Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

[stickdog99]

WTF is going on here?

On edit: this is from March 2020.

[streeb]

WTF is going on here?

On edit: this is from March 2020.

Every thing you know, suspected, or considered as a probability has been spoken out loud by these douchebags or plastered across a WHO website at one point or another, what's amazing is that every new contradiction is cemented in the moment as truth and internalized by... well, in my immediate vicinity, basically fucking everyone. The variants of real concern are media illiteracy, learned helplessness, and amnesia. And cowardice.

[drstrangelove]

The variants of real concern are media illiteracy, learned helplessness, and amnesia. And cowardice.

People have a need to be informed, but they haven't the time to be. I think it is this fact which compels otherwise demonstrably intelligent people, against better judgement, to lay faith within information authorities(newspapers of record like the NYTimes), which provide them with the views and outlook required to fulfil this need. They wake up, read the newspaper with breakfast then start their busy days. Come home, watch the evening news at dinner, then retire to their tv shows and bed.

Just as appetite can compel one to eat what is rancid, the need to be informed does this as well. It's strange, because I've brought this up with family members, PhDs on this diet of newspaper of record, and they more or less agree with me, without agreeing necessarily that they are misinformed as a result. They say they need to trust the newspapers of record as there is no better source of information for the limited time they have. Which is true. If you are going to pick only ONE source, then as it currently stands a newspaper of record probably is the best choice.

[Belligerent Savant]

They say they need to trust the newspapers of record as there is no better source of information for the limited time they have. Which is true. If you are going to pick only ONE source, then as it currently stands a newspaper of record probably is the best choice.

Fuck NO it's not. Any fucking comic strip will better inform than the fucking "newspaper of record", which is ACTIVELY CAUSING HARM. They are COMMITTING CRIMES OF COMPLICITY DAILY.

for fuck's sake.

[drstrangelove]

The best newspapers of record are those whose readership rely on it to inform market decisions. So mastheads like the Wall Street Journal would be better than the New York Times. Both lie through omission, but the WSJ can't do this as much as it will come at a material cost to its readership, who will then go elsewhere.

By single source of information, I mean literally forming ones entire world view daily from a single source. One. I can't think of any that would be better than a newspaper of record, one specifically catering to a readership which takes a material loss if they are too misinformed about reality.

The inverse to this, would for instance be something like Alex Jones infowars. If that was someones only source for their entire world view, they would be much better informed about many aspects of the current pandemic reality, yet of course they would be functionally retarded in much of their world view beyond this.

If your argument is that it would be better they weren't informed at all, I would agree. But I'm talking about a need to be informed which they are compelled to fulfil. That this need they only have time to fulfil through a single source. And that if you were to only be informed by a single source, it absolutely makes sense to do this through a newspaper of record.

I'm not arguing this is how it should be, just that this is the way it is. In this way meaningful solutions to the problem can be explored. As providing these people with an overload of alternative information from a motley assortment of sources isn't going to work. They don't have the time to read it, let alone fact check it. And they certainly don't trust it. To do this they would need more time.

The problem is convincing people to spend more time absorbing information on these issues. Only then can they be open to alternative sources that fill in the information omitted from the authoritative ones. Converting them is a matter of making them question their own world view WITHOUT offering your alternative one. If they are made to feel they can no longer be informed by a single source, they will be compelled to make more time for multiple ones. Well in theory.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

All understandable and valid points during times of relative (presented) normalcy. In times like these, however -- during blatant acts of war against the populace -- the active and overt disinfo/misinfo campaigns are grounds for public floggings. That's a charitable penance compared to what's owed to some of the other players higher up the rungs.

Spare no one complicit.


Ah, if only I'd have my bare hands near any of them... those on the TV, and rarer still, those behind the curtain. Slow and methodical, my actions.

I'd relish every pained howl. If ever trapped 1-on-1, they'd cower in terror like the frightened little specimens they are.

(allowing myself a moment to be fanciful. And yet, in these times, one never knows what may transpire)

[drstrangelove]

Yes, but you can't deal this way with loved ones, or people you care to engage with due to having a relationship with them you want to maintain. And these are the only people I feel can be reached through individual effort.

