CDC To Restructure After COVID Failure, 'Confusing and Overwhelming' Guidance (arstechnica.com) 277
After persistent and often harsh criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and now the monkeypox emergency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will
undergo a significant overhaul, involving cultural and structural changes aimed at realizing its prior reputation as the world's premier public health agency. From a report: "For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in an email to CDC's 11,000-person staff Wednesday, which was seen by The New York Times and Stat News. "My goal is a new, public health action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness."
Though the CDC endured meddling and undermining during the Trump administration, many of the agency's pandemic misfires were unforced errors -- such as the failure to stand up reliable SARS-CoV-2 testing in the early days and muddled messaging on masks. In a meeting with senior staff Wednesday, Walensky made a startling acknowledgement of the failures while outlining the overhaul in broad strokes. The cultural changes appear aimed at stamping out pedantic data analyses that have slowed and hampered the agency's public health responses. A briefing document provided to the Times said the goal is for CDC staff to "produce data for action" as opposed to "data for publication." As such, the agency will cut down on the time allowed to review studies before they're released. The agency will also change the way it grants promotions to staff, placing more emphasis on public health impact rather than the number of scientific publications.
Though the CDC endured meddling and undermining during the Trump administration, many of the agency's pandemic misfires were unforced errors -- such as the failure to stand up reliable SARS-CoV-2 testing in the early days and muddled messaging on masks. In a meeting with senior staff Wednesday, Walensky made a startling acknowledgement of the failures while outlining the overhaul in broad strokes. The cultural changes appear aimed at stamping out pedantic data analyses that have slowed and hampered the agency's public health responses. A briefing document provided to the Times said the goal is for CDC staff to "produce data for action" as opposed to "data for publication." As such, the agency will cut down on the time allowed to review studies before they're released. The agency will also change the way it grants promotions to staff, placing more emphasis on public health impact rather than the number of scientific publications.
about the washing of hands . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Has anyone anywhere ever caught COVID because they didn't wash their hands? Yet the warning persists- wash your hands! A whole industry grew up distributing alcohol based hand cleaners. As far as I can tell there has never been evidence of transmission via dirty hands, and yet the official warning remains. How is this any different from the bad advice offered by the former president? Shouldn't there be some science behind CDC recommendations?
Re:about the washing of hands . . . (Score:5, Informative)
How is this any different from the bad advice offered by the former president?
Because washing your hands is, at worst, harmless, unlike ingesting Ivermectin.
Re:about the washing of hands . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Ivermectin is taken by dogs once a month. Also people too for parasites. It also won a Nobel Prize. Ivermectin: a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honoured distinction with indicated efficacy against a new global scourge, COVID-19 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov] Science!!!
The Nobel you speak of was awarded in 2015, this was before. Covid 19 (as in the years 2019) was even a thing. The people who discovered Ivermectin got a Nobel but the Nobel was awarded for its discovery as a drug wight effectiveness as a drug to treat parasitic infections, not Covid-19 because the Covid 19 pandemic (as in the years 2019) hadn't happened yet. The Nobel was not awarded for the discovery of Ivermectin as an anti-viral drug. Ivermectin does not cure Covid-19, it has no significant effect on the virus:
https://www.bbc.com/news/healt... [bbc.com]
Merck - one of the companies that makes the drug - said there was "no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against Covid-19".
Science!!!
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"one of the" means that Ivermectin is off patent, meaning that anyone can make it. Merck is unique among ivermectin producers, I think, in that they have promised to give it away for free "as much as needed, for as long as needed"
Merck has two on-patent COVID drugs in the pipeline, expected to be worth about 10 billion dollars, if approved.
The data on ivermectin is not hard to find [ivmmeta.com] if anyone wants to look it up.
Re:about the washing of hands . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Meh. My friend regularly washes his hands, before the pandemic. OCD? Not really, just washes them after touching public surfaces, before touching food, etc. And yet he annoys us by reminding us that the's not had the flu in thirty years. I think there's a likely connection there.
I don't understand the MAGA hatred for this given that Trump is the biggest germ phobe out there and regularly does the handwashing, I'd have thought they'd be first in line to emulate it.
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Has anyone anywhere ever caught COVID because they didn't wash their hands?
