I'm double vaxxed and boosted and just spent 4 days in the hospital with Covid.
I actually entered the hospital without Covid and got it while I was in there. They had the entire place divided into separate wings and I had to be transferred between them. 103 degree fever, pulse 130, was pretty awful but came out of it fine.
I, too, am done with all of it. Let the chips fall where they may now.
wow, you just had a really awful covid experience despite having all preventive measures in place, and now that you're "done" it's time to take off the masks for everyone?
thanks for "letting the chips fall where they may" on everyone else who still would much prefer not to get sick and risk long covid but I will keep the mask on for now, thanks
I mean, my stance on seatbelts is never going to change even if car accidents never stop happening. I have no idea how I'll feel about masks and everything else in 3 years, but for the moment it's not crazy to say "I think we should keep taking precautions as long as the problem still exists".
The ideas that masks are new and the need for them doesn't have a clear end-date are the major reasons why the opposition is so insistent. After drugs and terror, the West and especially the US have run out of appetite for endless, unwinnable wars.
(Edit: seat-belts address a threat that ought to be persistent, because it's inherent to driving, so they're easier to accept. Covid is, at least allegedly, temporary.)
I get it, I'm just trying to explain that my reaction to "this is lasting longer than we thought it would" is "I guess the precautions will have to last longer as well", and I believe that is a reasonable reaction. I don't find it difficult to accept that nobody knows when it will end. That's just how it is, we're in a pandemic, it sucks. I don't have any more appetite for it than anyone else, I hate it.
Covid also happened at the same time as a bunch of other political/media holy-wars, which is why it's so bizarrely an us vs. them issue in the US. If seat-belts had been advocated by people half the country considered untrustworthy for unrelated reasons, they wouldn't be so universal today.
I wasn't alive in the 80s, but honestly it seems pretty similar. A lot of people hated the laws, there were public fights and court challenges for a while, and then eventually society got over it.
I guess you might be right, although I consider it a little unpalatable that the side I would have agreed with lost so thoroughly. The pre-Fox-News media were the media who declared the Vietnam War lost and salivated at being the fourth branch of government during Watergate.
Apart from the fact they make it harder to breathe, speak, hear people, are uncomfortably warm in the summer, become completely wet from water condensation in the winter, are hard to put on/off if you're walking with stuff in you hands/have a hat, make it impossible to read lips so fuck deaf people and make it harder to communicate non-verbally.
I can understand people who say it's worth it, but not those who say it's inconsequential. Especially compared to seat belts.
I have to cover my face every time I talk to someone. That's in no way inconsequential. It's depressing and antisocial.
I have to wear a mask while at the gym. That's in no way easy, particularly for cardio.
I'm lucky that I can work from home, otherwise I'd be wearing a mask for nearly my entire day at work.
And of course masking is just a part of the overall Covid restrictions that we still have to deal with.
To be clear, I'm in the bay area and fully follow local mask guidance. I can do that while also trying to figure out how long we can do this for, and acknowledging that I can't do this forever.
> I have to cover my face every time I talk to someone. That's in no way inconsequential. It's depressing and antisocial.
Is it? Why?
> I have to wear a mask while at the gym. That's in no way easy, particularly for cardio.
Of course it isn't at first. If society was such that we already used masks all the time I suspect people would just get used to it.
> I'm lucky that I can work from home, otherwise I'd be wearing a mask for nearly my entire day at work.
And...? We also wear clothes all day long at work. I suppose some people would call it bothersome or depressing or antisocial, but mostly we're all so used to it we don't even think about it.
I'm not opining on whether or not society can keep intermittently locking down forever, but we can certainly keep masking forever.
> Huh? You don't just get used to a soggy, restricting mask. I tried running with a mask for like 3 months and it sucked the entire time.
Sure you do, the same way you get used to soggy clothes. You're telling me you ran with a mask for 3 months with no major issues other than "it's soggy and it sucked". Of course, but soggy clothes suck.
> I don't think my belly button would contribute as much to building connections with people as my facial expressions do.
Plenty of ways to build connections with people without them seeing the entirety of your face. Heck, I've plenty of internet friends who have never seen any part of it!
> I can't. Period. And I don't think I'm a minority here.
What I'm saying is: yes, people could, as in, they won't die or be permanently injured by it. At most there would be a few minor inconveniences, particularly during the time it takes for people to adapt. People say they can't, in general, to mean that they won't and as a way to feel less guilty about it.
That is absolutely not true. Aside from the consequences of people not seeing each other’s faces, there are dumb things like having to wear a mask in a gym. Wearing a cloth mask while working out is not easy or inconsequential.
So you’re saying forever then, because Covid is not going away. Do you honestly think people should be forced to wear masks for the rest of their lives?
name any evidence whatsoever of this. this is a toxic viewpoint that conservatives seem to hold which is that liberals/antifa/others somehow "like" covid, or that governments somehow "want" to shut schools down. I see this viewpoint quite a bit and it is completely insane and not based in any reality at all.
for example, I have relatives who watch FOX news all day. they are convinced covid vaccines were created to kill people, for the purposes of "thinning the herd". the reason for this "thinning the herd", which they seem to believe is happening? despite most everyone they know including their whole extended family shaking their heads at their crazy facebook posts being vaccinated without any issue? is so that this would somehow pave the way for "communism". that's their whole worldview. so those are folks who think we're somehow all on board with covid being great, or something.
There's a lot of people that like masks, staying home, a lot of people that like that others are being forced to do things ("political enemies"), etc. I think it's more than most suppose, and they are vocal, too.
ive liked to stay home for decades and because of that i tend not to travel much. covid has nothing to do with that? why would i wish a certain lifestyle on other people? also "political enemies" who disagree with covid restrictions arent forced to do anything, they are walking around unvaccinated, unmasked, filling up the hospitals and crushing the healthcare system with abandon. Nobody is coming after them.
