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CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk


Mrs Whiggins

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2 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Why?  It's my understanding that the IgG and IgM antibodies aren't measurable until one is past the contagious period.  Essentially, if you show those antibodies, you have "recovered".

If COVID-19 antibodies work the way HepA antibodies do, IgG would reflect a past infection; IgM would reflect a current infection.  

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1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

The ones screaming the loudest about their natural immunity now were screaming about masks and social distancing earlier. I’m not fine with the constant goal post moving when what people are really doing is looking for an open door to undermine any real effort to get this under control. 

This.  Most of what you're seeing from "the CR people" reflects the exhaustion from dealing with largely bad faith arguments by the large majority who oppose any sort of vaccination mandate.  

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1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

I think you are confused. The implementation of a testing program in the EU (which based on what I understand from the descriptions here involves serial diagnostic testing and is not what I am suggesting which is even easier to implement) in 400MM people precisely undermines the "tHe LogIstiCs aRe ToO HaRd" red herring. 

Red herring: logistics are too hard to feasibly accomplish the task. 

Not red herring: It is logistically feasible to implement a testing exemption system, but the benefit to such a system simply isn't worth the extra cost.

In fact, from a public health perspective, I'm not convinced there is any benefit to implementing such a system, at least not in the United States.

(1) It isn't going to increase the speed at which our population acquires immunity. In fact, in comparison to a simple mandate that everyone get vaccinated, it'll almost certainly result in a slower rate of immunization.

(2) It isn't going to decrease the overall risks to the population given the vaccines practical non-existent risks vs the risks of non-immunized Covid-19 infection. 

(3) And, I don't see it providing any economic benefit either. In fact, it seems like it'll do just the opposite by slowing our progress in reaching some acceptable level of population wide protection.

It is compromise for compromise's sake. If we have to do it to move forward because we lack the political will to just vaccinate everyone, fine, let's do it. But let's not pretend it is anything but an inefficient mechanism, necessitated by the unreasonableness of others, to reach our ultimate goal. 

P.S. Despite vaccines mandates for everyone (at least adults and teens at this point) being my position, I also believe it is important to be honest about why we should do that. It isn't because immunity acquired via infection is inferior to vaccination. It is because mass vaccination is the easiest and fastest way to ensure that everyone is actually immunized. 

Edited by Dahobbs
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13 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

It is logistically feasible to implement a testing exemption system, but the benefit to such a system simply isn't worth the extra cost. In fact, from a public health perspective, I'm not convinced there is any benefit to implementing such a system, at least not in the United States.

The position is not unreasonable, imo.  But in the context and the reality of the policy discussion taking place in this country, and in particular the OSHA-mediated mandate, the decision has already been made by the Biden administration. A test exemption will be part of the policy.  Once that decision has been made, we can assess the utilities of the various options among different population segments. Demonstration of seroconversion among people with past COVID that do not want to vaccinate is either preferred or has no established difference on the dimensions of cost, logistical complexity, impact to public health, ethical considerations, etc. relative to either vaccination against one's will or required weekly diagnostic testing. It's a math equation, and it's not even a hard one. 

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1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Authoritarianism is a form of government that collapses political choice, suppresses democratic selection of leaders, and concentrates all political authority in one branch or institution. Enforcement of even unpopular and not completely perfectly nuanced public health measures is not authoritarianism.

For instance—- trying to overturn a democratic election via manufactured claims of fraud and pressure on political allies— would be signs of a would be authoritarian. I know it’s easy to get lost given the amount of propaganda sloshing around out there. 

Is that the only manifestation  of authoritarianism? Think hard now

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35 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Is that the only manifestation  of authoritarianism? Think hard now

Not at all! There’s so many fun things you can do. You can install crony loyalists throughout the civil and military services. You can manipulate media outlets and intimate dissenters. You can find ways to disenfranchise voters unlikely to support you. You can erode the concept of truth and stoke unreasonable fear. You can encourage or condone violence against your opponents and then downplay it after the fact. You can weaponized religious sentiment. You can attack and persecute whistleblowers. 
 

Funny though, in all the actual authoritarian places I’ve lived and/or worked on, “get people vaccinated so the economy can function and people don’t die” was NOT a go-to. I guess they didn’t get the globalist circular. 

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32 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Not at all! There’s so many fun things you can do. You can install crony loyalists throughout the civil and military services. You can manipulate media outlets and intimate dissenters. You can find ways to disenfranchise voters unlikely to support you. You can erode the concept of truth and stoke unreasonable fear. You can encourage or condone violence against your opponents and then downplay it after the fact. You can weaponized religious sentiment. You can attack and persecute whistleblowers. 
 

