Once we realized the actual risks of covid in the spring or summer of 2020 all restrictions should have been lifted.

I luckily dont live in some of these delusional places, I couldn't believe how much worry and concern new England has over covid still when I have lived my life mostly unmolested in Arizona for more than a year.

People walking alone outside with masks on, avoiding me on the sidewalk. Pure insanity

Yes we have great neonatal care that makes death unlikely. No we don't want to send our 2-day old daughter to the NICU. If you read recent news articles omicron is certainly hospitalizing many more infants than earlier variants for steroidal treatment. Things don't have to be fatal for you to want to avoid them...

I dont know how to put this any other way.

Statistically speaking parents are more likely to murder their own newborns than newborns dying of covid.

What can I do to help you understand the vast improbability of covid being an issue for your child.

How can I fit it into your head that you are not properly understanding the actual risks to your child. Its borderline irresponsible.

Her normal coat didn't fit her so she was wearing my heavy parka that I use for working outside in Greenland. She would have likely been comfortable down to -40. (Ice is the bigger danger of course, though they're pretty good about clearing the sidewalks here). .

Yes and statistically speaking you're unlikely to die from being castrated. Doesn't mean I don't want to avoid that.

How can you possibly think that's a reasonable response?

Yes causing major bodily harm and an amputation to yourself is highly risky

How is that analogous to your child catching covid. I truly am dumbfounded how you can see the reality right in front of you and still, without blinking, continue with your COVID fantasy.

I linked the CDC data in my post.

How??????????? Truly how????

People act irrationally when the news broadcasts covid fear porn constantly for the past two years, it warps their thoughts and makes them overreact to a tiny slight threat of getting sick and nearly no threat of dying if you are vaccinated.

Meanwhile, for those vaccinated, driving is way more dangerous than any threat covid ever has posed, its way more dangerous even when everyone was unvaccinated if you were under the age of 80.

12,000 people under the age of 17 die from injuries every year. Yet you dont see parents wrapping their children up in bubble wrap to prevent accidental injuries from happening.

Like Obadno stated, 259 children have died of covid, that is absolutely no cause for concern, like at all.

608 child passengers age 12 and younger died in motor vehicle crashes in 2019. So, children are twice as likely to die in a car wreck then covid, yet you dont see society freaking out at all over that. In reality, shouldnt everyone be losing their minds twice as hard over car accident deaths in children?

^ I'd be more than happy if we finally outlawed cars once and for all!

They're WAY more fucking dangerous than stupid covid for like 90% of the population.

Lets just cut to the chase and outlaw Danger, Death and Dismemberment.

Problem solved!

In the first year of the pandemic around here, covid was #8 for cause of death across all age groups. For younger people it is much lower. There were more years of life lost to drug poisonings/overdoses (fentanyl etc.).

The typical response to this framing is that if we had not freaked out about covid a vastly larger number of people would have died. Many people said the fatality rate is about 1% so around 1% of people would have died with no lockdown or mitigation measures. Then on top of that there is the "healthcare system collapse" theory which states that if the covid hospitalizations hit a certain point the deaths go dramatically higher than just the covid deaths. How this actually happens usually isn't spelled out.

I think that's all a bit unrealistic/hysterical and obviously was never how things played out but that view had a big impact on the perceived severity here, even just a few months ago. It seems to be losing some support now, and even our public health officials have pointed out that mitigation measures aren't working very well and the hospital numbers are dubious (they are just a count of whoever tests positive while in the hospital, not net impact of covid on the system).

Another theory was that the government has to tell people what to do (everybody is a wooden block/idiot) so if for example you implement a mask mandate 100% of people will wear masks (or all except for the evil people) and without it 0% will wear masks. Therefore if masks do anything, 100% of the gain is attributable to mandates. This is very common thinking not specific to covid. You hear it a lot from people who think that if the government could just control everything we would live in a utopia. Unfortunately it is not how things work in the real world.

this is literally religious unfalsifiable thinking. You cant know what would have happened. Good thing we invaded Iraq before Sadam conquered the earth! Imagine what would have happened if we didn't! We'd all be subjects of the planetary Baath party!

I would argue that if we had not become the spectacle it was it would have probably stayed 3rd page news about a Wuhan flu epidemic that spread and was causing busy emergency rooms like many many many flue and other illness epidemics have in the past.

I think it would have been worse than other similar events in recent decades but far below the worst-case scenarios even without the society-wide mitigation measures which probably did little in the long run and had a catastrophically bad cost-benefit. I agree with you about the falsifiability problem and most people seem to have a hard time seeing this or why it's a problem.

One thing we can see even right now with omicron (maybe the 4th or 5th time this same thing has happened) is that rather than rapidly infecting everybody the spread tends to be limited long before then. With omicron the spread was fast (maybe faster generation time) and the peak came quite quickly. But it's hard because people want to know what will happen in the future and so the false certainty of the simple models is alluring, or they're held up as a kind of "worst-case scenario" we must always plan for (even though we don't have the resources to respond to every potential threat in this way). Furthermore many people attribute peaks and declines in cases to whatever they want, which could be expanded mitigation measures (even though around here most of the same stuff has been in place for many months now). Many people will look at the "wave-like" case curves and make up a story that fits their views, which around here mostly means faith in masks and social distancing, etc.

