Violet's pandemic roundup is particularly depressing this week.All those cheesy zombie films got one thing right: we would still be expected to show up for our shifts at the mall, and the real monsters weren't actually the zombies.
This virus is like measles and polio: a virus with long-term impact.
Even a "mild" case in a vaccinated individual can lead to long-term issues which cause a measurable uptick in all-cause mortality in the first 6 months, and get progressively worse with time. [...]
Perhaps the most terrifying study is from Oxford University, which examined the effects of vaccination on long COVID symptoms, because not only did it find that vaccination does not protect against Long Covid, but that Long Covid symptoms become more likely over time [...] "Vaccination does not appear to be protective against long-COVID features, arrhythmia, joint pain, type 2 diabetes, liver disease, sleep disorders, and mood and anxiety disorders." [...]
Since our vaccines don't stop transmission, and don't appear to stop long-term illness, a "vaccination only" strategy is not going to be sufficient to prevent mass disability.
"Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic," he said. "So 40% is just unheard of." [...]
They explained that they're seeing deaths months after workers "recovered" from Covid from infection-related health consequences (heart attacks, vascular problems, etc.). These deaths don't get classified as "from Covid" because they're no longer "positive."
We don't remember polio nowadays, only longpolio.
In 29.5%, it presents as diarrhea, GI distress. Only 0.5% of cases present with neurological symptoms. For the vast vast majority of people who got a disease which left hundreds of thousands disabled for the rest of their lives, polio was a few days of having the shits. If that.
There is absolutely no way the US would recognize polio as a problem nowadays, or do anything at all useful to try to stop it.
We are not going to write checks to incentivize people to sit at home, and we are not going to bail out businesses if the economy seems strong.
SF Teachers Planning a Mass 'Sickout' on Thursday Over COVID Safety Frustrations:
Hundreds of teachers have signed an online petition saying they won't work Thursday because of SFUSD's alleged COVID safety failings, but can you really have a sickout when more than 10% of the staff is already legitimately out sick? [...]
"By withholding our labor, by reclaiming our time and our health, we send the message that if SFUSD, the City, State, and Federal Government do not invest in seriously addressing this pandemic (and the ongoing issues which make dealing with the pandemic so challenging for public schools), we can shut the whole system down. And we will!"
