It’s almost as if people still don’t realize all Coronoviruses follow a very predictable seasonal pattern and Florida’s is summer months.
stusser
1914
My feeling is pretty much everybody who isn’t vaccinated got COVID by now. Delta is too contagious to reasonably avoid without a severe lockdown and nobody’s down for that anymore.
You still see clusters emerging in isolated areas that somehow escaped infection before, but that will pass too when it runs out of people. It’s true that prior infection is less effective than being vaccinated, but it’s vastly better than being completely unprotected.
Barring another variant that evades both prior infection and vaccines or outcompetes delta, we’re in the home stretch here. You can see COVID becoming endemic on the horizon. We aren’t there yet, far from it, but it’s within view.
Your correction is a good one. Especially since the initial point about summer months isn’t very correct:
Hard to disagree when you put it like that.
[Please stop editing the posts of others]
Clear seasonal pattern, which was also followed last year - easy to see with a full county layout - despite all the different approaches those various counties have taken towards masking, distancing etc. (not saying those methods aren’t helpful - those areas might have higher counts without them) - just highlighting that the geographic seasonality is a much larger factor on overall trends, and has been well known for 100 years when it comes to coronaviruses and influenza.
When it’s your turn, it’s your turn, and it’s important for us to recognize that given the endemic nature of Covid 19, this is a pattern that will continue for years to come, and we have to adopt mitigation methods that are sustainable and which cause the fewest and most tolerable adverse effects to society and community health.
Holy hell you are a crazy person.
At this point DeSantis is literally doing a better job of representing the virus’s interests than those of his own constituents. I mean, if you accept that he’s doing everything possible to maximize infection rates and needless deaths I suppose he is following the science.
DeathSantis is very methodical in his fucking over of the citizens in this state in all ways. In that way, yes, very sciencey.
I don’t think that’s really fair. Florida is only in seventh place on the listing of states by per-capita COVID deaths. There’s obviously more DeSantis could be doing. Number 1 is in reach!
Between this nonsense and the hate towards Todd Howard in the Starfield thread, etc., it’s no wonder forums have problems retaining people who just want rational discourse or a few laughs.
Well, fair enough. I mean, it is pretty hard to beat Mississippi at the ideology-over-lives game, even when you’re trying as hard as Florida is.
On a related note (and sorta back on topic), local numbers are starting an upturn from their long plateau. I expect we’re going to get at least a moderate wave moving into winter. On the upside, I already got my booster. On the down side, this’ll probably be another winter where we can’t take the baby anywhere other than the houses of other vaccinated relatives, and that sucks.
Alstein
1924
We’re definitely getting a moderate wave, especially since mask mandates will be lifted (their popularity is declining right now). It won’t be a bad as prior waves due to vaccinations, prior infections, and kids getting the shot as well.
We probably need to go the UK route and just soldier on with things.
Outside schools those have been gone here since summer. The delta wave, to my surprise and horror, did nothing to change patterns of behavior in that regard. I’m fortunate to work in higher ed, so we’ve got required masking at least.
One odd thing about the extended pandemic and being back in a classroom is trying to strike a sensible balance in terms of opening the windows. On the one hand, ventilation is a key factor for COVID mitigation. On the other, freezing my students to death is not a desirable outcome. Teaching a lot of night classes makes this that much trickier.
Alstein
1926
We’ve had a countymade mask mandate since August here.
Schools should require masks until January at least.
I think a lot of the US will see something like this again, just like last year. But given the amount of vaccination-based immunity or natural immunity our population has at this point, I’m honestly curious if high case rates are a problem comparable to previous years. If we don’t get much (or any) of an uptick or hospitalizations or deaths does a wave mean anything? I don’t have an answer to that, it’s just an interesting question.
stusser
1928
Unless it leads to mutations that evade vaccines, no. But that’s a very big “unless”.
Also if you’re immunocompromised you could die from it, of course.
Yeah, I think we had this discussion in another COVID thread recently. I’m personally just not worried about that. It might not happen, we can’t assign any sort of reasonable probability to it happening, and we’ve proven we can invent vaccines fast. If it happens, we deal with it then. But I do understand that other people may be very uncomfortable with that answer if they think it’s a high probability thing, or that there’s a low probability we could quickly and safely pivot to a variant vaccine to fight a variant strain.
stusser
1930
It seems like it isn’t a high probability and we certainly could create new mRNA vaccines extremely quickly.
That said, imagine something with a mortality rate of 15% like SARS-COV-1 and the virulence of COVID-19’s Delta variant. Then imagine you don’t live in a rich country that will quickly distribute vaccines to everybody that’s willing to take them.
Oh sure, that would be a nightmare if it was a vaccine beater. But there’s absolutely nothing we can do to stop mother nature from throwing up that virus tomorrow. It doesn’t even have to be a variant of SARS-COV-2. We could get a whole new virus. After all Ebola and SARS-COV-1 came out of left field.
I try not to lose a lot of sleep worrying about things that we can’t control and just have to deal with if they happen. However I also won’t tell anyone else who is worried that they are wrong.
