Non-Political Coronavirus Thread

[Donkey Deac Doug]

Wife just tested positive with symptoms. Good times.

Mako, did you visit my wife while you were sick?

 

[Louis Gossett Jr]

Everyone keeps listing shit that’s a cause of Covid not some edict from above. Medical care neglected because the medical system is overrun by ohh shit that’s right actual covid, shortages because of actual Covid, majority of schools are open now but a disaster because teachers out with Covid. Throw in that for these profession as well as others people realized it’s not worth dealing with, administrators, the government, asshole patients, parents, family, customers etc… so you don’t get to flip a switch and be pre pandemic because those people aren’t putting up with your shit anymore so a shortage will continue.

 

[Biff Tannen]

My wife got her negative test yesterday, one week after testing positive. She never had a fever but felt like her temperature was swing back and forth between chills and overheating. Other than that just some congestion and fatigue for about 3-4 days. She got boosted after Christmas.

 

[deacdiggler]

Wife just tested positive with symptoms. Good times.

Mako, did you visit my wife while you were sick?

mako -> mako's mom -> you -> your wife

 

[Louis Gossett Jr]

There are roughly 94,000 STDs in the state of North Carolina a year and Mako’s mon is the nexus point for 70,000 of them, so not surprising to add covid to her spreads spread.

 

[2&2 Slider To Leyritz]

Everyone keeps listing shit that’s a cause of Covid not some edict from above. Medical care neglected because the medical system is overrun by ohh shit that’s right actual covid, shortages because of actual Covid, majority of schools are open now but a disaster because teachers out with Covid. Throw in that for these profession as well as others people realized it’s not worth dealing with, administrators, the government, asshole patients, parents, family, customers etc… so you don’t get to flip a switch and be pre pandemic because those people aren’t putting up with your shit anymore so a shortage will continue.

That, as usual, is completely wrong. The people you reference are very much out because of the edict from above, they aren't out because they are actually sick. If whatever minor, and in most cases nonexistent, symptoms they had were anything other than "OH SHIT THE TEST SAYS POSITIVE WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" then they would still be showing up. They are staying home because of the edict from above related to a test result, not because of actual sickness.

 

[Shooshmoo]

I'm more and more convinced every day that we need to divide into two countries.

 

[TimmyClutch]

A Nurse at MUSC in Charleston, who was a former photojournalist, has been taking pictures of patients with COVID to show the world what it is like.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/26/1066395049/intimate-portraits-of-a-hospital-covid-unit-from-a-photojournalist-turned-nurse

 

[deacdiggler]

From today's NYT morning newsletter. Can't get the graphs to link but the descriptions are pretty clear and it maps out this discussion pretty well.

Two Covid Americas

Covid’s starkly different impact on the young and old has been one of the virus’s defining characteristics. It tends to be mild for children and younger adults but is often severe for the elderly. More than three-quarters of all U.S. Covid deaths have occurred among people 65 and older.
Given these patterns, it seems obvious that older Americans should be more fearful of Covid than younger Americans. Yet they’re not.

That’s one of the striking findings from a new poll that Morning Consult, a survey firm, has conducted for this newsletter: Old and young people express similar concern about their personal risk from Covid. By some measures, young people are actually more worried:


From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult


The most plausible explanation for this pattern is political ideology. Older Americans, as a group, currently lean to the right, while younger generations lean to the left. And no other factor influences Covid attitudes as strongly as political ideology, the poll shows.
Across most demographic groups, Americans have broadly similar attitudes toward Covid. It’s true not just of the young and old, but also of men and women, as well as the rich, middle class and poor. The partisan gap, by contrast, is huge:



From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult

Many Democrats say that they feel unsafe in their communities; are worried about getting sick from Covid; and believe the virus poses a significant risk to their children, parents and friends. Republicans are less worried about each of these issues.

Who’s right? There is no one answer to that question, because different people have different attitudes toward risk. An acceptable risk to one person (driving in a snowstorm, say, or swimming in the ocean) may be unacceptable to another. Neither is necessarily wrong.
But the poll results suggest that Americans have adopted at least some irrational beliefs about Covid. In our highly polarized country, many people seem to be allowing partisanship to influence their beliefs and sometimes to overwhelm scientific evidence.

