Jump to content
A Merry Christmas from Surly Horns to You. ×

CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

Mrs Whiggins

By Mrs Whiggins
in Cloak Room

 Share

Recommended Posts

WBT

WBT 20998

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

If he had the J&J vaccine and died anyway that’s newsworthy because it indicates possibly a potential problem.
 

He’s not the president or a movie star but he’s also not some unknown bum on the street either. His death did make the news. If he died of Covid after getting the J&J vaccine that should be mentioned and it has absolutely nothing to do with politics. If he did have the vaccine I question why that’s not being mentioned. 

Why?  The data are out there.  There are more than enough anecdotal stories passing around that people shouldn't be drawing any conclusions from.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 52.6k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Anastasis

    2588

  • jimmyjazz

    1665

  • 4th&Five

    1305

  • Mrs Whiggins

    1226

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

safe sex
safe sex

I'd just like to point out that neither myself nor any of my fellow nurses, fellow advanced nurse practitioners, and other healthcare providers ever swore an oath that we would lay down our lives for

Bama Chick
Bama Chick

Welp, it finally happened. I snapped in public today. I went into work for a bit this morning because I’m trying to figure out the safest way to host physicians we are recruiting given our CV-19 sit

safe sex
safe sex

I don't really know what to say anymore tbh. What happened last night is hard to put into words for anyone who hasn't worked in a hospital healthcare setting. Just unreal. Everyone is getting fucked.

Posted Images

Brisketexan

Brisketexan 107031

Posted
Posted

The piece you linked is actually the one about the EU maybe changing restrictions. I’m really, really hoping that they’ll continue to allow fully vaxxed people to enter. My son is REALLY looking forward to continuing his studies there, and we’ve already paid for his flight, private dorm starting sept 2, tuition, etc. Some may be refundable if restrictions change, but the money is secondary: the kid just needs to catch a break. He had long mono fuck up his Jr year, then Covid hit right as he was somewhat recovered, he had some semblance of a senior year, but has chosen an educational gap year to grow up and to give the university situations time to stabilize. I just want to get him there and studying, and this goddamned country is fucking shit up.
  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
PenelopeWitherspoon

PenelopeWitherspoon 19334

Posted
Posted
39 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


The piece you linked is actually the one about the EU maybe changing restrictions. I’m really, really hoping that they’ll continue to allow fully vaxxed people to enter. My son is REALLY looking forward to continuing his studies there, and we’ve already paid for his flight, private dorm starting sept 2, tuition, etc. Some may be refundable if restrictions change, but the money is secondary: the kid just needs to catch a break. He had long mono fuck up his Jr year, then Covid hit right as he was somewhat recovered, he had some semblance of a senior year, but has chosen an educational gap year to grow up and to give the university situations time to stabilize. I just want to get him there and studying, and this goddamned country is fucking shit up.

My bad.  I had copied another link.  Here is the JazzFest news.  

https://www.nola.com/news/article_8ba8976e-f87b-11eb-81ee-4b038ea360f1.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites
PenelopeWitherspoon

PenelopeWitherspoon 19334

Posted
Posted
40 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


The piece you linked is actually the one about the EU maybe changing restrictions. I’m really, really hoping that they’ll continue to allow fully vaxxed people to enter. My son is REALLY looking forward to continuing his studies there, and we’ve already paid for his flight, private dorm starting sept 2, tuition, etc. Some may be refundable if restrictions change, but the money is secondary: the kid just needs to catch a break. He had long mono fuck up his Jr year, then Covid hit right as he was somewhat recovered, he had some semblance of a senior year, but has chosen an educational gap year to grow up and to give the university situations time to stabilize. I just want to get him there and studying, and this goddamned country is fucking shit up.

When is his flight?  I am seriously wondering if they would change things before August 30 (that is when the current rules run out).  If they allow the current guidance through August 30th, then I might switch my flights to arrive on the 30th instead of leaving on the 31st.

I am just really hoping that the data is there to continue to support vaccinated folks being able to go without quarantine.  

And I think Biden is WRONG to not let vaccinated Europeans in.  This isn't hard.  Only the vaccinated should be traveling at this point.  