I wonder how much the mitigation measures are extending the pain at this point. Even if all we cared about were hospitals I wonder if our strategy makes sense.

As long as they continue to allow internal combustion powered sports cars, I'm ok with this.

Less cars on the road, less grandmas and housewives driving slow in the left lane, and more joyrides! We all win!! :tup:

No.

ALL cars.

You are not special.

Your efforts at not getting castrated does not put people out of work, keep the economy down, and lead to the Feds printing money and rampant inflation thoughout.

Every time the germaphobes that the current leaders put in charge have a shit fit about a new variant, TONS of working class people trying to make ends meet miss out on a paycheck or two, or three, if not losing their jobs altogether. And scores of more businesses close.

That point continues to sail over your head.

No deal. I am special.

I got some disappointing news for ya, snowflake.

Isn't the US with an all time low unemployment? You shouldn't worry so much.

And inflation, it comes and goes. FED will increase interests and it will disappear. Meanwhile, it prevented the economic collapse of the US economy.

-----------------------------------------------


This discussion about newborns getting Covid is completely nonsensical. It's OBVIOUS, as a parent, you don't want your kid to take a virus (or any virus for that matter) that has killed 1 million Americans in the past two years.

Agree. We can debate what degree of lockdown was appropriate in the spring of 2020, but by 2022, the answer is pretty obvious: locking everything down even now that everyone's vaccinated and we've switched to dominant strain that's weaker than a cold is not a good economic cost-benefit calculation at all.

It's interesting now to look back at the various scientists who commented and how they were treated. Lots of people believe we "follow the science".

The ones who did some early serology studies were completely trashed publicly even though their estimates looked pretty good in the long run and we eventually sort of had to accept their findings. It was obvious even in March 2020 that covid was not killing 3-5% of people for example and probably not even 1% of infections in many populations. One of the guys who got trashed was a star of scientific meta-analysis, maybe one of the most cited people in the world.

There was another guy (Michael Levitt, biophysicist with Nobel prize) who made basic observations (stuff like "derivative is going down, spread is not going to take off in the way you guys say") and he got trashed.

The people arguing for focused protection of the most vulnerable (Great Barrington) got smeared too. Since that time an email leaked from the NIH director that asked for a "take-down" of this group.

I don't think anybody had any silver-bullet solutions but if we had been able to have an open and honest conversation that was less fear driven it might have gone better IMO. This was a total fail to deploy the resources we have effectively due to politics. One big political problem is that big pharma basically "saving us" does not fit into the worldview of a lot of people, so they have to emphasize other things. As for me, I don't care if my altar that I pray to has an Anthony Fauci or Theresa Tam doll or a Pfizer logo. :D

You can order 4 covid tests now per address:
https://special.usps.com/testkits

USA only

OMG, just what I've been waiting for! :hyper:

I thought you were busy planning another insurrection?

Now the paranoid don’t ever have to leave their homes.

I ordered mine a couple hours ago. I have a wedding coming up, I'll save a test for that.

Does it really suck that you were advocating against testing, and now every American household can get 4? :haha:

It may even be that the same number of people would have gotten it pre-vaccination, but in a shorter period of time. And since the vast majority of people don’t get anything close to requiring hospital treatment, the “overwhelmed healthcare system” problem could have been prevented by prudence on the part of vulnerable people (particularly the elderly).

Of course they refused to do that (my own 73-year old father was complaining in May 2020 that it would be “unfair” to let young people enjoy themselves if old people could not, as if fairness had anything to do with it).

We have this in common.

I think everybody with health insurance can get up to 8 tests per month now at no expense. I got an email from KP with the details.

In all seriousness, I ordered mine as well.

Of course, not because I am worried about COVID, but in case we're required to clear testing by this authoritarian regime we're living in right now :D

I work for Amazon, and they sent me like 75 tests a couple weeks ago. I need to upload a negative test in order to check in for my flights, if/when I travel. These at home tests are notorious for false negatives. I've have Covid 3 times so I think I have super powers at this point.

COVID or the vaccines? That's where we're at right now. It's interesting how this didn't come out last year before mass vaccinations, and this was when folks were saying this could be a long-term affect, but now conveniently it's blamed on covid. Never has a vaccine been pushed as 100% safe for pregnant women so quickly like this one has. Very scary in fact. Now all of a sudden they want to recognize other issues like the menstrual problems women have had since being vaxxed, whereas a year ago it was called a conspiracy.

I tested positive this morning (as did my 9-year old). I had a fever last night but after about noon today it has just been a runny nose. Its funny because I am the one person in my house that stays home every day. My wife works in a hospital every day (tested negative again today to be sure), my kids go to school every day. I work from home. I probably got in on Saturday when we went down to the Keys for one of those swim with the dolphins things for my daughters birthday. It was all outdoors, but that's the only time me and my 9-year old did anything out together in the last week. 2 days from exposure seems pretty quick to get symptoms though.

