The Fauci emails have all the derps on my feeds in a tizzy. They’re certain that they got him.
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I’m not so sure. If Delta really is 2.25x as infective as what we had in December/January, and 60% of the population is immune, then the virus can grow 2.25 * (1 - 0.60) = 90% as fast as it did then. And the December/January wave occurred when there were still substantial restrictions in place. Raw numbers are also not going to be a problem (for the virus). The whole epidemic to date has generated something like 10% of the population in cases. There’s plenty of susceptible people to fuel a wave.
I think we forget how much people modified their behavior during the peak of the pandemic. It has allowed the deplorables to say “SeE iT wAs NeVeR tHaT bAd”.
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I haven’t seen anything damning from the emails I’ve seen, but I haven’t gone too far down that rabbit hole. Some stupid stuff like suggesting masks don’t help prevent infection last February, but like… he was saying that publicly at the same time?
I saw some right wing randos on Twitter pointing to some emails with the Kristian scientist guy where they mention something like .1% of the Covid genome that looks possibly engineered but my impression is that it was simply a lot of uncertainty early on in the process and nobody involved actually thought any part of the virus was actually engineered.
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The four positive amino acids in a row thing is bullshit discussed upthread if you can get thru all the bullshit in the last week.
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I think that the more optimistic take is that the 10% of the population that’s had covid is both an undercount and not a random sampling. It’s going to be heavily enriched for the very people who are in the 30-40% of adults who don’t want to get the vaccine.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to get cases down quite a bit from where they are before opening things up, to continue to require masks for children 2-11 until they can get vaccinated, and still only open up counties with 70% of the eligible vaccinated, but I’m much more conservative than the median American, so I don’t expect most places to use a plan like that.
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I got the J&J vaccine yesterday (walk-up at a drug store near me, no waiting). Today I am stoically experiencing a wide range of side effects without complaint (lol).
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Grunching, seems more likely to happen in winter than this summer given seasonality and the potential for vaccine antibodies to start to wane, but another wave definitely possible (whether worse than January wave IDK). ~ Every country in the world that unlocks with community transmission heads there eventually. Vaccines will help slow that but dont see why we are automatically immune to waves at mid 60’s of eligibles vaccinated.
Not sure it matters practically. Vaccines are preventing illness, the infected will be less vulnerable on average, we wont overwhelm hospitals, and as a society we have proven that we dont give a shit if we infect kids. Sucks to be unvaccinated, but cant see society undertaking mitigation for years to come in winter, so is what it is.
lol
they’re like the most mundane shit ever, literally boring af
A selection of derp comments on the Fauci Emails. I’m not editing the names because fuck these people and this is on a public facebook profile:
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They show that he’s a pretty nice guy tbh. Beyond that, not much.
When you factor in the stress and frustration of trying to deal with a pandemic and Donnie Dumb Dumb at the same time, his level of niceness is actually pretty amazing.
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It was the summary of the article. Whatever it was, it’s sensationalist claptrap. A “never-ending pandemic?” That’s sensationalist bullshit.
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No, we’re not. I fucking agree with you on mask mandates and non-pharmaceutical interventions. What I disagree with is the Churchill-style fearmongering negativity. Sensationalist bullshit about super-strains and super-covid need to be called out, irrespective of the fact that we should still be masking indoors.
I would have personally gone with JokerAndHereWeGo.gif, but this is still a reasonable choice.
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It is thought the new strain is a version of the Indian variant which has acquired new mutations.
A PHE spokesperson said: “[The] ‘Nepal’ variant is Delta with a K417N mutation.”
Dr Jeff Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said scientists had observed 91 sequences of the Indian variant with a K417N mutation so far and that that distinction was also present in the strain of Covid-19 first detected in South Africa.
He said: “This mutation is present in [the South African-origin variant] and is believed to be part of why that variant is less well neutralised by vaccines. Because of this possibility, and because Delta appears more transmissible than Beta, scientists are monitoring it carefully.
“This Delta+K417N has been seen in numerous countries, including the UK, Portugal, the USA, and India. It has also been observed once in Nepal, which does very little sequencing, and 14 times in Japan, of which 13 are samples from airport quarantine from travellers from Nepal.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1400771916261122051
https://mobile.twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1400833264999403520
JT you’ve chosen a method of persuasion that’s guaranteed to persuade zero people to your side. If your primary goal is to vent then go off king I suppose.
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My kids got their second shots three hours ago. They’ve already made it longer than I did without feeling shitty.
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