This is starting to feel like scientists going "for the last time, the Earth is ROUND", and pointing to pictures of outer space....
I wonder what would happen if COVID "gained function" and the mortality rate rose to something significant, like 5% or 10%. Would the antivaxxers come running or would they chalk it up to a laboratory false flag?
I think if, god forbid, that did happen you’d get almost no compliance from a big chunk of society on the mandate. And the schism between the two sides would go nuclear. Probably the state would completely isolate the unvaccinated, and it would be open season on anyone who was symptomatic, unmasked, unvaccinated, etc.
Sigh. Let's go back to April of 2020 or December of 2020, when I was planning contingencies. It depends. Let's say we're dealing with an initial "active" population of 100,000 individuals with a particularly nasty variant of COVID, walking around all contagious and shit. Assuming this population will double in 72 hours, by the time the first folks show up with symptoms (72 hours), we're looking at a contagious population of at least 250,000. Depending on how long it takes to recognize this variant is worse in terms of fatality (remember, it takes 3 weeks to die, so this won't really be confirmed for weeks), or distinct from other variants, it could be much more. Also, generally speaking the more contagious a virus is, the less fatal: can't spread if you kill a high percentage of the hosts (medical treatments exacerbating the condition like leeches or bloodletting notwithstanding) and there's a decent chance medical staff improve interventions reducing that fatality rate. Depending on where that is (concentrated in a city? Multiple cities? Funnelled through the same airport so contact tracing can work?), there's slight variation, but you run the pandemic playbook as early as possible. So, let's say a variant has a fatality rate of 5%, meaning 1 in 20 dies. This means they don't just drop dead, they die in care, and we have to plan for said care to endure an extended period of time, say 3 weeks. So, from your first 100,000-250,000, you're looking at 5k-13k dead spread over 4-6 weeks. Wherever this takes place will cry for help. Now 5% death is bad, but how many of this new variant require hospitalization? Let's say 20%. So, 20-50k hospitalized out of 100k-250k would be back-breaking for all but a few places. Remember, we have about 600k hospital beds nationwide. You'd be looking at battlefield medicine, tents in parking lots, the whole nightmare. This is going from 1 in 12 or 15 or so, to 1 in 4, so this is a tremendous increase. Out of 100k cases, 5k died (again, after a prolonged bout) and 25k needed to be hospitalized, over a span of 3 weeks. Our normal baseline of deaths is about 7800 nationwide per day. 100k with a 5% fatal variant adding 5k to that total nationwide over 3 weeks would be a blip, but not a crisis. As it spreads, when it tips into 8k a day and 9k a day is when we start to see resources get stretched. 10k a day is a solid, round number acting as a canary in the coal mine. No single locality, state, region etc. can absorb excess mortality of about 1000 deaths...it's just too much work. I saw this firsthand in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. So, if 5k die in a single state or metro area, it's catastrophic. Also, given how this would overwhelm any single hospital system, it would result in excess mortality, because all medical capacity would be consumed. Anyone with a chronic medical condition would basically be told to test, innoculate, mask up and evacuate, in that order. Triage would kick in at a certain point, and plugs would get pulled, possibly earlier than they are pulled now. If things got truly out of hand, the governor would be asked to approve a more focused triage, essentially narrowing it down to cases that have the highest likelihood of survival, and limiting treatment for those with comorbities or of a certain age to palliative or comfort care alone. Again, that requires some official, typically the governor in conjunction with the federal government, to waive laws based on the situation at hand, and for a period of no more than a day. In all of this, there's no mention of best case scenario, and no separation between vaxxed/non-vaxxed, because professionals tend to not fuck around, and we'd simply assume it was going to get worse before we got a handle on it. The countermeasures deployed probably wouldn't be overly different. Social distancing, masks, testing, vaccines, avoiding non-essential crowds, shutdowns, etc. If you refused to obey the countermeasures, when there's schools closed to serve as makeshift hospitals, I'd have to imagine enforcement would be less tolerant, not to mention the other members of the public. If you roll the dice on a 1-in-4 game of hospitalization and 1 in 20 death, yeah you'd suffer some consequences similar to conditions like huffing paint, consuming household cleaning products or overdosing....it's pretty close to those odds.
