| Brainstorm | New from Reddit (test): nCoV: Canada government links blockade to extremists | 17FEB22 → https://old.reddit.com/r/nCoV/comments/sv1wdu/canada_government_links_blockade_to_extremists/ | 00:09 |
|---|---|---|
| Brainstorm | New from Ars Technica: Science: Vaccine makers announce slowdowns for omicron-specific booster → https://arstechnica.com/ | 00:28 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Hong Kong: +6116 cases, +11 deaths since a day ago — France: +93512 cases, +287 deaths since 20 hours ago — Italy: +58055 cases, +320 deaths, +538131 tests (10.8% positive) since 20 hours ago — Netherlands: +56461 cases, +17 deaths since 20 hours ago | 01:04 |
| Brainstorm | New from COVID on Twitter: Marc Veldhoen (@Marc_Veld): What happens if you agitate and spread misinformation about vaccines?Yep, those diseases you thought were gone; they come back!science.org/content/articl… → https://twitter.com/Marc_Veld/status/1494462121157009410 | 01:06 |
| LjL | %title https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/02/omicron-specific-boosters-delayed-as-cases-fall-animal-studies-disappoint/ SIGH maybe this is why the Moderna CEO was selling stocks and fleeing Twitter after all | 01:31 |
| Brainstorm | LjL: From arstechnica.com: Vaccine makers announce slowdowns for omicron-specific booster | Ars Technica | 01:31 |
| LjL | "The shots were initially expected in March." ... "Meanwhile, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said Wednesday that Moderna's omicron-specific shot could now be ready by August, according to a separate Reuters report." | 01:31 |
| Tuvix | I'd probably do the same in their position regardless of targeted booster ETAs; not only can estimates slip due to less-than-ideal outcomes, but if they're either less effective or turn out not to be needed (say á best-case outocme of no major new VoC and managable VE after 3 doses, which is indeed a bit unrealisic) then the stock may be worth more now than it would be in 1, 3, or 12 months. | 01:34 |
| Tuvix | Sure, we could also see the worst-case where a new VoC requires an updated product that can be produced quicker than we ever could imagine today & stocks go up, but that's perhaps the bad bet. | 01:35 |
| LjL | Tuvix, well i don't really care what he does with his stock really except as a possible indicator of trouble ahead... i'm just disappointed at these delays, although to be fair, countries wouldn't *use* these vaccines before August. but if they'll be *ready by* August (at least in the case of Moderna), then for sure we'll be rushing to have the injected in time again next fall. i wish we could reach a reasonable pace. | 01:52 |
| LjL | meanwhile, i'm also not very happy about this little development in italy | 01:53 |
| LjL | %title https://www-punto--informatico-it.translate.goog/ufficiale-il-green-pass-non-sara-abolito-il-1-aprile/?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp | 01:53 |
| Brainstorm | LjL: From www-punto--informatico-it.translate.goog: Ufficiale: il Green Pass non sarà abolito il 1 aprile | 01:53 |
| LjL | well i thought the title would be translated, but anyway "Official: The Green Pass will not be abolished on April 1st", the title doesn't say much | 01:53 |
| LjL | the thing is, the state of emergency is going to end, but they're writing laws to make the green pass and other restrictions a non-emergency instrument | 01:54 |
| LjL | i think in part this just has to happen because the constitution says we can't have more than 2 years of state of emergency, iirc, and on march 31 the time runs out | 01:54 |
| LjL | but i'm not a huge fan of the green pass and i'd rather it stay tied to a clear state of emergency rather than becoming normalized | 01:54 |
| Tuvix | Many nations are moving in similar directions, either reducing limits, or making more things guidance and working to restore "normal" to a higher degree. | 01:55 |
| LjL | as long as we're in this mess, sure, let's do things, but when anti-greenpass people said (and they did) that it would not be ditched when the pandemic "ended", but it would stick around, well... i'd rather they not be proven right | 01:55 |
| Tuvix | The bot had an interesting read comparing smoking to COVID that I found rather interesting here. | 01:55 |
| LjL | Tuvix, that's not what Italy is doing though | 01:55 |
| LjL | the countries that are removing restrictions are... removing restrictions | 01:55 |
| LjL | Italy is maybe changing them, but actually making the restrictions untied from the state of emergency, so that they can *continue* | 01:56 |
| LjL | i hope the laws are still being written with a clear concept of an "end" in mind. not that we'll have QR codes to get on the bus forever. | 01:56 |
| Tuvix | Oh, I see. Yea, that's perhaps the wrong approach; if they feel the emergency persists, getting approval to continue it specifically might be better. | 01:56 |
| LjL | well if that's constitutionally not allowed, it's not allowed | 01:56 |
| LjL | i'm just unhappy about it | 01:57 |
| Tuvix | Well, that's what the smoking comparison talked about; we're decades into the smoking (and 2nd hand smoke) issue, but we still put up with it. | 01:57 |
| LjL | decades? more like centuries O.o | 01:57 |
| Tuvix | That article talked about how smoking is effectively endemic, and similar to (but not on the same scale as COVID, obviously) impacts others via 2nd hand smoke injury & death. | 01:57 |
| Tuvix | Well, we've only really _known_ about the dangers of modern style smoking for perhaps 5 or 6 decades. | 01:58 |
| Tuvix | Before that, that article noted something like half of all Americans smoked. | 01:58 |
| LjL | oh i broke the bot | 01:58 |
| Tuvix | Now it's about 1 in 7, but of coruse they can impact those around them with thier behavior, and we've worked to curb *that* impact with limits on smoking in public places, for example. | 01:58 |
| Tuvix | Trouble is, it's less easy to ban dining indoors while shedding SARS-CoV-2 than it is to ban smoking with a lit cigarette… | 01:59 |
| Tuvix | Let's see if my bookmarks sync'd to the laptop here… | 01:59 |
| LjL | de-facto, ubLIX[m]: is it The Atlantic, Politico, or both, that have become bad? | 02:00 |
| Tuvix | Yup, this one from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/02/covid-anti-vaccine-smoking/622819/ | 02:00 |
| LjL | yes i found it in the logs | 02:00 |
| Tuvix | I don't agree that COVID is currently endemic, but that article also doesn't make that claim; it points out that it'll eventually be considered endemic, either because the populuation has effectively given up hope of further containment, or because we've reached the end of practical progress year-over-year | 02:01 |
| LjL | by the way, there is a new channel ##covid-links that posts every link posted in ##covid-19 and ##coronavirus with its title (it's really an offshot of the existing ##coronalinks, but ##coronalinks will no longer include Brainstorm links, only human-posted ones, ##covid-links will include them all) | 02:01 |
| LjL | Tuvix, technically it's endemic when the R hovers around 1, is my understanding. what i wonder is whether it's considered endemic if the R stays low for a while, and then EVERYONE AND THEIR CATS become infected again, and over and over in waves just like we've had. what's stopping that from happening? re-infections are getting more and more likely with each variant. Omicron gives little protection against itself, maybe 50%. | 02:02 |
| LjL | basically if the current situation with years creepy big waves persists "forever", does that eventually gets called endemic anyway? | 02:03 |
| Tuvix | Sure, although that describes influenza too; many get re-inefected, and after a lull, it comes roaring back predictablly. | 02:03 |
| LjL | Tuvix, but is it nearly as many as the covid waves? (i honestly have little idea how many get infected yearly) | 02:04 |
| de-facto | Politico is owned by Axel Springer, in my opinion they do sabotage | 02:04 |
| Tuvix | I view the difference more in how it impacts society; that's been the driving point with my US-vs-Anywhere-Else examples to large part; the US has worse impact because we've handled this more badly. | 02:04 |
| Tuvix | I don't have good flu data for non-US sources mostly because I haven't really looked, but in the US, flu kills 36.9k on annual avearge going back 10 years (this is pre-pandemic times since we actually curbed flu a bit with early COVID mitigations too.) | 02:05 |
| Tuvix | That's over an order of magnitude less death (nevermind all the other secondary COVID issues that flu largely doesn't have.) | 02:05 |
| LjL | forget about how many it kills for now, the endemicity is about the R which is about the infections | 02:05 |
| Tuvix | Well, sort of, sure, but flu goes to basically zero, and then R is "enough to get a lot of the country infected." | 02:05 |
| LjL | de-facto, do you think for endemicity you need to have R~1, or would you call something with big yearly waves (just every year, forever) "endemic"? | 02:05 |
| Tuvix | By this logic, the seasonal flu is NOT endemic, despite the fact that most consider it to be. | 02:06 |
| LjL | Tuvix, yeah i suppose maybe if you take the average over the year, the R may be 1-ish? | 02:06 |
| LjL | right | 02:06 |
| LjL | to be fair, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza only includes the word "endemic" twice | 02:06 |
| LjL | one is "By the end of the 16th century, influenza was likely beginning to become understood as a specific, recognizable disease with epidemic and endemic forms.[50]" | 02:06 |
| Tuvix | I don't really even see fairly notable case-values to be a problem; it's the impact it has. The common cold comes & goes too; it can hit in summer (not unlike COVID) but hits harder in seasonal winter in places that experience it. | 02:06 |
| LjL | so as an inference from this, it would be considered endemic or epidemic depending on the season. | 02:06 |
| LjL | i see them to be a problem given long COVID and the impact on workforce of staying home | 02:07 |
| LjL | deaths are not COVID's only problem by any means | 02:07 |
| de-facto | Axel Springer also owns BILD and WELT in Germany, the former aiming for the mentaly less capable the later trying to appear more mainstream, yet both actively try to discredit institutions in key positions such as RKI, Wieler, health ministery, Lauterbach, DIVI hospital register etc | 02:07 |
| Tuvix | Right, and that's why I try to look at impact. | 02:07 |
| LjL | ugh, <Brainstorm> New from r/WorldNews: worldnews: Italy: The Effects of Covid-19 on the Italian Pension System - Saving €11 Billion Due to Covid Deaths → https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/sv3pu7/italy_the_effects_of_covid19_on_the_italian/ | 02:08 |
| Tuvix | I don't care so much about cases at this point; we can argue all we want about how testing plays a role in that, and how percent-positive may or may not be expressing the true situation, but when hospitals, ICUs, and deaths are up, that's clearly an issue. | 02:08 |
| LjL | i wish we'd save money in some other way than this :\ | 02:08 |
| de-facto | endemic just means some kind of steady state, regardless if that means low or high impact on health | 02:08 |
| LjL | de-facto, well, if every year there is a big wave and then it stops for a while, it's not a steady state, is it? | 02:08 |
| de-facto | hence a seasonal SARS may be called endemic (always returning) even when it causes deadly waves every winter | 02:08 |
