COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[emailking]

The idea is to discourage these sort of close contact social gatherings, which we know help spread this virus.

Well yeah, I guess I just feel like the line should be drawn somewhere short of a $30K fine.

[emailking]

Herd immunity has swept New York and Arizona for sure.

Not so clear on the "for sure" part, but maybe.

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1302961482716639233

[emailking]

“Listen to the Scientists” has to be the most naive belief. Conventional Scientists once thought the earth was flat. It took brave men to stand up and prove otherwise.

No that is not true. The ancient Greeks were the first to know it was round (so far as we know). Thereafter, most educated elite knew it was round. Scientists knew it was round. Columbus knew it was round.

The Earth not being the center of the universe would fit your point.

[emailking]

It's scary though how many people I've seen on social media who appear to genuinely believe that Bill Gates and/or the Democrats created the virus somehow.

[emailking]

This is Labor Day related I guess? Otherwise these are some big drops.

[emailking]

In fact, BLM and Sturgis both seem to have a negative R0 somehow.

What does that mean?

[emailking]

So many people seems to be excusing the fact that health experts deliberately gave people bad medical advice

Note sure it was deliberate.

[emailking]

I thought the point of a placebo was that you don't know whether you got the real thing or not?

[emailking]

A 'distressed' Birx questions how long she can remain on White House task force, sources say

Once a fixture at the administration's coronavirus briefings, Dr. Deborah Birx has confided to aides and friends that she has become so unhappy with what she sees as her diminished role as coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force that she is not certain how much longer she can serve in her position, sources familiar with her thinking tell CNN.

Birx has told people around her that she is "distressed" with the direction of the task force, describing the situation inside the nation's response to the coronavirus as nightmarish.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/politics/deborah-birx-white-house-task-force/index.html

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/1309529806145490945

Florida reported 2,851 new cases yesterday.

Good. The more overwhelmed hospitals, the better for Biden.

See folks, it really is true...liberals don't want America to get better unless there's a Democrat in the White House.  The reaction to the pandemic is (and always has been) overtly political. 

Dr. Lurker is the only one taking that position.

[emailking]

Just like Obama was the only one who believed rural Americans "clinged to guns and religion?"  or Hillary Clinton the only one who believed Trump's supporters were "a basket of deplorables?"

No, Forumlurker is only giving voice to how the liberal establishment and their supporters have turned COVID into a political weapon and how they justify unequally applied restrictions and lockdowns. 

She said half were deplorable. Yes I know this makes no difference to you, but it's still important to get the facts right.

Dr. Lurker is the only one on this forum taking that position. Your generalization from that appears to be based on supposition and not rooted in any evidence. If politicians have expressed similar sentiments then I apologize, but I haven't seen anything like that.

[emailking]

But I do think Covid has already mutated to be weaker and more contagious which makes sense.

Why does weaker make sense?

[emailking]

But I do think Covid has already mutated to be weaker and more contagious which makes sense.

Why does weaker make sense?

I think what happens is that the virus has to adapt to be less deadly, since it needs living hosts who can spread it.

For ebola I get that, but this thing spreads easily before you even have symptoms from it.

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1316146752685174784

[emailking]

413,000 new cases reported yesterday.

This thing has gone Full Beet.

Apologies to Beet for underestimating his now clearly accurate early-stage pandemic hyperbolae.

I will never doubt your pre-pandemic estimates and over-exaggerated mathematical projections again.

He said the death rate was approaching 100% at one point.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=355597.msg7146506#msg7146506

He was right in some ways but not others.

[emailking]

That was the number then very early on when we had no idea what this was. A number of people had died, but virtually no one had recovered. Fortunately as we got a bigger picture the IFR turned out to be much lower.

Yeah we did. If you look back in that thread, there were a number of people claiming the death rate was just a few %, before your post.

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1317822838519128068

[emailking]

It's fairly clear that the virus is going completely out of control. Something has to be done soon.

But what? Everything we've done thus far has failed.

This is correct, folks, we have tried everything. Except maybe a "stay outside" order, which won't go over too well as cold weather comes.

So all we can do is stop worrying about it. People are not equipped to panic for months on end. Around here, I already see maskless customers and employees of indoor stores. Nobody worries about social distancing anymore, and families have big gatherings. And this is near a major city, not some rural area. People are done with fear and panic.

Among the few exceptions is that every time someone announces some event on Facebook, it always says something like, "SOCIAL DISTANCING WILL BE PRACTICED." Yeah. Sure.

Not everyone is as done with it as you and your area are. My family isn't doing a Thanksgiving dinner because of the virus. And I still haven't seen someone in a grocery store without a mask since April, not even 1.

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1318252740431155200

[emailking]

Dang. Looks like we could break the cases record tomorrow.

[emailking]

I think they should try to space the desks and require masks. It sucks, but it's better than another year of remote learning.

[emailking]

Even remote learning would be better than that. But remote learning is still bad.

Yeah I don't get why you think remote learning is better than masks. At least children could socialize in person.

[emailking]

Yeah I don't get why you think remote learning is better than masks.

Sweden is doing decently by not having much of either one.

Their cases are spiking right now. But it's irrelevant to whether remote learning is better than masks, or not.

[emailking]

If we had treated this like a war from the start, rather than a series of millions of individual medical choices, we could have solved this pandemic months ago with a fraction of the death we have already seen.  But a war requires volunteers who are willing to risk their own individual well-being for the benefit of the safety and survival of the whole of society.  Those volunteers were readily available.  You can see almost 40,000 of them (myself included) signed up just on the 1DaySooner website.  But almost any suggestion to go down that path was immediately treated as somehow unthinkable and never even subject to serious discussion.

I applaud your courage. A trait more and more men are losing by the day.

Is that supposed to be a knock against people who won't intentionally infect themselves with a disease? 🤔