uziq
Member
+493|3672
120 deaths a day is a fraction of the death toll this time last year with comparable case numbers. so, erm, it really seems like vaccines make a significant difference ... which is something you weirdly keep trying to call into question.

covid is never going away. we are never going to extirpate it. making a country of 60 million stay at home because of 100 deaths a day is not good public health policy. it WAS good policy when there was no hypothetical limit to daily death numbers, and when the prospect of hospitals being overwhelmed was a very real one. that was the right circumstance for EMERGENCY lockdown measures. now we have widespread vaccination that provides increased immunity to people across all age brackets.

amazing how you fail to grasp this.

if the UK can nail our winter 2021 booster shots as well as we nailed the initial vaccine rollout (after doing much very badly, it must be said), then we will be well on our way to properly taming this pandemic. once again: 100 deaths a day with 40,000-50,000 cases is a significant difference to this time last year. with mask-wearing mandates this winter and prudent controls on large indoor gatherings (a lack of which has driven an avoidable spike in case numbers -- but not deaths, importantly), we could have our case/death numbers much more in line with the rest of western europe.

the picture is actually rather promising for any country that has its head together and good organization. but you seem to think we are still hopelessly lost and don't have any means at our disposal other than lockdowns and isolation. 'vaccines might become marginally effective given enough time'. no. that's not what the data says. vaccines work and they work in a big way. lockdowns do not work as effectively against the delta variant and are an increasingly costly way of buying time ... for more vaccination.

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-18 02:38:32)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6992|PNW

Who posts minions memes anymore?
uziq
Member
+493|3672
i think the medium-term future should focus on getting vaccines distributed globally. there will inevitably be some tussling over this issue, as we have seen with 2/3 of the major and widely tested vaccines (AZ and pfizer) that effectivity does drop off against the delta variant within a year. that means many western nations will soon be putting themselves (again) at the front of the queue for new vaccine combos or boosters. alternating an mRNA with a traditional trace vaccine like AZ/J&J seems to give very promising robust protection for 12+ months.

but vaccination is still overwhelmingly the most salient (ahem saline) part of this pandemic response. highly vaccinated nations can take further measures like mask wearing, limited large indoor gatherings, frequent testing in high-risk environments, etc. in order to keep the r-rate of transmission low. but that r-rate, in the post-delta world, will be devilishly hard to return to near-zero levels. 'living with covid' is the new paradigm. and thank god for, again, highly effective vaccines and now provably effective boosters.

international travel should be tightly controlled from areas with low vaccination/high case numbers. seems prudent to me. but to ban all travel indefinitely, when there are quarantine+tracing regimes which provably have worked in nations like RoK/taiwan, again seems purely excessive. to pursue a strategy of 'zero ingressing cases forever' is not realistic. even states like new zealand will gradually come to abandon such an approach when they have bolstered their vaccination figures.

people are burnt out with this pandemic, even in notoriously group-oriented and collectivist cultures like korea, where obedience and peer-pressure to the state line are the norm and rebellion/protest/freedom-loving rank nowhere on the social agenda. businesses are tired. workers are tired. most economies that made the money machine go brrr for the last 18 months haven't even begun to reckon with the fiscal consequences. we are already seeing grumblings of large-scale labour market disruptions in the US, UK, and of serious slowdowns in places like china. shutting down the world for half a decade is not the optimal strategy and it's in the interests of far greater and far more significant matters than 'egotistical tourists' to return to business-as-usual.

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-18 04:15:53)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3940
Just got the New York Times alert... Colin Powell got taken out by COVID. He was 84.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6326|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

120 deaths a day is a fraction of the death toll this time last year with comparable case numbers. so, erm, it really seems like vaccines make a significant difference ... which is something you weirdly keep trying to call into question.

covid is never going away. we are never going to extirpate it. making a country of 60 million stay at home because of 100 deaths a day is not good public health policy. it WAS good policy when there was no hypothetical limit to daily death numbers, and when the prospect of hospitals being overwhelmed was a very real one. that was the right circumstance for EMERGENCY lockdown measures. now we have widespread vaccination that provides increased immunity to people across all age brackets.

amazing how you fail to grasp this.

if the UK can nail our winter 2021 booster shots as well as we nailed the initial vaccine rollout (after doing much very badly, it must be said), then we will be well on our way to properly taming this pandemic. once again: 100 deaths a day with 40,000-50,000 cases is a significant difference to this time last year. with mask-wearing mandates this winter and prudent controls on large indoor gatherings (a lack of which has driven an avoidable spike in case numbers -- but not deaths, importantly), we could have our case/death numbers much more in line with the rest of western europe.

the picture is actually rather promising for any country that has its head together and good organization. but you seem to think we are still hopelessly lost and don't have any means at our disposal other than lockdowns and isolation. 'vaccines might become marginally effective given enough time'. no. that's not what the data says. vaccines work and they work in a big way. lockdowns do not work as effectively against the delta variant and are an increasingly costly way of buying time ... for more vaccination.
If you could just sensibly control the borders you could eradicate covid and get out of lockdowns.

