I went looking for one of those sweet syringe and sickle shirts the guy in the way back is wearing and discovered a wide array of anti-vax garb such as
and
but I also found
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90% chance they also believe the Holocaust was fake too.
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Interesting and not surprising. Sort of speaks to how hard it is to figure out how prevelant long COVID actually is and IMHO argues for precaution in letting cases spread while scientist continue to figure it out.
Yes. It is certainly one case where there was lung damage and resulting maladies of poor lung function and the nebulous cadre of symptoms being associated with “long” Covid.
The wife’s idiot uncle by marriage had “glassy” lungs and is having a tough go of it and of course has not been vaxxed (though he got it late in 2020 or early 2021). Genius of retired respiratory therapist/home church minister. He’s about 70 and I’d bet shaved 10 years off his life.
I missed it when it happened a few days ago, but Australia’s most populous state, NSW, has hit the 90% of 16+ year olds double-dosed mark. Victoria is not far behind. The country as a whole is at 83%. After a slow start to vaccine distribution here we are getting it done.
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Gonna issue I guess, idk a weird community brag or something, but this is the first post I ever made in a covid thread (circa Jan 2020):
I mean the R0 of SARS was between 2 and 4 and the mortality rate was around 10%, but after control measures were introduced, the R0 was reduced to 0.4. R0 without any context is a little meaningless because it depends how easily control measures can be introduced. For example:
If that’s true, then it’s a massively bigger problem.
This is pretty great in that I feel not just that I’m making sense here, but everyone I’m quoting is too. Like @j8i3h289dn3x7 is pretty spot on with his numbers there. @Rugby is correct that carriers can be asymptomatic and I’m correct that asymptomatic carriers is a huge deal in terms of containing the virus (and correct in response to jman that how well containment measures work is a big issue). Zero Pinnochios rating all round.
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I assume this was probably posted at the time, but the New Yorker had a feature a few weeks ago diving into Long Covid and a “grassroots” movement of patients and advocates:
I thought it was pretty balanced, informative, and interesting. Some people didn’t, and the magazine had the integrity to print two scathing letters to the editor about the piece including one that begins:
The New Yorker’s article on Long COVID , in which I was a central subject, was a profound affront to everyone suffering the long-term sequelae of even mild and asymptomatic cases of COVID -19 (“The Damage Done,” September 27th). The piece included no interviews with doctors or scientists directly investigating Long COVID , and no interviews with patients battling the disease. I participated in the article with the understanding that it would be a profile of me and of Survivor Corps—the world’s largest grassroots COVID movement, which I founded—but it proved to be something entirely different. It depicted my organization as anti-science, even though we have reinvented what it means to be citizen-scientists by co-authoring scientific papers and creating a system in which patients and researchers partner to advance science in line with patients’ needs. Your writer laments a gulf between activists and scientists. He doesn’t do enough to show how our work bridges the divide.
Airline: Employees must get vaxxed
Pilot: I need an exemption due to my profound and sincerely held religious convictions.
Airline: Ok
Pilot: Yay!
Airline: You’re on unpaid leave now.
Pilot: Say what?
Airline: Obviously unsafe for you to stay in a customer-facing position. We’re trying to find you a safer position temporarily.
Pilot: But I like my current job. How dare you!
Airline: Uh, nah dog.
Pilot: But I should have a right to do whatever I want. LAWSUIT!
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I read the article and the letters. The article is fine. The main complaint basically boils down to “I am a hero for my advocacy work and an article that doesn’t amplify my advocacy work to the exclusion of opposing views is Unfair.” That person sounds more like a narcissist than anything else.
I am more sympathetic to the guy whose wife killed herself believing that she was suffering from long Covid. That is just a brutal situation where its almost impossible for the writer to thread the needle between empathy and objective reporting.
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Yes, that’s pretty much where I came down on it. I just thought it was impressive that the magazine was willing to devote the entire letters section of a subsequent issue to these critiques, not just online but in the print magazine as well.
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I think you’re spot on and the CFS connection is mentioned in the article:
Advocating for such a vast constituency has pulled Berrent into choppy scientific waters. Historically, patient advocates have often found themselves opposing the researchers with whom they are trying to partner; AIDS activists frequently clashed with scientists, demanding faster research and more treatments, and in May, 1990, hundreds of ACT UP members protested outside the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Anthony Fauci had been leading for half a decade. More recently, advocates have worked on behalf of people who say they suffer from chronic-fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme disease, and other conditions that some researchers consider ill-defined.
Patient advocacy is a legitimate thing. Guess what, a bunch of doctors really are pricks that talk down to patients. In large part because a lot of patients are imbeciles that demand irrational things. So I can see where this all comes from. It’s a pretty classic situation where people’s feeling get hurt so they dig their heels in and double down on opposing positions.
That’s a kind way of putting it.
@mosdef patient advocacy is obviously a thing, but the line between advocacy and ‘fad’ that causes real harm for some people gets blurred pretty hard in these groups.
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Yeah, exactly. This is why it’s such a rich area for conflicts. Like, antivaxxer misinformation campaigns can be framed as “patient advocacy” and then when you say “that’s stupid” they run to their grievance playbook OMG YOU’RE JUST A MOUTHPIECE FOR BIG PHARMA BIG GOVERNMENT MY BODY MY CHOICE HELP HELP I’M BEING OPPRESSED! At the same time, uncertainty in diagnoses and treatment plans is a real thing and I think that patients are not well equipped to deal with it so I can empathize with these groups. It’s very understandable to me that someone with a chronic health problem that their doctor(s) can’t seem to solve will gravitate to curated Facebook groups that sell them on the idea that they are being let down by the medical profession. It’s a pretty small leap from there to conspiracy theories about the medical profession intentionally hiding The Truth from patients.
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“No one told me there could be CONSEQUENCES!”
Appeals court extends the vaccine mandate hold and opined challengers likely to succeed on the merits.
Another failure by the Biden administration. They could just mandate vaccination and/or facilitate vaccine passports, but instead tried this backdoor through employers getting half
cute and its gonna get tossed.
Good, I guess, that it got some people vaccinated but we might need to get 80-90 percent of the population boostered to get a handle on this anytime soon and this won’t be helpful,
EDIT: Two of the three judges Trumpers LDO
It’s almost like we shouldn’t have a whole society geared to giving whining Kevins and Karens everything they want when they complain to the manager, no matter how stupid and harmful.
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Seems suspect to attribute the failure of a Biden initiative to get through an overwhelmingly biased court system to the decision between an employer mandate and a total mandate.
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The government covid team in the CR is basically doing nothing to stop this wave from growing.
They rejected Austria’s lockdown of the unvaccinated policy and instead have invalidated antigen tests and self-tests as proof of negative tests. Other than that, no changes despite the surge.
Oh but schools are exempt from that apparently since there will be antigen tests given on the 22nd and 29th to all unvaccinated students. Amazing how much they’re fucking this up again!
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If you know someone who’s been naughty this year, this should make a great stocking stuffer:
Fellow grifter/misinformation spreader Peter Navarro also has one coming out.