Coronavirus

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cardinalkarp
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by cardinalkarp »

Arthur Dent wrote:
July 23 21, 4:36 pm
Austin is trying to reimpose its universal mask mandate, and I’ve decided to become an anti-masker now. There’s been around 6,000 total hospitalizations or deaths of vaccinated individuals nationwide so far, which does not at all seem like a level of concern justifying mandating mass shutdowns. Those shutdowns made sense when they served to buy time to get to a better solution (improved treatment methods and vaccination), but what are they supposed to do now? Nobody has even suggested that this is part of an actual solution, so what are we doing here?
Are they mandating mass shutdowns, or asking people to wear masks again? Because one is far different from the other.

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Joe Shlabotnik
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Joe Shlabotnik »

Arthur Dent wrote:
July 23 21, 4:36 pm
Austin is trying to reimpose its universal mask mandate, and I’ve decided to become an anti-masker now. There’s been around 6,000 total hospitalizations or deaths of vaccinated individuals nationwide so far, which does not at all seem like a level of concern justifying mandating mass shutdowns. Those shutdowns made sense when they served to buy time to get to a better solution (improved treatment methods and vaccination), but what are they supposed to do now? Nobody has even suggested that this is part of an actual solution, so what are we doing here?
Good questions. We should be concentrating on getting the unvaccinated vaccinated. Get approval for school kids as quickly as is prudent and then get those kids vaccinated too.

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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Arthur Dent »

In fact, there’s little difference as the mandates here never came with any enforcement, I guess with the exception of bars, but the bars all just evaded it by making you pretend to buy food with your drinks. You can argue that maybe a toothless mandate is a “who care” situation, but the authorities giving advice that can be rationally ignored is not great public health policy, and it will still hurt quality of life, which does in fact matter.

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cardinalkarp
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by cardinalkarp »

I guess I’m just different, because my quality of life when down exactly zero by having to wear a mask.

Granted, did I go out and about less….sure. Trips to places were more when necessities were needed, but hell I could have probably used less of that mindlessness consumerism anyway.

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haltz
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by haltz »

cardinalkarp wrote:
July 23 21, 2:35 pm
haltz wrote:
July 23 21, 2:08 pm
Staying home isn't an option for me, so I spent a year working in a restaurant and other people's homes wearing a mask religiously and got vaccinated immediately. Now it looks like St Louis is requiring masks again regardless of vaccination status. Thank you very much variant-factory, conspiratorial [expletive].
Questioning a vaccine that has only been approved for experimental use is not “conspiratorial”, and there’s plenty of information out there that supports that the potential risks are real.

But continue blaming unvaccinated people for variants (which again can be contested) and call those who make a personal [expletive] choice “[expletive]”, because that’s making a point.

The mask wearing preventative measure shouldn’t have ever been taken out of place, because the god damn vaccine does not prevent you from getting COVID or spreading it, as you would put it, “[expletive]”.
For the record, I said dipsh-ts not a-holes -- one's moronic and one is malicious. I'm also not necessarily taking about you personally -- your choice, though I disagree with it, seems a little more thought out than the average anti-vaxxer and I don't lump you in with the lunatics.

That said, I don't really view it as a choice either in a personal freedom sense because it affects everyone. I can't imagine being more worried about the vaccine than the pandemic but I'm no epidemiologist. Imagine if polio had been politicized. What a world.

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haltz
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by haltz »

cardinalkarp wrote:
July 23 21, 5:48 pm
I guess I’m just different, because my quality of life when down exactly zero by having to wear a mask.
Sounds nice. If you deal with anxiety and do physical high stress work where the details matter, masks [expletive] suck, but I could have been one of the hundreds of thousands of people who died so it wasn't a big deal when necessary.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

I've recently started wearing masks again, which feels odd, but this is the reasoning.
William Haseltine, writing for Forbes, observed the virulence of the Delta variant can be understood
by three epidemiological factors: the viral load or the number of particles replicating in the respiratory
tract; the time from exposure to the moment of identification via a PCR or antigen test; and, the R naught
or how many people an infected person infects. The viral load for the Delta variant is 1,000 times higher
than the Alpha variant based on research in Guangzhou China. The much higher viral load allows the
Delta variant to spread more quickly, as reflect by its R naught. The R naught of the Delta variant is 6
compared to an R naught of 2.7 of alpha variant, which was considered very high. What this means is that
a person infected with the Delta variant can infect, on average, six additional people. The final parameter
is our ability to detect the virus of interest. It is detectable within four days or 48 hours earlier than the
Alpha variant. Tracking infections in the state, will require widespread testing. Because the Delta variant
is more infectious, our opinion is Arkansas may exceed 3,000 new daily infections, the high point of the
December/January surge, very quickly. At that point, hospitalizations in the state will begin to challenge
the capacity for the system to handle patients.
No link but this quote, which references someone elses work, is from the Arkansas Public Health Pandemic Working Group and is out of UAMS, a local hospital. On top of that, at Mrs. AW's hospital, 22% of hospitalized patients in Med Surge (non-life threatening, a step before ICU so to speak) are fully vaccinated. They've yet to have a fully vaxxed person admitted to ICU or die. So, that's good. Back to the 22%. There are some numbers floating around, but something like 44% of those eligible have been fully vaxxed in AR. So, yeah, the vax is preventing exactly 50% of vaxxed from being hospitalized (if 44% are vaxxed and it was zero percent effective, 44% hospitalized would be vaxxed, and it it was 100% effective, 0 percent would be vaxxed...Idk if that's how numbers work at the moment, it's late). I know these numbers don't mesh with published numbers, but whatever, I'll trust the anecdote here becasue the DOH isn't publishing the numbers.

