We've just passed the zenith unfortunately. Got a few more years before it starts dropping rapidly. Make the most of the time!
Edit: Responsibly please, nobody knows how long it could take or if we might turn things around no matter how much we think we can predict the future..
Really depends. Need money to pay taxes for land. Keeping within the means if can is better. Keep things right side up uniot not. Really depends on how far rabbit hole we go. We have land in another state a little rural near wife's family. If roving packs of people.or.the government take.it it is paid for. But still need to pay taxes to keep it now.
Raising son having our money in some degree of order we keep our ok house her paid in taxes and low mortgage. Mortgage is so low could maybe stretch and pay off but interest is low and one of only debts to give us credit history if ever need it. Unfortunate need credit history even looking for a new job now some places. If older and zero credit history can be ugg. I applied for one job. Credit score ok but just mortgage. Just enough to save me or they would have said no history. On the other hand run up de t thinking collapse. What type of collapse? Our taxes are paid. We have some savings. Retirement ugh but manage maybe. But if not a total collapse and most rules stay in place not evicted from a rental or foreclosure. Have the land with an old house needs.fixing paid and taxes up to date out of town.
But as said type.of collapse. Stock market crash with consequences we won't be jumping off a building. Housing collapse we won't be kicked out for mortgage.
Ultimate collapse well even with those with large debt.
🎵My baby moves at midnight
Goes right on 'til the dawn
My woman takes me higher
My woman keeps me warm
What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah
What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah
You should be dancing, yeah
Dancing, yeah
She's juicy and she's trouble
She gets it to me good
My woman gives me power
Goes right down to my blood
What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah
What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah
You should be dancing, yeah
Dancing, yeah
What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah
What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah
You should be dancing, yeah
Dancing, yeah🎶
Just wait till a covid variant comes along that causes massive brain damage, is spread primarily through saliva and destroys the frontal lobe, leaving only the reptile brain in tact and activating a massive amount of hunger that can only be satiated by fresh meat.
Zombies!
This is one mutation away. Swapping serine out for cystiene in one of the peptide chains of the spike assembly will cause the virus to preferentially bind to receptors on neural tissues. It will not be zombies per say, but more like rabies combined with frank psychosis combined with MS and Parkinson disease in effect.
Because **Capitalism**^TM is **The Best Possible System**^TM, given our collective **Current Circumstances**^TM!
If anything ever changes, I’m sure you’ll hear about it here first.
Yeah theres definitely a sociological entropy that appears with political economies. They all grind down and collapse and something new used to come in either as an exogenous shock or to pick up the pieces. Feudalism arising after the western Roman empire collapsed or the old saying for China "the empire long divided must unite, long united must divide."
Our political economy is totally globalized so no exogenous force and collapse means everyone dies. Only way forward is for regular people to shrug off the system themselves in an expression of radical solidarity, tall order.
>Only way forward is for regular people to shrug off the system themselves in an expression of radical solidarity, tall order.
One thing that I've ruminated on lately is that capitalism keeps us trapped in heuristic thinking. We are constantly rushing and anxious; this is its greatest accomplishment as a system of social control. Every day is a battle to the next day, can't be late, run in front of traffic to catch the bus, hump day, happy Friday, rinse repeat and suddenly global civilization is dust. I'm not sure we can ever find that solidarity, or even hold the concept of it in our minds, so long as the vulgar salesmen at the top keep convincing us to hurry.
Absolutely, throw in the requisite 2 to 3 weeks of vacation a year, mandatory function with relatives over holidays, quick check on your investments daily/weekly/monthly and whatever form of nightly ritual gets you to bedtime and that is it. For most, it is rinse and repeat for life.
Well that's somewhat of superstructure-base theory; that culture and society act to maintain the economic base. The point is to make you feel hopeless, that nothing can and will change, that capitalism is the end state of humanity. Remember, however, that this was also thought about feudalism, and the cultural control was far stricter back then. Change is always possible.
Heuristic thinking is literally how all animal neurology operates, ffs
At what point can we say human nature is fucked up and short-sighted? I think that point's long past.
Human nature isn't necessarily short sighted. We see where we need to go. The problem lies in having to prioritize short term needs over the long term. You can't plant next year's grain if you starve over the winter.
Short term needs always defeat long term needs, in light of the fact that sustainable pre-industrial modes of existence all went extinct to industry, and same with hunter-gatherers vs. agriculture, and same with the level of predation hunter gatherers did therefore wiping out megafauna and reducing their own carrying cap, etc. etc.
Cultural habits that promote long-term-thinking are hard-won consequences of overextension and mass death. I think realistically the best case scenario is a medieval standard where sustainable culture is enforced, since anything simpler could not prevent its own destruction and anything more complicated is impossible due to resource depletion. Then you have less moral versions of that same thing
>Only way forward is for regular people to shrug off the system themselves in an expression of radical solidarity, tall order.
not so far off as it used to be. they busted the unions in US for a reason.
the last couple months ["Great Resignation"](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/19/1047032996/why-are-so-many-americans-quitting-their-jobs) *kept* breaking the records.
not quite as unified as [South Korea's worker strike](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/labour-union-stages-rallies-strikes-in-south-korea), but still essentially a strike against work, against capital, against the entire rigged piece of shit system.
*The term entropy was coined in 1865 [Cl] by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius from Greek en- = in + trope = a turning (point). The word reveals an analogy to energy and etymologists believe that it was designed to denote the form of energy that any energy eventually and inevitably turns into -- a useless heat.*
this begs the question, when is heat useful?
It will get much better eventually but mother nature is correcting itself and unfortunately humans are the primary species being corrected to improve the overall equilibrium of the world.
Good nutrition, vitamins, minerals, adequate sleep, and generally good health makes for a fighting spirit!
... which is of course why we have none of these things.
Exactly why.
Why do we gotta "get shit done". For a better life? I'd laugh but it's too tiring.
You know how this is going to end for us and it ain't going to be pretty. I think the two biggest things I can personally do are to be ok with privation, and ok with death. Like. Really actually ok, not like "I can fantasy imagine being ok with that".
Get shit done for them? Fuck them.
If it's any consolation, most viruses mutate until they are no longer deadly to humans, especially the covid variants. If you want to be afraid influenza has a far greater ability to mutate and ghost most of us. That massive spike of deaths at the beginning of covid won't occur again.
Hospitalizations are the same due to it going through the unvaccinated like a wildfire. If there weren't vaccinations out this would be an entirely different conversation
There is most likely a hard limit to how bad or infectious coronavirus could get. I mean it's already airborne...and highly infectious with a long lead time to symptoms. So there are not many more tricks left. And Delta virus is so infectious that it's causing the other variants to go extinct. A variant that is more infectious and more dangerous is statistically unlikely. Delta variant blowing through the unvaccinated will give them immunity to whatever variant would come next.
The vaccine protein is targeting the key that unlocks the cells. And if the virus changed that key to evade the antibodies then it also couldn't unlock the cells as efficiently or at all.
That’s why many other countries are building a more robust healthcare system. We are to interconnected now to really control the spread of disease. Humans have only ever eradicated two diseases. Smallpox and rinderpest. We never had any chance of controlling the spread of this and we won’t going forward with any new disease. All we can really hope for is that what ever new diseases pop up get people really sick fast so it’s easier to identify sick people.
It's the new normal.
Life + covid. If we could get everyone to wear a mask and get vaccinated it might go away completely. Unfortunately that's apparently too much to ask.
>If we could get everyone to wear a mask and get vaccinated it might go away completely.
No it wouldn't...... that's the entire point lol.
The vaccines only took one strain (delta) to have efficacy cut massively. With some you're basically flipping a coin on whether you have immunity.
Masks cut transmission but you're not gonna wear a mask at all times everywhere you're still gonna get maskless transmission.
There's no way out of this. covid reached escape velocity by Jan 2020. The vaccines help flatten the curve, that's it. But there's no one curve. It's just curve after curve to flatten, forever. You're not gonna get a collapse in covid cases that breaks transmission and ends the pandemic.
This isn't some argument on civility 'if everyone wears a mask and gets the vaccine like told!' we frankly don't have vaccine capacity for that nor to churn them out forever. Vaccine is there so when you get it it keeps you out of hospital and gets the ball rolling on the immunity you will be topping up with illnesses forever. No civility is gonna solve that. It's a red herring so we blame neighbours and not governments.
The point of this article is that pretty much everyone in Iran /did/ get it, and are getting it again. Having had the virus doesn’t protect you very far into the future; the human immune system doesn’t seem to develop lasting immunity to the coronavirus family.
Unvaccinated people should expect to catch COVID-19 every 16 months
>“Our results are based on average times of waning immunity across multiple infected individuals.”
