COVID-19 in your part of the world

[Sengoku Strider]

My brain can't formulate a comment about this.

[Mischief Maker]

That one's gotta be a troll.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I just assume everything on reddit is fake. But that one is a bit EXTRA for sure.

[Sengoku Strider]

I just assume everything on reddit is fake. But that one is a bit EXTRA for sure.

The Qultists all got kicked off normie social media a long time ago. It's from Greatawakening dot win, the main QAnon forum which - and I cannot emphasize this enough - is a bottomless Stygian pit of people so crazy and dangerous Reddit & Twitter won't touch them. I say in 100% seriousness the ISIS members posting in the darker corners of Telegram are way more grounded than some of these people.





They're completely fucking nuts, and not always in a funny way.

[Mischief Maker]

As I type this I'm dripping wet from the shower in a bathrobe because all my clothes are in the laundry. Why am I in this position at such an odd time of day?

Well I thought I would be clever and go to the grocery store early in the day to avoid the crowds and minimize the risk. And I was double-masked. So I'm at the store and I bump over a display and try to pick things up while some guy hovering near me chuckles. Then the guy asks me, "do you know where the organic applesauce is?" and I point it out for him. So he says, "Thanks. I've got someone with covid back home and now I have to shop for all these new things." At which point I tell him to stay safe while fleeing the aisle at top speed.

Then when I get to checkout, I think to myself that the girl checking out is pretty, then realize I know she's pretty because she's going maskless, as are 80% of the other shoppers. Now the guy with the covid wife was wearing some kind of mask, that much I remember, but it sure as hell wasn't N95.

So now an important non-emergency hospital visit I've been waiting weeks for had to be pushed back an additional two weeks thanks to that dude not making use of the grocery delivery service I god damn know he had access to, especially while shopping at the upscale store for organic produce instead of the Aldis down the road.

I am SO sick of this shit! This is why I hate zombie movies. The zombie threat is always containable, the plot only happens if you have assholes among the survivors.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I am SO sick of this shit! This is why I hate zombie movies. The zombie threat is always containable, the plot only happens if you have assholes among the survivors.

I've had multiple friends remark that the pandemic's made apocalypse movies look incredibly silly. The idea that everyone on the planet will come together to fight a common enemy and the Earth will be miraculously saved is nonsense; we have far too many idiots willing to sabotage things out of sheer stubbornness and ineptitude. If we can't beat an easily preventable virus by simply inoculating and wearing a piece of mildly inconvenient cloth over our faces diligently for a few months to limit the spread of virus-laden droplets, how would we beat a zombie horde?

[Steamflogger Boss]

I am SO sick of this shit! This is why I hate zombie movies. The zombie threat is always containable, the plot only happens if you have assholes among the survivors.

I've had multiple friends remark that the pandemic's made apocalypse movies look incredibly silly. The idea that everyone on the planet will come together to fight a common enemy and the Earth will be miraculously saved is nonsense; we have far too many idiots willing to sabotage things out of sheer stubbornness and ineptitude. If we can't beat an easily preventable virus by simply inoculating and wearing a piece of mildly inconvenient cloth over our faces diligently for a few months to limit the spread of virus-laden droplets, how would we beat a zombie horde?

I kind of disagree that the virus is easily preventable. There is a reason the flu is still around too. Viruses with animal carriers are a bitch.

But, no doubt we would all be better off if everyone took the vax and wore a mask. Not disputing that.

[EmperorIng]

I'm sure most medical professionals would tell you that since your exposure was less than 15 minutes between two masked individuals your risk was exorbitantly low. I dunno if I would self-quarantine for two weeks unless I was a nervous wreck, unless of course the doctors blue-balled you themselves. But that's just me, I'm a different person.

[Mischief Maker]

The doctors themselves said ix-nay.

[EmperorIng]

blue balls it is, my lad. Seems like every doctor makes it up. I and my family had enough of those 'scares' or encounters last year and 3rd-degree contact was almost never taken very seriously.

[Mischief Maker]

Well the big problem is this Delta is so much more contagious than the wild-type, so shit that was sorta scary last year is really scary this year.

Also I'm spending a lot more time with an elderly relative after a recent death in the family. We're both vaxxed, but vaccines can fail for the elderly.

Plus it kills kids. I'm worried we're gonna see tiny mass-graves in red states come the school year.

[Randorama]

Roo: pardon me for my ignorance of the zombie apocalypse genre, but isn't the first phase "let's all panic and do completely suicidal actions", usually?
Not that I would take any fiction as useful for what may happen in real life, also usually, since writers need to sell and the "rational response squad=heroes" model should be the one that sells the most, I believe...

