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

On another topic, got the official confirmation - no more WFH, no more remote, full time ass in seat every single hour of every single day starting in August.

But in more serious news, Tennessee really doesn't want to be outdone in the batshit response dept:

SCOOP: Tennessee Department of Health halts all vaccine outreach to kids – not just for COVID-19, but all diseases – amid pressure from GOP. Staff ordered to remove the agency logo from any documents providing vaccine info to the public, per internal dox. https://t.co/PX0Rvpc6Ot

— Brett Kelman (@BrettKelman) July 13, 2021

The agency will also end all COVID-19 vaccine events at schools, even though they've mostly served adults. And, if teens get a two-dose vaccine, it won't remind them to go back for their second dose. Teens are intentionally stripped from the mailing list for reminder postcards.

— Brett Kelman (@BrettKelman) July 13, 2021

It took the Christian Identity right about 20 years to completely capture the GOP, the Q nuts/anti-vaxxers have done it in less than five. Hooray for Facebook and Twitter?

this is good

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/france-reports-rush-for-vaccines-after-macron-tightens-covid-rules/ar-AAM63GB

That is good, too bad that could never happen here.

Once at an ice cream place around Chicago and today at the birthplace of the Girl Scouts here in Georgia I've seen a seemingly pretty effective sign that basically says, hey, there are young kids coming in and hanging out here that can't be vaccinated yet, that's why we're still requiring masks. Places could and maybe should be posting those signs everywhere.

Good theory but I don't think it's gonna work on the "MaKIng a CHILD wEAR a Mask IS abUSe" idiots.

I'm imagining an ad campaign that says "I wear this *regular mask* so you kid doesn't have to wear this *ventilator mask*"

I've conceded to the reality of the exponential rise in COVID rates over the past couple weeks and have gone back to wearing a mask in public despite still feeling dubious of the extent to which I'm protecting myself or others.

I haven't stopped using them in stores or the supermarket. In Lee County where I'm vacationing I've counted seven people in five days wearing masks of any kind.

I actually like wearing a mask in Target or the supermarket I think I will for the rest of my life.

I'm wearing a mask when I leave my office to go to the bathroom or exit the building. This is mostly to display my displeasure at being back at work.

Also, I haven't had a cold or anything else in over 16 months and really don't want to get one!

we're much more likely to catch COVID in small gatherings than in big box stores but I like the peace of mind

i wear masks so I don't have to smell farts

Yeah, seeing the case numbers on that exponential path already have me really nervous about what fall is going to look like.

Chicago introduced new travel "advisories" (essentially meaningless, even less so than the "orders" they never once enforced) on travelers coming from Missouri and Arkansas today. It's disappointing that bad actors and dipshit halfwits are pushing us towards a depressingly familiar spike.

I'm not sure about mask wearing when I return to the office. Unvaccinated folks aren't required, unless assembling in large numbers or in occupied classrooms, but I'm told that no one is wearing them at all and one coworker (a cancer survivor, ffs) has been chided twice this week already for wearing one in his office. I like PBKR's approach but, sadly, I don't have an office - just a shared open floor plan with 5 or 6 other people.

Gottlieb thinks it will peak by September (in the US, that is)

yeah, still, six more weeks of exponential growth is enough to worry.

I'm wearing one indoors and kind of enjoying the fact that since I'm vaccinated it's not actually particularly moving the needle on public health, it just makes it feel more whimsical and fun

(a mask)

will be interesting to see if the UK breaks its single day case record before or after restrictions are lifted on monday. i suppose they could break the record on the exact day, which would be a nice coincidence.

'Nice'

No surge in the fall comparable to last fall, scientists in the U.S. claim:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/health/delta-variant-uk-usa.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Given the level of vaccination in the US it seems almost unfathomable that there could be a surge comparable to last fall. Is that controversial?

What do we think about parents lying about their kids' age to get them vaccinated? I know at least two families who got their 11-year-olds the shot. One got caught, the other didn't.

xp

depends if you mean cases or hospitalization/death.

in terms of number of cases, exactly that is happening in the UK right now and there's no reason to think things will be different here. the UK has vaccinated a larger share of its population nationally and doesn't have huge swathes of the country with 20% vaccination rates. cases are already doubling every 1-2 weeks in the most vaccinated big cities in the US (e.g. LA, NYC). so it seems likely we'll be back up above 100k/day during august.

my guess is hospitalization/deaths will not be as bad as they were last winter, *averaged across the entire US*. seems like there will be regional hospitalization surges comparable to last winter though (i.e. overrun hospitals, etc.).

My COVID test was negative, so can go to Scotland after all... and stop cursing Astra-Zeneca... will carry on cursing the UK government though.

xpost I know of at least one under 16 kid that was able to wrangle an early shot. I do assume there are a few under 12 doing the same. I'm not sure if there's any risk involved. I guess that's why they're still studying! But it's not like something magical happens to your body between 11 and 12.

it's not like something magical happens to your body between 11 and 12

speak for yourself, josh

well, the shot should stunt that, but give you magnetic powers, so ... a wash.

