The panic over variants is bullshit. “Long haul” Covid is bullshit. If we are not there now then we never will be. You and Pedestrian can hide at home for as long as you like.

Posting this here and in the CE thread. It’s not even clear whether boosters are the right approach or if everyone just should be getting Covid once vaccinated, to naturally top up immunity as with almost every other respiratory virus:

https://apple.news/A6ZvDDOmoQnOnV6om1sWrcg

Covid isn’t special.

A booster will help. But it isn't the only thing that people can do and they should do all the simple things they can do.

You think your mother and mother-in-law should wear a mask. Why? Because they will infect you when shopping with them. You are more likely to infect them if you aren't wearing one. Wearing masks is about the other people you protect, not yourself.

Why is this such a difficult concept?

As a matter of personal choice, now that wearing a mask doesn't mark you as excessively weird, I may well chose to wear an N95 in circumstances where I never would have before to protect from flu and colds in the season for those.

But I am the optimist to your pessimist. I don't think we will need to keep worry about covid at the top of our consciousness forever or even that much longer. The Spanish flu lasted 2 years (with no vaccine). 2022 may be a very different year than the last 2. For that purpose, the highly infectious delta strain may be a good thing. Infect all the uninfected and unvaccinated!

They wear theirs when they go out, again, at their discretion and if I am going to 'infect' them, it's either at their house or mine where no one wears a mask anyway.

Come on. You are making excuses for anti-Democracy. Long-lasting measures that turn life upside down across a wide spectrum of households should never be undertaken at the decree of one man (woman). Declaring a perpetual emergency is a slippery slope to exactly the kind of society that we don’t want, unless you enjoyed Senator Palpatine in Star Wars a bit too much.

Democracy and majority votes by elected legislatures should be making laws if certain measures are expected to be long lasting.

The proof is in the pudding, dude. You’re in Chicago where everybody robotically complies with all of these mandates. Out in the burbs and rural areas, mandates are being blatantly and outwardly ignored, and although I believe that masking is good and reasonable, I’m glad we have so many defiant people because we need people to be defiant right now to remind certain people that they aren’t tyrants.

Had some of these metrics been brought up on legislative floors, debated, and brought up for a vote and passed as temporary laws, I bet we would see more compliance today.

After reading my mask doesn't really protect me, I'm thinking of taking it off and enjoying the ability to go maskless in the places that allow it. We are both vaccinated, all three of us had COVID-19 earlier this year (including our son), and Lauren and I both had a breakthrough case last month, which was best described as a bad two-day allergy attack (with Moderna). Our son didn't get it the second time, likely due to both of us being vaccinated? As I've read here, the fact that we all had it earlier this year provides our son protection and the breakthrough was like a booster to Lauren and myself. I'm sure that's not the conclusion the people providing that information wanted me to reach, but it is the conclusion I reached. It needs approval from my wife.

I like calling my wife misty eyes or foggy eyes while we are out and then she complains about masks and glasses. When I was cleaning my glasses, I used window cleaner and she was angry over it, saying it can take-off the coatings on the lenses. I'm guessing she would have the same reaction to anything sprayed on them? I can also remember at the office being told to use certain types of cloth, cleaner, and who knows what else to protect the coatings. I remember anti-glare, a blue light coating, they turn dark outside, and maybe something else? I remember the better lenses are anti-scratch and are made to be easier to clean. They're not really glass... I think they are something else? My first thought in October 2019, as I looked around for the first time with glasses: When will we have glass buildings that turn dark in the sun? The Transitions Skyscraper, by Boston Properties. Be careful cleaning the windows!