| de-facto | well its the yearly pattern then, hence steady state | 02:09 |
| LjL | okay | 02:09 |
| Tuvix | de-facto: Yea, and there was a NYT article on that point too, focused on the US badly-handled stated of affairs (as compared to other places, in this case Denmark by contrast) and there they pointed out that if we (Americans) call this the end ie: endemic, we're really normalizing a high rate of death. | 02:09 |
| de-facto | just one that is not very desirable | 02:09 |
| LjL | so the R~1 meaning endemicity is only true when averaging over long periods? | 02:09 |
| Tuvix | Endemic really just means "present in the population" | 02:09 |
| Tuvix | Pandemic has the related but more dire meaning of "present everywhere" | 02:10 |
| de-facto | well we do know now that SARS-CoV-2 is so highly infectious that it causes waves with Rt > 1 and between those we have declining cases with Rt < 1 | 02:10 |
| de-facto | if nothing really restricts infection dynamics this will not average out, and indeed we see roughly a 10-fold of infections every year for now | 02:11 |
| de-facto | how that will change with reinfections, we dont know that yet, but Omicron demonstrated the possibility that even Delta recoveries very easily can get reinfected with Omicron | 02:12 |
| Tuvix | Sure, but my point is let's say we track both the common cold and influenza the same way we track COVID today; we'd likely see similar case incidence trends. | 02:13 |
| de-facto | hopefully immune systems wont freak out that much anymore, but that remains to be seen | 02:13 |
| Tuvix | The problem is that COVID is a lot worse then the cold or the flu; *that* is the problem, not the R-value or the case spikes. | 02:13 |
| de-facto | we will see a new mutant after Omicron too, i am pretty sure of that | 02:13 |
| Tuvix | Right, COVID could just as easily become just as bad or worse than recent varients, and then we're back in this all over again, with another summer Delta-like (but not Delta) problem. | 02:14 |
| Tuvix | It might not do that, but we just can't really say, and not having any plan for it seems foolish; but frankly, equally foolish is not being able to relax a bit more if we don't see that. I might even be more comfortable going out to indoor events again, as a reasonably healthy person with no co-morbidities. But not next week. | 02:14 |
| de-facto | COVID is a lot worse (10-20-fold) than the seasonal influenza, but there are types of Influenza that are a LOT worse than those, e.g. its not entirely unrealistic to see a very pathogenic Influenza with something like 20-50% mortality | 02:15 |
| de-facto | fortunately none such circulate in the *human* population so far | 02:15 |
| Tuvix | Indeed, I noticed that too with just 10-year CDC data (pre-pandemic decade.) That's what I used for my annual aveage when I compare COVID to flu, but one of those years was almost twice as bad as the avearge. | 02:16 |
| Tuvix | It doesn't offset the average by much, but shows that small changes annually can make a decent impact in fatality. | 02:16 |
| de-facto | Omicron mainly was an immuno-evasive mutant, it was not the very fittest one we had seen so far | 02:17 |
| de-facto | maybe that also could be one reason why infections were milder compared to other variants | 02:17 |
| Tuvix | By the same line of reasoning, I actually really like The Atlantic take that slow improvements to COVID vacciantion, assuming they remain necessary on at least an annual basis to keep protection up for the time being, is the way to improve outcomes. The risk to the vaccinated remains fairly low, and it's the risk of hospitalization or death times the inverse-VE value against either that's important. | 02:18 |
| de-facto | but can we exclude that a future mutant combines both capabilities, immuno-evasive and increased fitness (as in being better reproductive in human biology)? | 02:18 |
| Tuvix | Right, Omicron was only worse (death-wise) in the US than Delta due to how readily it spread; it's a lot less effective a killer, it just had more chances to roll the dice and get a fatal outcome. | 02:18 |
| de-facto | maybe immuno evasive capabilities come at some fitness cost, but is that always guaranteed? | 02:18 |
| Tuvix | There's nothing at al that stops the *next* VoC from being better or worse at either. Extra bad for humanity if it's better at both though. | 02:19 |
| de-facto | the hope may be that populations immune system gets broader and broader spectra of epitopes in their immune libraries (B-cells, T-cells etc) leaving less room for evasion without dramatic changes to the S-protein | 02:22 |
| de-facto | and assumed that the S-protein already is optimized to human biology, depending on how much it already is in the "sweet spot" it may really require the cost of decreased fitness to do dramatic changes (for immuno-evasion) | 02:23 |
| de-facto | the challenge is to estimate how much possible room there still is for increasing fitness (compared to where it is now) | 02:24 |
| de-facto | and i guess SARS-CoV-2 may have some tricks for that, it is very adaptive and easily can jump species barriers etc | 02:24 |
| Tuvix | However fast we are at guessing, it'll be faster at whatever-it-is it's about to do next: https://xkcd.com/1605 | 02:25 |
| Tuvix | Very relevant mouseover too, "Researchers just found the gene responsible for mistakenly thinking we've found the gene for specific things. It's the region between the start and the end of every chromosome, plus a few segments in our mitochondria." | 02:25 |
| LjL | latest couple of case counts in Italy: | 02:27 |
| LjL | <Brainstorm> Updates for Italy: +59869 cases, +278 deaths, +555080 tests (10.8% positive) since a day ago | 02:27 |
| LjL | <Brainstorm> Updates for Italy: +58055 cases, +320 deaths, +538131 tests (10.8% positive) since 20 hours ago | 02:27 |
| LjL | it's interesting how the cases keep going down but the positive rate keeps being 11% :P | 02:28 |
| LjL | or even more exactly the same | 02:28 |
| LjL | meanwhile the deaths go up again... :\ | 02:28 |
| de-facto | btw the opening steps just decided in Germany very well may stabilize case numbers at higher niveau, ensuring SARS-CoV-2 got enough time to diffuse into the vulnerable groups, so death numbers quite likely will begin to rise soon | 02:28 |
| Tuvix | US has seen a slow trend into a finally-declining death-rate. | 02:28 |
| LjL | i don't like to think that we may have just decided "it's time to reopen again" and that results in massaging the numbers :\ | 02:28 |
| LjL | but i do | 02:28 |
| de-facto | (looking at Denmark for that) | 02:28 |
| LjL | de-facto, either level, English doesn't really use/know the word niveau unless one has studied French :P | 02:29 |
| LjL | err, higher* level | 02:29 |
| Tuvix | The real open quesiton I have with US deaths is how _far_ they go down; will this be like spring/summer 2021 where we see a sharp decline to very low death rates, or will Omicron and even fewer mitigations mean we see a really poor Delta-like recovery to over 10x rates (weekly avearged over a year) of influenza, but in *summer* | 02:29 |
| Tuvix | Erm, that 10x figure was actually during post-Delta, so to be fair, that's early Fall (Sept.) | 02:30 |
| de-facto | oh yeah lol, indeed i meant level, in German one would use niveau | 02:30 |
| LjL | Tuvix, it may be an isolated case, but again, i'm concerned when i see how in Greece somehow the cases just abruptly stopped going down, and stabilized at a *pretty high* level that is sure to come with a few deaths | 02:30 |
| de-facto | for some reason this seems to be the goal, stabilize infections at the highest level as long as possible | 02:31 |
| de-facto | even if the costs are lots of damage to health and fatal outcomes | 02:31 |
| de-facto | i mean how else could one understand the intent behind deciding to take away restrictions at the exact moment of highest incidence? | 02:33 |
| de-facto | if the goal would be to bring infections down one would at least ensure the circumstances that lead to a decline of infection increase would stay, yet instead one actively seems to try to increase reproduction number as soon as it could fall below 1 | 02:34 |
| Tuvix | Ultimately it's a balance of impact though. | 02:34 |
| Tuvix | It may make sense to reduce restrictions where the expected impact is lower, despite case-levels. I really think cases are largely the wrong metric to consider, at least without context to more impactful measures. | 02:35 |
| Tuvix | Again, how much war would you advocate we wage on the common cold? It has lots of cases; yet in winter we often *celebrate* getting together indoors; families travel great distances to spend hours to gether in gatherings, sometimes quite large ones. | 02:36 |
| Tuvix | It's not incidence we should care about; it's potential impact. | 02:36 |
| de-facto | but for taking back restrictions one would have to wait for daily infections to be on reasonably low levels instead of stabilizing them at highest reached levels | 02:36 |
| de-facto | if the goal would be to protect health and life | 02:36 |
| de-facto | incidence (per age group) is the indicator for what will happen later on in terms of potential impact | 02:37 |
| de-facto | if we wait until damage actually happens its too late to prevent that | 02:38 |
| de-facto | i would not compare SARS-CoV-2 with the common cold, obviously it gave us a lot more problems | 02:39 |
| Tuvix | To a point, but if the magnitude is low enough, we won't care. 36.9k deaths annually is more or less acceptable here in the US. That's a rate of 0.21/7day/100k (using the same metric the CDC trends chart uses for easy comparison.) Let's go a step further & estimate that flu only really kills durin a 3-month period in winter, 91 days; that's now 0.86/7day/100k fatality rate | 02:40 |
| Tuvix | So, what level of COVID is "acceptable" to consider it another background issue, like deaths from flu, or those from annual deaths due to 2nd hand smoke (which is, in the US anyway, almost exactly that of the seasonal flu currently.) | 02:40 |
| de-facto | yet its not only deaths, there are a lot of people with symptoms that last for many months (or more), i did not hear about that for the common cold | 02:41 |
| de-facto | i would say no level of COVID is acceptable | 02:41 |
| Tuvix | True, that's another serious issue to consider. | 02:41 |
| Tuvix | I just don't see zero-covid as realistic. | 02:42 |
| Tuvix | I don't see any way we as a global society can do that. | 02:42 |
| LjL | we're probably not all the same, but to me, something "acceptable" is anything where i don't constantly feel like if i go indoors on a bus or in a store i may end up ICU. of course that says nothing, because i "may" end up in ICU with flu or being run over by a truck, but, just to qualitatively express what going back to a normal state would mean to me. | 02:42 |
| de-facto | i am for a strict zero covid policy and nothing i have seen so far convinced me of the opposite | 02:42 |
| LjL | i would be for it because i don't see how we can go back to a state i consider "acceptable"... but i also don't think it's possible :\ | 02:43 |
| de-facto | yet i get the impression decisions become more and more insane, so we will see to what that leads | 02:43 |
| LjL | not just with NPIs, anyway. it isn't realistic at this point, i think it would have been possible if we had all reacted very strongly *immediately* | 02:43 |
