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

Science says that the vaccinated are vastly less likely to contract or spread the virus, but that masking reduces the likelihood much further still. Social decency says that masking around other people is an easy way to indicate that you are fine with wearing clothes in public in order to avoid killing vulnerable and immuno-compromised and underage people. The CDC's messaging is a shitshow. All three of these can be true.

The Saturday LA times national section is like 12 pages and has three separate stories about people not understanding or being frightened by this change, or being forced to change plans with no warning.

My whole thing wrt the CDC announcement is that it's probably perfectly fine and sound advice if you assume that American humans are rational actors who will attend to the advice in good faith (ie that the unvaccinated will recognize that the good news does not apply to them until they are no longer among the unvaccinated and that they will behave accordingly). That the CDC apparently believes this to be the world we inhabit leads me to believe that the CDC is out of its goddamn collective mind.

I literally wore my mask in public earlier sic so not sure what your point is

in fact, the Target I went into (in a red county, no less) still had its mandate, and everybody was still masking. i don't blame people criticizing the CDC for how fast their decision was made, but like - where do you all live where mask behavior was healthy and being observed and now isn't? the Florida has been the Wild Wild West most of the year - so much so that friends of mine formed a group last year to report what businesses were "safe" or "unsafe" to go into based on their own mask rules/enforcement of them. and they had some horror stories.

lots of businesses around me removed any mask mandates the moment DeSantis removed any lingering local ordinances and said they couldn't be re-imposed, and that it was up to the businesses.

I understand the criticism that the abrupt announcement means now businesses have to make snap decisions whether to stay the course or change their approach. I can understand some vaccinated assholes might be dicks if asked to put on a mask (I sure as hell won't be, I still have a huge stack). I know folks who are vaccinated have unvaccinated children as well as immunocompromised dependents to think of and that this causes a confusing/stressful scenario I also understand some businesses are likely to abruptly put their employees in uncomfortable situations if they remove mask requirements for everyone, and I've never been unsympathetic to THAT. those are fair points.

but the criticism that "now a bunch of unvaccinated people can pretend to be vaccinated and stop wearing masks and it's going to halt our progress"? when exactly were these folk waiting for permission to begin with? why do you think Walensky went on TV in late March, almost sobbing, saying we were headed for impending doom if states didn't stop relaxing their guidelines? 15 states removed their mandates this year alone, long before the May 13th statement! it would really only come into play for stores that adopt a "vaccinated people need not mask, and we'll use the honor system" approach, which is really still probably less risky than "Nobody needs to mask" mandates.

Florida's a dumpster fire in terms of COVID responsibility at the moment and yet cases have been dropping in tandem with the national decline. It sure as hell isn't because of our "amazing efforts". that doesn't mean I don't think COVID measures and responsibility "no longer matters" or that I don't hate my state, its officials, and its civilians, but I'm saying it isn't exactly a new problem, and the solution is more vaccination.

I literally wore my mask in public earlier sic so not sure what your point is

Neanderthal, I don’t think it’s fair to lump “this thread” in with what you are seeing on social media.

:) :)

whatever is in your facebook feed seems to be very bad for your anxiety rn and I encourage you to either avoid both it and this thread (as you said) OR, preferably, to avoid facebook and just assume that everyone here is chill and concerned for each other's well-being, not aggro

Florida's a dumpster fire in terms of COVID responsibility at the moment and yet cases have been dropping in tandem with the national decline. It sure as hell isn't because of our "amazing efforts".

cases have been rising steadily for two months in this county/state that is handling public policy very well by comparison btw, and opening rando pop-up vaccination clinics in different neighbourhoods every few days. I don't have any data to back it up but imo the reason is maskless unvaccinated dipshits in bars etc (and eg Amazon forcing people back into offices - someone I know split from his bf during the pando, had just moved in with a new roommate, and got covid when the roommate went back to work for one (1) day and caught it.)

fwiw I was at the library working, then went to Publix and Target. Employees and patrons all masked.

