Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

why not? Are cocktails bad?

pre-dosing with a mai tai rn

cases in the US have stopped dropping (basically haven’t moved for 2 weeks) at 20x the rate per population of Israel’s. oof.

more on that: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/here-are-the-states-where-covid-19-is-increasing-2#block-7560b4e1-bf82-4661-a1f2-4efa99fc9604

not shockingly, increases being seen in less vaccinated states, but it's in too many states to merely attribute to vaccination. arrival and spread of Delta variant probably has a lot to do with it.

Vaccinations at something like 1.17 mill/day, so who knows what % of people will eventually wind up vaccinated, but there's no massive increase coming unless they give everybody 10k to get a shot. it's going to be far short of 70% of all Americans though (though we'll likely get to 70% of adults).

sigh.

fundamentally fucking stupid country where modern miracle occurs to obtain not one but several high quality vaccines and a third of the nation views being unvaccinated as a badge of honor while the rest of the world begs for them.

meanwhile, this doesn't entirely jibe with John Hopkins/NYT, but....I think the CDC excludes 'historical' cases from their averages, whereas the other sites do not. And there were something like 8,000 - 9,000 historical cases reported the week of Memorial Day, a non-negligible number.

oh for consistent numbers

#COVID19 cases are continuing to decrease in most parts of the United States.

The 7-day average of daily new cases is 12,192, down 15.8% from the previous week. Get vaccinated as soon as you can. More data: https://t.co/gp6X4zBMdj. pic.twitter.com/golUw7SOJQ

— CDC (@CDCgov) June 16, 2021

to what degree is Florida's stupid decision to move to weekly updates affecting context here?

It makes data more difficult to interpret, but I ultimately don't think it's distorting anything anymore, now that we have one Friday of reporting in. If cases were still tailing off like they were prior to Memorial Day, I would have expected totals on Saturday through Thursday to be lower than they are now, with a one-day data anomaly every Friday.

Our World in Data appears to be forecasting daily FL cases so they can get to a better approximation of our daily cases, and they're using realistic numbers, and the cases appear to still be declining a little bit, but at a very slow rate as opposed to the fast rate of decline in previous weeks.

idk - i'll defer to caek on this shit as I'm tapped out parsing the data since Memorial DAy.

2.03 million vaccinations reported today, largest total since May 22nd. vaccinations were ticking back up slightly this week after a disastrously low week, not sure how 'real' a phenomenon that is, but more please.

We are officially Maskless in Gaza over here, but some are still exercising caution, I saw from my recent trip to the store.

It's all over the place wherever I go. I was just in St. Louis for a day, and there were plenty of masked staff/unmasked clientele situations. One place had a sign that said "if a staff member is unmasked, that means they are vaccinated," which is helpful, I guess, but leads to a paranoid paradox. That is, I've seen a lot of signs that currently read "masks are highly recommended for unvaxxed," or something similar. Then I go in and there are mostly masked people, or at least a huge number. So when I see them I immediately think, hmm, I wonder if that means they are unvaxxed? And when they see me, maybe they think, huh, he must be one of those anti-mask, anti-vax crazies. And yet, where I am, most likely most people are vaxxed, masked and unmasked alike. We just have to let our confidence and comfort levels grow a little I suppose.

Some stores I think have forgotten what signs they even have posted. Picked up from a local falafel shop, and there was a sign out front that basically said "no mask, no service." Inside, the customers had masks, the guy behind the counter had a mask below his nose, and the two guys in back (like, a foot behind him, in the open little kitchen) had no mask.

Yes, exactly.

I just wear a mask anytime I go inside any public building. Seems to be doing the job of tamping down the COVID-related anxieties you detail. It helps that we are now a full seven days in our city with ZERO new cases. But the mask stays on for the time being and to hell with whatever anybody else thinks or does.

Florida's week-long total less than the previous week but only by like 1,000 (10,629 reported for 6/11 - 6/17). about 100 less cases per day or so.

Guess NYT is doing the OWID thing of spreading the FL cases over the week?

