Covid 4/21/22: Variants Working Overtime

[-]MondSemmel4y230

When someone walking by you casually suggests you can do something you might find more pleasant, that is ‘imposing their beliefs on others.’ I think this is a lot of why such folks don’t see a problem actually imposing their beliefs on others and forcing them to engage in physical actions. They do not see a difference between ‘hey man you’d be better off if you did X’ and ‘do X or else.’
I am curious if there is a way to make such people notice this difference.

This is an interesting point. As a teenager I was invited to parties a few times, and there were very strong social expectations and peer pressure to drink alcohol. Having to consistently resist that stuff was utterly exhausting, and I very quickly lost all interest in the whole concept of parties. A similar dynamic occurs during group meals when some people have dietary restrictions, and these restrictions then become the topic of discussion.

On the one hand, I would absolutely call people in those situations "imposing their beliefs on others". I utterly detested these experiences, and I responded by becoming more contrarian and disagreeable.

On the other hand, I wonder what would have happened if the peer-pressure positions ("must drink alcohol at this party", "must eat meat at this restaurant", "must not eat meat at this family gathering", whatever) had been not only socially mandated, but also legally mandated. I guess I would've had to resist at an earlier point, when being invited to a party, rather than when I was already there?

Anyway, my point here is that what seems like an innocuous comment like ‘hey man you’d be better off if you did X’ for one person, can feel like an attack to another. As if it's part of a relentless barrage of attempts to make you conform to whatever is the current social consensus. (To give another example, I imagine this may also be a part of how women experience catcalling.)

[-]Viliam4y110

The new Florida law, HB7, which forbids CRT from being taught in math classes from K-12 here in Florida has resulted in only ONE publisher of textbooks in the country, Houston-based Accelerated Learning to be eligible to supply books to the State of Florida, out of ALL of the publishers of textbooks in the country!

Uh, do I understand it correctly that there is only one publisher in the entire Florida providing math textbooks without critical race theory?

And I thought that the communists of my youth were overzealous by pushing the mentions of Marxism-Leninism into all kinds of school subjects! Yet they mostly left math alone...

[-]Viliam4y170

By the way,

Math that Florida finds objectionable (McSweeney’s, remarkably good).

I find it a quite disgusting type of humor, because it is based on lying. "Critical race theory is just the usual math, people who object against CRT just don't understand math haha."

You know that it is a lie. Your opponents know that it is a lie. You know that your opponents know that it is a lie. So we are just having fun bullying our opponents, because the only thing more amuzing than punching your opponents is punching them while yelling "I am not punching you, stop punching yourself".

(Yet somehow countries outside USA find it quite simple to print math textbooks without CRT.)

[-]Adele Lopez4y20

Seems more likely it's just corruption.

[-]Lukas_Gloor4y*90

>When someone walking by you casually suggests you can do something you might find more pleasant, that is ‘imposing their beliefs on others.’

It seems like you don't realize how annoying this is to experience. It's like strangers telling me to smile. Fuck them! It's a boundary violation to assume that you know what's good for someone who you know nothing about, especially if they don't look particularly comfortable.

I also think the phrase you use is euphemistic. I can see instances of "casually suggesting something you might find more pleasant" that are totally fine. For instance, for some reason I used to keep on my school backpack when I sat down in trams in Switzerland because my route was only 8 minutes and I thought taking it off isn't worth it for such a short amount of time. But sitting that way was actually quite uncomfortable. And sometimes people would say "Why aren't you taking off your backpack and put it in front of you, you don't look comfortable." And once I started doing that, I realized "Oh yeah, this is clearly worth it."

By contrast, with the mask example, it just wouldn't make sense to assume that the thought of not wearing the mask (now that requirements have long been lifted) had never occurred to the other person. Therefore, I don't buy that people are trying to be helpful. Instead, they're disrespectful for giving "advice" (from the position of being a literal stranger!) that the other person must have already considered and decided against. That's implicitly judging someone to be bad at deciding what's good for them, which is why I think "imposing your views on others" is accurate. In particular, it's something like "imposing your typical mind fallacy on others."

[-]TLW4y50

I can only conclude that most people do not much care about Covid.

...or people don't have the resources to be able to afford Paxlovid.
...or 'have you had a positive test in the past 14 days; if so you cannot work'-style questions, especially combined with nontrivial false-positive rates, have lead people to avoid getting tested in the first place.
...or people think that the cost to get tests outweighs the expected benefit.
...or people think that the cost to get Paxlovid outweighs the expected benefit.
...or people have started to discount 'do X to stop Covid; we really mean it this time' in general.
...or people simply haven't heard of Paxlovid.

64% (!)^[1] of the US is living paycheque-to-paycheque. Missing a couple of shifts due to having to stay home can be the difference between making rent and becoming homeless.

^{^}
https://ir.lendingclub.com/news/news-details/2022/48-Percent-of-Americans-with-Annual-Incomes-over-100000-Live-Paycheck-to-Paycheck-9-percentage-points-higher-than-first-reported-in-June-2021/default.aspx - admittedly not a giant study.

[-]RobertM4y10

These seem mostly non-responsive to the described situation.

Paxlovid itself is free at point-of-sale (or at least the current supply is), so there's no monetary concern.
These patients have already been tested.
Not only did they get tested but they tested positive.
See "paxlovid is free".
They already have covid, they aren't being asked to do something unusual and unpleasant to prevent an uncertain future harm.
They're literally being offered a prescription by a doctor and turning it down.

[-]TLW4y10

Paxlovid itself is free at point-of-sale (or at least the current supply is), so there's no monetary concern.
See "paxlovid is free".

Admittedly, I am not super familiar with the US hospital system, but I believe Paxlovid is only available by prescription - which itself is a nontrivial cost for many.

