Dose-y Kind of Post
I am confused about the latest official numbers on Covid cases and fatalities over the last few months. My confusion is that I have heard from multiple sources from a variety of starting points suggesting that Omicron Part Deux (or whatever the correct letters are) was likely to occur sometime soon -- like as of now or before summer starts. Is that really occurring? Will it really occur?
The World O Meter provides a mixed bag on the topic. In the UK where the various predictions of the next surge begin, there was a significant surge in cases from about March 1 through March 27. Since then, the chart shows yet another symetrical nose dive and the rate is now less than one eighth of the prior peak and less than one third of the rate as of March 1.
The current daily case rate in the UK is at its lowest level since the summer of 2021. Fatalities reported have tracked upward, but at a rate about 15% of the pandemic high in that country that occurred early in 2021.
Will this next surge occur? I have no reason to think or even hope that this shit is over. But could it be?
.
Meanwhile, I have heard of a surge building on the East Coast of the USA. I sampled New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and found that the reports of daily cases has been rising since early March at a lower pace than the last surge, while reported fatalities continue to decline.
As I look at all the charts from within the USA and around the world the most striking factor is that symmetry of the statistical spikes. They come down at virtually they same angle at which they rose -- which suggests to this skeptic of The Science that the disease goes its own way, regardless of our attempts to "control" it.
We can't control what we do not understand.
Comments
Cases are a function of testing
...at least from my understanding.
It doesn't mean symptomatic necessarily, so it is confusing no mater how it is sliced and diced.
Hospitalizations and deaths are the numbers to look at IMO. My problem is filtering out vaccine injury vs COVID effects. Lots of both me thinks.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
True
Counting cases are a function of testing. With home testing there is a lot of data not being reported. There could be many more positives than we know of, or, everything could be hunky dory. But hey, Freedom!
Plus the home tests are unreliable
most Omicron cases were infectious for several days before being detectable by rapid antigen tests
In the UK they had the ZOE app where people self reported daily, and it provided a good sampling of symptomatic expressions. https://covid.joinzoe.com/about
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
On the end of the mask mandate for planes
Babylon Bee has some advice for those still living in fear:
It can be difficult, though, to suddenly see all those triggering human faces after the government coddled you and fed your psychotic delusion and fear for the last two years.
Here are seven ways to cope:
Close your eyes and imagine everyone is wearing a full hazmat suit. - It's a neat little trick that actually works.
Scream at the sky. - This is a well-known coping mechanism. It works especially well if you record your scream onto your TikTok account.
Play The Sims 4 and manage other people's lives like you're an all-powerful god to your heart's content. - Now you can drown people by surrounding their swimming pools with an impenetrable wall of potted plants. You're in charge here!
Upgrade to 3 or 4 masks, or just roll around in a giant hamster ball. - Keep upping the number of masks you wear, but if that's not enough, go the hamster ball route.
Get your pilot's license and start your own airline. - aIrLiNeS aRe PrIvAtE cOmPaNiEs ThEy CaN dO wHaT tHeY wAnT!
Just remember, we're all in this together. - It's just for a little while. It's a small sacrifice to make. If it saves one toddler from a speech impediment it's all worth it.
Never go outside again. - Curl up in a ball and live out the rest of your days in the corner of your home, completely safe from COVID.
Bear in mind that nothing is stopping the fearful from 'masking up' against the virus...
"you are free to wear masks if you like... if they work, they will protect you, if they don't why mandate them?"
Bear in mind that nothing is stopping the fearful from 'masking up' against the virus...
"you are free to wear masks if you like... if they work, they will protect you, if they don't why mandate them?"
Let’s hear from Biden.
But Biden is going to appeal the decision anyway. Good move, Joe. Guess we’ll be hearing from the White House that you didn’t mean that it’s up to people to decide whether to wear a mask or not. Gee where’s the bunny to keep Biden from saying something that he didn’t mean to say?
A study on the surgical masks
No kidding. Why are people still taking their shoes off at the airport?
Babylon Bee’s solution to the current state of masking
is funny in an ironic way. It seems like the question of masking was from the beginning frought with questions. I still mask when in a shop that services many, although I don’t frequent them. It is still required indoors here in some places. It’s difficult to make sense of the ’science’ or lots of other stuff anymore. We are so impelled now to listen more to our gut and our hearts.
It 'tis isnt it?
Especially when Fauci went back and forth on whether they would work or not. It’s my understanding that cloth masks don’t do anything to protect us, surgical ones are a tad better, but for real protection a n95 that fits is the best one to wear. If you can slip a hair between your skin and your masks then virus will be having a party. It’s kinda weird thinking back how the government was showing people how to make cloth masks at home whilst having to know that they didn’t do diddly.
