My point stands.MarkHaversham wrote: ↑Apr 11, 2022You're the one asserting that 2mil dead is apocalyptic but 1mil is, apparently, no big deal business as usual. And yes, the effect of the virus to date (plus wildfires, flooding, etc.) has been "momentous or catastrophic". The pre-COVID world is literally gone forever.DTGstl314 wrote: ↑Apr 11, 2022MarkHaversham wrote: ↑Apr 09, 2022I can't imagine thinking that "only" 1.2mil pandemic deaths plus millions of disabilities (plus wildfires, flooding, et cetera) isn't apocalyptic.
I can't imagine thinking that a pandemic that has killed roughly 0.08% of the global human population over a 2 year span is equivalent to the literal destruction of the world.
It is possible for COVID-19 to both be "really, really bad" and simultaneously "not apocalyptic".
You made up a completely bogus number (2 million U.S. COVID deaths) that isn't remotely close to reality, and you frequently exaggerate the numbers because you need the situation to appear much worse than it actually is, because you seem to be addicted to doom.
The situation is indisputably bad. I've never denied that it is bad. Pointing out that it is not as bad as you have characterized it ≠ claiming that it is not bad. I've acknowledged on numerous occasions that this is by far the worst public health crisis that any of us have ever experienced in any of our lifetimes. I'm not some MAGA kook who thinks COVID is all a giant hoax. Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers infuriate me to no end. I think everybody should get vaccinated and boosted, and I think the American public health response to the pandemic has been far from ideal. But you are an extreme nihilist with your characterizations of the pandemic, and I don't think it is helping anyone, or swaying anyone. It really seems like you want everyone to live in a state of constant dread about all of this, and since society is collectively not in that headspace, you think we're all idiots and we're all doomed. It's annoying AF. And it isn't saving a single life.
This is a good take (and I say that as someone who finds much of Yglesias' contrarianism of late to be extremely obnoxious)...
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What possible justification could someone have for reducing COVID NPIs in 2022 relative to 2020? The fact that January 2022 was merely the second-deadliest month of the pandemic?
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying every year from COVID, and millions disabled, and we're doing less about it than ever. Of course you should feel dread! This is an enormous failure of government, and it's not even a hard problem to solve! It's not like trying to revamp our entire society to solve climate change, you literally just have to put a bunch of air filters everywhere! The richest nation on the planet is failing an open-book test! The same people wringing their hands over 150 homicides a year in the city are whining that twice that many deaths from COVID is no cause for action! This is a bout of mass delusion that makes the post-9/11 war fever seem quaint.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying every year from COVID, and millions disabled, and we're doing less about it than ever. Of course you should feel dread! This is an enormous failure of government, and it's not even a hard problem to solve! It's not like trying to revamp our entire society to solve climate change, you literally just have to put a bunch of air filters everywhere! The richest nation on the planet is failing an open-book test! The same people wringing their hands over 150 homicides a year in the city are whining that twice that many deaths from COVID is no cause for action! This is a bout of mass delusion that makes the post-9/11 war fever seem quaint.
Millions of Americans are not disabled due to covid. Asserting that it is true does not make it so.
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https://theconversation.com/long-covid- ... ins-175424Ebsy wrote: ↑Apr 12, 2022Millions of Americans are not disabled due to covid. Asserting that it is true does not make it so.
https://www.americanprogress.org/articl ... -to-adapt/
I don't understand why you people are arguing about the numbers. Even if we haven't hit 2mil dead or disabled yet, we will soon. Are you going to change your opinion about anything when we officially hit 2mil dead? If not, why are you even arguing about it? Why do you think 1mil casualties are acceptable and 2mil aren't? This was a disaster when it killed 100k Americans, it's still a disaster after killing 1mil, it'll continue being a disaster when it kills 10mil, and it's all completely unnecessary and we're acting like it doesn't matter at all.
At least we can all stop caring about crime, which is much more complicated to solve and has a fraction of the casualties.
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A new COVID wave is probably coming, and America just doesn’t seem to care
https://fortune.com/2022/04/09/new-covid-wave-return-to-office-fauci-omicron-subvariant/
https://fortune.com/2022/04/09/new-covid-wave-return-to-office-fauci-omicron-subvariant/
For all of the talk about a wave, when you look at the various European countries that seem to be in the worst shape, only Austria had a real significant increase in cases. The others are just minor rises.
Even if US cases triple from where they are now, that'd be just a bit over 100,000 per day average. Doesn't really seem like it's worth worrying about for vaccinated people.
Even if US cases triple from where they are now, that'd be just a bit over 100,000 per day average. Doesn't really seem like it's worth worrying about for vaccinated people.
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Keep in mind that the test positivity for most of these peaks in in the range of 30-60%, so actual cases are likely much higher. And that many vaccinated people have unvaccinated or vulnerable friends and family members to worry about.eee123 wrote: ↑Apr 12, 2022For all of the talk about a wave, when you look at the various European countries that seem to be in the worst shape, only Austria had a real significant increase in cases. The others are just minor rises.
Even if US cases triple from where they are now, that'd be just a bit over 100,000 per day average. Doesn't really seem like it's worth worrying about for vaccinated people.
covidcases.jpg
"Every year"?MarkHaversham wrote: ↑Apr 12, 2022Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying every year from COVID, and millions disabled, and we're doing less about it than ever.
Sure, I guess if you ignore the fact that roughly zero Americans died from COVID for the first 243.5 years of this nation's existence and we all assume that the word "every" is now a synonym for the word "two", yes, it is fair to say that hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying every year from COVID. You're right, we should all stay isolated in our homes forever and never come out again until there are zero COVID cases on the planet. Brilliant plan. I'm sure it will work.
