That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
One set of chemicals that underwent scrutiny for a year as an entire community desperately look for solution for billions vs many many many sets of chemicals in a cocktail as a few professionals desperately look for a solution for one person.Smoove_B wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 9:59 am Getting COVID-19 twice is a real badge of honor. I'd be amazed if he fully recovers and doesn't have any long term issues. But yeah, free shot vs 10s of thousands of dollars of medical care. I'm sure he'll be back in your office ranting about the illegals driving up taxes and the cost of your healthcare plan soon enough.
I wish that was a joke.Smoove_B wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 9:59 am Getting COVID-19 twice is a real badge of honor. I'd be amazed if he fully recovers and doesn't have any long term issues. But yeah, free shot vs 10s of thousands of dollars of medical care. I'm sure he'll be back in your office ranting about the illegals driving up taxes and the cost of your healthcare plan soon enough.
He's just an early adopter. We'll all get there eventually, right?
Echo chambers can be a hell of a drug. Especially the crack-cocaine level of chambers that our wonderful social networks have provided in the past several years.hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:34 amIt's tough to reconcile this nutjob from the very nice person who will often bring me gifts of smoked meats from his home smoker, or other treats whenever he does come to the office. I worked with him at a previous company, so he's known me for decades. It seems like he's just gotten worse over the last 10 years or so though.
And is the sentiment of me still having compassion for the unvaccinated even if I am angry with them. It's like this entire segment of the population need a sociopolitical AA to join and you can't help them unless they help themselves. I'm not sure what it's going to take to be the final straw but I'm not there.hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:34 am It's tough to reconcile this nutjob from the very nice person who will often bring me gifts of smoked meats from his home smoker, or other treats whenever he does come to the office. I worked with him at a previous company, so he's known me for decades. It seems like he's just gotten worse over the last 10 years or so though.
Yeah, I know a lot of smart and decent people who have really dumb / crazy politics (and, while it's trite to say it at this point, it's true on "both sides" of the political spectrum).Zaxxon wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 11:14 amHe's just an early adopter. We'll all get there eventually, right?
Echo chambers can be a hell of a drug. Especially the crack-cocaine level of chambers that our wonderful social networks have provided in the past several years.hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:34 amIt's tough to reconcile this nutjob from the very nice person who will often bring me gifts of smoked meats from his home smoker, or other treats whenever he does come to the office. I worked with him at a previous company, so he's known me for decades. It seems like he's just gotten worse over the last 10 years or so though.
You're a middle-aged white guy. I imagine that the experience of those who are not is markedly different.hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:34 amIt's tough to reconcile this nutjob from the very nice person who will often bring me gifts of smoked meats from his home smoker, or other treats whenever he does come to the office. I worked with him at a previous company, so he's known me for decades. It seems like he's just gotten worse over the last 10 years or so though.
Usually it's hitting rock bottom, but even that doesn't seem to be working here.LordMortis wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:04 pmAnd is the sentiment of me still having compassion for the unvaccinated even if I am angry with them. It's like this entire segment of the population need a sociopolitical AA to join and you can't help them unless they help themselves. I'm not sure what it's going to take to be the final straw but I'm not there.hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:34 am It's tough to reconcile this nutjob from the very nice person who will often bring me gifts of smoked meats from his home smoker, or other treats whenever he does come to the office. I worked with him at a previous company, so he's known me for decades. It seems like he's just gotten worse over the last 10 years or so though.
A source familiar with the matter said Powell had multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells that suppresses the body's immune response.
+1. Meanwhile, the click bait headline for what is a pretty even keeled take is here already.
The vaccines are not perfect—particularly at preventing infection. Breakthrough infections, and even hospitalization and deaths, among vaccinated people are real. But, for people without confounding risk factors for COVID-19, the vaccines remain effective against the most serious outcomes the disease. That is, vaccinated people who are in good health, and do not have chronic conditions, are very, very safe from COVID-19. The issue is that Colin Powell was not one of those people.
