Our Covid Response

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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"Luciferase enzyme"?
Ooh, for a moment I thought there was something interesting. Fluorescence microscopy is my sort of scientific territory, although I mostly worked with calcium-binding fluorophores.
 

Phoenixmgs

The Muse of Fate
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No it doesn't. Dude, just stop. We're all tired of dealing with your arrogance.
Then why is it being studied if it has no reason to work?

What complete bullshit. Who in their right mind believes that living in lockdown is equivalent to being dead?
Why don't you ask an Australian that question? They literally can't even leave the country if they want out of the bullshit. Also ask a prisoner locked up for life if they think their quality of life is the same as if they weren't in prison. Being alive and living are two different things.

People who can't tell the difference between a minor inconvenience and a right denied. Sadly, the US is full of them.
Where's the proof the lockdowns provide more benefits than harms? I'm for anything that has more benefit than harm. Show your proof and I'll agree with you. Where's the cost-benefit analysis saying lockdowns are more beneficial? Where's your proof?

And yes, it does matter to me if someone is unvaccinated because the anti-vaccine bullshit is precisely why Covid is here to stay. We're going to be masking up every winter and probably have to get annual boosters for the new variants, just like the flu. This is public health we're talking about, not personal comfort. If we don't have over 90% of the population vaccinated, then there's no herd immunity. Immuno-compromised people will continue to be put in unnecessary risk. And by your admission, you condone this stupidity because of a petty, paranoid grudge against the government and the media.

Time was, people were lining up to get the polio vaccine and within a generation iron lungs became a thing of the past. That would have been nice today.
Why would we need to get annual boosters? The vaccines and natural immunity are holding up greatly for hospitalizations and death. Two of the very top FDA officials quit over Biden pushing boosters when the data didn't say that at all. Getting to "Covid Zero" is not possible and trying to do so is insane. The vaccine trials showed 90+% efficacy against infections which made the politicians think you can eliminate covid but those trials weren't very long and obviously an influx of antibodies early will offer greater protection than after they wane. Now all this booster garbage is all about trying to hold on to that idea that covid can be eliminated. Not every disease is the same, polio and measles vaccines are extremely good because the long incubation period of the viruses, covid does not have those long incubation periods which cause people to get symptomatic covid again, the important part is not getting severely sick, and why can't that be FINE? The vast majority of people think that is indeed fine. I'm not going to get 4 shots a year for something less likely to kill me (and others with immunity) than driving to work everyday.
 

Silvanus

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Why don't you ask an Australian that question? They literally can't even leave the country if they want out of the bullshit. Also ask a prisoner locked up for life if they think their quality of life is the same as if they weren't in prison. Being alive and living are two different things.
Why would I ask a prisoner, seeing as living in lockdown is utterly incomparable to living in prison?

And leaving the country... OK, you realise millions of people worldwide already can't leave their country because of economic reasons, right? Are you content to argue that the global poor are living in "prison"?
 

Gordon_4

The Big Engine
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Why don't you ask an Australian that question? They literally can't even leave the country if they want out of the bullshit. Also ask a prisoner locked up for life if they think their quality of life is the same as if they weren't in prison. Being alive and living are two different things.
You're aware that international travel is a two party arrangement right? If I for whatever reason wanted to visit London, I need to apply to the British High Commission to visit. And even without COVID they can refuse my entry for any reason they deem fit.
 

Trunkage

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Why don't you ask an Australian that question? They literally can't even leave the country if they want out of the bullshit. Also ask a prisoner locked up for life if they think their quality of life is the same as if they weren't in prison. Being alive and living are two different things.
Other than Australian meant to be that land of prisoners in the first place...

All of the lockdowns that happened in Sydney and Melbourne were the direct result of people flying in from overseas and then not quarantining properly. Literally tens of thousand of people. My cousin wife flew to the UK earlier this year with a 5 month old baby. Her mother, who you can read about in the UK papers due to her court case and the complexity of her COVID symptoms (she been in able to move her eyebrows since last December. And that's about it. Not even a head tilt, or even her eyes really. Can get a groan going. Fuck COVID), needed some care, while the sister dealt with court proceedings. She was able to FLY BACK INTO AUSTRALIA this year. They have now FLOWN BACK to Manchester a few weeks ago. All this during our supposed 'prison sentence.'

But hey, go on about this prison we have. As to your quality of life nonsense. Yes, some people cant go to Bali. What a tragedy. But that's to make sure the rest of your quality of life can remain the same. I cannot tell you how little COVID has effected me where I live (Melbourne does sound bad though.) My quality of life is pretty much the same. The Australian government made the most of this by suggesting tourism in Australian instead of flying overseas. It's been quite popular. Opening borders would have negatively effected the QoL of Australians way more than shutting them

Anyway, from Nov 1, the borders are gradually opening up. My state is taking more on Dec 17

Maybe you just need to ask the right Australian? You know, the one that's just going to agree with you.
 

