US COVID Cases More Than Triple in Two Weeks (axios.com) 403
The number of new COVID cases more than tripled over the past two weeks, shattering records all across the U.S. From a report: The Omicron variant appears to be significantly milder than its predecessors, and it's not leading to as much serious illness. But sky-high case counts are still a warning sign, especially in areas whose health care systems are already stretched thin. The U.S. is now averaging nearly 550,000 new cases per day -- a 225% increase over the past two weeks, and by far the highest levels of the entire pandemic. That's likely an undercount, as many people are testing themselves at home. In previous waves, a sharp increase in cases would translate into a similar increase in hospitalizations, and then deaths. Omicron, however, appears to cause severe illness at a much lower rate.
I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe pretty much everyone is going to catch this at some point or other in the near future and I'm kinda getting to the mindset of "ok, let's get it and get it over with".
I'd not really worn a mask since I got my 2nd shot last April and really no one around here does.
Restaurants are full, no checks, etc....life had gone back to normal.
Omicron hit...here, still mostly the same.
I did fly over the Xmas holidays and that was really the first time I wore a mask since April like I said.
I had N95 for one leg and KN95 on another. But it was crowded, I got cancelled on a few flights and spent time in bars/restaurants at airport for those many hours so I could take mask off, I can't wear THAT long, I get claustrophobic.
Anyway...home now, and I guess I'll see if I catch it or even know if I catch it.
At this point, I've done all I can to protect myself and I'm kinda at the point of "Ok let's just catch it and get it over with once and for all".
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Was down in Florida throughout December and it was sporadic masking, but beyond that everything was packed for the holidays.
I'm fully vaccinated and boosted (Moderna) and ended up testing positive on December 20th. Like bad cold symptoms for me, with bad headache, congested, and cough for a week. I treated it w/Dayquil for the most part. My wife (vaxxed, not boosted) tested positive on the 21st. For her it was a mild cold, mostly sneezing and headache for 3 days. My youngest son (13, vaxxed) never showed symptoms so we never had him tested.
My wife's aunt and uncle (60 & 61) caught it the same day, though up in Ohio. Unvaxxed. She spent a week in the hospital before going home, he never made it home -- died in the hospital.
People made their choices, and they can now live or die with them. Welcome to the new normal.
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Insightful)
"People made their choices, and they can now live or die with them."
If only that consequences were limited to those who make poor choices. They are not.
This is the same argument that is used against requiring motorcycle helmets. Society pays a significant cost for stupid people's "freedoms".
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to ride without a helmet, but as you grow older you come to know you aren't quite as bulletproof.
What's the extra meaningful cost to society?
If you're worried about money, well, charge them more insurance money those that ride w/o helmets.
Hell, tons of people regularly do risky behaviors...mountain climbing, sky diving, running with the bulls....boating, etc.
Are we doing to start prohibiting all risky behavior?
This will turn into a dull world quite quickly.
When exactly as a society did we start all turning into pussies and become so scared of anything that might be risky?
We're supposed to be the champion of the individual...what happened to the US in the past decade or so?
I didn't grow up that way.
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Simple, we realized we couldn't just foist the costs onto groups who couldn't fight back and just had to lie down and take it. When you grew up, people made poor choices, and others simply had to suffer the consequences and the original person was blissfully unaware, normally shielded by money, race, politics, and any number of other factors.
Covid is the first thing in a LONG time that mows people down regardless of any of the above. It doesn't care about any social bullshit that people used to isolate them
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LOL...I'm sorry, but you really caught me with this one.
Where do you live where they monitor and would ban you from a boating location?!?!
I'm serious, I mean yes, I've seen the cops in boats, mostly on holiday weekends looking for drunks, but very seldom does anyone get pulled over otherwise.
I mean, aside from maybe harbors and boat slips....lakes, rivers and the ocean
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What's the extra meaningful cost to society?
People's lives change when people they care about die, even if that person died because they did something stupid. It affects them, and if it affects them negatively (which I don't think is controversial to say is the case most of the time) it can put *them* in positions to contribute less to society.
