Coronavirus: Already In a Neighborhood Near You

[Tiger337]

Getting the vaccine and the boosters does make it less likely that you'll feel sick and less likely that you'll spread the virus.  

[Jim Cowan]

8 hours ago, ewsieg said:

it was 50/50 before the vaccine, at least based on the polls i've seen from Democrats.

From Democrats?  Sorry, I don't get it.

[ewsieg]

6 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

From Democrats?  Sorry, I don't get it.

Well into Covid some polls came out where they asked folks their political party and then asked them about Covid.  Near 50% of democrats believed that the unvaccinated had to be hospitalized for Covid at a rate of 50%.  

Seems like maybe more than one side was not getting all the facts.

[oblong]

and being wrong about that hurt people how?

 

[Dan Gilmore]

Some polls. 🙄

[ewsieg]

38 minutes ago, oblong said:

and being wrong about that hurt people how?

 

Kept people out of work longer, which led to more stress, mental health issues, etc which led to more dissent, anger.....

[Motown Bombers]

That's weird because I remember companies complaining they couldn't find enough people to work. 

[1984Echoes]

40 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

Kept people out of work longer, which led to more stress, mental health issues, etc which led to more dissent, anger.....

Sounds like you're just making shit up.

IMO.

Respectfully.

[ewsieg]

14 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Sounds like you're just making shit up.

IMO.

Respectfully.

You're probably right, everything is ducky.

[ewsieg]

I honestly thought it was pretty common knowledge so I didn't bother sourcing anything.  Probably pointing out that democrats weren't being properly informed as well should have reminded me not to assume that on this site.

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimates-covid-hospitalization-risk.aspx

[oblong]

you said "near 50".  41 is not near 50.  

[gehringer_2]

17 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

I honestly thought it was pretty common knowledge so I didn't bother sourcing anything.  Probably pointing out that democrats weren't being properly informed as well should have reminded me not to assume that on this site.

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimates-covid-hospitalization-risk.aspx

I not sure I would draw that conclusion. This shows  almost everybody was was off my an order of magnitude on the question, the difference only being degree. That would indicate that almost no-one on either side had particularly well informed themselves with much accuracy.

Edited March 30, 2023 by gehringer_2

[Jim Cowan]

All I said was that without the vaccine we both might be dead.  That is unequivocally true.  Notice the word "might".  We are both in our 70's.  And I still don't get the strange reference to a "Democrat poll", but don't spend any more time on it.

[1984Echoes]

1 hour ago, ewsieg said:

I honestly thought it was pretty common knowledge so I didn't bother sourcing anything.  Probably pointing out that democrats weren't being properly informed as well should have reminded me not to assume that on this site.

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimates-covid-hospitalization-risk.aspx

Basically this is a graph...

Of a poll...

Of everyone's WAG. It says nothing whatsoever about how well-informed a person is, or not. That's just a guess on your part, that a Dem wasn't properly informed.

This is not a poll of who was well-informed, who was misinformed, who was doing the informing. It's peoples' perceptions. And since the loudest voices were Republican F.U. Vaccine (& FU Democrats) voices, and people knew that the aged were getting hammered...

That seems like not a bad guess for someone who is not analyzing a table of actual results/ risks/ exposures/ hospitalizations, etc...

If I had to WAG, I'd say 50% of the unvaccinated were a hospitalization risk as well. Just on a WAG.

[1984Echoes]

59 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I not sure I would draw that conclusion. This shows almost everybody was was off by an order of magnitude on the question, the difference only being degree. That would indicate that almost no-one on either side had particularly well informed themselves with much accuracy.

Yes.

And the loud-mouthed A-Hole Anti-vaccers dominating the headlines would certainly make an impression on both the uninformed and on Dems in particular... who knew the Anti-vaccers were just playing stupid political games with a pandemic.

Anti-vaccers are at 50% hospitalization risk because of no vaccinations...?

Seems absolutely reasonable to me.... and I'm an Independent.

Now I didn't verify anything... but that seems like a good guess.

[1984Echoes]

1 hour ago, Jim Cowan said:

All I said was that without the vaccine we both might be dead.  That is unequivocally true.  Notice the word "might".  We are both in our 70's.  And I still don't get the strange reference to a "Democrat poll", but don't spend any more time on it.

Smart choice to just get the vaccine.

But then... Canadiens are smarter than Americans, right? Wouldn't you agree?

😉

[gehringer_2]

5 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Yes.

And the loud-mouthed A-Hole Anti-vaccers dominating the headlines would certainly make an impression on both the uninformed and on Dems in particular... who knew the Anti-vaccers were just playing stupid political games with a pandemic.

Anti-vaccers are at 50% hospitalization risk because of no vaccinations...?

Seems absolutely reasonable to me.... and I'm an Independent.

Now I didn't verify anything... but that seems like a good guess.

the other thing to remember in this set of questions is that each side is going to be better informed wrt their own choices. The vaxxed being interested in the prognosis for the vaxxed and the unvaxxed being more interested in the prognosis for the unvaxxed. I think Gallup's results more or less bear that out, and that is not a particularly unpredictable result.

