Coronavirus COVID-19

[SDHornet]

This this this. I'm dreading having to return. Sept 9 is my date of return. I'm hoping BAC follows the other banks and pushes it back.

Get ready for that date to be pushed back. We went back 3 days a week beginning June 2, and this week went BACK to full remote because of climbing case counts.

Yup. Our "return" date was pushed back to October, which of course is flu season so I expect the date to get pushed again to late spring/early summer.

[JohnStOnge]

The CDC stopped monitoring the frequency of breakthrough infections. They did not stop monitoring total infections. They did not stop counting cases among vaccinated people in the total case count. They just stopped trying to keep track of whether each case was vaccinated or not. They didn't say "Oh this is a case but we're not counting it because the person was vaccinated." They just didn't make an effort to record the case as vaccinated or not. Also, the Worldometers site uses State by State reporting. You can see that by clicking on the numbers in the "source" link at their site. So what CDC did or didn't do doesn't matter with respect to the correlation analysis I did.

BTW, Kaiser Family Foundation did a fairly recent assessment using State by State reporting and it suggested the vaccine is very effective. It's dated July 30 and it's at https://www.businessinsider.com/risk-of ... 021-7?op=1. Here's a quote with respect to what State data say about total infections:



I wish CDC would have continued what it was doing. I think it's good information to have. But it doesn't change the picture. There is a strong correlation such that States with higher vaccination rates tend to have lower case rates and it continues to be the case that the overwhelming number of infections are among people who have not been vaccinated.

Dude. You're too nice. I was wrong about where the data came from. My apologies.

That was your chance to pummel me!

I normally don't talk about this but I do not believing in attacking people personally during debates. I may slip sometimes and break my own rule. But if I do it's not often. I believe in focusing on the argument rather than the person making it. I will rarely respond by calling the other person names even if they are hurling insult after insult at me. I simply focus on the substance and try to offer substantive responses. Also, I interpret personal attacks on me as a sign that I am winning the debate. If someone is in a debate with me and they are throwing insults, I'm grinning.

[SDHornet]

Oh.

[AZGrizFan]

Dude. You're too nice. I was wrong about where the data came from. My apologies.

That was your chance to pummel me!

I normally don't talk about this but I do not believing in attacking people personally during debates. I may slip sometimes and break my own rule. But if I do it's not often. I believe in focusing on the argument rather than the person making it. I will rarely respond by calling the other person names even if they are hurling insult after insult at me. I simply focus on the substance and try to offer substantive responses. Also, I interpret personal attacks on me as a sign that I am winning the debate. If someone is in a debate with me and they are throwing insults, I'm grinning.

Yeah. THAT'S why people hurl insults.

[SDHornet]

Australia fully embracing their penal colony roots.

[JohnStOnge]

Here is the thing: The denialist side has been wrong on the big picture with respect to just about every sub-issue associated with the debate.

They started it off trying to compare this to the seasonal flu. I can remember stuff like people saying the seasonal flu kills about 30,000 per year on average so this was nothing. The 30,000 per year is an estimate. If you take the CDC estimate of COVID-19 deaths in the United States right now it's 767,000 in 18 months. The rate is 511,000 per year.

There's the mask stuff. Masks do reduce the spread. There is no longer any doubt about it. Anybody with common sense would know that a mask on an infected person reduces the risk of that infected person passing on the disease. But there are studies. Here are a couple:

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.13 ... 2020.00818

And the vaccine stuff. Do I even need to link anything?

This is sad. We are in a war with a pseudo life form. We will win. But we have the tools to win relatively quickly with relatively little damage and we have a critical mass of idiots among our own species impeding our efforts. Drawing this out longer than it needs to be. It's sad.

If you're wondering why I wrote "pseudo life form," here is a discussion: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... live-2004/

[JohnStOnge]

I normally don't talk about this but I do not believing in attacking people personally during debates. I may slip sometimes and break my own rule. But if I do it's not often. I believe in focusing on the argument rather than the person making it. I will rarely respond by calling the other person names even if they are hurling insult after insult at me. I simply focus on the substance and try to offer substantive responses. Also, I interpret personal attacks on me as a sign that I am winning the debate. If someone is in a debate with me and they are throwing insults, I'm grinning.

