COVID-19

[whitesoxnation]

Rogan himself is unvaccinated, and is a vocal supporter of snake oil treatments like ivermectin, which he took himself when he became infected with COVID. Do with that what you may, but it’s not difficult to assess the degree to which Rogan is strongly and vocally anti-vax. To suggest that nobody will listen to what he says belies a complete ignorance to his audience’s fanaticism toward him.

I’ve listened to pretty much every podcast going back many years. My impression is that he is not anti-vaccine.

My impression is that he believes everyone should make a risk based decision based on their personal health situation and beliefs, and that the right answer for one person may not be the right answer for another person.

Whether or not Joe Rogan is right or wrong, there is division and that can, in my opinion, be attributed to what I would at best call a sub-par response to COVID by the government. Lots of credibility was lost at the beginning and it hasn’t been restored, which leads to a fertile ground for differing ideas.

The Premonition by Michael Lewis was a page turner on how poorly prepared we were and how sub-par our response was. I read the Fifth Risk by Lewis prior to the pandemic and it was as if he had a crystal ball to predict how ineptitude from the leaders of our institutions could lead to a response like we saw, and set conditions for the division and disagreement that we are seeing.

 

[Mirage]

I shouldn’t have to explain this to you.

I about fell out of my chair when I read this laughing.

Hey @Brett327, you ever heard the saying that everyone squadron consists of about 10% assholes? I bet you always thought that number seemed a bit high.

 

[wink]

I know this is what the GOP fantasizes about late at night, but it will never, ever happen. Write it down.

Promise me the DEMs won't regulate speech on social networks based on misinformation, truth, and established science. That DEM dream may be more likely than a public utility guarantee of speech on social media.

 

[MIDNJAC]

My two older kids have it and are like, ‘Dad, get with the program. Buying music is so last week.”

But I still buy music, from bandcamp where possible because they send more $$$ to the artists.

I may have actually been the last person of my generation to purchase a real CD from a store.......and I can't over-state my app/social media/phone ineptitude (or lack of caring), but Spotify is pretty good. You can search and play like any song in the world, whenever you want. For $9.99/mo (or whatever it is now), your phone connected to your car, or a bluetooth speaker, has all the music. Full disclosure, you do occasionally run into songs/albums that aren't hosted, but for me at least, that is pretty rare. /unpaid advertisement

 

[Brett327]

Promise me the DEMs won't regulate speech on social networks based on misinformation, truth, and established science. That DEM dream may be more likely than a public utility guarantee of speech on social media.

That’s not Dems, per se. Those are business owners, exercising their own free speech by deciding what they will and will not allow on their platforms.

 

[Brett327]

I about fell out of my chair when I read this laughing.

Oh, good. I’m glad you’re feeling better.

 

[Spekkio]

Promise me the DEMs won't regulate speech on social networks based on misinformation, truth, and established science. That DEM dream may be more likely than a public utility guarantee of speech on social media.

There essentially are 3 camps when it comes to COVID-19:

1. COVID-19 is fake news. The COVID-19 vaccine is harmful and no one should get it. This camp is relatively fringe at this point.
2. COVID-19 is real, and we need to do everything we can to minimize its spread. That includes government regulations on capacity, vaccines, masks, etc. This stance has largely been adopted by the Democratic platform.
3. COVID-19 is real, and while we encourage people to get vaccinated they are free to make their own choices. Time to put an end to mandatory NPIs. This stance has largely been adopted by the Republican platform.

Problem is that group 2 frequently places group 3 into group 1 in order to garner public pressure to silence them under the premise of 'spreading misinformation.'

 

[taxi1]

My impression is that he believes everyone should make a risk based decision based on their personal health situation and beliefs, and that the right answer for one person may not be the right answer for another person.

That's been the fundamental to our response throughout. Make your own choice.

The thing about a pandemic of some contagion, as opposed to the "obesity epidemic" or those of that ilk, is you need to treat the entire community as a patient. It's like the difference between having an infected cut on your foot and having sepsis. Foot, you apply antibiotic. Sepsis, you treat the system.

The doctors of a pandemic are public health specialists, not your PCP. A 70% successful vaccine might be iffy for a person but damn good for a community (if people take it). Percentage points are the difference between a reproduction rate R0>1 where the virus spreads, and one less than 1 where the virus goes away.

 

[Mirage]

That's been the fundamental to our response throughout. Make your own choice.

The thing about a pandemic of some contagion, as opposed to the "obesity epidemic" or those of that ilk, is you need to treat the entire community as a patient. It's like the difference between having an infected cut on your foot and having sepsis. Foot, you apply antibiotic. Sepsis, you treat the system.

The doctors of a pandemic are public health specialists, not your PCP. A 70% successful vaccine might be iffy for a person but damn good for a community (if people take it). Percentage points are the difference between a reproduction rate R0>1 where the virus spreads, and one less than 1 where the virus goes away.

Your comparisons and analysis assume the vax is effective at stopping spread of the virus. This is no longer true, and hasn't been for a long time. It is only effective at preventing the vaccinated from being hospitalized and/or dying. If anything, this increases the spread of the virus since the infected is more likely to be out and about, rather than in a hospital.

As it stands, we have no effective weapon at treating the system, as you say. That is why I'm in Paris, where there's extremely strict rules regarding COVID and very high vaccination rates, and it is doing nothing to prevent a huge spike here.

