The scary thing is that many of the paranoid technology conspiracy theories from decades ago are now much more plausible with advances in electronics. Presumably this trend will continue. At some point, pretty much any paranoid notions that people can dream up may actually be plausible!
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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
I cannot think of any. And the really big flaw with all conspiracy theories is that they assume that thousands of people can keep a secret. There are real conspiracies all the time. They usually get busted within a year or two. But I don't know of any technology conspiracy theories that are even remotely plausible.
Right. One person can possibly keep a secret. For two people to keep a secret the odds go down dramatically. Conspiracy hypothesis have the same validity as the "we faked the moon landings". The tens of thousands of people that were involved plus all the eyewitnesses of the launches would all have to conspire. It's just isn't even remotely possible for that to have happened--not to mention the technology didn't exist back then to create a convincing fake.
There should be a stupidity tax: Vaccine refusers should have to pay a tax in an amount that would be sufficient in the aggregate to pay all the costs of the pandemic that have accumulated since the vaccine became available.
From an anti-mask post on Facebook. Seems to me this proves that masks decrease infectious vector load.
dhanson865
Well-Known Member
The 4th wave might have been a dud but the 5th wave clearly wasn't hampered by vaccines.
Basically the 5th wave is just as deadly as the first wave.
when we get rid of wave number 5 will we get a valley or plateau for late fall/early winter or will the holidays bring us wave 6? Or is wave 5 going to fake us out and extend upwards after a day or two of lowered readings?
Basically the 5th wave is just as deadly as the first wave.
when we get rid of wave number 5 will we get a valley or plateau for late fall/early winter or will the holidays bring us wave 6? Or is wave 5 going to fake us out and extend upwards after a day or two of lowered readings?
In what alternate universe would that be an anti-mask post? If the mask didn't "catch" those, the person would have inhaled them.
Here is an intriguing hot new pre-print not off the press yet.
In other words, a vaccine based on the common ancestral variant of Beta and Delta (the current vaccine) likely does a better job of protecting against both variants while a vaccine based on Delta might not elicite good protection against a Beta-like variant.
A dual vaccine that produced spikes for both beta and delta might do better than the current vaccine?
Divergence of delta and beta variants and SARS-CoV-2 evolved in prolonged infection into distinct serological phenotypes
SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve variants of concern (VOC) which escape antibody neutralization and have enhanced transmission. One variant may escape immunity elicited by another, and the delta VOC has been reported to escape beta elicited immunity ([1][1]). Systematic mapping of the serological...
www.medrxiv.org
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You wouldn't believe the logic around "Wearing masks are dangerous". This was in our local school Facebook group. They are trying to come up with reasons the Governor's school mask mandate is harming their precious children who should just get COVID and share it with everyone else.
My first thought when I saw the post was that Florida school should test all students for TB.
Did you know there are toxic substances in laundry detergent? So washing a mask in the laundry will kill kids. Really, that was one of the comments. Personally I don't think anyone should be wearing a cloth mask at this point, but I also wouldn't be putting them in the laundry either. Just wash them with mild soap in a basin and hang them to dry.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
It's true that the mortality with this wave has been way higher than I expected (CFR is still over 1, close to 1.2%, higher than my hope of 0.5%-1%). It absolutely has been hampered by vaccines. Just not as much as it should have been, and the lack of uniformity of vaccination rates has really hurt. Delta variant has probably also played some role.
1) You don't know how many cases were in the first wave (there were a lot!)
2) We know there was significant undercounting of mortality due to COVID in that first wave, based on excess mortality data. (At this point it's pretty clear the excess mortality was not primarily due to other causes.). This chart makes that apparent (however, note that the 2021 data lags and it will continue to rise). Best to use to compare waves 1 & 2. Worldometers says wave 1 was ~85% more deadly than wave 2. But looks like it was actually 200-300% more deadly than wave 2. (And wave 1 was about 15% lower peak than the winter wave (wave 3) - though much sharper (NPIs!), so substantially less deadly. Worldometers shows a peak about 35% lower than wave 3 for wave 1.)
