outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

in orbit basically otm in my opinion; asking teachers (plenty of whom have seen colleagues and family members die or be grounded with longterm covid) to cope with the risk if they can't access the vaccine or to start back in class immediately after their first poke because the numbers won't be "that bad" suggests a lack of awareness of human behavior.

the prior administration simply did not care if america lived or died and the current one is mostly making this shit up as quickly as possible

We get it, yes, there is a global imbalance that fucking sucks. Everyone itt is powerful to change that, unfortunately.

"powerless"

Arguing that schools should be open (regardless of vaccination) and then:

Why *shouldn't* teachers have to go through "the same bullshit" as everyone else?
is fucking incredible.

― Rocky Thee Stallion (PBKR), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 5:27 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Pretty sure I said I was fine with making vaccination of school staff a condition of reopening? At least vaccination for all who want it - you are going to have refusers.

right, so i'm suggesting that the feds should incentivize taking the vaccine for the good of public health / speed of assimilating semi-immunity into all communities / effective hazard pay and should set up the remaining staff that can't or flatly won't get vaccinated with distance learning/hybrid programs for the foreseeable future. but i'm not seeing anything along those lines happening either.

Covid poop coming back

Stay frosty folks

😬

Boston-area MWRA SARS-CoV-2 wastewater update today.

Looking a lot less like noise now. pic.twitter.com/qMkq4WN2K3

— Nicholas Bauer, PhD 👨‍🔬🔬 (@BioTurboNick) February 24, 2021

because we're asking them to be stuck in a room with a group of unrestrained potential virus carriers who are not being tested on a regular basis and who are coming in from different neighborhoods with different levels of infection! because a number of teachers and staff died behind this shit before schools shut down! because getting the kid out of the house so mom and dad (mostly mom) can go to work and earn the rent is a massive priority! because it is a relatively highly skilled job that people have built into lifelong careers that now comes fraught with genuine danger in a way that was never presumed or expected!

hand down, man down, mama there goes that man alive

Coronavirus vaccine skepticism has come way down for Black and Hispanic people since last fall. Where skepticism remains high is among white Republicans. Nearly 60% of white Rs will either not take the vaccine or are unsure.@Civiqs tracking: https://t.co/lLKHxCP3IM pic.twitter.com/O1NT9xB4ZF

— Drew Linzer (@DrewLinzer) February 23, 2021

republicans! what a world!

not the first time their asses are gonna get saved by everybody doing the right thing but them.

sad to say but the best case scenario now looks to be that come april or may an enclave of q types are gonna all get sick and die while numbers keep dropping and vaccine availability increases and that's gonna scare the holdouts into finally getting a jab and bitching about it all the way

or gates throws the switch in June and all us rubes turn into lizard people running on windows 386, who can say which is more likely

if q-ers and q-adjacent holdouts get sick and nobody else does, they'll dig their heels even deeper into their conspiracy-fueled denialism

"This is ridiculous! It's just the flu!"

"Nah, it's 20 times worse!"

"Who cares? Are you gonna live in FEAR?"

"Well, millions of people will die and hospitals will collapse"

"Fuck you, I'm still doing what I used to"

"Well ok, we'll reopen slowly, but can you wear a mask? That'll mitigate risk"

"No, fuck a mask, fascist! Reopen everything!"

"Well hey there's a vaccine now that should actually allow us to actually do that eventually, want it?"

"Fuck you, I have already compromised enough!"

Bit of a very specific San Francisco note but a welcome one that I hope is more broadly the case: at the hospital where I work, the worst of the holiday surge meant something like almost 70 patients in ICU or close to it at one point. Per today's mailout, after a notable decline over the recent weeks, we're down to just 11. Would love to see if we can go back to single digits again by tomorrow or early next week.

SFGH claimed to have discharged their last COVID patient yesterday (I think? maybe the day previous) but with indoor dining reopening, that should fill some beds back up in a week or so.

We'll have to see -- we're at 20% of the city population with at least one shot at this point, and that's bound to have been a big part of this, especially with well over half of the 65-and-up populace falling into that category.