If the world could have just properly shut down and controlled travel for three months this would never have happened

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-10-18 05:47:30)

Fuck Israel
uziq
Member
+493|3672
no we could not eradicate covid. what the hell are you talking about dilbert? any nation that has more than 2,500 daily cases is way beyond the point of being able to perfectly contact trace all transmission. the UK could completely seal its borders for the next 12 months and wouldn't get the current case numbers down to 0. new zealand couldn't do it with case numbers in the LOW HUNDREDS for FUCK's sake.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s government acknowledged Monday what most other countries did long ago: It can no longer completely get rid of the coronavirus.

Despite New Zealand going into the strictest form of lockdown after just a single local case was detected, it ultimately wasn’t enough to crush the outbreak entirely.

One factor may have been that the disease spread among some groups that are typically more wary of authorities, including gang members and homeless people living in transitional housing.

The outbreak has grown to more than 1,300 cases, with 29 more detected on Monday. A few cases have been found outside of Auckland.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus- … c03418aeaf

even IF a country could domestically hoover up all its cases and return to perfect zero – which is a nigh-on impossibility – how would we keep the world neatly cleaved in half with absolutely no movement of people or goods for half a year or a year to effect this miracle scheme? we are not talking about tasmania, here; we are talking the GLOBAL SYSTEM. almost everything you buy and consume is grown, manufactured or transported through an area where covid is very not under control. vast swathes of every nation's economy is dependent upon the labour of 'grey market' people and goods. it's the case in california and the case in new zealand and the case in south korea where outbreaks are common in undocumented factory-slaving migrants. that's the world system we have devised and which we live in, and which we can't wish away with the swish of a magic wand.

new zealand and china, respectively, have used some of the most stringent lockdown measures of anywhere in the free or authoritarian world. neither have managed to eradicate covid. i repeat to you again: technocratic-authoritarian china and perfectly isolated remote island new zealand have failed to eradicate covid, from low case numbers.

it's like saying 'if we just locked down for half a year we could eradicate influenza'. there's a reason no one has ever seriously proposed this: because flu is a highly infectious airborne disease and the practical necessities of 'just sensibly controlling' the disease is pure fairy-tale stuff.

If the world could have just properly shut down and controlled travel for three months this would never have happened
this is literally the only contribution you've had to this topic in the last 12 months. it's inane childish wish-fulfillment. you truly sound like a man who has never been further than 100 metres away from his mother's left breast. keep handwringing with your shoulda-woulda-couldas. i'm very glad that we have actual virologists who can invent actually effective vaccines. you seem frankly way in over your head when it comes to dealing with highly complex problems like this. aren't engineers supposed to be problem solvers? 'let's just close down the world for 6 months and totally eradicate covid' is not a real fucking solution.

your proposal seriously amounts to 'if we could perfectly seal every border for an extended period and not allow ONE single positive case to get through, each country could somehow trace+isolate each one of its 2,500 or 25,000 or 75,000 daily cases and sort it. oh btw the entire world economy must effectively freeze whilst we do this'.  you are fucking INSANE my guy.

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-18 07:05:57)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3940

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Just got the New York Times alert... Colin Powell got taken out by COVID. He was 84.
If you have blood cancer you probably should be more careful even if you are vaxed.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6992|PNW

pirana6
Go Cougs!
+691|6511|Washington St.
My college football coach was just fired for not getting the vax after state mandates said all employees had until the 18th to get it.
Gave up millions of dollars.

Good riddance, the guy was a fucking idiot and not a very good football coach anyway.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3940
I can't be bothered to read the above argument about the black death. I did notice a similar post-pandemic effect though.

After the Black Death, the west went through a period of high wages and demand for material goods. Part of our current supply shortage is really high consumer demand.

2 years of pent up demand. I am not an environmentalist. High demand for consumer goods is um good.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6326|eXtreme to the maX
Not if they're imported - which they are - and imported from the nation which delivered the pandemic.
Fuck Israel
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3940
These consumer goods don't exist for their own sake. They represent people going about life and doing things. I bought two dress shirts for a political event. They were made overseas. The dress shirts help me go about career stuff.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6992|PNW

To the surprise of none,

Vaccine skeptics seize on Powell's death
https://news.yahoo.com/vaccine-skeptics … 38527.html

Tucker Carlson opened his prime-time Fox News program Monday evening by telling his viewers that Powell's death shows that they've "been lied to" about the vaccines' ability to quash the pandemic. "Vaccines may be highly useful for some people, but across the population, they do not solve covid," Carlson said.

