oh ok, that's how science works. thanks for the lesson. i didn't know anything about science but now i am educated.
― criminally negligible (harbl), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 16:21 (two years ago) link
just be honest and say that you think people with long covid are faking it, stop dancing around it with all this ‘hmmm my science brain needs data’ like an antivaxxer pretending he’s scrutinising every published vaccine paper
― you are like a scampicane, there's calm in your fries (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 16:26 (two years ago) link
I think there's room for middle ground between saying there is no long Covid and questioning how much we currently know about it. Those studies are being done but I think it's too early to say very much conclusively. I believe that currently long Covid is a "diagnosis of exclusion", meaning if you present to a doctor with any of the symptoms listed above and they can't find anything else wrong with you, you can be diagnosed as having long Covid. So most likely that's a big net that catches things which may not actually trace back to Covid in any direct biological sense, which of course doesn't mean that many cases aren't real.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 16:29 (two years ago) link
did anyone say we know all there is to know? it didn't exist two years ago! and no one in "science" (as far as i know, i just learned science this morning) says very much "conclusively" and every paper talks about limitations!
― criminally negligible (harbl), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 16:37 (two years ago) link
Science is the process of doing the same thing, over and over, until something changes, and of talking with peers, reviewing findings, researching
― professional anti- (Karl Malone), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 16:43 (two years ago) link
no that's posting
― rob, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 16:46 (two years ago) link
in case anybody seems the alarmist DELTA IS PRIMED TO BECOME THE MEGA SUPER VARIANT THAT EVADES ALL IMMUNE PROTECTION pre-print study going around, here are some reassuring responses from virologists, who....are pretty angry about the study:
A couple problems with this preprint that do not support the alarmist take is pushes… 🧵 https://t.co/QNJGCCNtxB— Jeremy Kamil (@macroliter) August 24, 2021
well *this* is a deeply irresponsible shit paper.shows escape from NTD nAbs which also put RBDs in the "up" position which might improve infectivity. somehow goes on to claim that loss of serum neutralization is the same as vaccine resistance (it's not).in short, crap. https://t.co/GwsYzDPRnP— Jasnah Kholin - 8964 - ACAB - 💉💉 (@wanderer_jasnah) August 24, 2021
― Duke Detain (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 16:48 (two years ago) link
seems like these pre-print jokers don't know how science works
― rob, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 16:51 (two years ago) link
It took me 3 seconds to find this article and about 5 minutes to read the entire thing https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8056514/
And I’m a dumbass
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 16:58 (two years ago) link
maaaaaaan alive that is a bad post
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 17:46 (two years ago) link
(not you, el tomboto.)
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 17:47 (two years ago) link
If you don't want to engage with what I actually said because you're convinced I'm personally accusing your loved ones of faking fevers, fine. I think it's best I retire from this thread.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 18:08 (two years ago) link
good thread:
There is a lot of concern/confusion about vaccine effectiveness against the delta variant. How effective are the vaccines against Delta & how to interpret real-world observational data? So much misinformation is being circulated, so this thread brings key data together. 🧵(1/n)— Muge Cevik (@mugecevik) August 24, 2021
― Duke Detain (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 18:09 (two years ago) link
man alive no no please, who will now gaslight us about long covid?? this is a crisis
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 18:13 (two years ago) link
look i think it’s important that, despite scientific evidence that long covid can be a very serious condition and the existence hundreds of thousands of documented cases around the world, that we still find time to properly engage with posters whose thoughts on the topic include the phrase ‘everything I read about Long COVID is extremely vague - again, not saying it isn't real, but’
― you are like a scampicane, there's calm in your fries (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 18:38 (two years ago) link
Most people are happy with saying it's a real risk and leaving it at that, but I can sympathize with the urge to put some kind of hard numbers on the risk, and I think that's where things start to get fuzzy. Is the risk analogous to the risk of lingering effects that can occur after any serious illness? How common are long-term debilitating effects after even a mild initial case? I wish we had more certainty about questions like that.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 18:53 (two years ago) link
if only there were scientists working around the clock to get those answers
― you are like a scampicane, there's calm in your fries (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 18:57 (two years ago) link
hundreds, maybe even thousands of them, all over the world
― you are like a scampicane, there's calm in your fries (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 18:58 (two years ago) link
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, August 24, 2021 2:08 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago)
Ok, here's a question: why have a control group of Covid-negative subjects from the same time period in your study unless the point is to test the hypothesis that long covid is psychosomatic? That strikes me as prejudicial, but I'm not a scientist so maybe it's normal to do this?