Pretty much not. Turns out transmission is respiratory. That was figured out relatively quickly in the epidemic, but it took a long time for the "transmission is mostly airborne" to shift to "transmission is almost entirely airborne, and then for that information to filter down. Here's the WHO information [who.int] as of July 9 2020, about 6 months after the first cases (note that "fomite" refers to viral contamination of surfaces) "Despite consistent evidence as to SARS-CoV-2 contamination of surfaces and the surv
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Handwashing is less about keeping hands clean, and more like not accidentally causing ingestion of diseases through vulnerable membranes.
The most common way to get infected is not having a dirty hand, but touching that dirty hand against something on you that can't handle it - like your eyes.
Rubbing your eyes is something lots of people do, and for many, it's an involuntary habit that they will touch their eyes to rub something out of it. It's an incredibly difficult habit to break, and it's why it's a prim
This concerns me (Score:5, Insightful)
The cultural changes appear aimed at stamping out pedantic data analyses that have slowed and hampered the agency's public health responses. ...the goal is for CDC staff to "produce data for action" as opposed to "data for publication." As such, the agency will cut down on the time allowed to review studies before they're released.
For me, I like well-researched information flowing out of a scientific institution like the CDC. We depend on their scientific authority, especially in order to counter the information warfare that exists when particular presidents start saying that drinking bleach is a viable means of fighting COVID. Their authority depends on their information being as accurate as possible If the CDC starts spewing out "data for action" that screws up the science and sends everyone scurrying in the wrong direction, they will lose that authority and won't be able to get it back.
In this age of information warfare, the CDC should behave less like an infantryman and more like a sniper. We don't need a hail of information being fired at us; need targeted and accurate messages that won't miss their mark.
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Sure, but at the beginning of a pandemic we don't have time to perform a year long double blind case study on the efficacy of wearing masks. In all the time they've had to study previous pandemics they should have some basic messaging about transmission vectors, sanitation, warning the old and infirm that they're at higher risk, etc. Instead we got a lot of confused messaging and mask mandates (which they should have known would backfire, like any other mandate).
I also expect the CDC to have strategic suppl
Good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the CDC are facing is just a symptom of lack of leadership across the board.
Where I live, in the UK, we had the same lack of leadership as the US did during the pandemic - we're right up there in the league tables with our friends across the pond.
Populism has overtaken leadership and grand visions.
We have morons for leaders, pretty much. Narcissists.
Our next Prime Minister could be the mobile toting selfie-queen know as Lizz Truss, a "pound shop thatcher" - devoid of any original thought and any concern over anything but herself.
What we have experienced in the UK over the last few decades, mirrors the US - our governments are no longer in control in any shape or form.
They are beholden to "big money" - it's all about the revolving door, from politics into a fancy high paying corporate role - and the other way around.
Our governments are no longer about the people they are supposed to serve, but rather about serving corporate profit - it's that simple.
What the CDC have experienced, is a side-effect of that lack of leadership.
Revolution beckons - but will probably be nipped at the bud by civilisation collapse due to climate breakdown anyway.
Choose your poison, get prepping - the end of this civilisation is coming very soon...
Re:Good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid voters get a government that reflects themselves!
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
-Henry Louis Mencken; On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
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Stupid voters get a government that reflects themselves!
Given the average reading level in the US, it's not hard to see why this works.
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People used to complain about Tony Blair. Compared to what we have now, Tony seems like a genius.
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The success or failure of an organization is never about policies, procedures, goals, wishes, hopes, or dreams. It's about people. The CDC gave us terrible, conflicting advice, and they did so consistently. In fact, they're still doing it.
Why? Because we have the wrong people working there. If you don't find better people, you won't get better results, it's really just that simple.
This latest effort is doomed to failure from the start because the people who failed us so completely are the exact, same people
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The issue the CDC had was, they are used to passing data onto people who then would take appropriate action.
The typical chain was; CDC (Produced Data supporting a conclusion and passes this data on to other groups and countries to re-confirm the conclusions or help in refining the data so its more detailed) => Goes to political aggregators (Health and Human Services of the US Government who would propose a
They really failed the "social science" (Score:5, Insightful)
The part where they really failed was the social science.
They deliberately downplayed masks when they had information that masks would be a good idea because tjhey worried about gougers/hoarders - and yeah that was a concern, but by giving bad info they fed the fires of the anti-maskers
When the CDC announced that fully vaccinated people were OK to go without masks ... they were failing to consider that the unvaccinated who were already ignoring mask mandates or who reluctantly masked up - would immediately unmask as well - they should have held off removing the mandates till it was epidemiologically safe for everyone to stop masking - and with the variants about - honestly that time has not yet come.
