outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

this is an appeasement move. scientifically I don't think a 'we're out of the woods' really makes sense now, I mean BA.5 seems to have peaked in the US, but substrains are showing up almost as quickly. would think we'd want to wait for the bivalent booster before removing things like test-to-stay or distancing.

these kids have grandparents, some unvaxxed, etc etc

Case rates are receding faster than hospitalisation and deaths; the US is likely seeing the seasonal summer easing now, slightly delayed this year by widespread lifting of remaining mitigation mandates before spring. No subvariants currently seem to be as much of a menace as BA.5, so hopefully outdoorsy-ish weather will keep the trend going until the typical Thanksgiving spike.

congratulations on defeating covid, everyone. mission accomplished

I guess my biggest immediate concern is that the quarantine thing is, per the other covid thread, going to give companies even more reason to refuse time off to sick and exposed employees.

I mean, these new guidelines are bullshit, but at the same time I'm surprised the CDC mentioned the six-feet thing. Does it matter how far apart we are now that we've known since summer '20 that this is an airborne/aerosolized virus?

jon:

But the guidance does keep some measures the same. It encourages testing for people with symptoms and their close contacts. It also says people who test positive should stay home for at least five days and wear a mask around others for 10 days. It also continues to recommend that people wear masks indoors in about half the country.

The new guidelines also tailor advice on isolation for people who became very sick from Covid-19. People with moderate symptoms -- such as shortness of breath -- and those who were hospitalized should stay home for at least 10 days. People with compromised immune systems should now talk to their doctor about ending their isolation after an infectio

with the six feet thing, so....the 'six feet' thing has def always been bullshit, buuuuuuuuuuuut on the other hand, as some virologists pointed out in a (heated) debate with an aerosol specialist, although people have definitely infected people from much further than six feet away indoors due to poor ventilation/etc, you also don't bear the same risk of infection if you're in a room with an infected person but a decent distance away versus being close-up.

DeWald/AJ Leonardi acolytes for a while were screaming about how COVID can stay in teh air for a while, and while it's a valid point and true and means you should mask indoors regardless, it's not as if walking through a few droplets = instant COVID, like viral load breathed in and length of exposure matter too.

so my general philosophy is not to treat 6 feet like invincibility like some, but also to try to stay further than close up next to people if I'm indoors.

sorry neanderthal, but if i'm shopping in the same store i'm going to get up to the extreme limit of your personal space, as is my god given right in this country, bless it. the time of space is over

xp - I was pleased to see that stayed the same but I remain... skeptical... that most employers are going to take the time to recognize that and not just say "see? we don't have to quarantine anymore".

Source? My supervisor who just loudly said, "we don't need to quarantine anymore" across the office as he read an article about the new guidelines.

That guy should die.

such nonsense, didn't people used to say "WHOA KEEP AWAY FROM ME" and giggle any time someone would mention they were "just getting over a cold" 3 years ago.

now it's "lol I have highly infectious virus i'ma sit right next to you and lick your baloney sandwich"

with the six feet thing, so....the 'six feet' thing has def always been bullshit, buuuuuuuuuuuut on the other hand, as some virologists pointed out in a (heated) debate with an aerosol specialist, although people have definitely infected people from much further than six feet away indoors due to poor ventilation/etc, you also don't bear the same risk of infection if you're in a room with an infected person but a decent distance away versus being close-up.

lol I'm also the guy who forced a woman to walk away from the table we shared at the library today because she sat down across from me unmasked at a distance of three feet. Masked me rolled his eyes, sighed, coughed, pulled the table close to me. She got the hint. It offended me that she thought it was cool in the middle of a pandemic to sit this close.

I corrected him, but remain doubtful that it landed.

Anyway, to Neando's original point, it remains on brand that this whole pandemic has been about appeasing the dumbest, loudest, most selfish dipshits in the country.

once case numbers hit a very low level, I may start being a little less cautious, but we're not there yet.

though 20% lower week over week means we'll get there

So I went to see Anthrax tonight and had a mask on.

