The vaccine may have kept you out of ICU. It doesn't seem logical to change to a "let the chips fall where they may" based on this experience.
But once vaxxed+boosted, what more realistically can we do? I mean sure, let's maybe avoid coughing into each other's open mouths. But apart from that, Omicron seems to be so contagious, we're all bound to get it eventually unless we literally lock ourselves at home for the next 3 years.
1. Vaccines (most effective do it first).
2. Masks everywhere.
3. Lockdowns, if necessary.
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The big question right now is if we should push button#3. Many of us hoped it wouldn't be necessary, but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button.
Lockdowns are themselves staged. We can lockdown schools (already happening in many colleges effectively. I have cousins who are off of college because they've extended their winter break, to minimize COVID19 spread).
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There's also lesser actions: I work in technology. All in-person meetings have been canceled. Schools are "sometimes online" in my area, depending on local conditions. Testing has gone up significantly, we try to catch the disease and encourage people to stay home asap to minimize spread. Etc. etc.
There's plenty of actions we can do, even if we decide against lockdowns.
I think my overall point is that we're well into discussing options between 2 and 3 now. This Omicron surge is truly ferocious, and far worse than people predicted (or really, hoped for).
There's also the evidence that Omicron subsides rather quickly (at least, in South Africa it did). So any such emergency measures would truly be temporary, more so than the original strain or Delta-surges of the past. Under these statistics / calculations, it makes more sense to perform bigger actions.
My 2020 Roger Waters concert was canceled. Sure, that made sense -- 15,000 people all packed inside the venue. But at the same time, my hairdresser was shut down, not even a single customer at a time allowed. Made no sense to me.
I think you have the theoretical game plan right, but I’d say that #3 is no longer within the realm of possibility in the US. There’s just no public support for it amongst anyone but the tiny percentage of the most cautious among us.
On #2, I’d even say that yes, masks still make sense in crowded indoor non-optional settings - meaning places we all have to go like public transit, grocery stores, and hospitals. But I’m already past the point of ever wearing a mask outdoors, and I’d also argue that it shouldn’t be a requirement for vaccinated individuals in optional spaces like gyms, bars, restaurants.
Being unmasked for 50% (?) of the time (while eating, say) you are in an enclosed space is obviously less risky than being unmasked 100% of the time.
My wife an I recently went out for breakfast. There was no wait for a table, so the masked time was basically less than a minute, but let's call it a full minute. Then, we were there for about 40 minutes unmasked.
That's a 97.5% time unmasked, talking or eating. You cannot possibly convince me that the 1 minute I had my mask on made ANY difference.
That said, the alternative to the "mask until you're seated" policy was never going to be "no masks", it would end up being "no indoor dining".
Or were you socializing for 30 minutes after actually eating for 10? And during the socializing period, you didn't feel like wearing a mask?
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Surely, when you were seated, you didn't have food yet. You had some time to place an order. It takes a few minutes to even fetch drinks from the back sometimes, depending on what the drinks are.
But everyone who is going to a restaurant in a "mask to the table" kind of area is wearing it for about 30 seconds til they sit at their table. Maybe on the way to the bathroom.
I know a few states had tried to pass mandates about wearing your mask when you were being waited on or when you were socializing/not actively eating. I don't think those stuck though because they are impossibly hard to enforce.
I don't always practice what I preach, but I've done so on multiple occasions. (IE: I've kept my mask on for the "social" phases of the Restaurant, and only took it off for the eating phase).
Given that we're currently facing an unprecedented hospital shortage _RIGHT NOW_, its certainly a behavior worth revisiting and advocating.
We can't stop all restaurant visits or family gatherings. But we can lessen the spread of COVID19 while we do gather.
No. I’m boosted. I’ve got plenty of other problems that are far higher in priority than Covid or the spread of Covid. Nobody should be required by law to wear a mask indoors at this point.
Why? No one has ever been able to tell me why a mask on a face was so terrible, to the point where I'm pretty sure that its just partisan bickering / political theater.
Masks are absolutely corrosive to society. They should have stayed off last June.
But in public, its important to reduce the hospitalization rate and COVID19 rate of spread. As corrosive as you "think" masks are, I guarantee that the long-term effects of COVID19 are more corrosive.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/rxwnbl/i_am_a_new_york...
Just 10% of this school has gotten infected with COVID19, and you can see how much of a nightmare its become. Not enough substitute teachers to watch kids. Kids mingling in the auditorium because there's not enough teachers to watch them. Spreading COVID19 further and further, causing more kids to be absent, causing more teachers to be absent, preventing school from effectively functioning as a learning environment.
