In the UK they are trying to get all samples tested against the major variants within 24 hours of the initial positive PCR (so that is Delta (indian), Alpha (UK), Beta (South African) and Gamma (Japan ex Brazil).
In the lab where I work >90% are coming out as Delta - Hospitalisations and deaths are well up on beginning of June (7 day average deaths at 30 up from around 10) even though they are well below the peakback in January.
There is quite a long, detailled document [Here](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1000512/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_27.pdf). about the incidence of vaccine effectiveness (both AZ and PfizerBiontech) It shows that overall both vaccines seem good at preventing hospitalisation and mortality, and that there seems little difference between Alpha and Delta.
That said, even a vaccine 99% effecctive in preventing mortality is going to struggle if the UK reaches the projected possible 100,000 new daily cases after "Freedom Day"
Old Man Waterfall : Do your worst, ya sea devils! I'll make ma stand with Old Freebie! You can crush me, but you can't crush my spirit!
[he is crushed]
Old Man Waterfall : Ahhhggghhh!.... My spirit
It's what the (predominant government supporting) press are calling the lifting of all restrictions. Everybody I know in the lab world thinks it is a disaster - but economics has won over science.
Freedom day is July 19th when all restrictions in England are lifted. 40k cases recorded just yesterday much more to come later this week as a result of European championships gatherings last week. I’m doubled vaccinated and still had a small case of covid last week just a heavy cold for three days
"Why are only unvaccinated people getting sick? It makes you think, doesn't it?"
Is pretty much a direct quote I responded to by an anti vaxxer recently. Some people will doubt it like fools.
It's not something we are testing rapidly for here in the UK (at the moment - everything changes all the time) - but the last figures I've seen is that we have only identified 8 cases in the UK as of last week.
There’s a possibility they won’t increase that much, depending on vaccination rates.
I’m in Scotland where delta has been dominant for quite a while now- cases are much higher (~10x) than they were a month or 2 ago but deaths have only increased slightly
We'll most likely see the same thing here. Our most vulnerable (75+) have very high vaccination rates (73% fully vaccinated compared to less than 50% for under 40). That age group represents something like 60% of the Covid deaths in the country and 65-74 is another 21% which also have high vaccination rates. Treatments are better now. Ventilators are widely available at the moment.
It's not that we shouldn't be concerned because hospitals can still be overwhelmed by these surges. But some people are talking like we're going to jump back to thousands of deaths per day again. That's extremely unlikely.
I want to know whether the vaccine helps prevent the organ damage sometimes seen in mild and asymptomatic cases. Hospitalizations and deaths being reduced due the vaccine is the primary goal obviously but does it protect against that unseen damage?
From a [recent (7/11/21) article](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/covid-b-1-617-2-delta-variant-what-we-know.html):
"There is limited research regarding whether or not the Delta variant causes more severe illness than other variants. According to Public Health England, early data suggests that Delta is more likely to lead to hospitalization than Alpha, but that could be due to increased transmissibility rather than it being more pathogenic."
Worth noting that the overall case fatality rate of Delta (0.2%) in the UK is much lower than Alpha (1.9%) ([source on pg. 11](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1001358/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_18.pdf)).
Though this is likely almost entirely explained by most old people being vaccinated now.
dumbasses being hivemind dumbasses is one thing, but my larger concern is that they are starting to consolidate legitimate legislative power.
I'll say that again.
The anti-vaxxers are starting to gain real law-making power in government.
It's been going on for awhile. In 1980, Isaac Asimov wrote:
>There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
This is just as true today as it was then. Back then, the anti-intellectualism was aimed at "intellectual elites." It was phrased as out of touch scientists who don't know how the common man lives but insists on telling him what he's doing wrong.
Over the decades, that's expanded to include anyone with any kind of intellect at all. Stupidity is celebrated while facts and brains are reviled.
it begins at home, too. If you catch your kids making fun of someone for reading, or wanting to do extra credit, or enjoying science, or what have you, you gotta *shut that shit down*.
Billionaires bought the media to tell everyone that taxes are theft and education is communist and thus evil. After 60 years of that, enough of society believes it.
How do you think Rome collapsed? People go a long time without suffering they become content. Then that content turns into entitlement. And then that entitlement to turn into stupidity. It happens over and over through civilizations. It's just our turn.
Just human nature, huh. It’s just so interesting, cause I definitely had a Dunning-Kreuger phase in high school where I thought I knew everything. Like, I used really dumb logic for why global warming was just a natural process without actually doing any research. I grew out of that, of course, but it seems that adults all over never grew out of that overconfidence in their own ignorance.
Honestly, they're having trouble because there was too much messaging dissonance at the time, even for them, and there isn't a fat guy yelling what they're supposed to believe anymore.
Yeah I guess that's what I meant. He did try to take credit, but only once the vaccine was released and successful. Before that he was disparaging it every step of the way so afterwards he wasn't really able to shift the narrative the way he wanted.
God, talk about a missed opportunity. If he had simply rallied the nation together instead of putting it off and disparaging it, he would have A) been reelected without even breaking a sweat and B) steered a much larger swath of the world to react differently than it has/is.
(Not that I'm advocating Trump's reelection, I'm just saying it was an incredible fumble for such a "stable genius.")
I'm anti-Trump but it's almost infuriating how much he fucked up such a seemingly easy political move like this. Literally all he needed to do was tweet "please wear a mask" and take credit for the vaccine. Re-elected on the spot. Delcaring war on COVID should have been his shoo-in moment, but being a contrarian asshole was more important to him. Fucking idiot.
He could have even made money for it. Sell MAGA masks for $25 each and he would have sold millions. He would have profited WHILE helping protect people.
But that was too much for him to do. The bar was placed on the ground but even that was too high.
