That was my bet (positive as a lie). What do I win?
If he lied that will banhammer for 3 years and tennis should do the same worldwide for 1.
I generally think amplifying dunks on idiots is bad, but this is pretty good stuff. Lol’d at Rand’s stupid face, god bless that neighbor.
https://twitter.com/gunsdownamerica/status/1480944235645964304?s=21
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Why do Chuck and Nancy give Rand a hot microphone? Cant they yank his chair and give it to someone less Qanon-adjacent?
Interesting. This was a good point toward the end
“Aerosols will fill up indoor spaces rapidly in the absence of proper ventilation, so assuming the infected individual remains within the room, the levels of virus will be replenished.”
So I read this as—if the same infected people keep spewing out live virus in the same space then practically the 5 minute thing is really just going to impact the steady state and the environment will still be infective until that person leaves or some other factor (ventilation) pulls out the particles/droplets or hastens drying.
Clearly we know from some of the earliest studies that steady air currents from spot A to spot B can act as streams to carry the infection at least 10s of feet.
Also remember that Covid is already a “less deadly” disease. The endgame of death happens after an individual has already had lots of time to spew virus.
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Better late than never.
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More Fauci excellence. Make sure to listen to the end.
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Man I’m used to complete imbeciles in the House but I was under the obviously misguided assumption that Senators are better. That guy is dumber than a box of rocks.
What’s up everyone? I’m back! Of course I have some thoughts on the current situation in the pandemic and the current situation ITT, that can hopefully get people to talk past each other a bit less and be a bit less accusatory.
One thing that I think a lot of people might be missing in this back and forth is that everyone’s precaution level can (and SHOULD) be changing over time, and that doesn’t automatically mean you got it wrong before.
There are a lot of attempts to go for a “gotcha” on other posters based on what they said months ago. Pre-Omicron was a different world, just like pre-Delta was a different world, just like pre-Vaccine was a different world.
It can be correct to have been pretty damn close to normal 3-6 months ago once boosted (as protection vs Delta was very good), but it is clearly not a good idea to be close to normal right now if you want to avoid Omicron.
I was playing unmasked poker for a while post-booster and pre-Omicron. I felt safe doing so. Now I’m basically treating things the way I would if you dropped me into March 2020 in a time machine with my current knowledge: N95 for trips to the store, only seeing other people who I know have been careful the last 10-14 days before seeing them, nothing in person and unmasked where there’s potential exposure. I’m masking outdoors on the way into stores, mainly because the level of extra inconvenience is inconsequential and it can’t hurt, and there may be outdoor spread of Omicron.
That doesn’t mean I was wrong a couple months ago. I think there’s a significant likelihood that this continues for years, maybe even the rest of our lives (hope not), and the key to maintaining happiness and sanity while minimizing risk is to adjust your behavior/precautions to the data and your current booster status.
One thing we know for sure is that barring a HIGHLY lethal new variant, western society is done trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19. These are individual decisions. Perhaps in some communities, cities, regions, etc there are more precautions being taken - that’s great. In others there will be ~none. We have to decide how to live in the areas we live in and make personal risk decisions. We can criticize society at large for how this is being handled, but that doesn’t change the fact that we have to live within the society we choose to live in and make the personal decisions that society is leaving to the individual.
My primary concern from here on out is avoiding Long Covid, especially after Fauci’s latest comments and the data out of Finland. Thus I’m trying to personally mitigate my risk of catching COVID-19 to as close to zero as possible, unless/until we see data that vaccines, Paxlovid, or other treatments prevent most of the risk of Long Covid - especially the cognitive side of it, or anything that would take significant years off of life expectancy. I’ve seen conflicting data, expert opinions, etc on whether severity of case is linked to likelihood of and/or severity of Long Covid. So I feel like we simply don’t know yet.