I work for a healthcare system with hospitals in Oregon, Washington and Alaska and our ICU numbers are declining at a very similar rate.

we're at 20% of the city population with at least one shot at this point

Wow, that's incredible!

i believe we're at 13% nationally?

14%, at least according to the NY Times. Chicago is at 11.9%.

My GF is taking her mom to get a vaccine shot (Pfizer?) at this very moment... Fresno County Fairgrounds yee haw

this is pretty unrigorous eyeballing rather than causal analysis, but this thread makes an uncontroversial observation point:

cases have bottomed out are starting to rise in some countries (continental europe, brazil)

the thread then argues this:

this is happening becuase those countries are either not able to vaccinate as fast as israel/uk/us, are not doing very rigorous lockdowns, or do not have herd immunity to the extent of, e.g. south africa, uk, usa, etc.

... which wouldn't pass peer review without more work, but makes total sense.

NEW: it’s a while since I’ve done a big international Covid thread, but this one feels important.

The first six weeks of 2021 have gone rather well in terms of humanity’s fight against Covid.

As well as the rollout of vaccines, global cases halved(!) between Jan 11 and Feb 18 pic.twitter.com/bnoxNkUZsu

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) February 25, 2021

yeah that passes the smell test

The worst part is, as vaccination increases through spring and early summer, the anti-vaccers will have their asses saved by herd immunity.

I don't know - I wonder about certain ruby red pockets of the US. Will COVID be a constant in some rural areas, slowly become less lethal and eventually be renamed Hillbilly's Cough or whatever?

can we plz not use hillbilly as a pejorative, tyia

point taken

https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/K2pB2wVpL3v.9SGh8YUYDw--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTUwNC42MzA3ODg0ODU2MDc-/https://media-mbst-pub-ue1.s3.amazonaws.com/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-11/55a82d50-2dce-11eb-9dbf-e504b1a1bd51

SFGH claimed to have discharged their last COVID patient yesterday (I think? maybe the day previous) but with indoor dining reopening, that should fill some beds back up in a week or so.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, February 25, 2021 9:33 AM (one hour ago)

you're gonna go to jail for not calling it ZUCKERBERG San Francisco General Hospital

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/02/24/more-americans-now-say-academic-concerns-should-be-a-top-factor-in-deciding-to-reopen-k-12-schools/

going back to our earlier conversations about educators needing to be vaccinated before going back to school, this is a pretty stark and clear illustrator of who has been hit hardest and who feels safest.

http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/ft_2021.02.24_schoolreopening_03.png

pfft but can we really trust this anecdata from uh…Pew…

Right wing people don’t give a fuck about teacher safety, who knew

esp rich right wing people.

That data lines up very consistently with the surveys about reopening schools in our district, fwiw.

right wing people will say "oh if you're not 'high risk' (a somewhat meaningless term considering people who weren't died from it), then get your ass to school!"

While really rich people say, I've haven't had to oversee my own children for this long day after day in... ever, so please open the schools.

I think "all school staff who want vaccines have been vaccinated" is a much better benchmark than the nebulous guidelines put forth by the CDC.

"really rich" people have their kids in school already. It's called private school. They're open.

Yep

very strange view of of "public health" in this country. either all schools should be shut because there's a communicable disease or they shouldn't be.

yeah i had no idea private schools in the US were allowed to be open, that’s... totally insane to me

They have the money for small class sizes, upgraded HVAC systems, etc. And no pesky teachers' unions trying to keep their members alive.

Private schools should be banned, I’ve been saying this

agree with that fwiw

yeah i had no idea private schools in the US were allowed to be open, that’s... totally insane to me

it is insane! someone needs to have a word with these people about what public health _is_.

yeah i had no idea private schools in the US were allowed to be open, that’s... totally insane to me

Private schools should be banned, I’ve been saying this

Join the transatlantic club.

absolutely private schools should be banned and their wealth redistributed to public schools. but the way politicians and journalists are currently talking about teachers unions can be used to further undermine funding for public schools and create more schools on a privatized model. it's true what DJI says, private schools can afford to manage COVID risk well, and public schools can't, which is a fucking disgrace in such a rich country.

i say as a traitor to the public school system, but i've seen both sides, and it would make you want to puke