This said, I'm not above the online propaganda war at all, and will happily characterise anyone advocating for compulsory mRNA gene therapy vaccination as a Nazi and what not, with more the aim of making them emotionally unstable(thus less credible) than actually changing their views. Though that's more about speaking to the gallery than anything else. Online is a hive mind, so a bombardment of alternative facts going viral does work. But at a personal level, the methods used for hive mind propaganda are ineffective.

[MacCruiskeen]

^^Belligerent Savant, let's instead start a new chapter in human history and convert useless public buildings into secure but humane prisons. About a year ago on Twitter I suggested turning the Palace of Westminster into a jail. At least half of the UK's many thousand welders and bricklayers would rush to volunteer their services.

The incarcerated former Ministers and MPs could sit on the terrace over the Thames and wave at the liberated people as they sail past in their pleasure boats. The 16 subsidised bars would remain open. The jailbirds could use the debating chamber to discuss whose fault it was they got nicked. "Order! Order!"

Coviid: PM faces big rebellion as MPs vote on new restrictions

The proposals... angered many of his own MPs. The measures are still likely to pass as Labour says it would support them. ...

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said it was his party's "patriotic duty" to ensure the new rules went through.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-59640792

[drstrangelove]

Just as an example, newspapers of record can be very valuable resources. From the New York Times:

New Study of Covid Booster Shots Fans Debate Over Benefits

Independent experts, including government scientists, were skeptical of the research from Israel, which included limited data over a short period.

Wading into an acrimonious debate over booster doses, researchers in Israel reported on Wednesday that a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine can prevent both infections and severe illness in adults older than 60 shortly after the injection.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the latest salvo in the conflict over whether booster doses are needed for healthy adults and whether they should be given out, as the Biden administration plans to do, when so much of the world remains unvaccinated.
Several independent scientists said the cumulative data so far suggest that only older adults will need boosters — and maybe not even them.

. . .

What the Israeli data show is that a booster can enhance protection for a few weeks in older adults — a result that is unsurprising, experts said, and does not indicate long-term benefit.
“What I would predict will happen is that the immune response to that booster will go up, and then it will contract again,” said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. “But is that three- to four-month window what we’re trying to accomplish?”

. . .

In younger people, officials must balance the limited benefit of a third dose with the risk of side effects like blood clots or heart problems, researchers said. And repeatedly stimulating the body’s defenses can also lead to a phenomenon called “immune exhaustion,” Dr. Pepper said.
“There’s obviously some risk in continuously trying to ramp up an immune response,” she said. “If we get into this cycle of boosting every six months, it’s possible that this could work against us.”

https://archive.md/HAhdK

Of course this has been memory holed since the booster campaign is well underway. But I can still omit all the broader context of the article and isolate the facts I want to highlight to force people who reject any unfamiliar source to engage with the premise of a vaccine hesitancy argument, if only to debunk it by pointing out I omitted the context. Which of course I did, but at least the effectiveness of the vaccine is now up for debate, and is the discussion we are now having

[stickdog99]

[drstrangelove]

More than 200 people have now tested positive after Newcastle superspreader event
More than 200 of the 680 people who attended Newcastle's Argyle House nightclub on Wednesday night have tested positive.

- https://www.sbs.com.au/news/more-than-2 ... 0fe91b62bf

Vaccine passports are doing a doubleplusgoodjob downunder

If only they had passports to keep reality out too.

[Belligerent Savant]

^^Belligerent Savant, let's instead start a new chapter in human history and convert useless public buildings into secure but humane prisons. About a year ago on Twitter I suggested turning the Palace of Westminster into a jail. At least half of the UK's many thousand welders and bricklayers would rush to volunteer their services.

The incarcerated former Ministers and MPs could sit on the terrace over the Thames and wave at the liberated people as they sail past in their pleasure boats. The 16 subsidised bars would remain open. The jailbirds could use the debating chamber to discuss whose fault it was they got nicked. "Order! Order!"

