outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Well, these latest tidbits at least make me feel less like a crazy forest hermit… I reckon I’ve been applying just about the right level of restraint/caution.

But lord do I hate this

Congrats humanity on making sure this is an endemic pandemic. Reports about B4/B5 feel pretty bleak.

It also feels like the fear mongering over the last week is increasingly difficult to separate from the reasonable warnings and data sharing. Saw a couple threads just yesterday getting shared widely on Twitter that start out as wise and apt data sharing and warnings, but quickly devolve into essentially saying masks should be worn at all times, even outside and that outdoor transmission is possible even if you pass by someone with 4/5. I've also seen a lot of unverified doctor's tweets getting widely shared with anecdotal data that these variants appear to be leading to much more severe hospitalization among even vaxxed and boosted younger folks. It's all just seems even harder to sort the signal from the noise lately.

Don't get me wrong, numbers are trending in a bad direction and I think it's important to alert and warn to see if we can shift any behavior now that mask wearing has been abandoned by so many, but I wonder at what point the hysteria starts to do more harm than good.

If "essentially saying masks should be worn at all times, even outside and that outdoor transmission is possible even if you pass by someone with 4/5" is an accurate depiction of events, would you still classify it as "hysteria"? I'm not being disingenuous, I can't fully unpack every tweet either, but I'm still wearing N95s into places and on transit, and it seems like a good and easy thing I can do when the covid+ rate is supposedly 25% in NYC (one figure I've seen).

Oh I am still wearing a N95 on transit, in buildings and if I (rarely) happen to be in a large crowd outside, but these tweets are suggesting that we should be masked everywhere outside, which does seem to me over the top based on what we've learned over the last two years.

Maybe I shouldn't have focused on that specific item, there's just an over the top tone to a lot of threads that scan as fear mongering. Can't find it quickly now, but saw one that said "if you leave your house without a mask on, you will be killing someone with your choice". Which, maybe? But that feels... extreme and not helpful.

Liiiiiike...telling people what their assessed risks are and what they can do to protect themselves and others, when you just acknowledged that numbers are trending and infection counts are rising, and more people are getting more seriously ill...obviously no one is HAPPY about this reality! But just reporting on it isn't fearmongering.

But I'm talking about the threads that start out as reporting, but devolve into unsourced speculation - the latter is my concern, not the former.

I 100% agree that we should be ringing alarm bells right now.

I guess the “everywhere outside” thought is driven by epidemiologists saying this is by some distance the most contagious variant yet.

So the risk level of specific behaviors may no longer be at the baseline to which we have been accustomed.

I’ve added “when close to other people outdoors” to my times-to-mask. Maybe overcautious, we’ll see.

Xposts sorry

I follow a lot of disabled & chronically ill ppl on my media and yes, the messaging from some people in that area is more intense, because their lives are pretty intense already and it sounds like they're living in a different reality than people who don't identify as "high-risk" or compromised or w/e. I don't always know how to receive that message because practically speaking most people seem to be at 0% working empathy reserves and Idk what can be done about that.

xxxpost I'm always skeptical of "oh shit, it can be transmitted even with fleeting contact" reports because they said this during Delta and this was all based on one anecdotal story of someone who passed an infected person in an airport and there was zero attempt to actually ascertain whether this person had possibly been around other infected people that day or other days. eventually this anecdote DID get called into question in a few studies but naturally it didn't circulate as well as the original story. and also, the 'fleeting contact' depends on what happened during that contact. if someone coughed on or near you, maskless, it really doesn't matter at all how long you were in their presence.

as far as I can tell, there's nothing to suggest that outdoor transmission for BA.4 and BA.5 is more likely other than the fact that it's just inherently the most transmissible of all of the variants. i wouldn't begrudge anybody for masking outdoors, but I have seen no reputed source actually suggest it's necessary. and there are a LOT of amateur cranks on Twitter who have spread a lot of misinformation.

and I'm hardly a "COVID minimizer" in saying that, though Twitter would say otherwise. these are the same people who were screaming OMG EBOLA IS AIRBORNE during the Ebola epidemic of 2014 even though, no, it was not airborne. a lot of the people circulating rumors aren't even experts in their field, but it gets picked up as they're a blue check for another reason. so I am sympathetic to what jon says - fearmongering and unsourced information don't help anybody.

this isn't me saying 'these things are false', but people jump from "suspicion" to "100% confirmed truth" very fast.

the empathy reserves thing is very true. the "OMG WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE US DO, LOCKDOWN FOREVER" reactionary crew seems to jump on any Tweet that suggests BA.4 and BA.5 might be a bad thing. it's all strawman, strawman, strawman with them. wondering how bad it will get here. South Africa didn't have much of a BA.2 wave.

impossible to tell this week because the 4th of July fucked up reporting royally.