It can't work. (Score:3)
People want simple right answers. When something new comes along, the right answers aren't known, and even relatively simple advice gets reinterpreted by PR flacks.
E.g. "Save the N95 masks for those who will be most exposed" got watered down to "don't use masks". And lots of people *still* believe that "don't use masks" was the real message.
Re:It can't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Save the N95 masks for those who will be most exposed" got watered down to "don't use masks". And lots of people *still* believe that "don't use masks" was the real message.
Not so fast. I was there too, and I remember Dr. Fauci saying, in effect, that masks don't work. Later, when everyone (including him) was saying that masks do work and we all needed to wear a mask in public, he justified his anti-mask comments by saying that he was worried about hoarding, and wanted the masks left for people who needed them.
Scott Adams was saying at the time that in his opinion the "masks don't work" comments were obvious lies, and that probably they were worried about hoarding. With the benefit of hindsight I think Scott Adams nailed it.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether Dr. Fauci actually lied. I think his guidance was so misleading as to count as a lie, but you may think otherwise.
IMHO it would have been better to straightforwardly tell the truth. "Masks are not 100% effective but they will help slow the spread. We want everyone to wear a mask if possible, but right this moment masks are in short supply, and we ask everyone to leave the N95 masks for those who really need them."
IMHO giving anti-mask guidance made many people distrustful of the advice they were given after the guidance switched to pro-mask. "If they were lying to us about masks, why should I trust them on anything?"
https://reason.com/2021/06/04/anthony-fauci-may-not-have-lied-about-face-masks-but-he-was-not-exactly-honest-either/ [reason.com]
Questions need to be asked (Score:2)
At first we genuinely didn't know what we were dealing with. Now we do.
Long after we had the information we needed the media and government continued with the OMG WERE ALL GOING TO DIE narrative, regardless of what the data said. Yes, people died. Few died of COVID, most died with COVID. A difference. The vast majority were in well-defined risk groups - if you're fat or old or already have lung issues COVID will fuck you up - but we shut down our entire society anyway. Why? Was it worth it?
COVID is no j
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Same data diametrically opposite conclusions (Score:2)
A briefing document provided to the Times said the goal is for CDC staff to "produce data for action" as opposed to "data for publication." As such, the agency will cut down on the time allowed to review studies before they're released.
One of the core issues with CDC's "response" is they were running around like a code monkeys eager to ship their wares the second they could get it to compile. Doubling down on more of the same is to say the least counterproductive.
What the CDC should do is have all studies properly peer reviewed prior to release and avoid confusing "science" with "policy" especially when addressing the public.
When I see CDC products publishing figures out of line with or directly contradicted by preexisting studies this i
Good. (Score:2)
Re: Guidance it should be (Score:2, Insightful)
#1 should be transparency.
But I suspect this is like that old Dilbert cartoon about restructuring;
Boss:. What do you do when you get a flat?
Wally: if I'm you, I rotate the tires and drive away
The organization is so hopelessly inept and corrupt the only real thing to do is dissolve it. I know I won't ever trust anyone ever associated with it again.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
> The organization is so hopelessly inept and corrupt the only real thing to do is dissolve it. I know I won't ever trust anyone ever associated with it again.
I'm curious why you say that? Because the recommendations changed as the situation changed, and as more data became available? That's mostly what I've heard from people.
For me, I would trust them LESS if they were still giving the exact same recommendation today as they were 2 1/2 years ago, as if they hadn't learned anything and the situation hadn't changed at all in the last few years.
Wrong lessons. (Score:2)
So now the CDC says they will produce "data for action" rather than "data for publication". And they will promote based on public health impact rather than number of scientific papers. So they have learned the wrong lesson. The muddled messaging about covid resulted from a desire to affect the behavior of people. Rather than tell people the truth and let them come to a conclusion about whether the action recommendations are correct, the CDC wants to skip the part about telling the truth and jump directl
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The CDC is more interested in "public health" than my health.
I don't think you're wrong, but arguably that's also not the wrong approach for an agency with their charter. When a public health agency looks at the nation as a whole and says "how do we get the largest reduction in death/infection/whatever," they really have to look at it on a statistical data-driven level, not what's best for you personally.
