Coronavirus. The n(in)th sequel.

[Takhisis]

Another reason to like llamas...

Llama antibodies have 'significant potential' as potent COVID-19 treatment (medicalxpress.com)

Should I post the llama song?

 

[Takhisis]

Only in 'Murica!

https://twitter.com/jayobtv/status/1440699694703730720
NEW: Florida is now *prohibiting* schools from sending kids home after COVID exposure, unless the child has symptoms or the parents give permission. All per FL Department of Health rule signed today by state’s new Surgeon General.​

 

[amadeus]

I do, which is why I'm calling into question the real reason(s) hospitals are at/near capacity (allegedly) despite a > 60% vaccination rate in most states. I expect that particular allegation is some mixture of fearmongering/push for compliance, hospital mismanagement/cutting costs, and incentives to make anything a "COVID" hospitalization if possible to get away with it, even if the presenting complaint has nothing to do with COVID.

It's a lucky coincidence that all of the greediest doctors just happened to be concentrated in areas where they have the most infections.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@TheMeInTeam Are you vaccinated?

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

This is hilarious...

‘Don’t get vaccinated’: Fake funeral home used to promote coronavirus shot | The Independent

 

[FriendlyFire]

When you receive funding based on how many COVID patients you have, everybody who can look like a COVID patient is a COVID patient. Mothers giving birth, trauma patients, etc. If they test positive for COVID, they are "hospitalized with COVID". That's just how the process works. And what's the alternative? Trying to achieve similar levels of nuance everywhere as people decide whether this guy with COVID is here because of COVID vs some other reason? At least if you do it this way, you can have the same standard everywhere. It will obviously inflate the numbers, but the alternative is having less useful points of comparison. I don't think this counts as a "conspiracy" or "lying", though?

Have you tried using google ?
Cite links for your claims

U.S. hospitals are losing millions of dollars per day in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic
When hospitals across the United States halted elective procedures back in March, they immediately started hemorrhaging revenue
The American Hospital Association is now reporting that hospitals are bleeding more than $50 billion per month.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/05/hos...-of-dollars-per-day-in-covid-19-pandemic.html

Hospital Payments and the COVID-19 Death Count
that the government will pay more to hospitals for COVID-19 cases in two senses: By paying an additional 20% on top of traditional Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients during the public health emergency, and by reimbursing hospitals for treating the uninsured patients with the disease.
Berenson and others we spoke with also said that hospitals have profound disincentives for “upcoding,” which can result in criminal or civil liabilities, such as being susceptible to being kicked out of the Medicare program.

Revenues appear to be down for hospitals this quarter because many have suspended elective procedures, which are key to their revenue, forcing some hospitals to cut staff. He surmised that potential instances of patients being wrongly “upcoded” — or classified as COVID-19 when they’re not — are “trivial compared to these other forces that are affecting hospital finances.”

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-the-covid-19-death-count/

 

[Gorbles]

@TheMeInTeam Are you vaccinated?

From memory, yes, and he uses this to repeatedly shout down people criticising his relatively overlapping position with a number of anti-vaxxer talking points.

 

[Hrothbern]

Looking at the bright side:

From Dutch news on an interview in the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, The important message is that the increase of production capacities this year are able to handle full global vaccinations.
Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

Moderna director: in a year the pandemic will be over
The director of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, thinks the corona pandemic will be over in a year. He told the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung. The CEO of the pharmaceutical company makes this prediction because, according to him, enough vaccines are being produced for the entire world.

"If you look at the expansion of production over the past six months, enough doses should be available by the middle of next year to vaccinate everyone on the planet," Bancel told the paper. "That also applies to the necessary boosters." Vaccinations will be available soon, even for babies, he says.

According to Bancel, unvaccinated people become immune automatically, because the delta variant is so contagious. "This way we end up in a situation similar to the flu. You can get vaccinated and have a good winter. Or you don't and run the risk of getting sick and maybe end up in hospital."

The pharmaceutical company is currently testing a booster vaccine that protects against the delta variant, but also against the 'delta-plus beta variant'. Scientists believe this will be the virus's next mutation, Bancel says.

 

[El_Machinae]

From memory, yes, and he uses this to repeatedly shout down people criticising his relatively overlapping position with a number of anti-vaxxer talking points.

I don't think he shouted. But afaict, antivaxxers borrowed from his talking points, not vis versa.

This is the same cohort that latched onto data showing NLP in the ovaries as 'proof' that spike proteins were in the ovaries. It's the same cohort that says the vaccinated spread aerosolized spike proteins in their pheromones.

They had a wide array of borrowing. It's impossible to have disagreement about vaccine policy without seeing antivaxxer talking points, if you're primed to notice them

 

[Gorbles]

I don't think he shouted. But afaict, antivaxxers borrowed from his talking points, not vis versa.

This is the same cohort that latched onto data showing NLP in the ovaries as 'proof' that spike proteins were in the ovaries. It's the same cohort that the vaccinated spread aerosolized spike proteins in their pheromones.

They had a wide array of borrowing. It's impossible to have disagreement about vaccine policy without seeing antivaxxer talking points, if you're primed to notice them

shrugs

At this point in the pandemic, for better or worse, I see little distinction anymore. If someone cannot see how their points aid such, and refuses to change their approach based on this information (as has been provided repeatedly), then they don't care about the borrowing and the harm that it can do. Much like the prominent people spreading anti-vaccination messages in politics or in the media, that themselves have actually gotten vaccinated. Not all anti-vaxxers believe in the message. But you don't need belief to further the harm done.

If discussions were purely about policy, I'd agree with you more. But they're evidently not solely about that.