Given the level of vaccination in the US it seems almost unfathomable that there could be a surge comparable to last fall. Is that controversial?

Given the level of vaccination in the US it seems highly probable that there could be a surge large enough to rank as one of the most significant public health emergencies in the history of the country.

are you expecting larger or smaller than the surge that occurred at the beginning of this year?

what caek said sounds right. cases will temporarily go over 100k/day, deaths/hospitalizations lower than during similar case loads because of vaccination. but probably not near our peak (251,000/day) - that was a horrifying time, and unless we truly are covering up a horrifying number of breakthrough cases rather than a number that is higher.

in the UK, cases have not stopped increasing, but the rate of increase has slowed a bit (at least per the stats folk). the re-opening plan might fuck that up some more, but many are holding steady to the idea that it could peak by late July.

you can't really accurately predict these things to the extent people want though. some surges we expected never really materialized in the past, whereas some were far worse than we ever feared they could be.

the level of vaccination will be over 50% fully-vaxxed probably within a month, as we're over 48% now. nowhere near enough to get 'herd immunity' but the disease is going to have a much harder time spreading than it did ay ear ago, where only people in clinical trials were vaccinated. that seems like a fairly uncontroversial thing to say.

that doesn't mean it's not a major problem but.......I know that's not what you're asking.

esp when you factor in natural infection, which is higher than in other countries cos we outright didn't give a fuck about stopping the disease in most of 2020

I agree with all this, I'm mostly wondering if sic believes this will be worse than the massive surge we had in the winter and if so, why?

what specific number of cases and/or rate of cases-to-deaths would you think of as nbd if not compared to last winter?

Did literally anyone say nbd

Moodles committed the mortal sin of ilx of asking an earnest question, I think, which must be answered with snark.

sic, the fact that we are having any surge whatsoever is extremely demoralizing, but you were responding to a comment that was specifically saying it probably wouldn't be comparable to the last surge, and it isn't clear if you are saying no, it will be comparable or worse, or if you are just saying any surge is bad regardless of size. I think there's a real difference between those because its a question that revolves around whether vaccines at a 50% level will be a mitigating factor or not.

i'd wait for caek to show up again at this point tbrr

we have him on retainer

I’m not snarking or arguing*, just mildly advocating against being inured to the situation, or only ranking things on a scale of what orange man did

*apologies to anyone who read either post as belligerent

Someone in my medias is spending a month vacationing in Hawaii and complaining about all the "hoops" she had to go through to get there, like "UGH THREE COVID TESTS" and meanwhile Maui is begging people to stay home and stop bringing the virus there.

Like, you want to believe the best of people and then they go and do things.

we stole the Kingdom of Hawaii, only fair we share our infectious diseases with them now too amirite

I think this is probably the correct and safe move here, but gotta admit that seeing more and more stuff pop up like this in the last week feels like a depressingly familiar path...

Unfortunately, with Covid infections rising in Austin, even some of the fully vaccinated getting infected, the uncertainty of the delta variant, and with Austin now in stage 3 on a collision course with stage 4 restrictions, we are going back to requiring masks at all times.

— Waterloo Records (@WaterlooRecords) July 15, 2021

I think businesses are going to need to require masks for the foreseeable future, the government isn't providing any other options besides leaving it up to them to manage it (just like businesses have to manage access to health care!)

same trend continues in the UK - the growth rate is slowing a bit, but....nonetheless, cares are still increasing.

If you haven't been following Delta in the UK closely, it looks like this, now >50 cases/100,000 people and still rising despite some slowing of growth pic.twitter.com/6YZuTA6vlY

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) July 15, 2021

weaker link between cases and hospitalization, but NOT a broken link, so obviously hospitalizations and deaths rise alongside cases, just...fortunately, not at the same rate they did pre-vaccine.

The main mitigating and positive factor is the weaker link between cases and hospitalizations/deaths now that there are a high level of vaccinations compared with prior waveshttps://t.co/pLudMPSPfj pic.twitter.com/O84J7eRqiW

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) July 15, 2021

heh, I've been going to Waterloo Records to browse used CDs and I've been wearing a mask anyway... good on them for not fucking around.

Yeah, I mean, I'm still masking up when shopping and in stores and I think its the right move. Just, still, seeing more mandates and restrictions kick back in is doing a number on the optimism of the last few months while things were heading in the right direction. Which isn't to say I was magically thinking "hey COVID is over", it's just the slowly sinking in of realizing that, thanks to numbnut assholes, we're gonna be in this for a lot longer than necessary.

i'm not getting into the over/under relative to last winter (nobody knows), but at a high level, the UK is on track to exceed their winter surge of cases and there's no reason to think the same thing won't happen here.

the vaccination rate is very low in some regions of the US, so seems quite likely that the subsequent hospitalization/death surge in those regions will be significantly worse than the (currently very small) hospital surge in the UK.

all of which is to say, it might be worse than last winter, it might not, but this is wrong:

Given the level of vaccination in the US it seems almost unfathomable that there could be a surge comparable to last fall. Is that controversial?