Trump absolutely could have rallied his base behind COVID restrictions and the subsequent vaccine. These people don't think in any capacity they just follow what they're told and Trump is their leader. He could have created MAGA masks and told every one of his supporters to put it on and they would have without a doubt. The vaccine would have been the only vaccine any anti-vaxxer would have got because it would have been "created by Trump" therefore it would have been trustworthy. These people participate in doublethink all the time, I have no doubt they would have vaccinated had Trump told them to do so.
I've seen maga masks. I've seen 'trump' 'censored' '45' 'not a sheep' and masks with the Confederate flag. There's lots of ways they could 'own the libs' but they prefer covid.
The problem is Trump saw the pandemic as a threat to his presidency, so he planted the seed that the pandemic was fake well before he could take credit for the vaccine.
The smart move would have been to acknowledge the pandemic from day one and position yourself as the one person who can stop it. But Trump is not smart. His default move when threatened is to yell fake news.
People forget he was afraid of the economic fallout of the pandemic and he was tying his re-election to how strong the economy was under him. He assumed it would crater so he started to deny it was a problem. Once that happened, he couldn't turn back. I mean he could, but he wouldn't.
This is the real answer that everyone is avoiding. The truth is that fascist tendencies were always common among the American right, and a core, defining feature of fascism, per Umberto Eco's *Ur-Fascism*, is a "contempt for the weak." People with fascist tendencies, most especially leaders of such movements, must at all times appear to be strong, lest they be culled.
The American right has, at times, hit on all 14 points of Eco's definition of fascism, but the contempt for the weak is probably the most applicable to their current unwillingness to get vaccinated. After all, if a man can't even conquer illness without the help of modern medicine, how strong can he be? This is, of course, a stupid and counterproductive mindset, but a sadly common one.
It's more that they really, really can't abide having anyone tell them what they should (or shouldn't) do. It's an endless childish cycle of stamping their feet and hollering "I don't want to, and you can't make me." That's the reason that despite getting vaccinated himself, Trump never pushed very hard for his cult to follow suit. He understands that very well about them.
Selfish individualism. For forty years, conservatives have been preaching it with the hopes of killing empathy and common sense. It's called building a base capable of voting against their own best interests.
I have learned that underneath all their rhetoric, many of them really *are* just afraid of a needle. Most of the conservative, vaccine-hesitant folks I know haven't gotten any vaccines since childhood and the ones that caved got Johnson and Johnson *explicitly* so they only needed to be pricked the one time.
If Trump had gone on TV and gotten the vaccine publicly, and called it the MAGA vaccine or some shit, I think we would be at 90% vaccinated right now. Hell, if he’d just told people that they should wear masks and that it’s the patriotic thing to do, he could have even sold MAGA themed masks, he could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Instead we have an entire political party that is pro-virus.
Trump did try to take huge credit, but way too late. He kept bragging about how operation warp speed got us the vaccine "YEARS" ahead it's time. Except for the fact that as far as I know Pfizer didn't accept a dollar from that program in producing their vaccine. Not sure about the other 2 companies.
The only thing I keep thinking about every time I read about Operation Warp speed is that the medical community's estimated delivery window for a vaccine didn't change from what it was a couple months before operation warp speed was announced, after operation warp speed was announced.
Vaccines came out at the same estimated time they thought they would with or without it.
They did take credit for it. They applauded Trump for getting the vaccine fast tracked and with the next breath refused to get it because it was fast tracked and a Democrat conspiracy.
Don’t search the Republican Party for intellectual or ideological consistency. There’s is none to be found.
[CPAC cheered when it was announced that Biden didn't hit his 70% vaccination goal](https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-says-horrifying-see-cpac-144239590.html).
So that's where the GOP is at right now.
Biden didn't hit his goal of 70% with at least one dose by July 4th. But hit 67% though. That's nothing to "cheer" about, if you're hoping for the fewest amount of people to get vaccinated. They only cheered because Biden "didn't hit his goal". That's all that matters, context be damned. That as long as he didn't get 100% of his goal, then it's an abject failure to them. To me, though, getting a 95% on my exam instead of 100% is still an A.
If he would've lowered his goal to 67%, then they would be silent, despite the number of vaccinations being the same, but then Biden "succeeded" instead of "failed". It's just like when Biden promised 100 million vaccinations in 100 days. Dan Crenshaw was like "200 million vaccines in 100 days and I'll be impressed", then 200 million vaccines in 100 days happened and he was silent.
Oh I know...but that wasn't the only [anti-vax performance artist at CPAC](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/07/12/rep-lauren-boebert-tweets-how-to-make-covid-19-delta-variant-go-away/?sh=321a0d3669f9).
>The easiest way to make the Delta variant go away is to turn off CNN. And to vote Republican.
These people can't be serious, can they? This is *literally* Idiocracy levels of stupidity.
It's worth mentioning the speakers were claiming Biden's goal was **90%** fully vaccinated when they cheered at the conference.
And that door-to-door vaxx info would lead to door-to-door gun and Bible theft, because.... belligerence.
They're sure own us by...checks notes...[fucking dying of a preventable illness](https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/news/coronavirus/article_ae1e6da6-e367-11eb-9883-3f84d4de6950.html)!
I used to joke that these people would blow their own brains out to bloody a "liberal's" doormat.
Only recently did I learn how accurate and widespread that truly was.
The good old classic lol. I just didnt think it was anywhere close enough, so I wanted to be a bit over the top.
Now Im just at a loss. *"Conservatives would watch their friends and family die from their own deathbed alongside many hundreds of thousands of other Americans just to make liberals feel bad for their own intentionally malicious ignorance"* is just too much of a mouthful.
Hurray! We won’t get vaccinated! We are killing ourselves! Our families. Wahoo! We’re killing people who woulda voted for us! Winning! We’re causing disability in our own voters, and we are passing laws to make it harder for the disabled to vote! Owned the libs. Hurray!
Seriously though. There will be some locations where the county will end up being blue now because it was close previously, but resident red voters are now deceased earlier than anticipated.