That said I also do think they massively botched the whole COVID thing, start to finish, in both messag
Re: Wrong lessons. (Score:5, Insightful)
From a narrow utilitarian perspective you are right.
If you balance the utilitarian consideration with a philosophical one, you might be wrong.
For various reasons spread over various times through history, we have collectively concluded that some things are worth their costs: accountable government, human rights, the vague all-encompassing abstraction called "freedom."
You may disagree when it's your own life on the line (or you might not...you never know in advance) or you might come to agree rather strenuously when they bring around the welding torches to seal you into your house for everyone else's good.
All I know is that while I don't want to die from a preventable illness, I also don't want to enable and normalize the petty tyrants who live among us and gravitate to government by ceding fundamental things like freedom of speech ("combat medical disinformation!"), freedom of assembly for to seek a redress of grievances ("no you can't protest lockdowns; you may only loot and riot to protest the concept of law enforcement!"), and the presumption of innocence with a burden of proof on the state to restrict my freedoms ("if you leave your home you could be murdering anyone you breathe on!").
All this shit may bring covid numbers down but it is fundamentally contrary to the ideal of a government that is constituted by the people to serve the people with their consent, rather than a government that exists to rule the people.
Perhaps some of these emergency temporary measures might have been excusable if there were evidence of success and/or competence associated with them. There was none. What there was was conspicuous innumeracy, deliberate obtuseness (in the form of a decision to not run any scientific trials and outsource nearly all data collection to the third world), and a very transparent attempt to use the emergency as an excuse to apply Chinese tactics on American citizens.
Maybe I don't hope they all hang, but I do keep a gun in my house in case the welding brigades ever come around.
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It seems a sizable percentage of your population came to their own conclusion anyway, which is why the US has a pandemic toll few other countries wish to emulate.
The reason the US had a high pandemic toll was because we have lots of unhealthy people and lots of old people compared to other countries. If what you said were true, Africa would have a horribly high toll, but they didn't. Also if what you said were true then China would have no outbreak. In fact, I can't think of a single country or region where the data supports your conclusion.
I think you are exactly the type of person folks are talking about in this thread. Your real interest (whether you know i
Re: Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm curious why you say that? Because the recommendations changed as the situation changed, and as more data became available?
They made claims about the vaccine that ended up being false. So they made a claim about a product they didn't have enough information about. When they claimed that vaccinated people couldn't carry the virus [businessinsider.com], people lost their jobs. That was irresponsible. They went back and changed their guidance once it became too obvious to refute that they did actually carry the virus.
They abused their role/power, and that injured citizens. That wasn't their only misstep either. Like when they claimed natural immunity wasn't as protective as the vaccines [wsj.com]. They should have just said they don't know what the results are yet. Being honest helps build confidence.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm curious why you say that? Because the recommendations changed as the situation changed, and as more data became available?
They made claims about the vaccine that ended up being false.
Welcome to science. Science is a series of course corrections that asymptotically approaches truth.
In the face of a deadly pandemic, you have to act on the best information you have, you can't wait until all of the results of the long-term studies are in, because that still hasn't happened yet, and won't for some time yet. This inevitably means that some of your actions will be wrong. The problem is, there's no way to know which ones are wrong, because science, although always wrong to some degree, is still the most reliable source of information we have.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the recommendations changed as the situation changed, and as more data became available? That's mostly what I've heard from people.
For me, I would trust them LESS if they were still giving the exact same recommendation today as they were 2 1/2 years ago, as if they hadn't learned anything and the situation hadn't changed at all in the last few years.
The problem that happened was political. COVID-19 obviously had massive political implications because people were scared and it was going to dramatically affect every corner of society. The CDC as designed is a scientific agency and for decades has been very good at what they do. However they were thrust into a role of public policy setting. The Trump Administration had a big hand [science.org] in the political breakdown between the Administration, which should be setting policy, and the CDC which was on the front lines of figuring this thing out, but the CDC also has some real mud on it's face because they came at public policy with science.
I don't buy the fact that the recommendations changed as the situation became available. I work in science; I'm extremely familiar with how you can build in one direction until data tells you something else and you go a different direction. That's how science works, and scientists are experienced with dealing with that. The public, particularly a frightened public, is not.
