Covid-19 miscellany

[ZiprHead]

Well, as I already said above, other Australian cities did not have a lockdown and posted a fraction of the cases that Melbourne did during the same time period.

Did they have the same rate of infection as Melbourne?

 

[TSwizzle]

MSM remain suspiciously mute;

A new working paper from Johns Hopkins University’s “Studies in Applied Economics” institute claims that COVID-19 lockdowns imposed by a variety of governments worldwide had “little to no effect” on COVID-19 mortality. The study, conducted by three professors from around the world, also found that lockdowns “imposed enormous economic and social costs” and are “ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

Daily Wire

 

[ZiprHead]

MSM remain suspiciously mute;

A new working paper from Johns Hopkins University’s “Studies in Applied Economics” institute claims that COVID-19 lockdowns imposed by a variety of governments worldwide had “little to no effect” on COVID-19 mortality. The study, conducted by three professors from around the world, also found that lockdowns “imposed enormous economic and social costs” and are “ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

Daily Wire

The sooner, the better: Early lockdowns save more lives and livelihoods

Many countries have implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions such as lockdowns as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the economic costs of such measures have been recognized, their size and importance have not yet been fully assessed. This column analyses high-frequency proxies of...

voxeu.org

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Arnon-et-al-conference-draft.pdf

Abstract We examine the period of national lockdown beginning in March 2020 using an integrated epidemiological-econometric framework in which health and economic outcomes are jointly determined. We augment a state-level compartmental model with behavioral responses to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and to local epidemiological conditions. To calibrate the model, we construct daily, county-level measures of contact rates and employment and estimate key parameters with an event study design. We have three main findings: First, NPIs introduced by state and local governments explain a small fraction of the nationwide decline in contact rates but nevertheless reduced COVID-19 deaths by almost 30% percent---saving about 33,000 lives---over the first 3 months of the pandemic. However, NPIs also explain nearly 15% of the decline in employment---around 3 million jobs---over the same period. Second, NPIs that target individual behavior (such as stay-at-home orders) were more effective at reducing transmission at lower economic cost than those that target businesses (shutdowns). Third, an aggressive and well-designed response in the early stages of the pandemic could have improved both epidemiological and economic outcomes over the medium-term.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Okay. "Vaccines work because they are mandated".

That means vaccines don't work. What a strange thing for you to say. I believe vaccines work, that's why I got one.

Places with higher vaccination rates have lower case fatality rates. Whether that vaccination rate comes from personal choice or vaccine mandates doesn't change this.

For fuck's sake, vaccines work because they are designed to innoculate individuals who get the vaccine, and the specific method of innoculation is not 'because the government forced you to get one'.

That's not an answer, you're letting ideology overrule your understanding here.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Apparently, blue lives don't really matter at Fox.

COVID was again the leading cause of death among U.S. law enforcement in 2021

Some 458 officers died in the line of duty, making 2021 the deadliest year since 1930. The vast majority of deaths — 301 — are attributed to COVID-19, followed by firearm and traffic incidents.

www.npr.org

But I've seen trumpets talking about how bad crime is because police and fire deaths are way up.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The authoritarians will try to ignore the science;

Lockdowns have “had little to no effect on” reducing deaths from Covid-19 and should be “rejected out of hand” for dealing with the next pandemic, according to a new international study that comes amid falling confidence in public health authorities in the US.
Business closures and stay at home orders in the US and Europe reduced deaths by 0.2 per cent on average, according to a new analysis by American and Swedish researchers that questioned whether the novel health policy, pioneered by China in Wuhan in early 2020, would pass a cost-benefit analysis. “Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century,” the authors said, suggesting their “marginal at best” benefits needed to be compared with their “devastating effects”.

News

And the MSM will likely pay no attention.

1) The pandemic has produced a tidal wave of bad "research" on pre-print servers which is then used to support QOP positions. There have been a lot of pretty elementary blunders in the rush to produce crap or outright fraud. Strangely, it's always pre-print stuff, it doesn't make it into journals.

2) What they're really measuring is that most places had bad enough compliance that it didn't do much beyond the economic pain.

3) They're looking at all NPIs, not merely lockdown. This is therefore deceptive garbage that has no business being called science.

 

[Metaphor]

Well, as I already said above, other Australian cities did not have a lockdown and posted a fraction of the cases that Melbourne did during the same time period.

Did they have the same rate of infection as Melbourne?

Are you, like, reading anything I've written?

They did not have the same rate of infection as Melbourne. It was lower. Melbourne had higher cases than other capital cities even after Melbourne had been in lockdown for weeks and months.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well into babyhood...

Does that give you any pause for THIS vaccine for THIS virus? Forgetting effective vs omicron and assuming an up to date version of the vaccine for the circulating virus.

While the current version does little to prevent infection it does a lot to prevent infection from being serious. Thus it's well worth having anyway.

Furthermore, since the vaccines are based on mRNA it's very easy to update a shot to target a variant--something that goes much faster than the normal vaccine process. Omicron-variant vaccines are already in phase 2 human trials.

Vaccines are typically given as early as they provoke an adequate immune response. They're not harmful when given earlier, they're just likely to not take.

 

[Metaphor]

That's not an answer, you're letting ideology overrule your understanding here.

Holy shit, what a batshit incoherent thing to say.

I have the COVID vaccine and booster. It worked because it introduced a spike protein that my body built a defence against.

It did not work because there was or wasn't a mandate forcing it into my body.

Holy fucking shit.

 

[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.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's not an answer, you're letting ideology overrule your understanding here.