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 78759

Posted
Posted (edited)
57 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


The piece you linked is actually the one about the EU maybe changing restrictions. I’m really, really hoping that they’ll continue to allow fully vaxxed people to enter. My son is REALLY looking forward to continuing his studies there, and we’ve already paid for his flight, private dorm starting sept 2, tuition, etc. Some may be refundable if restrictions change, but the money is secondary: the kid just needs to catch a break. He had long mono fuck up his Jr year, then Covid hit right as he was somewhat recovered, he had some semblance of a senior year, but has chosen an educational gap year to grow up and to give the university situations time to stabilize. I just want to get him there and studying, and this goddamned country is fucking shit up.

 

send him now and a gap year is damn great move

Edited by tx 3 putt
Link to comment
Share on other sites
PenelopeWitherspoon

PenelopeWitherspoon 19334

Posted
Posted
Just now, Anastasis said:

I might have to log into my texags account to go troll those dipshits. 

I looked at Tigerdroppings for 2 seconds earlier.  I left ASAP.  The idiocy just makes me angry.  I get enough of that with the comments on the New York Times articles. You know, for saying the New York Times is fake news, a bunch of mouthbreathers take the time to comment on their articles. Honestly, the world would be better off if a lot of those people had no outlet for their stupidity.  

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Trumpers spent a helluva lot of time telling us it was a bio-weapon, that it was engineered by the Chinese, that it was a deliberate attack/attempt to tank our economy/lose the election for Trump.

And when presented with a solution to avoid that "Chinese bio-weapon", they turn their backs on it.

agreed.

It's illogical as hell.  The solution was basically offered for public distribution for FREE, and they were begging people to utilize it.

That part bugs me probably more than any other aspect, and I think it feeds the justified frustration/ consternation/ anger on here towards non-vaxers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RomaVicta

RomaVicta 30637

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, We’reTexas said:

Checkmate, lib. 
 

63ECA843-593E-4F37-B1F7-7FFC01C94E7A.thumb.jpeg.5c0f7626f2aba5c4d7ab4ac54bd28ee3.jpeg

Yea, I went over there a few days ago. Check out the 63 up votes for this moron. The sensible posts maybe get five or six up votes.

I don't want to go all Randy Duke, but this is how they "think" through everything. Somebody makes something up that sounds reasonable to the unreflective. That becomes an assumption. The entire Aggie Borg construct an Idiot Cube based on the assumption and assume further that all who disagree are the actual idiots.

Lying and idiocy are their most notable traditions.

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted

Borrowed from one of my buddies, actually a first responder/ paramedic, as we were discussing vaccines and naysayers.

"When I read the comments over there, it reminds of this:"

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
pyrohornIII

pyrohornIII 4847

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

Delta is fucking shit up.  Less than 50% of the USA is fully vaxxed because of stupidity.

And a lot of people figure they survived the first wave fine, so no need to take any precautions this time around.   The past 3 or 4 months has been the eye of the storm.   The backside's going to be worse.  

1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

karma is a mother fucker ........

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-radio-newsmax-host-who-opposed-covid-vaccine-dies-covid-n1276304

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dick-farrell-death-covid-vaccine-b1899092.html

I am going to bet that none of these stories about these right wing morons are getting any type of play on NewsMax, OANN, Fox, etc.   

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
WhatTheBuck

WhatTheBuck 28941

Posted
Posted
35 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Yea, I went over there a few days ago. Check out the 63 up votes for this moron. The sensible posts maybe get five or six up votes.

I don't want to go all Randy Duke, but this is how they "think" through everything. Somebody makes something up that sounds reasonable to the unreflective. That becomes an assumption. The entire Aggie Borg construct an Idiot Cube based on the assumption and assume further that all who disagree are the actual idiots.

Lying and idiocy are their most notable traditions.

And college men from LSU
Went in dumb, come out dumb too

- Randy Newman (Rednecks, 1974)

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 2
  • Drool 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Fletch

Fletch 5817

Posted
Posted
58 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

I looked at Tigerdroppings for 2 seconds earlier.  I left ASAP.  The idiocy just makes me angry.  I get enough of that with the comments on the New York Times articles. You know, for saying the New York Times is fake news, a bunch of mouthbreathers take the time to comment on their articles. Honestly, the world would be better off if a lot of those people had no outlet for their stupidity.  

