I tried to say pretty much the same thing as your first point--in other words, WE AGREE.

As to the second point, I think the SARS family of viruses are very different from flu viruses in many, many ways including the severity and complexity of disease they cause (we aren't even sure COVID is primarily a respiratory virus any more--its respiratory symptoms may have as much to do with vascular damage in lungs as to damage directly to lung tissue) AND the manner and frequency of their mutation. I wouldn't compare them at all.

Boy, I can't wait till the next pandemic! :D

I hope I am long gone by then......

just found out that a neighbor who was double-dosed with moderna back in february got pretty sick over the weekend, so she got tested for covid yesterday, and she has the rona.

just a friendly reminder that nothing is 100%.

Letter from AZ Dept. of Health Services

THAT was quick. Good on them!

There are going to be a lot of these examples with a vaccine that is 95% effective. The wife of my friend (nurse) got Covid in March or April after being double vaxx'd back in January. She's in her 30s and had mild symptoms, recovered quickly.

As you pointed out, if 300 million people are vaccinated with a vaccine that's 95% effective, 1.5 million people are going to get some sort of break-through infection.

But there's also the issue that the tests for COVID are not 100% accurate either although for the PCR test (and other molecular tests) the false negative rate is much higher than the false positive rate.

In terms of documented experience, let me repost what I posted above:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-1...ugh-cases.html

That's 1 death/million persons vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

But being more than 60 years old, I have to say this is why I still wear a KN95 mask indoors in stores etc and why I expect I will continue to as long as we have regularly occurring cases of this disease.

^ Exactly, and I'm betting that many of those people were saved from a far more severe infection if they never had been vaccinated at all.

It's also an issue that some people never mount an immune response to vaccines. Plus you have a few people who are immunocompromised, and in those cases they are likely to get much reduced benefit from the vaccine

I don't think you're talking to me since I said I don't really care if people choose to wear a mask outside, but I'll chime in here. Wearing a mask outside, especially if you're vaccinated, is essentially virtue signaling. It's a sign that people have lost trust in science and official government guidance, as the CDC has said people do not need to wear them outside. That is troubling, I think. Further erosion of trust of government and facts is never a good thing.

I wear a mask 100% of the time inside, as I believe you are still required to in CA. Continuing to wear them outside, to me, feels like a hesitancy for people to allow themselves to return to some semblance of normal. I don't want to live in a world where everyone has their faces covered, and where people are afraid to even walk by each other on the sidewalk. I choose to not wear a mask outside because I am vaccinated, but when I see everyone else masked up outside, I feel like people view me suspiciously or think that I'm not taking the pandemic seriously. :shrug:

Just have to say: I wear a mask 100% of the time inside too, not because the state of CA says so (if they do--I have never paid any attention to what they say because I've always considered it absurd the way they make these pronouncements and make no attempt to enforce them) but because the stores and other inside venues say so and MAINLY because it is totally the sensible thing to do based on what we know about the virus and how it is transmitted.

I also think Tony Fauci had a very valid point over the weekend in spite of being mocked by certain media: We've learned something from COVID, namely that wearing a mask in indoor or poorly ventilated public spaces full of other people can prevent more than COVID. It can prevent flu, colds and so on: Illnesses that may not kill you but can make you miserable for days or weeks. Again, not because Fauci says so but because it makes sense to me, I'm probably going to keep wearing a mask on transit and in some stores etc during cold/flu season even after COVID has passed into history. If I had done that 2 years ago, people would think it really strange but now it shouldn't shock them.

I don't think they're virtue signaling. I think they are, for whatever reason, still afraid they might get the 19, despite the extremely low risk of outdoor transmission. We should see less and less mask wearing as people gradually get more comfortable, especially as we see vaccinations continue to gradually increase and cases nadir to near zero.

Covid-25 coming soon! God, could you imagine if we have to do all this crap again in few years?

It's possible that a rogue nation like North Korea accidentally unleashes another virus that goes full on pandemic.

I also think people stayed home when they had any kind of cold/ flu/ covid like symptoms and spared everyone else the displeasure of being coughed and sneezed on. Agreed about some people wearing masks during cold/ flu season going forward.

Though, I am starting to see people wearing masks less and less and businesses not pestering them about it; going to the bathroom at a restaurant and not putting mask on.

Yes, I agree. I don't just wear a mask because the state says we have to, but because it makes sense to wear one inside based on what we know about how the virus spreads. I have been wearing masks on airplanes for years after I got very sick following the jankiest flight of my life on Frontier Airlines (never again). I, too, will probably wear a mask on transit during cold/flu season going forward.

It's having to wear a mask to take the dog around the block, or while running in the park, etc. that I find burdensome. I did it without complaint, but after getting vaccinated and seeing the updated CDC guidance on the matter, I was happy to ditch the mask for those activities. It's so nice to be able to smell all the jasmine, eucalyptus, and flowers again on my neighborhood walks. I really missed that.

You live in Texas ;) : https://twitter.com/AlainaW69265029/...e-it-was-texas

This is just such a crazy cool graphic I had to post it: I hope non-subscribers can see it.

Americans Up and Moved During the Pandemic. Here’s Where They Went.

I doubt it; North Korea hasn't embraced capitalism, so they wouldn't have an unregulated wet market not following the rules that would spread "exotic food"-borne diseases.

If China were truly communist and had highly regulated places to sell things, they would have cracked down on unsanitary wet markets.

You doubt North Korea could inflict harm on the rest of us because they haven't embraced capitalism?


wot?

I did not say that. I said that North Korea hasn't embraced capitalism, and hence would not allow an unregulated, free market unsanitary wet market that would sell questionably legal "exotic food" that would unleash new deadly viruses. They would be mandating and inspecting legal, state-sanctioned food markets. Because isn't that what communism is all about? State control and responsibility over commerce, and plenty of other things?

IF the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic came from a "wet market", which is unproven (and I personally am not at all convinced about), it doesn't necessarily mean that market was unsanitary in the sense most people would think of. The problem would have been the human consumption of wild animals and/or the confinement of different species wild animals that may not normally come into contact with each other in close proximity.

I do believe, and I think it's consensus, that the virus arose in bats native to parts of China but not in the immediate vicinity of Wuhan. And it probably then passed through an intermediate species but we are much less sure which one is most likely. But IF the human source was the wet market, it was probably that intermediate species that was for sale in the market and that infected humans. Even if the conditions in the market were scrupulous, humans would have been infected by slaughtering and consuming that species.

China has recognized this by putting in place restrictions--even bans I've read (but one wonders how effective)--on wild animal consumption nationwide. But there's still plenty of ways an animal pathogen could be passed to humans. One well-known example is via mosquitos (or other blood-sucking parasites) but there are many others.

I doubt we are going to be able to prevent the formation of novel pathogenic viruses in places like the Asian and African hinterlands. But we should probably focus on minimizing the interactions of humans with intermediary species like parasites and eating wild animals. There are effective ways to eliminate those parasites in human environments for example.