Coronavirus

jeb wrote: My biggest fault with the new CDC recommendations isn't about the science--I would bet the science behind it is solid as a rock. The issue is it assumes people follow and have followed CDC guidance to this point. It is not "tested for bad actors" in my profession's parlance. People will fake the cards, people will not wear masks when called for, &c. And removing the CDC guidance removes a solid, easily conveyed excuse to handle the Rick Schroeders of the world (that's my local Costco, God bless) that want to give people a hard time for doing their already-hard jobs. I think they could have made the recommendation and included metrics or other measures to explain why it's being done, so folks know why it might have to go back in place if/when the numbers climb again.

Okay, but what is the conditions required for us to go maskless? People are going to behave as they always have. Since except for edge cases the only people harmed by not following the guidelines are, those not following the guidelines I don't really get what the problem is. If the sticker on the ladder says don't stand on the top step, well you live with the consequences.

It's like at the workplace. You don't just say, "that's not going to work". You say, "how about we do this instead, it is better because reason 1, reason 2, reason 3."

mtagge wrote:

jeb wrote: My biggest fault with the new CDC recommendations isn't about the science--I would bet the science behind it is solid as a rock. The issue is it assumes people follow and have followed CDC guidance to this point. It is not "tested for bad actors" in my profession's parlance. People will fake the cards, people will not wear masks when called for, &c. And removing the CDC guidance removes a solid, easily conveyed excuse to handle the Rick Schroeders of the world (that's my local Costco, God bless) that want to give people a hard time for doing their already-hard jobs. I think they could have made the recommendation and included metrics or other measures to explain why it's being done, so folks know why it might have to go back in place if/when the numbers climb again.

Okay, but what is the conditions required for us to go maskless? People are going to behave as they always have. Since except for edge cases the only people harmed by not following the guidelines are, those not following the guidelines I don't really get what the problem is. If the sticker on the ladder says don't stand on the top step, well you live with the consequences.

It's like at the workplace. You don't just say, "that's not going to work". You say, "how about we do this instead, it is better because reason 1, reason 2, reason 3."

Selfishly, I wouldn't be opposed to retaining a local mask ordinance until my seven year old daughter can get vaccinated.

Maskless, forever, back to pre-COVID would involve assumptions/demonstrations of herd immunity, which is a LOOOONG ways off given how everyone is acting. I mean, unless you're in New Zealand or whatever. In the US it's a ways.

Masks off for outside is good now in most parts of the country where you have exposure/vaccination rates north of 50% and more like 70%.

If you are fully vaccinated, you don't need to wear a mask to protect yourself unless in a high-risk setting like a crowded interior space. Even then, your chances of getting seriously ill if you do get infected are very low. BUT, if you do get infected, you might be carrying enough load to infect the un-or-under-vaccinated like my 9yo son, and no one wants that on their conscience.

On a walk? I have one in my hand in case I stop and chat someone up for a spell.

At the store, I wear one.

At a meal indoors with fully-vaxxed folk, I would not wear one.

At a meal outdoors with a mix of fully-vaxxed and un-vaxxed, I would wear one.

It's a mix. Just trying to minimize risks. They just don't bother me that much.

CranBerries wrote: Popular author Michael Lewis (The Big Short, Moneyball, etc) has come out with a book arguing that the CDC totally screwed things up. His interview with Ezra Klein was interesting. Here is the transcript that I am too lazy to summarize:

www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/podcasts/ezra...ewis-transcript.html

He does go into the history of the agency, and argues that the shift from career civil servant to political appointments has damaged the agency, but there is a lot going on. I'm not super invested in defending or destroying the CDC, just frustrated, like all of us.

MICHAEL LEWIS: Key failure number one, not facing up to the severity of what was going on in Wuhan as early as you could have done it. I would say January 20, when my characters have a real bead on what the transmissibility and the lethality of it is. And they had connections within the CDC. They’re talking. They’re trying to get them to pay attention. The “head-in-the-sandness,” kind of, of it.

Two, being proprietary about COVID testing so that they created in our government a single point of failure. So that when their test didn’t work, we had no test. And that’s not just the CDC. That’s the FDA, because the FDA was insisting that people use the CDC’s test.

We have more microbiology labs than any other country on Earth. They could all have whipped up COVID tests and some of them did. We could have done it a completely different way. Not just that the tests failed, but instead of responding to the failure by saying, this isn’t working, we got to find a different way, clinging to the authority to create a test. That would be two.


Three, in the midst of all this, not being able to stand up to Donald Trump and say, what you’re saying about this is false. You’d lose your job maybe. But there was a public information role that they failed repeatedly with. And they failed in both directions. It’s interesting. Saying that masks didn’t do anything, because they didn’t have masks. But also, remember early on there was an obsession with fomites. You can get this thing off of surfaces. And you were cleaning your newspaper before you got it off your front porch if you got —

EZRA KLEIN: Yeah, people were Lysoling their groceries.

MICHAEL LEWIS: All that. Think about the expense that the whole society has gone to because the CDC only like last week said, actually, that’s not that big a deal. They could have said that last May. So the guidance has been bizarre.

Fine hindsight.

I’m fully vaccinated and I’m still wearing a mask. I don’t see how it is anything more than a minor inconvenience (at worst).

The whole conversation around masks still seems to be about protecting yourself. Unless the science has changed, the last I recall seeing is that masks aren’t great at protecting the wearers from disease, but they are great at preventing the wearers from spreading disease.

I'm still keeping masks in my car but only putting one on when it's required or someone asks me to.

My three year old and I have been sick with a “stomach bug” for the last couple of days. Took him to his doc and they did a covid test. He is positive. So I went to the local clinic and tested negative, even though we have the same symptoms.

Maybe because I’m vaccinated? I don’t know.

But this is killing me. We are super careful with everything. I don’t know how he could have been exposed.

My teenage sons just got their first shots today. I'm very pleased.

Ugh, sorry n815e, a quick recovery to you both.

Not sure which tests you each took, but some have a high false-negative rate. this came up in the public discourse when (someonefamous) took four tests, and two came back positive, and they concluded "something was fishy." It wasn't. They were just seeing that false negative rate play out--that they had two positive tests indicated they were certainly positive.

A couple of weeks after my second Pfizer shot, I started going back to the gym, where masks were mandatory except in the pool area with a new maximum population of 7 people. Mask compliance was about 90%, with me not counting masks that only cover the mouth or the chin or the neck. Since this new CDC guideline, mask compliance at my gym has dropped to about 30%, and the gym was fairly busy for the first time since March of 2020. I'm going to keep wearing a mask there for now, even though it sucks to practically inhale my mask when really exerting myself.

As of yesterday I am two weeks past my second Moderna shot. Might lick a public doorknob to celebrate.

Thank you, jeb.

Had one of those incredibly disturbing covid denial conspiracy conversations with my grandmother in law, who is 87. Absolutely insane, depressing shit.

I have seen multiple people declare that they don't need the vaccine because their prior positive case of Covid and the resulting antibodies "gives them natural immunity".. Cue the Picard face palm.