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

[Firewithin]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

Mississippi fire chief dies hours after legal win allowing use of Ivermectin to treat COVID

WWW.WLOX.COM

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Wayne Doyle died Tuesday afternoon at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo.

 

[Pikachu]

On 1/18/2022 at 3:40 PM, Jason said:

 

That's basically the same deal as the site I linked to. Costco has a box of 5 tests, ihealthlabs has boxes of 2 tests and lets you order 5 boxes at a time = 10 tests total. In Europe you can get a box of 20 tests for about $4.

 

@Jason Costco lowered the price to $40 for 5 tests. I got an $8 gift card from Costco for the price drop. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Moderna’s omicron booster was only as good as current vaccine in monkey study

ARSTECHNICA.COM

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Boosting with an omicron-specific vaccine didn't offer more protection against omicron.

 

 

Quote

 

In a small group of monkeys, an omicron-specific version of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine did not protect against the omicron variant better than Moderna's current, highly effective booster. This finding casts doubt on whether a switch to variant-specific doses is necessary.

 

The study was led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and posted on a preprint server last Friday. The study has not been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal. It also has all the limitations of an animal study and only involved eight monkeys. The study's findings will have to be verified in human trials, which are currently underway.

 

 

[Jason]

1 minute ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Moderna’s omicron booster was only as good as current vaccine in monkey study

ARSTECHNICA.COM

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Boosting with an omicron-specific vaccine didn't offer more protection against omicron.

 

 

 

 

The study was only eight monkeys IIRC. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Pfizer postpones FDA request for Covid vaccine for kids under 5

WWW.NBCNEWS.COM

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The company said it believes three doses "may provide a higher level of protection in this age group."

 

 

Quote

 

Pfizer-BioNTech is postponing its rolling application to the Food and Drug Administration to expand the use of its two-dose Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months to 4 years.

 

The move means that vaccines for this age group will not be available in the coming weeks, a setback for parents eager to vaccinate their young children.

 

Pfizer said on Friday that it will wait for its data on a three-dose series of the vaccine, because it believes three doses "may provide a higher level of protection in this age group." Data on the third dose is expected in early April, the company said.

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Johnson & Johnson halts production of single-dose COVID-19 vaccine, report says

WWW.CBSNEWS.COM

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Drugmaker reportedly closed the Dutch plant that was making the vaccine in order to focus on a different drug.

 

Quote

 

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson has halted production of its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine, according to a New York Times report.

 

The pharmaceutical company last year quietly shut down production at a plant in Leiden, Netherlands, which was the only facility where usable doses of the vaccine were manufactured, catching some of its customers off guard, including developing nations that prefer the single-dose J&J drug over two-dose alternatives, the report states. 

 

 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Moderna’s omicron booster was only as good as current vaccine in monkey study

ARSTECHNICA.COM

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Boosting with an omicron-specific vaccine didn't offer more protection against omicron.

 

 

 

 

Quote

Moreover, the finding falls in line with the concept of "original antigenic sin" (aka antigenic imprinting). This idea suggests that, when the immune system is presented with a pathogen similar to one it has fought before, the encounter will activate the immune memory from the prior interaction. In other words, a response to an omicron-specific vaccine will build off the responses to prior versions of SARS-CoV-2 encountered.

I don’t recall where I read it, but there was an mRNA vaccine expert a few months back saying that we likely can’t get worthwhile variant specific boosters for people who have already been vaccinated or have prior infection because of this concept.

 

Interesting that researchers are seeing this play out, and does not bode well for reducing infections in the future. Good thing is vaccines continue to hold up well on the most important matters.

[Air_Delivery]

14 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

 

I don’t recall where I read it, but there was an mRNA vaccine expert a few months back saying that we likely can’t get worthwhile variant specific boosters for people who have already been vaccinated or have prior infection because of this concept.

 

Interesting that researchers are seeing this play out, and does not bode well for reducing infections in the future. Good thing is vaccines continue to hold up well on the most important matters.

So the unvaccinated have just been playing the long game?

[Ricofoley]

I wonder what that means for the "pan-coronavirus" vaccines they're trying to develop. Would probably be the same deal, I would think, but I'm not a doctor.

