New Coronavirus Cases Fall By 20% (axios.com) 194
Coronavirus infections continue to plummet across the U.S. From a report: The U.S. averaged about 30,000 cases per day over the past week. The progress is happening remarkably fast, and across the board. It was just last week that average daily cases dropped below 40,000, for the first time in months. This week's figures are a 20% improvement over last week. 39 states saw their caseloads improve over the past week. Alabama showed an increase in new cases, although the state had some unusual reporting glitches this week. Technically, cases also increased in Washington, D.C., but it's no cause for alarm: The District has fewer new cases per day (about 48, on average) than any state.
Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Who would have guessed getting people vaccinated and still wearing masks could have such a dramatic effect on cases? It's almost as if science told us this would happen but some still refuse to believe it.
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Re:Amazing (Score:4, Informative)
I believe it is immunity due to prior infection as well. Early estimates suggested the true number of infected could be as high as 10x of what was recorded. For instance my entire family was sick but only one of my siblings went to get tested.
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Yes, early estimates were that actual infections could be 10x what was reported, but by May of 2020 or so, testing had kicked in to where anyone that wanted to get tested could, so the numbers were much closer to reality. The number of actual cases in NY, NJ, MA, and WA were probably much higher, but the rest of the nation where it didn't hit hard early on are probably pretty accurate. I know a number of people who almost certainly had it in MA, WA, and OR but couldn't get tested because they were only te
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Yeah, no.
In October last year, I want to get a test and I could get a test, but I had to book in advance and the earliest appointments were 7 days away. I didn't bother since 7 days away made it pretty much pointless.
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I believe it is immunity due to prior infection as well. Early estimates suggested the true number of infected could be as high as 10x of what was recorded.
The testing and reporting rate in the US is still very low. CDC estimates total infections 4-5 times higher than reported, which is insane in a developed country. So over 100 million infections, but still nowhere close to herd immunity. At least the US is among world leaders in the vaccine rollout. Get those vaccines!
https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Informative)
Except the US is running into vaccine hesitancy. Canada badly bungled its vaccine rollout, but we're now vaccinating at a higher per-capita rate than the US, even though our supplies are more limited.
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Yep. Some of my coworkers are not planning to get the vaccine ever, and I live in California. Some of them are still on the fence about whether they will or not. I finally got my first shot yesterday evening, because it finally became convenient.
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which is insane in a developed country
Who said the US was a developed country? Every civilised country on this planet has had universal health care for the last six decades or so.
This pandemic has revealed just how much of a shithole country the US is.
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That's not entirely true, especially in the early parts of the pandemic, which is when other countries (India not withstanding) were hit hard, too.
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That sounds just like my place of work. I'm essential grocery worker. Lots of sick people in Feb/march but we couldn't prove anything back then.
Wife and I are convinced we had covid in Jan/Feb prior to march lockdowns. We tested positive this year in January and pretty much had the same set of symptoms but significantly reduced compared to the first time around.
If we didn't have covid in Jan/Feb before lockdown, then covid was a complete joke to me as the only time I tested positive I skated right through.
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Well I don't think the guy is insinuating everyone followed what science tells us. But this is an interesting argument, the lack of action or coherence in general lead to us being better off now. Thanks?
Re: Amazing (Score:2)
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Re: Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect it was that high during the first two or three months, back before everybody who got a sniffle started going for testing, but I highly doubt that the real multiplier was anywhere near that high over the course of the entire pandemic.
The assumptions made in their model seem utterly implausible to me. Specifically, they seem to assume that:
That last one is a big problem. Some people have year-round allergies. Some people have asthma. Some people have acid reflux. Some people have various intestinal conditions. All of these things can result in some COVID symptoms. Without knowing whether those specific individuals had reasons to believe that their malaise had another cause (based on their personal health history), there's no way to go from such behavioral data to any sort of useful estimate of the number of cases. And because the data was self-reported, not based on any sort of random sampling, you can't even use the prevalence of those illnesses out of the general population to estimate how many of those cases are real.
Heck, because it was self-reported, you can't say for sure whether people were telling the truth, whether people reported in more than once, whether... basically that data might be interesting from a government policy point of view (maybe), but relying on it in any sort of statistical model is basically the mathematical equivalent of throwing a dart at a dartboard occulted by Swiss cheese.
In short, after reading about their methodology, my initial reaction is to say that their models have all the earmarks of "garbage in, garbage out", and are probably not much better than a wild guess supported by a random number generator.
I doubt it's much more than about 1.5x undercounting overall, but I could be wrong. The only way to know for sure would be by doing mass random antibody testing on a nationwide scale, but we can't usefully do that now that folks have been vaccinated, so we'll never know for sure who is right.
But we do know some hard undercounting numbers from last year. At the end of May, the positivity rate in NYC was estimated to be 20%, but about 2% in the rest of that state). Some quick math:
8.42 million * 20% means 1.68 million expected NYC cases, plus 2% of the ~11M folks in the rest of the state means 220k non-NYC cases, for a total of about 1.9 million estimated cases, compared with 370k known cases as of the end of May.
