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

harm reduction, pure and simple. waiting until the local medical system is already severely overburdened before instituting NPIs is bad policy, in the same way that waiting for catastrophic outcomes of global warming before instituting effective reductions in CO2 emissions is bad policy.

― it is to laugh, like so, ha! (Aimless), Monday, August 16, 2021 3:12 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

On one hand, yes, waiting until extreme overburden is bad policy. But the other extreme means you can literally never lift restrictions. Because we have a highly contagious variant that we're not going to get rid of, and we're also not going to reach 90% vaccination. So surely there should at least be some level of hospitalizations at which restrictions are triggered?

Biden Officials to Advise Boosters for Most Americans 8 Months After Vaccination - The New York Times https://t.co/tvYSMFH0jI

— John Bresnahan (@bresreports) August 17, 2021

On one hand, yes, waiting until extreme overburden is bad policy. But the other extreme means you can literally never lift restrictions.

Yes, surely those two extremes you mention represent the only two available options.

xpost -- Interestingly, that'll make me due for such a booster next month. Which, if that can be logistically swung...I won't mind, simply because of my hoped-for concert plans alone. If I can get one by mid-September, well. But let's see more about the specifics first.

So they're really going to recommend a *third* shot before they even officially get FDA approval, huh? I know the wheels of bureaucracy move slow, but if they're going to keep this vaccine train rolling then why even wait? Been some 357 million doses given in the US, what's the FDA going to say? "Sorry, folks, we've determined it's *not* safe, hold off on those vaccines"?

Anyway, we all know the need for boosters is that when people started talking about tracking chips and magnetism the pharmaceutical industry realized they missed an opportunity and that this time around we'll get jabbed with the real deal and get the superpowers we deserve.

Per my 16-year-old son, the booster shots are to move us from 5G to 6G, which sounds awesome.

Ugh, so more forced obsolescence? This is going to be like the Moore's Law of vaccines. You know what they say, don't ever try a 6G vaccine if you've only had the 5G, because the 5G is going to seem so inferior to the new one.

I know there's little we can do about this as individuals, but it is absolutely shameful and disgusting that we're talking about booster shots when 75% of the world population has yet to receive a first shot.

Isn’t it also a little soon to say whether this is “waning” immunity that requires a booster vs delta just breaks through more easily? I can’t imagine we already have enough data to be sure.

seemingly Moderna protects best against Delta, but all the educators (around here at least) got J&J shots

I ate the lasagna.

If you, like me, get flu shots each year, the concept of a regular booster/revamp in response to projections about how a particular disease functions is not unknown.

yep

the justice argument against boosters is extremely compelling.

the "when does this end" argument is obviously not, but is going to be understandably common in countries that don't do mass annual flu vaccination (most of them, the US is unusual in this respect).

Very pleased to learn via email that my mom will not be going on a Viking River Cruise through Europe in October; due to concerns about Delta, she's pushing it back to April 2022.

Wow, mask requirement back in effect here for the next month, "everyone age 2 and older wear a face covering or mask when in in any enclosed building where other people, except for members of the person’s own household or living unit, could be present."

I think of myself as not on the overcautious side but I was already doing this. OK, not necessarily when I've been inside the house of somebody whose vaccination status I know, but a) I have still been primarily socializing outside rather than in, it's awfully nice here this August, and b) I and probably everybody else will still do this and the state is not gonna say boo, this is about stores.

eephus, yeah, same here -- except the part about the "awfully nice" weather.

I mean, I've definitely been hanging out inside (and outside) with friends.

The only thing I've changed is a recent upgrade from cloth to KN95. I haven't been maskless in an interior space (beyond my apartment and my mom's house over the 4th) since the beginning of last year.

you meet friends outside?

If you, like me, get flu shots each year, the concept of a regular booster/revamp in response to projections about how a particular disease functions is not unknown.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 17 August 2021 17:38 (yesterday) link

Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought the annual flu shot was not a “booster” at all, but rather a new vaccine based on scientists best guess at which strain of flu would dominate that year. So if that’s the analogy we would need a vaccine tailored to delta rather than a “booster” of the same

Ned literally said "booster/revamp" in your quote

flu jab is 3 or 4 strains at a time and they do repeat, certainly families repeat, but i don't know how much evolving goes on within families between years.

a/Hawaii/70/2019 (h1n1)
b/Phuket/3073/2013

for instance.

I think the whole idea of when do things go back to normal is just fantasy.

and, to quote Miguel, what's normal anyway?

I want no part of what the world looked like in 2019.

I just mean this won't be the last pandemic, obviously global warming is going to totally transform the way we live, we'll be nostalgic for the normal everyday life we had. Or like when seafood doesn't exist, coffee, wine, stuff like that

yeah I wouldn't mind sticking with 2019's avg temp

Seems like the teenage children of my friends are getting COVID left right and centre. I was speaking to another friend of mine whose 35 year old cousin is in intensive care and they don't give him much hope of getting out.I asked if he'd been vaccinated and he said, "Probably not, knowing his politics".

