I think that's becoming a more accepted view, in that before vaccines were available, we talked a lot about two goals: reducing the number of deaths and reducing the spikes that overwhelmed the health-care system.

Unfortunately, the politicians got in the way, as they always do. "How do I use COVID to get votes?" And they get votes by making you hate your neighbors and even your family members.

I thought this was a fair article, written while Omicron was becoming the dominant strain. Just interviews with public health specialists at various universities. This latest spike is difficult, but the article explains why it is, and where these specialists think we're going.

Omicron Is Changing Our View of Breakthrough Infections | Time

(Time is one of those "X free articles" sites)

It concludes with this quote, from Indiana professor Nir Menachemi:

“We need to start preparing people for the understanding that they will probably, at some point, get COVID,” he says, “and if they’re vaccinated and up to date on their boosters, it’s probably not going to be a big deal.”

That's uncomfortable, especially for those of us who are a little older and maybe have some additional risks. But I think we have to get there.

I don't think it's completely unreasonable to move your thinking that way.

Those who do/did so instantaneously as a rationalization of continued irresponsible behavior, I'm not down with that. Where I am, right now, signs are pointing toward Omicron being a heavy wave for weeks, not months, and then perhaps an abatement back to prior levels and caseloads. If that's so... I don't want to look back and feel like I needlessly risked my medically vulnerable kids for the sake of a handful of "nights out" or whatever.

Maybe, in time, this will become an obviously fair p.o.v. and I'll join those folks back at the bars or whatever. I hope to get more "back to normal" but right now my own risk/reward doesn't validate that.

I'm pretty much resigned to getting it, especially when classes resume, but that's the driving force behind me behind vaxed/boosted. If you aren't protected, getting covid is just playing Russian roulette with the chamber holding extra bullets if you are older or have comorbidities.

As a side-note, just saw the bill from last month's booster.

The clinic billed my insurance $570 as a "consultation and immunization." Of which $38 was "allowed" for reimbursement. I don't pretend to understand how our "the system" works, but I strongly suspect that most of the trillions added to the national debt have wound up in the pockets of opportunists.

As for "consultation," I have headphones on when I have to wait anywhere. I took them off twice - once to tell the receptionist why I was there and then for less than a minute when the nurse came out, needle in hand, to administer the shot.

I'm vaxed, boosted, and have Covid currently. Other than a fever that spikes to 104 now and then (and manages pretty easily with Tylenol/Ibuprofen when I stay on top of it), it hasn't been too bad...and I'm a smoker.

My kids are also positive -- i.e., guess where I got it. One of them is two-shot vaccinated, but recently enough she wasn't eligible for the booster. The other is one-shot in. The severity of our symptoms align pretty well with our vaccination preparedness.

My son presented with his initial symptoms on Sunday. We were visiting my parents, so loaded him up and brought him home. My dad tested positive (vaccinated and boosted) by Tuesday morning. He says he's feeling fine other than some fatigue.

Unless things take a drastic turn, it feels like a mild flu at this point. Take some cold medicine, hydrate, and go to bed for a couple of days (if you've taken the other precautionary steps). But if it's spreading this fast in my small cluster, I think people should just assume that they're going to get Omicron at this point.

I am shocked I haven't gotten it, nor has my wife. I haven't missed a day of work because of Covid, and she has missed one. That was last week because someone in her office had tested positive.

huh...I WISH!

I still assume I have it as well (my test appt is next Wed. USA?) and the fatigue has kicked my ass & kept me in bed most of the week, despite my fever never getting above 101. Mine has been closer to a severe flu then a mild one, but my last vax was 8 months ago (my booster is scheduled 2 weeks from now) and that might have something to do with it.

I was sick last week with no symptoms except for extreme fatigue and that general "sick" feeling. I tested negative for covid.

Breakthrough infections have always existed. I believe the efficacy of this vaccine is similar to measles (which is really damn good!).

The difference is that 92% of the country is vaccinated against measles so it's incredibly difficult to spread. If only 60% were vaccinated, we'd have measles everywhere too.

This isn't re-thinking breakthrough cases necessarily. It's accepting that our lack of vaccinations have made it possible.

The Darwin Award train keeps on rolling.

Cirsten Weldon, a top QAnon promoter, called vaccine recipients gullible "idiots" and warned people at a vaccine site that the shots would kill them.

On Thursday, Weldon died of COVID. https://t.co/tM7vjjb9C0

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) January 7, 2022

wanna hear something funny? I copied the link for your picture to post into facebook but it only got the picture of her and not the surrounding text so I went to delete it. And instead of "Delete". the option was "Move to Trash".

Hmmmmmmmmmm :D

At this point I will be very disappointed if I don't actually have covid & just have a flu.

There are many differences and many similarities.