Their count has cases dipping below 12,000 a day for the first time. Deaths about to dip below 300/day

Fun fact: in the year between April 12, 2009, and April 10, 2010, the CDC estimates swine flu epidemic caused 12,469 deaths in the U.S. At 300 deaths per day it would take just six weeks to exceed that total. Yet, after 15 months of raging Covid-19, 300/day dead people looks like rainbows and unicorns.

also COVID isn't real and is just the flu

vaccines will kill you and hurt your immune system, and democrats created the virus

I wonder, if they did a poll, what percentage of Americans would happily take a serum that gave them magnetic powers? I bet it'd be something north of 80%. And here we have a vaccine that not only gives you magnetic powers, it stops you from getting covid, too, and all these people are all, no, this is where we draw the line!

And who doesn't want free 5G

Handshakes seem to have come back, quickly, and i dont rly care for it!

handshakes have always sucked

I'm just terrible at them, very limp

hands are gross

Kissing, however

Man, if I generated free data service *and* was magnetic, that would be so cool. I would be like a walking hotspot. I could stick my phone to my arm when I'm running and get great service. Everyone in my house would have sterling phone reception. I would never have trouble finding the car keys. I'd get invited to all the parties. *And* I would not get covid!

I don't know if I'd be allowed to fly, though. But still: no covid, that's something!

NEW: Covid could potentially change the physical structure of the brain.

A new study found shrinkage in several brain areas like the limbic cortex, hippocampus & temporal lobe. These regions are mainly responsible for smell/taste, memory & emotion. https://t.co/UXUKL6UTnI

— Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, MD MPH (@draditinerurkar) June 19, 2021

meanwhile turns out Australia might have had the entire population vaccinated by now, instead of 4%, but last July the government held a meeting with Pfizer:

Three sources told Swan that the Federal Government sent an inexperienced procurement officer to the meeting who “started nickel and diming on the costs”.

Pfizer had allegedly wanted to make an example out of Australia about how to properly conduct a vaccine rollout, similarly to how Israeli handled theirs. Instead, the Federal Government came back in November 2020 and ordered only 10 million doses of Pfizer.

Within the subsequent rollout,

"When you talk to people on the inside they say it’s worse than you imagine it from the outside," Doctor Swan said.

4%, most of the other numbers say around 2.5%, but who the hell knows it’s an absolute shambles.

I’m now one of the 2.5%, but I had to navigate through a bunch of crap to get there.

My mom's been vaccinated for a while, but when she told me last night that she's going on a Viking River Cruise in October (she bought the tickets in late 2019) I immediately thought that I hope she's got her papers in order. (AFAIK I won't have to be her executor when she does go; one of her sisters has that job.)

Yeah, my mom is heading to a couple of countries in Africa for a few weeks, with multiple flights, regular required covid tests, etc. I was a bit nervous for her, but she's vaxxed, of course, and where she's heading is rated by the CDC travel map at level 1 or 2, which is lower than the US and the UK (where she is traveling later this summer).

BTW, you want new era, even the Red Cross (through whom I went to donate blood this morning) no longer requires masks for vaccinated staff or donors.

My reading is that 4% have one shot, 2-3% are fully vaxxed*, but the data are such a mess that I went with the most generous framing.

*as much as variants allow

My understanding is that fully vaxxed is fully vaxxed and none of the current variants warrant an asterisk?

🐦[NEW: Covid could potentially change the physical structure of the brain.

A new study found shrinkage in several brain areas like the limbic cortex, hippocampus & temporal lobe. These regions are mainly responsible for smell/taste, memory & emotion. https://t.co/UXUKL6UTnI🕸
— Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, MD MPH (@draditinerurkar) June 19, 2021🕸]🐦

It’s a weird headspace here esp for those of us that are double jabbed, we are demob happy cause basically everything’s open (which coincided with a big improvement in the weather) but the whole 6 weeks since opening everything there has been this constant doomsaying of delta delta delta be careful (but there will be no reversal of policy obv)

