How do we know a pandemic's over?
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This is very much unlike your usual posts, RR:
I don't know if this is supposed to be a joke, but if it isn't: Why did you delete this part for The Atheist's quotation?: "Barring a new variant of concern, the pandemic is done and dusted." It is obvious that his claim was about the current situation, i.e. 2022, and not about the far future.
It wasn't (and isn't) unstoppable. And the NZ death rate rose dramatically when the country abandoned ZeroCovid.
You do know that it's summer in NZ right now, don't you?!
Yes, the media in Western countries is celebrating that China appears to have lost control of the virus and is following in the footsteps of NZ and the rest of the Western world. And now that the number of infections in China appears to be rising rapidly, let's not forget that China's ZeroCovid strategy was condemned as a human rights violation and protestors against it were celebrated as freedom fighters: Artist wears 27 hazmat suits to protest China's policies (CNN, Oct 20, 2022)
Whenever new and more contagious variants appear, face masks that are not 100% effective (and most of them aren't) will allow more transmission of the virus to occur. However, that doesn't mean that they don't make much of a difference, as Skeptic Ginger already pointed out. And you seem to forget or deliberately ignore the immune evasion of new variants, which makes vaccinations even less reliable than they already were.
The Swiss cheese model is still true as long as vaccinations don't give us 100% immunity - and they are very far from doing that.
Yes, you think so. And The Atheist thought so last year, but nothing at all seems to indicate that it's true. You seem to think that ignoring SARS-CoV-2 as if it were the flu will probably make it behave as if it were. Not true. I just saw the current number of infections with flu and Covid-19 in Sweden (where it's winter, unlike in NZ): Flu: 1,452 - Covid-19: 12,801
And you base this idea on what exactly?! Hope is not a strategy.
The boosters don't "ward off the latest variants" because the boosters to ward off the latest variants haven't been made yet, and when they get around to making them, they still need to be tested before they go into production. At that point, even newer variants will have appeared. I'm a big fan of Covid vaccinations, but the ones we have aren't particularly effective and don't do the trick alone.
We have already seen the true pandemic numbers. They are there for everybody to see and study.
And endemic doesn't mean what you seem to think it means: 'as relatively harmless as the flu'.
SARS-CoV-2 has already become endemic, and that is nothing to celebrate.
I don't know if this is supposed to be a joke, but if it isn't: Why did you delete this part for The Atheist's quotation?: "Barring a new variant of concern, the pandemic is done and dusted." It is obvious that his claim was about the current situation, i.e. 2022, and not about the far future.
It wasn't (and isn't) unstoppable. And the NZ death rate rose dramatically when the country abandoned ZeroCovid.
You do know that it's summer in NZ right now, don't you?!
Yes, the media in Western countries is celebrating that China appears to have lost control of the virus and is following in the footsteps of NZ and the rest of the Western world. And now that the number of infections in China appears to be rising rapidly, let's not forget that China's ZeroCovid strategy was condemned as a human rights violation and protestors against it were celebrated as freedom fighters: Artist wears 27 hazmat suits to protest China's policies (CNN, Oct 20, 2022)
Whenever new and more contagious variants appear, face masks that are not 100% effective (and most of them aren't) will allow more transmission of the virus to occur. However, that doesn't mean that they don't make much of a difference, as Skeptic Ginger already pointed out. And you seem to forget or deliberately ignore the immune evasion of new variants, which makes vaccinations even less reliable than they already were.
The Swiss cheese model is still true as long as vaccinations don't give us 100% immunity - and they are very far from doing that.
Yes, you think so. And The Atheist thought so last year, but nothing at all seems to indicate that it's true. You seem to think that ignoring SARS-CoV-2 as if it were the flu will probably make it behave as if it were. Not true. I just saw the current number of infections with flu and Covid-19 in Sweden (where it's winter, unlike in NZ): Flu: 1,452 - Covid-19: 12,801
And you base this idea on what exactly?! Hope is not a strategy.
The boosters don't "ward off the latest variants" because the boosters to ward off the latest variants haven't been made yet, and when they get around to making them, they still need to be tested before they go into production. At that point, even newer variants will have appeared. I'm a big fan of Covid vaccinations, but the ones we have aren't particularly effective and don't do the trick alone.
We have already seen the true pandemic numbers. They are there for everybody to see and study.
And endemic doesn't mean what you seem to think it means: 'as relatively harmless as the flu'.
SARS-CoV-2 has already become endemic, and that is nothing to celebrate.
The Atheist
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Cuba's data is totes legit.