Before the measles vaccine, millions were infected each year. The death rate was about 0.1%, and very young children were most likely to have complications.

It took about ten years to get to that percentage of vaccinations. I think we're doing quite well with COVID, but obviously we can do better - particularly with some minority groups and with the segment of the right wing that seems to think it's a conspiracy.

About 20 years ago, someone connected with a lawsuit against measles vaccine makers published a "study" connecting the vaccine with autism. Even though the study was quickly discredited, it got out there and vaccine rates dropped, leading to some measles outbreaks. And today, some people still believe it can cause autism.

Measles doesn't seem to mutate. COVID does. We will likely be dealing with COVID variants, just like flu variants, for the long-term future, no matter how many people are vaccinated.

If measles boosters were required twice a year, the percentage of adults receiving the shots would drop quite a bit.

Researchers are still learning about COVID. The knowledge base is changing on a weekly basis. I think we'll get better results if we stop trying to ridicule everyone who has questions - even if they are dumb questions. It's that ridicule that keeps people in their safe zones. Sometimes safe zones are also bad advice zones - and that's hardly exclusive to the right wing.

I don't think people are refusing to get vaccinations because they are being ridiculed. And experts have been answering their questions for a year now.

They simply have different motivations and goals than the rest of us.

i could live with that kind of disappointment

What hit me by surprise is that sometimes "people"/not "us" are ones you (I) wouldn't expect to be strongly opinionated about not taking the vaccine. And then they do get infected last November/December, very ill, but thankfully recover after the worst cold they ever had. Will this convince them to get vaccinated now? I doubt it. Because they were diagnosed so recently, they'll have to wait until March/April to actually get their vaccination program started anyway.

To be fair, if I had built any reasonable doubts, it seriously helps to have a sister in law who actually works in medical research and would have easily convinced me to be doubtless and get vaccinated. But in these days of social media addiction, the way media like Youtube and Facebook work, even reasonable people can get entangled in the web of ill informed decision making based on "research".

I'm starting to hear this, and I hope the sentiment gets redeemed.

There are, however, a variety of still-emerging metrics on "long covid" that are not to be trifled with, if true. If a significant number of people who have this "mild, like a cold" illness and feel better write it off as nothing... but later on have longer-term cardiac, bronchial, immunity, or neurological problems as a result, it could turn out to be a really big deal in retrospect and that sentiment might be proven precisely wrong.

I hope not. I hope the long covid phenomenon is somehow psychosomatic and/or very minor in its effect. But if even 10% of the millions who have gotten sick end up in two years with meaningful chronic conditions from it... yikes.

I saw a study on footballers where those that had Covid were showing less stamina months after their illness.

As many of us are tempted to cast blame upon the deniers, the assholes, the anti-vaxxers, the rank-and-file in this whole movement to frustrate the public health process... I feel it's important to keep in mind that this doesn't spring from thin air. It comes from bad faith actors who, for money or power or something else, actively seed this information with them, their loyal followers.

I know this isn't the politics thread, so I'll steer narrowly here, but here's a very widely watched "news analysis" show - and watch how effortlessly the host, who is very well versed in these topics after covering this matter relentlessly night after night, slips right into informing his viewers that getting vaccinated and boosted will make you more likely to get COVID:

Tucker Carlson tells viewers the COVID-19 boosters don't work and actually increase your chances of catching the omicron variant pic.twitter.com/GjuojbRj7V

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) January 8, 2022

I don't even know what the word is for it? Is there any chance that he is so immersed in the messaging they peddle that he actually believes that to be true? I guess it's possible. Seems more likely that he simply does not care about truth, he is engaging in a "bit," and is just so enchanted with its effectiveness and the power/wealth it provides him that he doesn't think twice about it.

There's no doubt about it... people with audiences in the millions who tell their American followers something like this are causing unnecessary deaths. This is the great evil at work here... it's more about disinformation than it is misinformation. It's evil, not stupidity.

I'm sick to my stomach over it, on a routine basis. As a humanizing effort, I make a point to follow a twitter account that does nothing but post information about school employees lost to COVID, and it's... just awful. But I don't want to let this whole thing turn into another "fight over the filibuster" or a "tan suit stir" or a "bridgegate." There are actual grieving families too many to count for this to still be happening the way it is.

Sorry, maybe too political. Kick me off this thread, it would be good for my mental health.

Carlson knows exactly what he is doing. I may have mentioned this before. My BIL is super high up in JP Morgan, like, reports directly to Jamie Dimon. He was at some event around late 2015 with Carlson and got to talking to him. Carlson told him Trump is a fucking idiot but would also be the best thing to ever happen to him. It is all an act to him.