One way is the emotional cost, whereby people are more likely to make poor or risky decisions (one common example is people turning to substance abuse to cope with an
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Honestly, the simple reality is the rules are different when your actions can impact others. The activities you all describe -- mountain climbing, sky diving, running with the bulls (done that, BTW), motorcycle no helmet -- the consequences fall on you. None of the above actions are contagious and can, at worst, only indirectly impact others who depend on you, assuming you die or become a cripple. (Try not to land on people if you skydive.)
At this point, in the United States, the vaccine and boosters have b
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Informative)
I used to ride without a helmet, but as you grow older you come to know you aren't quite as bulletproof.
What's the extra meaningful cost to society?
If you're worried about money, well, charge them more insurance money those that ride w/o helmets.
The cost to society is literally killing people that had nothing to do with your behavior by filling up hospitals so that they can't handle your heart attack or accidental trauma.
The only exceptions to mandatory vaccination should be a valid medical reason. "Freedom" or religion is BS - society doesn't let me go to church and shoot a rifle in the air just because my religion says I have to, because it endangers others. There's no difference with not getting vaccinated.
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Informative)
If you wear your mask you are safe. Of course, that's assuming that you actually *followed the science* and are wearing a .3micron filter on a rubber frame with a tight seal and safety goggles.
What, you believed what the government was telling you and you only wear a cloth mask or one of those paper surgical masks? Well, then that puts you in the same "stupid people get consequences" as those avoiding masks and going to parties and jet setting to foreign nations.
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Studies have found that masks - aside from N95 or surgical masks - actually increase infection. The mechanism isn't yet known, but those who just tie some piece of cloth in front of their face are actually increasing their risk of infection. Given that Amazon will only sell* N95 masks to health workers, the likelihood that the average mask wearer is doing themselves or society a favor is between slim and none.
Citation needed. I can only find a single study [nature.com] that even approaches such a conclusion, and that study involved reused cloth masks without washing them. So yeah, if you're using a mask that's damp from weeks of using it without cleaning or drying it, you're going to get more aerosols than would come out of your mouth normally. This isn't an interesting result.
Even if you ignore the fact that reuse without washing is not a sane way to use cloth masks, the fact that some of your aerosols eventually come fr
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:2)
Basically get vaxxed or greatly increase you chance if serious complications. It'll put a real dent in the GOP voter base.
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Informative)
I dunno if I'd cackle too loudly about that one.
From what I read minorities are STILL some of the most UN-vaccinated populations out there in the US. Blacks and Hispanics are topping the charts on vaccine hesitancy.
Yes, the republicans in past couple of elections have made large headways of gathering more of these minorities as supporters of the party, but the overwhelming majority of these minority communities are still depended upon by the democrats as a major part of their base.
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Informative)
From what I read minorities are STILL some of the most UN-vaccinated populations out there in the US. Blacks and Hispanics are topping the charts on vaccine hesitancy.
That's a fact.
Yes, the republicans in past couple of elections have made large headways of gathering more of these minorities as supporters of the party, but the overwhelming majority of these minority communities are still depended upon by the democrats as a major part of their base.
Also a fact.
However, some basic math eludes you.
While minorities may be more likely to be vaccine hesitant, they are regardless a small fraction of the total people who are vaccine hesitant.
You can look at the death rates by state. The political faction most affected by this is quite clear.
Not that I think that's a good thing by any means. It's fucking tragic. Political victory by mass death of the opposing team isn't a victory of any particular ideology, other than whether or not you believed fucking morons while they spread misinformation regarding a pathogen.
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Whataboutism at it’s finest. Pull up pictures of anti vaxx rallies and you’ll see the crowd is 99.99% white. I have yet to see a combination BLM/anti vaxx rally.
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Kind of funny, you complain about "biased news sources" and then post three links to biased news sources.
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if only one stupid person couldn't then spread it to untold numbers of people who DIDN'T make that same choice, huh? :(
It's almost like this virus doesn't check to see what politics you follow, or of you believe in science or not. I'm sorry for your loss, btw. Nobody deserves to die from this even though it is going to happen
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People made their choices, and they can now live or die with them. Welcome to the new normal.
I have an infant at home. I'm not quite ready to give the anti-vaxxers a pass and leave them to the natural consequences of their actions. Babies don't have the option to get vaccinated. Our only hope is that he got some protection from his vaxxed and boosted mother before he was born.
