outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

We had the whole summer to sort this shit out and did nothing. In fact the feds have actively worked against fixing quarantine.

We had the whole summer to sort this shit out

that's a chunky

I saw this being shared today, and while the underlying data may or may not be fantastic, the fact that it includes the first couple months of the year really aggravated my data nerd side.

Please get vaccinated.

99.5% Of People Killed By Covid In Last 6 Months Were Unvaccinated, Data Suggests https://t.co/50chCW9sEO

— Clayton Hove (@adtothebone) July 4, 2021

Agreed but AP numbers in the same article are more meaningful (and similar):

A previous analysis by the Associated Press found 99.2% of the more than 18,000 coronavirus-linked deaths reported in May were among unvaccinated individuals, with just 150 dying from “breakthrough” infections (in fully vaccinated people).

Again, classic anti-vax rhetorical maneuver. Take something that is true - yes, vaccinated people can catch covid. Present it as if it is surprising or contrary to what was promised. Undermine public confidence in the official message https://t.co/pnttlcLzfD

— James E. Baldwin (@james_e_baldwin) July 6, 2021

I know zero for what it's worth but I also know such people exist because I'm not a fool. I also know that someone highly invested in anti-vax is massively disproportionately likely to know more such people.

She’s not anti-vax, she’s zero-COVID and wants strong restrictions in place alongside vaccinations.

Which is not the first time she has floundered in the face of political realities and likely won’t be the last.

i don't know if Zero Covid will ever be truly possible. few diseases have ever been eradicated outright. doesn't mean we shouldn't try to keep the numbers as low as possible (including restrictions), but I think Zero COVID is definitely going to become unattainable even in the countries that practically had achieved it.

it will likely be endemic.

Polio still kicking around in a few places, we’re not going to eradicate covid-19 this decade.

Polio had resurfaced in the Philippines right as I was departing in 2019

To be very clear I’m criticizing the original quoted tweet. I’m very frustrated seeing vaccines presented as if they only work if they result in eradication, which they rarely do. It discourages people from getting immunized & deemphasizes the push for global vaccine equity.

— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) July 5, 2021

I worry about the last Israel-Pfizer report because of how it's already being misinterpreted and because there was no data or pre-print, so experts can't analyze and speak to the data. I hope more is coming.

Even the Chairman of Israel's expert panel cautioned against reading too much into the numbers due to the small sample size of cases.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/early-israeli-data-signals-delta-strain-may-bypass-vaccine-cause-mild-illness/

caek when u read this, any thoughts on yesterday's news from Israel?

Yes I have and I don’t think it’s accurate and we need to wait for data. https://t.co/2VPOHJh0yZ See here. Some seem to think it means infection total (as in asymptomatic and symptomatic) which if that is the case it’s no different than that Israel found for Alpha and ancestral.

— Mac n’ Chise 🧬🦠🧫 (@sailorrooscout) July 5, 2021

Singapore now showing 100% of vaccinated cases are mild/asymptomatic...while 10% unvaccinated require oxygen and 0.7% died. pic.twitter.com/qX8Voc61bw

— Juli798686 (@julietast2) July 6, 2021

apparently the MoH put out some of the methodology behind yesterday's report and it's getting skewered by multiple scientists:

Methodology is very much so off and therefore cannot be used to help effectively assess the effectiveness of the vaccine, therefore that “64%” is not a true assessment hence why it differs from the 88% you see out of PHE and Canada.

— Mac n’ Chise 🧬🦠🧫 (@sailorrooscout) July 6, 2021

i find this passage incredibly relatable

“For some, even a catastrophic bout of covid-19 couldn’t totally shake that skepticism.

“We never took it serious. We would joke about it, actually, and say that after the election it would all go away, that this was the Democrats’ way to control us,” said Jessica Goff, who lives in Chilhowie, Va.

When her mother, who is in her mid-50s, developed a sore throat after a family trip to D.C., they ribbed her, saying it must be the coronavirus.
It was. After Goff’s mother developed a high fever, she was taken by ambulance to Johnston Memorial, and a week later she was intubated. Goff was furious, claiming that doctors had not adequately informed her family about the severity of her mother’s condition. As a result, she said, she had advised her mother to refuse the proven covid-19 treatment remdesivir.

