Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[Meadow Skipper]

I was listening to some anthropologist talking about his stay with some isolated Amazon tribe and what struck him most about those people was that they never stopped talking from the moment they woke up until they went to sleep. I would not like being in that tribe.

I’d kill myself…or all of them, like riserx said.

You do you, but you cannot seriously argue that is the majority opinion currently.

Yeah, but half the population is dumber than average.

Or is that dumber than the median? Anyway, tyranny of the majority is an ongoing issue. Don’t get me started.

[mb6f50]

The people who think we all need to be forced back to the office are straight up crazy though. Remote or hybrid is here to stay and is way way better for life balance than commuting to a cubicle to do the same thing.

There is a certain subset of people that want everyone back in the office to meet their socialization needs -> via dropping by my desk to chat about some bullshit I don’t care about.

In times of low case numbers I would think it would be up to the company if they wanted to allow work from home and at what level.

[XXX-er]

Last Weds one of my employees called in to say he had a feverish night and had just tested positive. He worked the day before with myself and 3 others. This is at a small bike shop, we keep doors /windows open and ceiling fan on, but we’re generally in close contact with each other all day. We don’t see a ton of tourists - don’t do rentals and are primarily a service shop. But we’re in Durango and the majority of our town’s visitors are from TX, NM and AZ. As a bike shop, our customers do tend to be on the healthy side.
Those of us who worked with him masked up and monitored for symptoms the rest of the week.
Despite no symptoms, I took a rapid test Sat pm, 5days from contact, just in case I was asymptomatic. Negative, same with my other staff that had worked that Tuesday.
We’re still all healthy.
What does this mean? I have no idea, just figured I’d provide another anecdote to the mess.
This is the closest confirmed fly-by I’ve had since Aug 2020. Masks have gone on and off based on the reco of the local health dept.
FWIW, I start the day with an EmergenC packet, and a zinc and vitamin D supplement. I have no idea if this has any effect, but I haven’t “officially” caught the Covid yet. I did catch some nasty bug in early Feb 2020 when I lived in Ketchum…I still think that might have been the ‘Rona. (Vaxxed 3/21 - boosted 10/21 - furiously knocking on wood). I’ve tried to balance hermit/social life, but the reality is that I work retail and interact with people at the shop 6 days a week to make a living. I eat out regularly, but avoid really crowded, stuffy places. YMMV


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keep testing especaily if you feel sick but I think vitamins got fuck all to do with preventing Covid

[SumJongGuy]

Call me crazy, but the isolation of the last 2 years has helped in part create this outrage culture we see today. People are less agreeable than they were in 2020 and before.

Humans are social animals no matter how you try to rationalize it.

I'd argue that is just as much or more the result of more people carrying guns more places. Folks are way more likely to lose their manners and escalate arguments and road rage rather than turning the other cheek when they're armed. The myth that "an armed society is a polite society" is TOTALLY busted!

[Cono Este]

Round 2 for me. Triple vaxed had it in Jan. Been flying a lot, still masking up. Flu like symptoms for a few days then hacking cough at night.

Might have gotten from an HoA meeting. Presidents husband died of pneumonia a few days ago, idiot would not go to a doctor. Probably not in the stats.

Urgent care seeing alot of it.


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[SumJongGuy]

Huh. Well I'm one of those that enjoys my own company. I have no problem hanging out on my farm with the animals enjoying the natural world. I don't mind talking to to people, having them stop by for a chin wag once in a while but I have always truly enjoyed my alone time and this has been the case since I was a little kid.

What if it mutated to a variant where it could spread between farm animals and people? I get that most animals stay put, but new ones and the dogs and cats might be mingling with other critters off your property and coming back. Would you mask yourself, the animals, or both?

[SumJongGuy]

You do you, but you cannot seriously argue that is the majority opinion currently.

It can be both if folks wear masks.. Folks afraid of getting sick or high risk and everyone else can live a reasonably social life instead of having to isolate at home with more mask usage. Is it worth it to don the face diaper inorder to increase eye to eye contact and real life conversations and workplace interactions? Or is the mask just too much to deal with and not worth it to avoid getting and spreading COVID??

