I’m pretty sure these “fact check” segments are mandated, instigated, or highly recommended by somewhere on high. I checked the local affiliate that does fact checking stories, and they had the same thing, of course with local sources, but I’m sure reporting the same results.
It’s not needed. It’s settled science.
I like that. Do you have a source link, or is it a “probably correct” photoshop job?
No source sorry, just the picture, but I checked a couple by googling the headlines and the articles were legit (NYT, CNBC).
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We might be watching the same local affiliate?
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You know what the truth is when The Oregonian disseminates illogical points…
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Asylum seekers who are allowed into the U.S. receive COVID-19 testing and are put into isolation if they test positive.
Yet when an elementary student tests positive, it’s absolutely essential that their entire class gets quarantined for 2 weeks. And that’s if you ignore the popular assertion that it is far to unsafe for elementary students to even attend in-person classes because someone there might test positive.
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This seems about right. They go into a lot of the scientific details and rationale, and the conclusions are below.
The pandemic is on its way out, but SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay. Fortunately, as everyone develops immunity to it (whether through vaccination or natural infection), it will soon no longer be a major problem anymore. The virus will continue to circulate, but much less than during the pandemic and, even when people are infected, the infection will typically be mild. In the future, almost everyone will get infected for the first time during their childhood, which is harmless and will protect them against severe illness when they are reinfected.15 The virus will continue to mutate and some of those mutations will favor immune evasion, but while this will allow it to infect people who have already been infected or vaccinated more easily, immunity should continue to protect against severe forms of the disease, thanks in particular to the role played by T-cells. This is likely what happened with other human coronaviruses, which are already endemic and typically cause a cold in the people they infect. To the extent that immune evasion occurs, it will be very gradual and the fact that most people will be infected every few years will update their immunity, ensuring that subsequent reinfections will also be mild. The most vulnerable people, whose immune system doesn’t work very well and could use some help to be ready in case of infection, can get a vaccine booster from time to time. The virus will still kill people, as the flu does, but it will never cause the same amount of disruption again. The hardest part of what lays ahead may be to convince people who have been traumatized by the pandemic that it’s over and that restrictions are no longer necessary.
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Just an observation:
Masks are a very regional and place specific thing. Where I live and work (central Virginia) masks went out of fashion for most people in May and stayed that way until recently. In the past 2 weeks, I am starting to see the majority of people (but not much more than 60%) wearing masks again in public indoors (not counting workers that serve the public, most of which unfortunately didn’t get a chance to to unmask at work before masking returned). My co-workers (where I assume most people are more left leaning than me) are mostly masked when walking through the office, but I haven’t seen a downturn in employees using the breakroom to eat lunch.
The further out into the suburbs you get, the fewer people you see in masks, but it’s much more folks than just 2-3 weeks ago. But it also depends on the place. The suburban Fresh Market has a much higher percentage of masked clientele compared to the Walmart in the same neighborhood. The only place I’ve been in where I haven’t seen the percentage of mask wearing indoors change in the past few weeks is my church (very conservative).
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In case anyone is confused by or only reads the last sentence, this is talking about the hopeful near future, not now. The pandemic will not be “over” where you live until the nearby ICUs stop filling up with COVID patients.
I realize the digital, video, and probably print headlines are filled with “The Sky is Falling” style doom, including lack of:
- beds
- icu beds
- ventilators
- masks
- doctors
- nurses
- candy stripers
- anyone else related to hospitals except billing and A/R staff, and possibly temperature takers at the front door.
What I don’t understand is why are these desperately understaffed and under supplied hospitals still accepting elective surgeries? Doesn’t that fly in the face of the headlines?
Maybe you’re not looking for them? There’s plenty of headlines about hospitals canceling elective surgeries. Mostly in FL, TX, LA, OK, but other places too.
I do not know why a hospital may run out of ICU beds but still have elective surgeries available. Is the assumption here that the surgery room / equipment / staff could be repurposed for ICU COVID care? I don’t know enough about this to know that it works every time. I’m guessing maybe it just doesn’t work that way. Maybe they don’t need / can’t use surgeons and anesthesiologists in ICU for COVID. Maybe they just need nurses and GPs. Maybe using surgery rooms for ICU beds is inefficient? I dunno. If any of that is true, then this doesn’t “fly in the face” of the headlines.
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I guess that depends on what one means by the pandemic meaning over. We are starting to see signs of the health authorities in a few places giving up on “pandemic footing” and treating covid like the flu or any other ongoing endemic illness. Usually this means stopping testing of asymptomatic and/or not seriously ill people, stopping reporting of case counts, and judging the seriousness of the situation by hospitalization levels rather than cases. Here are some examples of this -
Iowa
https://www.kniakrls.com/2021/08/17/covid-19-classified-as-endemic/
Singapore
Alberta CA
https://archive.is/pAY35
Getting back to the “when is it over” part, there’s a case to be made that, given eradication is basically impossible, the pandemic footing should end when everyone who wants a vaccine has gotten one and then let everyone get on with their lives. Sure, some old people who for whatever reason don’t want a vaccine will die from it, and a much smaller % of older vaccinated people will too, but it was the former’s choice and there’s nothing much we can do for the latter currently, so why are we wrecking the economy and not living our lives again? We don’t lock down the world over a few 10k’s of annual flu deaths here in the US, and pretty soon most people will either be vaccinated or recovered. The last numbers I saw for vaccinated death rates from covid were below that of the flu.
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Don’t listen to the CDC they’re untrustworthy! Here, a college student is the expert, read their creative writing essay!
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I’ll think for myself thanks, and rank the CDC well above the WHO and the Chinese government for trustworthiness, but they have already proven they will lie to the public to influence behavior on masks/PPE so I assume their posturing on vaccination is similarly conflicted.
Did you have anything substantive to critique in the writeup, different view on T cell protection, etc?
Covid is fairly friendly as new viruses go at least as things look here. If you assume long lasting immunity from exposure, in the long term everyone gets it as a kid when it’s nearly always an inconvenience and life goes on (ala chickenpox before the vaccine). So it’s really just a question of the transition period, protecting older people in the short term, etc.
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Have you learned nothing since last March? You don’t have to wreck the economy or stop living your life, just wear a mask and don’t throw COVID parties, because that inevitably leads to overflowing hospitals and ICUs.
I say if you’re vaxxed and your ICUs aren’t overloaded, go ahead and skip the mask and throw some parties, just watch the ICU situation, while keeping in mind that it is 2-3 weeks behind any case positivity surge. Eventually people will either die or your area will get to some form of herd immunity or permanently increased ICU capacity, at which point I’d say the pandemic is over. But not sooner.
How the Israeli population can see a 67% protection against severe disease from the vaccine, while every single age bucket sees 80-100% protection. A lesson in misleading statistics
We see that the current Israeli data provide strong evidence that the Pfizer vaccine is still strongly protecting vs. severe disease, even for the Delta variant, when analyzed properly to stratify by age.
The bottom line is there is very strong evidence that the vaccines have high efficacy protecting against severe disease, even for Delta, and even in these Israeli data that on the surface appear to suggest the Pfizer vaccine might have waning efficacy. This is clearly evident if the data are analyzed carefully
Philosopher @bendover has spoken. All hail or, 'er groan, or at worst, turn your head and cough. 
How did you get back in my thread, anyway?
Whoa, kimosabe! Are you saying to ignore the natal democrat orders? Say it ain’t so, Joe. I’m looking for a mixed metaphor, but it’s been back-seated.