[Air_Delivery]

I'm guessing within the next 5 years there are gonna be mRNA pan vaccines that will provide at least some protection against most common viruses.

[CitizenVectron]

 

[Jason]

1 minute ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

 

[CitizenVectron]

It's just a flu and we have to live with it!

 

I read a good thread this week by an epidemiologist. She said that people want to get back to "normal," but we never will. This virus is here to stay, and it's going to make the world a much darker place for our lifetimes. The best recommendation she gave was that we should approach fresh air the same way we approached clean water in the past, and perform an overhaul of ventilation systems just like we added indoor plumbing. 

[PaladinSolo]

Just now, CitizenVectron said:

It's just a flu and we have to live with it!

 

I read a good thread this week by an epidemiologist. She said that people want to get back to "normal," but we never will. This virus is here to stay, and it's going to make the world a much darker place for our lifetimes. The best recommendation she gave was that we should approach fresh air the same way we approached clean water in the past, and perform an overhaul of ventilation systems just like we added indoor plumbing. 

People like this are really dumb sometimes, things are already back to normal, just a lot more people are dying, lol.

[Ricofoley]

Yeah, I really think a lot of the vitriol about whatever remaining restrictions are left basically boils down to what people actually want is for everything to feel like 2019 again, and that is just absolutely not something that's on the table.

[Guest]

There are lots of places where things are like 2019 again for the vast majority of the population.

[CitizenVectron]

1 hour ago, sblfilms said:

There are lots of places where things are like 2019 again for the vast majority of the population.

 

Except for the large increase of death.

[Ricofoley]

Things are back to 2019 in terms of what you're allowed to do, but what I'm talking about is this phenomenon of media people like David Leonhart and Yascha Mounk who aren't "COVID is a hoax" cranks but who keep writing these pieces where the thesis is "we have to live with the virus and remove all restrictions." Yascha Mounk wrote one of these for the Atlantic a couple of days ago and when people reacted by asking "What are you actually being restricted from doing?" he wrote this whole accompanying thread trying to explain what we meant, and one of the things he wrote was that we have to get back to "guilt free dinner parties" which, like, that's not gonna be a thing. Like, you're allowed to have a dinner party, and you can ask that everyone be vaxxed and maybe take an at-home test beforehand to be cautious, and I think at this point if you've gotten vaxxed and you've tried to be careful for two years I think you're allowed to take whatever risk calculus you want in terms of what activities you do. But... if you have a party you can't guarantee for a fact that someone won't end up sick afterwards, and if somebody ends up sick, by human nature you're gonna feel kind of guilty afterwards.

 

Like CV was saying, for the forseeable future, more people are we're used to are going to get sick and in some cases die, and there's not really an option on the table to prevent that (maybe we're getting closer with more anti-viral treatments, etc.), but there's also not an option on the table to not have to think about that at all.

[CitizenVectron]

Guilt is 100% the root of it. It's why, even when people can walk around without a mask, some of those maskless will yell at people in masks and say "stop being afraid." It's because if other people are doing something different than them, it makes them feel looked down upon. This isn't about the freedom to do what you want, it's about the freedom to feel good about doing what you want. And that means not feeling judged, and that means trying to control what other people can do and say to you, including doing something you yourself don't want to do.

 

Like almost all issues caused by the snowflakes on the right, it's about hurt feelings. 100%

[Guest]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Except for the large increase of death.

The vast majority of the population isn’t dying, nor are the people in their age cohort seeing large increases in the rate of death.

 

1 hour ago, Ricofoley said:

But... if you have a party you can't guarantee for a fact that someone won't end up sick afterwards, and if somebody ends up sick, by human nature you're gonna feel kind of guilty afterwards.

I wouldn’t feel any bit of guilt in the stated scenario. Outside of a scenario where you are sick, you know you’re sick, and you still go out around people, there is nothing to feel guilty about.

[Ghost_MH]

49 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

The vast majority of the population isn’t dying, nor are the people in their age cohort seeing large increases in the rate of death.

 

Yeah, but that has nothing to do with general large increase in the death rate. If you're arguing we shouldn't be including the increase in deaths among boomers, that's a different story.