A crucial fact about Powell being left out of many headlines: he had been previously diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that devastates the immune system—in particular, the blood’s plasma cells that produce antibodies. Only 50 percent of blood cancer patients produce antibodies in response to vaccination, and even after a booster, 33 percent still fail to produce antibodies. (While it’s unclear if Powell had received a booster, and one might reasonably quibble about whether, given his age, he may need a booster to count “fully vaccinated,” his illness, along with being 84, made him vulnerable to COVID either way) And while we don’t know the specifics of Powell’s medical chart, he would have been at heightened risk even if his cancer was in remission. “Multiple myeloma is not curable, so while he may (or may not) have been on active treatment, his disease, and his age, made him more vulnerable to breakthrough infection, complications and death,” Dr. Gwen Nichols, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s chief medical officer who authored the studies I’ve linked to in this paragraph. “Myeloma is a disease which affects antibody production and immunity. Whoever transmitted the virus to him may have been asymptomatic, but they gave him a disease he could not fight as well [as people without the diagnosis], despite vaccination.”
Powell’s cohort—those who are still pretty vulnerable to the virus despite vaccination—isn’t a small slice of America. At least 1.5 million Americans are living with or in remission from multiple myeloma and related cancers. Add this number to the millions of others living with weakened immune systems, and some 10-15 million people are facing down COVID without proper immunological armament. What happened to Powell is what millions of vaccinated people fear could happen to them each day, and with some good reason.
Yup. I mean the author has to be fuming. This line is in there:
And then their social media editor does that to them? Someone is getting crossed off the holiday card list.A crucial fact about Powell being left out of many headlines: he had been previously diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
While I agree in spirit, only ~57% of all Americans are currently fully vaccinated. In short, the number of people that aren't is gigantic. And yes, it's a mix of people that can't be vaccinated (like kids) people that are vaccine hesitant (like my 73+ year old FIL) and those that are truly vaccination resistant.
Spoiler - it's happened here in the United States as well.It is one of the conundrums of the current phase of the Covid pandemic: the UK has among the highest number of infections across the world and a death toll that continues to steadily climb, yet the national mood seems sanguine. So is this down to British stoicism, a Keep Calm and Carry on mentality?
Not according to experts. They talk of many factors being at play – and warn it may not last.
“We’re in a phase where we still have large numbers of people dying from this disease,” said Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh. “But it has gone into the background. We’ve become used to something that has not gone away. I think there’s been a desensitisation to the mortality.”
...
As a disease shifts from an initial pandemic phase to an endemic illness, the data curves outlining its spread become less precipitous. And psychologists say this steady stream of daily deaths – although the UK is now on an upwards trajectory – tends to feel less alarming than the rises we witnessed in the first year of the pandemic.
“We’re built to react to change. We don’t react to steady state,” said West. “Something will have to change in people’s psyche to make people feel like we need to do more about it.”
But this here is the core:“The idea that everyone is accepting the new normal is very dangerous,” said Prof Stephen Reicher, a psychologist at the University of St Andrews. “Then you reinforce a sense of fatalism.”
Reicher points to a wealth of evidence in psychology showing that our behaviour can be shaped to a greater extent by what we think others think than by our own beliefs. “If your attitude is at odds with a perceived social norm, you’re less likely to act on it,” he said.
According to Reicher, the government has been “systematically normalising” the UK’s current rate of infections.
“They’ve been acting like this is inevitable, seeming relaxed about infections going up,” he said. “People often want a generic psychological explanation, but we mustn’t ignore the political and ideological context in which this is happening. We’re looking at a phenomenon of normalisation.”
The media also plays a role in setting a perception of what is “normal”, according to Reicher. “[Research shows] that the media changes virtually nobody’s mind,” he said. “But it changes people’s belief about what others think.”
The most recent surveys show that the public retain cautious attitudes on Covid safety. However, there is a widening gap between attitudes and behaviours.
To some, the lack of public reaction to the ongoing death rate is bewildering. “It feels very surreal that we are just accepting the current infection rates. No one is making a fuss about it, but well over 100 people are dying every day due to Covid,” said Kit Yates, a senior lecturer in mathematics at the University of Bath.
Yates points out that, while vaccination has changed the outcome of high Covid rates, having so much virus in circulation is not without consequence.
“The current death rate is equivalent to over 40,000 people a year dying of Covid. This is not normal,” he said.