Keep in mind that those numbers are from NYC, where the surge began at a time when testing capacity was massively inadequate. Yet even with a huge number of people unable to get tested, you still just barely get a 5x multiplier. A
Re: Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
Humans get in contact with each other at much higher rates than your assumption, an average person interacts in a significant way with about 8-20 people per day and a multiplier of that in people we simply pass.
I'm not assuming anything about how much people interact with other people. We know the typical rate of transmission. And on average, it's somewhere around 2.7-ish (though probably lower in rural areas and higher in ultra-dense urban areas like NYC).
If 30% of a population have been infected with what is supposedly a highly infectious pathogen, then 100% of the population has been exposed. Most people will develop immunity from being exposed.
Sorry, but that's completely untrue, at least from a medical definition of "exposed". You aren't exposed to an airborne contagion just because you breathe it in, because most of the viruses that you breathe in go right back out. The odds of the virus landing on an ACE2 receptor and starting an infection aren't that high, particularly given that there are layers of sticky mucus designed to trap and kill airborne pathogens.
Also, even if a single virus particle manages to make it through mucus layers that are designed to kill viruses and actually reaches a susceptible epithelial cell, it's going to infect one cell, your immune system is going to say, "What's this? Oh, h***, no," and stomp it into the ground. You won't have enough of a reaction to build up any immunity to it or show any symptoms.
When you actually get sick, it's because you inhaled at least 300 or so virus particles (estimated; some estimates are as high as 1,000; I'm being extremely conservative by saying 300) so that a nontrivial number of them reach actual cells, and can multiply at a rate that's high enough to get past the immune system's initial "kill the infected cell" response.
The alternative could be that the pathogen is NOT highly infectious but only slightly more infectious than say a cold or a flu, in which cases lockdown and mask wearing is pointless.
Actually, it's the other way around. The more infectious a pathogen is, the less masks matter. If something has an R0 of 10 and you lower it by 30%, it's still 7, so after 11 replication cycles, approximately the entire country could ostensibly be infected (ignoring the effects of immunity, the tendency of sick people not to travel long distances, etc., all of which make that a gross overestimate). By contrast, if something has an R0 of 1.2 and you lower it by 30%, it's now 0.84, and it dies out rather quickly.
So if the R0 is too high, all the mask wearing in the world isn't going to stop approximately everyone from getting it long before a vaccine becomes available. Ask yourself what percentage of people have gotten chickenpox (more than 95%). That's what an R0 of 10 to 12 does. No amount of mask wearing, even if everybody had N95-grade masks, would likely make chickenpox go away without a vaccine. (Fortunately, it mostly just makes you itch, ignoring shingles.)
If the R0 is really close to 1, mask wearing can basically eliminate the virus. That's what happened to influenza (that, plus a somewhat elevated number of flu shots). Flu is approximately gone at this point. To be quite honest, near eradication of influenza is unprecedented in all of the world's recorded history, so nobody has any idea what's going to happen. It will probably come back from animal vectors or from some pocket of anti-maskers who kept the dream alive, but it might take many years before the numbers build up to what we would consider a normal flu season. (Or it might not. It's anybody's guess.)
The R0 of COVID-19 is about 2.7-ish. So if masks produce... let's say a 30% reduction (educated guess), the result is an R0 of about 1.9, which is still worse than influenza, which is high enough to be a concern, but not as insane as 2.7, which is high enough to panic about. So its R0 is in a range where mask wearing could make a big difference in the real world, assuming a vaccine got released within a year or two (which obviously several were).
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it is playing a big role. The CDC's COVID diseases burden" figure for the US -- the number of people estimated infected including those not reported -- is 114 million. The number of Americans who've been vaccinated is just a little more than this: 125 million. So as of today, natural and vaccinated immunity are playing a roughly equal role in slowing the spread of COVID in the US.
In another nice round number coincidence, the 125 + 114 = 239, which given that the US population is about 329 million, means there's about 90 million Americans still fully susceptible to COVID. There is still room for COVID to do a lot of harm, but it's clearly an uphill struggle for the virus when only 27% of the population is susceptible.
Without vaccination 2/3 of the population would be susceptible, not less than 1/3. So vaccination is a huge success.
Add natural and vaccine immunity (Score:5, Informative)
There is a place where antibody tests have been done. The California prison system had a failed infection control program which left a lot of people with antibodies and a successful vaccination program that left a lot more people with antibodies.
They know, because they checked, that 75% of their population tested positive for SARS COV 2 antibodies.
And when they got to that level, their case load dropped 98%,
BTW a reminder that vaccination after a natural infection boosts antibody levels dramatically. Encourage your convalescent friends to get a shot.
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Somewhere around 60% of adults have gotten at least one vaccine. If we for the moment pretend that people under 16 don't exist (this isn't a great assumption, to be fair), that gives you somewhere in the neighborhood of 15% of people who have gotten sick with COVID.