The jump from "some people aren't as bothered by masks and are more ok with staying home" to "these same people wouldn't mind if a disease that already killed millions just lingers forever" is... baffling.
It’s absolutely based on reality. I invite you to live in any major west coast city. Dudes have lost the plot.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with being “anti mask”. Covid is endemic. I’m boostered. Why should I continue to be forced to wear a mask? Is Covid still the only problem I can ever focus on?
There is a significant portion of the population that enjoys telling others what to do. Nobody can argue this. Therefore, given the fact that COVID restrictions is the hottest-button issue of the past several years, and dealing with it involves telling people what to do, through force of law no less (usually), it only follows...
After COVID, what are the media and these people going to do? The gravy train is going to run out, everything else will be boring for them in comparison.
it's not possible for things to "stay the same" because long covid will have been studied for years and there will be tons of data on it regarding what effect vaccines have upon it, what different variants do as far as long covid, etc. hopefully it will be well established that long covid is preventable by vaccines and/or new treatments have been developed and/or more evidence that "long covid" is not actually permanent will have been reached.
right now almost nothing is known about long covid except for the very terrifying pathways by which the virus causes it takes effect, directly attacking organs, cardiovascular, lungs, immune system, and brain with long term, extensive damage in some cases. no thanks
so the plan is "wait and see" until more is known. if indeed it's established that long covid is much too dangerous to be risked (in the same way that lyme disease is currently considered to be too dangerous to be risked) then hopefully they will work towards producing newer vaccines that keep the initial antibody wall up against variants, and oral antiviral drugs that stop the virus much more quickly will also be commonplace. as well as that the global population will slowly (very...slowly) be getting more and more immunity from vaccines and re-infection, hopefully reducing the rate at which new variants emerge.
so in 3-5 years there will be lots of things improving the situation. we are not there yet.
> so in 3-5 years there will be lots of things improving the situation. we are not there yet.
Uh yeah sorry, I'm already losing it less than 2 years into this thing. There's zero chance I'm making it another 3-5 years. It's just not possible mentally for me. I don't know exactly what my time frame is, but 3-5 years is certainly beyond my limit.
People's stances should change as reality and conditions on the ground change, not based on some arbitrary number of months/years pulled out of the sky. What makes 3 years special, or 5 years? We may be at the very beginning of a COVID decade or even century. Do you know for sure how long this will last? Does anyone? Part of why we can't get past this thing is politicians declaring "We must be back to normal in [TIMEFRAME X]" where TIMEFRAME X was arbitrarily chosen and has nothing to do with reality.
I picked arbitrary time frames in my question because at some point people are going to give up, regardless of the conditions on the ground. A massive amount of people have already given up.
I wanted to know if they were prepared to go on for 1, 3, 5, 10, 20 more years of mask wearing in public, travel restrictions, remote learning, testing, etc. if things stay the same.
I see. Yea, I mean the only answer that really makes sense is "when it's over"--by some arguable definition of over. If they say "Well, I'll deal with it for 3 years but on year 4, that's it--I'm just going to give up, and pretend it's over." then I would: a) question where they got that number 4--what it's based on, and b) ask, if you're willing to ignore reality and just pretend it's over, why not just start pretending now?
> Yea, I mean the only answer that really makes sense is "when it's over"
I wouldn't say that. On the extreme end, if I found out that this thing was not going to be "over" during my lifetime, I'd say it doesn't make sense to continue doing this for my entire life. What kind of life is that?
And to be fair, I'm from the perspective of the Bay Area which has some of the strictest restrictions in the US. If you live in a more red area then you're more likely to already pretend it's over.
> ask, if you're willing to ignore reality and just pretend it's over, why not just start pretending now?
That's what I've been asking myself. I don't know the answer.
You’re the only one talking about forcing anyone to do anything with masks. If you want to wear it fine, but not forcing people to is not the same as forcing people not to.
That's an uncharitable reading of it. A charitable reading of it might be "We've done everything we can do, there's nothing left to do now but roll the dice"
But there's a lot we can do concerning vaccinations, mandates and social distancing. I'm not sure why it's on the reader to fish for a charitable reading of a comment devoid of any nuance.
Because those social distancing and other mandates don’t acknowledge that Covid is here forever. We cannot continue to live under these kinds of mitigations for a virus that will be here forever.
How does anything he does from here on out have any consequence on other people's decisions?
Did you just entirely dismiss what he said about catching it?
It is not his responsibility to protect you or anyone else. YOU can stay home and isolate if you can't handle being out. Stop putting your burden on everyone else. You (and your ilk) have no right to demand protection from others while putting yourself in harms way.
"I can't handle my own health anxiety so I'm going to make sure everyone makes ME feel better regardless of how it affects their lives"
Im typing this from an airport so im not sure what you mean about not being able to handle going out, or who my ilk is (people haven’t had Covid yet?). The selfish part of his statement is this - because he is no longer personally at risk, he no longer supports any measures to protect those who still are. How hard is that to understand?
It is super selfish to except society to continue to cater to the fears of fully vaccinated individuals. If people are scared, they can double mask up, wear protection and go outside or not. It’s not cool to expect society to continue playing this game. Vaccinations were the end of the road.
>he no longer supports any measures to protect those who still are.
Who are we protecting? What measures? Why is he responsible for the health and actions of others? Who exactly is he helping by getting more boosters?
Why is it hard for you to understand that a free society doesn't put the onus on others to keep you or anyone else healthy. You are free to boost the shit out of your system, quadruple mask, and lock down all you want for the end of time. No one will force you to go out. Leave the rest to freedom of individual choice.