As I think more about it, for people who are scared of COVID-19—even after vaccination—the best place for them to be is at home. You can work from home, take classes from home, and order almost anything from home. You can even talk with the doctor from home. The people who are scared and don't want to take any risks and those who are both scared and at higher risk (they can still catch it by going out, from what I've read here) should strongly consider staying at home until it's acceptable enough to them to go back out. The people who are vaccinated should have the ability to go out maskless. To further reduce the risk, we need to require vaccination to go out. Restaurants, retail, bars, fitness centers, concerts, arts, sports, classes, etc., should all require proof of vaccination and masking should be optional. Going out and doing so maskless should be the reward for vaccination. By both going out and doing so maskless, you take the risk and trust the vaccine for protection. Our main focus should be on getting as many people vaccinated as we can and convincing them to get boosters. Telling people they—and everyone around them—need an N95 after getting vaccinated, so they don't catch COVID-19, won't help in talking people into getting the vaccine.

I do think there will be a new variant (I've already heard of a new variant) and experts recommending masking, distancing, and capacity limits or closing certain businesses/cancelling events. The Spanish Flu is a good example to bring-up, since it has the best example of how measures to protect us can last for a decade or more! The next time you're in an old building with radiators, notice they are under the window, are covered, and usually painted an aluminum metallic color. This is due to national health experts telling people to open a window in their bedroom due to the Spanish Flu. Out of fear, people in Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Buffalo (down here, too!) opened all of their windows in the winter and the heating systems were designed to keep their homes and businesses warm on the coldest day of the year with all of the windows open! You likely noticed this (radiator under the window, aluminum paint, and radiator covers) in a building constructed in "1930." Yes, for the "1918" Spanish Flu Pandemic. When the Great Depression happened, people finally started closing their windows to save money and they had to find ways to reduce the heat of the radiators. Solutions introduced in the mid-1930s included covering them (reduced heat by 30%) and special aluminum metallic paints that reduced the amount of heat by around 20%. Those windows were open long after the danger of Spanish Flu had passed. Are masks, cancelled events, and business restrictions the new "open windows" that will stay with us for a decade or more?

I've seen people driving alone in their cars while masked.

^ Finally you're starting to sound a wee bit less like a germaphobe....thank God!

Most of the American public (and that means you too, progressive pro-vaccine people) just don't understand science and biology and continue to think that isolating and being scared is the "appropriate" default position.

Reality is, letting this virus spread through the population is the best way forward. That's how we get the immunity. We need to stop trying to stop COVID from spreading because....ya know....it AIN'T WORKING ANYWAY!!!!

And of course people should get vaccinated, but the dopeheads who refuse to do it are still standing their ground, so.......whaddya gonna do? :shrug:

Once again, I welcome Delta and all future variants into my respiratory passages, along with future vaccines, because I'm just arming my immune system. The sooner the better

Everyone WILL get this. If not today, maybe tomorrow or maybe a month or six months from now. Including the kids, they will ALL get it. Some will die, some won't. Some adults will be fine, some won't. Such is nature...

The best thing to do is to get vaccinated. This is another background substance, like the cold. Now with enough vaccination, we will reduce the chances of this becoming another dangerous strain but this will take a GLOBAL effort, not just an American one or a British one but a GLOBAL effort. Those that are not vaccinated or refuse to do so, this thing will cut through them, and purge and cull the sheep but do little to hurt the vaccinated wolves.

No sense in being germaphobes or wearing the masks forever and ever because one day you will encounter it, unless you never leave the house but that isn't feasible. Get vaccinated and if warranted, take a booster. That is the only solution.

Yeah folks forget how the immune system works. Our friends like Monocytes and Mast Cells and the original gangster's, Natural Killer Cells and the big boys, the one's that have been hitting the gym, the Macrophages! They even have nerds that remember past infections, we call those Memory B cells. Vaccines are like a stimulus injection and cash flow. Its like an arms shipment to fund the war going on in our body via some foreign intervention. The immune system will fight off those Delta and Lambda terrorist's so that the urban politician cells, a proud group of cells who believe in common cell rights, like enjoying ICE, can continue to live and enjoy freedom.

:haha:

Long live loud internal combustion engines.......

LOUD AS HELL!!!!!

I think the comparison made between murder and covid is not justifiable.
In reality, I don't want to die either COVID or Murder.

