| Alex1138[m] | worldwide it's on the upper end of 5 million | 00:00 |
|---|---|---|
| Alex1138[m] | and obviously that being just official, actual number is surely higher | 00:00 |
| ecks | of course you can take reasonable precaution to minimize the effect but even if the RRR is huge, the ARR remains small-to-neglible | 00:00 |
| Tuvix | It's avoidable is the rub. If we had a vacine against opoid deaths, it would be some kind of a medical miracle. | 00:00 |
| Alex1138[m] | + whatever number are those are unrelated medical emergencies that didn't get treated | 00:00 |
| Tuvix | You seem to be advocating against the vaccines, becuase they're highly effective with side-effects evaluated to be much less worse than outcomes otherwise. I'm tryhing to find out why. | 00:01 |
| ecks | don't think i've mentioned vaccines once | 00:01 |
| Tuvix | You say this is an "acceptable" level of detah. Is it there for acceptable for my figurative gunman (note I in no way advocate gun violence, this is just a comparison) going and killing 2 children in each state? | 00:01 |
| Alex1138[m] | s/+/plus/ | 00:01 |
| Tuvix | Look, you can't talk about the rate of death being acceptable unless we compare the alternatives. | 00:01 |
| ecks | strawman | 00:01 |
| Tuvix | The alternative is a highly accessible vaccine, so it is very relevant. | 00:02 |
| Tuvix | The risk of the vaccine would have to be worse than the death, hospitalization impact, and long-term disease impact on youth that we're still learning about each month. | 00:02 |
| Tuvix | There's been quite a lot of discussion of this in the medical community as a requirement to authorize the vaccine. | 00:02 |
| dTal | Yeah there's no such thing as an "acceptable" death. Only "acceptable, given the cost of avoiding it". | 00:03 |
| Tuvix | And it's not really a strawman argument to compare death by a different mechanism. Obviously to reduce actual youth gun deaths is a lot harder than a vaccination; we'd somehow need a vaccine against, what, antisocial and violent behavior? | 00:03 |
| ecks | yes, vaccines reduce mortality and complications from covid. yes, preventing deaths is good. yes, there's a significant RRR with vaccines. | 00:03 |
| oerheks | highly accessible vaccine, only in the west ... | 00:04 |
| xx | dTal: pretty sure there are acceptable deaths | 00:04 |
| dTal | no you | 00:04 |
| Tuvix | So, what's the argument for not working to get the US's astongishingly low vaccination uptake rate in the 12-18 year olds and 5-11 year olds to match the rest of the Global West, including Europe? | 00:04 |
| xx | even deaths that are intentionally not being avoided, e.g. any armed conflict | 00:04 |
| oerheks | ehm, 5-11 year olds ?? | 00:04 |
| Tuvix | 5-11 are the most recently approved age-group for the Pfizer vaccine, yes. | 00:05 |
| ecks | you can argue for vaccine mandates, of course, but you have to weigh bodily autonomy against ARR | 00:05 |
| Tuvix | The 12-17 year olds had access much earlier, and there was a lot of very specific medical analysis of the VE, IRR, and side-effects as compard to the disease impacts in that youngest age-group. | 00:05 |
| Tuvix | Nevermind mandates; uptake in other places has been higher despite many of them not having requirements. | 00:05 |
| Tuvix | It's more socially acceptable, and as a result, they have far lower detahs compared to the US. | 00:06 |
| Tuvix | The US is seeing 70% of the worst peak during Omicron, a figure far higher than our peers. | 00:06 |
| dTal | Always worth mentioning that the long term side effects of covid are not fully known, but there are many worrying signs | 00:06 |
| dTal | death count does not paint the full picture | 00:07 |
| Tuvix | America is still "Number One" in this regard. Highest ratio of Omicron detahs compared to prior pandemic peaks. I put forth that this is a bad thing to be world leader in among mondern wealthy countries. | 00:07 |
| Tuvix | Well, hospital impact too; we've been largley slammed with a healthcare system quite at the brink, again, a metric genrally not seen this bad when compared to our peers. | 00:07 |
| Tuvix | NYTimes had a really good summary of this, and a lot of the factors involved, and I highly recommend this article for some broader context: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/01/science/covid-deaths-united-states.html | 00:08 |
| xx | does america really have peers to compare to though? | 00:08 |
| xx | it's a very unique place | 00:08 |
| Tuvix | Also this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/05/responding-pandemic-biology-matters-so-does-trust/ | 00:08 |
| ecks | of course it would be desirable to have a higher vaccination rate in all eligible age groups | 00:08 |
| ecks | no one is arguing against that | 00:08 |
| Tuvix | The comparison I'm drawing between age-groups is which ones are more impacted by the pandemic as compared by the waves. | 00:12 |
| Tuvix | Saying "well it's so small" is a pointless argument; why did the youth die twice as much in Delta, but the oldest 4 age-groups died less? That's a trend, and a very pronounced one matching up across multiple age-groups that is clearly not just a data artifact due to lower IRR values. | 00:13 |
| ecks | and again, even if the relative risk difference is significant, you cannot just ignore the absolute risk | 00:13 |
| Tuvix | It's a trend, and the cause seems to largely be higher vaccination rates as you pass the 40+ mark. I have a log-scale chart from the provisional death data-set: https://imgur.com/pgrt7d1 | 00:14 |
| Tuvix | So, what's your point exactly? I'm suggesting that the US under-vaccinating the lowest 3 to 4 age-groups relative to other similar nations in terms of economic power is a drawback and causing more death. | 00:14 |
| Tuvix | Not just death mind you; that's just the most trivial symptom to plot. Hospitalizations and long-term effects are piling up in each month's papers that get published. | 00:16 |
| Tuvix | An interesting thing to not on that log-scale graph I linked is that the trend of twice the death in Delta vs. Alpha waves in the US is very consistent among all 4 of the youngest age-groups, which includes the under-50's. | 00:19 |
| ecks | certainly true if you look at the relative numbers but in terms of absolute numbers it's rather significant in the big picture. I don't think it's really productive to highlight how "dangerous" the omicron wave is to 0-17yos compared to alpha or delta or whatever because in terms of absolute risk it's neglible. the odds of being struck by lightning is on the same magnitude as a child dying in alpha/delta/omicron | 00:19 |
| Tuvix | And if we had a vaccine to vastly reduce the risk of being hit by lightning, that sounds nice. I've been less than 2 minutes from being struck myself, with an umbrella exactly at the location that would be hit had I been there 90 seconds later. | 00:21 |
| Tuvix | We don't have a highly effective and safe vaccine against these things. If my asking you to consider the cause of death is a strawman argument, according to you, this clearly is too. | 00:21 |
| ecks | in a large population, small percentages will always look scary | 00:23 |
| dTal | my mum always told me to stay out of water and avoid high place during a thunderstorm | 00:24 |
| xx | Tuvix: we have something better than a vaccine - not being out while there's a storm | 00:24 |
| Tuvix | I've asked what your point is, and you keep saying that it's "not so bad." Omicron is just as bad (slightly worse actually) than Alpha in the under-40's by impact. A big part of my comparing this data is to counter the seemingly false-narrative that Omicron is "more mild." By case-incidence? Yes. By death impact? Nope, Omicron is in fact *worse* (depending on age-group of course.) | 00:24 |
| dTal | the risk of being struck by lightning is clearly not so negligible that parents don't worry about it | 00:24 |
| Tuvix | Sure, I wasn't ever allowed to fly kites when storms were predicted. | 00:25 |
| xx | this whole argument about omicron vs delta vs whatever, which one is more bad, is just weird. They are all bad. | 00:25 |
| ecks | I'd say 0.0001% sounds quite good actually | 00:25 |
| xx | like all infectious diseases are bad, and we should be taking steps to prevent infections instead of just letting it do whatever | 00:25 |
| ecks | I'd trade that for freedom any day | 00:25 |
| Tuvix | And measles? That's a required vaccination. | 00:26 |
| xx | we were so close to eradicating measles... | 00:26 |
| Tuvix | If "freedom" means the ability to avoid vaccination, why stop at COVID? Why not bring back diseases we'd previously been on the global erradication list for? In fact, the US has done just that, by poor decisions that lead to issues on the global stage: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31790030 | 00:27 |
| ecks | measles has a mortality rate of something like 0.01% | 00:28 |
| ecks | that's two orders of magnitude more than covid-19 in this population | 00:28 |
| ecks | it's not even remotely comparable | 00:28 |
| ecks | no, sorry, 0.1% | 00:29 |
| ecks | three orders of magnitude | 00:29 |
| Tuvix | 0.0793 mortality rate for COVID among infected individuals, per JAMA network, though this is pre-omicron. | 00:29 |
| Tuvix | Yes, Omicron is less fatal by *case* incidence, but remember there's a lot more of it around. | 00:30 |
| ecks | I'm talking about the underage population | 00:30 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Michael Lin, MD PhD (@michaelzlin): Novavax says reactogenicity (side effect profile) in adolescents is similar or milder than adults. The same was said for Pfizer (cdc.gov/vaccines/covid…). Then we can compare adult side effect distributions below pic.twitter.com/65uPuU6OIg → https://twitter.com/michaelzlin/status/1491915047349592064 | 00:30 |
| Tuvix | So am I. | 00:30 |
| Tuvix | https://imgur.com/TIN0BKa | 00:31 |
| Tuvix | CNN does a decent job vetting their sources, and cites the source (though not the actual data used) so I feel reasonably comfortable linking this despite not having the data from JAMA at my fingertips yet. | 00:32 |
| Tuvix | 6.1% * 1.3% (of the death among the hospitalized) ≈ 0.08% | 00:32 |
| Tuvix | If your 0.01% figure for measles is accurate, COVID, pre-Delta is worse. | 00:32 |
| Tuvix | But the "freedom" argument suggests to me that you're implying all such restrictions on freedom are somehow not permitted. The 1905 SCOTUS Jacobson v. Mass case made it very clear this is not the case. | 00:33 |
| ecks | i mean, your earlier graphs said ~60 deaths in ~60 million people in 1 month. that's 1/1000000/month, or 0.0001%. of course that's given 100% of the population is infected. | 00:34 |
| Tuvix | In fact, in the US, a number of lower courts have used that very same 1905 ruling as the basis for prior case-law, and no higher-court (appeals, state, or SCOTUS itself) has overturned any of those rulings. | 00:34 |
| Tuvix | The CNN data is based on infections, but let's be honest here, anyone uninfected yet is almost sure to get it as Omicron continues to spread, it'll just take some time. | 00:34 |
| Tuvix | Well, JAMA data, CNN is just producing it with some fancy graphics. | 00:35 |
| ecks | let's say 1% of the population was infected that month, that brings the fatality rate to 0.01%. still not even close | 00:35 |
| ecks | and 1% is an incredible conservative estimate given omicron's huge spread in the past month | 00:36 |
| Tuvix | This argument is very silly. YOu seem to be basing your entier reason to avoid pushing for more vaccines (and I never said a mandate, although you did. | 00:37 |
| Tuvix | I simply said to work to get more vaccinated. YOu seem to be basing your whole point on "freedom", which I guess is the freedom to increase the rate of dying from this by an order of magnitude, despite the highly safe and effective vaccines we have. You're free to take such a position, but if your best argument is that it's not technically illegal to do, that seems a fairly weak position to me. | 00:38 |
| ecks | i think it's incredibly good to put all these numbers in a context among all the hysteria | 00:38 |
| Tuvix | What exaclty are you proposing? | 00:38 |
| Tuvix | To avoid vaccinating the youth? | 00:38 |
| Tuvix | You've been very clear what you're against here, and we're going in circles. What are you for, exactly? | 00:39 |
| ecks | I'm for not abusing statistics | 00:39 |
| Tuvix | The log graph is specifically designed to show trends. | 00:39 |
| Tuvix | Calling Omicron "more mild" is, from where I sit, also an abuse of statistics. | 00:39 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Michael Lin, MD PhD (@michaelzlin): Teen rates of vaccination are only 57% in the US, lower than older ages. So there's a lot of room for improvement.news.northeastern.edu/2022/02/08/chi… → https://twitter.com/michaelzlin/status/1491918065935675394 | 00:39 |
| Tuvix | Saying that the death-to-case-rate is lower with Omicron is true, but really needs to include the risk of death along with that or it's also very dishonest. | 00:40 |
| ecks | yeah, and the risk of death is astronomically low | 00:40 |
| Tuvix | I'm also compring trends across _all_ age groups. This rise in deaths over Delta is true in all groups up to 50. | 00:41 |
| * Tuvix sighs. | 00:41 | |
| Timvde | Tuvix: rise of omicron deaths compared to delta? | 00:47 |
| Tuvix | Crap, the chart I linked earlier for youth was very wrong; the _vaccinated_ was highly inflated becuase I mistakenly used the SUM function, not AVG. | 00:47 |
| Timvde | That's not what we're seeing here tbh, but we do have high vaccination rate | 00:48 |
| Tuvix | Vaccines are about 4-5x more effective than shown, because of the summation vs. MMWR week averaging. My mistake. | 00:48 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Michael Lin, MD PhD (@michaelzlin): While we still don't know about rare side effects like myocarditis (due to low n), it may be useful to have Novavax as an option for nervous parents who can be reassured that it is a protein + adjuvant formulation similar to annual flu vaccines and [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/michaelzlin/status/1491918067214868480 | 00:49 |
| Tuvix | Timvde: No, a slight rise in Omicron deaths compared to Alpha in the youngest age-groups. | 00:49 |
| Tuvix | ie: this winter's death toll vs. last winter's (before vaccines) | 00:49 |
| ecks | so omicron is milder than delta, both in terms of deaths/cases and deaths/population? | 00:50 |
| Tuvix | Nope, more deaths total in the US. | 00:51 |
| Tuvix | https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases_7daydeathsper100k | 00:51 |
| Tuvix | By quite a bit. | 00:51 |
| Tuvix | In places that are *not* the US, they're seeing far less Omicron deaths, largley due to vaccination rates and some mitigation measures more socially acceptable. | 00:51 |
| Tuvix | OWID make this very easy to compare. | 00:52 |
| Tuvix | https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-08-31..2021-12-13&uniformYAxis=0&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Cases+and+deaths&country=USA~GBR | 00:52 |
| Tuvix | https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-08-31..2021-12-13&Metric=Vaccine+doses%2C+cases%2C+ICU+patients%2C+and+deaths&country=USA~GBR | 00:52 |
| Tuvix | The US was, for a time before Delta, doing better in per-capita death rates than the UK, although were were very close between our 2 nations. | 00:52 |
| ecks | in the 0-17 population, that us | 00:52 |
| ecks | that is* | 00:52 |
| Tuvix | Reduced rates of Omicron's peak (we think, keep in mind the Jan data is still missing some counts due to lag, but unlikely to grow by 40% to come close to Delta.) Vaccines being available obviously count for some of that, as do mitigations to some degree. Case-incidence may help as well, although data seems to show that schools may be less likely a source of spread compared to the general population. | 00:55 |
