outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

eephus! why, in August fucking 2021, do you think what people are getting angry about is the risk to the kids?

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.

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

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

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?

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.

got it, thanks!

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?

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.

people with COVID

o. nate, read the last Twitter thread posted by Neanderthal.

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.

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.

well and she could also give it to you. is the thing.

epistantophus, do you live in a county with a mask mandate?

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.

remember when everyone was like, the best thing we can do is improve ventilation

nobody is improving ventilation and nobody is going to improve ventilation

Our school district upgraded all buildings to MERV-13 air filters and I don't think we're alone in that

ahh really?? i stand corrected. amazing!

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.

The majority of filters in our high school were upgraded to Merv 13.

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.

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

tbf you can't install MERV 13 filters without forced air heating and air conditioning

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.

well and she could also give it to you. is the thing.

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.

epistantophus, do you live in a county with a mask mandate?

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.

Our school board voted unanimously to kill the mask mandate this year. And it’s a county that skews liberal.

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

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

Holy shit did he actually reference The Croods?

It’s shit like that that drives me up the wall- it’s like, that’s a make believe world that you are referencing! We are not living in this make believe world where everything happens for a reason, and the protagonists always manage to avoid harm despite the crazy risks they take! This is the real world with real dangers here!

More than once, in different interviews, it was clearly a prepared remark.

I guess since I'm already in a hole I will try to better explain what I'm trying to understand, and sorry for going over the snideness line. I certainly don't mean to suggest it's all "psychosomatic" btw and that's *not* the reason I suggested a control group (I think anosmia in particular, or BG's wife's fevers, would be pretty hard to explain away as psychosomatic). The reason you'd have a control group is to eliminate any other explanations - including very real medical reasons that just aren't COVID (although there could be cases that are psychosomatic). People sometimes develop medical conditions or symptoms that are very real in the time period following having a virus - that doesn't automatically mean the virus caused them. For example, I saw a long covid "study" on kids that listed insomnia as an effect in some percent of kids (maybe it was 10% or something like that). My daughter had COVID, and she has insomnia. She also had insomnia before the pandemic started. And the pandemic in general is very anxiety-provoking in kids, so there are a lot of ways anxiety and insomnia could rise in kids but not be directly caused by having a virus. I don't know how prevalent insomnia is among 9 year olds, but I'll bet it's not that uncommon, and I'll bet it's more common now than in 2018 among both kids who did and didn't have COVID.

Also a lot of the adult long COVID reports I've seen are based on self-reported survey evidence. Certainly there could be psyschosomatic symptoms included in there, but that wasn't my point, my point with the control group is just that correlation isn't causation, and other things can cause some of the symptoms. A certain percentage of the adult population is going to experience certain medical conditions in a certain timeframe (again, anosmia less likely, but that's not the only thing being reported as Long COVID). Also symptoms like "fatigue" when self-reported are, in fact vague. Some of the people responding undoubtedly have the intense, deep fatigue described upthread, no question. But some likely don't. I'm not doubting the experience of individuals who experienced COVID causing them extreme, prolonged fatigue, it's just that the survey evidence isn't well designed to differentiate different types of fatigue.

There is now a large umbrella term of "Long COVID" under which many different things are being placed -- short term, medium term, long term, permanent, severe, moderate, mild, of varying physiological types. BG's wife's persistent fevers, which sound awful (and it sounds like it makes sense to link them to COVID) are "Long COVID" but so is having shortness of breath when exercising for two months and then recovering fully (which happened to a family friend).

The problem is you lump all these different things of varying severity and duration together (and potentially of varying causes), in some cases with no medical diagnoses but only self-reported, and in some cases not even with a positive COVID test demonstrating the person in fact had COVID, and you get a potentially exaggerated sense of how prevalent long-term, severe effects are, because you are lumping everything together as "Long COVID." That doesn't mean there aren't many real cases of serious, long-term side effects of the virus, and we absolutely need to know how common that is, study why it is happening, look for treatment, etc. So to be clear, no I'm not saying everyone who says they have long COVID (or anyone ITT for that matter) is "making it up," just that the way Long COVID is reported in the media can make it seem like a bigger risk than it may actually be. And this risk in turn gets thrown out there all the time in advocating for, e.g., closing schools.

well and she could also give it to you. is the thing.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, August 24, 2021 2:53 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Tracer, presumably most vaccinated parents aren't at much risk if this happens to them. Odds of hospitalization or death when vaccinated are very low, especially if not also over 75 and/or with very serious health risks.

True but we are still learning about the long term efficacy of the vaccines.

Define much risk. They might not end up at a hospital but is it no big deal to miss a week of work?

Also, let’s say we get to x% vaccinated in the US. What meaning does that have 6 or 12 months from now? How many of the people who were convinced to get the vaccine the first time will continue to get booster shots at the recommended frequency?

And, again, the risk is still a risk, and even with a reduced risk of death, the risk of Long Covid will weigh on many.

The tree of man alive's freedom must be watered with someone's blood, no?

For thousands of years, disease pathogens have spread from person to person. Never before have carriers been blamed for infecting the next sick person. That is a very dangerous ideology.

— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) August 24, 2021

I guess doctors don't take any history classes in undergrad

incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugMmyjCdpoQ

man alive more like child dead, boom roasted

― class project pat (m bison), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 4:25 PM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

btw man alive, i didnt read anything you wrote, i just figured it was bad bc everyone was saying it was bad and i trust the science of ilx

Never before have carriers been blamed for infecting the next sick person.

"Never", unless you count the millions of times it has happened. People have even been prosecuted, convicted and jailed for knowingly attempting to infect other people with diseases.

including this fucking pandemic!

"we've never held people accountable for infecting people" a really hilarious revisionist take. sadder when you realize dude has a prominent position at Harvard

Never in the history of art!

ahhh, this explains why he had to go with that monumentally stupid line instead of a progressive-friendly (and accurate) line about the historical injustices that have resulted from punishing infected people

Kulldorff is one of the three authors, along with Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya, of the early October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration. With several specific recommendations, the Declaration argues for "focused protection" of older high-risk people instead of COVID-19 lockdowns that have resulted in substantial collateral public health damage.[6] Kulldorff has appeared on several media platforms to debate the topic.[7][8][9][10] According to an article on its website, the Declaration was independently funded and written by the three principal authors with proof reading and editing done by a journalist and family member. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) provided the location, camera equipment, and a camera person pro bono.[6] The authors received no money to write the Declaration.

The not-so-Great Barrington Declaration, know what I mean?

Approval for COVID vaccine for kids 5-11 years-old unlikely before end of 2021, @NIHDirector Francis Collins tells @NPRinskeep on @MorningEdition. Data for it still not submitted to @US_FDA

— Fernando Pizarro (@FPizarro_DC) August 24, 2021