By the way, the unsurprising result is that the 7 cases of Delta variant in Wuhan (out of 11 million inhabitants) already healed, and did not spread.
I was to sue three acquaintances that spread false information on contagion (one literally made up numbers about the campus where I live), but the police officers very politely asked me not to pursue.
It turns out that there is a psychological counselling service at work for those people who are drowning in fear (...like Mischief Maker), even if public promotion of the service is...lacking, to say the least.

I am half-tempted to post a Dune quote here, as lame as it would be.

EDIT: ...it just occured to me that both my parents had the virus and got vaccinated (Italy), and my younger sister-in-law, husband and two children moved from South Korea to Austin because the husband had to spend a 2-year work internship at the SK embassy.

Considering the situation in both countries, I might have found it surprising that they were worried about "the situation in Wuhan" (i.e. my situation), rather than their own situation.

Considering also that my father is an ex-army general with an M.Sc. and three years of graduate school in Geography, and who intervened in no less than 5 natural disaster situations (e.g., the Earthquake that flattened my hometown), I was expecting a more rational attitude to the whole virus situation.

The in-laws instead thought that Texans were such responsible citizens that vaccination rates and mask-wearing were around the 100% mark, because of course their picture of the US is solidly grounded in... Hollywood movies and the like.

So, I am not really surprised that they are worried about...ghosts.

...what were we saying about rational response and education? Anyway, I am adopted and they are in-laws, which is a kind of meager, petty consolation.

[SuperPang]

After a clusterfuck of clusturfucks, things seem to be going "OK" in the UK at the moment. That's what a 90% vaccination uptake buys you, and we're now prepping for autumn booster shots, which from recent Israeli data seem to be important.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Well the big problem is this Delta is so much more contagious than the wild-type, so shit that was sorta scary last year is really scary this year.

Also I'm spending a lot more time with an elderly relative after a recent death in the family. We're both vaxxed, but vaccines can fail for the elderly.

Plus it kills kids. I'm worried we're gonna see tiny mass-graves in red states come the school year.

Where did you hear it kills kids? In the UK, Delta has been almost all of our covid for a couple of months now and we've seen no change to age-based mortality. It infects kids more easily (as per our home-grown Kent variant from last year) but symptoms are mild where present and fatalities are essentially non-existent.

Yes it's hit Indonesian kids hard but that's a mix of poverty, malnutrition and poor medical facilities.

Delta's outcomes have been analysed in the UK as worse only by virtue of its increased transmissibility, so it is infecting those most vulnerable more quickly and in greater numbers. All the data on the major vaccines suggest they are just as effective as they were against the original covid after all full course (the outlier is a study from Israel which is based on a partial data set, so should not be given weight). The hit appears to be on first dose efficacy, suggesting there is some antibody evasion but it is countered by the broadening of the response triggered by the second dose. Likewise our healthcare burden is coming from the unvaccinated and those who have only had a single dose (usually before it has had a chance to kick in, or because they had it months ago and never got a second dose so the protection has waned). On the downside, we are seeing plenty of people dodging the vaccine - above 60 the uptake has been 90% plus but drops down after that, 30-40 is at about 70% and under 30 around 60%.

A third dose is being prepared in Israel and the UK out of caution. The antibody levels drop off after about 8 months and while theoretically they are still more than sufficient, it's better to have a top up than have the protection expire in the most vulnerable at precisely the worst possible time - winter. Indeed there is some resistance to this strategy in the UK's scientific chiefs because the immune memory is sufficient regardless, and only those with clear medical vulnerabilities should be considered with the rest of our vaccine surplus going to other countries. We'll see what happens, personally I think it better to be cautious at this early stage but likewise you have to give it a step back at some point or you're just vaxxing people every 6 months which is almost certainly overkill and unsustainable for many countries.

Yeah it's a shitshow with the politicising of face coverings leading to a lot of people throwing caution to the wind, who are also probably unvaccinated and thus more likely to be teeming with it. However, reasons to be cheerful - we've dropped all restrictions here in England and high vaccination rates appear to be keeping Delta in check. We have had fairly stable case numbers for a few weeks, at levels which rapidly escalated when they last occurred. Meanwhile our healthcare situation is stable at the state it was in early Autumn last year, and at that time it escalated rapidly too - it's static now, with fewer restrictions and a more infectious variant.

