Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Also, since a literal appeal to authority was made, it's worth remembering that these same authorities used to say that masks are absolutely useless outside hospitals and nobody should use them except medical professionals on the job - back when masks were in short supply and the authorities were worried hospitals are going to run out.
I don't bring it up as a way to say they aren't to be trusted and following their advice is wrong. I just want to point out that the recommendations are based on other factors besides what's actually the best for people's health.
No. The reasoning was like "if people start panic buying masks now, we'll end up with hospital staff having to treat Covid patients without proper protection so they'll end up sick and either unable to work or further spreading it around, and then the serious cases will be truly fucked". As TP etc. show, that fear wasn't unfounded, and at the time it wasn't really clear what would be the greater risk: not protecting the general public or potentially not protecting the professionals.
That they said "naah relax, it's not necessary" instead of something honest like "it would be smart to wear a mask, but please don't go and buy masks for the next year today" was obviously a worse strategy in retrospect. Being honest and protecting the professionals would have required governments to secure masks for hospitals under emergency powers though (because look how well "please don't panic buy" worked when they said it), something they didn't have much political support for even months later.
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@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Also, since a literal appeal to authority was made, it's worth remembering that these same authorities used to say that masks are absolutely useless outside hospitals and nobody should use them except medical professionals on the job - back when masks were in short supply and the authorities were worried hospitals are going to run out.
I don't bring it up as a way to say they aren't to be trusted and following their advice is wrong. I just want to point out that the recommendations are based on other factors besides what's actually the best for people's health.
No. The reasoning was like "if people start panic buying masks now, we'll end up with hospital staff having to treat Covid patients without proper protection so they'll end up sick and either unable to work or further spreading it around, and then the serious cases will be truly fucked". As TP etc. show, that fear wasn't unfounded, and at the time it wasn't really clear what would be the greater risk: not protecting the general public or potentially not protecting the professionals.
That they said "naah relax, it's not necessary" instead of something honest like "it would be smart to wear a mask, but please don't go and buy masks for the next year today" was obviously a worse strategy in retrospect. Being honest and protecting the professionals would have required governments to secure masks for hospitals under emergency powers though (because look how well "please don't panic buy" worked when they said it), something they didn't have much political support for even months later.Masks have proven to be pretty useless to control spread though, so they had it right in the beginning.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
We know that comorbidities matter. Yet our government refuses to publish co-morbidity statistics on the serious covid case counts. So we're forced to make assumptions based on statistics from elsewhere.
It gets seriously complicated, as people with comorbidities have often been prioritised in vaccination programmes and the unvaccinated among them may have significantly different behaviour patterns to ordinary unvaccinated young adults. That means that working out comparable figures is intensely difficult; there are quite a lot of things that you have to control for even if we assume that the basics of the biology are similar worldwide (a factor that means that data from the early stages of the pandemic can't be used for current predictions; the delta strain has different parameters to the alpha and beta strains).
Complex, yes. But unless you provide a rough separation between those basically healthy and those who were not, in the data, it's hard to make a case for vaccinating. AIUI, among the ICU cases and deaths among non-elderly,
more than half75% had diabetes or other known pre-existing co-morbidity. So I automatically substract half of the published covid death statistics when I consider whether the vaccine might protect me from serious illness.If the government were to publish statistics that disprove this notion, then that would make it more likely for me to get the vaccine. Because that would mean my ass is on the line (with greater probability). But the government refuses, and makes excuses.
As for the Delta variant, it's dominant among the vaccinated populations. Meaning, it's adapted to evading the vaccine. Is it lethal to me, or to anyone for that matter? Nothing so far published has suggested that.
EDIT:
News today stated a more accurate figure.
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@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
after all, historically, the worst side effects always popped up after a few years.
I've read that for vaccines, delayed side-effects are not really a thing - when they occurr, they occur pretty quickly (definitely not years after).
The mRNA has been shown to accumulate in the ovaries (among other places), so widespread side-effects might become apparent fully a year after the <40yo started getting the vaccine. Meaning around spring 2022.
(Sorry for replying twice to the same post, but I just remembered this.)
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@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Also, since a literal appeal to authority was made, it's worth remembering that these same authorities used to say that masks are absolutely useless outside hospitals and nobody should use them except medical professionals on the job - back when masks were in short supply and the authorities were worried hospitals are going to run out.
I don't bring it up as a way to say they aren't to be trusted and following their advice is wrong. I just want to point out that the recommendations are based on other factors besides what's actually the best for people's health.