| Tuvix | Now it's hard to say what all drives that; is it due to the extra care taken in a classroom setting by most teachers? We'd hope teachers are doing a better job of mitigation, testing, and so on, but conversely that means we in non K-12 schools are doing a collectively worse job with testing, masking, staying home when ill, and so on. | 00:56 |
| Tuvix | Keep in mind better than Delta is relative, becuase in the youngest 3 age-groups (put another way, the under-40 year olds) are all doing slightly worse comparing peak Omicron deaths to peak Alpha deaths. | 00:57 |
| Tuvix | And sadly, this is with the benefit of vaccines. | 00:58 |
| Brainstorm | New from r/COVID19: COVID19: Assessment of Sequelae of COVID-19 Nearly 1 Year After Diagnosis → https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/spk1cm/assessment_of_sequelae_of_covid19_nearly_1_year/ | 00:58 |
| Tuvix | Corrected IRR comparison, fixing my earlier plot function flaw: https://imgur.com/6RK3Wze | 01:01 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for United Kingdom: +162640 cases, +205 deaths since 22 hours ago — France: +299785 cases, +616 deaths since 22 hours ago — Switzerland: +31 deaths since 22 hours ago | 01:02 |
| LjL | ecks, Arsanerit, Tuvix: just so we're all vaguely on the same page or at least so that *i* know what you were talking about, earlier when "50 deaths" were mentioned in the 0-17 year old population, was that in total, was that over 100k, was the in one million? was it during Omicron, or since when? ecks' calculated very low percentage would be wrong, right? because i think that kind of does make a difference between whether the vaccine is a no-brainer for those age | 01:07 |
| LjL | groups, or one really should have a big hard look at the adverse event ratio from the vaccine vs covid | 01:07 |
| Tuvix | 50 is a raw value (peak was 106 during Delta.) I included the measure on both linked charts, see the 'Measure' selection on the left-pane. | 01:11 |
| LjL | Tuvix, as opposed to peak, so per day? | 01:11 |
| LjL | per month? | 01:12 |
| Tuvix | Monthly vaues, but now if we're going to talk adverse events, great, let's be upfront and honest that this involves *all* the adverse events from COVID too. | 01:12 |
| LjL | i'm not prepared for such a broad discussion, i butted in at the point where you said specifically "One of the most often-cited reasons is myocarditis, except the risk of that is quite a bit worse from catching COVID as an unvaccianted immune-naive individual than from the vaccine, by an order of magnitude" because i believe that's just not true by the data i have on those age groups | 01:13 |
| LjL | sure, there are many more outcomes to look at | 01:13 |
| LjL | not denying that, but that's a specific claim and i think we have both seen the studies where that claim is falsified ;( | 01:14 |
| Tuvix | The MMWR that discussed the Pfizer approval specifically looking into that. I think I have a very intersting op-ed with several dozen citations the bot spat out a couple weeks ago that dives into the issue of vaccines in youth, quite fully. | 01:15 |
| Tuvix | Be sure to read this with the author's very intentional tongue-in-cheek intent: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-cant-we-discuss-this-taboo-topic-everyone-is-talking-about/ | 01:17 |
| Tuvix | That one links this article as well, with links to multiple studies: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/vaccine-myocarditis-an-update/ | 01:18 |
| Tuvix | https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/children-underlying-conditions-and-covid-19/ says, "If 20% of decedents were healthy, this means that around 161 healthy children have died of COVID-19 in the USA. 161 dead children isn’t nothing – at least I feel that way. It’s less than the number of children who drown per year, but it’s more than the number of children who die from school shootings or bike | 01:20 |
| Tuvix | accidents each year, as well as from other multiple other vaccine-preventable diseases before vaccines were available." | 01:20 |
| Tuvix | "Healthy children are also at risk for hospitalization, and some hospitalized children are extremely sick, needing mechanical ventilation. Other children may feel sick, some for weeks. We need to be humble about the possibility of long-term consequences we cannot currently appreciate." | 01:22 |
| LjL | "Though the short-term outcomes for adolescents seems reassuring so far, individuals with vaccine-myocarditis had chest pain and many had shortness of breath. Though most recovered, about 25% had persistent symptoms at last follow-up. They had markers of cardiac injury and are almost always admitted to the hospital. As myocarditis can cause scarring, the potential for arrhythmias exists later in life and affected individuals will have to be monitored over the | 01:29 |
| LjL | long-term." | 01:29 |
| LjL | "Additionally, affected individuals are advised to avoid strenuous physical activity for several months. As such, vaccine-myocarditis should not be trivialized." | 01:29 |
| LjL | i guess your article contains the main message i want to get across | 01:29 |
| LjL | as to the exact numbers, i can't compare vaccine vs covid myocarditis while at the same time making broad comparison to deaths by drowning and shooting, really. i'm sure you know the articles you cited better than i know the articles i could cite from Zotero with indications that vaccine myocarditis rates and covid myocarditis incidence are at least similar, and there may be a lot more subtleties associated with that, so i won't push the point | 01:31 |
| Tuvix | And yet the risk is still lower than that from catching COVID, reported previously (I'd have to dig up the report this is from, I can get to it later tonight or tomorrow if it matters) is ~12/100k. The 2022 NEJM puts the Israeli risk for 12-15 year olds or 404.4k at 18 cases were reported requiring hospitalization. | 01:32 |
| Tuvix | So, 4.45/100k (18/4.044) vs. 12.<decimal-value-I've-forgotten> , I want to say 12.7, but this was mid-2021, so presmably Alpha or Delta, if that matters.) | 01:33 |
| Tuvix | If the newer NEJM / Israeli data is true, now it's closer to 3x, not an order of magnitude. Still worse to get COVID if that's the primary reason to be worried about the vaccines. I'm certainly not trying to travialize the risk, but put it in *perspective* (as the earlier chatter was attempting to make a big point about wrt. the incidence rates.) | 01:34 |
| Tuvix | Yes, it is a risk. Yes, there's a growing amount of data Moderna has a higher risk than Pfizer here (but this won't apply to children; the 18-30 age-group may indeed want to consider this when selecting a vaccination.) | 01:35 |
| Tuvix | Now, boosters? There's good reason to demand more data here, and nothing I've said would go against applying caution given the 0.56/100k (1st dose) vs. 8.09/100k (2nd dose) in the Israeli trial. Is the 3rd more lik the 1st or the 2nd? Are the same people impacted previously more at risk? We could really use more data here. WHO is even calling for more data! | 01:42 |
| Tuvix | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/18/who-says-theres-no-evidence-healthy-children-adolescents-need-covid-boosters.html | 01:42 |
| LjL | Tuvix, i don't know if different countries' studies have found different degrees of risk for whatever reason, but the study i can recall the best about this (since it alarmed me a bit) is https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v1 based on the UK population, where Moderna's 2nd dose seemed to be worringly high on young males, but also the 2nd dose of Pfizer/BNT wasn't lower than COVID-caused myocarditis | 01:47 |
| LjL | and indeed, boosters worry me, since the data on a Moderna booster was missing entirely there (likely not enough people got it) | 01:47 |
| LjL | i am aware that Moderna is already mostly being "shunned" for younger people, and... i think that's good, tbh, given this | 01:47 |
| Tuvix | Yea, the Israeli study I cited above noted the CDC's referenced trial had far fewer participants, vs 404k. | 01:48 |
| Tuvix | (for Pfizer, specifically.) | 01:48 |
| LjL | but even with non-Moderna, the rates may be comparable to rates from COVID, maybe not all the studies found this, but the ones in the UK and iirc one from Scandinavia found similar rates, while another one found lower ones | 01:48 |
| Tuvix | Although if the rates are similar, and a vaccine significantly reduces the odds of catching it in the wild, there's even perhaps an argument to be made for knowing "when to take it easy" so to speak. | 01:49 |
| Tuvix | If you are recommended to take it easy due to the possible risk, while still perhaps marginally lower than catching the disease unprepared, you don't really know WHEN you're going to come down with it. | 01:49 |
| Tuvix | You could even be fighting infection for several days before tesing positive, and that's assuming you test daily. | 01:49 |
| LjL | Tuvix, on "taking it easy" i could go on a rant, because de-facto has said for ages that exercise should be limited for a while after the vaccines, and apparently at least some doctors tell that to people *in Germany* when giving them the vaccine, but no one is ever told that here | 01:51 |
| LjL | and that pisses me off | 01:51 |
| LjL | are we not avoiding avoidable risk simply because telling people that they should take it easy for a while may make them scared of the vaccine? that would be asinine. | 01:51 |
| Tuvix | Is that based on some guidance that doesn't take into account some of the more recent findings? Sometimes the general public PR messaging is slow to get updated, worse where doing so requires a good amount of red-tape. | 01:52 |
| Tuvix | I've been a bit surprised at the lack of information provided in some situations; my sister had a child last fall, and moved previously during 2021. Her new OB seemed, at least as my sister reported her experience, to be under-reporting the risk to her of being pregnant and giving birth while having COVID. | 01:55 |
| Tuvix | My sister had already done her reserach and her prior OB had made it very clear she absolutely should be vaccinated; there's plenty of data at this point showing poor outcomes, including stillbirths, are much worse in unvaccinated COVID-positive mothers. | 01:56 |
| LjL | Tuvix, i just know that de-facto has been saying it for *ages* and i've been agreeing for at least "half ages" and they're still not saying it | 01:56 |
| Tuvix | But, this is related to your comment above on the risks of vaccination too, so this seems to be a trend on *both* sides of the medical messaging aisle. | 01:56 |
| Brainstorm | New from Reddit (test): nCoV: Johnson & Johnson quietly halted production of its COVID-19 vaccines | 08FEB22 → https://old.reddit.com/r/nCoV/comments/splm3v/johnson_johnson_quietly_halted_production_of_its/ | 01:56 |
| Tuvix | In other words, I'm not sure it's just one "thing" or set of things getting missed. Why would my sister's new OB not stress how bad the outcomes are for un/under vaccinated mothers? Brainstorm had an article about that just this past day IIRC. | 01:57 |
| Tuvix | Not every doctor is going to be the same in this regard though, but some national-level consistency could go a long way. For instance, making the risk of all options more clear, be it remaining unvaccianted, unboosted, or selecting from available vaccines based on an individual's risk factor, both medical and percieved risk. | 01:58 |
| Tuvix | Maybe that's what you're driving at? That we need more than every doctor kind of making it up as they go along? | 01:58 |
| Tuvix | More worringly, some states in the US are moving the opposite direction, making it harder for obviously bad medical science to go unchecked by raising the bar to medical board action against doctors doing things like perscribing unproven treatments for average patients (not those enrolled in trials) | 01:59 |
| Tuvix | One of a couple recent pregnancy articles from the bot the past few days: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220208/covid-increases-risk-of-pregnancy-complications-study-says | 02:03 |
| * xx advises everyone to not get pregnant during a pandemic | 02:03 | |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Canada: +11832 cases, +131 deaths, +57758 tests (4.7% positive) since 23 hours ago — Netherlands: +86809 cases since 19 hours ago | 02:04 |
| Brainstorm | New from r/COVID19: COVID19: Photodynamic and Contact Killing Polymeric Fabric Coating for Bacteria and SARS-CoV-2 → https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/spm9m8/photodynamic_and_contact_killing_polymeric_fabric/ | 02:25 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for United Kingdom: +162688 cases since 23 hours ago | 03:07 |
| Brainstorm | New from Novavax: (news): Novavax Statement on First Administration of its COVID-19 Vaccine in Australia → https://ir.novavax.com/Novavax-Statement-on-First-Administration-of-its-COVID-19-Vaccine-in-Australia | 03:12 |
| LjL | %title https://www.businessinsider.com/johnson-and-johnson-to-shut-down-coronavirus-vaccine-production-report-2022-2 | 03:22 |
| Brainstorm | LjL: From www.businessinsider.com: Johnson & Johnson Pauses COVID-19 Vaccine Production: Report | 03:22 |
| LjL | the title i see is "Johnson & Johnson quietly halted production of its COVID-19 vaccines: NYT" | 03:22 |
| LjL | but whatever, Brainstorm | 03:22 |
| xx | I'm unsure why they include the word "quietly" there. What would they expect instead? | 03:24 |
| xx | seems superflous | 03:24 |
| xx | but maybe I've just been dealing with far too many conspiracy theorists, which always associate 'quiet' with 'covert' or 'secret' | 03:24 |
| LjL | the NYT headline is "J.&J. Pauses Production of Its Covid Vaccine Despite Persistent Need" and that's what i'm putting into Zotero | 03:25 |
| LjL | i'm not sure what persistent need there is in reality | 03:25 |
| xx | "J.&J." also looks odd | 03:25 |
| LjL | not saying there isn't, as i'm really not aware of what the many countries on this planet are doing. i'm just not sure | 03:25 |
| LjL | house style guidelines maybe | 03:26 |
| LjL | it's tagged "Janssen" in Zotero :P | 03:26 |
| LjL | just Pfi- i mean BNT is tagged BioNTech... | 03:26 |
| * LjL looks around part-lost part-innocently | 03:26 | |
| xx | oh no let's not start this "what's the *actual* name of the vaccine" again | 03:26 |
| LjL | okok | 03:27 |
| LjL | tbh i wouldn't mind if Zotero had a synonym feature for tags | 03:28 |
| LjL | but not only it doesn't, the developers have explicitly ruled it out when someone asked | 03:28 |
| Brainstorm | New from ##covid-19 Zotero group: J.&J. Pauses Production of Its Covid Vaccine Despite Persistent Need: Type Newspaper Article Author Rebecca Robbins Author Stephanie Nolen Author Sharon LaFraniere Author Noah Weiland URL https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/business/johnson-johnson-covid-vaccine.html Publication The [... want %more?] → https://www.zotero.org/groups/covid_links/items/JGW376DK | 03:32 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Cayman Is.: +1753 cases, +6810 tests (25.7% positive) since 3 days ago — Solomon Is.: +408 cases, +10 deaths since a day ago — St. Barthelemy: +252 cases since 8 days ago — Netherlands: +86928 cases, +16 deaths since 22 hours ago | 04:09 |
| Brainstorm | New from Reddit (test): Covid2019: Hear doctor's grim prognosis for unvaccinated Covid-19 patient: looks at one South Dakota hospital that is overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients, in a state that is experiencing explosive Covid-19 case counts → https://old.reddit.com/r/Covid2019/comments/spnuir/hear_doctors_grim_prognosis_for_unvaccinated/ | 04:10 |