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Of course it would work, it's worked everywhere it's been done. But you could also mandate masks, employ workplace air quality standards, or maybe take other measures to mitigate the pandemic. Basically do anything other than encourage people to spit into each others faces like it's 2019 again.DTGstl314 wrote: ↑Apr 12, 2022Sure, I guess if you ignore the fact that roughly zero Americans died from COVID for the first 243.5 years of this nation's existence and we all assume that the word "every" is now a synonym for the word "two", yes, it is fair to say that hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying every year from COVID. You're right, we should all stay isolated in our homes forever and never come out again until there are zero COVID cases on the planet. Brilliant plan. I'm sure it will work.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-wor ... n-know-it/
There could be a lesson from the 1918 flu pandemic. After cases started to go down following the first two waves of the influenza virus, public sentiment shifted and many health measures were lifted. But in 1919, at the tail end of the pandemic, a fourth wave hit New York City, causing deaths to spike higher than they had during prior waves, according to a government funded study.
“These late waves of the pandemics are sometimes the deadliest because people have given up,” said Gonsalves from Yale.
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This is an interesting graph because it breaks out, in real time, a recurring phenomenon. We come down from a peak and "level off", which is taken as the end of the pandemic but is actually the decreasing old variant combined with an exponentially increasing caseload from a new variant. If it's anything like previous variants, leadership will act very surprised in a week or three as the new peak becomes evident.
The county's infection rate climbed past 1.1 just in time for Easter, so wear masks at family gatherings!
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That's a no for me. But you do you.MarkHaversham wrote: ↑Apr 16, 2022The county's infection rate climbed past 1.1 just in time for Easter, so wear masks at family gatherings!
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The traditional beginning-of-surge headline is here:
Covid infections rise, but hospitalizations remain low
Covid infections rise, but hospitalizations remain low
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My work reimposed their mask mandate earlier this week since we hit the 1% of site employees with COVID threshold with ~ 10 cases. Masks on until at least the 23rd of June, but could potentially be longer as it's 10 days after the last case or something asinine like that. Don't really see any benefit behind it at this point, but what can you do?
My works went back into effect when we hit the high level again a couple weeks ago.Trololzilla wrote: ↑Jun 17, 2022My work reimposed their mask mandate earlier this week since we hit the 1% of site employees with COVID threshold with ~ 10 cases. Masks on until at least the 23rd of June, but could potentially be longer as it's 10 days after the last case or something asinine like that. Don't really see any benefit behind it at this point, but what can you do?
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Looks like the current "wave" peaked June 7th with about 111,000 cases (7 day avg) and its now at 96,000 and falling.
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The benefit is that masking reduces infections at work.Trololzilla wrote: ↑Jun 17, 2022My work reimposed their mask mandate earlier this week since we hit the 1% of site employees with COVID threshold with ~ 10 cases. Masks on until at least the 23rd of June, but could potentially be longer as it's 10 days after the last case or something asinine like that. Don't really see any benefit behind it at this point, but what can you do?
For the past couple years it seems like the winter wave has been at least twice as severe as the summer wave. I wonder how this winter will go.dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑Jun 17, 2022Looks like the current "wave" peaked June 7th with about 111,000 cases (7 day avg) and its now at 96,000 and falling.
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Does it though? The mandate will barely last long enough to ride out the current on site infections, most people are getting infected outside of work (which is going to continue to be the case), and the areas on site that have the most people in enclosed spaces working in proximity to a bunch of people for extended periods of time are already ISO 7 and 8 spaces, meaning air flow is tightly monitored and controlled and masks were always required.MarkHaversham wrote: ↑Jun 20, 2022The benefit is that masking reduces infections at work.Trololzilla wrote: ↑Jun 17, 2022My work reimposed their mask mandate earlier this week since we hit the 1% of site employees with COVID threshold with ~ 10 cases. Masks on until at least the 23rd of June, but could potentially be longer as it's 10 days after the last case or something asinine like that. Don't really see any benefit behind it at this point, but what can you do?
The corporate policy is based off of self-reported COVID results. Is anyone even really getting tested anymore? Or even being honest about being sick? They stopped mandatory on-site testing months ago and now barely have a single testing station tucked away in a corner that I have literally not seen a single person use. I'd be willing to bet that the true count of COVID cases on site is much higher but it hasn't really affected our operations in any way.
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Ah yes, the old "Why should I wear a seatbelt, I never get into accidents" argument is back
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You're right, workplaces should be masking all the time. This policy is like only wearing a seat belt when you're on the interstate: arbitrary and only slightly better than doing nothing at all.Trololzilla wrote: ↑Jun 21, 2022Does it though? The mandate will barely last long enough to ride out the current on site infections, most people are getting infected outside of work (which is going to continue to be the case), and the areas on site that have the most people in enclosed spaces working in proximity to a bunch of people for extended periods of time are already ISO 7 and 8 spaces, meaning air flow is tightly monitored and controlled and masks were always required.MarkHaversham wrote: ↑Jun 20, 2022The benefit is that masking reduces infections at work.Trololzilla wrote: ↑Jun 17, 2022My work reimposed their mask mandate earlier this week since we hit the 1% of site employees with COVID threshold with ~ 10 cases. Masks on until at least the 23rd of June, but could potentially be longer as it's 10 days after the last case or something asinine like that. Don't really see any benefit behind it at this point, but what can you do?
The corporate policy is based off of self-reported COVID results. Is anyone even really getting tested anymore? Or even being honest about being sick? They stopped mandatory on-site testing months ago and now barely have a single testing station tucked away in a corner that I have literally not seen a single person use. I'd be willing to bet that the true count of COVID cases on site is much higher but it hasn't really affected our operations in any way.