| LjL | other than that, i dunno, if sterile immunity turns out to be possible, then maybe zero covid is also possible, but i think we all doubt that | 02:43 |
| de-facto | i dont think by now we can achieve sterile immunity, that time window of opportunity closed with the diversification of the phylogenetic tree of SARS-CoV-2 (as i said when we discussed this in 2020) | 02:45 |
| de-facto | unfortunately with all the variants that ship may have sailed by now | 02:45 |
| LjL | well, similarly i think the time window of opportunity for reaching zero COVID with NPIs closed when variants became more infectious | 02:45 |
| de-facto | well, may have sailed, i am pretty sure its gone | 02:45 |
| de-facto | so far we have not seen a super big outbreak in China for example | 02:46 |
| de-facto | so, either they achieved that with NPIs or they have some other magic we dont know about | 02:46 |
| de-facto | honestly i think that other magic is called cohesion | 02:47 |
| LjL | and when there is *total* cohesion, you have totalitarianism? | 02:48 |
| de-facto | in western societies the individual comes before everything else, in Asian countries the community may be more important than individuals | 02:48 |
| de-facto | i think that is a very fundamental difference there, and honestly mathematically it makes more sense to put majorities above minorities | 02:49 |
| LjL | uhm | 02:50 |
| LjL | i don't know much about mathematics, but i am not a number | 02:51 |
| de-facto | thats what i mean | 02:51 |
| LjL | "putting majority above minorities" sounds very scary a proposition | 02:51 |
| LjL | it sounds like it would justify what China is doing to minorities | 02:51 |
| LjL | and fuck that | 02:51 |
| LjL | in constitutional democracies, although majorities decide on governments, minorities are to be protected. i think i like it that way. | 02:52 |
| LjL | i was born and raised with that as a value. sometimes it comes at a price. | 02:52 |
| de-facto | yes i know, i just say it also protects minorities that may be in the way of things like successful containment of infections | 02:53 |
| de-facto | there always are two sides to things | 02:53 |
| de-facto | some are good others are bad, depending on the perspective also | 02:53 |
| de-facto | in my personal opinion (i think not many seem to agree) the price for putting protection of minorities above protection of majorities (e.g. from infections) is too high, because it means that any pathogen just can rip through a society (with all associated damage), regardless if its a naturally occurring disease or some kind of crazy bio-terrorism or such | 02:56 |
| de-facto | i see this COVID as a test, a magnifying glass for our problems, an opportunity to reveal weaknesses hence chance for improving on them | 02:57 |
| LjL | as long as improving on them doesn't also mean i have go to back to the closet because that's what i would have to do in China | 02:57 |
| de-facto | i see your point, and i partly agree in that it is problematic to rely on concentrating power in a single point (of possible failure) | 02:59 |
| de-facto | but I also see the necessity to evolve towards being able to control transmission paths, the smarter the concept for doing that the less impact on daily life it will have | 03:00 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Solomon Is.: +522 cases, +6 deaths since 22 hours ago | 03:03 |
| de-facto | for example i think lockdown is the wrong way, we should improve our detection and tracing capabilities towards a point where they integrate seamlessly into our daily lifes in a way that does not restrict us or requires extensive efforts (of healthcare system or such) | 03:05 |
| de-facto | it should be a decentralized, resource efficient, reliable, controlled system that also protects privacy (as long as that is not in the way of tracing success) | 03:06 |
| de-facto | sure that does not exist yet, hence it would need to get worked on and could be tested with COVID | 03:07 |
| de-facto | instead we still dont have enough PCR testing capacity in Germany, 2 years into the pandemic | 03:07 |
| de-facto | why dont we have a simple and cheap, accessible and traceable decentralized testing infrastructure, one that could be employed to also trace down outbreaks of other future pathogen outbreaks? | 03:08 |
| de-facto | why dont we make regular tests mandatory instead of vaccinations? | 03:09 |
| LjL | in italy, why aren't we even effectively used the contact tracing app? (i say "in italian" because germany seems to be using it more effectively) | 03:09 |
| de-facto | not nearly enough though, it is quite common in some sub-groups of population such as university or technically affine people | 03:10 |
| de-facto | its not perfect, but it at least is in use, hence constantly is improved | 03:10 |
| de-facto | the hope would be that this could also be the case with other infrastructures, such as PCR test lab networks, yet lobbyist interests seem to be in the way of that | 03:11 |
| LjL | in italy it's just never really been mentioned again, except as a place to keep your green pass in | 03:12 |
| LjL | and sure, that makes more people download it (even though it's still so few) | 03:12 |
| LjL | but that's no use if positive people don't know they have to upload it into the app | 03:12 |
| LjL | and they are not encouraged to do so | 03:12 |
| LjL | so like... we aren't really using what we already *have*, so before we go full China, maybe we should at least try | 03:13 |
| LjL | it's all pretty ridiculous, how when you have a positive rapid test you still don't get job leave (and neither does your household) until your PCR is officially positive, which happens several days later | 03:13 |
| de-facto | for example: we did use bluetooth for proximity tracing, honestly that was a hack. why dont we develop and integrate proper proximity sensors, e.g. based on round trip times of radio signals rather than on their attenuation instead? | 03:13 |
| de-facto | such things easily could already be integrated in all new generation smartphones, if they had been developed | 03:14 |
| LjL | de-facto, well, i don't know that the Bluetooth and Wifi standards are designing but i think there is a lot of location-related stuff they're adding. but you can't make everyone replace their phones at the same time immediately | 03:14 |
| de-facto | not replace them immediately, i mean just to develop such things and integrate then in new models | 03:15 |
| de-facto | also emergency warn systems etc | 03:15 |
| LjL | but also, look, de-facto, who cares about distance? if you're in the same location with a positive for some amount of time, you should be treated as a potential positive | 03:15 |
| LjL | so it doesn't matter if the signal is a bit low, and i'm not 1.5m from you | 03:15 |
| LjL | i'm 3m? who cares! | 03:15 |
| LjL | the chance of error should be moved to the upper side not the lower side | 03:15 |
| de-facto | it does still make a difference | 03:16 |
| LjL | but... then... when the UK was having a big wave, people basically uninstalled the application because otherwise too many were being notified to quarantine :\ | 03:16 |
| de-facto | have you notices putin always was staying at distance, putting a 6 meter table between him and leaders visiting him? | 03:16 |
| de-facto | and an airfilter in the middle of them | 03:17 |
| LjL | not really, but i haven't really watched him | 03:17 |
| de-facto | but yeah with aerosol accumulation distance becomes less important than e.g. outdoors or such | 03:17 |
| de-facto | yet still its a difference if two people sit on the same desk talking about something on the same computer monitor, closely face-to-face (even when wearing masks) compared to those two staying at 3m distance for the same time | 03:18 |
| LjL | de-facto, https://www.beaconzone.co.uk/blog/new-tof-distance-measurement-bluetooth-sensor/ | 03:19 |
| LjL | the technology is there i guess. it's up to the Bluetooth standardizing body... | 03:19 |
| de-facto | just imagine one of them would smoke, wouldnt it be much more inconvenient to be as close as sharing a computer monitor compared to a scenario where someone smokes at the neighboring table in a bar? | 03:19 |
| LjL | i'd still smell the smoke, and i don't know that we've found a minimum viral load likely to trigger an infection yet | 03:20 |
| LjL | imagine you're somehow allergic to smoke, and you'll have actual anaphylaxis if you breathe in smoke | 03:20 |
| LjL | then it won't matter whether i'm next to you or at the other table. either situation is unacceptable | 03:20 |
| LjL | i think COVID may be more like that, at least to our current knowledge | 03:20 |
| de-facto | but is that sensor really round trip time (with BLE beacons or such) or rather time of flight sensor (such as iphones use with the infrared dots they use for 3D face recognition)? | 03:21 |
| LjL | it's time of flight | 03:21 |
| LjL | i specifically searched for time of flight :P | 03:21 |
| de-facto | so light? | 03:21 |
| LjL | uh no it's bluetooth | 03:21 |
| LjL | i'm not really sure what distinction you're making | 03:22 |
| LjL | time of flight *is* roundtrip time | 03:22 |
| de-facto | i think its like those iphone infrared projecting dots that use time of flight for distance measurement | 03:23 |
| LjL | this is not infrared, though, it's definitely a bluetooth sensor | 03:23 |
| LjL | so it doesn't use light | 03:23 |
| LjL | it still uses time of flight | 03:23 |
| LjL | "Time of flight (ToF) is the measurement of the time taken by an object, particle or wave (be it acoustic, electromagnetic, etc.) to travel a distance through a medium" | 03:23 |
| LjL | TOF can be electromagnetic, like bluetooth | 03:23 |
| LjL | i don't know | 03:24 |
| de-facto | iphones project infrared light dots onto peoples faces, they pulse that or such, then measure the time it takes for the light to bounce back, therefrom making a 3D model of a surface | 03:24 |
| de-facto | "+-25mm accuracy with a 27 degree field of view. The error may exceed 25mm when the target is transparent liquid because the bottom of the container will also reflect the light. In this case make sure the bottom of the container is black or non-reflective. In that case, make sure the bottom of the container is black or non-reflective." | 03:24 |
| LjL | i see | 03:25 |
| LjL | i'm wrong about that sensor i guess, but i don't think there's anything theoretically stopping you from measuring time of flight *of bluetooth signals*, if the protocol caters for that | 03:25 |
| LjL | de-facto, it may be beneficial to use actual light, anyway, arguably | 03:26 |
| LjL | light is stopped by walls | 03:26 |
| LjL | and we generally don't want people to be marked as contacts if their *neighbor* in the room next to them (but completely separated by walls) is positive | 03:26 |
| de-facto | what i meant is like sending a radio pulse (with some id) and timing the time of flight towards another device, by having that device bounce it back with a time jitter less than the tolerable distance measurement error (that is quite difficult and would have to be done in hardware) | 03:26 |
| LjL | which i think was a big reason why they implemented those RSSI measurements in the contact tracing apps | 03:26 |
| LjL | yeah it would need dedicated hardware, for sure | 03:27 |
| LjL | i just think if the Bluetooth standards body wanted to do it for the next Bluetooth version... they could | 03:27 |