> Why is it hard for you to understand that a free society doesn't put the onus on others to keep you or anyone else healthy
Eh? We restrict activities that have negative externalities on the people around you all the time. To name a few: anything that creates pollution, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, even having ridiculously bright headlights in your car.
A disease that you may or may not be infected with, may or may not be spreading, and may or may not exhibit symptoms is FAR outside any of those things you mentioned. You're grasping at straws to push your strange authoritarianism.
Most of those things are restricted when they actually harm people NOT before. You are not restricted from consuming alcohol unless you go out and drink or do something else under the influence. You are not restricted from smoking unless you do it in a place where the smoke cannot be avoided. In this scenario you'd be demanding someone stop smoking while walking towards the smoke.
Lastly, I'm sort of done convincing people like you. I no longer care what you think. I and many others are going to move on with our lives. What are you going to do to stop us?
That’s the most American-possible sentiment, so what’s wrong with it?
In this country we typically don’t care how our actions and policies affect broader society, from NIMBYism to faux-meritocracies to non-universal healthcare.
I really can’t fault anyone for not caring how their actions affect others, it’s been engrained in our culture/laws/policies as long as I’ve been alive.
Let the strongest survive. We do it in every other facet of our lives (well it’s more let the strongest take all and let the weakest suffer for decades).
I’m vaccinated, boosted, and wear masks when needed. I do that for me, not for society. Personally, I’d love 20-40M Americans to kick the bucket with this pandemic, free up housing, decrease the labor supply, lower carbon emissions. Sounds wonderful.
He/she didn't deny that the vaccine kept him out of ICU.
But once vaxxed+boosted, what more realistically can we do? I mean sure, let's maybe avoid coughing into each other's open mouths. But apart from that, Omicron seems to be so contagious, we're all bound to get it eventually unless we literally lock ourselves at home for the next 3 years.
The big question right now is if we should push button#3. Many of us hoped it wouldn't be necessary, but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button.
Lockdowns are themselves staged. We can lockdown schools (already happening in many colleges effectively. I have cousins who are off of college because they've extended their winter break, to minimize COVID19 spread).
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There's also lesser actions: I work in technology. All in-person meetings have been canceled. Schools are "sometimes online" in my area, depending on local conditions. Testing has gone up significantly, we try to catch the disease and encourage people to stay home asap to minimize spread. Etc. etc.
There's plenty of actions we can do, even if we decide against lockdowns.
I put myself firmly in the camp of “vaxxed, boosted, and done”, and I’d say that’s the attitude of more people than we all might think.
I think you have the theoretical game plan right, but I’d say that #3 is no longer within the realm of possibility in the US. There’s just no public support for it amongst anyone but the tiny percentage of the most cautious among us.
On #2, I’d even say that yes, masks still make sense in crowded indoor non-optional settings - meaning places we all have to go like public transit, grocery stores, and hospitals. But I’m already past the point of ever wearing a mask outdoors, and I’d also argue that it shouldn’t be a requirement for vaccinated individuals in optional spaces like gyms, bars, restaurants.
Plus of course in bars and restaurants they are pointless theater- wearing a mask to walk to your table, then taking it off to eat, drink and talk loudly for several hours, does precisely nothing.
Agreed on the masks in bars/restaurants just being theater, but the alternative was never going to be masks not being required, it would be that indoor dining wouldn't be permitted.
Agreed. At least where I live (a major American city) there’s already no expectation or enforcement once you enter a bar, despite us having an indoor mask mandate that people are relatively good about following everywhere else. I’d be willing to guess that the city knows and has chosen not to enforce it in certain settings.
Except at a restaurant, the unmasked time is closer to 95%-99%, depending on how long it takes to get a table, and then how long you're there.
My wife an I recently went out for breakfast. There was no wait for a table, so the masked time was basically less than a minute, but let's call it a full minute. Then, we were there for about 40 minutes unmasked.
That's a 97.5% time unmasked, talking or eating. You cannot possibly convince me that the 1 minute I had my mask on made ANY difference.
That said, the alternative to the "mask until you're seated" policy was never going to be "no masks", it would end up being "no indoor dining".
Or were you socializing for 30 minutes after actually eating for 10? And during the socializing period, you didn't feel like wearing a mask?
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Surely, when you were seated, you didn't have food yet. You had some time to place an order. It takes a few minutes to even fetch drinks from the back sometimes, depending on what the drinks are.
Literally no one is doing this. I'm not arguing that what you're describing isn' safer -- but seriously, no one is doing this. They could, they definitely could.
But everyone who is going to a restaurant in a "mask to the table" kind of area is wearing it for about 30 seconds til they sit at their table. Maybe on the way to the bathroom.
I know a few states had tried to pass mandates about wearing your mask when you were being waited on or when you were socializing/not actively eating. I don't think those stuck though because they are impossibly hard to enforce.
I don't always practice what I preach, but I've done so on multiple occasions. (IE: I've kept my mask on for the "social" phases of the Restaurant, and only took it off for the eating phase).
Given that we're currently facing an unprecedented hospital shortage _RIGHT NOW_, its certainly a behavior worth revisiting and advocating.
We can't stop all restaurant visits or family gatherings. But we can lessen the spread of COVID19 while we do gather.
So what? Why is Covid the single only thing that matters. Covid is endemic. Mandating masks says “Covid is literally the most important thing for you”.
No. I’m boosted. I’ve got plenty of other problems that are far higher in priority than Covid or the spread of Covid. Nobody should be required by law to wear a mask indoors at this point.
Keeping a mask off your face while indoors is that important to you?
