urbanSTL

 New Covid variant with 46 mutations infects 12 in France https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/co ... stract.com

chris fuller wrote: ↑

Jan 04, 2022

 New Covid variant with 46 mutations infects 12 in France https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/co ... stract.com

As the article says, we don't know yet whether this variant is significant or not. # of mutations is not, by itself, a useful indicator of anything.

U.S. COVID cases are on the rise, but this doctor sees hope on the horizon
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2022/01/05/1070380589/omicron-covid-cases-prediction

chris fuller wrote: ↑

Jan 06, 2022

U.S. COVID cases are on the rise, but this doctor sees hope on the horizon
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2022/01/05/1070380589/omicron-covid-cases-prediction

They put the load-bearing caveat right at the top:

Could the U.S. really be in "good shape" in terms of the pandemic in six to eight weeks?

Yeah, I think that's the likeliest outcome. I should always caveat it by the fact that over the past two years, every time things have started looking good, something bad happens. So it's possible that will happen again. There'll be another variant that will be a curveball.

Media experts every six months: "we're fine as long as this is the last variant".

Remember a couple of years ago when we all thought if everyone just quarantined themselves at home for a week, it would all go away?  

framer wrote: ↑

Jan 06, 2022

Remember a couple of years ago when we all thought if everyone just quarantined themselves at home for a week, it would all go away?  

Nobody moderately informed thought this. It was known in January 2020 that the virus had an incubation period up to two weeks and occasionally beyond.

^I think Framer is using some standard rhetorical hyperbole. Quite a few people did think that everyone staying home for a modest period of time unless they absolutely had to do otherwise for literal lifesaving reasons would lick the thing. And you know what? In the few places that did that it did. It wasn't actually a week. It was more like six to eight weeks. But in China it worked for a while, at least until things started creeping back in from elsewhere. Is it realistic for everyone in the world to stay home for eight weeks? Probably not. And at this point it probably wouldn't work anyway, since the darn thing has hopped species into cats, dogs, deer, and anti-vaxers. But Framers statement remains ironically funny. Yes, a fair few of us really did think that. And stayed home for a couple of months. And then it was all as if it had never happened because so many people just bloody refused. Anyway, enough of the gloom and doom. A lot of us have died and more will follow, but this won't last forever. At some point we just give up and live with it. (Or die with it as required.) And then life will go back to normal, much as it has after every plague before. At least until the next one.

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Jan 06, 2022

At some point we just give up and live with it.

This might be the best article I've read on the topic of "living with COVID":
https://www.ft.com/content/20fec1d4-bf0 ... 5c2787cf31

To live with Covid, we must plan for a permanent pandemic
Governments should adopt well-rehearsed emergency regimes that the public and business understand
- - -
Two years into the pandemic, much of Europe is holding its breath, hoping Omicron is less virulent than earlier coronavirus variants so that even record infection numbers don’t reap the death and sickness rates of earlier waves. In the US, too, Omicron is spreading like wildfire. Leaders seem uncertain about which restrictions to impose, and are scrambling to put in place everything from sufficient testing capacity to support measures for renewed economic disruption.
We have evidently neither controlled the pandemic nor learned to optimise our policy responses, despite two years of experience. There is no excuse for this. Omicron, like any particular mutation, came unannounced. But the arrival of mutations is a predictable — and predicted — outcome of infections continuing to spread, which the world has failed to prevent.

“Zero-Covid” has not worked, because it has not been tried in enough countries. The few governments with an uncompromising repression strategy have largely succeeded in keeping cases at an enviably minimal level. They have suffered neither greater economic hardship nor, over time, more onerous deviations from normal behaviour, than countries permitting higher transmission rates.

Quite the contrary: clamping down harder at the first signs of community contagion makes it possible to ease up sooner and enjoy normal economic activity for longer. South Korea and New Zealand, for example, have over time had lighter restrictions in place than the UK and parts of the US, and even than Sweden for much of the pandemic. The greatest cost of zero-Covid strategies — harsh limits on cross-border travel — are only necessary because partner countries have been more tolerant of contagion. The lack of global commitment may indeed have made zero-Covid unsustainable, though that is hardly a justification for those who actively undermine it.

