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

[LawBeefaroni]

But haven't you heard? The economy man - it's doing great!

The cracks in the facade are starting to show. And inflation is no longer "transitory," as if by magic

Definitionally it probably *is* still transitory but that isn't the way lay people define transitory. Transitory means not structural. The signs are that it isn't. For instance, the employer price index just came out and showed wages didn't surge alongside inflation. The read is that it doesn't look like the 70s style wage-inflation death spiral. That is also probably why the Fed has been so slow to pump the brakes. The 'best growth since Reagan' story the media is pumping sort of glosses over that averaged over the pandemic actual growth has been around 1% per year. We've recovered but the idea this is some economic boom is pure mis-framing. In the end, the current conditions still looks like supply-demand mismatches and pandemic based transportation disruption. But let's keep on trucking...when they stop all the coughing.

Smoove touched on it but these aren't normal times. The EPI is lagging and IMO broken by COVID and the Great Resignation. There were furloughs, healthcare costs dropped, and there are fewer job seekers filling fewer jobs.

Anecdotally, we just gave most hourly workers a $10K raise in addition to merit increases and bonuses.

[malchior]

While I'm not an economist (we'd need to check in with Nate Silver), my guess is that just like public health, whatever historical economic models are being used aren't quite right.

Right because there is no model for this. How could the Fed or any economics agency predict how many truck drivers would be out of work in January due to omicron? Which wasn't even a thing when they did their forecasts for Jan 2022. How could they account for port issues? Could they model 20% of the healthcare workforce quitting and the impact of that on healthcare costs (edit: a major component of the economy but not driving inflation right now since prices in hc are up above historical trend but well below the headline - a shocker I know!)

I can talk about viruses and communicable disease, but I have nothing I've learned or studied that can accurately describe what we've been seeing for 2+ years now - we are in uncharted territory, even after all this time. That goes for what we can expect and how this will all ultimately end. No one knows. Lots of people have guesses and some are better than others, but no one knows. It feels like the economic projections are the same.

Follow that thought and you come to a truth. Unless you forecast the pandemic right...you can't forecast the economics. They are always chasing their tail. Management of this economy is all about containing damage and picking least bad options. The conservative market people - who I'll note always have some conflict of interest that makes their advice sketchy to begin with - are screaming for interest rate hikes because inflation is taking bites out of their 'debt based' rents. The Fed however has to balance that moves they make impact employment and a fragile economy. Everyone says it is strong. It isn't. It has all sort of pain points. Inflation is but one.

I'll also mention that the economy isn't some monolithic thing. The situation in Blackhawk's hood where supply chains are longer and disruptions more impactful on prices are worse than they are for those of us on the coasts where our supply chains are typically shorter and we have more substitute goods. You have millions of tiny bubble economies everywhere reading all differently right now. The idea that they are going to get forecasts right is pretty impossible.

[malchior]

The EPI is lagging and IMO broken by COVID and the Great Resignation. There were furloughs, healthcare costs dropped, and there are fewer job seekers filling fewer jobs.

Healthcare costs didn't drop - they just didn't surge along with everything else. But the fewer job seekers filling fewer jobs isn't quite right - More jobs than jobless in 42 states. I do think the labor market is impossible to read. So many people are out of the workforce that who can say with any certainty what is happening.

I also agree that EPI lagging is a consideration but it has been tracking about 50% of headline CPI. That provides reasonably reliable certainty that it doesn't indicate the death spiral but it is not all good news. It still indicates workers are losing ground especially since a good chunk of all economic growth is assumed captured by corporate profits. Workers aren't keeping up.

Anecdotally, we just gave most hourly workers a $10K raise in addition to merit increases and bonuses.

I am seeing similar but we're also a tighter job market (cybersecurity). We have more flexibility being pre-IPO so we increased total comp by giving people more stock options. TC increased something like 10% here in the current cycle (Jan 2022 reviews). It also rose 10% last year too. But we're a business in a unique market position. It is useless as a gauge on anything but pre-IPO cybersecurity firms.

[LawBeefaroni]

Healthcare costs didn't drop - they just didn't surge along with everything else.

Healthcare spend dropped precipitously and temporarily. For an employer that is self-insured that means lower costs. For anyone else, it means they should be looking for a rebate or some other compensation.

We have several value-based (MLR) bonus programs and we hit records on every single one, mean spend was lower. The biggest insurer tried to add in a COVID adjustment of 6% (!) to reduce calculated savings.