Coviid: PM faces big rebellion as MPs vote on new restrictions

The proposals... angered many of his own MPs. The measures are still likely to pass as Labour says it would support them. ...

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said it was his party's "patriotic duty" to ensure the new rules went through.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-59640792

I'd sign right up for that. Good suggestion.

Circling back for a moment on the damage that may have been done by mass-vaccinating all age/risk groups during a new viral outbreak, the below piece is quite damning, if portions of it hold true.

It also further underscores damage done due to strict lockdowns. NO, large-scale lockdowns were NOT beneficial near-term or over time, as Joe H suggested elsewhere in a recent response. He'll eventually need to own up to that reality. I see a few members here have yet to own up to certain miscues and are now passively attempting to softly re-write their historical positions on this virus.


On to the piece I referenced above; some worthwhile considerations:

https://www.rintrah.nl/the-vaccine-wont ... e-boosted/

Moving up an excerpt that specifically touches on lockdowns, particularly in Australia and NZ:

-If we vaccinate people and a number of them end up infected by variants that replicate rapidly enough to overcome their neutralizing antibodies, we’re thereby encouraging the evolution of new variants that replicate more rapidly than older variants. Such variants will generally be more dangerous to everyone, vaccinated or unvaccinated.

That’s what we saw with Delta: It’s intrinsically a more dangerous variant than the previous variants, but this was obscured by the fact that most people now had immunity from natural infection or the vaccines. That’s why countries like Australia and New Zealand lost their mind once they failed to keep Delta out: Because nobody there had pre-existing immunity to SARS-COV-2 due to their zero COVID stupidity, it was going to be far more dangerous for them than it is in a country like Sweden, where almost everyone has had some exposure to the virus before Delta arrived.

The vaccine won’t work against Omicron, even if you’re boosted

December 13, 2021

Almost everyone now seems eager to jump on the “Omicron is mild” bandwagon, but the evidence we have just doesn’t really justify that conclusion. In fact, the vaccine induced immunity is effectively useless against Omicron in most people, so you can expect that we’re going to face another massive wave of people getting sick.

I would understand it if you’re skeptical about this idea because you heard some “anti-science anti-vaxxer right wing populist conspiracy theorist” like me peddle this suggestion. But it’s not just the usual suspects now telling you that these vaccines are not going to work. It’s the blue-checked Phd in immunology zero COVID pronouns-in-your-Twitter-bio wokies who say the same thing. The only people still arguing that these vaccines work, are the people who are involved in producing and marketing them, including the politicians who fell for this blunder.

This is so interesting, that I’m going to republish a couple of the tweets here, with a little commentary from me:

Dr. Meryl CD8+ T cell #CovidAndFungus
@MerylSwanLake

A thread on #misinformation about vaccine elicited immune responses and vaccine induced protection, and why conflating these two things leads to downplaying the severity of Omicron
1/33

@MerylSwanLake
You will often read that vaccine induced protection is more than just neutralizing antibodies. That’s just not true. Let me correct this:
The *immune response* is more than just NAbs, BUT ONLY A PART OF the immune response confers protection, and this part IS actually NAbs
2/

This excellent study carried out by
@VirusesImmunity
and
@BenIsraelow
shows that vaccine induced protection does NOT rely or depend on CD8+ T cells : CD8+ depletion at the time of challenge didn’t change anything
3/

CD8+ could even enhance disease severity (via
@C_A_Gustave
+++) which is not surprising considering they act as mass shooters by “shooting” infected cells
4/

As
@BenIsraelow
said, “while T cells play a role during ACUTE infections, our antibodies are crucial for long-term protection against re-infection”
Reminder : protection during ACUTE infection doesn’t depend on vaccine mediated protection
https://news.yale.edu/2021/09/02/immune ... inst-covid
5/

As a consequence we can’t count on CD8+ T cells to protect us against symptomatic or severe disease.
6/

https://twitter.com/MerylSwanLake/statu ... 07809?s=20


I care not about some narrative, I care about what’s correct. And here the zero COVID wokies get it right: The evidence suggests that T-cells won’t protect people from severe disease. Yet here’s what the vaccine peddlers tell you:

