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~*Official #COVID-19 Thread of Doom*~ Revenge of Omicron Prime

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

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1 minute ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Like I said, that combined with everything else.

 

Let's make this simple. If everyone was vaccinated, wore masks more often, and practiced some social distancing, would COVID numbers be up, down, or about the same? If the answer is down, then it's absolutely a moral failing that we aren't there right now. You're basically arguing that we couldn't have done anything better in regards to our reaction to the pandemic. That's categorically cause because other countries around the world have managed to handle things better than the US. If you want to argue it's not a moral failing of the people, but of leaders and influencers misleading they're followers then sure. I can buy into that hypothesis.

That is not at all what I said.  That is not what the article said.

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20 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Like I said, that combined with everything else.

 

Let's make this simple. If everyone was vaccinated, wore masks more often, and practiced some social distancing, would COVID numbers be up, down, or about the same? If the answer is down, then it's absolutely a moral failing that we aren't there right now. You're basically arguing that we couldn't have done anything better in regards to our reaction to the pandemic. That's categorically false because other countries around the world have managed to handle things better than the US. If you want to argue it's not a moral failing of the people, but of leaders and influencers misleading their followers then sure. I can buy into that hypothesis.


Vaccinations, yes. The other parts, probably not in practice. As @AbsolutSurgennoted, cloth masks do very little and at least my experience has been that a majority of people are using cloth masks. If everybody weee wearing N95s, absolutely would be better.

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Ghost_MH

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1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

That is not at all what I said.  That is not what the article said.

 

My understanding of the article is that we shouldn't call COVID spikes a moral failing because we don't really understand what causes these spikes and calling it a moral failing doesn't help. What am I missing here? Like I said, if everyone actually cared about others in this country, wore masks, got vaccinated, and practiced some social distancing, would COVID numbers be down? Would those small, personal sacrificing save lives in this country?

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

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18 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

My understanding of the article is that we shouldn't call COVID spikes a moral failing because we don't really understand what causes these spikes and calling it a moral failing doesn't help. What am I missing here? Like I said, if everyone actually cared about others in this country, wore masks, got vaccinated, and practiced some social distancing, would COVID numbers be down? Would those small, personal sacrificing save lives in this country?

The article was focusing on why it is so hard to forecast/predict the pandemic -- and why attributing changes to moral failures is harming our ability to predict it.

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5 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

The article was focusing on why it is so hard to forecast/predict the pandemic -- and why attributing changes to moral failures is harming our ability to predict it.

This is quite clearly the point, but it isn’t the point our fellow board members want to engage with. Hence my comment about them mounting their hobby horse issues instead!

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Ghost_MH

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14 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

The article was focusing on why it is so hard to forecast/predict the pandemic -- and why attributing changes to moral failures is harming our ability to predict it.

 

That's exactly what I just said. You want know why it's hard to forecast the pandemic? Because people are irrational and unpredictable. This isn't the weather we're talking about. There's no cloud of COVID-19 floating across the country and just choosing to chill in Mississippi for a spell while flying over California because the air is stale and on fire. People are emotional and irrational and these very same people are the ones spreading the disease. The media was all doom and gloom the last couple of weeks covering hospitals being overrun with COVID patients and then there's a drop in infection rates. If Biden gets on TV tomorrow and starts cheering the drop and how things are looking good, you'll wind up with red swaths of the nation rising infection rates as people start taking COVID less serious out of pure spite.

 

Shocker. It's really hard to predict the behavior of people during a once in a century pandemic.

 

Either way, yeah, it's a moral failing that we aren't in a better place. I don't really care if that makes people feel bad. I just had to sit through a meeting about folks arguing we shouldn't have to be under a vaccine mandate because we aren't the right kind of federal contractor and all I could think is "who the fuck cares, just get vaccinated and it won't matter".

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19 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

That's exactly what I just said. You want know why it's hard to forecast the pandemic? Because people are irrational and unpredictable.


