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

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?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/nyregion/nyc-breakthrough-infections-vaccine.html

Vaccines offered powerful protection against the coronavirus in New York City, blunting the second wave of the virus and saving an estimated 8,300 lives between December of last year and July of this year, according to a new study by Yale University epidemiologists released by the city on Wednesday.

The study underscored that the real-world performance of the vaccines can meet and even exceed trial results in preventing virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the city said. Only 1.1 percent of the 500,300 virus cases during the first six months of this year were among people who were fully vaccinated, according to data from the city’s health department also released Wednesday in support of the study.

Yet the data was also a reminder the protection was not perfect. A total of 94 fully vaccinated New Yorkers died from the virus between January and mid-June, compared with 8,069 deaths among the unvaccinated, the city reported, though it did not include specific demographic information.

One important caveat is that most of the period of the study was before the Delta variant became the predominant variant in the city, according to the limited amount of genetic analysis of cases being done by the city each week. Studies suggest that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant, though cases among those who are vaccinated tend to be mild or asymptomatic, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist said this week. Because of vaccines, health experts don’t expect the recent increase in cases to reach the levels seen in New York City’s first and second waves.

The protection of vaccines remains powerful. A Public Health England analysis, which has not yet been peer reviewed, showed that Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 88 percent effective against symptomatic disease and 96 percent effective against hospitalization from Delta, just slightly lower than against older variants. Moderna also reported on early studies showing only a “modest reduction” of antibody protection against the Delta variant.

The data released Wednesday represented the most comprehensive look yet at breakthrough infections in New York City. In all, the city reported that about 5,300 fully vaccinated people were infected and 583 fully vaccinated people were hospitalized in New York with Covid-19 between January and June.

The picture is more complete than what is being released nationally, as it included mild cases, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is only tracking serious breakthrough infections that result in hospitalizations or deaths.

On the day that Australia's two largest cities went into lockdown, our national leader went on Kyle & Jackie O's radio show to talk about whether he ever shat his pants at Engadine Maccas. They didn't even raise it. He did.

— marquelawyers (@marquelawyers) July 15, 2021

A friend's sister in Singapore was phoned up yesterday to be informed that, as she had recently been in proximity to someone who had COVID, she would be picked up by the authorities from her flat and taken to a hotel room to isolate for ten days. She was given TEN MINUTES to pack. She protested this, saying that as a diabetic, she would need 45 minutes to gather her stuff. This was refused, and she was given 30 minutes. Exactly 30 minutes later, the vehicle was outside her door. Once in the room, she was fitted with a tracking wristband, to ensure that she didn't leave.

how do the lockdown precautions factor into the numbers? I know the UK was in some form of lockdown last winter (that was delayed and wasn't absolute), whereas the US was largely not (some states locked down, some just imposed restrictions on capacity/hours of operation, some didn't do shit).

is the thought that due to the much larger virulence of Delta than the dominant strain of virus last winter (which, at least in the US, wasn't even the Alpha yet), that even with 50%+ of the US vaccinated + high natural infection, we'd still have a real chance to hit 250,000 cases a day? Last year I know that mostly occurred due to a combination of people traveling, gathering indoors more frequently due to weather, gathering en masse due to holidays, and many states not wanting to re-instate restrictions.

just trying to make heads or tails of the consensus, which there doesn't seem to be any (not that this is surprising, it's a novel virus with a newly attacking variant).

long but good thread on new study

We hear often about how delta is more transmissible, but we don't hear much about why that's the case or how that impacts exposure risk.

A new study by Li and colleagues is out on Virological that provides some insight:https://t.co/EiwAJmrgcI

— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) July 15, 2021

suggests, among many other things, that incubation period is reduced, meaning virus is detected sooner in tests and victim is 'infected' sooner after exposure than previous strains

thanks for that

Good Bob Wachter thread on the state of things in SF. As he says, caution, not panic.