As an example,Fauci [businessinsider.com] should never have advised against wearing masks, regardless of what the context of the time was. Masks are a low burden, and the data later changed. As a scientist, he knows data can change conclusions, but in his role and his platform talking from a science perspective confuses the average American. It may have been correct scientifically, but if everyone started wearing masks the cost was relatively low and harmless if it did nothing, but if it actually did something the benefit would be high, so by saying this he confused the public and it was just bad policy.
The CDC also badly botched the test kit rollout [science.org], on a faulty PCR reagent. PCR testing has been around since 1982; a mistake like this is just sloppy and crushed public confidence in the CDC.
There's a lot of missed opportunities and blame to go around, but the CDC had numerous forced errors and black eyes in this whole situation. The Director is 100% right; public confidence must be restored or the value of the science they put out will never be trusted.
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The "assaults on freedom" are necessary at times, and this was one of those times. You're required to wear clothes in public, so why did so many freak out and claim to be living under a dictatorship because of a trivial mask mandate? A bunch of babies, more concerned about their own comfort than the fact that people were dying. This generation would never have survived WWII, they'd instead be bitching about why they can't get nylons and gasoline is rationed. Didn't help that the moron in chief was decla
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This generation would never have survived WWII, they'd instead be bitching about why they can't get nylons and gasoline is rationed.
I’m picturing the London blitz happening and asking for everyone to turn off their lights. Today’s response would be “fuck you I do what I want” as they fire up the flood lights.
These same babies don’t have any reservations about wearing masks while protesting outside the local FBI office.
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Clothes are actually optional in public, in most places, as long as your reproductive organs are not exposed.
In many places, such as Minneapolis, that means women can go around completely naked (reproductive organs are internal) and men are required to tuck it or cover it.
Just throwing it out there.
Re:Guidance it should be (Score:4, Insightful)
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Also, masks work very well in limiting the spread of influenza. In the early days the cause of the spread was not widely known. I suspect there was some pushback because mask wearing is too "asian" for some Americans, especially those intent to blame it all on China.
I find the mask works great. Everyone who sees me wearing one instantly backs off 10 feet because I'm not MAGA enough for them.
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That is where messaging from the government, CDC and **ESPECIALLY** the media fucked it up! True, some "masks" amplified aerosols and it was known pretty early but even years afterwards we still see ignorant people wearing those wind-breaker masks.
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WhereTF did you get your science from? Iran?
Do you know what science is? Do you even have a science degree?
If so, do you know what cognitive dissonance is? Dunning-Kruger?
Abstinence works best; otherwise use protection... and not the cheap shit full of holes... so... why don't we allow condoms with holes but we'll allow people to mask up with cloth chin diapers? Yeah, men wrap up your junk in cloth for protection!
Re:Guidance it should be (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do surgeons wear masks while operating? Is there something from their mouths that might cause contamination?
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Sounds pretty par for the course for Slashdot.
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What the hell is so flamebaitey about this comment? It's right on the money.
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The comment advocates doxxing of all participants in CDC studies. It is difficult to believe that it is a genuine opinion.
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Re:lies lies lies yeah (Score:5, Informative)
For those of us in the west, having any medical expense covered by the government is such a shocking development that calling the vaccine "free" is not that far from the truth. Yes, somebody paid for it. But when a place of business offering the vaccine states it's "free," look for the little print. It likely says something about "to the recipient on time of injection" or some such similar wording.
I'd rather the government put that money into vaccines for me and my neighbors than more weapons to bomb people with a slightly different shade of skin than me. It's false on the surface, sure. But if the money isn't required up-front out of my wallet, for a walk-in medical procedure? In America? Holy crap.
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No. You took my "hey, look, I find one little tiny positive thing" and turned it into a whole philosophy I don't espouse. Nice one, but it has nothing to do with what I said.
But, if you really want to play that game. Is it better to directly give that money to weapons manufacturers that are making arms that are DEFINITELY going to go to killing people that look just a shade different than I do? That's the only real argument I had, so if you want to argue something I said, start there.
Re:lies lies lies yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
The covid vaccines ARE safe and effective. You're just pushing the same old likes and debunked misinformation. Yes, some heart problems but very rare and very temporary. Covid gave the dying anti-vax conspiracy new life, unfortunately.
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The covid vaccines ARE safe and effective.
"Safe and effective" is a generalized subjective assessment. What is safe and effective for one person may very well be neither safe nor effective for another. What one considers "safe" or an acceptable risk others may ascribe different subjective value judgments.
