outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

"i don't know!"

but there were 37 people in the sample! and i googled and anything above 30 in a sample is statistically significant! it's not rocket science!!!

'I gorged on fifty tubes of horse paste and all I got were these shrunken nuts!' tees will be flooding the quad this fall, mark my worms

Horse paste sterility falls under “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” IMO.

After Delta Airlines told its employees they would get charged $2,400/year if they didn't get the free vaccine, they had... wait for it... zero people quit over the policy.

Instead 4,000 more of their workers chose to get vaccinated. People are all talk. Mandates work. https://t.co/ZhnQzbLWFi

— Arlen Parsa (@arlenparsa) September 11, 2021

SF continues to show that high vax rates (73% of city; 90% of 12-18 yo's) plus sensible mitigation strategies can overcome Delta. Virtually no in-school spread https://t.co/yK8QBTRfnW; overall SF cases ~100/d (⬇by 2/3, Fig L); hospitalizations falling (Fig R; lags). Impressive. pic.twitter.com/R5ZSS8EHLG

— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) September 11, 2021

People are all talk. Mandates work.

Totally agree with this. Remember the smoking ban? “Buttmah freedoms!” Not even a ripple.

Good tweet somewhere yesterday about the disconnect between a nation that still requires every airline passenger to remove their shoes based on a once-in-a-lifetime event that happened 20 years ago vs being hesitant to require masks during a live pandemic that’s killing thousands of people a day.

And how much longer?

https://time.com/6096505/covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-family/

thanks for sharing that; it's one of the better versions of that story i've read.

sometimes i wish that all the unvaccinated could be forced to walk the halls of an ICU for just a bit and see what's really going on. there are so many layers of irony with the incredible degrees of Protection that the unvaccinated benefit from. there's the obvious, the worldwide effort by EVERYONE ELSE to get vaccinated, to wear a mask, to try to do reasonable things. but then there's the psychological protection they get, from the dying being in these ICUs, their families, the doctors and staff, all going through living hell to try to protect them. they get protected from all that, too. they don't have to see it, they don't think about it. they're free to come up with conspiracy theories indicating that it's actually the doctors who are the enemy here. because they do it for money.

of course, as i drift off onto the conspiratorial tangent, i'm reminded that even if you could make the unvaccinated witness it for a while, it wouldn't likely change many minds. maybe the ultimate, third level of protection they have is their own mind, trying to look after their own by completely deceiving itself

i think we should start paying people to get vaccinated. it's not fair. it is completely unfair to all the people who had to take off work (losing money). and it would be giving money to some of the very worst people in the united states. but also, it might convince some of them to do it and save lives.

i don't know. what the fuck do i know, i don't understand any of these fools

some positive news in Florida. Hospitalizations due to COVID under 12,000 for the first time since 8/1 (they were 17,500 only a few weeks ago). ICU bed occupancy below 3,000. New admissions have gone down by about 5,600 per week.

None of this due to any form of intervention from DeSantis, or local government. basically just due to the virus spreading uncontrollably and finally burning out.

Ohio is now back up to Jan. 8th numbers for new cases.

ugh :(

Illinois is sadly only back to late January numbers atm but if we roll down our sleeves and make a little less effort I'm convinced that entropy will carry us back to where we were all the way at the beginning of the year!

interesting thread

Today, Denmark lifted all restrictions & COVID-19 is no longer deemed a "societal threat".

I led the country's largest behavioral covid-project (@HopeProject_dk) & advised the Danish gov.

Here are my thoughts on how DK got here, what can be learned & what lies ahead.
🧵 (1/14)

— Michael Bang Petersen (@M_B_Petersen) September 10, 2021

Wow

Funny. In March 2020, I can recall reading at least one expert saying that the key to an effective public health response to covid was total transparency in communication with the public, giving accurate and timely information whether it was good or bad. It's not like this was some arcane secret formula.

The problems in implementing that strategy came almost exclusively from those who saw the chance to use the pandemic in service to their political and financial interests, whose voices were much louder and better focused than the public health establishment. For example, in the USA, Dr. Fauci tried to serve that role and Trump undercut him over and over again.

