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My Pfizer was fully vested as of April 30th, so I flew out to DFW to see my family for the first time since Christmas of 2019. Stayed for one weekend, ate indoors twice. Nobody masked at either of the restaurants, but everyone fully masked all the time during airport+flight. Got back on Sunday, have remained quarantined in my apartment, and have a COVID test scheduled for Thursday. I feel fine, but I just want to be absolutely certain that I'm not carrying anything. I already got tickets on the Acela and a hotel reservation for a July trip up to Manhattan. Now, if I test positive then I might have second thoughts, but I feel confident enough to throw down the $300.
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May 5, 2021 16:16
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MarcusSA posted:No they probably won’t. Tracking asymptomatic spread will probably be harder, assuming that there is any significant amount of asymptomatic spread among the vaccinated. I kinda doubt it, though, given what the studies have shown.
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May 5, 2021 19:06
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LanceHunter posted:My Pfizer was fully vested as of April 30th, so I flew out to DFW to see my family for the first time since Christmas of 2019. Stayed for one weekend, ate indoors twice. Nobody masked at either of the restaurants, but everyone fully masked all the time during airport+flight. Got back on Sunday, have remained quarantined in my apartment, and have a COVID test scheduled for Thursday. Oh yeah, took the COVID test and got the results this weekend: All negative. Given how terrible a lot of people's sanitation protocols were in Dallas, I'm feeling pretty good that the vaccination is doing its part. So the NYC trip is definitely happening. I even went ahead and signed up at a local gym as well, to try and work on this terrible plague body I've developed over the last year.
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May 10, 2021 22:19
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Ugly In The Morning posted:What started that, anyway? TikTok, which has become the origin of all musical trends now. Also, just got an email about the baseball game I'm going to on Saturday... quote:In response to the Mayor's announcement Monday regarding mask requirements in the District of Columbia, we will be changing our face covering policy starting with the upcoming homestand.
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May 21, 2021 13:15
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Ran across this article from 2001, about ACT UP San Francisco. The group had gotten taken over by AIDS-deniers, folks who claimed that HIV was harmless and that you couldn't get AIDS if you ate "whole" foods and poo poo. Almost all of them were HIV-positive. It's a depressing read, but is an interesting insight into how little things have changed. The AIDS Deniers quote:As if 18.8 million deaths worldwide weren't bad enough, there now emerges an ACT UP group that argues that HIV is harmless, that AIDS is a myth and that unprotected sex is everyone's birthright. There's a lot more. And the most depressing part is that you can google every single one of these people and find their obituaries. Every one of them died of AIDS.
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May 28, 2021 17:19
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Ugly In The Morning posted:If it was a war it would be, but though pepper agents are banned from war they’re completely above board for things outside of that. Like pepper spraying someone who is mugging you would be a war crime if you were a uniformed service member in a war zone “War crimes” are specific things and most people don’t really understand them- there’s tons of stuff that’s illegal in war mostly because of WWI. It’s actually a really interesting legal area. Yeah, people keep using "war crime" because it sounds like some kind of super-bad crime. And there are certainly some really horrible things that are war crimes. But there are all kinds of things that are significantly better than the alternatives when done by law enforcement that would fall under the category of war crime. For example, it's a war crime to keep prisoners of war in a jail or camp that is in a different climate than the one in which they were captured. So if someone from Florida went on a multi-state crime spree and got arrested in Maine, it would be a war crime if the went to a federal penitentiary back in Florida instead of one in Maine (or a Maine-like climate.)
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May 30, 2021 16:16
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CarlosTheDwarf posted:It is possible though that it would have fallen even steeper with the mask mandate in place. We''ll never know. So it was declining at a steady rate with the mask mandate, and continued at that exact same rate once the mandate was lifted. Are you saying that the pace of the decline would have increased on May 13th? Because that seems unlikely. Now that we are several weeks after the updated CDC mask guidance, there are a few things that are pretty clear: - The vaccinations are orders of magnitude more effective than masks at preventing both infection and the spread of the disease. - There are a lot fewer unvaccinated people going maskless than some people feared.