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:4, Interesting)
All true.... and meaning absolutely no disrespect to your wife's aunt or uncle here. But do you know which variant they got? It seems to me that's a pretty big factor that's being downplayed in the media, except to say, "OMG! Omicron is popping up everywhere!"
An old friend of mine contracted the Alpha strain of COVID19 early in 2021, and he felt like he had the flu for a few days, and got over it. Then, last summer, his wife went on a business trip out of state and caught the Delta variant of COVID19. She wound up infecting him with it, and he eventually went to a hospital because it was bad enough. They turned him away, and he died at home a couple days later. She survived after a stay in the hospital herself. Neither of them ever got vaccinated. But days before he died? He still insisted it should be a person's own personal medical decision to get the shot or not, and he said he would still tell most people to consider avoiding it. So .... a man of principles, at least, even if many would say he was misguided.
But I guess my point is - it sure seems like the Delta variant was the real "whammy", with its ability to attack the lungs like it did. It pretty quickly superseded Alpha, to the point where basically nobody was even contracting the original variant anymore. And now, we're seeing Omicron pushing Delta out that same way. But it's far more infectious while far less deadly. (This is a trend predicted by some microbiologists for this virus for quite some time. It will mutate itself into irrelevance -- becoming another pesky flu type virus that people catch easily but get over in most cases. Like any flu, of course, SOME will have more problems or even die of it.)
All this fear over catching Omicron variant may be pointless and misplaced, really. I think the only remaining concern is probably catching Delta, before it's completely superseded by Omicron. (Last I heard, Omicron was 70% or more of all new reported COVID cases.)
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We will have to see if people start dying or if hospitals start filling up with vaccinated people. At this point th
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"Hopefully by summer we will be in a world where infection does not mean serious concern."
Hopefully, but how is this "reality is winning over superstition"? The reality is that the virus mutates, so "by summer" we may "be in a world where infection" means serious likelihood of death.
"Deaths in the US seemed to have stabilized to less than 1500 a day, Half of the peak a year ago. These are mostly unvaccinated people."
Your takeaway here is disturbing. Fukem, I got mine.
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:3)
That is not an accurate summary. An honest interpretation would be "they refuse to listen, so they cannot be helped".
People have a right to be willful idiots, and we have a right to let them.
I have tried a whole lot to talk people into vaccination with no perceptible results. I tried, but they want to die. So THEREFORE fuckem. Their willful ignorance is endangering lives, so the sooner they die frankly the better. If they want to stop doing that then I will stop deploring them. It isn't because I don't like
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:2)
Summer won't have infections. You mean by next winter infection won't be a concern.
Covid will be endemic and for a decade worst than the flu. The flu was rather shitty for me the last time I got it which I certainly don't want again anytime soon. Oddly enough, many of the people in my current locale seem to have never had the flu, and this baffles me...
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Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Insightful)
"At this point, I've done all I can to protect myself and I'm kinda at the point of "Ok let's just catch it and get it over with once and for all"."
Masks, isolations and vaccines are not just about protecting you, they are about protecting others and preventing overload of the medical system. Claiming that you've "done all" you can is an outright lie by your own admission, as you use vaccination as an excuse to do nothing else.
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To be fair at this point it looks like we probably wont be able to get rid of this disease even if we get each and every single person vaccinated who can be safely vaccinated.
Furthermore at this point we've vaccinated everyone who is willing and there's no way a mandatory vaccine mandate will pass our current supreme court (I also strongly doubt they'll allow Biden's mandate on large companies).
At some point people need to get back to living normal lives and with this new less deadly variant becoming domina
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These are the same tiring excuses given since the beginning.
Right now...both vaccinated and un-vaccinated can catch and transmit Covid.
The system in some areas has been stretched and overloaded for short bursts of time, and ea
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Funny)
I had N95 for one leg and KN95 on another
Double-masking may be a good idea, but they're supposed to go on your face!
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There you people go, moving the goalposts again.
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:4, Interesting)
I got Omicron on a flight, wearing two masks (one n95), fully vaccinated...
Like you said, none of what we have are doing matters for Omicron, it's time to move on and just accept the newer strains of Covid will be around for a long time - but that's OK since they are extremely mild compared to the original.
