Corona Virus: It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint

[Smoove_B]

Everything is fine in New Mexico:

New Mexico is the first state in the nation to ask National Guard troops to serve as substitute teachers as preschools and K-12 public schools struggle to keep classrooms open amid surging COVID-19 infections.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Wednesday the unprecedented effort to reopen classrooms in the capital city of Santa Fe and shore up staffing across the state.

New Mexico has been struggling for years to recruit and retain educators, leaving teaching routinely to long-term substitutes who do not have full teaching credentials.

Her administration says school districts and preschools are seeking at least 800 substitute teachers and day care workers for shifts ranging from one classroom period to the entire day. They’re also asking state bureaucrats to volunteer to serve.

What an absolute mess. I saw some numbers last week about the number of newly certified teachers in PA and it was similarly problematic. Even here in NJ, it's bad. They actually just passed a law allowing recently retired teachers to come back to work in NJ without impacting their retirement. The way we're treating teachers now, I can't imagine there are many willing to run to the field. I can't imagine being a a student teacher now or getting ready to graduate with a degree in elementary education and being tossed into this current environment.

[malchior]

Guess COViD isn't airborne in British Columbia.

https://mobile.twitter.com/DrEricDing/s ... 2909593600

[El Guapo]

Is British Columbia where all the sketchy / crazy Canadians live? 80% of the times that it comes to my attention it seems like it concerns poor / questionable decisions.

[malchior]

Is British Columbia where all the sketchy / crazy Canadians live? 80% of the times that it comes to my attention it seems like it concerns poor / questionable decisions.

I love Vancouver but man does BC appear to be the Florida of Canada. Wait...that isn't totally fair. Maybe only 80% Florida in line with the exchange rate.

[Max Peck]

Is British Columbia where all the sketchy / crazy Canadians live? 80% of the times that it comes to my attention it seems like it concerns poor / questionable decisions.

Traditionally, BC is the weird province. These days, Saskatchewan seems the craziest, although there are contenders.

[Alefroth]

Is British Columbia where all the sketchy / crazy Canadians live? 80% of the times that it comes to my attention it seems like it concerns poor / questionable decisions.

I love Vancouver but man does BC appear to be the Florida of Canada. Wait...that isn't totally fair. Maybe only 80% Florida in line with the exchange rate.

I'd say it's more like the CA of CA.

[msteelers]

aaaaannnnndddd positive

The dr listened to her chest and checked out her throat and ears. She said everything else looked good except for the positive test. We can expect a fever for 3 days, and to treat it like we would any other cold. If she gets lethargic or stops drinking we should call the pediatrician.

I'll be stunned if the mrs and I don't come down with it too. It's not like we can shove her into a room all by herself for five days. We probably already have it. Hopefully the vaccines and boosters keep our symptoms mild.

Our daughter had a good day today. No fever at all. You could tell there were times where she was still uncomfortable, but overall a much better day than yesterday.

Can't say the same for my wife though. She woke up feeling rough and it slowly went downhill throughout the day. Around 7pm she had a fever around 100 and was exhausted. She took a rapid test earlier in the day which came back negative, but... come on. She has COVID too. I'm sure I do too. I can feel something in my sinuses. So far it's been a drippy nose and a mildly sore throat. We only have one more rapid test at the moment, so we're saving that for my wife to take on Sunday. Since I work from home it's easy for me to just quarantine, but I scheduled a test to know for sure. The first time I could get was Sunday morning.

[Isgrimnur]

[Daehawk]

High number of Omicron mutations render antibodies ineffective - study

New research indicates the 46 mutations found in the COVID-19 Omicron variant have rendered antibodies ineffective, accounting for the high number of re-infections and breakthrough cases.

[Smoove_B]

Once again the exact thing academics and researchers warned against, is happening. When you have a treatment (vaccination) but allow the virus to continue to spread uncontrolled (no universal masking policies in place or anything else being done to dramatically reduce spread), you're now artificially selecting for a virus to emerge that has the ability to bypass immunity. We can only hope things don't get worse, but for the love of Pete if people don't start doing things to stop the virus from spreading we're all fuct.

[malchior]

WTF headline writers. 800K people are dead. Could we not get cutesy about the pandemic...while it is still happening.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1485146313582858241

[Daehawk]

its what killed the Quitafuckasaurus

[Max Peck]

[El Guapo]

Who the hell has been in charge of NYT headlines for the past few years?

[LawBeefaroni]

Once again the exact thing academics and researchers warned against, is happening. When you have a treatment (vaccination) but allow the virus to continue to spread uncontrolled (no universal masking policies in place or anything else being done to dramatically reduce spread), you're now artificially selecting for a virus to emerge that has the ability to bypass immunity. We can only hope things don't get worse, but for the love of Pete if people don't start doing things to stop the virus from spreading we're all fuct.

The current line is we're already fuct and nothing we can do about it so might as well live it up. After all, we can't make sacrifices forever.

No one is going to do 2020 lockdowns over again.

[Blackhawk]

If we haven't done it now, it isn't going to happen. Anything else is woulda-shoulda wishful thinking.

