How do we know a pandemic's over?

[lobosrul5]

Good for you that you're healthy and not one of those people, but some people (even some people in this thread) are those people (and not because they're unvaccinated), and others are now no longer healthy due to the virus. Besides, you may not be as well protected as you think.
You do know that face masks work on both the air going in and the air going out, don't you?! They protect others when you are the one shedding the virus.

I see you are using the CDC as a source, when the CDC themselves are saying its no longer necessary for most people to wear masks. Soooo... I'll just stick to what they recommend. Theres always going to be "those people" who are at higher risk from communicable diseases whether COVID or otherwise. Yet, we didn't mandate masks to protect them before COVID. We're either at the point of masks being unnecessary from the POV of public health or we should just require them in public for forever. But, sure of course, if I'm visiting a retirement community I'll wear a mask.

And also I should add due to my job I was tested weekly for COVID until pretty recently and never was positive because I took precautions very seriously.

 

[TragicMonkey]

It isn't clear to me what kind of filters TragicMonkey is talking about. I have a cloth mask to be used with paper filters. The cloth mask is washable. The filters aren't.

It was somebody else who said their cloth mask "held N95 filters". My own cloth masks have something between the layers of cloth, what it is I do not know. I'm not going to dissect them to find out. But it's waterproof -- when I wash these masks, they can hold water like a cup would, water doesn't pass through. So there's definitely something in them besides cloth, but what exactly it is I don't know. I feel comfortable assuming they are therefore superior to purely-cloth masks without those layers, although obviously inferior to an N95.

 

[Myriad]

A simple case in point for contingent precautions: my wife wakes up with a sore throat this morning, so off I go to the drugstore to get some throat lozenges. Does she have Covid-19? Can't rule it out. If she does, how likely is it that I also have it but am in an asymptomatic contagious stage? Reasonably. And if it's not Covid-19, is it something else that I could also have and be contagious? Probably. So, KN-95 (the best I've got) mask in the drugstore.

 

[Rolfe]

It was somebody else who said their cloth mask "held N95 filters". My own cloth masks have something between the layers of cloth, what it is I do not know. I'm not going to dissect them to find out. But it's waterproof -- when I wash these masks, they can hold water like a cup would, water doesn't pass through. So there's definitely something in them besides cloth, but what exactly it is I don't know. I feel comfortable assuming they are therefore superior to purely-cloth masks without those layers, although obviously inferior to an N95.

That sounds as if it would suffocate you.

 

[lobosrul5]

A simple case in point for contingent precautions: my wife wakes up with a sore throat this morning, so off I go to the drugstore to get some throat lozenges. Does she have Covid-19? Can't rule it out. If she does, how likely is it that I also have it but am in an asymptomatic contagious stage? Reasonably. And if it's not Covid-19, is it something else that I could also have and be contagious? Probably. So, KN-95 (the best I've got) mask in the drugstore.

Sure it would great if everyone who suspected they might have a communicable disease with airborne transmission would socially distance if possible and wear a mask if not. Also, would be super ******* great if we'd mandate sick leave for people especially in the food service industry (wonder how many lives that would save). But thats almost a whole other topic.

 

[TragicMonkey]

That sounds as if it would suffocate you.

I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if I suffocated. Or if it escaped my notice, someone else would have noticed.

 

[The Atheist]

Has it? Has that occurred? Has Paxlovid, etc been successful enough in saving the lives of those with severe Covid that the fatality % has dropped below the 1.5% or so fatality rate that we've seen since 2020?

The 1.5% was a myth at every stage of the pandemic, and as noted, the current death rate is very low.

There have been 100M notified cases in the past 4.5 months. During that same period, 240,000 people have died. That's a whopping 0.2% fatality rate, and note that number is considerably inflated by there being a lot more people sick in May than September, and the case rate hugely understated due to people not self-reporting.

So yes, the rate is well below 1.5%.

... we've lost 12K to Covid19 in the last 28 days. That really doesn't sound to me like the pandemic is over yet...

The current 7-day average is 286 a day, just over half what it was at the start of that 28-day period.

By a neat turn of statistics, the covid death rate will be less than 10% of the cardiovascular death rate in America within the next few days.

I wonder if we gave things like that the panicked response some people think we should be taking towards covid we might actually save a lot more lives than a disease which is now an endemic disease that we need to learn to live with.

I'm not even going to bother noting the vast majority of people dying of covid are extremely old - the facts are stark enough without comment.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge

President Biden is an idiot!

10/10 for letting covid panic ignore the realities of politics. He might be an idiot, but he would have been downright insane to try to take covid seriously right now.

