Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

he's part of this person's team: https://medicine.fiu.edu/about/faculty-and-staff/profiles/translational-medicine/amarty.html

Damn that's a reversal. I didn't expect that to come quite so swiftly, figured at least it would be outdoors first and ramp up to some indoor spaces.

Whyyyyy does that feel like the kind of overly-broad statement that will soon be followed by a qualifier-filled walkback that will once again make a whole lot of people wary of CDC guidance?

I mean, I want to believe (to the extent that believing doesn't entail rushing back to our stupid office as quickly as my stupid company wants us to) but still.

Yeah, I fear a lot of "welp, get your asses back into the office next week, no more excuses" type emails flying out tomorrow.

the CDC got zinged for being too conservative about outdoor activity

I'd hate to think the head of the CDC would freelance on such a critically important public health policy. If there's a walk back on it, it would be because the public response to it is unexpectedly negative and they feel they need to regroup, not because the CDC director is a loose cannon who makes up policy on the fly.

and it'd be weird for liberals who used TRUST THE CDC against anti-jab and anti-mask Trump psychos to now go WHOA SLOW DOWN NOW. We've known this was coming.

My biggest concern is that anti-vaxxers (who don't seem to be super-bright or inclined to register the detail that this news applies to fully-vaccinated individuals) are going to take this as a win and eagerly join in all of the BACK TO NORMAL!!! activities, causing a huge spike in cases. I mean in most cases there's no functional ability to prevent them from doing so.

My biggest personal gripe is that I have a pending request with HR to defer my return to the office which is all-but-guaranteed to get kicked into the trash now.

the CDC are absolutely terrible at this. just cannot communicate in a way that results in anyone trusting them.

and it'd be weird for liberals who used TRUST THE CDC against anti-jab and anti-mask Trump psychos to now go WHOA SLOW DOWN NOW. We've known this was coming.

ok liberals suck but what about the epidimiologists saying "this is really weird"?

the thing is, even with jab rates slowing, we're not returning to December-January spikes.

the CDC gets its recommendations from epidemiologists, I think?

the right way to handle lifting restrictions is with clear criteria communicated in advance that need to be met, and plenty of notice, which give people time to prepare and give some indication that this isn't just "fuck it, let's do this thing".

this is what they have done in countries with competent public health administration and governments that communicate with clarity. you said it yourself, this is going to give people whiplash after last week's recommendation (which was also terrible), and people aren't going to trust them. they are just awful at this.

i get that you're ready to take your mask off, but this is a society with unbelievably low social trust. this doesn't help.

caek otm

I still don’t think I need to eat inside a restaurant til next year

but I'm not ready to take my mask off.

In one fell swoop, they've effectively demolished the normalization of mask wearing and social distancing. Once the fully-vaccinated begin joyously returning to copious naked-faced interactions with one another, it's not like the unvaccinated are going to sheepishly continue letting their freedoms get trampled all over.

At the giant local vaccine clinic with my daughter this afternoon, the person jabbing told us there was a 12-year old girl who came in with her parents first thing in the morning *before the jabber had even been told it was officially ok to jab kids*! That's how fast this is moving.

I assume the CDC is just saying whatever bc people are yelling at them

if you’re immunosuppressed life is never gonna go back to normal but at least you can be happy for other peoples lives going back to normal potentially at your expense

— hil (@plume__) May 13, 2021

Dumb fuckin country

With respect, I don't get that take? Before 2020 life sucked for the immuno-compromised (some of whom are my relatives) already.

No business is going to want to take on the added responsibility of posting a vaccination card bouncer at the front gates, so this will be on the honor system and I just don't see how the anti-vaxxers aren't going to take this as a win.

I doubt it'll change much for us just yet. I know adding 12-15 year olds to rolls of the vaccinated is a great big win, but our kid isn't close to that yet, so protecting him is my #1 priority (even if the likelihood of him getting seriously sick is exceedingly small).

I saw someone ask "how will we know if someone is vaccinated?" and someone responded "ask them if they think the election was stolen."

it's a victory for anti-jab sociopaths for sure, but we're so dumb as a country I'm not sure announcing this relaxation now vs, say, July would've made a difference

Honestly I expected them to wait until the end of the school year for most of the country before announcing this, to help with kids who can't get vaccinated yet.

that's what I expected, actually: an early June announcement before summer vacations started

Again, standard will be when servers in restaurants can get away with not wearing a mask.

I mean, that seems like a standard for a very specific industry. Also, according to my reading of the CDC guidelines from today, if that server is fully vaccinated they don't need a mask, no>

No one in America but the cautious and mindful (or those who are outright forced to do so by circumstances of employment or whatever) is gonna wear a mask after today.

Good luck, America!

Well, there are still state laws and whatnot. I wonder how fast those dominoes will fall. Pretty fast, I imagine.

ahh wonderful, so we should trust scientists until we decide we shouldn't trust them, and we should trust epidemiologists, but only certain epidemiologists who are critical of the CDC.

like there's no way the CDC was bullied into this because they're literally getting bullied from all sides. some expert virologists/epidemiologists have said they're being too reckless, other experts have said they're being too cautious, there isn't even agreement inside the CDC (see the walkback of a few months ago), so in that circumstance, I don't know how throwing your hands up and saying "ok no masks" is really capitulating because you're still going to get angry phone calls from SOMEBODY.

I think the real problem is we haven't run into this since before any of us were born, we didn't handle the 1918 flu well at all, we did none of the things that were necessary to curb it last year because lol Trump and lol him actually breaking the will of the CDC to say what he wants them to say and threatening to fire Fauci, and now we're in a position to turn things around, but the disease and the vaccines are still so novicely understood in that experts actually don't have a real consensus on this.