No. The reasoning was like "if people start panic buying masks now, we'll end up with hospital staff having to treat Covid patients without proper protection so they'll end up sick and either unable to work or further spreading it around, and then the serious cases will be truly fucked".
The point stands. A recommendation can be made/not made for reasons other than impact on the individual's health. Such as the overall health of the whole population when you include logistics etc. Which is a different thing from the individual's health.
As TP etc. show, that fear wasn't unfounded
TP never went out of stock. It was just a meme. The mask shortage was real, though.
That they said "naah relax, it's not necessary" instead of something honest like "it would be smart to wear a mask, but please don't go and buy masks for the next year today" was obviously a worse strategy in retrospect.
Or was it? How do we know we'd get better results otherwise? We don't have another Earth to do comparative study. And in the grand scheme of things, either decision would have minor impact on things, especially considering we're now talking on the timescale of years and not weeks/months. Looking at available data, we didn't do much better this year than last year, despite abundance of masks.
Being honest and protecting the professionals would have required governments to secure masks for hospitals under emergency powers though (because look how well "please don't panic buy" worked when they said it), something they didn't have much political support for even months later.
Eh. All that was needed was banning in late 2019/early 2020 any and all transports of masks to China, to prevent the Chinese panic buyers living in USA and Europe from buying out the whole stock right before it was needed. But that would require admitting in late 2019/early 2020 that the Wuhan epidemic is a real deal, and nobody wanted to do that until it was too late.
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@Carnage said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Masks have proven to be pretty useless to control spread though
No, they work… provided a large enough proportion of the population wear them (especially when indoors in public places). There have been stages of the pandemic (at least in some countries) that have proved this to be so. The “large enough proportion” is a factor that depends on the variant; delta's so damned infectious that masking up has to be done by a lot of people indeed to be effective.
Optional masking is not effective. Too many
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So I automatically substract half of the published covid death statistics when I consider whether the vaccine might protect me from serious illness.
So you have decided to apply your own statistical massaging using a copronumerological source.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
As for the Delta variant, it's dominant among the vaccinated populations. Meaning, it's adapted to evading the vaccine.
It's also dominant among unvaccinated populations.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
TP never went out of stock.
Did you actually go to the store at all during the first few weeks of that (very stupid) panic? They absolutely were out of stock; the aisle that's usually full of TP of different types (because some people want extra thick aloe vera scented stuff), that was completely cleared out. Yes, there would have been more loads coming from warehouses and manufacturers (TP is never transported truly long distance; far too bulky for that to be cost effective) but things were definitely locally out of stock.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
We don't have another Earth to do comparative study.
But we have different countries and states that enacted different mandates at different times. So we can look for correlations between the progress of the infection and the measures. And at least there is nothing obvious, so if there was some effect, it was not the most important factor.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Carnage said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Masks have proven to be pretty useless to control spread though
No, they work… provided a large enough proportion of the population wear them (especially when indoors in public places). There have been stages of the pandemic (at least in some countries) that have proved this to be so. The “large enough proportion” is a factor that depends on the variant; delta's so damned infectious that masking up has to be done by a lot of people indeed to be effective.
Optional masking is not effective. Too many
And that's assuming that the masks have some kind of filter and aren't just cloth. Because half of what I see on the street is just cloth.
If everyone had a proper particle filter mask, the pandemic would be over already.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So I automatically substract half of the published covid death statistics when I consider whether the vaccine might protect me from serious illness.
So you have decided to apply your own statistical massaging using a copronumerological source.
I do what I have to do to get some kind of sensible estimate of my chances. Like I said in the edit, the published number is now 75%. So dividing the deathcount by half gives a conservative correction.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Because half of what I see on the street is just cloth.
Many of the cloth ones I've seen round here appear to have a proper filter inside. I've no idea whether that applies to where you are.
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@Watson said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
As for the Delta variant, it's dominant among the vaccinated populations. Meaning, it's adapted to evading the vaccine.
It's also dominant among unvaccinated populations.
We don't know that. The countries that haven't vaccinated half their population also don't have good statistics on the which strain is dominant.
You could still be right though. If the vaccine-adapted variants get an edge in a mixed population, they will have a lead on the others in cross-border infection rates too.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Eh. All that was needed was banning in late 2019/early 2020 any and all transports of masks to China, to prevent the Chinese panic buyers living in USA and Europe from buying out the whole stock right before it was needed. But that would require admitting in late 2019/early 2020 that the Wuhan epidemic is a real deal, and nobody wanted to do that until it was too late.
