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

Early estimates of the Wuhan emergent virus R(0) were in the neighborhood of 3. Obviously a value of 6 or 9 would reflect a far more transmissible disease.

It’s been sobering to see that no matter how many intelligent, capable and dedicated scientists and epidemiologists we have working to help battle a virus like this, the amount of time it takes us to get things relatively under control will still be dictated by the absolute dumbest members of our society.

I could use some advice. It’s getting down to the wire for us to decide if we are sending our daughter back to in-person school for 4th grade. We are in FL and the remote learning program we did last year is no longer an option. Before the Delta wave, we had decided (reluctantly) that it was time to send her back to school this fall. But now it seems ridiculous that we’ve been so careful and kept her home all this time, only to send her back now when Florida is peaking with the Delta variant and the school board just voted down the mask requirement. And after reading this article I really don’t want her around these kids who have been getting indoctrinated and used as political tools by their asshole death cult parents. There is still an option for remote learning but it is a less robust program and we would be largely responsible for teaching her day to day. She really struggled with remote learning last year, though, and we’re afraid she will fall too far behind if we put her through this for another year.

As a single childless man, I can't speak about the problem directly, but my sister and one of my buddies faces a similar dilemma. They worry but they're sending their kids masked to school. Remote learning was too much for them.

You can take (some) comfort in that infection and symptoms for kids your daughter's age, even exposed to the Delta variant, remains low.

I'm sending my kids masked to school and did starting last April. That said, I live in a high-vaxx area where currently there's not a huge outbreak (of course it could be different by September.) The issue with in-person school has always been more the danger from kids than the danger to kids, and I'd guess 95% of their teachers are vaxxed and I just don't think them being in school is going to contribute meaningfully to community spread given the level of vaccination already achieved and all the other interactions between people taking place in town.

Our schools aren't requiring masks this year either (or distancing, contact tracing or quarantines for people who have been exposed). Given how low our vaxx rates are this seems like a possible disaster, but I guess we're gonna find out. Both my kids (both vaxxed, and also they've both already had COVID) have voluntarily said they want to continue wearing masks, we'll see if that's true if not many of their friends or classmates are doing it. I'm not going to try to force them because I don't want to add stress to them, just telling them to use their own judgment. It's an imperfect approach, but none of the options are good.

The plan as of right now is to send our kids to high school in the fall (first day of school here is actually in less than a month; they'd each been going to in-person school to some extent the second half of the past school year, anyway). As I understand it they will still be required to wear a mask. My kids are both fully vaxxed and we live in a high vax area, and yet iirc the vax rates of high school aged kids here (around 15-18 years old, say) is lagging pretty dramatically behind the population here as a whole. The school is not yet requiring vaccines and I suspect can't require vaccines until the FDA belatedly waves its magic wand.

If this matters, one of my kids is vaccinated but the other is too young.

I suspect can't require vaccines until the FDA belatedly waves its magic wand

Again, this is absolutely 100% wrong. The FDA status of emergency approval v. final approval has zero effect on the enforceability of vax mandates. Vaccine mandates have and continue to be upheld in court whenever challenged.

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/federal-court-upholds-employer-s-covid-19-vaccine-mandate

The court also rejected Plaintiff’s arguments that the vaccine mandate violated 45 C.F.R. 46.101, seq., which protects the rights of human subjects in research. In the complaint, Plaintiffs argued that they were subject to medical experimentation because they were required to receive a vaccine that has not been fully approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration. According to the court, this claim “misrepresented the facts” because the hospital’s employees are not participants in a human trial, but instead merely employees subject to a vaccination requirement.

Nearly the only people this matters to are people looking for an excuse not to get the vaccine who will come up with another excuse when this one is hopefully soon removed.

The bottom line is that nearly all segments of society (employers, gov't, public accommodations, airlines, public transit, etc. etc. etc.) can and should require vaccines. If they do so, they will prevail and the vast majority of unvaccinated people will cave nearly instantly and get the vaccine when confronted with not being able to do things they want to do.

The only thing preventing this is the political will to deal with the issue.

I appreciate everyone’s perspective on this!

I have no idea why our (or most) schools are not requiring them, then. Because we live in a heavily vaxxed, overwhelmingly liberal area that is not one to give people excuses not to do something. Employees is one thing. But mandating for kids under 18? Has that been legally tested yet?