Why? No one has ever been able to tell me why a mask on a face was so terrible, to the point where I'm pretty sure that its just partisan bickering / political theater.
Were smiles banned or something? I've smiled to my niece and she smiled back to me last time I checked.
But in public, its important to reduce the hospitalization rate and COVID19 rate of spread. As corrosive as you "think" masks are, I guarantee that the long-term effects of COVID19 are more corrosive.
Just 10% of this school has gotten infected with COVID19, and you can see how much of a nightmare its become. Not enough substitute teachers to watch kids. Kids mingling in the auditorium because there's not enough teachers to watch them. Spreading COVID19 further and further, causing more kids to be absent, causing more teachers to be absent, preventing school from effectively functioning as a learning environment.
Seems like a self created problem. Imagine if we simply stopped all this testing. I bet a lot of money you wouldn’t even know omicron was a thing. This would be “that thing that is going around”
I was standing in a 4-hour line to get a nurse to give me a regular TDAP vaccine (wooping cough). I decided to come back later when the line was shorter, and stood in line __before__ the clinic opened. I was then met with a 2-hour wait instead.
You can't ignore this crap. Its evidently and immediately an issue right now.
Until when? Until covid goes away (which Biden implied earlier this year, that the reason we still have covid is because of the unvaccinated)? Vaccines seem to do nothing to infections, it only reduces the risk of hospitalisation and death. In the UK the % of positive cases that are vaccinated is pretty much the same than the % of people vaccinated in the population. Covid isn't going away.
So are you suggesting vaccines, masks and lockdowns forever? I don't think many will agree to that. I certain don't.
If this is our new reality then this is our new reality.
Given that our hospital systems are being pushed to basically their breaking point, we need to do what we can to help our the nurses / doctors handle this situation.
A cloth mask is something like 30% effective. That's better than nothing, and certainly can slow down the spread if used universally. Booster-vaccines are something like 70% vs Omicron.
I don't know the situation in the US, but here in the UK, the only reason there is a strain on hospitals is not because of high hospital admissions, they aren't particularly high. It is because of mandatory self-quarantine requirement for hospital staff who test positive, which result in staff shortage. We wouldn't do that with a cold, and this variant, at least to the vaccinated, is little more than a cold.
If you are sick, stay home. Don't infect your colleagues, don't infect your patients. Its not that hard.
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The fact that you're arguing for the opposite is incredibly callous and reckless of you. Its like the pandemic has removed you of common sense.
That's literally why we have paid sick leave. Having 5% of your workforce stuck at home is better than those people coming in and infecting _EVERONE ELSE AT THE OFFICE_.
It seems like you misunderstand what people are calling for. It doesn't make sense for a triple-vaxxed, asymptomatic, positive test to be quarantined for ten days. We have rapid tests that are very good at determining whether people are actually infectious. We can use those to return asymptomatic people to work faster with minimal risk of spread.
In the USA, we've already changed our guidance to 5-day quarantines. So as usual, my words are USA-focused and based off of our current US-politics.
There seem to be people arguing for the COVID19 sick doctors/nurses to come in and work as usual, even with symptoms.
If that's not the case in UK (and if you're still on the old 10-day quarantine), then I guess your local politics are just different than what I'm dealing with here. We can blame this misunderstanding on our different local situations for sure.
The strain on your hospitals and morgues could be much higher, if only those COVID-positive healthcare workers were at work, infecting their colleagues and patients.
But this line of discussion is so bad, that I can only imagine it originated from Russian propaganda. How the hell does bringing in _PROVEN_ COVID19 positive people into a face-to-face setting with sick/immunocompromised patients a possible benefit in this situation?
The situation is sickening to think about. Its not something a rational person could ever possibly come up on their own.
Clearly if all doctors stay home sick, then it will lead to many more deaths than if they all came in with COVID.
On the other hand, if only 0.1% stay home sick with COVID, then the effect of their absence will probably be to reduce deaths if their job can be covered by others adequately.
So what we have is a question of degree: there exists a threshold at which doctors (or nurses, etc) should come in even if they have COVID. And somewhat counterintuitively the more doctors who are sick, the greater the likelihood that if they came in with COVID there would be fewer deaths overall.
Exactly where this threshold lies is an open question, and will depend on the facts.
>Given that our hospital systems are being pushed to basically their breaking point, we need to do what we can to help our the nurses / doctors handle this situation.
Our hospitals have been pushed to the breaking point for a long time. Maybe we should focus on extending our ICU capability to meet the demand better, given that this may be the new normal for who knows how many years yet. I think we need to come to terms with this and expand accordingly on a more permanent basis.
"It's possible the deer in northeast Ohio contracted it from contaminated water, since the novel coronavirus is shed in human waste. But alternative sources — such as trash, backyard feeders, bait stations and wildlife hospitals — have to be considered, Bowman said."
What does this have to do with masks again? Perhaps you can organize a scientific experiment equipping half the deer with masks, and report back to us with the results.
It certainly seems likely that deer engage in behaviours outside that humans do not, that leads to much closer contact. I can think of at least one such behaviour. I don't think that wild animals are a good model for human epidemiology.
"A Japanese investigation of 110 cases found the probability of transmission to be 18.7 times higher indoors compared to an “open-air environment.” And a more recent study, which looked at transmission between 18 infected construction workers and 496 of their close contacts, showed that the infected individuals were nearly 25 times more likely to spread the virus to coworkers in enclosed spaces compared with outdoor settings. They transmitted the virus to 26 percent of their indoor coworkers while infecting only 1.4 percent of their outdoor workmates — this despite being significantly more likely to share meals and talk loudly while working outside."