The other thing about Omicron is that it’s so widely prevalent right now that even a highly efficacious vaccine is going to be tested FREQUENTLY. So to pull some numbers out of my ass, if the average unvaccinated person would have a 25% chance of infection in a certain situation, and the vaccine gives you 75% protection over that, you have a 6.25% chance of infection. That’s significant protection! But if you roll the dice on that type of situation five times a day for a month, guess what? You’re probably going to catch it, at which point you can rely on the extremely good protection against severe cases.
I’m very curious what others, especially some of our resident medical/science experts, think about the situation right now with Long Covid. How concerned would you be about it, being double vaxxed and boosted? Do you think it’s going to end up being strongly correlated to severity of case? In particular the cognitive side of it…
Last but not least, I find it absurd that we aren’t doing a massive study somewhere in the world on how the common cold coronaviruses spread. Are we all being infected every year, but the vast majority are asymptomatic? Are they surging in two waves per year and not one? Do they cause any long-term effects?
It seems like a study aiming to track the spread of regular coronaviruses would offer a lot of insight into the eventual end-game of COVID-19. If the regular common colds are spreading asymptomatically and like 90% of us catch them without even realizing it, their R0 is much higher than we previously thought, and we can probably conclude that asymptomatic infections don’t do much of anything to us and proceed accordingly.
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This was quite the pleasant surprise while I was scrolling through selecting posts to split off into a new thread. I hope I don’t read the post and you end it by saying you’re leaving again.
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Would be highly interested in reputable long COVID studies that show treatments are effective as the stuff I’ve found leaves me very uneasy. One of my fears is this is an endemic disease where the acute stage is becoming more treatable but that is still going to lower our life expectancy meaningfully when we repeatedly catch it and leave us vulnerable in particular to things like Parkinson’s and auto immune disorders.
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I feel like the answer to your last question there has to be no, because we would know about it… hopefully. But yeah the first two questions are interesting.
Redacted for privacy.
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The ONS survey, over four weeks in November and December 2021, suggests, of those with long Covid:
- 51% have fatigue
- 37% have loss of smell
- 36% have shortness of breath
- 28% have difficulty concentrating
In line with previous analyses, about 20% said their symptoms meant their ability to do day-to-day activities had been limited a lot.
And those most likely to have long Covid are:
- women
- 35- to 69-year-olds
- people with underlying conditions
- those working in health, social care and education
University of Exeter senior clinical lecturer Dr David Strain said: "The stark warning here is that, based on this, in the previous waves, over 800,000 people have their day-to-day activities significantly affected over three months after catching Covid and nearly a quarter of a million report this has a dramatic impact on their quality of life.
“As we continue to see case numbers of Omicron rise, we must be wary that our reliance purely on hospitalisations and death as a measure of the risk from Covid could grossly underestimate the public-health impact of our current Covid strategy.”
I guess this isn’t shocking. People used to have fucking chicken pox parties. And before that they had fucking measles parties. People are dumb.
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The Guardian…
Almost twice as many people with Covid-19 are still infectious on day five of self-isolation compared to day seven, The Independent reports.
New government analysis by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that one in three people, or 31%, are still infectious five days after first testing positive for Covid.
In contrast, just one in six, or 16%, are able to transmit the virus to others by the seventh day of self-isolation.
Scientists concluded the findings show that ministers would be “shooting themselves in the foot” if they decide to cut the self-isolation period from seven to five days.
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Agreed. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the average life expectancy drops 10 years due to the effects of COVID-19.
Would we, though? We definitely experience cognitive loss over time as we age. We know this. Can we definitively say that’s not partially impacted by whatever coronaviruses we’re catching every 1-4 years throughout our lives? It’s not like we’re studying this whatsoever - we’d have to take brain scans, do cognitive tests, and test regularly for the common cold coronaviruses and compare the results before and after infection.
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The WSJ had an editorial today opining we need to end any restrictions because we need everyone to catch Omicron as essentially a booster since it is so mild.
It’s also really critical that we all get Omicron at the exact same time because reasons.