Doing some quick math, that would be about 49.23 million actual cases, versus about 33.1M actual cases, for an actual multiplier of about 1.49x. Hey, that's pretty much exactly in line with my prediction in another post a few minutes ago. :-)
Of
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There is overlap between the vaccinated and those who had COVID. If being vaccinated and having COVID were fully independent, we would have (1-125/329)(1-114/329)=41% as the susceptible fraction. I would intuitively expect being vaccinated and having had COVID to be somewhat negatively correlated (obviously, vaccination highly reduces the risk of subsequent COVID; moreover, people who had COVID could be expected to be less cautious people and hence less likely to get vaccinated, and if they knew they had CO
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I'd guess it might be higher than 41% because it seems plausible that people more likely to get COVID (people in corrections facilities, nursing homes, or other similar living arrangements, essential workers, etc) are also more likely to have gotten vaccinated.
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There is overlap between the vaccinated and those who had COVID. If being vaccinated and having COVID were fully independent, we would have (1-125/329)(1-114/329)=41% as the susceptible fraction. I would intuitively expect being vaccinated and having had COVID to be somewhat negatively correlated (obviously, vaccination highly reduces the risk of subsequent COVID; moreover, people who had COVID could be expected to be less cautious people and hence less likely to get vaccinated, and if they knew they had COVID, that might further decrease motivation), so 41% is an overestimate of the susceptible, and the true number is probably somewhere between 27% (no overlap) and 41% (independence).
I think that number is way too high. Over 60% of adults have gotten at least one shot. The folks with one shot aren't fully immune, but are much, much less likely to get it, as are the 48 million people under the age of 12.
So out of the ~253 million people over 18, about 152 million are at least partially vaccinated, leaving 101 million who might be susceptible if they have not gotten it. Add to that at least 60% of the 27 million people who are age 13—17 (because they aren't vaccinating people und
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Ignoring that there are people who both had COVID and got vaccinated.
Re: Amazing (Score:2)
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>"Who would have guessed getting people vaccinated and still wearing masks could have such a dramatic effect on cases? "
Only the people thinking the masks are THAT effective (the types and ways people are using them). And they are not. Mask usage had not changed. What changed was vaccination. The drop was overwhelmingly due to vaccinations (and to a smaller extent, more people having obtained natural immunity during the period).
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It's the weather too. Last year cases went down about this time in the north, because people were outside. Then it went up when the summer heat arrived and they hid in the air conditioning. Then it went down when it cooled down in the fall, and then really took off when winter started and people went back inside.
So in midsummer I expect there will be a resurgence, though probably a minor one given those who already had it, knowingly or not, and the vaccines.
The count in this county is about 9% of the popula
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Nonsense, it's mostly the hot humid weather. Watch what happens if there are large gatherings on the coming holiday Monday.
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but some still refuse to believe it.
I know a couple people very well educated and well rounded but will not wear a mask, will not get vaccinated. They have a excellent explanation to both reasons why they will not. However, the underlying reason is "only applies to old and weak." Since they are neither then they see no reason to care.
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I know a couple people very well educated and well rounded but will not wear a mask, will not get vaccinated. They have a excellent explanation to both reasons why they will not. However, the underlying reason is "only applies to old and weak." Since they are neither then they see no reason to care.
Assuming this wasn't fairly early in the pandemic, I'd say that they're clearly not *that* well educated, or else they'd know that the old and infirm had to get the virus from someone who had to get it from someone else, and so on down the line. And they'd understand that if thirty people down that line, just one person had worn a mask and happened to not pass it on as a result, that elderly person wouldn't have gotten sick and possibly died.
More to the point, every one of those people along that path woul
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Good point....why wear a mask during surgery? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm yet to see any science that show that wearing some undefined garment called 'a mask' in a series of randomly defined situations shows any conclusive evidence of a positive effect. But sure, just say 'science' and you automatically win every argument like it is God.
Good logic there, billy. How about the next time you or a loved one go into the hospital, why don't you tell your heathcare professionals not to wear a mask?
...open heart surgery?...no mask needed...after all, if billy hasn't seen a positive effect, why should he listen to you?
Organ transplant?...no mask needed, doc...those are for Democrats and they don't believe in freedom.
Catheter changing?...go ahead and skip with the mask nurse, I want you to be able to breathe comfortably.
Yup...masks are just a plan for liberal fascists to control us...no need. They offer no benefit. Your local hospital should spare you the expense of masking theri doctors...you deserve to see their smile when they cut you open, Billy!...it's your right!
Nice talking point (Score:4, Insightful)
Even an idiot like you appear to be must recognize that there is a world of difference between a medically approved, properly fitted and properly worn, properly sanitized mask and an old t-shirt loosely draped on someone's face.
You are exactly the type of person he is talking about when he says science is treated like a religion. If science actually demonstrates that the types of masks most people are wearing are effective you should have no problem pointing to the research and experimentation proving that. What you just did was the exact opposite of science.
An old T-shirt? Well, that's not really a proper mask is it? I am not sure the point you're making, but yes, some people do things that aren't as helpful as they hope. However, a bunch of asshole refuse to wear masks at all. I find someone who purposely wears a poorly designed mask as the same category.