Does it EVER spread outdoors? Sure. Is it very likely to? Not even close. We've known this for a long time, and yet we still have municipalities welding basketball hoops shut and filling skate parks with sand.
There's a restaurant close to me that's got "outdoor" seating. Its a tent with the sides down and heaters. It happens to match the legal requirements for "outdoor seating" in my county, but we all know that COVID19 is spreading everywhere inside that small tent.
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Its not like people are social-distancing at national parks. People are abusing these declarations in ridiculous ways.
> There's a restaurant close to me that's got "outdoor" seating. Its a tent with the sides down and heaters. It happens to match the legal requirements for "outdoor seating" in my county, but we all know that COVID19 is spreading everywhere inside that small tent.
> People are abusing these declarations in ridiculous ways.
And yet, the declarations are also ridiculous, which is the point that OP was making (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29880264). In the past (and maybe now, not sure) people have been required to social distance at national parks - or even forbidden from going to them at all.
On the other side of "ridiculous": 6 feet of "social distancing" wasn't enough to begin with. Building and elevator capacities were a sham. And, my employer (and likely many others) skirted all of these ridiculous rules in ridiculous ways - which is the point, that regardless of how people behave (which isn't relevant for this discussion, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up), some of the rules are still bad and useless.
The vast majority of covid-related rules are unnecessary, hygiene theater, woefully inadequate, or some combination of all of those - and, yet, governments and people of a particular inclination insist on following this charade anyway and using various logical fallacies (e.g. strawmanning, as you did above) and emotional attacks on those that have the audacity to question them.
> On the other side of "ridiculous": 6 feet of "social distancing" wasn't enough to begin with
Its not enough for you as an individual.
But such a rule lowers the "blast radius" of who gets infected when a case comes up. People's breath travels like 20 feet. If everyone is 6-feet apart, you only get ~3 people in front of you sick.
If people are ~2 feet apart instead, you infect 300% more people.
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There's a thing about big groups. What's good for the group isn't necessarily what's best for the individual.
Read the quote I pulled: outside = "open-air environment".
> People are abusing these declarations in ridiculous ways.
And this is being obtuse about "these declarations" to avoid acknowledging the fact that the person at the top of this thread is correct: COVID, statistically, almost never transmits outdoors. It's been studied, multiple times, all coming to the same conclusion.
This is a pretty blatant strawman - OP's exact words were "COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside" (emphasis added), not that it doesn't transmit at all.
COVID19 is _effectively_ spreading to the entire Ohio deer population.
> The investigators said the prevalence of infection varied from 13.5% to 70% across the nine sites, with the highest prevalence observed in four sites that were surrounded by more densely populated neighborhoods.
Furthermore, it seems like we humans are spreading it to deer, with the deer in higher-density human neighborhoods reaching ~70% infection.
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I don't think we humans are sitting around talking to deer indoors. Any reasonable application of Occam's Razor is that humans are spreading COVID19 to deer through some kind of outdoor setting.
> The number of deer who've caught COVID19 in Ohio seems to suggest otherwise.
It doesn't suggest anything.
You're conflating two uses of the English word "effectively". One means "efficiently", which is the only one in use in the thread above, and the only one under debate. The other means "functionally" or "the effects are the same as", which is what you used in this single comment - but not even correctly. 1/3 of the deer population is not "effectively" the entire Ohio deer population in the sense that you meant it.
Furthermore, COVID19 does not spread effectively (in the sense of "efficiently") outside, as a comment that you've already read has pointed out[1]. 18 to 25 times less likely to spread to co-workers in an "open-air environment" (which kind of implicitly is still not like being in a park) fulfills the definition of "ineffective".
> Any reasonable application of Occam's Razor is that humans are spreading COVID19 to deer through some kind of outdoor setting.
Nobody claimed that there were no cases of outdoor human-to-deer infection - you were suggesting that the virus spread effectively outdoors in [2], which Occam's Razor does not support in the slightest.
You also moved the goalposts from "The fact that there's a bunch of infected deer means that covid effectively transmits outside" to "There's some outdoor transmission", and those two positions are completely different.
So, yes, Occam's Razor does support your (silently) revised claim in this comment, but definitely not the comment you originally invoked the Razor in.
> You also moved the goalposts from "The fact that there's a bunch of infected deer means that covid effectively transmits outside" to "There's some outdoor transmission", and those two positions are completely different.
The deer samples were anywhere from 14% to 70% COVID19 infected.
You're grossly underestimating the amount of COVID19 we have spread to the deer population (and likely, that deer have spread to each other). All of which happened outdoors.
> The deer samples were anywhere from 14% to 70% COVID19 infected.
...with an overall rate of 36%, which is given in that very article that you linked. It doesn't matter if 70% of the deer at one site were infected, if the average is significantly lower than that.
...which isn't even relevant, because again, you're moving the goalposts, as stated above.
> You're grossly underestimating the amount of COVID19 we have spread to the deer population
I'm not underestimating anything, as one of the researchers said: "there is no documentation of deer transmitting the virus to humans or vice versa"[1] (another article which you have linked but apparently failed to read).
...and, as a previous study found[2], the virus does not spread effectively outdoors.
You're literally fabricating claims from thin air. There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever for effective human-deer or deer-deer COVID transmission.
I mean, I can't really imagine a world where the deer have mostly be infected by humans. It would seem more likely to me at least that there were a few human-deer transmissions, but way way more deer-deer transmissions.
The GP isn't really arguing in good faith - they didn't even fully read (or purposefully omitted sections from) one of the articles that they linked, in which one of the authors of the study says that there is no documentation of deer transmitting the virus to humans or vice versa[1].
