Coronavirus

[Jonger]

1 hour ago, nwohweather said:

Actually this is very correct. The 1918 flu was actually a new strain of bird flu that aided by WW1 flew across the globe. After it's big hit similar to Covid, it experienced "antigenic drift" which mutated it into a more mild bug. Because this was such a dominant virus it became "the flu" that we know about today, just a milder variant. However when that virus mixes with another one in an animal, it turns into another pandemic. That's what happened with the Swine Flu in 2009.

I highly recommend everyone to read Michael Lewis's (Moneyball, The Big Short) book "The Premonition: A Pandemic Story" as it's an absolutely fascinating read

But my comment received 3 weenie dogs yo!

Some people really dig the lockdowns. Imagine wanting that.... yikes.

[TimB]

8 minutes ago, Jonger said:

But my comment received 3 weenie dogs yo!

Some people really dig the lockdowns. Imagine wanting that.... yikes.

I don’t think anyone “digs the lockdowns”. As I’ve said before (and adding a few more that may or may not be my personal beliefs), I think:

1. A lot of people recognize that there’s no reason they ever need to go back to the office and would rather work from home forever, not because they’re afraid of getting covid but because wasting up to 10 hours a week commuting absolutely sucks.

2. A lot of people don’t have an issue with people being 6 feet apart forever and not have someone up their ass in every public place they go.

3. A lot of people probably have no issue with not having to receive unsolicited handshakes and hugs all the ****ing time and agree that it’s another unhygienic practice that doesn’t need to be brought back.

4. A lot of people have no issue wearing masks because they also cut back on the transmission of cold and flu, and:

5. If people really do enjoy the staying at home a lot part of lockdown, they can continue to do that whether there is a lockdown or not.

[MJO812]

On 5/30/2021 at 5:22 PM, schoeppeya said:

It’s not continuing. The pandemics over. 

I agree about it being almost over but not nearly enough people in this country are vaccinated.

[MJO812]

On 5/31/2021 at 7:58 AM, StormfanaticInd said:

Thank you Trump

14 hours ago, BuffaloWeather said:

So what’s up with fauci emails to wuhan lab leaders? Did he get caught? 

He has been shaky since day 1. Trump, DeSantis, Rand Paul and others called him out.

[Malacka11]

While viruses generally tend to evolve to be less severe in order to increase their virulence, that doesn't really matter in this situation because the concern is that the virus will mutate to overcome the vaccinations we've created against it, which would make it more lethal and would disrupt the flow of things yet again. 

[Hoosier]

The IsraeIi Health Ministry says there is a likely link between the Pfizer vaccine and myocarditis in the 16-30 age group, and particularly in 16-19 year olds.  Seems like there isn't consensus on this yet though.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-sees-probable-link-between-pfizer-vaccine-small-number-myocarditis-cases-2021-06-01/

I haven't seen polling on it, but I wonder what percentage of parents who got a covid vaccine are hesitant about their kids getting it as people may tend to be more cautious with their kids.  In general, you would expect that parents who did not receive a vaccine would not want their kid getting one either. 

Although the risk of vaccine induced myocarditis appears to be quite low, it does make for an interesting debate on whether it's worth getting vaccinated right now if you're in that age group, or if it's worth putting it off and waiting for more info about this.  The risk of severe covid in teenagers is very low, and the background level of virus in the US is dropping pretty rapidly.  Of course there could end up being an issue in Fall if huge numbers of kids remain unvaccinated and if safety protocols in schools are relaxed/eliminated.

[TimB]

13 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Thank you Trump

He has been shaky since day 1. Trump, DeSantis, Rand Paul and others called him out.

Who?

[WaryWarren]

16 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Thank you Trump

He has been shaky since day 1. Trump, DeSantis, Rand Paul and others called him out.

you're a real-ass dude. now get in the octagon with Jonger.

[fujiwara79]

20 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Thank you Trump

 

aww, he misses the orange demagogue.  so cute.

[Jonger]

37 minutes ago, Malacka11 said:

While viruses generally tend to evolve to be less severe in order to increase their virulence, that doesn't really matter in this situation because the concern is that the virus will mutate to overcome the vaccinations we've created against it, which would make it more lethal and would disrupt the flow of things yet again. 

There's nothing stopping mutations and new variants, just have to accept that life comes with risk. My best bud just got Covid last week. Stuffy nose and a sinus headache that lasted 3 days. 

[StormfanaticInd]

1 hour ago, MJO812 said:

Thank you Trump

He has been shaky since day 1. Trump, DeSantis, Rand Paul and others called him out.

