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Pandemic Panic Must Stop

marting said:
Interesting outlier multi-breakthrough case. The poor woman had Covid-19 in 2020 but was luckily asymptomatic, got fully vaccinated in 2021 after which she caught the Alpha Covid-19 variant causing "mild" illness lasting 11 days. Then later she caught the Delta variant and was hospitalized 6 weeks with severe disease.

Severe SARS-CoV-2 Breakthrough Reinfection With Delta Variant After Recovery From Breakthrough Infection by Alpha Variant in a Fully Vaccinated Health Worker

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.737007/full

These were confirmed breakthroughs with full genomic sequencing. A rather rare situation but the woman was unusually attentive and sought/requested medical details including serology verification of antibody levels. I haven't googled it yet but wouldn't be surprised if the anti-vax crowd is waving this study around.

On less of an outlier front, here's a study that indicates strong protection from re-infection for a year. Similar to early data from vaccines. Caveats are that it was before widespread circulation of Alpha and Delta.

Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection 1 Year After Primary Infection in a Population in Lombardy, Italy

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2780557
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Wrong thread. It belongs here
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=348212
 
smartcooky said:
Wrong thread. It belongs here
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=348212
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You're right. My error.

I meant to discuss what I've seen in Southern California.

First week of March 2020 was the last time wife and i went out to a restaurant thinking it would be a while before it would be safe to do so again. Been a lot longer than I thought.

Near the end of March I drove 40 miles to a engineering place that had repaired my total station. Traffic was close to non-existent. The shop (considered an essential biz) had put up plexiglass barriers at the front and had the doors open. No masks then since they had been discouraged at the time. Within 2 months traffic was back to near normal though people were wearing masks everywhere except driving. A few did but very few.

Since this May, most everything is open. Probably about 20% of people wearing masks and many clerks in stores aren't wearing masks. This in spite of the fact deaths went from under 10k in March 2020 to 500k. So I suspect covid panic is a function of time. It subsides as people get used to things once the bugger has been around a while. Even if it's killed lots of people. It hasn't affected my life much since I'm retired and I adjust optional activities based on assessing risk. I find the science and statistics fascinating.
 
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COVID has officially equaled the Death Toll of the 1918 Spanish Flue pandemic as far as deaths in America.

"Panicking" my achin' ass.
 
JoeMorgue said:
COVID has officially equaled the Death Toll of the 1918 Spanish Flue pandemic as far as deaths in America.

"Panicking" my achin' ass.
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Per capita the 1918-19 flu was 3x more deadly. A part is Covid-19 occurred at a time of much better medical care not to mention vaccines which have reduced many recent deaths and will significantly reduce future deaths. Absent modern medicine and vaccines, Covid-19 could well have exceeded that flu on a per-capita basis. Count us lucky to be around now.

But another factor is that that flu was far more deadly to younger people and thus had a far higher impact on society than Covid-19. Deaths are deaths but the impact on younger people was much more devastating than Covid-19 where most of the deaths were over 65 y/o.

Frankly, the headlines everywhere about Covid-19 deaths eclipsing the 2018-19 flu as if there is some real comparison is misleading as hell.

Not to discount Covid-19 but comparing it to what the country suffered in the 1918-19 flu is apples and grapefruits.
 
marting said:
Per capita the 1918-19 flu was 3x more deadly. A part is Covid-19 occurred at a time of much better medical care not to mention vaccines which have reduced many recent deaths and will significantly reduce future deaths. Absent modern medicine and vaccines, Covid-19 could well have exceeded that flu on a per-capita basis. Count us lucky to be around now.
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It also should not be forgotten that more than half of the people who died in the 1918-1919 Flu Pandemic did not die from the flu virus itself. They did so from secondary infection by bacterial Pneumonia. This particular secondary infection was not just a bacterial attack on people in an overall weakened state. The virus destroyed the cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs, and the bacteria that normally reside in the nose and throat were able to invade the lungs along a pathway created by that viral destruction. There was no such thing as anti-biotics back then, so no way to effectively treat them.
 
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smartcooky said:
It also should not be forgotten that more than half of the people who died in the 1918-1919 Flu Pandemic did not die from the flu virus itself. They did so from secondary infection by bacterial Pneumonia. This particular secondary infection was not just a bacterial attack on people in an overall weakened state. The virus destroyed the cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs, and the bacteria that normally reside in the nose and throat were able to invade the lungs along a pathway created by that viral destruction.
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Good point. Absolutely right. My father's mother died at 40 y/o from bacterial pneumonia just a few years before penicillin was discovered.
 
marting said:
Frankly, the headlines everywhere about Covid-19 deaths eclipsing the 2018-19[sic] flu as if there is some real comparison is misleading as hell.
Not to discount Covid-19 but comparing it to what the country suffered in the 1918-19 flu is apples and grapefruits.
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Yes, it is a bit misleading, but not for the reason you think. Comparing current Covid deaths to the 1918-19 flu is misleading because this pandemic isn't over yet.

There were four successive waves of the 'Spanish' flu, covering the period from 1918 to 1920. It was over relatively quickly due to the high infection rate and lack of vaccines, at greater cost in lives. But we are only just getting into the fourth wave of Covid, with no guarantee that it will be the last. We can't get a final death tally until it's over - which could be a year or more from now.

