Covid-19 News/Discussion

[incognito_man]

Just now, MWil23 said:

Western Hemisphere alone? That’s hilarious.

i typed "western hemisphere alone"?

that's hilarious

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

2 hours ago, MWil23 said:

BINGO!!!

@ramssuperbowl99 He’s helped me identify the source of my frustration. And in my profession, make that 2.5 years in all likelihood. The law of unintended consequences as I’ve gone into great detail about what all that entails seems unbelievably daunting right now, and frankly, I’m not sure that I’ve got the energy to regroup and face it all again.

We had one chance to get this right, and unfortunately for political reasons that can't be discussed, we screwed it all up and now we can't retract that and start over. It's simply too late. 

[MWil23]

20 minutes ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

We had one chance to get this right, and unfortunately for political reasons that can't be discussed, we screwed it all up and now we can't retract that and start over. It's simply too late. 

To be fair, I’ve always been in the minority in that I’ve never for a second believed the narrative that most people are good. We are all selfish and look out for #1 by default and need to be taught to do otherwise. 

[Xenos]

44 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

To be fair, I’ve always been in the minority in that I’ve never for a second believed the narrative that most people are good. We are all selfish and look out for #1 by default and need to be taught to do otherwise. 

Total depravity baby 

[squire12]

47 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

To be fair, I’ve always been in the minority in that I’ve never for a second believed the narrative that most people are good. We are all selfish and look out for #1 by default and need to be taught to do otherwise. 

Primal instinct.  Survival of the being, survival of the species.

We won't get into the lack of criteria that doesn't restrict the latter 

[MWil23]

56 minutes ago, Xenos said:

Total depravity baby 

I knew you’d track with me  

[ramssuperbowl99]

2 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

We had one chance to get this right, and unfortunately for political reasons that can't be discussed, we screwed it all up and now we can't retract that and start over. It's simply too late. 

At a societal level, getting to herd immunity through vaccination alone, yeah. But we've also gotten more than half the population vaccinated to some degree or another. And in a few months from now when children can be vaccinated, this is going to be almost exclusively a pandemic of the unvaccinated (it's pretty much there already). 

So if you're young and don't work in healthcare or have a bunch of expected healthcare issues coming up, once you've got your shots this doesn't have to impact you. So for a lot of Americans, isn't that mostly a success? Close enough?

[TheKillerNacho]

1 hour ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

At a societal level, getting to herd immunity through vaccination alone, yeah. But we've also gotten more than half the population vaccinated to some degree or another. And in a few months from now when children can be vaccinated, this is going to be almost exclusively a pandemic of the unvaccinated (it's pretty much there already). 

So if you're young and don't work in healthcare or have a bunch of expected healthcare issues coming up, once you've got your shots this doesn't have to impact you. So for a lot of Americans, isn't that mostly a success? Close enough?

Biggest issue here... mutations.

We've already seen the Delta variant, which is able to infect the vaccinated at a higher degree and is significantly more contagious overall.

This will never be a "pandemic only of the vunnaccinated". Although the anti-vaxxers would love to clamor the rhetoric that a "vaccinated person shouldn't worry if I'm unvaccinated", this is only true by the flimsiest of logic. Every spread of the infection from unvaxxed individuals adds to the chance of mutation. Mutation that can and will get past the vaccines and elongate the pandemic as a whole. I had COVID19 in the early stages and got the vaccine anyway. Antibodies from COVID simply do not protect you from contracting and spreading the virus again as well as the vaccines do, and not nearly as long.

Complete herd Immunity, meanwhile, would stop the virus and all of its mutations in its tracks, however. It's the only way we could return to "normality" any time soon.

[Xenos]

Here’s all the symptomatic breakthroughs. It’s not a bad percentage. Though I would like to see a breakdown state by state to compare.

https://news.yahoo.com/symptomatic-breakthrough-covid-19-infections-110109222.html

Quote

With more than 156 million Americans fully vaccinated, nationwide, approximately 153,000 symptomatic breakthrough cases are estimated to have occurred as of last week, representing approximately 0.098% of those fully vaccinated, according to an unpublished internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document obtained by ABC News. These estimates reflect only the adult population and do not include asymptomatic breakthrough infections.

 

Edited July 27, 2021 by Xenos

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

3 hours ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

At a societal level, getting to herd immunity through vaccination alone, yeah. But we've also gotten more than half the population vaccinated to some degree or another. And in a few months from now when children can be vaccinated, this is going to be almost exclusively a pandemic of the unvaccinated (it's pretty much there already). 

So if you're young and don't work in healthcare or have a bunch of expected healthcare issues coming up, once you've got your shots this doesn't have to impact you. So for a lot of Americans, isn't that mostly a success? Close enough?