At times it feels like we are literally living in the twilight zone 

[StormfanaticInd]

 

[mattb65]

40 minutes ago, Jonger said:

There's nothing stopping mutations and new variants, just have to accept that life comes with risk. My best bud just got Covid last week. Stuffy nose and a sinus headache that lasted 3 days. 

Stopping transmission of the virus stops the mutations and reduces the chance for an escape variant. The vaccines stop transmission, this has been conclusively proven in the real world. You dont need to drag your knuckles here, human ingenuity has given us the tools to win this fight. 

Globally we're at 35 million vaccinations per day,  we're 9 months away from 75% immunized globally.

I agree life comes with risk but it's just plain stupidity to purposely increase risk when you have an easy way to mitigate the risk. 

My buddy James from New England caught covid a few weeks ago, he was 31 years old, he suffered overwhelming multi organ failure and died. He didn't have to die. 

[Jonger]

13 minutes ago, mattb65 said:

Stopping transmission of the virus stops the mutations and reduces the chance for an escape variant. The vaccines stop transmission, this has been conclusively proven in the real world. You dont need to drag your knuckles here, human ingenuity has given us the tools to win this fight. 

Globally we're at 35 million vaccinations per day,  we're 9 months away from 75% immunized globally.

I agree life comes with risk but it's just plain stupidity to purposely increase risk when you have an easy way to mitigate the risk. 

My buddy James from New England caught covid a few weeks ago, he was 31 years old, he suffered overwhelming multi organ failure and died. He didn't have to die. 

100+ years and we're still battling the Spanish Flu.

How many mutations do we have of COVID already? I'm not telling people to avoid the vaccine, I'm pro-science.... but, thinking we're going to globally eradicate covid and its variants isn't realistic.

[winterwx21]

20 minutes ago, mattb65 said:

Stopping transmission of the virus stops the mutations and reduces the chance for an escape variant. The vaccines stop transmission, this has been conclusively proven in the real world. You dont need to drag your knuckles here, human ingenuity has given us the tools to win this fight. 

Globally we're at 35 million vaccinations per day,  we're 9 months away from 75% immunized globally.

I agree life comes with risk but it's just plain stupidity to purposely increase risk when you have an easy way to mitigate the risk. 

My buddy James from New England caught covid a few weeks ago, he was 31 years old, he suffered overwhelming multi organ failure and died. He didn't have to die. 

Do you know why your buddy James didn't get the vaccine? I know he was overweight and had big health problems. Very sad what happened to him. Obviously it's critical for higher risk people to get the vaccine. Of course a 31 year old that's in great shape wouldn't be at risk of dying,  but for those younger people that are at higher risk it's extremely important to get the vaccine.

[mattb65]

4 minutes ago, Jonger said:

100+ years and we're still battling the Spanish Flu.

How many mutations do we have of COVID already? I'm not telling people to avoid the vaccine, I'm pro-science.... but, thinking we're going to globally eradicate covid and its variants isn't realistic.

We have a vaccine that protects against Spanish flu in addition to the more harmful flu variants that have emerged. We may soon have a global flu vaccine that comes close to eradicating flu. I think we have a chance to keep covid as a minor virus going forward with a global effort. I think r are making moves in the right direction. I'm glad to hear you're not anti vaccine, I take back the knuckle dragger comment.

 

 

Just now, winterwx21 said:

Do you know why your buddy James didn't get the vaccine? I know he was overweight and had big health problems. Very sad what happened to him. Obviously it's critical for higher risk people to get the vaccine. Of course a 31 year old that's in great shape wouldn't be at risk of dying,  but for those younger people that are at higher risk it's extremely important to get the vaccine.

I don't know why,  I know from his fb posts a few years back that he liked Trump but I can only speculate. 

[winterwx21]

6 minutes ago, mattb65 said:

We have a vaccine that protects against Spanish flu in addition to the more harmful flu variants that have emerged. We may soon have a global flu vaccine that comes close to eradicating flu. I think we have a chance to keep covid as a minor virus going forward with a global effort. I think r are making moves in the right direction. I'm glad to hear you're not anti vaccine, I take back the knuckle dragger comment.

 

 

I don't know why,  I know from his fb posts a few years back that he liked Trump but I can only speculate. 

We don't know if it was the case with James, but overall it's very sad how many people died during this pandemic because they were Trump supporters. All the people that refused to wear masks when the virus was at its peak because of Trump's attitude about masks. Really a shame.

