Bad News Thread

[dad4]

Couple of decent wapo articles today.

The first is on evaluating risk for the unvaccinated.

Basic argument is that you can’t really measure total cases/total pop. Unvaccinated people are where the virus is, so you have to measure unvaccinated cases/unvaccinated pop.

For CA, that means your risk as an unvaccinated person is about double the reported rate. The number of cases is still about 1500 per day, but almost all of that is unvax. So the unvax community is at about 6 daily cases per 100K and the vax community is close to 0.

The other good article was on the lab leak theory. Wapo is now treating it as mainstream, and published a “why we got it wrong” article. They don’t quite say “we dismissed it because Trump said it”, but they come close.

 

[Bruddah IZ]

Couple of decent wapo articles today.

The first is on evaluating risk for the unvaccinated.

Basic argument is that you can’t really measure total cases/total pop. Unvaccinated people are where the virus is, so you have to measure unvaccinated cases/unvaccinated pop.

For CA, that means your risk as an unvaccinated person is about double the reported rate. The number of cases is still about 1500 per day, but almost all of that is unvax. So the unvax community is at about 6 daily cases per 100K and the vax community is close to 0.

The other good article was on the lab leak theory. Wapo is now treating it as mainstream, and published a “why we got it wrong” article. They don’t quite say “we dismissed it because Trump said it”, but they come close.

Measuring risk by PCR means no credibility.

 

[dad4]

Imagine that.

No one said that natural immunity doesn’t exist. It’s just a painful way to go about solving the problem. There is that uncomfortable phase when cases spike and you try, and fail, to keep covid out of the nursing homes. (I know. You don’t like talking about that part.)

 

[Grace T.]

Couple of decent wapo articles today.

The first is on evaluating risk for the unvaccinated.

Basic argument is that you can’t really measure total cases/total pop. Unvaccinated people are where the virus is, so you have to measure unvaccinated cases/unvaccinated pop.

For CA, that means your risk as an unvaccinated person is about double the reported rate. The number of cases is still about 1500 per day, but almost all of that is unvax. So the unvax community is at about 6 daily cases per 100K and the vax community is close to 0.

The other good article was on the lab leak theory. Wapo is now treating it as mainstream, and published a “why we got it wrong” article. They don’t quite say “we dismissed it because Trump said it”, but they come close.

Yet on social media the commentators who raised the issue were banned or shadow banned because “Trump said it” and called racist for questioning the prc. Moreover, it is beginning to look like that the virus may have been enhanced (aka engineered) and while not quite a bio weapon also did not naturally occur. Yet another failure of the establishment and put up another point for the scrappy naysayers

 

[dad4]

Yet on social media the commentators who raised the issue were banned or shadow banned because “Trump said it” and called racist for questioning the prc. Moreover, it is beginning to look like that the virus may have been enhanced (aka engineered) and while not quite a bio weapon also did not naturally occur. Yet another failure of the establishment and put up another point for the scrappy naysayers

I think inclinations towards believing a lab leak (including mine) had more to do with a knee-jerk distrust of PRC than anything else. Not so much scrappy naysayers as just understanding that you can’t trust any country which puts their sociopath on their currency.

Intersting that CW is moving from lab leak of a sample to lab leak of a manipulated sample. My bet had been on the first, but evidence is leaning towards the second.

 

[Bruddah IZ]

No one said that natural immunity doesn’t exist.

First your Mask mea culpa. Now this?

It’s just a painful way to go about solving the problem. There is that uncomfortable phase when cases spike and you try, and fail, to keep covid out of the nursing homes. (I know. You don’t like talking about that part.)

No, that's Cuomo who doesn't want to talk about keeping covid out of Nursing homes.

 

[dad4]

First your Mask mea culpa. Now this?

No, that's Cuomo who doesn't want to talk about keeping covid out of Nursing homes.

Change the topic when losing, again? Ok.

Happy to blame Cuomo and Levine for reintroduction into nursing homes. No excuse for it.

No mask mea culpa needed. I said they work, the science backs me up. See espola's article in Science, among others.

You might consider a revision to your anti-mask and anti-mRNA stances. Neither of those opinions is aging well.

 

[Grace T.]

COVID-19 Mitigation Practices and COVID-19 Rates in Schools: Report on Data from Florida, New York and Massachusetts

This paper reports on the correlation of mitigation practices with staff and student COVID-19 case rates in Florida, New York, and Massachusetts during the 2020-2021 school year. We analyze data collected by the COVID-19 School Response Dashboard and focus on student density, ventilation...

www.medrxiv.org

 

[Grace T.]

COVID-19 Mitigation Practices and COVID-19 Rates in Schools: Report on Data from Florida, New York and Massachusetts

This paper reports on the correlation of mitigation practices with staff and student COVID-19 case rates in Florida, New York, and Massachusetts during the 2020-2021 school year. We analyze data collected by the COVID-19 School Response Dashboard and focus on student density, ventilation...

www.medrxiv.org

My guess is that ultimately masks (in general) will be shown to have reduced cases overall by 5-15%....would have been more had they rolled out the N95s.

 

[Grace T.]

As I was saying prior....

 

[Desert Hound]

Yet on social media the commentators who raised the issue were banned or shadow banned because “Trump said it” and called racist for questioning the prc. Moreover, it is beginning to look like that the virus may have been enhanced (aka engineered) and while not quite a bio weapon also did not naturally occur. Yet another failure of the establishment and put up another point for the scrappy naysayers

It wasn't just social media. It was the main stream press that eagerly said that lab theory was "thoroughly debunked". Their reporting on that issue and most others is done through a partisan lens. And as a result you get don't get good reporting on many issues of the day.