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Jun 3, 2021 13:10
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Here in the US, the 7-day average number of cases is now, 64 weeks since we first started lockdowns, at the same level it was 2 weeks into lockdown. The next big psychologically-significant milestone number will be when the average has fallen below 10,000 cases. Sadly, the next psychologically-significant milestone number after that will be reaching 600,000 reported deaths. 
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Jun 5, 2021 15:46
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wilderthanmild posted:Haven't we been over 600k reported deaths? Or is this from the CDC count that lags behind weeks to months? Count is from the NYTimes, which is collecting from state and local health agencies. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage They are currently showing total US deaths at 596,483. So 600k is 8-12 days away given the current pace.
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Jun 5, 2021 18:39
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PIZZA.BAT posted:it's loving stupid and gaining traction because of their usual method of getting these bullshit stories off the ground. repeating it over and over and over again despite being shown to have been making garbage up wholesale the entire time And lab leak or no, the bigger implication (that this was an engineered virus/some kind of bioweapon) is demonstrably false because if it were actually engineered then we wouldn't be seeing the more effective variants coming out.
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Jun 15, 2021 20:01
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Spazzle posted:This doesn't follow at all. How does it not follow? The mechanism by which the delta variant is more contagious (by binding more strongly to ACE2) is well-understood and researchers have been able to re-create it fairly easily in pseudoviruses. If you're a state actor/Resident Evil villain who is actually engineering a bioweapon for some reason, it is entirely possible to have had these traits in your virus from the very beginning, and no guarantee that they will develop out in the wild.
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Jun 15, 2021 21:01
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MarcusSA posted:You are making the assumption that they were already studying the most potent version possible. They very well could have been studying a mild virus (which tracks with the lack of proper PPE) which escaped because of the lack of proper safe guards. I wasn't talking about the overall lab leak theory. This was the statement that the person I was replying to said "doesn't follow at all"... LanceHunter posted:And lab leak or no, the bigger implication (that this was an engineered virus/some kind of bioweapon) is demonstrably false because if it were actually engineered then we wouldn't be seeing the more effective variants coming out.
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Jun 15, 2021 21:40
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Space Camp fuckup posted:It’s also difficult now to get a test that insurance will cover unless a doctor recommends it as far as I’ve seen. They’re not cheap if you’re paying out of pocket, maybe $70-$120. What are you talking about? At least here in the US you can still get no-cost covid tests at plenty of places (like most CVS locations). I do agree, though, that the positivity rate going down is a very good sign.
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Jun 16, 2021 21:05
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Space Camp fuckup posted:Check the fine print there, it depends on your insurance. I did some research on this for a client and as far as I could tell you have to pay out of pocket unless you get a referral from a doctor. That seems very odd, since HHS is still paying for testing of the uninsured and paying insurance companies to keep the out-of-pocket costs at $0, per the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.
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Jun 16, 2021 21:14
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Fluffy Bunnies posted:You're already stuck in this shithole with me. Do you have any data on where testing is and isn't happening that would back up these claims? I'm looking at the CDC county-level data for tests performed as well as positivity rate per county, and it doesn't seem to back up the idea that these secret CHUD zones with no more tests happening that are secretly becoming covid hot zones.
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Jun 17, 2021 01:47
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Castaign posted:I don't think the disagreement is about whether current positivity rates are accurate; it's about the claim that lower positivity is a foregone result of less tests being conducted. ...which then got goalposts-shifted to the lower positivity rate only happening because only areas where a lot of people are vaccinated/taking covid seriously are still doing testing.
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Jun 17, 2021 03:04
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https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1405488004366581760?s=20 This sums up a lot about why the CDC is doing things right, even if it is setting off all of the doomers' alarm bells. Presenting the facts as accurately as possible and basing the guidance on those facts is superior to trying to be extra alarmist in hopes that your alarmism will somehow change the actions of people who were already ignoring it. Also, we're now 14 days past Memorial Day weekend and the case numbers are still declining. It seems all the gathering people did during the holiday didn't result in any surge.