A lot of the masks come from China, so I'm not sure what that's supposed to achieve.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If everyone had a proper particle filter mask, the pandemic would be over already.
Around here (almost) everybody does have a proper particle filter mask and the next wave is on the rise.
Granted, almost nobody has the particle filter properly fitted, but you can't expect people anywhere else to do any better in that regard.
In fact I am starting to think that the “proper” particle filters are making matters worse. Because people tend to have them for the brief contacts in the tram and such, but not in the longer term contacts term contacts, and the longer the contact, the higher the viral load, and the more likely you'll get a severe case. And note that Czechia is almost worst in covid.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Eh. All that was needed was banning in late 2019/early 2020 any and all transports of masks to China, to prevent the Chinese panic buyers living in USA and Europe from buying out the whole stock right before it was needed. But that would require admitting in late 2019/early 2020 that the Wuhan epidemic is a real deal, and nobody wanted to do that until it was too late.
A lot of the masks come from China, so I'm not sure what that's supposed to achieve.
It'd avoid a lot of useless round-trips.
Some Chinese use Europe and the U.S. as a quality-control step in their supply chain. They order stuff like vitamins and meds from here.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Watson said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
As for the Delta variant, it's dominant among the vaccinated populations. Meaning, it's adapted to evading the vaccine.
It's also dominant among unvaccinated populations.
We don't know that. The countries that haven't vaccinated half their population also don't have good statistics on the which strain is dominant.
You could still be right though. If the vaccine-adapted variants get an edge in a mixed population, they will have a lead on the others in cross-border infection rates too.
Delta variant was already becoming dominant in the respective countries before vaccination was wide-spread.
It has certainly adapted, but not because of the vaccine. That might happen in the future, but it's not the case for delta.
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@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
And note that Czechia is almost worst in covid.
Historically yes, currently no. Specifically, cumulative totals are large relative to population size but active cases are not (assuming that the website I was looking at wasn't totally wrong). OTOH, there's definite signs of the exponential pick-up in rates again in that data so it's time to start worrying.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Delta variant was already becoming dominant in the respective countries before vaccination was wide-spread.
There's monitoring of variants around the world, and so far Delta's been out-competing all the variants that have arisen before or since.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
And note that Czechia is almost worst in covid.
Historically yes, currently no. Specifically, cumulative totals are large relative to population size but active cases are not (assuming that the website I was looking at wasn't totally wrong). OTOH, there's definite signs of the exponential pick-up in rates again in that data so it's time to start worrying.
The N95 mandate is in place since something like February. And the disease is showing very seasonal behaviour here. Nothing changed in the spring, but the infection rates still subsided, and not much changed in the fall, but the infection rates are rising again.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Delta variant was already becoming dominant in the respective countries before vaccination was wide-spread.
There's monitoring of variants around the world, and so far Delta's been out-competing all the variants that have arisen before or since.
I'd expect that to be a combination of getting the infection function for humans right at the same time that there wasn't enough people around with an immune system that was prepared for the virus.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
No, they work… provided a large enough proportion of the population wear them (especially when indoors in public places). There have been stages of the pandemic (at least in some countries) that have proved this to be so.
Source?
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@MrL Comparative infection rates in various European countries in early stages of the pandemic, when there were absolutely no vaccines to be had and masking and lock downs were the only available control measures that had an actual impact.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@MrL Comparative infection rates in various European countries in early stages of the pandemic, when there were absolutely no vaccines to be had and masking and lock downs were the only available control measures that had an actual impact.
That's a nice description, but no source.
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This study was recently in the news. There's a summary here. Apparently it even evaluates surgical masks vs cloth masks. Here's different one (note: pre-print, couldn't find a final version in the 5 minutes I give for googling up stuff for other people). Another one.
At this point, they're not that hard to find. People have had time to do the studies now, including the first one that involved over 300'000 test subjects.
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@cvi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
This study was recently in the news. There's a summary here. Apparently it even evaluates surgical masks vs cloth masks. Here's different one (note: pre-print, couldn't find a final version in the 5 minutes I give for googling up stuff for other people). Another one.
At this point, they're not that hard to find. People have had time to do the studies now, including the first one that involved over 300'000 test subjects.
