We don’t do nuance anymore. It’s Manichaeism all the way down.
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Fair which is why I’ve mostly ducked out.
That said, if I was betting on one thing social and medical science will look back on and think we made an error it’s school closure. Maybe not but it seems probable.
School closure is nowhere close to the biggest mistake made in the pandemic. Even if it was a mistake.
Oster is not a case of nuance and bemoaning as we don’t do nuance in this thread is just bullshit. Oster is just a moron with a very large microphone who thinks they can do public health better than people in public health because she’s an economist.
BBC…
Scientists in South Africa have produced a copy of the Moderna Covid vaccine, raising the prospect of wider access to jabs in poorer parts of the world.
Researchers in Cape Town backed by the World Health Organization hope to begin human trials in November.
They have used publicly available information to produce the mRNA vaccine which uses fragments of the genetic code of the coronavirus.
Moderna had previously said that it would not enforce the patent on its vaccine, but stopped short of offering help to the South African project.
It is hoped that locally produced Covid jabs could sharply increase vaccination rates across Africa, which are the lowest in the world.
The South African team has offered to help scientists in Latin America to make their own version.
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Here’s a great Guardian longform report from the US:
People with long Covid face an uphill battle convincing skeptics their malady is real, but, as Mike Mariani writes, discrediting uncommon conditions is hardly a new phenomenon.
I don’t think anyone here has called her an anti-vaxxer?
Oster has had a series of terrible takes on how well COVID spreads in schools that are counter-intuitive and poorly-supported by the science. Conveniently, she is funded by Libertarian think-tanks. For reasons that continue to mystify me, The Atlantic has put her on a pedestal and given her an outsized voice. She’s not anti-vax afaict.
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Opens with a case never confirmed to be Covid that didn’t even include a fever, uses 19th century medicine to discredit 21st century medicine, and the author just happens to have ME/CFS, another super dubious disease
And a bonus POTS reference too. I stopped there, next up fibromyalgia and chronic Lyme disease. Be very skeptical of this kind of stuff
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For clicks. School closures are absolutely devastating for working parents. The market for But Actually takes on keeping schools open is massive.
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This is absolutely true. There’s an intelligent, nuanced debate to be had about the pros and cons of school closure and whether it’s worth the real harm it does to kids. Injecting Oster’s bullshit into the discussion has not been helpful.
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BBC, 3 Feb 2022
Record number of UK long Covid cases – ONS survey
The number of UK long Covid sufferers has hit a record high of 1.33 million people, an Office for National Statistics survey found, rising from 1.27 million at the start of December.
The figure includes more than 550,000 people who caught Covid a year beforehand, underscoring the long-lingering and often debilitating impact of the virus for some people.
The figures are based on self-reported long Covid – more than four weeks of symptoms – from a representative sample of people in private households in the four weeks to 2 January.
Nearly two in three people with long Covid (836,000) said it was adversely affecting their day-to-day activities – with 244,000 people saying their ability to undertake day-to-day activities has been “limited a lot”, the ONS found.
No it won’t.
This is brand new info for me. It’s being framed as Moderna generously donating their IP, but digging deeper it kinda seems like they tried to steal shit from the public and got swatted down:
Moderna has abandoned a patent application for a key part of its Covid-19 vaccine amid a dispute with the National Institutes of Health over who should be credited among the inventors, deferring a possible court battle between the company and the government.
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~50% of confirmed cases have no fever. This is true with both Delta and Omicron, doc.
Fever wouldn’t even appear to be listed in the top 10, which I stole from The Express, printed four days ago.
The latest guidance from the ZOE Covid Study and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is that the following ten symptoms can typically point towards Covid:
- Runny or congested nose
- Feeling fatigued
- Headache
- New, continuous cough
- Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
- Muscle or body aches
- New loss of a sense of taste or smell
- Sore throat
- Nausea or vomiting
- Diarrhoea
As BA.2 is a sub-strain of the original BA.1 Omicron variant its symptoms will probably mirror its predecessor’s.
Mind you, CDC still have it listed but their frequent updates don’t seem so frequent
I’d rather go off what actual Covid postive people report, even if it is by App
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Omicron and Delta wouldnt be relevant for a March 2020 case, which is what was discussed in the article.
IDK what long COVID will turn out to be. Theres enough smoke from studies around potential physical changes, particularly with brain/vascular/T cells, from contracting even mild COVID that Im certainly not ready to dismiss these cases as mental problems.
That’s just what they said you commercial doctors would say.
I thought I’d posted these here but apparently not… 2nd one from 6 days ago is the most interesting IMO
Scientists used a novel xenon gas scan method to pick up lung abnormalities not identified by routine scans.
They focused on 11 people who had not required hospital care when they first caught Covid but experienced long-lasting breathlessness after their initial infection.
A larger, more detailed study is under way to confirm the results.
This is not relevant to the point made whatsoever. Specificity matters. Your input is appreciated though. If you have any questions about how to interpret that kind of data in this context feel free to ask.
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Full study is here:
https://oxfordbrc.nihr.ac.uk/preprint_explain_study/
This preprint is a fucking mess. It literally has (NEED STATS) in it. It doesn’t have the tables they’ve cited. It’s impossible to figure what was really done here at this point.
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You can find the tables in the full text version at the place they published the pre-print at - medRxiv
Here, a link for you.
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need stats is still in there, it’s a hot mess of a paper.
also, I can’t read anything in their tables the font is so small, same with your link
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