Also, going back to my favorite analogy, it is conceivable the intruder the dogs are protecting against has become faster and is finding a way to repel from above. Sure, the dogs still going to get him, as is evidenced by the lack of deaths/icu admissions, but the intruders still getting in. Maybe. Also, I'm not convinced vaccinated people aren't spreading the disease. Tough to compare apples to apples because Arkansas is full on let 'er rip right now which they weren't last year. And, we're somewhat vaxxed. I'd like to think the vaxxed people would offset the let er rip mentality, but who knows. Regardless, cases are rising as fast as they ever have in the past.

What's the point of wearing a mask? For me it's to be as safe as possible and prevent catching/possibly spreading the virus if I do. Like I said in a previous post, to me at least it's become relatively clear that even 50% vaccinated populations aren't immune to massive outbreaks. Who knows what the real number is for herd immunity is, but if r naught really is 6, the theoretical number is 83%. Daily cases are increasing in every state in the nation. The lowest infection rate at the moment is 1.1. For reference, over the past year, 1.1 would have been relatively high as most states outside the first couple months didn't reach it very often. Arkansas was only above 1.1 for a few days in November and we still managed to top out at over 100 cases per 100K people daily (along with the rest of the country). And, we're currently at 1.28 with 40 some odd cases per 100K daily.

It should be noted infection rates are relative, so if you're at 1 case per day and jump to 10, that's going to be a large infection rate despite low cases. But, but...it makes me nervous. If the infection rates don't drop, it won't take long for there to be a metric [expletive] ton of cases again...which would be nice to avoid, vaxxed or not.

Which brings me back to the original question, what's the point. It's incredibly nerve wracking to think this may be the case until everyone has been infected or vaxxed and even then we'll still have a virus that can make people sick.

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Re: Coronavirus

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I’m about as pessimistic at this point as I’ve been in some time. Perhaps it’s the current situation in our state. Or at mrs aws work which I’ll go into more detail in a second. But I used to think the worst case scenario was everyone was infected, gained some form of immunity if not highly effective immunity and we’d suffer a lot of death to get there. But there would be an end. In a year or two or three. But an end.

This is pure speculation, I’ve read nothing to suggest anything I’m about to say is possible. It’s just my thoughts. So take it fwiw, which is not much.

But the real worst case scenario is...considerably worse. Let’s say over the next year or so we vax and infect another couple billion people. 10^10^10^billion more viral replications occur in natural infections (or whatever number you want to use) and a variant is formed that does make previous infections either from vax or natural harmful. Like the spike protein remains but an antibody eating arm is added that absorbs all the antibodies and makes the virus stronger and helps it replicate more and then it starts pooping out meth into the blood and the host turns into a zombie and starts infecting if not killing everyone around him in a tweaker rage. I mean that may be impossible according to virologists but the point is we’ve created a large group of people, in an overpopulated world, to all have a the same or close to the same immune response to a virus that is only gonna get an almost infinite amount of chances to reproduce. And obviously changes don’t happen purposefully but if one of them figures out how to turn the host into a tweaker meth head it’s going to be the dominant strain going forward which is the end of humanity. Except for New Zealand. [expletive] kiwis. That may be a bit exaggerated but it certainly seems like the variants are getting stronger with each go around.

And the spread is so wide. *not an immunologist * And from my understanding the vaccine and natural infections activate and shorten the adaptive arm response which still helps the innate response but the adaptive arm is slower and takes some amount of time to ramp up. A day or two instead of a week or two let’s say. Does the virus get to keep replicating during that time. Does it get to spread? Seems like at this point we’re relying solely on the ability to attack or block the spike protein. Which is very smart. I always thought it would be impossible for the spike protein to attach to the ace2 receptor and avoid the immune response. But it’s happening.

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Re: Coronavirus

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

So mrs aws hospital is overrun. They’re bringing people in from out of state to help in a week or so apparently. They’re just a few shy of the patients they were at during the peak last year. But this surge was unexpected.

And apparently everyone that worked covid before except a few people found some excuse why they can’t. So mrs aw was going to be working some pretty unreasonable hours.

I was like wtf happened to all the other peeps you were working with last time? Well they started having parents move in with them. Having cancer patients move in with them. Etc. No one wants to work covid. Why would they. Using my numbers. 78% unvaxxed in med surge. 100% unvaxxed in icu. They get to work 12 hour shifts, alternate days night every week, work weekends, expose themselves to variants known to be more harmful to children and crossover to vaccinated people. Yeah. [expletive] off.

Anyway, mrs aw was like what should I do. And I was like you’ve done this enough. If you tell them I’m diabetic you wouldn’t have to work covid ever. And she never told them because she’s just that way. She did bring up the kids though. But people that had worked covid before were literally bringing high risk patients to live with them just to get out of working it this go around.

We’re going on vacation this week but she’s going to work a couple [expletive] schedules when we get back until some out of town reinforcements get here...apparently.

But it’s not just the hospital mrs aw is at. Uams the hospital I talked about earlier is paying nurses (normally what ~$30/hr) $1k per shift because they don’t want to do it either. If things go bad, hospitals will be out of staff before they run out of room.

The compassion and sense of duty so to speak by and large is gone. At least around here.

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GeddyWrox
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by GeddyWrox »

There is a great interview with a Mayo Clinic virologist embedded in this article. It touches on many of the things AW mentions about the Delta variant and how it is so much better at binding. They also talk about masks, vaccine hesitancy and several other things.

HuffPost: Delta Variant Will 'Find Everybody Not Immune,' Warns Mayo Clinic Vaccine Expert.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gregory- ... 153fbe23c1

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