See the thread to find out about how he calculates his risk of catching Covid on a plane or in a restaurant to be 5-10%.

Wow! A 5-10% chance of catching covid from being on a plane or in a restaurant? Maybe you're right to panic.

Except, you're being dishonest as hell. Let's have a look at what he actually says:

I estimate that the chances of getting Covid from a moderate exposure to an infected person (sitting in my row on a plane or a nearby table in a restaurant) is ~5-10%. That's a rough guess – & would vary depending on things like exposure time, ventilation, distancing, etc.

bolding mine

I won't make a fuss where masks are mandated or whoever's premise I enter requires them, but other than that I'm done with them.

We are down to 3 deaths a day (7 day rolling average) from COVID, up from two a day a few weeks ago in my state. Most of those people are likely unvaccinated or have serious health risks anyways; I'm vaccinated (3x) and have no conditions that would make COVID more serious. I figure my odds of dying from COVID at this point are miniscule compared to many other causes of death.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/...eaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~All+ages

Looks like the death rate for all people, no matter their age is .4 per 100,000 per annum if fully vaccinated and boosted. By way of comparison, the murder rate in the city I live in is about 30 times higher (were on murder #128 of the year so far, in a city of 600k). The motor vehicle accident rate in my state is about 58 times higher (it was 23.5/100k in 2021) than the vaccinated covid death rate.

Biden might be wrong that is over, but with rates like this, its no longer a serious concern for the vaccinated and healthy part of the population.

Bravo!

You're not going to be popular, introducing common sense like that. (and bonus points for mentioning car deaths!)

Another point I think is clearly way above the heads of the panicking brigade, if we ask people to wear masks when the threat is absurdly low, good luck trying to get them to wear masks if a really deadly virus arises.

 

[TragicMonkey]

On the other hand, one of the effects of the population lowering their masking use is going to be a spike in cases. I wonder if a graduated approach would work better. Maybe do it by birthdays: first only the people born in January stop masking, then a month later extend it to February, and so on. That way we'd only be increasing the risk by roughly 8 percent of the population at a time, and could reverse course if the spike was too much. But I doubt the general population would comply with that sort of thing, they're more likely to do whatever the people closest to them are doing...and of course those are the people most likely to infect them.

 

[lobosrul5]

On the other hand, one of the effects of the population lowering their masking use is going to be a spike in cases. I wonder if a graduated approach would work better. Maybe do it by birthdays: first only the people born in January stop masking, then a month later extend it to February, and so on. That way we'd only be increasing the risk by roughly 8 percent of the population at a time, and could reverse course if the spike was too much. But I doubt the general population would comply with that sort of thing, they're more likely to do whatever the people closest to them are doing...and of course those are the people most likely to infect them.

Mask usage in my area has been pretty low over the last few months. I see maybe 1 person in 10 wearing a mask when shopping, and no one at restaurants or bars. And, we've had no spike.

 

[dann]

Yet another panic attack!

I wonder if we gave things like that the panicked response some people think we should be taking towards covid we might actually save a lot more lives than a disease which is now an endemic disease that we need to learn to live with.

I'm not even going to bother noting the vast majority of people dying of covid are extremely old - the facts are stark enough without comment.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge

The vast majority! Extremely old! Let's see what counts as a vast majority and extremely old according to The Atheist:

All deaths involving COVID-19
0-17 years 1.282
18-29 years 6.574
30-39 years 18.893
40-49 years 44.383
50-64 years 193.560
65-74 years 239.342
75-84 years 271.923
85+ years 274.824
All ages 1.050.781

Everybody 75+ makes a majority of all deaths, but it's hardly what normal people would call vast. Considering The Atheist's fondness for hyperbole, it's difficult to say what he would consider to be a vast majority, but if we say everybody 50+, then they make out more than 90 percent of all Covid-19 deaths. I would call that a vast majority. Everybody 65+ would be about 75 percent of all Covid 19 deaths. So depending on The Atheist's definition of a "vast majority", people older than either 50 or 65 are not only old, but "extremely old."

Thanks to the pandemic, The Atheist's measure for who is old enough to be expendable seems to have moved down a notch from 80+. I wonder how many of the people in this thread are so old that it is insane to take the threat to their health and lives seriously!

10/10 for letting covid panic ignore the realities of politics. He might be an idiot, but he would have been downright insane to try to take covid seriously right now.

See the thread to find out about how he calculates his risk of catching Covid on a plane or in a restaurant to be 5-10%.

