Covid-19 miscellany

[Ruth Harris]

Rhea? Not sure she would like for you to mistake her for me....

Ruth

 

[Metaphor]

Rhea? Not sure she would like for you to mistake her for me....

Ruth

You are correct, I was mistaken.

 

[Elixir]

The emergence of Omicron means possibly fewer people in total will die FROM COVID

FIFY

You can thank me later. I do not believe your "blessing" is saving any lives. Before your Great Blessing appeared, the predominant variant in June 2021 and even the New and Deadly Delta was killing fewer people every day at its peak than omicron is now. Deaths were in a steep decline, bottoming out in the US at fewer than 300/day. Then Delta variant appeared, and US deaths peaked in September at just over 2000. That number had declined to under 1000 again, when your blessing showed up.

Your "blessing" has increased that again to over 2300 deaths per day. It does NOT feel like any blessing.
June felt like a blessing, when your blessing and its blessed predecessor, Delta had yet to appear.
Hopefully we are at or past the top of this new deadly curve. The salient fact here is:
Had the delta and then omicron not appeared, you have no reason to think US deaths wouldn't be down in the single digits today.

Meanwhile, don't get sick or injured around here any time soon, or the minor could become major, and the major could kill you before you get any medical treatment. That is happening here and it's heartbreaking. Some would say EVIL.
You can thank the omicron patients who have taken up every single bed in our medical center for weeks. But hey - if it meant possibly saving some unspecified number of plague rats at some unspecified time down the road, you'd willingly make that sacrifice, right?

Luckily for you, you don't have to make that choice because you're in Australia where a number of factors including geography and better pandemic management policies have kept your HC systems running relatively well, or so Stateside rumor has it.

 

[TomC]

Hmm... Resisting vaccine mandates and mask mandates and social distancing guidelines which are together the majority of what we may use to "keep it checked"

One fantasia doth tread upon another's heels, so fast they follow.

The gish gallop of the positions you imagine your ideological enemies to hold is exhausting.

There's a ton of that fantasy in this thread. "The pandemic is over." might be the most fantastic.
Tom

 

[Elixir]

Leaving Omicron unchecked will lead to something else and nothing in evolutionary biology at all demands that this not be a more deadly strain.

Actually it doesn't demand, but it does prefer that successful successive variants will usually get more and more contagious and more and more survivable for the host species. Of course that is only a likelihood that should emerge as a trend, over a truly terrifying number of "trials" ...

 

[Metaphor]

FIFY

You can thank me later. I do not believe your "blessing" is saving any lives. Before your Great Blessing appeared, the predominant variant in June 2021 was killing fewer people every day than omicron is now. And it was in a steep decline, bottoming out in the US at fewer than 300/day. Then Delta variant appeared, and US deaths peaked in September at just over 2000. That number had declined to under 1000 again, when your blessing showed up.

Your "blessing" has increased that again to over 2300 deaths per day. It does NOT feel like any blessing. June felt like a blessing, when your blessing and its blessed predecessor, Delta had yet to appear.
Hopefully we are at or past the top of this new deadly curve. The salient fact here is:
Had the delta and then omicron not appeared, you have no reason to think US deaths wouldn't be down in the single digits today.

Well, yes, had there not been further waves of COVID, there wouldn't have been further deaths from COVID. What a trite observation to utter.

Meanwhile, don't get sick or injured around here any time soon, or the minor could become major, and the major could kill you before you get any medical treatment. That is happening here and it's heartbreaking. Some would say EVIL.
You can thank the omicron patients who have taken up every single bed in our medical center for weeks. But hey - if it meant possibly saving some unspecified number of plague rats at some unspecified time down the road, you'd willingly make that sacrifice, right?

Luckily for you, you don't have to make that choice because you're in Australia where a number of factors including geography and better pandemic management policies have kept your HC systems running relatively well, or so Stateside rumor has it.

Omicron patients are less likely to be hospitalised than delta patients, and when they are hospitalised, they spend less time in hospital, are less likely to go into intensive care, and are less likely to be ventilated, and are less likely to die.

Anyway, Elixir, I truly don't care to argue this with you. I came to my conclusions from listening to expert commentators talk about omicron and literally saying the words 'blessing in disguise'. I frankly do not give a shit to try to change your opinion on this because what you believe about omicron does not interest me.