Even if it were true, the idea that the methods of a totalitarian government on a closed island can be instituted throughout the world is plain insanity.
By the count of some people, the pandemic will never be over, when in the real world, it's now just another endemic disease. Even WHO is coming round to that: https://www.reuters.com/business/he...-says-end-sight-covid-19-pandemic-2022-09-14/
Even if it were true, the idea that the methods of a totalitarian government on a closed island can be instituted throughout the world is plain insanity.
By the count of some people, the pandemic will never be over, when in the real world, it's now just another endemic disease. Even WHO is coming round to that: https://www.reuters.com/business/he...-says-end-sight-covid-19-pandemic-2022-09-14/
The Atheist
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That means it's permanent, then.
It's not going away and it's not going to kill everyone.
Endemic disease.
Given the continual flattening of the number of cases, I think we're already there. In the past 4 months, the 7-day average has been in a narrow band.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Yes, Cuba's data is totally legit.
The Cuban numbers are true, the government isn't totalitarian, the island isn't closed, and its pandemic strategy can be instituted throughout the world:
1) Everybody needs to get vaccinated,
2) wear face masks indoors in public places.
3) and get tested often.
It requires only that vaccines are safe and effective, that the population is well-informed and trusts the health authorities and their recommendations, which, of course, also requires that those health authorities actually are reliable and to be trusted.
By the count of some people, the pandemic was never really there. According to them, it was invented by deep-state scare mongers. And some people don't understand what "endemic" means, which is why they refer to pandemic diseases as "just" endemic. Covid minimizers usually prefer to compare SARS-CoV-2 with the much less contagious and virulent flu. For some reason they shy away from mentioning malaria, also just another endemic disease, which also doesn't kill nearly as many people as Covid-19 does (see post 234).
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The Atheist
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How convenient that of all the world, a country like Cuba can be relied upon.
Yeah, when was their last election again?
Mea culpa, I see the problem - you've only recently arrived on Planet Earth.
You might like to cast your eye over some details of what happened over the past three years, where vast numbers of humans not only didn't get vaccinated, but claimed it was all a scam.
Which you actually know, yet still claim universal vaccination is possible:
Yet again, you're wrong.
Malaria kills over 600,000 people a year.
In the past three months, covid deaths are 143,000, and the average daily rate is steady at 1400. Whichever maths you use, those don't come to 600,000 in one year.
I'm not even going to mention the glaringly obvious fact that the "covid death" number still includes people with covid who died in car accidents and from other causes.
No matter, facts and evidence are clearly beyond your comprehension as your idiotic comments about stopping covid show.
Why don't you look it up? It was in March 2018. The next one will the this year. Cuba had a referendum three months ago. I'm not surprised you don't know about it. I was Havana and witnessed it.
Universal vaccination is obviously possible. All it requires is that the vaccines are there and people have reason to trust them. The latter depends very much on the reliability of their health care systems in general and the vaccines in particular. And Cubans rely on their vaccines because they have reason to do so. They are educated and informed.
At this point, it helps that the country's pandemic strategy has been extremely successful which you would know if you had spent just a few minutes of your time on Planet Earth looking it up.
That their vaccines are fairly resistant to the immunity evasion of the mutating coronavirus will probably help make Cubans eager to get themselves and their children vaccinated in the future. It certainly makes me appreciate the Soberana Plus booster shot I got in October.
Yet again you are wrong and continue to resort to the tired old arguments of Covid woos:
Many countries just don't register C-19 deaths, which makes it necessary to distinguish between the confirmed death toll and the true death toll, the latter being an estimate: The true death toll of COVID-19 - Estimating global excess mortality
I am pretty sure that you are aware of this, but when it suits you, you don't mind resorting to numbers and statistics that you know are wrong. The most obvious example is your claim that more people die in road accidents than from Covid 19. People who spend any time at all on Planet Earth know this, and it has been pointed out to you several times, using reliable (!) numbers and statistics as in this thread less than two weeks ago.
I don't think that you resort to the usual idiotic comments because reality is beyond your comprehension. It is a very simple case of deliberate obfuscation.
As for your utterly ignorant idea that "covid deaths are 143,000, and the average daily rate is steady at 1400. Whichever maths you use, those don't come to 600,000 in one year."
Jan 11, 2022 to Jan 9, 2023:
And winter is coming!
So back at you!
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The Atheist
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Oh. My. God.
Mea maxima culpa. I really thought someone from an actual democracy would realise that one-party elections are a bad joke.
Clearly, I was wrong.
Maybe you need to have someone explain to you that elections where only one party is on the ballot and other parties are illegal, does not make a democracy.