| Brainstorm | New from r/COVID19: COVID19: Omicron adopts a different strategy from Delta and other variants to adapt to host → https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/spnx2g/omicron_adopts_a_different_strategy_from_delta/ | 04:20 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for France: +153619 cases, +372 deaths since 11 hours ago | 04:59 |
| Alex1138[m] | i wonder when we'll see deaths drop to 0 | 05:37 |
| Tuvix | Doubtful; I'd settle for a few times the seasonal influenza deaths, especially here in the US where during the whole pandemic we've only come as close as a bit over 2 times that rate of death (taken as an annual average of the last 10 years of non-provisional flu fatalities) and that was for no more than a week :\ | 05:41 |
| Tuvix | Sadly, even say a target death rate of an annual average COVID life toll of let's say 4 times the toll of influenza is a long way off. Post-Delta the US was still averaging around 10 *times* the seasonal flu, and yet there was a general lack of any urgency whatsoever. | 05:44 |
| Tuvix | Omicron has not done a lot to change that meanintfully here in the US anyway; new first-time fully vaccinated citizens hardly showed more than a brief uptick, and no new interest in meaningful mitigations measures has been applied in a broad sense. | 05:44 |
| Alex1138[m] | yeah, i know what you mean. i'm curious to see what march/april look like, if omicron is anything to go by it will be tapering off | 05:48 |
| Tuvix | Sure, and with any luck, the recovery from Omicron will look more like the very sharp recovery (fast reduction in death) that Spring 2021 saw. However, Delta's recovery in the US was the beginning of the trend where the US started doing much worse than most other well-off nations. | 05:49 |
| Alex1138[m] | i'm happy the positive (positive in a "good news" sense, not positive as in virus sense) numbers from south africa did really turn out to have some validity, there were so many people saying "this doesn't count, it's summer, SA has a younger population..." etc (not to deride that, there's truth in that, but still) | 05:50 |
| Tuvix | Well, South Africa was also in their seasonal summer during Omicron, yet the Global North is in their winter. | 05:51 |
| Alex1138[m] | yep | 05:51 |
| Tuvix | In the US anyway, Omicron is currently ripping through the largerly unvaccinated parts of the country now, which perhaps explains the lack of notable recovery in our death rates. | 05:51 |
| Tuvix | Even as the virus is now in generally-less densely populated areas, it's finding plenty of victims who are less protected against complications. | 05:52 |
| Tuvix | It's easy to look at early-hit places in the US like the northeast and say that things are looking up, but many states are only just now entering the worst of Omicron in terms of hospital and death impact, and many of them are the least prepared. | 05:52 |
| Tuvix | Despite a sharp recovery in new hospital admits 26 days back, we're still at 96% of the peak death total for Omicron alone. | 05:54 |
| Tuvix | With any luck most of that is just Omicron's delayed entry into the worst-prepared parts of this country, but it could also be that despite slowing down, it's finding more of the at-risk population nationally and will continue to sort of simmer a fairly-high rate of death well into the spring. | 05:56 |
| Tuvix | I hope it turns out I'm being too dire in my prediction, but I'm not impressed with how the US measures up to other neighbors or most of Europe with Delta to have a lot of hope Omicron and the exit of Winter will be enough alone to make up for that. | 05:56 |
| Alex1138[m] | it's still a bit surreal to think we've just been through 2 years of a global pandemic | 06:01 |
| Alex1138[m] | like... going back to 2019, we (i) didn't have any clue | 06:01 |
| Alex1138[m] | just feels so surreal | 06:01 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Belgium: +19616 cases, +66 deaths, +70061 tests (28.0% positive) since 23 hours ago — India: +58077 cases since 23 hours ago | 06:01 |
| Tuvix | It's always easier to look back than forward. That's part of why I've been cautious about embracing some of the less-careful social interaction I've been invited to, especially the ones that involve a lot of indoor, close-quarters, unmasked socialization with what's likely to be an overly unvaccinated population. | 06:13 |
| Brainstorm | New from Reddit (test): China_Flu: If Less Severe, Then How Does Omicron Kill? (Dr. Syed) → https://old.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/sppz30/if_less_severe_then_how_does_omicron_kill_dr_syed/ | 06:15 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Scotland, United Kingdom: +103285 cases, +23 deaths since 23 hours ago — Novosibirsk, Russia: +4394 cases, +9 deaths since 23 hours ago — Germany: +236080 cases since 23 hours ago — Cayman Islands, United Kingdom: +1753 cases since 6 days ago | 07:04 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine): Researchers who tracked the replacement of #Delta by #Omicron in the UK in December 2021 report large falls in infection prevalence among adults who received a booster shot and vaccinated older children compared with unvaccinated younger children. [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/ScienceMagazine/status/1491987878972375040 | 08:10 |
| Brainstorm | New from MedicineNet: (news): Lockdowns May Not Have Harmed Toddlers' Language Learning: Studies → http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp | 08:48 |
| Brainstorm | New from r/Coronavirus: Daily Discussion Thread | February 11, 2022: Please refer to our Wiki for more information on COVID-19 and our sub. You can find answers to frequently asked questions in our FAQ , where there is valuable information such as our: → https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/spu212/daily_discussion_thread_february_11_2022/ | 09:07 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for France: +154666 cases since 16 hours ago | 09:59 |
| Brainstorm | New from BBC Health: Covid: Wales' face mask law could be scrapped in March: Covid passes will not be needed from 18 February under plans to ease Wales' remaining restrictions. → https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-60332835 | 10:04 |
| Brainstorm | New from EMA: What's new: Event: EMA regular press briefing on COVID-19, Online, 14:00 - 14:30 Amsterdam time (CET), from 17/02/2022 to 17/02/2022 → https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/events/ema-regular-press-briefing-covid-19-14 | 10:33 |
| Brainstorm | New from BBC Health: End of Covid regulations: What if I'm still worried?: What would ending isolation rules in England mean for people who are worried about getting Covid? → https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-60332989 | 11:22 |
| Brainstorm | New from BMJ: Covid-19: What do we know about omicron sublineages?: BA.1(B.1.1.529.1)The original SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant is B.1.1.529.1, the version that most people think of when omicron is referred to and that currently makes up more than nine in 10 omicron... → http://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o358.short | 11:31 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Covid Fact Check UK (@fact_covid): P.S. I appreciate some people don’t like a “fact check” account expressing opinions, but having spent almost two years analysing every aspect of COVID-19 (and trying to remain balanced at all times) please allow me to indulge myself on this occasion. → https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1492083528074465280 | 11:41 |
| Brainstorm | New from Politico: Aid and development: Macron refused Russian COVID test, official says → https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-france-refuse-russia-covid-test-vladimir-putin/ | 11:51 |
| Brainstorm | New from NPR Science: U.K. lifts all testing requirements for vaccinated travelers starting today: Residents and visitors who have had at least two doses of an approved vaccine now only need to fill out a form before entering the U.K. Unvaccinated people [... want %more?] → https://www.npr.org/2022/02/11/1080053580/u-k-lifts-all-testing-requirements-for-vaccinated-travelers-starting-today | 12:01 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Brunei: +981 cases, +5712 tests (17.2% positive) since 18 hours ago | 12:04 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch): Covid polarisation is deeply weird, and seems to have infected almost as many people as the virus.I’ve enjoyed quietly returning from holiday and just ... not tweeting about Covid this week.Others seem to need to exalt or excoriate their chosen [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1492098464762761235 | 12:39 |
| Brainstorm | New from r/COVID19: COVID19: Association of BNT162b2 COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy With Neonatal and Early Infant Outcomes → https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/spxhcq/association_of_bnt162b2_covid19_vaccination/ | 13:18 |
| Brainstorm | New from Science-Based Medicine: Science and Medicine: Should An Infectious Disease Epidemiologist Comment on Child Vaccination? → https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/unkind-largely-unqualified-and-highly-judgmental/ | 13:28 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Covid Fact Check UK (@fact_covid): Something that must be addressed is the quality of advice for those who are clinically extremely vulnerable from COVID-19.The government guidance hasn’t been updated since 24/12. And it makes no mention of the new antibody & antiviral treatments [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1492118030842740743 | 13:57 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Timor-Leste: +243 cases, +1 deaths, +1181 tests (20.6% positive) since 20 hours ago — Palau: +74 cases, +1 deaths, +391 tests (18.9% positive) since 20 hours ago | 14:09 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Florian Krammer (@florian_krammer): 1) We now often hear about 'universal coronavirus vaccines' in the media. I think development of a universal coronavirus vaccine is an important goal that may be achievable in the long run if sufficient funding is available. But I think we should [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1492124831713841154 | 14:17 |
| xx | ^ just like universal flu vaccine | 14:18 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Florian Krammer (@florian_krammer): 5) Betacoronaviruses also include the bad guys. In the subgenus merbecovirus we have MERS CoV, or Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus. This virus has a high case fatality rate and is transmitted from camels to humans. It usually doesn't [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1492127073456037893 | 14:26 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Florian Krammer (@florian_krammer): 9) But there is a high diversity of sarbecoviruses. Some use ACE2 as receptor like SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV. Some don't (a great review here: academic.oup.com/ve/article/7/1…). And that makes vaccine development tough. pic.twitter.com/2wTvi9gYEZ → https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1492129534820421632 | 14:36 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Florian Krammer (@florian_krammer): 11) Maybe we will at some point even arrive at a pan-coronavirus vaccine. This would likely be multivalent and it would take a very long development time. For many of these, the licensure pathway is not clear at all, making this more complicated. [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1492130471353929731 | 14:46 |
| Brainstorm | New from EMA: Human medicine assessment reports: (news): Human medicines European public assessment report (EPAR): Bexsero, meningococcal group B Vaccine (rDNA, component, adsorbed), Meningitis, Meningococcal, Date of authorisation: 13/01/2013, Revision: 28, Status: Authorised → https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/bexsero | 14:56 |
| Brainstorm | New from Reddit (test): China_Flu: Small steps, strong shield: directly measured, moderate physical activity in 65 361 adults is associated with significant protective effects from severe COVID-19 outcomes → https://old.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/spzuga/small_steps_strong_shield_directly_measured/ | 15:06 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Switzerland: +11628 cases, +25 deaths, +77394 tests (15.0% positive) since 21 hours ago | 15:11 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Covid Fact Check UK (@fact_covid): John always tells it like it is - good or bad.COVID’s IFR continuing to tumble, and the @ONS survey showing cases are level/falling, is definitely in the “good news” camp. twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/s… → https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1492139286707294213 | 15:15 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Eric Topol (@EricTopol): Evidence that the fatality rate for Covid continues to decline, derived from the unique @ONS dataset that includes random sampling—data the world has relied upon throughout the pandemic twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/s… → https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1492148401521057793 | 15:55 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Germany: +236226 cases since 22 hours ago | 16:01 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Eric Topol (@EricTopol): The number of American Covid deaths this weekFeb 10 3,234Feb 9 3,450Feb 8 3,406Feb 7 3,385At least 90% of these were preventable → https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1492154277564846080 | 16:15 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Covid Fact Check UK (@fact_covid): Delta has all but disappeared in England.The superb @sangerinstitute Genomic Surveillance site shows that,as of 29 January, just 0.1% of genomes sequenced (36 from 37,162) were Delta, down from 0.3% a week before.In late December it was 17.2%.Link: [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1492156413434605571 | 16:25 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Bloom Lab (@jbloom_lab): @ellieleigh96 #SARSCoV2 gets mutation about every other transmission. But sometimes gets none & sometimes >1.Say A transmits to B & there are 2 mutations. Also A transmits to C transmits to D & no mutations. B is infected earlier than D, but D's virus sequence [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1492162895769006084 | 16:55 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Canada: +13379 cases, +165 deaths since 22 hours ago | 17:04 |
| Brainstorm | New from ClinicalTrials.gov: (news): Prognostic Significance of COVID-19 MSCT Chest Findings on Short Term Disease Progression → https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05235373 | 17:24 |
| Brainstorm | New from ClinicalTrials.gov: (news): Efficiency of an Optimized Care Organization for Fatigue Management for Patients With COVID-19. → https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05236478 | 17:44 |
| Brainstorm | New from ClinicalTrials.gov: (news): Study of Vascular Endothelial Glycocalyx and Ophthalmic Injury, Prospective Cohort of Patients With Prolonged Post-COVID-19 Symptoms → https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05235698 | 17:54 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Netherlands: +80792 cases, +20 deaths since 22 hours ago | 18:06 |