Dickhole wearing an American flag hat looks at Me

"ARE YEW REALLY WEARING A MAAASK?"

dramatically walks away from me as I shoo him.

He goes and loudly whines to his friend about me.

Five minutes later tossed out by cops for starting a fight.

I am in heaven

He even dramatically put up his hands and wasn't even under arrest.

Lil fuck

Does it matter how far apart we are now that we've known since summer '20 that this is an airborne/aerosolized virus?

Sure, this is just how aerosols work, the density of particles is higher closer to the source. What was NEVER true is that you are somehow COVID-proof if you maintain an exact six-foot radius of empty space around yourself, but of course, nobody ever said that was true, the idea was always "farther is better than closer and in order to maintain that you make up a threshold value." That said, I think we know now that length of exposure matters a lot and it's not particularly important to bounce around the grocery store like a pinball trying to maintain your radius.

When I go to concerts, I try and do all drinking outside, usually skip opening acts, and manage to keep my indoor time around an hour.

Does it suck, fuck yes it does but it allows me to hear live music with less risk.

Also I just hate opening acts

(i like how the band was called anthrax and you still got called out for wearing a mask)

I'm not sure the aerosol thing has ever been stated officially in England. i think the government had given up by then.

or i had

The CDC in the states and WHO were late to updating their guidance that it was airborne too.

Hell WHO was minimizing the idea of asymptomatic spread for a while too

When I go to concerts, I try and do all drinking outside, usually skip opening acts, and manage to keep my indoor time around an hour.

Does it suck, fuck yes it does but it allows me to hear live music with less risk.

Also I just hate opening acts

well if I'm there specifically to see the opening act (which I do from time to time), I'll watch them. i just generally lack the energy to sit through several hours of live music on most nights. even when I went on the metal cruise, I never made it to more than 4 sets a day when other people I knew were clearing 10 or more.

in this particular case its usually to minimize my time indoors. pre-pandemic I didn't care so much about skipping openers.

I get it! I just like openers, maybe— there have been many occasions where I’ve seen a band as an opener and been totally floored and then seen them as the headliner and been underwhelmed, is really the thing. Of course Covid throws all that out the window.

This is weird, but has anyone gotten into it with people who are spreading misinformation on the *overcautious* side? A friend posted some tweets from another account that asserted, first thing, that "if you've had Covid, you're immunocompromised." The rest of the tweet thread had some decent ideological views about how people should be demanding safer workplaces and etc, but I was just flabbergasted at the blatant falsity of the first tweet, and told my friend so...

and then he responded by saying that he "didn't know so much about these things" but that "questioning him" in such a way first thing in the morning was overassertive and "violent." He also said I should take it to the page that posted it, but I was like...you also posted it? What?

I didn't respond because I'm conflict-avoidant in this way, but I'm a little flabbergasted that he responded in this way.

It's amazing what some people call violence these days.

Not with friends but most definitely yes. It honestly is fucked that the discourse on this pandemic has become so tribalist.

If you call out sketchy info like you did, you often get called a "minimizer" or... accused of a "violent" reaction. Which is dumb because you personally are at higher risk so it's not as if you would have a reason to downplay anything.

My response to this is always "if my measured response to you regarding the accuracy of what you posted leads you to react in this way rather than providing a measured defense, perhaps you should examine why that is" and I peace out.

This is the aggro way I reacted in high school when I was a bible thumper and had my "facts" checked and it was 100% because I subconsciously doubted everything I was saying"

It's amazing what some people call violence these days.

― DJI, Monday, August 15, 2022 1:10 PM bookmarkflaglink

I wonder how much the 'audience' factor of social media plays in.

In high school, I could have heated in person arguments or over email and we'd all stay friendly.

But on social media there's an element of "you didn't need to EMBARRASS me in front of all of my friends!" which is dumb because literally everything is public now.

Yeah, I'm just not going to respond.

Tbh, this person is someone whom I like, but who has become increasingly isolated and unhinged over the course of the past few years, and while some of that is due to a situation somewhat similar to yours, Neando— he's taking care of an ailing parent, and stuck in a location where he has little community— there's also a part of it that seems like he's acting the way he is because he's simply an asshole and I didn't realize it before.

