That’s terrible, Brian. I’m very sorry to hear it.

I'm sorry, Brian. That's awful :(

SI

STOP ABUSING YOUR CHILDREN!!!!

Fox News' Tucker Carlson suggests viewers call the cops on parents with masked children

Sorry to hear. I've been fortunate so far, no one close has been adversely impacted. Sorry its someone so close to you.

Thanks everyone for your kind thoughts. I'll be fine.

Those people run a school? What the fuck?

I was wondering if what was happening in India is some sort of super strain etc. Pfizer is supposedly effective, would like to know about Moderna (got that one) but assume it is also.

Vaccines are one thing but we need good therapeutics also. Hope this works out.

3 data points.

Like the 36x difference. There should be more PSA announcements on TV (e.g. Oscars for the left, NASCAR on the right, include streaming also etc.) about benefits of second shot and the cons of missing it. I've not been watching regular TV as much but I don't think we've been inundated with these PSA announcements.

We kinda knew about the second one. And think the article implied the third one is overstated as there are folks getting second shots but just not at the same place for various reasons.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/02/us/co...sed/index.html

What's happening in India is delaying vaccine production and therefore impacting rest of the world.

The article implied that India was helping produce the vaccine for ROW while not pressing full steam ahead to vaccinate her own population. Don't know the full story but if it was largely for profit motives, not good.

As a lessons learn, I think Biden's plan should include bringing back some level of drug manufacturing to the US. Don't know what the right balance is but it should be like Moderna/Pfizer etc. getting nice tax breaks for bringing the strategic stuff onshore.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/01/world...cmd/index.html

Just pulling India's numbers up to the level of Brazil in terms of infections per capita and death rate, and India would have roughly 100 million cases with about 2.2 million dead.

A few tidbits of info on India:

Covid-19 deaths may be more than double the official total - Vox

This has always seemed pretty obvious to me. Unless you want to posit an unknown disease that just happens to be randomly killing people at the same time as COVID, the only real explanation for the excess deaths is COVID.

But what about the suicides!!!!

I know you're joking, but suicides actually dropped last year

Africa is pretty nervous after seeing India...once it explodes, it will run non-stop.

Not just Africa but Asia too. The article says festivals, holidays etc. There's a graphic comparing Nepal with India, pretty scary.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/07/asia/...hnk/index.html

I do wonder why Africa doesn't seem as badly hit as others. Less indoor congregation, weather, genes etc. whatever.

True. But I will speculate some of that number is collateral damage from the virus. There is probably a good percentage of the number from postponed surgeries, restricted doctor visits, fear of going to the hospital when normally they would, etc. Those numbers probably will never be quantifiable.

Final results from the Nordic natural experiment:

Cumulative COVID deaths per million people

Sweden: 1,403
Finland: 166
Norway: 141

Annual GDP change for 2020

Norway: -2.5%
Finland: -2.8%
Sweden: -3.1% pic.twitter.com/tXkwae3oit

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) May 10, 2021

Herd Immunity is the latest in a long line of “If we put a fancy name on not wanting to do the necessary hard work, we can make it seem like something other than a lack of will” ideas to fail.

Doing the necessary hard work is hard. But not doing the necessary hard work is always worse in the long run.

Today's report was the first in nearly a month where first doses administered were larger than the same day a week prior. Yesterday had seen the smallest drop compared to a week prior in nearly a month, so two better days than in a while.

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) May 10, 2021

There's always gonna be ~25% of us who won't get a vaccine to make a political statement. And the media has given them an outsized voice as the face of the not yet vaccinated.

But I think that the administration has rightly written those folks off as irrelevant. And it is instead focusing on getting the quiet reluctant to get their shots. And it is working.

We may yet reach normal.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/10/pfiz...-12-to-15.html

In Ontario Canada, they just opened the vaccines to 40+ today. Both my wife and I have appointments later this week (different days though). It was a stampede as the internet savvy 40-49 year olds went crazy to secure appointments. Crazy how we are in such a different place compared to the US with regards to vaccine supply.

I think its relative. Crazy how Canada is in such a different place compare to Asian countries.

Just become the 51st state (and maybe 52nd with Quebec) :)

I don't think its a done deal yet, but was reading good news about vaccine safety and pregnancy also.

Regardless, if my daughter was pregnant, I would recommend waiting another 4-5 months and not be an "early adopter".

My son is 11 and starting middle school next year. He won't turn 12 until December...it's frustrating because from what I hear there's been a HUGE difference between how the local middle schools have been handling COVID precautions vs how the elementary schools have. And that was before the email we got earlier this week saying that masks will be optional next year.

I really wish my kid could get the shot before he heads off to middle school.

My one son is 13 and already preschedule for an appointment tomorrow pending approval.

My other son is <12, so he will be going to school without a vaccine next year. But our governor is a Dem, so we'll still have reasonable restrictions at the schools if necessary.

My daughter got hers yesterday and a bunch of her friends went today. We are thrilled because she just turned 12 and will be going to sleepaway camp. I believe the data are being collected for the younger kids and my guess is there will be more approvals toward the end of the summer.

Just learned our neighbor is anti vax. Our daughters are the same age and best friends, but I'm really rethinking that.

Huzzah, Ohio is lifting its mask mandate on June 2nd.

California is lifting it on June 16.