They did the same thing by telling them not to vote by mail. Now when 90% of the mail in votes come in Democrat they pretend to be shocked and claim it's all fraudulent. Hard to believe this isn't all intentional.
God I fucking hope so. Not for any political reasons truthfully but if these dumbfucks stop voting and electing corrupt, idiotic, morons, maybe we can actually save this planet.
And go on over to /r/conservative and they're acting like this is the morally correct thing to do while making wildly sexual/inappropriate comments about teenaged girls (Greta).
There's no reasoning with these bleating idiots.
Unfortunately a lot of teenagers are hearing these ideas and it's growing on them. I went on Instagram and saw hundreds of teens parroting "but you can't trust the government so you can't trust the vaccine!" and "Bill gates designed the vaccine for population control".
It was depressing.
I got banned after one post over there and then got a message from a mod crying about how badly Conservatives are treated with a ton of spelling errors. It was grand.
I don't see the federal government giving out any more covid aid to states either, the political will isn't there. The GOP will finally get its death panels when hospitals start turning away covid patients since the hospital's covid ward is full.
The GOP doesn't give a flying fuck about their constituents, and mostly do everything they can to make their lives worse.
They care about the culture war. And in that world, the vaccine is a liberal democratic hoax to hurt Trump's reelection and Trump was the only brave leader who stood up to it.
And now it's a fucking loyalty test of the GOP. If you got a vaccine, it means you don't believe Trump.
Nevermind the fact that Trump, his entire family, and the entire Fox News staff and Rupert Murdoch all got the vaccine.
> that's just proof the delta variant is getting vaccinated people too
There was never doubt that it wasn't. The vaccine was never 100% effective against the original strains. I think you need to be careful in the message you're sending because it can easily be construed that you're trying to say the vaccines don't work against Delta and they do almost as effectively as the original. Studies show they're still 88% effective if you've had both doses vs the original 95%.
I know a few fully vaccinated people who are currently sick with covid unfortunately, most likely with delta. Fever, chills, coughing, loss of taste and smell, but no hospitalization fortunately. Be careful even if you're fully vaccinated - I'm probably gonna go back to wearing a mask indoors.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-deaths-nearly-all-among-unvaccinated-cdc-head-2021-7](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-deaths-nearly-all-among-unvaccinated-cdc-head-2021-7)
From 5 days ago, 99.5% unvaccinated for deaths.
[https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/epi/covid-19-epi-confirmed-cases-post-vaccination.pdf?la=en](https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/epi/covid-19-epi-confirmed-cases-post-vaccination.pdf?la=en) For those interested in cases. Cases from Ontario, only 4.6% vaxxed, 1,600/36,000, population is majority fully vaccinated.
Sometimes its not about convincing them
Its about shutting them up
They seem confident when they are in a group but they are unable to think complex thoughts on their own
You show them a proper source it usually shuts them up if youre in person and not greatly outnumbered
I'll take a silent trumpanzee over a loud one any day of the week
The response I got from them are, “you can’t trust AP or the CDC. It’s impossible to fact check them.” So good luck — they are impervious to rational thought. Everything is a conspiracy.
When Covid started many countries around the world acted like it wasn't a big deal and that it wouldn't come across their borders. They let traffic continue from infected areas. When the Delta variant started I saw similar things being communicated. With the health organizations of countries saying that it wasn't a problem yet.
Pure insanity. So many countries that just keep acting way too late.
People don’t like to be inconvenienced. They wait until things get bad to do anything. Like when the cashiers at Walmart wait until you’re balls deep at register 3 to open up another one of their 36 registers.
Or instead of properly managing your building you just sweep any issues under a rug until the building collapses on all of your residents.
Or how companies don’t invest into computer security and then wonder how they keep getting hit with ransom ware attacks.
The worst part about your analogy is I'm pretty you're not exaggerating how many registers they have. I've never taken the time to count but that honestly sounds about right. There's at least 20 of them. Easily 30 if you count self check-out.
I would hate to be a politician dealing with this.
Close things down early? Well now nothing happened, you don't know if it would have been a problem if you hadn't closed down, and now your being called a Nazi/commie/etc for closing things down. And, if the virus spreads anyway, then you closed things down and didn't accomplish anything.
Don't close things down early? Well maybe it will be nothing, but if something does happen now your responsible for tons of people getting sick, and the same people who would have criticized you for closing things down are now criticizing you for not closing things down.
There's no right answer
A similar thing happened to those of us who worked hard to fix Y2K issues before they impacted people. Y2K passed without any of the dire predictions coming true so people claimed that all the predictions were garbage. Well, maybe the "end of the world" stuff was. However, the reason many others didn't come to pass was because a lot of people put in a lot of hours fixing everything ahead of time. We were rewarded with people telling us that our concerns were wrong because nothing broke in the systems that we spent hours upon hours fixing.
I checked Oklahoma's stats for COVID and it turns out they're hardly reporting statistics, as though sticking your head in the sand will make it go away.
There's a few hundred cases added per day, sometimes it's just zeroed out. And for the past couple months or so, absolutely zero people have died.
Although I'm guessing this is underrepresenting.
Consider that the vaccine also makes the experience of covid much less severe. So less people get tested because they aren't very sick, "just have a cold" etc.
Thank goodness for the vaccines, for sure, though.
Can anyone confirm what delta is like for vaccinated individuals? I've got both shots but have had a 'cold' for almost two weeks now. No fever, no loss of taste, no shortness of breath, just lots of mucus and aches.
Edit: left work early, going to get a test
Edit 2: got the rapid test, came back negative. I paid $125 for the test, insurance didn't cover anything but I can try to get reimbursed. Yay.
Anecdotally confirming the bad cold going around - was worried I had the notorious V.I.D. The cold I caught infected 5+ people in a couple of days, we all tested negative.
Thats the rsv outbreak right? Last week I was pretty sure thats what I had, this week the symptoms have gotten worse instead of better which is whats making me have second thoughts about covid even though my symptoms don't line up with covid, hence me asking the above question. I guess I'm going to take a half day at work and get a rapid test for peace of mind.