I'm not even talking about the one or two idiot quack epidemiologists who said we should have infected everybody and let God sort it out last year, every time the CDC says or does anything, there's always multiple epidemiologists on either side of the argument, they're too cautious, they're not cautious enough. what do you do at that point?

I don't think it has to be an either/or thing though. I think it's perfectly reasonable to trust the science/epidemiologists but also feel like this might be too fast, too soon given the still worrying levels of vaccine hesitancy.

xxpost I mean my larger point is that anyone who's been begrudgingly masking up is going to basically just stop after today's news. No state law is going to reverse that tide.

hh wonderful, so we should trust scientists until we decide we shouldn't trust them, and we should trust epidemiologists, but only certain epidemiologists who are critical of the CDC.

like there's no way the CDC was bullied into this because they're literally getting bullied from all sides. some expert virologists/epidemiologists have said they're being too reckless, other experts have said they're being too cautious, there isn't even agreement inside the CDC (see the walkback of a few months ago), so in that circumstance, I don't know how throwing your hands up and saying "ok no masks" is really capitulating because you're still going to get angry phone calls from SOMEBODY.

This is my take too. Last spring the CDC fucked up on the importance of masks. It fucked up on the safety of outdoor spaces. Both decisions, let me be clear, from an abundance of caution. Then this year it moved too slowly to give the fully jabbed suggestions about how to return to semi-normal life.

i wouldn't be surprised if some of the studies they said needed a 'further look' regarding the mRNA vaccines and their ability to block infection/transmission have gotten a deeper look and that the guidance on that is going to get an update from the CDC. it doesn't seem possible that transmission isn't blocked at least partially considering that the average 7-day case total is half of what it was a month ago, and in a few days could be as low as levels from past June. infection rate also 3.5%, which is the lowest its ever been (though obviously the weirdness of limited testing in the early going messed things up)

This is lunatic messaging, that antivaxxers are going to take as a checkered flag to spread, and to abuse / culture war against anyone who is still wearing a mask out of social politeness.

Biden is on TV now saying demasking is a reward for being good, as though he's talking to people who haven't understood anything about the pandemic to date.

we didn't handle the 1918 flu well at all

Bears more repeating that in a lot of ways the 1918 flu was an outlier (more people died of infections from secondary illnesses that would have been prevented with antibiotics than the flu itself). More illustrative were the 1958 flu pandemic, the 1968 flu, swine flu, SARS, et al. And of course before those but after 1918 were polio, small pox ... In fact, I'd almost argue that we ("we") handled covid almost uniquely badly, given the impact and the advances in technology we had at hand.

xpost I mean, they probably are going to do all of those things, but they'd also do it if the CDC waited until 2024, after 24 months of 0 cases and 0 deaths, to say "ok no more masks"

I think the solution should consider the lowest common denominator, which it has all of this time, but I don't think the solution should be 'dictated' by the lowest common denominator.

antivaxxers are going to take as a checkered flag to spread, and to abuse / culture war against anyone who is still wearing a mask out of social politeness.

But they're doing this already, and if you're vaccinated, according to the CDC, you have less to worry about. I worry more about kids.

And, bro, he's talking to people who have taken the virus seriously. You think Trumpists haven't already been giving people shit about masks?

i've already been bullied in the past week for wearing a mask simply because of what Desantis said.

that's not why DeSantis's decision was wrong. His decision to revoke his state/local authorities the ability to require masks was wrong because it was irresponsible and took their ability to fight the outbreak away in a country and state that is less than 50% vaccinated. People like me were being harassed for wearing masks before he did that (just not 'me' personally).

all that ever ends up happening is we wind up telling everybody there is nobody you can trust, everybody 'knows a guy' who said 'xxx' or 'yyy' and that is the truth and you are irresponsible if you believe otherwise, and....then we're IRL Twitter.

i'm just trying to find out how you come up with messaging that doesn't have antivaxxers/Trumpers/conservatives harassing people taking the pandemic seriously when that literally is their default behavior which hasn't ceased once since March of last year, before any of us owned our first mask. if the CDC says "fuck it, everybody should wear masks forever", antivaxxers show up to the Capitol building with torches and misspelled signs. they double down on their anti-vaccine message.

idk this might actually get a few on the fence people to get vaccinated too.

To be fair, there's a huge gulf between "masks are over, take 'em off today folks!" and "fuck it, everybody should wear masks foverer", no one is arguing the latter position at all. Just maybe not a whiplash inducing turn from what they were saying just last week is all.

rly would like everyone to keep wearing masks until cases are at zero for like six weeks or so, that's just my idea that I made up

this just makes me want to go out and do things less

multi-xps what do you do at that point?

Science works by patiently assembling a consensus, around which are areas still in dispute to some degree. The clearer the data, the stronger and more complete the consensus. To confuse matters, in this case public health policy has to consider politics, human behavior and broad economic impacts. No wonder it's still a dog's breakfast of conflicting opinions.

Do? (shrugs) Listen carefully to what's being said and why. Try to strike a middle path between fear and desire. And hope for the best.

cannot stress enough that the right way to do it is to set criteria for removing the restrictions in advance, and that way 1) nobody is surprised when it happens 2) people trust why it's happening, even if you don't agree with it.

the CDC published borderline incomprehensible (and extremely cautious!) masking guidelines for vaccinated people a week ago. now they're just like fuck it.