OP's exact words were "COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside". Read the "effectively" - he's clearly not saying that it doesn't transmit at all (obviously it does if you go outdoors and then cough right into someone else's face from two inches away), just that it doesn't do so effectively.
Deer don't do social distancing. They sleep together, and move around in herds for most of their day. COVID can both spread terribly outdoors (which it does) and lots of deer can get it exclusively outdoors.
Let's be clear on this: The majority of humanity is not okay with the idea of wearing masks full-time in all public places, and shutting down densely populated activities forever.
Masks make sense locally, temporarily, and as circumstances warrant. Such as a hospital or pharmacy during a flu outbreak, or when someone thinks they may be sick (cough or sneeze fits).
There doesn't seem to be much we can do to stop this in the near term. The idea of stamping out COVID quickly like we thought we could do in the spring of 2020 is gone.
It is time now to understand we live with it, to be cautious when we feel ill and isolate ourselves, and to get the preventative measures that help best (vaccines).
Where the hell are you that this is your reality? Here in Texas it is absolutely not the case that "but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button".
Texas has much lower per capita cases and deaths than a state like New York. But I also suspect that Texas values freedom relative to safety much higher than states like New York.
Texas leadership is focused on performing for their constituents. That relegates the contemplation to progressive city/county leadership who are willing to push back on statewide policy when the numbers get bad.
A lot of this gets left to the choice of business owners and school administrators who have to balance their choices with fiscal concerns and public perception. There is no political leadership position for them to fall back on. Basically everyone's hands are tied, and some group is going to be upset whether buttons get pressed or not.
There are several ways this could end, but the scenarios that could realistically keep most people from encountering the virus have proven implausible. So while you can use maska and lockdowns indefinitely, it's not much of a plan.
Arguably boosting the entire population and waiting for the last wave to pass is a more realistic plan, even though nobody so far seems willing to admit they're planning to do this, they just are doing it.
Except there are so many options in between Nos. 2 and 3. Reduced capacity. Outdoor dining. Testing requirements. As well as the wide, wide gulf between total lockdowns and selective ones.
I think my overall point is that we're well into discussing options between 2 and 3 now. This Omicron surge is truly ferocious, and far worse than people predicted (or really, hoped for).
There's also the evidence that Omicron subsides rather quickly (at least, in South Africa it did). So any such emergency measures would truly be temporary, more so than the original strain or Delta-surges of the past. Under these statistics / calculations, it makes more sense to perform bigger actions.
I'm still pissed that in California we handled the possible in-between steps so clumsily.
My 2020 Roger Waters concert was canceled. Sure, that made sense -- 15,000 people all packed inside the venue. But at the same time, my hairdresser was shut down, not even a single customer at a time allowed. Made no sense to me.
> The countries that have locked down the hardest (eg Australia, Canada) have seen no improvement relative to those with no lockdowns (e.g. Florida, Texas).
This is a laughable assertion.
Florida has 650 deaths per 100k people. Australia has 9.4 deaths per 100k people.
What is the demographic difference between Florida and all of Australia? When I visit Florida it seems like half the population is at least 80 years old, but maybe that's just my impression.
> The big question right now is if we should push button#3 [lockdowns].
I think a more salient question is if we can push button #3. Nobody wants more lockdowns. The vaccinated are tired of the unvaccinated fucking everything up for us, and the unvaccinated have never been open to the idea.
This is another thing pointed out by the article: there just isn't the will to do it, even if it was necessary.
This isn't being made as a medical decision, it's being made as a political decision.
You either do an orderly shutdown, or you get de-facto shutdown.
In the case of this high-school, they only needed ~10% of students / teachers to get COVID19 before chaos reigned supreme. Students are now skipping classes out of fear of their own safety, teachers are collecting students into auditoriums (because too many teachers are sick, not enough substitute teachers to watch the students 30-at-a-time anymore, gotta collect all the students together to more efficiently watch over them).
At this point, the high-school in this Reddit discussion should have just an orderly shutdown, rather than pretending everything is fine.
If people aren't getting COVID and are staying at home because of a shutdown, then this exact same situation happens again just later in time... (After the school shutdown)
An orderly shutdown is better, because all the students remain at the same point of their lessons. If you're a calculus teacher currently teaching basic integrals this week... you won't be able to teach "integration by parts" (or other advanced integrals) 1 month from now, because 10% of your students were missing.
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In contrast, a formal shutdown means that _EVERYBODY_ gets held off at this lesson. You cut your losses, formally shutdown school, and start everybody up when times are safer.
You can plan around a formal shutdown. You can't plan around a de-facto shutdown. All the students are going to have bits and pieces of knowledge and are unable to catchup, because they all randomly lost bits of information due to randomly missing class.
In many countries in Asia it was already considered polite to wear a mask if you got sick. Got a cold and coughing everywhere? Wear a mask so your not spewing droplets all over your coworkers and people at the store.
I am hoping that trend continues in the western world but who really knows
TBH, I consider wearing a mask to be so low-effort, I take it for granted. I know for many other people in this country that's not the case at all, and wearing a mask to the grocery store for them is somehow akin to wearing a 20-pound iron ball chained to their ankle. But to me (and my family), a mask isn't a big deal.
By "what more realistically can we do" I'm really talking about shutdowns, lockdowns, and capacity reductions. I'm ok with continuing WFH for people who can... so I suppose my stance is inconsistent: I want to get back to "normal" but I'm ok with WFH and masks.
Overall, I'm frankly at a point where, double-vaxx'd and boosted, I really want to go back to not having to second-guess my decision to go out for a bowl of ramen.
