A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

@jik @augieray

That's incorrect, if you're talking scientific data into the subject. Even the author of the best model says:

“Nobody is screened. Nobody is asked if they’ve come down with COVID. There was no attempt made to figure out where people got it. We have so little data.

...

“If we had actual data from the United States, then maybe we wouldn’t have needed a model.”

Of all places Nerd Wallet did an article on the subject this past summer if you want to take a look as that's where the quote came from.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/covid-transmission-on-planes

You're much better off looking at CO2 levels before takeoff when HEPA filters are not running as a proxy. I think you'd have to conclude from that that it's not a very safe place to be sitting, but, you're somewhere between hard scientific data and anecdotal evidence with CO2 alone.

@scarpino Having read that, I have to question the tone of your summary.

I certainly hope it turns out to be a lesser variant than it appears at first, but, precautionary principle seems to be exactly what they're advocating.

1 - Yes, what you linked to shows that due to backfilling the fitness advantage may have been overestimated early on. We'll know a lot more soon.

2 - Is that your take or what you got from your link?

"Although this is a positive sign, case reports may be lagging or unreliable, so we might not be out of the woods yet."

Of course case reports lag after the holidays. Again, we'll find out.

3 - It doesn't say that at all? It says:

"Countries with prior high prevalence of XBB may have some local immunity to buffer against XBB.1.5."

And then links to a report they put out in October. That report says:

"Outside of Singapore, Bangladesh, and India, the XBB variant is still fairly uncommon."

So unless you're talking about Singapore, Bangladesh or India that seems pretty irrelevant.

Fingers crossed it's far less of a big deal than many people are predicting, but let's summarize the science correctly if we're going to post about it. It's not a "hey no big deal" report. It starts out with:

"Our model currently shows the XBB.1.5 variant is spreading quickly in the United States."

And ends with:

"In summary, we advocate for a close eye on XBB.1.5, but advise caution!"

@madinpursuit

Anarchy. The logical outcome of one of two parties continually trying to prove that government doesn't work is a non-functional government.

@lolgop

I'm going to say it until I'm blue in the face, apparently, but there has to be some sort of actual media infrastructure that touts things like this. You're correct in that almost no one knows. Democrats go "look at our track record especially vs the people who don't want to do any governing" and the fact is that the average American legitimately doesn't know there's a difference.

@TinFoilAwards

My poor science teacher wife will weep when I show her this....her students say this all the time. They honestly believe and have learned somewhere along the way that "peer review" means you and your online friends reading something and agreeing it's correct.

@tickfoot@merveilles.town

So glad to have found you! We are in the process of moving to the Appalachians and I'm looking forward to learning from your experiences there. Our goal is to grow enough to feed ourselves and others, as well.

@rchusid

It's a great point, but, that's what's getting through to a lot of people. I've found most people in the south have never heard of any type of good mask, so obviously they can't be using them. They see a video of a floppy blue surgical mask online and they know of cloth masks and to the best of their knowledge that's what people mean when they say "mask up." Then they join in mocking people who wear masks because "obviously that doesn't work" and it's usually out of genuine ignorance, not malice.

That's how bad the messaging is in the real world.

@nilikm

It's wildly under reported to begin with, and then you realize that the acute COVID deaths have been trending at about 1/2 of the excess deaths for so long that it's no coincidence.

I posted yesterday about this, but, from the start of 2022 until the first week of November the excess deaths in the US were ~714 a day, or a bit over 20,000 a month in total.

@mguhlin

One of the many positives of teaching virtually is not having to deal with that.

@rbe_expert

After Republicans decided they admire Putin there was no shared political enemy. Democrats and Republicans are coalescing around China as that new shared enemy.

@DrPsyBuffy

Unless you deleted them in an iCloud mistake they're probably not totally gone. This happened to me before with photos of that era. I wish I could exactly walk you through what to do, but it's been a while. In an update somewhere along the way there were actually multiple libraries created in my case. I was able to merge them back together

Always make sure you have a backup, too! Time Machine makes it easy.