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Jun 17, 2021 13:32
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Fluffy Bunnies posted:While I'm glad y'all are enforcing mask orders, I haven't seen a kid in a mask in three or four weeks; schoolyards/daycares included. How many schoolyards/daycares are you visiting exactly? Are you just looking at the kids when they are running around outside (and thus when masks are less necessary), or actually going inside the buildings/looking at classes?
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Jun 17, 2021 13:43
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Meanwhile in the US, we're about to have millions of doses expire because they've got an image problem. High Hopes for Johnson & Johnson’s Covid Vaccine Have Fizzled in the U.S. quote:WASHINGTON — When Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine was authorized for emergency use in late February, it was seen as a breakthrough for reaching vulnerable and isolated Americans, a crucial alternative to vaccines that require two shots weeks apart and fussier storage. It was soon popular on college campuses, in door-to-door campaigns and with harder-to-reach communities that often struggle with access to health care. The vaccination effort is still going really well in the US, overall. Certainly better than we could have even dreamed one year ago. But the whole Johnson & Johnson situation has been such a debacle.
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Jun 18, 2021 14:32
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smoobles posted:Sunday is always a dip because nobody gets tested on the Lord's Day. Is BNO new to the pandemic? There have been other Sundays between March 2020 and yesterday. So, even though Sunday always has the lowest numbers, this last Sunday has been the lowest so far. The 14-day average, which is pretty good at smoothing out the fluctuations through the week, is at 11,138. That's down 18% and well lower than it has been since testing became widely available. At this rate the average will be below 10,000 cases by July 2nd.
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Jun 21, 2021 12:26
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gay picnic defence posted:Is much of that down to a lot of states not doing much testing? That's tremendously unlikely. The number of tests done has remained consistent since the beginning of June, but the number of cases is still falling.
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Jun 21, 2021 12:31
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Platystemon posted:People choosing Pfizer over Moderna is a consequence of the authorities pretending that all vaccines are the same. Moderna, the "Is Pepsi okay?" of covid vaccines.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:46
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MarcusSA posted:https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1408599066242658310?s=21 The fact that things are no longer declining isn’t great. But over the same five-day period last year the average number of cases had jumped over 30%. It was the beginning of the summer surge in cases, most likely brought about by folks in warmer climates spending more time in air conditioned areas with other people. So the 2% rise we’re seeing now is much better as it means that the seasonal rise is being seriously blunted.
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Jun 26, 2021 07:08
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From this morning's NYTimes newsletter. The bad news: counties where people aren't getting vaccinated are seeing higher cases. The good: the vaccine is very good (significantly more effective than wearing a mask) and cases are continuing to drop in areas where the majority of people are vaccinated.
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Jun 28, 2021 11:55
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Fluffy Bunnies posted:the very bad: the dumb fuckers who won't get vaccinated can still infect those traveling to the good areas. People from the less vaccinated areas are traveling to areas that are more vaccinated areas (and vice-versa). Still, a high amount of vaccination among the population is doing what was expected and severely slowing transmission in those communities, thus making even unvaccinated people in those areas safer.
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Jun 28, 2021 15:25
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Anne Whateley posted:I live in NYC so I heard plenty of banging on pots for OUR FRONTLINE HEROES. I just feel like it's weird that there's not Mercury astronaut–level coverage of the teams who created the vaccines, like why are they not on Wheaties boxes and chatting about their favorite music with Ellen and posing for action figures. I hope they are in Germany at least! The Mercury and Apollo missions, as well as the comparable Soviet programs, were very explicitly meant as public image/media campaigns for their respective nations. Doing PR and making the Astronauts/Cosmonauts into celebrities was an important part of the mission objective. Now, maybe that is something that we should have considered to help bolster the images of the vaccines among the public, but we're kinda past that point now.