The priority now is to handle the reality that Covid-19 is here to stay. Given Omicron has caught leaders unprepared, the consequences of a mutation that is both more contagious and more virulent hardly bears thinking about. But the risk of another, potentially more lethal, variant is incontrovertible. Scientists have long told us to expect regular zoonotic contagion. Failing to imagine what that means is no longer forgivable. A whole new order of preparedness is therefore imperative. If waves of coronavirus variants, or new pathogens, are likely to hit us regularly, we need a system of emergency responses entrenched in law and practice. Everyone needs to know these can be triggered at short notice. Our best case future is one where “normality” can be shifted to a crisis regime at the flick of a switch, when contagion intensifies.

Pre-planned emergency responses would specify three things. First, a set of behavioural rules, such as compulsory mask wearing, distancing, remote working and testing. Second, a set of brakes on the activities most conducive to contagion — typically hospitality and live entertainment — possibly differentiated according to participants’ likely immunity. Third, predictable economic support for the activities hit by such emergency measures, including furlough and subsidies. Our inspiration should be other types of pre-planned emergency responses: fire and safety drills, military war games, police playbooks for anti-terrorism operations. A more sinister analogy is evacuation advice given historically to the public for bombing raids and nuclear attacks.

The advantages of advance plans for pandemic outbreaks are threefold. First, economic damage is minimised if businesses know exactly which restrictions and support schemes to expect should a pandemic emergency be triggered, and can organise their business model (and insurance) around such an eventuality.
Second, advance planning greatly facilitates government decision-making. A ready set of measures to be “switched on” in a crisis is vastly preferable to reinventing the wheel each time — and more likely to avoid the errors of hurried decision-making. One may even hope that the existence of an emergency regime would focus minds on boosting equipment stores and test, trace and vaccination capacity ahead of time rather than after the fact.

Third, the previous two advantages would reduce the political cost of acting early. Procrastination has been one of our deadliest enemies. What the examples above show is that it takes more severe restrictions to bring a higher rate of contagion under control. Put differently, we limit social interactions to bring the “R number” below one — but R must be kept below one— but R must be kept below one for longer if the case rate has been allowed to rise too high beforehand.
Misunderstanding this is the original sin of politicians who resist restrictions ostensibly for the sake of freedom or economic growth. Both fare better with the occasional swift imposition of a predictable emergency regime for a few weeks than under our current policy mess. In wars and pandemics, as former US Treasury secretary Tim Geithner said of financial crises, “plan beats no plan”. Of course, details should be frequently updated with the latest knowledge, for example, of which restrictions best limit contagious interaction.

Planning for a permanent pandemic, rather than pretending it does not exist, is what learning to live with the virus really means.

^I hate to break it to you, but none of that will ever happen. We're not going to permanently wear masks, eliminate live entertainment, quit having parties, quit traveling . . . We are social creatures. We need group interaction for our own mental health. We need facial expressions to communicate. The measures we've taken for the last two years can only ever be temporary. It's just not possible to make them permanent. We cannot do what the article suggests and remain sane and human. Good luck.

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

^I hate to break it to you, but none of that will ever happen. We're not going to permanently wear masks, eliminate live entertainment, quit having parties, quit traveling . . . We are social creatures. We need group interaction for our own mental health. We need facial expressions to communicate. The measures we've taken for the last two years can only ever be temporary. It's just not possible to make them permanent. We cannot do what the article suggests and remain sane and human. Good luck.

We're going to have to do something, because this is a deadly and debilitating virus that is circulating freely. You have to contain it, or you have to deal with the consequences (supply chain disruptions, short lifespans, widespread increase in mental and physical disabilities). Doing nothing and ignoring it will work out about as well as if everyone stopped wearing condoms a year after AIDS appeared.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

^I hate to break it to you, but none of that will ever happen. We're not going to permanently wear masks, eliminate live entertainment, quit having parties, quit traveling . . . We are social creatures. We need group interaction for our own mental health. We need facial expressions to communicate. The measures we've taken for the last two years can only ever be temporary. It's just not possible to make them permanent. We cannot do what the article suggests and remain sane and human. Good luck.

