Vaccines, Infrastructure, and Kids In Cages: US Politics April 2021

the UK is planning to lift domestic restrictions pretty soon IIUC. not sure about inbound travel given the situation in the ROW. my point is more that you can set a pretty strict requirement to lift a given restriction and it's not impossible to reach it. (well, it might be in a country in which 25% of adults plan to refuse vaccination.)

I mean, we probably are never hitting herd immunity at this point, so I guess travel is just over forever if that's our benchmark.

Should we travel now? No, we should not. Is herd immunity a pipe dream at this point which will lead to all airplanes being grounded forever? I think that's pretty obviously a different question and involves a lot more conjecture. But this summer, vacations shouldn't involve flights.

xpost I didn't say impossible, I said years, if the standard is no new cases and herd immunity.

i understand. i'm saying that a rich country with access to vaccines could set an aggressive target for lifting all domestic restrictions (probably not zero, but small, like 5 per million or something) and that wouldn't be synonymous with "never lift this restriction" or "years" because they could reach it in the next few weeks.

the UK and israel (both now in the low tens per million) have in fact done this, and are going to succeed.

exponential growth goes both ways (or it does when there is effective healthcare and public health systems and hasn't been epistimic collapse).

Hope you are right! What remains to be seen is how successful these countries remain once they totally open up their borders again, considering tight restrictions on travel, and quarantines and whatnot, are some of the best ways of maintaining that success.

i would imagine the UK, a bastion of civil liberties and famously pro-immigrant island, is going to have a pretty strong stomach for requiring proof of vaccination to enter.

requiring proof of vaccination at the border would be a tough sell in the US because 25% of US adults will never get vaccinated (that number will be more like 10% in the UK, maybe even less). also the UK doesn't have land borders and is already committing unrelated international trade suicide, so there's less to lose by shutting people out.

well they do have that one land border...

new variants are popping up that you might either not be protected against or you can carry asymptomatically

i’d be worried about this if there were a shred of evidence for it. my parents are vaccinated, my wife and i will have had both doses by july, i haven’t seen them in a year and a half, and we’re going to travel to go see them. my dad’s in his eighties, i don’t know how many chances we have left. is this “necessary”? “unnecessary”?

I'm not waiting another year to hug my kids.

well they do have that one land border...

― Piven After Midnight (The Yellow Kid), Monday, April 19, 2021 3:48 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha i literally forgot it, which i assume is what the UK government is doing too.

Not to say anyone itt is doing this (I do totally understand what f. hazel is saying, believe me, I'm not planning to leave the country for quite some time yet), but it is frustrating to feel like the goalposts are being shifted wrt what fully vaxxed people can and can't do. I can absolutely see why people are frustrated to have been told to be patient until vaccinations are here, only to get vaccinated and then be shamed for doing things like traveling to see family they haven't seen for over a year.

Maybe you're vaccinated, but A. new variants are popping up that you might either not be protected against or you can carry asymptomatically and B. the vaccines aren't 100%... they're awesome in terms of protecting you from hospitalization

tracer otm. there's no substantial evidence for A.

B omits that they are also awesome at protecting you from _any_ kind of infectionr: https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/29/real-world-study-by-cdc-shows-pfizer-and-moderna-vaccines-were-90-effective/

Participants were tested weekly to look for all cases of Covid infection, even asymptomatic ones. There were 161 Covid infections in the unvaccinated workers, compared with 16 in workers who had received only one dose by the time of their infection and only three infections in people who had received both doses and were two weeks out from their second dose.

there's no equivalent study that I know of for J&J or AZ, but moderna and pfizer appear to be almost perfect vaccines with they make you 90%+ less likely to get covid with or without symptoms (which means they also make you 90%+ likely to give it to someone else). this is based on real world studies with the variants that are circulating now, now whatever was around last summer when the original trials for those vaccines were running.

*not whatever was around last summer

moderna and pfizer appear to be almost perfect vaccines with they make you 90%+ less likely to get covid with or without symptoms (which means they also make you 90%+ likely to give it to someone else).

sorry, I'm just over here enjoying the typo

"I'm not waiting another year to hug my kids." don''t you ... live with your kids? Do you mean you have not been touching them for the past year?

I am divorced. My ex has my kids in TN. I live in MA.

We have joint custody but that's meaningless when you aren't actually allowed to travel

oh shit, I did not know that happened, I'm sorry. I'll PM ya.

anyway IMO if you are fully vaxxed, there is no reason not to travel, particularly for reasons like this (to see family). is there some small chance that vaxxed people can still catch and spread covid? the evidence seems inconclusive at best, and if it were a clear and present danger I think we would not see these declining cases that we've seen in Israel and, in fact, parts of the US where vaccinations are happening at a large scale.

sorry, I'm just over here enjoying the typo

yeah sorry i've had four hours sleep every night for the past year. every comment i post has them these days.