I shifted my approach from 'how do we get the rest of society to stop acting like idiots' to 'how do I defend myself from the idiots.'

[RunningMn9]

Once again the exact thing academics and researchers warned against, is happening. When you have a treatment (vaccination) but allow the virus to continue to spread uncontrolled (no universal masking policies in place or anything else being done to dramatically reduce spread), you're now artificially selecting for a virus to emerge that has the ability to bypass immunity. We can only hope things don't get worse, but for the love of Pete if people don't start doing things to stop the virus from spreading we're all fuct.

I don’t think this is technically correct, is it? Vaccines don’t exert any selection pressure on a virus. Unrestrained transmission just allows the virus to mutate, but it doesn’t apply selection pressure the way that antibiotics do. As I understand it anyway.

[Smoove_B]

I don’t think this is technically correct, is it? Vaccines don’t exert any selection pressure on a virus. Unrestrained transmission just allows the virus to mutate, but it doesn’t apply selection pressure the way that antibiotics do. As I understand it anyway.

It's not exactly the same as antibiotic resistance, no. But what's happening is you have two elements going at the same time. We're boosting immunity (which is good) but we're not controlling spread (which is bad). So we are inadvertently encouraging the emergence of a virus that has the ability to to address improved immunity - which is exactly what Omicron does. Its not like antibiotic resistance where we're actively selecting strains that can overcome the antibiotics, we're just setting up an environment now that could encourage variants like Omicron to emerge.

That's been my understanding from the big brains that discuss it online.

[Zaxxon]

Presented for Smoove's morning coffee / scream-into-the-void break:

Kids Shouldn't Have to Be 'Resilient'

In which The Atlantic takes a topic with some level of rational merit and butchers it beyond belief.

[LordMortis]

Presented for Smoove's morning coffee / scream-into-the-void break:

Kids Shouldn't Have to Be 'Resilient'

In which The Atlantic takes a topic with some level of rational merit and butchers it beyond belief.

Ooph. I'm don't play Smoove on TV but that title hurts. Resiliency has been the literal battle cry of the supply chain for he last two years. Talking about children in terms of economic risk assessment is painful to my soul and that's all I can see when you use that language. Talking about your children as if you weight their well being the same way you weight things in a business continuity plan. What is your disaster recovery for losing your child? How much precaution do you take when it come to defining risk? What is my disaster recovery for you losing your child? How much precaution do I take when it comes to defining risk to you?

[raydude]

Presented for Smoove's morning coffee / scream-into-the-void break:

Kids Shouldn't Have to Be 'Resilient'

In which The Atlantic takes a topic with some level of rational merit and butchers it beyond belief.

Ooph. I'm don't play Smoove on TV but that title hurts. Resiliency has been the literal battle cry of the supply chain for he last two years. Talking about children in terms of economic risk assessment is painful to my soul and that's all I can see when you use that language. Talking about your children as if you weight their well being the same way you weight things in a business continuity plan. What is your disaster recovery for losing your child? How much precaution do you take when it come to defining risk? What is my disaster recovery for you losing your child? How much precaution do I take when it comes to defining risk to you?

So, the author of the article linked to another article when mentioning that "Although the science on the benefits of child masking is uncertain, and the downsides are becoming clear". "downsides" linked to here. I have to admit, after reading the "Downsides" article I see no clear downsides other than "However, some mask wearers who exert themselves may subjectively feel short of breath."

That's it?! With a headline like "The Downsides of Masking Young Students Are Real" that's all the other article could come up with?! Well, whoppdie fucking do man, I get short of breath when I wear my mask too. Doesn't mean I don't wear it!

[LordMortis]

The downside is they hurt my ears and they like to cinch up into my eyes. I think my ears are too high. Glasses have always been an issue as well.

[malchior]

That Atlantic piece is just a hot garbage mess of bad risk analysis. I'll scream it forever - people are bad at risk. Americans more so because we indulge in finding some brand of fantasy that fits our feelings. Since that is what matters most. Damn reality.

For example, the author points at a NY Times article saying we shifted the impact from adults to kids. All without any recognition that there are still a lot of unknown risk to kids. Will we have a cohort in 10 years with elevated risk of diabetes? Cognitive impacts? Etc. We just assume that they didn't die so the risks were overblown. Utterly stupid. We did children a huge disservice stopping there with our risk analysis.

What would have been a more suitable risk analysis IMO? Instead of assuming that something unknown impacting the population at scale that doesn't cause death implies low risk, we instead should assume that unknown impacts at population scale will inflict high to critical risks. I'm not certain they are but worse case should be the baseline and you work back from there. Based on that level of risk we do the one thing in our control - minimize spread. We can't 'un-infect' people. Instead, we said let 'er rip and then backed into the approach using fantasy thinking assuming low risk. It's ridiculous.

[LawBeefaroni]

The downside is they hurt my ears and they like to cinch up into my eyes. I think my ears are too high. Glasses have always been an issue as well.

As someone with a big head and big ears, masking pulls my ears forward and I feel like Ross Perot or something. The double masking we're required to do at work? I routinely break the ear straps.

N95s help this but I don't have a big box of those on my desk.

