Atrocious Joe posted:

how do you convince that person to not say "gently caress you covid is over."

Pingui posted:

Article collation, from the claim, the facts and the tools that we have (I am playing a bit dirty by switching back and forth between UK and US).

Oddly it seems said "shift in attitude" follows along class lines.

Perhaps exploring other absences among the poor would be more constructive, than blaming them for illness with the absolutely incredible "down to illness, including mental (..), but". A couple of absences I - humbly - suggest exploring:

The factors mentioned especially apply to the working poor and their access, while the obvious solution proposed would benefit them disproportionately.

tl;dr: The initial assertion is correct: the social contract has been broken and is the cause of disruption. It is just that the break was made when poor children got thrown to the respiratory disease wolves, to save pence on the dollar.

Atrocious Joe posted:

I was involved in trying to organize protests when eviction moratoriums were lifted and most people were not super responsive. The "victories" during the pandemic, in general, were not consciously fought for by workers, they were preemptive concessions by a ruling class unsure of how bad the crisis would be. Since the expanded social safety net was imposed by an outside circumstance and not struggled for by the working class itself, most people were not super conscious of it's destruction either.

The organized Left, however small it is, and the working class as a whole didn't know how to respond to the pandemic. There was no theory to turn to about how to respond and the Left currently is not large or confident enough to innovate in the way that was needed to actually take advantage of the situation. There's plenty about how socialist states dealt with infectious disease after taking power, but not about making it a political struggle prior. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao faced much more deadly infectious disease than we do in the US even with COVID, and none of them saw it as a something like a primary contradiction. Obviously other authors can be turned to, but there was still a lot of work that needed to be done on why capitalist societies even got interested in public health. So when public health as a concept got destroyed it actually passed without notice for a lot of even politically active people. This lack of theory really killed an innovative response that could have taken advantage of the unique conditions created by COVID.

ACT UP struggled arounds AIDS, but that was also rooted in the struggle against homophobia. The current struggles around COVID are most often building off previous struggles around disability rights. We did actually see a mass uprising in the US during the peak of concerns around COVID, and again it was rooted in a revolt against anti-Black racism, a specific sort of national, oppression. I do think it's notable that when given some free time and money, millions of people decided to fight the racist state. The George Floyd uprisings are instructive too because despite decades of the Left studying urban rebellions, the state was still able to contain the rebellions with essentially no concessions.

The current militancy of the labor movement was in part inspired by the pandemic. The UAW and Teamster contract fights referenced the sacrifices they made "during COVID," and while there is some dissent with the outcomes, they won their strongest contracts in decades and are preparing for the next negotiation already.

Communists are still products of their societies and class, and we still need to learn a lot. As we move back into an era of common and widespread respiratory illness, people who know more about that stuff need to continue political study and education around the topic. Stuff like "Death Panel" is useful, and I still need to check out their book. People can be pissed about the response to COVID, but being angry or bitter is not going to lead to change by itself. A class conscious approach to public health is what the working class needs, and if you think and study a lot about it, write that poo poo down. Talk to people about it who are curious and interested. I know this can sound corny, but for the working class to take power it needs workers who are confident in their own ideas. A lot of people don't have the time, money, or energy for that, but if you do think about how you can use your time on behalf of those who don't.

Shiroc posted:

If you can't wear a mask because you'll feel awkward, even though it almost absolutely carries not risk other than perceived social ones, how are you going to really convince yourself you'd be the kind of person who would have joined Mao or Lenin when the civil wars were hard?

Shiroc posted:

When I'm trying to do things, whether its meant to be explicitly towards left goals, community building, or even things like organizing a work event, I'm constantly pushing people on the idea that they can just do things. The idea of just going to do something new that is outside of the regular patterns without an authority giving blessing terrifies them.

To that end, I give permission for anyone who wants to wear a mask but worries about social pressure to just do it.

I go to parties and made friends/acquaintances as Mask Girl because I'm otherwise interested and engaged with people. I occasionally get strangers yelling from cars like cowards but those are a drop against the number of compliments I get on my cute clothes and accessories. I'm a clocky transsexual who wears pride poo poo so I'm not rolling in as a cishet white guy saying nobody will ever bother you.