I have a chronic autoimmune condition (crohns) and tbh I’ve never found a solid accounting of how that elevates my risk level or not. My wife has hypothyroid and diabetes and those definitely elevate risk.

I would give anything to be doing the things I was doing last July tbh… anything other than getting covid and drawing the short straw re severity lol

my partner has crohns and i believe the elevation of risk is mainly dependent on the medication you take and whether it is an immunosuppressant or not (or at least this is what her specialist told her). she finally caught Covid a few weeks ago and had it realtvely mildly - mainly some weird pains.

jvc & Neando - maybe our media feeds are just different. I haven't noticed a preponderance of the kind of tone I think you're describing. I definitely see perspectives on things that I don't know what do to about, but the fault in that is not on the person who's just explaining what's happening. I am troubled by the BA 4/5 stats and I'm heading back into NYC today for a large outdoor event tomorrow. Sigh.

I haven't noticed a preponderance of the kind of tone I think you're describing

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXJccxNUYAAK_va?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

I saw an article on CNN last week that quoted fucking Feigl-Ding and I damn near threw my phone across the room.

Is Topol bad? Every highlighted part of that article seems reasonable to me.

July 4 reporting is messed up but fwiw north east wastewater doesn’t suggest we’re about to have a huge wave.

I saw an article on CNN last week that quoted fucking Feigl-Ding and I damn near threw my phone across the room.

xxxxpost Josh, I wouldn't put Eric Topol (who wrote the article above) in the crank category. he does have a tendency to jump on pre-prints without vetting them, but he's right more than he is wrong. he's just upset at how our country has mishandled the pandemic from the beginning.

in orbit I don't venture into *that part* of Twitter anymore because it's toxic, but there is definitely an entire wing of Twitter that spreads mass misinformation under the guise of "the truth you're not being told", who actually sic their followers on actual experts they feel aren't 'taking things seriously enough' (Dr Angela Rasmussen gets a LOT of this flack, much of which is misogynist). I had to stop as it was affecting my mental health, as even when I read twitter feeds I liked, these people would invade.

a few times in this thread I've actually made a list of whom to avoid, before I just gave up reading Twitter altogether. one of these guys, whose name I've thankfully forgotten, claimed to be the "sole expert on the pandemic", started a substack with a decent number of followers, and has zero experience in any field even five clicks removed from virology or epidemiology.

that's a very different category than, say, Dr Eric Topol, Scott Gottlieb, Tulio Olivera et al saying "hey, this one is worse than we've seen and here's what you should know", which I agree is helpful, even if the message isn't what we want to hear.

stay safe!!! just ordered more N95s myself.

Is Topol bad? Every highlighted part of that article seems reasonable to me.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, July 8, 2022 11:06 AM bookmarkflaglink

no Topol's good. humorously, he gets flack both from people saying he's not taking the pandemic seriously enough, and also from people who say he's a scaremonger.

He had an open about monkeypox in the Washington post yesterday!!!

jfc! Since successfully finding the right combo of terms to block him completely from my Twitter feed, I has lived a few blissful months without hearing anything from him.

Yep, topped up on our supply of N95s as well. I'm one of the last two people in our building still wearing one every day. Not sure it actually helps, but I also have an air purifier running at my desk.

humorously re: wastewater, I had one friend who was posting the latest data for FL, and another friend genuinely asked why the increase in wastewater was a concern (as this was when 'wastewater data' had just started to become mainstream), and another friend hopped in to say (not even jokingly) 'because there's always a risk kids will get into the septic system and possibly drink the water', and OP said "uh, no, that isn't it at all".

