Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[Falcon3]

JFC Idaho is a “special” place…
I rode a lift with a guy this week. He got a phone call from work about a cancelled conference. His buddy asked him why they cancelled and he said he wasn’t sure. Then they went on to talk about how a bunch of families they knew were really sick with something. “Yeah something’s really going around!”

Apparently they had never heard of covid?……WTF.

Also, I don’t mean to restart the discussion on kids, but if we’re comparing trauma of masking vs other things, don’t underestimate the trauma kids are going through with parents, grandparents, and teachers dying by suffocating in their own lungs. There will be a lot of single-parent households with long-term trauma from that in the years to come. So maybe reducing the kids as vectors is worth it for that reason eh?

[bennymac]

Wow. You must be fun at a party.
Omicron is an upper respiratory virus, not the pooper buds. And while fully admitting “Im not that confident” about whatever the fuck I said, your post comes across as paranoid and anti science.

You’re smarter than the folks at the Mayo Clinic? They’re paranoid and anti-science at that institution? Their posted info on covid is wrong and your ideas are right? 😂

Sounds like you’re the one that’s likely to be fun at the party. Confident and stupid is an entertaining combo to witness (briefly).

[rideit]

[subtle plague]

I hate to break it to you, but $30K ain't what it used to be.

In Austria you can get a decent hooker for it.

[teletech]

One kid back in a five day quarantine. Whole family just did this less than 2 months ago. School rule if you are exposed to an infected person at an school sanctioned after school sport or event you have to quarantine. Exposed at school or bus no quarantine, basketball with a mask on, quarantine. Vaccinated coach is the spreader. Stupid ass rules.

[twat]

In Austria you can get a decent hooker for it.

: ) finaly austria has lost its dark gray shade and has a good reputation!

Visit Spritzbuhel home of
dumplings and eastern european hookers

[MagnificentUnicorn]

JFC Idaho is a “special” place…
I rode a lift with a guy this week. He got a phone call from work about a cancelled conference. His buddy asked him why they cancelled and he said he wasn’t sure. Then they went on to talk about how a bunch of families they knew were really sick with something. “Yeah something’s really going around!”

Apparently they had never heard of covid?……WTF.

Also, I don’t mean to restart the discussion on kids, but if we’re comparing trauma of masking vs other things, don’t underestimate the trauma kids are going through with parents, grandparents, and teachers dying by suffocating in their own lungs. There will be a lot of single-parent households with long-term trauma from that in the years to come. So maybe reducing the kids as vectors is worth it for that reason eh?

Covid doesn’t exist in Idaho, I thought everyone knew that


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[altasnob]

But it makes me angry that after 2 years so many people are ready to give up and say fuck it, we're just going to have to live with millions getting sick ad thousands dying of it every year. Quitters.

It's not just the US. Places like Australia, Canada, and Norway, who have done relatively well up until now are seeing cases explode. And countries like Japan that are currently low are seeing upticks as well (so one would assume they will be hit hard like the rest of Earth).

The optimist wouldn't say we gave up, they would say we won (or at least made a truce). We have a dominant, highly contagious variant that gives us acceptable risk to unvacinated under 5, and vaccinated over 5, and to the rest of the US that refuses the vaccine (and poor people in far away places who can't get the vaccine) we say fuck it. Everyone gets Omicron, there is worldwide immunity that reduces the chance of another variant forming and hopefully life will go back to normal.

[::: :::]

PPS wrote this morning to say that two high schools are moving to remote learning immediately for a week or so to deal with staff absences & lack of substitutes. Student absences also play into the decision.
We are reading it as a early warning that our HS will follow suit if the current vector of caseloads continues to be accelerating. We know of two teachers who got covid over break from the kid’s total of 7 teachers. >25% is not a great ratio.

[::: :::]

My unprofessional opinion is that we shouldn’t be giving up until the caseload numbers tell us we are headed in the right direction. Currently they are all accelerating which isn’t the time to decide everything’s ok in the new normal.

[altasnob]

Do we have a choice? That's my point about cases going up in other countries that were able to keep things under control until now. When this is all said and done, I am fairly confident the only countries that can successfully prevent the spread of Omicron will be authoritarian governments like China and North Korea. And then what the hell do they do when the rest of the world has immunity to dominant variant on Earth but they don't? Stay locked down forever?

To stop Omicron in the US right now would mean go into full hard core lock down like nothing we have seen in the pandemic. Does anyone actually think that is the right move?

[jono]

If we somehow get lucky and omicron doesn't mutate and the whole world catches it except ____, they'll vaccinate for it and get their immunity just fine.

Get some coffee, bud.

[::: :::]

Public health officials continue to publish what they think is the best path forward. It includes some measure of reasonableness & isn’t hard core isolation. But they get pilloried for things like unmasking to eat in public, which is a direct concession to the folks who think pure isolation is worse than the virus.