People weren't going to the doctor unless they had COVID. This is going to whipsaw soon enough as people either catch up or suffer the effects of delaying care.

But the fewer job seekers filling fewer jobs isn't quite right - More jobs than jobless in 42 states.

I mean that there are few job seekers are taking fewer jobs. Not that there are fewer jobs to fill. Quite the opposite.

[LawBeefaroni]

I am seeing similar but we're also a tighter job market (cybersecurity). We have more flexibility being pre-IPO so we increased total comp by giving people more stock options. TC increased something like 10% here in the current cycle (Jan 2022 reviews). It also rose 10% last year too. But we're a business in a unique market position. It is useless as a gauge on anything but pre-IPO cybersecurity firms.

We're a fairly normal big-city hospital. Healthcare employs a lot of people and the price is going up.

[malchior]

Healthcare costs didn't drop - they just didn't surge along with everything else.

Healthcare spend dropped precipitously and temporarily. For an employer that is self-insured that means lower costs. For anyone else, it means they should be looking for a rebate or some other compensation.

In spurts but long-term aggregate healthcare spending in all the US was still up like 3-4% YoY. That's all I'm getting at. Every place will be different. And spending doesn't mean profits obviously. It was probably all low margin stuff in the end. It however pulled the headline number down because it is a big component of GDP. If healthcare costs ballooned it might've been pretty bad. We essentially had the government implement price controls there and no one really talked about it in any significant measure.

We have several value-based (MLR) bonus programs and we hit records on every single one, mean spend was lower. The biggest insurer tried to add in a COVID adjustment of 6% (!) to reduce calculated savings. People weren't going to the doctor unless they had COVID. This is going to whipsaw soon enough as people either catch up or suffer the effects of delaying care.

Yep - that's what I'd expect. Mean spend/profits down for healthcare corporations, doctor's practices booking less profit, etc. Those impacts are impossible to model in any consistent way when you don't know if next quarter your doing high margin procedures, etc. I expect all this delayed care is going to just unwind over time. It's debt of sorts. It'll have to unwind sometime.

I mean that there are few job seekers are taking fewer jobs. Not that there are fewer jobs to fill. Quite the opposite.

Ah I see what you mean. Still that should be wage inflationary and we aren't quite seeing that story...at least yet. It's interesting to say the least.

I still think there is an actual 'anti-trust' component here that some players can capture rents no matter what as well. I read an article where economists pitched a dozen or so approaches to combating inflation and my take was we need at least 10 of them simultaneously. I shy away from anyone who says there is one predominant major factor. It's multi-factor for sure.

[Smoove_B]

Just to show that we're still learning new things, a study was published relating the genetic connections to the risk of COVID-19 related pneumonia.

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/14 ... 4072430593

About 15% of the critical Covid pneumonia cases can be accounted for by genetic/immunologic variations, particularly involving the interferon pathway and autoantibodies

[Kraken]

The 7-day average positivity rate in MA has fallen below 10% after spiking as high as 30%, and wastewater data suggest that it will continue to fall. If/when it goes below 3% I'll start to relax my precautions and rejoin society. I'm hoping we'll get there by spring, if that new omicron variant doesn't have other ideas. I would love to eat in a restaurant again. We quit doing that when the rate went over 3% in early November.

[Daehawk]

Ill still pass on being in a place longer than I have to. No reason people wont get reinfected or a new wave or a different variant.

[Daehawk]

Though I dont have a heart problem from birth this video shows why even vaccinated I dont want Covid. Its so unpredictable with what it will do to you...from much of nothing to death and all the stuff in between and long times of it.

[YellowKing]

Stories like this are also why I hate the garbage people who from the start of this thing have refused to take the minimum effort to protect others.

[Jaymon]

Even the job market is wonko. The numbers are not thewhole story without further breakdown.

Is the offered job a remote work opportunity? Then it is drowning in over qualified applicants.

Is it a in person job dealing with maskhole customers? Then you are posting a sign outside your shop with the hourly wage, trying to entice applicants.

[Kurth]

Stories like this are also why I hate the garbage people who from the start of this thing have refused to take the minimum effort to protect others.

Stories like that seem to me to be a prime example of information that warps and degrades rational risk analysis. From that video, I understand that she had a serious underlying heart condition that resulted in the loss of her legs after she contracted COVID and experienced a critical circulatory failure.

I feel terrible for that young woman, but, as a society, if we decided we were going to take efforts (even minimum efforts) to prevent all shitty, random, rare, crazy, tragic things from happening, we'd grind to a halt.

