At this point pretty much every official organ has burned all it's credibility. The CDC was making blatantly political decisions to protect business profits. The UK's goal was to fill the morgues until Covid magically stopped spreading because of some herd immunity bullshit. China threw in the towel and told everyone they could spit in each other's mouths if they wanted to. Half the US believes COVID is made up. Professionals are saying all kinds of contradictory things.
The authorities that should be trustworthy but burned their trust are saying Covid is over, even though wastewater, the last real data source, says that nothing has really changed.
So that leaves mostly random non-authoritative sources. And I have no fucking idea how to tell which of those people are cranks, which are just plain wrong, and which are actually providing useful information.
Known. Known Unknowns. And Unknown Unknowns.
The Known Unknown is "Who is this person, what are their credentials, are they some kind of quack or crank, are they working with good information, and how the hell can I assess any of these questions?"
Another known unknown is which things coming out of the CDC, or any other official body, are useful information and which ones, like the "It's okay to go back to work after five days" thing that was total bullshit, is profit-serving sociopathic bullshit.
And then the unknown unknowns are new variants, surges (wastewater lags by 2 weeks where I am so I wouldn't know until it was well underway), and fuck knows what else.
I feel this, really pissed me off when COVID became a "personal choice", and then they immediately removed all the data I could possibly use to actually make a choice. At this point I just wear an N95 everywhere I go, don't go out unless necessary, and only see friends/family if they've taken a COVID test that day and haven't been potentially exposed in the past week (this fucks over poorer friends in the service industry more than others but 🤷).
At this point I just wear an N95 everywhere I go, don't go out unless necessary, and only see friends/family if they've taken a COVID test that day and haven't been potentially exposed in the past week (this fucks over poorer friends in the service industry more than others but 🤷).
Is that actually sustainable? How do you manage that?
Not sure exactly what you mean by sustainable, could you clarify? Wearing an N95 (I wear 3M Auras) all day at work isn't that bad tbh, the bigger issue is having to eat and drink outdoors; it's okay for now, but it gets bad in the fall/winter. On my days off I mostly just stay indoors anyway so no difficulty there. I was able to steal a bunch of N95s from work so I'm good there for at least a few more months, and I think they have more that they won't notice going missing at any rate.
Forcing people to get tests has gone fine so far with few objections. The bigger issue here is what happens if stores stop stocking boxes of tests, but that's something I'll deal with if/when it happens. I've also pointed out to everyone I meet with in person that if I ever get COVID I'm ceasing in-person all-together, so they take it relatively seriously.
To care about yourself and others despite mild inconvenience?! How can you manage such a thing? Remarkable!
It's not a criticism of caring about other people. The issue is that there's never going to be a state intervention at a scale that could actually contain covid. We lost and capital won. So, with that reality in mind, is it actually sustainable to maintain these social limits for the rest of your life? I have kids that go to school and with the nature of my job and my wife job my potential exposures are endless, so I said fuck it.
The "fuck it" alternative is just opening the gate to the endless risk of a serious outcome that could stem from you or any one of your family members catching covid, to say nothing of the compounding probability of long covid that comes with each successive infection. The reality that there will not be a state intervention that will contain covid at a societal scale is totally fucked but it doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile to personally endeavor to protect yourself and those around you whenever you possibly can.
Even here, people like you and me who actually take covid seriously are rare
Hoskin's effect/original antigenic sin in respiratory illnesses
Well that was a whole shit load of words I've never heard before. : |
So what's your thought on the XBB1.5 vaccine that's supposed to roll out next month? I figured I'd get it because even though XBB1.5 isn't really circulating it couldn't make things worse.
I'd wear masks at grocers but everyone in my area assumes you're stealing, and I am actually
Lmao that's the best sentence I've read this week. Uncritical support.
Using old vaccines for older variants potentially fucked up your immune response to newer variants.
I mean, the point was to make it so that pharmacological products were the only potential solution. Big pharma and associates get a government contract out of a preventable pandemic, and eventually we have another vaccine to purchase. Every crisis an opportunity, basic Milton Friedman MBA 101 stuff.
We're living in the X-Files universe and 90% of this site is Mulder and the other 10% is Scully.
The guy who runs this podcast is honestly a microbiology genius, he does a lot of really good Covid content: This Week in Virology
He also does a podcast about parasitology, one about immunology, one about other infectious diseases… and one about urban agriculture.
His material is heavily cited, research based, and impressive in its scope. Strongly recommend. Definitely not a crank.
There’s honestly like 7 podcasts, and they’re all at a pretty intense level of scientific detail about very different subjects. He kinda scares me.
Oh yeah he also teaches at Columbia and wrote a text book.
If he does it as his full time job and works the same amount of hours per week as the rest of us, it doesn't sound hard to me. If it's a hobby thing on the side then yeah that's inhuman
Thank you for the recommendation! Seems like exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for.
And then the unknown unknowns are new variants, surges (wastewater lags by 2 weeks where I am so I wouldn't know until it was well underway)
Wales still does wastewater monitoring. And since US COVID trends are pretty much like UK COVID trends but delayed by a month, that gives a bit of a warning ahead of US wastewater.
I'm afraid I don't know how to read that data, and I'm too fried from trying to make sense of a bunch of new information. : p
On the first page of each region, next to the map, there'll be a summary of the data.
For example, this is what it had to say about Teifi and North Ceredigion:
- Wastewater signal in the region has increased over the last four weeks.
- Compared with last week, the signal has increased across the region.
- However, the signal decreased at Cardigan.
- The Rapid Increase indicator was triggered at Aberystwyth (Glan Yr Afon) during the last reporting period.
- There was one sample missing from each of the sites in the region.
Same and if someone could tell me where to get information I’d really appreciate it. At this point the best I have is Dave Anthony’s occasional rants on The Dollop and that’s just him badly repeating information from Twitter doctors
You could ask him who he follows on Twitter. You've got a 50/50 shot of not getting blocked immediately.
If you tell him J-Town sent you, it'll probably up your odds. Not sure which way though.
J-Town likes skateboarding, walking on water, and preventing the spread of deadly pathogens
I like how J-Town is sometimes brought to us by ketamine and shrooms.
Socialism For All on YouTube is still doing COVID update streams I think.
I know about a dozen people who have had it in the last month, including me last week. Most of them never tested positive, but a few of us did and all obviously had the same thing. It still fucking sucks, but it sucks even more for friends working in service who rang in sick saying they wouldn't be in for at least the (bullshit) five days and we're met by 5 days, Covid? That's not really a thing anymore, we're gonna need you in ASAP.