We all MMQB this shit as if our opinions matter, but the pros are doing their best to provide guidance.

From what I can tell, they are saying, “yes, we should still be fighting this,” not pretending it’s the new normal and stopping protective measures.

[altasnob]

If we somehow get lucky and omicron doesn't mutate and the whole world catches it except ____, they'll vaccinate for it and get their immunity just fine.

You are likely right. Should we go full China?

Public health officials continue to publish what they think is the best path forward. It includes some measure of reasonableness & isn’t hard core isolation. But they get pilloried for things like unmasking to eat in public, which is a direct concession to the folks who think pure isolation is worse than the virus.

We all MMQB this shit as if our opinions matter, but the pros are doing their best to provide guidance.

From what I can tell, they are saying, “yes, we should still be fighting this,” not pretending it’s the new normal and stopping protective measures.

Public health officials are never going to tell people to not worry about it. For one, they have to factor in a large non-compliance rate so they will always error on the side of being more careful. Plus, we have the overwhelmed hospitals problem to still deal with. We're not MMQBing, we are trying to predict the future. Again, an optimistic view is we sludge through this current wave that will end sometime in February, and then COVID will fizzle out as it faces worldwide immunity. And if you think it is too risky to take this view, with a virus this infectious, the only alternative is China-like controls.

Lets put it this way. If Norway can't control Omicron, no one can. There is no country on earth more set than Norway. Healthy, educated, homogeneous population with social safety nets. Norway is so flush with cash from their North Atlantic oil reserves they refused to join the EU because they didn't want those shithole countries, like France and Germany, holding them down. They have the money and social cohesion to stop Omicron if they want to and even they appear to be saying fuck it.

[Adolf Allerbush]

And if you think it is too risky to take this view, with a virus this infectious, the only alternative is China-like controls.

[Rideski]

You keep saying immunity as if it's permanent.
But people have been getting covid twice, and there's chatter about omicron not protecting against delta at all.

[altasnob]

You're right, people infected by Omicron most likely won't have any kind of permanent immunity. And Omicron infection may not prevent Delta. But again, the optimist view is that Omicron is so infectious and spreads so rapidly throughout earth that even temporary immunity is enough to reach herd immunity and tap down the virus once and for all. And while it is still too early to know for sure, it appears Omicron is outcompeting Delta to become the dominant variant on Earth. On top of all this, we have vaccines that, although, don't stop infection, appear to prevent serious illness from all COVID variants up to this point in time.

It's basically like the world has gone full Sweden and is having one giant Covid party.

[skaredshtles]

In Austria you can get a decent hooker for it.

[::: :::]

Public health officials are never going to tell people to not worry about it.

I don't agree based on the actions and published CDC directives. They have given performance based goals earlier in the pandemic about relaxing proposed measures. I don't see why that changes just because it's taking time to hit the goals.

We're not close to goals. I realize everyone's tired of it, but the gorilla ain't done.

[old goat]

Do we have a choice? That's my point about cases going up in other countries that were able to keep things under control until now. When this is all said and done, I am fairly confident the only countries that can successfully prevent the spread of Omicron will be authoritarian governments like China and North Korea. And then what the hell do they do when the rest of the world has immunity to dominant variant on Earth but they don't? Stay locked down forever?

To stop Omicron in the US right now would mean go into full hard core lock down like nothing we have seen in the pandemic. Does anyone actually think that is the right move?

Yes we have a choice. We can make vaccination mandatory for everything--planes, trains, buses, schools, etc. Without lockdowns. Without stay at home orders. We can start vaccinating for omicron, realizing there's a chance there will be another variant to worry about. We can continue to pursue a nasal spray vaccine (which they've been doing since the start, with no guarantee of success).

We controlled measles and polio simply by vaccinating everyone and nobody but a few kooks complained about the loss of freedom until the autism lie. There is good reason--not a guarantee-- to believe that we can do the same with Covid. Vaccination has been the single biggest medical advance in history--bigger than antibiotics, certainly way bigger than ICU's and ventilators. And yet millions turn their back on it in some kind of know-nothing death cult. Imagining themselves as patriots instead of the ignorant buffoons they are.

You keep saying that omicron will infect everyone and then we'll all be immune and the pandemic will be over. I shouldn't have to say this yet again but measles is more contagious than Omicron, from the numbers I've seen (too soon to give an R0 value yet) and yet measles was not controlled until we vaccinated everyone in early childhood. Relying on natural immunity never controlled measles. And it won't control omicron.

[abraham]

Man this thread moves fast, still it seems good to skim occasionally.

Did you read my posts?