Kids have been mandated MMR vaccines for years. Kids were mandated polio vaccines even longer ago. What is your perceived difference with this situation?

mah roights

xpost that they are not yet officially approved by the FDA, that it's under emergency usage.

The only thing preventing this is the political will to deal with the issue.

Or, depending on where you live, a political determination to do absolutely the opposite. Our pro wrestler county mayor has been stomping all over social media loudly proclaiming that "under no circumstances" will he reinstate any health mandates of any kind. He doesn't directly control the school system but he has a proclivity for publicly bullying them when they do things he doesn't like. Plus half our school board are COVID skeptics who bitched all last year about masks and contact tracing, so there's no way they'll let them come back. Mandatory vaccinations aren't even something anyone is talking about, it's so far off the political table here.

My kid will be in 1st grade this fall and a week ago the district said K-6 are required to wear masks, then this week changed it to everyone K-12. We’ve got pretty good vax rates so I’m feeling alright about this.

The university where I work also announced last week that all faculty and the 50k+ students are required to be vaccinated to be on campus which is also pretty great as far as I’m concerned.

The university where I work also announced last week that all faculty and the 50k+ students are required to be vaccinated to be on campus which is also pretty great as far as I’m concerned.

this (and the similar U-Indiana requirement that survived a court challenge) has me hopeful that the one I work at will soon follow suit

Let's just skip the small talk and get right to the point. This figure shows the data. It shows Ct (cycle threshold) values for vaccinated vs unvaccinated people infected with delta. Yes, they are basically the same.

But are Ct values a good measurement of viral load...? pic.twitter.com/3hypqB1ZCc

— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) August 1, 2021

I really can't tell if there is increasing disagreement among scientists and experts, or if said disagreements have been as pronounced and diverse from the start but this far along they're much more likely to speak out against the status quo set by the CDC and whatnot.

The problem is journalists looking for click bait.

And here are 17 reasons why!

I think most of the experts have started to coalesce now after a week of confusion. the problem is loads of non-nationally known doctors and scientists and other in the field who show up in every one of their threads going WELL AKSHUALLY.

lots of MDs spreading bad advice, including that masks are bad

MBs.

neanderthal maybe i’m dim but i don’t know what the fuck anything in that twitter thread means

My 6 and 11 year olds are starting school in Houston soon. No mask mandate in schools, no social distancing, full classes.

Our kids are good about masking, but I don't think it's enough. But we're not about to start home schooling, so.... We kinda feel like we're forced into a shit situation.

I wish Greg Abbott would choke on a chicken bone.

Wachter didn't write this, but shared it: https://inguyun.medium.com/the-provincetown-outbreak-is-actually-good-news-if-you-are-vaccinated-93a1edd763b6

and here's why

I’d like to share this gem from the email the school district sent out yesterday to all parents:

The district anticipates that as the community continues to return to pre-pandemic conditions, that the processes below will also guide the school district’s return to pre-pandemic operations.

I wrote to the school district and gave them a piece of my mind. This is what we call a return to pre-pandemic conditions? When the state is setting new records for daily cases, in the midst of an outbreak of a more dangerous variant? I made sure they know how furious I am that my daughter’s health and safety is taking a backseat to the dangerous and backward politics of Florida.

Their response was equally infuriating:

… administrators and teachers will work to foster a culture of civility and tolerance and all choices will be respected...

Why should all choices be equally respected?? The choice to put others at risk should be not only tolerated but respected?

"all choices respected" fuck that. I'm sorry, that's absolutely awful. I'm glad to live in a school district that takes things seriously and has no time for that anti-vaxx bullshit.

Similar to "pre-pandemic conditions", we've gotten three pieces of communication from my workplace in the last week that all say, "as we return to normal after COVID-19". Excuse me, what?

That language about tolerance and respect obscures the fact that the virus is an objective danger to life and health. It's the old libertarian saw about your right to choose where to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. The very nature of communicable disease is that it is a communal problem.

