How do we know a pandemic's over?

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

More idiotic views from The Atheist: If people didn't 'panic', there would be no pandemic. And yet he won't stop panicking ...

The pandemic will never be over as long as there's someone to panic about it.
Covid isn't going away, and nor are your idiotic views on what the world should be doing about it.
Tedious.

In the meantime in the real world where diseases are diseases and infections are infections and nobody but minimizers are panicking, which they do whenever they are confronted with reality instead of with attitude:

In case you forgot:
The definition of “(herd) immunity” is NOT “reduced but sustained excess mortality with a permanent infection schedule.”
Do not be gaslit. That’s not the herd immunity—as with smallpox—that you were promised.
Gregory Travis. Make schools #DavosSafe (X, July 10, 2024)

This week in USA Influenza vs. COVID
June 2024 Influenza: 126 deaths
June 2024 COVID: 1,178 deaths (9x)

2024 to-date:
Influenza: 7,374 deaths
COVID: 25,606 deaths (3x)
Gregory Travis. Make schools #DavosSafe (X, July 10, 2024)

See graph in tweet!

 

[dann]

Denmark
It has been on the way with rising numbers since late May, but it now appears to be picking up speed:

After two weeks of a 31% rise in Covid conc. in wastewater each week, there was a 47% rise in the most recent week - at the undefined scale, we are at 'middle level'. The same patter everywhere in the whole country - we are at the beginning of a new wave with new variants & they are running wild
Astrid Iversen (X, July 10, 2024)

Graphs in the tweet and here: Resultater af den nationale spildevandsovervågning af SARS‐CoV‐2 (SSI.dk, 10 July, 2024)
Percentage of positives: 11,5.
Hospitalizations also rising, 83 in the past week, seven of them 0-2-year-olds.

But don't worry! Danish mainstream media's favourite minimizer, Randrup Thomsen, is on top of it, as he has been since February 2022, i.e. 6,000 C19 deaths ago.

Der er stigende smitte med coronavirus i spildevandet, men hverken professor eller Statens Serum Institut er lige nu bekymrede.
Coronasmitte har i tre uger været stigende – rammer også om sommeren, siger ekspert (TV2.dk, July 11, 2024)

Rising contagion with coronavirus in wastewater, but neither a professor nor Statens Serum Instute are currently worried.
Covid infections have been on the rise for three weeks - They also impact us in the summer, according to expert

The good news from the professor appears to be that, unlike the flu and RSV, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic isn't seasonal and never will be: "We may as well get used to it in the summer, too, says Allan Randrup Thomsen. (...) To the best of my knowledge, these waves will be something to be expected even in the far future."
A short Twitter thread with an English translation of the article:
Sheep in Fog (x, July 12, 2024)

 

[The Atheist]

More idiotic views from The Atheist: If people didn't 'panic', there would be no pandemic. And yet he won't stop panicking ...

Your projection has reached truly pathetic levels.

I'm laughing at you. Like the rest of the world, covid isn't on my radar, and only your terror at the disease encourages me to post.

You screech like a banshee yet have no [sane] answer.

It's ******* hilarious.

 

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

The Atheist screeching like a banshee, as usual.
The only thing that encourages me to post is The Atheist's fear-driven and thus unsubstantiated lies about the pandemic. I don't think anybody still believes anything he writes, but I find it necessary to point out his lies in case somebody takes them seriously.
This one, for instance:

Long covid is not able to be clinically tested and the sole diagnosis is based on self-reported symptoms.

No, the "sole diagnosis is based on" much more than "self-reported symptoms." It has been pointed out to The Atheist again and again in the thread in Science & Medicine, so there is ample reason to assume that he knows he is lying.
This is a recent addition to the knowledge we have about Long Covid, referred to as PASC:

ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has triggered a consequential public health crisis of post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), sometimes referred to as long COVID. The mechanisms of the heterogeneous persistent symptoms and signs that comprise PASC are under investigation, and several studies have pointed to the central nervous and vascular systems as being potential sites of dysfunction. In the current study, we recruited individuals with PASC with diverse symptoms, and examined the relationship between neuroinflammation and circulating markers of vascular dysfunction. We used [11C]PBR28 PET neuroimaging, a marker of neuroinflammation, to compare 12 PASC individuals versus 43 normative healthy controls. We found significantly increased neuroinflammation in PASC versus controls across a wide swath of brain regions including midcingulate and anterior cingulate cortex, corpus callosum, thalamus, basal ganglia, and at the boundaries of ventricles. We also collected and analyzed peripheral blood plasma from the PASC individuals and found significant positive correlations between neuroinflammation and several circulating analytes related to vascular dysfunction. These results suggest that an interaction between neuroinflammation and vascular health may contribute to common symptoms of PASC.
Neuroinflammation in post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) as assessed by [11C]PBR28 PET correlates with vascular disease measures (BioRxiv)

Does The Atheist think that the "we" in this abstract are the PASC sufferers themselves self-reporting their symptoms?
Of course, he doesn't! He is well-aware that Long Covid sufferers aren't hypochondriacs, but he is grateful whenever somebody - Trausti being the most recent example - claims that they are.

Does this, also about PASC/Long Covid, sound as if it comes from self-reporting hypochondriacs?

ABSTRACT
Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (SARS2) infection (PASC) is a heterogeneous condition, but the main viral drivers are unknown. Here, we use MENSA, Media Enriched with Newly Synthesized Antibodies, secreted exclusively from circulating human plasmablasts, to provide an immune snapshot that defines the underlying viral triggers. We provide proof-of-concept testing that the MENSA technology can capture the new host immune response to accurately diagnose acute primary and breakthrough infections when known SARS2 virus or proteins are present. It is also positive after vaccination when spike proteins elicit an acute immune response. Applying the same principles for long-COVID patients, MENSA is positive for SARS2 in 40% of PASC vs none of the COVID recovered (CR) patients without any sequelae demonstrating ongoing SARS2 viral inflammation only in PASC. Additionally, in PASC patients, MENSAs are also positive for Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) in 37%, Human Cytomegalovirus (CMV) in 23%, and herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV2) in 15% compared to 17%, 4%, and 4% in CR controls respectively. Combined, a total of 60% of PASC patients have a positive MENSA for SARS2, EBV, CMV, and/or HSV2. MENSA offers a unique antibody snapshot to reveal the underlying viral drivers in long-COVID thus demonstrating the persistence of SARS2 and reactivation of viral herpes in 60% of PASC patients.
MENSA, a Media Enriched with Newly Synthesized Antibodies, to Identify SARS-CoV-2 Persistence and Latent Viral Reactivation in Long-COVID (BioRxiv)

Will The Atheist now realize that Long Covid actually exists? Will he understand that it is a real disease that can be diagnosed using objective measurements? Will he stop screeching like a banshee?
Probably not. He already knows that it's real. He just doesn't want anybody else to know, and he enjoys pretending that Long Covid sufferers are only pretending, i.e. using their only alleged disease as "a very handy rabbit to pull out of the hat" because they "want an excuse or sympathy."

I'm sure there are people who suffer from long-term damage by the virus, just as they do with other viruses, but it's a very handy rabbit to pull out of the hat if you want an excuse or sympathy.

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

The Atheist screeching like a banshee, as usual.
The only thing that encourages me to post is The Atheist's fear-driven and thus unsubstantiated lies about the pandemic. I don't think anybody still believes anything he writes, but I find it necessary to point out his lies in case somebody takes them seriously.

Mate, the only one screeching like a banshee is you. The world has moved on.

You will keep producing page after page of this. As is your right, and apparently your vocation.

And the world will keep ignoring you.

That, like it or not, is the reality.

 

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

Why continue to lie about everything?
Why pretend that "the world has moved on," as in, 'there's no pandemic, and if there is, it is mild, and if it isn't mild, it's only not mild when old people get it, and when it kills children, they must have been immune-compromised or something else must be wrong with them, so they're probably better off dead'?
Why continue to claim that the virus is mild? That it's just like the common cold or the flue when it obviously isn't?
Why claim that people with Long Covid are hypochondriacs?

You may not have noticed, but my alleged screeching usually consist of nothing but a few indirect quotations, i.e. The Atheist's screeching, plus an awful lot of facts that show what the pandemic is - including that it obviously isn't over.
Unlike you and The Atheist, I mainly post facts, like in post 996, and those fact show that the pandemic isn't over, even though you prefer to pretend that "the world" has moved on - as if a pandemic stops when people stop believing that there is a pandemic. The virus doesn't give a **** what you believe.