We're going to have to do something, because this is a deadly and debilitating virus that is circulating freely. You have to contain it, or you have to deal with the consequences (supply chain disruptions, short lifespans, widespread increase in mental and physical disabilities). Doing nothing and ignoring it will work out about as well as if everyone stopped wearing condoms a year after AIDS appeared.

I’m about as covid cautious as anyone but I agree with symphonic. Either covid somehow burns itself out or it’s just going to be a thing from now on. It’s about as bad now as it has been and not much is shutting down. You have full sporting arenas all over the country. Bars and restaurants aren’t under capacity limits. Masks aren’t even required in most parts of the country now and many places they are people aren’t following them. It is basically going to come down to you do what is best for you but government intervention will be minor.

Seems like we are going for the deal with whatever consequences come route from here on out.

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Jan 06, 2022

^ Framers statement remains ironically funny. 

Yep; just indulging in a bit of light-hearted nostalgia. 

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

^I hate to break it to you, but none of that will ever happen. We're not going to permanently wear masks, eliminate live entertainment, quit having parties, quit traveling . . . We are social creatures. We need group interaction for our own mental health. We need facial expressions to communicate. The measures we've taken for the last two years can only ever be temporary. It's just not possible to make them permanent. We cannot do what the article suggests and remain sane and human. Good luck.

We're going to have to do something, because this is a deadly and debilitating virus that is circulating freely. You have to contain it, or you have to deal with the consequences (supply chain disruptions, short lifespans, widespread increase in mental and physical disabilities). Doing nothing and ignoring it will work out about as well as if everyone stopped wearing condoms a year after AIDS appeared.

The comparison to AIDS does not make any sense. There are plenty of fully vaccinated people who caught Omicron and were asymptomatic and recovered fine from it (I have several family members in Europe, including very old people, to whom this happened). At this point, for most fully vaccinated people, this is a mild flu. You never fully recover from AIDS.

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

It’s about as bad now as it has been and not much is shutting down.

That's what is going to make this an unprecedented wave. Last time we responded to extreme infection rates with mitigation, now we're just letting it burn out of control. We're going to find out exactly how many people can fit in an ICU, and I will use my psychic powers to predict that the result will be... bad.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

It’s about as bad now as it has been and not much is shutting down.

That's what is going to make this an unprecedented wave. Last time we responded to extreme infection rates with mitigation, now we're just letting it burn out of control. We're going to find out exactly how many people can fit in an ICU, and I will use my psychic powers to predict that the result will be... bad.

I don't disagree about it being unprecedented.... but your comment of we "have to do something" We don't HAVE to do anything and I don't think anyone does do anything. If they were, it would have happened already.

Sirius radio has a 24 hour Covid channel. All Covid chat/talk/discussion/opinions.

Brilliant.

I recently tested positive for Covid and am triple vaccinated. I honestly thought I had a sinus cold I wouldn’t of never known if I hadn’t got tested. My symptoms were very mild either way being vaccinated has really helped. All I can say is get vaccinated and stay masked or go at your own risk.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

It’s about as bad now as it has been and not much is shutting down.

That's what is going to make this an unprecedented wave. Last time we responded to extreme infection rates with mitigation, now we're just letting it burn out of control. We're going to find out exactly how many people can fit in an ICU, and I will use my psychic powers to predict that the result will be... bad.

I don't disagree about it being unprecedented.... but your comment of we "have to do something" We don't HAVE to do anything and I don't think anyone does do anything. If they were, it would have happened already.

We're basically playing chicken with a wall. You don't have to steer the car away. But if you don't then you're going to hit the wall, you're going to bleed a lot, you're going to get a bill from the hospital. So you do have to do something, either avoid the wall or pay for the consequences. Right now we're in the "I don't have to touch the wheel" phase, but ultimately we'll have to pay the bill one way or the other.

I agree that we aren't going to do anything proactive. What we're going to be doing is getting used to buying whatever brand is in stock this week, calling bill collectors to explain that we haven't gotten our mail the past two weeks, caring for family members who can't walk to the kitchen without getting winded, growing our favorite vegetables because we're tired of the grocery store running out, working from home because the gasoline company had no delivery truck drivers this week, rationing water usage to preserve medical-grade oxygen, et cetera.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

^I hate to break it to you, but none of that will ever happen. We're not going to permanently wear masks, eliminate live entertainment, quit having parties, quit traveling . . . We are social creatures. We need group interaction for our own mental health. We need facial expressions to communicate. The measures we've taken for the last two years can only ever be temporary. It's just not possible to make them permanent. We cannot do what the article suggests and remain sane and human. Good luck.