Funny though, in all the actual authoritarian places I’ve lived and/or worked on, “get people vaccinated so the economy can function and people don’t die” was NOT a go-to. I guess they didn’t get the globalist circular. 

Taking people’s livelihoods away in a capricious manner not backed by science fits nicely as well. Especially when there are reasonable alternatives available. That is what we are talking about here. Unless you are arguing the executive branch can do anything it wants because it was duly elected. 

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14 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Taking people’s livelihoods away in a capricious manner not backed by science fits nicely as well. Especially when there are reasonable alternatives available. That is what we are talking about here. Unless you are arguing the executive branch can do anything it wants because it was duly elected. 

“What are logical fallacies ghost Alex.”
 

Ghost Alex -“Correct!”

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25 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Taking people’s livelihoods away in a capricious manner not backed by science fits nicely as well. Especially when there are reasonable alternatives available. That is what we are talking about here. Unless you are arguing the executive branch can do anything it wants because it was duly elected. 

What would make it capricious? The mere fact that a law impacts individual freedom does not make it authoritarian. You could just as easily say that requiring drivers licenses takes "people's livelihoods away in a capricious manner" by preventing those without them from driving as job or driving to a job. We force people to do things they may not want to do all the time. I don't see a vaccine mandate being appreciable different. 

Here, their livelihoods wouldn't be taken away instantly and without recourse for an unpredictable reason. Rather, there would be something simple and beneficial they could do to restore their livelihoods. And it would take 5 minutes. Science and public policy aren't going to have a one-one relationship. For instance, science says we should reduce CO2 emissions to 0 today. But a public policy that enforced that would be disastrous. Science should be a factor in public policy decisions, but science alone can't dictate results. 

 

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Just now, Dahobbs said:

What would make it capricious? The mere fact that a law impacts individual freedom does not make it authoritarian. You could just as easily say that requiring drivers licenses takes "people's livelihoods away in a capricious manner" by preventing those without them from driving as job or driving to a job. 

Here, their livelihoods wouldn't be taken away instantly and without recourse for an unpredictable reason. Rather, there would be something simple and beneficial they could do to restore their livelihoods. And it would take 5 minutes. Science and public policy aren't going to have a one-one relationship. For instance, science says we should reduce CO2 emissions to 0 today. But a public policy that enforced that would be disastrous. Science should be a factor in public policy decisions, but science alone can't dictate results. 

 

If you can’t show a benefit of vaxed status over recovered it is absolutely capricious. 

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12 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

If you can’t show a benefit of vaxed status over recovered it is absolutely capricious. 

How? Would law be changing often? Would it be impossible to predict its application?

As to the benefit, from a public policy perspective, the benefit need not be for the particular individual. Here, the benefit to a vaccine mandate without an exemption system is fairly obvious: it simplifies the administrative process. Other potential benefits include increasing the rate at which our population acquires immunity and providing increased Covid-19 protection even for those that were previously infected (as shown by the studies).

Now, you could argue that those benefits aren't worth the additional imposition on individual liberty compared to an exemption system. But that wouldn't make such a law capricious. And frankly I'm highly skeptical of that argument. The reasons for allowing allowing an exemption process are political and pragmatic. But they aren't because a system with an exemption process is inherently superior to a simple vaccination mandate. In fact, I think it is pretty clearly inferior considering our end goal. 

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10 minutes ago, Captainant said:

I’d love to see you critique the strengths and weaknesses of this study, assign a level of evidence to it, and share with the board your insights as to the relative strengths and weaknesses of this analysis vs the others on the subject. 

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15 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Bullshit.  Take the test or get the shot.  Perfectly reasonable.

This is a reasonable stance if we are including serological tests in the scope. Posters here have spent the last couple pages arguing against this reasonable position with weak and flimsy arguments, unrooted in the science and evidence. So here we are. Must have put the “In this house science is real” signs up in the garage already. 

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Well, is a BiaxNOW test more or less capable of discerning active infection than a vax card or proof of prior infection?

We need to keep our eye on the ball.  The idea, at least with Biden's mandate, is to minimize the # of infected and contagious people in the workforce.

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Review article/perspective piece timely to aspects of the discussion over the last few days published in Lancet today. Maybe an interesting read to some, so I share: 

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00407-0/fulltext

 

 

Summary

Many nations are pursuing the rollout of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines as an exit strategy from unprecedented COVID-19-related restrictions. However, the success of this strategy relies critically on the duration of protective immunity resulting from both natural infection and vaccination. SARS-CoV-2 infection elicits an adaptive immune response against a large breadth of viral epitopes, although the duration of the response varies with age and disease severity. Current evidence from case studies and large observational studies suggests that, consistent with research on other common respiratory viruses, a protective immunological response lasts for approximately 5–12 months from primary infection, with reinfection being more likely given an insufficiently robust primary humoral response. Markers of humoral and cell-mediated immune memory can persist over many months, and might help to mitigate against severe disease upon reinfection. Emerging data, including evidence of breakthrough infections, suggest that vaccine effectiveness might be reduced significantly against emerging variants of concern, and hence secondary vaccines will need to be developed to maintain population-level protective immunity. Nonetheless, other interventions will also be required, with further outbreaks likely to occur due to antigenic drift, selective pressures for novel variants, and global population mobility.