 

[El_Machinae]

Conversely, though, I think the vaccine-mandate crowd doesn't recognize the damage they do when they latch onto bad reasoning or dismiss good reasoning that hurts their narrative. Or mischaracterize rather than dispute.

This really could be our last gentle pandemic. We're really screwing up the trial run.

 

[Gorbles]

Conversely, though, I think the vaccine-mandate crowd doesn't recognize the damage they do when they latch onto bad reasoning or dismiss good reasoning that hurts their narrative. Or mischaracterize rather than dispute.

This really could be out last gentle pandemic. We're really screwing up the trial run.

I find that's true of any crowd though, on basically any subject. I mean in my experience that's the key problem in crowd vs. individual (and often why forum threads can get too messy vs. something like PMs, occasionally).

However the basic problem here, beyond the hopeless politicisation that's gone on from about day 1, is the core dissonance between social responsibility and individual . . . uh, I'll be polite and call them "freedoms". Every discussion in this thread (and others) has recognised the people that might not be able to take the vaccine. There has often been note of the problems in mandating punitive consequences for a lack of vaccination (often because enforcement will take little difference between those that are choosing not to, and those that can't for any reason).

I don't see much mischaracterisation beyond the usual personal conflicts that are rather subject-agnostic. But maybe that's a blind spot.

 

[El_Machinae]

That blindspot is why I called out "shouting down"

Much of the issue is definitely the tension between forcing others to behave vs doing so voluntarily. With a vaccine, this matrix becomes the most specific case study I can possibly think of.

The vaccine is going to be some spectrum of "good for you" intersecting with "good for others", and the benefits of both factors 100% depend on the behavior of your local society, too.

From a human-behavior-vs-homo-economicus experimental standpoint, I honestly cannot think of a better case study to build all analogies.

OTOH, it will also be possible to note people's bias when it comes to technocratic or authoritarian signals. Like, whether they're prone to swing towards or against them too strongly

 

[Arwon]

Pfizer is:

Pfizer and BioNTech announced on Monday that their COVID-19 vaccine is safe in children ages 5-11 years and produces a significant immune response.

“We are pleased to be able to submit data to regulatory authorities for this group of school-aged children before the start of the winter season,” said Dr. Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech. “The safety profile and immunogenicity data in children aged 5 to 11 years vaccinated at a lower dose are consistent with those we have observed with our vaccine in other older populations at a higher dose.”​

They've been asked by our Therapeutic Goods Administration to submit it for approval, we should be vaxxing kids 5 to 11 soon enough I'd imagine!

 

[Arwon]

Conversely, though, I think the vaccine-mandate crowd doesn't recognize the damage they do when they latch onto bad reasoning or dismiss good reasoning that hurts their narrative. Or mischaracterize rather than dispute.

This really could be out last gentle pandemic. We're really screwing up the trial run.

What's a vaccine mandate crowd

 

[Gorbles]

That blindspot is why I called out "shouting down"

Much of the issue is definitely the tension between forcing others to behave vs doing so voluntarily. With a vaccine, this matrix becomes the most specific case study I can possibly think of.

The vaccine is going to be some spectrum of "good for you" intersecting with "good for others", and the benefits of both factors 100% depend on the behavior of your local society, too.

From a human-behavior-vs-homo-economicus experimental standpoint, I honestly cannot think of a better case study to build all analogies.

OTOH, it will also be possible to note people's bias when it comes to technocratic or authoritarian signals. Like, whether they're prone to swing towards or against them too strongly

I mean, "shouting down" was an off-the-cuff remark. My own idiolect isn't representative of a blind spot Regardless of any faults in my phrasing, said vaccinated status is definitely used as a defense against (pretty much any) criticism. Which is ironic, because we have plenty of examples of vaccinated people still spreading damaging information.

The way you phrase it as "tension" though is automatically, uh, tensive? It causes tension. Because the context is about a vaccine, a thing that saves lives (from something that takes them). I'm not saying it's intentional, your view on this is more academic in this instance. But it does contribute to the whole adage of "discussing x vs. y" when "x" is "something harmful" and "y" is "not doing something harmful".

 

[El_Machinae]

What's a vaccine mandate crowd

People who want vaccine mandates, and more broadly 'punishments' for the unvaccinated. They'll be on the opposite of the spectrum from people who don't want to coerce other people from getting a vaccine.

But it does contribute to the whole adage of "discussing x vs. y" when "x" is "something harmful" and "y" is "not doing something harmful".

Both x and y, in this case cause harms. It's the matrix under which those harms are perceived that matters.

And, more clearly, both x and y cause both probabilistic harms (or harms expressed when looking at aggregate data) as well as actual social harms.

 

[Arwon]

People who want vaccine mandates, and more broadly 'punishments' for the unvaccinated. They'll be on the opposite of the spectrum from people who don't want to coerce other people from getting a vaccine.

We variously (federalism) have covid vaccine requirements for employment in aged care, healthcare, deploying defence personnel, quarantine workers, police, and a couple other things.

Some other vaccines (I think the flu jab) are also required in some things like aged care. Is that damaging, to you?

 

[El_Machinae]

We variously (federalism) have covid vaccine requirements for employment in aged care, healthcare, deploying defence personnel, quarantine workers, police, and a couple other things.

Some other vaccines (I think the flu jab) are also required in some things like aged care. Is that damaging, to you?

???

Here's what I said caused damage

when they latch onto bad reasoning or dismiss good reasoning that hurts their narrative

 

[Arwon]

So requiring vaccination for employment in high risk settings is good then? Cool. Am fine with not endorsing the use of analogies and or silly arguments, just the good ones like reducing transmission risks.