[HighOPS]

I teach math. If you think understanding percentages and paying careful attention to the base (50% of people who are unvaccinated and get Covid get hospitalized vs. 50% of people hospitalized with Covid are unvaccinated) is in most American's wheelhouse you are mistaken. 

I wouldn't have been able to answer without a guess given those categories. I would have clearly thought below 10% but I would not have known without research how much below 10% it was.

Edited March 30, 2023 by HighOPS
apostrophication

[Dan Gilmore]

I think it’s worth pointing out the the poll refers to hospitalization risk. Risk, not actual hospitalization. I see it as merely showing that Democrats had a higher awareness of the risk of going unvaccinated and that included the worst case outcomes. 

[gehringer_2]

I know, it's irritating to have links posted to paywalled stuff, but there an excellent NYT article offering a retrospective of how Sweden's low mandate Covid policies actually turned out in the end. There is a lot of good stuff in there if you can get access, but I'll excerpt a few conclusions and summarize by noting a couple of things:

1-it turns out there is no such thing as 'herd immunity' for Covid - it's just not that kind of virus so all the conversation around that question early in the pandemic was futile. Wrong infection model. Covid has never and will never recede because of infection resistance in the population -rather it has become and will remain endemic. The corollary to that is that Covid vaccination does not stop populaton transmission - what it does do is protect the vaccinated from severe illness. To try and give an explanation of this: Covid is a virus that can replicate and spread via the nasal mucosa - so you can have good systemic immunity from it via vaccination - while you can still be 'infected' and spread it because you can carry it 'superficially'. (What has now been achieved in unvaccinated population is simply past exposure immunity, but that came at the cost of the unvaxxed populations suffering higher mortality rates.)

2-For Covid what turned out to be important was raising serious disease resistance in the popuation via vaccination. That is why Sweden's experience did not turn out to be much worse than average despite the lack of mitigation mandates - they didn't push mitigation that hard but they did get very good vaccination compliance. (And they got a lot of voluntary compliance with other 'guidlines' as well as they are a socially cohesive population.)

 

final word from the article:
 

Quote

The policies weren’t as heavy-handed as some of those executed elsewhere, and mobility data suggests that Swedes did move about more freely early on than the citizens of other countries. But there wasn’t an absence of guidance, just an absence of mandates. And there was more death in Sweden that first year than in its neighboring peer countries — just not off-the-charts death.

In the end, “what the ‘Swedish model’ really suggests is that pandemic mitigation measures can be effectively deployed in a respectful, largely noncoercive way,” Francois Balloux wrote recently. “Obviously, being a rich country with a decent welfare net and achieving high vaccination rates didn’t hurt either.”

What kind of case study is this? And how replicable are its lessons in a country like the United States? Sweden never exactly let it rip, nor did the country truly expose its population to uninterrupted spread. Instead, it asked its citizens to protect themselves, according to a suite of best practices familiar to anyone who’s lived through the last three years with open eyes. And then to vaccinate like crazy. The result wasn’t painless; the country didn’t beat or even emerge unscathed from the pandemic. But it did survive it. Like much of the rest of the world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/sweden-pandemic-coronavirus.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces-variants-shadow-lda-unique-diversify-time-cutoff-30&alpha=0.05&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=710496947&impression_id=cca9189e-d21a-11ed-a71a-b71ef5b5bdcc&index=6&pgtype=Article&pool=pool%2F5bffce26-a993-4ed4-af7d-8894fdf413ca&region=footer&req_id=251251044&shadow_vec_sim=0.35518996439878153&surface=eos-most-popular-story&variant=0_pers_bandit_diversified

Edited April 3, 2023 by gehringer_2

[oblong]

So in essence they said "Be good... you all are smart enough to do what's right for your neighbors and not be selfish"  And they did.

That would never work here.

 

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

So in essence they said "Be good... you all are smart enough to do what's right for your neighbors and not be selfish"  And they did.

That would never work here.

 

In a country that fethisizes cutthroat competition and frontier-like self-reliance? Not a chance. Doctors would take fee payments in chickens first.

[Tiger337]

On 3/30/2023 at 12:46 PM, HighOPS said:

I teach math. If you think understanding percentages and paying careful attention to the base (50% of people who are unvaccinated and get Covid get hospitalized vs. 50% of people hospitalized with Covid are unvaccinated) is in most American's wheelhouse you are mistaken. 

I wouldn't have been able to answer without a guess given those categories. I would have clearly thought below 10% but I would not have known without research how much below 10% it was.

I would bet that the majority of people had very little conception of what the question was asking.  Americans are bad at math and even worse at probability.    

[Tiger337]

On 4/3/2023 at 11:19 AM, oblong said:

So in essence they said "Be good... you all are smart enough to do what's right for your neighbors and not be selfish"  And they did.

That would never work here.

 

We have gotten too big and too heterogenous for that and many (includung some of the most influential people in the country) take advantage of it by creating division and hatred.  

[pfife]

Anecdotally, hearing of a lot more folks testing positive last week or so....