Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[MultiVerse]

Remember that all of us are now looking at this through the lens of lots of people actually getting vaccinated. It's easy to say it wasn't as bad as it could have been now. If the vaccines weren't available it would have been much worse.

Yeah, the data conclusively shows Covid vaccines saved millions of lives. What's more, there are lots of studies showing much higher mortality rates among antivax communities versus vaxxed communities.

Covid already killed more than 21 million people, 1.1 million in the U.S. alone, and there's no herd immunity so without vaccines mitigating severe illness and death it would have been, would continue to be, much worse.

[SumJongGuy]

Yeah, the data conclusively shows Covid vaccines saved millions of lives. What's more, there are lots of studies showing much higher mortality rates among antivax communities versus vaxxed communities.

Covid already killed more than 21 million people, 1.1 million in the U.S. alone, and there's no herd immunity so without vaccines mitigating severe illness and death it would have been, would continue to be, much worse.

But ASSpen and two other people he knows lived so all that data is moot..

[oldnew_guy]

If you want to rehash some really good predictions go dredge ups Spats comments on flu versus CoVID deaths.

[Danno]

Her argument is the most humane because she's trying to save the most lives. Economists are focused on policy. According to her research, in Africa you can save a 100 human lives treating other sexually transmitted infections, and 25 human lives through HIV education, as you can treating one person with Antiretroviral drugs.

Moreover, she's not per se arguing against Antiretroviral drugs. She's laying out the options in terms of lives saved for policy makers, "It may be that my conclusions are best laid aside in the name of morality and compassion. But in making the tough decisions about how to spend limited resources, we should understand the economic consequences of our choices."

This one would give her no pause

[GoldMember]

Covid already killed more than 6 million people, 1.1 million in the U.S. alone, and there's no herd immunity so without vaccines mitigating severe illness and death it would have been, would continue to be, much worse.

FIFY

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[MultiVerse]

The real number is probably closer to 21 million. The official count in India alone vastly under counts actual deaths. Just think about it. How do you get 1.1 million deaths in the U.S. and then 'only' 4.9 million for the rest of the world when the United States only represents 4% of the total world population? That would mean something like 1-in-4 Covid deaths occurred in America compared with the rest of the planet combined.

This one would give her no pause]

It would give her pause. She's a truth-seeker, not a monster.

[jono]

No, the vaccines absolutely did reduce transmission at least until omicron came along, so your position is flawed from the get go.

FIFY. Adding a booster of the original mRNA vaccines did better against delta transmission than 2 shots did against original (at least in the studies quoted for asspen's perusal here, late 2021). Omicron has the immune evasion.

Without omicron we'd still be fighting about whether the last of the idiots should stop holding out or just let them pay their own bills. And yet, curiously, none of them have been able to definitively identify the zoological jump that would explain omicron without it being a man-made virus set loose on an unsuspecting continent to get some immunity to the people who couldn't get a shot fast enough. Whatabout that, huh? And how many of those pre-omicron strains have been eradicated now? We were promised that would never happen.

It's cool to know who thinks beacons cause avalanches, though.

[bodywhomper]

This is fascinating: https://twitter.com/solidevidence/st...vIdtD5uPJftTYg
Preprint: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....28.22281553v1

Wastewater sampling leads to finding the “source” /facility of somebody shedding a “new” variant from their gut for at least 4 months. By the time they’d tested the ~30 people using the shitter, none were positive, but they still were shitting covid.

[PB]

So .... set up home in the colon?!?!?

[Tri-Ungulate]

exasterbating the pandemic

Is that like masturbating?

Like the mental masturbation you seem to constantly be doing to come up with such a tortured argument?

LOLOL

Percy/Asspen/MrGyptian/Whoeverdthafuckyouare, even when you're incoherent, you're amuserbating if nothing else.

Keep pissing in the wind.

[The AD]

Classic.

[Cisco Kid]

You're misrepresenting the conversation from a year ago.

That's how he rolls. Go back 100 pages and see the same from him and his ilk. You'd have and easier time trying to convince a Nazi that Jews are people too. His brain has been chemically switched. I'd put him on ignore but you all quote him because it's hard not to. I get it.

[Danno]

Still testing positive a week in.

[californiagrown]

This one would give her no pause

Hand the reins of power over to a sociopathic swiss engineer and watch how brutally efficient policy becomes.

[bodywhomper]

So .... set up home in the colon?!?!?

Glad I stopped eating rando ass years ago….

There’s something going around my house at the moment. Lots of different sick in my area, just like most areas at the moment. My kids wear masks indoors at school. Several of us have had low grade fevers and tiredness that last for a day or two. Negative tests. Staying home from work and school. I have no PTO at the moment, but WFH. Since I’m feeling fine and tested negative recently, I’m the masked errand runner.

[skaredshtles]

Glad I stopped eating rando ass years ago….

There’s something going around my house at the moment. Lots of different sick in my area, just like most areas at the moment. My kids wear masks indoors at school. Several of us have had low grade fevers and tiredness that last for a day or two. Negative tests. Staying home from work and school. I have no PTO at the moment, but WFH. Since I’m feeling fine and tested negative recently, I’m the masked errand runner.

My kid has had a whole string of respiratory cooties over the last couple months. Started with COVID over Labor Day and has been what appears non-COVID crap since. He's only been "OK" for a couple weeks in the last two months.

