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

Good luck, everyone.

fwiw, the handful of very modest, very small outbreaks last year at the school (when it was at reduced capacity, still masked but on partial reopening in the spring of course much less vaxxed) all were spread and traced to outside the school - parties, mostly - so we'll see how things fare under new conditions. More virulent strains, but mostly vaxxed population, both in and out of school. More densely packed, but everyone still wearing a mask, perhaps less cautious, but perhaps (hopefully) slightly less of a need for caution.

In a press conference just now, Tennessee Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey says the state has already seen more COVID hospitalizations in just the first half of August than in any other full month in the pandemic.

— Stephen Elliott (@ElliottStephenB) August 16, 2021

local outbreak in my town linked to 2 crowded gigs at a couple 100ish-capacity venues last weekend. 'honor system' mask policy meant hardly any masks. luckily i skipped both gigs, but over the last week my various feeds have been a daily rollcall of vaxxed friends posting about testing positive. no 'official' count but just connecting the dots on social media looks to be as many as 30 breakthroughs or more. definitely going to keep me away from any indoor gigs for a long while.

*shakes head* Sorry to hear that. All SF shows are masked period and more venues as I muttered the other day are switching to a vax-only policy for admittance so while I'm still going to play it by ear when the time comes in late September, at least there's that to start with.

I was going into the office 3x per week starting the week after July 4. After a short vacation in early-August, with cases starting to pop off and CDC guidance moving back to masking indoors for the vaccinated (no one was masking), I haven't gone in the last two weeks and don't plan on it any time soon. No one has said anything.

I just received an email from our office manager that someone who was vaccinated just tested positive so I feel pretty vindicated in my decisions.

both kids back in the high school today, full capacity, 3400+ students and staff in relatively tight quarters, everyone masked and overwhelmingly (80-90%+) vaxxed.

This'll be us in a couple of weeks -- good luck to us all! I think this really might work. But I think it's inevitable that clusters of kids will test positive and miss substantial chunks of school and that's gonna be disruptive.

define "work"?

Not a lot of people get sick, and those that do have mild to no symptoms?

schools being open is going to do what it's done in every other country it's happened, i.e. drive community transmission up significantly (nationally the US's delta wave is small relative to the winter wave because its schools were closed in june/july, unlike in europe). the USA is not magical in this respect.

and the US has lower vaccination rates and looser NPI than most of western europe, and regionally it has vaccination rates in the teens/twenties, so i'm not sure why we're expecting a good outcome in terms of hospitalizations when that happens.

i think schools should reopen, but the idea this "might work" seems strange to me.

Might work = no one I know dies.

It's the American way.

I'm not talking about the entire stupid country, I'm talking about where I live. It might work, here. If I lived my life like I were living in Mississippi, I would be living it a lot differently. The patronizing stuff is pretty exhausting.

And I mean, I get it, I get the concern and the caution, it's all real and warranted. But people were positive Lollapalooza would be a super spreader event, and it wasn't. Good news sometimes comes to pass. If anywhere at its best bases its policies on anywhere at its worst, then it will be masks, social distancing and shelter at home for the foreseeable future. And maybe it will be, because the places at their worst right now - Mississippi, Florida, et al. - are really far behind the places at their best right now. You said yourself (xpost) that you think schools should open. Well, there's your "might work" right there, whatever your standard happens to be.

What I have a hard time getting my mind around is: assuming delta means (1) COVID can’t be eradicated (2) COVID is now endemic (3) super spreader events are no longer the primary means of transmission and (4) breakthroughs are not uncommon, then what is the goal with masking, distancing, avoiding indoor events etc unless you are in an area where the medical system is severely overburdened? What is the endgame other than herd immunity via a combination of infection and vaccination? And what do other NPIs do but prolong reaching that endgame? Not a rhetorical question. I mean individually people can choose to mask and avoid indoor activities for years to come if they want to lessen their risk, but it just kind of feels like most of us are going to get it sooner or later.