I'm actually pretty happy I finally got it since after that I really don't care about exposure to others in any way, and I know for sure I can't be giving them Covid either since I quarantined for the old extended 10 day period and felt totally fine five days in. I'm still not going to be going out anywhere if I feel sick at all since I don't want to give people traditional colds or flu, but it really is better just to have had it and move on from thinking about protection levels while you are out.
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Insightful)
You say this as if getting it once means you can't get it again. Just because you had it once, doesn't mean you can't get it again. There are many cases of people getting it twice (or even 3 times), sometimes even the same variant. The thought process you have is a big part of why things are so bad. People are just "over it" and don't want to bother. The US has been operating as if the pandemic was done for like 9 months now. No masks, no social distancing, huge gatherings, etc. (and of course people still refusing to get vaccinated). And that put us exactly where we are now, with hospitals still crowded and now overfilled with people. If we had kept simple safeguards in place like masks and distancing, we would have been a lot better off. Instead, we removed everything and just let things go back to normal like it was over, even when everyone knew it wasn't. And because 'merica, we won't put restrictions back in place, so we are just screwed.
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Quote: "ok, let's get it and get it over with"
That's the worst sentence you could have written.
Are you sure you are OK with passing ALL variants. Because you can get infected with all of them (more than one at the same time even).
If so, sooner or later your inmune system will fall apart and you with it.
No getting over it.... (Score:2)
It's looking very unlikely that there will be any getting it over with. At least not if "it" is COVID itself. At this point it's looking like a near guarantee that it's going to be endemic, which means we'll all be catching it over and over (and over) again since it seems like neither vaccine nor natural immunity lasts very long.
On the other hand I'm a big fan of "getting over it" and resuming life as normal. At this point everyone who wants to has been vaccinated (in the US at least), except for very yo
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Even if you're vaxxed and boosted you can still get Long Covid.
So sure you won't die, but your life will be kinda shit.
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I think it's pretty clear that everyone's going to get COVID sooner or later, but *rate* at which this happens is still important. Even though omicron has a lower complication rate than ancestral COVID, omicron appears to be still producing enough hospitalizations [ourworldindata.org] to stress health care systems around the country. Sure, it's less virulent than ancestral COVID, but sheer volume is making up the difference when it comes to rates of admissions and ICU burden [ourworldindata.org].
Mask mandates have returned in my area, but it's not
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...I'm vaxxed, boosted and all...
I believe pretty much everyone is going to catch this at some point or other in the near future and I'm kinda getting to the mindset of "ok, let's get it and get it over with".
I agree that most everyone will catch it at some point. But in the coming half year or so, it's people like me who continue to practice more care, which saves healthcare capacity from being overstretched by the people like you who practice less care, or rather the small fraction within your group who will need hospitalization because of covid.
I'll adopt your lower level of care once hospital bed capacity no longer has a significant covid-related shortfall (either because enough people have it, or a new str
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https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
177 / 177 infected healthcare workers were left with autoantibodies in their blood. It's starting to look like there's no such thing as surviving this monstrosity without suffering permanent damage, the only question is how severe the lasting symptoms will be.
Re:I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm kinda at the point of "Ok let's just catch it and get it over with once and for all".
You know that doesn't grant you immunity, right?
Or is your "once and for all" far more ominous?
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Well, like I mentioned I believe I'm a bit claustrophobic.
As a child in church, I had to sit at the end of the pew, I'd get to feeling smothered if in the middle.
I still don't like being long in confined places.
And when wearing a mask, I feel smothered.
I also
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Pardon me if you've tried it, but consider eating a tablespoon a day of local honey for a month or two. Try to get it from a hive in your county, but anything less than 50 miles away should do. If you can find it unfiltered, so much the better.
I stumbled across that treatment when I was searching the internet to see if I could double up on Allegra safely. I did it, and my allergies greatly reduced in severity and are now c
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I have 1-2 TBSP of local honey in my cup of hot green tea pretty much every morning.
While tasty, I don't find it relieves anything in any perceptible manner.
I've had this since childhood....I'm used to it, this is my daily life.
But thank you for the suggestion!!!
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I have been wearing a mask 16 hours a day for almost 2 years, what are you?
