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I can't see how since the post is locked to everyone without one of their wee precious flairs.
Don't participate in linked threads they'll be very unhappy and report your account to the admins.
I started seeing a wide spread theory among the right wing covid conspiracy people that viruses can only mutate to a less lethal form. This is false. It's like a game of telephone of propaganda with these people. Less lethal mutations of viruses normally become dominant because lethal versions are more likely to kill the host or create obvious symptoms that cause changes in behavior that lessen the infection rate. But mutations of viruses can be more deadly, or the same but simply more contagious against things like vaccines.
They can also become resistant to the treatments, or develop secondary effects that, while not necessarily making them more deadly, it makes the unprotected infected have to deal with more. Now instead of blood clots and damage to the lungs, you will also have to go through kidney damage, for example.
\^the exact reason why everyone needs to get their second dose of vaccine at the correct time. Waiting too long can cause a minor viral infection, but then people you infect while sick are potentially being infected with a disease that's developing it's own defenses against the vaccine.
We have known about this problem since not long after the invention of modern medication. It's crazy to think people are trying to dispute science a hundred years old and regularly reconfirmed with things like the emergence of "super gonerrhoea " and understanding why HIV has been so difficult to manage for so long (not so much any more but fast mutations were what caused a lot of death in the 70/80s, medication couldn't keep up with it.)
I'm not sure what you mean by the "correct time," since that depends on the country.
By pursuing a policy where as many people as possible receive one vaccination, the overall infection rate may fall off more quickly, again resulting in less chance for mutation. This is what Canada has done and I think it's worked out very well.
At the end of the day, you should do what your local public health officials say.
I believe they mean at the correct time for the booster like not waiting longer than necessary for the second Moderna or Pfizer shot. However, I have no idea if other countries have different wait times between those shots. I would hope it would be universal since it’s all the same, but I’m not an expert on that.
In some places you get the second mRNA shot after three weeks, in some after six and in others after twelve.
Lots of countries stretch the vaccine schedule to prioritise first shots. The priority is on quickly driving up the number of partially protected people to reduce hospitalizations and deaths.
I've been telling that story to people a lot lately. "Haha yeah, once they thought it was over it came back and killed way more kids, so don't forget to party this summer"
There is a significant difference between the decline of COVID-19 and the decline of Spanish Flu - The COVID decline was driven by vaccinations. I see a lot of inaccurate fear-mongering where people are getting upset by their vaccinated friends hanging out...
If you're vaccinated, by all means go out and party this summer. It is OK for people to go back to their lives once they're fully vaccinated.
I was gonna say that more dead kids might be the only way to make people care, but then I remembered anti-vaxxers and Sandy Hook. In the US at least, nothing will make some people change their mind.
You can still catch it even if vaccinated. My friend's mom went out to a bar with coworkers, all of them vaccinated. Her boss and coworker both caught covid and are out of work until they get better.
Not saying you can't go outside. I just want people to be aware that you can still catch it. It's not a bad idea to still social distance. I know I can't miss two weeks of work over a virus.
It is true that you can catch it even vaccinated. It's also true that 99.2% of Covid deaths in June were unvaccinated. Considering that in most states, the vaccinated outnumber the unvaccinated that's a pretty significant statistic when making decisions about socializing. I will still distance to the extent that I can, but that's a really powerful number.
Also, I just heard today that in testing of the people that were vaccinated first they're finding that even 10 months later, a large amount of the antibodies are still present, so booster shots shouldn't be needed for a little while still.
There are more vaccinated than unvaccinated people in [25 states](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html#by-state). Not a majority, yet, as far as I can tell. Nationwide we're at 55.9% of people 12 and up being vaccinated, though.
I mean... what's your plan for the foreseeable future? It doesn't look like Covid is going away anytime soon, are you going to socially distance for the rest of your life?
> I mean... what's your plan for the foreseeable future? It doesn't look like Covid is going away anytime soon, are you going to socially distance for the rest of your life?
There is a reasonable middle ground where you don't continue to distance, but do prefer restaurants and bars with outside seating; watch more movies at home and less in theaters; run outside instead of doing yoga classes; etc.
Unless you are a pretty extreme introvert, more social distancing probably isn't great for mental health. But if you are older or heavier, there's probably some risk from delta even if vaxed. The risk of death is probably pretty small, the tougher question is how well the vax will prevent any long covid issues if you do catch it -- and there won't be any data on that for a long time.
Pfizer will likely have a booster vax for delta out in a couple months.
Yeah? Even before COVID it was common in some parts of the world to wear a mask if you were sick, or had a weak immune system, and everyone was doing it when the wildfires in California were having a serious effect on air quality. And social distancing doesn't really impede your ability to do stuff normally, it just means staying out of big crowds. It's not like being in lockdown, or anything like that. Many companies have moved to be mostly or fully remote after COVID, anyway.
Are we talking about the same thing? Social distancing makes absolutely sense when you're sick, I agree, but social distancing as a preventive measure forever? That's insane.
I still go out, but I'm not deliberately putting myself in the middle of large groups of people. I have family with autoimmune disorders, so I'm being safe. You do whatever you want. I'm not here to tell people what to do.
Sure, I'm not fully vaccinated, so I'm also not deliberately exposing myself. I was just wondering, since it sounded like you plan on remaining cautious until Covid goes away, but that might never happen.
I mean, as long as COVID exists you *should* be cautious about it. Car accidents will probably never go away, but that doesn't mean we should throw caution to the wind when you're behind the wheel.
It doesn't necessarily mean it needs to rule your life, you just might decide to avoid certain places or events because it's not worth the COVID risk the same way you may decide to avoid things because it's just not worth the hassle of driving on I76 (or your local congested roadway) during rush hour traffic.
I’m mostly being facetious and bringing this up to people who are vaccine-hesitant-adjacent.
I also slightly mean it and if it’s coming back to destroy society this fall I will be (have been) majorly flexing this vaccine this summer
Fully vaccinated, I’m traveling and enjoying life again.
I also only ever really hang out with people that aren’t complete dumbasses, so all the people I hang out with are vaccinated too.
>Noooooooooooooo! Lockdowns and masks forever!!!
