Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[bodywhomper]

I guess osterholm finally recovered from his long covid?

[riser4]

I'm collecting as many vaccinations as I can.

[bennymac]

I’m still waiting for the “immune system shutdown” I was promised 3 years ago. I have the 5G coverage though so I got that going for me. Which is nice.

[old goat]

Summit, I'm not saying that Covid is only the flu or that we don't having to worry about it anymore. It's a question of how high the risk is, what are the consequences of stricter public health measures, how high compliance is likely to be and how to balance the three. There's no magic number.

One problem with the current death numbers from covid is that because of the change in how data is collected--as of May, was it?--it's no longer possible to tell if people died with covid or because of covid. Another question is how preventable some of the covid deaths are, given undertesting and underuse of Paxlovid, not to mention lack of vaccination with the later strains. Seems like we need to focus on those things.

Anyway, I don't claim to have the knowledge to have a valid opinion on the subject but Michael Osterholm does and that's who I'm blaming for my opinion.

[summit]

One problem with the current death numbers from covid is that because of the change in how data is collected--as of May, was it?--it's no longer possible to tell if people died with covid or because of covid.

We also have long since stopped screening for covid and most of us are using antigen testing unless we have a negative antigen and high pretest so we are not picking up incidental covid or asymptomatic covid or previous covid that then has to be differentiated by a "from" vs "with." If you are covid+ in the hospital these days and died, most likely you died from it. If were in the hospital and are covid+, then most likely it was a contributing or primary factor in your hospitalization.

Another question is how preventable some of the covid deaths are, given undertesting and underuse of Paxlovid, not to mention lack of vaccination with the later strains. Seems like we need to focus on those things.

No doubt

[xyz]

I suspect I got it last winter. Never tested but my sense of taste changed, it is slowly changing back. I used to like tomatoes, now, nope. Nacho chips were once a staple, haven't had any in a year. Stoned wheat thins are only now tolerable but not yummy like once they were.

Try a nicotine patch protocol. https://bioelecmed.biomedcentral.com...34-023-00104-7

[Buzzworthy]

The smart ones realized it was a ruse from the start with a purported 3% fatality rate that was actually closer to .03%.

Dumb ones should have figured it out when the CDC inexplicably went from 10 day isolation to a 5 day isolation during the Omicron wave to ensure that the exploited working class kept....working and society was about to fold.

And the morans finally figured it out in 2023 and beyond since booster uptake currently hovers around a disappointing 18%.

Good job everybody.

This guy still doesn’t understand math. Or the grand picture of why it went down as it did. Nobody expected you to get smarter over these past years and you’ve proven us correct.

Good job Asspen.

[PB]

This guy still doesn’t understand math. Or the grand picture of why it went down as it did. Nobody expected you to get smarter over these past years and you’ve proven us correct.

Good job Asspen.

Could it be sub-acute long covid .......?

[skaredshtles]

Could it be sub-acute long covid .......?

No - he was just as dumb before the pandemic.

[Trackhead]

I’m still waiting for the “immune system shutdown” I was promised 3 years ago. I have the 5G coverage though so I got that going for me. Which is nice.

Glad you’ve turned into your own personal cell tower.

Immune imprinting after repeated vaccination with same antigen was a hypothesis not sure how that played out.

[skiJ]

But it isnt the same fuck I don't have time to make the appropriate post that illustrates why but if you want to look at what is still killing people, its COVID, not flu/rsv. COVID is airborne, the others are not.

ETA Fuck it I went and pulled some slides out the January powerpoint to try and briefly do this with some data instead of folks impressions based on what they see or hear anecdotally.

If the attack and death rates were the same for COVID as Flu/RSV, then you'd have some merit, but they aren't the fucking same

Attachment 486826

Add to that transmission mode in an epidemic situation and they are far from the same as much as we are fatigues and wishing they were. And saying "go on back to work," throwing on a mask on an airborne disease patient only helps source control (preventing infections of others) rather than essentially solving it like with droplet borne Flu/RSV. Add to that the much higher reproduction (transmission) rate of COVID where instead of one employee infecting another like with Flu/RSV, you have one employee infecting half a department... well they just ain't the same.

Attachment 486827
Graphics from this substack, very good, our chief of resp/cc medicine introduced me.

Yes people need to test and be treated. Yes we need to carefully examine data to push for better science based returns. And yes people can and do ignore guidance.

But "ah fuck everyone wants to pretend they are the same and ignore the shit so we'll just rubber stamp it" is not a great rationale to fail to actually provide guidance. Especially when we in the past never treated flu as the serious problem it was, and now the goal is to be even more unserious with COVID. If you think making COVID seem less serious is going to make people test more and seek treatment, I don't know what to tell you. The studies I've seen show that the primary barrier to patients failing to seek Paxlovid rx is because they think they don't qualify to take it or that it is only for serious cases.

