A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org
Moved full time to my other account @BE soon as this instance is still having issues.
Joined Nov 2022
As someone who lives in the rural south I can 100% confirm this. There's a segment of the population that really believes that Portland, literally, does not exist anymore, for example. They're scared to go to Tampa or Miami or Atlanta because they believe that "BLM riots" happen every day. This is absolutely a thing and it's been blowing my mind for a long time.
Not to get too far off from your original post here, but I've thought about this quite a bit. I distinctly remember a Fox News segment in 2020 stating something very similar to:
"The reason you have a country with 330 million is so that you can afford to lose a few million for the sake of the economy."
With that in mind, on the one hand, I feel like Jerome Powell, for instance, now stating that the number of people "missing" from the workforce is a problem signals that the oligarchy realizes it can't go on forever and maybe we're reaching that point where the human toll is too much for the economy/rich people to deal with and maybe this will lead to a change.
On the other hand I have often contemplated this question:
If in upper levels of the government they realized that there was nothing that they could currently do about COVID would their response look any different than what we're seeing?
I don't know all of the data for China's inhaled vaccine, India's nasal vaccine or these pills, but it sure makes me feel like at least they're trying to do something while we're just doing our best to pretend COVID isn't real.
We're saying the same thing, but not at the same time and it's completely my fault :) Let me try again to put it all together.
Yes, it has been stated previously as you said. My belief is that the answers to your original question in your post referencing the WaPo article is because they are trying to slow it down, then make it look like the flu by announcing yearly shots in the fall.
You asked "Wait...for what?" and I believe the answer to that is that they will keep delaying until the fall, they'll announce a yearly shot and pretend immunocompromised people don't exist, like they're essentially doing for the rest of the pandemic response.
My comment about making it like the flu is that my immunocompromised relative gets the RIV4 shot once a year for flu. I believe in the end they're going to pretend like the COVID equivalent will be enough for everyone.
The truth is *everyone* will need more than one shot a year with the current vaccines. The data bears that out. I don't think it will change the political plan, though.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but, I suspect I'm not.
You nailed the issue I have with this paper right off the bat.
It's because their own data is not saying that "shutdowns" themselves had anything to do with the findings. This article has been kicking around for two months now and it keeps being brought up this way by anti-lockdown proponents, and the authors must have intended that by mentioning the word "shutdowns" multiple times in their introduction.
I've read the actual article a couple of times(linked below) and I'm struck that while they say "shutdowns" continually in the introduction, in the discussion they say things like:
"Rather, the pandemic appears to have altered adolescent mental health and neurodevelopment, at least in the short term, which will present a challenge for researchers in analyzing longitudinal data from studies of normative development that were interrupted by the pandemic."
Clearly stating that the change is "pandemic" related and not "shutdown" related. They really only seem to be using "shutdown" as a term to describe a point in time in which they assume that all kids knew they were living in a global pandemic.
Their own conclusion states:
"Conclusions
Thus, not only does the COVID-19 pandemic appear to have led to poorer mental health and accelerated brain aging in adolescents, but it also poses significant challenges to researchers analyzing data from longitudinal studies of normative development that were interrupted by the pandemic."
Doesn't even mention lockdowns or shutdowns.
The real headline to this paper should be "Kids are stressed living through a global pandemic"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667174322001422?via%3Dihub
Yes, sorry, my point is that they will continue to do as little as possible to make COVID different than the flu. Doing something would lead to questions. This means nothing special for the immunocompromised and they'll set up another round of shots after the bivalent's been out for a year. They're intent on mimicking what they do for the flu. There's nothing that's going to change their minds at this point.
My belief is that they're trying to slow it down because people were already told yearly shots were coming by politicians and they don't want to give anyone shots before that.
Proof that being right isn't a prerequisite to being called an expert.
Thanks for sharing. My friend developed rheumatoid arthritis after his first COVID infection, but swears it can't be related. I'll show him that, but I doubt it will change his mind.
"...many working individuals may find “living with COVID” to be beyond their means within a short period of time."
