COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

Which horse film is your favorite? This poll is closed.
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Mr. Hands	54	28.72%
Total:	188 votes

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mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

It's too bad ivermectin didn't work as well as BCG or MMR vaccines against covid

Also does anyone have a link to the actual OSHA text for the PTO specifics, or is that still unreleased

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 13:24

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 03:28

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Masks were our last, best hope for peace.
They failed.
But in the year of the Variant War, they became something greater: our last, best hope for victory.
The year is 2021.
The place - the something awful forums.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2021 15:29

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Madjackal, are you seeing any covid trends in person right now? Cases seem to be shooting up in NYC but since they're almost all vaccinated is that putting any noticeable pressure on the medical staff?

NYC is going to be the canary in the coal mine once again and the more on the ground info the better

# ¿ Dec 16, 2021 19:04

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

MadJackal posted:

Keep in mind I�m solely outpatient now.

Definitely seeing an uptick in sick calls in general and a couple breakthrough cases over the past two weeks.

54M seeing me 8 days after Thanksgiving for a yearly physical, gets a call while I�m in the room and about halfway done that he tested positive for COVID. I was really glad that I�ve been consistent in wearing an N95 with a surgical mask over it during every visit. He only felt a little fatigued a few days before, absolutely zero other symptoms. Vitals all stable. Double vaccinated, second shot in mid June. Figured he probably picked it up when he was visiting his also-vaccinated family.

Had a weird case yesterday of a 48F with five days of myalgias, mild cough and subjective fever. Double vaccinated, second shot also in June. Was exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID six days prior. No loss of taste or smell. POCT flu and COVID both negative, chest X-ray also completely clear. I labeled it bronchitis and started some symptomatic stuff. She�s doing better today.

I�ve got a mobile testing van across the street, and a CityMD down the street which have started to get long lines for the first time since the pre-Thanksgiving testing rush.

I�ve really got to write down the annual exam I had with an RN who told me she lost her job due to refusing to get vaccinated, had her entire family get sick from COVID resulting in the deaths of one son and her father in law, and telling me proudly that she has taken part in anti-mask anti-vax protests marches that passed right by my office a month or so ago. Oh and how masks are making everyone hypoxic, but had nothing to say when I got a pulse ox and placed it on her finger (crappy cloth mask) then my finger (N95 plus surgical) and magically we both had SpO2s flipping between 97-98%.

She�s basically my perfect example of how dumb, confident, paranoid idiots would rather die than mentally touch the third rail idea that their beliefs are wrong and have directly lead to immense suffering of everyone around them and themselves.

Thanks for the insight, I'm betting a lot of the twitter people flee NYC like they did two marches ago so we won't get much social media updates on what's going on. My bet is they'll go visit relatives then stay there for a month or so.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2021 20:50

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Charles 2 of Spain posted:

https://twitter.com/michaelzlin/status/1471749391585214465
Again preliminary with many caveats but it will be interesting to see the same data from other countries.

Wow this is great news, hopefully it holds up

# ¿ Dec 17, 2021 14:39

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

It's literally not.

This is that thing where a layman use of a word is different than a formal definition in some field and people think the dumb scientists are just stupid and getting it wrong.

Like go call something negative reinforcement in front of a behavioral psychologist or "likelyhood" in front of a statistician if you want to have the same sort of endless fight where you declare you are right because they won't agree something you are calling that is the same thing they are using the word for.

Airborne vs aerosol vs droplet doesnt really matter - the miasma theory was always correct and should never have been erroneously discredited

# ¿ Dec 18, 2021 22:37

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

enki42 posted:

So the relative protection that vaccines provide in Ontario is completely nose-diving now that Omicron is solidly dominant (80+% of cases). I don't think this can be translated to actual vaccine effectiveness, there's zero controls for age or other factors that would affect infection rates and vaccination rates, but your odds of contracting COVID are basically now identical in Ontario regardless of whether you've been vaccinated or not. (also things are moving too fast for the 7 day average to keep up, so note the actual data points)

"Vaccinated" in this case means 2+ shots, so some small proportion of this group is boosted.

lmao at vaccine effectiveness against infection being calculated at 5%

# ¿ Dec 20, 2021 18:13

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Interesting moment happening locally:
Chicago and the county health department both announced they're starting vaccine checking mandates for bars/restaurants/gyms after new years. One of the small city public health departments followed suit (each entity controls its own jurisdiction, so county only controls where nothing local). But the city next door, the most liberal one in the Midwest with high vaxx rates (84% fully vaccinated over age of 5, but had a mumps outbreak five years ago from granola moms) put out a statement they don't see the point in vaccine card checkers at the door.