Yes the latest variants seem to have shorter incubation, shorter transmission windows, and maybe even shorter still with some paxlovid, and different peak viral loading that may affect antigen testing and we can use that to fine tune things!

I know everyone is fucking tired of COVID. How do you think I feel? It is still part of my daily job. I rarely post in this thread because who wants to fucking talk about it. We aren't in the pandemic. It isn't a crisis. But it absolutely is still a deal.

Respect for you, summit -

I believe this post deserves a page bump ^^

I'm not certain of the necessity or the value of trying to differentiate deaths from covid, from deaths with covid -
short laboratory evidence to the contrary, I will believe covid contributes to the death of anyone who dies from disease, when "with covid"
( Maybe even If you get hit by a truck ) ;

months ago there was a [deaths above expected ] parameter that seemed to have merit ;

One thing I Am certain of -
IF you are truly Dead, it doesn't matter whether one dies with covid, or dies from covid...
Dead is still dead.

Oh. I consider mankind lucky, that since Delta mutated to omicron and beyond, it has become less pathogenic, and apparently less virulent ( - If I am misusing that term correctly. ).

I believe it could so easily have gone the other way.


Thank you, summit -

Respect you for your post. !

skiJ / tj

[bennymac]

Glad you’ve turned into your own personal cell tower.

Immune imprinting after repeated vaccination with same antigen was a hypothesis not sure how that played out.

The road scholars that were crying about immune system shutdown started that shit a week after the vaccine mandates began. They aren’t the crowd that reads about immune imprinting - or anything else beyond echo chamber headlines and tweets.

[old goat]

One thing the govt can do would be to bring back unlimited free tests.

[Percy Rideout]

This guy still doesn’t understand math. Or the grand picture of why it went down as it did. Nobody expected you to get smarter over these past years and you’ve proven us correct.

Good job Asspen.

Please, regale us about "the grand picture of why it went down as it did" to try and justify that being lied to at every step of the road. We are all ears.

Coming out of the pandemic, Americans are doing worse in almost every important measurable metric that defines ones quality of life.

Americans lost trust in their healthcare providers and their doctor, further eroded trust in government/elected officials, lost trust in media outlets (thank god for this one), are more obese, are drinking more alcohol/self medicating/self harm, a drop in average life expectancy, STD's are up, record suicide numbers (i said this was gonna happen early on in the pandemic and got laughed at by some of you retards), a still unexplained excess death number, learning losses across the board (unfortunately particularly in reading and math), an increase in food insecurity(1 in 6 Americans are now food insecure), record inflation, and more than 40% of small businesses closed (while the big boys got a free pass to stay open).

The middle class is also in worse shape in every metric vs pre-pandemic. Learning loss, worse health, and the eroding of trust in gov't/healthcare will take a generation (or two) to fix.

Our government and Pfizer willfully let us tear families, forced us to throw established professional careers in the trash, and split work groups apart over "mandatory vaccination" for over 2 years before meekly admitting (under oath) that they never tested the "vaccine" to see if it EVEN FUCKING PREVENTED TRANSMISSION OF THE VIRUS. Now, less than 20% of the population even wants it in their body.

Oh, and the virus leaked from a US funded lab, then (our top health experts) tried tried their best to cover their tracks. Honestly, we couldn't kick ourselves in the dick harder if that was the explicit plan from the start.

Good job, dumbfuck. Go worry about the CURRENT THING CNN is telling you to worry about, which i will also be right about in 6 months to a year.

[Buzzworthy]

You are a fucking moron with extremely questionable intelligence. All you right wingers have lost your damn minds. Keep sucking the GOP talking point dick. It’s fucking laughable at this point.

[CarlMega]

Is this real life? That's some triggered rambling on display.

Yes, the worldwide pandemic and the mitigations to prevent even more dire impacts had negative consequences. Maybe there's another plague on historical record we can reference to baseline if society did better / worse this go-round? Share your example of pandemics handled to your standard.

Citing every society ill from even before Roman times and then attributing them to pandemic handling is bizarre.

Institutional trust has been on shaky ground for some time; there's a propaganda effort out there whose sole purpose is to undermine credibility with dubious claims and bad faith arguments at every turn. Despite unearned influence and amplification of naysayer kooky bloggers/pundits and bad actors - the government and world wide health institutions have proven, credible track records but they are not perfect. But they are far better resources and mechanisms for containment/mitigation execution than any horseshit peddled by weirdos.

[Percy Rideout]

You are a fucking moron with extremely questionable intelligence. All you right wingers have lost your damn minds. Keep sucking the GOP talking point dick. It’s fucking laughable at this point.

