over.. when do YOU think it’s over?

It’s over after the 2nd Easter egg at the end of the trailer, when they show a bat fornicating with a gibbon and a banner smashes into the screen - “COVID-pox? Monkey-vid19?  To be continued…”

It’s here with us, and there are large swathes of the world who are pretending we can/have to move on from it.  It’s going to be years til we know if it reaches a stage of equilibrium in the world, a la the flu.  So pretending like anyone knows if/when it will end is like asking when reality TV or conservativism will end.  It’s not going anywhere bar a miracle and the best we can hope for is acceptable levels of irrelevance.

[Which Tyler]

16 hours ago, Heartofice said:

When SHOULD we stop talking about Covid?

Dunno - when SHOULD we stop talking about Cancer? or HIV? or war in Ukrain? or Depression? or Gun Violence in the US? or Murder By Cop? or Influenza? or Social Injustice? or....

[Varysblackfyre321]

8 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

Dunno - when SHOULD we stop talking about Cancer? or HIV? or Depression? or Gun Violence in the US? or Murder By Cop? or Influenza? or Social Injustice? or....

To an unfortunate amount of conservatives the answer would be it should have never been talked about.

Better to just pretend the biggest problems in the world is their meaningless culture nonesense.

[Which Tyler]

16 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

To an unfortunate amount of conservatives the answer would be it should have never been talked about.

Better to just pretend the biggest problems in the world is their meaningless culture nonesense.

But when SHOULD we talk about meaningless culture nonsense? That's the real killer here!

[Varysblackfyre321]

Just now, Which Tyler said:

But when SHOULD we talk about meaningless culture nonsense? That's the real killer here!

Obviously always, forever, till the end of time, as decreed by the old gods and the new.

[Week]

5 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

But when SHOULD we talk about meaningless culture nonsense? That's the real killer here!

The real killer is the womanization of media depriving young men of good role models. Ghostbusters, Bond (supposedly), Star Wars, Dr Who (briefly), etc. It's no wonder the cringe* rate among men has risen.

 

*I'm keeping this autocorrect. I mean crime.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Week said:

womanization of media

 Women talk too much, do all the talking, are always whining about something -- and they want us to LISTEN TO THEM.  It's clear then, that ridding ourselves of women all together gets rid of the need for any talking  at all. All problems solved.

Proof?  Just today I read two women commenting on their cases of covid, and how awful it is, though they are vaccinated, are medicating, etc.  They bang on and on about how careful they've been for all this time. One of them even said she thought since she'd managed to avoid getting sick until now she started to think her vaxxing and masking meant she wasn't ever going to get it. Then she went to a family wedding and bam, half of them are sick.  Why must I have to read about this.