@sailorrooscout
More than half the cases were reported as “mild” (think cold-like symptoms), “moderate” (think flu-like). This IS these VACCINES AT WORK. Preventing YOU from facing SEVERE disease and worse. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3981711

https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/stat ... 78882?s=20

Liar-liar, pants on fire! Look at this from an emotionally detached perspective: Does this look like a consistent narrative to you? Only one of these two can be correct. It should be obvious: The narrative is falling apart. The people who don’t have a reputation tied to these vaccines are ready to point out that the vaccines won’t tackle this new variant.

...

Dr. Meryl CD8+ T cell
@MerylSwanLake

Concretely it raises concerns about protection durability.
It means that:
- 75% of the ppl who got their 3rd dose btw September & October aren’t protected against Omicron anymore
- at least 75% of doses administered so far are now spoiled
19/

https://twitter.com/MerylSwanLake/statu ... 21635?s=20

So here you see it. If you got two doses of this vaccine, it doesn’t work against Omicron. If you did get a third dose, but you got it three months ago or more, there’s at least a 75% chance it doesn’t work against Omicron.

What if you get your third dose now? It seems that it takes a few weeks before it starts offering protection. During the first few days, your white blood cells migrate to the injection site, so the rest of your body is actually less protected.

If we look at the graph, we see that two weeks after the booster, 42% have zero neutralizing antibodies. How much more evidence do you need? These vaccines are not going to work in protecting you against Omicron.

At this point, the bigger question is: What do the non-neutralizing antibodies do? Again, from the Japanese scientists we learned that the non-neutralizing antibodies can make the infection worse. We need to know: What happens to the majority of people, who received the booster but are still stuck with zero neutralizing antibodies? It looks to me like they’re stuck in a situation with a vaccine that makes them more susceptible to this virus.

She is also worried that Omicron can overpower the neutralizing antibody response, simply because it replicates too rapidly:

Dr. Meryl CD8+
@MerylSwanLake
·
Dec 13
We couldn’t predict how challenging Delta could be based on neutralization assays because the issue was its increased transmissibility and the fact it coincided with waning immunity (lower levels of antibodies made it easier for Delta to overwhelm vaccine induced defenses)
22/

According to all data we have on ACE2 binding, Ct values, community transmission, secondary attacks, etc… Omicron might be a too overpowering variant IN ADDITION to documented immune escape. It means that on top of that it will expose you to a much higher viral load…
23/

https://twitter.com/MerylSwanLake/statu ... 64227?s=20

She offers us other juicy information too, later on in the thread. After you had your first three shots, you’re going to need two or three more, to be protected against Omicron:

@MerylSwanLake

Will vaccine induced defenses be sufficient to limit disease severity even in the first 3 months following the 3rd dose ? Nothing is more uncertain
24/

And of course it’s a vicious cycle because increased transmissibility and rapid viral growth mean you will shed a lot more virus and much sooner, thus exposing your community to an infectious dose shortly after your own exposure… And so on…
25/

Well you’re going to say that mRNA based vaccines formula can be adapted easily compared to protein based vaccines, and it’s true !
But tweaking vaccines isn’t a guarantee that your immune response will be updated. Read this excellent thread by
@C_A_Gustave
[in French]
26/

We need more data on neutralizing activity against non conserved epitopes in double vaccinated ppl who encountered Omicron Spike after full vaccination to figure out how we will respond to mRNA vaccine encoding Omicron Spike
27/

Besides it won’t be 1 dose of a booster encoding Omicron Spike. With respect to the immune response, only a complete series of 2 or 3 doses of Omicron specificSyringe can provide robust/long lasting protection. One dose can only prime the immune response to non conserved epitopes
28/

https://twitter.com/MerylSwanLake/statu ... 63718?s=20

There is some refreshing honesty here, because she tells you the whole story, instead of just getting you to go along with the next step and pretending that the previous step worked perfectly fine. Her honesty is unusual, I recommend reading the whole thread, but I won’t post it here.