It's heartening to hear anecdotal evidence that some people are staying the masks + distancing course, but surely y'all can understand the dreadful anticipation that a lot of people are just gonna do what they want now because MURRICA. And I get that there were already a bunch of MURRICA sociopaths already doing whatever they wanted, and they are and were and probably always will be a lost cause on pretty much every level imaginable, but my concern is more re: the people who've been begrudgingly going through the COVID safety motions whatever their personal feelings who will take this as the prompt to stop going along with the sheeple because COVID is clearly fixed now.

On the plus side, I don't know if it's bullshit or not but I've seen a couple accounts of race tracks opening up to the public as a reward for going through drive-through vaccine clinic. That sounds fun!

xpost how is hypothetical evidence superior to anecdotal evidence?

There are a handful of instances where people will still need to wear masks — in a health-care setting or at a business that requires them — even if they’ve had their final vaccine dose two or more weeks ago, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters at a press briefing. Fully vaccinated people will also still need to wear masks on airplanes, buses, trains and other public transportation, she said.

Walensky said unvaccinated people should still continue to wear masks, adding they remain at risk of mild or severe illness, death, and risk of spreading the disease to others. People with compromised immune systems should speak with their doctor before giving up their masks, she said.

She added there is always a chance the CDC could change its guidance again if the Covid pandemic worsens or additional variants emerge.

that message clearly isn't "COVID is over". people will hear "COVID is over" because we are a county full of assholes, idiots, and grifters. but people have heard "COVID is over" before when it wasn't said too, many many times. we've vented about them ITT. People have been sharing Youtube videos that say exactly that (or that it never existed) since the beginning.

I'm not saying we won't be welcoming new participants to the Ignorant Olympics after this, no, but I don't really buy that suddenly, this is the watershed moment in which nobody masks again.

my main worry is getting vaccination levels back up, as we are back below 2 million a day again, though we haven't had time to benefit from the 12-15 crowd yet. we did clear 2 million in today's report, but it was still below what we did last Saturday.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/?

silver spoon up his ass:

Former child star Rick Schroder harasses a Costco employee over face masks pic.twitter.com/HRlWeJJlt1

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) May 16, 2021

fuckin asshole

I haven't trusted him since he antagonized the Soviet premier and caused a nuclear war.

"Walk to the edge of a cliff, Yuri. And drop off!"

I don't know exactly when Schroder became a piece of shit, but his commitment appears to be absolute.

Just one-fifth of epidemiologists said it was safe for fully vaccinated people to socialize indoors without masks in a group of unlimited size. https://t.co/u3SNNNGNBp

— NYT Health (@NYTHealth) May 14, 2021

that's so vaguely worded ('safe', 'socialize', 'indoors', unlimited') that if I were an epidemiologist I'd hesitate to endorse it, too.

i think the thing that bothers me most about this change (apart from the lack of warning) is that if you are a healthy under 50 who was one of the lucky people who got one of the appointments and took time off work to get your first done on literally the first day you became eligible in the most populous state in the nation, then you are not fully vaccinated until late next week.

*dose

Schroder was one of the big donors to get that little nazi shit out of jail on bond, hope he gets incurable shingles on his penis.

The question posed in the survey was:

If you had to predict, how long will Americans need to wear masks when indoors with people whose vaccination status they don’t know?

Nowhere does it stipulate "Americans" as being vaccinated or unvaccinated, it mushes them into the same bucket. It's worded terribly right off the bat.