The goal is to make it as harmless as a cold or mild flu.

Or, alternately, we or the planet die.

then what is the goal with masking, distancing, avoiding indoor events etc unless you are in an area where the medical system is severely overburdened?

harm reduction, pure and simple. waiting until the local medical system is already severely overburdened before instituting NPIs is bad policy, in the same way that waiting for catastrophic outcomes of global warming before instituting effective reductions in CO2 emissions is bad policy.

Or, alternately, we or the planet die and the planet lives.

man alive i kind of can't believe you're asking that? the majority of people in a lot of states are unvaccinated. you think now it's okay to just let them get it? frankly my 85-year-old dad is vaccinated but i don't want it even getting a couple of millimetres into his right nostril if i can help it. most vaccinated people will be fine. but super oldies with health problems? yeesh.

I'm not talking about the entire stupid country, I'm talking about where I live. It might work, here. If I lived my life like I were living in Mississippi, I would be living it a lot differently. The patronizing stuff is pretty exhausting.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, August 16, 2021 3:37 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm also not talking about the entire stupid country (although reopening schools will not so much "work" as "literally kill thousands" in the south east incl. florida, and it should not happen until later in the year).

but illinois's vaccination rate is 10% below the UK's. it's going to be worse in illinois than it is in the UK right now. arguably that's fine/worth the trade. i object to the "eh, it'll probably be fine/i've got a good feeling about this" attitude though, which is obviously not true unless you pretend there are no countries outside the US telling us otherwise.

man alive, there are lots of reasons but a pretty salient one for a lot of people (including me) is that 25% of the population in the UK and 15% of the population in the US are not even eligible for vaccination.

(it's less than 25% in the uk, they changed the age limit recently, can't be bothered to check though)

down to 16s

but illinois's vaccination rate is 10% below the UK's.

Illinois is a big, long state, and I live at the top of it, as do most people in this state, so it's not helpful to cite the state's vaccination rate at large. Down at the bottom, five hours away, Illinois hits Missouri and Kentucky, which (if the names were not giveaway enough) are very different. Where I am, where we associate, where we go to school and live, is 80%+ vaccinated, among those eligible. If being 80%+ vaccinated, and masked, and aware is not good enough to hope for the best, then it's hopeless. I'm thankful for how things seem to be here, right here, because there's nothing I can do about anywhere else.

the uk is a long country also? i mean we can compare the UK's highest vaccinated regions to the bit where you live if you want. my point is the same.

Sure, compare whatever you want. But the most important thing, as far as risk goes, is where you live, and where I live it is 80% vaxxed among the eligible, which is not perfect but which makes me feel a bit more comfortable.

sure, you should feel more comfortable than someone in florida (https://covidactnow.org/us/florida-fl/?s=21801106).

i guess i'm frustrated that people are acting like either 1) it's going to be fine (eh, maaaybe, arguable), or 2) there's simply no way of knowing what's going to happen when schools reopen (there kind of is!). i've never lived somewhere where the rest of the world simply doesn't exist to this extent.

man alive i kind of can't believe you're asking that?

reread the first two words of this sentence

21.2% of the UK is under 18; 19% are under 16. I don't know if the 25% cited above included people ineligible for reasons other than age?

Nearly 90% of adults in the UK have had their first dose and presumably will have their second fairly shortly. I don't think that's bad.

I am team "2) there's simply no way of knowing what's going to happen when schools reopen"

Worth noting as well that cases in IL have been on a steady rise for weeks now and we haven't even really been hit with delta yet. I don't know how we've largely avoided it bit it's surely just a matter of time (if that time hasn't come already, as reliable information gathering is fuckin' nigh impossible these days).