But let’s summarize what we learned:

-Without inducing neutralizing antibodies, these vaccines can’t protect you.

-Even three months after your booster, there’s a 75% chance you won’t have neutralizing antibodies and thus are not protected against Omicron.

-Even if you do have neutralizing antibodies, it can still be insufficient, because the virus replicates so rapidly that your neutralizing antibodies can’t keep up.

From the third idea we can draw the following conclusion ourselves:

-If we vaccinate people and a number of them end up infected by variants that replicate rapidly enough to overcome their neutralizing antibodies, we’re thereby encouraging the evolution of new variants that replicate more rapidly than older variants. Such variants will generally be more dangerous to everyone, vaccinated or unvaccinated.

That’s what we saw with Delta: It’s intrinsically a more dangerous variant than the previous variants, but this was obscured by the fact that most people now had immunity from natural infection or the vaccines. That’s why countries like Australia and New Zealand lost their mind once they failed to keep Delta out: Because nobody there had pre-existing immunity to SARS-COV-2 due to their zero COVID stupidity, it was going to be far more dangerous for them than it is in a country like Sweden, where almost everyone has had some exposure to the virus before Delta arrived.

But now I want to show you the most damning piece of evidence, that makes it very clear that these vaccines merely seem to make you more vulnerable to Omicron. Here you can see infections in Denmark, Omicron versus non-Omicron, by vaccination status, since the 22nd of November:



You can see the distribution here, of Omicron versus the other variants. Whereas 43.6% of cases of other variants are in the unvaccinated, just 13.8% of Omicron cases are in the unvaccinated. Whereas 4% of other variants are in boosted people, 8.9% of Omicron cases are in boosted people.

And keep in mind: This is going to get worse, not better. It’s going to evolve further, to turn into a virus that preys on people with a vaccine-induced immune response. Here you can see a recent mutation that showed up and now constitutes 10% of Omicron cases:

Bloom Lab
@jbloom_lab

As background, there is sub-variant that shares many but not all mutations w #Omicron called BA.2 (original #Omicron is BA.1). I played no role in discovery of BA.2 (maybe was
@Tuliodna
?), and am just getting info from
@arambaut's post here: https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-d ... issues/361 (2/n)

https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1 ... 38594?s=20

This is the sort of mutation that allows it to escape what little protection these vaccines still offer in a handful of people. And these mutations now have a selective advantage, so you’re going to watch them become more common. If the vaccines offer zero percent protection against severe disease today, a month from now they may offer us negative protection against severe disease, because Omicron will have changed.

If you have made it this far without rolling up your sleeve for an experimental gene therapy, it’s easy: Whatever you do, don’t get the vaccine. If they fire you from your job, if they don’t let you into the supermarket, if they give you a fine, deal with it, but don’t get the vaccine.

If you did get the vaccine, don’t get the booster, but study prophylactic treatment. Zinc, vitamin D, vitamin K2, Quercetin, protease inhibitors (like Ivermectin), nattokinase, N-Acetylcysteine, magnesium, vitamin B12, vitamin C, that sort of stuff. If you live in the Netherlands and want Ivermectin, let me know, I’ll send it to you.

-----------------------------------------------

So far so good, but now I want to address the normie-conservatives, who are peddling the “Omicron is mild” bullshit. This is just not true, it’s wishful thinking. Just because you want to be done with the batsoupflu after injecting everyone with some gene therapy doesn’t mean the problem is over.

If you alter people’s immune response and prohibit the normal development of layered immunity after the introduction of a new virus, it’s going to have consequences. The more diverse our immune response is against this virus, the more we are protected from new variants. By inducing a similar and very narrow immune response in billions of people worldwide, we turned ourselves into sitting ducks for this virus.

We could have handled it very easily: Allow the virus to infect everyone while it is still mild and give people supplements to protect them from severe disease. In the summer of 2020, we should have had massive festivals, where young people infect each other. I even organized parties myself back then, I spent hundreds of bucks on psychedelics. We did not use this opportunity to build broad layered immunity. We waited, gave this virus time to evolve into more dangerous variants and eventually ended up engaging in the most stupid act imaginable:

We gave everyone a highly similar immune response, to the Wuhan version of the Spike protein. Without humans developing broad diverse immunity against this virus, this doesn’t end. We prevented people from developing broad diverse immunity, so now we get to enjoy the consequences.

