A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

@ZeroCovidColin

You're absolutely right, but I'd change "let Biden get away with" because we live in a two party system in which public health is now ignored by both parties. There's really not anything we can do about it. Punish Biden by electing DeSantis? No thank you. Re-elect Biden so he can keep ignoring COVID? I guess...

@tobeB

And all I get asked from people in the real world is "When are scientists going to solve this?" completely unironically as they continue about their daily lives without any other thought about it.

@flexghost

No, but it's the capitalist decision.

I was really, truly naive way back in 2019 and believed that public health would basically get a blank check to keep the people safe. Where we've ended up is proof that we only have a CDC in order to run cover for corporations and that we are completely helpless as a populace because we have a two party system in which neither party is interested in public health as a benefit to the people.

When Jha said back in August that "commercializing" COVID was the right decision I knew we were doomed on this one. People are going to have sticker shock, even people with "good" insurance. The 7-15 million people who suddenly have no Medicaid will be even worse off.

Poverty or health in the world's wealthiest nation. What a time to be alive.

This will be within weeks of when the WHO, most likely, ends their emergency proclamation at the end of April, freeing governments worldwide to pretend like COVID doesn't exist. I suspect it'll be a pretty wild rest of 2023 from that point onward.

@abejaclaustro

Thank you for asking. He's handling it as well as he can. He's frustrated about the idea of being unable to just sit around and read. I'm sad and mad about it all, much like you.

I know it's all exhausting. Hang in there as best you can.

@SourPatchAdult

I'm afraid the "What if we can't" answer is that we can't and that just leads public health officials to throw up their hands and go "Oh well. Who knows? You do you!"

@SourPatchAdult

So glad to see this article's been mentioned already. Yes, Wen is nuts, I agree. When I saw she was quoted I *almost* closed it out, but didn't.

I think this gets to one of our core problems going forward. The people who don't want there to be good data have done a really good job at making sure we don't have any good data. It takes effort to track and collect good data. It takes a lot less effort to not have it, and that's where we're at.

I've thought a lot about this recently as I see people arguing about "COVID numbers are down" and "Less people are dying of COVID." I don't get into it, because if you just look at the raw data it sure looks like those are both true. But it's disingenuous(and I don't in any way mean to imply that all of the people saying that are purposefully disingenuous), because it's comparing apples and oranges. The data that we have today is not equivalent to what we used to get. It's not collected as fastidiously as it used to be and in many cases the criteria have changed significantly over time.

Where does that leave us? As far as I can tell the only fairly reliable data sets that we really have moving forward are work hours missed, because economists will definitely track that, and excess mortality, because after all is said and done it's hard(er) to hide the bodies.

Anything else is blurry, fudged or otherwise obfuscated now to make whatever point people want to make with it. This is going to make it *really* hard to change anything going forward. Add this to the Biden administration ending the emergency declaration in a few months and I suspect we're stuck in "you do you" public health hell indefinitely.

@beige_alert

I read that quote and I laughed...and then I realized what will probably happen in 3 months is he'll say "We did it. They're at their lowest possible level" and that'll be that.

@AliceMarshall

Jha seemed pretty happy about getting it to the private sector back in the fall. I'd honestly be surprised if the administration does anything other than shrug and say "That's capitalism!"

Jha on COVID care in August-

My hope is that in 2023, you're going to see the commercialization of almost all of these products. Some of that is actually going to begin this fall, in the days and weeks ahead. You're going to see commercialization of some of these things.

@nilikm

My wife was working with a high school student recently who needs to get ready for end of course exams in a few months, but they're continually going weeks without doing any work. She's not ignorant, as many teachers are, that this is likely COVID related, and sure enough the mom tells her "This is just the way the world is now. There's nothing we can do about it. It's up to the school to figure out how to teach students who are always out sick."

And I kind of felt like that nicely summed up the whole mess.

@TerriBlue416

Glad to hear he's staying in good spirits!

@agathachristieandcoffee @TerriBlue416

We had good luck with the flo masks for the kids originally. The 11yo has pretty much outgrown it at this point. The 9yo still uses it.

The next mask is largely up to what your kids will wear, honestly.

My wife and I have the GVS Elipse and a couple of fit tested N95/KN95 options, but going to a P100 is a bridge too far for some.

@masknerd has done some great testing and although some of it's older by now, you can still buy most/many of the masks. If you haven't checked out his database of testing data and you're interested it's at:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eE2BERAvRzs28kG87ft3a27FS9-gHvdC

With the latest data set at:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M0mdNLpTWEGcluK6hh5LjjcFixwmOG853Ff45d3O-L0/edit#gid=1976839763

@Chantzy

Jerome Powell seems like he might be more concerned about COVID than Rochelle Walensky lately.

@abejaclaustro

I'm so sorry for what you're going through. That must be so hard. My dad has brain fog after COVID, too, and it's gotten really quite bad. Hang in there.

The fact that hospitals are one of the most likely places to get a potentially debilitating disease is one of the largest failures of our current society. My wife's never seen idiocracy, but I often describe it to her as a movie that we used to laugh at, but became a sad documentary over time.

@TerriBlue416

Ugh sorry you're all going through this. Keep doing your best to keep the kid safe. It's all we can do as parents.

FWIW, the halo strap is helpful(my 9yo uses it), but, you're right, particularly with bigger kids the kid's flo is a great mask but the seal can break during the day.

@mjmurphyva @BlackAzizAnansi

Sorry the stats didn't support your supposition.

@mjmurphyva @BlackAzizAnansi

The stats are from the National Center for Education. Ignore the article, if you'd like.

I didn't link it for anything but the stats. Never heard of the HSLDA before.

@mjmurphyva @BlackAzizAnansi

Quite a take about the National Center for Education, a federal agency.

@mjmurphyva @BlackAzizAnansi

As part of a family largely in education including a close family member who's entire job is being "the teacher in the room" for homeschoolers I just want to point out that while white christian homeschooling was once "the norm" in homeschooling that's been changing for about 15 years now. The stats show that the percent of homeschoolers who are white has been going down since ~2007.

The pandemic accelerated that trend and now the percent of families that homeschool are approximately even across white, black, hispanic and asian families.

https://hslda.org/post/new-research-shows-homeschool-growth-across-all-race-income-categories

@SourPatchAdult

No apologies! I don't really disagree with anything you're saying. The sad truth is that there doesn't appear to be any way that it gets significantly better before getting significantly worse without some major scientific breakthrough....and I'm always the one telling people to not count on the breakthrough that ends COVID or solves the climate crisis.

@SourPatchAdult

I'd like to explore that a little deeper. Not that there's nothing that could be done, in a physical sense. Early on there were some attempts at mask mandates, vaccine mandates, etc., right? All of those were derided by the GOP and thrown out by the courts.

I've said before that the Biden administration didn't *really* lean into what they could have done. They didn't even ask for a stay on the mask mandate ruling, they just said "Eh, whatever" essentially.

Sure, they could have doubled down, said "No, we're going to fight for mask mandates, vaccine mandates, ventilation and filtration. We're going to use the DPA to make N95 masks and we're going to send them to every American along with monthly tests" and maybe that would have led to a situation in which it was taken seriously and more money was put into research, and so on and so forth. Essentially, they could have fought for public health.

They obviously looked at losing in court, along with the public attitude where many people weren't going to go along with public health and decided not to fight that fight.

So, here we are, in the "Can't do anything about it" world.

Will it change? I really, unfortunately, believe it's going to have to get a lot worse before there's any momentum in the other direction than where we're headed. Maybe the ruling class losing too many workers is that push that's required.