There are 50 million children under 12 (like mine!) who can't get vaccinated and pediatric hospitalizations are skyrocketing but that doesn't seem to count

man alive i kind of can't believe you're asking that? the majority of people in a lot of states are unvaccinated. you think now it's okay to just let them get it? frankly my 85-year-old dad is vaccinated but i don't want it even getting a couple of millimetres into his right nostril if i can help it. most vaccinated people will be fine. but super oldies with health problems? yeesh.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 16 August 2021 20:22 (yesterday) link

But a lot of those people are simply going to remain unvaccinated even though the vaccine is easily available to them. So is this a forever war or is there actually an end goal? We aren't going to eradicate COVID and we aren't going to get 90% vaccination.

Kids are another story, I have my views on that (and I have two unvaccinated children), but putting that aside, let's assume we should at least wait until the vaccine is widely and easily available to all kids. Then what? Say a lot of states at that point are still only at 70% vaccination, which seems likely. Do we then spend another year masking, distancing, not spending time indoors with those outside our immediate family, not dining indoors, etc? I just think people are not grappling with the fact that the disease is here to stay. There is no eradication and no end.

harm reduction, pure and simple. waiting until the local medical system is already severely overburdened before instituting NPIs is bad policy, in the same way that waiting for catastrophic outcomes of global warming before instituting effective reductions in CO2 emissions is bad policy.

― it is to laugh, like so, ha! (Aimless), Monday, August 16, 2021 3:12 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

On one hand, yes, waiting until extreme overburden is bad policy. But the other extreme means you can literally never lift restrictions. Because we have a highly contagious variant that we're not going to get rid of, and we're also not going to reach 90% vaccination. So surely there should at least be some level of hospitalizations at which restrictions are triggered?

Biden Officials to Advise Boosters for Most Americans 8 Months After Vaccination - The New York Times https://t.co/tvYSMFH0jI

— John Bresnahan (@bresreports) August 17, 2021

On one hand, yes, waiting until extreme overburden is bad policy. But the other extreme means you can literally never lift restrictions.

Yes, surely those two extremes you mention represent the only two available options.

xpost -- Interestingly, that'll make me due for such a booster next month. Which, if that can be logistically swung...I won't mind, simply because of my hoped-for concert plans alone. If I can get one by mid-September, well. But let's see more about the specifics first.

So they're really going to recommend a *third* shot before they even officially get FDA approval, huh? I know the wheels of bureaucracy move slow, but if they're going to keep this vaccine train rolling then why even wait? Been some 357 million doses given in the US, what's the FDA going to say? "Sorry, folks, we've determined it's *not* safe, hold off on those vaccines"?

Anyway, we all know the need for boosters is that when people started talking about tracking chips and magnetism the pharmaceutical industry realized they missed an opportunity and that this time around we'll get jabbed with the real deal and get the superpowers we deserve.

Per my 16-year-old son, the booster shots are to move us from 5G to 6G, which sounds awesome.

Ugh, so more forced obsolescence? This is going to be like the Moore's Law of vaccines. You know what they say, don't ever try a 6G vaccine if you've only had the 5G, because the 5G is going to seem so inferior to the new one.

I know there's little we can do about this as individuals, but it is absolutely shameful and disgusting that we're talking about booster shots when 75% of the world population has yet to receive a first shot.

Isn’t it also a little soon to say whether this is “waning” immunity that requires a booster vs delta just breaks through more easily? I can’t imagine we already have enough data to be sure.

seemingly Moderna protects best against Delta, but all the educators (around here at least) got J&J shots

I ate the lasagna.

If you, like me, get flu shots each year, the concept of a regular booster/revamp in response to projections about how a particular disease functions is not unknown.

yep

the justice argument against boosters is extremely compelling.

the "when does this end" argument is obviously not, but is going to be understandably common in countries that don't do mass annual flu vaccination (most of them, the US is unusual in this respect).

Very pleased to learn via email that my mom will not be going on a Viking River Cruise through Europe in October; due to concerns about Delta, she's pushing it back to April 2022.