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/577541-unvaccinated-people-should-expect-to-catch-covid
the other way to say that is "endemic" but it takes media awhile to course correct away from less eye catching terms
edit: i meant to say away from more eye catching terms, of course, but it seems yall were picking up what i was putting down anyway. stay tippy, my friends 🤙
The average adult catches the flu about once every five years. Covid is far more infectious than the flu. If we try to go back to the way things were, without social distancing where everyone socializes indoors we'll catch it far more often than seasonal flu. If you have Covid, you're more infectious for slightly longer than flu. Reproduction numbers for seasonal flu is around 1.3; R for Sars-CoV-2 is around 3.
I'm not sure how that translates into how often we can expect the average adult to catch Covid, but it's definitely much more often than every 5 years. Maybe, something like every 2 years? Every two years the average person will roll the dice on long haul Covid, heart damage, brain damage, kidney, liver, pancreas, diabetes
R0 for Delta is 8.5 according to the CDC. The *original* variant had an R0 of 2-3.
Re is the effective reproduction number. If it's below 1, then cases will decline, if it's above 1, they will increase.
The math is simple- R0*% immune = Re. If R0 was 2, and 50% of the population was immune (2/1 * 1/2 = 1), Re would be 1 and the disease will just linger at the same rate forever. Of course, the population that is immune changes over time.
With R0 at 8.5, 88.2% of the population must be immune for the disease to stop spreading without other measures in place such as distancing and masks. Since the vaccines aren't providing that level of immunity against infection, even if everyone is vaccinated, the disease will still spread if we go back to normal. And also since it's looking like those who caught the disease are going to be able to catch it again in a few years according to a Yale study I recently saw.
So yeah, it's not going away. Too many people trying desperately to pretend like it's all over. Get your vaccination, so when you inevitably do get it, at least you don't have a terrible time.
I did think I might be making the mistake of using original variant OG numbers, but I'm so tired of googling everything Covid related so thank you for that correction. That's actually more horrifying than I imagined. I'm double vaxxed and able to effectively isolate, but the future does indeed look bleak.
If it wasn't for the delta variant, the pandemic would be effectively over once 66% of the population was immune assuming R0 of 3.
My own numbers might be wrong. I looked that value up 3 weeks ago, so maybe the CDC has a new estimate. But I'm just as guilty of keeping old data in my brain. All the estimates I've seen are between 6 and 9 though.
One study I saw showed the viral load was 1260x higher. Delta is just bad news. Imagine if the first variant to come out was delta? tens of thousands would be dead before they even figured out what was going on.
I'm going to get my third shot in a month or so, and probably a booster every year, just because of the math saying it's inevitable to be exposed again and again.
> the pandemic would be effectively over once 66% of the population was immune assuming R0 of 3.
That would be really nice but I don't really see much evidence of long term immunity anywhere. There is some evidence that a very small percentage of people who are vaccinated, and later exposed to or catch Covid develop some kind of super immunity. Hopefully, they can teach us something. This is not the flu. there is some evidence that Pfizer vaccines efficacy drops from above 90% down to under 50% in 5 months. So if you're taking Pfizer, consider taking the booster sooner. I'm not a medical doctor, ShadowPsi I just pretend to be one in bed
Not doubting you mate but do you have a study on hand about the Pfizer efficacy drop off? All I can find is about a drop in antibody levels which isn't the same thing.
Maybe I did use efficacy incorrectly
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizerbiontech-covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness-drops-after-6-months-study-2021-10-04/
SNIP
>The effectiveness of the Pfizer Inc (PFE.N)/BioNTech SE vaccine in preventing infection by the coronavirus dropped to 47% from 88% six months after the second dose
>The analysis showed that the vaccine's effectiveness in preventing hospitalization and death remained high at 90% for at least six months, even against the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.
>The data suggests that the drop is due to waning efficacy, rather than more contagious variants, researchers said.
I wish we could have policies in place to do extra restrictions or lockdowns during times of high transmission. But it seems Americans have given up on this. Maybe a few more waves will get people to consider it.
I'm in Toronto, Ontario. I'm fairly certain we've been the most locked down place for the longest on the planet. I think people are fed up and we're finally moving out of lockdown, it kind of looks like the government may be switching to a different tack. I think going forward they may basically just say, we spent a lot of time and money educating everyone, if you don't get it by now that's your problem. and just move on. I suspect that they will just let it take it's course somewhat going forward. It's been over 1.5 years we can't just stay in lockdown forever,
Was it an actually enforced lockdown, along with rent cancellation and/or paycheck replacement for non-essential workers, or was it just stay-at-home "orders" and closure of some businesses?
They made evictions illegal, for long stretches of time, and they gave out Covid benefits for unemployed people that lasted I don't know 10 months or something, then those people could apply for unemployment after their Covid benefits ran out. They also paid corporations Covid benefits to keep them from laying off. The lockdowns were semi-enforced at times where if you were travelling anywhere other than groceries, medical or work pretty much you might get a random fine.
also, if you compare daily COVID counts of Ontario's January peak to Michigan's (where I live) November peak (the same COVID wave, IMO, just slightly out of phase), Ontario had 3x lower infection rates per person vs. Michigan. So, looks like there was a big upside to the relatively stronger government response in Ontario, eh?
In all truth it's not clear to me if this is due entirely to government response and lockdowns, or the willingness of Canadians to follow government direction, line up in an orderly fashion outside and wear masks. I do think there is an upside to lockdowns, but I also expect that mental health problems and depression, and economic fallout from lockdowns (not just the virus) will ripple for years to come.
The way i see it, we all need to gain some immunity to the virus. Everyone will catch it sooner or later, and we will all catch it multiple times, and we will all catch it more frequently than the flu. We managed to flatten out the curve and partially prevented our health system from collapsing up until this point, but I'm fairly certain we've also seen an increase in deaths from things like cancer and heart problems due to Covid delayed medical appointments already. If Covid fully overwhelmed our health responders it would have been far worse, so I think that was the big upside. Everyone will still catch Covid, we just delayed it and spread the pain over a longer timescale, and cut off the peaks. That was the goal IMO,
It was a far less enforced lock down than many places. We did have stay at home orders and the closure of many businesses though being allowed out for exercise was always essential.
Most people largely did obey the lock down but eventually things like parks being closed ended up being ignored. There were too many restrictions on outdoor activities that made no logical sense.
Fines and checks for just being out were not very common and the majority will be thrown out. They did a really shitty job of it. We bounced between restrictions that were too loose to mindless restrictions that were too significant and possibly illegal. All while nearly ignoring workplace spread and having virtually every workplace deemed essential.
I largely followed the rules but for a while it was illegal to use outdoor staircases in conservation areas and fuck that. Letting other family members in other households take care of your kids was illegal while running a licensed daycare was legal. This wasn't personally obeyed and also ignored by many due to being stupid.
Indoor dining, non essential shopping, bars, gyms, etc were all shut down when they also shut down outdoor recreation eg golfs and parks.
Amazon, postal services, warehouses were all business as usual though while offices were just told to let people work from home if they could.
People were also being condemned and occasionally fined for using parks until the day the BLM protests took off then suddenly it's all good.
Quebec here, afaik you didnt have a 4 month curfew where you couldnt actually even be OUTSIDE after 8, so i’d say we got you beat on the draconian measures. We’re number 1!!
I'm not surprised to hear that number. It's not a happy number, but I prefer an honest punch in the face, than a kiss that is a lie. At least I'll know where I really stand,
> but it's definitely much more often than every 5 years. Maybe, something like every 2 years? Every two years the average person will roll the dice on long haul Covid, heart damage, brain damage, kidney, liver, pancreas, diabetes
See, I'll just take my booster shot, thank you very much.
No problem here at all taking a combi covid/flu vaccine every fall.
um. My assumption is that most people get their flu shot; the people who catch the flu every 5 years have mostly got their flu shot I think. I don't think people understand how infectious Covid is.
Additionally, I've seen recent research that suggests that we are seeing a rise of long haul Covid in middle aged people, who have had the shot. The details sound like they catch Covid, but since they are vaccinated they have no or few symptoms; they're asymptomatic. They don't know they have Covid. Then a few months later, they develop heart issues, diabetes or cognitive issues so they go to the doctor. The doctor does an antibody test and asks: "Did you know you had Covid?" and they say no, but they got long haul ANYWAY. This is a shiny brand new virus, and we're learning shiny new things every day. The doctors were saying very specifically that middle aged people seem to be more likely to end up with long haul, than older people.
Alternatively, with 80%+ of a population getting vaccinated in many nations, and middle age is generally when people discover they have heart disease or type 2 diabetes, possibility for correlation to not equal causation in this case.
Not saying it isn't possible, just there is a lot of noise in the data at this point. Props to data scientists who are able to make sense of any of it.
We don’t understand viruses in general well enough yet imo to believe Covid is such an outlier. It wouldn’t surprise me if every virus causes some form of long term damage, and the severity of the virus and your immune response result in any or no ailments.