Then there’s this
Lordy looking back at the start of the mass jabbing we saw limited quality of jabs so people rushed to get theirs and then we saw the interesting bribes they used to get people to get jabbed and then we saw coercion and then threats of job losses and being shunned by family and friends. And then when omicron swept the country we saw lots of people getting sick anyway and saying that this was the sickest they’ve ever been, but saying that it could have been worse. Biden, Fauci and Walensky all told us that if you get jabbed you won’t get sick only to then say that they were only created to keep people out of hospital and then we saw that most people who died had been double and triple jabbed.
Yeah it’s no wonder It’s difficult to make sense of the ’science’ or lots of other stuff anymore.
Amen, Janis.
So is Fauci implying
that only the Pfizer-BioNTech and other approved US vaccines like Novavax are effective? Why then are those here in NZ, primarily vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech, ‘dying with covid’? I guess it could always be worse???
I wear a mask if it is required.
But from the beginning, when I appeared in court, I was required to mask, until I had to speak. So was everyone else. Then, I was required to drop it. If I understand anything, it is that the virus is airborne. So, my talking would spread it, or my inhaling it spread by other speakers would cause me to breathe it in. It never made sense.
Even social distancing was strange. Drs. were telling me it spread up to 50 ft, but the standard adopted was 6 ft.
Still, I am not at all bothered by staying some distance from people, although there is no reason to believe standing face to face would be worse.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Oh you are silly
Don’t you know that the virus is smart and can tell when you are just eating and drinking in restaurants and on the planes or when you have to take your masks off it knows not to infect you? Or when government tells you that you can’t visit your family or friends or have more than 10 people at your house or that kids must be masked in schools or you have to wear one on a plane that it was okay for government officials to party down with friends and family or go to Hollywood get togethers to not have to follow the rules that they set down for we the little folks.
Remember how bad it was when Florida opened the beaches and the playgrounds that had been roped off were opened? Lots of states put sand on their skateboard parks so kids couldn’t skate. Weird how much money that must have cost. It’s kinda like states buying boulders and concrete blocks to put under underpasses and anywhere else that people who are homeless can’t use.
This country isn’t too broke to take care of its citizens, it has its priorities wrong. Biden is sending another $1.3 billion for weapons to Ukraine. I’m betting that since Obama’s coup in Ukraine in 2015 that we’ve spent $20 billion which could have ended homeless here instead.
I know, I know...
I'm a silly goose.
Homeless folks are spreaders and dangerous, must keep moving all day, all night, no sleep, for public health and safety! Of course!
Government officials and the fund raisers tossing big parties are not. I keep thinking we are all in the pandemic, but, of course, some are affected in different ways than others.
Politicians are almost always asymptomatic. Interesting, that.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
not "standing face to face"
is hopefully only a thing of the past.
How timely
Wearing a cloth or surgical mask is like putting up a chain link fence to keep mosquitoes out of your yard.
Viruses aren't motile
Viruses have no means of mobility by themselves. They ride upon aerosols created by sneezing, coughing, singing, breathing, etc.... So yes, the pore size of most barriers used in medical PPE is not small enough to block the pathogenic virus or bacteria so it is not absolutely sterile, but it is small enough to block the vapor particle that they ride on. Unlike your analogy of mosquitoes, it's more like the single bar blocking a road at a checkpoint or guard hut at the entrance to a military base. The saboteurs on the road to the facility could certainly hop over the single barrier but it prevents their vehicle from passing and limits their travel into the facility. IF you're so sure of the futility of masks, next time you have surgery just tell the docs to skip the PPE since it doesn't really do anything anyway.
Nevertheless,
I arrived at the clinic for allergy testing. It was closed because so many employees had COVID, they had to close temporarily.
My Dr. has had it twice.
My RN niece has had it twice.
I guess they were not careful when they left work.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Ahh... the sweet sound of science and facts...
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
The number of deaths
before and after the vaccinations are sweet facts.amirite?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I wear a mask because if I died of covid, my wife would kill me
I never thought the mask did much, but it did seem logical that it would lower the amount of contagious stuff that I could pump into the atmosphere if I happened to be sick. Conversely, I can see how other people wearing their mask could do the same thing. How much good that would do, I never much cared. And in the argument about the size of the contagious stuff and the size of the open space within the mask, I am not much impressed with the dueling metaphors in either direction.
I remain skeptical of any claimed "size" of the "particles" that make people sick and sometimes die. Too much bullshit is loose in this discussion to trust much of anything.
In either case, whether masks are of limited but real value or, instead, are all but worthless, they are not much of a burden, and they are very unlikely to cause you any specific harm.
The lockdowns and vaccine mandates are palpably insane, however.
.
Does anybody have any insight or new information on the predicted surge of Omicron Part Deux?
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.