outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

who is bad at messaging? surely the CDC, i get that. but check out this wonderful first line

Social media is calling bluff on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for modifying its definition of the words “vaccine” and “vaccination” on its website.

thanks a lot Katie Camero, shitty journalist. good thing the article is free because it's about coronavirus. this way, it can be shared more easily

social media is calling bluff?

fuck you

katie camero, i mean, lol

nean you're fine and i know you didn't mean to highlight the article but rather the CDC's messaging instead.

the whole thing is a just yet another minor abomination that will be forgotten by tomorrow

but if you're just skimming through your local Miami Herald, being a retire, golfing, waiting to die, doing whatever they do there, all you remember from this article is "skepticism...ministry of truth...cdc changing things and be scary...lies..."

excellent

“Some people have speculated” is always a great peg for a news story

“Let’s go to Twitter for the reaction!”

cut to: raging hellscape, the howls of the tormented

“Thanks for that Katie”

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?

― Lily Dale, Sunday, September 12, 2021 11:01 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

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

― Tracer Hand, Monday, September 13, 2021 2:45 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I doubt that's the explanation, and if it were, then we should be seeing spread in school, which at least so far we aren't. But either way, is there any good reason not to mandate school staff be vaccinated?

Meanwhile

News in QAnon world today: Veronica Wolski, a Covid denier known for hanging QAnon signs on bridges, died of Covid last night. QAnon believers, led by Lin Wood, had been deluging the hospital with demands that she receive ivermectin. Cops were called last night amid bomb threats.

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) September 13, 2021

The article is indeed awful and makes things even worse but to repeat what others have said, the timing of the update on the CDC's part is super dumb. Just don't bother at this point? It's just fodder for the idiots and does far more harm that good. Even if the reasoning behind the change was solid, which I think it is, what's the point of updating it now?

Immunity is the correct word. "Protection" is much broader and more vague.

xpost Presumably because the people who have been doing their own research for the past year and a half asked for clarification. It's just such a difficult, personal decision!

3 positive tests among teachers in 4 days at one school isn’t “spread”? what is it then?

of course there should be a vaccine mandate for teachers. but what about the kids? but is there any good reason for kids to not be tested regularly?

3 positive tests among teachers in 4 days at one school isn’t “spread”? what is it then?

of course there should be a vaccine mandate for teachers. but what about the kids? but is there any good reason for kids to not be tested regularly?

― Tracer Hand, Monday, September 13, 2021 9:32 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

TBC, one teacher at the high school, one shared between the middle and elementary, and one at the elementary, and none had any contact with each other.

The good reason for kids not to be tested regularly imo is that asymptomatic cases in kids have a pretty low chance of spreading, it leads to tons of needless quarantining, and adults who are actually in any way vulnerable to COVID should have gotten vaccinated by now. A child under 12 is less likely to get severely ill than a vaccinated adult.

However, kids do de facto get tested pretty often, because they need tests any time they are out of school for anything remotely sick-related. For example today my daughter is home with a sore throat (no fever). She will get tested before she can return to school.

A child under 12 is less likely to get severely ill than a vaccinated adult.

Just for example, end of last school year, kid in my daughter's class goes to a yankee game and has to get tested. Tests positive on the rapid. Subsequent PCR is negative. They retest him two more times just to make sure. No symptoms, negative. Whole class has to stay home for ten days. Test all students regularly and that's going to happen every couple of weeks.

"adults who are actually in any way vulnerable to COVID" = every adult

Obviously the whole class shouldn't stay home for 10 days if the PCR test doesn't confirm it. That's just dumb policy, not a reason not to test kids.

It takes 20 seconds. My son does two lateral flow tests a week (well okay, sometimes it's just 1) and he has done for months. If he's positive (he never has been) then he'd need to stay home until confirmed by a PCR test. But according to you this is... bad?

xp

AMAZING report from @PHE_uk on vaccination impact on #COVID19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths in England

2 things stand out:
- Vaccines work astoundingly well
- Even unvaccinated kids are lower risk of death than fully vaccinated adults of any agehttps://t.co/E1oHhKrCCA pic.twitter.com/rUadEWusOp

— Alasdair Munro (@apsmunro) September 9, 2021

"adults who are actually in any way vulnerable to COVID" = every adult

Obviously the whole class shouldn't stay home for 10 days if the PCR test doesn't confirm it. That's just dumb policy, not a reason not to test kids.

It takes 20 seconds. My son does two lateral flow tests a week (well okay, sometimes it's just 1) and he has done for months. If he's positive (he never has been) then he'd need to stay home until confirmed by a PCR test. But according to you this is... bad?