| de-facto | .title https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGjzWC2olyE <-- PCR Tests in Germany: too few, too expensive, too much lobby | 18:09 |
| Brainstorm | de-facto: From www.youtube.com: Corona-PCR-Tests: Zu wenig und überteuert | Frontal - YouTube | 18:09 |
| Brainstorm | New from Politico: Belgian politics: Belgium eases coronavirus restrictions as country switches to Code Orange → https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-eases-coronavirus-restrictions-country-code-orange/ | 18:14 |
| xx | Code Orange? | 18:15 |
| xx | why not code We're Fucked | 18:15 |
| xx | if I was in belgium and heard code orange, I'd think the dutch are invading | 18:15 |
| de-facto | If we soon pass 50% positivity rate for PCR tests, the a priori probability, even prior to taking a sample is bigger for having a positive result than a negative result. So even if they dont tell the actual result, assuming its positive would then be more accurate than assuming its negative | 18:31 |
| de-facto | Germany is a complete disaster right now | 18:31 |
| Brainstorm | New from Politico: Freight: Transport union tells COVID ‘freedom convoy’ to truck off → https://www.politico.eu/article/transport-union-coronavirus-freedom-convoy-protest-paris-brussels/ | 18:33 |
| de-facto | Maybe they can free some lab capacity by just telling people: "Yeah its probably positive test" without doing the actual lab work? (post 50% positivity a false positive is much less likely than a false negative, hence they would me correct with such a statement in the majority of cases) | 18:34 |
| de-facto | ARGH :(((( | 18:34 |
| xx | yeah they'll be more likely right than not if they just say every test is positive | 18:35 |
| de-facto | I think the incidence in reality is a LOT more than the official numbers reflect, i would not be surprised if it was as much as 10-fold as many daily infections as officially published | 18:35 |
| xx | would save money, and people won't go into quarantine anyway | 18:36 |
| de-facto | this is completely nuts, i would not have assumed we would reach such a point | 18:36 |
| xx | like what actually changes for a person if they know they have covid? | 18:36 |
| xx | at this stage, it looks like information that's not in any way actionable | 18:37 |
| de-facto | they could prevent infecting others, but that seems to not be desired by some crazy politicians anymore | 18:37 |
| xx | they could, but do you see people care? Even common people, not just politicians. | 18:37 |
| xx | plus with BA.2 they likely will spread it anyway because they are not gonna be strict about it | 18:38 |
| de-facto | they all are corrupted by the lobby of the lab oligopols, in Germany we have like 1/10-th the PCR testing capacity and it fucking costs 10-fold per test compared to our direct neighbors | 18:39 |
| de-facto | i blame the most embarrassing thing is that manufacturers did develop and optimize PCR lab processes | 18:39 |
| de-facto | https://www.alm-ev.de/aktuell/corona-themenseite/ <-- those are the ones with the lobby, making billions while blocking more innovation in building up appropriate PCR testing capacities | 18:40 |
| de-facto | https://www.qiagen.com/ <-- those have developed much more efficient lab pipelines for PCR testing, but the German government is too corrupted by ALM to try to modernize labs | 18:42 |
| xx | probably because labor costs in germany are stupidly high | 18:42 |
| xx | send the tests to poland, it'll be cheaper | 18:43 |
| xx | or further away even | 18:43 |
| de-facto | its even developed in Germany, just the government is unable to prepare for the Omicron wave, despite them publicly predicting the infection numbers since months | 18:43 |
| de-facto | no tests have to be done locally for fast results | 18:43 |
| de-facto | technically this is absolutely trivial, its solved already (as other countries like Austria clearly demonstrate) | 18:43 |
| de-facto | its just, our government is too corrupt to properly implement an efficient lab pipeline | 18:44 |
| de-facto | this really makes me mad | 18:44 |
| de-facto | we URGENTLY need more PCR test capacity | 18:44 |
| de-facto | and they do fucking NOTHING | 18:45 |
| de-facto | instead they talk about taking back restrictions | 18:45 |
| de-facto | if they dont provide enough tests they should explain that they are unable to organize enough testing capacity and therefore would need to go for a lockdown | 18:45 |
| de-facto | are politicians completely crazy nowadays? its their fucking duty to protect the interests of majorities of their population instead of thinking about their own advantage by being corrupt to the lobby | 18:47 |
| de-facto | complete disaster, absolutely embarrassing :( | 18:49 |
| ecks | what is mass testing with these incidence numbers gonna help with that "stay at home if you have symptoms" doesn't | 18:50 |
| de-facto | because people are stupid, if they manage to get a negative antigen quicktest they really believe their cold is not COVID and not stay at home, instead go to work and infect their colleges | 18:51 |
| de-facto | then be surprised if their result becomes positive a few days later, together with all their colleges | 18:52 |
| ecks | maybe they should stop selling antigen tests | 18:52 |
| de-facto | a proper PCR testing strategy such as AUstria implemented enables everyone to get a gargle test, and they can bring it to collection boxes everywhere and get their result online in a few hours or such | 18:53 |
| de-facto | well if they would stop selling the antigen tests it would become even more obvious that we have 100-fold too few PCR tests | 18:53 |
| de-facto | fucking two orders of magnitude | 18:53 |
| ecks | looking at Austria's number it doesn't seem to be doing much | 18:53 |
| de-facto | thats so crazy that i even dont have enough words to express how mad that makes me | 18:54 |
| de-facto | the numbers in Germany right now are not accurate at all | 18:54 |
| de-facto | 40-50% positivity of PCR tests | 18:54 |
| de-facto | https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing | 18:54 |
| xx | politicians were always crazy, because only crazy people win popularity contests | 18:55 |
| de-facto | positivity rate should be less than 1% for a proper testing strategy, hence if its 50% its two orders of magnitude too few tests | 18:55 |
| de-facto | and since the government was talking about (and observing) the Omicron wave numbers since months, they did correctly expect the number of infections to increase, hence had more then enough time to prepare lab capacity | 18:56 |
| de-facto | so they willingly did not do that, due to lobby of ALM | 18:56 |
| de-facto | hence ALM should be ended | 18:56 |
| blueberrycrop | mandate freedom | 18:57 |
| ecks | 250k cases/day in Germany at 50% positivity rate, you'd need 12 million tests a day to get that positivity rate down to 1% | 18:57 |
| de-facto | yes | 18:58 |
| de-facto | impossible right now, but possible if they would have prepared lab capacity | 18:58 |
| ecks | at a conservative 10€/test, that's 120 million€ daily that could be used for something else | 18:58 |
| ecks | the true price of a test is probably at least 5 times that | 18:59 |
| ecks | do you really want to dump half a billion euros into tests, daily? | 18:59 |
| de-facto | well if the alternative is lockdown because everything goes out of control and due to not enough testing capacity even the risk groups can not be shielded anymore, it would be cheap to pay for the PCR tests instead | 18:59 |
| de-facto | lockdown is probably at least an order of magnitude more expensive | 18:59 |
| de-facto | if not more | 18:59 |
| ecks | I wonder how many ICU and hospital beds you could finance with an addition half billion daily | 19:00 |
| blueberrycrop | let's just lift all restrictions and limitations | 19:00 |
| ecks | that's 180 billion annually, compared to Germany's current healthcare budget of 400 billion (got it from a quick google search) | 19:00 |
| ecks | either test 12 million people daily, or add 50% to the country's healthcare budget | 19:01 |
| ecks | I know which alternative I'm choosing | 19:01 |
| xx | make the people pay for the tests themselves, if they wish to enter any restaurant, public transport, ... | 19:01 |
| xx | stay at home = no need to pay for tests | 19:02 |
| xx | go outside = pay for tests | 19:02 |
| ecks | ah yes the poor tax | 19:02 |
| de-facto | i think it would be beneficial to pay that much for PCR testing capacity, because building up the pipelines and having a competetive market (by ending oligopoles such as ALM lobby) it would mean optimizing lab efficienty during a time of high demand | 19:02 |
| Tuvix | Testing actually is much cheaper when scaled up; multiple universities in the US earlier on in the pandemic used internal labs to do it quite effectively as opportunity cost for avoiding more invasive limitations to keep the on-campus options open. | 19:02 |
| de-facto | but its impossible with ALM lobby in place | 19:02 |
| Brainstorm | New from Contagion Live: Episode 2: Vaccine Equality vs Equity with Dr. Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir: In this latest episode of Contagion Community, we interview Dr. Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir about vaccine equality vs vaccine equity as well as her experience on a COVID-19 [... want %more?] → https://www.contagionlive.com/view/episode-2-vaccine-equality-vs-equity-with-dr-jacinda-abdul-mutakabbir | 19:03 |
| de-facto | yeah scaling up testing makes a lot of sense in every respect, it would also allow to prevent other restrictions with more impact on daily life | 19:03 |
| Tuvix | There's both economies of scale and the fact that there are ways to test that aren't billed at the retail price when you actively work to find solutions, like a leveraging local labs instead of paying top-dollar for ones with limited capacity. | 19:03 |
| ecks | Denmark has been testing a lot (500k tests daily back in 2021) and they put the price at 10-20€/test | 19:04 |
| Tuvix | Think of it like buying a bottle of liquor and mixing your drinks vs. going to the bar and buying them one glass at a time. | 19:04 |
| de-facto | yet its utterly important to test widespread and often, right now we dont even have enough tests for everyone infected per day | 19:04 |
| de-facto | hours of waiting queues, days till results get delivered | 19:04 |
| ecks | and why exactly is it so utterly important to test if the incidence is so high | 19:04 |
| de-facto | completely unusable | 19:04 |
| ecks | just tell everyone to stay home if they feel sick | 19:05 |
| de-facto | to end infection chains, thereby bringing down incidence | 19:05 |
| de-facto | people dont stay at home when they feel sick | 19:05 |
| de-facto | if they have a positive test, at least more of them may stay at home | 19:05 |
| ecks | so why would they bother getting tested then | 19:05 |
| de-facto | to determine if its COVID | 19:06 |
| xx | no test = no service | 19:06 |
| Tuvix | It's artificially high because only the very likely to be ill are getting tested. There are a few drivers of that, largely test limitations. A recent UKHSA study demonstrated that people are contagious quite a while. | 19:06 |
| de-facto | but you got a point there, i think biweekly PCR testing should become mandatory at work, in university, at school etc | 19:06 |
| de-facto | we would need the PCR lab capacity for that though | 19:06 |
| de-facto | that way we could maximize both, freedom from other containment measures and biosecurity by ending infection chains | 19:07 |
| ecks | don't forget about maximizing the cost for the taxpayer | 19:08 |
| de-facto | again, healthcare costs and lockdown primary and secondary order side effects are probably several orders of magnitude more expensive | 19:08 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Italy: +67478 cases, +334 deaths, +663786 tests (10.2% positive) since 23 hours ago | 19:09 |
| de-facto | not only costs are included there, but also potential loss of tax income etc | 19:09 |
| de-facto | lockdown is crazy expensive | 19:09 |
| ecks | how many lives are you gonna save by dumping hundreds of millions daily into testing | 19:09 |
| ecks | those are expensive QALYs | 19:09 |
| Tuvix | The plain fact is there isn't enough testing; guidance many places does not match the science. | 19:10 |
| Tuvix | That's just poor planning when the science says one thing about how long one is contagious, but word games are played with the rules suggesting when to mask. There was a very good summary of the CDC's ever-changing guidance here, if I can dig the article up. | 19:10 |
| de-facto | its not only about loss of life, its about protecting the society from the disease, saving citizens from impact of long covid and long lasting damage to their health and productivity, saving economy from otherwise necessary containment measures etc | 19:11 |
| de-facto | every test done probably is a win for economy in terms of over all costs | 19:11 |
| ecks | [citation needed] | 19:11 |
| ecks | i'm sure it is, up to a certain point but at this incidence, probably not | 19:11 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID19 Vaccine Tracker: valerie: Airlangga University: UNAIR Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine → https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/vaccines/181/ | 19:13 |
| de-facto | if every infection got a negative impact on economy (by primary and secondary effects), in a scenario with Rt>1 (every generation infecting more susceptible, increasing the number of carriers) bringing Rt<1 is an economic advantage if the costs for achieving that are below a certain threshold per potential case | 19:14 |
| de-facto | hence focusing on the most effective containment measures is also the best for economy, and testing probably is one of the most effective containment, together with wearing masks etc | 19:15 |
| Tuvix | The barking about the cost is ironic considering costs were squandered elsewhere with very low return on investment that could have been far cheaper with an upfront test strategy like many countries are now doing. Back in 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/11/13/cdc-airport-screening-for-covid-19-coronavirus-was-costly-and-low-yield | 19:16 |
| de-facto | for in order to do that management has to be willing to go for aiming on improving containment effectivity instead of fulfilling the wet dreams of the lobbyists | 19:17 |
| ecks | I mean, Denmark and Austria are the poster childs of testing a lot. Neither have been able to get omicron under control by any measure | 19:17 |
| ecks | what's to say Germany would? | 19:17 |
| de-facto | it has to become an open and competitive market, surely with some quality control, but still it will optimize itself towards more capacity hence less costs per test | 19:18 |
| Tuvix | Better accessibility when needed would be a good start; a combination of preventative tests in congregate settings (universities, workplaces doing on-site work, especially with larger offices or teams of people who travel, etc) would be more value than testing every member of a population daily, or testing those who are largely isolated already, say in care-facilities as long-term residents. | 19:19 |
| de-facto | both are post beak already though https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/austria | 19:19 |
| de-facto | germany is not https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany | 19:19 |
| ecks | probably gonna peak in a week or so | 19:20 |
| de-facto | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/positive-rate-daily-smoothed?tab=chart&country=DEU~AUT~DNK | 19:20 |