Totally off topic, but if anyone is interested Bloomberg did a profile on him a couple years ago. I love him like a brother and am fiercely proud of him and his journey. Godfather to my daughter and an all around tremendous human, despite being a banker. My be better suited in the stocks thread.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

LOL. It's still called the "Wuhan Coronavirus" thread - it's the COVID thread for all things, political and apolitical

SI

"No reasonable person would believe what he says"- His own lawyer defending him in a liable suit.

Everyone up for the BISON! The ROUT is on!!!

WOOOOOOOOOT! Hell yeah!

Did they all get Covid?

I can imagine you saying the same thing watching people play Street Fighter II


ETA:

Also are we in the right thread? Is the BISON kicking covid's ass or something?

Yeah I don't know that fucking guy. He struggles with reading apparently.

Then why does it say "a non political thread" still in the title?

*if you look in the VERY early days of the thread, I believe you'll see me comment to the effect that it's impossible since it's all political ... but that's not what the thread title says

Because of who made the thread and some silly stances taken a while back. What it says and what it's actually always been and always will be are two different things. It's always been a farce to pretend it's been anything different.

SI

It's why I rarely engage in the thread (I dropped into it today cause ... reasons)

I have no need to go looking for extra reasons to go 0 to 120 toward blind rage, my dance card on that is full up for life (and then some)

There are actually a number of people who have legit attempted at least to keep political conversations vis a vis Covid in other threads such as the Biden/Trump ones. I know because I am one of them, and I've seen others do it as well. Some of it is political. There is nothing political about the facts of hospitalization rates, testing rates and positivity, trends, scientific data about the different variants, etc.

I have watched and experienced your change over time. It's pretty awesome to witness. I remember a time when you were seething and I can only imagine the weight you freed yourself of.

My plate is a lot fuller lately :/

I'm not particularly lacking for rage frankly, I simply lack the spare energy to expend on it.

I am convinced that Bullet with Butterfly Wings is the single most penetrating song ever conceived.

I am lost

I don't think SHE would even say THAT!

For me, it came down to wanting a thread that contained helpful information vs the typical finger pointing, diatribes, anti-Trump etc. Especially in those early days since we didn't know what we were dealing with and there was a lot of unknowns. I did not want to wade through posts after posts, page after after of X when I wanted to know Y.

There were and are several other threads always go back to politics and Trumpism. And BTW, the Mental Health thread is a great non-political companion to this one.

Yes, there are still politics in the thread, and as others had said there is always a certain level of politics tied to this. Per below, my ask was "do the best we can" and I also admitted fault at this.

I'd give us a B so far. I appreciate and hope the majority of FOFC appreciate the effort to keep this thread more informational vs political.


Specific to the title of this thread implying it makes it political or maybe racist. In post #1, the NYT (and WaPo) article I posted called it Wuhan coronavirus. I simply called it the same.

It's fair to ask why not change the name and remove Wuhan. I think my rationale is it wasn't political in the beginning, it was just a way to identify the virus. It's not political now, more an outdated term. If lots of FOFC members have a beef on this, sure I'll change it np.

I've noticed that we are now talking more about hospitalization than just infection rates. I agree with this and believe these are initial steps to getting us to the new normal, endemic stage.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/a...022/index.html

So his basis was because he had recently recovered from Covid. I actually think this is a reasonable medical exemption but his team should still have checked.

If his quarantine facility is really as bad as its been reported, I do agree that Australian government should let him quarantine in a nicer place. From what I've read, other countries have differing quality of quarantine facilities (e.g. hotels). Basically, if there are nicer quarantine facilities and he is willing to pay for them (which I'm sure he has the $ for), then why not.

There's probably a lot of he said, she said going on right now though so who knows.

Fun thread:

Yes, the boat hit the iceberg, but putting the children in lifeboats is the most destructive thing imaginable to their psyche. It's time for us to stop all this evacuation talk and just complete the voyage.

— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) January 6, 2022

Not sure if it was intentional, but the sinking of the Titanic led to arguably the most sweeping changes to maritime safety rules in history.

Edit: which furthers the irony, I think.

It's not irony. The entire thread is this guy with a sarcastic take on anti-vaxxers.

I feel like the ghosts in pac-man after pac-man eats a permanent power pellet. It's coming for me, and damn skippy I'm worried

My brother (who I share a home with)'s best friend (and basically his whole family). COVID
The girl across the street who walks Duke The Monster Dog. COVID
My counselor's wife. COVID

Now, it's not a guarantee I'll get it, my brother and I don't interact much, the girl who walks Duke was masked when she came over.. but still.

Just wonder what's around the corner, and empty alleyway, or CHOMP.

My son's first day of baseball practice for 2022 was today. On a roster with 35 players they had 9 eligible for practice after covid testing last week.

there are P{ERMANENT pellets?!~?~?