Breathtaking.
And continuing the foray into cuckoo land...
20,000,000 children are facing starvation in Africa right now.
Hey, you feed them while you vaccinate! Knock off two problems at once. Legend.
We can't ******* feed them, but you're going to vaccinate them? I have no idea what level of delusion you'd need not to realise how ridiculous the idea is.
Good luck with that. After feeding the kids, vaccinating them all and asking the Taliban to please let us vaccinate them, getting people to trust the vaccine and authorities should be a cinch.
Yet again, you're using numbers from early in the pandemic. They are as relevant as Mpx infections to the current state. The fact is, few people are dying, and those who are, are almost exclusively people whose toe tags had already been printed.
Early in the pandemic, the media was hell-bent on pumping the small number of deaths of the young as a scare tactic. They'd be doing the same now if there were any.
There are not.
Thankfully, you're very much a lone voice. Nobody in any position of knowledge is saying what you are.
I find it hilarious you accuse me of obfuscation then deliberately choose to use data from early 2022, which is, as above, totally invalid. That's not obfuscation so much as straight out lying about the facts.
No matter, like I said, exactly zero people give a damn about your "zero covid" fantasy. Even China had to give up. But I find it cute you're now touting an equally totalitarian state since China finally accepted the truth.
FTFY
The currently waning wave in NZ - in an absolute scorching summer - was almost exactly the same size as the winter one.
The most interesting thing about The Atheist's posts isn't what he says but what he leaves out. Sometimes he doesn't respond to a post at all, which was the case with my extremely well documented Reality Check post in this thread on Dec 30, 2022.
But then there are also posts like this one where he simply ignores major parts of an argument and leaves what appears to be mere statements, which he then treats as if that's all they are. I will highlight what The Atheist has left out:
I am not at all surprised that The Atheist knows nothing about Cuban elections. Not many people do, and they have been largely ignored by Western media in recent years because there is nothing to write home about. No armed thugs trying to intimidate voters, no stop-the-steal insurrectionists trying to overthrow the election results, no candidates rallying for money, no cult of personality to make the whole thing really exciting. And the Cuban electoral system has even made it impossible for billionaires to buy elections, parties and candidates, so why write about it at all? If billionaires can't buy candidates and parties and thus legislation, it can't be a democracy in our sense of the word, right? By the way, candidates at Cuban elections aren't party candidates, but who cares about stuff like that?
Not even the recent referendum, which made it legal for same-sex couples to marry and raise children, was worth mentioning even though U.S. Evangelicals did what they could to secure their preferred Evangelical outcome but failed. But that is already the theme of another thread of this forum, so there's no need to derail a thread about when the pandemic's over. Evangelical Homophobia in Cuba
Feeding starving children while you vaccinate them would be nice. But since The Atheist can't imagine and has no interest in doing both, he thinks it is the perfect argument against worldwide universal vaccinations even though the allegedly ridiculous idea of universal vaccination has already been turned into reality in the case of small pox: In 1980, the World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated (CDC)
So much for the real world.
But The Atheist prefers to take the step from Covid minimization to universal-vaccination denialism. Not a giant leap, actually.
By leaving out my argument (with documentation) about how a piss poor country like Cuba has managed to vaccinate everybody, including children 2+, and thus virtually stopped people from dying of (or 'with') Covid-19, he pretends that I am an idealist who just doesn't know about the ways of the real world, which he, the pretend realist, has to teach me about.
By the way, when he mentions the Taliban, he is probably ignorant of the ways of the actual world and why the Taliban might be unwilling to "let us (!) vaccinate them" and their children:
The Taliban have every reason to distrust "us". I do, too.
Only a New Zealander could come up with the idea that 2022 is "early in the pandemic," since it didn't really take off in NZ till February of that year.
For most of the rest of the world, the pandemic started two years earlier, so welcome to the real world, New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place, so I can see why some people might prefer to stay in denial of pandemic reality.
As mentioned above, I understand how it was possible for some New Zealanders to remain ignorant of the reality of the pandemic in the rest of the world because they were blissfully isolated from it for the first couple of years, but the fact is that the number of registered, confirmed deaths is a far cry from the real (the dark) number. That The Atheist doesn't want to acknowledge this and prefers to move the goal posts: 'people died, but they were old!!', "people whose toe tags had already been printed," 'and frail and old lives don't matter'.
The Atheist actually seems to think that it is a good sign that the current wave in New Zealand is "almost the exact same size as the winter one."
Having lived through two and a half pandemic winters at this point, people in the Northern Hemisphere, who didn't benefit from New Zealand's ZeroCovid policy, know how very relevant seasonal changes are to the the spreading of an airborne virus.
