outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

the suicide stat in that story is motivated reasoning and reductive bs (see thread)

The problem with this story is that the graph from the MMWR clearly shows suicidality DECLINED during the lockdowns and rose during the SUMMER of 2020, and has risen the most in 2021 when most kids are back in school! https://t.co/dZVI3cSCj3

— Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky) January 4, 2022

(i am sympathetic to the rest of it btw, but that one is dangerously dishonest)

Yeah it seems like at a minimum more research is needed on why suicide rates actually rose

Although one caveat to that is that there were a number of large urban school districts that did not go back in person until Fall 2021. He looks at "state-level" change in suicides vs share of students in school "in the state" which won't necessarily fully capture that. It would probably be more telling to look at whether suicides were up in places like Chicago.

Even then obviously you're not going to be able to disaggregate all causes, as he points out - for example the large urban districts most likely to be closed are also likely to have been hit with numerous other COVID-related stresses -- death, illness, job loss, etc.

well yeah it's extremely complicated, which is why dropping a stat with the clear implication (as understood by the many people replying to the author of that piece on twitter) that closing schools caused children to commit suicide in the paper of record is not actually ideal.

Yeah that's horrid

...child obesity...has a lot of its own long-term health consequences.

holy shit why has no ever mentioned this thank u dr. alive

This is what it comes down to for me: if you're willing to potentially sacrifice me and/or any number of my immunocompromised adult friends so that little Billy doesn't have to wear a mask and can swap sandwiches with other kids at lunch, then you can quite literally fuck off to the next galaxy over.

i don't think it's so much about wearing the masks, as getting them out of the house so the parents can go to work in many cases. also a reason many people are quitting and not going back to work at all, for good or ill

Then the issue isn't the way that *WE* treat children but the way that the needs of capital steamroll the ability of many adults to teach and supervise their children adequately. Yet somehow that isn't talked about, and instead it's always, "fuck those teachers and people who are immunocompromised"

I think its more about realizing that covid isn't going away, ever. It's going to be endemic. People who wanted to be vaccinated have had ample time to do so. So once this current Omicron wave recedes the question is going to be what are we waiting for to reopen everything?

once this current Omicron wave recedes

When we know what that looks like we might be able to answer your question: what are we waiting for to reopen everything?

A preliminary guess might still be that health care systems everywhere are so near to breaking, and so many serious non-covid needs are going unmet or being postponed, that just saying "fuck it, we'll just let the chips fall where they may" could result in a much worse situation for society than if we continue to manage covid for harm reduction.

Everything has reopened.

in which states have restaurants, gyms, bars, etc. remained closed?

Leonhardt is right in much of what he says but I get tired of his "at last, I am the one who dares to say [commonplace stance that has been driving public policy in most places since late 2020 and everywhere since fall 2021, and which has never not been a standard part of the public discussion about COVID]" schtick

I mean "right in much of what he says" just to mean, yes, there are real and big costs of having school be online, and those costs, like the costs of COVID itself, fall most heavily on low-income people. But it's madness for him to pretend nobody was allowed to mention those costs or take them into account before yesterday!

Everything has reopened.

In Florida, yes. In France, no.

But the tone of o. nate's question suggests that what he's thinking about is the US or UK removing all restrictions and mandates, such as mandatory tests, masks, or proof of vax. The flaw here is that simply declaring victory and retreating won't lead to everyone acting like things are open or normal. I sure wouldn't pretend the pandemic suddenly disappeared just because half the people at the grocery aren't wearing a mask! It would just make me hunker down more determinedly.

I thought it was understood I referred only to the United States.

And there is irritating goalpost shifting in that series of tweets -- "maybe in spring 2020 it was a good idea," he says, but NOW, he goes on, the availability of vaccines to everyone should raise the ethical question of whether children should bear the cost in order to protect unvaccinated adults.

OK but there are TWO OTHER SEMESTERS you are not mentioning here. If he thinks that in fall 2020, schools should have been fully open, even though there were no available vaccines at that time, and that children shouldn't suffer that harm for old peoples' sake, he should say so! There's a case to be made! But you gotta actually do it!