Thanks, those are interesting.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
However, the second two are different matters; the risks of complications from the main vaccines are mostly really low, and the chance of infecting someone else with a vaccine are… well, basically TDEMSYR. (Well, almost.)
This does not seem to be the case at all at this point. It might have been with the original version. The main effect of the vaccine (at this point) seems to be preventing severe disease. Which is, in fact, great. But people (including you, here) talking about how it prevents other people from being spread reduces trust because it does not appear to be the case at all.
Obviously that message is not as nice and neat as we'd like it but we've had waaaaay to many noble lies from people in positions of authority already. We're beyond Baghdad Fucking Bob at this point and I don't know how we get back.
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@cvi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Does any actual authority on the matter actually recommend @Gąska to take aspirin as a preventative measure given his conditions?
Yeah, but that's kind of exactly the point here! Why one but not the other given somewhat similar risk profiles?
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@Carnage said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Also, since a literal appeal to authority was made, it's worth remembering that these same authorities used to say that masks are absolutely useless outside hospitals and nobody should use them except medical professionals on the job - back when masks were in short supply and the authorities were worried hospitals are going to run out.
I don't bring it up as a way to say they aren't to be trusted and following their advice is wrong. I just want to point out that the recommendations are based on other factors besides what's actually the best for people's health.
No. The reasoning was like "if people start panic buying masks now, we'll end up with hospital staff having to treat Covid patients without proper protection so they'll end up sick and either unable to work or further spreading it around, and then the serious cases will be truly fucked". As TP etc. show, that fear wasn't unfounded, and at the time it wasn't really clear what would be the greater risk: not protecting the general public or potentially not protecting the professionals.
That they said "naah relax, it's not necessary" instead of something honest like "it would be smart to wear a mask, but please don't go and buy masks for the next year today" was obviously a worse strategy in retrospect. Being honest and protecting the professionals would have required governments to secure masks for hospitals under emergency powers though (because look how well "please don't panic buy" worked when they said it), something they didn't have much political support for even months later.Masks have proven to be pretty useless to control spread though, so they had it right in the beginning.
Which was pretty much what all the pre-2020 research said about masks vs viral infections.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Carnage said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Masks have proven to be pretty useless to control spread though
No, they work… provided a large enough proportion of the population wear them (especially when indoors in public places). There have been stages of the pandemic (at least in some countries) that have proved this to be so. The “large enough proportion” is a factor that depends on the variant; delta's so damned infectious that masking up has to be done by a lot of people indeed to be effective.
Optional masking is not effective. Too many
Do you have some kind of reference about this? I've never seen anything that was at all persuasive.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
However, the second two are different matters; the risks of complications from the main vaccines are mostly really low, and the chance of infecting someone else with a vaccine are… well, basically TDEMSYR. (Well, almost.)
This does not seem to be the case at all at this point. It might have been with the original version. The main effect of the vaccine (at this point) seems to be preventing severe disease. Which is, in fact, great. But people (including you, here) talking about how it prevents other people from being spread reduces trust because it does not appear to be the case at all.
To be fair, I think he meant infecting someone from a vaccination, as is possible with some live-bacteria ones. Not transmitting the virus when vaccinated.
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@cvi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
This study was recently in the news. There's a summary here. Apparently it even evaluates surgical masks vs cloth masks.
Hmm...
The proportion of individuals with COVID-like symptoms was 7.62% (N=13,273) in the intervention arm and 8.62% (N=13,893) in the control arm.
That...doesn't seem to make much of a case for masks.
Here's different one (note: pre-print, couldn't find a final version in the 5 minutes I give for googling up stuff for other people).
This one shows a much larger difference between masked and non-masked but sample sizes are pretty small and it was about health care workers. I've seen other studies where they compared "hand hygiene" vs "mask plus hand hygiene" with health care workers and the masked people were significantly worse.
Another one.
At this point, they're not that hard to find. People have had time to do the studies now, including the first one that involved over 300'000 test subjects.
<!-- inb4 those don't count because ${raisins} -->Yeah, as to that last one, the raisin is pretty obvious:
We simulated outbreaks under a variety of parameter values associated with mask effectiveness (protection and containment) and mask supply, and identified the resulting total numbers of infections and deaths.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
However, the second two are different matters; the risks of complications from the main vaccines are mostly really low, and the chance of infecting someone else with a vaccine are… well, basically TDEMSYR. (Well, almost.)