Ugh

So it looks like it's boosters for all (Americans) 8-months after second shot, starting in September. Which means I'm due in ... December?

Incidentally, I just had my blood drawn for the Red Cross antibody study I'm participating in for the first time since getting my vaccine back in April. They usually get back to me with results in a few weeks, I'm curious where my antibodies stand just four or so months after my second dose.

Stories like this infuriate me cuz #clicks

These are the relevant buried grafs:

A vast majority of vaccinated people who are hospitalized for Covid-19 are likely to be older adults or those who have weakened immune systems for other reasons. C.D.C. data show that 74 percent of breakthrough cases are among adults 65 or older.

Most states do not compile the numbers by age, sex or the presence of other conditions. But in Oregon, which does, the median age for a breakthrough-associated death is 83 years

As more people get jabbed, breakthrough cases increase (and let's stop calling them 'breakthrough' cases as if vaccination created a force field).

A vast majority of vaccinated people who are hospitalized for Covid-19 are likely to be older adults

But it's kind of a weird thing to say since that's... also true for unvaccinated people

Just got an email from my school district inviting all staff to "start the school year strong" by attending a "vaccination and wellness event" in a stadium, with yoga, meditation, and a DJ. So, an all-staff stadium party in advance of the school year, with Delta surging. What could go wrong?

They don't even need to do this as an inducement to get vaccinated. They are requiring vaccinations and most teachers in this district already have the shot.

I think the whole idea of when do things go back to normal is just fantasy.

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, August 18, 2021 7:35 AM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Or we could just accept a new normal where we're most likely going to get COVID, and if we are vaccinated we will probably be ok. Because that's the most likely scenario. That's already the scenario for a lot of people who can't work from home - they either get it (or have gotten it) vaccinated and wind up ok or get it unvaccinated and have an elevated risk of not winding up ok. If anything, I think it's a fantasy that things aren't already going back to that kind of normal - most people are not in WFH jobs and are not avoiding crowded indoor places indefinitely.

when was that normal previously

Happy to keep avoiding crowded indoor places indefinitely.

I’d prefer not to get covid and I don’t see why I should have to

Or we could just accept a new normal where we're most likely going to get COVID, and if we are vaccinated we will probably be ok. Because that's the most likely scenario. That's already the scenario for a lot of people who can't work from home - they either get it (or have gotten it) vaccinated and wind up ok or get it unvaccinated and have an elevated risk of not winding up ok. If anything, I think it's a fantasy that things aren't already going back to that kind of normal - most people are not in WFH jobs and are not avoiding crowded indoor places indefinitely.

This just strikes me as someone who has been completely unaffected by this entire pandemic.

The belief that the delta surge means almost everyone will end up getting infected with covid is just man alive's latest fixation. It could be true. It could be wrong. But it's pure prognostication, based half on extrapolation from the skimpy but frightening fact that we have to work with atm and half based on the emotional 'truth' those facts have engendered. iow, man alive is guessing a future that sounds personally convincing, like all the rest of us.

xp I am sorry, I don't know that. But your comments are infuriating to me.

man alive switched from "opening the economy is incautious" to "fuck it, open all the schools and stop crying, fewer kids than adults die and it will be summer sometime this year iirc" to "I'm vaxxed and I assume my kids have caught it, stfu and catch it you bussies" earlier this year

anyway further to Lily, in Seattle all city employees have to be vaxxed (cop union is fighting it, but a few of the many local cops who took part in the Jan 6 insurrection have been retired, so... yay?), and as of today anyone who works at a school in WA - teacher, bus driver, janitor, flower-arranging volunteer - has to get vaxxed, and there is a state-wide mask mandate for all non-private situations.

Pretty sure none of those are actual quotes

xp Both my kids had COVID (not "assumed," one tested positive and the other had the same symptoms) and my wife teaches in person. Also, not that it's remotely equivalent to loss of a loved one, but I haven't seen my brother or my niece (who I've only met three times) in two years, I've barely seen my elderly parents, I have another niece I've never even met, my wife can't visit her sick grandfather, when school was remote I had a child having regular emotional outbursts and saying she wished she was dead, etc. Yes, by comparison to many I have come out unscathed, but how exactly would a person be "unaffected" by this pandemic?

I 100% stand by opening the schools fwiw, it was the right move when they finally did it here, and there was no spread in the schools.

Ironically I think now we face a tougher situation where there actually will probably be spread in the schools, and I'm still sending my kids. Mandate that teachers get vaccinated imo.

But...there already has been spread in the schools. Lots of it.

Any limited spread we had in our school last year was traced to outside the school. We'll see how things shake out this year. As I understand it the biggest challenge so far has been lunch, largely because the school is in the midst of a large construction project and kids are jammed tighter than usual. I guess they're testing everyone once a week, so if Covid rears its head we'll know pretty soon.