| de-facto | then a device could cound how many cycles (of distance measurement) it takes until it receives the echo of its beacon and thereby estimate distance (to that other device that somehow would have to identify itself, maybe by adding its own id or such) | 03:27 |
| LjL | but how many years would it take before all the smartphone user base is converted, anyway? | 03:27 |
| de-facto | well its fine, if it takes some time, ok so be it, but it should be done and improved with every generaiton | 03:28 |
| de-facto | its good if its not rushed, it should be done properly, so it really is of some value | 03:29 |
| de-facto | so i hope they will work on that and integrate it in the next bluetooth | 03:30 |
| de-facto | just as one example, there are many other things that could get improved | 03:30 |
| Tuvix | And people still won't use it; there was an article on that very issue with the program (a joint effort by Google & Apple) in the US. It was so privacy-aware that the governmets that spent huge sums of money on it can't even know how many people use it. | 03:31 |
| de-facto | and btw LjL afaik they did use an infection dose in those challenge trials for COVID that resulted in about 50% of the people to get infected (by pure luck of their estimation) | 03:31 |
| Tuvix | I don't mean to dismiss the ideas, but the reality in much of what's been discussed tonight is that it's simply not practical for modern society to implement. | 03:31 |
| Tuvix | You can have the best plan or program of technology or vaccines or mitigation or internation flight quarantine or border control and so on, but it's all meaningless when it can't be implemented. | 03:32 |
| de-facto | so imagine if measures reduce contamination dose to be not saturated (e.g. 50% instead of 95% for same exposure time), so if there were differences in exposure dose (as to be expected by that analogue of smokers) distance will make a difference, even with aerosol | 03:33 |
| de-facto | but of course that depends on many circumstances that determine how localized aerosol diffusion is, if there is air exchange, how saturated the contamination threshold for developing an infection is etc | 03:34 |
| Tuvix | How? You don't even know if *you* are a contagious spreader until after you get a positive test, after you'fe likely been sharing that contamination to spredable levels for a couple days. | 03:34 |
| Tuvix | And that's assuming you get tested daily. | 03:34 |
| Tuvix | The proposal just doesn't work in the ideal way you seem to suggest it should. And, you'll what, force every mobile phone owner to put this technology on their phone? To *enforce* that now we need to have government tracking of it, and that was specifically what we avoided with most of the bluetooth trackers that aren't tied to government systems like the US states bought into. | 03:35 |
| Tuvix | People won't accept what you're proposing. As LjL said earlier, someplace like China can mandate these things, but not the rest of the world. | 03:35 |
| Tuvix | Of course, politicians know this; that's why it won't ever be implemented. After all, look how many holes the EU Green Pass has, and even it can't continue to hold as it is across the state sthat had it put in place. | 03:36 |
| de-facto | what i mean is that all those intentions lead to concepts that are not perfect yet, they are able to lower transmission risk (e.g. testing, distancing, tracing, isolating, air exchange, etc pp) but not entirely prevent it, yet taken together their effects may multiply hence give quite a decent protection already and of course such concepts can get improved a lot | 03:37 |
| Tuvix | I'm not sure we'll see such adoption in the future though; since the Google/Apple partnership resulted in such poor data metrics (intentionally, as a privacy-measure to ensure people would be willing to install it, and I did after reviewing those very privacy measures were in fact legit) they'll likely never pay that much for such app design again. | 03:38 |
| Tuvix | They don't even know how much it was used in practice, and we know the overall answer is "not enough" to meaningfully reduce spread. | 03:38 |
| de-facto | its about converging towards improving capabilities to control transmission paths with minimal impact on everything else | 03:38 |
| Tuvix | Except what you're proposing is not minimal. | 03:39 |
| Tuvix | How do you plan to get a system onto everyone's phone? | 03:39 |
| Tuvix | The US app is free, and very privacy friendly. And very, very poorly used in terms of uptake. | 03:39 |
| Tuvix | What's the magic fix here? | 03:39 |
| de-facto | by next bluetooth generation | 03:39 |
| Tuvix | People still won't install it. | 03:39 |
| Tuvix | That's the issue you have to fix. I don't care how good the next-gen BT it; that's pointless. | 03:40 |
| de-facto | its a bluechip, this would have to be integrated in hw | 03:40 |
| Tuvix | Let's say next-gen bluetooth can know exaclty how the airflow quality is, what kinds of walls, and HVAC you're in. | 03:40 |
| Tuvix | Let's say you even write the perfect app to use this, with 100% percecision. Now what? | 03:40 |
| de-facto | otherwise jitter control on nanosecond scale is not possible | 03:40 |
| Tuvix | You, force all citizens to install your program? Track them to ensure they do it? | 03:40 |
| Tuvix | The issue isn't technology; it's society and individuals. | 03:41 |
| de-facto | no not force them, rather integrate it into something that gives people an additional benefit independent on the tracing capabilities | 03:41 |
| de-facto | e.g. indoor navigation or such | 03:42 |
| de-facto | something fancy new nerdy whatever | 03:42 |
| Tuvix | And I'd enver touch it; I suspect many others wouldn't either. | 03:42 |
| Tuvix | You're trying to "trick" the public into something whwat that approach. | 03:42 |
| de-facto | id try it out for sure | 03:42 |
| Tuvix | It's doomed to fail as a result. | 03:42 |
| Tuvix | I think you've lost the forrest for the trees here. | 03:43 |
| de-facto | ok so we just give up, raise the white flag on everything, we dont even try to improve things | 03:43 |
| de-facto | idk if that is such a good approach | 03:43 |
| Tuvix | There's middle ground between mandated apps as a new "papers, please" approach, and that. | 03:44 |
| de-facto | i never said force that, i said improve concepts to *lower* impact on other things | 03:45 |
| de-facto | for example: i think the German Corona Warn App partly may have been installed so often because it tried to honor peoples privacy and transparently was developed in open source way | 03:45 |
| Tuvix | I don't see uptake improving without requirements. | 03:45 |
| rustynail1[m] | it is kinda sad that all that time was spent implementing apps and none were used widely in the US | 03:45 |
| LjL | Tuvix, i think a carrot can be dangled as well as a stick for adoption of a contact tracing app, if we're smart. for example: did you (and de-facto) see that article recently that said the US finally has some stock of Paxlovid (and Molnupiravir, ugh), but it's mostly going unused, because people can't get PCR'd in the 5 days Paxlovid should be taken since onset of symptoms? - well: tell people that if their app says they've been a contact of a positive, they get | 03:46 |
| LjL | guaranteed Paxlovid treatment as soon as they show any symptoms, regardless of test | 03:46 |
| LjL | rustynail1[m], most of the time was really spent by Google and Apple implementing their system, and most of the EU apps are just "frontends" to it | 03:46 |
| Tuvix | Ljl: Nice approach, but I still don't think that'll work. | 03:46 |
| LjL | there's not a *whole* lot of work going into the individual apps, unless they have custom enhancements (like the green pass wallet in italy) | 03:46 |
| rustynail1[m] | at least it was used in some areas | 03:47 |
| Tuvix | People will refuse to install some "Big Government" app (popular phrase for any government you don't like, especially from conservatives) and then demand treatment after they're sick enough to be facing death. | 03:47 |
| Tuvix | I mean, it's quite literally going to have a lot of ven-diagram overlap with the same people refusing vaccines now, then on their deathbeds about to be put in a comma for intubation are begging to take the vaccine. | 03:47 |
| Tuvix | These people are not going to be friendly to installing some app, no matter how many carrots you dangle; they don't think COVID is real or will harm them, etc. | 03:47 |
| de-facto | hence the concept of decentralized contact tracing, the government can not trace people with the CWA | 03:48 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah. i see vids all the time from people on their death bed like that | 03:48 |
| de-facto | the sensitive data never leaves peoples hardware | 03:48 |
| Tuvix | They can't with these apps either de-facto , and we have them, today. Same data capture, and it's wildly unpopular here. | 03:48 |
| de-facto | the tracing is done by processing the data locally | 03:48 |
| Tuvix | Yes, yes, I know. | 03:48 |
| Tuvix | It's still unpopular. | 03:48 |
| Tuvix | So you've just "fixed" a problem that wasn't ever responsible for the lack of US uptake. | 03:49 |
| de-facto | most students here use the CWA | 03:49 |
| Tuvix | Maybe it works better in more socially-accepting countries, or at least sub-populations of them. | 03:50 |
| Tuvix | The US is very averse to this kind of thing, as a whole. Not just citizens, but politicians will fight quite hard to stop any mandatory use of such apps, or requirements by private employers, etc. | 03:50 |
| rustynail1[m] | i mean i probably would not install a contact tracing app outside of a dedicated user on my phone with sandboxed google play | 03:50 |
| de-facto | what is the problem with using an app that honors peoples privacy and gives them advantages such as navigation or tracing for their own benefit (e.g. leaves them to decide what to do with that info)? | 03:51 |
| Tuvix | rustynail1[m]: No idea if you've been paying attention here; these apps are so privacy-friendly by *design* that even very cautious pro-provacy professionals who do this as a job have zero problem installing it. | 03:51 |
| Tuvix | This is really not the time for paranoia, but if anything you've also just proven my point. | 03:51 |
| de-facto | i honestly dont see any reason that speaks against using that app, other than ignoring reality (e.g. by not wanting to know if there was an contamination risk) | 03:51 |
| rustynail1[m] | well i mean i guess your right i did. i just look at things like the tuskegee experiments and it gives me pause | 03:52 |
| Tuvix | Someone who has had an open history here of paranoia is still concerned about this app, which is ironically the point I was making before, that despite some of these best privacy protections (that have perhaps undermined the states who purchased them to every spend this kind of money again) citizens still worry about them. | 03:52 |
| de-facto | and mine became red a few times already, it made sense (from the scenarios i was in) | 03:52 |
| Tuvix | ANd this is why these apps are sadly doomed to fail, despite the great good that could be done if the majority of citizens used them. | 03:52 |
| Tuvix | Classic Tragedy of the Commons failure for us all :( | 03:52 |
| Tuvix | I've been enough places with my app I should have been alerted, but never was. But that's because adoption in the US flat out sticks. | 03:53 |
| rustynail1[m] | do you need a google account for the covid exposure notifications? | 03:53 |