 

[Metaphor]

Hmm... Resisting vaccine mandates and mask mandates and social distancing guidelines which are together the majority of what we may use to "keep it checked"

One fantasia doth tread upon another's heels, so fast they follow.

The gish gallop of the positions you imagine your ideological enemies to hold is exhausting.

There's a ton of that fantasy in this thread. "The pandemic is over." might be the most fantastic.
Tom

Who claimed the pandemic was over?

 

[Toni]

Or: All of Trump supporters and their ilk are dead.

Which do you think more likely?
All the TeaPartiers are dead or Biden gets his butt kicked in 2024?
Tom

Biden gets his butt kicked by who, exactly?

The current favorite is Desantis.
Does it matter, exactly?

Who, exactly, do you think will be running against Biden in 2024?
Exactly.
Tom

DeSantis??????

Lol.

I don’t think so.

 

[Jarhyn]

Leaving Omicron unchecked will lead to something else and nothing in evolutionary biology at all demands that this not be a more deadly strain.

Actually it doesn't demand, but it does prefer that successful successive variants will usually get more and more contagious and more and more survivable for the host species. Of course that is only a likelihood that should emerge as a trend, over a truly terrifying number of "trials" ...

This isn't a function of what does and does not arise randomly through mutation.

It's a stochastic outcome caused by the fact that when more deadly variants arise, they alter the population density via their passing. I don't want our population density altered to the point where whatever new variant burns itself out!

Mechanically speaking, oftentimes the infectivity is vaguely correlated insofar as the virus must often give something up to get something else; but this is far from any kind of hard and fast rule and it's entirely possible for viruses to both spread quickly and kill their hosts.

But given the fact that even human beings can do stupid shit not thinking about consequences, I have no doubt that viruses can mutate stupid features given that they are unable to think at all, and especially not about such consequences.

It doesn't matter if we "get serious" after it starts getting out of hand; it will already have been out of hand.

 

[TomC]

Who claimed the pandemic was over?

I'm not sure.
@TSwizzle I think. Possibly @Trausti , or @Lumpenproletariat . Somebody did.
Tom

 

[TomC]

Or: All of Trump supporters and their ilk are dead.

Which do you think more likely?
All the TeaPartiers are dead or Biden gets his butt kicked in 2024?
Tom

Biden gets his butt kicked by who, exactly?

The current favorite is Desantis.
Does it matter, exactly?

Who, exactly, do you think will be running against Biden in 2024?
Exactly.
Tom

DeSantis??????

I don’t think so.

The day before the 2016 presidential election, Daily Kos was putting Hillary at a 97% chance of winning.

"Everybody" knew Clinton was gonna win.

Are you saying you don't remember this?
Tom

 

[Elixir]

Omicron patients are less likely to be hospitalised than delta patients

Idiocy. If they are a quarter as likely to be hospitalized and there are fifteen times as many cases... figure it out, dude.

FYI that trough in late October was around 50k cases, while the latest omicron peak was over 880,000. So 15x is close to the factor you'd have to overcome. And it's NOT happening. Omicron is killing more people than would have died if it had not appeared. Some directly, some indirectly. But one thing is for sure -
IT'S NO GOD DAMNED "BLESSING"!

 

[ZiprHead]

Or: All of Trump supporters and their ilk are dead.

Which do you think more likely?
All the TeaPartiers are dead or Biden gets his butt kicked in 2024?
Tom

Biden gets his butt kicked by who, exactly?

The current favorite is Desantis.
Does it matter, exactly?

Who, exactly, do you think will be running against Biden in 2024?
Exactly.
Tom

https://law.marquette.edu/poll/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/MLSPSC06Toplines.html#P9:_Trump_vs_Biden_2024

 

[TomC]

Or: All of Trump supporters and their ilk are dead.

Which do you think more likely?
All the TeaPartiers are dead or Biden gets his butt kicked in 2024?
Tom

Biden gets his butt kicked by who, exactly?

The current favorite is Desantis.
Does it matter, exactly?

Who, exactly, do you think will be running against Biden in 2024?
Exactly.
Tom

View attachment 37102
View attachment 37103

https://law.marquette.edu/poll/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/MLSPSC06Toplines.html#P9:_Trump_vs_Biden_2024

How is this relevant?
Tom

ETA ~My point was about a post C19 mandate political landscape. But, also, Godzillary was way out in front on election day. And she got the largest number of popular votes. But Trump won the White House.~

 

[Toni]

Or: All of Trump supporters and their ilk are dead.