| Tuvix | Part of the CDC's recent messaging confusion is specifically becuase the science shows people are contagious a lot longer than previously though. Just a couple weeks before the CDC's guidance change, UKHSA came up with this result: https://imgur.com/4W0x7xA | 19:20 |
| de-facto | maybe, hopefully, possibly, id think around mid to end of feb we will have our peak in germany | 19:21 |
| de-facto | fatalities may rise despite that when diffusion of incidence into the vulnerable naive groups can not be prevented due to not having enough test capacity for achieving that | 19:21 |
| Tuvix | Given that nearly a third of people remain contagious 5 days after their initial test, it seems absurd to suggest the general public go back and mingle with others during that time. Combined with the really poor mask guidance, that's a setup for more spread knowing full well the science doesn't indicate doing it. | 19:21 |
| de-facto | i really think we can learn something form AUstria here, they did implement a good testing strategy | 19:22 |
| Brainstorm | New from Retraction Watch: Ivermectin papers slapped with expressions of concern: A journal has issued expressions of concern for a pair of 2021 meta-analyses purporting to find that ivermectin is an effective treatment for Covid-19 after data sleuths raised questions about [... want %more?] → https://retractionwatch.com/2022/02/11/ivermectin-papers-slapped-with-expressions-of-concern/ | 19:22 |
| ecks | doesn't seem like their strategy is working very well https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?facet=none&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=DEU~AUT~DNK | 19:23 |
| de-facto | well i am a bit surprised deaths in Germany did not begin to rise yet, but i am pretty sure they are just about to do so, its just a question of time | 19:24 |
| de-facto | we are a bit behind here with our Omicron outbreak | 19:24 |
| Tuvix | Indeed, the rise in Omicron-deaths hasn't even really started yet in Germany. | 19:25 |
| Tuvix | It seems dishonest to compare data like that, and this from the person that yesterday was all up in arms talking in circles about intentionally misrepresenting data :\ | 19:25 |
| xx | or the deaths are not counted in the official statistics as covid deaths, it's hard to say what they are doing with the numbers in germany | 19:26 |
| xx | we'll probably only find out in a years time when we have year-over-year mortality stats | 19:26 |
| Tuvix | Limit your data more usefully to 1 country first to see the trends: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?uniformYAxis=0&Metric=Vaccine+doses%2C+cases%2C+ICU+patients%2C+and+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~DEU | 19:26 |
| xx | *excess mortality | 19:26 |
| Tuvix | Let's discuss, so I'm not explaining this like it's black magic. | 19:26 |
| Tuvix | First, notice now the spike in new-cases, the big jump due to Omicron (ie: it's more transmissible nature) has only occured quite recently, about a month ago before exceeding the prior peak earlier in December. | 19:27 |
| ecks | actually the EU-wide excess mortality is about the same as in 2019 so far this year, and slightly below 2018 | 19:27 |
| Tuvix | Next, notice now the prior ICU spike was actually on the downswing just before that uptick; the trends are going to be first to see a rise in cases, then a spike in hospital & ICU admits, and finally deaths as some of the infected don't survive. | 19:28 |
| Arsanerit | What the excess mortality in 2019 and 2018? | 19:28 |
| de-facto | .title https://imgur.com/a/0twL0D2 https://i.imgur.com/wOySu7Q.png https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Wochenbericht/Wochenbericht_2022-02-10.pdf?__blob=publicationFile | 19:28 |
| Brainstorm | de-facto: From imgur.com: COVID Germany: Weekly incidence per age group - Album on Imgur | 19:28 |
| Tuvix | However, notice hte ICU trend in Germany is only _just_ beginning to rise; we'd expect deaths to shortly follow, but they wouldn't generally show up right away, which is exactly the trend we're seeing. | 19:29 |
| de-facto | so it seems infections are about to also diffuse into the elderly groups, and those are the ones that are exponentially more likely (doubling each 5.75years of age increase) to die from infection | 19:29 |
| de-facto | yes | 19:29 |
| Tuvix | Germany saw this same trend in mid-October, 2020, so this is not a new data concept. | 19:29 |
| ecks | I wonder if the correlation between deaths/1M and tests/1M is significant | 19:30 |
| Tuvix | Now, comparing Australia to Germany on the same time-scale won't work, since Australia saw their case-rise earlier than Germany. We can actually see that zooming in. | 19:31 |
| ecks | Arsanerit: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ | 19:31 |
| de-facto | ICU patients (units occupied with COVID) just began to rise in Germany on early Feburary https://www.intensivregister.de/#/aktuelle-lage/zeitreihen | 19:31 |
| Tuvix | https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2021-08-19..2021-12-29&Metric=Vaccine+doses%2C+cases%2C+ICU+patients%2C+and+deaths&country=DEU~AUS | 19:31 |
| de-facto | so it seems we would have to expect rising fatality rates with a bit of a delay to that too | 19:32 |
| Tuvix | If you take that above link and drag the right-time-marker out, you'll see Australia's ICU and deaths rise, though not as a much as countries doing a more poor job of vaccination and mitigation (obvious example being the US) | 19:32 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Eric Topol (@EricTopol): New @CDCMMWRAs seen previously in Israel and the UK, modest booster effectiveness waning vs hospitalization for Omicron for booster effectiveness (91% < 2 months, preserved at 78% at ≥4 months); much more waning for infections, ED, urgent care [... want %more?] → https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1492202102822604802 | 19:32 |
| Tuvix | But, it's wrong to compare Australia's deaths to Germany and say that Australia is doing worse, becuase we don't really know how much worse Germany is going to manage from Omicron specifically; we'll find out soon enough, in the coming 3 to 6 weeks though. | 19:32 |
| Tuvix | Or, in theory how much better. I don't believe that's likely given the initial trends, especially considering the November spike Germany saw. | 19:33 |
| de-facto | to me it looks like people are pretty much on their own (e.g. with quicktests), since government did not really prepare for the Omicron wave | 19:34 |
| Tuvix | For instance, Germany's recent case peak (around Nov 30) saw a spike in ICU & deaths as well; that trend seems likely with Omicron, it's just a question of magnitude. | 19:34 |
| de-facto | its never too late to start ramping up lab capacity etc, yet nothing is done towards that | 19:34 |
| de-facto | they should start to do so today and deal with problems when they arise | 19:35 |
| de-facto | not talk about problems and give up prior to even trying | 19:35 |
| de-facto | first thing would be: close down ALM and their contracts | 19:35 |
| de-facto | then rebuild an open market | 19:36 |
| de-facto | invite more lab companies to participate | 19:36 |
| de-facto | ensure proper quality control | 19:36 |
| de-facto | such things | 19:36 |
| de-facto | prevent oligopols | 19:36 |
| xx | it's been 2 years, we could have trained more lab techs instead of mcdonalds workers | 19:37 |
| Tuvix | Vaccination likely plays a bigger role than testing just for the sake of it. Tests only do so much, especially in places like the US where there's no requirement most places to isolate. For example, at the national, state, and local level around me, I could literally get a confirmed positive lab result tomorrow morning, but not be (legally) prevented from going to shop, dine-in, and drink at a bar for | 19:38 |
| Tuvix | hours, maskless, knowing I'm positive. | 19:38 |
| de-facto | btw if we got more PCR test capacity we also could do more primer specific testing for mutants, something that will become more and more important | 19:38 |
| Tuvix | Yes, break-through cases are a thing too, and testing (with coordinating mitigations!) can help prevent that. But the impact of the disease spread are far lower when there's less vulnerable population for it to work though, and in doing so overwhelm hospitals & ICUs. | 19:39 |
| de-facto | we also should stop restriction to restaurants etc by immunity status, because there is not sterilizing immunity for SARS-CoV-2 and there never will be | 19:39 |
| de-facto | instead we should make testing mandatory | 19:39 |
| de-facto | proper PCR testing | 19:39 |
| de-facto | massively ramping up PCR testing and making it mandatory will also make it much cheaper | 19:40 |
| de-facto | also making the lab networks more independent, because they probably would optimize for less consumables and building up their own supply lines | 19:41 |
| Brainstorm | New from BioNTech: Pfizer and BioNTech Provide Update on Rolling Submission for Emergency Use Authorization of Their COVID-19 Vaccine in Children 6 Months Through 4 Years of Age: NEW YORK AND MAINZ, GERMANY, February 11, 2022 —Pfizer Inc. [... want %more?] → https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/pfizer-and-biontech-provide-update-rolling-submission-emergency | 19:42 |
| ecks | https://i.ibb.co/510010W/Picture1.png | 19:42 |
| ecks | I plotted the test rates and death rates of all European countries | 19:42 |
| ecks | (data from worldometer) | 19:43 |
| Tuvix | Except the number of people getting tested is typically going to scale with the amount of virus spreading. | 19:44 |
| Tuvix | https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_newtestresultsreported_7daycasesper100k | 19:44 |
| Tuvix | What you may have discovered is that periods of higher case-incidence result in more people getting tested due to the disease being spread more; you'll likely find similar trends if you narrow down each country by the time period where there was a peak or lull around a spike during the various waves. | 19:45 |
| Tuvix | (note that the time start/stop for each wave will vary by country here) | 19:45 |
| xx | rather than any supposed trend, why not try to be those outliers on the graph where they have a lot of tests *and* lower deaths | 19:45 |
| xx | I see at least 3 data points of interest there | 19:46 |
| Tuvix | A linear regression on the CDC test-volume co-plotted with case-rates looks to be a pretty good fit, with small changes in magnitude throughout. | 19:46 |
| ecks | that's Finland, Norway, Iceland, Isle of Man and Belarus in the lower left corner | 19:47 |
| Tuvix | Sure, and here again, by that metric, Australia is doing pretty well recently. | 19:47 |
| ecks | not sure how much you can trust Belarus numbers though... | 19:47 |
| Tuvix | Not just in tests, but in results. Comparing US, UK, & Australia sort of shows the worst, average, and better handling overall, and has some interesting changes as the waves progressed: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2020-12-19..2021-11-30&Metric=Vaccine+doses%2C+cases%2C+ICU+patients%2C+and+deaths&country=USA~GBR~AUS . Even ignoring Omicron, the ICU & fatality data | 19:49 |
| Tuvix | is starkly different. | 19:49 |
| ecks | my conclusions are: you can test little and do well. you can test a lot and do well. you can test little and do poorly. the question is, can you test a lot and still do poorly? not really enough data points to infer that | 19:50 |
| ecks | (please don't cite this... study of mine) | 19:51 |
| Tuvix | Sure, although tests alone don't do anything. More tests in the US (changing nothing else, just, let's say overnight magically doing 50x more tests) wouldn't do much, since no one would necessarily change behavior. | 19:51 |
| Brainstorm | New from FDA Press Releases: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Postpones Advisory Committee Meeting to Discuss Request for Authorization of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for Children 6 Months Through 4 Years of Age: The [... want %more?] → http://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-postpones-advisory-committee-meeting-discuss-request-authorization | 19:51 |
| Tuvix | The change in UK vs US deaths since the 2020-21 Alpha wave is a curious tale there, because back then the UK was seeing notably more death in its prior-winter spike. | 19:51 |
| Tuvix | Both the US & UK recovered fairly well during summer 2021, but then things start to go off the rails for the US. In the latest OWID I linked above, you can see after that fall, the US sees its delta wave just slam ICUs and lead to well over twice the death peak with a very slow and limited recovery going into the period just before Omicron. | 19:52 |
| ecks | Sweden, which has done fuck-all when it comes to mitigation, does quite well on this graph | 19:53 |
| Tuvix | A bit less so with Omicron, if you expand the graph out to include that. | 19:54 |
| Tuvix | I limited the end-time mostly so the scale of the US's consistent out-pacing UK deaths was more clearly visible. | 19:55 |
| ecks | across the pandemic, i mean, on my tests-to-death graph | 19:55 |
| Tuvix | Oh, I see, I was plotting them compared to the US/UK/Aus analysis above. | 19:56 |
| ecks | In fact, Germany and Sweden are quite alike in both tests and deaths per capita | 19:57 |
| rpifan | well im finally gonna get the novavax | 19:57 |
| rpifan | idk why its not US approved | 19:57 |
| ecks | maybe Germany should adopt the Swedish model: stop testing and lift all restrictions | 19:57 |
| Tuvix | And, yea, over most of hte pandemic Sweden seems to have done rasonably well; a bit worse than the US (but better than the UK) during the 2020-21 winter wave, but Sweden recovered fairly consistently, at least until Omicron now. | 19:57 |
| Tuvix | That's a pretty bad idea: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/covid-19-omicron-variant-might-be-weaker-letting-it-rip-ncna1288194 | 19:58 |
| de-facto | ecks, nice graph there, maybe also could include stringency index | 19:58 |
| ecks | The Nordic countries seem to think it's a good idea, we will see I guess | 19:59 |
| de-facto | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index | 19:59 |
| ecks | anyway I need to head out for a bit | 19:59 |
| Tuvix | The US has largely given up any hope of meaningful restrictions, doesn't show any interest in bringing any back, and our results have not been good, compounded with a weak vaccination uptake compared to similar nations one would compare ourselves too. | 19:59 |
| blueberrycrop | Why are people so scared of COVID? | 20:00 |
| blueberrycrop | Why is everyone so divided on this issue? | 20:00 |
| de-facto | because its a dangerous virus? | 20:00 |
| blueberrycrop | I side more with the conspiracy theorists. | 20:01 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID19 Vaccine Tracker: valerie: Arcturus Therapeutics Inc: ARCT-165 → https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/vaccines/148/ | 20:01 |
| de-facto | your decision, id advise for sticking with data derived claims | 20:01 |
| de-facto | beacuse those are falsifiable | 20:01 |
| blueberrycrop | Isn't it easy to lie with statistics? | 20:03 |
| blueberrycrop | We interviewed 1000 people that have played russian roulette before. 100% of them survived the game. Conclusion: Russian roulette is completely safe to play. | 20:03 |
| Tuvix | Which is why sites like OWID allow you to see the data and use it to contribute to the analysis and discussion. | 20:04 |
| blueberrycrop | designed to mislead | 20:04 |
| Tuvix | The data gathered from official government agencies and made publicly available to anyone? | 20:05 |
| Tuvix | It's frankly not designed to do much of anything but be enumerated on a modern webpage. | 20:05 |
| blueberrycrop | why do you think that is reliable? | 20:05 |
