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

i have a co-worker who put off getting vaxxed and he is downright miserable. he's had it two weeks now and says he feels worse now than he did a week ago :(.

(yes, to echo the chorus, best wishes man alive and fam, and i'm glad you're vaxxed!)

there is an epidemiologist in FL claiming FL will be 'near herd immunity' soon and I refuse to link it here as I refuse to boost that article. so fucking irresponsible - we have no idea what the threshold for "herd immunity" is, and using phrases like that causes people to change their behaviors.

Agreed. Reckless messaging like this might jeopardize the heretofore excellent decisionmaking capacities of the people of (checks notes) Florida.

fwiw it looks like cases in this wave in florida look like they may have peaked

have you a link?

Alfred, I begged off in-person teaching this semester, even tho we have an indoor mask mandate with no exemptions and a vaccine mandated by October 15 for all students and staff at the institution where I'd been working. My partner told me about the number of beds in the ICU taken up by Covid patients, and I looked at the rates of positive cases at the institution, and I said "no way." They won't let professors decide whether to teach in person or not, even if there's a positive case in one of their classes. It's completely irresponsible afaic.

Never mind. From the Orlando Sentinel:

One model created by University of South Florida researchers predicts the state will hit the most daily infections by Aug. 24, bringing about 23,000 that day, said Dr. Edwin Michael. Because the delta variant has infected so many unvaccinated people, and more than 66% of Floridians have been immunized, he said the state will likely hit herd immunity in early September.

If immunity gained from infection proves to be long-lasting — though research has indicated it offers shorter protection than that of the vaccine — and if vaccines hold, Michael said the pandemic could end by early next year.

“If immunity is long term, this will be the last significant wave,” he said, noting “flare-ups” could still occur. “There’s a lot of caveats to this.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people who have been infected and recovered from COVID-19 should still get vaccinated.

“If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC Director this month, following the findings of a study showing unvaccinated people are two times more likely to be reinfected.

A University of Florida model predicts a similar timeline, projecting a peak to come at the end of last week or sometime next week, said Dr. Ira Longini, a biostatistician who helped develop it. The model, updated Aug. 14, predicts a more severe summit at about 33,000 cases in a single day, or 150 cases per 100,000 residents, according to a report published by the school.

i finally read https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/08/delta-has-changed-pandemic-endgame/619726/ btw. it's excellent of course.

couple of things jumped out

If no other precautions are taken, Delta can spread through a half-vaccinated country more quickly than the original virus could in a completely unvaccinated country.

and

But herd immunity—the point where enough people are immune that outbreaks automatically fizzle out—likely cannot be reached through vaccination alone. Even at the low end of the CDC’s estimated range for Delta’s R0, achieving herd immunity would require vaccinating more than 90 percent of people, which is highly implausible. At the high end, herd immunity is mathematically impossible with the vaccines we have now.

also i didn't realize things were this bad

USA is now just 48th on the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker list of 1st vaccine shots per capita and 51st in % fully vaxxed. https://t.co/NmrDyP1oHe

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) August 23, 2021

xpost the latter part is a reality i don't think most have realized yet.

fwiw it looks like cases in this wave in florida look like they may have peaked

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, August 23, 2021 12:15 PM bookmarkflaglink

I sure as fuck hope so. the hospitals are at breaking point, but i know those aren't going to decline until much later than cases.

is tehre a name for a logical fallacy where we assume the most negative takes/news are correct simply because they're negative? I see a lot of that going around. which doesn't mean we shouldn't admit negative news is negative but I know a lot of people that will hear two reports about the same thing and inherently believe the most negative of the two.

If no other precautions are taken, Delta can spread through a half-vaccinated country more quickly than the original virus could in a completely unvaccinated country.

This is just restating the R(0) of each variant, but in layman's terms which, ofc, makes it a much better way to deliver the message to the vast majority of the population who have no medical expertise.

At the high end, herd immunity is mathematically impossible with the vaccines we have now.

Which is why it cannot be overstressed that the benefit of the vaccines is quite simply they will save your life 99.7% of the time. Herd immunity was always a highly theoretical outcome about which few people had an accurate understanding. Not dying is much easier to understand.

is tehre a name for a logical fallacy where we assume the most negative takes/news are correct simply because they're negative? I see a lot of that going around. which doesn't mean we shouldn't admit negative news is negative but I know a lot of people that will hear two reports about the same thing and inherently believe the most negative of the two.