"The grand picture of why it went down as it did" is something you alluded to (like we should all know what the fuck you are talking about), but you don't seem to want to answer based on your politically charged response and personal attack, and lack of details.

Enlighten us.

My comment above references many of those (what i think you are alluding to) grand picture metrics, and none of those metrics are positive.

[Percy Rideout]

Yes, the worldwide pandemic and the mitigations to prevent even more dire impacts had negative consequences. Maybe there's another plague on historical record we can reference to baseline if society did better / worse this go-round? Share your example of pandemics handled to your standard.

How about a different response than America to the same pandemic which eliminates many of the variables?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10399217/

"While supported by the majority of Swedes, this approach faced rapid and continuous criticism. Unfortunately, the respectful debate centered around scientific evidence often gave way to mudslinging. However, the available data on excess all-cause mortality rates indicate that Sweden experienced fewer deaths per population unit during the pandemic (2020–2022) than most high-income countries and was comparable to neighboring Nordic countries through the pandemic. An open, objective scientific dialogue is essential for learning and preparing for future outbreaks."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...83035522000891

"No learning loss in Sweden during the pandemic: Evidence from primary school reading assessments."

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL8N2P53EZ/

"Sweden was not hit as hard as many other countries thanks in part to less onerous COVID-19 rules which allowed most businesses to stay open."

We fucked up royally. God forbid we do a post mortem to ensure a better pandemic response in the future.

[CarlMega]

I might be the triggered one now.

Dude writes about the pandemic like a coddled, entitled brat who can't fathom that a world-wide disease & health crisis shouldn't interrupt his life. Everyone else's job to ensure his standard of comfort. Fucking baby.

Yes, famine. Plagues. Invasions and war. Natural disasters.... are all going to bring some hardships and ills. They're challenges and try us. They bring adversity and tear at our fracture lines and ills. It's not a fucking party.

But you're indictment of western civilization reacting to a crisis is staggeringly stupid and juvenile. Our medical professionals, our scientists worldwide did us amazing service in this pandemic: remedies, controls, immunization. We should erect monuments to their efforts.

Edit: Sweden again huh? I'm not going to relitigate that; there's value in the information. But my family is Swedish. I can't think of another western culture that is more polar opposite that Sweden/us in regards to communal self-sacrifices and regard to fellow citizens. If there was a magic wand to give the US the already baked-in cultural setting (and quality of life metrics) that Sweden started the pandemic with - I'd be waving that wand and rubbing Aladdin's lamp until Allah himself says "give it a rest already".

The lesson and narrative of Sweden should be: if you build quality health care and access, foster a robust healthy population who have been educated to logically consider one's actions in regard to the well being of the nation - the repercussions of managing a crisis are diminished and options are wider. If you are caring for a weak and sick population with limited health access - you are vulnerable and your mitigation options lessened. tldr; build strong before you have a problem, because then it's too late.

[skaredshtles]

I might be the triggered one now.

Dude writes about the pandemic like a coddled, entitled brat who can't fathom that a world-wide disease & health crisis shouldn't interrupt his life. Everyone else's job to ensure his standard of comfort. Fucking baby.

You can see now why we put him on Ignore and don't quote him.

[bodywhomper]

I guess osterholm finally recovered from his long covid?

Osterholm has shared that he took pax for 10 days. I believe he had a 5-day dose, rebounded, had another 5-day dose, and then still developed long covid. He’s previously argued for pax rx’s to be for more than 5 days-worth of doses. What’s are the side effects to taking it longer? What are the side effects to people taking paxvolid yearly or more frequently than yearly on 5 or 10 day scripts?

[twat]

WoW election time. Let’s get the dead horse out and ride it again!
Yeeehaaa

[summit]

I'd like to see the evidence in favor of paxlovid for more than 5 days for most people given that primary risk factors for rebound is immunocompromise and the rebound issue is largely overblown for most if you meta-analyse.

That said most people don't have significant side effects.

[bodywhomper]

I'd like to see the evidence in favor of paxlovid for more than 5 days for most people given that primary risk factors for rebound is immunocompromise and the rebound issue is largely overblown for most if you meta-analyse.

That said most people don't have significant side effects.

Yeah. My memory is that he brought it up on his frequent interview/podcast thing. I think that he and fauci were higher profile cases for taking 10 days of pax due to rebounds. I’ve also seen those analyses showing that rebound was overblown. If I remember right, those studies also showed the frequency of rebound for those not administered paxlovid.

Thanks for the info about side effects.

[Trackhead]

Pax rebound was statistically insignificant….
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/...-covid-rebound

I took it in January and felt way better after 48 hours, did 25 mile gravel before i finished the course. GI side effects kinda sucked mildly for first few days but tolerable.