The Atheist prefers to post claims only, and most of those claims are nothing but lies.
What is the point of that? Why pretend that the pandemic is over?
Why didn't marting follow up on his predictions about his local version of the pandemic?
Why didn't he tell us how far off the mark his San Diego predictions were? Why did I have to do that instead, in post 929?

Marting recently gave us an obvious hint in the other thread: He gets his pandemic information from people who have been wrong about the pandemic since day one, people like Vinay Prasad and ZDoggMD, the latter a current COVID-19 patient. They have both evolved into vaccine skeptics during the pandemic, and it is no coincidence that The Atheist has, too.

This is what actual skeptics (unlike 'vaccine skeptics' or 'climate skeptics') write about the people who spread disinformation about the pandemic, people like Vinay Prasad (Brownstone Institute):
An Open Letter to ZDoggMD (Science-Based Medicine, Jan 21, 2022)

Dr. Vinay Prasad Pretends to Admit Error: I Was Optimistic That Vaccination Would Halt the Spread of the Virus—I Was Wrong. (Science-Based Medicine, May 11, 2024)
Dr. Vinay Prasad: It’s “Good” That Parents Who Want To Vaccinate Their Kids Against COVID Get Reported To Child Protective Services (Science-Based Medicine, April 14, 2024)
Dr. Vinay Prasad vs. a VAERS study finding more reports of vaccine injury in red states (Science-Based Medicine, April 8, 2024)
I Agree with Dr. Vinay Prasad: It’s Entirely Predictable That More Parents Don’t Want Routine Vaccination for Their Kids (Science-Based Medicine, Nov 25, 2023)
Dr. Vinay Prasad fully embraces the antivax message of “do not comply” (Science-Based Medicine, Sep 11, 2023)
Dr. Vinay Prasad echoes a common antivax trope that portrays concern about a deadly disease as irrational fear (Science-Based Medicine, Sep 19, 2022)
Dr. Vinay Prasad: “Public Health’s (Mis)Truth Problem” (Science-Based Medicine, Feb 27, 2022)


ETA: In his post about Vinay Prasad and ZDoggMD, marting also mentions Paul Offit, who used to be a brilliant vaccine scientist. 90 percent of what I knew about vaccines before the pandemic came from reading Offit's Vaccinted (Goodreads), which I can still recommend.
However, as Jonathan Howard writes, Offit is "not infallible." (Nobody is, obviously.):

At the very start of the pandemic he predicted that COVID-19 would cause less than “one-tenth of the damage that influenza causes every year in the United States”. With humility and humor, he soon acknowledged his error saying, “If you’re going to be wrong, be wrong in front of millions of people. Make a complete ass of yourself”. This differentiates him from several other people who also underestimated the virus at that time. It is why I still trust him.
Today however, Dr. Offit shares something in common with many of the contrarian doctors I’ve criticized previously. They all feel young, healthy people, males in particular, would not benefit from a booster vaccine (here and here). Dr. Offit advised his own young son not to get a booster as “he believes that his son is well protected against serious illness with two shots, so a third just isn’t necessary”. This prompted one doctor and critic of our site to say:
"Now just waiting for the @ScienceBasedMed crowd to call Paul Offit an anti-vaxxer. Wait for it…"
I Won’t Call Dr. Paul Offit an Anti-Vaxxer (Science-Based Medicine, Jan 23, 2022)

Since January 2022, there have been many studies of the efficacy and side effects of the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, some of them fairly recent. I don't know what Offit's attitude is today, but I assume that his skepticism of the expediency of boosters for young people is what makes him interesting to people like ZDoggMD - and marting and The Atheist. ZDoggMD might have fared much better if he had been boosted - like his wife.