― rob, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:09 (two years ago) link
TBH I don't get the anger at man alive's post -- I too am sending my unvaxxed kid to in-person school (all teachers vaccinated, all indoor time masked.)
I don't think the chance is tiny that my kid will contract COVID. If I thought my kid had a non-tiny chance of developing debilitating illness that would last years, I wouldn't be letting her go to school. If you know people whose kids under 12 are going to school in person right now, you know people whose estimation of the risk of long COVID are similar to man alive's, I would assume.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:11 (two years ago) link
cmon, people are mad bc he wrote "Sorry if that's aggravating, but that's how science works"
― rob, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:14 (two years ago) link
Ok, here's a question: why have a control group of Covid-negative subjects from the same time period in your study unless the point is to test the hypothesis that long covid is psychosomatic?
This is a great question! The answer is that it's normal for people to develop long-term debilitating symptoms for which there's no discernible explanation, and that does not in any way mean they're psychosomatic, just that the cause is unknown. And that's why it's important to understand whether that's happening to COVID sufferers more frequently than the ambient rate. (Which is a very reasonable hypothesis to test, since LOTS of viruses have weird long-lasting aftereffects, that's why it's being tested!)
It's exactly the same as the reason that we don't just ask "how many people had a stroke / had a blood clot / had a seizure a few weeks after getting vaccinated," we ask "how many people XXXXX a few weeks after getting vaccinated compared to the number of people who XXXXXX out of a similar size/demographic population who didn't get vaccinated" -- because sometimes people just have a stroke! And you don't want to classify that as a vaccine aftereffect just because it happened shortly after vaccination.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:16 (two years ago) link
eephus! why, in August fucking 2021, do you think what people are getting angry about is the risk to the kids?
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:21 (two years ago) link
yeah i think it's reasonable to have a control of non-covid havers but i'm not an experiment designer
as i said, before the extremely patronizing post that followed later, i was mad about "the impulse toward skepticism or minimizing it as just fatigue or anxiety like everyone has." this could be a justification for the decision to send a child to school but in my opinion it's fine to just say "i don't know what the risk is, i'm just making a decision based on what information is available now" instead of baselessly downplaying it.
― criminally negligible (harbl), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:22 (two years ago) link
AF: As for myself I think the danger from kids is a lot bigger than the danger to kids, but I gotta say, I know a TON of people who frame the issue of in-person schooling as "we are being asked to put our kids in danger," do you not?
Yes, "i don't know what the risk is, i'm just making a decision based on what information is available now" is a solid description of where I am re school and for that matter most things
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:26 (two years ago) link
thanks for the response eephus, I appreciate it
A follow up q: if during this study you observed the same frequency of symptoms in both groups, that would disprove or at least cast a lot of doubt on COVID as the root cause, y/n?
In case my tone is off here: I am genuinely asking as I too am not an experiment designer! Though harbl is right that man alive's preceding post about the effects of isolation etc. did incline me to read his study design post as a way to backdoor psychosomatic suspicions in
― rob, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:29 (two years ago) link
It wouldn't disprove, that's not what studies like that are designed to do and it's not even clear you could design a study to do that. You would just walk away saying "In this study we didn't see evidence that long-lasting symptoms like fatigue and anosmia were associated with previous COVID infection." Which would kind of surprise me. But that's what you would say.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:33 (two years ago) link
got it, thanks!
― rob, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:36 (two years ago) link
In the meantime, it seems like discouraging news coming out of Israel about the long-term efficacy of the vaccine. Even the risk of serious illness and hospitalization increases again among the most vulnerable cohorts at some point after vaccination, though perhaps Delta is confounding some of these numbers. We may be looking at a world where vaccine boosters must be given every 6 months or so. In that scenario I guess vaccine mandates would require proof a recent shot? Meanwhile this will only reduce the availability of vaccines to the less-rich countries of the world. Perhaps we're heading towards an outcome where most of the non-rich world develops herd immunity through exposure, and the rich countries are in a pattern of never-ending boosters?