Wishful thinking won't change the fact, and NZ winter could come early this year:
As for the allegedly "currently waning wave in NZ," the curve may not be as steep as it was this (NZ) winter, but waning?!
But then there are also posts like this one where he simply ignores major parts of an argument and leaves what appears to be mere statements, which he then treats as if that's all they are. I will highlight what The Atheist has left out:
I am not at all surprised that The Atheist knows nothing about Cuban elections. Not many people do, and they have been largely ignored by Western media in recent years because there is nothing to write home about. No armed thugs trying to intimidate voters, no stop-the-steal insurrectionists trying to overthrow the election results, no candidates rallying for money, no cult of personality to make the whole thing really exciting. And the Cuban electoral system has even made it impossible for billionaires to buy elections, parties and candidates, so why write about it at all? If billionaires can't buy candidates and parties and thus legislation, it can't be a democracy in our sense of the word, right? By the way, candidates at Cuban elections aren't party candidates, but who cares about stuff like that?
Not even the recent referendum, which made it legal for same-sex couples to marry and raise children, was worth mentioning even though U.S. Evangelicals did what they could to secure their preferred Evangelical outcome but failed. But that is already the theme of another thread of this forum, so there's no need to derail a thread about when the pandemic's over. Evangelical Homophobia in Cuba
Feeding starving children while you vaccinate them would be nice. But since The Atheist can't imagine and has no interest in doing both, he thinks it is the perfect argument against worldwide universal vaccinations even though the allegedly ridiculous idea of universal vaccination has already been turned into reality in the case of small pox: In 1980, the World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated (CDC)
So much for the real world.
But The Atheist prefers to take the step from Covid minimization to universal-vaccination denialism. Not a giant leap, actually.
Good luck with that. After feeding the kids, vaccinating them all and asking the Taliban to please let us vaccinate them, getting people to trust the vaccine and authorities should be a cinch.
By leaving out my argument (with documentation) about how a piss poor country like Cuba has managed to vaccinate everybody, including children 2+, and thus virtually stopped people from dying of (or 'with') Covid-19, he pretends that I am an idealist who just doesn't know about the ways of the real world, which he, the pretend realist, has to teach me about.
By the way, when he mentions the Taliban, he is probably ignorant of the ways of the actual world and why the Taliban might be unwilling to "let us (!) vaccinate them" and their children:
The Taliban have every reason to distrust "us". I do, too.
Only a New Zealander could come up with the idea that 2022 is "early in the pandemic," since it didn't really take off in NZ till February of that year.
For most of the rest of the world, the pandemic started two years earlier, so welcome to the real world, New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place, so I can see why some people might prefer to stay in denial of pandemic reality.
As mentioned above, I understand how it was possible for some New Zealanders to remain ignorant of the reality of the pandemic in the rest of the world because they were blissfully isolated from it for the first couple of years, but the fact is that the number of registered, confirmed deaths is a far cry from the real (the dark) number. That The Atheist doesn't want to acknowledge this and prefers to move the goal posts: 'people died, but they were old!!', "people whose toe tags had already been printed," 'and frail and old lives don't matter'.
And that was "as of 31 December 2021" ...
The Atheist actually seems to think that it is a good sign that the current wave in New Zealand is "almost the exact same size as the winter one."
Having lived through two and a half pandemic winters at this point, people in the Northern Hemisphere, who didn't benefit from New Zealand's ZeroCovid policy, know how very relevant seasonal changes are to the the spreading of an airborne virus.
Wishful thinking won't change the fact, and NZ winter could come early this year:
As for the allegedly "currently waning wave in NZ," the curve may not be as steep as it was this (NZ) winter, but waning?!
But rest assured! It's probably just Cuban propaganda.
Wait! No, it isn't!
Biden administration renews Covid-19 public health emergency (CNN, Jan 11, 2023)
Nope, not over yet
As for comparisons with the flu, new variants, the use of PPE, vaccine hesitancy, the spread of misinformation, and long-term sequelae such as cardiovascular and metabolic disease:
I would have loved to hear how many cases they found in Davos, if any, but I don't know where to look for that information or if it has even been made public, which is disappointing, considering that they were "setting an example for the rest of the world," and measures were in place to make sure that it didn't turn into a super-spreader event. (Do you remember a time when super-spreader events were still reported and weren't something people in the Western world were just supposed to learn to live with?)