Instead of using loaded terms such as "safe and effective" risks and benefits should be clearly communicated to individuals and carefully weighed.
Are medical procedures that are unlikely to benefit a particular patient yet pose little risk to hea
Re:lies lies lies yeah (Score:5, Informative)
First, it's a pre-print, not peer reviewed. Second, did you actually READ it? Because here is what it says:
By contrast, the incidence of COVID-19-associated cardiac injury or myocarditis is much higher, estimated to be 100 times higher than mRNA COVID-19-related myocarditis. Moreover, mRNA vaccine-related myocarditis is characterized by overall mild presentation and favorable outcomes.
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2. No vaccine is 100% effective, their purpose is really about trying to protect populations not individuals. Even a somewhat effective vaccine saves lives and can prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.
3. Nobody uses the word free as at no cost to anyone, not even a free ice-scream scoop sample is conjured
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Same thing about how the CDC site STILL says the vaccines are "safe, effective, and free."
1. They're not particularly safe for young people, especially young men.
Compared with what? Compared with getting COVID, they're *very* safe. You can't just mindlessly compare the rate of adverse events after vaccination against a baseline and expect to get a meaningful result. But that's exactly what all of the people calling the vaccine unsafe are doing. All of them. Every single one.
Nor is that being studied in the Western world. A study from Thailand with a few hundred young people was released as a preprint the other day showing that as many as 2.3% of participants had physical heart damage (troponin and other markers floating in their flood) and as many as 8% had tachycardia and other clinical cardiological presentations
Ah, a new study. By my reading, 100% of patients were fine five months later. Thats not true for people who had myocarditis from actual COVID infections. A decent number of them die.
And t
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>Compared with what? Compared with getting COVID, they're *very* safe. You can't just mindlessly compare the rate of adverse events after vaccination against a baseline and expect to get a meaningful result. But that's exactly what all of the people calling the vaccine unsafe are doing. All of them. Every single one.
Compared with the risk of healthy young people being infected by Omicron. Not the Wuhan strain or Delta, which are extinct.
What's your evidence that omicron causes at least one or two orders of magnitude lower rate of myocarditis than previous strains? That seems unlikely, given how many different viruses cause myocarditis.
Hell, where's your evidence that the vaccines are actually causing those myocarditis cases, rather than being proxies for other activities that are gated by vaccination, such as returning to school or participating in sports?
>Ah, a new study. By my reading, 100% of patients were fine five months later.
There's no such thing as "fine" when you have physical heart damage. What you're referring to is recovery. Side-effects in medicine are studied even when you can recover from the damage caused. And it has to be balanced against the risk of the illness.
Nope.
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I don't know. The folks screaming about having their freedoms stomped because someone asked them to wear a mask once seem to be pretty fired up. Guess they haven't gotten to vent about it enough lately.
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How in the bloody hell did this get modded up? Yes, the people who died died of Covid. Even if they technically died of say pneumonia, it was decided that the pneumonia was caused by Covid19. That is how cause of death works. If you have lung cancer and died of pneumonia, the cause can still be lung cancer because the pneumonia was either brought on or made worse enough to kill the person because of the cancer. The idea that there was some huge conspiracy among doctors to fake the cause of death is beyond s
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When everyone wears them, even 2% can add up to a lot of lives.
Just think of all the lives that would be saved if we were mandated to wear helmets and life preservers everywhere we went. No more head injuries, no more drownings. Safety!
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That all depends on the mask, Here is a link (https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/epa-researchers-test-effectiveness-face-masks-disinfection-methods-against-covid-19) showing masks generally are anywhere from 26% to 79% effective (and these are basic home use masks and proper fitting increases the effectiveness even further). SO no, not 2%. If we just cut it down the middle and say 50%, that is a pretty damn good reduction.
Re: One can dream (Score:5, Insightful)
>Masks also objectively work. How much? 2%?
99% if they're N95 masks. Per person. So if both people are wearing N95 masks, p(exposure) = .01 * .01, or 99.9999% effective at preventing transmission.
But they don't work if you are wearing them down on your chin. They don't work if you're dining out and the person next to you has COVID. They don't work when you take off your mask and immediately rub your eyes or nose without using hand sanitizer first.