I personally didn’t feel like the football was being snatched away when they postponed declaring the pandemic over with half the population vaccinated - because that was always fucking mental - but I’m feeling the dissonance as much as anyone. Also the weather turned shite again

none of the current variants warrant an asterisk?

as you say, delta delta delta, and it seems wildly optimistic to suppose that there won't be even stronger variants by 2022

That’s not really how it works, man.

sic burn

I mean I hasten to add I’m literally not an expert but a virus doesn’t have infinite degrees of freedom to evolve in response to evolutionary pressure, there’s no MegaPolio or HIV-1-Max

88% effectiveness (i.e., reducing your risk by 88% versus 93% against Alpha) hardly warrants an asterisk. the asterisk that could be attached based on what we know 'now' is that the temporary protection you get after one shot is significantly lower , which means you can't bank on the "oh well, I'm 80% protected" if exposed before your second shot. that's a non-negligible dip, and basically means you're at risk for 5-6 weeks after your shot.

as far as variants getting stronger, maybe, variants can also get weaker (though we haven't been lucky enough to have that happen yet). it's not the same thing as antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

in terms of viral evolution, killing the host is actually bad for the virus's survival, because it decreases the ability to spread.

I didn't say infinite! but it seems probable that at least Brazil, a concentrated population with a massive outbreak and little mitigation against spread, will evolve a newbie

and basically means you're at risk for 5-6 weeks after your shot.

when do you anticipate ppl in Australia are getting their second shot tho

as far as variants getting stronger, maybe, variants can also get weaker (though we haven't been lucky enough to have that happen yet). it's not the same thing as antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

curious about this - I've assumed that weaker variants just aren't getting noticed or researched in detail because they're less concerning (and they don't replicate themselves as well, so peter out before study can be done), but are they just not happening?

a newbie

(although aiui the Gamma variant was previously being considered as two strains before being downgraded to one, so maybe they're at capacity)

killing the host is actually bad for the virus's survival

covid isn't nearly fatal enough for this dynamic to affect its transmission.

variants can also get weaker (though we haven't been lucky enough to have that happen yet)

Oh I'm sure it's happened. But we won't see it because they'd be outcompeted by stronger variants and wouldn't persist in the population.

Yeah I also don’t know what I’m talking about but I really think the only thing is to just get everyone vaccinated and remove the “novel” aspect of the virus and then hopefully it’s one of those that’s just around during the winter months with minimal damage

Obv the situation in aus is dire (& more so in India, Brazil &c)… we are so far from the end of this but I can’t be worrying about deadly super strains just yet - I worried about vaccine escape at one point but the technology has been shown to work and then some, we just need world govts to do the necessary (& like obv I don’t feel great about this as a dry run for climate disaster but let’s see)

xps I keep hearing the conventional wisdom that a virus becoming endemic/more transmissible corresponds with it becoming less severe but idk

Back to Australia for a bit. Imagine for a moment, that Donald Trump really was a billionaire many times over and, having paid for anti vax adverts that got banned ( too slowly) from the radio, was using some of his fortune to mail out anti vaccine bullshit to people in low income, often immigrant communities in Melbourne. People who were particularly hard hit by the second wave last year.

This evil clown is Clive Palmer, and sad to say that you’re more likely to see one of his yellow misinfo sheets than any kind of public information campaign from the government (or anyone else).

The rollout is a shambles and slowing down not speeding up.

than any kind of public information campaign from the government

oh come now

Brief to the highest paid comms dept in Aus during a global health emergency: Write an expensive letter minus ANY urgent calls to action + give a redundant phone number | be as non-committal as possible + allude to a certificate that doesn't exist. #COVID19Aus @ScottMorrisonMP https://t.co/cSrxD5MGVV

— Louisa Deasey (@louisadeasey) June 20, 2021

I got my breakfast out this morning and, for my sins, read the herald sun. You wouldn't know there was a vaccine rollout going on until you go to the opinion pages. To be fair there was a piece by a melbourne Uni public health academic explaining the risks of Astra and the cartoon was mildly lampooning ScoMo and vaccines. There was barely any coverage of the Sydney outbreak. The lack of urgency anywhere is galling.