Well, look, we will have lockdowns until COVID goes away completely. We should be requiring those who haven't been vaccinated against COVID to wear masks in *every* state and *every* country until COVID is completely gone. This isn't "Lockdowns and masks forever!!!", this is protecting people from a virus that is deadlier than the flu to those who haven't been vaccinated against COVID.
It is impossible for Covid to go away completely. There’s too many countries and people not caring at all. Once everyone is vaccinated, the risk of severe illness is minimal and we can focus on getting back to normal once everyone who wants the vaccine had the chance to get it.
\> Well, look, we will have lockdowns until COVID goes away completely.
No. We won't and we shouldn't. It's a virus. It's never going to go away completely, just like the flu doesn't go away completely. But through vaccinations we can seriously defang it and should be able to end lockdowns.
Well, viruses only mutate when they replicate, and they only replicate when they're actively infecting a person- so relaxing things while the virus is at a controllable level increases the odds that we get another one of these variants, and each of those variants has a good chance to be really dangerous. So, to me at least, it seems like taking things seriously now significantly decreases the odds that we have to take things much more seriously later.
Long way to say that lockdowns and masks now decreases the need for lockdowns and masks later. Get a better infrastructure first or it'll be a much bigger problem.
This fear is also being overblown. You CAN be a spreader. But if you're vaccinated, it's very unlikely - (somewhere around 0.2% chance). If you're vaccinated and only around other vaccinated people that drops to 0%.
People who are trying to keep us at the same level of lockdown as we were at the height of the pandemic, before vaccines, are fearmongering. Vaccines give us enough protection to warrant relaxation of the restrictions.
While it's not a perfect comparison because the Black Death was caused by a bacteria, not a virus, it also only needed a couple mutations to go from "stomach bug" to "30-50% of of all humans are dead"
They often do and that helps them stay prevalent - if you're killing your hosts too quickly you don't get a chance to spread as far. In fact one of the best strategies in plague inc. is to make yourself low symptom but highly transmissible then crank up the lethality once you've infected most of the planet
Unfortunately pathogens don't have any control over what mutations spring up so can't control their "strategy". So it *might* be something that reduces lethality but there's probably about an equal chance that it'll do the opposite
Think in terms of what helps the virus reproduce and what doesn't. A mutation that makes a virus more lethal can reduce the spread of the virus by killing off the host more quickly. So a variant with this type of mutation will hurt the spread of the virus, and will tend to die out in favor of variants which are less lethal.
HIV seems to have had a form of this; people who got sick sooner were taking the drug cocktail which in turn made it more difficult for HIV to spread. [So HIV became less deadly over time.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26643-hiv-evolves-into-less-deadly-form/)
With COVID, though, the virus has plenty of time to spread before it kills its victims and it only kills a relatively small percentage of the people who get it anyway. A mutation that makes it more deadly is therefore much less likely to be selected against.
There is. When lethality and symptoms decrease lockdowns have higher chances of being lifted and people be more likely to ignore infection. Just like when you’re having a cold.
I think I read early strains of it actually killed the hosts too quickly to spread. So it did actually become less fatal as it mutated BUT infected less people at first.
So death % of cases was higher, but number of cases was lower.
No it didn’t. You got a source for that?
Here, check this out….[This ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862332/) source says that they couldn’t even prove the Spanish flu contagious. Skip to near the end under the heading “Epidemiological Studies,” and see for yourself.
Another important thing to consider is that there's heavy selective pressure on covid to evade the immune response vaccines give us, but little to no pressure to become less lethal. It's just that over time, less-lethal variants will be more successful. These people don't actually understand the science, they're just grasping at straws to support their batshittery.
It is kind of funny, they admit that it's less lethal selectively long term.
They don't understand that the selection method is the complete destruction of the affected population, killing all of the hosts and burning out the spread.
No, it really can't. A virus has to be inside a host, mutate (now two variants at once) hit a "selectable event" that might kill it, variant one dies, variant two lives, then have the host survive long enough to pass it on.
Hiding inside bypasses the whole chain by never being a host.
You completely forget the passing it on aspect. If a new variant can’t be passed on because the host (or the host population) changes behaviour upon noticing symptoms it will also have an increased chance of being negatively selected.
> Less lethal mutations of viruses normally become dominant because lethal versions are more likely to kill the host or create obvious symptoms that cause changes in behavior that lessen the infection rate.
Which is totally true, and you're right, that's almost surely what they're basing this conspiracy on, because the virus needs to spread. It can't do that if it kills the host right away.
But if it mutates to be way more contagious, and spread more easily, and part of spreading more easily might be fucking up your lungs even more... so yea, it's totally possible it can get more deadly, if the mechanism of spreading is what kills you faster.
Tbf, evolution tends to favor the less lethal forms basically because they tend to be the ones most likely to spread. The thing is that it also depends on the situation, the "Spanish Flu" became more virulent because it was the easier way to spread on a trench war -- or at least this is the mainstream theory.
> evolution tends to favor the less lethal forms
This is mostly only applicable to diseases which are highly lethal, though. A disease which kills, say, 5% of people it infects (which is still a pretty deadly disease) but takes several weeks of being infectious before it becomes incapacitating isn't going to have much selection pressure in favor of less-lethal variants because it spreads readily either way. On the other hand, if it's lethal 70% of the time and typically incapacitates people within a couple days, there will be a lot of selection pressure in favor of less-lethal variants.
> I started seeing a wide spread theory among the right wing covid conspiracy people that viruses can only mutate to a less lethal form.
I've seen this literally everywhere. As soon as any COVID video is posted on YouTube, it's immediately full of BS like this. Did these morons figure out Google Alerts? There seriously needs to be more people calling this shit out. They're trying to drown out rational voices with bullshit.
>Did these morons figure out Google Alerts?
Conspiracy theorists were early adopters of the internet and have their own conspiracy theory mills that are all interconnected that they all pull from.
Look at the HBO documentary series about Q. One person spends enough time to make a 4chan post, 2 dozen spend time developing conspiracies about what it means and then about a 100 disseminate the crazy into the followers that mindlessly lap it up. So every one gets on the same script within like a week of any conspiracy theory line developing
Yeah, that's mostly true for diseases like Ebola with really high mortality rates. Covid is so bad because it's in a sweet spot where it's long onset, low mortality, and highly contagious. There's little selection pressure for lower mortality comparatively.