| de-facto | data is publicly available, globally, from independent sources, make your own analysis rather than outsourcing thinking to some malicious conspiracy theorists that you dont even personally know | 20:05 |
| de-facto | or journalists | 20:05 |
| Tuvix | You can actually find a lot of information on the sources. Have you checked? If you just didn't know how to get started, this is a good reference for OWID if you were referring to that specifically: https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data | 20:06 |
| Tuvix | Digging into sources to decide what you think of them takes a bit of work, but can help demistify the process if you're not familiar with the origins of data. I download some raw government data from a few US sources (not just COVID-specific) for a variety of purposes, including a couple of hobbies I have which rely on government data. | 20:07 |
| de-facto | read primary sources (papers and studies) rather than biased and filtered secondary opinions from conspiracy blogs or boulevard press | 20:07 |
| de-facto | download supplementary files and analyze further | 20:08 |
| de-facto | that way you learn how to build your own opinion rather than repeating conspiracy theories without thinking too much about their actual intent and impact | 20:09 |
| de-facto | think about ways to cross check, e.g. compare similar scenarios from different perspectives from independent sources | 20:10 |
| blueberrycrop | hey thanks for the help, truly appreciate it | 20:10 |
| blueberrycrop | which do you recommend checking out? | 20:10 |
| blueberrycrop | and why should I trust it? | 20:10 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for United Kingdom: +60635 cases, +198 deaths since 19 hours ago — Canada: +5630 cases since 20 hours ago | 20:11 |
| de-facto | trust building up your ability to find primary data sources and learn how to analyze them, a very useful skill especially since its universal, not only restricted to this pandemic right now | 20:11 |
| Tuvix | The bot has a number of feeds here, many of which are doctors who link studies. Yes, they offer their own take on them, but the reputable ones link the original studies you can read. | 20:13 |
| de-facto | you could start by analyzing how other independent analysis efforts try to compile their info and compare several of such approaches in terms of overlap in their stats | 20:13 |
| de-facto | that way not only would you get your own analysis but you also could estimate how accurate other analysis efforts actually are | 20:15 |
| blueberrycrop | so what do you usually check out? | 20:15 |
| de-facto | it depends on the question | 20:16 |
| de-facto | owid got a lot of data compiled for example | 20:16 |
| blueberrycrop | That's right | 20:16 |
| de-facto | if i need more detailed data, id go with local sources, e.g. as near as possible | 20:17 |
| de-facto | then do consistency checks on that | 20:17 |
| Tuvix | OWID and other sources like the CDC's public pages and even their data-visualizations are very handy; the "raw" data is available too, often in the form of CSV or other data-exports. I do grab several of them, and I actually cross-reference that with the more timely (but less specific) national data. | 20:17 |
| Tuvix | This is because some of the raw data I'm working with, that is either plotting in CDC's visualization or working with the raw exported data myself, "lags" behind by some weeks, typically about 3, but sometimes several more. | 20:18 |
| Arsanerit | ecks: thank you | 20:19 |
| Tuvix | This lag is actually documented in the data-set, but I bring this up as an example where the data is not wrong, but it would be easy to incorrectly claim it is. It's simply incomplete, and knowingly incomplete. It's provided as early as it's available, and I cross-reference the expected totals so I can gauage when the data is complete-enough to be useful for more general analysis. | 20:19 |
| Arsanerit | I read that in some places a positive test automatically deactivates the corona passport for two weeks | 20:20 |
| Tuvix | If I did not carefully read the data I was using, I could mistakenly do something bad like shout about how wrong the data is (it's not wrong, it's just not all collected from the sources like hospitals and counties that report them.) This is why it's crucial to understand the material you're reading and using. | 20:20 |
| Arsanerit | Testing can still help slowing down the spread. | 20:20 |
| de-facto | also i just observe the date, e.g. for Germany to see how it behaves, hence i know that there are different amounts of reporting delay at the tail for specific data sets, e.g. hospitalization and death got a lot more reporting delay than e.g. ICU capacity that almost is real time | 20:22 |
| blueberrycrop | I just don't trust it. | 20:22 |
| Tuvix | Bed-availability is a pretty basic thing hospitals do. | 20:23 |
| de-facto | yet id rather not trust conspiracy theorists, they don't even care about revealing their sources, all they would provide is cheap psychology tricks and rhetoric tricks, most dont even care to hide it, because they know that selecting people that would believe even obviously biased statements are much easier to control | 20:24 |
| de-facto | just imagine if everyone of their followers would care to question statements and do their own analysis :P | 20:25 |
| Tuvix | I have the ability to listen to the Fire & Medics here in my state, and hospitals are so finely-aware of their patient handling capacity that when the hospital is nearing capacity, they go on what's know as "divert" which informs all fire and medic responding personell to avoid that hospital, and they have to go to the next-nearest hospital. | 20:25 |
| blueberrycrop | how many vaccines is it going to take? 20? | 20:26 |
| de-facto | as long as SARS-CoV-2 circulates? indefinitely many | 20:27 |
| dTal | blueberrycrop what are you hoping to get out of this conversation? | 20:27 |
| dTal | Are you looking to convinve people of something? Or be convinced? | 20:27 |
| blueberrycrop | dTal I don't think COVID is real. | 20:28 |
| de-facto | oh so those that die from COVID just do so because they think its real? | 20:28 |
| de-facto | LOL | 20:28 |
| blueberrycrop | I think it's mostly about social engineering and wanting to create a global lockdown society. | 20:28 |
| pwr22 | So you think those who have had it or seen people die from it are just making it up? | 20:28 |
| dTal | Isn't a waste of your precious and finite time on Earth then to come into an IRC room and talk about a fake thing? | 20:28 |
| pwr22 | Or have some other mysterious illness? | 20:29 |
| blueberrycrop | dTal Well, if it is real, I'd like to know.... and I guess you're right, it would be a waste of time. | 20:29 |
| pwr22 | Because if they have a mysterious illness, called covid then it's still bad even if it is some weird conspiracy and not caused by the SARS-COV-2 lineage of viruses | 20:29 |
| blueberrycrop | I think it's easy to write down anywhere that something is covid related. | 20:30 |
| de-facto | how about you go to the hospitals and reveal your valuable info that COVID is not real to those that fight for their life from this potentially deadly disease? | 20:30 |
| pwr22 | "Global lockdown society" -> yes, this is exactly why many places have barely any restrictions and the UK is soon going to not even require positive covid cases to quarantine 🙄 | 20:30 |
| LjL | two words: excess deaths | 20:30 |
| de-facto | maybe they go like "Oh thank god that you told me, i though i would have to die!" stand up, pack their things and walk home? | 20:30 |
| LjL | and one URL: https://github.com/ljl-covid/links/blob/master/COVID-19-chat.md | 20:30 |
| dTal | blueberrycrop, what would it take to convince you that covid is real? | 20:30 |
| blueberrycrop | Yes, I am with the UK | 20:31 |
| pwr22 | de-facto: Don't suggest it, people *have* done that 😛 | 20:31 |
| blueberrycrop | let's lift all restrictions. | 20:31 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Apoorva Mandavilli (@apoorva_nyc): In a striking reversal, the FDA says it will wait for data on three doses of the Covid vaccine in kids under 5 before deciding whether to authorize the vaccine for that age group.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/1… → https://twitter.com/apoorva_nyc/status/1492217358571692035 | 20:31 |
| blueberrycrop | dTal I'd have to see it for myself. | 20:31 |
| dTal | Well, none of us can show you that, as it's IRC/ | 20:31 |
| pwr22 | So if the UK is lifting restrictions, what was the point of doing all the lying about covid already? | 20:31 |
| dTal | but for what it's worth, my sister just recovered from Covid. | 20:31 |
| pwr22 | I mean like, we are doing the opposite of locking down now... | 20:31 |
| pwr22 | Which is what you said covid is for | 20:32 |
| Tuvix | The official COVID-deaths are an undercount of true impact, as LjL noted earlier about the measure of excess deaths. | 20:32 |
| LjL | and for what it's worth, my friend's relative just died from COVIDDDDDDDDD | 20:32 |
| pwr22 | My brother and his gf both have covid | 20:32 |
| LjL | too bad my friend left, should be a relief to learn it's not real | 20:32 |
| pwr22 | I know people who have lost family to covid - thankfully I haven't | 20:32 |
| LjL | blueberrycrop, how would you "see it for yourself"? would visiting a COVID hospital be enough? i guess not, since you'd say it's other conditions. would you have to sit at an electron scan microscope and stare at the virus? but that could easily be faked, don't you think? | 20:33 |
| dTal | I'm still not sure what the point of this conversation is. If you don't think it's real, and only face-to-face confrontation with the deadly virus will convince you (I don't recommend that by the way), then what can we say? | 20:33 |
| blueberrycrop | LjL yeah something like that, and that's right I guess it could be faked. | 20:33 |
| xx | wait, is someone in here saying covid is not real? | 20:34 |
| LjL | blueberrycrop, do you have the scientific knowledge to tell that'd be a novel virus and not just some other virus? | 20:34 |
| LjL | or just a smudge | 20:34 |
| dTal | In a very general philosophical sense, I would advise caution in adopting unfalsifiable beliefs. | 20:34 |
| pwr22 | blueberrycrop: could you take a look at my messages above please? How does the UK doing the opposite of locking down fit with your proposed narrative that covid is about pretending to have a pandemic to lock everyone down? We are literally doing the opposite? Why? | 20:35 |
| peetaur | xx: people like to jump to 1 extreme.... covid isn't real, or covid is a horrible plague that justifies 1984-like solutions | 20:35 |
| pwr22 | xx: yes, it does happen from time to time | 20:35 |
| LjL | it happens often enough that i have a passage on it in the guidelines i linked earlier, indeed | 20:36 |
| blueberrycrop | pwr22 I would be happy if we could just go back to normal | 20:36 |
| xx | blueberrycrop: 1) You really think going to normal is possible? 2) You really think the normal we had was anything good to go back to? | 20:36 |
| LjL | blueberrycrop, that goes for most of us, but for most of us, that probably includes not having the virus around (which is sadly unlikely). anyway you haven't answered pwr22. | 20:36 |
| pwr22 | Yes, I think most people would be. But again, you suggest covid is not real and is actually an excuse to lock down the world. But we are literally unlocking the world. How does that make sense? | 20:37 |
| pwr22 | This is a contradiction - the logic does not work | 20:37 |
| blueberrycrop | Well, I just don't like the idea of big government | 20:37 |
| pwr22 | blueberrycrop: ^ | 20:37 |
| pwr22 | Ok, what does that have to do with what I'm asking? | 20:37 |
| peetaur | why can't we just pick a middle path...like it was released by accident from a lab that had good intentions (but stupid) ... like creating a bat vaccine, and then exploited to the max by lobbyists and used as an opportunity to see how far they can go on the 1984-likeness scale and get away with it (so they know how much worse to do things next time) and still make you beg for more | 20:38 |
| blueberrycrop | Well, let's just end the lockdown and lift all restrictions. | 20:38 |
| LjL | blueberrycrop, you're still not answering the question, and at this point i'm convinced it's a waste of time | 20:38 |
| dTal | peetaur: because you can't find truth by just averaging the extremes | 20:38 |
| LjL | i don't like banning people but my relief here is that i see no evidence that you exist | 20:38 |
| pwr22 | If covid is fake and made up to lock us all down and take away our liberties, why are we giving liberties back? Can you see that what you are saying makes no sense? blueberrycrop | 20:38 |
| blueberrycrop | What is it you want to know? | 20:38 |
| dTal | peetaur: saying that, your account is probably pretty accurate | 20:38 |
| LjL | blueberrycrop, the very thing that he asked repeatedly | 20:38 |
| pwr22 | I think you are about to be banned now 👋 | 20:38 |
| dTal | to be fair the whole channel was talking at them :p | 20:40 |
| pwr22 | It's weird. Like a 50% committed troll | 20:40 |
| xx | they'll probably interpret it as you being part of the lizard people who made covid up | 20:40 |
| dTal | I read that as a cry for help to be honest | 20:40 |
| pwr22 | Maybe they are someone genuinely mentally ill and just struggling with their delusions | 20:40 |
| Tuvix | Yea, but repeating the same 3 things over and over isn't how you try to learn someone else's point. | 20:40 |
| LjL | well, i'd like to help people | 20:41 |
| pwr22 | Maybe all the people who come to "troll" but remain reasonable are? | 20:41 |
| pwr22 | Or at least a subset of them | 20:41 |
| xx | anyway, onto real stuff. They did the lockdowns so that they can replace the batteries in the government surveillance drones aka birds. | 20:41 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Tulio de Oliveira (@Tuliodna): Challenging the status quo and making Africa a leading force to respond to epidemics and pandemics... We can, and we will use science to save lives and lead the world. @DrTedros @WHO @dsigovza pic.twitter.com/H3OCgex9DM → https://twitter.com/Tuliodna/status/1492219469141262346 | 20:41 |
| LjL | and i had said to myself i'd leave this channel alone for a few days, and i'm not doing it | 20:41 |
| pwr22 | xx: you might not be real. You might be a figment of my delusions 😉 | 20:41 |
| dTal | someone whose mind is poisoned by right wing conspiracy media, senses something wrong with it, but doesn't know any other way out than to argue their talking points in the hope that someone manages to convince them | 20:41 |
| LjL | but i don't know how to help someone who doesn't think covid is a thing and specifically states nothing would convince him | 20:41 |
| LjL | but if you have a plan for helping him, be my guest ;( | 20:41 |
| xx | pwr22: might want to get that looked at, because I must be a pretty serious nightmare | 20:41 |
| pwr22 | 😛 | 20:42 |
| dTal | LjL: well my approach was to just press the advantage of asking why they were here | 20:42 |
| dTal | half a dozen outraged people all piling on isn't a very effective therapy session | 20:42 |
| Tuvix | And you got your reply; they were here because they didn't like "big government" | 20:42 |
| LjL | dTal, my impression was taht they'd keep ignoring it, it's true many people were "talking at" them, which usually does happen when utter bollocks is being spouted, but pwr22 made sure to clarified his question twice, and i asked him to answer it which makes it three times at least... and he just very vaguely went "i want restrictions to end" every time | 20:43 |