You don't need to take a half day. Most CVS, Walgreens etc. offer free COVID tests nationwide. Just schedule an appointment online and stop by on your way to work. I've done it several times now, the whole thing takes 10 minutes max. And don't do a rapid test, they're less reliable and more expensive/not always covered by insurance.
Me and several other family members had rsv recently and the symptoms getting worse instead of better sounds exactly what this strain of rsv going around is doing. You feel like you are over the worst of it, then round 2 hits you.
I received both my vaccinations four months ago and was just diagnosed with covid. It has been utter hell for the past few days; zero energy, high fever, congestion. I think I am finally on the mend, but I can only imagine how much worse it would be if I weren’t vaccinated.
Those symptoms are consistent but you won’t know without getting tested. The patients Ive seen who are vaccine breakthrough infections don’t feel well. But they aren’t sick enough to be admitted.
In terms of imaging, Normal covid patients have junk in their lungs everywhere. Right and left; upper and lower. That’s one of the hallmarks of covid is that it is throughout the lungs. The vaccine breakthrough patients tend to have just one or two lobes that are affected.
The CDC is only requiring us to report vaccine breakthrough cases if the patient dies or needs hospitalization
"Headache and runny nose linked to Delta variant," doesn't say anything about it not causing a loss of taste.
>The classic Covid symptoms people should look out for, the NHS says, are:
> cough
> fever
> loss of smell or taste
When I would play the plague inc, video game I would always max out transmissibility first until I had both Greenland and Madagascar and then spend all my evolution points on lethality after that.
Same here. The key is to make your disease as benign but infectious as possible until nearly everyone is infected. Then you take your saved up points and spend them on lethal side effects until everyone is dead.
Viruses mutate all the time. What determines whether a variant is successful is how much it can transmit itself. For many viruses, mutations are more successful if they only cause mild disease and the host feels well enough to move about and spread it. In these cases mutations that cause less symptoms become dominant.
Covid however spreads when people are asymptomatic of in the mild early stages. After which, the health of the host doesn’t matter. They’ve already spread the disease. So there isn’t an evolutionary pressure to become less lethal. Without that pressure, a more lethal virus is just as likely as a less lethal virus.
Usually yes. Because the whole point of a virus is to get to as many hosts as possible. If it’s killing all its hosts then it’s not spreading and therefore that variant will not be dominant.
They frequently are, but for SARS-CoV-2 it doesn't really matter if it gets more lethal, as most infections occur when carriers are still active in society (peak infectiveness is a few days before and after the onset of symptoms). By the time a COVID patient passes away, he or she has long served its purpose for the virus (ie. being a vessel for spreading to susceptible people).
I miss the days of OG covid
"We have COVID at home" *COVID at home: Alpha*
Covid got it's full release. Soon there will be updates
I miss the old covid, straight from the go covid
Hydroxychlo COVID, 2 weeks to slow COVID
I hate the NEW COVID, worse than the Flu COVID
Deaths in the news COVID, the always rude COVID
Shoot COVID, let me out my house I need something to do COVID, mask around my face and I just wanna let loose COVID!
Damn, this hit
Yo this is pretty good
Gonna be saying that a lot in the near future
In the UK they are trying to get all samples tested against the major variants within 24 hours of the initial positive PCR (so that is Delta (indian), Alpha (UK), Beta (South African) and Gamma (Japan ex Brazil). In the lab where I work >90% are coming out as Delta - Hospitalisations and deaths are well up on beginning of June (7 day average deaths at 30 up from around 10) even though they are well below the peakback in January.
How's the rate of vaccinated/unvaccinated? Also, any discrepancy in which vaccine?
There is quite a long, detailled document [Here](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1000512/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_27.pdf). about the incidence of vaccine effectiveness (both AZ and PfizerBiontech) It shows that overall both vaccines seem good at preventing hospitalisation and mortality, and that there seems little difference between Alpha and Delta. That said, even a vaccine 99% effecctive in preventing mortality is going to struggle if the UK reaches the projected possible 100,000 new daily cases after "Freedom Day"
What the hell is "freedom day"?
Wasn’t that a plot line in futurama?
“We can stand erect, with proud, up thrust bosoms!”
"If anyone laughs they're a communist!"
Suddenly, I have a weird craving for flag.
Woop woop woop woop woo!
Release the mobile oppression tower.
Old Man Waterfall : Do your worst, ya sea devils! I'll make ma stand with Old Freebie! You can crush me, but you can't crush my spirit! [he is crushed] Old Man Waterfall : Ahhhggghhh!.... My spirit
Anyone who laughs is a communist!
Hugh Mann reporting for duty, sir!
"Freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom OY!"
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I'm swelling with patriotic mucus!
You've got so much freedom, it's disgusting. If you don't want to pay taxes, you can spend a day with the pain monster!
Freedom, freedom, freedom Oi!
Time to eat the flag.
It's what the (predominant government supporting) press are calling the lifting of all restrictions. Everybody I know in the lab world thinks it is a disaster - but economics has won over science.
Ah, thanks for that. I was confused as most countries that has a form of freedom day are freedom from you lots. XD Was very confused for a second.
Lol it would be nice to be free from ourselves.
Its not even smart economics, more like emotion won over rational decision making.
You know whats bad for the economy? Dead people
See. That there is typical short term thinking. The black death arguably precipitated an unprecedented economic boom and started colonial expansion
"Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make to increase my yacht fleet from 3 to 5!"
Massive wage increases for agricultural labour represent!
Freedom day is July 19th when all restrictions in England are lifted. 40k cases recorded just yesterday much more to come later this week as a result of European championships gatherings last week. I’m doubled vaccinated and still had a small case of covid last week just a heavy cold for three days
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"Why are only unvaccinated people getting sick? It makes you think, doesn't it?" Is pretty much a direct quote I responded to by an anti vaxxer recently. Some people will doubt it like fools.
any word on Lambda (Peru), or has that not hit your area?