| Tuvix | No. | 03:53 |
| de-facto | nope | 03:53 |
| Tuvix | It's 100% local, uses a locally-generated rotating PRNG-key and only your device ever keeps it. | 03:54 |
| rustynail1[m] | my state was against doing it anyway so i could not install it if i wanted to | 03:54 |
| Tuvix | It never sends location data, is not tied to an account, and never sends your random IDs anywhere. | 03:54 |
| rustynail1[m] | i would have at least tried it. albeit inside grapheneos | 03:54 |
| de-facto | https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.corona.tracing/ | 03:54 |
| de-facto | completely without any google | 03:55 |
| Tuvix | rustynail1[m]: It's 100% worthless if you don't keep it on, all the time, on YOUR mobile phone. | 03:55 |
| LjL | Tuvix, rustynail1[m]: to give you an idea about these apps... the contact tracing is normally provided by a Google or Apple framework, *but* i use microG instead, which provides a FOSS version of it based on Google's published code. it works. and the "frontend" app is open source; i do have to get the Italian one from the Play Store, but the German one for example is available on F-Droid. can't get much better than that, privacy and freedom-wise | 03:55 |
| LjL | %fdroid corona | 03:55 |
| Brainstorm | LjL, Corona-Info v1.2 (com.corona_info) in https://f-droid.org/repo: show current number of Corona cases in local district (Germany) - updated 2020-04-01, see https://github.com/devasworski/Corona-Info/releases | 03:55 |
| Brainstorm | LjL, Last time I checked, not all indexes could be downloaded! (secfirst.org failed) | 03:55 |
| Tuvix | If you only run it in some sandbox that is not on you at ALL times, it's worthless. YOu go to a gathering, but your "super secure OS" isn't running: you don't get notified. | 03:55 |
| LjL | well it's not that one | 03:55 |
| rustynail1[m] | LjL: oh ok | 03:55 |
| rustynail1[m] | so micro g works good | 03:55 |
| Tuvix | It's worthless if you don't use it as designed, like if you kept your mask in a sealed plastic bag. Sure, the *mask* won't get infected, but it won't help you. | 03:55 |
| rustynail1[m] | Tuvix: well i meant like bring a dedicated fone with me | 03:56 |
| de-facto | i honestly think there is no reason for being concerned with the CWA, hence i use it | 03:56 |
| rustynail1[m] | i use grapheneos for everything tho anyway | 03:56 |
| Tuvix | Sure, I use my state's version too; but the majority of my neighbors do not. | 03:56 |
| rustynail1[m] | but yiur right if the user is not active it will not work | 03:56 |
| LjL | de-facto, i think it's not very ideal at all that the Google/Apple code is proprietary (they published an initial version but then refused to update it). it should be as open as humanly possible | 03:56 |
| Tuvix | The app needs to run as a background service. | 03:56 |
| LjL | so i use microG, but for many people microG is not really an option | 03:57 |
| Tuvix | If you "cheat" that process, you render the app completley useless. | 03:57 |
| LjL | Tuvix, the app doesn't need to run as a service if it's based on the Google/Apple framework | 03:57 |
| LjL | the apps that *do* need to run as a service are the ones that Google and Apple have kinda tried to hinder in every possible way ;( | 03:57 |
| Tuvix | Well, the bluetooth data IDs being sent out is backrounded. | 03:57 |
| LjL | (like France and what the UK wanted to have) | 03:57 |
| LjL | Tuvix, yes, but basically a part of the OS does it, either with Google's proprietary stuff, or with microG | 03:57 |
| Tuvix | Not necessarily the app, but obviously the app doesn't actually work unless it gets to keep a (local) list of PRNG IDs sent out via bluetooth. | 03:57 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah would be good for phones that cannot run play services | 03:58 |
| Tuvix | Sure, my use of 'app' was a poor word choice there, but if you uninstall the app, Google (or Apple) stops sending those Ids. | 03:58 |
| rustynail1[m] | not every phone in the US it certified for play | 03:58 |
| Tuvix | The app isn't "technically" doing the sending, but without the app the framework that does won't be engaged. | 03:58 |
| rustynail1[m] | i mean most are but some cheap devices are not always | 03:59 |
| Tuvix | So, semantics aside, "the backgrounded cause that send bluetooth pings in a PRNG and standardzied fasion only work so long as enough people to get a decently reliable hit on a likely positive case near you." And the US doesn't meet that. | 03:59 |
| de-facto | LjL, yes true, but as you said there also is a version that does not depend on the google code | 03:59 |
| Tuvix | I really don't care if the code is in google or the app, and frankly neither do most useres. They don't even know how it works, they just don't want it (or in some of our cases, do.) | 03:59 |
| Tuvix | Changing deatils about how the app works won't change people's minds. | 04:00 |
| Tuvix | Not enough of them. | 04:00 |
| rustynail1[m] | it seemed to work good in places like south korea but they are smaller and probably more willing to follow along with what their government recommends. | 04:00 |
| * LjL-Matrix uploaded a video: (2671KiB) < https://libera.ems.host/_matrix/media/r0/download/matrix.org/gUZMpxuszSnYcLNyzwakFnCt/screen-20220218-040004.mp4 > | 04:00 | |
| de-facto | so maybe one would need to work on peoples attitude, so that they understand the importance of participating in such things | 04:00 |
| LjL | de-facto, only because they managed to integrate microG's implementation, which comes from Google's *version 1* code, but they never released subsequent version. it's better than nothing and kudos to microG and to the people who work on the F-Droid CWA version, but still, not ideal. | 04:00 |
| LjL | Tuvix, rustynail1[m]: the video above shows microG's exposure notification stuff | 04:01 |
| LjL | oh, Immuni isn't actually shown because it blocks screenshots and videos of it | 04:01 |
| LjL | but it doesn't matter, it's just a home screen | 04:01 |
| de-facto | LjL, nice | 04:02 |
| rustynail1[m] | so it would prolly work on my phone then | 04:02 |
| rustynail1[m] | no one in my area would use it tho. they do not believe covid is a big deal | 04:03 |
| LjL | Tuvix, you keep saying "not enough of them" and that may be true in the US (and maybe the US population needs a big attitude change sometimes?), but in Germany the app has decent adoption. not *great* adoption, but decent, certainly enough to get a *lot* of people notified. | 04:03 |
| rustynail1[m] | we cannot just have only people center or center left or whatever using it you know | 04:03 |
| LjL | Tuvix, look at this https://www.coronawarn.app/en/analysis/ | 04:04 |
| rustynail1[m] | you are never going to get half the country to do it when they want to fire fauci | 04:04 |
| LjL | and... don't look at this https://www.immuni.italia.it/dashboard.html ;( | 04:04 |
| de-facto | .title https://www.coronawarn.app/en/analysis/ | 04:05 |
| Brainstorm | de-facto: From www.coronawarn.app: Open-Source Project Corona-Warn-App - Dashboard | 04:05 |
| rustynail1[m] | people here have made it part of their whole identity to laugh off covid | 04:05 |
| LjL | 138,357,461 "you may have been someone's close contact" warnings in Germany. that's a lot (and that's just the users who chose to share that info for analysis, you don't have to). in italy that's 187557. just ridiculous | 04:05 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for South Korea: +109828 cases, +45 deaths since 23 hours ago — New Zealand: +1885 cases, +32899 tests (5.7% positive) since 23 hours ago — Netherlands: +56485 cases since 23 hours ago | 04:06 |
| de-facto | almost 43M downloads not too bad for 82M population | 04:06 |
| Tuvix | LjL: I mean, yes, the issue is a social one, not a technical one. It's the same root cause that makes it not a legal problem (just a moral one, if I'm so inclined to be concnerned about it) to go to a group on purpose knowing I'm positive. | 04:06 |
| LjL | de-facto, i just linked it... | 04:06 |
| de-facto | oh you were faster :) | 04:06 |
| Tuvix | It might break some obscure law somewhere if I sent somewhere positive *intending* to spread virus, but if I did it just because I didn't care and wanted to go to a diner or bar? That's 100% okay, at least around me. And really horrible as well :\ | 04:06 |
| LjL | Tuvix, well that's your country being absurd. knowingly infecting people is a crime here. | 04:07 |
| Tuvix | Problem is that's not "waht they're doing" | 04:07 |
| Tuvix | They're just out the bar. | 04:07 |
| Tuvix | The fact that they're posistive? Well, clearly they don't "mean" to spread it. Ergo the problem. | 04:07 |
| LjL | Tuvix, well, just violating quarantine for any reason is a crime here. and you are quarantined if you have a fever, even without a test. of course then this is Italy so a lot of people do stuff anyway, and the rules are applied "flexibly"... but people have definitely being fined very large amounts, at least, for breaking quarantine, and some people who have gone on to infect others have been / are being criminally prosecuted | 04:08 |
| LjL | and i mean, Italy is not exactly China | 04:08 |
| Tuvix | Right, most EU rules here are something closer to sane. | 04:08 |
| LjL | in terms of strictness | 04:08 |
| Tuvix | Our quarantine has always been "guidance" here, at laset nationally. | 04:08 |
| LjL | what can i say... get a grip :P we should get one too, but y'all should get a bigger one | 04:09 |
| Tuvix | SOme states, and some cities went further, but not mine. Well, I think the city did have some requirements in 2020, but they were basically never enforced, so they were as good as not existing. | 04:09 |
| rustynail1[m] | i have heard of limited instances in the US of people being arrested but certainly not widespread | 04:09 |
| Tuvix | I called out a couple people in palces I felt safe enough not to get shot or stabbed for pointing out the lack of masking when it was required; most people either ignored me or smirked, as if they were proud of breaking the rules. | 04:09 |
| Tuvix | The only people who seem to care are store clerks, and they're more embarassed when I politely point out they're not wearing the mask as the business says is required, or not wearing it over the nose, etc. | 04:10 |
| Tuvix | Those people don't really care, they're just displeased a customer had to call them out on it really. | 04:10 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah there has been a lot of violence over even just masking in the US | 04:10 |
| Tuvix | It's entierly unnecessary, and largely a political problem as much as it is a social one, in the US at least. | 04:11 |
| Tuvix | Imagine if this wasn't masks for COVID mitigation, but something basic like not leaving excrement in the public street (which is also unsafe.) | 04:11 |
| Tuvix | Now imagine that if leaving your human waste in the street was so commonplace that people would get violent if you tried to _stop_ them from doing it… | 04:12 |
| Tuvix | Is it still their freedom to do that? | 04:12 |
| Tuvix | WOuld it still be if there wasn't a specific law they were violating, but it was still very against the public health interests? | 04:12 |
| Tuvix | At what point do you draw the line and say that freedom isn't absolute? The US *did* just that in the Supreme-Court case of 1905, Jacobson v. Mass. | 04:13 |
| Tuvix | How quickly we forget our history… | 04:13 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah even george washinton required vaccines | 04:13 |