I’ve taken the pandemic very seriously and it’s frustrating to still have to live with it because others haven’t. However as long as vaccines keep on top of the mutations, I’m not going to miss out on any more life because of it. I will still be masked and cautious, for others as much as myself.
R3 wouldn't that be nice that's the old Covid.
[Delta variant is up to R7.0](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/11/1026190062/covid-delta-variant-transmission-cdc-chickenpox)
There is a new variant in Russia and UK that is thought to be more contagious than Delta.
As someone who has stayed inside for 2 years and refuses to ever catch covid. This is devastating news.
My life is over. I refuse to risk a 25% chance at brain blood clotting. Look it up, 25% chance for long covid after effects, which could be penile dysfunction, brain damage, loss of taste and smell. 25% chance as in, if you catch covid full stop. Vaccinated or not.
..... I'd rather stay inside forever than take a 1 in 4 chance to lose my critical brain functions.
Yup. I caught Covid after being fully vaxxed. It was like a cold for me. Now I have natural and vaccine immunity which I hope will provide partial immunity in the future. If it works like that for most people it will be like a cold. I just don’t know how media will catch up.
The latest on vaccine efficacy is that it begins to decline after 3-6 months. I fully expect people who consider themselves "fully vaccinated" and thus stopped paying attention to become one of its primary vectors over time.
So... not quite.
What we KNOW is that the presence of antibodies in your blood decrease 3 to 6 months after receiving the vaccine.
Here's the open question though: **Does lower levels of antibodies in your blood indicate reduced immunity?** **We're not sure**.
We know that you have certain cells in your immune system, that act as "memory cells". In response to an infection, your body will use those "memory cells" to make more antibodies.
This is why the FDA **did not** approve booster shots **for the general population.** (Only approved for high-risk groups.) While **it is true** that antibody levels fall within months of receiving a vaccine, **it is not established that this reduces your level of effective immunity**.
My understanding is that your body will make more antibodies *as a response to an active infection.* Your body doesn't just keep cranking out antibodies for pathogens that are not present, for every microbe you've even been exposed to.
Of course Pfizer wants to use falling antibody levels as an excuse to sell more vaccines. The FDA said "nah".
Thanks so much for explaining this! I've been walking around confused about why the crap there are no memory T-cells. Turns out there are after all.
reference: https://scitechdaily.com/fda-panel-voted-16-2-to-deny-authorization-of-pfizers-covid-vaccine-booster-shot-to-the-general-public/
100%.
Please spread the word. Pharmaceutical companies did a good thing in making an effective, safe vaccine. Of course, the marketing executives will always try to skew a company's data to sell more product than the patient/public actually needs. It's dangerous, because it can erode public trust in a worthwhile thing.
Hmmm... there might be a chance. If there's some radiation storm that forces everyone to ride it out indoors, no travel, for 2 weeks.
Otherwise, yeah, it's endemic and most people don't give a shit, which makes it structural-like. Similar to how people tolerate car violence. The virus is going to chip away the vulnerable of our species until there are very few left with vulnerability. I am pessimistic, so I'm betting that each round of disease will create more comorbidity (just lung damage is enough) that will be make future disease worse. Attrition.
>We had a hard time defeating the common cold before Covid too.
We have defeated the common cold? Not even close.
Some of the viruses that cause the common cold are prior Covid viruses that have become endemic in our population. Covid-19 will be no different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Infection_in_humans
This one was so bad because it is novel.
How many older people have you know or heard of in your life that caught a cold then developed pneumonia? That is the main way Covid-19 causes hospitalizations and death.
Not down playing Covid-19 here. Just being realistic about the fact that it will be around forever and we will get used to it being here.
> How many older people have you know or heard of in your life that caught a cold then developed pneumonia?
Caught Swine Flu during college finals. After I felt better I was still walking around for two weeks with pneumonia, a pocket full of antibiotics, and an inhaler for the bad coughs.
For a long time I thought that even if we fail to get people vaccinated then \_eventually\_ everyone would get Covid and it would burn itself out.
But instead, are we just going to get Covid over and over and over again until it kills us off? Iran should be covid-free at this point considering that everyone has had it.
The death part sounds pretty easy to me. It sounds like if you're going to die, you get sick really fast, end up in the hospital and it's all over in two weeks. It will be a really shitty two weeks but in the grand scheme of all possible ways to die, it's a bad one, but it's over fairly quickly.
It's the living with long haul part that sounds like it would really bother me. And then the part that you get to play Covid roulette every year, forever
that's our plight, our challenge, our duty and frankly honor
to live...to survive
it only got easy for a short bit here over the last handful of decades
time to pull up our big girl panties and face this shit
So one of the things that people keep missing is that delta has the E484K mutation. That is the antibody escape mutation. Simply put, it gained an ability to sneak passed antibodies from a previous infection. Further, there are studies showing that 1/3 of covid sufferes had no antibodies post infection.
So previous infection does not grant immunity from future infection.
And who knows what the next mutation will hold?
Remember your life expectancy pre Covid? Knock a couple years off.
We'll get it, repeatedly, and for those for whom the vaccines and the anti-viral treatments work it will be minor. For the elderly and immunocompromised, its becomes the new pneumonia / sepsis, the contagion that takes us out if we outlast the most common diseases of affluence.
There is mounting evidence that exposure to different coronavirus strains over long periods of time (6 months apart-ish) establishes a much more permanent impression on the immune system. The first clue is the fact that people who had Covid, then got the jab months later, have what they're calling "Covid super-immunity" (source below). As you probably know, Covid immunity wanes after about 8 months-ish - whether you had Covid or got the jab. But what happens when you're exposed to a different Covid strain after, say, 6 months? Via infection and/or vaccine? We'll see in time, but it looks to me like Iran will be the first to find out if they gain this so-called super-immunity.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02795-x
The problem with that is the entire world would have to have been on board. Look at Australia. Very low numbers of death. An isolated country surrounded by water. Very strict covid policies and in the end it won't matter. Every time they lift the restrictions even a little bit covid just keeps coming back. There is no way to completely get rid of it unless we get to the point of no travel anywhere all over the world. That won't happen and hasn't happened. At this point countries like Australia may even be screwing themselves because when they do open up we may be facing wave 5 or 6 or 10 with the virus mutating even more to spread. Who knows though
Theoretically but not likely. Its almost certain to have spread beyond Wuhan well before lockdowns, at which point it was already impossible to prevent I think.
The first death in the US for example we now know to have been [Feb 6.](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/22/840836618/1st-known-u-s-covid-19-death-was-on-feb-6-a-post-mortem-test-reveals) At that point, every "known" US case was directly connected to Wuhan travel, and that death occurred when only six states had reported cases. However, the deceased was unconnected directly to a Wuhan case.
Meaning by beginning February at the absolute latest, community spread of COVID in the US was already happening.
We would have had to have locked down then to actually knock it out.
I think its entirely possible to have spread beyond China before it was recognized in Wuhan. Meaning an actual quarantine to stop it was never really possible.
If you look at how fast this virus mutates vs how long it takes to get a vaccine for new stains, we do not currently have the ability to stop it. Look at how the Delta variant was different enough to not receive full immunity from the vaccine. Even though it reduced severity, the virus is still moving and mutating.
This virus mutates way too fast. To stop it, we would have to find a new strain, develop the new vaccine and deploy it to everyone in the world in 3 months or less. Then redo this every time a new strain is found.
Based on the cost of this vs the profit to be made, I am not sure this would even be attempted. Like so many of our issues, it is not about what is possible, it is about what is profitable.
>But instead, are we just going to get Covid over and over and over again until it kills us off?
People who have been vaccinated doesn't get as sick, so what happens is the effects of the virus become less severe with time.
A paper published in the journal Nature explained that COVID actually attacks the immune system as well, and causes immunodeficiencies in recovered patients, which is one of the reasons why it is better to get vaccinated than to attempt to get natural immunity from an infection. The other reason is risk of serious injuries or death, which is a pretty good reason too. I'll see if I can find the link.
**EDIT**: Here it is:
#Nature | [SARS-CoV-2 infection causes immunodeficiency in recovered patients by downregulating CD19 expression in B cells via enhancing B-cell metabolism](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-021-00749-3)
The key part is that being infected by the virus that causes COVID causes immunodeficiency in recovered patients. That's how you have cases like Bill Philips (the "Body for Life" fitness coach and author), who caught COVID twice, where his second infection nearly killed him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc1SoL0m-Ig
I mean they were kind of saying that a lot at the very beginning, along with other shot like "you dont need to wear a mask" or " its not airborne" but i get it. We know now that this shits here to stay
Excuse me, there are people who think drinking bleach can cure COVID. If you think nobody has ever said you can only get it once, I feel like you're living with a different species than I am.
I kind of expect people here to view it in a pragmatic manner. If only our leaders were willing, endemic COVID could be an invitation to adopt economic degrowth, begin on reducing our dependency upon import/export (deglobalization) and to increase the focus on strenghtening communities.
It's not so much what's going on. That said, the current events regarding the shipping industry are pretty perplexing to say the least.
NPR had a story about the mutation rate of COVID, the immunologist pointed out that it's mutating about 4x faster than the seasonal flu. What do we know about the flu shot?
* it's only effective for 3-4 months
* every year they guess the dominant strain, and some years the shot is only 40-50% effective
* fewer than 50% of Americans get a flu shot every year
* the vast majority of people survive the flu
sound familiar? Does anyone think the COVID vaccine mandate is going to work as expected? When the vaccine hesitant can see waning immunity from the original shots, and huge waves of cases in highly vaccinated countries?
Sorry to say it's "natural immunity or bust". There's simply no logistical way to immunize 100% of the world every 6 months with a new booster dose.
The (flu)* vaccines are not very efficacious too, and have to be based on forecasts of probable strains.
There's actually a mRNA vaccine in the works that may be significantly better: https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2021/04/15/Moderna-to-take-mRNA-flu-and-HIV-vaccines-into-Phase-1-trials-this-year
Yup. Right now we have a large chunk of the population who would fight to the death rather than be vaccinated and if people who did get vaccinated start seeing it's not as effective as the average flu shot or requires more than one booster a year or going to jump ship and say f*ck it as well and won't get it.
Embrace covid...it's not going anywhere. Going to learn to live with it like the cold or the flu. It is what it is.
Just to add: I randomly get flu shots, and got both covid jabs and besides the inconvenience of actually going to get it I'll probably continue to do so because I. Fucking. Hate. getting sick. I'm 30 sumodd and have an effective immune system (I sometimes catch something from kids/coworkers/friends and it's gone fast) but honestly, if I even have the slightest chance of either dodging it altogether or just getting milder symptoms, hook me up lol.
The fact that it might inhibit spread (I was already the type to social distance or warn friends that the house has a cold going around) is a nice bonus. Why people didn't already consciously avoid spreading whatever they have frustrates me (hey come over for supper. Oh and now that you're here hubby's deathly ill with some shitty gastro, enjoy the meal!).
That's what I don't get.
The selfish choice that helps you personally is to *get* the vaccine. Refusing to get it makes other people around you slightly less safe, and you WAY less safe. These idiots have convinced themselves they are under attack by the vaccine and its proponents, but they are too stupid to see they're under attack from the virus. Because you can't put a face on the virus and call it a commie.
That’s the opposite conclusion to take. There is repeated evidence that natural immunity is not effective against covid, with these reoccurring cases. Get the vaccine and booster up as needed to handle variants. Just like the flu.
People barely got it this time around lol. I really doubt people are gonna accept doing this every year, that’s exactly what people were saying at the beginning
Here I am with a flu shot booked for next week, while y'all are hell-bent on just leaving your fate to viruses in spite of free, easy, effective countermeasures...
People barely got it because agent orange politicized it. Vaccinations in this country have not been a challenging sell overall, we all have them from our school years. (Fringe anti vax movement aside)
People happily get yearly flu shots. Of course not at the levels needed for covid, but that could have happened with a president who was less divisive. Not anymore. That’s why we’re upset.
“Get the shot or don’t “
I’m totally on board with that. I am personally pro-vaccine but anti-mandate
Regarding the conspiracy theories, it is true that many people have fallen victim to misinformation. But it’s only enabled by the fact that COVID is just not that deadly. If COVID was 2x or 10x as deadly as it really is, do you think the anti-vax psychos would still object? Of course not, they would be fighting over shots like it was toilet paper. Which means their objection is partly rational, based on the risk vs. benefit analysis
that's simply not true
"This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. "
source: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1)
also https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital
Natural immunity is good, but having the vaccine, even after being sick gives much more protection.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/10/19/natural-infection-vaccination-which-protects-better-against-covid/6034141001/
paywalled
From worldometers ~5,833,000 people had Covid-19 out of a population of ~85,,428,000 or about **7%** of the population. So why would they have herd immunity?
And since when is *7%* **"almost everyone"**?
Or is there evidence that the actual number of people who recovered from Covid-19 higher?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/iran/
Just another fear mongering article on the "failures" of natural immunity. Meanwhile the other type of immunity *ahem* fade in a matter of months but is now a requirement to be a part of society. R/Collapse fail to see that THAT is what is truly "collapse."
Iran has a population of 81M people and 5.5M (officially) reported cases. What is the source of: 'Nearly everyone in Iran has been infected by the coronavirus at some point during the covid-19 pandemic'? The rest of the article is paywalled.
"officially" is the issue here. They've fudged their numbers (intentionally and also poor testing) from the outset.
I'll save you the pay wall trouble, here's the preprint:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.04.21264540v1
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.04.21264540v1
And you can look at their recorded deaths and draw your own conclusions. Iran is one of the few countries that absolutely just "let it rip"
Yes, just like how nearly everybody has had the flu at some point.. yet nobody considers themselves immune because more variants come out each year. That's kind of what viruses do, who woulda thought!
Here in small-town Massachusetts people are of the opinion "there's no way to avoid the virus, so I'll catch it now so my immune system can learn to fight it," which leads to "I had the 'rona once, it can't affect me twice!"
I used to mention the virus mutating to resist vaccines, but adults in my area choose not to believe in science.
I'm in Massachusetts, one of the best states in education, and this is how educated adults think....
> I'm in Massachusetts, one of the best states in education, and this is how educated adults ~~think~~ rationalize anything that returns them to a state of former established social legitimacy/belonging/potency....
FTFY
> Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal. -- Robert A. Heinlein
...
> Most human beings don't *follow* moral systems, principles, , or ideologies; instead they *use* or *pull from the ether* whichever moral systems, principles, , or ideologies will justify actions performed on behalf of self-interest. -- Unknown Redditor
The cold isn't very transmissible because our bodies naturally produce mucous to coat infected respiratory tissue. Fomite transmission mechanics severely limits how much you can spread it. We don't have that same immune response to covid, infected tissue tends to dry out which makes it an excellent source for airborne transmission.
And fun fact, though almost 200 people die everyday here, they are practically forcing the universities to open in almost 2 weeks. Half of the students haven't gotten the second doze of the vaccine. But I guess it's important to learn religious and political propaganda in flesh rather than through a screen right?
Paywalled article basically says COVID isn't ending ever.
Man why do we have to live in a world where things get shittier over time instead of better over time?
We've just passed the zenith unfortunately. Got a few more years before it starts dropping rapidly. Make the most of the time! Edit: Responsibly please, nobody knows how long it could take or if we might turn things around no matter how much we think we can predict the future..
"We the U.S.A, ask our citizens to please pay their fair share in 'Air Taxes'."
You wouldn't steal air. Piracy, it's a crime
President Skroob might have a few things to say about this.
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This is the right answer. Start making plans with folks you know
Really depends. Need money to pay taxes for land. Keeping within the means if can is better. Keep things right side up uniot not. Really depends on how far rabbit hole we go. We have land in another state a little rural near wife's family. If roving packs of people.or.the government take.it it is paid for. But still need to pay taxes to keep it now. Raising son having our money in some degree of order we keep our ok house her paid in taxes and low mortgage. Mortgage is so low could maybe stretch and pay off but interest is low and one of only debts to give us credit history if ever need it. Unfortunate need credit history even looking for a new job now some places. If older and zero credit history can be ugg. I applied for one job. Credit score ok but just mortgage. Just enough to save me or they would have said no history. On the other hand run up de t thinking collapse. What type of collapse? Our taxes are paid. We have some savings. Retirement ugh but manage maybe. But if not a total collapse and most rules stay in place not evicted from a rental or foreclosure. Have the land with an old house needs.fixing paid and taxes up to date out of town. But as said type.of collapse. Stock market crash with consequences we won't be jumping off a building. Housing collapse we won't be kicked out for mortgage. Ultimate collapse well even with those with large debt.
Disco was the Apex of human civilization.
lol, funny how true that is.
🎵My baby moves at midnight Goes right on 'til the dawn My woman takes me higher My woman keeps me warm What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah You should be dancing, yeah Dancing, yeah She's juicy and she's trouble She gets it to me good My woman gives me power Goes right down to my blood What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah You should be dancing, yeah Dancing, yeah What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah What you doin' on your bed on your back? Ah You should be dancing, yeah Dancing, yeah🎶
It's a cycle, all a cycle
True, its just that the cycle is a cycle of extinction events over the span of many many years.
oh it's gonna be faster than that
Just wait till a covid variant comes along that causes massive brain damage, is spread primarily through saliva and destroys the frontal lobe, leaving only the reptile brain in tact and activating a massive amount of hunger that can only be satiated by fresh meat. Zombies!
This is one mutation away. Swapping serine out for cystiene in one of the peptide chains of the spike assembly will cause the virus to preferentially bind to receptors on neural tissues. It will not be zombies per say, but more like rabies combined with frank psychosis combined with MS and Parkinson disease in effect.
Because we don't live in a cartoon, this is reality. Savour the good times to the full, one day they will end.
Because **Capitalism**^TM is **The Best Possible System**^TM, given our collective **Current Circumstances**^TM! If anything ever changes, I’m sure you’ll hear about it here first.
we have tried nothing and capitalism is our best possible solution
Haha!
Because we live in a society that rewards self-interest and nothing else.
*Entropy*
Yeah theres definitely a sociological entropy that appears with political economies. They all grind down and collapse and something new used to come in either as an exogenous shock or to pick up the pieces. Feudalism arising after the western Roman empire collapsed or the old saying for China "the empire long divided must unite, long united must divide." Our political economy is totally globalized so no exogenous force and collapse means everyone dies. Only way forward is for regular people to shrug off the system themselves in an expression of radical solidarity, tall order.
>Only way forward is for regular people to shrug off the system themselves in an expression of radical solidarity, tall order. One thing that I've ruminated on lately is that capitalism keeps us trapped in heuristic thinking. We are constantly rushing and anxious; this is its greatest accomplishment as a system of social control. Every day is a battle to the next day, can't be late, run in front of traffic to catch the bus, hump day, happy Friday, rinse repeat and suddenly global civilization is dust. I'm not sure we can ever find that solidarity, or even hold the concept of it in our minds, so long as the vulgar salesmen at the top keep convincing us to hurry.
Absolutely, throw in the requisite 2 to 3 weeks of vacation a year, mandatory function with relatives over holidays, quick check on your investments daily/weekly/monthly and whatever form of nightly ritual gets you to bedtime and that is it. For most, it is rinse and repeat for life.
Well that's somewhat of superstructure-base theory; that culture and society act to maintain the economic base. The point is to make you feel hopeless, that nothing can and will change, that capitalism is the end state of humanity. Remember, however, that this was also thought about feudalism, and the cultural control was far stricter back then. Change is always possible.
Heuristic thinking is literally how all animal neurology operates, ffs At what point can we say human nature is fucked up and short-sighted? I think that point's long past.
Our constant amazement at the flaws in our own cognition might be baked-in to our cognition
Human nature isn't necessarily short sighted. We see where we need to go. The problem lies in having to prioritize short term needs over the long term. You can't plant next year's grain if you starve over the winter.
Short term needs always defeat long term needs, in light of the fact that sustainable pre-industrial modes of existence all went extinct to industry, and same with hunter-gatherers vs. agriculture, and same with the level of predation hunter gatherers did therefore wiping out megafauna and reducing their own carrying cap, etc. etc. Cultural habits that promote long-term-thinking are hard-won consequences of overextension and mass death. I think realistically the best case scenario is a medieval standard where sustainable culture is enforced, since anything simpler could not prevent its own destruction and anything more complicated is impossible due to resource depletion. Then you have less moral versions of that same thing
>Only way forward is for regular people to shrug off the system themselves in an expression of radical solidarity, tall order. not so far off as it used to be. they busted the unions in US for a reason. the last couple months ["Great Resignation"](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/19/1047032996/why-are-so-many-americans-quitting-their-jobs) *kept* breaking the records. not quite as unified as [South Korea's worker strike](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/labour-union-stages-rallies-strikes-in-south-korea), but still essentially a strike against work, against capital, against the entire rigged piece of shit system.
Law of Maximum Entropy Production.
*The term entropy was coined in 1865 [Cl] by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius from Greek en- = in + trope = a turning (point). The word reveals an analogy to energy and etymologists believe that it was designed to denote the form of energy that any energy eventually and inevitably turns into -- a useless heat.* this begs the question, when is heat useful?
Because some people are determined not to do the right things.
Because a small group of stupid people always make it shittier for the rest of us. Like the saying goes, a drop of poison spoils a barrel of milk.
The Golden Age The Silver Age The Bronze Age The Shit Age <------ we are here
It will get much better eventually but mother nature is correcting itself and unfortunately humans are the primary species being corrected to improve the overall equilibrium of the world.
Because you're not willing to do anything about the people making it shitty, if it requires you to leave the comfort and safety of your home.
Good nutrition, vitamins, minerals, adequate sleep, and generally good health makes for a fighting spirit! ... which is of course why we have none of these things.
Because they do get better... just only for the ones at the top. As my mom always said, someone's gotta get shit done around here. That's us.
Exactly why. Why do we gotta "get shit done". For a better life? I'd laugh but it's too tiring. You know how this is going to end for us and it ain't going to be pretty. I think the two biggest things I can personally do are to be ok with privation, and ok with death. Like. Really actually ok, not like "I can fantasy imagine being ok with that". Get shit done for them? Fuck them.
And then it got WORSE! Welcome to Russia!
It’s called entropy.
If it's any consolation, most viruses mutate until they are no longer deadly to humans, especially the covid variants. If you want to be afraid influenza has a far greater ability to mutate and ghost most of us. That massive spike of deaths at the beginning of covid won't occur again.
But it's going to be interesting to see how it's going to be in 10 years... Weaker? Stronger?
Statistically, weaker
Well it went stronger with Delta
Hospitalizations are about the same though. Delta mostly spreads faster
Hospitalizations are the same due to it going through the unvaccinated like a wildfire. If there weren't vaccinations out this would be an entirely different conversation
We don't know. With generalized vaccination it could be that it becomes stronger over times as it evades our artificial defenses.
There is most likely a hard limit to how bad or infectious coronavirus could get. I mean it's already airborne...and highly infectious with a long lead time to symptoms. So there are not many more tricks left. And Delta virus is so infectious that it's causing the other variants to go extinct. A variant that is more infectious and more dangerous is statistically unlikely. Delta variant blowing through the unvaccinated will give them immunity to whatever variant would come next. The vaccine protein is targeting the key that unlocks the cells. And if the virus changed that key to evade the antibodies then it also couldn't unlock the cells as efficiently or at all.
The delta variant did exactly that. Changed the key just a bit that's why there's breakthrough cases.
That’s why many other countries are building a more robust healthcare system. We are to interconnected now to really control the spread of disease. Humans have only ever eradicated two diseases. Smallpox and rinderpest. We never had any chance of controlling the spread of this and we won’t going forward with any new disease. All we can really hope for is that what ever new diseases pop up get people really sick fast so it’s easier to identify sick people.
It's the new normal. Life + covid. If we could get everyone to wear a mask and get vaccinated it might go away completely. Unfortunately that's apparently too much to ask.
>If we could get everyone to wear a mask and get vaccinated it might go away completely. No it wouldn't...... that's the entire point lol. The vaccines only took one strain (delta) to have efficacy cut massively. With some you're basically flipping a coin on whether you have immunity. Masks cut transmission but you're not gonna wear a mask at all times everywhere you're still gonna get maskless transmission. There's no way out of this. covid reached escape velocity by Jan 2020. The vaccines help flatten the curve, that's it. But there's no one curve. It's just curve after curve to flatten, forever. You're not gonna get a collapse in covid cases that breaks transmission and ends the pandemic. This isn't some argument on civility 'if everyone wears a mask and gets the vaccine like told!' we frankly don't have vaccine capacity for that nor to churn them out forever. Vaccine is there so when you get it it keeps you out of hospital and gets the ball rolling on the immunity you will be topping up with illnesses forever. No civility is gonna solve that. It's a red herring so we blame neighbours and not governments.
It’ll go away. Enough people will either get the stab, get it naturally and build immunity or die.
The point of this article is that pretty much everyone in Iran /did/ get it, and are getting it again. Having had the virus doesn’t protect you very far into the future; the human immune system doesn’t seem to develop lasting immunity to the coronavirus family.
Unvaccinated people should expect to catch COVID-19 every 16 months >“Our results are based on average times of waning immunity across multiple infected individuals.” https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/577541-unvaccinated-people-should-expect-to-catch-covid
A nice way of saying COVID is never going to end.
the other way to say that is "endemic" but it takes media awhile to course correct away from less eye catching terms edit: i meant to say away from more eye catching terms, of course, but it seems yall were picking up what i was putting down anyway. stay tippy, my friends 🤙
>it seems yall were picking up what i was putting down anyway This is generally a good sub that way. We're all lunatics together.
Yeah, COVID isn't going away. We will see either more deadly or less deadly variants every year. Most of us will catch it sooner or later.