The Delta variant was initially met with skepticism by many, but proved to be much more virulent and have a more deadly effect on young people. Many countries who thought they had been through the worst got unexpectedly hammered by Delta because their containment strategies (that seemed to work before) were not good enough. Some early vaccinations are not as effective on Delta so we are getting 'breakthrough' cases, which may increase as immunities wane. But that is not the worst scenario by far. At least one other variant has surfaced, and the longer Covid circulates the more likely an even more virulent variant will pop up.

The fat lady hasn't sung yet. Until she does we shouldn't be comparing deaths and declaring Coivd-19 a 'nothing-burger' compared to the 1918-19 flu.

Frankly, there is nothing wrong with headlines talking about Covid-19 deaths eclipsing the 2018-19 flu, or even other events with major fatalities. "apples and grapefruits" you say, but that's not the point. What is important is that we have something causing deaths on a similar scale to another notable event, which does make it a big deal even if the scenarios are not exactly equivalent.

What would be 'misleading as hell' is headlines asserting that the risk is low, that taking 'extreme' measures would hurt the economy more than it helped, that people are dying of the flu all the time so why treat it any different, that it only kills old people so don't worry, that we can beat it with with less pain by just protecting old people and letting everyone else get it, or that it will all go away as soon as the election is over - you know, stuff we were being told that was misleading as hell.

But if you acknowledge all that and are just worried about people overreacting then don't - the majority are still not taking this virus seriously!
 
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Roger Ramjets said:
The Delta variant was initially met with skepticism by many, but proved to be much more virulent and have a more deadly effect on young people. Many countries who thought they had been through the worst got unexpectedly hammered by Delta because their containment strategies (that seemed to work before) were not good enough.
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Which is why our government, thankfully, put the country into lockdown within a day of the first Delta detection, and yet, even with what they saw happening in other countries, they were still unable to stop it reaching peak daily cases similar to that of the first outbreak

First Outbreak
First Case................28 Feb 2020
Level 4 lockdown......25 March 2020 (25 days later)
Peak daily cases.......84

Delta Outbreak
First Case................17 August 2021
Level 4 Lockdown......18 August 2021 (<1 day later)
Peak daily cases......81

All the stochastic branching process and contagion network modelling of the Delta variant being carried out by their science and medical advisors told them that if they tried to use the same strategy as the first outbreak, taking 25 days to work their way through the Alert Levels 1 through 4 before lockdown, by that time (September 12) would would be reaching rates in the region of 500 to 800 new cases daily, and climbing to a peak of over 1500 daily before falling.

Adopting the strategy that some people advocate (just let it run wind) would have been an unmitigated disaster. The government copped some stinging media criticism back in August, from home and abroad, for "overreacting" by putting the country into Lockdown at midnight on the evening of the first detected case. That decision has now been thoroughly vindicated, and today the case rates are falling.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
The fat lady hasn't sung yet. Until she does we shouldn't be comparing deaths and declaring Coivd-19 a 'nothing-burger' compared to the 1918-19 flu.
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....and we've applied a range of tools that simply weren't available over 100 years ago including vaccination, the various treatments and even intubation and ventilation. Without all of these things, Covid deaths would be much, much higher.

Suggesting that Covid is a nothingburger is as misleading as suggesting that the Y2k computer "problem" was also a nothingburger because planes didn't simply fall out of the sky and the power grid didn't completely fail - ignoring the hundreds of millions of hours diligently spent making sure that these things didn't happen.
 
The Don said:
Suggesting that Covid is a nothingburger is ...
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Not happening in this thread, so excellent point!

I was thinking about people not panicking yesterday as I was leaning on our front fence talking on the phone. It's 3m from the footpath, which two young Asian women in mask were walking along. When they got to 10m away from where I was they pinched their noses through their masks and ran until they were 10m past me.

Utterly not panicking at any stage.
 
The Atheist said:
Not happening in this thread, so excellent point!

I was thinking about people not panicking yesterday as I was leaning on our front fence talking on the phone. It's 3m from the footpath, which two young Asian women in mask were walking along. When they got to 10m away from where I was they pinched their noses through their masks and ran until they were 10m past me.

Utterly not panicking at any stage.
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Have you considered washing your feet?
 
Droplets, whatever air you've expelled, and whatever surfaces you may have touched or breathed on do not instantly vanish or become safe when you leave the vehicle.

People driving with masks:

- may be driving a shared vehicle.
- may be on the way to pick someone up.
- may not want to handle their mask repeatedly.
- may be an Uber or delivery driver.
- may have kids in the car later, or the next day.

I'd rather see that than what I see in my area, which is too many people not caring about others.

- The guy I saw through the window of a closed martial arts studio after hours cleaning with his mask around his chin.

- The woman who puts on her mask only when she sees me coming to pick up my food. A place I will not go in again because the cooks do the same thing. Kinda wear it, kinda don't.

- The manager who cussed out my co-workers friend for wearing a mask in his small store (that was in Iowa or Idaho, can't remember). He made her leave.

- My stupid roommate.

**** anyone that thinks people are being "too careful".
 
 
Maybe my car stinks.

Or the one time I was at the jail and the inmates were smoking drug infused paper and for some reason also feces so the place smelled like burning feces. Driving home I found that sucking on a coughdrop while wearing the mask allowed me not to smell my clothes and overpowered the smell in my nose. I'm going to keep that trick in mind in any similar situations.

I'm never going to stop wearing masks in public spaces such as the grocery if I feel as much as the sniffles or think something might be going around.

Plus, I kinda like the anonymity. I'd probably wear a full on Bandit Heeler head in public if I could manage it.
 
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