The biggest failure of the CDC's response was in not encouraging people to purchase KN95 or N95 masks the very second they became available in adequate quantities, and in not educating people about how to wear masks. They should have said, "Cloth masks were okay when that was all you could get, but they're not okay anymore, because they're not nearly effective enough compared with proper masks." And they should have then mandated proper masks, and taught people to use hand sanitizer after every single time you touch your mask. We'd have a lot fewer dead people if they had done so.
And don't get me started on the politicians who wanted people to stop wearing ported N95 masks because they "don't protect others". These people must all have failed high school statistics. Assuming all else is equal, the person with the ported N95 mask is 1% as likely to get infected compared with someone who doesn't wear a mask. Thus, even if there is no filtering on the way out, their risk of spreading the disease is reduced by 99%. The person wearing a cloth mask is 90% as likely as an unmasked person to get infected. Thus, even with similar filtering on the way out, they have an 81% chance of catching and passing on the disease. You'd have to be an idiot to think that 19% reduction is better than 99% reduction.
Unfortunately, the biggest thing that came out of COVID-19 was the realization that a lot of people (particularly politicians and pundits and reporters) are entirely too clueless to meaningfully take part in public health discussions. :-(
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Oh, there were much bigger failures. If masks were so damned important, why not just provide qualified PPE to the populace? Why the need to purchase at gouging prices, and likely counterfeit? How about the USA's inability to actually ensure that there was adequate PPE in the first place, due to horrendous industrial and health policy? Or Fauci'
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If masks were so damned important, why not just provide qualified PPE to the populace?
They got 3M to build a whole new factory to supply masks in the volume needed. But it took a year to bring that online. In the meantime, they bought what they could get, which were mostly KN95 masks made in China, because China has proven particularly adept at rapidly transitioning manufacturing from one product line to another as market demands require, while U.S. companies generally have not.
How about the USA's inability to actually ensure that there was adequate PPE in the first place, due to horrendous industrial and health policy?
The policy was fine. It just wasn't followed. There was supposed to be a national cache of PPE. It got used up
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99% if they're N95 masks
Cite? In general, N95 masks block 95% of particulates, which would include droplets and aerosols carrying COVID. Is there some quantitative evidence that shows N95 masks perform better against COVID than in general?
So if both people are wearing N95 masks, p(exposure) = .01 * .01, or 99.9999% effective at preventing transmission.
Assuming 95%, and assuming that both have their masks fitted properly, that's 99.75%. Which, of course, is still very close to 100%, and represents excellent protection.
FWIW, I wear an N95 mask when I'm in close proximity with large numbers of people. However, I wear a vented N95 mask which doe
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Re: One can dream (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sadly, basic math (i.e. the effectiveness of two people both wearing masks, vs only one, if one of them is infected) shows that a small number of plague rats have an astonishingly outsized ability to sabotage a large number of responsible individua
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Everything you said was right except for the conclusion. You seem to think that the point of masks was to save lives or stop the pandemic. This is a nice thought but completely unrealistic (even in China where they did everything you might argue for). The point of masks was to slow down the pandemic so hospitals didn't get overwhelmed and so everyone that got sick could get care and their best chance at recovery. It also bought time to make a vax.
Here is where things get tricky though. The lockdowns
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Re: One can dream (Score:5, Informative)
I call bullshit. I know of several people who died of covid-19, all of us do. The only people I know of who died of the flu did so before I was born. I know someone who was fine and then 2 weeks later was dead with covid, no mitigating factors that Fox could blame it on other than being old. Six million more people would likely be alive today if there was no covid.
And you're only talking deaths, the talking points routinely ignore extended hospitalizations. All the worry about "the economy will plummet!" ignored the people who were financially devastated by just the hospital stays, not even counting the long term after effecs.
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no mitigating factors that Fox could blame it on other than being old.
Well old people as a group were by far the most impacted by Covid, so that makes complete sense.
Six million more people would likely be alive today if there was no covid.
Yeah that's were I'm going to call bullshit. I'd say the vast majority of those would in fact still be dead, only the death certificate would list some other cause. Most of the people killed by Covid were already in rough shape, it just happened to be Covid that finally did them in.
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Right, but do you just ignore people who are old? They'll die of something, someday, so why not covid? People were stretching for any reason to claim that covid was just a mild flu, and so any comorbidity was taken as suspicious. Comorbidity does not mean they all have an equal share fo the blame; if it was a court of law then covid-19 was the murderer and the comorbidities were accomplices.