(2) avoid polarization;

sure, sure, we'll get right on that.

I would argue that a necessary factor besides total transparency from experts and leaders is having a populace comprised of <40% frothing maniacs. Transparency would never have helped us in our current state.

It's just a small step for him
It's a nice break from Vietnam
(Filmed in a factory)
Out on the back lot in Houston
Who says the world isn't flat

(thumbs up to KM)

https://i.imgur.com/9P789R1.gif

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/94716861_1608037062690235_7499681981706272768_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=_maURxRPLK8AX_85bSF&tn=nMaCpl2pu4gQQq4y&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.xx&oh=e97d47100a2ac9cb281e8283095f8866&oe=6162695D

I’m guessing indoor masks are going to be a “thing” (be from outright mandates or just because numbers drive safety and recommendations) for another couple of years until we really nail down effective boosters for the non-death cultists of us willing to get them. I don’t think even next spring is going to look much different than things do now, unfortunately.

I think that strongly depends on where you live.

Masks mostly disappeared here in the spring. They are back now in places like grocery stores, but absent in packed restaurants and bars.

Im not really talking about mask mandates being initiated, enforced or followed, since that’s been a patchwork shit show from the start, but rather that the case counts, transmission rates and other metrics will mean that masks in indoor public spaces are going to remain a necessity for those wishing to protect themselves and/or loved ones. Trying to predict where their mandates will be followed through on in any official capacity is a fools errand at this point.

More reacting to folks I see saying, essentially, “this fall and winter is going to suck but we will emerge next spring with the pandemic largely behind us”. I think the first part is true, though I’d argue we still aren’t mentally prepared for just how bad it’s going to get, but I don’t think the latter half of that is true at all. Yes, cases will subside again, but not enough to where we can begin to hit June 2021 levels of optimism again.

I also wasn't talking about mask mandates. I'm not nearly as pessimistic about the outlook over the next couple months, but that may also be due to location. Things seem to have peaked here and are declining, but of course it could jump back up again too.

Everyone in the US occupies the same enormous landmass, wherein those from COVID-rich regions can freely cross over into COVID-lite regions. So I'm not sure how meaningful any seeming COVID peaks are within a particular region.

I mean until a particular region either crosses a huge threshold with respect to vaccinations or is slammed so hard that they essentially achieve herd immunity.

everyone in the US is in a dreamland

me too btw. not trying to do some sheeple shit. i dream hard

xxp

There seem to be clear regional differences in how hard different places have been hit. Someone's perspective of how good or bad things are can easily be influenced by the local outlook vs how things are 1000 miles away.

https://i.imgur.com/WBlgZOo.jpg

oof, wrong thread sorry

My particular comfort level with what activities I can or can't do has way more to do with the local situation than with other parts of the country, and I'm sure that's true for lots of other people as well.

CDC gives more manna to the denialists: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254111268.html

How are they so fucking bad at this.

Ugh, Jesus they are so bad at messaging.

tbf, for almost the entirety of the CDC's existence, literally no one would have noticed or cared about them changing a word on their website. Also they are right that the change has a reasonable justification. Now they are under a microscope (e.g. one word on a website changes and it's news) and they'll get slammed from some side regardless.

The CDC change seems fine to me, it's clear people were reading "immunity" and thinking it meant "you literally cannot get the disease," why would they not clarify?

not the change itself, which is fine, but the timing of it.

Because it's all or nothing for all the many people who can't grasp percentages and probability.

xp

I don't think they should have changed a word just because some people don't understand the readily available definition of it, and changing it only made things worse with those people, so bad move.

And generally speaking I think they have been terrible at messaging.

So far in a total of four days of school, three staff in our schools have tested positive and zero students. Can't help but bet that the staff were unvaccinated. I am generally supportive of the student mask mandate, with some reservations, but it infuriates me that it isn't accompanied by a staff vaccine mandate.

Do you think it's possible that the staff are testing themselves more frequently than the students are? Or is everyone mass tested by the school?

right. most kids don’t show symptoms so the only way to know would be to do regular testing of everyone.

that article is fucking awful and i went off on katie

cdc is dumb, but that article, FUCK