It's still finely balanced, has a long way to run yet and could still go to utter shit, but it's not all doom and gloom. Coronaviruses have two weaknesses - there's a small and finite amount they can ever change by, and there tends to be immunity overlap between them. Whilst this coronavirus can theoretically completely evade the vaccine antibody response, as far as I've seen from studies, T-cell responses (including memory) cannot be evaded entirely - meaning the vaccines as they are should be sufficient to avoid the worst outcomes indefinitely.

Also, we kind have to deal with it. More lockdowns could risk wearing down population immunity to existing viruses to the point where they essentially become covid-like in impact and leave us stuck in perpetual lockdown cycles, which just isn't sustainable for most countries (or people).

[Udderdude]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-19 ... -1.6092834

[GaijinPunch]

Well the big problem is this Delta is so much more contagious than the wild-type, so shit that was sorta scary last year is really scary this year.

Are you or anyone in your house unvaccinated?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I kind of disagree that the virus is easily preventable. There is a reason the flu is still around too. Viruses with animal carriers are a bitch.

But, no doubt we would all be better off if everyone took the vax and wore a mask. Not disputing that.

The problem is that while the virus is easily preventable in terms of the steps needed to address it, there isn't an ingrained culture of awareness of pathogens and respect for being a responsible individual who takes steps to limit its spread. Look at how much mask wearing has triggered lunatics into acting like it's a literal infringement of their freedoms compared to asian countries where it's the norm to see people wearing a mask out of consideration if they're worried they might be sick to avoid spreading it. The mild inconvenience of wearing a mask is treated as a vast blow to their freedumb. The mechanisms for prevention of vaccination, mask wearing, diligent handwashing, and physical distancing/avoiding large gatherings until things are under control are easy and we know they work... it's just that society is incredibly irresponsible and many bad actors and nutjob politicians have sabotaged efforts to get people to behave responsibly. It's also a rather damning indictment of libertarianism; you can't ignore that we as a society have some basic responsibilities to one another to maintain a functioning society and screaming about freedom isn't an excuse to ignore those.

So it'd be easily manageable if humans were all rational, sane, empathetic individuals... but human nature is a fucking nightmare and therefore we're all in the mess we're currently in I guess.

As a side note, I'm really fucking sick of wearing a mask. It's been a year and a half, they're scratchy, and annoying with glasses. But I do it because I'm a responsible adult and not a deranged menace to public health.

[Sengoku Strider]

The problem is that while the virus is easily preventable in terms of the steps needed to address it, there isn't an ingrained culture of awareness of pathogens and respect for being a responsible individual who takes steps to limit its spread. Look at how much mask wearing has triggered lunatics into acting like it's a literal infringement of their freedoms compared to asian countries where it's the norm to see people wearing a mask out of consideration if they're worried they might be sick to avoid spreading it. The mild inconvenience of wearing a mask is treated as a vast blow to their freedumb.

I don't think that's an educational or even culture-bound issue per se, at least not on a pan-national scale. Other Western nations have managed fine. Every American has at least a vague understanding of how people catch colds. Every semi-functional adult in the US knows they have to wear pants in public (half-body masks!), bathe somewhat regularly, stop at red lights and do their best not to pee in the middle of McDonald's.

The violent reaction to mask mandates has everything to do with US culture wars. Trump tried to reality-distort covid away, because he thought it would tank the stock market, hurt his re-election chances (which he already knew were dicey no matter what he said publicly) and tick off the actual smart rich business people he desperately wanted to be accepted as one of.

On the popular level this translated into "our tribe doesn't accept this," enabled by right wing political & spiritual leaders and media who were all very much going to stay on-message in an election year. Only pussies are scared. It's a foreign plot. It's an affront to God, who will protect good people. Trump was the only guy bullish enough and with enough social credit in the pop-cultural bank to go after Roe v. Wade, push back the foreigners, kick the transexuals out of the military, and make being a lout publicly acceptable. While most couldn't/wouldn't articulate it this way, those were issues that superceded any short-term survival concerns because they represented the maintenance of white nominal Christians at the top of the cultural capital totem pole. Besides, the 65-odd percent of the population who were extraverts were going nuts under lockdown.

As time went on, the psychological cost of accepting reality only increased. Covid is the biggest disaster in US history, with a higher death toll than WW2 or the Civil War, in a much, much shorter span of time. And the casualties are almost all civilians in vulnerable cohorts. The deniers have have forcefully aided and abetted this the whole way, spurred on by Machiavellian liars telling really, really dumb lies.