You can’t just say “I want COVID to be over, so it’s going to be over, even though we did everything we can to make it worse”. If we did everything we can to make it worse, then it’s going to get worse. That’s why you’re now stuck with a new variant, that spreads more rapidly than anything we have ever seen.

But hey, don’t just take my word for it. Ignore South Africa for a moment. They are lucky enough to have everyone infected before the vaccine campaign began. Rather, look at the numbers from Denmark:



Uh-oh. That’s 37 people hospitalized, on 3437 cases. That’s slightly over 1% of cases hospitalized. That’s very nasty, especially if you keep in mind these people were supposed to be protected by the vaccine.

But hey, it’s actually worse. Here’s the age demographic that got Omicron:



It has only just seeded itself into the country, so most cases are still in healthy young adults, the people who engage in most social mingling and thus are the first to encounter the virus. Once the elderly pick it up, that’s when the real mess begins.

But it’s even worse, if you consider there’s a lag between cases and hospitalizations. If you assume there’s a three day lag between cases and hospitalizations, then you’re looking at 1,280 cases with 37 people hospitalized. That’s a 2.8% case hospitalization ratio.

I don’t see how this could possibly not turn into a catastrophe. The normies really screwed up this time. Watch as the narrative changes by the end of this week.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Just as an example, newspapers of record can be very valuable resources. From the New York Times:

The Gray Lady has been making quite a few curious pivots in recent months -- this one especially:

Via: We Can Live Better Lives While Being Smart About Covid

Nearly two years into the pandemic, it is clear that the coronavirus is not going to disappear anytime soon. Surges will happen, variants of concern will pop up and mitigation strategies will need to evolve. Yet too many Americans are still paralyzed with doubt and fear over each new uncertainty, as trust in government and other institutions to manage the virus ranges from shaky to nonexistent.

It is past time to ask ourselves, as another Covid winter begins, if we have to keep living like this: Anxious over the unknown, worried about large indoor gatherings, tense at every bit of virus news and frustrated and at times contemptuous of fellow Americans who have a dramatically different sense of acceptable risk.

Because progress has been made this year. Vaccines that protect against serious illness and death are taking ever greater hold in the United States and are beginning to make their way to the world’s most vulnerable regions; drugs that work against the virus are coming through the pipeline; and, despite a recent uptick in cases, schools and businesses remain open.

Americans should pause a moment and let this progress sink in. The virus will continue to surprise us, and even when scientists manage to predict its worst turns, officials will not necessarily be able to prevent those turns from coming. But what if leaders at all levels made choices so that we don’t have to exhaust ourselves with stress over every curve ball? To help us all live more normally with this virus, rather than let it control us?

That exhaustion has characterized so much of the past two years, as parents, teachers, frontline workers and small business owners wade through what can feel like an unending morass. Is it safe to celebrate the holidays? Will schools shut down again? When will young children finally be eligible for vaccines? And why are we still having to ask ourselves these questions?

Make coronavirus testing as fast, easy and inexpensive as possible. Ubiquitous testing could help schools stay open and make gatherings of every kind safer. With more than 1,000 people still dying of Covid-19 every day in the United States, it’s past time to make this basic tool as readily available as it is in other countries like South Korea or Britain. President Biden’s latest plan — which would require people with private health insurance to submit a claim for reimbursement and people without insurance or private coverage to hunt down free tests at community health centers — does not do nearly enough to achieve that goal. Instead, the administration should do what other countries have done, and what the United States did so successfully with vaccines: Work directly with companies to get more tests approved and on the market quickly, use advanced purchasing agreements to ensure a steady supply of those tests and create federal subsidies for clinics and pharmacies to provide them free or very cheap to consumers who want them.