Shiroc posted:

The idea of just going to do something new that is outside of the regular patterns without an authority giving blessing terrifies them.

Shiroc posted:

I mean here's your problem

Atrocious Joe posted:

but I didn't wear a mask because I'd be the only person in there doing it.

DickParasite posted:

As you say, this isn't just a leftist thing. I run into this all the time at work. People are paralyzed. What a terrible way to live.

Rescue Toaster posted:

Aranet4 is on black friday sale at Amazon for $150. I think that's the lowest price I've seen.

Levoit Core 300 & 400 are both on small discounts too.

maxwellhill posted:

how is making an appearance to a funeral for kids, presumably with more kids in attendance, and non-consensually / forcibly imposing a hazard on those kids of pandemic exposure (some of whom WILL receive ruinous lifelong damage) in a trivially avoidable way, revolutionary at all? how is growing a human atrocity in size, revolutionary at all?

no matter the social motions one goes through to get there, however passionate, however reverent to the cause when paying respects, or how many people are "united" en masse when doing so, a revolution in words and not deeds is no revolution.

It's worse that no one else was doing the right thing and masking, you get that right? it's not better when there were wrong people to go along with.

your original post was very observant but even there it makes sense that you'd be someone who is over-concerned with theory while being naive to more concrete things in a movement, such as how exactly to navigate ubiquitous state-sponsored sabotage, or visible hypocrisy of action which is self-sabotage. your personality type denies you that just as it denies the ability to understand why people here might be aghast that the perception of feeling "odd" in public is all it took to fatally compromise all of the above, and why we get "invasion of the body snatchers" vibes from it as much as from anything else that's happening. so i don't know why i'm explaining this to you... it's more for solidarity with the rest.

Shiroc posted:

I wear a mask everywhere. Maybe that makes other people feel a little bit more comfortable in their mask wearing or makes someone who decided not to realize they could do it too. Maybe someone asks me directly and I can explain reasons why and even offer them some of the spares I always have on me so they can see how comfortable a good mask is. Maybe nobody cares at all but it keeps me safer to keep trying the things that I do.

I have the theory "support the other members of the working class and build solidarity in the ways I am able to" and just loving operate on it.

Maed posted:

I had some teenager look me right in the eye and call me an NPC today as he walked by me cause I had a mask on. I just found it bizarre and hilarious cause he sounded like an incel redpiller

quote:

The differences are mostly due to differences in mortality estimates for ages 85 and older. Medicare data, which is used to supplement vital statistics mortality data in the construction of annual final U.S. life tables, was not available for the estimation of provisional life tables.

In addition, the 2021 postcensal population estimates used to produce the two sets of tables differed. The final tables are based on the 2021 postcensal estimates that were constructed using the Blended Base developed by the U.S. Census Bureau, while those used for the provisional tables were based on the April 1, 2010, decennial census

jemand posted:

I've been checking up on the chatter about the provisional life expectancy tables, pondering what types of data fuckery could be going on in the meantime.

Life expectancy seems a simple enough thing to calculate at first, just calculate "number died at age" divided by "number of people of that age in region."

But then I started thinking about how documentation of the above can change based immigration trends, people dying while traveling, fetal age estimates & the line between a counted "stillbirth" death vs uncounted miscarriage & whether any of that birth-side of the story might have changed in abortion-illegal states, etc, everything starts to get extremely complicated & definitely very possible to massage if desired.

Then I decided to look at the provisional vs final life tables for 2021, & found that the final version and provisional version were quite different!

Calculation for 2020: 77 years
Calculation for 2021, in report published August, 2022: 76.1 years
Calculation for 2021, in report published December, 2022: 76.6 years

In other words -- the drop recorded in August was .9 years from prior year, vs .6 years in the later publication. This seems pretty big, to me!

The final document does have an explanation here:

Huh. Reading further into the report, they increasingly weight the Medicare data vs the vital statistics data as ages increase, & above age 85 they start literally using logistic regression & modelling to "smooth" the observed data. I'm curious what this means for reality on the ground, given that from what I understand, Medicare requires citizenship or at least bureaucratically sanctioned residency? It really makes me wonder things when they state that the majority of that extra 0.3 years found in December vs August comes from ages where a model, rather than observed death data, is being used.