She was comforted when she learned that one of her old high school friends was a nurse manager in the ICU, and thrilled when her mom recovered after several days on the ventilator. But she gives the credit to God, not to Johnston Memorial.

“It was definitely a miracle,” she said. “I had rallied the prayer warriors.” And while she no longer doubts the reality of covid-19, she said she still believes it has been exaggerated and that hospitals are falsifying cases to make money.

“It’s just like, what’s real? What’s not? Obviously the corona is real, but I don’t think the numbers that they’re reporting are actually accurate,” said Goff, a 38-year-old information systems analyst.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/07/06/appalachian-covid-deniers-nurses-virginia/

fuck God, he ain't putting in 24 hour shifts

god's voicemail is full

also he's out of night and weekend minutes LOL what is this 2005

think of that passage every time you feel tempted to reason with these people

Every ER employee should be allowed to stamp on Goff's feet on their way out of the hospital for the rest of eternity

this is kind of an amazing slice of life americana 2020 exchange:

Their opinions about the pandemic had been shaped by sources that include Facebook, YouTube, Fox News commentator Sean Hannity and conservative talk radio. They distrusted the evolving guidance from public health authorities.

Christy said, “Wasn’t there one point where they were saying you could get it through your eyes?”

Tony shook his head.

“What’s the point in wearing a mask if you can get it through your eyes?”

that's comedy gold, sorry

what's the point of hugging a dog if it knows you know it will die one day

What's the point of peeing if you're just going to have to pee again later

what's the use of asking Kenneth for the frequency if the frequency is going to change

I brush my teeth every day I never get a reward

Christy said, "Weren't you the one telling me if you wear a mask you're actually probably more likely to get it?"

Tony shook his head.

"What's the point in wearing a mask if your dog can get it?"

https://i.imgur.com/EctVNzt.png

the answer my friend
is blowing in the wind

aroooooooooooo

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese virus in his eye

caek when u read this, any thoughts on yesterday's news from Israel?

― not up to Aerosmith standards (Neanderthal), Tuesday, July 6, 2021 11:24 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

link?

on the issue of "endemic", this is a good thread, not just pedantry about the meaning of the word (it really just means R = 1, i.e. not growing or falling), but about what we're trying to do here.

[MEDIUM THREAD] On the topic of covid becoming an endemic virus. You hear this a lot; sometimes in response to critiques against strategies of elimination, sometimes just as a statement in its on right. Statements such as “Covid will inevitally become endemic.” 1/n https://t.co/Isjm1ENnMj

— Aris Katzourakis (@ArisKatzourakis) February 11, 2021

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-05/israel-sees-decline-in-pfizer-vaccine-efficacy-rate-ynet-says?srnd=premium-asia

since then a non-zero number of experts (that have been tweet-shared ITT) have questioned the data, but nothing that's made it into the actual news.

also thx for that tweet thread

(in case it wasn't clear that was the link you requested - I'm so scatterbrained today I don't know how clear I'm being)

xps -These people have spent a year or more constructing an elaborate structure of misinformation, rationalizations, wishful thinking and denial, upon which which they kept building new additions and superstructures on a weekly basis. Nothing as flimsy as personal experience is going to tear down that mansion of delusions.

Aimless otm, which is what I was getting at in the Mostly Political thread - I just don't see any path to getting the herd immunization we need to see short of mandatory vaccinations.

xp thanks.

as you know "The vaccine protected 64% of people against the illness between June 6 and early July, down from a previous 94%" is gibberish.