So I'm just irritated because *I too* basically think that IN SPRING 2021 schools should be in-person, and I think they almost entirely will be, and gets my goat that people are presenting this as if it's some kind of brave contrarian stance which was obviously right all along under all the many conditions that have so far obtained.

hate to break it to you, but it's 2022

no we just started 2021 over

fuuuuuuckkk

child obesity is way, way up, which has a lot of its own long-term health consequences.

pretty sure not being able to exercise for 2 years is going to have health consequences for ppl the exact age as me too tbh

i've been put on two new medications and developed two new ailments and gained about 20 pounds myself

Btw if you're seeing scaremongering about a new French variant, it's tabloid bullshit

Lots of chat about B.1.640.2 in the last few days - just a few points to keep in mind:
- B.1.640.2 actually predates Omicron
- in all that time there are exactly... 20 sequences (compared to the >120k Omis in less time)
Def not one worth worrying about too much at the mo...

— Tom Peacock (@PeacockFlu) January 3, 2022

Really? I heard that one does serious damage to your Système D.

Not til now! xp

otm tbf

“look i almost stepped in this!” (holds handful of dog shit in bare hand)

I actually have seen some scare-mongering oblique refences to a "terrifying new variant", so I actually appreciated Neanderthal sharing that, but ilx seems to be really tetchy about Twitter links lately.

yeah, sorry for posting COVID news in the COVID news thread.

ok but ilx has generally been a beacon of healthy unflappability wrt unverified scare stories about new variants so getting schooled on the reality feels a bit preemptively patronising no

it’s not healthy to know that much YOU HAVE FLOWN TO CLOSE TO THE SUN NEANDERTHAL DESCEND DESCEND

Neander probably shouldn't have said "you" in that post, but it seems clear his intent was benign imo

to be sure!

on the road to hell i would expect nothing less!

That variant hasn't been in the news. It's pure twitter gossip.

Thus is v good to see. Lockdowns are done, we are v close to an end.

Africa's top public health official John Nkengasong, speaking today:

“The period where we are using severe lockdowns as a tool is over, we should actually be looking at how we use public health and social measures more carefully & in a balanced way as the vaccination increases." pic.twitter.com/Hez0cZIJmD

— Covid Fact Check UK (@fact_covid) January 6, 2022

xpost it has been, hence why my friends all started freaking out about it simultaneously the other evening. granted, not REPUTABLE articles but.....

careful, xyzzzz___, you posted a tweet with analysis, remember that's not welcome in this thread!

Pardon me if this was posted somewhere upthread—I searched but it's hard to filter 15,000 posts.

Nature: Do vaccines protect against long COVID? What the data say

With such bummer highlights as:

"For those who do experience a breakthrough infection, studies suggest that vaccination might only halve the risk of long COVID — or have no effect on it at all"

“It’s important to get that lab confirmation for care,” she says. “Otherwise, people struggle a lot.”

In other news, I was hoping my recent bout with COVID, which happened right as I got the booster, would give me super immunity. Sadly...

"Even in the most optimistic scenario, in which a post-vaccination infection does really turbocharge a vaccinated person’s immune responses, the durability of the most primo effects is still a wild card. Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute, in South Africa, told me that he suspects the post-breakthrough luster may dissipate within weeks, as antibody levels naturally fall. There’s also no telling how well Omicron-specific protection—should it show up, and persist—would shield us against the next variant, or the next. The arithmetic of vaccine + vaccine + vaccine + infection just isn’t very satisfying."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/01/do-post-vaccination-infections-improve-immunity/621172/

i had no idea

https://www.propublica.org/article/i-saw-firsthand-what-it-takes-to-keep-covid-out-of-hong-kong-it-felt-like-a-different-planet

It’s a lot and it was fascinating. I was in both Hong Kong and Tokyo in late 2018, during the winter and the precautions people took against colds etc with masks are well known. But I was interested in Hong King to go up escalators that were coated in disinfectant and regularly cleaned, for example. There was similar in Tokyo, although much less. The challenge for a city like HK where they both had the original SARS virus and also it’s incredibly dense must be huge - anything gets loose in HK, it’s going to tear through the place without stopping. I’d love to read about how other cities handled it.

whenever i ride an escalator i think of the nicholson baker bit where he imagines what it must have been like the first time the guy who cleaned the escelator handle in his building could do it by just standing still and waiting.

oof

This post from a NYC high schooler about the covid situation right now is wild https://t.co/iefprZq2fy pic.twitter.com/2xSIW5DCBq

— Adam J Calhoun (@neuroecology) January 7, 2022

My kids didn't go to school yesterday due to an ad-hoc teacher sick-out at their high school (San Francisco). They are back today, but I don't know the situation.

holy fuk @ that reddit post