― o. nate, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:42 (two years ago) link
xpost
Yeah the dimensions and effects of long COVID are essential to understand, with good science, because we are going to have a shit-ton of people COVID. I have a sister who dealt with chronic Lyme for about a decade and I watched her go through all the skepticism and limited treatment options, which got a bit better over time but not much. So I'm very sensitive to any downplaying of anybody's symptoms. We just need to have a much clearer sense of what the triggers and risk factors for long COVID are, what systems they impact, and what they mean over time. For diagnosis and treatment purposes, we have to understand it, which means controlled studies.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:45 (two years ago) link
people with COVID
o. nate, read the last Twitter thread posted by Neanderthal.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:47 (two years ago) link
Fauci said this morning on MSNBC that (I paraphrase) a booster after the two Pfizer/Moderna jabs strengthens the T cell's institutional memory against variants.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:48 (two years ago) link
Count me among the people who are primarily fucking furious right now about in person schooling and the risk to kids. I do think the risk is pretty small that my kid will get covid *and* suffer long term effects- but it’s a non-zero risk for sure, and I am pissed off that I was forced to make that calculation. Meanwhile, Florida school districts are not allowed to have mask mandates, they stopped the remote learning option, and basically- despite assurances to the contrary- they have essentially gone back to business as usual, with the exception that some students, my kid included, are masked. It’s eating my guts out from the inside that every day I have to wonder if she’s getting exposed and is going to get sick and possibly die because I chose to take the risk of sending her to school in this fucking cesspit of a state instead of just keeping her home and trying to figure out a way to homeschool her for the year.
― epistantophus, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:52 (two years ago) link
well and she could also give it to you. is the thing.
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:53 (two years ago) link
epistantophus, do you live in a county with a mask mandate?
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:55 (two years ago) link
I'm angry that no one is willing to devote the resources to do this the right way. Okay, kids need in person schooling. I'm on board with that, I can't imagine making my kindergartener miss first grade as well. So throw some money at the problem so that kids can be spaced more than 3' apart. Social distancing with kids is totally out the window, the schools don't try and they don't have the resources. None of this is a surprise! We've been going through this long enough now and we're still bumbling through. It is infuriating.
I'm so glad our school (houston) is requiring masks. Greg Abbott and Desantis can choke, die, and burn in hell.
― Cow_Art, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 19:59 (two years ago) link
remember when everyone was like, the best thing we can do is improve ventilationnobody is improving ventilation and nobody is going to improve ventilation
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 20:11 (two years ago) link
Our school district upgraded all buildings to MERV-13 air filters and I don't think we're alone in that
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 20:14 (two years ago) link
ahh really?? i stand corrected. amazing!
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 20:17 (two years ago) link
Our son's school is doing pretty much everything they can, though I wish they were going METV-13 instead of just MERV-10 filters.
― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 20:20 (two years ago) link
The majority of filters in our high school were upgraded to Merv 13.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 20:22 (two years ago) link
wow. i guess things are different in the US. in the UK i would estimate that approximately the square root of jack shit is being done.
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 20:24 (two years ago) link
the government is pledging “CO2 monitors” which, i guess if they beep you should open a window??https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/aug/21/classrooms-england-monitor-air-quality-effort-combat-covid-better-ventilation
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 20:25 (two years ago) link
tbf you can't install MERV 13 filters without forced air heating and air conditioning
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 20:26 (two years ago) link
yeah, I think there are some 35 classrooms in our school that can't accommodate those filters, and in those cases they have HEPA filters.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 20:27 (two years ago) link
Exactly! That’s also in the risk calculation. She could give it to me, I could die, and then she has to grow up without a father. But at least I’m vaccinated so I have some protection.
I do not! My county is never even mentioned among the counties that are pushing back on DeSantis in any way on this. Honestly, a simple mask mandate would have made me feel a lot better about sending her back to school.
― epistantophus, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 21:09 (two years ago) link
Our school board voted unanimously to kill the mask mandate this year. And it’s a county that skews liberal.
― epistantophus, Tuesday, 24 August 2021 21:10 (two years ago) link
in the UK i would estimate that approximately the square root of jack shit is being done.try having a PM who yesterday said that anyone who wants to take measures of safety is living in fear, like the caveman family in The Croods, and we need to go and strive and advance and bravely face the light to reach the future, like the caveman family in The Croods who folllowed the light
― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 21:11 (two years ago) link
some ppl who had seen The Croods noted that three out of four families in The Croods who follow the light and leave the cave unprotected promptly die
― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Tuesday, 24 August 2021 21:13 (two years ago) link