| rustynail1[m] | the vaccines were live back then | 04:14 |
| Tuvix | 1905 would have been T. Roosevelt | 04:14 |
| LjL | Tuvix, we don't leave *human* excrement in the streets but italian dog owners do have a pretty bad and persistent habit of letting their beloved do it on the sidewalk, and leaving it there :\ other countries (like i do believe Germany, de-facto can confirm), when the police finds such gifts, they analyze the DNA against stored DNA of dog owners, and people get fined, plus whatever it cost to run the analysis | 04:14 |
| rustynail1[m] | wow | 04:15 |
| LjL | but in Milan, you really should walk carefully and not be too lost on your smartphone, because there are a fair amount of dog gifts around to dodge ;( | 04:15 |
| rustynail1[m] | that is wild i cannot imagine that happening here | 04:15 |
| Tuvix | Ah, dog-waste is better here in the US, but sometimes owners do forget (by mistake or sometimes on purpose.) | 04:15 |
| rustynail1[m] | most human waste here is from mentally ill homeless people sadly | 04:15 |
| Tuvix | My point was about doing it on purpose becuase of some ill-percieved notion of "freedom." Or dumping your RV camper waste on the street for the same reason. | 04:16 |
| LjL | Tuvix, few things are as... bleh... as being going somewhere, hitting a dog shit, and having to leave your shoes outside of wherever you're going and explain what happened | 04:16 |
| LjL | and i think it's an experience anyone in this city has had at some point | 04:16 |
| Tuvix | Why is masking when it's marked required or a local regulation such a problem, but other public health issues are more cut & dry? | 04:16 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah | 04:17 |
| LjL | here they just do it on purpose on an ill-perceived notion of "the street is everyone's property, so it's really no one's property, someone will clean it up, it's not my problem" | 04:17 |
| LjL | very very much a shitty (literally) italian attitude around public property | 04:17 |
| Tuvix | LjL: Indeed, it's rare enough in my city I'd be quite annoyed if I ran into dog-bigs on a walk around the block or to the store. | 04:17 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah it is not that common by me either | 04:18 |
| Tuvix | Well, your dog-poo description in Italy is basically the US view on masks. | 04:18 |
| Tuvix | At least by society as a whole. | 04:18 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah | 04:18 |
| rustynail1[m] | our government lied to us at first saying masks do not work | 04:19 |
| rustynail1[m] | they lied but i think many would have come to not want to wear them anyway regardless | 04:19 |
| Tuvix | That's not really a fair view either. | 04:19 |
| rustynail1[m] | they should have just been honest about the mask shortage | 04:20 |
| LjL | Tuvix, and similarly to the US too, when seeing a dog owner do this kind of thing, there is some fear in calling them out, because 1) you have no certainty that other people will side with you rather than quickly leaving the scene, and 2) they have a dog, maybe a big dog, takes nothing to get the dog to assault you | 04:20 |
| Tuvix | The N95 masks were in short supply, and upfront it was publicly billed as an issue of not taking away supply for medical staff, combined with the (public, anyway) messaging that such masks are not as effective if worn improperly. | 04:20 |
| de-facto | i cant imagine when i have seen dog poop the last time, owners would have to collect and dispose it here indeed (with some special plastic bags) | 04:20 |
| Tuvix | While the mask/N95 thing _is_ true, we know now with Omicron that good quality masks _do_ matter, and obviously that should have been the message from the start, but with supplies limited, the message was not to use medical quality masks to save them for profesionals. | 04:20 |
| LjL | one time my mom got scared by a dog, she didn't say anything, she just gasped or jumper in fear, and the dog owner angrily said "madam, if you're scared of dogs, you should just stay home" | 04:21 |
| Tuvix | Oof. | 04:21 |
| LjL | my dad was about to start a fight on that, and i can understand it | 04:21 |
| de-facto | not sure if police would run a DNA sequence from it, but surely there would be fines for leaving it in the public streets | 04:21 |
| Tuvix | That's the same BS the anti-maskers use here when they refuse to mask up in places that put others at-risk. | 04:21 |
| rustynail1[m] | Tuvix: they definetly were unclear and some people still cite that to this day but i do think many would have been against masks anyway regardless | 04:21 |
| LjL | there is an insane, misguided love of pets in Italy. i think we also have an inordinately high amount of pets compared to other countries, also considering we all live in apartments and dogs don't really love that | 04:21 |
| * de-facto needs some sleep, have to get up in a few hours | 04:22 | |
| Tuvix | rustynail1[m]: Absoultely, the guidance was not as correct as it should have been, but that's a lot different than accusing the CDC of a "lie" | 04:22 |
| Tuvix | Be careful not to box yourself into a corner when discussing such matters, becuase it makes discussing it with others who don't share the same view far harder. | 04:22 |
| LjL | don't get me wrong, loving pets is fine. treating them as more important than humans and having every right, including to scare people and leave their excrement around... not so much | 04:22 |
| LjL | de-facto, well, if police don't catch them in the act, how can there be fines unless they find out whose dog did it? | 04:23 |
| de-facto | i dont know the details, it just works somehow what they do | 04:23 |
| rustynail1[m] | i do not remember if it was the CDC but i know some doctors were saying masks might do more harm then good because of touching your face. that is not true and you do not even need to touch much of your face to put a mask on anyway | 04:23 |
| rustynail1[m] | that was when it was thought to be more surface based | 04:23 |
| Tuvix | 'eh, it could be true if you never washed it for example. | 04:23 |
| LjL | err, don't wash N95 masks though please | 04:24 |
| Tuvix | Or if you wore your mask so poorly as to touch it all over every time you put it on without washing, etc. | 04:24 |
| LjL | i know you know that, but just as a PSA :P | 04:24 |
| Tuvix | Right, I meant for cloth masks when those were popular earlier in the pandemic, but yes, surgical or N95/KN95 etc masks are not to be washed, best just to left out to air-dry. | 04:24 |
| rustynail1[m] | but all that messaging muddied the waters | 04:24 |
| LjL | Tuvix, i've seen *lots* of people constantly readjusting their mask by touching it on the nose part when they're talking. including doctors called on TV to talk about the pandemic. | 04:24 |
| rustynail1[m] | 🤔 | 04:25 |
| rustynail1[m] | it is not primarily sueface based but could still happen that way i suppose | 04:25 |
| de-facto | the outside of the mask is contagious by definition, hence transport routes to inside should get avoided | 04:25 |
| Tuvix | rustynail1[m]: Lots of the messaging was muddied _by_ people who were anti-mask in the first place. We know masks work, which is why healthcare workers use them, and why surgical masks are common by surgeons. It's less to protect the surgeon, but to protect their patient who is cut open and really cannot have whatever the doctor exhales in heavy water dropplets end up in their open body. | 04:26 |
| de-facto | e.g. dont put the whole mask into a box and juggle it around or such | 04:26 |
| Tuvix | I'm not defending the CDC's bad messaging here, becuase it _was_ a lot worse than it should have been, but it also wasn't a lie. | 04:27 |
| de-facto | .title https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm | 04:27 |
| Brainstorm | de-facto: From www.cdc.gov: Effectiveness of Face Mask or Respirator Use in Indoor Public Settings for Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 Infection â California, FebruaryâDecember 2021 | MMWR | 04:27 |
| Tuvix | Ironically, the people least likely to wear a mask likely also overlap with the same group less likely to get vaccinated or avoid crowds who could be best served by masks in terms of source-control. | 04:27 |
| de-facto | .title https://www.pnas.org/content/118/49/e2110117118 | 04:27 |
| Brainstorm | de-facto: From www.pnas.org: An upper bound on one-to-one exposure to infectious human respiratory particles | PNAS | 04:27 |
| Tuvix | Soruce-control being where your goal is to prevent a positive case that you may have from infecting someone else. | 04:27 |
| rustynail1[m] | i foubd medical literature all the ways from the SARS days talking about how if you do not have n95 to use multiple surgical masks | 04:28 |
| Tuvix | For personal protection, at this point (Omicron) you really want a KN95 mask or better. | 04:28 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah | 04:28 |
| rustynail1[m] | at least now they are widely avalible and free | 04:28 |
| Tuvix | Right, the literature on masks wasn't so much in question, but the messaging early on by public health authorities at least in the US was largely due to supply problems, which was the same reason the guidance around testing is still pretty poor here; it's largely a lack of tests. | 04:29 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah it is hard to get tests they are also intended to be ran serially | 04:29 |
| rustynail1[m] | which no one is doing because of lack of supply | 04:30 |
| de-facto | hence such things can be improved, even if it takes some time, its very much worth the effort | 04:30 |
| Tuvix | And indeed, the messaging has been very bad about that, but they weren't really lying about that either. It's a 2-fold problem: supply was limited when the guidance around qurantine was changed, and if you ask people to do soemthing that most people will refuse to do anyway, it won't matter. | 04:30 |
| rustynail1[m] | thats why each kit usually has two tests to be ran serially altho a bunch of mine are single because of the shortage | 04:30 |
| LjL | Tuvix, i disagree there, they *were* lying, i distinctly remember statements like "masks won't help you" | 04:30 |
| Tuvix | Antigen tests do have a fairly high degree of false-negatives, yes. | 04:30 |
| LjL | they totally lied initially about masks | 04:30 |
| rustynail1[m] | ideally we would all have enough supply to run very frequent antigen tests | 04:31 |
| LjL | "you shouldn't hoard masks because healthcare operators need them" is one thing, which wouldn't have been a lie, but that was largely NOT what was said | 04:31 |
| rustynail1[m] | LjL: me too | 04:31 |
| LjL | like, the first couple of months of this channel were mainly fuming about the lies the WHO/CDC stated about masks | 04:32 |
| LjL | i don't want to dig into logs right now, but there were definitely lies | 04:32 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah they really were deceptive but i do believe this would have turned political eventually. | 04:33 |
| Tuvix | LjL: Source? Here's a CDC cloth-mask suggestion back from July, 2020 (17 months ago now): https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0714-americans-to-wear-masks.html | 04:33 |
| LjL | not July | 04:33 |
| LjL | July was late | 04:33 |
| LjL | talking about March, April, May | 04:34 |
| LjL | i don't have a source right now and as i said i'm not about to dig into the channel logs from 2020 to find one | 04:34 |