Like they used to? I wasn’t around yet but seems like y’all had a good deal goin in the 80’s without all these shitass platforms. I’m probably wrong though 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RDCanecutter

RDCanecutter 26924

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, Fletch said:

Like they used to? I wasn’t around yet but seems like y’all had a good deal goin in the 80’s without all these shitass platforms. I’m probably wrong though 

There were Letters to the Editor. In the 80s I worked at a newspaper made out of paper. Next to me was where they cut (with scissors) and pasted (with hot wax) the master copies of the sheets. The ones who did that routinely laughed at and ridiculed the readers who had written letters to the editor. Then when they were done getting everything to lithography to burn the plates they used to print it, they'd go out to the Toyota Tercel and smoke some weed.

But yeah, in the 80s, most people would just voice their opinions by going to a bar and running off at the mouth.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
elfenix

elfenix 34782

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:


The piece you linked is actually the one about the EU maybe changing restrictions. I’m really, really hoping that they’ll continue to allow fully vaxxed people to enter. My son is REALLY looking forward to continuing his studies there, and we’ve already paid for his flight, private dorm starting sept 2, tuition, etc. Some may be refundable if restrictions change, but the money is secondary: the kid just needs to catch a break. He had long mono fuck up his Jr year, then Covid hit right as he was somewhat recovered, he had some semblance of a senior year, but has chosen an educational gap year to grow up and to give the university situations time to stabilize. I just want to get him there and studying, and this goddamned country is fucking shit up.

you should put him on the next plane to europe.  if he has to sit in a hotel for a bit before the program starts that's better than missing the whole thing, which is what will happen if you wait. 

  • Hook 'Em 4
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
hookemATL

hookemATL 12317

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


I hope so. The set backs of the past two years have sent hi. Through some bouts of depression, and his mental health is a real battle and concern. It’s no freaking joke.

Just keep fighting the good fight.
 

As a parent you are always in a state of worry, and covid has launched my anxiety and concern for my kids mental well being into the stratosphere.

even in normal times teenagers are all over the place, and they can really go to some dark places when life is putting up roadblocks. I can only imagine the toll this must be taking on him, and kudos to you for recognizing, prioritizing, and taking action to help him find his way. These are unprecedented times, and there will likely be more bullshit that he will have to overcome before all this is over.  But he has you and the rest of the fam, and he will be better for it in the long run.  
 

I sincerely wish him the best and hope he gets the opportunity to plow Bavarian ass, drink good beer, and enjoy his time overseas.  

 

 

  • Hook 'Em 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32612

Posted
Posted

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/delta-variant-most-prevalent/2021/08/08/d1017f0e-f558-11eb-9068-bf463c8c74de_story.html

 

Quote

The variant battle in the United States is over. Delta won.

Since late last year, the country has been overrun by a succession of coronavirus variants, each with its own suite of mutations conferring slightly different viral traits. For much of this year, the alpha variant — officially known as B.1.1.7 and first seen in the United Kingdom — looked like the clear winner, accounting for the majority of cases by April. In second place was iota, B.1.526, first seen in New York City. A few others made the rogue’s gallery of variants: gamma, beta, epsilon.

 

Quote

Then came delta — B.1.617.2. It had spread rapidly in India, but in the United States, it sat there for months, doing little as the alpha advanced. As recently as May 8, delta caused only about 1 percent of new infections nationally.

Today, it has nearly wiped out all of its rivals. The coronavirus pandemic in America has become a delta pandemic. By the end of July, it accounted for 93.4 percent of new infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

Quote

The speed with which it dominated the pandemic has left scientists nervous about what the virus will do next. The variant battles of 2021 are part of a longer war, one that is far from over.

Delta is sending thousands of people into hospitals every day and has knocked the Biden administration back on its heels. In a few short weeks, the delta variant changed the calculations for what it will take to end the pandemic.

 

Spoiler

Epidemiologists had hoped getting 70 or 80 percent of the population vaccinated, in combination with immunity from natural infections, would bring the virus under control. But a more contagious virus means the vaccination target has to be much higher, perhaps in the range of 90 percent.

Globally, that could take years. In the United States, the target may be impossible to reach anytime soon given the hardened vaccine resistance in a sizable fraction of the country, the fact that children under 12 remain ineligible and the persistent circulation of disinformation about vaccines and the pandemic.

With so many people unvaccinated, in the United States and around the world, the virus has abundant opportunity not only to spread and sicken large numbers of people, but to mutate further. Some scientists have expressed hope that the virus has reached peak “fitness,” but there is no evidence this is so.