Non-resident deaths are excluded from the life tables -- makes sense, I guess, it's hard to really figure out how deaths of tourists really relates to life expectancy. But I would expect the undocumented immigrant population to have had the GREATEST mortality impact from covid, & such deaths could be categorized as "nonresident." Other cases where I might expect to see a meaningful difference in rates observed by medicare data vs "vital statistics" data (which I assume is just: have we found dead body yes or no) would be unhoused populations, & in both cases I could imagine actual deaths of people living in an area for an extended time statistically down-weighted in favor of the more locally established Medicare population.

It seems reasonable that estimates based on the 2020 census (used in Dec) might be better than extended estimates off the 2010 one (used in August), but given that it is still so close to the conclusion of that census & analysis of population estimates changes over time as people continue to try to make sense of where there are maybe gaps, I dunno. They didn't cite that as the biggest contributor though.

Having such an impactful difference between the provisional & final numbers though really does help explain why the report is SOOOO MUCH LATER this year. They're in there busily correcting their death certificate data with some medicare data & some model building.

Caveat: I have only read these reports for about an hour or so, not in their entirety, and am quite sure I don't fully get what's going on here. Peeking at the 2020 report, it looks like the "vital statistics" estimated death rate for old ages is lower at any specific age than the medicare one, but this really does not explain the direction of the revision in 2021 values!

Reports:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr72/nvsr72-12.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr023.pdf

quote:

In August 2023, for the first time, mpox cases were confirmed in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Four separate events were identified where persons exposed in other provinces (Equateur, Maindombe) travelled to Kinshasa, each leading to local transmission with small clusters in the capital. Between 18 August and 12 November 2023, a total of 102 suspected cases were reported in eight health zones in Kinshasa, including 18 confirmed cases with one confirmed mpox death (case fatality ratio of 5.6% among confirmed cases).

quote:

Before 2023, South Kivu province had not reported mpox. The first confirmed case was a young trader who travelled from Kisangani, in Tshopo province, one of the mpox endemic provinces, a few days before the onset of symptoms on 26 September 2023. The first skin lesions were located on his genitals and later extended to the whole body. During the initial epidemiological investigation, 113 contacts were registered in Bukavu and Kamituga health zones. As of 22 November 2023, a total of 80 suspected and 34 confirmed cases (including 20 sex workers) of mpox have been reported in South Kivu mainly from the Kamituga health zone, with no deaths.

quote:

The individual identified himself as a man who has sexual relations with other men. During his travel in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he visited discretely operating known clubs of men who have sex with men and had several sexual contacts.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/11/24/its-not-gone-its-changing-its-killing-the-covid-variants-who-is-watching-closely posted:

'It’s not gone. It’s changing. It’s killing': The COVID variants the WHO is watching closely
There are several circulating subvariants of Omicron globally. But what are they and why are we not as concerned as WHO officials about it?

While the height of the pandemic may be over, the virus that causes COVID-19 continues to mutate with multiple variants circulating in every country.

Yet despite this, testing and surveillance have decreased, with experts urging people to keep taking the threat of this disease seriously.

"The world has moved on from COVID, and in many respects, that's good because people are able to stay protected and keep themselves safe, but this virus has not gone anywhere. It's circulating. It's changing, it's killing, and we have to keep up," Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 technical lead at the World Health Organization (WHO), told Euronews Next.
(..)

Shiroc posted:

If you can't wear a mask because you'll feel awkward, even though it almost absolutely carries not risk other than perceived social ones, how are you going to really convince yourself you'd be the kind of person who would have joined Mao or Lenin when the civil wars were hard?

Shiroc posted:

When I'm trying to do things, whether its meant to be explicitly towards left goals, community building, or even things like organizing a work event, I'm constantly pushing people on the idea that they can just do things. The idea of just going to do something new that is outside of the regular patterns without an authority giving blessing terrifies them.

To that end, I give permission for anyone who wants to wear a mask but worries about social pressure to just do it.