― Duke Detain (Neanderthal), Monday, August 23, 2021 12:29 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

my dad does this about football and his view is you're either right or pleasantly surprised, so it's a good way to go through life.

sort of a dirty pascal's wager there

heh, Neanderthal, check this out:

https://www.wpbf.com/article/usf-researchers-florida-will-reach-peak-of-covid-surge-next-week-herd-immunity-sept-11/37342961

my dad does this about football and his view is you're either right or pleasantly surprised, so it's a good way to go through life.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, August 23, 2021 11:56 AM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's a problem with something like COVID where simply always taking the most cautious approach can have its own harms. But it's never an easy call to make.

Yes I don’t agree with my dad and the prevalence of that attitude is part of the reason I left the UK tbqfh

that is kind of what bugged me about Topol's 'sick burn' against the infectious disease doctor last night, like he was actually chastising him because he was "being too positive", as if Topol's grimmer outlook was inherently superior because it was grim.

I mean, sometimes grim IS correct. I don't believe in putting perfume on a pig. but when I told a fellow Floridian cases appeared to be peaking as an attempt to be reassuring, I got "OH MY GOD THAT'S BULLSHIT, NEANDERTHAL, we aren't fucking PEAKING, and it's irresponsible to say that, we can't be complacent", like....i fucking...know? do we gots to caveat every statement now?

It's been really fun having my allergies kick back in over the last week or so.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, August 23, 2021 8:43 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Glad to know it's not just me.

For me it's not allergies but mosquitos as of late. I feel my odds of catching West Nile are much higher than Covid.

What's the case for thinking Florida's cases aren't peaking? The week-on-week percentage increase has been going down for several weeks in a row now. Missouri, which was hit by this wave first, a few weeks before Florida, already has cases going down. I mean it sucks that we been through enough of this now to say "this is how it works" but -- this is how it works. The question of whether we're at "this is it, enough people have acquired immunity either the hard way or the easy way that it's just local flare-ups from here on out" or "brace yourself for the winter wave" is of course another question entirely.

Another piece of good news is that the Delta waves in the upper Midwest and northeast grew just as rapidly as in the South (Delta being Delta) but seem to be, at least for now, topping out at a much lower level, at least in part because vaccines work and are good. And the number of shots we're giving per day keeps going up and up and it is not at all unreasonable we can get to the place where what happened in Florida and Louisiana and Mississippi this summer doesn't happen anymore.

I think that's the situation. After a while, the virus has nowhere else to go after running out of infected people except to vaccinated ones, in which case the infections are overwhelmingly asymptomatic to mild.

Denmark has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. At current pace the US will get to that point in about three months, which would mean about 60 COVID deaths per day. Compared to about 800 per day now.

and, as previously noted, the U.S. is back up to April levels of jabs per day.

projecting future vaccinations by simply extending the current trend line seems a bit iffy to me

the issue is the way FL is reporting its cases. Everybody got excited that a more precipitous decline was on the way last week given the really light case load on Thursday, only for a sharp uptick on Friday and Saturday (and we're talking even when considering "day of week" effect). turned out the low case count on Thursday was an INCOMPLETE report out and a lot of Thursdays cases got rolled into Friday and Saturday. one reason to not take one day's worth of data as an indicator.

also, though the week to week case rate shrunk last week (by ~1,000 cases), the positivity rate of tests went up from 19.3% to 19.8%.

there's a definite difference between plateau and 'decline' and I think a bunch of people are afraid to call "decline" before they're sure we're finished plateauing.

or we might all be dead and not know it idk

projecting future vaccinations by simply extending the current trend line seems a bit iffy to me

― it is to laugh, like so, ha! (Aimless),

I wasn't trying to, I hope. Any increase however modest means fewer places for the virus to go.