I'm all for mask wearing but I find your 16 hours a day number highly suspect as your number basically means the only time you're not wearing a mask is when you're sleeping.
I mean, are you wearing a mask when you're home watching TV or reading a book?
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:3)
Chinese likely put in this amount of time masked. I am hearing stories of working 14 hours related to epidemic prevention. So that's a good part of this period.
Likely this person is a health professional. Likely they get less than 8 hours of sleep... The two are related...
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I have been wearing a mask 16 hours a day for almost 2 years, what are you? some kind of child? I dont mean to pick it just drives me nuts to hear people say stuff like that
If play a video game in which my character walks near a cliff I often get weak in the knees and must shelve the game. A totally not related fact is that I do enjoy handling and admiring snakes -- pick them up and gaze upon the beauty of their design. Curiously, I have a relative who both works high iron construction and mountain climbs for fun yet will piss himself if he thinks a snake is in the neighborhood.
Are we both some kind of child? One of us? I would argue neither simply based on the facts liste
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:2)
Why are you wearing a mask 16 hours a day?
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"There is actually little potential benefit to a mask on a plane."
Citation please.
"...but after having investigated the issue the CEO admitted recently that there isn't really much point."
This was not said, this is you paraphrasing what was said while injecting your own biases.
"Surprisingly the bars/restaurants are actually higher risk but that is mitigated by the three dimensional volume of air in the space especially in airports/malls where these things are normally open to the massive three dimensional v
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:2)
Stooges... the lot of them. I don't think I have seen a disinformation campaign so clear on /.
Re: I'm thinking get it over with... (Score:3)
The CEOs of airlines are not relevant sources of information. Notably they lie continually about cabin air quality already due to bleed air problems.
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Disease spreading on planes is part of where we get our social distancing measurements from as they check how far away people get infected from the source. Masks help, but everyone needs to be wearing them (especially those potentially infected)
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Re:I'm not vaxxed and I'm doing just fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: I'm not vaxxed and I'm doing just fine. (Score:2)
"anything that goes against the mass formation psychosis version of reality."
With this particular topic, I think you have a strange way of saying "attempting to reduce the amount of false information available so people have logical, scientific based facts to base their decision making on."
Not sure why so many people are so against that. It's like there are groups around who intentionally fuel chaos and confusion so they can cash in on it or something. Well, those in the position to cash in on it at least.
T
How could you forget this? (Score:2)
https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1323439729988296704 [twitter.com]
But sure, go show us what great people you are by talking crap about a guy taking care of his wife with cancer. Even if he did get Covid... so what? You do realize that a huge fraction of the country has had it by now, right? This just reads like you rooting for your political opponents to su
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Green tea and zinc, nice. I remember a hippie girlfriend I had in the 00s and your words really take me back. (Though IMHO you should throw "Emergen-C" into the mix to really nail the impression, and also do a bit about burning smudges to drive evil spirits out of rooms where you otherwise can't correct any faulty Feng Shui.) I'm glad to have her behind me and I would never go back, but I still treasure the memories and all the hippie-lore I acquired.
Anyway, keep the archetype alive, and I hope you embrace
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There is bonafide science behind taking green tea + zinc. Green tea contains ECGC which acts as a zinc ionophore. It is known that zinc will slow down the replication of coronavirus [nih.gov] through inhibition of enzyme RNA polymerase. The zinc ionophore activity of ECGC facilitates the transport of zinc across the cell membrane.
I don't use burning smudges, chakras, pendulums, etc. You seem to be trying to invalidate science by associating it with non-science. Good luck with that.
Re: Oh please. I hope big pharma is paying you wel (Score:3)
I don't know who you are, but thank you. I haven't laughed like that in a while.
My wife is a High Priestess in the Pagan community, and yet... she's vaccinated and taking precautions. When people ask her about things like what you mentioned she literally laughs, rolls her eyes, and explains that yes, in CERTAIN cases and for CERTAIN things natural really is the way to go. She also points out that during the time in history that magic was used instead of medicine we only lived to see about 30 on average. Gol
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Err...no thank you.
I don't want to have the Feds/State/City to have which would be a mandatory database of more of my personal information.
This can rapidly evolve into a social scoring system, and we're already on the brink of creating a 2 class society in some cities with their rules.
This is supposed to be the US, not France.
A death rate increase would be weeks behind. (Score:2)
It takes weeks for the reported death rate to catch up to the reported infection rate, which makes sense since it takes people a while to die. Also, we just got out of the holiday season, when reporting takes a nosedive. There have definitely been individual days with higher than recent average deaths reported. I think we're quite likely to reach a point in about 3 weeks where the daily average hits something like 2000-3000 people dead per day up from the ~1200 we've had recently.
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Re:A death rate increase would be weeks behind. (Score:5, Insightful)
Possibly, and that might happen DESPITE the population being substantially more resistant to the disease due to vaccination, among other things.
The conclusion that the new strain is less severe is premature and dangerous. It also serves no purpose other than a political one. People need to do everything they can to protect themselves and others, we will have time to conclude the severity later, after the threat subsides.
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The conclusion that the new strain is less severe is premature and dangerous.
No it isn't. We have plenty of data at this point, spanning multiple regions and analyses, and it shows a consensus that Omicron produces significantly less mortality.
It also serves no purpose other than a political one.
While I disagree that having accurate epidemiological understanding of the pandemic virus serves only a political purpose, I am not sure what your comment is even about if it is not in relation to public health policy?
People need to do everything they can to protect themselves and others, we will have time to conclude the severity later, after the threat subsides.
That's absurd. The first part of responding to any threat is assessing it. How does "Police should just shoot all their susp
I don't care if I get it. (Score:2)
I'm vaxxed with J&J and Moderna on top. Endemic means learning to live with it, and learning to live with it means not particularly caring if you get it, as it's on it's way to being nothing more than a cold for vaxxed folks. I have no fear of this particular variant, unlike the past ones. The faster we get to this place as a society, the better.
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Then you are part of the problem. That has likely always been the case.
If only people took it seriously, our outcome might have been better.
"Endemic means learning to live with it..."
Who says it will ever reach that point? Your political party?
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Covid was already reasonably low risk... yes if you aggregate the risk across hundreds of millions of people in the US or accross billions around the globe it adds up to a lot of damage but putting it in perspective we all face a greater risk on the commute to work and comparable risk running out in a thunderstorm to roll up the windows we left open.
Can you provide any facts to support your claim? The numbers I've found [wikipedia.org] have annual automobile deaths in the past decade at around 10 per 100,000 population, which would be about 1/10th the deaths caused by COVID-19.
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Too far gone to save.
"...if you aggregate the risk across hundreds of millions of people in the US or accross billions around the globe it adds up to a lot of damage but putting it in perspective we all face a greater risk on the commute to work and comparable risk running out in a thunderstorm to roll up the windows we left open."
A comment like this is unsurprising coming from someone who believes as you do. Comparable risk of what? What does "aggregate the risk" mean? Are you suggesting that someone di
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but putting it in perspective we all face a greater risk on the commute to work and comparable risk running out in a thunderstorm to roll up the windows we left open.
That is obscenely fucking false.
38k people die in automobile accidents in the US each year.
About 43 people die of lightning strikes.
In the US, 385,000 people died of COVID in 2020, and around 445,000 people died of COVID in 2021.
Please, for the love of fucking god, please stop spreading your horseshit misinformation.
Subject (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm well past the point of not caring anymore. While COVID isn't the flu, I've felt for a long time that we'll be settling into a flu-like pattern with it, and that seems to be happening.
It's a potentially deadly virus but not on the scale of "Bring out your dead!". It doesn't impart permanent immunity after infection and recovery. Vaccines seem to lessen symptoms/severity but don't' seem to be making much of a dent in actual cases.
It's quite clear that we are never ever never going to eradicate this virus from the population. Even if everyone is vaccinated. Even if everyone wore masks. It will peak and dip in waves just like all other seasonal viruses forever unless we get better vaccines than what we have now.
At this point go ahead and get your shot (or don't - I don't think anyone should be forced to but I think its the smart choice). If you're sick, stay home. If you're not sick: live your life. We may have a new problem to deal with but the choices are to cower in fear for eternity or just accept that it's just an unfortunate aspect of reality.
So how does this compare to the flu? (Score:2)
So has Omicron turned into the flu? How do the death and hospitalization numbers compare?