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Jun 28, 2021 16:52
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Fluffy Bunnies posted:17k+ new cases today in the US up from what, 8-9k the past week or so? 16,571 cases (according to the NYTimes tally), and Fridays have been consistently showing the highest case counts for a while now (last Friday was 14,956). The 7-day average is up about 5% at 12,809, but that is after weeks of having 10%-30% drops. Also, this time last year was a little over a week into the summer surge, where cases hit 49k and were rising rapidly. A lot of folks in the warmer parts of the country are now, just like they were then, gathered in indoor spaces with recirculating air. This time, though, the vaccine is doing its job.
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Jul 3, 2021 01:48
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Akuma posted:Is that a serious question? It’s hard to tell anymore. Poe’s Law but for doomers.
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Jul 5, 2021 18:26
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freebooter posted:It's not just the US, though. The "live with it" attitude is basically everywhere outside of a handful of nation-states, and has been since the very beginning. There are hundreds of millions of people in very different countries who did their hard lockdowns and restrictions in the first half of 2020 and then went back to normal life. Outside those bubbles, an inability to prioritise delayed gratification has led to 18 months and counting of mass deaths and/or severely hampered lifestyles, with no sign of any change or even any acknowledgement that such a change would be possible or desirable. It should be pointed out that there are no "vaccine-resistant variants". There are variants that are more contagious generally, and against which some vaccines are showing a slightly lower efficacy, but the vaccines are still very effective against these variants. It's not like MRSA where they've evolved their way into beating the drugs.
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Jul 6, 2021 04:39
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Chief McHeath posted:What the hell is the point of using the Greek alphabet to name variants when the Delta variant changes into "Delta Plus" instead of Epsilon. I believe the letters are used for significant variants, with sub-variants getting labels like "plus". The new variant out of Peru, C.37, is apparently now the Lambda variant.
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Jul 6, 2021 18:22
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NYTimes has a piece out about the French study on the Delta variant and how effective vaccines are against it... How does the Delta variant dodge the immune system? Scientists find clues. quote:The Delta variant of the coronavirus can evade antibodies that target certain parts of the virus, according to a new study published on Thursday in Nature. The findings provide an explanation for diminished effectiveness of the vaccines against Delta, compared with other variants. So basically, get your second jab if you haven't already.
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Jul 8, 2021 16:40
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Purgatory Glory posted:Genuine question, has 2nd jab hesitancy been a thing anywhere? I don't know if it's hesitancy so much as either being in a place where it's harder to get a 2nd jab, or just some amount of people putting it off for the typical reasons one delays an appointment (too busy, too stressed for the extra logistical work, etc).
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Jul 8, 2021 20:27
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Fallom posted:Why wouldn’t places with huge quantities of unvaccinated people continue to get high infection rates? Is the confusion or shock performative? COVID horseshoe theory: People pushing maximum concern/fear about COVID end up becoming vaccine denialists just like the people who think COVID is a hoax.
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Jul 15, 2021 12:03
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Ceramic Shot posted:Unaccompanied by the caveat that "fully vaccinated" (what does this mean?) doesn't mean fully protected, couldn't it be argued that announcements like this do more harm than good? There is literally no such thing as fully protected unless you're going full boy-in-the-bubble 24/7 for the rest of your natural life. Fully vaccinated means you are more protected than in literally every case except for full head-to-toe PPE and/or complete physical isolation (and in both of those cases, that protection ends the second you take any of that PPE off or get within 6' of another person). Masks are extremely important if you aren't vaccinated, but they still provide only a fraction of the protection that full vaccination does. If anything, the over-emphasis on the small number of breakout cases in the vaccinated is doing more harm than good, because we need to be encouraging as many people to be vaccinated as possible. There were orders of magnitude more "breakout" cases of people who caught covid despite wearing PPE before vaccines were readily available, but people rightly recognized that it was stupid to argue that since masks didn't offer full protection they were worthless.
