Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Yeah, this is March 2020 all over again. NHL postponed a bunch of games, no more across-the-border (US/Canada) games until January (for now). DC's mayor Bowser is mandating that businesses require masks city-wide. Positive omicron cases in my state have skyrocketed in just a couple days. I had to pick my daughter up from middle school yesterday because a friend of hers tested positive the day before, which means we're in quarantine now until after Christmas. Sucks. We always spend Christmas Eve with my extended family at my folks' but not this year.

That said, I'm somewhere in the middle of all this. I'm pro-vaccine and am totally cool with businesses deciding whether to require masks, but don't think it should be forced on individuals or businesses via government mandate. I'm caught between wishing people would get some sense and vaccinate themselves and understanding to some degree why many refuse. And I'm really damned tired of both sides of the argument.

And for whatever it's worth (no one cares), I'm also a Christian and don't believe in the big bang. Nor do I care about what the Pope says or believes. He's a fallible human just like the rest of us.

Cycle has been cases rise, restrictions put in place. Cases go down and restrictions are relaxed. Cases then go up and restrictions put back into place. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I respectfully don’t see it that way at all. I see the cycle as EVERYONE gets their wave of Covid regardless of mitigation.

The only mitigation I see “clear evidence” (clear evidence is the key word) of working is the vaccines. Vaccines have clearly led to decreased deaths and hospitalizations.

Florida will get their wave, as will New York, as will Ohio, as will California…etc.

Meet Cornell University, a public health official's dream.

97% vaxed, mask mandate, daily checks, mandatory testing, travel restrictions, contact tracing, quarantines, social distancing rules.

1,000 covid cases in a week and closed.

But if vaccines work then won’t most people either get Covid or vaccines? In which case, isn’t it stupidity and not inevitability?

I’m not sure I understand the question…or if it is even addressed toward me. I can tell you that as the Cornell example shows…many will get the vaccinations and STILL get Covid.

If you are asking if I think it is stupid to NOT get the vaccines…the answer is of course. I’m already boosted.

I was just addressing GoBucks opinion that the Covid cycle is because of a restriction-restriction reduction pattern. I don’t see any clear evidence of this oft-repeated phenomenon.

I see the the Covid Cycle goes up and down in waves regardless of restrictions. At least in the United States where welding people in their homes is still frowned on…

I get that there are patterns and that there’s a significant increase recently but FL saw WAY more cases this summer than they did at any point during the pandemic and they held their ground.

I see the cycle as EVERYONE gets their wave of Covid regardless of mitigation.

Given how covid requires individual interactions within certain proximity, this doesn't really make a lot of sense. Taking it to an extreme, interacting with no one and your risk of getting covid is zero.

Could ask you a list of questions about preferences of being with any given numbers of positive people, inside/outside, in proximity/at distance, with/without masks, but presumably your view would be none of it matters.

It's objectively not true. There have been different degrees of infection, but you can't look at New Zealand and say everyone gets it regardless of mitigation. It's not even true in the US, as blue and red counties have had dramatically different outcomes. Mitigation actually works, it just depends on how willing people are to go along with it.

This narrative that there's nothing you can do about it is stupid, especially since vaccines became widely available.

If everywhere else is like it is here in Indiana, then the reason we see waves come and go and see every region get slammed pretty hard at some point is because people are over the pandemic and there really is no mitigation happening. Social distancing is not a thing, and mask wearing is only barely a thing. Sports arenas and stadiums have been filled to capacity all over the country since their respective seasons started, mostly with unmasked people and with at best a 2/3 vaccination rate. I'm sure mitigation strategies are adhered to more strictly in some places than in others, but to say that big COVID waves are evidence that mitigation strategies don't work is inaccurate.

I'll see your Cornell anecdote and raise you the infected, masked lady in the hair salon that didn't pass it on to anyone else anecdote from last year.

Even with the vaccines, I'm sure those Cornell students were dry humping in ways many other groups are not.

The vaccines are indeed the mitigation that have proven to work in the U.S. That’s objectively true. It accounts for the red/blue divide in deaths.

97% vaxed, mask mandates, daily checks, mandatory testing, travel restrictions, contact tracing, quarantines, social distancing rules.

It’s also objectively true that the most stringent mitigation protocols in the U.S…in the most perfect control groups…at college campuses across the country have failed. There’s a reason these colleges are shutting down again.

Maybe if they masked harder? Maybe if we just kept them at home again?

Honestly…what else should Cornell et al have done? While we’re on topic… What else should New York City have done? How about Royal Caribbean?

At some point the practical limitations of “living” in America have to be considered.

There is a real question about who is doing the “presuming” here. For example, is there a standard presumption that cloth masks at Universal Studios starting Christmas Eve will work…?

Edited to add that the 97% vaxed were dry humping each other… 😂

Edited once more to ask if anyone has anecdotes of where the safe groups are hiding from Omicron in the United States?

Among other things, I would imagine at Cornell students were still eating in large communal dining halls, presumably without keeping their masks on. And going to restaurants and bars, in Ithaca, and, yeah, snogging.

And, given lots of testing and contact tracing at Cornell, you would expect them to find a lot of (probably asymptomatic) cases. With about 15,000 students at Cornell, 1000 cases works out to about 6.8% positivity, which is actually lower than NYC's 28-day average.