[riser4]

riserx

Hey now. My pronouns are he/him/his. No need to go and put an "x" on there.

[raisingarizona13]

I was listening to some anthropologist talking about his stay with some isolated Amazon tribe and what struck him most about those people was that they never stopped talking from the moment they woke up until they went to sleep. I would not like being in that tribe.

People that are uncomfortable with silence often give me anxiety.

I bet my silence gives them anxiety

[Ted Striker]

riser(-y, x)

[KQ]

What if it mutated to a variant where it could spread between farm animals and people? I get that most animals stay put, but new ones and the dogs and cats might be mingling with other critters off your property and coming back. Would you mask yourself, the animals, or both?

Actually... I do mask when I'm working in the barn because of the dust from hay and bedding and when I groom the horses. I wear N95s in the barn. I wear KN95s in public.

There are some equine diseases that are highly transmittable between equine that require all vehicles entering and leaving an infected farm to drive through a tire wash. They also require boot washes for workers and clothes must be sanitized after being worn around the barn. So we already have protocols for stuff like that.

[SumJongGuy]

Don't see anyone calling for lockdowns anymore, well, outside of China at least. I've seen and heard lots of pragmatic advice lately about what can and can't be done in terms of mandating actions though.

The original purpose of lockdown was to buy time and eliminate transmission when we had no clue what we were up against (anyone remember flatten the curve?). We're long past that point, transmission would resume once the lockdowns ended, and three years in there is little to no appetite from society to go back to that stage, so not sure why people want to discuss it as a possibility other than to stir the pot.

Masking, social distancing, washing hands, getting vaccinated, taking antiviral medication if prescribed (side note: don't hear anything about Ivermectin anymore), testing and isolating when sick, listening to expert advice and the science without going all Dunning Kruger, improving ventilation, and all those other relatively cheap and effective common sense measures, while continuing to get out and live your best life, whether that be by yourself or with people? Seems reasonable enough.

Bold part is the really big problem.. especially in a nation where 80% of the face to face service workers don't get sick pay. And people most of the time don't know they're sick. So if you really don't want to get sick every other month you got to wear a mask when close up with others in public venues... and probably work too..

[mb6f50]

Bold part is the really big problem.. especially in a nation where 80% of the face to face service workers don't get sick pay. And people most of the time don't know they're sick. So if you really don't want to get sick every other month you got to wear a mask when close up with others in public venues... and probably work too..

Yeah. Kinda funny, my job just ended the "emergency" and all the stuff that helped people not work when sick and we have more people than ever out with it.

I stopped going to the pool because after my bout of not covid I do not have enough sick leave left to get covid. Lots of people are super low on sick leave because they were making anyone with "covid symptoms" stay out until for like 2 weeks and everything is a covid symptom.

Now no more.

[bodywhomper]

keep testing especaily if you feel sick but I think vitamins got fuck all to do with preventing Covid

Fwiw, my SIL, who was symptomatic, was not yet testing positive at the time that joetron tested. She tested positive on pcr at day 4 of symptoms, likely 6 days after exposure and tested pos on RAT at day 5 of symptoms. She’s also had a pcr on day 2 of symptoms and RATs every day from symptom onset.

[Percy Rideout]

Don't see anyone calling for lockdowns anymore, well, outside of China at least. I've seen and heard lots of pragmatic advice lately about what can and can't be done in terms of mandating actions though.

The original purpose of lockdown was to buy time and eliminate transmission when we had no clue what we were up against (anyone remember flatten the curve?). We're long past that point, transmission would resume once the lockdowns ended, and three years in there is little to no appetite from society to go back to that stage, so not sure why people want to discuss it as a possibility other than to stir the pot.

Masking, social distancing, washing hands, getting vaccinated, taking antiviral medication if prescribed (side note: don't hear anything about Ivermectin anymore), testing and isolating when sick, listening to expert advice and the science without going all Dunning Kruger, improving ventilation, and all those other relatively cheap and effective common sense measures, while continuing to get out and live your best life, whether that be by yourself or with people? Seems reasonable enough.