Even Donald J. Trump understood the simple principle that more testing led to more confirmed cases -- this sounds more like another corporate welfare trough than a serious solution, but when it comes to a security theater / pork barrel combo platter, this idea is hard to beat. Even that Moldbug blowhard is fantasizing about 24-7 PCR testing systems being installed into HVAC systems. This one is too stupid and too lucrative to ever go away.

Aim to make the 2021-2022 school year the last dominated by Covid. The Biden administration should have enough testing free and available — and push to have a critical mass of students vaccinated — by September.

Teachers unions will be very happy to put the burden of their safety on the kids yet again, this should be a winner, too.

Quarantine and isolation policies will also need an upgrade. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still advises people to isolate for 10 days after experiencing symptoms or testing positive, regardless of their vaccination status. Many schools still require anyone who’s been in contact with an infected person to quarantine for several days, at least. As breakthrough infections become more common, even among those who have received their boosters, it makes sense to allow workers and students to avoid confinement, or test their way out of it much more quickly.

Prepare for surges. No scientist or health official has managed to predict, or even explain after the fact, what constellation of forces causes the pandemic to ebb and flow around the globe the way it does. But it’s clear that there will continue to be periods of substantial uptick in coronavirus cases, and there should be sensible, significantly better policies in place for dealing with them.

Country-specific travel bans are futile: By the time a variant like Omicron is detected in one country, it’s already spread halfway around the globe. Penalizing countries that report new variants — as South Africa did, with Omicron — will only discourage them from sharing that kind of information in the future. Blanket policies — like requiring everyone entering the United States to test negative or possibly quarantine — would be tougher and more expensive to carry out.

It would also have a better chance of actually working. If federal officials are serious about using border control to slow the spread of dangerous pathogens, they will need to establish clear, enforceable test and quarantine protocols, not to mention adequate quarantine facilities, at ports of entry.

Do away with Covid theater. The coronavirus is airborne, and any money spent on deep cleaning would be better put toward improved building ventilation. But instead of upgrading their HVAC systems, too many schools and businesses are still relying on things that won’t work nearly as well. The plastic barriers that have become common in restaurants, nail salons and offices, for example, can actually impede airflow and exacerbate viral spread. Lawmakers and local officials should make a concerted effort to change that. Not only would improved ventilation help thwart coronavirus, but it would also curb the spread of other airborne pathogens, including the flu and those that cause the common cold.

Keep going on vaccines. Public health powers were once a common feature of American life. When cholera and yellow fever routinely stalked the nation’s major cities, citizens accepted and expected their health departments to issue mandates, quarantine orders and travel restrictions. It’s crucial for officials to shore up those powers now, because scientists say that epidemics and pandemics will become only more common in the years ahead. Mr. Biden’s vaccine mandates have been bold and effective — and administration officials should stay the course no matter how many legal battles they encounter.

In the meantime, government officials and private businesses would do well to stand firm on some basics: Covid vaccines should be required for public employees and in large companies, for health care workers, in schools (for staff as well as students for whom the shots are authorized) and for a range of indoor activities including dining in restaurants and attending concerts. Masks should be worn again in indoor public settings anytime transmission rates are high, vaccination rates are low or new variants of concern are circulating.

Even as we remain vigilant against the coronavirus, we need not remain in a state of paralyzing hypervigilance. Returning to the sound basics of public health, continuing the progress of medical innovation and ratcheting back the societal anxiety around the pandemic could make us all a lot healthier.

So, not that much of a pivot, but for a publication that lives and dies by their narrative planning, you can see new seeds being planted, carefully.

Even back when twitter randos were calling me retarded last summer for saying that authorities in the West would soon be telling us to live with this forever instead of pushing "eradication" as a viable solution, those test balloons were already hitting print, and there has been a lot of "endemic covid" messaging ever since.

That's a narrative shift that keeps the foundation completely intact, though: state power being expanded on the basis of a perpetual emergency. I don't reckon that much will ever change.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

I understand the point you're conveying here, the NY Times opening their piece with their signal that "covid is here to stay, time to move on with life".