It's gonna take a long, long time for that to sink in, if this generation of deniers can ever really let it.

[Randorama]

Some 2 cents, in passing, in a perfectly TL; DR style.
No apologies whatsoever, of course.

[...]The problem is that while the virus is easily preventable in terms of the steps needed to address it, there isn't an ingrained culture of awareness of pathogens and respect for being a responsible individual who takes steps to limit its spread. Look at how much mask wearing has triggered lunatics into acting like it's a literal infringement of their freedoms compared to asian countries where it's the norm to see people wearing a mask out of consideration if they're worried they might be sick to avoid spreading it. [...quote]

My brief comment: "Yes and no".

I have personal experience of China (3 years in Guangzhou, 1 year now in Wuhan), South Korea (wife from Seoul) and Japan (visited 3 times for 4 months total, work).

The pattern "I have a cold, I will wear a mask" is more or less the norm in Japan, and fairly weaker in the other two countries (but it will grow after this epidemic, I guess).

The rest of Asia, I don't know and the continent is...big, and extremely variegated (cf. The Afghan Territories and Japan).

GP can cue in on this matter, but my general understanding is that the mask-wearing norm is pushed onto individuals as a norm "face-saving" norm in Japan from grade school onwards.

The norm is: "You are sick, and you don't spread it to other members of society because they would also get sick and be incovenienced (...they cannot work)".

The punishment is being shamed to the point of social exclusion, as befits tribal societies, and individual intentions are not really relevant.

Social ("extended tribe", I'd say) pressure dictates the norm, and people who do not like the norm may flout it to establish that they do not want to conform to pressure. Conversely, people may also follow the norm just to avoid exclusion, regardless of their own intentions.

As an example, I have seen plenty of people without masks, in the last 2 weeks, and during an emergency testing of the whole city (all 11 millions of it). 10% or so, unmasked? I count in a perfectly OCD-driven manner, when I go around, and again: I am currently living in Wuhan.

At least once I was in a scenario in which someone was not wearing a mask because, being in my presence, thought that the norm did not apply (foreign national=not part of society/the tribe, for them?).

More than once I was in situations in which gate-keepers (literally, people at buildings' entrances) would not respect the current laws, possibly because I was a foreigner or because they could not really care (...or both).

This resulted in either over-checking ("Have you just arrived from abroad?"), or under-checking ("Green pass is not needed"). Confusion seems the norm, to the effect that I showed webpages detailing the procedures for any citizen, foreign and Chinese alike, to those who were supposed to know them.

So, I would say that even a simple matter like wearing a mask may involve lots of factors that go from the very situational ("what to do, here and now?") to the very general, pan-cultural ("face-saving, social norms must be followed").

If one wants to go about it in a rational manner, then one has to reason on quite a few factors, especially when one is not sure on which norm(ative behaviour)s apply.

But rational decisions take time and are costly, and do not grant the relevant outcomes. So, people may resort to "guts feelings dictated by fear and tribalism", which is a quintessential trait of living beings including humans.

I think that Sengoku Strider makes a very precise and probably true point on this matter:

[...]On the popular level this translated into "our tribe doesn't accept this," enabled by right wing political & spiritual leaders and media who were all very much going to stay on-message in an election year.[...]

A simple heuristics for many people (OK, the lunatic kind) is really "our tribe doesn't accept this", and when the tribe beliefs (=basic norms) are clearly defined, the corresponding normative behaviours are easy to follow.

At least in the case of the U.S., a "I belong to the X tribe, not to the Y tribe" seems to be creating all the chaos.
I dare to say: because those interested in control cultivated disenfrachisement from the "rational, constitution-based tribe" for decades and anyway, the rural vs. city divide was probably born in 1783, not in the '80s.

And just to rant some more, some people are just plain W.E.I.R.D..

They do not follow tribal patterns, but respect norms mostly because their own personal intentions involve following the rule of the law as an imperfect though useful way of "behaving responsibly" towards any members of any tribe (...and here I am simplifying matters to offensive levels; apologies).

The full discussion of the term and its implications can be found here, in case you would like to know more.

You may read a bit about these people and find out that you are one of them, but here's the the interesting bit.

W.E.I.R.D.'s are a new group of individuals from an historical perspective, and they are less than 12% of the global population, moreover scattered across the globe in very uneven patterns (urban places, to simplify matters once more to offensive levels).

So, geographical generalizations on normative patterns tend to be really hard, really subtle and may go district by district, sometimes. Like, driving 20 minutes and going from the 21st century to "God country" will give us a full transition from "100% W.E.I.R.D." to "100% classic human" (tribalism="classic mode for humans", and that's the third ultra-offensive simplification).