[LordMortis]

N95s help this but I don't have a big box of those on my desk.

This. My N95s wrap around my head not my ears. So much more "comfortable" even as they apply a lot more pressure. The problem is surgical type masks are for all intents and purposes, free. The N95s have to be sought out and cost about $1 a piece, assuming you can find them in lots 20 at that price.

[Isgrimnur]

ear savers

[Max Peck]

In addition to ear savers, you can also get disposable medical masks with ties instead of ear loops. I don't know how difficult it is to find them elsewhere, but the place where I bought my C95 masks last year sells them.

https://benchmarkppe.ca/product/astm-le ... -tie-back/

[LawBeefaroni]

I may try the ear-savers. And by "try" I mean make a prototype with the kiddos.

We have to wear company issued masks at work and we don't have any tie-on surgical masks. At least not in the non-clinical areas.

[LordMortis]

I may try the ear-savers. And by "try" I mean make a prototype with the kiddos.

We have to wear company issued masks at work and we don't have any tie-on surgical masks. At least not in the non-clinical areas.

Henzau was 3d printing them and giving them to hospitals in 2020. I'd been thinking on of them a lot lately since I am on premise 3-4-5 days a week nowadays and additionally am being required to interact with... people... more while I'm here.

[Smoove_B]

In case you're wondering how we stack up in globally.

https://twitter.com/fibke/status/1485943421420331008

The world's second-oldest country has a COVID-19 mortality rate that's 18x lower than that of the US

[stessier]

I question the graph that seemingly has Japan using COVID to bring people back from the dead.

Edit: Ah, it is a Twitter display problem. Clicking through to the article has zero as zero. That's nice.

[malchior]

I question the graph that seemingly has Japan using COVID to bring people back from the dead.

Edit: Ah, it is a Twitter display problem. Clicking through to the article has zero as zero. That's nice.

It's not the 1st graph in the click-thru. You'd see the same image in the 2nd chart.

That being said it references that it is output from a ML model for excess death that the Economist drew up. It is hard to know which technique they used but in the end Japan is so close to zero that the model spit out some slightly negative numbers at the beginning of the pandemic. Why? Because numbers were so much higher in other nations per capita and the model had to adjust for Japan since it is such an outlier. I'd counsel ignoring the statistical noise and assume close to zero lower bound and just focus on the relative differences which are probably accurate enough.

Edit: I didn't think this through enough - it is modeling excess deaths. You can have negative numbers - that means less deaths than statistically normal. Due to lockdowns you might have a situation where less people die in accidents for instance and reduce the death rate. That might be an alternate explanation for what we see in the Japanese data.

[Defiant]

From the article:

Second, the opposite is true for Japan, where excess mortality is in fact lower than COVID-19 mortality.

[RunningMn9]

That's been my understanding from the big brains that discuss it online.

Roger, I think it’s just a terminology thing. You we are encouraging it, but I think really we are just allowing for it. Antibiotics encourage resistance because they only kill a certain percentage of the bug. The bugs that remain are the ones that the antibiotic couldn’t kill. So over time, they start to become the dominant strains because there’s no way to kill them.

A vaccine doesn’t do anything to the bug, so it’s not encouraging anything.

But by promoting transmission (what we are doing from a policy perspective), we are encouraging viral replication. So we are in effect choosing to roll the dice as often as possible, which will eventually come up snake eyes.

In the end, we rolled snake eyes, and here we are. So I guess it doesn’t make much of a difference.

[Max Peck]

Edit: I didn't think this through enough - it is modeling excess deaths. You can have negative numbers - that means less deaths than statistically normal. Due to lockdowns you might have a situation where less people die in accidents for instance and reduce the death rate. That might be an alternate explanation for what we see in the Japanese data.

Yeah, an anomaly like that would be much more noticable in a data set, like Japan's, where the COVID mortality rate is relatively low in and of itself. It would be interesting to see a deep dive into the various causes of death in Japan to see exactly why excess deaths went negative.

[Smoove_B]

When you hear voices yelling and screaming to open the schools and unmask the children, keep in mind who suffers the most - it's the theme of the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/oni_blackstock/stat ... 8414955520

The death toll of COVID among children is not equal.

Policies to prevent COVID transmission in schools protect ALL children, families, educators, and communities and especially those that continue to be most impacted by COVID

[Blackhawk]

I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the people fighting restrictions will smile when they see what that chart represents.

[Victoria Raverna]

Why Asian is lowest in the chart? Asian children has better immune?

[Isgrimnur]

https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/pu ... minorities

In the United States, 39 percent of African-American children and adolescents and 33 percent of Latino children and adolescents are living in poverty, which is more than double the 14 percent poverty rate for non-Latino, White, and Asian children and adolescents (Kids Count Data Center, Children in Poverty 2014).
...
American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic, Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian families are more likely than Caucasian and Asian families to live in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014).

[msteelers]

Todays episode of The Daily made me all kinds of angry today.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t ... 0549044026

Here’s an idea. Maybe lets not talk about learning to live with the virus at a time when thousands are still dying every day and the virus is still circulating uncontrolled everywhere?