I take my kids out and play every night, weather permitting, so I have about 200 trips post-mask-mandate of reference...yeah, it's not nice or intelligent people who refuse to wear a mask where I live. It's the assholes who have neutral to positive opinions about the Confederate flag...despite them growing up over 500 miles away from it. It's the same people who break other poorly enforced rules. The body language is so clear...dog not allowed in this park?...yeah...they bring it in. Now boarding zones 4 and 5 at the airport? They're the dicks who are clearly dressed for a business trip, have no disability and are fully alone so not a caregiver, but board zone 2 way early, sure...because well, a busy gate attendant has many things on her mind besides enforcing the rules and they get to ensure they claim extra overhead space before anyone can. They're also the people you see at the gym that drape towels on 5 machines and shoo away anyone who goes near them...claiming 5+ machines at a time, yet not even using them. Why?...a mixture of mental illness, shitty selfishness, and general sociopathy.
To me, there's a clear line between those people who will break any rule or law that's not rigidly enforced and those who won't wear a mask when told to. It's not freedom, liberty, or science...is selfish asshole-ish behavior.
Regarding actual science? Yeah, the scientists do think its effective. Also, I can see with my own eyes. Do I need a scientific study to know that steel is heavier than styrofoam?...do I need a scientific study to say that getting kicked in the balls hurts?...no... I have observed both. I always use surgical masks...smell goes down immediately and comes back when you take it off. If it can reduce aroma molecules, it can reduce airborn saliva ones, which are far bigger. Also, empirically, our flu rates went way down, even among those who cannot socially distance due to their jobs. I think it's safe to say that wearing masks contributed to that or else the masked working at their jobs would have had a similar infection rate compared to years prior. At the very least in the grocery stores they would as their business went up with the pandemic. So yeah...the scientific communities recommendation plus that redundant empirical evidence plus first hand observation do give me confidence that wearing masks in public was a smart recommendation.
Even if there is some uncertainty, I default to doing what's considerate for those around me. My state lifts its mask mandate at the end of the month. I am still going to carry a mask in case I am in a crowd with my kids both because they're too young to vaccinate and because I don't want to make other families uncomfortable. It's not even really an inconvenience...you get used to it if you don't have a shitty attitude. I often forget I am wearing it.
Sorry, buddy, the science isn't on your side. You can throw out phrases like "science is treated like a religion" or whatever Tucker Carlson told you to say, but that just doesn't make it so. If you feel the need to fight mask mandates, you're a selfish
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Reporting from Texas here... Governor Abbott ended the statewide mask mandate a couple of months ago, but many retailers, grocery stores, schools, continued to require them, including pretty much every national chain. Even at establishments without a mask mandate, some people were wearing them voluntarily.
We had also hit 1/3rd of the population with a vaccine by mid-April (closing in on 50% now) and then there's another third that have acquired natural resistance from being infected. That means a majority o
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
Governor Abbott ended the statewide mask mandate a couple of months ago, but many retailers, grocery stores, schools, continued to require them
But many also did not, and Florida was going largely without masks for some time. Even in Texas where some people were still wearing masks, there should have been an increase compared to other states and there was none... that data shows clearly masks had no effect, and any attempt to claim otherwise is simply ignoring hard data and science with actual test results instead of theory.
ROFL.
I'm having a hard time even bothering to reply to such nonsense. Let's compare a couple of states with low mask compliance:
Against a couple of states with high mask compliance:
You can't usefully compare one state to another in this way, of course, but even if we naïvely try, your claims ring false.
More to the point, two months ago, Florida actually had a huge surge because of spring break visitors. California didn't. What's the difference? In California, we wore our f**king masks.
So your time-based approach ALSO falls apart when you look at the actual numbers. There's quite literally no way to slice the data that doesn't show a statistically significant reduction in cases in areas with mask mandates in place. Anybody who claims otherwise is either lying or misinformed.
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Governor Abbott ended the statewide mask mandate a couple of months ago, but many retailers, grocery stores, schools, continued to require them
Also, I'm seeing what looks at a glance like a noticeable spike in Texas cases a week after the mask mandate went away. On March 9 (precisely a week later) through 12 jumped by about a factor of two compared with the three days prior. Now that might be noise, but it's also just about when you'd expect a surge based on the incubation period of the virus.
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Does He have that many followers or at least that many followers with even a mustard grain sized amount of faith in His promises? Time will tell.
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This is ~100% vaccines.* We've been masking for quite a while now and continued to experience some of our largest spikes well-into mandatory masking policies. In fact just recently we were seeing surges in areas of with mandatory masking (NY, MI) and drops in places opening up (TX). Masks *might* have had a small to moderate effect but there's no evidence they are involved in driving the precipitous drop in cases. Vaccines FTW.
* Well actually possibly a good part seasonal variation as well - cases were also dropping last May
Actually, compare the positivity rate of Florida and California. They have similar vaccination rates, but the positivity rate in California is about one sixth that of Florida. One of these states still has a statewide mask mandate in place for another month, and one has a ban on even local mask mandates. I'll let you guess which one is which. :-)
What you're missing in your assumptions is the fact that viral transmission is a threshold function. If the number of virus particles you're exposed to within a
Re:Masks have nothing to do with it, is vaccine/he (Score:4, Informative)
Who would have guessed getting people vaccinated and still wearing masks could have such a dramatic effect on cases?