Key messages

•The duration and breadth of the humoral response to SARS-CoV-2 infection varies markedly by age and disease severity, with detectable neutralising responses present for up to 1 year after infection; memory B cells raised against the viral spike protein and its receptor binding domain are maintained in frequency for many months after recovery from infection and are able to generate potent neutralising antibodies upon viral rechallenge

•Evidence from animal models, patient case studies, and large observational studies suggests that the time to reinfection is approximately 5–12 months, with individuals who were initially seropositive for IgG antibodies having a lower risk of reinfection

•The cell-mediated response seems to be more polyepitopic than that of the humoral system, and the magnitude of the response greater in younger patients with less severe disease; a potent spike-specific memory T-cell response persists for 5–8 months after infection and might be mounted even in the presence of low neutralising antibody titres, reducing disease severity upon rechallenge

•Vaccination elicits a spike-specific immune response of greater specificity and magnitude than that of natural infection, but emerging data suggest that protective immune responses, predominantly viral neutralisation, and vaccine effectiveness against infection are impaired against variants of concern

•Given the considerable viral epitopic mutation, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines will need to be updated on a seasonal or yearly basis to maintain population-level protective immunity, as is the case with other endemic respiratory viruses; other interventions might also be required to prevent the occurrence of further significant outbreaks and reduce the incidence of disease

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15 hours ago, TXSG8R said:

I should also add, that if the war on science isn’t over, science is definitely boxed in and low on ammo.  The antivax movement wasn’t a right wing thing in genesis, but the right certainly did a lot of heavy lifting in eroding public trust in science to lead to the explosion of antivax sentiment that is prolonging Covid. You would think that having so much access to information would lead to an enlightened period, but the opposite is true. Lack of processing power or critical thinking, too much contrarianism, all of it contributes to something bigger than dunning-kruger in how we are getting so far apart in how to respond to crises. Our shit is very broken.

It's not just lack of trust in science, it's lack of trust in government.  It's the whole mass adoption of ludicrous conspiracy theories.

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13 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Review article/perspective piece timely to aspects of the discussion over the last few days published in Lancet today. Maybe an interesting read to some, so I share: 

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00407-0/fulltext

 

 

Summary

Many nations are pursuing the rollout of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines as an exit strategy from unprecedented COVID-19-related restrictions. However, the success of this strategy relies critically on the duration of protective immunity resulting from both natural infection and vaccination. SARS-CoV-2 infection elicits an adaptive immune response against a large breadth of viral epitopes, although the duration of the response varies with age and disease severity. Current evidence from case studies and large observational studies suggests that, consistent with research on other common respiratory viruses, a protective immunological response lasts for approximately 5–12 months from primary infection, with reinfection being more likely given an insufficiently robust primary humoral response. Markers of humoral and cell-mediated immune memory can persist over many months, and might help to mitigate against severe disease upon reinfection. Emerging data, including evidence of breakthrough infections, suggest that vaccine effectiveness might be reduced significantly against emerging variants of concern, and hence secondary vaccines will need to be developed to maintain population-level protective immunity. Nonetheless, other interventions will also be required, with further outbreaks likely to occur due to antigenic drift, selective pressures for novel variants, and global population mobility.

Key messages

•The duration and breadth of the humoral response to SARS-CoV-2 infection varies markedly by age and disease severity, with detectable neutralising responses present for up to 1 year after infection; memory B cells raised against the viral spike protein and its receptor binding domain are maintained in frequency for many months after recovery from infection and are able to generate potent neutralising antibodies upon viral rechallenge

•Evidence from animal models, patient case studies, and large observational studies suggests that the time to reinfection is approximately 5–12 months, with individuals who were initially seropositive for IgG antibodies having a lower risk of reinfection

•The cell-mediated response seems to be more polyepitopic than that of the humoral system, and the magnitude of the response greater in younger patients with less severe disease; a potent spike-specific memory T-cell response persists for 5–8 months after infection and might be mounted even in the presence of low neutralising antibody titres, reducing disease severity upon rechallenge

•Vaccination elicits a spike-specific immune response of greater specificity and magnitude than that of natural infection, but emerging data suggest that protective immune responses, predominantly viral neutralisation, and vaccine effectiveness against infection are impaired against variants of concern