What's the case for thinking Florida's cases aren't peaking? The week-on-week percentage increase has been going down for several weeks in a row now.

they probably are (it's happened elsewhere with this wave), but there have been multiple times in the past 18 months where growth in cases has slowed or stopped (or cases have fallen) before rising again, so your second sentence doesn't necessarily imply the first https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html. cases are rising again the UK right now fwiw https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases.

yup. UK bounceback is concerning, even if hospitalizations (while now increasing a bit) haven't moved with the same severity.

projecting future vaccinations by simply extending the current trend line seems a bit iffy to me

― it is to laugh, like so, ha! (Aimless), Monday, 23 August 2021 21:57 (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If you think the rate of vaccinations will slow, then extend the time for us to reach Denmark. I'm providing actual information that you can use however you want.

During the hearing on Florida's restrictions for requiring students wear masks, one of the attorneys representing parents has been coughing all day. She told the judge she caught covid from her preschooler.

— Meryl Kornfield (@MerylKornfield) August 23, 2021

I... but.. that's... you... how...

good thing it was a virtual meeting

I'm really struggling with this facade of "normal" that is slapped on the pandemic right now and it's eating away at me. Like my job has returned EXACTLY to what it was in February of 2020, except with masks (no distancing, no capacity limits, same job function, same requirement of ass in seat full time ever day). We're all just charging full ahead back to a version of "normal" that wasn't really that great before and is borderline delusional in the face of a pandemic.

And it's just the constant mourning of all the little things that made life tolerable before that is wearing me down. It used to be a nice treat to stop at the good local coffee shop on the way to my office. Except COVID killed that shop. It used to be nice to not have to literally shove my lunch in my face as fast as humanly possible before strapping my mask back on because we all work in an open office and there is no private room to eat lunch. And just forget about the wild dreams of a leisurely lunch with a good book since restaurants around my office are either closed completely for indoor dining, don't have indoor seating or don't have outdoor seating at all (one fucking Chipotle being the only exception to the outdoor seating thing). I just wish so many of the little pleasures that used to make being back at the office more tolerable weren't out the fucking window. Without them it just makes every day feel just that much heavier and that much more stressful.

I know this is self-indulgent wallowing at this point, but I can't imagine I'm alone in struggling with being back at the office full time while the pandemic rages on and feeling like it's all the shitty parts of having a job without any of the small pleasures of having a job.

I'm sorry to hear it. I know you got kids, but for the sake of your sanity you gotta take mild calculated risks: taking the family or your wife to an early lunch where you know it's not crowded; going to a bookstore cafe; hanging out with friends -- anything.

To keep sanity, I've returned to outdoor dining and drinking on days off and weekends. I hang out hours at the library masked. I haven't stopped visiting friends at home. Again, small calculated risks -- and I get tested every 10 days.

Yeah I've been doing a couple of small things like that as well, more planned over the next couple of weeks. For me the real crunch time is when I start approaching when shows happen I have tickets for, and I will just have to think and plan very carefully. Worse comes to worse I don't go and I call it a donation to keep artist and venue going, it's already paid for. But I think what will be contingent is the booster shot, simply because I am eligible for it almost out of the gate last I've heard -- not that this automatically means perfection of course, simply that it will be a reassurance.

I never stopped masking in indoor public spaces when the CDC lifted its suggestions for vaccinated people in May, and my thinking is, FUCK YOU, unvaccinated people. I'm not crawling into a hole because of you, despite still keeping cautious.

Yeah same here. Outdoors was never a problem around June or so. Indoors? Always masked, always.

The thing that's really getting to me, other than my kids' constantly changing school/camp situations and their emotional turmoil, is the social loss. We're still relatively new in my town. I've actually managed to make friends here, but it's so much harder that we can't just be like "hey, come over, come inside for a drink/snack." I just want to get to that point where it's totally normal to have people stop in or come over for dinner, or to go to their houses. In fact, having moved mid-pandemic, there are almost no people here whose houses I've seen on the inside, which is a very strange feeling. I also don't think I've eaten inside any local restaurants, although I've been inside shops and coffee places. It's like I only live in the outside of my town (and my own house obv). I've never even seen the inside of my kids' school.

It's not entirely bad, because outside events can be really nice. I've been to some really nice patio get togethers and bbqs. I really, really hope things get better before the winter is over though, because patio heaters don't really do much, I've learned.