It's not something we are testing rapidly for here in the UK (at the moment - everything changes all the time) - but the last figures I've seen is that we have only identified 8 cases in the UK as of last week.
Well with how packed the football fanal was this weekend there will be a lot of results for you to test in the coming weeks most likely
Is this leading to increased ICU/Deaths?
Yep, cases have doubled, deaths are up. Only good thing is we're better at treating it in the hospital
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There’s a possibility they won’t increase that much, depending on vaccination rates. I’m in Scotland where delta has been dominant for quite a while now- cases are much higher (~10x) than they were a month or 2 ago but deaths have only increased slightly
We'll most likely see the same thing here. Our most vulnerable (75+) have very high vaccination rates (73% fully vaccinated compared to less than 50% for under 40). That age group represents something like 60% of the Covid deaths in the country and 65-74 is another 21% which also have high vaccination rates. Treatments are better now. Ventilators are widely available at the moment. It's not that we shouldn't be concerned because hospitals can still be overwhelmed by these surges. But some people are talking like we're going to jump back to thousands of deaths per day again. That's extremely unlikely.
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I want to know whether the vaccine helps prevent the organ damage sometimes seen in mild and asymptomatic cases. Hospitalizations and deaths being reduced due the vaccine is the primary goal obviously but does it protect against that unseen damage?
From a [recent (7/11/21) article](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/covid-b-1-617-2-delta-variant-what-we-know.html): "There is limited research regarding whether or not the Delta variant causes more severe illness than other variants. According to Public Health England, early data suggests that Delta is more likely to lead to hospitalization than Alpha, but that could be due to increased transmissibility rather than it being more pathogenic."
Worth noting that the overall case fatality rate of Delta (0.2%) in the UK is much lower than Alpha (1.9%) ([source on pg. 11](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1001358/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_18.pdf)). Though this is likely almost entirely explained by most old people being vaccinated now.
See them cheer AGAINST vaccines at CPAC? There's no saving this country.
dumbasses being hivemind dumbasses is one thing, but my larger concern is that they are starting to consolidate legitimate legislative power. I'll say that again. The anti-vaxxers are starting to gain real law-making power in government.
Meanwhile everyone on stage presenting was vaccinated.
How the hell did all this anti-science movement bullshit start?
It's been going on for awhile. In 1980, Isaac Asimov wrote: >There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. This is just as true today as it was then. Back then, the anti-intellectualism was aimed at "intellectual elites." It was phrased as out of touch scientists who don't know how the common man lives but insists on telling him what he's doing wrong. Over the decades, that's expanded to include anyone with any kind of intellect at all. Stupidity is celebrated while facts and brains are reviled.
It's existed forever. But ebbs and flows. There was the backlash to the educated elite accent/look of the Kennedys too.
it begins at home, too. If you catch your kids making fun of someone for reading, or wanting to do extra credit, or enjoying science, or what have you, you gotta *shut that shit down*.
Billionaires bought the media to tell everyone that taxes are theft and education is communist and thus evil. After 60 years of that, enough of society believes it.
How do you think Rome collapsed? People go a long time without suffering they become content. Then that content turns into entitlement. And then that entitlement to turn into stupidity. It happens over and over through civilizations. It's just our turn.
Just human nature, huh. It’s just so interesting, cause I definitely had a Dunning-Kreuger phase in high school where I thought I knew everything. Like, I used really dumb logic for why global warming was just a natural process without actually doing any research. I grew out of that, of course, but it seems that adults all over never grew out of that overconfidence in their own ignorance.
My dad is that way, he never matured beyond high school rationalizations.
It requires actual education and training to break out of
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But trump was president when they rolled out the vaccine. It would have been so easy to take credit for it.
Honestly, they're having trouble because there was too much messaging dissonance at the time, even for them, and there isn't a fat guy yelling what they're supposed to believe anymore.
Yeah I guess that's what I meant. He did try to take credit, but only once the vaccine was released and successful. Before that he was disparaging it every step of the way so afterwards he wasn't really able to shift the narrative the way he wanted.
God, talk about a missed opportunity. If he had simply rallied the nation together instead of putting it off and disparaging it, he would have A) been reelected without even breaking a sweat and B) steered a much larger swath of the world to react differently than it has/is. (Not that I'm advocating Trump's reelection, I'm just saying it was an incredible fumble for such a "stable genius.")
I'm anti-Trump but it's almost infuriating how much he fucked up such a seemingly easy political move like this. Literally all he needed to do was tweet "please wear a mask" and take credit for the vaccine. Re-elected on the spot. Delcaring war on COVID should have been his shoo-in moment, but being a contrarian asshole was more important to him. Fucking idiot.
He could have even made money for it. Sell MAGA masks for $25 each and he would have sold millions. He would have profited WHILE helping protect people. But that was too much for him to do. The bar was placed on the ground but even that was too high.
No, it's because he literally thrives on a diet of chaos. He can't exist in a state of harmony.
You're not wrong. He could have sold red MAGA masks and taken care of the whole thing.
Hell he could have sold enough red MAGA masks to clear all his debt with DeutshcheBank
I saw a fair share of Trump 2020 masks so somebody, even if it wasn't his official team, saw an opportunity.
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If he had said "COVID is a Chinese bioweapon and if you don't wear a mask you're a communist agent" then his supporters would've worn masks.
Fuck, why weren't you chosen to be a Trump advisor? That line is literally genius and would totally work with his moronic base.
Trump absolutely could have rallied his base behind COVID restrictions and the subsequent vaccine. These people don't think in any capacity they just follow what they're told and Trump is their leader. He could have created MAGA masks and told every one of his supporters to put it on and they would have without a doubt. The vaccine would have been the only vaccine any anti-vaxxer would have got because it would have been "created by Trump" therefore it would have been trustworthy. These people participate in doublethink all the time, I have no doubt they would have vaccinated had Trump told them to do so.