You can't ignore this crap. Its evidently and immediately an issue right now.
I think a more salient question is if we can push button #3. Nobody wants more lockdowns. The vaccinated are tired of the unvaccinated fucking everything up for us, and the unvaccinated have never been open to the idea.
This is another thing pointed out by the article: there just isn't the will to do it, even if it was necessary.
This isn't being made as a medical decision, it's being made as a political decision.
You either do an orderly shutdown, or you get de-facto shutdown.
In the case of this high-school, they only needed ~10% of students / teachers to get COVID19 before chaos reigned supreme. Students are now skipping classes out of fear of their own safety, teachers are collecting students into auditoriums (because too many teachers are sick, not enough substitute teachers to watch the students 30-at-a-time anymore, gotta collect all the students together to more efficiently watch over them).
At this point, the high-school in this Reddit discussion should have just an orderly shutdown, rather than pretending everything is fine.
An orderly shutdown is better, because all the students remain at the same point of their lessons. If you're a calculus teacher currently teaching basic integrals this week... you won't be able to teach "integration by parts" (or other advanced integrals) 1 month from now, because 10% of your students were missing.
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In contrast, a formal shutdown means that _EVERYBODY_ gets held off at this lesson. You cut your losses, formally shutdown school, and start everybody up when times are safer.
You can plan around a formal shutdown. You can't plan around a de-facto shutdown. All the students are going to have bits and pieces of knowledge and are unable to catchup, because they all randomly lost bits of information due to randomly missing class.
A lot of this gets left to the choice of business owners and school administrators who have to balance their choices with fiscal concerns and public perception. There is no political leadership position for them to fall back on. Basically everyone's hands are tied, and some group is going to be upset whether buttons get pressed or not.
So are you suggesting vaccines, masks and lockdowns forever? I don't think many will agree to that. I certain don't.
Given that our hospital systems are being pushed to basically their breaking point, we need to do what we can to help our the nurses / doctors handle this situation.
A cloth mask is something like 30% effective. That's better than nothing, and certainly can slow down the spread if used universally. Booster-vaccines are something like 70% vs Omicron.
You do what you can, with the tools you have.
If you are sick, stay home. Don't infect your colleagues, don't infect your patients. Its not that hard.
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The fact that you're arguing for the opposite is incredibly callous and reckless of you. Its like the pandemic has removed you of common sense.
That's literally why we have paid sick leave. Having 5% of your workforce stuck at home is better than those people coming in and infecting _EVERONE ELSE AT THE OFFICE_.
There seem to be people arguing for the COVID19 sick doctors/nurses to come in and work as usual, even with symptoms.
If that's not the case in UK (and if you're still on the old 10-day quarantine), then I guess your local politics are just different than what I'm dealing with here. We can blame this misunderstanding on our different local situations for sure.
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EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/s0jaai/hey_cdc_im_...
Frankly, we're erring on the side of "too short a quarantine" right now in the USA with these 5-day periods.
I'm sure people are arguing for that somewhere, but it doesn't seem like it's anywhere I can see in this thread.
Please give the /r/nursing topic I posted in as an edit a review.
I'm not sure that's an outcome you want, though.
But this line of discussion is so bad, that I can only imagine it originated from Russian propaganda. How the hell does bringing in _PROVEN_ COVID19 positive people into a face-to-face setting with sick/immunocompromised patients a possible benefit in this situation?
The situation is sickening to think about. Its not something a rational person could ever possibly come up on their own.
On the other hand, if only 0.1% stay home sick with COVID, then the effect of their absence will probably be to reduce deaths if their job can be covered by others adequately.
So what we have is a question of degree: there exists a threshold at which doctors (or nurses, etc) should come in even if they have COVID. And somewhat counterintuitively the more doctors who are sick, the greater the likelihood that if they came in with COVID there would be fewer deaths overall.
Exactly where this threshold lies is an open question, and will depend on the facts.
Our hospitals have been pushed to the breaking point for a long time. Maybe we should focus on extending our ICU capability to meet the demand better, given that this may be the new normal for who knows how many years yet. I think we need to come to terms with this and expand accordingly on a more permanent basis.
TLDW: lockdowns are ineffective because they focus on protecting the wrong people. They can also cause harm to people.
They also touch on schools/colleges and say it makes no sense to lock them down because young people are very low risk.
There are several ways this could end, but the scenarios that could realistically keep most people from encountering the virus have proven implausible. So while you can use maska and lockdowns indefinitely, it's not much of a plan.