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So has Omicron turned into the flu? How do the death and hospitalization numbers compare?
Every time someone stupid, such as yourself, wants to see comparative deaths and hospitalizations between the flu and covid, it's clear they're being stupid for the sake of being stupid.
A simple search would show covid orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu. But you knew that when you asked your stupid question because you like being stupid. It fills you with glee to post stupid comments because being stupid is what you do. Just like this stupid [yahoo.com] who is now six feet under.
The nice thing about stupid
Re:So how does this compare to the flu? (Score:4, Informative)
>So has Omicron turned into the flu?
No. The numbers of hospitalizations and ICUs is overloading our system, it's as bad has the first and second wave.
> How do the death and hospitalization numbers compare?
Deaths are lower. this wave is about 1/3 of the second wave which was about 1/3 of the first wave.
Numbers taken from here https://www.inspq.qc.ca/covid-... [inspq.qc.ca]
If the comparison with the US holds they (the US) could be in a similar situation in coming weeks.
Looking at South Africa, when they do our numbers (for Quebec) should drop pretty fast.
Enough data now - Omicron cases don't matter (Score:2)
Just look at Florida [worldometers.info] alone - cases way, way up - but the death rate has plunged, currently around 5 a day.
The data tells us something important, that the Covid going around now is simply not as dangerous, that the level of vaccines and treatments we have is enough now to where it doesn't matter Covid is still spreading.
Time for us all to move on, to drop the masks (which have done zilch as both masked and unmasked states have the same rise in cases). Time to live like humans again.
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Be careful, deaths are a trailing number. So it takes a few weeks for the full impact to show up in the death rate.
Don't forget about long-term effects (Score:5, Insightful)
I just read a twitter thread reminding everyone that COVID is a vascular disease, and long-term side effects can occur even when the case is mild (no hospital visit needed) or asymptomatic. It really isn't clear to what extent Omicron carries these risks as well; it replicates less well in the lower lungs, so you're less likely to get pneumonia from all the blood clots COVID causes, but it still spreads throughout your body. It's not the sort of thing I want to play chicken with.
I'm really looking forward to my booster.
Some say get over it... (Score:2)
Moving on and accepting covid, is a political and personal bitter pill for way too many.
This would suggest that some were wrong.
Hype and Bullshit. Again. (Score:3, Interesting)
"In previous waves, a sharp increase in cases would translate into a similar increase in hospitalizations, and then deaths. Omicron, however, appears to cause severe illness at a much lower rate."
If the latter is undeniably true at this point, then why in the hell would you even imply the former, suggesting that a "similar" increase in hospitalizations and deaths, would occur here when you already know damn well it won't, even with a 200% case increase?
This is exactly the Hype and Bullshit that has infected mass media to continue the delusion that COVID continues to be dangerous. If the latest variant is any indication, COVID is dying off far faster than Greed wants it to. And to Greed, I say tough shit. You've caused enough death. Fuck off, along with everyone else supporting a nonsensical hype train for profits sake.
TL; DR - PROVE we have a reason to be alarmed about this virus, or shut the fuck up about it already. NO ONE, is standing on a street corner right now ranting about flu and cold deaths, mandating those vaccines. And yet that is exactly where the fatality rate has fallen to, if not lower.
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Getting sick doesn't give immunity. Getting sick is like 1/3 of a vaccine, and the protection fades. People who get the C can be fine the first time through and die the second. Vaccines are a massive, massive safety measure.
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Indeed. Also remember that even people with low symptoms apparently lose something like 2% lung and heart capacity. That may well reduce your life expectancy. Anybody that does not get vaccinated is just deep in delusion and not rational.
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I don't think the superior effectiveness of vaccinated immunity against new variants is an accident. All the vaccines in widespread use are something new: vaccines that have been *designed* rather than *discovered* through trial-and-error.
With immunity you get from exposure to a virus -- whether its contracting a wild virus or being inoculated with a killed or attenuated virus -- you develop immunological memory of some random antigen stumbled upon by your immune system. With mRNA or genetically engineere
Re:good! (Score:5, Insightful)
That is very foolish, and aggressively evil if you're really doing that to people.
Whether vaxxed or not vaxxed, it is always going to be in your personal best interest to try to avoid it, because even if you fail and catch it, whatever preventative measures you took will likely lower the viral load.