Holy shit, what a batshit incoherent thing to say.

I have the COVID vaccine and booster. It worked because it introduced a spike protein that my body built a defence against.

It did not work because there was or wasn't a mandate forcing it into my body.

Holy fucking shit.

How it came to be in your body has no bearing on it's effectiveness.

 

[repoman]

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.

 

[Metaphor]

That's not an answer, you're letting ideology overrule your understanding here.

Holy shit, what a batshit incoherent thing to say.

I have the COVID vaccine and booster. It worked because it introduced a spike protein that my body built a defence against.

It did not work because there was or wasn't a mandate forcing it into my body.

Holy fucking shit.

How it came to be in your body has no bearing on it's effectiveness.

Yes, you don't fucking say! I've been saying that the whole time! Vaccines work because of the chemical mechanism engineered in the vaccine, not because some government mandated that people take them!

 

[Toni]

That's not an answer, you're letting ideology overrule your understanding here.

Holy shit, what a batshit incoherent thing to say.

I have the COVID vaccine and booster. It worked because it introduced a spike protein that my body built a defence against.

It did not work because there was or wasn't a mandate forcing it into my body.

Holy fucking shit.

Yes, you are smart to have protected yourself. What you seem to fail to grasp is that the fact that some people in Australia and elsewhere are choosing NOT to be vaccinated has given the virus ample opportunity to mutate and produce variants that are able to elude the vaccine that you have received.

That is why there are break through infections.

That is why we are still ALL at risk. Including those of us who have been vaccinated x 2 and boosted and are ready to be boosted again if it's needed and available. That's why I'm still wearing a mask in public.

The fact that some people are unwilling to be vaccinated is the reason the pandemic is continuing.

 

[ZiprHead]

Well, as I already said above, other Australian cities did not have a lockdown and posted a fraction of the cases that Melbourne did during the same time period.

Did they have the same rate of infection as Melbourne?

Are you, like, reading anything I've written?

They did not have the same rate of infection as Melbourne. It was lower. Melbourne had higher cases than other capital cities even after Melbourne had been in lockdown for weeks and months.

Thus proving the need for lock downs.

 

[Toni]

Lack of a flat mandate will have and does have all sorts of ugly side effects, most notably disease that, in its most innocuous, causes sufficient illness that people usually need to stay at home (and sometimes are compelled to work anyway), with whatever associated economic loss that indicates, undue burdens on health care systems and health care personnel, and hospitalization, and death, sometimes leaving children orphaned or families without their main breadwinner and now dependent on those bozos in the government you do disdain.

We're talking about very different sorts of side effects.

What I'm talking about includes violence in the streets and insurrection. A flood of money into Republican candidates campaign war chests. A big influx of Republicans into government, from local to Capitol Hill. Booting Biden out of the White House, whether by an act of Congress or the 2024 election. Replacing him with someone as fascist as Trump, but smarter and more effective.

You might not think this plausible, but lots of people thought Hillary was a shoe in candidate in 2016. Look what happened there.
Tom

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.

 

[TomC]

Vaccines work

A huge part of the problem with this discussion is that this is true on two different levels. Interrelated but different.

On an individual level, vaccination provides a lot of protection. Especially from the worst symptoms like hospitalization and spreading the virus to others.
On a societal level, vaccination also provides a lot of protection. Even to unvaccinated people. And even from problems that aren't directly related to the viral infection. That's herd immunity. Due to the slippery and contagious nature of the virus herd immunity requires a high degree of immunization. And infection itself doesn't give as much protection. Our best bet, as societies, is 90+% vaccination rates.
That could easily be achieved voluntarily. That would be the end of lockdowns and vaccination mandate threats and all the assorted crap we have to put up with because of the plague rats. But they won't let us, and that makes a lot of very testy.
Tom

 

[TomC]

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

 

[ZiprHead]

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

Could you cite some of those ways that would work on people such as these?

 

[TSwizzle]

More bad news for the authoritarians;

Norway and Denmark have lifted most of their remaining Covid-19 restrictions despite reports of rising coronavirus cases in both countries. Mask mandates no longer apply, nightclubs can reopen and businesses can decide whether to check customers’ vaccine certificates. In Norway, working from home will no longer be required, and the cap of 10 visitors in private homes is ending, prime minister Jonas Gahr Store said. Both countries are dealing with recent spikes in cases because of the Omicron variant. Neither has seen a corresponding rise in hospitalisations. The Danish government said it no longer considers Covid a “socially critical disease”

News

But the authoritarians and control freaks will not relinquish their powers voluntarily;

The ripple effects of Governor Gavin Newsom's controversial maskless photo with NBA legend Magic Johnson at the NFC Championship game over the weekend have reached school districts in San Diego County. Some students are saying they shouldn't have to wear their masks in the classroom because Governor Newsom, it seems to them, doesn't have to wear his out in public. At least three local students were sent home from school this week after taking that stance.

“This is what happens when you stand up for your rights," Carmel High School student Kaia Sabino said in a video posted to Instagram. Her comment came after she was escorted off campus Monday for refusing to cover her face.

The Poway Unified School District sent a letter to the Sabino home saying that without a mask, Kaia is a "clear and present danger" and can't return to school without a mask.

Harrison Jones, a student at Sullivan Middle School in Bonsall, shared photos of himself and more than 40 others who were told to leave for refusing to wear their masks.

News

without a mask the student is "a clear and present danger". What absolute nonsense, no wonder so many people opt for private or home school with these ignorant numbskulls are in charge.