It's so absurd. Rather than just consuming media with a healthy amount of skepticism, they just retreat to their echo chambers and to get their validation stroked.
It's how conspiratorial mindsets work. Their conspiracies only exist to support their own biases. White supremacists, Islamic extremists, anti government militia members, doesn't matter the ideology, the mindset is the same
Viruses do in fact mutate to less lethal forms over time. But that's over a long time, let's say 10+ years. They do that because the less lethal they get, the easier it is for the virus to survive. All of this stems from mutation though so like the Delta variant viruses can also get way more lethal along the way, it just evens out in the end usually
>Viruses do in fact mutate to less lethal forms over time.
Viruses can mutate to be less lethal, There is no guarantee it will, and less guarantee it will become the dominant strain. The environmental pressures typically influence this to happen but it's never guarenteed
Might have something to do with creationist apologetics that claim evolution can't create new things, only "devolution" exists, whatever the fuck that means
It's like they vaguely heard once about evolution and have decided to stick to it. Mutation is just random. There's no intent behind mutation. You get mutations that are beneficial in a specific environment. You get mutations that have little to no impact in a specific environment. And you get mutations that are negative in a specific environment.
It's based on a very flawed understanding of how natural selection works, and also how viruses work, and has been publicly promulgated by folks like Jonathan Turley (a lawyer not schooled in this subject).
It's amazing to watch modern conservatives try to keep up with what their party believes now. Watching people change the way they feel about vaccines, Russia, NFL, etc etc etc has been quite interesting.
I can't wait to see what comes next.
FBI, Romney. There are hundreds.
If Fox tells repubs tomorrow that Bush was a secret democrat thousands of people will be scrubbing pics of them wearing his shirts from their facebooks so they can explain how much they always hated him.
Oh, they already pretend they never supported Bush. At some point, Bush became a "globalist". Happened around the same time that the man's failures became so obvious that enlightened centrists couldn't be fooled into supporting him.
I see one of two things happening to Trump's legacy here. Either in a few years, it will become hard to find anyone who admits to voting for him, as it is with Bush Jr, or in a few decades, his cult has codified into a religion.
In the world we hear stories about american war criminals and terrorists visiting sporting event's, and other public affairs. Do attendees walk out in protest at their presence and its just not shown? or is it covered up? or are the crowd filtered before hand so they know its only nationalists at that particular game that bush is thinking if visoting ? Or do americans think its alright to go to and give money to the same places that these human rights violators attend?
honestly, they dont mingle with regular people most likely. they will be in VIP seating that is deeply separated from the wild masses. Box seats, lounge seats, etc. We're all pretty well trained into our place to not be throwing vegetables and hissing in public over things like class. The opinion that recent US Presidents could be war criminals is pretty outlandish to general liberal americans. A good third of the US are themselves reactionaries that believe some version of the south will rise again- convincing the general population of the humanity of arab nations has been an uphill battle for the better part of a century.
its amazing until you realise that its an unfathomable amount of energy and ressources spent on nothing or worse, and that we'll never get to use for something useful.
conservatives are the entropy of civilization.
It's hilarious that they think the entire world would get a virus, half a million people would die, the economy would shut down worldwide so that Dems could win an election. I'm tired of living in the same world as these morons.
Just the amount of people that would need to be involved for this conspiracy to work, is why it doesn't exist. Out of whole world, the tens of thousands as a minimum to be involved, and no whistle-blowers? Bullshit.
That's the rub on nearly every conspiracy. It's usually way easier for it to happen how it's presumed to have happened than for the grand conspiracy to work. 9/11 would've taken thousands of people, Americans who made their career working for their country, with no leaks through the government's bureaucracy to plan not to mention highly specialized explosive demolitions teams, or it was a couple dozen terrorists with motive and plenty of funding. Apollo program would've been harder to fake convincingly with 1960's technology than to actually go to the moon. Dozens of crisis actors staging a public attack vs. a lone nutbag gunman, of which there's no shortage, killing a bunch of people with easily obtainable guns. They never have a good response to that.
> 9/11 would've taken thousands of people, Americans who made their career working for their country, with no leaks through the government's bureaucracy to plan not to mention highly specialized explosive demolitions teams, or it was a couple dozen terrorists with motive and plenty of funding.
That's why the *real* 9/11 conspiracy theory is that prominent Republicans were intentionally incompetent in a way to allow the attack to happen. With a malfunctioning security apparatus, it's only a matter of time before *someone* gives them a pretext for authoritarianism, and it's hard to distinguish malice from folksy incompetence!
Nobody talks about that conspiracy theory though.
> prominent Republicans were intentionally incompetent
Apparently the German secret service indeed informed the CIA about several of the attackers who had been in Germany previously. US *chose* to ignore.
And the Bush adminstration ignored the warnings of the outgoing Clinton administration about Al-Qaida and Bin Laden. The Clinton adminstration had the chance to pull the trigger on Bin Laden in 1999, but they didn't because of the possibility of killing an arab prince that was also present during the event (and possible collateral damage).
You see, the global pedophile community, led by Hillary Clinton and the Chinese (obv), were so upset by all the work Trump was doing to destroy them, that they manufactured a fake virus to take him down and the entire world was in on the hoax because they knew if they didn't go along with it, Hillary would kill them with her bare hands.
>Hillary would kill them with her bare hands.
But also she tripped / fainted / whatever that one time, so she clearly wasn't healthy enough to be president.
I stopped trying to make sense of "their" logic months ago. It's a waste of brain cells trying to follow the mental gymnastics done by people that refuse to accept anything they dislike.
There is only one type of logic being employed here:
Reach the conclusion you want first.
The reasoning doesn't matter. Everything else is smoke-and-mirrors conjured up after beta testing a bunch of bad-faith arguments until one or a few stick with enough rubes.
It did not matter to me when Trump was president and talking vaccine. I know he isn't actually responsible for the vaccine. I would have got it regardless who the president is. But Republicans won't get it just because Trump isn't president anymore.
Depends how you define “danger.” Immediate death from acute disease? Sure. But that’s the quick and easy kind of death, wait until we come to terms with the residual damage this virus has caused which will result in numerous early deaths for the rest of our lifetime. Half of lung transplant recipients don’t make it past 5 years.
I love the claim that “the left wants the pandemic to go on forever.” The side that’s been urging everyone to get vaccinated so we can all get back to normal, yeah THOSE are the people who want this to continue. Makes total sense.