[Jonger]

2 hours ago, winterwx21 said:

We don't know if it was the case with James, but overall it's very sad how many people died during this pandemic because they were Trump supporters. All the people that refused to wear masks when the virus was at its peak because of Trump's attitude about masks. Really a shame.

I would say that American obesity was 10X the factor in deaths than the president.

The top death per 100,000 countries are mostly top 10 most obese.

This matters.

[MJO812]

6 hours ago, WaryWarren said:

you're a real-ass dude. now get in the octagon with Jonger.

How am I an ass ? Fauci has changed his mind so much  .He is now getting criticized  for his handling of Covid.

5 hours ago, fujiwara79 said:

 

aww, he misses the orange demagogue.  so cute.

Still butthurt over the 2016 election ? Orange man bad ? 

Anyway , I'm happy I got the vaccine.

[mattb65]

6 hours ago, Jonger said:

I would say that American obesity was 10X the factor in deaths than the president.

The top death per 100,000 countries are mostly top 10 most obese.

This matters.

I'm not going to argue that obesity is a risk factor for bad outcomes in covid but your presentation of the data here is ridiculous and not even close to factual.

1. Your top 10 deaths are not ranked per capita as you claim look at India 12 per 100k vs US 170 per 100k. 

2. Your top 10 most obese  countries has no source, where are you pulling that list from? 

The rate of obesity in India is 3.90% how are they 3rd on your list????? They are among the least obese countries in the world on a per capita basis.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-obese-countries

Edit: in fact many of the most obese countries in the world - Samoa and Marshall islands had no covid cases. 

In terms if large non island nations that are most obese per capita.

 

From worldometers

US #1 with 36% obese is 18th in covid deaths per capita

Saudi Arabia #2 with 35% obese is 111th in covid deaths per capita

Turkey #3 with 32% obese is 74th in covid deaths per capita

Egypt #4 with 32% obese is 124th in covid deaths per capita

I could go on but you get the point.  This looks like a huge #JongerFail

[TimB]

28 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

How am I an ass ? Fauci has changed his mind so much  .He is now getting criticized  for his handling of Covid.

Still butthurt over the 2016 election ? Orange man bad ? 

Anyway , I'm happy I got the vaccine.

He said real-ass dude (note the hyphen), as in a hardass. I’ll let you decide if it was sarcastic or not.

Why would anyone be butthurt over an election that was years ago and was undone through another election in decisive fashion?

I’m happy you got the vaccine, but believe me, that former president is about as relevant to me as other former presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce.

[BuffaloWeather]

21 hours ago, mattb65 said:

I haven't seen anything too concerning about his emails but may not be up to speed on everything. 

Having said that the lab leak concern is definitely increasing in likelihood based on the information I'm reading.  Unfortunately I doubt there will be a smoking gun because much has been destroyed or covered up by China plus the soule to find reliable information is especially difficult. 

Here are some articles I've found to be interesting. 

https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-how-amateur-sleuths-broke-wuhan-lab-story-embarrassed-media-1596958

https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/

What bothered me in the emails is spreaders being almost exclusively symptomatic. My entire family was so worried about hanging out with each other strictly because of this notion. How many viruses spread asymptotically vs symptomatically? He knew this in the beginning and kept saying how its extremely common for it to spread each way when that wasn't true.

Another issue I have is that he knew there was a potential of it being lab made, or accidentally escaped from the lab very early and hid that notion until just recently.

Here is a link to all his emails

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20793561/leopold-nih-foia-anthony-fauci-emails.pdf

[mattb65]

7 minutes ago, BuffaloWeather said:

What bothered me in the emails is spreaders being almost exclusively symptomatic. My entire family was so worried about hanging out with each other strictly because of this notion. How many viruses spread asymptotically vs symptomatically? He knew this in the beginning and kept saying how its extremely common for it to spread each way when that wasn't true.

Another issue I have is that he knew there was a potential of it being lab made, or accidentally escaped from the lab very early and hid that notion until just recently.

Here is a link to all his emails

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20793561/leopold-nih-foia-anthony-fauci-emails.pdf

I'm not entirely sure I understand your first concern.  He seemed to be pretty cautious throughout the crisis about how easily it can be spread. There were lots of debates and confusion about symptomatic vs asymptomatic spread early on and persisting through most of 2020. He admitted publicly multiple times that this virus ended up being far worse than he initially expected. There is tons of asymptomatic or presymptomatic spread of this virus, it's one of the big challenges in containing it. 

