COVID-19: Chapter 7 - Brags, Beats, and Variants

My parents, now fully vaccinated, are now going through with their plans to go to Florida. After giving them some HEAT last time, I bit my tongue this time, because I don’t know if my substantially lesser level of disgruntledness is coming more from a place of knowledge or jealousy. They are still at least according to them planning on masking and distancing, but I think I need to reiterate that dining out is unacceptable, at least if they want to come back and see their grandchildren in a timely fashion. It’s pretty clear that people want to YOLO as soon as they get the shot, so hopefully the effectiveness numbers hold up even as things relax.

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You’re really going to let whether they dine out or not determine how quickly they can see the kids? I’d just make them do a self quarantine upon return no matter what they claim to have done.

Like you, I’d also be a lot less critical of their decision to travel for leisure if they’re both fully vaccinated.

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My rickety stool analogy a day or two ago should suffice.

At some point is it possible that among a subset of people some transmission is disrupted due to a local level of acquired immunity? Sure but it’s too random to protect those that are not immune should they choose to increase their risk profile.

Published Rs for the states are mostly in the .99-.84 range. It’s a great decline but it’s just a bit below sustained transmission.

It won’t take much of a hiccup to send things back up unless there is some still poorly understand seasonality.

Family gatherings should be way down. That is more likely the biggest driver.

Don’t worry bro, in Florida you are allowed to self determine how sick you want to get everyone else, so they should be good here.

surely a good guy was able to quickly buy a gun and return fire?

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„Partial virginity“ is also not a thing and has very little explaining power.

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@BestOf

Just like “a little bit pregnant”

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I’m a little surprised there is still an expectation people should bunker down after the 2nd vaccine shot is effective. I understand the chances of infection aren’t zero but if we can’t go back to normal once vaccinated we never are. It sounds like I am in the minority here but once I am a week past my 2nd dose I am rejoining society and pretty much going back to normal with mask wearing.

I put in a year of pretty extreme sacrifice carrying weight for a society that mostly gave zero fucks about it. Once my risk and the risk of my spreading it is diminished as much as it can be no way I am keeping that up or think I should be expected to.

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You’re not wrong, but I am concerned that once the general population starts getting vaccinated people are going to start yoloing even if they haven’t been vaccinated. So there is some merit to continuing to support various control measures for several months even after vaccinated.

I’m not sure how much control I have over other people’s behavior. This last year has shown me people will do whatever they want regardless of my arguments or the example I set.

My wife and I can’t get any of our 6 parents/step parents to get vaccinated even though eligible. 80% of our family yoloed it the whole time. And that was with my wife constantly posting about the horrors of Covid hospital life.

It’s a fools errand to do anything else but act responsibly myself and try not to worry about the rest.

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Sure, I’m not saying that you’re responsible for others. I just think that people are responsive to group behavior - the more vaccinated people that are out and about sooner, the more unvaccinated people will resume pre Covid lifestyles sooner. I dint think you are being like immoral or anything, I just personally plan to continue to mostly curtail social activities probably for the rest of 2021.

If the curve gets really flat, and case numbers are very low, I’m likely going to be comfortable with going back to normal, accepting a slight risk. Right now, in my area, the case numbers are still way higher than they were last summer, even though they are dropping a bit lately. I think normalcy is more dependant on case numbers than vaccination numbers, but hopefully the link between the two will be noticeable.

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Good news for UKers

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What the fuck

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That’s the other thing, what we’re describing as way better we would have thought of as a disaster last fall. Cases are still pretty high. Hell our 7dma is still above the July peak.

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https://twitter.com/scottlincicome/status/1363485667083366404

https://twitter.com/scottlincicome/status/1363485669465743368

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germ theory still in play!

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My county in Oregon is back down to June-ish levels of covid, and I’m pretty happy about it. My old county is getting close to that. It’s remarkable to me how fast we’ve come down off the Christmas peak. The first two waves seemed to take twice as long or more to fall off this much.

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Ya. It’s insanity. The right wing brain worms are so fucked up sometimes.

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You’re not wrong. If the risk of an activity goes down 20-fold, it has a major impact on the risk-benefit analysis! If they want to give credible advice, public health authorities should be starting from square one on what they tell vaccinated people they should and shouldn’t do, rather than starting from the unvaccinated recommendations and tinkering. Otherwise, vaccinated people will just ignore them.

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