COVID topic vol 2

[jacob]

@Chenda - Insofar the following factors increase ...
viewtopic.php?p=209607#p209607

[classical_Liberal]

...

[Ego]

Yes. There are thousands of examples. Over the summer I began allowing one of our recycling collectors to empty the recycle bins twice a week because they are overflowing with alcohol empties. According to this study heavy drinking is up 41% amongst women since the beginning of the lockdowns. I would have guessed higher from the weight gains I've seen here.

https://www.rand.org/news/press/2020/09/29.html

[chenda]

According to this study heavy drinking is up 41% amongst women since the beginning of the lockdowns.

Yes without realising my consumption soared over the summer, every day felt like a Friday and the hot weather turned it all into a sort of Corona holiday. Our communal glass recycling box literally doubled in volume.

[7Wannabe5]

@Ego@chenda:

I rarely drink myself and I locked down with a non-drinker , but I thought most women who drink do it instead of eating? I even remember reading a dieting book that offered tip of trading off childish habit of sweets for adult habit of drinking. Anyways, drinking level of older females was already increasing prior to Covid.

@classical_Liberal:

It is pretty much a shit show out there. In fact, I’m back living with my very recent ex due to bed bugs at what I thought was a reasonably decent hotel. It might be optimistic to think we are ever going to have the resources to determine direct causation of any of this as our civilization and maybe even our species sinks into the twilight. Makes me kind of wish I was a drinker.

[chenda]

Anyways, drinking level of older females was already increasing prior to Covid.

What counts as 'older' ? Tbh for me it was more of a social thing, online poker nights over Skype (I'm not a gambler just fluttering a few $) The counter trend to this is all the people on my social media feed bragging about their weight loss and shining new abs ''Because we had no excuse not too during lockdown''. Either way, I agree there are lots of potentially positive things coming out of Corona, like reduced congestion and people enjoying the greater autonomy of working from home.

[7Wannabe5]

@chenda:

Oops, I didn’t mean to imply that you were older female like me Just that “increase in drinking among older women” was socio-economic trend I read about prior to Covid. However, I do think Covid may have served as accelerant of underlying factors which would be isolation and anxiety. I think I’ve read that women drink more often for anxiety and men drink more often for depression. Dunno.

If anything positive is going to come out of Covid long term, it is pretty much dependent on overall techno-optimist solution set, which I currently give maybe 8.5% highly dependent on how successful solution is defined.

[chenda]

@7wannabe5 haha, to be fair it might not be entirely inaccurate

Yes its definitely accelerating many pre-Corona trends, like home delivery and working from home which is likely to become the norm in a lot of industries now rather than in 10 years from now. This will hurt some but benefit others. As I mentioned, I'm also hoping it speeds up the decline of the car.

(OT, but you might like Kyle Harper's 'From shame to sin, the Christian transformation of sexual morality in late antiquity'. I've not yet read it but his book on the fall of Rome was excellent, and talks extensively about epidemics.)

[7Wannabe5]

@chenda:

Thanks for the recommendation. Added it to my list. Totally off-topic, but I will recommend “Beforeigners” HBO Europe, because features strong, amusing female protagonist from pre-shame era and interesting political allegory.

[jacob]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12 ... esign.html

Interesting in terms of what would be possible in hindsight and with foresight and a few billion dollars.

[Ego]

From Jacob's article...

The country may still reach herd immunity through natural disease spread, Christakis says, at roughly the same time as the rollout of vaccines is completed. Redfield believes there may be 200,000 more American deaths to come. This would mean what Christakis calls a “once-in-a-century calamity” had unfolded start-to-finish between the time the solution had been found and the time we felt comfortable administering it. A half a million American lives would have been lost in the interim. Around the world, considerably more.

The worst of both worlds. Lockdown damage that stretched out for nearly a year and yet we still arrive at natural herd immunity while all of that hospital overflow capacity we built in the spring went unused.