On the second point, he still thinks it's more likely animal to human.  I can understand the frustration especially since the lab origin was heavily politicized. There was a scientific push possibly with some questionable motives to push the animal to human origin.  You can see some suspicious stuff in the links I posted. I'm still not convinced,  I'm also not sure if fauci is the one to blame and think the conservative media frenzy on the emails is a huge overreaction.

[dan11295]

Obesity is one factor affecting mortality rates. Suggesting it is the "the" primary factor is a bit disingenuous. Average population age, amount of mitigation done, compliance of population wrt following health measures, health care capacity, availability of critical supplies (esp. oxygen), how Isolated a location is are all factors. Also while excess mortality is not available for many countries, for those that report is, it is a much better estimate than the official reported deaths. We know certain countries (e.g. Mexico, Russia) are significantly under reporting.

 

 

[fujiwara79]

18 hours ago, MJO812 said:

Still butthurt over the 2016 election ? Orange man bad ? 

 

it's very rare for an incumbent President to lose re-election, so I guess the american people must've thought the orange man was really, really bad.  it's time to move on, buddy.  

 

[MJO812]

17 minutes ago, fujiwara79 said:

it's very rare for an incumbent President to lose re-election, so I guess the american people must've thought the orange man was really, really bad.  it's time to move on, buddy.  

 

I did move on but many didn't

I'm worried about the NYC mayoral race.

[Jonger]

16 hours ago, dan11295 said:

Obesity is one factor affecting mortality rates. Suggesting it is the "the" primary factor is a bit disingenuous. Average population age, amount of mitigation done, compliance of population wrt following health measures, health care capacity, availability of critical supplies (esp. oxygen), how Isolated a location is are all factors. Also while excess mortality is not available for many countries, for those that report is, it is a much better estimate than the official reported deaths. We know certain countries (e.g. Mexico, Russia) are significantly under reporting.

 

 

Age, Obesity and overall health....

This is a comorbidity, there was never a reason for EVERYONE to quarantine when the situation could have been handled on a self-quarantine basis.

I rarely get the flu vaccine, I'll probably pass on this one too. There's basically a higher chance I get hit by lightning than die from this.

I turned into a fitness nut 3 years ago and I'm going to ride that wave from here on out. I'm not completely ruling out the vaccine, but it's not high on my list.

PS: Made a lot of money off of the quarantine, so this isn't some sort of butt-hurt assessment of it. I made out from COVID-19.

 

[MacChump]

not getting vaccinated because fat people

what a thread

[mattb65]

26 minutes ago, MacChump said:

not getting vaccinated because fat people

what a thread

He's the kind of person that needs a lottery ticket or similar incentive,  completely unable to parse out the relative risks and benefits involved. 

Also no consideration for others,  even if he individually may be low risk,  getting the vaccine so that be doesn't accidentally pass it on to someone else doesn't appear to be in the equation.

If nothing else jonger, please get vaccinated so that I can get a free beer on July 4th.

[winterwx21]

17 hours ago, dan11295 said:

Obesity is one factor affecting mortality rates. Suggesting it is the "the" primary factor is a bit disingenuous. Average population age, amount of mitigation done, compliance of population wrt following health measures, health care capacity, availability of critical supplies (esp. oxygen), how Isolated a location is are all factors. Also while excess mortality is not available for many countries, for those that report is, it is a much better estimate than the official reported deaths. We know certain countries (e.g. Mexico, Russia) are significantly under reporting.

 

 

Physical fitness level is one of the biggest factors...

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210419/more-exercise-lowers-risk-of-severe-covid-19-study

The studies overwhelmingly show how important exercise is in reducing severe Covid risk. Makes perfect sense too. We know that the reason why most people that get severely ill and die from Covid is their heart, lungs and arteries can't take it. So if you get your heart lungs and arteries extra strong through exercise, there's a much better chance that they'll be able to stand Covid. Simple common sense. I think even a lot of the elderly deaths could have been prevented had people exercised their entire lives. That keeps the immune system, heart, lungs and arteries in better shape even at a much older age.

Having said all this, I've decided that I'm going to get vaccinated. I'm going to go for the 1 dose J&J vaccine sometime in the next couple weeks. I'm not worried at all about severe Covid for myself since I've reduced my risk so much by being an athlete, but I think it's a good idea. Would nice to not have to worry about getting sick (even if it's just mild illness like when I had Covid last spring), and of course it's good to reduce the risk of passing it on to others. I also live in a very liberal area where they are big on vaccine requiremements. They're now reserving 90% of tickets for vaccinated people at Mets games, and I doubt they're going to allow people to go to big indoor events like concerts without being vaccinated. So I'm going to go ahead and do it.