“To see delta just running laps around these other strains is very concerning,” said Benjamin Neuman, a virologist with Texas A&M University. “It’s like ‘Jurassic Park’ the moment you realize the dinosaurs have all got loose again.”

Delta’s meteoric takeover of the pandemic in the United States brought a jarring, premature end to a summer of relative freedom from the global viral emergency. Just as schools and workplaces were ready to hit reset and embrace a level of normalcy, indoor mask-wearing is back in much of the country, regardless of vaccination status.

Hospitals in states with low vaccination rates are struggling to cope with a flood of patients. At the same time, vaccination rates are jumping as the reality of the pandemic and the efficacy of the vaccines overcome fear, inertia and disinformation.

A dangerous brew

Several factors have played a role in the rise of delta:

Behavior. This is almost impossible for researchers to quantify. As infection numbers started dropping in mid-April, people began returning to crowded gyms, restaurants, ballparks, indoor theaters, dance clubs. The CDC said vaccinated people didn’t need to wear masks. Human nature took over. Only the hypervigilant refused to behave as if the pandemic hadn’t ended.

Vaccine resistance. When the United States was reporting 3 million inoculations each day, it appeared plausible that by July 4 the Biden administration would reach its goal of 70 percent of adults with at least one shot. But in May, the rate of vaccination slowed dramatically. As of today, more than 90 million people nationwide who could get a shot haven’t. Tens of millions of children remain ineligible because the vaccines do not have approval for those age groups yet.

The delta variant itself. The rapid ascendancy to total domination is the real-world proof that this variant is different. For virologists studying the coronavirus up close, that difference remains somewhat mysterious. Scientists are racing to understand what makes this variant so successful. They are studying it in animal models and in petri dishes, and scrutinizing the genomes of thousands of closely related lineages.

What’s most sobering to scientists is how the coronavirus keeps getting better at jumping from person to person.

The original strain that emerged in Wuhan, China, had an estimated reproductive number — an “R-naught” — of roughly 2.5. That’s the average number of new infections generated by each infected person in a population without immunity or mitigations. Any number above 1 means that outbreaks will expand and spread. But the CDC and other scientists say delta has a reproductive number greater than 5.

The result is what the United States has endured this summer: viral explosion.

'Sicker quicker'

Although the greater transmissibility of delta is clear at this point, scientists are less certain about whether it has enhanced virulence — that is, whether it’s more likely to make a person severely ill. The evidence on disease severity is limited and largely anecdotal.

Stephen Brierre, chief of critical care at Baton Rouge General in Louisiana, said the onset of respiratory failure requiring ventilation seems to be more rapid: “This is observational and anecdotal at this point: They get sicker quicker.”

Emily L. Tull, a nurse practitioner in the covid unit at Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Shreveport, La., said she is encountering more renal failure, more liver damage and more blood clots in patients since delta took over. More patients are unable to get off ventilators, she said.

Under normal circumstances, one nurse manages two patients in intensive care. In recent weeks, Tull said, “these patients are so sick they’re requiring one-on-one care.”

Patients are younger compared with earlier in the pandemic, perhaps because fewer young people are vaccinated. Tull said health-care workers are “having to make the decision of, do we start dialysis on a healthy 25-year-old?”

In Alabama, where about 43 percent of adults are fully vaccinated and virtually all 67 counties are reporting high levels of community transmission, health officials are seeing inpatient data supporting that “delta may be more harmful,” according to Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the infectious-diseases division at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine.

At the 1,200-bed UAB hospital, patients hospitalized for covid-19 are younger, the patients who have died are younger, and there appears to be greater use of a last-resort treatment, called ECMO, that can mechanically substitute for badly damaged lungs. The heavy use of ECMO “connotes truly serious systemic illness,” Marrazzo wrote in an email.

An internal CDC document, first disclosed late last month by The Washington Post, cited several studies from other countries showing that infections with delta are more likely to result in hospitalization. The document concluded that greater disease severity is “likely” with delta — one reason the authors said the agency needed to “acknowledge the war has changed.”

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Thursday that such research is preliminary. She noted that the delta variant spread rapidly in a time when mitigation efforts such as masking and social distancing had been relaxed. That has led to many more people being exposed and made it difficult for researchers to disentangle the severity of the virus from important changes in how people are exposed to it.