Masks do not enter into the equation - ew've known for moths form Texas and Florida that masking rates have zero to do with Covid spread at this point.
I'm certain that masking rates don't affect the infection rate in moths.
But in humans, studies universally say that you're wrong. [jamanetwork.com]
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you've simply done no research whatsoever on the subject, and are just parroting bulls**t propaganda from some right-wing news source. Please read the research papers. When you make trivially falsifiable claims like the ones you're making, you come out looking like a complete idiot.
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Believe science, believe the data
Ok, do you have a scientific study on that? All the science I see says masks are helpful. People were still wearing masks in TX and FL even if it wasn't mandated at a state level.
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That's not true. Quit making strawman arguments.
During January CoVID was the leading cause of death in the
30,000 per day!!? (Score:2, Insightful)
30,000 cases *per day*!! What the hell are they doing up there in dystopia land?. If we have a single new case in the community it's all over the news and cities go into lock down. And because of this we've enjoyed very few restrictions on our lives since the pandemic started. I love living in New Zealand.
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We thought about moving the entire USA to an isolated island with a population of roughly 5 million. We decided that it simply wasn't practical.
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Wherever did you get the notion that there's a lot of unused land in Hawaii? 40 or so years back, I lived there for a year. Didn't see any sign of unused land the whole time.
Unless you count the beaches as "unused"....
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Wherever did you get the notion that there's a lot of unused land in Hawaii? 40 or so years back, I lived there for a year. Didn't see any sign of unused land the whole time.
Were you just on Oahu? That's the most built up island where most of the people are.
The big island is basically just the Kona on the west and Hilo on the east, and a lot of empty space. Granted, the active volcano limits how much of the land you could even consider using.
Maui has the tourist areas on the west side, Hana on the east, and a lot of nature.
I didn't visit the other islands, but my understanding was they were even less developed.
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We thought about moving the entire USA to an isolated island
Are you blaming the Mexicans? In early 2020, Covid cases were arriving in the US exactly the same way as in NZ - by air. :-(
But the countries responded very differently. The land boders with Canada and Mexico are no excuse.
Japan is far more densely populated than the US, but they did well. At least until November
Britain is an island, with strong immigration controls. Did them no good. The island thing is a distraction.
Re:30,000 per day!!? (Score:4, Informative)
The island thing does make strong quarantines easier to monitor. And when fewer people are flying in general, yields smaller number of possible infection sources. I suspect there are fewer business flights per million population from other countries to New Zealand than to the US or the UK but can't be bothered to try to find any statistics for that. Much more tourism oriented I suspect. The UK does have the tunnel connecting it to the mainland along with numerous other ship based points of entry in addition to the travel by air problems everyone had. Much more connected than New Zealand - the whole EU thing - even though that's winding down. I also don't think of NZ as a site where many refugees settle and refugees moving around and living in camps don't help anything.
The US just isn't really set up to handle federal level authoritarian control and the ____ in office didn't want to rock any boats or lose any potential votes to even try to do anything meaningful probably due to a disdain for reading and science and a reliance on a news as a source of information. Cutting off flights to a only a few spots in a pandemic was monumentally stupid. But without limiting internal travel and mandating mask wearing across the US we were doomed. India was doomed due to huge population densities and Brazil had similar problems with population densities in some areas. I'll leave it to local folks to comment on their own leaders responses to the crisis.
Re:30,000 per day!!? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Australia is not exactly small, and is well connected to the rest of the world. They have no community transmission, and they do wastewater surveillance to ensure nothing gets by their testing program. It's showing no virus at all.
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Re:30,000 per day!!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:30,000 per day!!? (Score:5, Informative)
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There's a detailed answer at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I believe, check for yourself, they're currently at alert level 1. Restaurants and bars are open, no rules about movement, workplaces and schools open, and so on.
Re:30,000 per day!!? (Score:4, Interesting)
I also love how you're getting replies about how being an island nation and fewer people is somehow relevant to how we kept covid out.
I might go to the rugby on Saturday. should be a big crowd.
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Comparing a relatively isolated island to a continent? Apples to watermelons.
Note that being isolated has pro's and con's. If you needed specialized surgery for something relatively rare (not talking Covid), you'd probably have to get on a plane and fly to a large city in a continent somewhere.
Living in Southern California, I have access to lots of very specialized experts without having to get on a plane. Yes, living in/near a metropolitan area is a downer during pandemics, bu
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It's funny how the United States is the only place in the world where economy of scale is reversed.
Vaccination (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate that this became some political affair. I'm glad people are getting vaccinated. You're not a bad person if you haven't gotten vaccinated. I get it, a vaccine that came out in record time is bound to raise eyebrows. However, these mRNA vaccines are something new and they represent one of many new technologies on the horizon that will change medicine forever. And just like people were hesitant of the automobile when it first came out, I don't blame folks for being hesitant on this. I got vaccinated, and I was kinda of excited to get an mRNA vaccine. Ever since the discovery of methylation of RNA as a means to bypass inflammation response in 2005, I've been excited at how this has paved the way for viable mRNA vaccines.