Unfortunately, I do. Quite a few actually. Few months ago I posted how a big time anti-mask, anti-vax friend got the 'vid and ended up in the hospital on oxygen. Month later he was still getting his ass kicked by it. He's full back posting on FB like nothing happened. Another friend's whole family got it and his wife had an incessant cough for six weeks. They're the ones saying they'll homeschool their kids before getting the vaccine and she'll quit her job and lose her chance of her pension if she's forced to get the vax. One of the outside sales reps who calls on us caught covid last Thanksgiving and *still* doesn't have smell or taste but if you ask him, it's all a sham and he'll never get the vaccine. There are more instances but you get the idea.
You can still catch and transmit Polio after being vaccinated. It simply protects you from serious complications.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFrea...axxers_interrupt_remembrance_day_ceremony_in/ This one's for @Nettdata
Yeah... I hate people. I wish someone there would have just fucking decked her. Or something. Even though those being remembered fought for her right to say stupid shit, she doesn't even show them the common courtesy of respecting the one day of the year they are remembered. Such a sense of entitlement. Such a lack of situational awareness.
This is when you stand back and enjoy the angry mob justice that’s in the mail. Bitch just blew up her life and she deserves what’s coming.
Completely unacceptable. I hope they manage to charge her with disturbing the peace, or something. Talk about a tone-deaf and misguided attempt to advance an agenda. Edit: when I read this article earlier, they noted that they were "worried about this kind of thing happening," and the Legion had elected not to proceed with the temporary security fencing to prevent it due to cost. I'm kind of disappointed that one of the local rental places didn't volunteer the fence for free, given the circumstances. Had that been an issue where I live, and somehow we were made aware of it, I would have reached out to our regulars and almost certainly a deal could have been done. What a shame it was needed, though.
Glad to hear it... but I'll be interested to hear whether or not her attitudes around vaccinations has changed. It's a weird thing... some people start off anti-vax, then see the light once they've been released from the ICU... others just double down.
A few of my friends have it right now. One of them was recently cleared from quarantine and he was telling me how he has no sense of smell or taste. Which, for a guy who lives to eat, is killing him. I made a comment about how that goes to show it’s not “just the flu” like so many people say around here. This shit actually affects your brain. He then told me how he’d recently gone out to scout some new land he’ll be hunting and long story short, go lost for the first time in his life. He said after coming upon the same spot a third time he knew something was wrong and sat down to think it through. Now, he’s lived in that area all his life, this shouldn’t have been happening. Even when he climbed up in a ridge and had a look around he oriented himself wrong. He figured it out, but he was shocked at how the “covid fog” affected him. And judging by the look in his eyes as he told me, it really scared him. Deer hunting is his religion and the woods are his church. That wouldn’t have happened to him were it not for Covid.
I've never heard Covid fog explained with that kind of outcome... that's much more of an impact than I originally thought it was. I'd thought it was more about being slow or not being able to get the right word, something like that... but that level of impairment is surprising. I can totally relate to that scenario, in that I've hunted the same 600 acres for 30 years, and could literally be dropped into any spot of it blindfolded and know where I was and how to get back to camp. Knowing that he walked out there, knowing where he was, and then couldn't find his way back? Fucking hell.
Yeah and “covid fog” is really the only explanation for it. He was able to spot distant rooftops as landmarks and still had a hard time. Anyone else I’d say maybe just an off day, but this guy… no. And the look on his face telling me was one of true “wtf”. He also said he always feels hungry, at least in his mind, and thinks not being able to taste or smell his meals contributes to that.