But any position that continues to push vaccine mandates (as conditions for employment, etc) and masking policies is not expressing any notable shift. It's pathetic they're still attempting to double down on that crap.

[drstrangelove]

The Gray Lady has been making quite a few curious pivots in recent months -- this one especially:

Via: We Can Live Better Lives While Being Smart About Covid

I could only dream of such a merciful editorial. Where I live this just got planted hours ago:

The Omicron wake-up call we can’t afford to ignore

When Dr Hans Kluge, the World Health Organisation’s regional director for Europe, remarked last week that “Omicron is already everywhere”, he was arguing against the reinstatement of travel bans. His colleague Dr Catherine Smallwood added that such restrictions “are not effective in preventing spread of disease”. In South Africa and the UK particularly, the Omicron horse has already bolted, and it is rapidly supplanting the infamous Delta variant as the main source of infection.

While there are early (though by no means conclusive) signs that Omicron’s transmissibility is not matched by the severity of its symptoms, its swift spread means governments are being forced to consider a return to politically unattractive measures to protect their health systems from being overwhelmed. In Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson is already enduring an especially bleak political midwinter, the idea of a second locked-down Christmas must be an awful prospect. There, rules on masking, restricting access to venues and working from home are being reintroduced.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already made it clear that he is unwilling to contemplate a return to lockdowns. This, we believe, is the right call for now. Meanwhile, all state governments (even Western Australia) are continuing at greater or lesser speed to open up.

But the unchecked spread of the Omicron variant would be concerning. A fast spread “means it will be in billions of people and another mutation may come,” Pfizer’s chief executive, Albert Bourla, told The Wall Street Journal last week. We in Australia are looking to a summer of greater freedom from restrictions, but Omicron has already heralded a more cautious tone from some on, for example, the wearing of masks. As unpalatable as it is for lockdown-weary Australians to hear, Britain’s winter experience shows we are not out of the COVID woods yet.

But before we hit the button to reintroduce restrictions we must ensure as many children are vaccinated as possible, and that those adults already double-dosed take advantage of the government’s Omicron-induced move to bring forward their booster shots.

We should also take note of Omicron’s broader lesson: that viewing the pandemic purely in terms of our own national wellbeing is a fool’s paradise. As Dr Smallwood said last week, “disease outbreaks are contained at their source, not at their borders”, and the source of viral mutation is unvaccinated populations around the world. Indeed, it seems a grim coincidence that the two nations which led the push for a temporary waiver on vaccine patents in October of last year were India – where Delta was first detected – and South Africa, where scientists raised the alarm over Omicron.

In the absence of such a patent waiver, the WHO’s Covax scheme was supposed to provide vaccines for poorer nations. But as our international editor, Peter Hartcher, has pointed out, so far it has fallen far short of its targets, even as wealthier nations (including Australia) siphon off some of its supplies and stockpile surplus doses.

The result is that just 7 per cent of Africans have been fully vaccinated and that in October only five of the 54 African nations were projected to hit the WHO’s recommended target of fully vaccinating 40 per cent of national populations by the end of the year.

In our immediate neighbourhood, Australia is already the leading source of vaccines for Pacific island nations, providing two-thirds of the regional stock while Covax supplies most of the remainder, but much is still to be done. Of Papua New Guinea’s 9 million people fewer than 5 per cent are fully vaccinated, and the Lowy Institute recently forecast that even by April 2026, only a third of that country’s adult population is likely to be covered. At the same time as our domestic manufacture of AstraZeneca vaccines has halted, Indonesia still has hundreds of millions of people unprotected.

At the G20 summit in Rome at the end of October, Mr Morrison insisted “there’s no higher priority than vaccinating people all over the world with safe and effective vaccines ... Australia will do our part”. Omicron is the wake-up call for us to commit to this task, for everyone’s sake.

- https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/hea ... 59h6j.html

they aren't fucking around with such brazen sentences as,

But before we hit the button to reintroduce restrictions we must ensure as many children are vaccinated as possible, and that those adults already double-dosed take advantage of the government’s Omicron-induced move to bring forward their booster shots.