It all makes sense. If you failed on something, convince everyone it wasn't a failure. That is pretty much what Trump did and what Johnson is doing. They are lying about their negligence. And unfortunately many people are blinded to reality. There is lots of room to debate the why but it seems pretty clear that something is very wrong at the heart of several of our societies. They have become nihilistic and vaguely "evil". In the sense, that governments aren't doing the basic things they exist to do. I don't think anyone really has answers but I can't shake the sense that a shoe could drop at any moment.Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 6:57 pm This is much bigger picture thinking here, but this article is making the rounds today among my public health people, namely how death and suffering has been normalized in the UK.
The difference, IMHO, is that catastrophic failure of our health care system is much more imminent than a catastrophic failure of our climate. In article after article the story is the same - nurses and doctors are burning out, leaving, and not being replaced. I'm starting to see more articles of patients dying because of the lack of ICU beds or dying because they couldn't get life-saving medical care because of a lack of beds. I fear that may finally be the kicker that causes some kind of action - when enough people start dying because they couldn't be seen by a doctor because of the lack of beds.
Multiple states have 100% full ICUs, and the so-called "expansions" are basically lowering the standard of care. Instead of your typical one ICU nurse to 2 patients pre-COVID, most of those states are now down to 1 regular nurse (not necessarily ICU nurse) and 2 nurse-trainees/nursing assistants watching 6-12 patients, with every room (storage, conference, office, etc.) turned into "ICU" wards. Regular patients are left in the corridors. People are shipped hundreds of miles away from home in search of an ICU bed, and often, die there.raydude wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 8:50 pm I'm starting to see more articles of patients dying because of the lack of ICU beds or dying because they couldn't get life-saving medical care because of a lack of beds. I fear that may finally be the kicker that causes some kind of action - when enough people start dying because they couldn't be seen by a doctor because of the lack of beds.
Not being a jerk. I thought we knew this over a year ago.Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Wed Oct 20, 2021 7:55 pm Mystery of COVID toes solved -- it's a runaway immune response that damaged blood vessels near fingers and toes
Ontario plans to lift all remaining public health measures including proof of vaccination and mask requirements indoors by March 2022.
At a Friday news conference in Toronto with Premier Doug Ford, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Keiran Moore and Minister of Health Christine Elliott, it was announced that the removal of the measures will take place "slowly and incrementally" over the next six months, guided by ongoing monitoring of key public health indicators.
Those indicators include: whether any new COVID-19 variants arise, how many people are in hospital and ICU with the illness, and if the province once again sees a rapid increase in transmission of the disease.
Here's a timeline of what you can expect:
Oct. 25: The province will lift capacity limits in the majority of settings where proof of vaccination is required including restaurants, indoor sports facilities and gyms, casinos, bingo halls and indoor meeting and event spaces. Places of worship, museums and personal care settings such as barbershops and salons can also do away with capacity limits if they require proof of vaccination.
Nov. 15: The government plans to lift capacity limits in remaining higher-risk settings where proof of vaccination is required, including night clubs, wedding receptions in spaces where dancing is involved, strip clubs, bathhouses and sex clubs.
Jan. 17: Assuming the holidays don't contribute to any "concerning trends," the plan is to lift capacity limits in places where proof of vaccination is not required. At the same time, proof of vaccine requirements may also be lifted for restaurants, bars and sports facilities.
Feb. 7: The province plans to lift proof of vaccine requirements in high-risk settings including night clubs, strip clubs, bathhouses and sex clubs.
March 28: Ontario plans to lift mask-wearing requirements in indoor public spaces, as well as remove proof-of-vaccine requirements for all remaining settings. Capacity limits and public health measures could be re-introduced at local levels to manage COVID-19 as needed.
By then, Moore said, hopefully enough Ontarians are immunized, including children aged five to 11, so the virus can't find hosts in which to reproduce.
Asked if masking requirements will also be lifted for classrooms by March, Ford didn't answer explicitly, saying all decisions will be informed by the key indicators as well as advice from the chief medical officer of health.
This is what a real breakthrough infection report should look like. Thanks Oregon. People < age 60 are not "immune" from hospitalizations and deaths
J&J>Pfizer>Moderna
Currently ~1/4 of cases
We still do not have this for the US, let alone most states
I assume the > symbols here mean more deaths/hospitalizations with that vaccine and not that JJ is more effective than the other vaccines, which it seemed like he was saying at first glance.