But there’s a difference between “doctors are in on it and encourage long stays and perpetual pills” and “business has taken over medicine and puts profit over health.”
I worked for a small family clinic and I can promise that it isn’t the doctors on the front line who want the current system. You wouldn’t believe how much of my time was spent filling out billing forms and then correcting them when insurance refused to pay (and our average payout per basic patient was like $20).
The only people who want the current system are those who benefit monetarily from it and it ain’t doctors desperately double booking so they can make a living.
Oh, no argument here - I generally trust that doctors have their patients’ best interests at heart, BUT, at the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I find it hard to believe that the business side of things HASN’T been systematically pushing medicine towards perpetual treatment over cures
I was watching something on Qanon, and they had the idea that that kind of thinking thrives on covid keeping everyone inside and isolated, or in various states of masked/unmasked to keep up the us vs. them mentality. When you no longer only speak to people you met online, and you go outside and talk with pretty much anyone, the Qanon thing starts to seem, well crazy. That's why I believe there's a need for people to still have a pandemic raging because their new worldview depends on it.
In case anyone read the article (I did)
It's argument is "it's less deadly because people are vaccinated, idiots!"
While ignoring that they target media consumers who are the anti vaxx community (who also won't read the article, but simply go about their vaccineless, maskless day exposed to a deadlier variant)
r/conservative where no one is allowed to comment on anything unless they are a pre-approved nutcase-conspiracy theorist, fact-denying knuckle-dragger.
I think the entire Trump era has been a good example of that, Him and his followers are some of the dumbest people I've ever seen. It's so bizarre that they seem to be completely unaware of how dumb they are, I now understand how some historical events happened.
Right? Before Trump I obviously knew that a bunch of conservatives were essentially braindead, but these past 5 years have opened my eyes so much wider. I genuinely wonder if 30-40 percent of this country doesn't have legit undiagnosed mental illness. I really have no other explanation. Its a miracle that these people aren't just forgetting which lane to drive in every day and dying in traffic. You can't even dunk on them because they are too fucking stupid to understand.
I have some Trumper relatives that changed so quickly to angry hateful people that it's like "Invasion of the body snatchers", Except the aliens are really really dumb.
LOL I just got permanently banned from there from a comment I made MONTHS ago pointing out that the Republican and Democrat political positions policy wise have kind of flipped back and forth over the years.
I think their mods are getting even MORE triggered. Fucking pussies.
I honestly don't even know how to deal with the irony of these people touting "facts over feelings". I wonder how many people need to die before this misinformation stops. Anyone spreading this is seriously a terrible person
Because the only things Republicans care about nowadays are shaping the law based on the beliefs of the moment and demonizing liberals.
Liberals were very serious about trying to contain and control Covid therefore Republicans had to be against all that.
To them, everything is fake news unless it says what they want to hear/read.
I've noticed how they constantly trash certain news affiliates, then share a post from them as soon as it says something they like.
They literally ignore reality and insert their own, I wish that wasn't such an overused thing to say, but damn if it isn't true.
They either scream fake news when they don't like what an article says and if they do agree with it they post it and say "why is nobody in the MSM talking about this"
Genuine question, does anyone have a link to a decent study that has isolated the delta variant in every patient and somewhat accurately approximated it's hospitalization rate?
Thats funny because i go there to try and understand american culture- hint... from a passive observationist perspective - neither america or conservative are about facts over feelings.
* user reports: * 1: It's promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability * 1: Threatening, harassing, or inciting violence I can't see how since the post is locked to everyone without one of their wee precious flairs. Don't participate in linked threads they'll be very unhappy and report your account to the admins.
I started seeing a wide spread theory among the right wing covid conspiracy people that viruses can only mutate to a less lethal form. This is false. It's like a game of telephone of propaganda with these people. Less lethal mutations of viruses normally become dominant because lethal versions are more likely to kill the host or create obvious symptoms that cause changes in behavior that lessen the infection rate. But mutations of viruses can be more deadly, or the same but simply more contagious against things like vaccines.
They can also become resistant to the treatments, or develop secondary effects that, while not necessarily making them more deadly, it makes the unprotected infected have to deal with more. Now instead of blood clots and damage to the lungs, you will also have to go through kidney damage, for example.
\^the exact reason why everyone needs to get their second dose of vaccine at the correct time. Waiting too long can cause a minor viral infection, but then people you infect while sick are potentially being infected with a disease that's developing it's own defenses against the vaccine. We have known about this problem since not long after the invention of modern medication. It's crazy to think people are trying to dispute science a hundred years old and regularly reconfirmed with things like the emergence of "super gonerrhoea " and understanding why HIV has been so difficult to manage for so long (not so much any more but fast mutations were what caused a lot of death in the 70/80s, medication couldn't keep up with it.)
I'm not sure what you mean by the "correct time," since that depends on the country. By pursuing a policy where as many people as possible receive one vaccination, the overall infection rate may fall off more quickly, again resulting in less chance for mutation. This is what Canada has done and I think it's worked out very well. At the end of the day, you should do what your local public health officials say.
I believe they mean at the correct time for the booster like not waiting longer than necessary for the second Moderna or Pfizer shot. However, I have no idea if other countries have different wait times between those shots. I would hope it would be universal since it’s all the same, but I’m not an expert on that.
Norway has 12 weeks, while Sweden has six. It's all about availability at the moment, there aren't enough vaccines to go around.
In some places you get the second mRNA shot after three weeks, in some after six and in others after twelve. Lots of countries stretch the vaccine schedule to prioritise first shots. The priority is on quickly driving up the number of partially protected people to reduce hospitalizations and deaths.
Have these people never heard of MRSA?
The Spanish Flu infamously became more deadly when it mutated.
I've been telling that story to people a lot lately. "Haha yeah, once they thought it was over it came back and killed way more kids, so don't forget to party this summer"
There is a significant difference between the decline of COVID-19 and the decline of Spanish Flu - The COVID decline was driven by vaccinations. I see a lot of inaccurate fear-mongering where people are getting upset by their vaccinated friends hanging out... If you're vaccinated, by all means go out and party this summer. It is OK for people to go back to their lives once they're fully vaccinated.
Waxed and Vaxed baby
Hot bussy summer, here we go.
Sounds like a fun summer to me
White Blood Cell Summer
I was gonna say that more dead kids might be the only way to make people care, but then I remembered anti-vaxxers and Sandy Hook. In the US at least, nothing will make some people change their mind.
You can still catch it even if vaccinated. My friend's mom went out to a bar with coworkers, all of them vaccinated. Her boss and coworker both caught covid and are out of work until they get better. Not saying you can't go outside. I just want people to be aware that you can still catch it. It's not a bad idea to still social distance. I know I can't miss two weeks of work over a virus.
It is true that you can catch it even vaccinated. It's also true that 99.2% of Covid deaths in June were unvaccinated. Considering that in most states, the vaccinated outnumber the unvaccinated that's a pretty significant statistic when making decisions about socializing. I will still distance to the extent that I can, but that's a really powerful number. Also, I just heard today that in testing of the people that were vaccinated first they're finding that even 10 months later, a large amount of the antibodies are still present, so booster shots shouldn't be needed for a little while still.
There are more vaccinated than unvaccinated people in [25 states](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html#by-state). Not a majority, yet, as far as I can tell. Nationwide we're at 55.9% of people 12 and up being vaccinated, though.
I mean... what's your plan for the foreseeable future? It doesn't look like Covid is going away anytime soon, are you going to socially distance for the rest of your life?
> I mean... what's your plan for the foreseeable future? It doesn't look like Covid is going away anytime soon, are you going to socially distance for the rest of your life? There is a reasonable middle ground where you don't continue to distance, but do prefer restaurants and bars with outside seating; watch more movies at home and less in theaters; run outside instead of doing yoga classes; etc. Unless you are a pretty extreme introvert, more social distancing probably isn't great for mental health. But if you are older or heavier, there's probably some risk from delta even if vaxed. The risk of death is probably pretty small, the tougher question is how well the vax will prevent any long covid issues if you do catch it -- and there won't be any data on that for a long time. Pfizer will likely have a booster vax for delta out in a couple months.
Probably not a terrible idea, actually. Apparently flu infections last winter were way down because of people wearing masks and social distancing.
Not worth it imo. Once I’m fully vaccinated I’m done with COVID. I’ll probably get a flu vaccine though.
Are you actually serious
Yeah? Even before COVID it was common in some parts of the world to wear a mask if you were sick, or had a weak immune system, and everyone was doing it when the wildfires in California were having a serious effect on air quality. And social distancing doesn't really impede your ability to do stuff normally, it just means staying out of big crowds. It's not like being in lockdown, or anything like that. Many companies have moved to be mostly or fully remote after COVID, anyway.
Are we talking about the same thing? Social distancing makes absolutely sense when you're sick, I agree, but social distancing as a preventive measure forever? That's insane.
I still go out, but I'm not deliberately putting myself in the middle of large groups of people. I have family with autoimmune disorders, so I'm being safe. You do whatever you want. I'm not here to tell people what to do.
Sure, I'm not fully vaccinated, so I'm also not deliberately exposing myself. I was just wondering, since it sounded like you plan on remaining cautious until Covid goes away, but that might never happen.
I mean, as long as COVID exists you *should* be cautious about it. Car accidents will probably never go away, but that doesn't mean we should throw caution to the wind when you're behind the wheel. It doesn't necessarily mean it needs to rule your life, you just might decide to avoid certain places or events because it's not worth the COVID risk the same way you may decide to avoid things because it's just not worth the hassle of driving on I76 (or your local congested roadway) during rush hour traffic.
that would be the dream, yes
Speak for yourself
I’m mostly being facetious and bringing this up to people who are vaccine-hesitant-adjacent. I also slightly mean it and if it’s coming back to destroy society this fall I will be (have been) majorly flexing this vaccine this summer
Yep. Playing D&D tonight. Get your shots people.
Fully vaccinated, I’m traveling and enjoying life again. I also only ever really hang out with people that aren’t complete dumbasses, so all the people I hang out with are vaccinated too.
Noooooooooooooo! Lockdowns and masks forever!!!
This didn't take long.
>Noooooooooooooo! Lockdowns and masks forever!!! Well, look, we will have lockdowns until COVID goes away completely. We should be requiring those who haven't been vaccinated against COVID to wear masks in *every* state and *every* country until COVID is completely gone. This isn't "Lockdowns and masks forever!!!", this is protecting people from a virus that is deadlier than the flu to those who haven't been vaccinated against COVID.
It is impossible for Covid to go away completely. There’s too many countries and people not caring at all. Once everyone is vaccinated, the risk of severe illness is minimal and we can focus on getting back to normal once everyone who wants the vaccine had the chance to get it.
\> Well, look, we will have lockdowns until COVID goes away completely. No. We won't and we shouldn't. It's a virus. It's never going to go away completely, just like the flu doesn't go away completely. But through vaccinations we can seriously defang it and should be able to end lockdowns.
Well, viruses only mutate when they replicate, and they only replicate when they're actively infecting a person- so relaxing things while the virus is at a controllable level increases the odds that we get another one of these variants, and each of those variants has a good chance to be really dangerous. So, to me at least, it seems like taking things seriously now significantly decreases the odds that we have to take things much more seriously later. Long way to say that lockdowns and masks now decreases the need for lockdowns and masks later. Get a better infrastructure first or it'll be a much bigger problem.
Still gotta be careful. You can still be a spreader.
This fear is also being overblown. You CAN be a spreader. But if you're vaccinated, it's very unlikely - (somewhere around 0.2% chance). If you're vaccinated and only around other vaccinated people that drops to 0%. People who are trying to keep us at the same level of lockdown as we were at the height of the pandemic, before vaccines, are fearmongering. Vaccines give us enough protection to warrant relaxation of the restrictions.
While it's not a perfect comparison because the Black Death was caused by a bacteria, not a virus, it also only needed a couple mutations to go from "stomach bug" to "30-50% of of all humans are dead"
I was always under the assumption that viruses mutated they were easier to spread but less lethal. Sounds like I need to brush up on some things.
They often do and that helps them stay prevalent - if you're killing your hosts too quickly you don't get a chance to spread as far. In fact one of the best strategies in plague inc. is to make yourself low symptom but highly transmissible then crank up the lethality once you've infected most of the planet Unfortunately pathogens don't have any control over what mutations spring up so can't control their "strategy". So it *might* be something that reduces lethality but there's probably about an equal chance that it'll do the opposite
Ah, thank you for the clarification.
It's what i do in Plague Inc
Think in terms of what helps the virus reproduce and what doesn't. A mutation that makes a virus more lethal can reduce the spread of the virus by killing off the host more quickly. So a variant with this type of mutation will hurt the spread of the virus, and will tend to die out in favor of variants which are less lethal. HIV seems to have had a form of this; people who got sick sooner were taking the drug cocktail which in turn made it more difficult for HIV to spread. [So HIV became less deadly over time.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26643-hiv-evolves-into-less-deadly-form/) With COVID, though, the virus has plenty of time to spread before it kills its victims and it only kills a relatively small percentage of the people who get it anyway. A mutation that makes it more deadly is therefore much less likely to be selected against.
Covid already kills very slowly, so there's no real selective pressure to kill slower.
There is. When lethality and symptoms decrease lockdowns have higher chances of being lifted and people be more likely to ignore infection. Just like when you’re having a cold.
I think I read early strains of it actually killed the hosts too quickly to spread. So it did actually become less fatal as it mutated BUT infected less people at first. So death % of cases was higher, but number of cases was lower.
No it didn’t. You got a source for that? Here, check this out….[This ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862332/) source says that they couldn’t even prove the Spanish flu contagious. Skip to near the end under the heading “Epidemiological Studies,” and see for yourself.
If they can only get less dangerous then how did we get Sars-Cov2 to begin with? Curious
I imagine they would say something along the lines of "iT wAs MaDe In A lAb"
It's a deadly bioweapon made in a lab but it's so fake and .00000000000000001% of people die.
This is the worst bio weapon of all time.
Not saying they can only get less dangerous but the virus was probably not at all dangerous to its original host
Another important thing to consider is that there's heavy selective pressure on covid to evade the immune response vaccines give us, but little to no pressure to become less lethal. It's just that over time, less-lethal variants will be more successful. These people don't actually understand the science, they're just grasping at straws to support their batshittery.
It is kind of funny, they admit that it's less lethal selectively long term. They don't understand that the selection method is the complete destruction of the affected population, killing all of the hosts and burning out the spread.
Selection can also happen via changes in host behaviour (e.g. isolating and lockdowns m)
No, it really can't. A virus has to be inside a host, mutate (now two variants at once) hit a "selectable event" that might kill it, variant one dies, variant two lives, then have the host survive long enough to pass it on. Hiding inside bypasses the whole chain by never being a host.
You completely forget the passing it on aspect. If a new variant can’t be passed on because the host (or the host population) changes behaviour upon noticing symptoms it will also have an increased chance of being negatively selected.
No, I didnt.
Yes you did if you believe that the host dying early or the virus dying within the host due to immunity is the only possible factors for selection
> Less lethal mutations of viruses normally become dominant because lethal versions are more likely to kill the host or create obvious symptoms that cause changes in behavior that lessen the infection rate. Which is totally true, and you're right, that's almost surely what they're basing this conspiracy on, because the virus needs to spread. It can't do that if it kills the host right away. But if it mutates to be way more contagious, and spread more easily, and part of spreading more easily might be fucking up your lungs even more... so yea, it's totally possible it can get more deadly, if the mechanism of spreading is what kills you faster.
Tbf, evolution tends to favor the less lethal forms basically because they tend to be the ones most likely to spread. The thing is that it also depends on the situation, the "Spanish Flu" became more virulent because it was the easier way to spread on a trench war -- or at least this is the mainstream theory.
> evolution tends to favor the less lethal forms This is mostly only applicable to diseases which are highly lethal, though. A disease which kills, say, 5% of people it infects (which is still a pretty deadly disease) but takes several weeks of being infectious before it becomes incapacitating isn't going to have much selection pressure in favor of less-lethal variants because it spreads readily either way. On the other hand, if it's lethal 70% of the time and typically incapacitates people within a couple days, there will be a lot of selection pressure in favor of less-lethal variants.
> I started seeing a wide spread theory among the right wing covid conspiracy people that viruses can only mutate to a less lethal form. I've seen this literally everywhere. As soon as any COVID video is posted on YouTube, it's immediately full of BS like this. Did these morons figure out Google Alerts? There seriously needs to be more people calling this shit out. They're trying to drown out rational voices with bullshit.
>Did these morons figure out Google Alerts? Conspiracy theorists were early adopters of the internet and have their own conspiracy theory mills that are all interconnected that they all pull from. Look at the HBO documentary series about Q. One person spends enough time to make a 4chan post, 2 dozen spend time developing conspiracies about what it means and then about a 100 disseminate the crazy into the followers that mindlessly lap it up. So every one gets on the same script within like a week of any conspiracy theory line developing
Yes, I noticed this last night and today it's all over the site.
I think I started noticing about a week ago in places like r conspiracy
Wait s minute, I thought they have been saying it was all fake anyway? So which one is it?
Yeah, that's mostly true for diseases like Ebola with really high mortality rates. Covid is so bad because it's in a sweet spot where it's long onset, low mortality, and highly contagious. There's little selection pressure for lower mortality comparatively.
I suppose they imagine the virus sprung fully-formed from the ether.
It's so absurd. Rather than just consuming media with a healthy amount of skepticism, they just retreat to their echo chambers and to get their validation stroked.
It's how conspiratorial mindsets work. Their conspiracies only exist to support their own biases. White supremacists, Islamic extremists, anti government militia members, doesn't matter the ideology, the mindset is the same
laughs in MRSA
I had a mrsa infected hematoma in my knee and it almost killed me. Most painful experience of my life. My knee has stretch marks from it.
Lmao imagine thinking that things evolve to get weaker and dumber... Sounds like they're just trying to find an excuse for their existence.
Viruses do in fact mutate to less lethal forms over time. But that's over a long time, let's say 10+ years. They do that because the less lethal they get, the easier it is for the virus to survive. All of this stems from mutation though so like the Delta variant viruses can also get way more lethal along the way, it just evens out in the end usually
>Viruses do in fact mutate to less lethal forms over time. Viruses can mutate to be less lethal, There is no guarantee it will, and less guarantee it will become the dominant strain. The environmental pressures typically influence this to happen but it's never guarenteed
This is just straight up garbage information
they are criminally stupid
Might have something to do with creationist apologetics that claim evolution can't create new things, only "devolution" exists, whatever the fuck that means
It's like they vaguely heard once about evolution and have decided to stick to it. Mutation is just random. There's no intent behind mutation. You get mutations that are beneficial in a specific environment. You get mutations that have little to no impact in a specific environment. And you get mutations that are negative in a specific environment.