| rustynail1[m] | https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-masks-recommendation-trnd/index.html | 04:34 |
| rustynail1[m] | here is one article i found | 04:34 |
| LjL | which may have magically changed in the meanwhile, also, unless i go to archive.org | 04:34 |
| rustynail1[m] | but i think they were evdn more explicit early on | 04:34 |
| LjL | rustynail1[m], of course that CNN article links to a WHO page that supposedly says not to wear masks, but *now*, that same page says "definitely wear them" https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks | 04:35 |
| LjL | but thanks for finding it anyway, archive.org should reveal what it said *in March* | 04:35 |
| rustynail1[m] | https://mobile.twitter.com/cdcgov/status/1233134710638825473 | 04:36 |
| LjL | Tuvix, here, courtesy of rustynail1[m]'s article and archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20200330222942/https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks | 04:37 |
| rustynail1[m] | the cdc tweeted this | 04:37 |
| LjL | but really this was common knowledge back then. i'm aghast that it's now been forgotten and you need a "source" to verify that they were saying this stuff | 04:37 |
| rustynail1[m] | this tweet is a direct lie | 04:37 |
| rustynail1[m] | they knew from the literature all the way back to sars that using at least two or three surgical masks was better than one | 04:38 |
| rustynail1[m] | especially with no n95 | 04:38 |
| rustynail1[m] | * no n95 in supply | 04:38 |
| Tuvix | LjL: I may have been thinking about the high-quality masks specifically there with the 'don't use them due to supply' discussion I made above. Now that you mention the WHO, I do indeed recall discussion about that, and IIRC the CDC cloth mask guidance came out when WHO was still not recommending them. | 04:39 |
| Tuvix | For the longest time the party line from the CDC was not to "take away" supply from hospitals because they suddenly didn't have enough. I don't know how long it takes to make masks, but you'd figure that should have been a top priority after the fisrst wave hit in early 2020. | 04:40 |
| rustynail1[m] | that tweet said masks in general tho | 04:40 |
| LjL | Tuvix, well i *am* liable to making confusion between the WHO and the CDC, but ultimately the WHO has a lot of CDC "consultants" in it, and i remember an Italian WHO representative (i have the transcription of what he said on github, as back then i was translating+transcribing these italian press conferences for the channel when the focus was on Italy) who basically said the WHO can't make statements that the CDC doesn't endorse, although he didn't say it this | 04:41 |
| LjL | explicitly | 04:41 |
| rustynail1[m] | in February | 04:41 |
| rustynail1[m] | https://mobile.twitter.com/cdcgov/status/1233134710638825473 | 04:41 |
| Tuvix | Right, and the tweet (and linked materials) goes on to note about the risks of using masks incorrectly. That risk was really overblown, but apparently someone made a recommendation about it. I don't know how much different outcomes could have been between say Feb 2020 & July 2020 when the mask guidance changed, but presumably some improvement in case reduction. | 04:42 |
| rustynail1[m] | in hindsight that tweet seems like a parody they are saying "respitory illness" and saying just wash ur hands | 04:42 |
| LjL | Tuvix, not taking them away from hospitals i can understand, but, again, i dinstinctly remember statements paraphrasing to "you shouldn't wear masks, because you don't need them; you should leave them to the healthcare operators, who do need them". this is not only a lie, it's also bad communication, because people are not *completely* stupid and will be like "wait a moment, THEY need them, but magically I do not?" | 04:42 |
| Tuvix | Right, and that was a missed opportunity to talk about the homemade cloth masks (multiple layers, etc) in a way that won't take away professional style masks even early in the pandemic. | 04:43 |
| LjL | rustynail1[m], yes don't get me started about the whole "it's droplets" and denial that it's quite airborne. it was always quite airborne, but they got away with half-heartedly saying that it "became" airborne, with Delta or Omicron or something | 04:43 |
| Tuvix | I wonder how much of this was also a risk-mitigation plan to AVOID mass-panic and people buying supply they were told not to anyway. | 04:43 |
| LjL | Tuvix, homemade masks quickly became common in Italy (since actual masks were nowhere to be found= | 04:43 |
| Tuvix | Not that this is a good reason, and if that really was the motivation, it's time you look right away at official guidance for how to best construct homemade masks for best effect. | 04:44 |
| Tuvix | But as you point out, that guidance didn't get changed, and it's another example of agencies, states, and cities here always being behind the pandemic, not planning out in front of it. | 04:44 |
| LjL | Tuvix, i know a hospital worker, and she told me her hospital was actually broken in and the masks stolen, back in March or April... so even if you tell people not to hoard them, you can rest assured there's enough people who're "clever" enough to understand the *real* thing behind it, and that masks were goign to soar in value A LOT | 04:44 |
| rustynail1[m] | hmm yeah that is interesting | 04:45 |
| rustynail1[m] | asian countries have been masking for years even with flu and stuff too. | 04:46 |
| Tuvix | Yup, very common to wear a mask there yourself if you're not feeling well and need to go out, or just due to a bad smog day. | 04:46 |
| Tuvix | (pre-pandemic that is) | 04:46 |
| rustynail1[m] | i guess what is sorta interesting to me is how they would show all those pics from china early on you know and almost everyone was masked in the streets and they were telling us here not to worry basically | 04:47 |
| LjL | Tuvix, it actually started in Japan after the 1918 flu | 04:47 |
| LjL | other countries were also wearing masks back then | 04:47 |
| LjL | sometimes begrudgingly, see the Anti-Mask League of San Francisco | 04:47 |
| rustynail1[m] | asian ciuntries have dealt with this stuff nefore so they probably are used to masking when sick | 04:47 |
| LjL | but with Japan, it stuck | 04:47 |
| LjL | partly because allergies and pollution were soaring at the time | 04:47 |
| LjL | (i mean, after the flu wave ended) | 04:48 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah they weee called "mask slackers" some were arrested or fined even | 04:48 |
| rustynail1[m] | some people in the US do not realize that a lot of this is pretty longstanding policy you know | 04:49 |
| rustynail1[m] | like the anti maskers i mean | 04:49 |
| rustynail1[m] | george washington forced military members to get a live vaccine that could have killed them. | 04:50 |
| Tuvix | It's still not very accepted generally in US culture, even now, which is why the anti-mask issue has become one of political and (more tragically) personal identity. | 04:50 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah it rwally has become an identity it is wild | 04:51 |
| rustynail1[m] | trump did not help | 04:51 |
| Tuvix | It's about relative risk; you don't want your soldiers you've put a lot of money and time into training to drop dead from disease. | 04:51 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah it is thought the vaccine is why they won the war partly | 04:51 |
| Tuvix | That's the same reason most active-duty (and I think reserves too, but I'm less clear on that offhand) have or are facing COVID vaccine mandates. | 04:51 |
| LjL | i'm not sure if i'm making a groundbreaking statement by saying that i believe "people not dropping dead" is an overall noble goal | 04:52 |
| rustynail1[m] | yeah they cannot just have you getting sick or spreading it to the whole platoon | 04:52 |
| LjL | (although that's best achieved by avoiding war, too) | 04:52 |
| Tuvix | I don't think the generals on the ground were so concerned with avoiding war; that job rests a bit higher up the food-chain. | 04:53 |
| Tuvix | At least once you're in one anyway. | 04:53 |
| rustynail1[m] | imagine if your deep in the enemy territory and you spread something to the whole base and highly skilled people die | 04:53 |
| rustynail1[m] | you cannot run the operation without for example a skilled sniper | 04:54 |
| Tuvix | Getting vaccinated against smallpox was a similar issue for the US military at the turn of the 20th century too. | 04:54 |
| rustynail1[m] | even if they live but are incapacitated a while you may only have so much time to do a mission | 04:55 |
| rustynail1[m] | the military enforces a whole host of vaccines because your traveling to areas that have all kinds of stuff that you have never been exposed to in the US | 04:56 |
| Tuvix | Tourists too, although some remain optional (just "strongly recommended") depending on where you're going as a citizen. | 04:57 |
| rustynail1[m] | https://www.newsweek.com/list-vaccines-mandated-us-military-covid-1641228 | 04:58 |
| rustynail1[m] | these same right wingers by the way were the ones who mandated we all pee in a cup or get a blood draw for a single puff off a marijuana cigarette | 05:00 |
| rustynail1[m] | they literally make u take your genitals out in the US and urinate on command | 05:01 |
| rustynail1[m] | or get poled with a needle and blood drawn | 05:01 |
| rustynail1[m] | all for a single puff off a marijuana cigarette | 05:02 |
| rustynail1[m] | s/poled/poked/ | 05:02 |
| rustynail1[m] | the same right wingers who want it done to the poor to get any assistance | 05:03 |
| rustynail1[m] | they made student loans that way too | 05:03 |
| rustynail1[m] | any conviction for what you do with your own mind and body is disqualifying for student loans | 05:04 |
| rustynail1[m] | this is not even close to being about freedom for these people it is about grifting and profit off covid miracle cures like silver | 05:05 |
| rustynail1[m] | * miracle cures scams like silver | 05:05 |
| rustynail1[m] | even the generic drugs they cannot realistically profit off of that they shill still leads to profit in other ways | 05:06 |
| rustynail1[m] | the drugs they shill are relatively cheap generics but it all feeds into their narrative of us versus them | 05:07 |
| rustynail1[m] | the grifting is just unbelievable the level of grifting | 05:14 |
| rustynail1[m] | what i worry about too is people under a guardianship like britney spears used to be | 05:15 |
| rustynail1[m] | what if their "caregiver" decides some scam is the treatment they give | 05:15 |
| rustynail1[m] | britney spears was forced to have a form of birth control | 05:16 |
| Raf[m] | rustynail1: please tone it down. Stay on topic | 05:16 |
| rustynail1[m] | ok | 05:17 |
| rustynail1[m] | i mean i thought it basically was on topic | 05:18 |
| rustynail1[m] | guardianship abuse can take the form of forced use of hydroxychloroquine | 05:18 |
| rustynail1[m] | that is what i was getting at | 05:21 |
| Tuvix | For the 3rd time, what you want is a living will. https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/family-finance/articles/questions-to-ask-before-writing-a-living-will | 05:24 |
| rustynail1[m] | i know but i was talking about other people | 05:25 |
| Tuvix | You were talking about many off-topic things in the last half-hour. | 05:26 |
| rustynail1[m] | ok | 05:26 |
| rustynail1[m] | ❤️ | 05:26 |
| rustynail1[m] | 🙂 | 05:27 |
| rustynail1[m] | sorry | 05:32 |