^^^

I think murder (especially if instant) would be a better option than some of those severe cases that are literally gasping for air for weeks. Sounds like a torturous way to die as your lungs fill with fluid and you feel like your drowning, gasping for air in a state of suffocation in a state of isolation as family is not allowed, with just you, the doctor and the incubation tubes. Stephen King has nothing on those severe cases. That sounds like true horror, knowing your time is on a clock and one sits there waiting for the end in a painful way. The viral version of waterboarding.

Sure it is. When you have people wearing masks while biking on the road at 530 AM, you have to wonder what the hell people are thinking.

If they looked at the data, they would stay home with a bulletproof vest instead.

Neither is rational of course, but one is looked at as good and the other one as stupid and overreacting. Both are stupid.

It's funny too, the people wearing masks outside are 100% people that are vaccinated. They are afraid of everything to include their own shadows.


A girl I go to school with made a facebook post about two weeks ago. She is in her mid-20s, healthy and is vaccinated yet stated she "will be staying indoors" until this current wave ends. Huh? First, does she know the data? Of course not. Second, we all know what she is doing. She is either insane or is virtue signaling. I know shes not insane.



Corona has become political. The girl running against Florida's governor had a press conference the other day and she wore her mask for her entire speech. Why? It wasn't because of science, it was to show she is SERIOUS about Covid while the governor isn't. We can all see right through this shit.

^ Yes, unfortunately some take the "you can never be too safe!" adage a bit too far.

It comes from a false understanding of science from people who claim to be in the "pro-science" camp, when really they are just misunderstanding science by assuming that being pro-fear is the same thing as being pro-science.

Exactly. And you can absolutely be too safe. You can be so worried about dying that you never live.

The pandemic is, for all intents and purposes, over. There are still people getting sick, and some of them are going to hospital, but almost always only because they’ve chosen not to be vaccinated. Covid won’t go away, people will keep catching it (vaccinated or unvaccinated), and almost all of the vaccinated people who get it will be fine.

I say “vaccinated” as shorthand for “vaccinated or previously infected”, because leaving aside debates about the breadth or depth of antibody response, people in either camp are generally fine. They can get sick but it’s unlikely to be serious. Boosters are probably unnecessary, especially if the virus continues to circulate and people are regularly infected, but they’re a great moneymaker for pharma companies so will probably be required.

That’s going to be the situation forever. It won’t get any safer for a vaccinated person than it is now. If you’re still wearing a mask, then either you’re planning to wear it forever or you’re just acting irrationally.

Dude, just go back to staying at home and shopping online.

You are going to get Covid. It’s inevitable. You’re vaccinated so the risk is minimal. But no one should have to keep this shit up because you’re a hypochondriac.

Risk reduction is key. Granted its the ultimate form of risk reduction by staying home and talking to the plants, but if one wants a normal life, vaccination and the outlook of knowing that you will get it but be protected is key. It made sense prior to the shots to heed caution amongst the at-risk groups but now that there is a solution, we adapt and live within the confines of the solution and any further feedback regarding this pathogen and mitigatory measures.

Given the situation at present, one can walk outside and live a normal life.

Which, of course, is not the opinion of "the scientists"; only you and self-centered people like you.

Technochratic decisions like public health are best handled by executives who have public health departments and access to modeling, not legislators who lack domain experts in their staff. There is already an off-ramp from tyranny in the form of the courts, who can grant emergency injunctions or whatever.

Besides, I highly doubt a lot of people care about or even understand jurisdictional issues. They may be making this argument, but mostly out of convenience against something they don't like. Very few people who are not complying now would be complying if it was voted on by a legislature.

And it's not surprising that compliance is lower in the burbs and rural areas, people don't live and work in highrises there or take public transportation (and antisocial people are more likely to live around fewer people if they can manage). I agree that masks inside restaurants are mostly silly, but I wouldn't eat inside a restaurant until case rates are much lower anyway.

^ I bet you that if we tracked Adenovirus as much as we are tracking Covid, you’d see the exact same surge patterns.

But of course nobody is asking about Adenovirus, because fearporning about Covid is all the “rage” these days :haha: