What is "Heard Immunity"?

[Vandiablo]

So fuck everyone who gets up on a soap box and cannot discuss logic! YOU are part of the problem, not the solution!

Ya know, I feel the same way. So I'll throw in some logic. (Where can one find a good soapbox these days? Everything's cardboard.) Safety tip: Don't randomly swap bodily liquids during a pandemic (wait for it to finish.)

Why are some people so focused on death rate? Death is just one part of COVID's destruction. You shouldn't just be concerned with death, you should also be concerned with the low, slow painful recovery rate and the possibly life-long effects. But let's do death...

Yes, early on, there were issues that affected the measured mortality rate, and later there are factors that affect the actual mortality rate. Let's look logically.

Early on, doctors were putting most patients on ventilators because their O2 level was so low; it turns out ventilators are bad bad -- giving people oxygen masks was a better solution. Also, eventually doctors found that patients should lie on their stomachs, not backs. Later, real medicinal treatments came and improved things even more. 

Early on, tests were in very limited supply and so it was only the only the definite sick people who got tests. If you only test the portion of patients that are the most sick, your death rate is going to be skewed on the high side. We even had a major conservative influencer say we shouldn't do testing at all! What a maroon. (Orange maroon?) If you only do posthumous testing, you're going to figure a 100% mortality rate; would that be accurate? Trying to use logic here.

But that does not take away that the first few months the observed mortality rate was easily higher than 3%. It has come down with more accurate testing (testing all who might have it, rather than just those with symptoms), earlier detection and improved treatment (oxygen but no ventilator).

The national rate is also skewed for the following (logical) reason: people with higher risk are more likely to be careful about catching it in the first place. You can't just take the number of deaths and divide by the number of cases to get the virus's actual mortality rate -- you'll get overrepresentation of Sturgis bikers and an underrepresentation of hand-sanitizing aunties.

As for ships, sailors on some ships were given N95 masks and PPE, and almost everyone on a USN ship is under 40. Deaths are the domain mainly for the over-55. Nevertheless,there have been three fatalities in the USN ship outbreaks.

So, why so focused on the changing rate? Do you feel people are lying to you? Mistakes have been made, and some 2020 government officials spent a large amount of time wishing the problem away, but knowledge has been increasing and the "guidance" is more often "we know" lately rather than "we think". As long as they give the reasons and/or science at each step, it's all good. Does it matter whether the rate is 3% or 1.4%, we've had 600,000 people die in the U.S. (I don't mean to exclude the rest of the world here.)

Slippery slope about rights is laughable because there is so so so much resistance to directives. Texas gov has now banned mask mandates. I'd worry much more about slippery slope into nationalist fascism (Jan. 6th being the wake-up) than a government that cares about everyone's health.

As for the economic effects, I think the GOP Rep. quote shows it the best. He said, People should be willing to die to save the economy. (Or at least Grandma should.) No thanks, Mr. Grift R. Moneybags, I'm not dying for the sake of your bank account.

So, let's move on to quarantines and the oncoming benevolent evil. We'll use a bit of counter-logic mixed with sarcasm; sarcasm helps me to stay awake.

"So do you force everyone to stay indoors?" If everyone had stayed home for a few weeks in March 2020 it'd be over. Yeah, impossible, nobody can bear their family that long. Quarantine and isolation do not necessarily mean indoors. In fact outdoors is better for COVID; maybe not so much for other plagues.

"To get vaccinated if they want to fly, enter a government building, or go to school?" Yes, yes, and yes. I work in a government building; get the damn vaccine. Schools already require vaccinations. OMG, they started years ago!!!

"We set a precedence here and if you remove the word COVID from it, the very concept becomes alarming... A pandoras box was opened by giving our governments so much power to arbitrarily shut things down when they make the claim their citizens are threatened in some way, to enact new laws and restrictions on travel, where they can and can't enter" .. this has been true for centuries around the world and it's already true here, you've just not realized it.

"what they wear on their faces" ... and butts and genitals. (Now the rules went overboard with nipples but let's not get distracted. . . what were we talking about?)

"how close they can get to others" . . restraining orders.

"... even who they can talk to." what? what are you talking about? I have a feeling you don't mean people dying from COVID in hospitals.

"Never before in the history of this great country in the United States has the well and unaffected been forced to quarantine! This infringes upon so many of our rights, and is edging closer to a nation without freedoms," --- I never studied history very closely but I remember that George Washington went to Philadelphia and could not enter it because of yellow fever ((?)did I get it right?) People practiced social distancing by moving out into the country until it passed over. If someone sick came toward you, shoot him and run! Yellow fever is very very contagious and is a horrible way to die. Nevertheless, as pointed out in a recent post by LavCat, the U.S. has always had these abilities, to maintain the health of the populace. We just have not had to use them very often. Back in the 80's, the members of the Public Health Service were technically a military organization complete with ranks and uniforms -- this was set up for when a plague struck the U.S. and the PHS would be issuing orders. (I think at some point they stopped that, though.)

Okay I'm tired of writing, I have one more thing though. When you talk about how people "on both sides" (where have I heard that expression?) get all religious-y, I can speak for myself that I get tired of all the crap from the "other side" so I get very impatient. Crap? Yep, we could probably spend hours on how just one guy (you probably know Mr. Carlson) generates a whole mountain of crap every frickin weekday. It's not a both sides do it thing, his crap is easily debunked with about 8 seconds of research. And also our former White House guy, some research compared him with the current guy -- the number of untruths coming from the former was THIRTY times higher than the current guy. Furthermore, news sources that I trust will do corrections with apologies, and that's why I trust them. Meanwhile, I know several "news" sources that still won't retract the thing about Harris's book being given to migrant children, because they were about to find ONE copy that had been donated by its previous owner -- no no, they still want you to believe that Harris is getting the USG to buy her book or that the migrants are being indoctrinated (!) or some such bull. These outlets only backpedal when they are sued for a billion dollars (e.g., about lying about voting machines.) I admit to reading HuffPost, whom I cannot recall ever apologizing, but I think some of HuffPo is too "out there". (This pronoun thing annoys me; I think we should create genderless pronouns and use those, rather than remember different ones for every person.)

"Now that the narrative for vaccines is in place, I see more and more of our civil liberties slowly eroding away and if you do not see it, then you are blind!" ... I do need glasses, but did you deliberately not mention voting rights in your post? That's where there is danger.

Good night, and God bless the Lurker Lounge.

-V