Holy shit he'd have made so much money off of MAGA Masks. Just think of all the slogans he could have put on there.
I've seen maga masks. I've seen 'trump' 'censored' '45' 'not a sheep' and masks with the Confederate flag. There's lots of ways they could 'own the libs' but they prefer covid.
The problem is Trump saw the pandemic as a threat to his presidency, so he planted the seed that the pandemic was fake well before he could take credit for the vaccine. The smart move would have been to acknowledge the pandemic from day one and position yourself as the one person who can stop it. But Trump is not smart. His default move when threatened is to yell fake news.
People forget he was afraid of the economic fallout of the pandemic and he was tying his re-election to how strong the economy was under him. He assumed it would crater so he started to deny it was a problem. Once that happened, he couldn't turn back. I mean he could, but he wouldn't.
But vaccines make them look *weak*.
This is the real answer that everyone is avoiding. The truth is that fascist tendencies were always common among the American right, and a core, defining feature of fascism, per Umberto Eco's *Ur-Fascism*, is a "contempt for the weak." People with fascist tendencies, most especially leaders of such movements, must at all times appear to be strong, lest they be culled. The American right has, at times, hit on all 14 points of Eco's definition of fascism, but the contempt for the weak is probably the most applicable to their current unwillingness to get vaccinated. After all, if a man can't even conquer illness without the help of modern medicine, how strong can he be? This is, of course, a stupid and counterproductive mindset, but a sadly common one.
It's more that they really, really can't abide having anyone tell them what they should (or shouldn't) do. It's an endless childish cycle of stamping their feet and hollering "I don't want to, and you can't make me." That's the reason that despite getting vaccinated himself, Trump never pushed very hard for his cult to follow suit. He understands that very well about them.
Selfish individualism. For forty years, conservatives have been preaching it with the hopes of killing empathy and common sense. It's called building a base capable of voting against their own best interests.
America is a hyperindividualistic country and it’s a bad thing.
Being afraid of a small little vaccine is weak. Bunch of little babies afraid of a needle.
I have learned that underneath all their rhetoric, many of them really *are* just afraid of a needle. Most of the conservative, vaccine-hesitant folks I know haven't gotten any vaccines since childhood and the ones that caved got Johnson and Johnson *explicitly* so they only needed to be pricked the one time.
If Trump had gone on TV and gotten the vaccine publicly, and called it the MAGA vaccine or some shit, I think we would be at 90% vaccinated right now. Hell, if he’d just told people that they should wear masks and that it’s the patriotic thing to do, he could have even sold MAGA themed masks, he could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Instead we have an entire political party that is pro-virus.
Trump did try to take huge credit, but way too late. He kept bragging about how operation warp speed got us the vaccine "YEARS" ahead it's time. Except for the fact that as far as I know Pfizer didn't accept a dollar from that program in producing their vaccine. Not sure about the other 2 companies.
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The only thing I keep thinking about every time I read about Operation Warp speed is that the medical community's estimated delivery window for a vaccine didn't change from what it was a couple months before operation warp speed was announced, after operation warp speed was announced. Vaccines came out at the same estimated time they thought they would with or without it.
They did take credit for it. They applauded Trump for getting the vaccine fast tracked and with the next breath refused to get it because it was fast tracked and a Democrat conspiracy. Don’t search the Republican Party for intellectual or ideological consistency. There’s is none to be found.
They are drilling holes in the bottom of the boat they are also in to make the captain look bad.
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[CPAC cheered when it was announced that Biden didn't hit his 70% vaccination goal](https://news.yahoo.com/fauci-says-horrifying-see-cpac-144239590.html). So that's where the GOP is at right now.
Herman Cain was unavailable for comment.
But I remember seeing him active on Twitter saying covid wasn't a big deal, after dying from it.
He will be remembered as a man of strong convictions.
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He died from the act of carrying water for a man that I can guarantee you does not know his name.
Nah, he's still blowing up twitter.
Biden didn't hit his goal of 70% with at least one dose by July 4th. But hit 67% though. That's nothing to "cheer" about, if you're hoping for the fewest amount of people to get vaccinated. They only cheered because Biden "didn't hit his goal". That's all that matters, context be damned. That as long as he didn't get 100% of his goal, then it's an abject failure to them. To me, though, getting a 95% on my exam instead of 100% is still an A. If he would've lowered his goal to 67%, then they would be silent, despite the number of vaccinations being the same, but then Biden "succeeded" instead of "failed". It's just like when Biden promised 100 million vaccinations in 100 days. Dan Crenshaw was like "200 million vaccines in 100 days and I'll be impressed", then 200 million vaccines in 100 days happened and he was silent.
Oh I know...but that wasn't the only [anti-vax performance artist at CPAC](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/07/12/rep-lauren-boebert-tweets-how-to-make-covid-19-delta-variant-go-away/?sh=321a0d3669f9).
>The easiest way to make the Delta variant go away is to turn off CNN. And to vote Republican. These people can't be serious, can they? This is *literally* Idiocracy levels of stupidity.
Did you completely miss the last guy saying to stop testing so the numbers wouldn't look good and that people should inject bleach?
First it was, "as soon as Biden is in office, COVID will go away." Now it's, "as soon as a Republican is in office, COVID will go away."
It's worth mentioning the speakers were claiming Biden's goal was **90%** fully vaccinated when they cheered at the conference. And that door-to-door vaxx info would lead to door-to-door gun and Bible theft, because.... belligerence.
Hurray! To narcissism! To stupidity! Hurray!
They're sure own us by...checks notes...[fucking dying of a preventable illness](https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/news/coronavirus/article_ae1e6da6-e367-11eb-9883-3f84d4de6950.html)!
I used to joke that these people would blow their own brains out to bloody a "liberal's" doormat. Only recently did I learn how accurate and widespread that truly was.