Fox News's Will Cain declared Powell's death a "very high-profile example that's going to require more truth," implying doubts about the efficacy of the coronavirus vaccines.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who has frequently minimized the significance of covid, wrote on Twitter: "Post-vaccine breakthrough infection kills more people than Iraq's WMD's ever did," a reference to the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that were used by Powell, who led George W. Bush's State Department, and others as a reason to go to war in Iraq.

Powell, who was 84 and immunocompromised, fit perfectly into a demographic that remains vulnerable to infections despite vaccination. His age puts him at a higher risk for covid-19, and he was battling a blood cancer that's known to make vaccines less effective. He also suffered from Parkinson's disease.
Renowned disease experts Carlson, Cain, Gaetz.
pirana6
Go Cougs!
+691|6511|Washington St.
They know vaccines help, and those that don't get vaccinated are more likely to die - and even if they don't and get ill, they'll then have doubts on whoever said vaccines don't help.
So why do they continue to tell their base that vaccines don't help? They're only hurting themselves. Argue that vaccines shouldn't be mandatory, but that they are generally good, sure. But that they are effectively useless? Why?
Or is it that they don't really believe that but they know their base does and they're just pandering the same lies they already believe? In which case, WHO IS LEADING WHO?
uziq
Member
+493|3672
'vaccine skeptics' seize on the death of a person with CANCER of the WHITE BLOOD CELLS.

you couldn't make it up.

if there's any group particularly at risk of serious illness, it's people with cancer inside their immune systems.

their scientific illiteracy is approaching dibertius the third levels.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6326|eXtreme to the maX
My scientific literacy is fine.

Also its Dilbert the Tenth
Fuck Israel
uziq
Member
+493|3672
dilbert this video is your vibe 100%

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6326|eXtreme to the maX
Why? I'm not anti-vax.

Why are you anti-sensible restrictions?
Fuck Israel
uziq
Member
+493|3672
dilbert: medieval solutions.
dilbert: let's just close down everything for 3 months.
dilbert: 'sensible restrictions'.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6326|eXtreme to the maX
Medieval solutions just haven't worked for my state.

https://i.imgur.com/14c7lMm.png

Maybe Australia should 'learn to live' with stinkbugs.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-19/ … /100550654

Sensible solutions are stupid.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-10-19 22:42:23)

Fuck Israel
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3940
The pandemic is over. We have vaccines, antiviral pills, and monoclonal treatment. Get your vaccine, get your booster, and return to normalcy.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3940
Reddit thread about NYC requiring vaccines for public workers included a big part about unions refusing to mandate vaccines among their workers. The union's don't want to set a precedent about mandates. I suggested that in order to let the public worker union's save face, the government should increase pay and/or benefits in exchange for the mandate.

I obviously have a selfish agenda but I also got vaccinated as soon as I could and want my booster. Anyhow this is the response I got from my I think moderate position.
Their incentive is the paycheck they already get. They don't deserve further coddling or incentive to take a basic public health and safety measure espcecially since their job is already public health and safety. That they should recieve increased benefits or pay to do the right thing that they should already be doing is the precedent that should not be set.
I am not going to respond to that but want to hear what you guys think. I think people have given up enough the last two years. And if we really want to convince the vaccine holdouts to get shots, high-minded lectures about public health and the public good isn't going to do it. Pro-vax people should also avoid this culture war framing of the issue. It does nobody any good.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6992|PNW

I don't have it in my heart to be angry with people who may be simultaneously hoping for better pay and more people who go to get voluntarily vaccinated. I can't believe we're talking about "coddling workers" as if it were a bad thing right now when so many resources are in the white-knuckled grip of so few. I'd cheer if your teaching job suddenly paid 300k a year although obviously that's not going to happen.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3940
I don't think I am worth $300,000 but I would take it. I would buy a nice house and import a wife from Eastern Europe.

The "cuddling" public workers part is a trip. I am more annoyed about the aggression people are displaying towards non-vaxed people.

That Breitbart article about liberals wanting conservatives to die of COVID had a partial point. It was something like "Liberals are setting up a situation where you either get COVID or feel like a cuck for giving into their demands". The guy who said "their incentive is their paycheck" is contributing to that feeling.

Yes, it sucks that there are people who can't even be bothered to help themselves but it is important that people don't feel bullied or come down upon. This is basic classroom management worker management. Combining mandates with better work conditions or pay is a good way for everyone to 'save face'. But instead we seem to be doing culture war and authoritarianism.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg

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