[MultiVerse]

FWIW, in response to the 'trolley problem', Oster's African HIV research is more compassionate than people realize. Most people, including academics, attribute the African HIV epidemic to behavioral & cultural issues and not something else. Her research debunked those beliefs. Instead, the problem mostly comes down to three things: 1) untreated STDs increase HIV transmission 2) STDs go untreated due to poverty and 3) HIV rates reported by the UN are too high due to testing bias. While there are small behavioral effects between countries, the main reason Africa has very high HIV transmission rates is likely due to high rates of other untreated sexually transmitted infections which also explains in part why HIV transmission rates in the United States and other European countries are low.

[oldnew_guy]

Still testing positive a week in.

I just followed the CDC clearance calculator and tested to make sure I was negative before I went back to work, which happened to be after day 10 anyways. I think I tested around day 7 just cause I was curious and I tested positive.

I’m not smart enough to invent my own clearance protocol or parse which alternative on the internet is appropriate so I just follow the CDC.

[Danno]

I just followed the CDC clearance calculator and tested to make sure I was negative before I went back to work, which happened to be after day 10 anyways. I think I tested around day 7 just cause I was curious and I tested positive.

I’m not smart enough to invent my own clearance protocol or parse which alternative on the internet is appropriate so I just follow the CDC.

You know, part of me says that is the way to go (hence the discussion up thread) but my brain also wants to figure shit out, that's just how it works. Plus, I have a kiddo who somehow didn't catch it (we were together the entire time when I could have been infected) who is at her mom's house right now. And the CDC doesn't answer the question of "when is it ok for your kid to come back to your house," and I'm not thrilled with the idea of "I'm still testing positive but the CDC says I'm good" or the idea of "I'm just not gonna test at all" because testing will only fuck up what I want to do. I'd like to have a negative test before having someone come back to live in my house.

[bodywhomper]

In California, the state and several counties (eg Santa Clara) have more science/evidence based procedures (compare to cdc) for when to leave isolation.

I remember reading of criticisms of oster’s hiv analysis when it first came out. She went on a large public defense of herself and her conclusions. Here’s a recent criticism: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...932586500.html

For covid, she’s pushed hard with her large amplifier to put a lot of people in harms path.

[Meadow Skipper]

I remember reading of criticisms of oster’s hiv analysis when it first came out. She went on a large public defense of herself and her conclusions. Here’s a recent criticism: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...932586500.html

For covid, she’s pushed hard with her large amplifier to put a lot of people in harms path.

Nice analysis/rebuttal in that link. Thanks.

[Danno]

In California, the state and several counties (eg Santa Clara) have more science/evidence based procedures (compare to cdc) for when to leave isolation.

Do you have a link? Because I went to the CA Dept of Public Health and they have similar guidelines as the CDC. The difference I saw is that the CDC says you can leave isolation (but still wear a mask) days 6-10, while CA says you should isolate through day 10 unless you test negative (only one negative test, not 2 as was stated earlier). Based on that guidance, I can leave isolation tomorrow REGARDLESS of rapid test results. Is there some different guidance I am missing?

[MultiVerse]

I remember reading of criticisms of oster’s hiv analysis when it first came out. She went on a large public defense of herself and her conclusions. Here’s a recent criticism: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...932586500.html

For covid, she’s pushed hard with her large amplifier to put a lot of people in harms path.

Nice analysis/rebuttal in that link.

It's not an analysis per se since the Tango rebuttal disagrees with the Oster framing and not the results. Instead it's a discussion about tradeoffs. In fact, most of Tango's criticism derives from the title (which was probably an editorial decision outside the author's control) and not the content of the article itself. Tango is making a philosophical argument while Oster is arguing reducing HIV infections saves more lives than antiviral drugs. So it's not like one analysis is correct and the other is wrong.

After all Oster essentially presents all of the Tango arguments in the Forbes piece, "It may be that we have an objective other than maximizing the efficiency of dollars spent. Treating HIV gives people hope, and that may have value in and of itself. Millions of Africans with HIV are parents with small children. What is the value of growing up with a mother and a father?"

The same is true of the education debate. The data shows a negative academic performance tradeoff in terms of learning to keeping schools closed. If people think the tradeoff is worth it in terms of safety that's one thing, but denying the tradeoff exists is another.

[Ridgehippy]

Still testing positive a week in.

FWIW, I tested negative today ... exactly two weeks out from my initial positive test. Was still positive on Monday afternoon.

[Meadow Skipper]

It's not an analysis per se since the Tango rebuttal disagrees with the Oster framing and not the results. Instead it's a discussion about tradeoffs. In fact, most of Tango's criticism derives from the title (which was probably an editorial decision outside the author's control) and not the content of the article itself. Tango is making a philosophical argument while Oster is arguing reducing HIV infections saves more lives than antiviral drugs. So it's not like one analysis is correct and the other is wrong.

After all Oster essentially presents all of the Tango arguments in the Forbes piece, "It may be that we have an objective other than maximizing the efficiency of dollars spent. Treating HIV gives people hope, and that may have value in and of itself. Millions of Africans with HIV are parents with small children. What is the value of growing up with a mother and a father?"

The same is true of the education debate. The data shows a negative academic performance tradeoff in terms of learning to keeping schools closed. If people think the tradeoff is worth it in terms of safety that's one thing, but denying the tradeoff exists is another.

Are you an accountant?