Yeah. THAT'S why people hurl insults.

Correct. If a person has a legitimate argument, hurling insults is not necessary.

[89Hen]

If you take the CDC estimate of COVID-19 deaths in the United States...

I'm not sure I'd take any stats on either side of this argument.

[UNI88]

Dude. You're too nice. I was wrong about where the data came from. My apologies.

That was your chance to pummel me!

I normally don't talk about this but I do not believing in attacking people personally during debates. I may slip sometimes and break my own rule. But if I do it's not often. I believe in focusing on the argument rather than the person making it. I will rarely respond by calling the other person names even if they are hurling insult after insult at me. I simply focus on the substance and try to offer substantive responses. Also, I interpret personal attacks on me as a sign that I am winning the debate. If someone is in a debate with me and they are throwing insults, I'm grinning.

John, this is a message board filled with football fans - we talk a lot of trash and it's ok. If we couldn't handle it we wouldn't be here (and those that can't have left).

[BDKJMU]

CDC posts false data about Florida:
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08 ... se-n424791

[JohnStOnge]

Oh.

[SDHornet]

Oh.

Link disproving the tweet or stfu.

[AZGrizFan]

Yeah. THAT'S why people hurl insults.

Correct. If a person has a legitimate argument, hurling insults is not necessary.

unless it's mocking someone else's ridiculous argument.

[SDHornet]

[JohnStOnge]

CDC posts false data about Florida:
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08 ... se-n424791

There was a data error and it was corrected. None of it changed the basic picture; which is that Florida is a COVID-19 hell hole right now.

Bottom line is that if you go to the Worldometers site (which uses State websites), you will see that Florida, a State with about 7 percent of the US population, has reported about 18 percent of COVID cases in the United States July 1 through present. It's bad there. The basic idea that things are really bad in Florida with COVID-19 is true. And it's associated with a Governor who insists on going contrary to the advice of public health officials.

[JohnStOnge]

Osterholm did not say the same thing as Paul. He was talking about limited benefit in certain situations. He did not say "masks don't work."

It is clear at this point that achieving widespread mask wearing does reduce risk. I posted links to a couple of studies a few minutes ago. Paul is constantly making false statements. He SHOULD be suspended.

I think the situation is summarized fairly well by a quote from the Forbes article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2 ... 8ba5941971:

Paul’s one-week suspension started Monday, six days after he claimed in a video that “cloth masks don’t work” and most over-the-counter masks “don’t prevent infection,” according to YouTube (in reality, public health experts have said cloth masks offer at least some protection against Covid-19).

[JohnStOnge]

Link disproving the tweet or stfu.

It is correct. But you should link a reliable source like Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/business/health ... 021-08-11/.

It's not going to amount to anything. This is how it works. Agencies carefully monitor for any possible indication of side effects and check it out. The vaccines are safe and effective. That's not going to change.

[JohnStOnge]

Should have Googled about what Osterholm has to say abut face masks the first time. Here is a commentary by him on his position on the matter:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... g-covid-19

Again, I want to make it very clear that I support the use of cloth face coverings by the general public.

He's doesn't have the same position as Paul does.

[JohnStOnge]

Speaking of masks: I have to shake my head when I see stuff like Desantis saying that parents can have their children wear masks to school if they want to. I know the guy is smart. He knows better.

If you are a parent that understands the situation you know that the primary purpose of masking is to reduce the risk that an infected individual will infect others. It's not to protect the mask wearer. It's a source control. Not shield. So if you're a parent that understands the situation you are not going to like your kid going to a school where none of the other kids are wearing masks or only a small proportion of them are. Especially not in Florida right now where things are out of control.

[SeattleGriz]

Here is the thing: The denialist side has been wrong on the big picture with respect to just about every sub-issue associated with the debate.

They started it off trying to compare this to the seasonal flu. I can remember stuff like people saying the seasonal flu kills about 30,000 per year on average so this was nothing. The 30,000 per year is an estimate. If you take the CDC estimate of COVID-19 deaths in the United States right now it's 767,000 in 18 months. The rate is 511,000 per year.