This is not correct. Again, if your position is masking and vaccinations are the things driving things, why are cases decreasing in places with low rates of both right now? Why does Covid have a roughly 2 month cycle for waves everywhere, regardless of the relative size of those waves? This is what you refuse to engage.

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Ghost_MH

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13 minutes ago, sblfilms said:


This is not correct. Again, if your position is masking and vaccinations are the things driving things, why are cases decreasing in places with low rates of both right now? Why does Covid have a roughly 2 month cycle for waves everywhere, regardless of the relative size of those waves? This is what you refuse to engage.

 

Because of what I just said. People are emotional. They see COVID is bad in the news and start masking up or taking fewer risks, even if they aren't intentional doing so. Then they stop seeing that in the news and start taking more risks and not wearing masks leading to another spike. Are you arguing that the virus is run by some videogame AI and is designed to come in waves so we, the players, don't exhaust ourselves? What other mechanism other than human behavior and humans en masse lacking any sense of long term planning do you think is driving these waves?

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Ghost_MH

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I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm still thinking about the craziness of being an organ transplant while also refusing to get the COVID vaccine.

 

GettyImages-906955504-760x380.jpeg

Unvaccinated patients are getting kicked off organ transplant waitlists

ARSTECHNICA.COM
Transplant recipients must take immune-suppressing drugs, raising risk for COVID.

 

Imagine being all "I trust my immune system" while also needing a new organ and having to take drugs to weaken your own immune system.

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On 10/8/2021 at 1:56 PM, Ghost_MH said:

 

Because of what I just said. People are emotional. They see COVID is bad in the news and start masking up or taking fewer risks, even if they aren't intentional doing so. Then they stop seeing that in the news and start taking more risks and not wearing masks leading to another spike. Are you arguing that the virus is run by some videogame AI and is designed to come in waves so we, the players, don't exhaust ourselves? What other mechanism other than human behavior and humans en masse lacking any sense of long term planning do you think is driving these waves?

 

Meant to respond to this yesterday, but the answer is certainly more complex than simple human behavioral responses to growing case numbers.

 

One of the leading ideas is that Covid runs through what are actually relatively discreet communities in a particular region. The easiest way to conceptualize this is that within a given high school, you have many different social groups and while those groups can have crossovers you can eventually run up against some hard breaks between them. Covid may burn through the football team, but never touch the track team. The next wave may been seeded into the track team, but never touch the marching band. The next wave seeds into the marching band, and so on in wave after wave.

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Ghost_MH

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27 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

 

Meant to respond to this yesterday, but the answer is certainly more complex than simple human behavioral responses to growing case numbers.

 

One of the leading ideas is that Covid runs through what are actually relatively discreet communities in a particular region. The easiest way to conceptualize this is that within a given high school, you have many different social groups and those groups while those groups can have crossovers you can eventually run up against some hard breaks between them. Covid may burn through the football team, but never touch the track team. The next wave may been seeded into the track team, but never touch the marching band. The next wave seeds into the marching band, and so on in wave after wave.

 

Yeah, that seems pretty reasonable. You just can't really plan for that. There's no way to know if the kid you're sitting next to in the bus is on the football team or the track team. Humans are what's spreading this disease. Maybe this week a church event winds up being a super spreader or maybe it's the bar mitzvah that leads to the next wave. Either way, something about human behavior and changes to their behavior are what slows things down and ramps things right back up. The point still remains. If everyone just masked up and got their damn vaccinations we wouldn't have to deal with explosions filling hospitals.

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Ominous

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On 10/8/2021 at 10:11 PM, Ghost_MH said:

I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm still thinking about the craziness of being an organ transplant while also refusing to get the COVID vaccine.

 

GettyImages-906955504-760x380.jpeg

Unvaccinated patients are getting kicked off organ transplant waitlists

ARSTECHNICA.COM
Transplant recipients must take immune-suppressing drugs, raising risk for COVID.

 

Imagine being all "I trust my immune system" while also needing a new organ and having to take drugs to weaken your own immune system.

I'm not putting that in me...where has it been?

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