Millions of Republican voters have decided that downplaying Covid is core to their identity as conservatives, even as their skepticism of vaccines means that the virus is killing many more Republicans than Democrats.

Millions of Democrats have decided that organizing their lives around Covid is core to their identity as progressives, even as pandemic isolation and disruption are fueling mental-health problems, drug overdoses, violent crime, rising blood pressure and growing educational inequality. As David Hogg, a gun-control activist, tweeted last year, “The inconvenience of having to wear a mask is more than worth it to have people not think I’m a conservative.”

In today’s newsletter, I’m going to focus on two examples of Covid irrationality that the poll highlights.
No vaccine, no worry

The Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If you’re vaccinated, your chances of getting severely sick are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ effectiveness and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that Covid now appears to present less danger than a normal flu.

For the unvaccinated, however, Covid is worse than any other common virus. It has killed more than 865,000 Americans, the vast majority unvaccinated. In the weeks before vaccines became widely available, Covid was the country’s No. 1 cause of death, above even cancer and heart disease.

But look at Americans’ level of worry about getting sick, by vaccination status:


From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult


It’s a remarkable disconnect between perception and reality. A majority of the boosted say they are worried about getting sick from Covid. In truth, riding in a car presents more danger to most of them than the virus does.
A majority of the unvaccinated, on the other hand, say they are not particularly worried. The starkest, saddest way to understand the irrationality of this view is to listen to the regret of unvaccinated people who are desperately sick from Covid or who have watched relatives die from it.

“There’s nothing that matters more than our freedoms right now,” a California prosecutor said at an anti-vaccine rally in December. She died of Covid this month.
Children in crisis

I know that some Democrats believe that their approach — the emphasis on minimizing any Covid risks — comes with little downside. But the poll results call that argument into question.
One area of agreement among Democrats and Republicans is a widespread concern that pandemic disruptions are harming their children:



From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult

People are right to be worried, too. Three medical groups — representing pediatricians, child psychiatrists and children’s hospitals — recently declared “a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health.” The worst effects have been on Black and Latino children, as well as children in high-poverty schools.

Many Democrats are effectively dismissing these costs and instead focusing on the minuscule risks of Covid hospitalization or long Covid among children. Most Democrats, for example, say they favor moving classes online in response to Omicron, despite widespread evidence that remote school has failed and little evidence that shutting schools leads to fewer Covid cases.

Closed schools almost certainly do more damage to children and vaccinated adults than Omicron does.



From a survey of 4,411 people conducted in Jan. 2022. | Source: Morning Consult

(Here’s much more Morning Consult polling on Covid, going back to early 2020.)

Democrats like to think of their political party as the one that respects science and evidence. And on several issues — vaccines, climate change, voter fraud, Barack Obama’s birthplace and more — that certainly seems to be the case. But just because something is usually true doesn’t mean it always is.
On Covid, both political tribes really do seem to be struggling to read the evidence objectively. As a result, the country is suffering thousands of preventable deaths every week while also accepting a preventable crisis of isolation that’s falling particularly hard on children.

 

[deacdiggler]

https://static.nytimes.com/email-content/NN_sample.html?action=click&module=nl-index-see-the-latest

found the link with images but I can't edit that post to include them. Alas.

 

[Louis Gossett Jr]

Society should always be if you are sick you stay the fuck home. It’s helpful that a large majority of people finally understand that, it’s out of the bag now and there’s no going back to the days of the American working mentality of I’m so fucking important I need to come into work to spread god knows what to the office. Chin up buttercup just add it the list of all your grievances that mildly inconvenience you and will have you dead at 50 from a heart attack.

 

[wakephan09]

How are pointing to kids' education, mental health issues, drug overdoses, neglected actual medical care, the inflation that is suffocating the country, etc. me, me, me? You're just so blinded to reality in your fear of Covid that you can't see anything else. But yes, hide behind your mask that will solve all problems, Batman.