| dTal | Well, I don't think they were here to troll, exactly - not in a deliberate, haha-watch-them-jump kind of way. They just wanted to talk. Some topics were obviously uncomfortable. | 20:46 |
| dTal | I'm not saying it was wrong to ban - what they need is probably a therapist | 20:46 |
| LjL | i think a lot less people are strictly speaking "trolls" than the amount who get called such | 20:46 |
| LjL | sorry, "fewer" | 20:47 |
| peetaur | does therapy work on the unwilling? | 20:47 |
| LjL | barely on the willing ;( | 20:47 |
| peetaur | people like that are smart enough to know the therapist will say whatever it takes to convince them of what they now reject...so that's like seeing them as the enemy, so they'll just disbelieve it all | 20:48 |
| Tuvix | I think the core issue is that there wasn't any apparent interest in learning how any of it worked. The only even remotely small opening I saw in the all the statements they posted, was this one: < blueberrycrop> I think it's easy to write down anywhere that something is covid related. | 20:48 |
| dTal | peetaur, as I understand it's pretty common for people to book therapy and then just... not talk or open up. A big part of therapy is figuring out how to convert people from unwilling to willing | 20:48 |
| Tuvix | They asked for sources we use, got a handful, then the reply was, just "and why should I trust it?" followed minutes later with "I just don't trust it." | 20:48 |
| pwr22 | LjL: it's okay that you aren't taking a break from the room because you are also one of my delusions so it doesn't matter 😉 | 20:48 |
| pwr22 | Yeah I was casually following their conversation with de-facto and that's when I tuned into it more | 20:50 |
| dTal | I do find that viewing covid conspiracists as simply people suffering from mental mealth problems does wonders for my own sanity | 20:50 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Eric Topol (@EricTopol): The BA.2 countries where sequences are coming fromLargely Denmark and the UKNotably, its spread has stalled in the US and other countries pic.twitter.com/P1llVDVdZp → https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1492222879781376000 | 20:51 |
| pwr22 | Hmm, to anyone that thinks we are doing 1984 style measures - I think they need to remember that we would not have this channel / room if that were the case truly | 20:51 |
| pwr22 | And we would be caught using it if we did and put in a cage with rats eating us or something | 20:51 |
| pwr22 | I forget what happened to Winston exactly - it has been a while since I read it | 20:52 |
| peetaur | pwr22: the Ministry of Truth just booted a denier ...so I don't see it as contradictory ;) | 20:52 |
| peetaur | no offense LjL ;) (but I would quiet, not kick and ban ....why do we kick and ban?) | 20:52 |
| xx | peetaur: the right word is 'unjoined' | 20:53 |
| peetaur | xx: ah yes of course | 20:53 |
| LjL | peetaur, actually i usually quiet in this channel in particular, or at least i've often said that's what i wanted to do | 20:54 |
| LjL | the simple answer is i just didn't think about it | 20:54 |
| pwr22 | peetaur: I don't know what you're talking about. There was never a denier. Everyone in this room has always agreed at all times. Perhaps you need to speak with a Ministry of Truth doctor about your memory issues? | 20:54 |
| LjL | (although quiets often have the effect of riling up people, in that they can still see things they object to, but can no longer reply, and that's frustrating) | 20:54 |
| xx | LjL: a quiet in combination with +z means they can still reply ;) | 20:54 |
| xx | in the right 1984 fashion of course | 20:55 |
| pwr22 | peetaur: banned in this case because they were quite likely trolling and just seemed to be spamming and had ceased to engage in conversation by that point | 20:55 |
| pwr22 | But in hindsight maybe we just should have kicked first. I admit it didn't really occur to me | 20:55 |
| LjL | xx, yeah, same way i could reply in r/Coronavirus (although that turned out to be unintentional). i'd do that sometimes with someone *clearly* malicious if it helped keep the channel usable, but not with someone just misguided | 20:56 |
| * xx shrugs | 20:59 | |
| Brainstorm | New from This Week In Virology: 259: Sea Sawdust: Mark Martin returns to TWiM for a discussion of the frightening global burden of bacterial antibiotic resistance, and a solution to the problem of daylight nitrogen fixation in a cyanobacterium, despite the incompatibility of nitrogenase with oxygen produced during photosynthesis. → https://asm.org/Podcasts/TWiM/Episodes/Sea-Sawdust-TWiM-259 | 21:01 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Spain: +49004 cases, +389 deaths since 21 hours ago | 21:01 |
| blueberrycrop | I sincerely apologize | 21:02 |
| blueberrycrop | As of right now I mostly just want to listen and gain more insight | 21:03 |
| pwr22 | 👍️ | 21:06 |
| Brainstorm | New from CIDRAP: With low COVID vaccine uptake, rural US bore brunt of Delta surge: Mary Van Beusekom | News Writer | CIDRAP News Feb 11, 2022 Rural counties with low COVID-19 vaccination rates had 2.4 times the risk of infection. → https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/02/low-covid-vaccine-uptake-rural-us-bore-brunt-delta-surge | 21:11 |
| Tuvix | blueberrycrop: Did you say you were from the UK? I have a bit of a comparison you might find interesting in drawing parallels with a somewhat similar country in impact and approach, the US. | 21:13 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Michael Lin, MD PhD (@michaelzlin): Forgot to mention, the Novavax press release didn't specify the length of the follow-up period after vaccination. Given small number of participants it's likely longer than 4 weeks, so the Pfizer numbers may not be directly comparable. → https://twitter.com/michaelzlin/status/1492231316443598851 | 21:20 |
| xx | well of course the numbers are not comparable, pfizer's been out for a year | 21:21 |
| Tuvix | Different meaning I think, xx; that's about the follow-up period of 3 vs 4 weeks for the initial trials. | 21:23 |
| Tuvix | If you're comparing results in an A vs. B design, typically you want all the other variables, like when and how you take measurements to match; this study wasn't designed to mimic Pfizer's original trials so much as be a fully independent trial of their own, and it look slike that was the point Lin was making, in context to the tweet thread. | 21:24 |
| xx | true, but I'd really not care about the initial trial when we already have over a billion more results | 21:26 |
| Tuvix | Right, but since Novavax doesn't have that advantage, they have to draw comparison parallels where they can, and for early data that would be trial data. | 21:27 |
| pwr22 | I wonder what the UK plan is post omicron. Are we somehow convinced there won't be another strain evolving to find the next immune escape? Or maybe we are banking on paxlovid and molubalurbanrir (sic 😉) to treat it when people are positive? | 21:29 |
| pwr22 | I kind of don't think running on them alone is wise, we don't have enough potent anti-virals to make a cocktail sufficiently destructive to covid to make escaping it difficult | 21:29 |
| dTal | "plan" lol | 21:30 |
| Tuvix | Keep in mind the rub with the oral treatments is that you have a limited time-window as well; without a good testing programme, the detection and timely administration of such treatments won't be as effective. | 21:30 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Eric Topol (@EricTopol): Yet another country goes to 3-doses to be considered "fully vaccinated"reuters.com/world/asia-pac…There should be exceptions for Prior Covid or J&J vaccinees for whom 1 dose may suffice for equivalent protection → https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1492232540018511872 | 21:30 |
| dTal | the most congruous explanation for the actions of the UK government is rank incompetence | 21:31 |
| dTal | or at least, completely apathy towards public health | 21:31 |
| Tuvix | And yet they're still doing better than the US if you look at any of vaccination, ICU capacity, or deaths for a full year now. | 21:32 |
| ublx | that might just be down to vaccine uptake and (slightly) less divided and populace | 21:32 |
| ublx | *-and | 21:32 |
| Tuvix | This said, the UK saw a pronounced death spike with Omicron far larger than the Delta spike. The US by comparison had a very bad Delta spike, and Omicron's death surge is only just a bit better during Omicron. | 21:33 |
| Tuvix | And sure, vaccines may well make the difference there, and Omicron's immune-escape would also go a long way to explaining the UK's substantial rise in deaths as compared to the rest of 2021: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?time=2020-10-15..latest&Metric=Vaccine+doses%2C+cases%2C+ICU+patients%2C+and+deaths&country=USA~GBR | 21:33 |
| Tuvix | Although the UK is doing much better in ICU-management it would seem. | 21:34 |
| pwr22 | Tuvix: Thankfully the UK gives us copious amounts of free LFTs right now | 21:34 |
| * xx would prefer free NFTs | 21:34 | |
| Tuvix | With the US coming off it's 2nd *major* hit to ICUs just in the last 6 months, the UK only saw a mild rise by comparison. | 21:34 |
| Tuvix | its* | 21:34 |
| pwr22 | dTal: I like to say the the government is pursuing a policy of extreme wishful thinking 😛 | 21:35 |
| ublx | more like deranged | 21:35 |
| dTal | wishful thinking, derangement, incompetence, apathy | 21:36 |
| dTal | what's the difference | 21:36 |
| Tuvix | The case volume is similar between US & UK, so the differences in ICU & death rates are almost entierly due to vaccines and any other mitigations or broader social willingness to do at least a little more than the US. Not once post-ALpha has the US done better than the UK for daily deaths. | 21:36 |
| dTal | the point is that whatever the reason, there is no plan | 21:36 |
| ublx | hmm | 21:37 |
| pwr22 | "Plans? Where we're going, we don't need plans!" | 21:37 |
| ublx | possibly there is a plan in the UK to ignore covid to the fullest extent possible | 21:38 |
| ertyle | how can i no that covid is a real disease? | 21:38 |
| ublx | same way you can know that any disease is real | 21:39 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID19 Vaccine Tracker: valerie: AnGes: AG0301-COVID19 → https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/vaccines/3/ | 21:40 |
| ertyle | but it gives you things like flu gives you. then they tell you with a test that it's not the flu and not pneumonia but "covid". does that make sense? | 21:40 |
| ertyle | this test didnt even exist before | 21:40 |
| ublx | what about that seems nonsensical to you? | 21:41 |
| ertyle | not nonsensical. but other disease have specific things that let people know they are what they are | 21:41 |
| ublx | and now so does covid | 21:42 |
| ertyle | oh | 21:42 |
| ertyle | you mean apart from the test? | 21:42 |
| ublx | i had the test in mind | 21:42 |
| pwr22 | What specific things do we have for flu to tell you that you have flu? | 21:44 |
| ertyle | maybe we dont. isnt flu a lot of things? | 21:44 |
| Tuvix | Are you referring to influenza here? | 21:45 |
| ertyle | what people call flu | 21:45 |
| ublx | yossarian, is that you? | 21:47 |
| Tuvix | Flu is short for influenza, but I'm not sure if you're referring to that or something else. Clarity may help yield better answers for you. | 21:47 |
| ertyle | ok i dont no maybe flu or influenza is a more specific thing but we didnt make a new world with new rules for flu | 21:49 |
| ertyle | whats happening with this covid thing just seems little strange | 21:49 |
| Brainstorm | New from StatNews: Authorization of new Covid-19 monoclonal expands arsenal of options against Omicron and its sister variant: The FDA authorized another Covid-19 monoclonal antibody treatment, expanding the supply of treatments [... want %more?] → https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/11/authorization-of-new-covid-19-monoclonal-expands-arsenal-of-options-against-omicron-and-its-sister-variant/ | 21:50 |
| Tuvix | COVID is distinct from influenza, which is why I'm seeking clarity on what you're asking about. | 21:50 |
| pwr22 | ertyle: I'm asking about when you said "but other disease have specific things that let people know they are what they are". You are now saying "maybe we don't". So is what you said true or not? | 21:50 |
| Tuvix | They're from differnet families of virus, which is a very big genomic distinction. | 21:50 |
| dTal | red letter day for radical skepticism huh | 21:51 |
| ertyle | well pwr22 what im saying is im not a doctor and maybe a doctor know more specificly what is flu and what isnt flu. but we knew about disease maybe less precisly even before we had all these tests, right? people said you have smallpox | 21:52 |
| ertyle | with covid i wonder if it had happened 300 years ago would we even no something is happening | 21:53 |
| pwr22 | Smallpox has very obvious visible symptoms | 21:53 |
| dTal | could you maybe take the time to type "know" | 21:53 |
| dTal | please | 21:53 |
| ertyle | know | 21:54 |
| pwr22 | It would be called "the X" for some name but it would be recognisable by it suddenly being present a lot more than it was before | 21:54 |
| pwr22 | they might call it flu also, it doesn't matter because back then there was nothing they could have done differently. Nowadays we literally take samples of the pathogen and take them apart and compare them to other ones we know. There is also an ongoing history of dangerous coronaviruses arising in humans in the same geographical areas around covid did. We called them SARS and MERS | 21:56 |
| pwr22 | So how does anyone of this relate to whether covid is a real disease or not? | 21:57 |
| pwr22 | *any of this | 21:58 |
| ertyle | so youre saying its like the flu and they would have called it the flu before, but, theyd notice a lot more of it? | 21:59 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Jeremy Farrar (@JeremyFarrar): Heart-disease risk soars after COVID — even with a mild case nature.com/articles/d4158… → https://twitter.com/JeremyFarrar/status/1492238922604322818 | 21:59 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for France: +133017 cases, +271 deaths since 21 hours ago — Kiribati: +2 deaths since 12 hours ago | 22:04 |
| LjL | oh today is one of those two days a week when France produces any numbers? | 22:07 |
| Tuvix | A number of US states have notably very irregular reporting schedules too, which makes even the 7-day smoothing hard to use (you have to scale it up to 14 or more days smoothing to avoid saw-tooth charts) | 22:07 |
| LjL | mmm at least in europe it's mostly about single weeks ;( | 22:08 |
| LjL | except when holidays occur | 22:08 |
| Brainstorm | New from CIDRAP: Eagerly awaited COVID lifesavers molnupiravir, Paxlovid now wait for patients: Mary Van Beusekom | News Writer | CIDRAP News Feb 11, 2022 Patients may not know about the drugs or don't want them. → https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/02/eagerly-awaited-covid-lifesavers-molnupiravir-paxlovid-now-wait-patients | 22:09 |
| pwr22 | Oh look, its Mjolnirupivir! | 22:10 |
| LjL | wut | 22:25 |
| LjL | like for real? | 22:25 |
| LjL | oh well, yes for real, and for obvious reasons | 22:25 |
| LjL | "However, patients have to surmount several hurdles to get them—including recognizing that they have symptoms of COVID-19, getting a COVID-19 test, having a positive test, securing a doctor's appointment, getting a prescription, and finding a pharmacy with a supply—and they have to do all of this quickly. Antivirals need to be started within the first 5 days of COVID-19 symptom onset in order to produce a benefit." | 22:26 |
| LjL | sigh | 22:26 |