| rustynail1[m] | 🤐 | 05:33 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Germany: +215145 cases since 23 hours ago — Belgium: +11503 cases, +54 deaths, +50645 tests (22.7% positive) since 23 hours ago — India: +25920 cases, +1319327 tests (0.1% positive) since 23 hours ago — Canada: +9431 cases, +136 deaths since 23 hours ago | 06:10 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Krasnoyarsk, Russia: +7617 cases, +21 deaths since 23 hours ago — Bashkortostan, Russia: +4341 cases, +19 deaths since 23 hours ago — Tatarstan, Russia: +3621 cases, +6 deaths since 23 hours ago — Kedah, Malaysia: +3243 cases, +1 deaths since 23 hours ago | 07:00 |
| lastshell | how things are going, are we now on the clear ? (a man can dream ...) | 17:40 |
| peetaur | yes covid-19 was cancelled due to low popularity | 17:45 |
| lastshell | what about https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/02/17/health/ba-2-covid-severity/index.html | 17:56 |
| Brainstorm | Updates for Myanmar: +3058 cases, +3 deaths, +32872 tests (9.3% positive) since a day ago — Germany: +182909 cases, +114 deaths since 16 hours ago — Switzerland: +27308 cases, +56808 tests (48.1% positive) since a day ago — France: +1143 cases, +2681737 tests (0.0% positive) since 16 hours ago | 18:03 |
| xx | eww, amp | 18:04 |
| lastshell | I know sorry I use my phone sometimes when I'm in irc | 18:08 |
| LjL-Matrix | Yesterday I had a small bot fixing sprint, maybe today I will make the amp converter work again | 18:08 |
| de-facto | .title https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480335v1.full | 19:26 |
| Brainstorm | de-facto: From www.biorxiv.org: Virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 BA.2 variant | bioRxiv | 19:26 |
| de-facto | .title https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/ | 19:32 |
| Brainstorm | de-facto: From www.worldometers.info: Denmark COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer | 19:32 |
| dTal | SO | 20:20 |
| dTal | "will we ever be back to normal" | 20:20 |
| dTal | discuss? | 20:20 |
| dTal | I say yes! | 20:20 |
| LjL | i say only if the variants-to-come actually happen to be progressively "milder" as so many people have said will be the case | 20:21 |
| LjL | but about as many people have said is a nonsensical expectation | 20:21 |
| dTal | We've had countless pandemics and they all blew over eventually, by a combination of acquired immunity and viral evolution | 20:21 |
| LjL | and effective vaccines | 20:21 |
| LjL | cholera took 150 years to "blow over" (with a vaccine) | 20:21 |
| LjL | i think the question "will we ever be back to normal" has to be framed as something like "... within our lifetimes" | 20:22 |
| LjL | because that's "we" to me, sure what happens in 300 years is also important, but i'm selfish | 20:22 |
| dTal | Well, what is "normal"? Around here things already look pretty normal. | 20:22 |
| lastshell | I hear 78% of the US population got omicron | 20:22 |
| dTal | The only abnormal thing is the elevated risk | 20:23 |
| dTal | lastshell: you heard wrong | 20:23 |
| LjL | dTal, i defined it for myself last night. it's going to mean a different thing for everybody i guess | 20:23 |
| dTal | How do you define it? | 20:23 |
| LjL | to me "normal"/"acceptable" would mean not feeling like i'm under a pressing threat if i have to take a bus | 20:23 |
| LjL | it's very qualitative | 20:23 |
| LjL | of course there is always some degree of threat | 20:23 |
| LjL | but for most of my life i didn't *feel* like by being on the metro, i was at risk of death from disease | 20:24 |
| LjL | normal to me is being on the metro without a mask reminding me that danger is still around | 20:24 |
| LjL | which is also part of why i wish masks go away | 20:24 |
| dTal | That does rather shift the burden of normality onto you | 20:24 |
| LjL | i will forever associate masks to danger | 20:24 |
| LjL | no | 20:24 |
| LjL | the burden of normality is on not choosing to react *strongly* to this and having *none* of it left, two years ago | 20:25 |
| LjL | which i kept yelling about | 20:25 |
| LjL | yes, now it's late for that | 20:25 |
| LjL | but please don't say that's *my* fault | 20:25 |
| dTal | that was never feasible | 20:25 |
| LjL | that is not something that's universally agreed upon | 20:25 |
| LjL | so that was never feasible, in your opinion | 20:25 |
| LjL | it was feasible in my opinion and in the opinion of a large (but not large enough) number of people including virologists, epidemiologists, etc. just not all of them | 20:26 |
| dTal | well whether it was or it wasn't, it is not the current topic of debate! | 20:26 |
| dTal | As you say, it is water under the bridge | 20:26 |
| LjL | it was feasible in the opinion of whoever advised Australia and New Zealand and China | 20:26 |
| LjL | well, that's why i don't believe we can go back to "normal" *now* | 20:26 |
| LjL | if you turn that into "ah but that's YOUR normal that entails covid going away which may or may not have happened 2 years ago but can't now" | 20:27 |
| LjL | yes, sure | 20:27 |
| LjL | but don't make it about the burden being on me | 20:27 |
| LjL | if it never goes back to normal *for me*, it's because we didn't stop it | 20:27 |
| dTal | Yes, we can never go back to the world before Covid | 20:27 |
| dTal | or the black death | 20:28 |
| dTal | or smartphones | 20:28 |
| dTal | but that's a dumb way to define "normal" | 20:29 |
| dTal | the world changes | 20:29 |
| lastshell | I thing LJL refers normal as the past, however the normal always is moving forward whatever we like it or not ? | 20:29 |
| dTal | by that definition, we have been in a constant state of not-getting-back-to-normal since humanity began and before | 20:29 |
| LjL | bit of a spurious comparison, "before smartphones" and "before COVID", if you ask me | 20:30 |
| LjL | but sure, things change | 20:30 |
| LjL | enjoy them | 20:30 |
| LjL | i won't | 20:30 |
| dTal | you're nearer the mark when you define normal as not living in fear | 20:30 |
| dTal | but hey, that's absolutely possible right now | 20:30 |
| LjL | sure, it was possible before too, i just needed to be a covid denier | 20:31 |
| LjL | pretty sure that's a coping mechanism in most cases | 20:31 |
| dTal | being drunk works too | 20:31 |
| LjL | hmm maybe we should have spirit-vending machines at metro stations | 20:31 |
| LjL | or i could just drink the hand sanitizer they already dispense | 20:31 |
| LjL | (don't do that) | 20:31 |
| dTal | but how can we de-subjectify this? Shall we say there's a level of living-in-fear that is *rational*? | 20:32 |
| dTal | that you're not being unreasonable by living in fear, and that makes it not your fault? | 20:32 |
| LjL | deaths *and* long term consequences of getting COVID being similar (same order of magnitude, at minimum) to the background level we already had before this | 20:33 |
| LjL | which, at minimum, entails knowing what the long term consequences will be and what exactly "long term" means, meaning... it will take a while to know | 20:33 |
| dTal | What if we made the rest of the world safer, so that we achieved the same overall risk? | 20:34 |
| LjL | basically when people will be able to say "it's just a flu" *and* it won't be bollocks. which the ones who didn't want to be scared said all along. | 20:34 |
| lastshell | is a democratix hoax, that was my favorite :P | 20:34 |
| LjL | dTal, i still would never be able to take a train and chill. it's not about "overall risk", it's about being able to do the things i used to enjoy, without fearing them | 20:35 |
| LjL | (and yes i enjoyed trains, sometimes) | 20:35 |
| lastshell | who doesn't enjoy trains | 20:35 |
| dTal | The "ambient risk" of the world fluctuates, but it's been gradually getting safer and safer for years and decades and centuries and millennia. | 20:35 |
| dTal | We're in a little local spike of risk, true | 20:36 |
| lastshell | I thing people are tired and they assume the virus is less lethal, aslo goverment is having a hard time to push restrictions because people are feed up, I agree that I think we are not out of the woods yet, we can assume is game over and they a new crazy variant emerge or maybe no covid, a new virus bird flu or what not, the world is not ready for a new big pandemic | 20:37 |
| LjL | for a while after the 2004 attacks in London and Madrid, i was tense whenever getting on the metro/trains. i kept telling myself "this is silly, there's higher chances i'll fall and hit my head and die than there are that a terrorist will detonate a bomb right here right now". and despite telling myself this, i would instinctively accelerate towards the exist | 20:37 |
| LjL | exit | 20:37 |
| dTal | Again, you can do things you used to do without fearing them *now*. That's within your power. | 20:37 |
| LjL | but that ended | 20:37 |
| LjL | i stopped being scared of bombs on the metro | 20:37 |
| LjL | it took a while, but not a very long while | 20:38 |
| dTal | threat fatigue is rational | 20:39 |
| lastshell | in mexico we called "boiling the frog" | 20:39 |
| lastshell | that is why high crime is tolerated started slowly | 20:39 |
| dTal | if covid were persist at exactly the current level of risk for the rest of our lives, the most rational response we could have would be to treat it as the new normal | 20:39 |
| LjL | well if i'm being asked "when will we go back to normal", my response to *that* scenario would be "never". if yours is "right now, because from now on this *is* normal", yes well i get what you mean, but it also doesn't seem like the real answer to the underlying question | 20:40 |
| dTal | so I am going to say that *by definition* we will go back to normal | 20:40 |
| LjL | i'm not saying it's a lie, because i understand if it goes back to *feeling* like normal for you, then it is normal for you. i am not built like that, though. | 20:41 |
| dTal | well things aren't exactly normal right now, for me either | 20:41 |
| LjL | if "by definition" we will go back to normal then the question doesn't make sense | 20:41 |
| dTal | I'm experiencing a kind of exponential threat defense decay | 20:41 |
| LjL | usually answers are in a framework of the question making sense, or the answer is "question does not compute" | 20:41 |
| LjL | it can't be both | 20:41 |
| dTal | It's not that the question doesn't make sense, it's that the question is ill-defined | 20:42 |
| dTal | the only resonable interpretation I can see is "when can I stop behaving as if there's an ambient threat"? | 20:43 |
| dTal | and the answer to that is "whenever you want, provided the government isn't imposing restrictions" | 20:43 |
| dTal | another reasonable interpretation would be "when can I *rationally* stop behaving as if there's an ambient threat?" | 20:44 |
| dTal | that's harder to answer but there is an answer and it's not "never" - that would be irrational | 20:44 |
| dTal | ...or would it? hmm | 20:45 |
| LjL | i am not made of rationality, but i'm not going to get into exact details why i doubt this will happen for *me* | 20:50 |
| LjL | if it happens for everyone else, cool | 20:50 |
| pgl | xrogaan | 21:12 |
| pgl | xrogaan | 21:12 |
| pgl | xrogaan | 21:12 |
| pgl | xrogaan | 21:12 |
| pgl | sorry about the spam, hardware hiccup | 21:17 |
| LjL | seemed more like wetware | 21:17 |
| pgl | yeah, it was of the pebcac variety, sorry again | 21:18 |
| dv^_^ | is that your screen lock password? | 21:45 |
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