CDN/US Covid-related political discussion

[Mick]

It makes sense to vaccinate the most effective spreaders first (nonlinear/exponential growths are best attacked at the source), and it also makes sense to vaccinate the most vulnerable to deadly infection first. Vaccinating the second group doesn't help with the first group; vaccinating the first group does help with the second group.

Very good point, but it seems to me that while vaccinating the first (younger) group first will eventually benefit the second (older, vulnerable) group, the second group will still be suffering immediate effects i.e. hospitalization and/or death, until they are vaccinated.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Possibly. Yet effective isolation measures seemed to improve somehow after the first few months, implying effective mitigation was possible if vaccination was delayed.

 

[Mick]

I would argue that vaccinating kids while hoping isolation measures will protect the older, vulnerable population is just as big of a gamble, if not bigger.

Yes, kids are the more effective spreaders, but they are more resilient. Perhaps vaccinating the older crowd while attempting to isolate COVID -positive kids is a the safest bet - which seems to be the current plan.

 

[Weinie]

I would argue that vaccinating kids while hoping isolation measures will protect the older, vulnerable population is just as big of a gamble, if not bigger.

Yes, kids are the more effective spreaders, but they are more resilient. Perhaps vaccinating the older crowd while attempting to isolate COVID -positive kids is a the safest bet - which seems to be the current plan.

I have four kids, ages 14 to 4. I have been laying awake nights dreading the reporting/emergence of a new variant, which attacks the youngest at a higher rate and a higher lethality than the current variants. I understand the emphasis for vaccines on the older population, I truly do. But until my kids are vaccinated, I will be selfish and worried about them.

 

[Mick]

I have four kids, ages 14 to 4. I have been laying awake nights dreading the reporting/emergence of a new variant, which attacks the youngest at a higher rate and a higher lethality than the current variants. I understand the emphasis for vaccines on the older population, I truly do. But until my kids are vaccinated, I will be selfish and worried about them.

I don't consider your concern to be selfish at all - it isn't.

My only point is that I think we are rightly concerned with vaccinating the current vulnerable demographic, rather than diverting limited resources to mitigate a hypothetical threat that has yet to materialize.

 

[Remius]

I have four kids, ages 14 to 4. I have been laying awake nights dreading the reporting/emergence of a new variant, which attacks the youngest at a higher rate and a higher lethality than the current variants. I understand the emphasis for vaccines on the older population, I truly do. But until my kids are vaccinated, I will be selfish and worried about them.

It is selfish and completely understandable. I am the same way.

 

[Altair]

I have four kids, ages 14 to 4. I have been laying awake nights dreading the reporting/emergence of a new variant, which attacks the youngest at a higher rate and a higher lethality than the current variants. I understand the emphasis for vaccines on the older population, I truly do. But until my kids are vaccinated, I will be selfish and worried about them.

I have a 6 year old, I get it.

And while its every parents job to want to protect their children from all potential threats, it has to be the job of public health to protect the most vulnerable and currently that isn't the younger demographic.

The good news is it takes a while for a new variant to take hold and become the dominant variant in a community/country, and we are real close to the end. It will take a month, month and a half for just B1617.2 to take over from B117. So for any kid targeting variant, assuming it doesn't originate in Canada, would need to get here and then outcompete b1617.2 in the face of a ever fully protected population, and do so before the end of summer. So by august, hard task. Not impossible, but unlikely at this point. At this juncture, assuming the vaccines hold up against any new variant, and booster shots can keep pace once everyone is vaccinated against any variant that can beat them, we just need to beat B1617.2

That's it. June, July, August and this thing is probably over. And I expect that July and August will look mostly normal. Our kids just need to weather this last storm and all the data we have says that they can.

 

[OldSolduer]

My thirteen year old grandson got his first shot today. I am hoping my ten year old granddaughter is eligible soon

 

[Altair]

the world health organization finally came up with a naming system.

While B1617.2 is the official scientific name, it can also now be called Delta.

Yahoo Search - Web Search

The search engine that helps you find exactly what you're looking for. Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web.

in.news.yahoo.com

Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants

It remains critical that global systems to detect signals of potential variants of interest (VOIs) or variants of concern (VOCs) and rapidly assess the risk posed by SARS-CoV-2 variants to public health are maintained, and data are shared, according to good principles and in a timely fashion.

www.who.int

B117 is Alpha

B1351 is Beta

P1 is Gamma

 

[Kirkhill]

Given the source, this qualifies as a "man bites dog" story.

My highlight?

In reaction to the fool Trump, liberalism made a cult out of the hierarchy of credentialed achievement in general

Like all plagues, Covid often felt like the hand of God on earth, scourging the people for their sins against higher learning and visibly sorting the righteous from the unmasked wicked. “Respect science,” admonished our yard signs. And lo!, Covid came and forced us to do so, elevating our scientists to the highest seats of social authority, from where they banned assembly, commerce, and all the rest.