Gergar12

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I just made an appointment for a booster shot, it's insane they(pharmacies) don't allow walk-ins.
 

tstorm823

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Maybe you just need to ask the right Australian? You know, the one that's just going to agree with you.
I mean this sincerely, I'm not trying to shame you, just please remember this moment when you talk about US politics.
 

gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
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Funny, this column is a year old:

"Playwright Arthur Miller once told a story about a geologist who remarked that life was possible even in the vast American desert. All you needed was water, he said, and the largest reservoir on the globe was located right under the Rockies.

But how would he get it?

Simple — drop a couple of atomic bombs.

But what about the fallout?

“Oh,” said the geologist, “that’s not my field.”

Today, the epidemiologists are prepared to nuke the entire American economy to kill a virus.

What about the jobs, the suicides, the heart attacks, the lost careers, the destruction of America’s wealth?

Oh, that’s not my field."


There may be something of a stealth acceptance that we've over done it. A new variant is out and, thankfully, I'm not hearing demands for new lock downs and masking in my area.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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Funny, this column is a year old:
It's also dumb as rocks. It is rhetoric, not serious debate: designed to be superficially plausible attention-grabbing, but without any real data or solid logic to back it up.

1) The analogy makes little sense. If you nuke the water out of the Rockies, you've irradiated the water for... a very long time. A recession is a blip: the US economy is already back above pre-pandemic levels. Sure, healthcare professionals are less concerned about the economy in ways. However, economists are plentiful, and a lot of them thought that infection control measures were warranted.

2) The pandemic caused considerably less damage to the US economy than the 2008 financial crash. (And yet these are the same people who think massively deregulated banks should continue being massively deregulated.)

3) This idea of "nuking the economy" with infection control is bogus. If a pandemic blasts through the economy, it "nukes" it irrespective of any measures. Firstly, deaths are economically disruptive and reduce economic actvity (except I guess for funeral directors, but that's not a major industry). Secondly, people will end up taking preventative measures anyway, and they will take more care the worse the pandemic is. If the government does nothing, all it ends up with is a buctcher's bill, a collapsed healthcare system and still gets a GDP crash. The argument relies on there not being a counterfactual: seeing as the government did something, we don't know exactly what it would have cost for the government to have done nothing. So this sort of argument just pretends the counterfactual is known and supports whatever they want to say.

4) These are the same people who were sniffy about masks, and vaccinations, and generally anything which were reasonable ways we could mitigate spread and casualties whilst maintaining economic activity, never mind the ways to mitigate spread that also had economic costs. I have no limit of contempt for such people.
 

gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
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EDIT: Consumer Confidence in the US: Based upon this, you do have a point.

1638385581182.png

I cringed with I saw Andrew Cuomo say if all of our efforts save even a single life, it will all have been worth doing.

EDIT: ITMT, doing some more reviewing. Example: https://www.economist.com/finance-a...to-assess-the-costs-and-benefits-of-lockdowns

2nd EDIT: Such a reasoned analysis is going to be difficult. Example here is about South Dakota. https://www.economist.com/united-st...omy-defies-conventional-wisdom-about-covid-19 Easy to tell that no lockdowns helped their economy. More difficult to tell what lack of lock down did for lives. Sure, they rank 8th per capita, but they also have a very low population density.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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There may be something of a stealth acceptance that we've over done it. A new variant is out and, thankfully, I'm not hearing demands for new lock downs and masking in my area.
It's less of a stealth acceptance that we've over done it and more a stealth acceptance that "we" care more about money than lives.

Any sort of pandemic relief for individuals has ended months ago and it's still being blamed for "nobody wants to work" for Christ's sake. Most of the countries on the travel ban list don't have cases of the new variant while plenty of countries with cases have no travel restrictions. Meanwhile, covid was the #1 cause of death in the US for people my age in August, and I'm not 40 yet. That's going to "nuke the economy", but that part of the equation isn't part of their "field" because most economists put a dollar value on human life years ago and started figuring we were fungible.


We're going to bury our head in the sand because doing otherwise makes the money sad.
 
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gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
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It's less of a stealth acceptance that we've over done it and more a stealth acceptance that "we" care more about money than lives.

Any sort of pandemic relief for individuals has ended months ago and it's still being blamed for "nobody wants to work" for Christ's sake. Most of the countries on the travel ban list don't have cases of the new variant while plenty of countries with cases have no travel restrictions. Meanwhile, covid was the #1 cause of death in the US for people my age in August, and I'm not 40 yet. That's going to "nuke the economy", but that part of the equation isn't part of their "field" because most economists put a dollar value on human life years ago and started figuring we were fungible.


We're going to bury our head in the sand because doing otherwise makes the money sad.
Thanks, will review your link.
I tested positive 11/28 and have to quarantine for 10 days. The impact on me has been very mild. Is that because I'm double jabbed? Is it because the virus has evolved to be more contagious and less deadly in order to better survive? I don't know.