NOT saying that COVID=Flu, but:

here's what recent research has shown:

- Cardiovascular deaths and influenza epidemics spike around the same time.
- Patients are six times more likely to experience a heart attack the week after influenza infection than they are at any point during the year prior or the year after the infection.
- In one study looking at 336,000 hospital admissions for flu, 11.5% experienced a serious cardiac event.
- Another study looking at 90,000 lab-confirmed influenza infections showed a strikingly similar rate of 11.7% experiencing an acute cardiovascular event.
- One in eight patients, or 12.5%, admitted to the hospital with influenza experienced a cardiovascular event, with 31% of those requiring intensive care and 7% dying as a result of the event, another study found.

Seriously, I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but it's the kind of anecdotal garbage that the media loves to fixate on and amplify. It's not the kind of information any one should use to determine what rational precautions they need to take regarding COVID.

[malchior]

Stories like this are also why I hate the garbage people who from the start of this thing have refused to take the minimum effort to protect others.

Stories like that seem to me to be a prime example of information that warps and degrades rational risk analysis. From that video, I understand that she had a serious underlying heart condition that resulted in the loss of her legs after she contracted COVID and experienced a critical circulatory failure.

While I get what you are saying. Some stories sensationalize edge cases. That's just the way of things. But the jump to this 'rational risk analysis' stuff seems a bit far fetched. We aren't anywhere near rationale risk analysis and stories like this don't move the needle much. This story having public health policy impact would require our society to have a moral/ethical compass. Which it doesn't.

I feel terrible for that young woman, but, as a society, if we decided we were going to take efforts (even minimum efforts) to prevent all shitty, random, rare, crazy, tragic things from happening, we'd grind to a halt.

But that isn't what most people are asking for. People aren't calling for lockdowns anymore. In fact, we've done the opposite at the expense of people like this. We're the only advanced country in the world that expanded our economy during the pandemic.

I also don't understand the idea that we're supposed to take stock that we don't fall for things like this that might make us irrationally evaluate risk. The measures that might have saved her legs aren't all that drastic. This isn't asking for a moonshot. The moonshot already happened. And because it happened we've pivoted to asking people like her to risk everything so people can feel like they can return to normal. And beyond this woman we're still seeing thousands of people dying per day. We can't prevent every bad end but we are very far and away from that.

NOT saying that COVID=Flu, but:

here's what recent research has shown:

- Cardiovascular deaths and influenza epidemics spike around the same time.
- Patients are six times more likely to experience a heart attack the week after influenza infection than they are at any point during the year prior or the year after the infection.
- In one study looking at 336,000 hospital admissions for flu, 11.5% experienced a serious cardiac event.
- Another study looking at 90,000 lab-confirmed influenza infections showed a strikingly similar rate of 11.7% experiencing an acute cardiovascular event.
- One in eight patients, or 12.5%, admitted to the hospital with influenza experienced a cardiovascular event, with 31% of those requiring intensive care and 7% dying as a result of the event, another study found.

I'm confused here. COVID != flu yet here is a list of effects from the flu? COVID is a very different disease. I don't even know what the point of citing this is - it's not very relevant. That's the problem. We don't know the true risks - we just don't have enough information - but we're supposed to engaged in principled risk analysis? We simply can't. We have to choose trade offs for sure but often it seems to be sacrifice people without power in the service of people with power. It's gross.

Seriously, I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but it's the kind of anecdotal garbage that the media loves to fixate on and amplify. It's not the kind of information any one should use to determine what rational precautions they need to take regarding COVID.

Ironically, I think what you are doing here is highly irrational. If you think stories like this are the problem I don't know what to say to you. The effects of misinformation that convince people not to get vaccines or take reasonable semi-inconvenient measures to reduce spread when surges happen is *way* more impactful than any story like this.

[Smoove_B]

It's weird to me how different people react to the same story. I don't see it as sensationalizing or fomenting fear. I instead see it as a reminder of what's at stake here - a reminder that if we all do our part to help minimize spread, those at highest risk are better protected.

I also keep seeing the flu discussion popping up - that we somehow don't care about the ~30K people that die each year from influenza. While that might be true of the general public (not caring or thinking about it), it's not true for public health as we know that an overwhelming majority of those annual influenza deaths could have been prevented if people vaccinated themselves. It's not true about childhood immunizations or pneumococcal vaccinations for seniors. It's very frustrating to see people dying from vaccine-preventable diseases, children in particular. Maybe the general public doesn't realize how much time, money and effort are usually spent annually addressing vaccine preventable diseases and the amount of effort we go to try and get people vaccinated (only to have it remain so frustratingly low).