I go to parties and made friends/acquaintances as Mask Girl because I'm otherwise interested and engaged with people. I occasionally get strangers yelling from cars like cowards but those are a drop against the number of compliments I get on my cute clothes and accessories. I'm a clocky transsexual who wears pride poo poo so I'm not rolling in as a cishet white guy saying nobody will ever bother you.

maxwellhill posted:

this might seem like joining others to fixate on one detail and missing the broader analysis you posted, but that detail is actually everything to the analysis.

how is it revolutionary to make an appearance to a funeral for kids, presumably with more kids in attendance, while also non-consensually / forcibly choosing the safety level for those kids in a hazardous setting? especially when trivially avoidable by slightly adjusting one's routine to accommodate reality. in a reality when some of them WILL receive ruinous lifelong damage from pandemic exposures, how is it revolutionary at all? how is growing a human atrocity in size, revolutionary at all?

no matter the social motions one goes through to get there, however passionate, however reverent to the cause when paying respects, or how many people feel more "united" in one place when doing so, a revolution in words and not deeds is no revolution. atrocities are counter-revolutionary and wrong, full stop

It's WORSE that no one else was doing the right thing and masking, we all get that right? it's not better when there were wrong people to go along with.

your original post was very observant, but even there it makes sense that you'd be someone who is over-concerned with theory while being naive to more concrete things in a movement, such as how exactly to navigate ubiquitous state-sponsored sabotage, or visible hypocrisy of action which is self-sabotage. your personality type denies you that just as it denies the ability to understand why people here might be aghast that the perception of feeling "odd" in public is all it took to fatally compromise all of the above, and why we get "invasion of the body snatchers" vibes from it as much as from anything else that's happening. so i don't know why i'm explaining this to you... it's more for solidarity with the rest.

Shiroc posted:

I wear a mask everywhere. Maybe that makes other people feel a little bit more comfortable in their mask wearing or makes someone who decided not to realize they could do it too. Maybe someone asks me directly and I can explain reasons why and even offer them some of the spares I always have on me so they can see how comfortable a good mask is. Maybe nobody cares at all but it keeps me safer to keep trying the things that I do.

I have the theory "support the other members of the working class and build solidarity in the ways I am able to" and just loving operate on it.

Ihmemies posted:

Seems the wastewater data keeps trending up here in Finland..... And I thought situation was bad a year ago, welp. Seems it has probably never been as bad as now. Basically a hockey stick graph.

Pingui posted:

"The world has moved on from COVID, and in many respects, that's good because people are able to stay protected and keep themselves safe, but this virus has not gone anywhere. It's circulating. It's changing, it's killing, and we have to keep up," Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 technical lead at the World Health Organization (WHO), told Euronews Next.
(..)

Soap Scum posted:

Why Am I So Tired posted:

[Pestilence] because (quote} "I want to be able to eat inside restaurants"

Why Am I So Tired posted:

[Pestilence] because (quote} "I want to be able to eat inside restaurants"

UnfortunateSexFart posted:

Surgery update, I'm being transferred to a private hospital because apparently the alternative was to send me home after I got bumped for the transplant recipient. Pretty shocking and disappointing.

I have a very complex immigration and private health insurance situation and literally no one can give me a 100% sure answer on private surgery costs, or even the same answer as anyone else. I suspect I won't find out until a bill shows up after.

Canada where I'm from (or at least BC) doesn't even really have private options as far as I know, so this insurance poo poo is all new to me and the exact opposite thing someone recovering from a heart attack should be dealing with.

So glad I have the "freedom to choose" as American politicians like to say.

Still no firm date for surgery. But apparently it's locked in at the new place once I get it.

Platystemon posted:

Thanksgiving was Omicron’s birthday.

quote:

Gabe Newell ordered to make in-person deposition for Valve v. Wolfire Games lawsuit

Valve CEO Gabe Newell has been ordered to attend an in-person deposition regarding an antitrust lawsuit filed by Wolfire Games.

In an order filed on November 16 in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, Wolfire Games said Newell "is uniquely positioned to testify on all aspects of [Valve's] business strategy" and that an in-person deposition "would allow [it] to adequately assess Newell's credibility."

Newell had asked for a remote deposition due to concerns regarding COVID. However, the court said Newell has presented "insubstantial evidence to suggest that he is at particularised risk of serious illness" and, as a result, has been ordered to attend the deposition in person.

The order states that all participants have to wear masks during the deposition, and that Newell must remove his mask when answering questions.