I can guess what it's supposed to say (it's about efficacy), but that would simply be evidence that most people are vaccinated. it's like you're shooting people at random. if most people are wearing bullet proof vests, most of the people who get hurt are going to be wearing bullet proof vests.

in terms of how much they protect the recipient, vaccines are like bullet proof vests, not invisibility cloaks. (actually, for most people it seems like *these* vaccines are like invisibility cloaks, but for some people they have almost not effect, so on average they're like bullet proof vests).

and yeah, sample size is an issue. you need huge samples in phase 3 trials to make claims about efficacy with any precision. israel had like 2000 cases in total in june. so 64% is probably plus or minus 30%. (i would hope the original study calculated this, but it's not easy to do it from the outside. 30% is a guess)

thx again caek. also good tweet-thread re: "endemic". admittedly I've used it incorrectly and i can read the meaning as "endemic doesn't mean 'stability', and stability doesn't come with an attempt at suppression". in other words "the disease isn't going to say 'ok it's been two years, I'ma hang out on the porch a while but I won't bother you as much, you've been patient".

good read.

sorry to bring up this same article again, and this is definitely a downer, but besides the comedy quotes in there from covid deniers, there's stuff like this from the nurse's (boucher) perspective.

On Saturday, the sons of the woman in Room 3314 returned to the ICU with a platter of cookies for Boucher and another nurse, Jeris Doane, who had cared for their mother. They’d left their father at home for the decision that must now be made.

Haytham Adada, the ICU’s medical director, met them outside her room. This was a conversation Boucher had witnessed again and again between October and February, when one and sometimes two covid patients were dying every shift.

“In my medical opinion, if we keep her on the ventilator, we will be having this conversation again in a few days,” Adada said.

One son shook his head. “She wouldn’t want to be on this.”

Adada left them to check on a newly arrived covid patient, a 69-year-old man whose chest now rose and fell in the mechanical rhythm of a ventilator, his bed draped in lines from the IV drips which Boucher had helped prepare for him that morning.

The sons of the woman in Room 3314 waited to sit with their mother through her final moments. This was a mercy of the late phase of the pandemic: Vaccinated relatives were permitted at a dying patient’s bedside in full personal protective equipment. But first Boucher would have to extubate her patient for the last time.

It was the moment when she tried to bestow a measure of dignity on those in her care, cleaning them and doing what she could to make them comfortable. But there were things that could not be altered or concealed: The discolored arms and legs, the gaunt face, the rigidly gaping mouth. The short, quick breaths that revealed a weakened but desperate instinct to survive.

When she had finished, the sons entered.

Boucher yanked a curtain across the outside of the door.

Above the rim of her N95 mask she was blinking back tears.

“It just sucks,” she said. “I’m tired of it.”

very strange to read this, as it exactly mirrors my own experience. that's pretty much exactly how it went. and knowing that i belong to that "lucky" group of late COVID-deaths that actually had an opportunity to see him before it was all over. so many people going through that, every day, that very same sequence of events

Sorry as ever for your anger and pain, Z.

, but I don’t think the numbers that they’re reporting are actually accurate,” said Goff, a 38-year-old information systems analyst.

And applause for this sahara-dry phrasing & timing.

these are the same fuckers who freaked out at 11 cases of Ebola and talked about shutting down travel to/from Africa in 2014

that was a total obama failure, equal or greater to trump and coronavirus, everyone knows

lol

i nearly took a photo of my father as he was lying there, at the end, with his eyes closed and glazed over with some of moisturizing paste. he looked like a pharoah just before mummification. i noticed his feet were still strapped to holders at the bottom. i thought that photo might come in handy as a way to have frank conversations with covid deniers. one of the first things they always say is "he had a pre-existing condition". cool, look at my mummy dad you fucker

good mourning! sorry.

in better news, apparently my mom has an appointment with a doctor later in the month to talk about covid, and if there's any point where she will accept a vaccination, it's that one. i'd still put the honest odds at 1:8, and probably less than that because she recently told me she didn't even get the CHICKEN POX vaccine because family thought it was evil

k at my mummy dad you fucker

uh it’s the ‘90s now, dads can be mummies if they want. so much for the tolerant left

it really is sad

We don't actually have the chicken pox vaccine in the UK, at least not routinely on the NHS! Just let kids get it when they're kids. There is some argument for not having it. Which iirc is that it's evil.

Best of luck with your mom getting her covid vaccine though. <3

With the NHS the argument is pretty much always about the expense.