Anecdotally it probably depends quite a bit on where you are, too, which they do address in the article with a range of outcomes.
People I know on the west coast get COVID far less often than the people I know in Florida. I don't know a single person that works in person in Florida that got COVID less than 2 times in 2022 while most people I know in the western US got it one time.
Interestingly, 1.4 times per year matches up very well with a previous paper I read that postulated, based on antibody persistence, that everyone would get COVID about every 8 months. It's a pretty dire outlook, particularly for kids today, if we continue to choose to do nothing about it.
I don't know if it's absolutely true or not, but what I saw anecdotally was that people just got too sick to keep spreading it all at the same rate. Enough people got worn down over the winter that they just stayed home and shut down enough transmission vectors.
@deonandan Very much been waiting to see how this goes and if there's any good data on this eventually.
Thanks for expanding on it a bit. I started going through your comments that you already made to other people and you had fleshed it out a bit. We're also in Florida. The data's questionable at best. For instance, our local hospital brags, out loud, about not having done a single COVID test in years. No wastewater because everyone's on septic. Even the death data's reliant on ME's who don't believe COVID exists in many places and purposefully delayed elsewhere as to be pointless for any sort of tracking.
I don't disagree with any of that. We're clearly in a mass disabling event and I guess the only question left scientifically is how many we're going to disable as a society and for how long.
Legitimate question that I'd like your opinion on for my own sanity. Does it ever go below a "local COVID forecast" in which you would feel safe without precautions? Completely safe with a mask?
I think we all see that the baseline is continually increasing. The *baseline* now would have been considered incredibly unsafe in 2019-2020.
I just don't see myself hanging out indoors as the only one wearing a mask anytime soon. Your post makes it seem like you differ on that opinion, so I'd kindly ask that you flesh it out a bit.
I'd argue a slight change to that statement, but it's essentially correct. MAGA and Roger Stone are putting up QAnoners to run for school boards. DeSantis is just going beyond what any FL Governor has done before(to the best of my knowledge) and endorsing them with his massively popular platform.
But, again, I'm going to explicitly state my unpopular point again:
He's not holding a gun to anyone's head. He didn't overthrow the government. He's popular and he's winning elections through the democratic process, right?
What's going on in Florida today isn't a coup.
People across the entire state turned out to vote for him. In 2022 15% *more* than in 2018. Even if Crist had gotten as many votes as Gillum did in 2018 he'd have still lost by over 600,000 votes. It's a *growing* movement that's flexing its muscles.
It's a representative government because the people of Florida *like it* and there's no popular movement to undo any of that here.
I'm in the very small minority of people in Florida who don't like him and I can look around and accept that. People outside of Florida seem unable to do so.
I mean, I knew this was coming but it's still wild to see it playing out. Might as well just say "I know we disabled you and lied to you about it, but, now we need you to push yourself until death for the short term economy."
Yes, he is dangerous, although if we're being honest I'd argue that his wife is the brains of the operation.
He's not so much Trump on steroids as someone smarter than Trump, less narcissistic than Trump who won't make the same mistakes of making *everything* about him, but still willing to burn it all down.
None of that makes anything I said untrue. The people of Florida love him and what he stands for and want that to be the entirety of the US. He's not some unpopular despot who overthrew the local government, as people outside of Florida often mistake him for.
@neilasaurus@mastodon.social
Absolutely! Personally, we were planning out our move long ago, but the last few years have accelerated our plans, in part, because as I replied to someone else there's no Democrat party here. There's no turning it around when the only other "viable" party is almost non-existent. They don't even bother to run candidates for office in this county. "Waiting it out" is probably generational at this point unless something wildly unexpected happens.
Absolutely correct. Now, in our county the teacher's pay has gone from ~$40,000 to over $50,000 in the last 4 years. When the majority of teachers were already self-identifying as not-liberals and then you add in a 25% pay raise you get a lot of "Eh, whatever he wants to do is fine with me."
Moved full time to my other account @BE soon as this instance is still having issues.
Joined Nov 2022