 

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

While the minimizers are busy pretending there's no pandemic, this is what is happening in the real world:

Statewide, the COVID positivity rate continues to skyrocket, with Friday’s update showing the percent of all COVID tests that come back positive is just one tenth of a percent shy of the high from the last 12 months. There have been only a handful of weeks in the past three years that have had a positivity rate over 13%.
After reaching record lows in March, and growing slowly in May, the portion of COVID tests coming back positive started to shoot up sharply in June.
On June 1, the positivity rate was 4.1%, up from just under 2% in May. The rate has now tripled to 13.0% as of July 8, the most recent date for which data was available. The state now has a higher positivity rate than during this winter’s COVID spike, when it reached just over 11%, and is poised to surpass the recent high of 13.1% in September of 2023.
Since COVID tests became readily available, the highest the positivity rate has ever been was in December of 2021 and January 2022, when it reached over 20% for nearly three weeks.
Deaths have also increased slightly in the past several weeks. COVID is responsible for nearly 2% of deaths in California in the first days of July, the most recent available data. That is still lower than the 3.5% in January of this year during the winter surge, and way below January 2021, when 40% of all deaths in California were due to COVID.
California’s COVID positivity rate is now just shy of record high from the past 12 months (MercuryNews, July 12, 2024)

We know how new waves usually go: cases -> hospitalizations -> deaths. The latter tend to rise 2-3 weeks after positive tests. A rise in the number of deaths may also remain unpublished due to delayed registration:
"But deaths tend to lag by several weeks, and the data can take weeks to catch up."

COVID-19 cases are continuing to climb in Los Angeles County, as are the number of people hospitalized with infections, as the typical summer surge in the illness creeps up.
COVID cases keep rising in L.A. County due to FLiRT; Mayor Karen Bass tests positive (L.A.Times, July 1, 2024)

As the summer travel season picks up, COVID cases and hospitalizations are rising in Los Angeles County — and some of those recently reinfected are finding their latest bout to be the worst yet.
There are no signs at this point that the latest coronavirus variants are producing more severe illness, either nationally or in California.
But some doctors say this latest COVID rise challenges a long-held myth: Although new COVID infections are often mild compared with a first brush with the disease, they still can cause severe illness. Even if someone doesn’t need to visit the emergency room or be hospitalized, people sometimes describe agonizing symptoms.
“The dogma is that every time you get COVID, it’s milder. But I think we need to keep our minds open to the possibility that some people have worse symptoms,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert.
Each time you get COVID, he said, is “kind of like playing COVID roulette.”
‘Playing COVID roulette’: Some infected by FLiRT variants report their most unpleasant symptoms yet (L.A.Times, July 8, 2024)

How can it be the worst yet with all that natural immunity from from previous infection(s)?
Well, as it turns out, each new bout of COVID-19 may not actually be getting milder:

NIH-funded analysis of health record data shows severe reinfections often follow severe first infections
Using health data from almost 213,000 Americans who experienced reinfections, researchers have found that severe infections from the virus that causes COVID-19 tend to foreshadow similar severity of infection the next time a person contracts the disease. Additionally, scientists discovered that long COVID was more likely to occur after a first infection compared to a reinfection. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER external link ) Initiative, is published in Communications Medicine external link .
Study suggests reinfections from the virus that causes COVID-19 likely have similar severity as original infection (NIH, July 11, 2024)

It's no wonder that the "world has moved on," i.e. into a state of permanent denial.

 

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

This year's winner of Tour de France appears to be none other than COVID-19, which seems to defeat all of them:
Tom Pidcock
Amaury Capiot
Alberto Bettiol
Louis Vervaeke
Guillaume Bolvin

And they are just the ones who had to drop out of Tour de France today. Yesterday, there were:
Juan Ayuso
Jesus Herrada

"I'm not feeling great, the doctor is monitoring me"
Geraint Thomas spoke about Tom Pidcock abandoning the race with COVID-19 and his own health.
ITV Cycling (X, July 13, 2024)

See clip in tweet! They are even masking up! Outdoors!!! Somebody must have forgotten to tell them that the world has moved on!
And then there are the regular scare mongers like this guy!

Take it from an NHS consultant who’s been treating Covid in hospitals since it arrived, cycling in the Tour de France while you are infected is reckless & incredibly dangerous for you both acutely & in the long term. Here’s what it can do…

Here are the studies. Covid can cause;
Cognitive impairment, brain shrinkage, heart attacks, strokes, kidney damage, lung damage, diabetes, clots & other blood disorders, immunological & neurological disorders.
It is multisystem, acute & potentially chronic (1 in 10 infections)

PrognosticChats (X, July 13, 2024)

He is obviously exaggerating. Either that or those professional cyclists must be much older than they look, or maybe they are all obese, diabetic or asthmatic. Yes, that must be it!
And what about this moron? Doesn't he know that nobody, nobody at all, masks up nowadays? That is just soooo 2021!