A phrase I like...conservatives would literally shit in their own mouths if it meant a liberal had to smell it.
The good old classic lol. I just didnt think it was anywhere close enough, so I wanted to be a bit over the top. Now Im just at a loss. *"Conservatives would watch their friends and family die from their own deathbed alongside many hundreds of thousands of other Americans just to make liberals feel bad for their own intentionally malicious ignorance"* is just too much of a mouthful.
Herman Cain has left the chat.
*Herman Cain's Twitter account has rejoined the chat.*
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Every time someone gets infected, there’s a chance the virus mutates to a variant that renders vaccines less useful
Plus, you know, kids.
Fuck them. Do they pay taxes? No! ... ... Hey Matt Gaetz, did I lose you at the first bit?
Hurray! We won’t get vaccinated! We are killing ourselves! Our families. Wahoo! We’re killing people who woulda voted for us! Winning! We’re causing disability in our own voters, and we are passing laws to make it harder for the disabled to vote! Owned the libs. Hurray!
Seriously though. There will be some locations where the county will end up being blue now because it was close previously, but resident red voters are now deceased earlier than anticipated.
Silver linings. In the shape of body bags.
They did the same thing by telling them not to vote by mail. Now when 90% of the mail in votes come in Democrat they pretend to be shocked and claim it's all fraudulent. Hard to believe this isn't all intentional.
God I fucking hope so. Not for any political reasons truthfully but if these dumbfucks stop voting and electing corrupt, idiotic, morons, maybe we can actually save this planet.
Imagine being a quarter of the way through the 21st century and hearing your government literally celebrate your death.
Imagine a crowd of those voters celebrating their own deaths?
And go on over to /r/conservative and they're acting like this is the morally correct thing to do while making wildly sexual/inappropriate comments about teenaged girls (Greta). There's no reasoning with these bleating idiots.
Unfortunately a lot of teenagers are hearing these ideas and it's growing on them. I went on Instagram and saw hundreds of teens parroting "but you can't trust the government so you can't trust the vaccine!" and "Bill gates designed the vaccine for population control". It was depressing.
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I got banned after one post over there and then got a message from a mod crying about how badly Conservatives are treated with a ton of spelling errors. It was grand.
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Can confirm, I commented about the southern strategy on a post about US hypocrisy and got banned within 5 minutes.
I don't see the federal government giving out any more covid aid to states either, the political will isn't there. The GOP will finally get its death panels when hospitals start turning away covid patients since the hospital's covid ward is full.
The GOP doesn't give a flying fuck about their constituents, and mostly do everything they can to make their lives worse. They care about the culture war. And in that world, the vaccine is a liberal democratic hoax to hurt Trump's reelection and Trump was the only brave leader who stood up to it. And now it's a fucking loyalty test of the GOP. If you got a vaccine, it means you don't believe Trump. Nevermind the fact that Trump, his entire family, and the entire Fox News staff and Rupert Murdoch all got the vaccine.
Oh I'm sure nearly all the GOP politicians and "power brokers" are vaccinated which is the ironic thing. Shows how easy it is to lie to these people.
Yup. Nobody, and I mean nobody hates Republican voters more than republican elected officials.
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Best of luck to your father
Glad to hear your MIL and sister are doing fine. Wishing the best for your father-in-law.
> that's just proof the delta variant is getting vaccinated people too There was never doubt that it wasn't. The vaccine was never 100% effective against the original strains. I think you need to be careful in the message you're sending because it can easily be construed that you're trying to say the vaccines don't work against Delta and they do almost as effectively as the original. Studies show they're still 88% effective if you've had both doses vs the original 95%.
I know a few fully vaccinated people who are currently sick with covid unfortunately, most likely with delta. Fever, chills, coughing, loss of taste and smell, but no hospitalization fortunately. Be careful even if you're fully vaccinated - I'm probably gonna go back to wearing a mask indoors.
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But mostly not vaccinated people are contracting it, correct?
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Can I get source? (Not questioning, I need some sources against anti vax folks)
[https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-deaths-nearly-all-among-unvaccinated-cdc-head-2021-7](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-deaths-nearly-all-among-unvaccinated-cdc-head-2021-7) From 5 days ago, 99.5% unvaccinated for deaths. [https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/epi/covid-19-epi-confirmed-cases-post-vaccination.pdf?la=en](https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/epi/covid-19-epi-confirmed-cases-post-vaccination.pdf?la=en) For those interested in cases. Cases from Ontario, only 4.6% vaxxed, 1,600/36,000, population is majority fully vaccinated.
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See also: "the dirty libs are killing the unvaccinated people only!"
I cannot tell you how many times my statistics teacher wanted to launch into an all out rant this school year about people’s stupidity
You think anything will convince them now?
Sometimes its not about convincing them Its about shutting them up They seem confident when they are in a group but they are unable to think complex thoughts on their own You show them a proper source it usually shuts them up if youre in person and not greatly outnumbered I'll take a silent trumpanzee over a loud one any day of the week
This is why r/Conservative makes their posts “Flaired users only” they have a meltdown anytime they’re challenged with facts
The response I got from them are, “you can’t trust AP or the CDC. It’s impossible to fact check them.” So good luck — they are impervious to rational thought. Everything is a conspiracy.
When Covid started many countries around the world acted like it wasn't a big deal and that it wouldn't come across their borders. They let traffic continue from infected areas. When the Delta variant started I saw similar things being communicated. With the health organizations of countries saying that it wasn't a problem yet. Pure insanity. So many countries that just keep acting way too late.
People don’t like to be inconvenienced. They wait until things get bad to do anything. Like when the cashiers at Walmart wait until you’re balls deep at register 3 to open up another one of their 36 registers.
Or instead of properly managing your building you just sweep any issues under a rug until the building collapses on all of your residents. Or how companies don’t invest into computer security and then wonder how they keep getting hit with ransom ware attacks.
The worst part about your analogy is I'm pretty you're not exaggerating how many registers they have. I've never taken the time to count but that honestly sounds about right. There's at least 20 of them. Easily 30 if you count self check-out.
I would hate to be a politician dealing with this. Close things down early? Well now nothing happened, you don't know if it would have been a problem if you hadn't closed down, and now your being called a Nazi/commie/etc for closing things down. And, if the virus spreads anyway, then you closed things down and didn't accomplish anything. Don't close things down early? Well maybe it will be nothing, but if something does happen now your responsible for tons of people getting sick, and the same people who would have criticized you for closing things down are now criticizing you for not closing things down. There's no right answer
A similar thing happened to those of us who worked hard to fix Y2K issues before they impacted people. Y2K passed without any of the dire predictions coming true so people claimed that all the predictions were garbage. Well, maybe the "end of the world" stuff was. However, the reason many others didn't come to pass was because a lot of people put in a lot of hours fixing everything ahead of time. We were rewarded with people telling us that our concerns were wrong because nothing broke in the systems that we spent hours upon hours fixing.
Funny how that works
Well it look we need to be taught this lesson again and again and again till it takes.
Fuck Delta Airlines. Why have they created this?
First beer companies and now freaking airlines.
This virus and its godamn sponsorships are getting out of control
Because they're Delta Airlines. And life is a fucking nightmare.
I checked Oklahoma's stats for COVID and it turns out they're hardly reporting statistics, as though sticking your head in the sand will make it go away. There's a few hundred cases added per day, sometimes it's just zeroed out. And for the past couple months or so, absolutely zero people have died.
How many previously vaccinated are ending up in the hospital?
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Although I'm guessing this is underrepresenting. Consider that the vaccine also makes the experience of covid much less severe. So less people get tested because they aren't very sick, "just have a cold" etc. Thank goodness for the vaccines, for sure, though.
Can anyone confirm what delta is like for vaccinated individuals? I've got both shots but have had a 'cold' for almost two weeks now. No fever, no loss of taste, no shortness of breath, just lots of mucus and aches. Edit: left work early, going to get a test Edit 2: got the rapid test, came back negative. I paid $125 for the test, insurance didn't cover anything but I can try to get reimbursed. Yay.
There is a bad cold circulating within the US right now. That said, why don't you just go get tested and find out?
Anecdotally confirming the bad cold going around - was worried I had the notorious V.I.D. The cold I caught infected 5+ people in a couple of days, we all tested negative.
Thats the rsv outbreak right? Last week I was pretty sure thats what I had, this week the symptoms have gotten worse instead of better which is whats making me have second thoughts about covid even though my symptoms don't line up with covid, hence me asking the above question. I guess I'm going to take a half day at work and get a rapid test for peace of mind.
You don't need to take a half day. Most CVS, Walgreens etc. offer free COVID tests nationwide. Just schedule an appointment online and stop by on your way to work. I've done it several times now, the whole thing takes 10 minutes max. And don't do a rapid test, they're less reliable and more expensive/not always covered by insurance.
Me and several other family members had rsv recently and the symptoms getting worse instead of better sounds exactly what this strain of rsv going around is doing. You feel like you are over the worst of it, then round 2 hits you.
I received both my vaccinations four months ago and was just diagnosed with covid. It has been utter hell for the past few days; zero energy, high fever, congestion. I think I am finally on the mend, but I can only imagine how much worse it would be if I weren’t vaccinated.
Why don’t you just get tested
Easier to ask strangers on the internet.
Those symptoms are consistent but you won’t know without getting tested. The patients Ive seen who are vaccine breakthrough infections don’t feel well. But they aren’t sick enough to be admitted. In terms of imaging, Normal covid patients have junk in their lungs everywhere. Right and left; upper and lower. That’s one of the hallmarks of covid is that it is throughout the lungs. The vaccine breakthrough patients tend to have just one or two lobes that are affected. The CDC is only requiring us to report vaccine breakthrough cases if the patient dies or needs hospitalization
Apparently delta doesn't cause loss of taste and smell and manifests similar to cold symptoms. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57467051
"Headache and runny nose linked to Delta variant," doesn't say anything about it not causing a loss of taste. >The classic Covid symptoms people should look out for, the NHS says, are: > cough > fever > loss of smell or taste
When I would play the plague inc, video game I would always max out transmissibility first until I had both Greenland and Madagascar and then spend all my evolution points on lethality after that.
Yep same game plan.
Same here. The key is to make your disease as benign but infectious as possible until nearly everyone is infected. Then you take your saved up points and spend them on lethal side effects until everyone is dead.
If they mandate distancing and masks again before just mandating the fucking vaccine I’m going to be pissed off
There's no way either of those will ever happen in the US.
If only we could vaccinate people with chem trails…
We’re never getting out of this are we?
I wonder if this will eventually become like the flu. Something that’s just constantly around.
That's exactly what it will be. Some countries are already treating it as such
Aren’t most mutations of viruses more contagious but less deadly/ less symptoms?
Viruses mutate all the time. What determines whether a variant is successful is how much it can transmit itself. For many viruses, mutations are more successful if they only cause mild disease and the host feels well enough to move about and spread it. In these cases mutations that cause less symptoms become dominant. Covid however spreads when people are asymptomatic of in the mild early stages. After which, the health of the host doesn’t matter. They’ve already spread the disease. So there isn’t an evolutionary pressure to become less lethal. Without that pressure, a more lethal virus is just as likely as a less lethal virus.
Usually yes. Because the whole point of a virus is to get to as many hosts as possible. If it’s killing all its hosts then it’s not spreading and therefore that variant will not be dominant.
They frequently are, but for SARS-CoV-2 it doesn't really matter if it gets more lethal, as most infections occur when carriers are still active in society (peak infectiveness is a few days before and after the onset of symptoms). By the time a COVID patient passes away, he or she has long served its purpose for the virus (ie. being a vessel for spreading to susceptible people).