Even if you ignore all of that, still 10 times more people were dying from covid-19 plus comorbidities than those wh
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... all of us do. ...
This is not true.
Early in the pandemic I thought "Wow, this looks like it's going to be big... by the time this is over, everyone will know someone who has died from this."
It turned out to not be the case. I don't know anyone who has died from it, and I know other people who also don't know anyone who has died from it. I'm not denying that people have died from it, I'm just saying I don't personally know of anyone, nor do some of my close friends. I do, however, know of two otherwise healthy people who d
Re: One can dream (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't mean no one had issues, just means what you experienced and what I experienced do not necessarily represent the average experience.
Statistics are on Darinbob's side, not yours. If you don't know anyone that had serious illness then you must not know many people.
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A) COVID 19 didn't kill a million people. A million people died while infected with c19, but it wasn't the cause in a cast majority of cases.
Citation needed. Just one single credible research paper supporting this utterly absurd theory, please. No? Didn't think so.
COVID-19 has killed over a million people in the United States alone. That's the number of people whose proximate cause of death was COVID-19. That's how many deaths would not have occurred without COVID-19. (Well, more precisely, they would have happened, just significantly later, barring some miracle that makes us immortal. But you know what I mean.)
B) Of all the mitigation methods we tried, did anything objectively work? Objectively, meaning supported by real world data.
Objectively? All of them w
Re: One can dream (Score:4, Insightful)
And so, because of the overwhelming power of human selfishness, we're likely to be living with this disease for the foreseeable future. Thanks, Trump, Abbott, and DeSantis, for leading us into this disaster.
Covid didn't just happen in the United States, you know. It's a worldwide thing. It ravaged Italy before it got to New York. Was that Republican's fault as well? It's currently ravaging Asia. Is that also Republican's fault?
The Republican party doesn't run the entire world, just so you're aware.
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And so, because of the overwhelming power of human selfishness, we're likely to be living with this disease for the foreseeable future. Thanks, Trump, Abbott, and DeSantis, for leading us into this disaster.
Covid didn't just happen in the United States, you know. It's a worldwide thing. It ravaged Italy before it got to New York. Was that Republican's fault as well? It's currently ravaging Asia. Is that also Republican's fault?
The Republican party doesn't run the entire world, just so you're aware.
When U.S. leaders make pronouncements about public health policies, other countries' leaders often follow their lead. And that's exactly what happened, as best I can tell. That made the problem worse around the world, and every extra case is another opportunity for mutations to result in interesting variants.
This is not to say that we would have definitely stopped COVID in its tracks if the Republican party hadn't given us so many leaders who don't understand science, but there can be little question that
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A) COVID 19 didn't kill a million people. A million people died while infected with c19, but it wasn't the cause in a cast majority of cases.
Yes, it was. There are pretty rigorous standards for cause of death. You could argue that many of the people who died were old, or had other conditions, and therefore probably would have died pretty soon anyway, but yes, they died of COVID-19. Look at:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid... [cdc.gov] https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com] https://cdn.who.int/media/docs... [who.int]
If nothing else, you can look at excess deaths, that is, how many more people died during the epidemic than die in non-epidemic years. That data shows that
Re: One can dream (Score:5, Interesting)
My relative wasn't counted as a COVID death because Trump reclassified so she'd not be counted but it was obvious to everybody (doctors too) that COVID did it.
Like many, it was blood clots from the lung damage... but delayed death by the few week limit Pence's task force made up.
If you want good estimates compare death rates against the norm death rates and you'll see it's well above 1 million. Oh and the homicide rate increase doesn't even amount to a rounding error at this scale. I'd argue the jump in suicides even if they are significant (I do not know) would be largely pandemic related (yes could be lock downs...but it's clearly an acceptable loss ratio.)
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People love conspiracy theories, but that one simply is not supported by facts.
https://theconversation.com/th... [theconversation.com] https://www.science.org/doi/10... [science.org] https://healthcare.utah.edu/pu... [utah.edu]
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I do think tearing down the specific group that was tasked with pandemic response right before the biggest worldwide pandemic in a few generations was one of those "oops" moments that historians will one day have a lot of fun with. As much as I don't enjoy living through this experience, I do wish I could be alive a few hundred years in the future just to read the histories of this time period.
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It wasn't dismantled. It was a departmental/leadership change.
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
There's still some disagreement as to what happened to the entire team itself. The only obvious departure was Timothy Ziemer.
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