One school wrinkle here (speaking of punishing people for not getting vaccinated) is that at our high school, "students (and staff members) who have been vaccinated and are exposed to COVID-19, will not need to quarantine as long as they remain asymptomatic. Currently, Oak Park Public Health is requiring 14 days of quarantine for unvaccinated persons who are exposed to the virus, regardless of whether they are symptomatic. We want to do all we can to limit lost instructional time this year, and so the benefits of vaccinations to keep students in our classrooms cannot be understated. Guidelines from the state board of education make it clear that we will not have hybrid learning this school year for students who are at home. And while we are working to provide remote support structures to help students who are quarantined, zooming into a class from home will not be an option."

So basically, if you are unvaxxed and exposed to Covid, you could really be academically fucked. If someone in a classroom tests positive, then anyone unvaxxed in that class or social/sport/whatever circle will have to hit the bricks for two weeks. Which is how it was the past half year, more or less, but that was with the option of at-home learning, and the school is providing a lot less wiggle room on that front going forward than they did in the recent past.

Eh, if it is someone who chose not to vaccinate but otherwise could be, that's a good policy. Fuck 'em. They should lose access to school for putting others at risk. We need more consequences. Presumably there is wiggle room in this policy for those who simply cannot get vaxxed, or some other accommodations.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Don't want to get vaxxed? Well, here are the repercussions, asshole.

Yeah, we're on the same page.

I'm getting a sense of a rising tide of anger on the part of vaccinated folks (as opposed to the ever-present inchoate anger of the unvaxxed), and it seems like maybe people in charge would do well to get out in front of this and start establishing some firm institutional restrictions before things start getting ugly (or uglier). We're quickly hurtling towards the colder months and the potential for bigger spikes and lockdowns, etc., and the understandable resentment needs to be acknowledged. Mealy-mouthed 'both sides'-ism is going to elicit an increasingly-sour response the longer responsible people feel they're being punished for the actions of maniacs.

Otm. Our school board had to listen to 30 speeches from scripted (probably planted) parents screaming at them about how their kids should have freedom from oppressive masks, and then they promptly voted *unanimously* to rescind the mask mandate. They need to be hearing from the other side too- the people with genuine concerns about health and safety, not just these loud bullshit freedom assholes.

You'd think we would've gotten at least a little better at pushing back against useless, loud-mouthed assholes by now instead of just sheepishly shuffling out of their way every goddamned time.

If the last five years have taught me anything, it's that we *always* end up caving to these dipshits, in one way or another. It's so disheartening.

have any of y'all seen the movie Threads?

imagine that, but instead of nuclear winter, it's just a buncha dead bodies lying around outside and shirtless people with Confederate flags slowly dying muttering "worth it, owned the libs"

It feels like part of this is “the squeaky wheel getting the grease”, i.e., conservative strategizing that the louder and more obnoxious their “concerned parents”, “common-sense thinkers”, “freedom-fighting patriots”, and other obvious plants are, the more their talking points will be accepted as a reasonable position. With the idea that actual normal people, who are not insane, will tend to be less belligerent, less rigid in their beliefs (more able to see “both sides”), and less vocal. So the more they crank it up to 11 with the bad-faith acting, the better results they get, because the other, more reasonable side will tend to allow themselves to get sidelined and spoken over.

But there is this underlying assumption, maybe not even thought out, but it’s there, that these highly vocal and belligerent people are so sure of themselves, that surely they must be ready and able to back up their words with reasoning, examples, evidence, and even action! That there is no sense challenging them because they will not back down, and they may even get violent. But maybe the actual fact is that they are not prepared to be challenged. Maybe their loud-mouthed, venomous hostility and self-assurance would wilt like wet paper in the face of a challenge. I’d like to start finding out if that’s the case.

christ this is a bleak tweet

COVID-19 vaccine required for all New Orleans deputy constables ahead of heavy eviction workload https://t.co/XYbIoIGwms

— wdsu (@wdsu) August 2, 2021

god that's depressing. and was avoidable.

Austin is officially in stage 5, which means the highest level of caution based on hospitalizations and other factors

Florida's in stage FUCK

Well, Austin is home to 51,000 University of Texas students, known affectionately by their team's mascot, as the Young Asshats.

https://www.austintexas.gov/covid19

Still showing Stage 4?

I read that Austin REACHED Stage 5 but it hasn’t been officially declared so still at Stage 4 rules

I read that the guidance for TX stage 5 is no different than stage 4, so not sure how much it matters.

stage 5 changes recommendation for travel for unvaccinated from "only if necessary" to "don't"