Frankly I think it's the right move to not do the mandate at this point, but they'll probably fall in line since it's easy enough to offload the responsibility on the private businesses

# ¿ Dec 24, 2021 04:03

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

brugroffil posted:

We saw that pretty much all the states and many employers changed their mask policies based on the CDC's political, indefensible decision back in May. This'll be more of the same.

I expect schools to follow it as well, for both employees and students.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2021 03:15

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Nearly 30 years apart, a gold medal winning olympian basketball player shrugged off most symptoms of a highly infectious disease, proving once and for all it's no big deal

# ¿ Dec 28, 2021 15:38

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Discendo Vox posted:

It appears you also do not know what the new guidance says. You may want to reread it.

The guidance says people can leave isolation after five days if they are asymptomatic. Do you understand how that is different from what you are asserting?

It says two different things in two different places on the same page, it's kind of amazing

# ¿ Dec 29, 2021 18:18

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Bearinabox posted:

No, again, you're wrong. We had an intense lockdown from July in Melbourne including curfews, no private gatherings, hell, they even closed down playgrounds, and *cases still grew*.

So - once AGAIN - I'm asking, what should have been done to police home gatherings?

Cell tower tracking on all all covid cases and who interacted with them, jail for anyone who went to a house not theirs. With a nightly curfew it's easy enough to just have cops patrolling and stopping anyone they see that's out and about

Frankly they should never have had the exercise outside rules and just used the method that Sri Lanka (or somewhere else near there, I forget where) where being outside without work papers = arrest , very simple

# ¿ Dec 30, 2021 03:20

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Again, this is the literally playbook from chronic lyme. You find a real and sympathetic group then pretend when someone attacks the fake thing they really mean the real guys.

No, vaccines can not prevent long covid. Having covid is not an important factor in getting long covid.

Yes, Vaccines can help prevent negative outcomes of the coronavirus. Including getting symptoms or those symptoms lasting over 2 weeks.

I think you'll find plenty of anecdotes about vaccines clearing up many people's long covid. My hypothesis is that many of those people's long covid symptoms were from the stress and anxiety of living in pandemic.

So you're wrong on your point because you haven't sufficiently described exactly what long covid is in order to narrow the argument for you to win it

Also re: discendo vox, simulations ARE informative and I don't know why you would say otherwise, especially when you're able to change the variables and see how the sim plays out. I don't know why you deny reality about what information is and is not

# ¿ Dec 30, 2021 21:30

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

virtualboyCOLOR posted:

Speaking of mitigations, what are the mitigation efforts for the huge super spreader event known as New Years.

Has Biden stated anything? Has the Dem leaders of New York City canceled the festivities like last year to flatten the curve?

That would bankrupt bars, so in a compromise everyone has agreed to close the bars new years morning until football games start

# ¿ Dec 31, 2021 16:24

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

School just announced they're going remote when they start back up on Monday 1/10

Then on Tuesday 1/11 everyone goes back in person

??? ?????

# ¿ Dec 31, 2021 18:27

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Gripweed posted:

The sheer number of cases is why I'm not getting excited about lab results from hamsters. The actual test is happening right now, in real life. We are going to find out exactly how mild Omicron really is this month.

everyone who's going to get omicron will have gotten it by then as well

# ¿ Jan 1, 2022 20:11

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

buglord posted:

Hi goons

I started feeling sick on Dec 24th, got a PCR test on the 28th and got a positive result on the 29th. What day should I be good to re-enter society? Would I need another test? The city has a program to ship out PCR tests to people who want them, but I’m also reading that PCRs will flag positive past the point of being contagious? Rapids are apparently rare but I can’t go to stores to check, obviously.

Today or tomorrow per the new rules so long as you feel a bit better

# ¿ Jan 2, 2022 22:56

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

around the time of this post, covid hospitalizations have set a new record, passing the previous trump lame duck era peak of 127k

# ¿ Jan 5, 2022 20:15

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:

I was a big fan of the soda tax here in Chicago. Cigarette taxes seem to be effective in combating smoking rates, seems like taxation of sugar drinks would reduce consumption similarly. It is a regressive tax and should be structured in a way to support the impoverished, but I don�t know what else could be done. Sugar soda is super unhealthy and should be an occasional treat, not the default beverage for a meal.