Yeah, when we bought ours (an electric one) a lot of the forums I read while researching noted it's not a coincidence that patio heaters sell the most in places like Arizona and the least in places like Minnesota. Our heater turned out fine, though. We had couple of winter get togethers outside on the absolute coldest of days. We just dug out the snow, arranged some chairs by the fire pit, and plugged in the electric heater as a sort of satellite where you could go and warm your hands or, in one particularly cold instance, thaw your frozen food.

One thing I kind of miss is that our block used to have a more or less weekly neighbor night, with everyone getting together at the end of the block for beers. Between the pandemic and a crew of our kids getting too old, that more or less stopped summer 2020 and never quite sparked up again this summer. We have, however, managed to stay relatively social, one way or another, and of our various other crews of good friends, no one has gotten sick, at least not from local transmission. Iirc one friend's daughter brought covid back from college, but didn't make anyone else sick in her family (who quarantined until they got a couple of negative tests). Another family we know all got sick (mild symptoms) when the Trumpy mother from Texas came to visit and brought covid with her. But locally, fingers crossed, everyone we know and hang out with has been reasonable and safe. I don't think anyone is looking forward to another winter of this, either, but at least I think we're all pretty comfortable with our limits and which of them can be pushed more than others.

In better news we all tested negative and none of the seven people (SIL plus in-laws and my family) who spent time together feel sick, so she probably wasn't contagious.

In some weird ways I find winter slightly easier to cope with because I don't have the distinct feeling that I'm missing as much anyway. Our social stuff really slows down in winter anyway and I don't have the added pandemic vibe of missing concerts and festivals and stuff nearly as much. That said, I sure hope this winter is easier than last.

The social isolation thing is real, I get it. When we first moved to the neighborhood we were excited because it was a really nice mix of long established families and young families like ours, unfortunately most of the latter have moved away for one reason or another. And the last three houses that sold in our immediate neighborhood sold to children of some of the older families already here, which is nice, but it also reinforces this very weird dynamic of a handful of families who have lived on the block for generations and they socialize constantly with each other but don't really let "new" people into the circle. Which never really bothered me before COVID and I still don't really feel like I'm missing much, but it would be nice to have that local social element/outlet.

xp - great news man alive!

good posts everyone.

Some professional venting: As a reporter covering local/state government, this wave is really exhausting and enervating to me. I'm so so tired of writing about COVID, of listening to people shout at the school board or whoever about having masks/not having masks, of tracking every bumbling incompetent step our local and state leaders are taking in their continuing refusal to deal with reality. I honest to god would rather write about zoning disputes or transportation planning. But I know this is actually all important and it all has to be documented and questions need to be asked and assumptions challenged etc. It's just draining for me at this point. (I realize this is not even a tiny smidge of the exhaustion experienced by healthcare workers in dealing with all of this, I can't imagine how they keep going.)

I feel that, tipsy, I get tired just reading the things people like you get tired writing -- but know that your readers are out there reading it and glad you're doing the work!

I imagine tipsy just using a MadLibs-style template at this point and filling in the unique details:

At a contentious town-hall meeting on DAY OF THE WEEKday in suburban NAME OF COUNTY County, tempers flared as irate anti-mask advocate Karen LAST NAME unleashed a NUMBER-minute tirade against the school system's latest anti-COVID measures.

Ms. LAST NAME's speech was rambling at times, but hinted at a dark conspiracy involving "alien lizard people from the planet NAME OF FICTIONAL PLANET, local council member FIRST NAME LAST NAME, Vice President Kamala Harris, County School Board chair FIRST NAME LAST NAME, Stacey Abrams, George Soros, FIRST NAME LAST NAME," and "the gays." Supporters of Ms. LAST NAME held signs reading "INSERT SOMETHING BATSHIT CRAZY HERE" and "WE WANT HEN FAP."

Desperate to restore order to the fractious meeting, Mr. LAST NAME repeatedly rapped his gavel and begged the capacity crowd of NUMBER to settle down, adding that there was "no evidence" the county's government was infiltrated by "reptilian aliens from the planet NAME OF FICTIONAL PLANET, GAYS/JEWS/MARXISTS/FEMINISTS (PICK TWO), or SENTIENT TYPE OF CHEESE PRODUCT."

omg, YMP.

Man, it hadn't even occurred to me before but it totally makes sense now that SENTIENT TYPE OF CHEESE PRODUCT is responsible for my Morgellons.

Well, you can't prove to me they're *not* responsible.