When exactly did you decide it‘s a good idea to book a non-refundable trip to the European Covid ground zero?
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It’s refundable. I’ll lose some change fees for airfare and forfeit (I think) train passes. Risks I was willing to take, but I’m still disappointed.
I agree with you that it seems pretty hard to prove one way or the other that a transmission was smear. We’re going to be relying on the educated guesses of scientists and I think they have a greater probability of being right than you or I, so long as they are not bowing to political pressure. There was plenty of reason to think that was true during the Trump administration, but maybe not now?
Given that, where should the burden of proof lie? How certain do we need to be. So far, you’ve been critical of where others are, but I don’t think you’ve given a clear answer as to where you draw the line.
If you’re asking me to psychologically profile you, I don’t think you’re being risk-averse. I think you’ve made a lot of sacrifices due to COVID and your arguing is a self-defense mechanism because you might crumble inside if it feels like some of that was unnecessary. Arguing on here may be a way to strengthen your resolve by allowing you to look down on people who are not as strict as you. If their arguments are found wanting, then that confirms that you are on the right path, so you have an emotional incentive to pick apart their arguments and find every flaw.
I’ve been worried about you because I think the disparity between when you could have been vaccinated in California and when you will be vaccinated in California is the sort of thing that could set off a mental health crisis for you. I’m just trying to set up a framework where you can see people who disagree with you as reasonable, but maybe you don’t want that and maybe you need the opposite of that to stay sane in this world.
Here’s two refs the CDC cites:
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E. A. Meyerowitz, A. Richterman, R. T. Gandhi and P. E. Sax, “Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: a review of viral, host, and environmental factors,” Annals of internal medicine, 2020.
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G. Kampf, Y. Brüggemann, H. Kaba, J. Steinmann, S. Pfaender, S. Scheithauer and E. Steinmann, “Potential sources, modes of transmission and effectiveness of prevention measures against SARS-CoV-2,” Journal of Hospital Infection, 2020.
Knock on wood, we should be in a better place in September despite the questionable decision to basically fully reopen now
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They fit in luggage no?
This is true. Look at difference over last few months. Things have changed pretty rapidly.
I think you’re still drawing live. Something like top two vs bottom set.
Good post
The author of the study we were discussing there explicitly addressed that issue and said she thought it was very unlikely to be a confounding factor in her results. My post is taking you to task for thinking you’re better-equipped to judge the relevance of that objection than an infectious diseases paediatrician is. Now you’re pretending I said that this could never be an issue in any contact tracing study ever.
In that post of mine you’re quoting I mention the Iceland results. Churchill has reposted them about 15 times and as far as I can tell you’ve steadfastly ignored them. Instead you’re declaring victory based on that review citing articles which were published in fucking June through August 2020. Your concerns probably were reasonable back then.
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Here. Here’s the author:
I would put a little asterisk by that and say that yes, there is a possibility that there’s an asymptomatic student who has given it to a teacher and we don’t really know, because I don’t know the source of infection in every case. But there’s no evidence of that. In most cases, the infection could be traced to a family member or a friend where they had spent time together outside of school. In some cases, sports activities, carpooling, and social gatherings were identified as the sources of infection.
Allison Ross Eckard, M.D. is jointly appointed as a professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Medicine in the Divisions of Infectious Diseases, at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Eckard serves as the division chief for pediatric infectious diseases…
Board certified in pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases, Dr. Eckard is an active member of numerous professional societies, including maintaining fellowship status in the Infectious Diseases Society of America, HIV Medical Association, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
That paper itself dates from September 2020 and the studies it cites are from June through August of that year. The exchange you’re citing here that this is “contradicting” is from January 2021, as is Eckard’s study. The NatGeo writeup of the Iceland results which you continue to ignore is from December.
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Like maybe I’m wrong about that? idk though. They were conducting a study. The article mentions them setting up in-school saliva testing because parents weren’t getting their kids tested due to transportation issues etc. I don’t know if the study is journal-published or what so I can’t find the details on exactly what they did.
When I have an expert in infectious diseases run a study and go from a schools-open skeptic to advocate, and she explicitly addresses the idea that there’s an iceberg of asymptomatic cases and says she thinks that’s unlikely, absent evidence of actual problems with the study I don’t think it’s reasonable to be like “OK but what if they are an idiot and just haven’t thought about it as hard as me”. Like of course I wouldn’t take a small study like that as gospel truth, especially without reading the particulars, but it’s also not reasonable to go full “well in the 1970s they said there’d be global cooling”, which is the line you’ve frequently taken when appeals to expert opinion are made ITT.
Edit: If it’s not clear what I mean by that last line, you’ve often been like “but what about how they said masks were ineffective” in response to citations of expert opinion. Ironically, this CDC paper you’re now saying is authoritative is of a similar vintage to some of those early fuck-ups.
While I’m back on this bullshit, here’s another study from February, looking at what happened in France when daycare centers stayed open during a lockdown. This study performed both regular PCR testing and antibody seropositivity testing, so it picked up all asymptomatic cases.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(21)00024-9/fulltext
Conclusions:
We did not find any evidence of SARS-CoV-2 transmission within daycare centres… the main factor associated with SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity in a child was contact with adult household members with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19. Contact with siblings or staff in the daycare centre with confirmed COVID-19 (ie, child-to-child or staff-to-child contact) was not associated with SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity in a child… Moreover, we found that the 14 seropositive children were broadly distributed across 13 different centres and that seropositivity among the children was not associated with the duration of exposure (ie, the number of days attending the daycare centre) or the seropositivity of the daycare centre staff. All of these exploratory analyses constitute additional arguments for intrafamilial transmission rather than transmission at the daycare centre. Our results are in line with a previous report of very few cases of secondary SARS-CoV-2 transmission in a primary school setting in France. The available data indicate that children mostly contract COVID-19 at home or through contact with other family members.
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Time to pause and reflect maybe that
ETA meant to reply to @Riverman wrt his planned trip to Italy
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Restrictions have been reduced in the Czech Republic for 3 days and the R is already back above 1. It’s obviously a matter of time before they go back on.
We also have just received our first cases involving the Brazilian mutation of covid.