A group of U.S. researchers has modelled where society’s current path — an unmitigated spread of COVID — would lead. They concluded that unfettered transmission could result in death tolls exceeding 100,000 a year in the U.S. alone. “Endemicity is not a victory,” they added.
:doomer:
Meanwhile China has become the global epicentre for COVID after its totalitarian government abandoned its enforced, lock-down dependent Zero COVID policy. A British modelling firm estimates that the pandemic will kill nearly two million Chinese citizens by April.
What the fuck? This is immediately followed by
The more COVID is allowed to spread, the more it will evolve in unpredictable ways.
Absolute freak authors. How could someone not be disgusted with themselves writing such cynical and heavy handed propaganda?
And China is definitely not the "global epicenter" for COVID. It's just that western media is trying to paint that picture.
To be fair, outside of niche leftist circles like ourselves it's just considered par for the course that Chyna bad.
The USA has arguably been the global epicentre of covid since the virus started, and now they've got a finger to point somewhere else.
Not defending the fact that they're towing the Western line here, but I'm just not exactly surprised. The Tyee for the most part is quite a good news outlet.
Clearly at least this author can't be trusted if they're citing a "British modelling firm" that thinks 2 million Chinese people are going to die of COVID.
It's a completely ridiculous claim. They're saying that after multiple years of effective COVID measures, with a population that aren't too big of babies to wear masks, with a low aversion to vaccination, with plenty of reasonable COVID measures still in place, is going to suddenly go from having barely any COVID deaths to having more than the US, when every western country is saying that COVID is a non-issue.
The end point of this stuff will be the same as much earlier in the pandemic when they made ridiculous predictions like this, and then they just say "China didn't report a trillion deaths therefore they're lying tricksters".
Just Google "China covid deaths" to see the amount of propaganda wish fulfillment by western media about this.
Not to mention, people seem to forget that China's COVID response was already very targeted the entire pandemic and most people didn't have restrictions most of the time. There was that BBC article early on that featured a maskless pool party in China, after China's successful initial defense against COVID. The 'lockdowns' were always targeted to high outbreak areas as far as I know. I think this latest media wave was only created because China announced a change in their policy (which the US was begging for, let's remember), so the US can use people's ignorance about it to make it seem like the cause for some big thing.
The change in policy is most likely a nothing burger. I haven't heard about any actual large increase in COVID cases or deaths to even close to a similar rate as every western country. These articles never actually compare numbers or anything like that, just insinuate that it's "bad" [for China].
Although I will say it is concerning how much heavy handed propaganda is coming from Chinese media itself about how the virus isn't that bad, repeating basically the same lines as the US.
From what I've seen, the latest round of lockdowns wasn't stopping the spread of the virus nearly enough to be effective, so they went with the "fuck it, let's rip the band-aid off and have one big wave" approach.
I have no idea why n95s and air filtration weren't promoted in the past two years, but that's how it's been everywhere for some reason. No country on earth has fully come to grips with the airborne nature of the virus. I can only assume it's cost prohibitive, so everyone is kind of assuming reinfections won't be a problem?
Naomi Wu/Sexy Cyborg has been talking about how the government hasn't been taking effective measures like emphasizing masks and ventilation for a while now. Lots of complaints that efforts were being taken to control fomites that weren't actually spreading the virus while ignoring or at least under-emphasizing airborne spread.
Plus a lot of the Chinese Covid response has been devolved to regional governments. Apparently some are doing well while others, like Shanghai, have been an embarrassing shitshow for the entire pandemic.
Also wtf estimate are they using, the highest end estimates I’ve seen is 700,000.
Which is still disgustingly high and the fact that China ended zero covid sucks ass, but still far better than the US
So they're saying that totalitarianism is ... good ? :thinkin-lenin:
The person that came up with the name "Kracken" for this variant (in the hopes of getting people out of the "everything is omicron" minimizing nonsense) is a very online yet fairly reasonable Twitter scientist that would dunk on a lot of folks in the recent COVID minimization threads here.
the recent COVID minimization threads here
There was one post several days ago now, and it wasn't even about minimizing covid.
The site is overwhelmingly covid-conscious. Equating a "touch grass" post with "The site is majority let it rip" or something is silly.
“The site is majority let it rip”
Literally no one said this, who are you talking to?
Now you're just being silly, talking about things I haven't said.
And the post I'm thinking about cast undeserved doubts on immune damage from COVID.