@smoke@mastodon.online

At least in the US so many schools are concerned about test scores. I'm convinced that if we were able to show school leaders that IQ levels drop in higher CO2 concentrations that they'd largely, willingly lower CO2 concentrations and "accidentally" lower respiratory infections as a side effect.

@White_Bite

I wish people were treating this like a whole new thing, because it looks like it essentially is. Instead, more of the same. As always, I'll try to opt out of this experiment on humankind...

@BeneCal

For years now I've been reading the anecdotal accounts from reddit's r/COVID-19Positive. You're not going to get any clinical data, but, enough people post about their day by day symptoms every day to get a pretty good handle on how each variant is affecting people when they first get sick.

@CmddASP @c_althaus

I don't think this is the best way to look at this data, but, that said, I had the same question so here's my findings from the same data set it appears that he used.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortality-p-scores-projected-baseline?tab=chart&country=USA

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-deaths-covid?time=2022-01-02..latest&country=~USA

Except for a few weeks in the summer of 2022(mid-July to mid-August) the US has not dipped below 15% since 2020.

The raw data shows a little over 220,000 excess deaths in the US from the beginning of 2022 until the last data date which is November 6th, 2022. That's 308 days so it ends up at ~714 excess deaths per day, from this data set, in the US.

@Blackfist@oliphant.social @wendynather

The messaging really is bad and mixed and, frankly, I suspect most people don't really know what to do.

Since you mentioned it, I just want to point out that it's commendable that you don't want to infect other people(most people really don't seem to care at all), so I'll point out that you can transmit COVID completely asymptomatically, and that includes a fever.

The best numbers I can find in a quick search seem to indicate that ~50% of people might not ever experience a fever with COVID.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765183

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2767993

All I can say is mask up whenever you have to be around people, both for them and for you. Everything we know about XBB is that it's no joke, and there's a *lot* of unknowns. It's as different from the original COVID strain as that was from SARS-CoV-1. Essentially this new variant is a whole new thing and people should use the precautionary principle and treat it that way IMO.

@wendynather @Blackfist@oliphant.social

Sadly a lot of people do believe that if they keep up to date with vaccinations that they are immune. Particularly in the south I hear it all the time. There are absolutely articles out there stating that the bivalent booster shows great promise against XBB, but it's just simply not what the data shows.

It's better than nothing. It's the best we have. It's just not great protection by itself.

It's a hard topic to discuss because of the nuance and therefore a lot of reporting gets it wrong. Particularly when erring on the side of optimism might get more people to go get it. I get that point, I just come from a perspective that we should be clear on the science.

Stay safe out there and good luck continuing to avoid it!

@wendynather @Blackfist@oliphant.social

I'm going to apologize up front for butting in here, because I'm about to argue semantics. Most of the time I think that's a pointless endeavor and you're probably just going to hate me for doing so(and I promise not to get into an argument with you if you say so), but I think it's important here. So here's my points:

1 - The bivalent vaccine does *not* show a good response against XBB.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02162-x

2 - It *is* better than the original vaccine or not being vaccinated at all.

I think we need to be careful about how we discuss this as too many people think the bivalent booster gives them sterilizing immunity and the ability to carry on as they please with no other precautions and the CDC isn't telling anyone otherwise. In pre-COVID times this booster would probably be considered a failure against XBB from my understanding. It's simply the best tool we have in our personal arsenal at the moment outside of masks.

@mcvresearch @ZeroCovidColin

I'm sorry but this is an awful take. Let's use the earthquake example in the thread. The ICC doesn't make laws. Should all of their building codes be ignored just because builders don't feel like complying?

Every agency needs to follow their mission statement and do the job they're in place to do. If politicians don't feel like enacting or enforcing the recommendations then that's the *next* discussion, not this one.

@DidiQ @rerutled

I believe having college seekers from outside of Florida eliminating Florida universities from their consideration is part of the goal. He's implementing a curriculum in K-12 that will eventually eliminate many of them from seeking accredited colleges, so by then changing the curriculum in Florida universities those in-state kids will have a continuous curriculum from K through college that never exposes them to things he doesn't want them to be exposed to.

It's all towards the goal of having a Florida society that's only received Hillsdale approved educational materials.