This does not seem to be the case at all at this point. It might have been with the original version. The main effect of the vaccine (at this point) seems to be preventing severe disease. Which is, in fact, great. But people (including you, here) talking about how it prevents other people from being spread reduces trust because it does not appear to be the case at all.
To be fair, I think he meant infecting someone from a vaccination, as is possible with some live-bacteria ones. Not transmitting the virus when vaccinated.
Ah, OK. Yeah, that wasn't at all clear to me but I guess it makes sense once you mention it.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Carnage said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Masks have proven to be pretty useless to control spread though
No, they work… provided a large enough proportion of the population wear them (especially when indoors in public places). There have been stages of the pandemic (at least in some countries) that have proved this to be so. The “large enough proportion” is a factor that depends on the variant; delta's so damned infectious that masking up has to be done by a lot of people indeed to be effective.
Optional masking is not effective. Too many
Do you have some kind of reference about this? I've never seen anything that was at all persuasive.
There was that one study where they swapped the nurses' surgical masks for proper N95 or something. Maybe with rubber fittings, just for good measure. And the covid infection rate among the staff fell to ambient levels, when it had previously been high above.
Of course, nurses at the ward also scrub their hands, etc.. But the study shows that it's theoretically possible to stop the spread with proper masks plus hand hygiene. There's no technical obstacle to expanding that to the population at large.
Of course, no-one's tried buying proper plastic-and-rubber masks with exhale valves and removable filters to a whole populace, so we don't know for sure.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Of course, no-one's tried buying proper plastic-and-rubber masks with exhale valves and removable filters to a whole populace, so we don't know for sure.
We might not know for sure, but we have enough evidence to know which way to place the bet for what the outcome of trying it would be.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Of course, no-one's tried buying proper plastic-and-rubber masks with exhale valves and removable filters to a whole populace, so we don't know for sure.
We might not know for sure, but we have enough evidence to know which way to place the bet for what the outcome of trying it would be.
That seems unlikely unless you got some pretty good odds one way or the other.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@LaoC said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Also, since a literal appeal to authority was made, it's worth remembering that these same authorities used to say that masks are absolutely useless outside hospitals and nobody should use them except medical professionals on the job - back when masks were in short supply and the authorities were worried hospitals are going to run out.
I don't bring it up as a way to say they aren't to be trusted and following their advice is wrong. I just want to point out that the recommendations are based on other factors besides what's actually the best for people's health.
No. The reasoning was like "if people start panic buying masks now, we'll end up with hospital staff having to treat Covid patients without proper protection so they'll end up sick and either unable to work or further spreading it around, and then the serious cases will be truly fucked".
The point stands. A recommendation can be made/not made for reasons other than impact on the individual's health. Such as the overall health of the whole population when you include logistics etc. Which is a different thing from the individual's health.
You said "for people's health" which doesn't mean individuals as opposed to groups, but fine.
As TP etc. show, that fear wasn't unfounded
TP never went out of stock. It was just a meme. The mask shortage was real, though.
As @dkf said, where have you been? We didn't have any of that here in Asia where people wash their butts but in Germany shelves were empty in many places, this much I know. That there may or may not have been lots in warehouses somewhere didn't really help.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
TP never went out of stock.
Did you actually go to the store at all during the first few weeks of that (very stupid) panic? They absolutely were out of stock; the aisle that's usually full of TP of different types (because some people want extra thick aloe vera scented stuff), that was completely cleared out. Yes, there would have been more loads coming from warehouses and manufacturers (TP is never transported truly long distance; far too bulky for that to be cost effective) but things were definitely locally out of stock.I never stocked up on TP, either before or during the pandemic, and still never ran out of it. There may have been temporary, hour-by-hour sweeps caused by the meme. But no major shortage like with masks or disinfectants.
I remember in the early days of the pandemic, I heard a rumor that one gas station on the other side of town is going to have a disinfectant delivery so I asked a friend from that area to go there early in the morning to buy some for me and 6 our other friends. Unfortunately the plan failed because they were limiting it to one 2L bottle per customer, so we just shared this one bottle and waited for another delivery some days later. Masks were rationed this way too. But with TP, I never had to do anything like that. I just went to the supermarket and sometimes the shelves were empty, but usually there was something.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Eh. All that was needed was banning in late 2019/early 2020 any and all transports of masks to China, to prevent the Chinese panic buyers living in USA and Europe from buying out the whole stock right before it was needed. But that would require admitting in late 2019/early 2020 that the Wuhan epidemic is a real deal, and nobody wanted to do that until it was too late.