The other thing that keeps circling back into the discussion are the comorbidities, usually when people like to point out that those dying of [Disease X] likely had other conditions, so for most people it's not something we should be concerned with. The problem with this line of thinking is at some point it's likely that all of us are going to be in that "other" category and at elevated risk for [Disease X]. Even if you're perfectly health otherwise, age is a potential risk factor. Writing those people off now just because your specific boxes aren't being ticked is (at best) short sighted.

Anyway, these news stories should remind us that there are millions of people that have chronic illnesses that are currently being managed, but during this pandemic they are at really high risk for complications. Here in America (and apparently now parts of Canada and the UK) we're seeing pushback against the idea that we should in any way care about the well being of others - that our decisions as individuals affect complete strangers. Instead, we should be looking at places like Japan or Portugal where they not only have insanely high vaccination rates, but they view simple things like wearing masks (to stop uncontrolled spread) as a civic duty, not tyranny.

The story of COVID-19 is largely over. If we don't learn from this, the next one is going to be much, much worse.

[Kurth]

Stories like this are also why I hate the garbage people who from the start of this thing have refused to take the minimum effort to protect others.

Stories like that seem to me to be a prime example of information that warps and degrades rational risk analysis. From that video, I understand that she had a serious underlying heart condition that resulted in the loss of her legs after she contracted COVID and experienced a critical circulatory failure.

While I get what you are saying. Some stories sensationalize edge cases. That's just the way of things. But the jump to this 'rational risk analysis' stuff seems a bit far fetched. We aren't anywhere near rationale risk analysis and stories like this don't move the needle much. This story having public health policy impact would require our society to have a moral/ethical compass. Which it doesn't.

I feel terrible for that young woman, but, as a society, if we decided we were going to take efforts (even minimum efforts) to prevent all shitty, random, rare, crazy, tragic things from happening, we'd grind to a halt.

But that isn't what most people are asking for. People aren't calling for lockdowns anymore. In fact, we've done the opposite at the expense of people like this. We're the only advanced country in the world that expanded our economy during the pandemic.

I also don't understand the idea that we're supposed to take stock that we don't fall for things like this that might make us irrationally evaluate risk. The measures that might have saved her legs aren't all that drastic. This isn't asking for a moonshot. The moonshot already happened. And because it happened we've pivoted to asking people like her to risk everything so people can feel like they can return to normal. And beyond this woman we're still seeing thousands of people dying per day. We can't prevent every bad end but we are very far and away from that.

NOT saying that COVID=Flu, but:

here's what recent research has shown:

- Cardiovascular deaths and influenza epidemics spike around the same time.
- Patients are six times more likely to experience a heart attack the week after influenza infection than they are at any point during the year prior or the year after the infection.
- In one study looking at 336,000 hospital admissions for flu, 11.5% experienced a serious cardiac event.
- Another study looking at 90,000 lab-confirmed influenza infections showed a strikingly similar rate of 11.7% experiencing an acute cardiovascular event.
- One in eight patients, or 12.5%, admitted to the hospital with influenza experienced a cardiovascular event, with 31% of those requiring intensive care and 7% dying as a result of the event, another study found.

I'm confused here. COVID != flu yet here is a list of effects from the flu? COVID is a very different disease. I don't even know what the point of citing this is - it's not very relevant. That's the problem. We don't know the true risks - we just don't have enough information - but we're supposed to engaged in principled risk analysis? We simply can't. We have to choose trade offs for sure but often it seems to be sacrifice people without power in the service of people with power. It's gross.

Seriously, I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but it's the kind of anecdotal garbage that the media loves to fixate on and amplify. It's not the kind of information any one should use to determine what rational precautions they need to take regarding COVID.

Ironically, I think what you are doing here is highly irrational. If you think stories like this are the problem I don't know what to say to you. The effects of misinformation that convince people not to get vaccines or take reasonable semi-inconvenient measures to reduce spread when surges happen is *way* more impactful than any story like this.

malchior, I think we're talking past each other to some extent here.

I'm reacting to this story ratcheting up YK's hatred of "garbage people" who don't take minimum efforts to protect people like this woman.

That seems irrational to me. We shouldn't be letting sensationalized edge cases (1) inform what our COVID policies should be or (2) fuel anger towards people we disagree with on COVID policy (there's plenty of good and rational reasons to be angry at a lot of those people anyway).