[CitizenVectron]

If anyone argues (including people on this board) that we should do nothing at this point to mitigate spread/hospitalization, then they are accepting the normalization of the new, higher death rate. Just be honest that you are okay with more people dying if it means greater convenience. I understand not wanting to close schools, have full lockdowns, etc. But mask mandates and vaccine passports do almost nothing to impede "freedom," yet are proven to slow spread.

 

And the thing that fucks me up the most because it directly affects me—no one arguing for "getting back to normal" has come up with any solution for the people that are the most likely to die if they take those same risks. "If you're scared or compromised, then stay home," people say. Okay...and who is paying the bills for those people? Getting their groceries (or paying for the cost of delivery, etc), doing things outside the home for them? If people advocating for a full return to normal are also advocating for full income replacement for those compromised people, then fine! But they aren't, because those people don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves. It's the same attitude about forcing a woman to carry out a pregnancy and then doing everything they can to not provide any support once the baby is born. 

 

 

[Ghost_MH]

21 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

If anyone argues (including people on this board) that we should do nothing at this point to mitigate spread/hospitalization, then they are accepting the normalization of the new, higher death rate. Just be honest that you are okay with more people dying if it means greater convenience. I understand not wanting to close schools, have full lockdowns, etc. But mask mandates and vaccine passports do almost nothing to impede "freedom," yet are proven to slow spread.

 

And the thing that fucks me up the most because it directly affects me—no one arguing for "getting back to normal" has come up with any solution for the people that are the most likely to die if they take those same risks. "If you're scared or compromised, then stay home," people say. Okay...and who is paying the bills for those people? Getting their groceries (or paying for the cost of delivery, etc), doing things outside the home for them? If people advocating for a full return to normal are also advocating for full income replacement for those compromised people, then fine! But they aren't, because those people don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves. It's the same attitude about forcing a woman to carry out a pregnancy and then doing everything they can to not provide any support once the baby is born. 

 

This. What is my grandmother's solution here? She can't afford to be in a home which didn't even matter since she's terrified of the COVID death rate in those. She's asthmatic and diabetic. She can't afford to get groceries delivered, doesn't live in a city with charities that'll do them for her, and can't afford to move to a larger city with similar programs. Right now my mother does a lot of that stuff for her, but it's getting harder for my mother, especially in the winter months. Luckily she's on an old pension plus social security so she doesn't have to leave the house to work.

 

And for anyone that says there's remote work for younger folks that needs to work, good luck there. My wife has already dealt with a bunch of bait and switch on jobs advertised as remote, but then in an interview being told "Yeah, is remote for the students, but we also expect you in the school for biweekly meetings/training."

[PaladinSolo]

The solution they're offering is for them to die, thought that was obvious when "Its just old people dying" from the start, they also care even less about immunocompromised people.  I got mine go fuck yourself is as strong as ever.

[Kamusha]

1 hour ago, sblfilms said:

The vast majority of the population isn’t dying, nor are the people in their age cohort seeing large increases in the rate of death.

 

I wouldn’t feel any bit of guilt in the stated scenario. Outside of a scenario where you are sick, you know you’re sick, and you still go out around people, there is nothing to feel guilty about.

 

This seems to imply that we should only care about deaths if the majority of people are dying.

 

Just because you personally won’t feel guilty doesn’t mean there’s nothing to feel guilty about, it just means you’re incapable of feeling guilt in this scenario.

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

If anyone argues (including people on this board) that we should do nothing at this point to mitigate spread/hospitalization, then they are accepting the normalization of the new, higher death rate. Just be honest that you are okay with more people dying if it means greater convenience. I understand not wanting to close schools, have full lockdowns, etc. But mask mandates and vaccine passports do almost nothing to impede "freedom," yet are proven to slow spread.

There is no massive increase in death amongst vaccinated populations. I have been entirely clear and consistent on this point for close a year now that we live in a time now where your risk of serious downsides is your own choosing. When the hospitalizations and deaths ramp up, it is driven by choosing their path by foregoing vaccination.

 

If that changes in the future, I’ll gladly adjust.