Tabe's friend escalated the conflict precisely because most people are conflict averse and that way he 'won' by getting the last word and by not having to deal with any further criticism. It's how a lot of people operate in the world and it sucks.

Has this friend been social during the pandemic? I ask b/c some of the most vehement overcautious people in my acquaintance in essence haven't left their homes since March 2020.

...and it has started to eat into their brains, despite claims like "I'm an introvert!"

No, he has not been social.

Like so much these days, less than ideal.

For the first time, the FDA is planning to base its decision about whether to authorize new boosters on studies involving mice instead of humans.

"For the FDA to rely on mouse data is just bizarre, in my opinion," says John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. "Mouse data are not going to be predictive in any way of what you would see in humans."

But others defend the approach, arguing that the country has had enough experience with the vaccines at this point to be confident the shots are safe and that there's not enough time to wait for data from human studies.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/08/18/1117778748/whats-behind-the-fdas-controversial-strategy-for-evaluating-new-covid-boosters

The Biden administration plans to offer the next generation of coronavirus booster shots to Americans 12 and older soon after Labor Day, a campaign that federal officials hope will reduce deaths from Covid-19 and protect against an expected winter surge.

Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine regulator for the Food and Drug Administration, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not discuss timing, his team was close to authorizing updated doses that would target the versions of the virus now circulating.

Even though those formulations have not been tested in humans, he said, the agency has “extremely good” data showing that the shots are safe and will be effective. “How confident am I?” he said. “I’m extremely confident.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/us/politics/covid-booster-shots-biden.html

I'm honestly a little confused. So these are booster shots ... for the variant that's been circulating for several months now? Isn't there a good chance there will just be another variant that starts circulating by winter, which (here) is several months after labor day? It's been so long since I got my booster that I can't even remember when I got it. October 2021? Nov. 2021? I'm practically at the one year mark, is it going to be another year after this booster? Or are they going to just keep rolling out boosters willy-nilly to various demographics a couple of times a year?

It's pretty clear? This is an omicron-related booster, therefore you're up if you last got boosted in 2021.

So it's a belated booster for the strain that's been circulating for nearly a year already, right? Hopefully they hit a rhythm at some point and make it more like a flu shot, an annual preemptive vaccine based on what has been circulating elsewhere *ahead* of its arrival here.

Someone that has already been second-boosted, are they being told to get this one, too, since it is targeted to currently circulating strains?

I don't understand why they aren't putting out a booster that stops the next variant before it happens

Someone that has already been second-boosted, are they being told to get this one, too, since it is targeted to currently circulating strains?

― Josh in Chicago,

There's some debate (cited in the article). I got my fourth shot in early June and will get jabbed with this one in October.

This is extremely simple: just get the latest available booster as soon as you are eligible (if not before).

otm

Isn't there a good chance there will just be another variant that starts circulating by winter, which (here) is several months after labor day?

As I understand it, the not unreasonable hope is that, as with flu, there are only so many changes to ring and we'll enter into a state where there are different strains but they're drawn from a menu we understand pretty well, and so the annual vaccine will mostly do a good job matching the year's prevailing strain, and every once in a while (as with flu) something new or something unexpected will come up and the vaccine will be less effective that year and we'll have a bad COVID year.

I'll be getting the new booster first day I can!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JTtI3D6lqk

I just mean that I (like many) have waited almost a year for a second booster. I couldn't (and still can't) figure out why, after beating the drum for vaccines and boosters, the most recent second-booster is the one they pumped the breaks on, (officially) limiting it to specific demographics. It does make me almost want to wait for the inevitable one *after* this one. (New! Improved!) I'm not saying there's any logic to that, or that I won't get the new shot. I love vaccines.

Anyway, if this new one addresses specific strains not addressed in past shots, then it's not strictly a booster, is it?

I lied to get mine in June. No regrets.

You can walk into nearly any pharmacy in the US and get a booster without them asking questions. What is your fucking point?

xp

I mean if the booster thing is too complicated for you maybe boosters aren't for you.