Yes, I have, and do! But I am specifically talking about daycares and their workers. They have no union and are completely SHIT ON.

Money where my mouth is? Yup!

We found our nanny at our old daycare. When we heard about how shitty they are treated we stopped supporting the daycare and removed our infant. We continued talking to many of the staff and ultimately offered to pay a salary (30k annually) for 30-35 hours of work per week. Our nanny is paid every 2 weeks, all 52 weeks of the year. If we go on vacation, she is still paid, if she is sick, she is still paid, if she wants to take vacation, she is still paid. We are basically giving her a universal basic income and when she is not sitting she is free to do what she wants, so she teaches art at a local studio.


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Good for you guys that you're able to make that work. Seriously.
Still I don't think that's really a UBI situation, you're paying a salary for a part time position. Kinda minor among all this stuff but from what I understand about a UBI that's not it.

Public health officials continue to publish what they think is the best path forward. It includes some measure of reasonableness & isn’t hard core isolation. But they get pilloried for things like unmasking to eat in public, which is a direct concession to the folks who think pure isolation is worse than the virus.

We all MMQB this shit as if our opinions matter, but the pros are doing their best to provide guidance.

From what I can tell, they are saying, “yes, we should still be fighting this,” not pretending it’s the new normal and stopping protective measures.

Yeah to me the shift to everyone's gonna get it is a bit intellectually lazy. Haven't we all become works class epidemiologist and statisticians in the last year? I didn't, but it seems to me like there some nuance available between "lock everything down harder than anything been locked down yet" and just let everyone get it. Are there any (many?) viral diseases that everyone gets? Even chicken pox doesn't infect every kid.

People seem to want answers and can't really deal with the fact that it takes time to understand the impacts of something novel. The first week of two after omicron was detected was full of crap like this is the end of the pandemic or this is gonna get us all and plunge us into another pandemic. It seems hard to say until there's some exposure and measurement of the effects. But it sells clicks and attention.

I made some changes to my level of interaction with people again, it's minor but I figure it's not scarring me mentally so why not? I felt a bit crappy and elected not to join my extended family for dinner so I could watch whether I got sick or was just worn out. I probably wouldn't have thought as much about it in mid October/November but it wasn't the end of the world and I saw everyone on other nights. It's not really clear to me why our options are presented by so many people as binary. At some point it's hard to take those views seriously and as anything other than people liking to hear themselves sound certain. Maybe that's a response to fear?


Good luck seano, and oftpiste.

[funkendrenchman]

I fucking tired of it because the only thing currently dragging it out in this country is a refusal to get vaccinated. We could have been close to normal many months ago if we weren’t so god damn stupid, stubborn, and selfish.

[altasnob]

Yes we have a choice. We can make vaccination mandatory for everything--planes, trains, buses, schools, etc. Without lockdowns. Without stay at home orders. We can start vaccinating for omicron, realizing there's a chance there will be another variant to worry about. We can continue to pursue a nasal spray vaccine (which they've been doing since the start, with no guarantee of success).

You keep saying that omicron will infect everyone and then we'll all be immune and the pandemic will be over. I shouldn't have to say this yet again but measles is more contagious than Omicron, from the numbers I've seen (too soon to give an R0 value yet) and yet measles was not controlled until we vaccinated everyone in early childhood. Relying on natural immunity never controlled measles. And it won't control omicron.

Vaccinations certainly help. We are not relying solely on natural infection to pursue heard immunity and vaccination plays a critical component . But even if you could somehow vaccinate the planet with the current vaccines overnight, do you think it would stop Omicron? Canada, Finland, and Spain have some of the highest fully vaccinated rates on Earth and are still experiencing surges.

Re: an Omicron specific vaccine. There seems to be a split in the scientific community as whether this is the right course. Those against it contend we already have a vaccine that works well enough, with production ramped up to hopefully vaccinate the entire planet. They contend it is simply not practical to tweak the vaccine for every variant that emerges, and then administer it on a worldwide scale. Plus, we don't even have the vaccine approved for those under 5. Tweaking the vaccine means we start over on all the clinical processes.

I care much less about what is happening in the US. America is broken and not the world leader it once was. The countries I am looking at are Northern European, Japan and South Korea, Australia, and Chile. But even if these countries can successfully solve the COVID problem can that formula be replicated in places like India and Africa?

[PNWbrit]

Just checking in to add my + status as of Tuesday, probably exposed last Friday according to WANotify app. Negative tests both last Tuesday and Thursday.

In isolation with mild and apparently stable symptoms, vaxed x3 with Moderna, booster was in November. PCR test scheduled for Monday.

Carry on.

Sorry to hear this buddy.

[funkendrenchman]

Let’s hope.

Omicron Study in South Africa Points to End of Acute Pandemic Phase

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...edium=news_tab