 

[taxi1]

As it stands, we have no effective weapon at treating the system, as you say.

We actually have now, and have had since before the vaccine, a ton of effective weapons to treat the system (control the spread). We chose not to use them uniformly.

Your comparisons and analysis assume the vax is effective at stopping spread of the virus. This is no longer true, and hasn't been for a long time.

It remains true that it lowers probability of infection, and then contagiousness if you get infected. Each percentage point decrease matters when you stack them together. To your other point...

It is only effective at preventing the vaccinated from being hospitalized and/or dying.

What else do we really care about?

We wouldn't care (much) if it was just a common cold sweeping the nation, or if we had a readily available drug that truly stopped it in its tracks when sick. Look at how antibiotics changed our lives.

As it stands, we have no effective weapon at treating the system, as you say. That is why I'm in Paris, where there's extremely strict rules regarding COVID and very high vaccination rates, and it is doing nothing to prevent a huge spike here.

So you think the spike wouldn't be bigger if everyone went to restaurants with no NPIs and talked loudly with each other? Physics says otherwise.

 

[Mirage]

We actually have now, and have had since before the vaccine, a ton of effective weapons to treat the system (control the spread). We chose not to use them uniformly.


It remains true that it lowers probability of infection, and then contagiousness if you get infected. Each percentage point decrease matters when you stack them together. To your other point...


What else do we really care about?

We wouldn't care (much) if it was just a common cold sweeping the nation, or if we had a readily available drug that truly stopped it in its tracks when sick. Look at how antibiotics changed our lives.

So you think the spike wouldn't be bigger if everyone went to restaurants with no NPIs and talked loudly with each other? Physics says otherwise.

To steal your previous analogy, you first claimed it's like we have sepsis and we need to treat the whole system, but it's clear you realize we do not have the tools to rid our collective body of sepsis. All we can do is slow it's spread, and even that only very mildly, as proven by the huge spikes that are worse now in severity than any other time in the pandemic, even pre vaccine. My belief is that the treatment in this case (mandatory masks, vaccines, fear mongering, further dividing our society and pitting classes of people against each other) is worse than the disease (which is now pretty comparable to the flu in severity).

My goal is to either get rid of the virus forever if that's possible, and if it's not then provide people with tools and knowledge to mitigate it however they see fit for their individual situations and beliefs while getting on with our lives and not destroying our society.

I would love to hear your goal and a detailed and realistic cost-benefit analysis of how you think we can accomplish it. If you humor me, please include in your analysis the damage to people's lives through lost schooling, lost jobs, lost freedoms/liberties (of movement, of making their own medical decisions, of freely participating in society by eating out, going to the movies, etc.), general decline in happiness, etc.

 

[taxi1]

(which is now pretty comparable to the flu in severity).

Uhhh, no.

The daily death rate right now with the "mild" Omicron variant is just shy of as bad as in the worst days of last winter. We are losing over 2,000 citizens a day to it. We've just become numbed.

My goal is to either get rid of the virus forever if that's possible, and if it's not then provide people with tools and knowledge to mitigate it however they see fit for their individual situations and beliefs while getting on with our lives and not destroying our society.

I would love to hear your goal and a detailed and realistic cost-benefit analysis of how you think we can accomplish it.

Here's the sad thing, we've got the tool in hand right now to solve this at $60/per person. Too damn easy.

A vaccine shot costs $20. Two shots and a booster is $60. It all but guarantees you won't have a serious hospitalizing illness or die. It lowers the spread of the virus by lowering R0. Yes, there may be some people who react adversely to it, but at rates and severity orders and orders of magnitude less than getting any variant of Covid itself, at many factors of 10 lower cost.

Each person optimally doing what is best for their individual situation results in a suboptimal collective result. We are proof of that.

 

[Brett327]

For additional perspective, we limit the freedom of Americans in all different kinds of uncontroversial ways to keep them from self harm. The idea that we would employ similar methods with COVID isn’t the shocking, authoritarian solution some are making it out to be.

 

[taxi1]

My goal is to either get rid of the virus forever if that's possible, and if it's not then provide people with tools and knowledge to mitigate it however they see fit for their individual situations and beliefs while getting on with our lives and not destroying our society.

By the way, agree 100% with your goals, just want folks to consider the collective too.

 

[Mirage]

Uhhh, no.

The daily death rate right now with the "mild" Omicron variant is just shy of as bad as in the worst days of last winter. We are losing over 2,000 citizens a day to it. We've just become numbed.

That's because it's more infectious than the flu, not more severe. An important distinction.

Here's the sad thing, we've got the tool in hand right now to solve this at $60/per person. Too damn easy.

A vaccine shot costs $20. Two shots and a booster is $60. It all but guarantees you won't have a serious hospitalizing illness or die. It lowers the spread of the virus by lowering R0. Yes, there may be some people who react adversely to it, but at rates and severity orders and orders of magnitude less than getting any variant of Covid itself, at many factors of 10 lower cost.

Each person optimally doing what is best for their individual situation results in a suboptimal collective result. We are proof of that.

If the vaccine solves this thing, as you claim, then why are we now 64% fully vaccinated (including much higher percentages among the actual at risk population) and still having a death rate as bad as last winter, as you also pointed out? And our rate is low compared to places like France, who are faring no better.