Stay away from people who don't take the pandemic seriously, and take every precaution you know you would take if this virus was any more serious. We all knew what to expect. Sure it sucks, but would you rather catch the virus?
at this point I want better public health evidence from CDC etc that "the vaccine may have kept you out of the ICU". I need better quantification of the various risks before continuing to live an extremely inconvenient lifestyle to ostensibly save other's lives.
There's a clear difference in hospitalization and death between the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. You don't have to take the CDC's word for it - other countries can see the same thing in their numbers.
Calling getting the vaccine "an extremely inconvenient lifestyle" is silly.
yes, exactly. I am getitng tired of people citing CDC facts that don't answer (quantitatively) which of any of actions are actually useful.
Note that many people who end up the hospital either didn't know they were infected, or got infected there. And probably many of the people with COVID who go to the hospital don't actually need hospital levels of treatment. We have a tendency to overtreat with technology.
At this point I don't really think that pointing at CDC public health releases is going to convince a scientist like me. Also, the data you pointed at doesn't directly answer what I said (nearly all data is ambiguous, there are a ton of confounders, etc).
Getting a vaccine isnt inconvenient, except that it was: I spent an entire week unable to use my left arm and feeling very sick (and my doctor didn't care). But also there's a ton of other issues, like my kids not being able to go to school, stores closed, having to greatly limit travel, etc.
I don't disagree with the directionality you describe but look at the case rates and hospitizalization numbers- even the most highly vaccinated areas of the country are still heavily impacted. Omicron changed everything and our reporting hasn't caught up.
The best way to think about CDC press releases is that they not intended to be read by scientists. They are intended to guide good behavior and may not be 100% accurate in terms of medical/scientific knowledge.
Thus far, every indication we have is that there's a successful decoupling of cases and hospitalization/death. Omicron's been in South Africa long enough for the lagging indicators of hospitalization/death. They remain low.
I don't think that disproves anything. First, I question their stats. IE I think they are straight-up fudging their numbers. Second, there are more people being hospitalized in my area (which has high rates of vax) than there are unvaxxed people. I would have agreed with you until omicron, but it's clear this is hitting vaxxed people are similar rates to unvaxxed, and that the hospitalization rates are similar.
I wasn't talking in proportions, I meant absolutely. I mean, it's extremely improbable that the huge jump in hospitalizations could be explained by massively more vaxxed people, because there aren't actually enough physical people in the state to explain it otherwise.
Just be aware: you're arguing with a scientist who worked for decades on medical biology who has, until recently, generally been quiet when seeing huge amounts of misleading medical knowledge trotted about to justify one procedure or another. I am always open to data and my "feelings" don't matter- except that most of the time, when I dig into the underlying claims, I find that they are misrepresented (usually unintentionally). So I use my own priors, and frankly, all I can say is that finding stats on a government page or a news article and using those to justify policy isn't convincing to scientists (and, it appears, the vast majority of the american public).
Ultimately, our public health people lost the PR war, and they did so through muddled messaging. Literally everything about vaccines has turned out to be less effective that public health leadership predicted, or claims. I'm not really surprised; I've commented many times on HN about how deeply challenging it is to do public health with a noncompliant population.
> Just be aware: you're arguing with a scientist who worked for decades on medical biology...
On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.
(I'm also glad the CDC employs more than just biologists, as statistics seems to be a fault here more than biology.)
> I wasn't talking in proportions, I meant absolutely.
Cool, so entirely pointless.
This popped into my inbox today: average daily cases, per-capita, for Seattle and NYC. Another clear distinction between the two populations. https://imgur.com/a/mjVxIhB
You can dismiss it as faked or rigged or manipulated again, but there's plenty of information out there to validate this sort of thing, and you don't have to take the US's word for it; other countries publish the same sort of information.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v...
Table S3 has what you want, it's much closer to useful than any CDC press release with the major caveats that it was done in a Kaiser population (which could be non-representative) and is very new and totally unvetted.
Ultimately I think you're not completely incorrect and I agree with teh directionality of what you're saying, but taken generally, the reality is that omicron does a much better job of infecting people (who were previously infected and have natural immunity, or who were vaccinated) and so much of this entire vaccine exercise has shown that we either need to move quickly/plan for regular 4-month updates (can you imagine trying to get everybody in the world to vaccinate every 4 months?) or maybe acknowledge that vaccination isn't the solution it was pitched as.
Here is where the details of COVID matter. Is it just a respiratory disease where once you are past the acute phase you are fine, or is it a multisystem disease where the long term consequences (kidney, heart, brain, blood clotting issues) we be on the rise for years and decades to come? The long term consequences (WHICH NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE) are frightening.
It's not a new phenomena [1]. I do not think "hospitals are incapable of keeping people safe from Covid" is the best expression. I think "encountering any humans bears increased risk in Covid times", regardless if those humans work in a hospital (although, arguably lower risk) versus a shoe store.
It calls into question the effectiveness of all the Covid countermeasures. A triple vaxxed person, following all masking and distancing requirements, in a highly controlled environment still gets Covid. It makes you feel a bit like... What's the point? Do we realistically have any tools that slow the spread of Omicron?
The standard response is "Just imagine how bad it would be without all the restrictions!". Which is exactly the problem, perhaps. You're using imagination and not a quantitative approach. You can say that about literally anything. "Just imagine how much worse we would have lost that game if I wasn't wearing my lucky socks!"
A) Covid is probably airborne and refusal to admit as such and this upgrade hvac is potentially an ignored reality
B) why aren’t we testing and segregated people in hospitals? If society is expected to segregate unvaccinated people why can’t hospitals test and segregate healthy patients from anyone with Covid?
C) what expression is appropriate for a hospital that was incapable of preventing a patient free of Covid from contracting Covid in the hospital? Unwilling perhaps? Uninterested?