These patients have already been tested.
Not only did they get tested but they tested positive.
They already have covid, they aren't being asked to do something unusual and unpleasant to prevent an uncertain future harm.
They're literally being offered a prescription by a doctor and turning it down.

Note this quote:

Paxlovid was expected to be a major tool in the fight against COVID after it reduced hospitalizations or deaths in high-risk patients by around 90% in a clinical trial.
…
“We’re just not seeing as many people coming in for testing,”

(Emphasis added.)

[-]tkpwaeub4y20

A possible reason for being cautious about prescribing Paxlovid to just anyone (regardless of underlying risk factors and severity) from a public health standpoint is the issue of rebounds. The Paxlovid might hold the infection at bay for a while, and then people could start testing positive again a few days later, so quarantine protocols become a bit more complex.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/04/21/metro/puzzling-phenomenon-patients-report-rebound-covid-19-symptoms-after-taking-antiviral-paxlovid/

[-][anonymous]4y40

If vaccines and boosters don't do much against Omicron variants right now, but might do really well against Omicron variants in a month or so, then right now is the perfect time to draw down campaigns encouraging people to get vaccinated.

People expect to get vaccinated only 2 times, 3 times, or 4 times and then be done. If the current strain of vaccine doesn't do much, then vaccine encouragement clearly should be dialed down, even without the reputation risks that affect the reputation of vaccination in general (forever).

tl;dr people expect vaccination to work well and they expect to permanently stop getting vaccinated after a specific number of doses. So there should be more vaccination when the vaccines work more effectively, i.e. not right now.

[-]Pattern4y30

When someone walking by you casually suggests you can do something you might find more pleasant, that is ‘imposing their beliefs on others.’

1. It's twitter. So yes, saying 'take your mask off' (what's that, command form?) isn't going to be appreciated. 'Everybody knows you don't have to wear a mask' etc.

2. People don't like this when it happens, over and over. (So yes, it will look like 'it's a small thing'.) Shockingly, people use social media to blow off steam.

and making credible promises pay premium prices in a crisis rather than imposing price controls. The best of all would be to get the masks in place in advance via a Strategic Mask Reserve.

Both is good.

Even better than that, we need a program for true mass production of P100 and other superior masks. When the next crisis hits, there is a good chance N95 is not going to cut it, especially in the most dangerous but essential places.

Can people buy these? In advance, enough to get production to go up?

Are American institutions unusually bad and thus undeserving of our trust, or are they actually pretty good by historical standards?

If something lies, then, yeah, don't trust it. You might distinguish this from 'egregious lies', etc. That said,

Looking at the future, how do we want institutions to operate? Are there ways we can structure efforts to be transparent, or otherwise better than existing stuff (like say, about lying, or catching 'academic' fraud faster)? Maybe to find out if something will work better, we'll have to try it.

[-]Robert Kennedy4y20

My understanding is that the math textbooks were banned in Florida for their use of the "Common Core" framework. I was a math educator, and my experience is that resistance to Common Core comes primarily from parents who hate math, and are confused why they can't do their child's math, and who somehow take this as a failure mode.

[-][anonymous]4y20

I looked at that mask but I'm worried about the fit; if air gets in through the side then it's P0 (0%), not P100 (100%).

Could you compare it to this mask? It looks like the fit is better. and I know it says "dust mask", but that's probably because it's amazon; if you look up "covid mask" on amazon, you get cloth masks, and no other mask on amazon states that it is meant for covid. I checked, and there should be research confirming that covid droplets are a specific size.

It's a bit of trouble, but it's probably worth it since covid causes permanent brain damage and incurable sleep deprivation

[-]spqr0a14y20

I used to use the same mask that Zvi's friend recommends, but switched to 3M's model 7502 respirator with model 7093 P100 filters. The mask I use is made of silicone and because of that is more comfortable for extended wear and easier to securely fit. The filter cartridges are less visually obtrusive than the pink 'pancake' filters and last longer before clogging (more of a concern for construction work than general covid wear).

I don't have first-hand experience with the GVS Elipse series, but the most compact model looks easier to fit a surgical mask over, should you go somewhere that enforces that bit of theater.

[-]tkpwaeub4y10

Part of the Covid endgame we should probably be considering right now - and feel free to down vote me until I add links (if you hate me) or add links for me (if you love me) should probably be - underlying genetic resistance (or susceptibility). There are tantalizing clues that this might be relevant:

the UK challenge study - about half of the participants stubbornly refused to catch Covid
actual progress in identifying genes for susceptibility, lots of data
experience with other viruses, often with tradeoffs (e.g. HIV vs West Nile virus - weird, right?)
waves often don't go past about 60%
lots of breakthroughs and re-infections and lots of people not getting it (consistent with my own social circle)
household secondary attack rates surprisingly low
myxomatosis in rabbits and virus/host co-evolution. As with humans and covid, interferons seem to be the key to understanding innate resistance/susceptibility to novel pathogens

At this point, I'm really starting to think I'm one of the lucky ones, since I've been plenty exposed and I test myself fairly frequently. Just like if I were to flip a coin and get 10,000 heads, at some point I start to wonder if it's biased. I don't feel too guilty about this, since swine flu got me pretty bad in 2009 and I'm old enough to have had chickenpox pre-vaccine (fun fact - everybody who gets chickenpox has "long chickenpox" - the body never clears it)

For my own personal closure on all this mishuggass I recently sent my spit to 23andme to get a sense of where I fall on the innate susceptibility spectrum. Don't try this at home, dear reader. It's pretty safe for me to do this, since I've got no plans to buy life insurance (no kids!) and I have a stable unionized government job with a great benefits.