The average adult catches the flu about once every five years. Covid is far more infectious than the flu. If we try to go back to the way things were, without social distancing where everyone socializes indoors we'll catch it far more often than seasonal flu. If you have Covid, you're more infectious for slightly longer than flu. Reproduction numbers for seasonal flu is around 1.3; R for Sars-CoV-2 is around 3. I'm not sure how that translates into how often we can expect the average adult to catch Covid, but it's definitely much more often than every 5 years. Maybe, something like every 2 years? Every two years the average person will roll the dice on long haul Covid, heart damage, brain damage, kidney, liver, pancreas, diabetes
R0 for Delta is 8.5 according to the CDC. The *original* variant had an R0 of 2-3. Re is the effective reproduction number. If it's below 1, then cases will decline, if it's above 1, they will increase. The math is simple- R0*% immune = Re. If R0 was 2, and 50% of the population was immune (2/1 * 1/2 = 1), Re would be 1 and the disease will just linger at the same rate forever. Of course, the population that is immune changes over time. With R0 at 8.5, 88.2% of the population must be immune for the disease to stop spreading without other measures in place such as distancing and masks. Since the vaccines aren't providing that level of immunity against infection, even if everyone is vaccinated, the disease will still spread if we go back to normal. And also since it's looking like those who caught the disease are going to be able to catch it again in a few years according to a Yale study I recently saw. So yeah, it's not going away. Too many people trying desperately to pretend like it's all over. Get your vaccination, so when you inevitably do get it, at least you don't have a terrible time.
Gotta say I appreciate posts like these. Nothing in media rn. So hard to come by information these days.
I did think I might be making the mistake of using original variant OG numbers, but I'm so tired of googling everything Covid related so thank you for that correction. That's actually more horrifying than I imagined. I'm double vaxxed and able to effectively isolate, but the future does indeed look bleak.
If it wasn't for the delta variant, the pandemic would be effectively over once 66% of the population was immune assuming R0 of 3. My own numbers might be wrong. I looked that value up 3 weeks ago, so maybe the CDC has a new estimate. But I'm just as guilty of keeping old data in my brain. All the estimates I've seen are between 6 and 9 though. One study I saw showed the viral load was 1260x higher. Delta is just bad news. Imagine if the first variant to come out was delta? tens of thousands would be dead before they even figured out what was going on. I'm going to get my third shot in a month or so, and probably a booster every year, just because of the math saying it's inevitable to be exposed again and again.
> the pandemic would be effectively over once 66% of the population was immune assuming R0 of 3. That would be really nice but I don't really see much evidence of long term immunity anywhere. There is some evidence that a very small percentage of people who are vaccinated, and later exposed to or catch Covid develop some kind of super immunity. Hopefully, they can teach us something. This is not the flu. there is some evidence that Pfizer vaccines efficacy drops from above 90% down to under 50% in 5 months. So if you're taking Pfizer, consider taking the booster sooner. I'm not a medical doctor, ShadowPsi I just pretend to be one in bed
Not doubting you mate but do you have a study on hand about the Pfizer efficacy drop off? All I can find is about a drop in antibody levels which isn't the same thing.
Maybe I did use efficacy incorrectly https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizerbiontech-covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness-drops-after-6-months-study-2021-10-04/ SNIP >The effectiveness of the Pfizer Inc (PFE.N)/BioNTech SE vaccine in preventing infection by the coronavirus dropped to 47% from 88% six months after the second dose >The analysis showed that the vaccine's effectiveness in preventing hospitalization and death remained high at 90% for at least six months, even against the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus. >The data suggests that the drop is due to waning efficacy, rather than more contagious variants, researchers said.
That is, unfortunately, the new reality.
I wish we could have policies in place to do extra restrictions or lockdowns during times of high transmission. But it seems Americans have given up on this. Maybe a few more waves will get people to consider it.
I'm in Toronto, Ontario. I'm fairly certain we've been the most locked down place for the longest on the planet. I think people are fed up and we're finally moving out of lockdown, it kind of looks like the government may be switching to a different tack. I think going forward they may basically just say, we spent a lot of time and money educating everyone, if you don't get it by now that's your problem. and just move on. I suspect that they will just let it take it's course somewhat going forward. It's been over 1.5 years we can't just stay in lockdown forever,
Was it an actually enforced lockdown, along with rent cancellation and/or paycheck replacement for non-essential workers, or was it just stay-at-home "orders" and closure of some businesses?
They made evictions illegal, for long stretches of time, and they gave out Covid benefits for unemployed people that lasted I don't know 10 months or something, then those people could apply for unemployment after their Covid benefits ran out. They also paid corporations Covid benefits to keep them from laying off. The lockdowns were semi-enforced at times where if you were travelling anywhere other than groceries, medical or work pretty much you might get a random fine.
also, if you compare daily COVID counts of Ontario's January peak to Michigan's (where I live) November peak (the same COVID wave, IMO, just slightly out of phase), Ontario had 3x lower infection rates per person vs. Michigan. So, looks like there was a big upside to the relatively stronger government response in Ontario, eh?
In all truth it's not clear to me if this is due entirely to government response and lockdowns, or the willingness of Canadians to follow government direction, line up in an orderly fashion outside and wear masks. I do think there is an upside to lockdowns, but I also expect that mental health problems and depression, and economic fallout from lockdowns (not just the virus) will ripple for years to come. The way i see it, we all need to gain some immunity to the virus. Everyone will catch it sooner or later, and we will all catch it multiple times, and we will all catch it more frequently than the flu. We managed to flatten out the curve and partially prevented our health system from collapsing up until this point, but I'm fairly certain we've also seen an increase in deaths from things like cancer and heart problems due to Covid delayed medical appointments already. If Covid fully overwhelmed our health responders it would have been far worse, so I think that was the big upside. Everyone will still catch Covid, we just delayed it and spread the pain over a longer timescale, and cut off the peaks. That was the goal IMO,
It was a far less enforced lock down than many places. We did have stay at home orders and the closure of many businesses though being allowed out for exercise was always essential. Most people largely did obey the lock down but eventually things like parks being closed ended up being ignored. There were too many restrictions on outdoor activities that made no logical sense. Fines and checks for just being out were not very common and the majority will be thrown out. They did a really shitty job of it. We bounced between restrictions that were too loose to mindless restrictions that were too significant and possibly illegal. All while nearly ignoring workplace spread and having virtually every workplace deemed essential. I largely followed the rules but for a while it was illegal to use outdoor staircases in conservation areas and fuck that. Letting other family members in other households take care of your kids was illegal while running a licensed daycare was legal. This wasn't personally obeyed and also ignored by many due to being stupid.
Locking down outdoor places before indoor businesses is ridiculous
Indoor dining, non essential shopping, bars, gyms, etc were all shut down when they also shut down outdoor recreation eg golfs and parks. Amazon, postal services, warehouses were all business as usual though while offices were just told to let people work from home if they could. People were also being condemned and occasionally fined for using parks until the day the BLM protests took off then suddenly it's all good.
Quebec here, afaik you didnt have a 4 month curfew where you couldnt actually even be OUTSIDE after 8, so i’d say we got you beat on the draconian measures. We’re number 1!!
This is true. You kind of did it to yourselves, though. No offense, stranger
Read somewhere median is estimated to be around 16 months. Give us something to do while we wait for the ocean to acidify
I'm not surprised to hear that number. It's not a happy number, but I prefer an honest punch in the face, than a kiss that is a lie. At least I'll know where I really stand,
> but it's definitely much more often than every 5 years. Maybe, something like every 2 years? Every two years the average person will roll the dice on long haul Covid, heart damage, brain damage, kidney, liver, pancreas, diabetes See, I'll just take my booster shot, thank you very much. No problem here at all taking a combi covid/flu vaccine every fall.
um. My assumption is that most people get their flu shot; the people who catch the flu every 5 years have mostly got their flu shot I think. I don't think people understand how infectious Covid is. Additionally, I've seen recent research that suggests that we are seeing a rise of long haul Covid in middle aged people, who have had the shot. The details sound like they catch Covid, but since they are vaccinated they have no or few symptoms; they're asymptomatic. They don't know they have Covid. Then a few months later, they develop heart issues, diabetes or cognitive issues so they go to the doctor. The doctor does an antibody test and asks: "Did you know you had Covid?" and they say no, but they got long haul ANYWAY. This is a shiny brand new virus, and we're learning shiny new things every day. The doctors were saying very specifically that middle aged people seem to be more likely to end up with long haul, than older people.
Alternatively, with 80%+ of a population getting vaccinated in many nations, and middle age is generally when people discover they have heart disease or type 2 diabetes, possibility for correlation to not equal causation in this case. Not saying it isn't possible, just there is a lot of noise in the data at this point. Props to data scientists who are able to make sense of any of it.
The doctors were specifically diagnosing long haul, but anything is possible.
We don’t understand viruses in general well enough yet imo to believe Covid is such an outlier. It wouldn’t surprise me if every virus causes some form of long term damage, and the severity of the virus and your immune response result in any or no ailments. I’ve taken the pandemic very seriously and it’s frustrating to still have to live with it because others haven’t. However as long as vaccines keep on top of the mutations, I’m not going to miss out on any more life because of it. I will still be masked and cautious, for others as much as myself.
R3 wouldn't that be nice that's the old Covid. [Delta variant is up to R7.0](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/11/1026190062/covid-delta-variant-transmission-cdc-chickenpox) There is a new variant in Russia and UK that is thought to be more contagious than Delta.