A lot of the masks come from China, so I'm not sure what that's supposed to achieve.
Just after the lockdown of Wuhan in January, the same week the U.S. confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus, Chinese civic organizations in dozens of countries on five continents began buying masks and other personal protective equipment. It was the beginning of an unprecedented humanitarian mobilization, orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, to send PPE supplies to a China struggling with an epic public health crisis.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
However, the second two are different matters; the risks of complications from the main vaccines are mostly really low, and the chance of infecting someone else with a vaccine are… well, basically TDEMSYR. (Well, almost.)
This does not seem to be the case at all at this point. It might have been with the original version. The main effect of the vaccine (at this point) seems to be preventing severe disease. Which is, in fact, great. But people (including you, here) talking about how it prevents other people from being spread reduces trust because it does not appear to be the case at all.
Obviously that message is not as nice and neat as we'd like it but we've had waaaaay to many noble lies from people in positions of authority already. We're beyond Baghdad Fucking Bob at this point and I don't know how we get back.
Toby Faire, what we call "having Influenza virus in your system that is detectable via PCR test, but having no Influenza symptoms" is healthy. And yet we call that same thing a positive COVID case.
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@izzion said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Toby Faire, what we call "having Influenza virus in your system that is detectable via PCR test, but having no Influenza symptoms" is healthy.
But maybe we shouldn't give it a free pass like that. If we used the stricter definition maybe we'd stand a better chance of stopping (most) 'flu seasons…
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Of course, no-one's tried buying proper plastic-and-rubber masks with exhale valves and removable filters to a whole populace, so we don't know for sure.
We might not know for sure, but we have enough evidence to know which way to place the bet for what the outcome of trying it would be.
Maybe.
But you realize that that's a different claim, right?
You're defending a different mask mandate than the one that's actually in place. People here are saying that they don't trust the mask mandate that actually exists because the actual mask mandate is nakedly political rather than grounded in science.
Defending a different, hypothetical, potentially scientific mandate doesn't really have much to do with that.
This is super relevant because people are pointing to the unscientific mask mandates as reasons why they don't trust the unscientific and political vaccine mandates
I don't think you guys understand just how bad the American vaccine mandates are.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I don't think you guys understand just how bad the American vaccine mandates are.
I'd argue that Italy and Lithuania are worse. But I'm not sure if we have anyone from there amongst us today.
Plus, unlike the U.S. mandates, the European ones have full force of law, not subject to suing the government.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@izzion said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Toby Faire, what we call "having Influenza virus in your system that is detectable via PCR test, but having no Influenza symptoms" is healthy.
But maybe we shouldn't give it a free pass like that. If we used the stricter definition maybe we'd stand a better chance of stopping (most) 'flu seasons…
We've had more depression suicides than corona victims. And now the same circus with every flu? Yeaaah.... thanks but no thanks.
On the other hand, a 2 week quarantine on every national border would achieve the same. And annoy a lot of politicians to boot.
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@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
We've had more depression suicides than corona victims.
Do you have numbers on this and are these surplus depression suicides?
(From the rumors I've heard the numbers up there where the sun shines two hours a day are supposedly pretty high)
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
(From the rumors I've heard the numbers up there where the sun shines two hours a day are supposedly pretty high)
Finns are well known for being moody, drinking a lot (or being full temperance types), having a fascination with various weapons, and for a high suicide rate. I don't suppose that covid will have had that much impact on their national character.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@acrow said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Because half of what I see on the street is just cloth.
Many of the cloth ones I've seen round here appear to have a proper filter inside. I've no idea whether that applies to where you are.
Around here, everyone and their mother makes them on their sewing machine and sells them for 10 bucks. (or gives them away when they get tired of doing that)
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@topspin
I'm pretty sure I read suicides doubling, but can't find the source now. The 2019 rate was 746, for a population of 5.5M. It's possible that they only doubled for a few months, in which case what I said may turn out to have been hyperbole.Turns out that total suicides for 2020 didn't rise that much after all. There was a 15 percent increase in early spring, but the rest of the year saw normal levels. Final numbers are still not out (or I can't find them), so this is based on news. Since corona officially took 534 souls, the increase wasn't really comparable after all. I apologize for my error.
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@acrow If I were to move the goalposts a bit, the covid deaths for 2020 for <70yo would probably be comparable to the increase in suicides for the same age group. Of the 534 covid deaths, only 60 were among people under 70.