Should they have shut down in those circumstances? That's a complicated decision: perception of the people paying tuition, ability to keep classes going (especially if you're asking people to quarantine), impact on the local hospital system, likelihood of getting sued, etc., etc.

As for the effectiveness of masks, I found this pretty persuasive.

If your presumption is that college campuses in America should be sexless. And there should be nowhere for them to eat together, etc. in addition to 97% vaxed, mask mandates, daily checks, mandatory testing, travel restrictions, contact tracing, quarantines, and social distancing rules…

I concede that might work.

Two years in…knowing the vaccines work pretty good at preventing symptoms…this seems bat**** extreme to ME… One step short of welding them in their rooms…though most campuses have quarantine dorms…

Anyhow…I look at things practically. Practically speaking the vaccines worked. The other stuff…

The reason they don’t work is people like to go to college. People like to go to amusement parks. People like to go on cruises. People like to eat out, etc. The average American would not and could not live under Cornell’s rules…

Even with the vaccines, I'm sure those Cornell students were dry humping in ways many other groups are not.

Presumably…that’s why Cornell et al have daily health checks and mandatory testing.

Maybe they could try chastity belts? 😂

What I heard is: the reason they (mitigation strategies) don't work is because people don't want to do them. My car won't start because I don't want to turn the key. My diet isn't working because I don't want to eat healthful food.

I get what you're saying in the sense that yes, most people are exhausted by pandemic protocols and are adopting an eff-it mindset, and thus good luck getting the populous to follow mitigation strategies. But isn't that more an indictment of American attitudes and less an indication that the strategies themselves are ineffective?

Also, how do you measure how ineffective they are? The problem is, there's no way you can ever know because we can only examine the current situation as it actually exists, not the hypothetical alternative. If more people followed protocols and we still had significant spreading, the conclusion isn't that the protocols don't work; the conclusion is to imagine how much worse it would be if no one was following protocol.

I'm not presuming anything about what additional mitigation strategies should have been in place. I'm pointing out that there are all sorts of reasons the normal mitigation efforts might fail on a college campus. If anything, a university seems an ideal place for contagious diseases to spread. I think we basically agree that there's not much more Cornell could reasonably have done to prevent an outbreak.

And, we may basically agree that at some point we have to start living with the virus, to reach a point, if you will, where we distinguish between being infected and being diseased. However, we can't do that with 30-40% of the population unvaccinated, because every outbreak, local or national, is going to mean overwhelmed hospitals, businesses and schools closing because their staff can't come into work, and so on.

We keep fluctuating between “objective” and “presumption.” I’m sure I’ve done it too.

That Cornell’s strategy failed is objectively observable.

But isn't that more an indictment of American attitudes and less an indication that the strategies themselves are ineffective?

The quote above is presumption. If we had just acted better…it might have worked.

I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with your sentiment fwiw. I don’t know if mitigations would have worked or not with better behaviors.

I will note that Cornell had daily health checks, mandatory testing, and isolation dorms to quickly identify and isolate “bad behavior.”

It still FAILED.

I PRESUME that Cornell’s restrictions wouldn’t fly for the majority of Americans…EVEN HAD THEY WORKED. The fact they failed makes me wonder why anyone wastes time and effort either…

a) defending the failure

b) calling for further impractical restrictions beyond Cornell’s already exhausting and extensive protocol to show it MIGHT work…if they had just done (this)…

I long ago built “non-compliance” with masks et al into all my Covid opinions/presumptions. But as I’ve said above…I look at this from a practical perspective.

And, we may basically agree that at some point we have to start living with the virus…

I personally reached that point the moment I realized vaccines have reduced this to a flu-like…or less…risk for me and my family. It is past time for me to worry about those who chose not to vaccinate. I say that respectively…as I support everyone’s right to choose what they put in their bodies. But I’m personally done worrying about other’s choices. That’s their life to live.

Dare I ask your stance on Roe v Wade

Aamilj said:
I personally reached that point the moment I realized vaccines have reduced this to a flu-like…or less…risk for me and my family. It is past time for me to worry about those who chose not to vaccinate. I say that respectively…as I support everyone’s right to choose what they put in their bodies. But I’m personally done worrying about other’s choices. That’s their life to live.

I've been here for quite a while now. Welcome.

Lord Gonchar said on January 14, 2021 (almost a year ago):

...once the vaccine has been available to everyone with no supply issues and 30 days have passed (enough time to get both doses), if you aren't vaccinated by then - that's on you.

The idea that we're still talking about restrictions, mitigation protocol and stuff as we enter 2022 is absurd.

(and I say that as someone who is literally about to walk out the door to get my Pfizer booster)

The reason it isn't absurd is because the people like you and me, middle-age and vaccinated, face a different threat in that hospitals become a scarce resource for things we can't always head off, like heart attacks, because of the people who do not mitigate. I had to put off a colonoscopy for months because of this. What if I had cancer and had to put off detection for months? Because some segment of ****holes think the shot violates their insane definition of freedom?

You aren't in the willfully ignorant crowd, thankfully, but you seem stuck on the idea that individuals don't affect others.