― Tracer Hand, Monday, September 13, 2021 10:00 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel it's unnecessary and not worth it, but at least if there were the option to reverse a positive rapid test with a negative PCR that would be hugely better. Although this year they supposedly have changed policies to make quarantining less likely, it's just a little unclear to me so far what the specifics are or how they will work in practice.

xpost sadly some people taking that to mean masks should come off for kids, as if "lower risk of death" means "no risk of death".

child pediatric death rate doubled in the past week in FL.

child pediatric, ugh. i need sleep

man alive I think it's an incredibly callous thing to say that protecting teachers, their families, the families of all the kids in the school isn't 'worth' your personal hassle of a 20-second lateral flow test. wtf man. Are you listening to yourself? Are you really that selfish? Is your own personal comfort worth more than their health??

it's not an issue of being worth a lateral flow test, it's an issue of how much school kids miss for non-contagious cases and/or false positives compared to how little protection is actually afforded

that is the issue

I think these protocols are already changing. There was a kid with COVID in my kid's class last week. THAT kid can't come back to school, neither can kids deemed "close contacts" of that kid by the principal, but they didn't shut the whole class down. They're PCR testing all the kids in the classroom this morning. (Our kid wasn't particularly close to the kid who tested positive and we gave her two rapid tests over the weekend, both negative, but I can't guarantee other parents did the same, obviously.)

I think if the whole class stays home for a week every time a kid tests positive, there's not gonna be much school, and I would say that there are going to be unknowingly positive kids in the classroom throughout the school year whether or not they have symptoms or get a positive test. (This school is fully masked, all teachers vaccinated, upgraded ventilation, for what it's worth.)

what is the equilibrium, there? if there are 50 unnecessary "false-positive / go home / hire a babysitter / lose 0.00000001% of your career earnings" cases in a month and 1 correct, "true-positive / go home / you saved someone's dad from having to die of covid this year", is that worth it to you? and by that i mean would you be willing to hire a babysitter to save someone's life, even though you'll never be able to prove that it saved anyone's life

xp

there is no correct answer to that, btw. no one gives a shit about the lives they saved, if they can't prove that they did it themselves and get some sort of fucking trophy

xpost - That sounds about right, but I'm curious to know how they determine "close contacts". I have a lot of sympathy for the school officials who have to try and figure all of this out.

child pediatric death rate doubled in the past week in FL.

― you had me at "giallo" (Neanderthal), Monday, September 13, 2021 10:04 AM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

TBC, the case fatality rate did not double, the total number of deaths increased, but we are still talking about 17 child deaths in 18 months. Would likely not even put it in the top ten causes of child deaths in Florida.

I mean, tbf though, Florida

Good morning!

there is no correct answer to that, btw.

actually, as usual, i'm wrong. there is a correct answer to stuff like that. they calculate it.

for example, speed limits. raising them leads to more deaths. it's a number. the number fluctuates, but it is correlated. it's a public safety trade-off - we want to go faster, we want goods to arrive more quickly, we want to live our incredibly selfish lives even more incredibly selfishly. the trade-off is about 30-40,000 more deaths, over 25 years. 1200-1600 per year.

same with EPA. the "cost of a human life", very useful to know for environmental litigation.

so i'm sorry, it's very much a normal human thing to consider, to trade off the deaths of some for the convenience of others

what is the equilibrium, there? if there are 50 unnecessary "false-positive / go home / hire a babysitter / lose 0.00000001% of your career earnings" cases in a month and 1 correct, "true-positive / go home / you saved someone's dad from having to die of covid this year", is that worth it to you? and by that i mean would you be willing to hire a babysitter to save someone's life, even though you'll never be able to prove that it saved anyone's life

xp

― "HYYOOOOOOONK!" is the sound I make (Karl Malone), Monday, September 13, 2021 10:49 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, there's no easy answer to this, but you could also ask the same question about flu, or letting kids swim, or driving.

in general i'd say i'd be fine with about 400K more deaths in the united states from coronavirus, though, if it meant that i get to walk around as a free man. looking at it cold and hard, it's not likely that it's going to kill someone else i know

by 400K i mean topping off around a million. But I could 1.5M if that's what it takes to make me feel better

honestly maybe everyone could just die

Also, it's not really just about "hire a babysitter" (although if you find a babysitter who stays home with quarantined kids please give them my info!), but about the fact that you have a generation of kids who have missed multiple years of school now. Some of them have been out of school more of their school-aged years than they've been in school. And to keep disrupting their school is, you know, disruptive.

so is this the "everybody else vs man alive" thread now?

i am generally just against the world

xp TBH, I would be a lot more fine with restrictions if I felt that they actually were saving lives here. We're a very high-vax area, and quarantining low-risk elementary school kids here is not protecting the people likely to get very sick or die.

so is this the "everybody else vs man alive" thread now?

I mean I'm the guy who sent my own kid to school today in a classroom where I know at least one kid was COVID-positive last week so I wouldn't say I'm actually vs man alive here

We're in a very high-vax area where the numbers have remained consistently low and I am perfectly fine with the restrictions we have in place continuing until we're well in the clear because we don't live in a bubble.

Maybe some people do live in a bubble. Is that a thing? Towns and principalities surrounded by some kind of impermeable dome such that everyone inside the dome can rest assured that current conditions will maintain because outsiders can't get into the bubble with their germs? That sounds nice.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W0ac_Ju8vHw/VOJN_2-2x4I/AAAAAAAAFHI/W3KHKFemOc8/s1600/bubbleboy1a.jpg

what restrictions are in place where you live?

xp

Sex is banned

Indoor mask mandate at the moment. And sex.

ok, hot

iirc, masks mandated for indoor sex only, outdoor sex masks are only recommended.