Because you don't actually care about those things, you're just using them as excuses to whine about how you're personally inconvenienced.

If you cared about kids' education you'd fight for it in other contexts too (and not complain about snow days, for instance). If you cared about addiction or mental health there are plenty of policies you could vote for and organizations to support. You probably do care about inflation.

I'm blinded by reality? By *my* fear of covid? That's the whole point: I'm not talking about me here. It's not about any individual.

I agree in general with the point that certain measures (like isolation protocols; online school) exacerbate some of the problems you mention. But also the government's vax mandates and masking policies would make a real difference and the right have resisted them all the way.

trimps whine about the "theater" of individual masking because they've personally been vaxed and boosted and infected five times. That doesn't mean that wearing a mask, any mask, doesn't still help the community in some small way. It reduces to the same old difference between Americans: some people want to help others and some people want to help themselves. Pretty clear where some of y'all stand

 

[thatguy2016]

Because you don't actually care about those things, you're just using them as excuses to whine about how you're personally inconvenienced.

If you cared about kids' education you'd fight for it in other contexts too (and not complain about snow days, for instance). If you cared about addiction or mental health there are plenty of policies you could vote for and organizations to support. You probably do care about inflation.

I'm blinded by reality? By *my* fear of covid? That's the whole point: I'm not talking about me here. It's not about any individual.

I agree in general with the point that certain measures (like isolation protocols; online school) exacerbate some of the problems you mention. But also the government's vax mandates and masking policies would make a real difference and the right have resisted them all the way.

trimps whine about the "theater" of individual masking because they've personally been vaxed and boosted and infected five times. That doesn't mean that wearing a mask, any mask, doesn't still help the community in some small way. It reduces to the same old difference between Americans: some people want to help others and some people want to help themselves. Pretty clear where some of y'all stand

twice now, recently, on this thread you have made assumptions about people and presented them as facts

you shouldn't do that

 

[WFcatamount22]

Society should always be if you are sick you stay the fuck home. It’s helpful that a large majority of people finally understand that, it’s out of the bag now and there’s no going back to the days of the American working mentality of I’m so fucking important I need to come into work to spread god knows what to the office. Chin up buttercup just add it the list of all your grievances that mildly inconvenience you and will have you dead at 50 from a heart attack.

I don't think people were coming to work sick because they think they are so fucking important. It's more the management level putting so much pressure on the working class to show up or get fired.

 

[Louis Gossett Jr]

Yeah there’s definitely that as well, as well as the lack of safety net for hourly employees and so forth. You could almost guarantee yourself encountering someone sick if you hit up fast food every day.

 

[wakephan09]

twice now, recently, on this thread you have made assumptions about people and presented them as facts

you shouldn't do that

Are you referring to my suggestion that you (and ELC) should

Just wear a fucking mask for a little longer and shut up

I don't see an assumption in there.

You responded:

I’m wearing the fucking mask. Never said I wasn’t. You shut up

I said that you should do two things at the same time: wear a mask and shut up about it. Even if you're doing the former you're certainly not doing the latter.

What's the other assumption? That all this whining is selfishly motivated? I directed that to 2&2, but if you took it personally then perhaps that's something to think about?

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

Society should always be if you are sick you stay the fuck home. It’s helpful that a large majority of people finally understand that, it’s out of the bag now and there’s no going back to the days of the American working mentality of I’m so fucking important I need to come into work to spread god knows what to the office. Chin up buttercup just add it the list of all your grievances that mildly inconvenience you and will have you dead at 50 from a heart attack.

People still have to work sick, they just can’t work with COVID. My dad worked all last week with the flu after two negative COVID tests

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

I don't think people were coming to work sick because they think they are so fucking important. It's more the management level putting so much pressure on the working class to show up or get fired.

Exactly. Labor levels are extremely tight right now, especially in food service.

 

[2&2 Slider To Leyritz]

Exactly. Labor levels are extremely tight right now, especially in food service.

That's what happens when you keep paying people not to work.

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

That's what happens when you keep paying people not to work.

You’re a moron.