And Denmark's Vingegaard, too!
The contagion continues - Star leaves the Tour. Vingegaard explains why the Visma team are now masking up before start (TV2.dk, July 13, 2024).

ETA: I don't know why the YouTube link doesn't work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0Q2wyU-fq8

The Tour de France riders are blaming journalists for not wearing masks to help stop the spread of COVID:
https://dr.dk/sporten/cykling/tourdefrance/fuglsang-krydser-fingre-i-haabet-om-undgaa-corona
Thomas Baekdal (X, July 13, 2024)

Freedom of the press???

 

[The Atheist]

Walls of text really aid your cause.

But you're totally not panicking...

 

[dann]

Some people are intimidated by walls of facts.
Facts ruin the impact of their short undocumented claims.

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

Some people are intimidated by walls of facts.
Facts ruin the impact of their short undocumented claims.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

Indeed. And the reality that is not going away, and that you refuse to accept, is that for whatever reason, the world doesn't care anymore and has moved on.

Your argument, giving page after page of reasons, is that it shouldn't.
My point is that whether it should or should not, it in fact HAS.

 

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

If only you guys stuck with that idea, and that idea alone, you would make a much better impression: 'There's a pandemic, it kills and maims, but we don't care.'

What makes it so embarrassing for you is that,
1) There is obviously still an ongoing pandemic, which is what I show with my posts to those of you who are in denial of reality.
2) Minimizers lie about the facts of the virus and the pandemic, which my posts presenting the facts make clear.
3) Minimizers do so for a reason: They want the denial to continue. They don't want people to know about reality.
4) And it is this ignorance of reality that is the reason why "the world" sometimes doesn't seem to care.
5) In the meantime, reality makes it obvious that some people do care:
a) Rich people care when they make sure that their meeting spaces have top notch ventilation and air purification systems.
b) Investor groups behind sports teams care because they don't want the professional athletes they have invested in to be ruined by COVID-19, so they order them to mask up.
c) Surging numbers of hospitalizations make it obvious, too, at least to hospital staff. It is possible to hide away the number of new infections, but the rising number hospitalizations makes the pandemic as conspicuous as when athletes don face masks on TV.
d) Ordinary people also tend to notice when they themselves and their colleagues are always sick - in particular when it's not the season for colds and influenza. And they mention it online.

That is when you and your fellow minimizers begin to panic and CAPITALIZE your insistence that the 'world' "in fact HAS" moved on.
The more adamant you are about this, the more conspicuous it is that you are fighting to maintain an attitude to the pandemic based on an illusion and maintained with lies.

My point is that the virus, i.e. reality, doesn't give a **** about your attitude. In fact, your attitude helps the virus prosper, mutate and multiply.
Your attitude is one that is based on lies and denial of reality while posing as realism, which is why my posts bother you so much that you feel the need to comment even though you don't have a single argument against the facts I present.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

In this update:
[1] Selected countries/regions
[A] USA (New York): COVID-related hospitalizations increase
USA (South Florida): COVID cases rise, hospitalizations increase
[C] Hong Kong: Suspected outbreak of COVID-19 cases in Ruttonjee Hospital
[D] Spain (Valencia): Number of cases is 6 times higher than a year ago
[2] New dominant COVID-19 variant FLuQE taking over as strain of concern
[3] "COVID tongue" is definitely a thing -- here's what it is and how to know if you have it
[4] Intranasal COVID-19 vaccines: What to know about the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines
[5] AstraZeneca's COVID prevention drug application gets EU fast-track assessment
[6] US CDC: COVID-19 can surge throughout the year
(...)
C] Hong Kong: Suspected outbreak of COVID-19 cases in Ruttonjee Hospital
Date: Thu 4 Jul 2024 13:42 CST
Source: The Standard [edited]
https://www.thestandard.com.hk/brea...break-of-Covid-19-cases-in-Ruttonjee-Hospital
Ruttonjee Hospital announced on Thursday [4 Jul 2024] that they have found 15 people infected with COVID-19 on a ward and have conducted measures in accordance with established guidelines.
The spokesman stated today [4 Jul 2024] that they found 12 male and 2 female patients aged between 33 and 88 on an infirmary ward of Ruttonjee Hospital who have been presenting with fever and testing positive for COVID-19 since June 27 [2024].
All patients are being treated in cohort isolation and are in stable condition.
Moreover, a staff member on the ward had the onset of a fever and cough on June 30 [2024] and tested positive for COVID-19; they remain in a stable condition.
They stated that admission to the ward has been suspended, and visitor restrictions have been imposed.
Thorough cleaning and disinfection measures have been conducted, along with stepping up infection control measures according to established guidelines.
The hospital will continue to closely monitor the situation. The cases have been reported to the Hospital Authority Head Office and the Centre for Health Protection for follow-up.
--
Communicated by: ProMED
[On Wednesday (10 Jul 2024), the Government of Hong Kong SAR reported an update on the outbreak.