If you're wondering how bad Delta really is, even in highly vaccinated SF (76% of >age 12 fully vaxxed) & still w/ a lot of masking (most folks in stores), we're seeing a pretty steep Covid uptick. Daily cases up 4-fold (10->42; Fig L), hospital pts doubled (9->19; R)(Thread 1/4) pic.twitter.com/6JC2UlA0Sf

— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) July 15, 2021

LA county is requiring indoor masking again

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-15/l-a-county-will-require-masks-indoors-amid-covid-19-surge

here's why, from my own personal dashboard, i.e. a shitty graph i made

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

note: LA county is more vaccinated than the US on average, and probably has more "natural immunity" than the US on average, so that this is happening here is not good.

the good news is there's nothing like a huge surge in cases to help trials for under 12s wrap up quicker than the current ETA, "midwinter"

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vaccines-kids-under-age-12-expected-mid-winter-fda-official-n1274057

this is a disaster of "messaging"

thank u based boris for ur freedom

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/16/englands-covid-unlocking-a-threat-to-the-world-experts-say

Wrapping up our first real trip, in Georgia, I was getting coffee in the lobby behind a family of four, all masked (kids too young to be vaxxed). They made it to the elevators before me, so I gave them some space; there's a sign requesting one family per ride, though I haven't seen it enforced. While they were loading on, an unmasked guy slipped in, but before the door closed they actually stopped it and asked him to leave. He politely told them he was vaxxed, but they held firm, and ... he listened and just took the next one (with me). And he didn't so much as grumble or shoot a glance. It was heartening to see, actually, the way it should work: respect the wishes of those most at risk.

Btw, all the anti vaxxer Covid deniers that claim it's no worse then the flu, I wonder how they would respond if you told them you were wearing a mask because you didn't want to catch the flu?

With inchoate fury? Because freedoms?

free to be me and flu

I mean, there's an awful lot of competition, but the enraged anti-maskers are very close to the top of the bugshit insane heap. It's like some dude in a sleeveless t screaming at people in deep winter for wearing a parka. No part of me understands the anger. Which I reckon, if only on this one point, puts me in the same boat as them.

I agree, it makes zero sense to be so rabidly angry about someone else wearing a mask. The anti-vaxx crowd, enrages me for certain, but I can at least intellectually understand that they don't want their bodies "messed with" (yes it's dumb, wrong and anti-science, but there is some level on which I can understand the fear behind it). But getting frothing in the mouth angry because someone else is wearing a small piece of cloth over their face just makes zero sense to me.

they also fixate on "people wearing masks in their own cars," for some reason, and will short circuit if they see someone who maybe didn't bother taking their mask off for the 3-minute drive home

Yup, I think this slogan was posted elsewhere, but driving through Wisconsin a few weeks ago saw a bumper sticker that said something along the lines of, "If you are driving alone in your car with your mask on you don't need to tell me you voted for Biden, I already know". And it's just, I don't know, like THAT is the important message worth slapping on the back of your shitty car?

wait til he sees my bumper sticker that reads "if you have a bumper sticker that says 'if you are driving alone in your car with your mask on you don't need to tell me you voted for biden, i already know,' you don't have to tell me you voted for trump, i already know"

It's all very They Live, which of course is an ott satire and sort of underplays what's become the reality of our situation.

So an interesting thing is that there seems to be some sort of data error in reporting the second shot for Illinois residents. The fully vaccinated number has barely budged in weeks and the gap between the "fully vaccinated" (47.3%) and "at least one dose" (60.6%) keeps growing and is a larger gap than any other state (California's gap is close to ours, but the numbers are still close together).

Anyway, I think I mentioned that I got a letter from IPDH saying that I appear to have missed my second shot, which wasn't the case. In talking to coworkers, one coworker's husband got the same letter, as did another one's daughter. In one of the daily stat update threads on the Illinois Coronavirus subreddit the other day, several people mentioned the same thing, either they or someone they know wrongly got this missed second shot letter. A couple posters over there are theorizing that there might be some error in reporting second shots to the state, which is why that fully vaxxed number keeps lagging further behind.

"numbers are still closer together" that should read

A little slice of life in London, the world's Delta capital.

I had a doctor's appointment arranged at the last minute for late on Friday afternoon, which meant I had to leave work early which my boss wasn't too happy about - because grumbling, but not actually doing anything, is about the only thing left to show that he is in charge. Getting a face-to-face appointment with a GP is, according to my colleagues, a real rarity these days, though I've never had any problems. I decided to walk there, because they don't like you turning up late or early and because public transport,

How it works is you have to buzz reception to let you in - you can't just breeze in like you used to - and, of course, you must wear a mask. Using the buzzer is vital because, this being the NHS, they are, of course, short staffed and there are no reception staff working so the office staff are having to cover.