Your Local Epidemiologist (Katelyn Jetelina) is also a very very good substack to follow. She just posted a state-of-things update yesterday

in orbit I don't venture into *that part* of Twitter anymore because it's toxic, but there is definitely an entire wing of Twitter that spreads mass misinformation under the guise of "the truth you're not being told"

Yes I'm aware there are covid cranks on the internet. What I'm asking is that we not equate them with people who have a reasonable message that one just doesn't like the content of.

I mean I think we're on the same page!

absolutely!

Yeah I don't think any of us are disagreeing. My whole point was that I've seen a few new (to me) Twitter experts that really ride the line between reasonable messaging and OTT spec content - folks that share legit data and science but also spin off into what is clearly their own speculation and interpretation about some of the finer points. That's what I meant by finding it harder lately to separate the wheat from the chaff. Like threads that start out with a general warning (good!), then several tweets linking to studies and data (good!) but then swing to unsourced speculation (less good!).

on another note, I hate living in FL because the entire pandemic has been politicized. DeSantis didn't order any extra vaccine after vaccinations were approved for under-5 (they can still get them, especially since nobody in FL wants to get vaccinated anymore, but he didn't order any because he had his own Department of Health recommend against having under-5s get them). His Department of Health has also recommended against gender reassignment surgery based on very specious science, as a very clear dog whistle for transphobia.

and he appointed a Surgeon General who is basically not far removed from "COVID is a hoax". we're truly on our own here.

DeSantis getting to the national level is a scary disaster I worry about. dude is Trump on even scarier crazy pills, without the drama and distractions derailing his momentum like the former.

Jon not Jon, thanks for the suggestion for Jetelina, I've read a few of her posts and they're clear and easy to follow. and I don't have to venture onto Twitter! woohoo

Just like...what does it say about the state of the world that, in seeking accurate news about an ongoing pandemic, laypeople are left trying to discern which Twitter users are and are not full of shit. It's insane.

I'm just trying to come to terms with the notion of wearing a mask pretty much everywhere but my home for the next several years at least. It seems like that's all that I as an individual can do at this point (aside from getting boosted regularly).

Jetelina talked about BA5 being more transmissible in her last few emails, but seems to be a bit less EVERYBODY PANIC about it

Not on Twitter and don’t know who the ppl under discussion are so just wanking aloud as usual, soz, but this discussion is ringing strangely from here in uk where there is almost total tacit consensus that we don’t really discuss covid and what might be done to control its spread (and nobody wears masks, anywhere, lol) despite a huge chunk of the workforce currently being off sick with it. Like in my experience ppl do talk about it but only to be like “haha everyone’s getting covid rofl ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” it’s a v strange phase of this v strange era

In other news this dickhead still a dickhead (thought the revive might have been about this) https://www.newsweek.com/naomi-wolf-accused-inciting-harassment-restaurant-over-vaccine-policy-1722389

I didn't post that to rip on Topol, though I find him among the most over-reaction prone (justified or no) of the smart people. I just posted it for the histrionic headline that elides some important context. That is, BA5 (or whatever) may be the "worst" in terms of transmissibility, but afaict (including in that article pic I posted) there is no indication (yet) that it is any worse in terms of hospitalization or death or serious illness, especially among the vaxxed. (right?). Personally, I'll take an illness that is much easier to get but much less likely to seriously harm than an illness that is slightly harder to get but more likely to put me in the hospital. Not that there seems to be any research affirming who gets hardest and why.

And as far as ott goes, I've seen a few people online that keep stressing that it's N95 mask or nothing, but it's unclear to me if it means KN95 interchangeably with N95 or the full-on double-strap tight fit N95. I've had almost nothing but good experiences at the many vaccine clinics I've now volunteered at over the last couple of years, but the only time I saw people close to frustrated or angry was a winter clinic, where people where waiting aside to reduce congestion inside, and my job was to hand out then-required N95 masks and walk them through putting them on. It was maybe 15 degrees out, and these poor folks had to take off their gloves and hats, take off their masks, then put on a tricky double-strap N95 before they went inside. I've not seen the local health department try to impose those things on anyone again.