I'm pointing out the fact that the flu is also deadly to people with underlying heart conditions (and there are shit tons of edge cases where a case of the flu yields terrible and tragic outcomes) because, at some point, hopefully, COVID risks and flu risks are going to be comparable. I don't know when we get to that point or how far away we are now, but it certainly seems that talking about risks presented by COVID and risks presented by the flu is becoming more and more a legitimate conversation to have. And it's a conversation we should have because it reflects what risks we are generally willing to live with as a society.

On your last point, I think you're being disingenuous. I never said reporting anecdotal edge cases was "the problem," and I think you know that's not what I believe. But just so we're clear, I think stories sensationalizing edge cases about cute young white women who have their legs amputated due to COVID are harmful to rational conversation and risk analysis, but I'll take them 100X over anti-vax misinformation.

#ImwithNeilYoung (and Joni Mitchell).

[Isgrimnur]

The other thing that keeps circling back into the discussion are the comorbidities, usually when people like to point out that those dying of [Disease X] likely had other conditions, so for most people it's not something we should be concerned with. The problem with this line of thinking is at some point it's likely that all of us are going to be in that "other" category and at elevated risk for [Disease X]. Even if you're perfectly health otherwise, age is a potential risk factor. Writing those people off now just because your specific boxes aren't being ticked is (at best) short sighted.

We have not, as a society, moved past this mindset (1899):

[malchior]

malchior, I think we're talking past each other to some extent here.

I'm reacting to this story ratcheting up YK's hatred of "garbage people" who don't take minimum efforts to protect people like this woman.

That seems irrational to me. We shouldn't be letting sensationalized edge cases (1) inform what our COVID policies should be or (2) fuel anger towards people we disagree with on COVID policy (there's plenty of good and rational reasons to be angry at a lot of those people anyway).

I don't think so. I was more just trying to pointing out the differences I have with your broader argument. You went way beyond this narrow point IMO.

Even then this would be boiling it down way too far. The story isn't necessarily the sole source of rage (though I'm not speaking for YK here) but I see this like Smoove_B as more a reminder of the stakes in the bigger picture. Maybe it's a rarer outcome but to Smoove_B's point in aggregate there are a lot of people in this woman's position. And they live every day worrying if this disease is going to kill or maim them. And that isn't some irrational fear. Anyway, I incorrectly thought you were equivocating this type of coverage with misinformation because you were raising some points that often aligns with the ones others use to equivocate COVID-19 risks.

I'm pointing out the fact that the flu is also deadly to people with underlying heart conditions (and there are shit tons of edge cases where a case of the flu yields terrible and tragic outcomes) because, at some point, hopefully, COVID risks and flu risks are going to be comparable. I don't know when we get to that point or how far away we are now, but it certainly seems that talking about risks presented by COVID and risks presented by the flu is becoming more and more a legitimate conversation to have.

Why is this a legitimate conversation? We are in the midst of a wave that has killed tens of thousands of people in the last weeks and will likely kill many thousands more. Every 3-6 months we're seeing waves worse than before even with vaccines but we're supposed to see the light at the end of the tunnel? Time to figure out how to live with this? That is what I see as irrational. Especially when it is couched in language about grinding society to a halt. As if that isn't still a risk now because of the unmanaged way we continue to deal with this crisis.

And it's a conversation we should have because it reflects what risks we are generally willing to live with as a society.

And I'll say it again. We're not having this conversation in any rational fact based way because we don't have many of the facts. Instead, we have politicized fantasy as public health theory. Check out the post that Smoove_B posted above about mask requirements. It's pure madness.

On your last point, I think you're being disingenuous. I never said reporting anecdotal edge cases was "the problem," and I think you know that's not what I believe. But just so we're clear, I think stories sensationalizing edge cases about cute young white women who have their legs amputated due to COVID are harmful to rational conversation and risk analysis, but I'll take them 100X over anti-vax misinformation.

I think you clarified it above when you were talking about responding to the YK post. Like I said I thought it was broader equivocation rather than addressing the specific instance.

[YellowKing]

I'm reacting to this story ratcheting up YK's hatred of "garbage people" who don't take minimum efforts to protect people like this woman.

This story in and of itself doesn't ratchet up my rage, it's simply another reminder of the rage I've been experiencing all along.

Whether it's being used as click-bait or sensationalism doesn't invalidate my irritation. At some level the media has had to resort to edge cases because we've already proven as a society we don't care about you if you're elderly or have pre-existing conditions. If telling a story about a 20-year old being impacted in this way wakes someone up into doing the right thing, I'm OK with it.