About half an hour into my wait, in walks an elderly Chinese couple - without having buzzed reception - who proceed to wander around the waiting room, the guy muttering, "Where is reception, is this reception?", the woman obviously can't speak English. Neither of them are wearing masks. After a few minutes of this, rather than explain the situation to them, because I've been waiting for half an hour and I suspect any conversation would be like pulling teeth, I nip outside and press the buzzer for them. When one of the office staff wanders out an interminable conversation begins along the lines of...

Man: Where is reception? There is no reception.
Worker: There's no reception working today.
Man: It's shit, are you reception? Where is reception?
Worker: It's Friday afternoon, the reception staff has gone home, we're having to cover for them.
Man: Where is reception? Is this reception? This is shit.
Worker: We're short staffed today.
Man: Are you reception?

Eventually we get to the point of their visit.

Man: I need appointment for the old lady.
Worker: What, this lady here. (gesturing to his wife)
Man: No, the old lady! Her mother!
Worker: We don't make appointments face to face.
Man: This is shit! I need appointment!
Worker: You have to phone us between 8.30 and 11.00 to make an appointment...
Man: No no no.
Worker: ... or else go online and fill in a form....

This really sets him off.

Man: No no no! Fuck off! That is fucking shit!
Worker: OK, I'll give you a pen and paper and you can write the phone number down.
Man: No! I'm not writing number, you write number. Fuck off! You do your fucking job!
Worker: I'll write it but there's no need to be rude.
Man: I'm not rude! You're fucking rude! Fuck off with this shit!
Worker: If you could just calm down.
Man: You're rude!
Worker: Listen, if you could write the number down.

The man picks up the pen and throws at the office worker.

Worker: I'm going to have to ask you to leave now.
Man: This is fucking shit! You're a fucking idiot!

And off he goes with his wife trying to calm him down, shouting insults as he leaves. Ironically, one of the the few people in the waiting room are a couple who are there to register with the surgery - after just witnessing that scene! Not long after that, another guy wanders in off the street without buzzing and without a mask and just kind of stands in the waiting room for ages until one of the office staff happens to notice him:

Man (pointing to jaw): Dentist?
Worker: I'll get you an address list.

Eventually, about an hour after my appointment was due, so I didn't have to leave work early after all, I see the doctor. Interestingly, he's a very laidback and chatty American who, throughout, refers to my usual doctor by his surname and not by his title.

Just another day in the NHS! But at least it didn't cost me anything!

Yeah in the US that's have cost you $37,811.05, and you'd have had to chase your insurance up for 3 years to get them to cover it. Looking forward to doing the same here in a few years!

And the old Chinese man would have been shot by the surgery security guards.

Yes, some advantages tbf

irl stifled guffaw

My encounters with the human race continue. I'm on a train, London to Crewe. Half the people in the carriage aren't wearing masks. I've taken a particular dislike to this fat ugly wanker and his stupid girlfriend who are sitting across the aisle from me, I hate his tattoos and shaved head/beard combo. Why, in the middle of a pandemic, would you go into an enclosed space where you're going to be confined with a lot of strangers for several hours and not wear a mask? And why wouldn't you bring some headphones so the rest of the carriage doesn't have to listen to whatever crap you happen to be watching on your phone?

Real England

That's exactly what it is.

Having said that though, on the bus into town, the only people not wearing masks were two sets of tourists.

Crewe to Glasgow train. Social distancing? You're having a laugh, people are packed in like sardines.

If I don't have COVID by the end of this week it'll be a miracle.

Right now if I go anywhere inside I'm expecting to be told to isolate after :(

And what is it with couples not wearing masks? They're so wrapped in themselves they don't care who they infect?

They've probably "done their own research", which astonishingly turned out to be more accurate than that of highly-trained medical professionals with near-infinite strings of qualifications to their names.

for your on the fence friends who think they're protected because "millions of other people are vaccinated": https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-vaccines-herd-immunity-variants-1.6104364