Arguably boosting the entire population and waiting for the last wave to pass is a more realistic plan, even though nobody so far seems willing to admit they're planning to do this, they just are doing it.
COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside, so mask mandates outside are at best useless.
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/07/deer-ohio-inf...
Are white-tailed deer commonly seen indoors? Or maybe, your assertion is full of crap.
"It's possible the deer in northeast Ohio contracted it from contaminated water, since the novel coronavirus is shed in human waste. But alternative sources — such as trash, backyard feeders, bait stations and wildlife hospitals — have to be considered, Bowman said."
What does this have to do with masks again? Perhaps you can organize a scientific experiment equipping half the deer with masks, and report back to us with the results.
Maybe the original case came from water, but we all know that COVID19 is primarily a respiratory virus that spreads by breath and air.
"A Japanese investigation of 110 cases found the probability of transmission to be 18.7 times higher indoors compared to an “open-air environment.” And a more recent study, which looked at transmission between 18 infected construction workers and 496 of their close contacts, showed that the infected individuals were nearly 25 times more likely to spread the virus to coworkers in enclosed spaces compared with outdoor settings. They transmitted the virus to 26 percent of their indoor coworkers while infecting only 1.4 percent of their outdoor workmates — this despite being significantly more likely to share meals and talk loudly while working outside."
Does it EVER spread outdoors? Sure. Is it very likely to? Not even close. We've known this for a long time, and yet we still have municipalities welding basketball hoops shut and filling skate parks with sand.
There's a restaurant close to me that's got "outdoor" seating. Its a tent with the sides down and heaters. It happens to match the legal requirements for "outdoor seating" in my county, but we all know that COVID19 is spreading everywhere inside that small tent.
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Its not like people are social-distancing at national parks. People are abusing these declarations in ridiculous ways.
> People are abusing these declarations in ridiculous ways.
And yet, the declarations are also ridiculous, which is the point that OP was making (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29880264). In the past (and maybe now, not sure) people have been required to social distance at national parks - or even forbidden from going to them at all.
On the other side of "ridiculous": 6 feet of "social distancing" wasn't enough to begin with. Building and elevator capacities were a sham. And, my employer (and likely many others) skirted all of these ridiculous rules in ridiculous ways - which is the point, that regardless of how people behave (which isn't relevant for this discussion, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up), some of the rules are still bad and useless.
The vast majority of covid-related rules are unnecessary, hygiene theater, woefully inadequate, or some combination of all of those - and, yet, governments and people of a particular inclination insist on following this charade anyway and using various logical fallacies (e.g. strawmanning, as you did above) and emotional attacks on those that have the audacity to question them.
Its not enough for you as an individual.
But such a rule lowers the "blast radius" of who gets infected when a case comes up. People's breath travels like 20 feet. If everyone is 6-feet apart, you only get ~3 people in front of you sick.
If people are ~2 feet apart instead, you infect 300% more people.
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There's a thing about big groups. What's good for the group isn't necessarily what's best for the individual.
Read the quote I pulled: outside = "open-air environment".
> People are abusing these declarations in ridiculous ways.
And this is being obtuse about "these declarations" to avoid acknowledging the fact that the person at the top of this thread is correct: COVID, statistically, almost never transmits outdoors. It's been studied, multiple times, all coming to the same conclusion.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/12/third-oh...
COVID19 is _effectively_ spreading to the entire Ohio deer population.
> The investigators said the prevalence of infection varied from 13.5% to 70% across the nine sites, with the highest prevalence observed in four sites that were surrounded by more densely populated neighborhoods.
Furthermore, it seems like we humans are spreading it to deer, with the deer in higher-density human neighborhoods reaching ~70% infection.
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I don't think we humans are sitting around talking to deer indoors. Any reasonable application of Occam's Razor is that humans are spreading COVID19 to deer through some kind of outdoor setting.
It doesn't suggest anything.
You're conflating two uses of the English word "effectively". One means "efficiently", which is the only one in use in the thread above, and the only one under debate. The other means "functionally" or "the effects are the same as", which is what you used in this single comment - but not even correctly. 1/3 of the deer population is not "effectively" the entire Ohio deer population in the sense that you meant it.
Furthermore, COVID19 does not spread effectively (in the sense of "efficiently") outside, as a comment that you've already read has pointed out[1]. 18 to 25 times less likely to spread to co-workers in an "open-air environment" (which kind of implicitly is still not like being in a park) fulfills the definition of "ineffective".