This is going to sound selfish, but man I don't want to go back to wearing a mask. I masked up for A YEAR. I stayed inside for A YEAR to avoid doing this crap again. If this keeps up, I have no doubts Oregon will once again put up a mask mandate, which, and again this is going to sound really stupid and selfish, completely ruins the experience I have going to the gym and playing outdoor sports.

So in a VERY SMALL completely selfish way, it does impact me - not for health reasons, just for convenience reasons.

[MWil23]

5 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

This is going to sound selfish, but man I don't want to go back to wearing a mask. I masked up for A YEAR. I stayed inside for A YEAR to avoid doing this crap again. If this keeps up, I have no doubts Oregon will once again put up a mask mandate, which, and again this is going to sound really stupid and selfish, completely ruins the experience I have going to the gym and playing outdoor sports.

So in a VERY SMALL completely selfish way, it does impact me - not for health reasons, just for convenience reasons.

[JonStark]

5 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

This is going to sound selfish, but man I don't want to go back to wearing a mask. I masked up for A YEAR. I stayed inside for A YEAR to avoid doing this crap again. If this keeps up, I have no doubts Oregon will once again put up a mask mandate, which, and again this is going to sound really stupid and selfish, completely ruins the experience I have going to the gym and playing outdoor sports.

So in a VERY SMALL completely selfish way, it does impact me - not for health reasons, just for convenience reasons.

I don't understand how they could go back to a mask mandate. Wouldn't that essentially be telling people that the vaccines don't work? What incentive would people have to go get vaccinated if we're back to wearing masks anyway? 

[ramssuperbowl99]

7 hours ago, TheKillerNacho said:

Biggest issue here... mutations.

We've already seen the Delta variant, which is able to infect the vaccinated at a higher degree and is significantly more contagious overall.

This will never be a "pandemic only of the vunnaccinated". Although the anti-vaxxers would love to clamor the rhetoric that a "vaccinated person shouldn't worry if I'm unvaccinated", this is only true by the flimsiest of logic. Every spread of the infection from unvaxxed individuals adds to the chance of mutation. Mutation that can and will get past the vaccines and elongate the pandemic as a whole. I had COVID19 in the early stages and got the vaccine anyway. Antibodies from COVID simply do not protect you from contracting and spreading the virus again as well as the vaccines do, and not nearly as long.

Complete herd Immunity, meanwhile, would stop the virus and all of its mutations in its tracks, however. It's the only way we could return to "normality" any time soon.

For Pfizer/Moderna, the Delta variant isn't really a concern. And in a few months with boosters, we won't even need to qualify which vaccine you got. There's some breakthrough, but it's negligible. And even then, it's mild illness. 

Obviously it sucks that we aren't getting to herd immunity, but in terms of versions of success, if we can still go outside and do the things we want to do, with only risk of mild illness, that's a win. We'd have all taken that a year ago.

5 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

This is going to sound selfish, but man I don't want to go back to wearing a mask. I masked up for A YEAR. I stayed inside for A YEAR to avoid doing this crap again. If this keeps up, I have no doubts Oregon will once again put up a mask mandate, which, and again this is going to sound really stupid and selfish, completely ruins the experience I have going to the gym and playing outdoor sports.

So in a VERY SMALL completely selfish way, it does impact me - not for health reasons, just for convenience reasons.

Maybe I'm just completely out of rope with this, but I'm not only skeptical mask mandates would come back, but even if they did, I'd imagine compliance would be so low you could get away with just not wearing one unless it was a requirement of your job or something.

[TheKillerNacho]

28 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

For Pfizer/Moderna, the Delta variant isn't really a concern. And in a few months with boosters, we won't even need to qualify which vaccine you got. There's some breakthrough, but it's negligible. And even then, it's mild illness. 

Obviously it sucks that we aren't getting to herd immunity, but in terms of versions of success, if we can still go outside and do the things we want to do, with only risk of mild illness, that's a win. We'd have all taken that a year ago.

Maybe I'm just completely out of rope with this, but I'm not only skeptical mask mandates would come back, but even if they did, I'd imagine compliance would be so low you could get away with just not wearing one unless it was a requirement of your job or something.

The Delta variant isn't a huge concern for these vaccines but it's conceivable a new mutation will be. Which is why unvaxxed people are a problem. The more they keep passing it along to eachother the more mutations there will be, with one eventually affecting those who are vaccinated. It's  only a matter of time if herd immunity isn't achieved.

[ramssuperbowl99]

44 minutes ago, TheKillerNacho said:

The Delta variant isn't a huge concern for these vaccines but it's conceivable a new mutation will be. Which is why unvaxxed people are a problem. The more they keep passing it along to eachother the more mutations there will be, with one eventually affecting those who are vaccinated. It's  only a matter of time if herd immunity isn't achieved.

We've seen dozens of variants, all seemingly reliant on very similar spike protein design. So yes the possibility exists, but to me the number of variants we see without notable breakthrough is a positive, not a negative.