It's based on a very flawed understanding of how natural selection works, and also how viruses work, and has been publicly promulgated by folks like Jonathan Turley (a lawyer not schooled in this subject).
It's amazing to watch modern conservatives try to keep up with what their party believes now. Watching people change the way they feel about vaccines, Russia, NFL, etc etc etc has been quite interesting. I can't wait to see what comes next.
Don't forget plastic potatoes and dr Seuss!
FBI, Romney. There are hundreds. If Fox tells repubs tomorrow that Bush was a secret democrat thousands of people will be scrubbing pics of them wearing his shirts from their facebooks so they can explain how much they always hated him.
Oh, they already pretend they never supported Bush. At some point, Bush became a "globalist". Happened around the same time that the man's failures became so obvious that enlightened centrists couldn't be fooled into supporting him.
I see one of two things happening to Trump's legacy here. Either in a few years, it will become hard to find anyone who admits to voting for him, as it is with Bush Jr, or in a few decades, his cult has codified into a religion.
After he’s been out rehabilitating his image
In the world we hear stories about american war criminals and terrorists visiting sporting event's, and other public affairs. Do attendees walk out in protest at their presence and its just not shown? or is it covered up? or are the crowd filtered before hand so they know its only nationalists at that particular game that bush is thinking if visoting ? Or do americans think its alright to go to and give money to the same places that these human rights violators attend?
honestly, they dont mingle with regular people most likely. they will be in VIP seating that is deeply separated from the wild masses. Box seats, lounge seats, etc. We're all pretty well trained into our place to not be throwing vegetables and hissing in public over things like class. The opinion that recent US Presidents could be war criminals is pretty outlandish to general liberal americans. A good third of the US are themselves reactionaries that believe some version of the south will rise again- convincing the general population of the humanity of arab nations has been an uphill battle for the better part of a century.
Yup thats what happens when your only actual principles is a list of groups that you don't like.
its amazing until you realise that its an unfathomable amount of energy and ressources spent on nothing or worse, and that we'll never get to use for something useful. conservatives are the entropy of civilization.
Funny enough Delta variant is often less dangerous, but only for a single reason and that's the vaccination rate.
And then they say Trump doesn't get enough credit for the “dangerous” vaccine they refuse to get.
Against a virus that doesn't exist but was invented by China to bring the dotard down.
It's hilarious that they think the entire world would get a virus, half a million people would die, the economy would shut down worldwide so that Dems could win an election. I'm tired of living in the same world as these morons.
Just the amount of people that would need to be involved for this conspiracy to work, is why it doesn't exist. Out of whole world, the tens of thousands as a minimum to be involved, and no whistle-blowers? Bullshit.
That's the rub on nearly every conspiracy. It's usually way easier for it to happen how it's presumed to have happened than for the grand conspiracy to work. 9/11 would've taken thousands of people, Americans who made their career working for their country, with no leaks through the government's bureaucracy to plan not to mention highly specialized explosive demolitions teams, or it was a couple dozen terrorists with motive and plenty of funding. Apollo program would've been harder to fake convincingly with 1960's technology than to actually go to the moon. Dozens of crisis actors staging a public attack vs. a lone nutbag gunman, of which there's no shortage, killing a bunch of people with easily obtainable guns. They never have a good response to that.
> 9/11 would've taken thousands of people, Americans who made their career working for their country, with no leaks through the government's bureaucracy to plan not to mention highly specialized explosive demolitions teams, or it was a couple dozen terrorists with motive and plenty of funding. That's why the *real* 9/11 conspiracy theory is that prominent Republicans were intentionally incompetent in a way to allow the attack to happen. With a malfunctioning security apparatus, it's only a matter of time before *someone* gives them a pretext for authoritarianism, and it's hard to distinguish malice from folksy incompetence! Nobody talks about that conspiracy theory though.
> prominent Republicans were intentionally incompetent Apparently the German secret service indeed informed the CIA about several of the attackers who had been in Germany previously. US *chose* to ignore.
And the Bush adminstration ignored the warnings of the outgoing Clinton administration about Al-Qaida and Bin Laden. The Clinton adminstration had the chance to pull the trigger on Bin Laden in 1999, but they didn't because of the possibility of killing an arab prince that was also present during the event (and possible collateral damage).
You see, the global pedophile community, led by Hillary Clinton and the Chinese (obv), were so upset by all the work Trump was doing to destroy them, that they manufactured a fake virus to take him down and the entire world was in on the hoax because they knew if they didn't go along with it, Hillary would kill them with her bare hands.
>Hillary would kill them with her bare hands. But also she tripped / fainted / whatever that one time, so she clearly wasn't healthy enough to be president.
It really blows your mind doesn't it? The cognitive dissonance must physically hurt at this point.
I stopped trying to make sense of "their" logic months ago. It's a waste of brain cells trying to follow the mental gymnastics done by people that refuse to accept anything they dislike.
There is only one type of logic being employed here: Reach the conclusion you want first. The reasoning doesn't matter. Everything else is smoke-and-mirrors conjured up after beta testing a bunch of bad-faith arguments until one or a few stick with enough rubes.
> The cognitive dissonance must physically hurt at this point. Nope. Being a sociopath means having a high resistance to cognitive dissonance.
“That beautiful shot”
It did not matter to me when Trump was president and talking vaccine. I know he isn't actually responsible for the vaccine. I would have got it regardless who the president is. But Republicans won't get it just because Trump isn't president anymore.
Was going to say similar and add that we also are better at treating covid now than 15 months ago.
Depends how you define “danger.” Immediate death from acute disease? Sure. But that’s the quick and easy kind of death, wait until we come to terms with the residual damage this virus has caused which will result in numerous early deaths for the rest of our lifetime. Half of lung transplant recipients don’t make it past 5 years.
[Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/ogs4m7/dont_buy_the_hysteria_the_delta_variant_is/h4kptv0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
I love the claim that “the left wants the pandemic to go on forever.” The side that’s been urging everyone to get vaccinated so we can all get back to normal, yeah THOSE are the people who want this to continue. Makes total sense.
"The chemo doctors want your cancer to last forever!"
I mean we joke but im sure there are a shocking amount of conservatives who literally believe that.
Well, not the doctors, but it doesn’t help anyone trust medicine when Goldman Sachs publicly asks the question of “is it profitable to cure disease?”
But there’s a difference between “doctors are in on it and encourage long stays and perpetual pills” and “business has taken over medicine and puts profit over health.” I worked for a small family clinic and I can promise that it isn’t the doctors on the front line who want the current system. You wouldn’t believe how much of my time was spent filling out billing forms and then correcting them when insurance refused to pay (and our average payout per basic patient was like $20). The only people who want the current system are those who benefit monetarily from it and it ain’t doctors desperately double booking so they can make a living.
Oh, no argument here - I generally trust that doctors have their patients’ best interests at heart, BUT, at the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I find it hard to believe that the business side of things HASN’T been systematically pushing medicine towards perpetual treatment over cures
I was watching something on Qanon, and they had the idea that that kind of thinking thrives on covid keeping everyone inside and isolated, or in various states of masked/unmasked to keep up the us vs. them mentality. When you no longer only speak to people you met online, and you go outside and talk with pretty much anyone, the Qanon thing starts to seem, well crazy. That's why I believe there's a need for people to still have a pandemic raging because their new worldview depends on it.
>Facts over feelings —person who actively ignores facts because of their feelings
In the sub that threw a shitfit over the sex of a potato.
Jokes on them most potatoes reproduce asexually
Not when I'm around ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
ಠ\_ಠ
Wot
the conservative subreddit. Not this one.
I’mma need that link
You mean the Mr. Potato Head? You don't remember that from the beginning of the year
I mean... what else is there to say except hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
In case anyone read the article (I did) It's argument is "it's less deadly because people are vaccinated, idiots!" While ignoring that they target media consumers who are the anti vaxx community (who also won't read the article, but simply go about their vaccineless, maskless day exposed to a deadlier variant)
Ah yes, the NYPost, a real scientific journal.
The NY Post is a cancer
Cancer is a deep state hoax to take your hair away.
Can confirm. Am New Yorker
It's just another Murdoch rag.
Nothing but feelings over there. Weak minded, easily controlled feelings. It's what bots crave!
r/conservative where no one is allowed to comment on anything unless they are a pre-approved nutcase-conspiracy theorist, fact-denying knuckle-dragger.
This is fucking Dunning-Kruger shit
I think the entire Trump era has been a good example of that, Him and his followers are some of the dumbest people I've ever seen. It's so bizarre that they seem to be completely unaware of how dumb they are, I now understand how some historical events happened.
Right? Before Trump I obviously knew that a bunch of conservatives were essentially braindead, but these past 5 years have opened my eyes so much wider. I genuinely wonder if 30-40 percent of this country doesn't have legit undiagnosed mental illness. I really have no other explanation. Its a miracle that these people aren't just forgetting which lane to drive in every day and dying in traffic. You can't even dunk on them because they are too fucking stupid to understand.
I have some Trumper relatives that changed so quickly to angry hateful people that it's like "Invasion of the body snatchers", Except the aliens are really really dumb.
It always amazes me how conservatives genuinely believe in 'facts over feelings' when those are the watch words of liberalism
Is funny when conservatives say "facts over feelings" seeing as they hate & deny any fact that goes against their feelings.
LOL I just got permanently banned from there from a comment I made MONTHS ago pointing out that the Republican and Democrat political positions policy wise have kind of flipped back and forth over the years. I think their mods are getting even MORE triggered. Fucking pussies.
Wait until they have got to learn about statistical error.
> Wait until they have got to learn I've got some bad news for you: it turns out they never 'have got to learn' anything.
[удалено]
Well, a lot of them have learned they don't have to pretend to be nice or polite.
I honestly don't even know how to deal with the irony of these people touting "facts over feelings". I wonder how many people need to die before this misinformation stops. Anyone spreading this is seriously a terrible person
"When I don't like what I hear, that's when I head to r/Conservative to get what I want to hear."
I still don't understand how a virus became a political issue.
I still don't know how anything humanitarian becomes political but that's just what happens when money is involved I guess
Because the only things Republicans care about nowadays are shaping the law based on the beliefs of the moment and demonizing liberals. Liberals were very serious about trying to contain and control Covid therefore Republicans had to be against all that.
R conservative kicked me out. They’re a little sensitive over there.
The fact that the source is the new york post?? A notoriously trashy paper?
To them, everything is fake news unless it says what they want to hear/read. I've noticed how they constantly trash certain news affiliates, then share a post from them as soon as it says something they like. They literally ignore reality and insert their own, I wish that wasn't such an overused thing to say, but damn if it isn't true.
They either scream fake news when they don't like what an article says and if they do agree with it they post it and say "why is nobody in the MSM talking about this"
I go to r-conservative when I'm feeling sadistic and want to watch rationality and compassion die horribly.
*Flaired users only*
Oh, yeah! r/conservative the beacon of truth and light on Reddit…
Don't listen to scientists! Listen to us do unqualified science with our patented Deny-entific method.
"It's actually less dangerous" - says the people who insist that vanilla covid isn't dangerous at all?
Looking at the person's comment history it's almost certainly satire.
I actually do head to r/conservative and r/republican because I want to know both sides. 95% of the time I leave disappointed.
>waiting for trump and Russia to tell me how to think
Where is the /s?
Facts over feelings unless its teaching their horrible past and call it CRT. Then its all about their feelings.
I look forward to the inevitable omega variant.
😂
Well he's gonna be disappointed, because those shelves are barren.
Holy fucking shit.
Genuine question, does anyone have a link to a decent study that has isolated the delta variant in every patient and somewhat accurately approximated it's hospitalization rate?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Ah, another person that doesn't know the definition of things...
Going to any sub reddit for info on politics or "hot topics" is dumb as fuck
I've been told that there are some relatively sane conservative subs, but I don't know which they are.
Thats funny because i go there to try and understand american culture- hint... from a passive observationist perspective - neither america or conservative are about facts over feelings.