Coronavirus

[Old Man]

Let’s cut the personal sniping before people who have covid notice. 

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Greywind said:

 

The vaccines were never intended to stop transmission. They were intended to reduce the severity of illness from infection and the likelihood of dying from it, which scientific evidence says they've been very effective at. Reducing severe illness reduces the number of infected people occupying hospitals, which logically leaves more spaces in them for people suffering from other illnesses and injuries, and reduces the stress and exhaustion of health care professionals. Vaccinated people are also less hospitable hosts for the virus, reducing the opportunities for it to mutate into more dangerous strains, as has already happened, which would threaten everyone. Which sounds like an ethical position to take.

 

I also find it deeply ironic that opponents of vaccines frequently recommend treatment of infection with monoclonal antibodies, or drugs like hydroxychloroquine. Quite apart from the fact that the latter isn't FDA certified to treat COVID and there's no evidence that it helps; and that monoclonal antibodies aren't a preventative treatment, and are only authorized for emergency use in the United States; both are products from the same "habitually criminal" pharmaceutical companies. Monoclonal antibodies are also a more expensive treatment than vaccines. So if the drug companies were only interested in profit, it would be logical for them to push that rather than vaccines.

[Greywind]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-plague-is-the-medias-cold-new-york-surge-omicron-infection-variant-vaccines-11640268505?reflink=share_mobilewebshare&fbclid=IwAR0BSC7y7jcCHaCrDyNzbIsrFTQ4PJPAZgT4SX37svriI2SBnIanJv1Vvuk

19 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

The vaccines were never intended to stop transmission.

 

 

And the more shots you get seems to improve your chances of contracting it. Funny, no?

[Lord Liaden]

34 minutes ago, Greywind said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-plague-is-the-medias-cold-new-york-surge-omicron-infection-variant-vaccines-11640268505?reflink=share_mobilewebshare&fbclid=IwAR0BSC7y7jcCHaCrDyNzbIsrFTQ4PJPAZgT4SX37svriI2SBnIanJv1Vvuk

 

And the more shots you get seems to improve your chances of contracting it. Funny, no?

 

It would be funny if that was said as a joke, since all the evidence to date says the opposite, and the article you linked to doesn't cite evidence for that either. What it does do is treat the situation with flippancy and mockery, a common rhetorical tactic intended to denigrate an opposing viewpoint when it can't be countered with evidence or logic. COVID won't pass over people because they score rhetorical brownie points.

 

I would urge you to consider what that implies about the foundation of your position, and the motivations of the people who tell you to believe it.

[Greywind]

It's an op-ed piece. Don't think the WSJ qualifies as "alt-right".

Oh, and Unclev Lad, about alt-right, "The term is ill-defined, having been used in different ways by alt-right members, media commentators, and academics." Pretty much kills your opinion in my mind.

And if any of you have ever really noticed, what I tend to post here is done without comment. Have a nice day.

[Lord Liaden]

I can't respond to that without addressing you personally, so I'm out.

[Starlord]

Here's what I know - 700AM WLW is a 50,000 watt conservative leaning talk radio station in Cincinnati.  They have a massive audience and their signal reaches all of southwest Ohio and northern KY.  They provide covid hospitalization rates more than 2-3 week - I know because I listen every morning on my way to work.

 

For the last 6 months since vaccines have been widely available they have consistently reported that 96-99% of hospitalizations and deaths in SW Ohio and Northern KY due to Covid are unvaccinated.  

[Hotspur]

6 hours ago, Greywind said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-plague-is-the-medias-cold-new-york-surge-omicron-infection-variant-vaccines-11640268505?reflink=share_mobilewebshare&fbclid=IwAR0BSC7y7jcCHaCrDyNzbIsrFTQ4PJPAZgT4SX37svriI2SBnIanJv1Vvuk

 

And the more shots you get seems to improve your chances of contracting it. Funny, no?

 

5 hours ago, Greywind said:

It's an op-ed piece. Don't think the WSJ qualifies as "alt-right".

Oh, and Unclev Lad, about alt-right, "The term is ill-defined, having been used in different ways by alt-right members, media commentators, and academics." Pretty much kills your opinion in my mind.

And if any of you have ever really noticed, what I tend to post here is done without comment. Have a nice day.

 

I never intended to ever post but this needed comment.

 

I am so depressed about folk commenting on science like it is a debate.  I would like to point out that, at least once, the post came with commentary, and the commentary is indeed disinformation.