A mystery story

At the CDC, the war has indeed changed. The agency has often acted at the pace of an academic institution. It can be glacial in putting out new guidance. Delta forced it to accelerate its normal process when evidence emerged that vaccinated people with breakthrough infections are spreading the virus. The agency changed its masking guidance without initially publishing the data that incited the change.

A “full-court press” to understand the delta is underway at the agency and will continue “until we break this surge,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Vaccinations remain key. All three vaccines with emergency use authorization in the United States are highly effective at preventing severe illness or death from delta or other variants. Vaccinated people rarely need hospitalization for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Delta is spreading fastest in areas with low vaccination rates. Vaccination lowers the risk of infection eightfold and the risk of hospitalization or death 25-fold, according to the CDC.

But vaccinated people are getting sick, too. Delta appears to be slightly more capable than some other variants at causing breakthrough infections, which are usually mild to moderate cases that do not require hospitalization.

The rising number of breakthrough infections isn’t surprising: As the number of vaccinated people increases, and delta swarms the nation, it’s inevitable that the virus will sometimes sneak past the enormously robust shield of protection afforded by vaccines.

The recent Provincetown, Mass., outbreak that drew national attention illustrates the point. The people who flocked to the tourist town at the tip of Cape Cod were overwhelmingly vaccinated. Hundreds of people became infected, three-fourths of them with breakthrough cases. But the vaccines kept them from becoming severely ill: Only four people with breakthrough infections were hospitalized. What alarmed the CDC were tests showing that vaccinated people with delta infections had viral loads similar to those among unvaccinated people. That suggested vaccinated people could spread the virus.

There is limited data on how common breakthrough cases are. The CDC has published only its tally of breakthrough hospitalizations and deaths, not infections. Vaccinated people who have mild symptoms of covid-19 may think they have a summer cold and never get tested.

Walensky and Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy have said in recent weeks that 97 percent of people hospitalized with covid-19 were unvaccinated. A document posted Monday by the White House stated, “Virtually all U.S. Hospitalizations and Deaths are Among Unvaccinated People.” The document cited that in Ohio, 99.5 percent of deaths and 98.8 percent of hospitalizations were among the unvaccinated.

But officials have relied on older data that does not capture the current impact of the delta, Walensky acknowledged Thursday when questioned at a White House covid-19 task force briefing.

The Ohio health department, contacted by The Post, confirmed the numbers for the state but noted that the data covers Jan. 1 to July 21. Walensky said she had been relying on data from January to June. The use of figures from early in the year skews the picture by including a large number of people sickened and killed by the virus before vaccinations were widely available.

Walensky said Thursday that her agency plans to update the breakthrough data.

The uncertainty about breakthrough infections “is disconcerting, and I think the reality is it’s humbling as a medical community,” said William G. Morice II, chair of the department of laboratory medicine and pathology at the Mayo Clinic.

“Even with the whole world being focused on covid, we still don’t truly understand the intricacies of the virus and its interplay with the immune system,” he said.

A numbers game

A Colorado county, perched on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, tells the story of delta’s swift spread.

In early May, five cases of the delta variant were reported in Mesa County. The extent of the threat was still emerging, but public health officials urged residents to get vaccinated. They noted that only 36 percent of people eligible for a shot had been fully vaccinated. In late May, the county announced the first pediatric death from covid-19 — a child infected with delta and too young for a vaccine.

In late June, the Country Jam music festival opened. Public health officials sent a bus to administer vaccines on-site, and used signs and messages on the Jumbotron to warn concertgoers about delta.

By early August, there were nearly 900 known cases of infection caused by the delta variant. Vaccines remained the best protection against severe illness, but about half of known cases were in fully vaccinated people.

The national numbers are similarly vertical. The seven-day rolling average of cases used by The Post showed about 13,000 new cases a day July 1. On Friday, that figure topped 100,000, and there is no sign of the curve flattening. Deaths are rising sharply as well: The daily average jumped from 209 on July 6 to 489 on Friday, a month later.

Because the delta variant replicates so well when it gets inside human cells, the infectious dose may be lower. Infected people may also begin shedding the virus sooner and in greater quantities. It’s a numbers game, and delta has numbers on its side. Rapid replication of the virus has probably shortened the period between a person getting infected and becoming infectious, to perhaps two or three days rather than five or six.

The flip side is that the delta surge is expected to peak faster. A more contagious virus finds susceptible people quickly and burns through that “fuel” faster. This may explain why the United Kingdom and India have both experienced surprisingly swift drop in cases after recent delta surges.