•Given the considerable viral epitopic mutation, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines will need to be updated on a seasonal or yearly basis to maintain population-level protective immunity, as is the case with other endemic respiratory viruses; other interventions might also be required to prevent the occurrence of further significant outbreaks and reduce the incidence of disease

So, summary: what many of us suspected, COVID is going to be an endemic disease, subject to periodic outbreaks, requiring adjusted boosters/annual shots to keep it relatively under control, including for reasons of mutations/changes in the virus over time.  Ultimately, our goal should be to control it like we do the flu: targeted vaccines, likely annually, administered to as many people as possible to keep seasonal outbreaks manageable.  Will we succeed in that?  Who the fuck knows.

Will we ever get back to the world we lived in before?  I'm getting increasingly discouraged.  And it's killing us -- depression, loss of connection, etc.  As a species, we aren't doing well.

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1 hour ago, Longhornfan1024 said:

He ded.  Fuckin moron.

That was quick.  He had over 500 pos rep just last week IIRC.  Donkey Cigars was in the red for over a week before his most recent crowd sourcing.  Let's see if PAC can resurrect himself.

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2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Will we ever get back to the world we lived in before?  I'm getting increasingly discouraged.  And it's killing us -- depression, loss of connection, etc.  As a species, we aren't doing well.

My friend, step off the ledge and come back inside. I think that we need to calibrate our expectations around the endpoints of severe disease and hospitalization.  COVID zero is not a realistic scenario, even with these awesome vaccines. We don't fully know the durability of protection wrt those endpoints, but we know that they are highly effective on those measures. And that substantial protection against those endpoints may be mediated by the longer lived components of the adaptive immune response. If between vaccination and recovery from infection we are primed to avoid those outcomes, COVID becomes something more like a bad case of the common cold for most people. You may not avoid catching it completely, but if you do you typically don't end up in the hospital. Advance the therapeutics (positive data regarding a repurposed drug fluvoxamine about to be published) and advance additional vaccines that may get us to a sterilizing immunity. 

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31 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

My friend, step off the ledge and come back inside. I think that we need to calibrate our expectations around the endpoints of severe disease and hospitalization.  COVID zero is not a realistic scenario, even with these awesome vaccines. We don't fully know the durability of protection wrt those endpoints, but we know that they are highly effective on those measures. And that substantial protection against those endpoints may be mediated by the longer lived components of the adaptive immune response. If between vaccination and recovery from infection we are primed to avoid those outcomes, COVID becomes something more like a bad case of the common cold for most people. You may not avoid catching it completely, but if you do you typically don't end up in the hospital. Advance the therapeutics (positive data regarding a repurposed drug fluvoxamine about to be published) and advance additional vaccines that may get us to a sterilizing immunity. 

Sure, this all makes sense in sane and rational world.

But we don't live in that world.  

We live in this one:

16 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Until the herd gets culled of all the Herman Cain award winners we are going to be seeing the ICUs stay full. 

Stupid can be fixed but it is gonna be a while.

The stark reality is that there are people in this country willing to die a physical death because they can't bear a social one.

 

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29 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Until the herd gets culled of all the Herman Cain award winners we are going to be seeing the ICUs stay full. 

Well, that isn't born out by the data.  According to the City of Austin, there are currently 70 ICU beds occupied by covid patients in the 5-county Austin MSA (Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties).  Total ICU capacity in the MSA is ~ 483 beds, at least for the 3 major hospital networks (Seton, Baylor S&W, St. David's), so we're currently at about 15% capacity occupied by covid patients.

Let's not go overboard.

Austin MSA covid data

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58 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Well, that isn't born out by the data.  According to the City of Austin, there are currently 70 ICU beds occupied by covid patients in the 5-county Austin MSA (Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties).  Total ICU capacity in the MSA is ~ 483 beds, at least for the 3 major hospital networks (Seton, Baylor S&W, St. David's), so we're currently at about 15% capacity occupied by covid patients.

Let's not go overboard.

Austin MSA covid data

91.7% full in Denton Co. 

58 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Screenshot_20211022-143337.thumb.png.c3885b921645fa8b69c1c9e091fbd2d8.png

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I read a short article a minute ago that Pfizer has a vaccine for children 5-11, results are positive. 90% effective and no deaths. No blood clots, no myocarditis and no anaphylaxis. 2200 kids roughly, 750 placebo to 1500 vaccine. 10 microgram dose was most effective with least amount of symptoms such as fever, body aches etc. The antibody results are similar to the 16-25 year old range. Most excited I’ve been about Covid news in a while. I have a 7 year old and soon to be 5 year old. 

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