I get it that it doesn't sound right to be able to make vaccines so quickly, but this technology is just in its infancy. There does exist a path to a day when vaccines can be produced in months timescale rather than years and be known to be safe in the majority of the cases, and that to me is what is so exciting. We're not there by any stretch, but this is a first step in that direction. Those who went out and got vaccinated, this case fall is because of you. And I think that those people deserve a pat on the back for being so willing to be vaccinated. And those who haven't been vaccinated yet, like I said, I understand. I personally couldn't fault you for not going right away. I do hope that you will remain open minded enough to see what this new technology does bring and that one day in the future you get vaccinated for whatever this virus turns into.
I hate that we've turned citizens of our country into bad guys versus good guys, when the reality is, this is new and uncharted territory, it is both frightening and exciting. And the decrease in cases today is a massive win for human knowledge in the long run and that to me supercedes any bad/good guy mentality.
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I hate that we've turned citizens of our country into bad guys versus good guys,
Especially when the "good guys" and the "bad guys" share more in common than divides them. They both think that the president of the other party is trying to become a dictator, and we all like good food.
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Each group also thinks the media outlets catering to the others' interest are full of "fake news".
Given the contrast between the output of the two sets of news outlets, at LEAST one of the groups is right. ;-)
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Each group also thinks the media outlets catering to the others' interest are full of "fake news".
tbh they are both full of fake news. The difficulty is seeing the fake news in your own preferred outlet.
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there are at least 3 false equivalencies in your thinking
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there are at least 3 false equivalencies in your thinking
List them.
Re:Vaccination (Score:5, Informative)
Anybody in the technology industry, I'll respect for taking a close look at a 1.0 product.
Some of the things I found as I researched the vaccine before letting it into my body:
o The virus research started with SARS Classic in 2003
o Cancer research has been collecting data on injecting humans with mRNA vaccines for many years
o The teardown report on the Pfizer vaccine at berthub.eu looked to me like the end product of long and careful development.
o If anything goes wrong after a vaccination, it happens in days or weeks.
o The speed came from risking money doing one step before knowing that the one before worked, and adding money to recruit and manage more Phase III subjects so that the statistics would ramp up faster.
We got the COVID vaccines in an unprecedented short time but there was almost twenty years of preparation behind that.
Re:Vaccination (Score:4, Insightful)
https://www.nytimes.com/intera... [nytimes.com]
https://www.medicalnewstoday.c... [medicalnewstoday.com]
If donald trump bothered to read the pandemic preparation plans produce by previous administrations, a lot more people could have been saved. I hate both parties and both parties royally screwed up. People making excuses for donald are in denial and rationalizing their guilt.
I get it. Admitting you fucked up hurts and requires confronting your own fears and doubts. My dad voted for donald because he grew up in a time when communism messed up the world. When the news says his opponents are communist or socialist, it triggers those deep seeded fears. It's totally subconscious and he isn't aware of it. Based on what I've seen on both sides, 70% of the voters react this way. They aren't able to see they're being manipulated and see through the BS. It's exhausting to be honest with yourself and take a complete account of your emotional mental state. For most people, it's easier to pretend you don't feel anything. Plus it doesn't help that our culture says "if you feel, you're pathetic" or "if you go to a therapist, you must be messed up."
As long as we keep falling for this BS, nothing is going change and it won't get better. The next pandemic comes around it will probably be worse. If you look at the rate of global pandemics, it's been accelerating. Math doesn't lie.
Re:Vaccination (Score:5, Insightful)
You do know that Pfizer and AstraZenaca both happened without operation warpspeed?
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You do know that Pfizer and AstraZenaca both happened without operation warpspeed?
You're 1 for 2 [time.com]. The Pfizer vaccine did happen without Operation Warpspeed.
Further sources:
https://www.usmedicine.com/supplement/workingtogether/astrazeneca-joins-forces-with-operation-warp-speed-to-defeat-covid-19/ [usmedicine.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-trump-moderna.html [nytimes.com]
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This time last year the estimate was 3 to 5 years for a vaccine. Operation Warpspeed made it available in 9 months. Please accept that as a fact no matter how much you hate Trump.
Fauci was saying about a year for the optimistic timeline at the start. Pfizer wasn't a part of Operation Warpspeed and they had the first vaccine available.
That said, yeah, Warpspeed was easily the best thing Trump did. It almost certainly helped make the other vaccines available sooner. The extra money in play limited risks and sped things along.
It's really not that uncharted (Score:2)
The problem is our media doesn't talk about this. You've got to dig through google search results to find the information. You're right about the politics. One side made it a wedge issue to win votes. Like guns or abortion. Sadly it's a good strategy.
Re:It's really not that uncharted (Score:4, Insightful)
>'One side made it a wedge issue to win votes."
Riiiight. Only one side does such things. [[eye roll]]
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but this technology is just in its infancy.