> Any reasonable application of Occam's Razor is that humans are spreading COVID19 to deer through some kind of outdoor setting.
Nobody claimed that there were no cases of outdoor human-to-deer infection - you were suggesting that the virus spread effectively outdoors in [2], which Occam's Razor does not support in the slightest.
You also moved the goalposts from "The fact that there's a bunch of infected deer means that covid effectively transmits outside" to "There's some outdoor transmission", and those two positions are completely different.
So, yes, Occam's Razor does support your (silently) revised claim in this comment, but definitely not the comment you originally invoked the Razor in.
The deer samples were anywhere from 14% to 70% COVID19 infected.
You're grossly underestimating the amount of COVID19 we have spread to the deer population (and likely, that deer have spread to each other). All of which happened outdoors.
[1] https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/07/deer-ohio-inf...
...with an overall rate of 36%, which is given in that very article that you linked. It doesn't matter if 70% of the deer at one site were infected, if the average is significantly lower than that.
...which isn't even relevant, because again, you're moving the goalposts, as stated above.
> You're grossly underestimating the amount of COVID19 we have spread to the deer population
I'm not underestimating anything, as one of the researchers said: "there is no documentation of deer transmitting the virus to humans or vice versa"[1] (another article which you have linked but apparently failed to read).
...and, as a previous study found[2], the virus does not spread effectively outdoors.
You're literally fabricating claims from thin air. There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever for effective human-deer or deer-deer COVID transmission.
[1] https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/07/deer-ohio-inf...
[2] https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2021/08/how-safe-ou...
Deer don't do social distancing. They sleep together, and move around in herds for most of their day. COVID can both spread terribly outdoors (which it does) and lots of deer can get it exclusively outdoors.
Here in the UK we are in a terrible position of having to eventually pay for insanely expensive lockdowns that effectively did very little.
And we are now in the exact same place, as we were previously, having the same "discussion".
Masks make sense locally, temporarily, and as circumstances warrant. Such as a hospital or pharmacy during a flu outbreak, or when someone thinks they may be sick (cough or sneeze fits).
There doesn't seem to be much we can do to stop this in the near term. The idea of stamping out COVID quickly like we thought we could do in the spring of 2020 is gone.
It is time now to understand we live with it, to be cautious when we feel ill and isolate ourselves, and to get the preventative measures that help best (vaccines).
#2 and #3 are for imminent emergencies.
I am hoping that trend continues in the western world but who really knows
ffs, wear a mask.
By "what more realistically can we do" I'm really talking about shutdowns, lockdowns, and capacity reductions. I'm ok with continuing WFH for people who can... so I suppose my stance is inconsistent: I want to get back to "normal" but I'm ok with WFH and masks.
Overall, I'm frankly at a point where, double-vaxx'd and boosted, I really want to go back to not having to second-guess my decision to go out for a bowl of ramen.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi...
There's a clear difference in hospitalization and death between the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. You don't have to take the CDC's word for it - other countries can see the same thing in their numbers.
Calling getting the vaccine "an extremely inconvenient lifestyle" is silly.
Getting a vaccine isnt inconvenient, except that it was: I spent an entire week unable to use my left arm and feeling very sick (and my doctor didn't care). But also there's a ton of other issues, like my kids not being able to go to school, stores closed, having to greatly limit travel, etc.
> You don't have to take the CDC's word for it - other countries can see the same thing in their numbers.
Any way you slice and dice the data comes up with the same answer; vaccination reduces hospitalization and death.
The best way to think about CDC press releases is that they not intended to be read by scientists. They are intended to guide good behavior and may not be 100% accurate in terms of medical/scientific knowledge.
Good examples here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2022/omicr...
Screenshotted here due to paywall: https://imgur.com/a/gk73qDy
https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/covid-hospitaliz...
So, any evidence that contradicts your feeling will be dismissed?
> Second, there are more people being hospitalized in my area (which has high rates of vax) than there are unvaxxed people.
Sure. In a place with 100% vaccinated people, they would be all of the hospitalizations.
Relative proportions matter.
Just be aware: you're arguing with a scientist who worked for decades on medical biology who has, until recently, generally been quiet when seeing huge amounts of misleading medical knowledge trotted about to justify one procedure or another. I am always open to data and my "feelings" don't matter- except that most of the time, when I dig into the underlying claims, I find that they are misrepresented (usually unintentionally). So I use my own priors, and frankly, all I can say is that finding stats on a government page or a news article and using those to justify policy isn't convincing to scientists (and, it appears, the vast majority of the american public).