Wow! A 5-10% chance of catching covid from being on a plane or in a restaurant? Maybe you're right to panic.

Except, you're being dishonest as hell. Let's have a look at what he actually says:

I estimate that the chances of getting Covid from a moderate exposure to an infected person (sitting in my row on a plane or a nearby table in a restaurant) is ~5-10%. That's a rough guess – & would vary depending on things like exposure time, ventilation, distancing, etc.

bolding mine

The Atheist's concept of "being dishonest as hell" and pretending to present the facts (unlike me, apparently) is (who would have thought?!) dishonest as hell:
Did he dig up something that I had been trying to hide?! No, not at all. As proof of my alleged dishonesty, he quotes an excerpt of the quotation that I presented.

I still recommend that you go to Dr Bob Wachter's Twitter thread to see his calculations based on the facts of the pandemic - instead of on The Atheist's hyperbole and wishful thinking. I find Wachter's calculations based on "@UCSFHospitals' asymptomatic test positivity rate (ATPR) as a measure of the odds that someone (in SF) who feels fine actually has Covid" very convincing. It leads him to reason like this:

I was asked this week by my 8 poker guys (all vaxxed/boosted) if I was up for playing inside. My response: yes, if everybody tested. Reasoning: in a crowd of 8 people in a city w/ an ATPR of 2.9%, there’s a 21% chance that one would have Covid, a bit high for my taste

It is obvious that the estimated risk depends on the current level of contagion (which is also an estimate).
By the way, it's not the risk of dying as much as the risk of getting long Covid that bothers him. And he is very cool and calm, and he exhibits no signs of panicking - unlike The Atheist.

Bravo!

You're not going to be popular, introducing common sense like that. (and bonus points for mentioning car deaths!)

Another point I think is clearly way above the heads of the panicking brigade, if we ask people to wear masks when the threat is absurdly low, good luck trying to get them to wear masks if a really deadly virus arises.

Those traffic deaths! The Atheist can't seem to get enough of them:

According to the latest data, 352 persons lost their life in road crashes in 2019. This represents a 6.9% decline on 2018. In 2018, 378 persons lost their lives in traffic crashes in New Zealand
Road Safety Data (International Transport Forum)

Compared to:
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths in New Zealand in 2022, i.e. Jan 1 to Sep 21 ... and counting.

1,924

If we ask people to watch where they're going, to stop looking at their cell phones while driving, and to use seatbelts and helmets in traffic, good luck trying to get them to pay attention to traffic lights! What were we talking about? Really?!

Minimizers gonna minimize!

 

[dann]

Mask usage in my area has been pretty low over the last few months. I see maybe 1 person in 10 wearing a mask when shopping, and no one at restaurants or bars. And, we've had no spike.

Around here, almost nobody wears them anymore. And it shows!
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths in Denmark
Covid-19 deaths June 1 to Aug 31:
2020 48
2021 68
2022 555
In spite of vaccinations. And in spite of the allegedly mild Omicron variant, which were the reasons given for abandoning the mask mandate in supermarkets and on public transport.

And since we now get "bonus points for mentioning car deaths!":

According to the latest WHO data published in 2020 Road Traffic Accidents Deaths in Denmark reached 213 or 0.47% of total deaths. The age adjusted Death Rate is 3.00 per 100,000 of population ranks Denmark #169 in the world.
Road Traffic Accidents in Denmark (World Health Rankings)

It goes without saying that not all road traffic accident deaths are car deaths.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, two and a half years, Denmark has had 7,016 Covid-19 deaths.

 

[dann]

I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if I suffocated. Or if it escaped my notice, someone else would have noticed.

Obviously. But based on your own description, it does sound as if you would suffocate.

 

[lobosrul5]

Around here, almost nobody wears them anymore. And it shows!
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths in Denmark
Covid-19 deaths June 1 to Aug 31:
2020 48
2021 68
2022 555
In spite of vaccinations. And in spite of the allegedly mild Omicron variant, which were the reasons given for abandoning the mask mandate in supermarkets and on public transport.

And since we now get "bonus points for mentioning car deaths!":

It goes without saying that not all road traffic accident deaths are car deaths.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, two and a half years, Denmark has had 7,016 Covid-19 deaths.

I should have specified, traffic accident deaths. There were 470 of them here in 2021. I did the math a bit wrong, since we have a population of 2 million its only a rate of 23.5 per 100,000.

Our rolling 7 day average of new COVID cases is down to 230. There are currently only 13 people in the entire state in the ICU for COVID. AND the rates in the county I live in are actually much lower than the state at large (since we have some MAGA territory counties with lots of antivaccers mostly near the Texas border).