"Regarding an earlier announcement on a cluster of patients infected with COVID-19 in a geriatric infirmary ward, the spokesperson for Ruttonjee Hospital made the following update today (July 10):
"Two more patients (women aged 66 and 76) in the ward have presented with fever. Appropriate tests were arranged for the patients and their test results were positive for COVID-19. The patients concerned are currently being treated in cohort isolation and all are in stable condition.
"Infection control measures have already been stepped up according to established guidelines. All other patients in the ward are under close surveillance.
"The cases have been reported to the Hospital Authority Head Office and the Centre for Health Protection for necessary follow-up" (https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202407/10/P2024071000729.htm). - Mod.LWW]
Pro MED Post (Pro MED International Society for Infectious Diseases, July 13, 2024)

 

[dann]

Some people will argue the pandemic isn't over in 3...2...1...

Spain:
Covid surge in Spain: Number of cases in Valencia is six times higher than a year ago (The Olive Press, July 4, 2024)

UK:

In recent weeks, health experts have voiced concern over the new FLiRT Covid variant that is thought to have caused a surge in cases in the UK. As a result, some hospitals have also reintroduced face masks and others are telling people to stay away if they experience Covid symptoms.
The most recent figures from the UK Health Security Agency shows deaths and hospitalizations due to Covid have increased in England. In the week up to June 28, there were 2,787 Covid patients admitted to hospital, 61 patients more than in the previous week. In the same period there were 168 death, 25 more than the week before.
Tongue symptom could be a red flag for Covid as new variant causes concern (Liverpool Echo/MSN.com, July 13, 2024)

Photo text: "Covid tongue can present as white patches or even ulcers and swelling."
If you still care and haven't yet moved on into denial, the photo will show you what a Covid-tongue ulcer looks like.

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

If only you guys stuck with that idea, and that idea alone, you would make a much better impression: 'There's a pandemic, it kills and maims, but we don't care.'

What makes it so embarrassing for you is that,
1) There is obviously still an ongoing pandemic, which is what I show with my posts to those of you who are in denial of reality.
2) Minimizers lie about the facts of the virus and the pandemic, which my posts presenting the facts make clear.
3) Minimizers do so for a reason: They want the denial to continue. They don't want people to know about reality.
4) And it is this ignorance of reality that is the reason why "the world" sometimes doesn't seem to care.
5) In the meantime, reality makes it obvious that some people do care:
a) Rich people care when they make sure that their meeting spaces have top notch ventilation and air purification systems.
b) Investor groups behind sports teams care because they don't want the professional athletes they have invested in to be ruined by COVID-19, so they order them to mask up.
c) Surging numbers of hospitalizations make it obvious, too, at least to hospital staff. It is possible to hide away the number of new infections, but the rising number hospitalizations makes the pandemic as conspicuous as when athletes don face masks on TV.
d) Ordinary people also tend to notice when they themselves and their colleagues are always sick - in particular when it's not the season for colds and influenza. And they mention it online.

That is when you and your fellow minimizers begin to panic and CAPITALIZE your insistence that the 'world' "in fact HAS" moved on.
The more adamant you are about this, the more conspicuous it is that you are fighting to maintain an attitude to the pandemic based on an illusion and maintained with lies.