Ultimately, our public health people lost the PR war, and they did so through muddled messaging. Literally everything about vaccines has turned out to be less effective that public health leadership predicted, or claims. I'm not really surprised; I've commented many times on HN about how deeply challenging it is to do public health with a noncompliant population.
On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.
(I'm also glad the CDC employs more than just biologists, as statistics seems to be a fault here more than biology.)
> I wasn't talking in proportions, I meant absolutely.
Cool, so entirely pointless.
This popped into my inbox today: average daily cases, per-capita, for Seattle and NYC. Another clear distinction between the two populations. https://imgur.com/a/mjVxIhB
You can dismiss it as faked or rigged or manipulated again, but there's plenty of information out there to validate this sort of thing, and you don't have to take the US's word for it; other countries publish the same sort of information.
Ultimately I think you're not completely incorrect and I agree with teh directionality of what you're saying, but taken generally, the reality is that omicron does a much better job of infecting people (who were previously infected and have natural immunity, or who were vaccinated) and so much of this entire vaccine exercise has shown that we either need to move quickly/plan for regular 4-month updates (can you imagine trying to get everybody in the world to vaccinate every 4 months?) or maybe acknowledge that vaccination isn't the solution it was pitched as.
> At this point I don't really think that pointing at CDC public health releases is going to convince a scientist like me.
I just watched you move the goal posts in realtime.
(people that have covid and end up in the hospital) / (those who have covid)
Instead, we're looking at the ratio:
(vaccinated people who have covid and go to the hospital) / (unvaccinated people who have covid and go to the hospital)
Note that many people who end up the hospital either didn't know they were infected, or got infected there. And probably many of the people with COVID who go to the hospital don't actually need hospital levels of treatment. We have a tendency to overtreat with technology.
Dwell deeply on that. The hospital is incapable of keeping people safe from Covid.
All the masks, social distancing and testing, and you catch Covid at the hospital.
B) why aren’t we testing and segregated people in hospitals? If society is expected to segregate unvaccinated people why can’t hospitals test and segregate healthy patients from anyone with Covid?
C) what expression is appropriate for a hospital that was incapable of preventing a patient free of Covid from contracting Covid in the hospital? Unwilling perhaps? Uninterested?
The standard response is "Just imagine how bad it would be without all the restrictions!". Which is exactly the problem, perhaps. You're using imagination and not a quantitative approach. You can say that about literally anything. "Just imagine how much worse we would have lost that game if I wasn't wearing my lucky socks!"
The follow-up question is - if we can't stop infection in hospital buildings, where the most vulnerable are literally cooped up together for days and weeks at a time, what's the point of the rest of the restrictions? If you follow the logic used to set guidance and law where I live (ie, closures of various categories of business at various times, and ongoing), then logically we should also have shut down the hospitals...
This was to ensure non-emergency admissions could continue without risking infection.
However the difference for me was that I was at home and all I needed to do was take my inhaler if I felt short of breath and take advil quite religiously for the fever.
So I don't feel there is any difference between their symptoms and mine, and I am an asthmatic and also a bit overweight.
Anecdotally, Advil worked much better than Tylenol. Advil made the body aches stay away for 6 hours, while Tylenol was more like 2 hours.
But as stated elsewhere in the thread, I should have qualified my statement with "don't give aspirin to kids" due to Reyes syndrome. Totally spaced that detail.
I'm glad you made it through okay, but statistically your risk was higher by being unvaccinated when you caught it.
Also if I was short of breath, a heart rate above 120 randomly, and had a fever of 102 (at the same tmie) during this pandemic, as an overweight asthmatic myself, I wouldn't have risked staying home and would have headed straight to the emergency room. Especially if I checked my Oximeter and it was in the lower 90s.
Please don't do that. Besides, how do you feel about Dr. Robert Malone? Is he an authority enough for you?
How do I know? This is exactly what happened to my wife.
I would have also used the nebulizer before going in, most likely (I have one at home), so I would know ahead of time how well it was working out. Also I did say I'd check the oximeter I have first, and if my blood oxygen level was low then according to that I probably need to be in the hospital and they'd hopefully take that measurement and react appropriately (Hopefully. I know hospitals have been overwhelmed at times, especially New York's)
I am a bit lucky in that the hospital closest to me, so far, hasn't run out of hospital beds this entire pandemic (currently has 80 regular beds and a dozen ICU beds available), and my state has, with a little luck and some decent policy decisions, has mostly kept things under control.