that we don’t really discuss covid and what might be done to control its spread (and nobody wears masks, anywhere, lol) despite a huge chunk of the workforce currently being off sick with it. Like in my experience ppl do talk about it but only to be like “haha everyone’s getting covid rofl ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” it’s a v strange phase of this v strange era

To be fair, this is generally true here as well, I find this board to be among the outliers. Mask wearing is effectively non-existent even in my liberal enclave.

god I hate Naomi Wolf. one of the worst Naomis to ever Naomi.

outside of the Twittersphere, my circle doesn't even talk about COVID much unless it's to report that they got it themselves. the fight director of my last play at the Fringe festival had to plead w/ people on FB to wear masks indoors to shows, as multiple shows had their runs end early due to COVID. and this was among people who dutifully masked all throughout 2020 and 2021 who just randomly gave up or didn't realize reinfections were much more common with Da Cron.

one (now former) friend of mine attended shows WITH AN ACTIVE COVID INFECTION, unmasked.

Xpost
Yeah the headline of that WaPo piece was the one bit of it I objected to. THE WORST VARIANT. The body of it seemed fine

I mean I understand the need to move on psychologically, 2 years in and vaccinated - for those of us on the ground what is there to talk about really? I doubt ppl spent 3 years talking constantly about flu in early c20 either. It’s the policy vacuum of govt/bosses &c that’s more unnerving, really feels like vulnerable ppl have been hung out to dry when something must be possible between “lock them away forever” and “fuckem last one back at work is a rotten egg” idk

Sorry again this maybe better for the (defunct?) venting fears & experiences thread

ahh gotcha. yeah it does feel a little Lord of the Flies-y even here.

I am often the only one masked in my gym, but today, I bouldered some hard problems with a guy who was also wearing one. Made me not feel like such a crank.

Am going to wear one while working the bar tonight— here's hoping it doesn't have an effect on my tips.

In a hotel room while a techie (unmasked) fixed my WiFi problems, I got so nervous I kept my mask on 10 minutes after he'd left, even though he'd been in the room no more than three or four minutes ("What if droplets linger in the AIR?!").

lost count of how many nurses I saw prairie-dogging it at dad's hospital. I doubt intentionally, dicknosing happens with those surgical masks over the course of a day, and sometimes they pull it down momentarily and get sidetracked due to being overworked and forget it's down.

NONE of them in the room working with my dad, thankfully, and in fact they've all been wonderful. but elsewhere in the building.

lol that is not the definition of "prairie-dogging" with which i am familiar

A good unhysterical read.

That was good, thanks. Reads essentially like public health officials more realistically lining up with what much of the public already decided. Get vaccinated. Consider masking indoors or in situations that make you uncomfortable. Most likely safer outside than inside. If you're at higher risk, take more precautions. Test if you think you've been exposed. If you feel sick, stay away from others. If someone seems sick, stay away from them. And so on. Pretty practical, definitely not hysterical.

For myself, I'll be with my dad in Eugene, Oregon here in a few days for the world track and field championships, and that's held outdoors. I gather the seats are comfortable individual ones where they used to be just wooden bleachers not even that long ago, but I still expect it to be packed, and am planning on wearing a mask out of caution. (The events we'll be attending will be at night as well so it'll be cooler in general, and therefore not as uncomfortable as it might be during summer; otherwise I suspect we'll be generally chilling in our rooms and doing individual ambles around town; I plan on taking all meals outdoors by default.) As my dad did recently have his bout but also then got his second booster when feasible, I'm not AS worried he'll catch it again given general reports on possible reinfection, but he's indicates he's wisely taking no chances regardless. Obviously we'll be masked on the flights up and back.

i keep worrying about my dad getting it in the hospital, but so far hasn't. i am masking around my mom at home because I keep visiting dad.

mom's recovery from surgery is progressing to the point where her oxygen levels are almost back to normal, so don't wanna fuck that up.

i sit outdoors when I can too. but quite honestly....I love being outside, so that's not a huge ask. granted, it IS stiflingly not, but most places have fans or shade or umbrellas.

SF has fully embraced the parklet/outdoor seating area model to the point where it's been fully incorporated into law/code here, so that's been a relief; numerous spots have heating options as well during cold times (which, of course being SF, can be any time of the year, depending).