We cast blame so innocently in those days. We scolded at will. We knew who was right and we shook our heads to behold those in the wrong playing in their swimming pools and on the beach. It made perfect sense to us that Donald Trump, a politician we despised, could not grasp the situation, that he suggested people inject bleach, and that he was personally responsible for more than one super-spreading event. Reality itself punished leaders like him who refused to bow to expertise. The prestige news media even figured out a way to blame the worst death tolls on a system of organized ignorance they called “populism.”

But these days the consensus doesn’t consense quite as well as it used to. Now the media is filled with disturbing stories suggesting that Covid might have come — not from “populism” at all, but from a laboratory screw-up in Wuhan, China. You can feel the moral convulsions beginning as the question sets in: What if science itself is in some way culpable for all this?

I am no expert on epidemics. Like everyone else I know, I spent the pandemic doing as I was told. A few months ago I even tried to talk a Fox News viewer out of believing in the lab-leak theory of Covid’s origins. The reason I did that is because the newspapers I read and the TV shows I watched had assured me on many occasions that the lab-leak theory wasn’t true, that it was a racist conspiracy theory, that only deluded Trumpists believed it, that it got infinite pants-on-fire ratings from the fact-checkers, and because (despite all my cynicism) I am the sort who has always trusted the mainstream news media.

My own complacency on the matter was dynamited by the lab-leak essay that ran in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists earlier this month; a few weeks later everyone from Doctor Fauci to President Biden is acknowledging that the lab-accident hypothesis might have some merit. We don’t know the real answer yet, and we probably will never know, but this is the moment to anticipate what such a finding might ultimately mean. What if this crazy story turns out to be true?

If the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis is true, expect a political earthquake | Thomas Frank

The potential consequences of the origins of the virus are shattering – if they can be proved

www.theguardian.com

The biggest failure in Arts education is the failure to understand there is no certitude in Science. Experts not only can be wrong, the best of them know it.

 

[ModlrMike]

The biggest failure in Arts education is the failure to understand there is no certitude in Science. Experts not only can be wrong, the best of them know it.

Ahh yes, the whole "the science is settled argument". If someone tells you that the science is settled, they've never studied science.

As I said in one of the political threads... the more we study an issue, the more we learn, and the more the science changes.

 

[CBH99]

I’ve been an avid backyard astronomer ever since I was a kid. My best friend growing up, all throughout my childhood, was a huge Star Trek fan. My school friends were all about Star Wars.

I would watch either Star Trek or Star Wars every weekend, then go outside and lay on the trampoline just to look at the stars. My imagination would always be at full power, and I’d always catch myself starring at a star and asking “Maybe something like Star Trek is happening on a planet there? Wonder what they would look like? Etc etc”

I’ve been a space geek since birth. But as I get older, the allure has changed. In astronomy, every single time a question is answered or a discovery is made - you just realize there are 10 more questions you hadn’t thought of.

Every question answered equals several new questions that aren’t.

If it isn’t the utterly basic stuff, then the science can’t ever be settled. Especially when the science itself changes over time.


“A wise man knows just how little he knows.”

 

[Altair]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1402661918423359492

https://twitter.com/x/status/1402661167487664135

55.8m vaccines by end of July. There are 32 million Canadians over the age of 12, so to hit the over 12 pop we need 64m vaccines.

Almost there. Looking like we beat the PM September deadline as well, we like get fully vaccinated come August.

 

[mariomike]

Almost there. Looking like we beat the PM September deadline as well, we like get fully vaccinated come August.

Hope so! I'm booked for AZ#2 on 15 June. No side effects at all from the first one.

Other than feeling like the M.D. drove it into my left shoulder with a Louisville Slugger. Next time I will ask a nurse do it.

 

[Loachman]

Trudeau should quarantine in same hotel as other travellers, Conservatives say

Trudeau is set to travel at the end of this week to the G7 summit in the U.K. and then to Brussels for the NATO summit, his first international trip during the pand…

www.thewhig.com

 

[PMedMoe]

As long as he quarantines, who cares? He flies on a different plane too. Is that a problem as well?

 

[Remius]

What a waste of time. Plus the conservatives are actually going to table a motion in the House of Commons asking that the PM stay in one of the designated hotels.

 

[PuckChaser]

As long as he quarantines, who cares? He flies on a different plane too. Is that a problem as well?

Flying on a different plane isn't illegal. It's currently illegal to not quarantine in one of those hotels. He can stay in whatever hotel he wants to, but CBSA should fine him the moment he steps out of the terminal.

He could make it a non-issue at any moment by just removing that stupid hotel quarantine rule, but instead he'll stay wherever he wants and the normal folks can eat cake.

 

[Remius]

This is the kind of crap that will lose the conservatives the next election. How about they actually show everyone how they are a government in waiting instead of this sort of thing.

 

[PuckChaser]

Should they go on trips and flout the rules that regular Canadians have to follow? That seems to be the standard for acting like a Government right now.