 

The headline, cursory look at numbers may show that the more shots you have improve your chances of getting the virus and don't stop transmission.  Any level of scientific understanding in the field would tell you both those statements are nonsense.

 

A vaccine almost never blocks transmission, what happens us that people do not get as sick, those infected are infected for less time, the virus is less virulent, and they produce less virus particles.  All of that reduces the risk of severe illness and transmission, all working to reduce the R number so that, eventually the level of virus in the environment us reduced to minimal levels and outbreaks tens not to spread to even epidemic levels.

 

Vaccines don't prevent illness, they do tend to prevent deaths and mass illness.

 

The strapline to a lot of this stuff is that we need to learn to live with Covid.  That the longer we go the milder the virus will become.  Again, scientific understanding in the field tells you that both those statements are nonsense.

 

It is a myth that viruses attenuate over time. The story is that the virus adapts to its host, that it doesn't want to kill off the animal that hosts it.  The truth is that the virus doesn't want anything.  It simply reproduces.  The changes that happen are random, we only see the "successful" variants, the ones that spread better than all the rest. Whether the one that spreads best is more or less lethal is entirely random. If we keep the level of Covid high, by not seeking to get it down to minimal levels, then we will continue to get more variants.  Omicron is Covid crossed with the common cold virus (rhinovirus) which made it more transmissible.  The longer we retain high levels the more likely it is we get a variant that is both transmissible as Omicron and as deadly as previous SARS diseases.

 

Gamers know that the most unlikely things will happen if we roll the dice often enough.  The chance of the deadly pandemic is improbable, not impossible and the longer we choose to "live with Covid" increases the chances we will die with it. Keep rolling the dice lads... 😞

 

There is the strange thing of cherry picking numbers.  Most folk in hospital may indeed be vaccinated, most cases of Covid may indeed be vaccinated (but only in countries where the vast majority of people have been vaccinated.  If you look at the vaccinated and unvaccinated population, the unvaccinated will have a higher percentage who contract the disease and a much higher percentage that gets sick and dies. Again, gamers, and especially HERO gamers, should be better at running the numbers than this.

 

There is the point of people choosing to compare the disadvantages of being vaccinated against the baseline of normal life.  Any medical intervention, even injecting sterile water, will result in poor outcomes (the placebo effect works both ways).  But we are now in the situation where you need to compare getting Covid to getting vaccinated, the chance of remaining uninfected is tending toward zero.  In all measures vaccinations are less risky than getting Covid.

 

Finally, in what is a massively longer post than I intended, there is the absolutely odd inclination of people in both the UK and US questioning the involvement of the private sector in the vaccination programme.  Both countries tend to think the private sector is more efficient than government, and the people taking this line mostly come from the political wing that is more anti-government than anti-corporation. I tend to agree that these companies should not own the vaccines, the profit motive restricts rather than includes and slows down the distribution of vaccines worldwide.  We should not be donating doses of vaccine, we should be allowing the third world to make their own and, while utilising the infrastructure of big pharma, should not be adding to their bottom line by paying profits on necessary, global and potentially perennial vaccination programmes.

 

I may now have said all I need to.  Hope this passes moderation....

 

 

[Simon]

Greywind will no longer be joining us on this site.

 

*somethingsomethingpunchingnazissomethingsomething*

[Dr. MID-Nite]

9 hours ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

Justifications to take the vaccine....

Ethically....it saves lives.

Scientifically....statistically proven to save lives.

Logically.....it saves lives.

 

 

 

Forgive the flippancy of my response, but as I'm celebrating my first Christmas without my only sibling....my tolerance for anti vaxx rhetoric is nonexistent.

[Simon]

I'd like to thank everyone for keeping level heads through that bit of inanity - while Greywind was an annoyance to wake up to, he was trivial to deal with and your responses made it a net positive.

 

Now I need to go find another borderline poster to go off on before you all think I'm going soft...

[unclevlad]

And spend a few moments going through that site's home page.  Their "stories" are straight anti-vax, anti-green, and pro-conspiracy.  

[Cygnia]

35 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

And spend a few moments going through that site's home page.  Their "stories" are straight anti-vax, anti-green, and pro-conspiracy.  

Ewww, no way.  Then I get the wrong sort of ad "suggestions" when I go elsewhere.

[unclevlad]

That argues for a Chromebook, and a throwaway account, so you set up a sandbox for this sort of site.