True, but the vaccine rollout is not. We have good safety data now, even on very rare side-effects. And it turns out that the mRNA vaccines have been even safer than the conventional ones. Australia is shifting from Astrazeneca to Pfizer and Moderna.
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I hate that we've turned citizens of our country into bad guys versus good guys, when the reality is, this is new and uncharted territory, it is both frightening and exciting. And the decrease in cases today is a massive win for human knowledge in the long run and that to me supercedes any bad/good guy mentality.
Consider another similar front in technology that could also result in a massive win for humanity: GM crops.
Think of all the criticism against GM crops that have been publicised in the last 20 years. Then think about how many Americans are now against GM practically in principle, i.e. they reject GM regardless of how it was done, because it was related to "messing with nature" and/or "messing with DNA". Think about the level of "safety" that anti-GM crowd required to have GM food to be "proven safe" befo
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The thing with GM is it is a tool, like a saw, that can be used in different ways. A saw can be used to build a house or to cut into a bank. GM can be used to make better crops or to lock people into certain practices that aren't good in the long term.
Just like each dwelling built with a saw still needs to be inspected that it was built correctly so it won't fall down in the first windstorm, each use of GM needs to be considered and generalizing that GM always equals good is as dumb as generalizing that eve
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I get it that it doesn't sound right to be able to make vaccines so quickly,
Why does it not sound right? In the year 2018-2019, 42.9% of Americans (162M) got a flu vaccine. That was in a year when a vaccine was not the #1 priority and the flu vaccine changes every year. From what I remember, many health officials were saying that the first vaccines were possible by December IF if they found an effective one.
While many companies and almost every country in the world working on a finding a working vaccine, I assure a large amount of resources were working to start massive scale manu
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Why does it not sound right? In the year 2018-2019, 42.9% of Americans (162M) got a flu vaccine. That was in a year when a vaccine was not the #1 priority and the flu vaccine changes every year. From what I remember, many health officials were saying that the first vaccines were possible by December IF if they found an effective one.
He's not concerned about the time to mass produce the vaccine, he's concerned about the time to develop it and verify it. Historically, the previous record for creating and testing a vaccine was something like a decade.
The differences here are:
1) People put a ton of work into figuring out a vaccine for SARS before realizing SARS was dying off on its on. COVID-19 is really similar to SARS, so we already knew what we had to do.
2) We put in more money to get larger test groups than normal, getting the necessar
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He's not concerned about the time to mass produce the vaccine, he's concerned about the time to develop it and verify it.
No he expressed skepticism that it could be manufactured to scale and whether it was adequately tested quickly.
I get it that it doesn't sound right to be able to make vaccines so quickly, but this technology is just in its infancy
Some of the technology is new but most of the manufacturing is not new.
Historically, the previous record for creating and testing a vaccine was something like a decade.
And why do you think it took so long? Priority being low means fewer resources, money, and urgency were dedicated to a vaccine. That was the opposite in this situation.
Most people don't know what we did to get it to market sooner, so they just assume the vaccine was slapped together quickly and rushed out without proper testing.
People also assume a great many things; that does not make it true. I hear this a lot from the anitvax crowd before CoVID that vaccines were "never tested". When
Re: Vaccination (Score:2)
Seasonal effects and the Memorial Day threat (Score:2)
I'm a huge proponent of vaccines but I wouldn't be so sure the decline is for this reason. Case counts were very low this time last year too and there were no vaccines yet. After Memorial Day, though, they shot up. This is what we need to watch for and be careful of. I fear that unvaccinated people will gather together to celebrate the end of the pandemic and the associated restrictions only to have the virus demonstrate that it is very much still here.
Re: Seasonal effects and the Memorial Day threat (Score:4, Informative)
Why do your fear that? That is their problem. You are vaccinated and wear a mask right? You are safe from covid. However you are still at a major risk of dying of heart disease or secondhand smoke. You should be fearful of that.
Because I am not safe from Covid. No one is. Pfizer's 95% effectiveness is awesome unless you one of the unfortunate 5% who get little immunity from the vaccine. Apart from a few involved in research efforts, no one knows if they are one of vulnerable. Also, the 95% is only against the original virus. It is only 75% effective against the South African variant and the P1 Brazilian variant. Who knows what the new strains coming out of India do?
Re: Seasonal effects and the Memorial Day threat (Score:5, Insightful)
>Because I am not safe from Covid. No one is.
Nobody will ever be 100% "safe" from anything. If that is your goal, you might as well go get yourself a bubble to live in.
> Pfizer's 95% effectiveness is awesome unless you one of the unfortunate 5% who get little immunity from the vaccine.
And that 5% will face a population who are already 50% vaccinated and 40% FULLY vaccinated and 95% of the latter unable to transmit it to you. Plus a huge percent who had it and are naturally immune and not going to transmit it to you. And the odds of never getting it even IF you encounter the small percent who are not significantly protected. It isn't about "OMG there is a 5% chance I will get it", the chances are way, way, way lower than that already.... and dropping every day.