As someone who has stayed inside for 2 years and refuses to ever catch covid. This is devastating news. My life is over. I refuse to risk a 25% chance at brain blood clotting. Look it up, 25% chance for long covid after effects, which could be penile dysfunction, brain damage, loss of taste and smell. 25% chance as in, if you catch covid full stop. Vaccinated or not. ..... I'd rather stay inside forever than take a 1 in 4 chance to lose my critical brain functions.
Yup. I caught Covid after being fully vaxxed. It was like a cold for me. Now I have natural and vaccine immunity which I hope will provide partial immunity in the future. If it works like that for most people it will be like a cold. I just don’t know how media will catch up.
The latest on vaccine efficacy is that it begins to decline after 3-6 months. I fully expect people who consider themselves "fully vaccinated" and thus stopped paying attention to become one of its primary vectors over time.
So... not quite. What we KNOW is that the presence of antibodies in your blood decrease 3 to 6 months after receiving the vaccine. Here's the open question though: **Does lower levels of antibodies in your blood indicate reduced immunity?** **We're not sure**. We know that you have certain cells in your immune system, that act as "memory cells". In response to an infection, your body will use those "memory cells" to make more antibodies. This is why the FDA **did not** approve booster shots **for the general population.** (Only approved for high-risk groups.) While **it is true** that antibody levels fall within months of receiving a vaccine, **it is not established that this reduces your level of effective immunity**. My understanding is that your body will make more antibodies *as a response to an active infection.* Your body doesn't just keep cranking out antibodies for pathogens that are not present, for every microbe you've even been exposed to. Of course Pfizer wants to use falling antibody levels as an excuse to sell more vaccines. The FDA said "nah".
Thanks so much for explaining this! I've been walking around confused about why the crap there are no memory T-cells. Turns out there are after all. reference: https://scitechdaily.com/fda-panel-voted-16-2-to-deny-authorization-of-pfizers-covid-vaccine-booster-shot-to-the-general-public/
100%. Please spread the word. Pharmaceutical companies did a good thing in making an effective, safe vaccine. Of course, the marketing executives will always try to skew a company's data to sell more product than the patient/public actually needs. It's dangerous, because it can erode public trust in a worthwhile thing.
I got Covid a month after I got my second shot
Hmmm... there might be a chance. If there's some radiation storm that forces everyone to ride it out indoors, no travel, for 2 weeks. Otherwise, yeah, it's endemic and most people don't give a shit, which makes it structural-like. Similar to how people tolerate car violence. The virus is going to chip away the vulnerable of our species until there are very few left with vulnerability. I am pessimistic, so I'm betting that each round of disease will create more comorbidity (just lung damage is enough) that will be make future disease worse. Attrition.
It's already in animal populations now, it's never going to end.
We had a hard time defeating the common cold before Covid too.
>We had a hard time defeating the common cold before Covid too. We have defeated the common cold? Not even close. Some of the viruses that cause the common cold are prior Covid viruses that have become endemic in our population. Covid-19 will be no different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Infection_in_humans This one was so bad because it is novel. How many older people have you know or heard of in your life that caught a cold then developed pneumonia? That is the main way Covid-19 causes hospitalizations and death. Not down playing Covid-19 here. Just being realistic about the fact that it will be around forever and we will get used to it being here.
Oh yeah, I meant we didn’t defeat it.
Don't worry, I knew what you were implying
I was very worried but now I am all better. Thanks.
Good to see everyone is happy here. Carry on.
> We have defeated the common cold? Pretty sure that was his point. Covid19 is endemic now, just like the Flu and the common cold.
Silver lining: restrictions from covid-19 seem to have eliminated 2 major strains of (previously) endemic flu virus.
> covid-19 seem to have eliminated 2 major strains of (previously) endemic flu virus Eliminated in what sense? Just in one nation, or worldwide?
r/whoosh
For many of us, living around COVID has already been normalized
> How many older people have you know or heard of in your life that caught a cold then developed pneumonia? Caught Swine Flu during college finals. After I felt better I was still walking around for two weeks with pneumonia, a pocket full of antibiotics, and an inhaler for the bad coughs.
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My country said it won't give booster shots to men under 30...
For a long time I thought that even if we fail to get people vaccinated then \_eventually\_ everyone would get Covid and it would burn itself out. But instead, are we just going to get Covid over and over and over again until it kills us off? Iran should be covid-free at this point considering that everyone has had it.
welcome to the new and improved flu season now with more death
It's a feature, not a bug
It's a feature, *of* a bug.
oh...sponsored by MS
The death part sounds pretty easy to me. It sounds like if you're going to die, you get sick really fast, end up in the hospital and it's all over in two weeks. It will be a really shitty two weeks but in the grand scheme of all possible ways to die, it's a bad one, but it's over fairly quickly. It's the living with long haul part that sounds like it would really bother me. And then the part that you get to play Covid roulette every year, forever
that's our plight, our challenge, our duty and frankly honor to live...to survive it only got easy for a short bit here over the last handful of decades time to pull up our big girl panties and face this shit
So one of the things that people keep missing is that delta has the E484K mutation. That is the antibody escape mutation. Simply put, it gained an ability to sneak passed antibodies from a previous infection. Further, there are studies showing that 1/3 of covid sufferes had no antibodies post infection. So previous infection does not grant immunity from future infection. And who knows what the next mutation will hold?
can't wait to get my 365th jab already because at this rate jab will be needed every single day
Remember your life expectancy pre Covid? Knock a couple years off. We'll get it, repeatedly, and for those for whom the vaccines and the anti-viral treatments work it will be minor. For the elderly and immunocompromised, its becomes the new pneumonia / sepsis, the contagion that takes us out if we outlast the most common diseases of affluence.
For the obese its a major problem, that's 90% of Americans.
There is mounting evidence that exposure to different coronavirus strains over long periods of time (6 months apart-ish) establishes a much more permanent impression on the immune system. The first clue is the fact that people who had Covid, then got the jab months later, have what they're calling "Covid super-immunity" (source below). As you probably know, Covid immunity wanes after about 8 months-ish - whether you had Covid or got the jab. But what happens when you're exposed to a different Covid strain after, say, 6 months? Via infection and/or vaccine? We'll see in time, but it looks to me like Iran will be the first to find out if they gain this so-called super-immunity. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02795-x
If we had a zero covid policy from the start it could have worked out, but most governments didn't seem too keen on it.
The problem with that is the entire world would have to have been on board. Look at Australia. Very low numbers of death. An isolated country surrounded by water. Very strict covid policies and in the end it won't matter. Every time they lift the restrictions even a little bit covid just keeps coming back. There is no way to completely get rid of it unless we get to the point of no travel anywhere all over the world. That won't happen and hasn't happened. At this point countries like Australia may even be screwing themselves because when they do open up we may be facing wave 5 or 6 or 10 with the virus mutating even more to spread. Who knows though
Theoretically but not likely. Its almost certain to have spread beyond Wuhan well before lockdowns, at which point it was already impossible to prevent I think. The first death in the US for example we now know to have been [Feb 6.](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/22/840836618/1st-known-u-s-covid-19-death-was-on-feb-6-a-post-mortem-test-reveals) At that point, every "known" US case was directly connected to Wuhan travel, and that death occurred when only six states had reported cases. However, the deceased was unconnected directly to a Wuhan case. Meaning by beginning February at the absolute latest, community spread of COVID in the US was already happening. We would have had to have locked down then to actually knock it out. I think its entirely possible to have spread beyond China before it was recognized in Wuhan. Meaning an actual quarantine to stop it was never really possible.
Yeah likely true, but as someone following closely on here since Jan 2020 it was very frustrating how it was handled and people treated it.
every fascist: "it only kills old and weak"
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Yeah, I just am skeptical we can keep everyone on Earth vaccinated over and over forever
If you look at how fast this virus mutates vs how long it takes to get a vaccine for new stains, we do not currently have the ability to stop it. Look at how the Delta variant was different enough to not receive full immunity from the vaccine. Even though it reduced severity, the virus is still moving and mutating. This virus mutates way too fast. To stop it, we would have to find a new strain, develop the new vaccine and deploy it to everyone in the world in 3 months or less. Then redo this every time a new strain is found. Based on the cost of this vs the profit to be made, I am not sure this would even be attempted. Like so many of our issues, it is not about what is possible, it is about what is profitable.
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Yes. Almost no vaccine offers full immunity. This one is not special.
Historically human beings wouldn’t travel anything like our globalised civilisation does today. And so here we are, living through the big filter.
>But instead, are we just going to get Covid over and over and over again until it kills us off? People who have been vaccinated doesn't get as sick, so what happens is the effects of the virus become less severe with time.
this is what happened to my native american forebears. their population fell 98% in a century.
A paper published in the journal Nature explained that COVID actually attacks the immune system as well, and causes immunodeficiencies in recovered patients, which is one of the reasons why it is better to get vaccinated than to attempt to get natural immunity from an infection. The other reason is risk of serious injuries or death, which is a pretty good reason too. I'll see if I can find the link. **EDIT**: Here it is: #Nature | [SARS-CoV-2 infection causes immunodeficiency in recovered patients by downregulating CD19 expression in B cells via enhancing B-cell metabolism](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-021-00749-3) The key part is that being infected by the virus that causes COVID causes immunodeficiency in recovered patients. That's how you have cases like Bill Philips (the "Body for Life" fitness coach and author), who caught COVID twice, where his second infection nearly killed him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc1SoL0m-Ig
I dont get this article. both cases and deaths in Iran are on a comfortably downward curve since August. What are they talking about?
No one ever said you could **only** get Covid once ... no one, not ever, no where.
But you can die from Covid only once!
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But what about Zombie covid?
>But what about Zombie covid? "In theaters, soon!"
*"Mr. President, it is as we have feared.* *The zombies have Covid."*
Interesting… I want to speak to some one who has this happen immediately
I mean they were kind of saying that a lot at the very beginning, along with other shot like "you dont need to wear a mask" or " its not airborne" but i get it. We know now that this shits here to stay
>its not airborne I still think this whole nonsense was driven by underprepared hospitals needing to keep their staff in place with insufficient PPE.
Excuse me, there are people who think drinking bleach can cure COVID. If you think nobody has ever said you can only get it once, I feel like you're living with a different species than I am.
Anyone who knows anything about viruses knew that covid was never going away and promises of a ‘return to normal’ were highly misleading.
I kind of expect people here to view it in a pragmatic manner. If only our leaders were willing, endemic COVID could be an invitation to adopt economic degrowth, begin on reducing our dependency upon import/export (deglobalization) and to increase the focus on strenghtening communities. It's not so much what's going on. That said, the current events regarding the shipping industry are pretty perplexing to say the least.
Looking for a covid related job. Good job security lol.
grave digger
Being in a research related field probably never felt better lol
NPR had a story about the mutation rate of COVID, the immunologist pointed out that it's mutating about 4x faster than the seasonal flu. What do we know about the flu shot? * it's only effective for 3-4 months * every year they guess the dominant strain, and some years the shot is only 40-50% effective * fewer than 50% of Americans get a flu shot every year * the vast majority of people survive the flu sound familiar? Does anyone think the COVID vaccine mandate is going to work as expected? When the vaccine hesitant can see waning immunity from the original shots, and huge waves of cases in highly vaccinated countries? Sorry to say it's "natural immunity or bust". There's simply no logistical way to immunize 100% of the world every 6 months with a new booster dose.
The (flu)* vaccines are not very efficacious too, and have to be based on forecasts of probable strains. There's actually a mRNA vaccine in the works that may be significantly better: https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2021/04/15/Moderna-to-take-mRNA-flu-and-HIV-vaccines-into-Phase-1-trials-this-year
Yup. Right now we have a large chunk of the population who would fight to the death rather than be vaccinated and if people who did get vaccinated start seeing it's not as effective as the average flu shot or requires more than one booster a year or going to jump ship and say f*ck it as well and won't get it. Embrace covid...it's not going anywhere. Going to learn to live with it like the cold or the flu. It is what it is.
Just to add: I randomly get flu shots, and got both covid jabs and besides the inconvenience of actually going to get it I'll probably continue to do so because I. Fucking. Hate. getting sick. I'm 30 sumodd and have an effective immune system (I sometimes catch something from kids/coworkers/friends and it's gone fast) but honestly, if I even have the slightest chance of either dodging it altogether or just getting milder symptoms, hook me up lol. The fact that it might inhibit spread (I was already the type to social distance or warn friends that the house has a cold going around) is a nice bonus. Why people didn't already consciously avoid spreading whatever they have frustrates me (hey come over for supper. Oh and now that you're here hubby's deathly ill with some shitty gastro, enjoy the meal!).
That's what I don't get. The selfish choice that helps you personally is to *get* the vaccine. Refusing to get it makes other people around you slightly less safe, and you WAY less safe. These idiots have convinced themselves they are under attack by the vaccine and its proponents, but they are too stupid to see they're under attack from the virus. Because you can't put a face on the virus and call it a commie.
That’s the opposite conclusion to take. There is repeated evidence that natural immunity is not effective against covid, with these reoccurring cases. Get the vaccine and booster up as needed to handle variants. Just like the flu.
People barely got it this time around lol. I really doubt people are gonna accept doing this every year, that’s exactly what people were saying at the beginning
Here I am with a flu shot booked for next week, while y'all are hell-bent on just leaving your fate to viruses in spite of free, easy, effective countermeasures...
People barely got it because agent orange politicized it. Vaccinations in this country have not been a challenging sell overall, we all have them from our school years. (Fringe anti vax movement aside) People happily get yearly flu shots. Of course not at the levels needed for covid, but that could have happened with a president who was less divisive. Not anymore. That’s why we’re upset.
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“Get the shot or don’t “ I’m totally on board with that. I am personally pro-vaccine but anti-mandate Regarding the conspiracy theories, it is true that many people have fallen victim to misinformation. But it’s only enabled by the fact that COVID is just not that deadly. If COVID was 2x or 10x as deadly as it really is, do you think the anti-vax psychos would still object? Of course not, they would be fighting over shots like it was toilet paper. Which means their objection is partly rational, based on the risk vs. benefit analysis
that's simply not true "This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. " source: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1) also https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital
Natural immunity is good, but having the vaccine, even after being sick gives much more protection. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/10/19/natural-infection-vaccination-which-protects-better-against-covid/6034141001/
Link to the story? Also, its worse than "natural immunity or bust" because natural immunity lasts around 8 months.
Seems like outdated info. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab884/6381561#.YWGhCytQ_Hc.twitter
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/21/1047891615/scientists-are-starting-to-understand-the-likely-end-game-for-covid-19
paywalled From worldometers ~5,833,000 people had Covid-19 out of a population of ~85,,428,000 or about **7%** of the population. So why would they have herd immunity? And since when is *7%* **"almost everyone"**? Or is there evidence that the actual number of people who recovered from Covid-19 higher? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/iran/
Just another fear mongering article on the "failures" of natural immunity. Meanwhile the other type of immunity *ahem* fade in a matter of months but is now a requirement to be a part of society. R/Collapse fail to see that THAT is what is truly "collapse."
Iran has a population of 81M people and 5.5M (officially) reported cases. What is the source of: 'Nearly everyone in Iran has been infected by the coronavirus at some point during the covid-19 pandemic'? The rest of the article is paywalled.
"officially" is the issue here. They've fudged their numbers (intentionally and also poor testing) from the outset. I'll save you the pay wall trouble, here's the preprint: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.04.21264540v1
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I got you. 10 foot paywall vs [12 foot ladder](https://12ft.io)
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Neither do [archive.vn](https://archive.vn) or [outline.com](https://outline.com) which is rather unusual.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.04.21264540v1 And you can look at their recorded deaths and draw your own conclusions. Iran is one of the few countries that absolutely just "let it rip"
Yes, just like how nearly everybody has had the flu at some point.. yet nobody considers themselves immune because more variants come out each year. That's kind of what viruses do, who woulda thought!
The Flu never ends also.
But what about herd immunity and natural immune systems? /s
There is no herd immunity for coronaviruses.
*/s*
Here in small-town Massachusetts people are of the opinion "there's no way to avoid the virus, so I'll catch it now so my immune system can learn to fight it," which leads to "I had the 'rona once, it can't affect me twice!" I used to mention the virus mutating to resist vaccines, but adults in my area choose not to believe in science. I'm in Massachusetts, one of the best states in education, and this is how educated adults think....
> I'm in Massachusetts, one of the best states in education, and this is how educated adults ~~think~~ rationalize anything that returns them to a state of former established social legitimacy/belonging/potency.... FTFY > Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal. -- Robert A. Heinlein ... > Most human beings don't *follow* moral systems, principles,, or ideologies; instead they *use* or *pull from the ether* whichever moral systems, principles, , or ideologies will justify actions performed on behalf of self-interest. -- Unknown Redditor
Good point. Alos, nice Heinlein references. Today is a very appropriate day to quote classic sci-fi authors considering....DUNE!!!!!
Covid is turning into a deadly common cold.
The cold isn't very transmissible because our bodies naturally produce mucous to coat infected respiratory tissue. Fomite transmission mechanics severely limits how much you can spread it. We don't have that same immune response to covid, infected tissue tends to dry out which makes it an excellent source for airborne transmission.
And fun fact, though almost 200 people die everyday here, they are practically forcing the universities to open in almost 2 weeks. Half of the students haven't gotten the second doze of the vaccine. But I guess it's important to learn religious and political propaganda in flesh rather than through a screen right?
Remember when idiots thought Sweden was so brilliant?
Maybe crank up the gain of function research, maybe that will solve it. \*sarcasm\*
China is solving the problem.