As for comparisons with the flu, new variants, the use of PPE, vaccine hesitancy, the spread of misinformation, and long-term sequelae such as cardiovascular and metabolic disease:
I would have loved to hear how many cases they found in Davos, if any, but I don't know where to look for that information or if it has even been made public, which is disappointing, considering that they were "setting an example for the rest of the world," and measures were in place to make sure that it didn't turn into a super-spreader event. (Do you remember a time when super-spreader events were still reported and weren't something people in the Western world were just supposed to learn to live with?)
The general idea is that once the initial surge settled out it would still be among us but more as just another sickness. We will slowly evolve to survive it better as CV evolves to survive itself.
We are still in early days of the process and we should believe it is still a killer to deal with.
But going to full lockdown again shouldn't be required anymore.
We are still in early days of the process and we should believe it is still a killer to deal with.
But going to full lockdown again shouldn't be required anymore.
Rolfe
Adult human female
It takes something like 30 generations for a species to evolve resistance to a severe pathogen, and that's a severe pathogen that kills a lot of individuals. It seems to me unlikely that covid is killing or otherwise giving a ticket to a Darwin Award to a sufficient number of people before they have reproduced for it to exert any meaningful evolutionary pressure at all.
It's more likely to impact on both length and quality of life, possibly quite severely, but leave reproductive capacity very little altered. So no evolving a race of supermen who don't catch it.
It's more likely to impact on both length and quality of life, possibly quite severely, but leave reproductive capacity very little altered. So no evolving a race of supermen who don't catch it.
Yes, unlike the Spanish flu, Covid-19 rarely kills people before they have reproduced. It's a weird way of taking comfort in evolution, by the way. Paraphrasing it: 'When enough people have died, 'we', i.e. the descendants of those of us who weren't killed by SARS-CoV-2, will have adapted and thus 'learned to live' with it!' It's funny how people always assume that they themselves are in the 'we' segment of the population.
Yes, we are. A lot of people aren't. For them, it's all over.
There's the Davos solution. Also on Twitter: #DavosStandard.
Yes, we are. A lot of people aren't. For them, it's all over.
There's the Davos solution. Also on Twitter: #DavosStandard.
Rolfe
Adult human female
I went to the opera this evening. In an FFP3 mask. I'm really quite used to it. It's just so annoying to realise that if only a lot more people did that (OK, an FFP2 like my friend was wearing will do) and they tried to fix the ventilation/air quality in public indoor venues, the prevalence would plummet.
The Atheist
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Lucky science gives us vaccines, so we don't need to wait 30 generations.
If you were reading the covid thread you'd have seen this: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(23)00007-5/fulltext
Science doesn't 'give' 'us' anything. The vaccine has to be paid for, which I assume is the reason why so many Western countries don't vaccinate children. (In Denmark, at this point, that would be children under 50!) And children need to be vaccinated, too, both for their own sake and for the sake of limiting virus transmission.
Covid-19 in children:
Two countries that I know of are currently vaccinating young children: Cuba and Singapore. And it shows because the 'gift' from science in the case of SARS-CoV-2 is not nearly as effective as, for instance, the MMR vaccines:
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people since Jan 1, 2022, in Cuba, Singapore, USA and New Zealand.
In Cuba and Singapore, people also have confidence in the health authorities in general and in the Covid-19 vaccines in particular.
In addition to vaccinations, Cuba and Singapore mask up, which also prevents children from getting infected.
But for some reason, Western Covid-19 trivializers can't be bothered to consider masking up and demanding (Davos!) measures like frequent testing and ventilation/air filtration in addition to vaxxing.
Covid-19 in children:
Two countries that I know of are currently vaccinating young children: Cuba and Singapore. And it shows because the 'gift' from science in the case of SARS-CoV-2 is not nearly as effective as, for instance, the MMR vaccines:
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people since Jan 1, 2022, in Cuba, Singapore, USA and New Zealand.
In Cuba and Singapore, people also have confidence in the health authorities in general and in the Covid-19 vaccines in particular.
In addition to vaccinations, Cuba and Singapore mask up, which also prevents children from getting infected.
But for some reason, Western Covid-19 trivializers can't be bothered to consider masking up and demanding (Davos!) measures like frequent testing and ventilation/air filtration in addition to vaxxing.
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Cuba has the benefit of free ventilation in most places. When I was in Cuba in Sep-Oct 2022, I noticed that old posters had hand-washing as the first measure against transmission of the virus. New posters mentioned airborne transmission as the most important thing to prevent.
Unlike Cuba, Singapore with its many air-conditioned office buildings and a population density of 8,358 per km2 can't rely on 'natural ventilation':
Imagine living in countries that understand and adhere to actual science during a pandemic!