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It's not a simple case of 95% effectiveness. The vaccines were not tested with a standardized virus challenge. The tests were comparisons of vaccine effectiveness among the general population going about their ordinary business. Those people would have had a variety of exposures to COVID. A possible useful way of looking at this is that the vaccine raises the threshold of the amount of exposure needed to cause disease.
Of course, individual variability still has an effect, but it's not "95% can't get COVID i
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Because I am not safe from Covid. No one is. Pfizer's 95% effectiveness is awesome unless you one of the unfortunate 5% who get little immunity from the vaccine.
You're using early data with a small sample and a resulting wide confidence interval. With the immunization and tracking of hundreds of millions of people, and identification of a few thousand "breakthrough" cases, we've got better numbers (in the accuracy sense). And they're a LOT better (in the "how good the vaccine is" sense).
Against the origin
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The variants they incubate will not necessarily be blocked by my vaccination. That's one reason I fear mass maskless gatherings of unvaccinated people. The other is that they will endanger people like my friend with cancer or my friend with the kidney transplant who can't count on vaccines to protect them.
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I wouldn't call it "just the flu" (Score:5, Informative)
The bar for being hospitalized is really high in America (not sure about the rest of the world).
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by all accounts 33% of people end up with long term compilations whether they end up in the hospital or not.
Source for that? I've not heard of much long term complications in people who were not hospitalized (and some of the long term effects were in part from early treatments when they knew less about how to treat Covid).
The one source I found said the risks were actually quite low [thelancet.com] and didn't include either "brain fog" or lung damage.
So you for sure cannot say "by all accounts".
One source of info for "long covid" incidence (Score:5, Informative)
Your question made me interested so I searched.
Here's what I found:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/i... [medpagetoday.com]
Here's what it said, in summary:
90% had mild covid
1/3 had "lingering effects"
"Many of these were young and no pre-existing conditions."
76% of those hospitalized in Wuhan had at least one symptom that persisted 6 months, mostly fatigue or muscle weakness".
"35 to 50% of non-hospitalized patents had symptoms 2-4 months later."
From a study of 177 lab-confirmed COVID infected:
6.2% no symptoms.
84.7% were outpatients
9% were hospitalized.
32% of outpatients reported one persistent symptom:
Fatigue, 13.6%,
loss of smell or taste, 13.6%,
13% other symptoms,
2.3% brain fog.
So I read that as, if you get COVID positive and have symptoms: .5 to 1%.
9% chance of ending up hospitalized
13.6% chance of lingering fatigue
13.6% chance of loss of smell or taste
2.3% brain fog
13% other
Overall risk of death seems to be
I really don't want any of that. I got vaccinated.
To put a personal spin on this, in the group of people connected with me, there are 5 people who are friends-of-friends who are dead from COVID-19. I only know 3 people directly who I know have had COVID.
On the other hand, I know literally dozens of people who've gotten vaccinated. No vaccine fatalities I've heard of in my friends or friends-of-friends. Only lingering adverse effect I know of in this group is my friend who says his toes are sore, so far for about a month after vaccination.
So even within 2 degrees of separation from me, 5 COVID deaths out of not all that many cases, and only one case of a lingering effect from the vaccine with a *lot* of folks getting the vaccine.
So yes, I think all the vaccines are a good bet vs. having an actual case of COVID.
Not to mention your duty as a human being. Yes, your duty. It's us humans vs. COVID. By getting vaccinated, you reduce your chance of giving all that risk of death or lingering badness to someone else. Right now pretty much every case of COVID is leading to another case. That means if you get COVID, you're probably going to give it to someone.
I'd much rather advance the cause of humanity by taking a small risk and being experimented upon with these new-ish vaccines than give some damn virus free rein to experiment on humans and maybe mutate into worse.
It's humans vs. COVID-19. Pick a side. Get vaccinated.
--PeterM
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OVER 9 MONTHS and they only reported symptoms with no further testing, so no idea what caused those symptoms, just that they once had a covid positive test. Asking about symptoms without testing for other infections not wise. You know what else those are symptoms of STRESS https://www.healthdirect.gov.a... [healthdirect.gov.au] now of course the 24/7 covid fear campaign pushed by tech corporations because shutdowns, the closing down the their brick and mortar competition enormously slows down profits and share price rise (which
Re: One source of info for "long covid" incidence (Score:2)
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So I read that as, if you get COVID positive and have symptoms:
You read that wrong. Your data applies to "had a lab-confirmed COVID infection", which leaves out the vast majority of cases.
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Re:I wouldn't call it "just the flu" (Score:4, Informative)
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Why did this get voted "Troll"? It's a legitimate response to an idiotic dick lick that was just "asking questions".
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Your source wouldn't cover me. After my positive test I never saw anyone about it and here I am, fine. Probably getting as much damage from other environmental contaminates. Almost like life is dangerous. Who knew.
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What if I told you there were other sources on the internet of which you had your choice? That is, if you really actually cared about getting an answer.
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No, we're at less than 40% fully vaccinated. This is mostly due to warmer more humid weather.
I'd like to lodge a formal complaint (Score:2)
I'd like to lodge a formal complaint.
I went to your website and didn't find any bacon, free or otherwise.