Which do you think more likely?
All the TeaPartiers are dead or Biden gets his butt kicked in 2024?
Tom

Biden gets his butt kicked by who, exactly?

The current favorite is Desantis.
Does it matter, exactly?

Who, exactly, do you think will be running against Biden in 2024?
Exactly.
Tom

DeSantis??????

I don’t think so.

The day before the 2016 presidential election, Daily Kos was putting Hillary at a 97% chance of winning.

"Everybody" knew Clinton was gonna win.

Are you saying you don't remember this?
Tom

Of course I remember. That is seared into my brain and the marrow of my bones.

DeSantis is simply not a viable candidate. He lacks whatever it is about Trump that attracted voters—that debacles kind of charisma and thin veneer of spayed on gold. Trump was well known for decades. DeSantis is famous for sparring with Trump, over who is the trumpiest.

 

[ZiprHead]

Or: All of Trump supporters and their ilk are dead.

Which do you think more likely?
All the TeaPartiers are dead or Biden gets his butt kicked in 2024?
Tom

Biden gets his butt kicked by who, exactly?

The current favorite is Desantis.
Does it matter, exactly?

Who, exactly, do you think will be running against Biden in 2024?
Exactly.
Tom

View attachment 37102
View attachment 37103

https://law.marquette.edu/poll/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/MLSPSC06Toplines.html#P9:_Trump_vs_Biden_2024

How is this relevant?
Tom

ETA ~My point was about a post C19 mandate political landscape. But, also, Godzillary was way out in front on election day. And she got the largest number of popular votes. But Trump won the White House.~

Hell, DeSantis might not even win as governor of his home state again

Another poll shows approval rating for Florida Gov. DeSantis tanking

The survey shows he'd lose to Charlie Crist (or Nikki Fried).

www.cltampa.com

The number of dead due to covid Floridian voters surpassed the number of votes he won by a long time ago.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Does anyone here have first hand knowledge of blood thinner use, heparin, plavix etc... with an active covid infection or immediate aftermath?

No, but I know those are drugs that one doesn't play around with. Doses have to be tailored to the patient, they are decidedly not one-size-fits-all.

And letting a disease where acute (as in within the next month after infection) clotting is the main worry progress without any blood thinners is also something to not play around with.

The point is that the use of such drugs is only of concern to the medical people. A layperson can't do anything with the knowledge.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I suppose we could just let COVID run rampant among those who chose not to be vaccinated and hope/pray that those of us who are vaccinated/boosted/masked, etc. don't also get sick and that it doesn't totally destroy our health care system because all of our health care workers are burnt out permanently (as many are close to being) and that it only takes out fascists and not actual thinking people with a conscience.

This sort of black and white thinking is disastrous, regardless of who is doing it. There are lots of ways of strongly encouraging vaccination without the side effects of the government mandates sledgehammer approach.
Tom

Yeah. The US tried that. Over 250,000 Americans died since July 1, 2021. And the anti-vax crowd is growing. People are radicalizing to this nonsense. The US strongly encouraged getting vaccinated. Companies were paying their workers to get vaccinated (because the cost of that reward was much lower than the cost of health care for hospitalizations). And some people are absolutely and unquestionably against vaccination. They say it is about freedom, but no one was forced to get vaccinated in the first place.

Yup. Why are we dead last?

U.S. has far higher COVID death rate than other wealthy countries

Two years into the pandemic, the coronavirus is killing Americans at far higher rates...

www.sfgate.com

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In the case of COVID19, the virus has mutated in those who are not vaccinated, so we have multiple strains active, some of which are less controlled by current vaccine.

The Omicron mutation is a blessing, given it has displaced Delta, gives protection against Delta for people who get Omicron, has a much, much, much lower rate of causing severe disease and death, and will result in the end of the pandemic.

The data out of South Africa is misleading. Omicron has about half the lethality of Delta. However, it kills slower, causing misleading measurements.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

May I remind everyone; omicron is not omega

The virus doesn't speak Greek.

As Toni points out, Omicron happened because Delta remained unchecked.

Omicron is not descended from Delta.