 

33 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

And the thing that fucks me up the most because it directly affects me—no one arguing for "getting back to normal" has come up with any solution for the people that are the most likely to die if they take those same risks. "If you're scared or compromised, then stay home," people say. Okay...and who is paying the bills for those people? Getting their groceries (or paying for the cost of delivery, etc), doing things outside the home for them? If people advocating for a full return to normal are also advocating for full income replacement for those compromised people, then fine! But they aren't, because those people don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves. It's the same attitude about forcing a woman to carry out a pregnancy and then doing everything they can to not provide any support once the baby is born. 

Medically fragile people have to be careful, this is not some new concept. There are things that your wife can do, like wear high quality masks and stay up to date on her vaccinations, that provide strong protections. It seems more that you’re bothered other people can go back to normal and you can’t. The frustration with something that feels unfair is understandable.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Komusha said:

 

This seems to imply that we should only care about deaths if the majority of people are dying.

 

Just because you personally won’t feel guilty doesn’t mean there’s nothing to feel guilty about, it just means you’re incapable of feeling guilt in this scenario.

No, it doesn’t. You are not following the logical flow of that back and forth. Imagine Covid stayed within the borders of China but the same number of people died, just all there. Would the existence of increased deaths in China affect your ability for 2022 to be like 2019? The existence of bottom line increased death doesn’t speak to how it affects individuals.

 

Nobody should feel guilty about something they didn’t do wrong. People sometimes do though.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

5 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Nobody should feel guilty about something they didn’t do wrong.

 

Definitely not Jewish or Catholic confirmed.

[Kamusha]

Hell, I feel guilty for simply existing.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Komusha said:

Hell, I feel guilty for simply existing.

Don’t ❤️

[CitizenVectron]

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

On 2/12/2022 at 6:59 PM, sblfilms said:

There is no massive increase in death amongst vaccinated populations. I have been entirely clear and consistent on this point for close a year now that we live in a time now where your risk of serious downsides is your own choosing. When the hospitalizations and deaths ramp up, it is driven by choosing their path by foregoing vaccination.

 

If that changes in the future, I’ll gladly adjust.

 

Medically fragile people have to be careful, this is not some new concept. There are things that your wife can do, like wear high quality masks and stay up to date on her vaccinations, that provide strong protections. It seems more that you’re bothered other people can go back to normal and you can’t. The frustration with something that feels unfair is understandable.

There is no massive increase in death among vaccinated populations, nor for unvaccinated people under the age of 40 (particularly for those with healthy immune systems).  I don't think there is for anyone under 65 (but I'd want to relook at the data for unvaccinated people between 40-65).

 

There are two actions that people can do to protect themselves, that are proven to be VERY effective.

1) Get vaccinated

2)  Wear an N95 mask when in high risk situations (this ties in to your concept of "being careful")

 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

There is no massive increase in death among vaccinated populations, nor for unvaccinated people under the age of 40 (particularly for those with healthy immune systems).  I don't think there is for anyone under 65 (but I'd want to relook at the data for unvaccinated people between 40-65).

 

There are two actions that people can do to protect themselves, that are proven to be VERY effective.

1) Get vaccinated

2)  Wear an N95 mask when in high risk situations (this ties in to your concept of "being careful")

 

Indeed. I don’t think there is much we can do public policy wise to push further vaccination that doesn’t have the unintended consequence of punishing those who have made the decision to be vaccinated. One way masking with N95s has now been proven over and over to be highly effective, so for the immunocompromised folks there is a simple solution when out in high risk public settings. 

 

With the tools we have today, vaccines, high quality masks, and treatment protocols, the risks associated with Covid have plummeted if you choose to utilize them. It genuinely makes me sad that so many have been fooled in to not using any of these things, but I’m not going to hold up life for those who continue to choose not to protect themselves. There is no end game to that, we will never move on if we wait for those folks to come around.

[Jason]

Covid-19 created America’s next health care crisis: The cancers we didn’t catch early

WWW.VOX.COM

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The pandemic dramatically disrupted cancer screenings, and thousands of lives are now at stake.

 

[AbsolutSurgen]