[Cygnia]

Like COVID-19, the Black Death had its own "truther" movement, too

[Lord Liaden]

As I keep telling people who spew this stuff, this kind of paranoid delusion is very, very old in human history. The wording stays essentially the same, just the name of the target group changes, like filling in a blank. Communists. Catholics. Witches. All the hatred and fear require are a convenient target, and someone to help aim people at that target, usually for their personal gain.

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Ewww, no way.  Then I get the wrong sort of ad "suggestions" when I go elsewhere.

 

Between uBlock Origin and Adblock Plus I often forget what a cesspool the internet really is.

[Starlord]

[Old Man]

If Omicron is 20% less intrinsically severe than Delta, and we assume that it is as contagious as measles, then:

 

330 million Americans

x 40% unvaccinated

x 1.5% Delta CFR

x 80% as severe as Delta

 

= 1.58 million unvaccinated American casualties, ignoring health care overload effects.

 

If anyone can revise this number downward, please do so.

 

Please.

[Duke Bushido]

This could go into pretty much _any_ social or political thread these days, but of late, this is where I run into this person the most.

 

Please enjoy this candid photo of an anti-masker hard at work studying.

 

 

[BoloOfEarth]

Self-Proclaimed ‘Plague Spreader’ Dies of COVID After Boasting About Maskless Grocery Store Stunt (msn.com)

 

I'll just say that the term "poetic justice" seems to apply here.

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, BoloOfEarth said:

Self-Proclaimed ‘Plague Spreader’ Dies of COVID After Boasting About Maskless Grocery Store Stunt (msn.com)

 

I'll just say that the term "poetic justice" seems to apply here.

 

 

 

"Poetic" I can accept.  While I one-hundred-percent cannot see anti-vax and anti-mask sentiment as anything less than a conscious, willful decision to embrace total ignorance, fueled by both the misguided desire to be seen as some sort rugged individual and play the odds to look as if you never had any doubt (and because of this very thing, being dome by so many, those odds have gotten far, far worse) and the truly reprehensible drive to be seen as fitting into part of some clique of tough guys or cool kids-- the whole thing is bogglingly nonsensical-

 

And while I have fanciful moments of a world twenty years on future with so many of this sort of person effectively dead by their own hands-

 

Well, the fact is that I don't want people to die, especially not od monumental stupidity or of willful ignorance.  And I certainly can't stand that the people who have chosen to play games with death want to chicken out after it is too late, and brong death to others by clogging limited medical resources.

 

I get the current trend of blaming extroverts via memes and stand up comedy, but damn, that's just feeding more misinformation and causing problems, too. I am an extrovert, as are,obviously,most of the people I know,  yet everyone in my social circles has done "what you are supposed to do:"  no social contact other than the grocery store and paying bills and going to work.  Masks all the time, every time,

 

Even meeting with Chris- my first social anything since Day 1,would not have happened if even one of us was without either masks or vaccines.  Other than that, I have suffered through every palpable moment of the "quarantine" with the understanding that if everyone else would, then things could be normal again.  I am starting to think that will never happen, because there will always be "those people."

 

There isnt any one group of types of people- it is not "just extraverts" or "just racists" (though that wouldnt be so bad I kid,of course: I genuinely dont want people to die, even if it means massive social improvements).

 

The problem is that for some reason, people believe the nonsense.   Until we can cure that, it isnt going anywhere except around and around again. 

 

 

[unclevlad]

37 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

The problem is that for some reason, people believe the nonsense.   Until we can cure that, it isnt going anywhere except around and around again. 

 

 

And what's worse is people don't realize what we're circling or where it will end up.  As major an issue as the pandemic is, it's not the #1 problem.  

 

 

[Cygnia]

[BoloOfEarth]

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

"Poetic" I can accept. 

 

I was basing the "justice" part on this:

 

"...he called in to the Zanzara radio program ... and openly told listeners he was seriously ill, with a high fever, but had made a point to stroll through a crowded grocery store maskless."  (emphasis mine)

 

This goes beyond monumental stupidity or willful ignorance and straight into deliberate, premediated malice.  Even if one accepts the idiot's assertion that COVID doesn't exist, he knew he was sick (presumably with flu? which is still potentially deadly) and went around *trying* to infect others.  To me, this is akin to that guy who knew he had AIDS but continued having unprotected sex and spreading it to many, many others.   You're a much better person than me, Duke, because I really feel the gene pool is a bit cleaner without someone like this swimming around in it.