I remember a coworker telling me that she had to drive to Indiana to buy soda for her family now because of the soda tax and all I could think was �I don�t think the soda tax is the problem here�.

Anyways, I only have a cursory understanding of the issue so there may be factors I haven�t considered but using taxes & subsidies to promote healthy food choices seems like a viable option.

The chicago pop tax calculated the tax by liquid ounces, so cheap drinks ended up being taxed at a higher rate than more expensive ones. Oh, and the tax included drinks without sugar, like all the diet drinks. But not starbucks style sugared drinks, those were left untaxed. Unless they were pre packaged, then they were taxed.

Oh, and the implementation got messed up because stores like walgreens were taxing Lacroix, which wasn't supposed to be taxed. And that doesn't get into the issue with refills, or ice.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2022 19:20

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

freebooter posted:

Do we have any understanding of why (in many places, not everywhere) Omicron receded as quickly as it spiked?

More importantly, is there any reason to believe - even putting aside new variants for the moment - we won't just have another Omicron spike as high as the one we went through in, say, another month? And another month after that?

I ask because the Victorian state govt is rolling back some of the last remaining restrictions:

https://twitter.com/theage/status/1494112138314792960

Same reason as Arizona in June 2020 and many places thereafter (India with Delta). The susceptible population gets it and gets a 4 week immunity or so, a bunch of people get scared and avoid it, and it recedes until the next wave

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 03:04

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Discendo Vox posted:

That's one of several activities; there was, for example, a CDC monitoring center in Wuhan, iirc at the institute that had conspiracies about being the source of the virus, as well as a USAID-based monitoring initiative. There was a whole infrastructure put in place after SARS that got gutted during the Trump admin.

With better data and information about how severe covid actually was from better early warning, about all that would have changed is no expanded unemployment benefits of $600/week

# ¿ Feb 22, 2022 01:57

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Marmaduke! posted:

I hope it works too - and not just because it's where a kickstarter I'm signed up to is doing their manufacturing, and literally every world event is a reason to delay even more these days

The entire small/ mid size board gaming community operates due to Shenzhen. The USA has only one place that makes components, but has a tiny selection and at way higher cost. Last year board gaming companies did great since so many people wanted to play games with close friends, now they're going out of business

# ¿ Mar 19, 2022 22:46

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Smeef posted:

It would not take long to re-source board game manufacturing to another country, without sacrificing quality and possibly at a lower cost. The reliance on Shenzhen is probably more a historical legacy than due to any capacity/capability factors. That's true for most products until you get to insanely large scales of production.

The actual machines that make all the highly demanded nice custom parts only exist there. It would take a huge capital investment to set that up somewhere else
And that's without getting into labor costs that keep the costs way down compared to what they should be. My friend has done 500k kickstarters and bitched about this issue to me for ages

# ¿ Mar 20, 2022 02:21

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

It's certainly bizarre that China appears to be an authoritarian hellhole on the one hand, and has utterly failed to vaccinate its most vulnerable population on the other hand. It must be a source of major embarrassment for them.

It's because non sterilizing vaccinations encourage spread of disease. Best to just not do it

# ¿ Mar 29, 2022 05:43

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Can't you find a gathering with like ten people instead

# ¿ Apr 9, 2022 04:04

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Koos Group posted:

It's not against the rules to post with multiple accounts as long as you don't use them to agree with yourself.

A polite, respectful, multi page argument between two accounts both citing data, journals, and various other resources - all posted by one very bored person - is the platonic ideal of D&D, is it not

# ¿ Aug 26, 2022 05:23

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Whatever kills 100k Americans this winter probably doesn't exist yet. Omicron wasn't even detected til mid November and then on GitHub the week before Thanksgiving

# ¿ Oct 6, 2022 23:21

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

I have a friend who has gone down the covid doomer rabbit hole and I find myself spending significant amounts of time refuting his bullshit, especially in online group chats we're both a part of.

Examples:

Covid destroys your immune system and lowers your T-cell count, which makes you more susceptible to both covid and other diseases, which basically means covid is airborne AIDS

Covid attacks your nerve cells and destroys them, which makes it airborne parkinsons

Covid makes it much more likely for someone to develop diabetes, which makes it... airborne diabetes

Covid brainwashes people into irrational fearlessless and complacency, which means it is just like certain parasites that infect insects and alter their behavior to make them spread it more

Catching covid makes it more likely that you will catch it again and again, and it will cause permanent damage in your various organs and cripple you.