On Friday I went to happy hour with two fully vaccinated coworkers at a brewery with a formidable outdoor seating section. A couple of us teared up. It felt good. Baby steps, man.

Congrats! At this point I'm just looking forward to booking a haircut (cannot wait until I can get my beard professional trimmed again tho) in mid-May.

we're gonna be travelling to Boston with the kids to meet my nephew who is going to be 1. I'm worried about the kids but the evidence seems to be that even if they get it, it won't be a big deal - afaik most people whose kids caught it didn't even know they had it

sorry, I'm just over here enjoying the typo
yeah sorry i've had four hours sleep every night for the past year. every comment i post has them these days.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, April 19, 2021 3:05 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i've really noticed this in my own writing - on ilx, for work - so many typos, lots of times i miss words in sentences. very disconcerting, i used to be able to write really clean copy and not have many edits.

I used to think that, too, but then I occasionally look at old things I wrote (not just here, everywhere) and there's all sorts of wrong shit, even post-edit.

my partner's sister came up from boston and we've had a house with her and her husband (both vaxed) and her three kids (8, 10, 12) for the past three days. It has been an experience.

I used to think that, too, but then I occasionally look at old things I wrote (not just here, everywhere) and there's all sorts of wrong shit, even post-edit.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, April 19, 2021 3:17 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

nah it's definitely different for me, my brain is dying, it's real specific stuff that i know didn't happen before. and at the magazine stuff used to get edited like 4 times, twice on paper w.pen, so i am pretty conscious of what it used to be like.

I feel like a negative test in the past 4 days or something is a much more useful barometer to fly than a vaccination card. You can be vaxxed and still theoretically contagious, or at least it's possible.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/covid-flight-record-infections-india-b1833655.html

In theory everyone was tested 72 hrs before travel.

Yep, you're not going to catch everyone. But that's true with people who have been vaccinated too, they can still be positive. I mean, my druthers are for everybody to be vaxxed before they get on a plane, and masked in flight. But I also think a negative test before flying is a good idea.

How's your family, tips?

All fine so far. Youngest kid — our first case — gets to go back to school tomorrow. His brother is in isolation the rest of the week, but has been healthy so far. My wife and I tested negative again on Friday, so it looks like our first shot is holding up pretty well. We should all be clear by this weekend, knock wood.

Minneapolis some kids have gone back, it was up to it parents. but the rest of the week everyone's back home in case the Chauvin trial goes the wrong way. fun times. my daughter's been home anyway

I thought a recent study had shown that people who are fully vaxxed are not contagious?

Very small chance.

The B.1.617 variant was first detected in India, but has since been found elsewhere, including California. It has worried experts as it contains two mutations in the spike protein that, it has been suggested, may boost its ability to escape the body’s immune responses. It is thought the variant may also be able to infect the body more easily.

Every single flight arriving in Toronto from India in the last month has had at least one COVID-positive passenger, and one-third of all international flights have carried the virus.

Whether it mutated in the US or mutated in India, I'm sticking to my "bad idea to fly it in and out unchecked" position.

What if you check your covid with your luggage and then just pick it up at your destination?

Or leave your covid at home, then rent a different one when you get there?

I read a lifehack once that said rather than checking your covid, at whatever cost, you can save a few dollars by having it FedEx'd right to your hotel, so that by the time you check in it's already waiting for you there.

Yeah I remember when that lifehack went... viral

this fucken guy
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/nyregion/andrew-cuomo-book-investigation.html

The New York State attorney general has opened an investigation into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s use of state resources as he wrote and promoted his recent pandemic memoir, the latest inquiry to engulf the embattled three-term Democrat.

The investigation followed disclosures that junior staff members and senior aides worked on Mr. Cuomo’s book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic,” including editing early drafts, sitting in on pitch meetings, and menial tasks like printing and delivering manuscript pages to the governor’s mansion.

Mr. Cuomo has insisted that any work done by government employees on the book — which garnered a seven-figure advance — was voluntary, allowing that some minor work may have been “incidental.”

The misuse of public resources has led to the downfall of numerous political figures, including a former state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, who resigned and pleaded guilty to a felony in 2006 after he used a state driver to run errands for his wife.

The investigation was opened after Letitia James, the attorney general, received a formal referral letter from the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, saying that a criminal investigation was warranted.

Hello hubris my old friend.

85 million adults fully vaccinated — fully vaccinated.

90 days ago that number was ... 400,000.

This country can do great things. pic.twitter.com/F99uJRayiK

— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) April 20, 2021

those are rookie first dose percentages, and they're going to stall earlier than in other countries because they're not bribing people to get vaccinated.

https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/open-uri20160811-32147-1dm69u9_4c7a4236.jpeg?region=0%2C0%2C600%2C600

Some serious doomposting these past few days.

Chauvin verdict is in

reading it at 4PM central

here we go

quick verdicts are usually very bad news for defendants, as I understand it

xxp haha, sorry. but if we top out at 70% of adults vaccinated we're in trouble. it looks like we might.