Given the data from here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2796235

I can pretty safely extrapolate that among those 13 people in the ICU most likely no more than 2 or 3 are fully vaccinated.

The state department of health and the CDC no longer consider COVID a crisis, and I'm going to chose to trust them. What applies here does not necessarily apply to Denmark.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Obviously. But based on your own description, it does sound as if you would suffocate.

No it doesn't. Seriously, are people unaware that materials exist that are impermeable to liquids but not to air?

eta: I looked up my past order when I bought these, it says 3 layers of "100% cotton" but specifies "sports mesh fabric" in the interior. Which may or may not also be cotton? But it's woven differently somehow. I can post a photo of the damn thing holding water if you'd like.

 

[The Atheist]

On the other hand, one of the effects of the population lowering their masking use is going to be a spike in cases. I wonder if a graduated approach would work better. Maybe do it by birthdays: first only the people born in January stop masking, then a month later extend it to February, and so on. That way we'd only be increasing the risk by roughly 8 percent of the population at a time, and could reverse course if the spike was too much. But I doubt the general population would comply with that sort of thing, they're more likely to do whatever the people closest to them are doing...and of course those are the people most likely to infect them.

Of course, the reality is that UK and Australia, where masks were thrown away a while back, haven't seen a spike in cases.

 

[The Atheist]

Yet another panic attack!

Yes, I do wish you'd keep it to yourself, but I'm here to correct your mistakes, so it's ok.

The vast majority! Extremely old! Let's see what counts as a vast majority and extremely old according to The Atheist:

For the past month, it's been 2400 out of 3600 deaths aged 75 and over.

The numbers you quote over the past year have little relevance, so yet again you're being dishonest by painting a historical picture and claiming it as current reality.

Did he dig up something that I had been trying to hide?! No, not at all.

You presented the odds as a chance of it happening in a restaurant or plane.

The reality was he referred to the chances if someone in the plane or restaurant had covid. That's a vastly different proposition.

You weren't hiding it, you were posting dishonestly.

 

[Chanakya]

The 1.5% was a myth at every stage of the pandemic, and as noted, the current death rate is very low.

There have been 100M notified cases in the past 4.5 months. During that same period, 240,000 people have died. That's a whopping 0.2% fatality rate, and note that number is considerably inflated by there being a lot more people sick in May than September, and the case rate hugely understated due to people not self-reporting.

So yes, the rate is well below 1.5%.



The current 7-day average is 286 a day, just over half what it was at the start of that 28-day period.

By a neat turn of statistics, the covid death rate will be less than 10% of the cardiovascular death rate in America within the next few days.

I wonder if we gave things like that the panicked response some people think we should be taking towards covid we might actually save a lot more lives than a disease which is now an endemic disease that we need to learn to live with.

I'm not even going to bother noting the vast majority of people dying of covid are extremely old - the facts are stark enough without comment.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge





10/10 for letting covid panic ignore the realities of politics. He might be an idiot, but he would have been downright insane to try to take covid seriously right now.



Wow! A 5-10% chance of catching covid from being on a plane or in a restaurant? Maybe you're right to panic.

Except, you're being dishonest as hell. Let's have a look at what he actually says:



bolding mine



Bravo!

You're not going to be popular, introducing common sense like that. (and bonus points for mentioning car deaths!)

Another point I think is clearly way above the heads of the panicking brigade, if we ask people to wear masks when the threat is absurdly low, good luck trying to get them to wear masks if a really deadly virus arises.

Why, as far as the highlighted?

Not going into the rights or wrongs of your overall argument, but I don't follow this part. Why do you think people who scare easy and wear masks even when they're not really needed, will be less likely --- less, not more --- to wear masks if some deadly virus shows up and masks do become a necessity, or more of one than they are now?

(Nitpicking, kind of, I realize. Perfectly fine if that was just loosely worded sentence, and you didn't mean it that way. That part makes no difference, one way or the other, to your larger argument ---- which, incidentally, I kind of disagree with, but leave that [larger] part be. Just wondering about this nit, is all.)

 

[dann]

I should have specified, traffic accident deaths. There were 470 of them here in 2021. I did the math a bit wrong, since we have a population of 2 million its only a rate of 23.5 per 100,000.

Our rolling 7 day average of new COVID cases is down to 230. There are currently only 13 people in the entire state in the ICU for COVID. AND the rates in the county I live in are actually much lower than the state at large (since we have some MAGA territory counties with lots of antivaccers mostly near the Texas border).

