dckingsfan wrote:tontoz wrote:Anyone else getting the feeling that Nate is just trolling at this point?
I think there is a lot of cognitive dissonance out there. This has been two different pandemics for the US Alpha and then Delta.
And the things that were true - aren't necessarily true any longer but once you set that thinking - it is hard to change tracks.
There was a lot of misinformation followed by disinformation out there last year. An example: it started with "kids don't get Covid", then "kids don't spread Covid". Well, Delta knocked that one down. You may have felt it was a disservice to close any school last year because who was going to get sick. No one right. Kids don't spread Covid. With Delta - well, damn - it doesn't hold.
Or last year with Alpha - it was just old people dying and going to the hospital. Now we have 1/2 of hospitalizations under 50 and 40% of those with no comorbidities. That is harder to put into a box from last year's notion.
And then there is long haulers. Take a multiple of the deaths and you have that number - it is not insignificant (although that is the only argument you can make to put it in a box).
And then you have this surge that is overwhelming our hospitals and killing folks that don't have Covid due to resource drains. This is a difficult one to put in a box and make go away since the vast majority of the hospitalizations are those that are unvaccinated.
It is hard to reconcile for some...
Basically you are wrong on the straw man arguments on all accounts.
I never said "kids don't get Covid". I say they rarely suffer from it, and I continue to post CDC data that proves my point.
I cede that Delta is spreading faster, but that doesn't concern me because I don't see any way out of these until everyone has already been infected. The end of Covid is not a function of time. It's a function of number infected. If we slow the rate of spread, it will merely take longer. We won't be actually saving lives (unless hospitals are overwhelmed, and I'm in favor of temporary social distancing restrictions in areas with overwhelmed hospitals).
Again, the higher rate of hospitalizations is not due to increase in severity, it's an increase in spread. The entire issue on whether or not healthy young people should be vaccinated is unrelated to spread. I'm assuming that they WILL get Covid sooner or later (or at least about 80% of them will). As long as their IFR is in the ballpark as the vaccine kill rate, then vaccines aren't such a great idea.
Long haulers are mostly just hypochondriacs, or people who can't smell or run a 7-minute mile for a bit longer than 6 weeks. The number of people who are truly suffering significant ill effects over the long term is extremely small.
I agree that hospital capacity is an issue. We briefly ran into trouble during the southern surge, but that has ebbed. (Amazing how that happened when there was no change in masking or vaccinations. It's almost like climate is the primary driver of surges, but I digress.) We don't have many hospital issues at the moment. We will run into trouble in the upcoming northern surge, but it won't be driven by young, healthy people. Perhaps we should stop firing nurses.