We could very well be thinking of 2 different posts.
I'm just tired of people complaining about the one I'm thinking of and making it a bigger deal than it was.
Edit: For context, I meant this post
Oh yeah that post is more or less fine. IMO people are sometimes getting stuck in a dichotomous way of thinking: either be a 100% hermit or hey just hang out like whatever with no mask. In the latter case they might give up on masks and visit people, become a regular at indoor bars, etc etc.
There's a reasonable middle ground of still seeing people but being careful with masking and limiting exposure and so on. I don't think folks consider it enough in these convos.
Honestly wish more people in government would have some online literacy course (besides the fash) on how important delivery is to social media and mass media
It would literally have to make people explode into a swarm of flies
What would it take honestly for people to start considering lockdown again?
At this point, I have to believe there is no limit. If it killed 50% of the entire populace, the remaining living people would just want to keep their heads down and keep going to work so they can continue to pay off their landlord's mortgage.
An organized counter narrative to the consent manufacturing already taking place. Until that happens, the majority will always fall in line with authority.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/morkandmindy/images/2/28/Mork_Portrait.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20210123212311
If it got to MERS level dangerous despite vaccines... maybe? Then again, it would probably cause us to double down on the eugenics. "Why lock down? everyone has immunity now and it's only killed the old and sick... I assume"
"It's only killing the weakest 30-40% of the population! I and my fellow Neo-Aryans will rule the ashes!" - Neera Tanden, probably.
Mass famous and rich people Deaths and deliveries not happening.
Even then, they would rather have the money.
It won't happen. I think the West has conclusively proven that the capability to enact actual quarantine procedures at a national level simply does not exist. The logistics aren't there, the governments aren't capable enough, the bourgeois would coup before accepting the economic losses, and the culture is too resistant to communal action.
So I was arguing with my chud friend who has a bullshit medical treatment business. He told me, with sincerity, that he met only one single person with long covid. I'm sure that part of that is meeting mostly tech millionaires.
unfettered transmission could result in death tolls exceeding 100,000 a year in the U.S. alone
Isn't the US already way past 100, 000 covid deaths per year?
Including excess morbidity, probably. We were talking over 250k back in September from covid infection only.
edit: shit, my bad. It was at least 225,000 as of late September
Apologies, but I'm not quite sure what you mean? We don't have exact numbers for things like excess morbidity or covid infections right now, because states are holding back numbers to fudge averages and current numbers. For example, Florida has been only releasing data every 2 weeks, and I'm not even sure what other states have been doing.
Consistently through the pandemic every estimate given has been far lower than the trend suggests and seems to assume that we’ll have some dramatic drop off in deaths for some reason
Check my comments on this post, it's all manufacturing consent bullshit. The billionaires fund studies that are optimistic and because they're billionaire funded they get elevated among politicians and news media. That's the polite, generous, they're all acting in good faith, it's not a conspiracy take. I'm sure we can all extrapolate something darker.
Something cursed that could be occurring is that as each year progresses the 100k excess deaths push up the average so each year the excess 100k is already cumulative on the new average
Every epi in public health must understand at this point that their job is essentially pointless. Truly grim
Pretty much the feeling of one of my friends, she is at least doing lots of LGBTQ research on health trends which can help if your bureaucracy isn't controlled by fash
Epidemiologist in the 21st century are either socialists or imbeciles.
They should go start drinking with the climate scientists and the public policy experts. Misery loves company and all.
screams into a pillow because I'm immunocompromised I WANT OFF MR BONES WILD RIDE.
SARS-CoV-2 subvariants BQ.1.1 and XBB.1 have been circulating globally with superior growth advantages over most Omicron mutants (Fig. S1A). However, XBB.1.5, a subvariant of the recombinant mutant XBB, has recently shown a substantial growth advantage over BQ.1.1 and XBB.1. XBB.1.5 has rapidly become the dominant strain in the United States and is highly likely40 to cause the next global wave of COVID-19 with the enhanced transmissibility (Fig. S1B) 1. XBB/XBB.1 is already demonstrated to be extremely evasive against the neutralization of plasma/serum from vaccinated or convalescent individuals and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), even stronger than that of BQ.1.1
:agony-wholesome: Its coming :lets-fucking-go:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.03.522427v1.full.pdf
Wasn't omicron already shown to be like the most contagious, transmissible virus EVER - by far? And this exceeds it?
God damn.