And remember: it doesn't just kill people. It makes people sick. Go break a leg and then try to get ER treatment right now, and you'll see a problem. All the more reason, if I may use a pop 2020 phrase, to flatten the curve. This is a very stupid time to get COVID on purpose, precisely because so many other people are getting it right now. You're buying stock during the bubble-bursting. If you simply must be stupid enough to deliberately get it at all, get it when cases are at a low point (June?).
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Natural immunity from having fought off infection may or may not be as effective but also is far less specialized. Rather than a high count of antibodies with little variation you'll have a huge variety of antibodies triggering off different aspects of
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What rights would those be? You don't have the right to assault me. If you try, I do have the right to defend myself.
Maybe we've been going about this all wrong. Instead of trying to save the lives of you anit-vaxxers, maybe we need to start defending ourselves against what is increasingly looking like attempted murder. Aren't you guys always going on about "2A solutions"?
You're a fool (Score:5, Informative)
The statistics are clear. The vaccines massively reduce death among the vaccinated. The unvaxxed are still dropping at a far higher rate.
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Case rate, too.
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It must be very frightening for you to live in a black and white world with no nuance. The morbidity rate of disease must seem like cruel, relentless stochasticism to you. Like trying to extract meaning from the noise of an aliased signal.
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You're a paranoid git. Deaths are running around 1300 a day in the US right now. That's a lot of dead people every day, in addition to all the other causes of death.
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There is NO WAY they can be saying that ALL THESE PEOPLE are omicron infected when they don't have the capacity to do a basic test ...
Omicron apparently has different symptoms (or different severity for similar symptoms) than other variants, like Delta. I read an article the other day noting that doctors can generally tell what type of COVID one has by the symptoms. While surely not definitive, it's probably fairly accurate after some experience treating people with the various variants. In any case, treatment is based on symptoms, not necessarily specific variant.
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A quick search reveals you are full of shit. The deaths didn't bottom out in the spring of 2021.
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Sure they did. Then they went back up to even higher numbers since then, but I guess OP stopped checking at that point
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Nonsense. For example, you can do a random sample and extrapolate. Statistics is not magic and works pretty well. It does require some actual education and insight to understand what it does though.
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Every immunologist has said
One of my instructors in college said anytime you see a question with the word every or always in it you can consider it false.
Same here. What you just said is you, or someone you trust, has asked every epidemiologist on the entire planet how to identify if someone has covid. Clearly that has not been done so clearly your statement is false.
The only one moving goalposts are morons like you who deliberately twist words. You will note the title of thread said cases of covid, not
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Sampling, how does it work?
You don't have to test everyone to get a very accurate estimate of the proportion.
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"Both Sides" move the goal-posts. The pro-plague one specifically said that it would only be a few cases, then that it would burn away in the summer heat, then that it would have a 99.9% survival rate, and so on. Some even have their goal post as covid being just a flu, then change it to requesting thoughts and prayers when they're in the ICU before dying.
Meanwhile, the other side knows what the fark they're doing, and make new recommendations on new data - along with having
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mRNA technology has been in development since the early Bush Jr. Administration. Stop spreading the nonsense that this is a beta test.
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It's also been very well tested at this point with hundreds of millions of doses given
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3 days ago it was chills, 2 days ago it was fatigue and right now I'm sitting here with a sore throat. I opted out of the mRNA injection beta test, what are my chances at survival?
Pretty good. Unfortunately for you, the chances of long-term (possibly permanent) damage to your body are also pretty good. Something like 40% for Long COVID which seems to stop getting better after a few months (nobody knows why) and some loss of lung capacity and heart capacity are pretty much ensured. Have fun reaping the fruits of your stupidity by going for the equivalent of a pre-alpha "vaccination" (getting COVID).
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If we live in a just world, poor.
Lame troll.
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If you share right wing memes on social media you can get nominated for a Herman Cain award.
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I guess there is a comment that even SuperKendall won't actually put his name to.
We should just acknowledge what the problem really is, emboldened sociopaths. We live in a time where sociopathy is openly celebrated, even worshipped. If we are going to cheer on the deaths of people it should not be the unvaccinated, it should be the sociopaths.