| LjL | we've said this here before, obviously with current testing regimens, you'll never grab it in time | 22:26 |
| LjL | double sighs | 22:26 |
| LjL | on another subject what is happening in Canada and New Zealand with truckers? | 22:27 |
| LjL | i've only heard about it but am not quite clear on it | 22:27 |
| pwr22 | Yeah, the UK is not prepared for rolling out these things yet at all | 22:27 |
| pwr22 | A bunch of Alex Jones level truckers and random followers are protesting | 22:28 |
| pwr22 | That's all I know | 22:28 |
| Brainstorm | New from CIDRAP: COVID-19 vaccine for kids under 5 delayed as Pfizer extends trial: Stephanie Soucheray | News Reporter | CIDRAP News Feb 11, 2022 Also, protection against serious Omicron illness drops by 4 months after a third dose but is still high, new data show. → https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/02/covid-19-vaccine-kids-under-5-delayed-pfizer-extends-trial | 22:28 |
| Tuvix | In Canada, they're blocking a major route into the US, and it's causing more than just the standard protest level of disruption as a result, which seems to have been the point. | 22:29 |
| xx | LjL: honk honk | 22:32 |
| xx | \_ò< HONK! | 22:32 |
| LjL-Matrix | xx: "honk honk" can express many things to an Italian... | 22:35 |
| Tuvix | I liked some of the signs the locals (who are very fed up with the whole thing; I know someone who lives in Ottawa) have hung on their public-facing flats | 22:36 |
| xx | oh really? | 22:36 |
| xx | to me it's just the sound a car or a canada goose does | 22:36 |
| LjL-Matrix | xx: the sound a car honk does can mean many things to an Italian | 22:36 |
| Tuvix | Spotted in Ottawa: https://twitter.com/ParlCharlie/status/1487913040137887745 | 22:37 |
| xx | sigh, let me guess, meaning #6 on https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/honk | 22:37 |
| Brainstorm | New from University of Washington: Alumni Spotlight: Corrie Ortega’s (PhD Pathobiology, ‘14) Path to Breaking Two Glass Ceilings: Corrie Ortega Profile Photo.jpg As a child, Corrie Ortega played with circuit boards. Her father, an electrical [... want %more?] → https://globalhealth.washington.edu/news/2022/02/11/alumni-spotlight-corrie-ortega-s-phd-pathobiology-14-path-breaking-two-glass | 22:38 |
| LjL-Matrix | No. Just "Beware I'm coming the wrong way while speeding", "Hurry up and dress quickly 'cause my blocking the road", " Be careful there are cops ahead", "I hope you have an accident and die very painfully" | 22:39 |
| pwr22 | I do admit number 6 does come to mind as well as number 1 | 22:40 |
| pwr22 | Though when applying number 6 to a nose I would say "beep" | 22:40 |
| xx | I'd say boop | 22:41 |
| pwr22 | And would refer to it as "booping" | 22:41 |
| pwr22 | It must be a UK / US distinction 😉 | 22:41 |
| LjL-Matrix | I'd say "ouch that cat bit me" | 22:41 |
| xx | hmm, 'boop' has diagonal symmetry, never noticed that | 22:41 |
| xx | oh nok, it doesn't | 22:41 |
| xx | *no | 22:41 |
| LjL-Matrix | booq | 22:42 |
| pwr22 | booq | 22:42 |
| xx | yeah | 22:42 |
| pwr22 | 😛 | 22:42 |
| pwr22 | What about qoob? | 22:43 |
| xx | anyway lots of honking in canada, and it's coming to europe too | 22:43 |
| xx | at least the people are staying inside vehicles instead of being in groups spreading covid among each other | 22:43 |
| Tuvix | Not really; there's a huge amount of protesting and gathering around the whole thing, not to mention the block of traffic which, as I just heard a report on yesterday, is impacting such traffic as nurses trying to get to hospitals that need them. | 22:44 |
| xx | I'll have to look at some photos then | 22:45 |
| Tuvix | This is quite offensive too: https://twitter.com/nilikm/status/1487813481470386176 | 22:45 |
| LjL-Matrix | The first thing I heard about it was neighborhoods going crazy with the day and night noise and getting an injunction from court to stop the honking | 22:45 |
| Tuvix | Protesters walking around, oviously the majority of them unmaksed; where are the trucks you claim they're inside again? | 22:45 |
| Tuvix | obviously* | 22:45 |
| LjL-Matrix | I bet the poorest people are the ones that tend to live closest to where the honking happens too | 22:45 |
| xx | maybe that's a different event then, because i just know about the one where trucks are blocking stuff | 22:46 |
| xx | don't see trucks there | 22:46 |
| xx | in fact the streets look pretty empty | 22:46 |
| Tuvix | This is all part of the same protest. | 22:46 |
| Tuvix | So search harder? | 22:47 |
| Tuvix | https://www.google.com/search?q=ottawa+truck+protest | 22:48 |
| xx | I like trucks, so that's what I focus on I guess. People walking other places without trucks has been going on the past 2 years so that's not something interesting to me. | 22:49 |
| Tuvix | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/07/ottawa-declares-state-of-emergency-as-canada-trucker-protest-paralyses-city | 22:49 |
| Tuvix | Then try to at least do a bit of research before claiming that "the streets look pretty empty." If that was in reply to my single photo about the offensive white-supremacy and Nazi ties, perhaps you just took out of of context and assumed it was representative of every street in Ottawa? | 22:50 |
| pwr22 | I've definitely seen video of a convoy of trucks going around | 22:51 |
| Tuvix | Indeed, not every street is full of protestors, such as the one that nurse was stuck behind the white supremacists trying to get to work. | 22:51 |
| xx | no I was just commenting on that single photo | 22:51 |
| xx | and about the lack of trucks in that photo. PM me truck pics. | 22:51 |
| Tuvix | Sure, in that single photo, the _street_ (not streets, plural, as you used) is somewhat empty. It was taken by a nurse who was, and I think rightfully, offended at the open racism in a protest that, in theory, has zero to do with race. | 22:52 |
| Arsanerit | People have the right to protest with their bodies, but it doesn't seem right that people who happen to own some large vehicle have the right to use that vehicle to use as a tool in a protest. | 22:53 |
| Tuvix | The gathering with those flags was clearly pre-planned, so it's fairly clear the small group of racists photographed were meeting up with the larger group later. | 22:53 |
| xx | Arsanerit: a truckers truck is an extension of their body | 22:54 |
| xx | just like a bikers bike | 22:54 |
| Tuvix | Arsanerit: Yea, and the blocking of a major road is what's causing the Canadian / Ottawa authorities grief at the moment. Respectful protests can even get help from local police to block off roads so they have an appropriate place to do their social discourse, safely. | 22:54 |
| pwr22 | I don't think we need to get too deep into whether a road or roads are empty. And whether there are trucks in them or not 😛 | 22:55 |
| * xx just likes trucks and male truckers, that's all | 22:55 | |
| pwr22 | 😀 | 22:56 |
| Arsanerit | xx: maybe to them, but not to the law | 22:57 |
| Tuvix | I mean, I'd even be more okay about it if they'd worked with authorities to put their vehicles in an appropriate spot, but they didn't, and again, largely on purpose with intent to cause as big a disruption as possible. The professional trucking industry is pretty irate about the whole thing too. | 22:58 |
| pwr22 | I don't see it as being anymore acceptable that people obstruct things with their bodies or their vehicles | 22:58 |
| pwr22 | Protest, sure fine | 22:58 |
| Tuvix | Sure, but picking a major international border specifically because of the impact is even worse then blocking some other road. Either is probably illegal if you don't have permission to be there though. | 22:59 |
| de-facto | sabotage of any form is not acceptable. they can protest without causing harm to other people | 22:59 |
| pwr22 | I absolutely strictly agree with no exception | 23:00 |
| xx | well all governments have been sabotaging the covid effort | 23:00 |
| pwr22 | 😉 | 23:00 |
| Tuvix | When the intent of your protest is in part to explicitly cause harm, it undermines the legitimacy of the protest. | 23:00 |
| xx | Tuvix: what if protests that don't cause harm are always ignored? | 23:00 |
| pwr22 | Is it sabotage if they're doing it through negligence rather than intent? | 23:00 |
| LjL-Matrix | Like the way strikes are meant to cause harm to the employer? | 23:00 |
| Arsanerit | pwr22: It's undemocratic to protest with trucks, because not everybody has a truck. | 23:01 |
| xx | heh | 23:01 |
| pwr22 | 😀 | 23:01 |
| pwr22 | pwr22 2024: trucks for everyone! | 23:01 |
| xx | I could get behind that | 23:02 |
| Arsanerit | let them protest with bicycles | 23:02 |
| pwr22 | But they would all be electric | 23:02 |
| Arsanerit | At one point a small group of protesters blocked the driveway of the CEO of Shell in The Netherlands to get him to take climate action, but their plan failed when he got out of his garage not in a car but on a bicycle. | 23:03 |
| Tuvix | Very climate-concious at that :P | 23:03 |
| Arsanerit | he invited them in for tea and they had a discussion in which they agreed about some things and disagreed about others | 23:03 |
| Arsanerit | There are many reasons to go by bike, climate-consciousness is only one of many. It's possible to go by bike without being climate-conscious. | 23:04 |
| Tuvix | Years ago in the metro area I grew up in, a group of drivers protested by driving the speed limit. The twist is they wer all in a row so that no one could pass them who wanted to (illegally) exceed the speed limit. | 23:04 |
| Tuvix | If I recall right, none of the speed-limit-following drivers were jailed or fined (pulling them over was enough to fix the traffic jam,) although the claim was that it was blocking emergency traffic. | 23:05 |
| Arsanerit | Tuvix: In many places, driving the speed limit would be reckless and dangerous. Most British rural roads are like that. Was it such a road? | 23:05 |
| Tuvix | No, multi-lay freeway here in the states, a 4 (or 5 at that point?) lane road. | 23:06 |
| Tuvix | lane* | 23:06 |
| Arsanerit | Around here an increasing mode of transport is rappelling off a motorway bridge forcing police to close the road for safety. | 23:07 |
| Arsanerit | Around here an increasing mode of *protest is rappelling off a motorway bridge forcing police to close the road for safety. | 23:07 |
| Arsanerit | Extinction Rebellion and similar groups tend to do that, I think. | 23:07 |
| Tuvix | And what, just hanging there until the protestors are removed, or actually putting their bodies on the roadway? | 23:07 |
| Arsanerit | Probably not the same people who block roads with trucks. | 23:07 |
| Arsanerit | Tuvix: No, just hanging midway, making it difficult for the police to remove the protestors safely. | 23:08 |
| Tuvix | Ah, gotcha. Yea, annoying, but they can't take the risk that someone's gear fails dropping them on the moving traffic below, or that some debris kicks up and hits them at high-speed. | 23:08 |
| Arsanerit | It's effective, illegal, and not entirely safe. | 23:08 |
| pwr22 | Around where I am some extinction rebellion people closed an amazon fulfilment center by chaining themselves to the gate | 23:09 |
| Tuvix | Depends on how well you know your gear. I rock climb, but the roadway has too many unwanted hazzards for me to say that's a "safe" thing to do. | 23:09 |
| Arsanerit | Effective in the sense that it has a high impact on causing a disturbance, not necessarily effective in that they achieve their political aims. | 23:09 |
| Arsanerit | Their aim being to stop all roadbuilding, I think. Or at least all motorway building. | 23:10 |
| pwr22 | Amazon took the gate off the wall and then the police put the whole thing into a big van lol | 23:10 |
| pwr22 | It was kind of funny 😛 | 23:10 |
| Tuvix | Ignoring the road-related (and legal) problems, staying midway is pretty safe with the right gear and assuming you set a good anchor point. | 23:10 |
| pwr22 | Also Amazon had another way to get the vans in too | 23:10 |
| Arsanerit | The road-related problems is what may make it unsafe. | 23:10 |
| Tuvix | Oh of course, and that's why the authorities have to respond, in the same way they'd deal with people climinging buildings or base-jumping off downtown rooftop access stairways. | 23:11 |
| Tuvix | If something were to go wrong, the city would have some liability too if they sat back and did nothing. | 23:11 |
| Arsanerit | They even got permission for one such action. They announced it in advance, and the authorities said OK and closed the road before they started. That surprised me. | 23:11 |
| Tuvix | I think that's a good balance honestly, if both sides can be kept mostly civil about it. | 23:12 |
| Arsanerit | In a tree blockade (to block a planned motorway) some protesters got hurt when they fell during a police action forcibly removing them, and now they're blaming each other for who is to blame. | 23:12 |
| Tuvix | Sure, it'll cause disruption to close a road, but doing it in advance allows both sides to clearly draw lines and still get some of the impact and visibility the protestors want without the risk of harmful side-effects the city & law enforcement wants. | 23:12 |
| Arsanerit | I do think we should build bikeways and public transport rather than more motorways, but closing a major motorway for a dozen protestors; I had expected that the authorities would have told them to hold their protest somewhere else. | 23:13 |
| Arsanerit | This being a federal road, so no city involvement I think, but I'm not sure how that works exactly. | 23:13 |
| Tuvix | If the unannounced protests were already a thing, that could have also been a trial to see how allowing them to get what they want in a controlled way works. | 23:14 |
| Tuvix | It's only effective long-term if that avoids the unannounced protests though. | 23:14 |
| Arsanerit | Yes, at the same time they declined approval for three simultaneous protests elsewhere in the state. | 23:14 |
| Arsanerit | which seemed a bit random | 23:14 |
| Tuvix | Nah, if the canadian truckers can all come to Ottawa, the protestors there can just all rapell down the same bridge :P | 23:15 |
| Arsanerit | French farmers have a habit of driving tractors into Paris and dumping dung in front of parliament when they're not satisfied about some rule or another. | 23:15 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Bloom Lab (@jbloom_lab): Another postscript: this comment @acritschristoph posted on the Antarctica-#SARSCoV2 pre-print makes good points that should also be considered in continued analysis of the data: researchsquare.com/article/rs-133… (25/n) → https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1492260711103299584 | 23:17 |
| de-facto | ok to be fair, in addition to my rant about insufficient PCR capacity in Germany with positivity rates of 40%-50% earlier, i have to mention that they do proxy PCR testing with positive rapid antigen tests in advance, so the positivity rate is not representative to over all test positivity rate in Germany | 23:41 |
| de-facto | yet that way the higher sensitivity of PCR tests is not available to broad majorities | 23:42 |
| de-facto | they say this strategy is able to deal with incidence of 450000 infections per day, hopefully we wont reach that | 23:43 |
| de-facto | also they claim that they have symptom based surveillance, so they combine many sources (not only incidence) to estimate current situation | 23:46 |
| de-facto | after easter they will publish serological studies, hence we by then will get numbers about how many more people developed antibodies than officially got registered as testing positive for viral infection with SARS-CoV-2 | 23:47 |
| de-facto | *Eastern | 23:47 |
Generated by irclog2html.py 2.17.0 by Marius Gedminas - find it at https://mg.pov.lt/irclog2html/!