Sure, I know we can't guard against every edge case. But almost a million people dead in this country, to me, doesn't constitute an edge case.

All anyone has asked in this country to do is A) get a free, widely available vaccine B) wear a mask when told to do so. That's it. To potentially keep thousands of people from dying. So yeah, if you're willfully not doing those because your risk analysis tells you 800K dead's no big deal, then yes you're a garbage person in my eyes.

Caveat - there are a lot of people out there that are literally surrounded by misinformation 24/7 through no fault of their own. Those people I have sympathy for. I'm talking about the people that willfully, stubbornly, put their "freedom" over the lives of others.

[RunningMn9]

YK is where I’m at. Stories like that remind me that we are a nation overrun by selfish twats. It makes me dislike selfish twats more. Sorry.

[Zaxxon]

YK is where I’m at. Stories like that remind me that we are a nation overrun by selfish twats. It makes me dislike selfish twats more. Sorry.

Thirded.

[Blackhawk]

Yeah, I no longer have the patience for people with a 'me first' attitude taken to the extreme that it balances minor inconveniences against death.

Fuck them. My tolerance no longer extends to people who have victims.

Maybe that makes me an asshole. If so, then ok, I'm an asshole.

[Formix]

YK is where I’m at. Stories like that remind me that we are a nation overrun by selfish twats. It makes me dislike selfish twats more. Sorry.

I wonder if you could trace a correlation between selfish twats and the rise of Fascism? It seems like a good old-fashioned Ubermensch mentality that the weak get left behind, and if you can't "lift yourself up by your bootstraps" financially, or in this case with your "immune system", then, well, you were Untermensch anyway.

[Blackhawk]

YK is where I’m at. Stories like that remind me that we are a nation overrun by selfish twats. It makes me dislike selfish twats more. Sorry.

I wonder if you could trace a correlation between selfish twats and the rise of Fascism? It seems like a good old-fashioned Ubermensch mentality that the weak get left behind, and if you can't "lift yourself up by your bootstraps" financially, or in this case with your "immune system", then, well, you were Untermensch anyway.

The funny thing is that a lot of those people wouldn't end up as uber as they seem to think they will. What, exactly, do the workers think they'll gain by giving more power to the powerful? That they'll be elevated? Have better lives?

One day, if their saviors win, they'll quickly discover that their heroes were only telling them what they wanted to hear, and gosh - in hindsight it seemed so obvious.

[Blackhawk]

There's a fable in this somewhere. Something about the squirrels disliking the way the rabbits want the field to be run. And the ones who want to run things implied that the rabbits might be responsible for all the squirrel disappearances, too. And that kind of makes sense, because the rabbits are so awful.

So yeah, the squirrels all agree: life in the field will be so much better once the foxes are in charge and put those rabbits in their place!

[Smoove_B]

I knew this, but seeing it stated so plainly is....something.

https://twitter.com/Craig_A_Spencer/sta ... 2765086731

More Americans died of Covid in the past 2 weeks than died of influenza in the past 3 years.

[El Guapo]

The other thing with him is he has this really weird puritanical diet that's pretty core to his existence at this point, so he's pushing this weird "if you just have good nutrition then you'll be fine if you get COVID".

Can you ask him if this line of thought translates to sexually transmitted infections? Like, would be be worried about getting herpes or gonorrhea from a random hookup and wear a condom? Or does he believe a healthy diet protects him from venereal diseases too?

Also, the conversation might get extra strange after you ask him, but I'm dying to know.

FYI his most recent post is praising Eric Adams's "holistic" COVID-19 plan. He notes "poor nutrition is a leading factor in most underlying risk factors for severe Covid outcomes, especially obesity, diabetes, heart disease and many autoimmune disorders." No mention of his views on the outcome-determinative impact of swagger, incidentally.

So I don't think he's saying that it will prevent you from getting an infection, just that it will help prevent you from getting a severe infection.

He's also concerned that too many vaccines might damage the immune system, and has proposed instead "a mass education on dietary protocols to counter obesity and boost immunity."

UPDATE - the cousin posted Joe Rogan's video statement to Facebook on the whole "misinformation" Spotify thing. The cousin and friends posting in the thread are concerned that this is going to cause Rogan to have more "mainstream" experts on which is bad because you can hear them everywhere. Cousin thinks it's fine, Rogan will just make sure to challenge them.

So I guess he's a Joe Rogan fan too.