Also dates back to 4/28

i think the thing that bothers me most about this change (apart from the lack of warning) is that if you are a healthy under 50 who was one of the lucky people who got one of the appointments and took time off work to get your first done on literally the first day you became eligible in the most populous state in the nation, then you are not fully vaccinated until late next week.

https://i.imgur.com/gaH923J.png

welp

Detailed but intriguing short thread

Just published @NatureMedicine: For 7 vaccines, the neutralizing antibody levels are highly predictive of the magnitude of clinical efficacy, support long term protection vs severe illness, and preserved efficacy vs variantshttps://t.co/ZQIrTQErMm pic.twitter.com/rUl9TMbVrC

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) May 17, 2021

The last time the US had <17,500 confirmed cases in a day was June 8, ~11 months ago, when the testing was 1/3rd as much as now.
The descent (exponential decay) continues pic.twitter.com/ehb2LHP6qb

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) May 17, 2021

I thought The World in Data's site had frozen last night, until NYT's numbers came in for the evening and we're even lower. Waiting to see what CDC recorded for yesterday, but they tend to have lower counts than the other two.

Great progress considering how much more severely undercounted cases were at this time last year.

We're also at threshold of 60% of adults vaccinated.

Long way to go, but promising:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/covid-19-second-wave-turns-a-corner-as-cases-fall-for-7-days/articleshow/82669447.cms

Wow, IL reporting <1000 new cases today. I think that's only happened one other time since last summer.

Yeah, that's incredibly promising.

https://i.ibb.co/R44V3cr/Screenshot-2021-05-17-2-42-22-PM.png

Pfizer
Got me on my knees
Pfizer

(Robert De Niro asks coronavirus to come look at some dresses)

it's in the way that you use it!

We're also at threshold of 60% of adults vaccinated.

we're not.60% have had one dose. 37% have had two doses. under 30% of the US population are two weeks out from their second dose and "fully vaccinated".

this isn't hair splitting, given the mask mandate change. 70+% of the US population needs to consider avoiding indoor spaces again because the CDC decided masks weren't white boy summer.

I meant with at least one dose, because it does still provide some, if incomplete protection. it's not a 0 to 100 thing

every place I've been this weekend has still had people overwhelmingly masking. it is, as Ive said, likely more based on the environment where you live than anything. I can guarantee this is NOT the case in Brevard County or outwards towards Daytona - but ....they've never been masking.

Someone should tell the cdc

considering that separate studies found vaccine effectiveness of 89-91% in Pfizer (a fact you acknowledged many months back, in fact, to correct me) 15 days or more after the shot, and 92% for Moderna greater than 14 days after the shot - it's pretty good protection.

Which isn't to say people shouldn't get their second shot, as it does provide more protection, and nor should the CDC give people with one shot permission, as the study was done with two shots so more confidence in the data for two shots. just sayin....it ain't like these folk are lying out there completely exposed.

https://www.healthline.com/health/why-two-doses-of-covid-vaccine#immunity-after-second-dose

this argument has done nothing but go in circles for days and we're just not going to agree so I'm going to leave it there.

Oregon's new case numbers rose through April and have been holding fairly steady until a couple of days ago. This puts us as an outlier in the midst of most states' sharp drops in new cases. I'm fully vaxxed, but I'm still masking for public indoor places like grocery stores and mostly avoiding them as much as in 2020. (I did visit a used book store last week for the first time in 15 months!)

On the whole, I do feel much more at ease now about my own prospects for avoiding a bout with covid-19, based on all the data I've seen about vaxx efficacy.

I was out this weekend: grocery stores, small stores, walking streets, sitting at outdoor bars (several friends visiting family for the first time since '19, all jabbed). Not a single person without masks. In Publix, which lifted its mask requirements on Saturday, 100% compliance from employees and customers.

If the cdc thinks people should act like they’re two weeks out from the second dose after their first dose they should say so.

people are pretty much all wearing masks at groceries and other stores here. restaurants, bars, and clubs are a different story.

Xpost literally not what I said. C'mon

So CDC is showing 3k vaccinations in the US today. That has to be incomplete data, right? Cos it says 0 vaccinations in NY

caek, are you fully jabbed?

Not until Friday. I got first dose the first day under 50s were allowed to in California so it’s not because I dawdled.