Source (first link I could find):
When looking at this recent wave, the most fair comparison is to wave 3. It looks like so far it was 33% less deadly than that wave (so far). This is way worse than I thought it would be, but it is an improvement representing 10s of thousands of lives saved.
This gap may widen on the downside of the curve - it's possible that deaths will drop more quickly than in prior waves in some areas (fewer stragglers). You can see deaths simply are not following cases and hospitalizations in more heavily vaccinated areas.
Source:
You are absolutely correct. But the idiot anti-mask logic is that rather than catching and stopping all those pathogens, the mask is making the kids inhale them. Of course masks should be washed.
dhanson865
Well-Known Member
you are speaking in relative terms, I was speaking in absolute terms.
Just look at the size of the waves in deaths, wave 1 and wave 5 have similar areas under the curve.
You can talk till you are blue in your face about CFR, IFR, and any another acronym you want but the US population hasn't dramatically shifted between wave 1 and wave 5 so deaths is the number I have to look at. It doesn't matter that the vaccinated are super unlikely to be in the death curve if the deaths are still happening.
You can spin "why" all you want, I'm observing "what" and "when".
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
But you're ignoring the fact that the number of infections in wave 5 looks like 8 times as many while deaths are actually lower than wave one. I'd say that's strong evidence that vaccines, and better treatments, have been effective.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
No spin here. I’m just saying that vaccinations have noticeably reduced mortality, which is true. Not as much as hoped because only half the people got vaccinated who were eligible, but such is life.
Right, that is what you should look at. However, in this case you need to look at excess mortality (which is not complete yet for wave 5) and compare to wave 1. You can see the plot above. That’s the key.
It does look likely that we’ll do slightly better than wave 1, though we will see (not clear yet, because the data is not complete). That’s actually likely a considerably better result, all things considered, since the country is open now while everything was largely shut down in wave 1.
Another way to tell whether vaccination helped is to look at deaths in this wave in vaccinated and unvaccinated (tracked by some localities), correct for portion of population of each group, and see how it looks.
It’s true that it doesn’t matter whether only unvaccinated people are dying for the most part - they are still deaths. But the fact that vacccinated people are dying at a lower rate indicates that rate*population of vaccinated people, are being saved each day.
You can't do that you're comparing apples to oranges - there were far more cases in wave 1 than were actually counted due to the lack of testing capacity and availability. Also - deaths were highly concentrated in a few small areas (NYC, for example) where hospitals were quickly overwhelmed leading to excessive death rates - not to mention that treatments have vastly improved since then as well.
If you want to see how vaccines are working - compare the rate of infection in people today - then compare to the rate of hospitalization and death today for the vaccinated and un-vaccinated - or perhaps compare wave 3 and 5.
Even then - there will be differences in demographics that you need to take into account.
So these people concerned about laundry detergent and toxicity are wearing clothes and sleeping on bedding washed in this stuff.
BTW for anyone wanting KN95 masks, Newegg will sell you 50 for $15 at check out. I think you need to buy something worth some minimum value like $100.
Bottom line: If you are vaccinated your chances of serious illness or death from COVID are practically nil. Hospitals are full to overflowing with COVID patients, nearly all of whom are unvaccinated. It's plain on the face of it: Vaccines work. So much so that a rational society would make vaccination a requirement for receiving medical care and would enforce mandatory supervised quarantine for all unvaccinated people.
We could stop this virus in its tracks if we just locked all unvaccinated people in their homes for a month.
We could stop this virus in its tracks if we just locked all unvaccinated people in their homes for a month.
uujjj2
Member
One thing I'm struck by is how high the CFR has been in Florida, around 2%, higher than in prior waves. That may reflect the effect of an overwhelmed health care system. And Florida's vax rate at the start of the delta wave was only slightly lower than the national average at the time.
I'm very concerned about some of these states with mediocre vaccination coverage that were also spared by earlier waves. In states like Alaska there may still be 30-40% of the adult population with no COVID immunity at all. It only takes about 10% of the population getting COVID to overwhelm the hospital system.
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