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

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.

wasn't it about two weeks ago?

sorry, you're right. it was april 28.

I wasn't try to zing you or be pedantic; I think two weeks might be enough to see trends on deaths and new infection rates.

this might be too fast, too soon given the still worrying levels of vaccine hesitancy.

I don't think the level of vaccine hesitancy is a given, though, I think it's something that the US government can and very much wants to affect, and this is how they're trying to do it. Whether it will work is of course not clear.

Fair point and maybe I'm too cynical, but I don't see this particular tactic moving the needle considerably.

I wasn't try to zing you or be pedantic; I think two weeks might be enough to see trends on deaths and new infection rates.

FWIW, maybe nothing:

The hospital where I work at currently has only one -- literally one -- patient in care due to COVID, and that patient is not in the ICU. That hasn't been the case since everything started happening last March, and we've been in single digits anyway for weeks now. I've been posting the (extremely good) SF city vaccinated numbers and of course we're not totally isolated or an island or anything but the vaccination rates are high in general up in the Bay Area. More than half the entire city population now has a fully completed regimen of shots, and that number continues to increase day by day.

I'm not trying to say 'yay wonderful us, please send us your love,' just...things have changed. Massively. When I was lucky enough to get my first shot back in early January the numbers were (compared to the rest of the pandemic to that point for SF, nothing as compared to even LA) truly horrible, and I was certainly concerned and wary on many fronts. Four and a half months later, here we are. I was more than a little nervous in early March when the first real lightening of strictures here in the city that were (re)imposed back in December occurred. But the numbers aren't lying.

Caek's point there is right, the remaining CDC guidance makes sense, I know people here who are immunocompromised, concerns about kids absolutely are valid, tons of good points are being raised. Hundreds of people nationwide still are dying each day and that's a fucking tragedy. But I'm just not SURPRISED at today's news, is all. If that makes me a goddamn Pollyanna, fine, but right now I'm betting on the wider results.

yeah i should be clear i don't think the new guidance is bad. it's the communication.

jvc and caek otm - setting clear targets, in advance, of "cases fall below x level, double-vax rates hit y level, restrictions and advice will become such-and-such" would have been a) sane and b) reinforce the scientific / epidemiological basis for restrictions and advice until now.

Instead they've just gone

https://media1.tenor.com/images/03e6115282b13b7751baf3d3c21df550/tenor.gif

wait dammit

https://media2.giphy.com/media/DMol8gy5grdEk/giphy.gif

the CDC should send every vaxxed person a bagful of molly and percocet

Don’t forget the blowjob machine

tbc I support both Rep Silby's policy AND Senator Future's campaign platform

I don't love this guidance because I know people will take it as a sign to drop masks whether they are vaxxed or not. Where I live, people do a really good job of wearing masks in places like the grocery, and I'm sure that includes a not insignificant number of unvaxxed people who do it grudgingly because everyone else does. Now that will end and cases will spike again. Numbers are already at a higher level than they were a year ago. Why not give it one more month and let those case numbers get really low first?

Lots of good vaccine/pandemic news today, so don't miss this bit: the slowdown in vaccinations has leveled off over the past ten days and reticence among Republicans has fallen. https://t.co/4qiFtMazPJ

— Philip Bump (@pbump) May 13, 2021

Good!

Even better, in a global sense, is that new cases in India, which had been showing positive signs of slower growth, have now clearly crested and started to drop, which means we should see the same for deaths before long.

that's a welcome relief, even if they have a long way to go

citation needed?

https://i.ibb.co/1QxPghs/Screenshot-2021-05-13-11-07-17-PM.png

however, given the criticism of the integrity of their data, combined with the fact that the 7-day average is still overwhelmingly high, there's quite a long journey to go there. especially with the number of hospitals out of oxygen/etc.

All I'm saying is you'd a hell of a lot rather it looks like it looks now than that it looks like it looked two weeks ago.

which is true!

I've read multiple interviews on news sites with Indian crematorium workers over the last month, saying that their own data suggests the official figures are underreported by several hundred percent. While that's extremely anecdotal, it holds more weight with me so far than (checks notes) a free image hosting site in Colombia.

Even if those unsourced figures were reliable, there is not enough data to conclude a crest at this point.

You are looking at a Screenshot I took and posted on ImgBB.

The site is The World in Data.

https://ourworldindata.org/about

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/

Fwiw I agree it's much too soon to dance a jig (which tbf eephus wasn't doing at all) because of the recency of the development, and frankly, what I don't know for certain, about the situation there

You'll also find similar data on Bloomberg's Vaccine Tracker and NYT COVID Tracker

after some hunting and light fraud I am booked for a vaxx in woodbridge ON today :)

congrats!

I got my first shot in Weston last week by checking the same day cancellations at the local hospital.

My 15-year-old gets dose 1 today, baby!

Nice!

Not that I want to rush the tests or science at all, but it's going to be a long wait until September for the next age cohort to get the go ahead. I think the return to school is still going to be a little fraught.

Yeah I have a younger kid too and the fact that they'll be differently restricted is going to be super annoying for her

Just back from trader Joe’s. 100% still wearing masks fwiw.

Every big box store still requiring masks fwiw