[Smoove_B]

Excellent article in The Nation from Gregg Gonsalves:

We’ve entered a new phase in the Covid-19 pandemic, which we can call bipartisan, unilateral surrender. From liberal and conservative pundits and politicians on both sides of the aisle to the celebrity docs who show up on cable news or in supermarket magazines, we’re being told SARS-CoV-2 is endemic now—which of course has nothing to do with the technical term, but has become popular shorthand for “it’s over.” We’re vaxxed-and-done now and we should be allowed, with no more mask requirements or other efforts to mitigate spread, to resume our pre-pandemic lives with the “urgency of normal.”

...

But now it’s different. People who were scrupulous about following public health advice in 2020 are now too tired, frustrated, and fed-up to care. Those still masking, doing some social distancing, trying to do their part to stem the tide of the pandemic are being treated as if they are holdouts in a war that is long over. Or risk-averse scaredy-cats, ridiculed as out-of-touch liberal elites by commentators on the right like Ross Douhtat; as deluded, too-far-to-the-left zealots by centrist pundits like David Leonhardt. Both of whom write for that touchstone of very serious people everywhere, The New York Times, so it must be true.

Except the pandemic is not over by a long shot. We’ve been seeing 1,000 deaths a day in the United States for months now; over the past few weeks, as Omicron deaths catch up to the vast number of infections diagnosed weeks earlier, we’ve had far more than that. The last day of January saw over 2,500 deaths in this country. Hospitals are still reeling in many places, and both health care and public health workers on the front line are just burned out and losing their shit. And that word—endemic—which in epidemiological terms connotes a pathogen that has stabilized at a long-term equilibrium in a population—hasn’t really arrived yet, with the pandemic still raging across the globe, even as Omicron numbers start to decline in some places.

What we’re seeing now is a combination of what we saw with influenza and with HIV. First, it’s capitulation based on misguided or at least premature hope, frustration, and anger that this has gone on for so long, disrupting our lives.

...

While pundits try to spin this as a debate about risk management at an individual level—claiming that some of us are being too cautious as we enter the golden age of endemicity—it’s far more like what happened with HIV: Once people feel like they’re safe enough, the safety of others doesn’t really matter that much.

[malchior]

Guess we might as well pack it up on public health. What's the point of studying the field if we are just going repeat the same mistakes of the near and historical past?

[Smoove_B]

A question I've been asking myself since (checks watch) March of 2020.

Realistically I'm sticking with my original guess of 2024 as when this current pandemic ends, coinciding with our election year, which is terrific. I can't even imagine what America looks like in another ~2 years as the virus continues to ebb and flow depending on location and season, but this is the path we're on (by choice). And nothing I know or say will change any of it - just a collective "Whatever, Russ. Whatever." as society runs head-first into a brick wall, over and over and over.

[LordMortis]

While pundits try to spin this as a debate about risk management at an individual level—claiming that some of us are being too cautious as we enter the golden age of endemicity—it’s far more like what happened with HIV: Once people feel like they’re safe enough, the safety of others doesn’t really matter that much.

Ding!

[malchior]

but this is the path we're on (by choice).

I'm not sure it is a real "choice". People were pushed in this direction strongly. This has been a demonstration of the grip that the very wealthy/oligarchs have on our society. They set out a policy choice that was firmly rejected by the public in the Great Barrington Declaration, the UK approach, etc. The masses have been bombarded with oligarch propaganda from our small pool of corporate owned media sources about the impact of the pandemic on people's economic lives. The people who couldn't protect themselves were forced to keep working and when they quit to take better pay they were shamed for it. It is a choice but people were driven there by a sick, sociopathic ruling class that doesn't give a fuck because they keep reaping all the rewards and we can't do anything to stop them.

[LordMortis]

but this is the path we're on (by choice).

I'm not sure it is a real "choice". People were pushed in this direction strongly. This has been a demonstration of the grip that the very wealthy/oligarchs have on our society. They set out a policy choice that was firmly rejected by the public in the Great Barrington Declaration, the UK approach, etc. The masses have been bombarded with oligarch propaganda from our small pool of corporate owned media sources about the impact of the pandemic on people's economic lives. The people who couldn't protect themselves were forced to keep working and when they quit to take better pay they were shamed for it. It is a choice but people were driven there by a sick, sociopathic ruling class that doesn't give a fuck because they keep reaping all the rewards and we can't do anything to stop them.

I can blame "feed the economy" on the Oligarchs but I can't blame the blinders up, desire "for normal", fuck 'em, on them. It's not even the bullshit of the right. You look no further than that attitude here of "I've done everything right. I'm vaccinated. I'm done." here. Ask yourself, how much have you traveled, before blaming the oligarchs.