Most covid deaths this year have been vaccinated people, which means the effectiveness of vaccines against the latest variants is questionable (fortunately he's not an anti-vaxxer, but I feel like this is anti-vax-adjacent)

I'm wondering if anyone else has come across this stuff, and what your strategy for fighting it has been.

As to the last point are you trying to refute how many vaxxed people died or are you trying to refute implied effectives of the vax? The former is just a number to look up. The latter is comparable to most people who did in car wrecks had seat belts and air bags

as to the rest of it, a) why do you care to "refute" this stuff and b) I guess you need to read the medical journals about all these studies to find out if they're accurate before you waste your time arguing about them

# ¿ Jan 1, 2023 06:36

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Rosalind posted:

That last one about vaccinated deaths became a right wing talking point in November after an extremely poorly worded Washington Post article with that headline dropped. True story I actually wrote the editorial board of the WaPo and got them to change it through the sheer power of my outraged email and dropping the fact that I'm an epidemiologist in there as well.

The fact is that the vaccines remain effective in preventing COVID, reducing the severity of COVID, and decreasing the likelihood of death from COVID. Someone who has been vaccinated is much, much less likely to die from COVID compared to someone who is unvaccinated. And yet more vaccinated people are dying. How can this be?

It's simple but unitutive math and a slightly misleading definition of the word "vaccinated" that is the culprit.

80% of Americans are vaccinated according to NYT as of October 2022 (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html). This means they received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Only 68% of Americans are fully vaccinated. More troublingly only 34% have received at least one booster.

With that information, we already see the first issue: "vaccinated" means anyone who has had one shot or more and therefore includes people whose initial vaccine course is incomplete.

The other issue of math takes a bit more explanation. Imagine we have a population of 8000 vaccinated people, 2000 unvaccinated people. 1000 of the vaccinated get COVID, 50 of them die. 500 of the unvaccinated get COVID, 40 of them die.

0.625% (50/8000) of the vaccinated population died from COVID in this example while 2% (40/2000) of the unvaccinated population died and yet the number of vaccinated people who died is higher. In spite of this raw difference, unvaccinated people were 3.2 times more likely to die of COVID compared to the vaccinated people.

So in summary:

Vaccinated people are, in a raw count, dying more of COVID than unvaccinated people. This is not taking into account proportions and the sizes of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations in the US.

The definition of "vaccinated" is slightly misleading and includes people who are not fully vaccinated or boosted. Among people who are fully vaccinated and boosted, rates of death are very, very low compared to unvaccinated populations.

Everything I've mentioned hasn't even considered other confounding variables such as the fact that the highest risk people (seniors, people with multiple risk-increasing conditions) tend to be the ones who got vaccinated and the people who didn't are younger

The bivalent vaccine is effective in preventing severe disease and death. This has not changed.

Hell of a lot of words to try to not acknowledge that more vaccinated people are dying than unvaccinated, just like more people die wearing seatbelts + with air bags in cars than without. Everyone with a tiny bit of a brain can understand this concept yet somehow you need to 'refute' facts because they make your preferred messaging narrative a tiny bit more difficult.

Do you want to massage the numbers a bunch more to account for age 0-17 being so poorly vaccinated but such a small amount of deaths vs the heavily vaccinated but most likely to die olds? A quick glance at CDC raw numbers (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm) shows 75.1% of deaths are from age 65+ which are 93% are fully vaccinated & 67% boosted per that nytimes article.
Guess what: old people are most at risk of covid death, we all know this, we've always known it, it's never changed no matter how much you want to play around with narratives about portion of the population that's vaccinated

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Jan 2, 2023

# ¿ Jan 2, 2023 21:30

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

James Garfield posted:

Assuming this is the same Anthony J Leonardi, he does not seem to be involved in covid research (the 7 publications are opinion articles and an open letter he signed) or to have a background in infectious diseases. It's not obvious to me why that would be the go to covid expert, I mean there are immunologists who study covid with twitter accounts.

His research background is in T-cells and he writes about T-cells. A lot of infectious disease experts focused on things like STDs yet were taken seriously on this airborne infectious disease (so long as their research was sound) so I don't see what the issue is.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2023 02:02

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 03:28

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

Charlz Guybon posted:

H5N1 has a 53% fatality rate among humans though. That's literally on the level with the Black Death.

is it skewed towards olds because if it is no one will care

# ¿ Feb 8, 2023 21:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.