^
Have you been purposefully this whole time not doing much outside the house with your daughter to avoid getting mildly sick for a day for two years? Hope not.

Nearly all conspiracy theories for the past two years when it comes to Covid have come true. The story usually goes, omg you believe that, you’re an alt right Trump supporting maniac, then a year or so passes and the media just nonchalantly reports that the “conspiracy” theories were true the whole time and everyone just forgets about it.

What a non-event, eh?

But it's ok, because our leaders are doubling down even further on COVID fears. Now the mask-making lobby is getting a Government contract for hundreds of millions of masks that nobody asked for.

Way to "win" the war against COVID! :rolleyes:

I don't know about him, but I bet you there are many people who are.

Sad, really. We have only one life to live. There is no afterlife, no heaven, no hell (sorry, religious folks, but it's true), and people are choosing to whittle away their lives like this....

Now every American can get 8 tests a month! Wow amazing! Now more asymptomatic and mild cases for people to record in the numbers and continue the hysteria.

Omicron is so non-dangerous you should really only bother testing if you find yourself very sick.

If its a mild case, then just stay home like a cold no test needed. If you have no symptoms WHY THE F*** ARE YOU TESTING?

^ Great business for diagnostic testing companies though.

I work in a small architectural office with older/vulnerable co-workers. We test ( I was positive two weeks ago) when we feel sick for that reason. :tup:

Must I again link the CDC data again?

Omicron is not a serious health threat to anyone of any group.

And in an architecture frim Im willing to bet your all vaxxed .

You are acting out health safety theater and not actually helping anyone or protecting your "vulnerable" co workers.

I don't think anybody should voluntarily test themselves if they don't have symptoms or if they have very mild symptoms. The problem is, a lot of people are forced to take tests on a routine basis whether they have symptoms or not. My sister is going to Aruba, she is fully vaccinated with a booster, doesn't have any symptoms, hasn't been exposed to anybody that has Covid and still had to take a Covid test this morning.

What's interesting to me is there was a lot of opposition to rapid testing earlier on in the pandemic when it would have been more useful. Regulators were slow to allow them and a lot of people were convinced they would be harmful, often due to dubious reasoning about sensitivity relative to PCR and total ignorance of costs and other trade-offs, as usual ("we can't allow a 95% accurate test when we could do a 99% test, and let's not worry if people can or will actually do the 99% test that costs 50x more and has 200x the turnaround time"). Doctors and regulators have a not-so-great history in this area, fighting against people being allowed to do their own pregnancy or rapid HIV tests.

What has changed? Are these tests better than before in some way? Or is this another case of the herd suddenly switching direction without any clear underlying reason?

What's funny is that the antigen tests give more false negatives with omicron than previous variants. The reason is apparently because people become symptomatic more quickly after infection than with other variants, but the tests aren't great at detecting early infections.

A big issue the modern western democracies face is they conflate expertise to leadership.

Virologists might have a good idea on how to quash a virus, but they are singularly focused on quashing a virus at the exclusion of ALL OTHER CONCERNS. And we see that same dynamic play out across most issues. Congress/parliament has no interest in coming down with decisions because actually voting on a law has political consequences. Executives are then tasked with the duty act dictatorially but still face all of the opposition to act in such a way so they are blocked by courts and their do-nothing congresses/parliaments and public oppinon into permeant gridlock, only able to make executive approvals and minor proclamations.

So now we are stuck with the auto-pilot beaurocracy rolling from crisis to crisis slapping their highly specific and highly specialized "solution" on a problem with absolutely no consideration for adverse affects, unintended consequences or at odds interests/actions.

what results is a political system at war with iself unable to actually do anything about serious problems and so in most cases the machinery of government grinds on in the background while the politics that are supposed to be the people who take all these factors into account and .... ya know legislate about it.... focus on cultural and social issues and sound bite grandstanding for the next election while nothing gets done and the machine rampages with no oversight.

Its the worst of all worlds; legislatures incentivized not to legislate, authoritarian while simultaneously ineffectual executives, and a massive unaccountable bureaucracy that does whatever it wants and commonly works at cross purposes or in highly damaging ways with no oversight or direction.

With the incentives of the modern world I dont know how this can be fixed.

Exactly. This is the reason I ordered my 4 tests.

Not because I have any desire to support the COVID-Industrial-Complex that we seem to be living under, but in the event that I or my family are FORCED to get a test done.

England ending all masking and vaccine-pass restrictions as of next Thursday.

^ The fix is easy.

Move to Texas and Florida

Yeah I had two negative antigens before a positive PCR.

:cheers::thrasher::djparty::dj:banana::banana::banana:

YES!!! YES!!!

YES!!!

YES!!!

No skyscraper start has made me more happy than to hear that a major western democracy is finally waking up from this insanity. (I just hope that I'm not celebrating too prematurely)

Lets hope it spreads, because America's current leadership has its head in its own ass and is actually doing the opposite. Doubling down by shipping out masks in masse to a public that never asked for them and is getting tired of wearing them.