There's the mask stuff. Masks do reduce the spread. There is no longer any doubt about it. Anybody with common sense would know that a mask on an infected person reduces the risk of that infected person passing on the disease. But there are studies. Here are a couple:

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.13 ... 2020.00818

And the vaccine stuff. Do I even need to link anything?

This is sad. We are in a war with a pseudo life form. We will win. But we have the tools to win relatively quickly with relatively little damage and we have a critical mass of idiots among our own species impeding our efforts. Drawing this out longer than it needs to be. It's sad.

If you're wondering why I wrote "pseudo life form," here is a discussion: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... live-2004/

Pseudo life form is at the heart of one of the very first questions you get asked about a virus when studying them. Of course that is a coined term, but the question is always the same, "Are Viruses alive?"

[CID1990]

I just love how, every time trip's arguments get destroyed, he just disappears and acts like it never happened....then he'll be back on some OTHER thread, making absolutism claims, and it's like "rinse, repeat"....deja vu all over again.

Start with...he’s probably content with this post of yours....

As usual... the board “moderate” tweaked by a dig at the proletariat

Even before the proletariat itself responds




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[CID1990]

Indeed - learning to live with COVID is really going to be the path going forward. Complete eradication appears to be unlikely regardless of vaccination levels.

Do you think it's possible one of the reasons the Delta variant doesn't appear to be as deadly is because the first two waves eliminated most of the most at-risk population? Across the country, case rates are up 10-15 fold, while deaths are up just 2-3x from their mid-summer lows.

I have often thought of COVID-19 as a kind of biological California undergrowth fire

Also, in response to 88 and others above - the common cold is an interesting analog to the SARS-Cov-2 virus in that although it frequently mutates, it never really changes its lethality. The common cold seems to have found that evolutionary sweet spot between transmissibility and lethality that keeps it viable.

I think that over time, COVID will become less lethal rather than more lethal as it adapts to both natural biological processes as well as artificial stressors like the vaccines


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[CID1990]

CDC posts false data about Florida:
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08 ... se-n424791

There’s a lot of Dem panic over DeSantis

We’re seeing a holistic, “all of government” full court press on Florida now, and it will continue in a steady crescendo until 2024

When the WH spox says your name in every daily press conference....


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[CID1990]

Speaking of masks: I have to shake my head when I see stuff like Desantis saying that parents can have their children wear masks to school if they want to. I know the guy is smart. He knows better.

If you are a parent that understands the situation you know that the primary purpose of masking is to reduce the risk that an infected individual will infect others. It's not to protect the mask wearer. It's a source control. Not shield. So if you're a parent that understands the situation you are not going to like your kid going to a school where none of the other kids are wearing masks or only a small proportion of them are. Especially not in Florida right now where things are out of control.

It is true that cloth masks reduce the risk but the reduction is negligible.

Numerous and sundry virology experts have been well documented and on record that the reduction in risk by two people wearing masks in close prox to each other are afforded a heightened level of protection that is statistically insignificant. Most masks are generally useless in this context.

N95 masks tailored to fit the face DO significantly reduce the risk of transmission.

Cotton cloth Hello Kitty masks do not, and that is the devil in the details that is obscured by the political bent to the debate, and one that you are perpetuating.


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[JohnStOnge]

Indeed - learning to live with COVID is really going to be the path going forward. Complete eradication appears to be unlikely regardless of vaccination levels.

Do you think it's possible one of the reasons the Delta variant doesn't appear to be as deadly is because the first two waves eliminated most of the most at-risk population? Across the country, case rates are up 10-15 fold, while deaths are up just 2-3x from their mid-summer lows.

My understanding is that the Delta variant appears to actually be more deadly when one adjusts for risk factors. One reason we see a lower death rate in the United State now, as I understand it, is that the most vulnerable tend to have high vaccination rates. Here's an example of such discussion:

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-re ... ives/93955

One of the reasons why there may be a decoupling between daily infections and deaths in the U.S. is because the majority of the elderly are vaccinated. Just over 80% of people ages 65 and older -- the group at highest risk for hospitalization and death -- have been fully inoculated against COVID-19.

"The surge of death that we would have seen is blunted because of our success thus far in vaccinating the most vulnerable," said Leana Wen, ​​MD, MSc, an emergency physician and health policy scholar at George Washington University in Washington D.C. and former health commissioner of Baltimore.