COVID-19: Chapter 8 - Ongoing source of viral information, and a little fun

how are the “BUT THE ECONOMY” people gonna deal with the fact that wearing masks basically completely eliminates flu? Like, that’s a huge economic boom.

They think covid is the flu.

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BUT THE ECONOMY is just code for FUCK YOU LIBERAL IF YOU WANT ME TO WEAR A MASK I REFUSE!

Most of South East Asia has known about this trick for decades.

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Even knowing this trick for decades flu cases are massively down in Japan too.

Thanks President Trump for the vaccine.

Chinese rockets, you have to launch a second one thirty minutes later, am I right?

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Just watched the most recent Last Week Tonight. They debunked nearly every antivax myth related to covid before telling the audience that vaccine hesitant people won’t watch the video. That the people who will convince people to get it will be their family members.

Nice work assholes. How about telling people 4 months ago before people solidified their opinions about getting vaccinated? I already talked to three people in my family who were not convinced by me despite presenting some of this information (though not as eloquently as they did). Thanks for presenting me a video full of information that I will never use.

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Mainstream news to kick off the day is the NY Times reporting we are never reaching herd immunity. I don’t think they are wrong, but hopefully doesn’t hurt vax uptake. Would like this to be as low circulating an endemic virus as possible for obvious reasons.

Things are starting to open faster than planned in the Czech Republic. Once again, political pressure is making it happen. I fully expect it to result in another wave because idiots can’t wait for OFB/OFS.

Goddamn country just can’t do things right. Anyway I’m vaccinated so whatever.

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Man, this captures a lot of my recent anger.

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NYT article on herd immunity was disturbing. Lots of interesting points that I haven’t thought about.

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Similar feeling I get with respect to religion - as summarised by Jim Jeffries - “you’re slowing us down”

NSFW language - liberal use of the c-word in a non-sexist manner*

(* is that possible? I was told it’s always sexist. Ed)

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The latest on COVID and in-person schooling:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/04/28/science.abh2939?rss=1

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That’s how I feel, but there’s some very legit people behind those quotes. There’s lots of other interesting stuff in there, like how herd immunity might be much more easily achieved in rural/suburban regions than cities.

Lots to chew on in there.

If some of that natural immunity wanes and we aren’t closing borders don’t we just seed variant outbreaks indefinitely?

The article makes intuitive sense to me. We probably can’t reach true herd, but the vaccinated/boosted will be well protected (at least to start) and hospitalizations and deaths will settle somewhat meaningfully below current infection levels and won’t overwhelm healthcare systems.

Vaccinated people can live according to their own risk tolerance, but are pretty unlikely to have severe COVID effects. One big risk is what Dan and probably others here have mentioned: that we seed new variants that outrun vaccination and we have to take strict mitigation measures while the vaccines catch up. In USA that likely means individuals choose to stay away from others and derisk, hopefully Canada has a better community based response should true vaccine escape variants arise.

There will be an end to the on fire stage of the pandemic, reasonably soon in rich countries, but we aren’t going to be post COVID for a long time.

I’d have preferred elimination or, barring that, vaccinated herd immunity, but this ending won’t be that much worse for the vaccinated on average. By this time next year those of us with kids should be back to a “new normal”. It should look at lot like this old normal with less tolerance for being out in public while sick and a lot more indoor masking in the semi-sane areas.

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Sounds quite promising.

Abstract

In-person schooling has proved contentious and difficult to study throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Data from a massive online survey in the United States indicates an increased risk of COVID-19-related outcomes among respondents living with a child attending school in-person. School-based mitigation measures are associated with significant reductions in risk, particularly daily symptoms screens, teacher masking, and closure of extra-curricular activities. A positive association between in-person schooling and COVID-19 outcomes persists at low levels of mitigation, but when seven or more mitigation measures are reported, a significant relationship is no longer observed. Among teachers, working outside the home was associated with an increase in COVID-19-related outcomes, but this association is similar to other occupations (e.g., healthcare, office work). While in-person schooling is associated with household COVID-19 risk, this risk can likely be controlled with properly implemented school-based mitigation measures.

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Strongly disagree. This paper shows that schools with mitigation measures can work, but they find you need 7 or more measures to take away a positive finding. Their mean number of measures is 6.7, and is in fact lower in kids attending full time (6.4). It also demonstrates that school attendance full time is associated with increased risk of covid positive tests across all age groups.

The paper finds that school attendance is correlated with covid spread. Why do you find it promising?

Because 7 measures is not a lot. Masks for students and teachers plus daily symptom monitoring is already 3. No extra curriculars and no parents inside is 5. Seems not that hard, and my daughter’s school district is doing 8 or 9 by my rough count.

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