On the topic of masks...I became used to wearing them for two rather unrelated reasons: sports training practice (very long story) and pollution (another long story).

After all this time, I sometimes forget that I am wearing a mask, since necessity made me used to a "second skin", and anyway there are a few simple rules that make skin contact imperceptible.

The other day I was at the restaurant and I tried to drink something without removing the mask. There is character from Naruto that should behave in a similar manner (Kakashi, right?), if I recall correctly. I also often walk and read something on my phone/kindle, to boot.

I just need a perm punch or spiky hair and I could play the "yanki with a mask" character for a while!

[GaijinPunch]

GP can cue in on this matter, but my general understanding is that the mask-wearing norm is pushed onto individuals as a norm "face-saving" norm in Japan from grade school onwards.

Case by case. I think in general people don't want to spread it to other people, and the trains are always jammed. I think some people wear masks b/c they don't want to get sick. I eavesdropped on the train once and heard a lady tell someone, "I wear masks because they're warm".

Japan is built on hypochondria. I've never seen more people go to useless doctors just to get placebo (and maybe one decent drug you can get over the counter in the west) prescribed. My friends are telling me you get the stink eye if you walk down the street w/o a mask on, even w/ nobody around.

[Randorama]

"Case by case" makes perfect sense to me, because people may simply follow an external societal rule ("in general people don't want to spread it to other people", i.e. a possible pressure not to damage others), but also an internal, personal rule (i.e., "they don't want to get sick", because self-preservation is important to the self).

The "I wear masks because they're warm" works a charm in winter: I have sensitive gums and running with a mask in winter is much better than using a scarf, regardless of who's around (often, nobody).

Case in point, the book I linked to discusses Japan as a country in which "classical" and "modern" (i.e. W.E.I.R.D.) psychological mindsets co-exist, often in the same individuals.

I think that there is an endless stream of anime, movies,...etc. in which the struggle of "old traditions and the clan vs. new life and the individual" are centre stage (one silly example: Fruit Basket; I also remember a Zombie apocalypse manga exploring this topic; any decent Yakuza movie...).

Also, hypocondria is fairly common in Western Europe, China, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand...well, any of the countries I lived in.

I cannot even remember the last time that I visited a GP without having to queue with 10 cretins fearing for death by excess of oxigen, or something.

In my own experience, the rational use of OTC (Over The Counter) meds seems to be specific to individuals who have a decent grasp of health matters, including nutrition, exercise and so on. Individuals who don't panic over health issues, anyway (e.g. definitely not my wife, for instance).

The "burpees to defeat CoVID, cancer and all that Jazz" seems rarer outside some...US tribes, I can agree.

But let's keep in mind that people during the bubonic plagues would flagel themselves to heal and until the 1920's, in most Western Countries, blood-letting was a perfectly respectable solution to just about anything (and "lift until you faint bro!" is part of this "no pain, no gain/healing" mentality).

Progress is a tricky matter and the psychology of health/illness is a vast, vast topic.

[GaijinPunch]

I cannot even remember the last time that I visited a GP without having to queue with 10 cretins fearing for death by excess of oxigen, or something

I had a running joke that at a future date, Japan would have a vitamin D deficiency epidemic due to the prevelance of "beekeepers" that insist on their clothes and accessories...even in August when it is oppressively hot.

[xxx1993]

This virus has gone too far now… It even killed Sonny Chiba…

[vol.2]

NYT has been sending these Covid email bulletins. I thought this one was interesting bc it's news to me.

[GaijinPunch]

Those look drastic. I've only seen them separate the bar staff from customers and I imagine when people drinking, laughing, and coughing for long periods of time it would help.

[Udderdude]

Could swab those things for days .. literal bio experiment.

[TransatlanticFoe]

In somewhere well ventilated, they will stop the larger droplets which are a risk in face to face contact. If the ventilation is poor, they do little because you'll have the small droplets gradually moving and accumulating through the room. And yeah a bit like with masks, some of the benefits are undone if you get a false sense of security (such as not thinking you need to bother with decent ventilation or yeah it's fine to shout in this person's face) and believe it's going to outright remove transmission.

[BulletMagnet]

They are not going to learn. They are not going to learn. They are NOT going to learn.

[Mischief Maker]

They are not going to learn. They are not going to learn. They are NOT going to learn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N--iM6L7e8g

[Steamflogger Boss]

Meanwhile in Florida.