For those who enjoy irony, it appears Mrs. Ego and I will be vaccinated in round one as Essential Workers just after healthcare workers and nursing home patients. I am not yet sure if this vaccination will be mandatory but judging by cL's apparent prescience I am guessing it will be.

[white belt]

Interesting article, Jacob. Hindsight is of course 20/20, however I think I agree with the author that it seems unlikely the US Government is going to change anything long term about vaccines and pandemic response. It seems in the US the perception is that this is a once in a lifetime pandemic, so we are safe for another 100 years.

This was my first time hearing that the Chinese military vaccinated back in June. I’m kind of surprised the US military didn’t do the same thing with a test vaccine, then again the military population is mostly young and we aren’t fighting any large scale conflicts at the moment.

[Qazwer]

@white belt
I am not sure whether you have been in long enough to know much about anthrax vaccine in the early 2000s. It was a complicated story and still remembered by those who would order a vaccine now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax ... on_Program

[nomadscientist]

The vaccine should have been tested in challenge trials (i.e. intentional infection) on young healthy volunteers in March. A full Phase III trial could have been completed in less than two months with ~1 anticipated death.

Some people advocated that in March, e.g. Robin Hanson.

It should then have been administered to all over 60s at which point legal measures should have been discontinued. Pandemic deaths fall permenantly into the noise in the summer.

However, Trump would almost certainly have won the election in that case. Even with the processes we had, the vaccine efficacy results were intentionally sat on until after the election.

[white belt]

@white belt
I am not sure whether you have been in long enough to know much about anthrax vaccine in the early 2000s. It was a complicated story and still remembered by those who would order a vaccine now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrax ... on_Program

I was not aware of all of that anthrax vaccine controversy. I received one a couple years ago prior to a trip and was not under the impression that it was voluntary. It was also the most unpleasant vaccine I’ve ever received because after the first shot, my arm was so sore that I couldn’t lift it above my head for several days. But I imagine still more pleasant than dying from anthrax exposure.

[Qazwer]

The punchline of all that was your jab was not voluntary. But it was somewhat of an ugly fight to make that so.
Fortunately so far there are less side effects of the future shot. Still not sure how it will play out.

[CS]

However, Trump would almost certainly have won the election in that case. Even with the processes we had, the vaccine efficacy results were intentionally sat on until after the election.

I'd be more likely to believe that if other countries were vaccinating on that time scale. No one was. The couple that came up with the vaccine was in Germany. It was an international effort. If there was something worth the risk of using, then western countries would have done so before now. (I'm not counting China because the personal risk/government control equation is different.)

Also, other elected leaders that controlled their pandemics better, also without a vaccine, won their re-elections in landslides.

What has happened to date is nothing short of miraculous. When this really started to hit the fan in February, I thought we were looking at 2-3 years for a vaccine, not 11 months. It is amazing.

[chenda]

@7wannabe5 Thanks for the recommendation

What has happened to date is nothing short of miraculous. When this really started to hit the fan in February, I thought we were looking at 2-3 years for a vaccine, not 11 months. It is amazing.

It really is, and I hope the right people get recognised for this great achievement, including all those annoymous government bureaucrats and officials who helped make it possible.

[white belt]

Right, from one perspective the COVID vaccine is miraculous. From the article’s perspective, the US risk management framework is a little out of whack. We took enormous risks with COVID treatment authorizations, some of which resulted in more fatalities. Yet we wouldn’t take risks with a vaccine that doesn’t even have the live virus?

I haven’t ever gotten the impression that folks in the US government are actually weighing risk/reward correctly, or at least they are weighing it correctly in terms of re-election possibilities, not in terms of pandemic response.

Edit: Perhaps this is just my INTJ brain frustrated at the ineptitude and irrationality of the US COVID response, along with the fact that it seems unlikely we'll learn any lessons over the long term. Humans, amirite?

[classical_Liberal]

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