Delta surprised me'

Human beings have never before seen viral evolution in such vivid scientific detail. Genomic sequencing technologies developed in recent years allow scientists to witness the evolution of a pandemic virus in real time, as one lineage evolves into another.

Scientists say the delta variant’s mutations look, at first glance, unremarkable compared with the mutations in variants it has outcompeted. It lacks some of the immunity-evading mutations seen in gamma and beta, for example.

But one mutation, P681R, may play an outsized role in boosting delta. The coronavirus requires two steps to get into the cell, akin to putting a key into a lock and turning it to open the door. Most of the mutations identified in the other “variants of concern” seem to improve the key’s fit to the lock, said Vineet D. Menachery, a scientist who studies coronaviruses at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. The P681R mutation seems to improve how the key is turned, making it better at getting into cells.

Most laboratory research has focused on the spike protein the virus uses to enter cells. But delta has mutations that affect other regions — and little is known about what they do.

Nevan Krogan, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biosciences, found this year that the highly contagious alpha variant may have derived some of its advantage from being able to suppress a person’s innate immune response. That’s the first line of defense against an infection. He and colleagues are exploring whether something similar helps delta.

“When these variants started, everybody was talking ‘spike, spike, spike,’ ” Krogan said. “Obviously, spike is involved in this, getting virus into cells more effectively . . . there’s other mutations that are somehow suppressing the immune response.”

Menachery said he regularly debates with people in his laboratory and other scientists about the evolutionary potential of the virus. He describes this coronavirus as a “Goldilocks virus” — many things have to be just right for it to remain successful. A mutation that helps the virus enter a cell, for example, might come with an Achilles’ heel, making it less stable.

That leaves the open question of whether delta is the fittest — that is, the worst — version of the virus, or whether it could acquire some new mutations that make it even more formidable.

“Nobody knows what tricks the virus has left,” said Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “It’s possible we’ve seen all of its chess moves, or its poker tricks, but it’s got a very big complicated genome and it probably still has some space to explore.”

Like everyone else, scientists are wondering when SARS-CoV-2’s contagiousness will peak.

“Delta surprised me,” said Trevor Bedford, an expert on viral evolution at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “This doesn’t happen with an influenza pandemic. It doesn’t happen with Ebola. It doesn’t happen with most other things.”

He knows it can’t keep evolving to become more transmissible forever. Eventually, the virus will hit a ceiling, he said.

“But it’s not exactly clear what that is.”

 

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Gatorubet

Gatorubet 30789

Posted
Posted

So this just happened: my ex-bil passed. I went to Annapolis (Academy grad) for his funeral recently, as my ex-wife’s brother or no, I knew the guy 30 years and we got along fine. One of his sisters (not my ex) is married to a West Point grad and live in Duval County Florida. So - dead bil’s widow is doing a visit family tour post funeral. She stays in Jax with her in-laws, and the last day there before returning home to Bama finds out NONE of them are vaccinated. Widow lives near her son and grandkids and realizes she may have been exposed and infected non-vaxed grandkids.

Big shit storm war in extended family over this - muh freedumbs versus silence is a lie, etc.

It’s great to be divorced sometimes.

  • Like 1
  • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Neonmoon

Neonmoon 38130

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

It’ll be like the good ole days talking HCQ with triple. Except even more brain damaged. 

Yeah I’ve noticed this new talking point among the anti-vax recently that the Covid vaccine isn’t a vaccine because it doesn’t prevent spread like the polio vaccine. It’s obviously untrue but it’s a weird turn in the world of stupidity 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Celery Man

Celery Man 21106

Posted
Posted

Hinojosa saw me do a quick double take when she walked into Papalote once while I was waiting on an order. I mean quick - I glanced because she’s cute and then glanced back because I had just seen her speak the previous night at an event. She introduced herself on my way out (in a very politician way, not penthouse letter way). I bet she can read name tags without looking, interested to see how high up she climbs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
justhookit

justhookit 4208

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

As much as I hate Cuomo, I wish the motherfucker would ban travel from FL.  We did it once, we should do it again.  Too many people go back and forth between NYC and South Florida.  

Yes, that will solve the Covid problem in NY. JFC.

You and I probably agree on most everything Covid related. I’m sorry you don’t see that. Peace, woman.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
 Share
Go to topic listing


Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!

×
×
  • Create New...