[Smoove_B]

but this is the path we're on (by choice).

I'm not sure it is a real "choice". People were pushed in this direction strongly. This has been a demonstration of the grip that the very wealthy/oligarchs have on our society. They set out a policy choice that was firmly rejected by the public in the Great Barrington Declaration, the UK approach, etc. The masses have been bombarded with oligarch propaganda from our small pool of corporate owned media sources about the impact of the pandemic on people's economic lives. The people who couldn't protect themselves were forced to keep working and when they quit to take better pay they were shamed for it. It is a choice but people were driven there by a sick, sociopathic ruling class that doesn't give a fuck because they keep reaping all the rewards and we can't do anything to stop them.

I suppose that's fair. When people have been manipulated into the "urgency of normal" and local/state/federal elected leadership is doing everything they can to maintain forward (economic) movement, the general public doesn't have much of a choice. It's difficult not to spiral into complete hopelessness. I mean for most people. I'm already there.

[LawBeefaroni]

Wait until they go on the offensive. I'm already seeing rumblings of the accusation that people want a COVID "lifestyle". CNBC commented on it a few times this morning and I'm sure FOX is already on it. They're going to blur the lines such that inevitable improvements like more WFH and higher wages are coming from libs and snowflakes who are antisocial and want continued distancing, isolation, and virtual living. Not because of COVID but because they enjoy it.

[Blackhawk]

Wait until they go on the offensive. I'm already seeing rumblings of the accusation that people want a COVID "lifestyle". CNBC commented on it a few times this morning and I'm sure FOX is already on it. They're going to blur the lines such that inevitable improvements like more WFH and higher wages are coming from libs and snowflakes who are antisocial and want continued distancing, isolation, and virtual living. Not because of COVID but because they enjoy it.

Four or five years ago our school instituted a remote learning system as a way to avoid having to deal with multiple snow days every year. That same remote learning system was what was there, ready to go, when it became necessary to go to remote learning in 2020.

The very effect you're talking about - making anything reminiscent of COVID precautions an anti-conservative act - has caused them to go back to using snow days just to avoid having remote learning.

[LordMortis]

Wait until they go on the offensive. I'm already seeing rumblings of the accusation that people want a COVID "lifestyle". CNBC commented on it a few times this morning and I'm sure FOX is already on it. They're going to blur the lines such that inevitable improvements like more WFH and higher wages are coming from libs and snowflakes who are antisocial and want continued distancing, isolation, and virtual living. Not because of COVID but because they enjoy it.

Why can't both be true? Why can't they decide they like WFH and isolation, and higher social hygiene while still wanting COVID to go away so they can also be social when they want and travel when they want and go in to an office when it's needed?

Now is that much isolation healthy? I dunno but as someone who quickly burns out among people and needs time to recover I appreciate it and appreciate the choice and am glad that I've had the opportunity to often WFH over the last two years and will likely search for that sort of employment if I find the need to enter job force again after I exit. (soon!!!!)

[LawBeefaroni]

Why can't both be true? Why can't they decide they like WFH and isolation, and higher social hygiene while still wanting COVID to go away so they can also be social when they want and travel when they want and go in to an office when it's needed?

Well, they can. But it doesn't fit with several agendas. So there will be push to label any meaningful improvements coming out of COVID as some sort of antisocial derangement.

[Smoove_B]

Well, they can. But it doesn't fit with several agendas. So there will be push to label any meaningful improvements coming out of COVID as some sort of antisocial derangement.

I see it happening in my teaching job right now. Many students have commented that they actually liked having more classes online - assuming it was a quality instruction and not a BS course set up by someone being forced to run an online course. As commuters, it gave them more time to work or take care of family - or whatever. But if the schools offer more online courses, how do they justify insane tuition for in-person amenities to keep people living on campus? The people asking that online instruction remain viable are being called anti-social people addicted to fear and control. Instead, they want to continue the option that has worked really, really well for some of them over the last 2 years. It's no different for some K-12 students that have actually done better with a fully remote option.

Instead we're all being told you MUST all be IN PERSON for everything. Work. Shopping. School. We're trying so hard to force people to forget that as bad as it was (still is), we learned it doesn't have to be the way it was prior to March of 2020 - we can do the same things in different ways and still make progress. But when we go that route, the people that make money off the old way are losing out, so their pressure to have us go back to the way is overwhelming everything.

[LordMortis]

We're headed full Quinn.