This inflation mess is going to get every elected official voted out of office, and is a direct effect of the lockdowns.

The next pandemic could be The Walking Dead Virus and i guarantee we aren't locking down again in the USA.

Side note: All the addiction deaths and suicides in the next 5+ years. Are they considered COVID deaths too? These shitty circumstances are a direct result of COVID and our bungled response to it.

[LongShortLong]

I'm just surprised how sticky our assessment of "intelligent" proves to be. The last 2 years whenever I have to work with a covidiot I reset expectations up front and plan to fend off emotional reasoning about purely rational problems. They rarely disappoint, but I'm learning a few techniques. Probably good for me in the long run, but I don't have to like it.

Got any tips or links for dealing with the emo people? I've got a couple I deal with occasionally. And I might sometimes suffer from it myself.

[jono]

Got any tips or links for dealing with the emo people? I've got a couple I deal with occasionally. And I might sometimes suffer from it myself.

[Monster thread drift warning] The first step is admitting we have a problem, right? I see the absurdity of getting emotional about irrationality, but we're humans, so we can't rationally expect not to be emotional. At least that's how I rationalize it.

Now that you mention it I'm sure someone has worked on codifying techniques. Probably worth a search. I'm not an authority at all, but I'm happy to offer some rights for discussion.

What has worked for me so far is similar to avoiding any inappropriate topic with people who really want to go there: personally, I set firm expectations with terse, factual comments that don't leave room for argument--truisms that we all know and accept (like project goals). Stated as professionally as possible to focus the conversation and set a factual tone. Stay rigidly on topic and be prepared to repeat the basic facts many times, since the emotional thinker is constantly working on ways to justify his or her desired conclusion. And who knows, maybe it is the right conclusion--if so, it will match the objective criteria.

All of that usually sacrifices open conversation and even creativity to a degree, but with some people that is a price worth paying. I've worked in a couple places with "borderline" sexual harassers and drama queens who liked to yell a lot and this worked well there (obviously I never called them that to their faces, I just left no room in our conversation for nonsense, never reacted to provocative statements etc. and I came away with much less colorful stories than did my co-workers.)

Sometimes having a written list of the reasons or concerns can help when someone starts going "firehose" or trying to just blitz the conversation with half-relevant issues. Slow down and go to the notes.

And, obviously, know and address your own biases and have low expectations, because nothing works all the time. At least, nothing I know of.

On the off chance the emo happens to be an engineer there's a great speech that Hoover gave to an engineering class graduation whose centerpiece was "if an engineer's works do not work, he is damned." Sometimes the guy who's in love with his own idea/solution can be brought back from the brink with that. There's no advantage to winning an argument by convincing the team to make a mistake (when we find out it didn't work we'll all remember who championed it).

[mb6f50]

This inflation mess is going to get every elected official voted out of office, and is a direct effect of the lockdowns.

The next pandemic could be The Walking Dead Virus and i guarantee we aren't locking down again in the USA.

Side note: All the addiction deaths and suicides in the next 5+ years. Are they considered COVID deaths too? These shitty circumstances are a direct result of COVID and our bungled response to it.

There was never a lockdown in the United States and suicide rates went down during 2020 when most pandemic restrictions were in place and economic uncertainty was highest.

[Buzzworthy]

Asspen doesn’t like facts. Dramatic stories are always better.

[Percy Rideout]

There was never a lockdown in the United States and suicide rates went down during 2020 when most pandemic restrictions were in place and economic uncertainty was highest.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/healt...021/index.html

"Overdose deaths have been on the rise for years in the US, but surged amid the Covid-19 pandemic: Annual deaths were nearly 50% higher in 2021 than in 2019, CDC data shows.
The spike in overdose deaths in the second year of the pandemic wasn't as quite as dramatic as in the first year: Overdose deaths were up about 15% between 2020 and 2021, compared with a 30% jump between 2019 and 2020.
But the change is still stark. In 2021, about 14,000 more people died of overdose deaths in than in 2020, the CDC data shows."