I just saw the Yankees have a mini outbreak of 7 coaching staff testing positive despite all being vaccinated and the entire Yankees traveling party was at least 85% vaccinated. 6 of the 7 are asymptomatic. If we do open everything up will people eventually get it and the vaccine just helps people avoid the serious symptoms?

Can't tell if this is embarrassing or brilliant. I personally think it would just be easier to tie stimulus to this.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...ewine-n1267176

I thought the last stimulus round should've been tied to getting vaccinated so I'm generally ok with it (except for the deficit spending but no one cares about that anymore).

They should make it really interesting and offer 100$ or a ticket for the lottery, but nobody knows how many entries were made until the drawing.

CDC says fully vaccinated Americans no longer need masks indoors or outdoors in most cases
By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Laurie McGinley

https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...rs-most-cases/



Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

This will probably spawn 2 new conspiracy theories for everyone one it kills.

So, the billion dollar question is, how until the vaccine dose loses efficacy. What I mean is, do we know how long I'm "95%" protected? Is it a sliding scale over a year, such that at 8 months post-vaccine I'm now 30%? Does it suddenly go away? How would I know when the math is no longer in my favor for being protected?

I feel like this changes the calculus of masking and re-opening, especially since there's a non-insignificant swath of Americans who refuse to get the vaccine or wear a mask. I got my last shot the first week of April, so am I going to need to start feeling antsy again come winter when my protection starts to wean, but I'm not due for whatever booster I need to get for another 5 months? I just have to deal with freaking out about maskless Kyle and Karen who refused to vaccinate their 13 home schoolers?

I mean, I like being a hermit, but even I enjoy an occasional venture to a hockey game or a dank restaurant on occasion.

They are studies going on right now addressing that question. Some of the folks who got the clinical trial vaccines (which started pretty much a year ago) are in the clinical trials for determining when boosters are needed.

From what I've read, coronaviruses do not mutate like influenza viruses, so while we will probably need boosters because our immunity naturally wanes, it isn't gonna be like we need a totally new shot every year.

until next week when they change their minds

The lifting of the mask mandate seems too quick to me. I get a good % of the pop have gotten 1+ dose already but IMO we should be moving from Red to Yellow, not from Red to Green all of a sudden (wouldn't do that on a project). Go to Yellow for another 4 weeks and then go to Green.

But overall, ain't going to argue with it as I'm sure Fauci signed off on this move.

I think it is just another way to incentivize getting vaccinated.


BTW, for people who don't understand HIPAA laws: HIPAA (which is not spelled HIPPA) says your doctor, hospital or medical insurer can't release your information without your consent. It does not stop your company for asking if you are vaccinated. I keep seeing the ignorant saying "This will violate HIPPA" when they obviously have no idea what HIPAA is. How do they think schools can require vaccination cards? Business require physicals all the time, not to mention drug test. I believe you have to wave HIPAA to receive Workers Comp.

I don't see how this changes anything. This is once again putting the onus on retailers to police the unpoliceable (is that a word?). The whole point of continuing to require masks of everyone is because of the impossibility of telling the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. They should have just announced that no one needs a mask except in crowded situations, period. Saying that unvaccinated people still need a mask begs the question of how to enforce that. If I can just lie without any repercussions, what's the point? How is Kroger supposed to protect its employees and customers if it has no way to tell who is unvaccinated and without a mask?

Also, many people raising the HIPAA thing are talking about stores being unable to request that info from customers, not necessarily their employees.

The easiest way to tell without a vaccine passport is to confront the following people without masks:

People with the American flag on their shirt or hat; or

Women in yoga pants with a child over 5 in the middle of the day.

100% none of them are vaccinated.

There is a high-ranking epidemiologist with the State of North Carolina in my wife's extended family. He is also a former CDC physician. Today, in advance of Roy Cooper's announcement lifting nearly all restrictions--which I'm sure this person knew was coming--he reposted this Tweet to his FB wall.

It’s possible the CDC saw a bunch of us trying to hoard gasoline in old Burger King cups and just gave up

— Mark Agee (@MarkAgee) May 13, 2021

Dola:

For context, since February 2020, this guy has NEVER posted anything humorous or snarky about all of this. It was a proverbial "spit water all over my keyboard" moment when I saw it.

Okay Karen.

Yup. Neighbor who flies the Blue Lives Matter flag whenever a cop murders someone told me the other day how there is no way he's getting the vaccine. I'm like "no shit".

Talked with a public pollster this week about the intersection between her work in polling and the policy work of reaching the vaccine hesitant. Interesting case study here in what pockets to look for, even though it matches up with our intuition.

But fresh off a census, where everyone sort of got accustomed to a "suspicion of government" being associated with communities of color, especially non-English-speakers. We all got into a groove that those were the people we needed to make a special effort to reach with the census, to ensure as full a count as possible.

For many, the first instinct was that a government vaccine program would have trouble reaching the same groups. Not really true, and polling played a major role in helping reshape the outreach effort for the weeks ahead -- now that most of those who actively wanted to get the jab have done so, we're on to those who were hesitant or reluctant. And the messaging is definitely laden with the if/then language... "getting to this reachable number is the way for us all to get mostly back to normal."

There's a lot that people will study and examine for years from this stretch of time, which will turn out to be lessons learned for public health policy, as well as other areas.