My point is that the virus, i.e. reality, doesn't give a **** about your attitude. In fact, your attitude helps the virus prosper, mutate and multiply.
Your attitude is one that is based on lies and denial of reality while posing as realism, which is why my posts bother you so much that you feel the need to comment even though you don't have a single argument against the facts I present.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

You again ignore my point.

I don't argue against your lists of facts because I don't actually disagree with them. You think I am disagreeing and saying the virus is no longer an issue. I am not.

Its not "There's a pandemic, it kills and maims, but we don't care."
Its "There's a pandemic, it kills and maims, and the world doesn't care".

The world doesn't care, and is apparently not willing to make changes to move beyond living with it.

That reality obviously bothers you enormously. But, that is still the reality.

If you think that 17 people contracting Covid in a hospital in HK who are in a stable condition is going to make HK change its behaviour, you are denying reality. There are thousands of people with Covid in HK right now. People are getting infected and reinfected on a daily basis. If those 17 people died, it would make no difference.

Rightly or wrongly, people don't care. They have moved on.

Feel free to post pages and pages more of your stats and news items.

Guess what.

People will still not care.

 

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

Once again you misunderstand what I'm saying entirely. I never claimed that "7 people contracting Covid in a hospital in HK who are in a stable condition is going to make HK change its behaviour," so why do you seem to think that I did?

The people in hospital obviously have 'moved on': They have moved on from whatever they were doing before to being hospitalized.

I also don't need your permission "to post pages and pages more of your stats and news items" and will continue to do so.
You don't even understand the title of this thread: How do we know a pandemic's over?
You seem to think that it means: When will people start pretending that the pandemic is over?

This is what 'moving on' has accomplished:
Covid 'death' warning because people 'mistaking FLiRT variant for hayfever' (BirminghamMail.co.uk, July 13, 2024)
Congratulations!

And this:

Neuer Look für Jonas Vingegaard.
Tour de France DE (X, July 2024)

Short clip with Vingegaard masking up.

France: Covid restrictions brought back at Tour de France
"Masks must now be worn by everyone, including organisers, guests and journalists."
Covid restrictions brought back at Tour de France
CoronaHeadsUp (X, July 14, 2024)

Australian Olympic medal chances will be better 4 protecting athletes from inconvenient airborne infectious diseases like Cvd, with good quality respirators
Well done to the Australian Olympic medical team
can we pls put you in charge of nat PH when you return from Paris?
Sue J (X, July 14, 2024)

With a short clip of the Australian Olympic medical team wearing respirators at the airport.
Don't they understand that people don't care? That they have moved on? Don't they understand that they are living in the past?

 

[dann]

[size=+2]Can the experts who have long been talking about COVID being mild, endemic, seasonal, no worse than flu, or just another respiratory virus for us to live with please confirm that this is what they meant.[/size]
T. Ryan Gregory (X, July 13, 2024)

 

[marting]

Since January 2022, there have been many studies of the efficacy and side effects of the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, some of them fairly recent. I don't know what Offit's attitude is today, but I assume that his skepticism of the expediency of boosters for young people is what makes him interesting to people like ZDoggMD - and marting and The Atheist. ZDoggMD might have fared much better if he had been boosted - like his wife.

I've seen pretty compelling studies for an initial vaccine course for kids. But not for boosters and kids. If you have how about some links.

As for ZDoggMD and Wife, why do you think I noted this?:

His wife hasn't gotten Covid and still is negative. She also had current boosters. ZDoggMD has not had recent boosters.

Kind of ironic, no?

San Diego Covid deaths for the fiscal year (6/30 to 6/30) came in at 350. Pretty much as expected. Down from 600 the prior FY and 1800 the FY year before that. That's out of 3.3 Million peeps. Yawn.

Looks like we folks in San Diego are getting an earlier surge than last year by a month or two. But nothing at this point suggests the total over the next 12 months will not also continue to decline. I'm guessing about 250 Covid deaths from 7/1/24 through 6/30/25. Might be a bit higher or lower.

 

[dann]

As predicted? By whom?
I remember your previous predictions and wonder why you keep making them, but I guess that's just what minimizers do.
I also remember how wonderful COVID-19 is supposed to be because, unlike the flu, it doesn't 'max out' hospitals.