Given the data from here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2796235

I can pretty safely extrapolate that among those 13 people in the ICU most likely no more than 2 or 3 are fully vaccinated.

The state department of health and the CDC no longer consider COVID a crisis, and I'm going to chose to trust them. What applies here does not necessarily apply to Denmark.

I don't know. Some things seem to be pretty similar. Denmark declared that Covid-19 was no longer a crisis, i.e. "a threat to society," and removed mask mandates and all other restrictions on Feb 1, 2022. At that point, Denmark had had 3,770 Covid-19 deaths - in a relatively well-vaccinated population. Now, Sep 22, we have 7,021. So by the end of this year, we will have had as many Covid-19 deaths since February as we had since the beginning of the pandemic until it stopped being a "threat to society" on Feb 1. And people in general and in particular old people seem to think that 'not a threat to society' means not a threat to their own health and lives. It doesn't.

"No longer considered a crisis" means: 'We know that people will continue to spread the virus, but, except for vaccinations, we encourage you to ignore it and learn to live (and die) with it', which is so much easier to do when the health authorities and the media give up on telling people the facts about the pandemic. Until very recently most messages were trying to reassure people and telling them that everything was fine. I haven't seen the number of deaths in the three pandemic summers, 2020: 48, 2021: 68:, 2022: 555, mentioned anywhere, which is probably the reason why my friends tend to doubt it when I tell them about those numbers.

By reducing the number of tests (Denmark was testing more per capita than any other country until February 2022, and TTI helped keep the numbers down), people look at the number of new daily infections now and believe that everthing is fine. They tend to ignore the percentage of positives because ... why is that relevant?! ... if they even scroll so far down the page. See both here: Dagens coronatal: Opdateres kl 14 på hverdage (TV2.dk)
Smittede siden pandemiens begyndelse: infections since the beginning of the pandemic
Positivprocent: percentage of positive tests

When restrictions and mask mandates were removed, people were told that they now had "super immunity" due to the vaccines. But there is no such thing with a virus that learns to spread faster and evade immunity from vaccines and/or previous infections the way SARS-CoV-2 does. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.15.507787v1

 

[dann]

Yes, I do wish you'd keep it to yourself, but I'm here to correct your mistakes, so it's ok.

For the past month, it's been 2400 out of 3600 deaths aged 75 and over.

The numbers you quote over the past year have little relevance, so yet again you're being dishonest by painting a historical picture and claiming it as current reality.

So 1,200 deaths in people younger than 75? I bet that will comfort them immensely. As for dishonesty, I took the numbers from The Atheist's own link and never claimed that they were from the past month only, so the dishonesty is all his.

You presented the odds as a chance of it happening in a restaurant or plane.

The reality was he referred to the chances if someone in the plane or restaurant had covid. That's a vastly different proposition.

You weren't hiding it, you were posting dishonestly.

So I'll have to correct The Atheist's dishonesty again: No, he didn't refer to the chances of someone on a plane or in a restaurant having Covid-19. He referred to the chances of getting it from someone sitting near him on a plane or in a restaurant, someone much more likely to infect him than somebody at the other end of a plane or a restaurant.

The Atheist no longer wants to quote from Dr Bob Wachter's text since it only agrees with him when he resorts to false summaries. This was what it actually said:
"I estimate that the chances of getting Covid from a moderate exposure to an infected person (sitting in my row on a plane or a nearby table in a restaurant) is ~5-10%. That's a rough guess – & would vary depending on things like exposure time, ventilation, distancing, etc."

Stop lying!

 

[dann]

No it doesn't. Seriously, are people unaware that materials exist that are impermeable to liquids but not to air?

Yes, I ride a motorcycle, so I know all about them: "a range of technologies such as GORE-TEX provide effective protection against rain while also ensuring optimal grip and feel."
Unfortunately, in spite of GORE-TEX, my allegedly waterproof motorcycle gloves always get soaking wet, and when it's hot, they don't even remove sweat from my hands by letting it evaporate through the permeable membranes ... and BS like that. I hope they at least offer the promised protection in an accident.
(I never tried breathing through them! I hope it won't be necessary. )

eta: I looked up my past order when I bought these, it says 3 layers of "100% cotton" but specifies "sports mesh fabric" in the interior. Which may or may not also be cotton? But it's woven differently somehow. I can post a photo of the damn thing holding water if you'd like.

No, I believe that it's holding water. That wasn't the point. I would look up tests of your face mask if I were you. Maybe it does do what it promises, but maybe it doesn't.

ETA: Since you said that you use it to keep paper face masks in place, I think you'll be fine.