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Jul 19, 2021 04:26
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https://twitter.com/mugecevik/status/1414685562263441410?s=20 Great paper on better understanding networks of transmission, and how mitigation strategies decided by those least at-risk are often ineffective for those most at-risk. quote:However, in reality, risk factors concentrate among the relatively few who have disproportionately higher exposure and onward transmission risks (2, 7). This individual heterogeneity is evident in data, which consistently indicate higher risks of infection due to higher frequency of exposure and multiple contacts (see the figure). In many countries, those working in low-paid and public-facing jobs had the highest risk of being infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (4). Long-term–care facilities such as nursing homes, homeless shelters, and prisons, as well as workplaces such as meat-packing plants, have been associated with large-scale outbreaks of COVID-19, which were then linked to sustained widespread community transmission (2, 8). These settings often represent environments where risks for infection are compounded and multiple transmission networks intersect (7). There is also a clear intersection of COVID-19 risk and socioeconomic inequities, given the network effects of occupation, crowded housing, job insecurity, and poverty (2, 4).
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Jul 19, 2021 12:55
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Blitter posted:I'd love to see a source for the bolded portion - every study I've read shows very low infection rates of HCW in direct patient contact with PPE and almost all ward outbreaks related to unmasked events. If you only consider the effectiveness of PPE under absolutely perfect adherence rather than how it is used in the real world, then your arguments aren't engaged with reality. Shifting the blame to "unmasked events" even among people whose adherence is significantly better-than-average is just moving the goal-posts. Part of the reason vaccines are orders of magnitude better than PPE alone is because once you are vaccinated then it no longer requires an unrealistic level of behavioral strictness to achieve the highest levels of protection.
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Jul 19, 2021 17:20
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Pistol_Pete posted:Ahahahaha, I thought the numbers sounded a little baffling but if they were coming straight from the government's scientific advisor, welp, they must be true enough. Best of all, that announcement of the 60% figure was a big part of today's massive stock market drop. (As you saw, it got blasted all over Bloomberg terminals around the world.)
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Jul 19, 2021 22:03
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Comfy Fleece Sweater posted:*takes gun out of mouth* Whenever someone does a study out of Israel with a tiny sample size, just ignore it and look at the state of Virginia's breakthrough case statistics. That is looking at numbers for the whole state (which has a population 90% of the size of Israel's) and counts absolutely everyone. https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/covid-19-data-insights/covid-19-cases-by-vaccination-status/
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Jul 22, 2021 01:36
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RandomPauI posted:How worried should I be about my mom getting covid in a Southern California hospital? She's fully vaccinated, but yesterday she had to go in for a preexisting lung problem. Probably as worried as you might have been in 2018 and you were concerned about her catching the flu when going to that hospital for the same reason.
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Jul 22, 2021 16:39
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:lovely cheap surgical masks or homemade cloth masks don't give a huge amount of personal protection but if everyone in a public space was wearing them it would genuinely give a large amount of protection to everyone and drastically reduce the spread of the virus. It's really an all or nothing scenario, if everyone was willing to sacrifice a small amount of personal comfort and wear a mask then even crappy masks would have worked wonders, but if a large enough percentage of people refuse to take part then the surges will just keep happening over and over. One similarity with masks and vaccines is that a significant amount of people using them makes individually-weak protection significantly stronger. This tweet makes a very good point: https://twitter.com/MatthewWynia/status/1418267763685081088?s=20 As you can see, the measles vaccine is about 70% effective in real-world conditions, but overwhelming adoption of that vaccine meant that we nearly eradicated the disease. It was only able to gain a foothold and start reinfecting people when there was a large enough pool of unvaccinated people. If we can get to >90% of people fully vaccinated, it could be possible to almost completely eradicate COVID. Everyone is focusing on Israel's breakout cases since so much of their population is vaccinated, but it should be noted that they are currently only at 58% of the population fully vaccinated (they just got to that level really fast).
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Jul 22, 2021 19:21
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