In the last week of May, we averaged 15 employees per day off for COVID; by the first week of June, we were up to 20; by the fourth week of June, we were up to 45 and we’re currently tracking 70.
County increases testing, UCSD Health workers return to masking as COVID surges (San Diego Union-Tribune, July 11, 2024)

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

Once again you misunderstand what I'm saying entirely. I never claimed that "7 people contracting Covid in a hospital in HK who are in a stable condition is going to make HK change its behaviour," so why do you seem to think that I did?

Because it seems like your point of view is that covid is still a clear and present danger, it maims and kills, the world is stupid for moving on and ignoring that, and that the world should change its behaviour.

So when you post a underwhelming news item about an outbreak in a HK hospital, I assumed that its part of the same pattern.

However, if that is not the case, why then did you post that particular item?

The people in hospital obviously have 'moved on': They have moved on from whatever they were doing before to being hospitalized.

Unfortunately, this time you didn't even read your own link or quote correctly.

They weren't hospitalised BECAUSE of covid.
They were already in hospital, and caught covid whilst they were there.

Just as they would if they were in the general population of HK, where covid is rife, and still nobody cares anymore.

 

[dann]

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

Your mistake is to concern yourself with my alleged point of view when I present you with facts showing that COVID-19 maims and kills and is currently surging. As for "the world" and what "it" should or shouldn't do, you don't seem to understand that the world as such doesn't really do anything. 'It' has no intentions and thus can't change 'its' behavior.

And I am aware that some patients are hospitalized and now have COVID-19 because they were hospitalized. What brought them there in the first place isn't clear, but it should give you an idea of pandemic reality and the health-care system nowadays: People go to the hospital to get treated for whatever is wrong with them, be it COVID-19 or something else, and some of them instead get more sick because hospitals are some of the places where mass outbreaks of COVID-19 take place and are registered because hospitals are some of the only places where people still get tested.

Why do you think that some of them "caught covid whilst they were there"? The obvious reason is that hospitals don't do enough to prevent people from catching the infection, which has to be there already to infect them if they weren't already infected when they got there, "just as they would if they were in the general population of HK, where covid is rife, and still nobody cares anymore."

That is what happens when even hospitals don't care anymore. That is the pandemic reality. That is how the virus that kills and maims spreads. It's not something that "the world" has come up with on its own. Your 'point of view' is being spread, actively and deliberately, not only by you yourself and marting and The Atheist, not only by the people behind the Great Barrington Declaration, sponsored by AIER, not coincidentally "a libertarian think tank located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts." And since 2021, the authors of the declaration, "Bhattacharya, Kulldorff and Gupta have worked with Brownstone Institute, a think tank that has opposed COVID-19 masking and vaccine mandates. The institute was started in 2021 by Jeffrey Tucker, the AIER editorial director who helped organize the Great Barrington Declaration."

The declaration was immediately embraced by the Trump Administration and later on, post-vaccination, by most of the political and economical leaders of the Western world. They did so on behalf of their subjects, but with one big exception: the leading class itself, the current aristocracy of the political world and in particular the world of finance, billionaires and multi millionaires - and their children, of course. They get protection from the disease by getting protection from the infection!
(The rest of us should learn from their example: Don't do what they say. Do what they do. But unfortunately most of us don't have the means to do what they do.)

To some extent, the upper-middle classes are protected in similar ways: Many of them cannot only often work from home, but they can also afford to provide their children (and thus to some extent their teachers) with some of the protection that Davos billionaires enjoy:
How Ashish Jha and Rochelle Walensky of Newton, MA protect their children from Covid (but not yours) (MR, Sep 25, 2022).

The rest of the world have been told to learn to live with the virus, i.e. to get infected, because somehow getting infected is supposed to protect you from getting infected: We Want Them Infected! (The Atheist is a big fan of this idea!)

So the ruling classes in their ivory towers and their talking parrots have seen to it that the proles, i.e. the rest of us, live unprotected and 'learn to live with', and get killed and maimed by, the virus, while they themselves live protected and to a high degree uninfected. (Nothing's perfect!) For the most part, I have posted about this aspect of the pandemic in the thread: Capitalism and Its Beneficiaries, Rich People, Are the Spreaders of Coronavirus.

That's how "the world has moved on" came into being, the motto that parrots of the ruling classes are screeching like banshees.