It's like we live in different worlds.

I even used your favorite source, CNN.

[SumJongGuy]

Naw everyone just killed other people with all those guns that were sold..

U.S. Murder Rate Up 30% During Pandemic, Highest One-Year Rise Ever

[Percy Rideout]

While I'm in here, did you see the FOIA released internal emails released from the CDC as they admitted their "vaccine" wasn't actually a vaccine by THEIR OWN DEFINITION? Instead of formulating a better product, they just changed the definitions of "vaccine" and "vaccinated" on their website. You cant make this shit up!

People have been asking us if COVID-19 vaccines are not technically vaccines. They often cite that page 25 CDC’ definition for what counts as a vaccine. Here are a few examples (more in the attached spreadsheets): « Isittrue that this shot for Covid is not actuallya vaccine per your definition? Does this shot make you immune to the Covid virus? If not, why should | get the shot? « Reading the CC's definition of vaccine i says ..10 produce immunity to. specific disease." Everything you read today says this shot doesn't give you immunity but helps a person fight off the infection. Our question is how is the CDC and the rest of the world allowed to call the shota vaccination when it doesn't even meet your own definition hitps://www cde gov/vaceines/vac-gen/imz-basics him The definition of the word vaccine used on this page states thatavaccine produces immunity. Further, immunity is defined as being. exposed tot the pathogen) without becoming infected. There are several vaccines, including the new COVID vaccines that do not produce immunity as defined. Would t be possible for you to update the page to be more clear on the definition ofa vaccine? | was directed to this page by someone attemptingto use it asproof that the EUA COVID vaccines are not really vaccines since they do not provide immunity as defined on the linked page. Hopefully this can help clear up some disinformation that has been spread during the pandemic. « Please update the definition of vaccine on your website found at hitps://www.cde gov/vacines/vacgen/imz-basics htm People are citing this as proof that the. mRNA vaccines are not really vaccines. The definition needs to include new technological advances (miriam webster has done this). Thanks Right-wing covid-19 pandemic deniers are using your "vaccine" definition to argue that mRNA vaccines are not vaccines: Here is the definition from the CDC website: Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person's immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose. The phrase "to produce immunity” was interpreted to mean “complete” or “perfect” immunity. This was twisted to claimthat the existing covid-19 vaccines were not vaccines because they only prevented severe fines. | think it would be more accurate to say thata vaccine function is "to stimulate an immune response" 10beclear that perfect immunity isnot what definesa vaccine. Best,Andrew

Edit: sorry that came out like a Ski J post, this is me copying and pasting the emails from the CDC FOIA request.

[The AD]

Every vaccine has breakthroughs, so technically their old definition was incorrect and that's why they changed it.

[AK47bp]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/healt...021/index.html

"Overdose deaths have been on the rise for years in the US, but surged amid the Covid-19 pandemic: Annual deaths were nearly 50% higher in 2021 than in 2019, CDC data shows.
The spike in overdose deaths in the second year of the pandemic wasn't as quite as dramatic as in the first year: Overdose deaths were up about 15% between 2020 and 2021, compared with a 30% jump between 2019 and 2020.
But the change is still stark. In 2021, about 14,000 more people died of overdose deaths in than in 2020, the CDC data shows."

It's like we live in different worlds.

I even used your favorite source, CNN.

Can’t ignore the fact that there is also a raging opioid epidemic at the same time as the Covid pandemic. So who knows the correlation, overdose deaths would of still increased without Covid, just hard to know how many extra people Overdosed because of Covid related issues.

Impossible to know.

Those kind of “studies” are stupid.


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[Percy Rideout]

Can’t ignore the fact that there is also a raging opioid epidemic at the same time as the Covid pandemic. So who knows the correlation, overdose deaths would of still increased without Covid, just hard to know how many extra people Overdosed because of Covid related issues.

Impossible to know.

Those kind of “studies” are stupid.


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Fair point.

Lets go with what we have been talking about for 1600 pages then, excess mortality.