 

[espola]

As I was saying prior....

"...not greater than the background rate normally seen..."

 

[Grace T.]

"...not greater than the background rate normally seen..."

Yeah, I agree with that. But the condition, particularly in the young, can go undiagnosed....so I think like the blot clots and J&J the number may be a bit undercounted. I'm glad they aren't doing a pause for this, but other nations (including the UK, Australia, the Czech Republic and South Korea) have also signaled a concern.

My guess is it ultimately goes into the insert, but isn't a particularly concerning side effect (at least relative to COVID which can also cause the condition in the young).

 

[espola]

Yeah, I agree with that. But the condition, particularly in the young, can go undiagnosed....so I think like the blot clots and J&J the number may be a bit undercounted. I'm glad they aren't doing a pause for this, but other nations (including the UK, Australia, the Czech Republic and South Korea) have also signaled a concern.

My guess is it ultimately goes into the insert, but isn't a particularly concerning side effect (at least relative to COVID which can also cause the condition in the young).

"...also cause..."?

If you want something more to worry about you can look up the number of traffic accident deaths among the post-vaccinated.

 

[kickingandscreaming]

My guess is that ultimately masks (in general) will be shown to have reduced cases overall by 5-15%....would have been more had they rolled out the N95s.

I heard that masks were better than vaccines. <cue espola>

 

[kickingandscreaming]

It wasn't just social media. It was the main stream press that eagerly said that lab theory was "thoroughly debunked". Their reporting on that issue and most others is done through a partisan lens. And as a result you get don't get good reporting on many issues of the day.

They ruined another word, "debunked". When will they ever learn?

 

[kickingandscreaming]

Their reporting on that issue and most others is done through a partisan lens. And as a result you get don't get good reporting on many issues of the day.

I don't think the role this plays in the division we have in our country can be overestimated. When a particular segment of the population feels the mainstream media is partisan against them, they will find another source and it may be one even more partisan in the other direction. The pandemic coverage has made it even more obvious. Diversity of race and religion is important but equally important is the diversity of thought and perspective. I don't get the feeling we are moving in a good direction in this regard.

 

[dad4]

My guess is that ultimately masks (in general) will be shown to have reduced cases overall by 5-15%....would have been more had they rolled out the N95s.

Mask mandates buy you a 10% reduction is about right. The key is understanding whether a 10% reduction is significant.

It's just under 1/10 of what we needed to solve the problem. Log(.9) / log (.33)

Or, to look at it from another angle, mask mandates were the difference between LA peaking at 45% or 50%. Saved you about 2500 deaths or so.

So, a significant help.

 

[Grace T.]

Mask mandates buy you a 10% reduction is about right. The key is understanding whether a 10% reduction is significant.

It's just under 1/10 of what we needed to solve the problem. Log(.9) / log (.33)

Or, to look at it from another angle, mask mandates were the difference between LA peaking at 45% or 50%. Saved you about 2500 deaths or so.

So, a significant help.

Had the government said 10% at the beginning (instead of masks are better than vaccines) you think the public would have had such a buyin? The essential workers wouldn't have freaked out at the beginning when everyone was panicking? What if they had been honest about cloth masks not working nearly as well as N95 for individual protection?

";part of the problem"....we can ask again: with the benefit of hindsight, what would have your solution to the rest of it been? Still toying with Australia?

 

[Bruddah IZ]

Change the topic when losing, again? Ok.

Happy to blame Cuomo and Levine for reintroduction into nursing homes. No excuse for it.

No mask mea culpa needed. I said they work, the science backs me up. See espola's article in Science, among others.

You might consider a revision to your anti-mask and anti-mRNA stances. Neither of those opinions is aging well.

Masks reduce the probability of transmission. That’s all. They do not come close to eliminating transmission.

Mask never have and never will come close to eliminating transmission. We've known that for decades. Unless you were trained for Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Warfare, like I was, how could you not be suckered into the DIY mask narrative. Not sure why you quoted Espola's article. That article was DOA. Comparing COVID-19 NPI to itself is about as unscientific as it gets. Perhaps some aging will help. Or maybe we will see more radical NPI like death threats toward those who post dissenting facts.

 

[dad4]

Had the government said 10% at the beginning (instead of masks are better than vaccines) you think the public would have had such a buyin? The essential workers wouldn't have freaked out at the beginning when everyone was panicking? What if they had been honest about cloth masks not working nearly as well as N95 for individual protection?

";part of the problem"....we can ask again: with the benefit of hindsight, what would have your solution to the rest of it been? Still toying with Australia?

Masks themselves are more like 45%. Mask mandates get a lower percentage because you are only measuring the degree to which the mandate changed behavior.

But, whether it is 10% or 45%, it is still a significant reduction.

Curious if you have any way to measure the overall effectiveness of just moving outside. It’s around 95%, for those things which can move. But not everything is movable, so it is lower. Then you need to correct for fact that being outside doesn’t help with in-home transmission.

I think you can end up with another 40% reduction or so, if you are aggressive about what you move outdoors. (A 95% reduction to 2/3 of what we do is a 64% reduction, but it applies only to half of the steps in the chain.)

Counting your 10% estimate, those two alone put us at R= 3 * .6 * .9 = 1.62. One more 40% reduction would have been enough to drop R below 1. Or, more likely, ten more 5% reductions.

Unpleasant, but we could have done it.