You can't reasonably maintain social-distance at the hospital. Pretty much by definition, you're in contact with several nurses and doctors per day, plus orderlies and various other staff. And that's the baseline. Add guests, other patients, and over-crowding (in some locations).
Of course hospitals are incapable of keeping you safe from an airbourne respiratory virus. Nothing can, short of a respirator.
The follow-up question is - if we can't stop infection in hospital buildings, where the most vulnerable are literally cooped up together for days and weeks at a time, what's the point of the rest of the restrictions? If you follow the logic used to set guidance and law where I live (ie, closures of various categories of business at various times, and ongoing), then logically we should also have shut down the hospitals...
In mid 2020 in the UK, The National Health Service (NHS) began introducing "green" and "ultra-green" pathways, and designating zones or entire hospitals as 'green' (CoVid-19 free) sites. 'Green' and 'ultra-green' refer to CoViD-19 prevention measures in the 14 days preceding non-emergency admissions and the status of zones (or entire sites) at the hospital during and after treatment.
This was to ensure non-emergency admissions could continue without risking infection.
I am not sure if your assertion is true. I am completely unvaccinated and at times also ran a heart rate above 120 (involuntarily) and a fever above 102.
However the difference for me was that I was at home and all I needed to do was take my inhaler if I felt short of breath and take advil quite religiously for the fever.
So I don't feel there is any difference between their symptoms and mine, and I am an asthmatic and also a bit overweight.
Different people have different reactions to Covid. That's true of both unvaccinated and vaccinated. But the data has been pretty clear that vaccinated has resulted in a lot less hospitalizations and death for those that take it.
I'm glad you made it through okay, but statistically your risk was higher by being unvaccinated when you caught it.
Also if I was short of breath, a heart rate above 120 randomly, and had a fever of 102 (at the same tmie) during this pandemic, as an overweight asthmatic myself, I wouldn't have risked staying home and would have headed straight to the emergency room. Especially if I checked my Oximeter and it was in the lower 90s.
You can never know if the vaccine made it less bad. If you don't like anecdotes about how tame covid was w/o vaccines, don't say things like "it would have been worse w/o the vaccine".
But statistically it is. Unvaccinated people die more. Vaccinated people die less. You can't _know_ in a meaningful sense in your specific instance, but your risk is what it is no matter what. I'm not sure what's hard about this.
I'm not going to prove to you that vaccines work, sorry. Do your own homework, but remember that you're (probably) not an immunologist. Do what thou wilt.
Had you gone to the emergency room in lower areas of New York, you would have been accepted through triage (but not "admitted overnight"), given an EKG, given an albuterol nebulizer treatment, told to continue these treatments every 2 hours at home until feeling better. If the nebulizer fails to help your breathing at that interval, you would be told to return. And if you developed pneumonia, you'd be given an antibiotic.
How do I know? This is exactly what happened to my wife.
That sucks for sure, and I'm sorry that happened to your wife, although at least you got a little information from that and hopefully if your wife was in worse shape they would have identified that at that time and admitted her.
I would have also used the nebulizer before going in, most likely (I have one at home), so I would know ahead of time how well it was working out. Also I did say I'd check the oximeter I have first, and if my blood oxygen level was low then according to that I probably need to be in the hospital and they'd hopefully take that measurement and react appropriately (Hopefully. I know hospitals have been overwhelmed at times, especially New York's)
I am a bit lucky in that the hospital closest to me, so far, hasn't run out of hospital beds this entire pandemic (currently has 80 regular beds and a dozen ICU beds available), and my state has, with a little luck and some decent policy decisions, has mostly kept things under control.
Risk after-the-fact doesn't work like that. Probabilities cease to be probabilities after the event happened. Plus, don't forget about all of the dead people who are unable to write posts like this. I'm glad you're okay, but as the sibling comment said, your risk was higher, especially being overweight and asthmatic. If you win a slot machine one time, it doesn't mean everyone else will also win the slot machine. Getting lucky doesn't mean there was never any risk, it just means you got lucky this time.
Just a note for anyone reading this but if you want to take a pain reliever for covid infection, apparently aspirin is an ideal one because the feature of preventing blood clots is very useful in preventing the fairly rare but serious covid complications caused by microclots.
But maybe not if you're young. Aspirin is associated with Reye Syndrome in children with viral infections. Not sure I've seen whether this has been shown to be the case or not with COVID, but basically nobody gives their kids aspirin anymore so I'm not sure if it's been an issue.
When I caught Alpha variant in February, I took advil/ibuprofen as well on the advice of my doctor. Didn't really have a headache more than a day though. I didn't know about aspirin's side-effect blood-thinning benefit pertaining to micro-clots.
But as stated elsewhere in the thread, I should have qualified my statement with "don't give aspirin to kids" due to Reyes syndrome. Totally spaced that detail.
One of the many reasons we had hospitals before covid? I'm not the person you asked but I don't see why it matters what their specific health concern was. There are many reasons to go to a hospital both emergency and not.
I'm just trying to understand, they went to the hospital for a totally unrelated reason to Covid or even suspicion of Covid, and then contracted Covid at the hospital.
Yeah catching a different infection while you're at the hospital for something unrelated was pretty common even before covid. It even has a fancy medical name and everything.
I don't hear much about it these days but a few years ago MRSA was talked about commonly in this context. I think that was the big fear there as well. You go for a minor surgery or whatever and come out with a bone infection you'll never completely shake.
I actually entered the hospital without Covid and got it while I was in there. They had the entire place divided into separate wings and I had to be transferred between them. 103 degree fever, pulse 130, was pretty awful but came out of it fine.
I, too, am done with all of it. Let the chips fall where they may now.