We're going to have to do something, because this is a deadly and debilitating virus that is circulating freely. You have to contain it, or you have to deal with the consequences (supply chain disruptions, short lifespans, widespread increase in mental and physical disabilities). Doing nothing and ignoring it will work out about as well as if everyone stopped wearing condoms a year after AIDS appeared.

The something that needs to be done is vaccination, coupled with rigorous masking at indoor public places. Vaccination doesn't prevent people from getting COVID, but it does mostly (yes, I know there are  exceptions) prevent them from needing hospitalization or dying from it.

If you don't want to die of COVID, get vaccinated, get boosted, and wear a mask when you are in indoor public places. While that won't give you a 100% guarantee that you won't get extremely sick or die, vaccination + masking at indoor public places is hands-down the best insurance policy available. If you willfully choose not to get vaccinated and remain unmasked at indoor public places and you get COVID and die, you have only yourself to blame.

DTGstl314 wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Jan 07, 2022

^I hate to break it to you, but none of that will ever happen. We're not going to permanently wear masks, eliminate live entertainment, quit having parties, quit traveling . . . We are social creatures. We need group interaction for our own mental health. We need facial expressions to communicate. The measures we've taken for the last two years can only ever be temporary. It's just not possible to make them permanent. We cannot do what the article suggests and remain sane and human. Good luck.

We're going to have to do something, because this is a deadly and debilitating virus that is circulating freely. You have to contain it, or you have to deal with the consequences (supply chain disruptions, short lifespans, widespread increase in mental and physical disabilities). Doing nothing and ignoring it will work out about as well as if everyone stopped wearing condoms a year after AIDS appeared.

Except that's not what's happening... the analog to condoms is vaccination. Most people are getting vaccinated. Even in the states with the absolute sh*ttiest vaccination rates, the majority of the population has at least one dose now, and there are only four states left where less than 50% of the population is fully vaccinated. The catastrophic health outcomes are occurring almost entirely in the unvaccinated population. And I'm pretty close to being completely out of f*cks left to give for unvaccinated people with a death wish who get COVID and die.

Condoms are 99% effective, vaccines are only 73% effective against Omicron. So if 200mil Americans catch COVID each year and 1% of them die, that's 2mil deaths, while if they're all vaccinated that's only 500k deaths. A big improvement, but still a lot of deaths for our current social structure to handle, not counting increases in sick days, permanent mental or physical disabilities, etc.

You're also throwing a lot of people under the bus such as those who have compromised immune systems, or are too young to be vaccinated. You're stretching the truth about the demographics of catastrophic outcomes in order to provide moral justification for inaction, but it doesn't fit the facts.

So this happened a few hours ago...

Death From COVID-19 Very Rare in Fully Vaccinated Adults: Study
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/966205

Trololzilla wrote: ↑

Jan 08, 2022

Wonder what the game plan is once we get a mutation with the transmissibility of Omicron and the deadliness of MERS?

If that happens, it will probably be an extinction-level event and we won't have to worry about fighting over any of this anymore, because everybody will die. There will be no game plan, because it would not be possible to effectively counter such a scenario. Yesterday, there were 850,000 recorded new infections in the United States. The true number is probably double that, because a lot of asymptomatic infections probably weren't reported, in addition to a significant number of mildly symptomatic cases where the diagnosis was confirmed by home testing and not reported to any health agency. MERS has a case fatality rate of anywhere between 25%-65%, depending on whose data you're looking at. Do the math. There's no point in debating how we would handle a viral outbreak with a disease as contagious as SARS-CoV-2 (omicron) and as deadly as MERS, because it would not be possible to handle such a catastrophe. I wasn't being hyperbolic when I called it an extinction-level event. If what you postulate did actually transpire, it would decimate the human race in record time, and most of us would in fact die.

So there's no point in worrying about it, because if it really did happen, we're all f*cked and none of this matters anymore. It's like speculating about how we would deal with an asteroid the size of Rhode Island heading towards earth. We wouldn't. We'd just die.