Corona Virus - How bad is it going to be?

[BSUTOP25]

I was DMing with @halfmanhalfbroncothis morning. Traveling back to Boise in a couple weeks for the first time in a year and a half. Will be the first time for my 10 month old. I’m going to take some heat from family and friends for my stance that anyone who isn’t vaccinated needs to wear masks and wash their hands around my little daughter but I’m just trying to be a dad and protect her. You’d think people would respect that but I’m already taking flak. 

[NorCalCoug]

57 minutes ago, BSUTOP25 said:

We had our opportunity to reach herd immunity but it won’t happen due to vaccine hesitation. So now we’re going to have to live with seasonal flare ups of COVID similar to influenza. Moving forward, it likely won’t be as deadly unless a nasty variant takes hold.

We really didn’t...  not when there are countries like India with a quarter of the world’s population and a 10%-15% vaccination rate. 

[BSUTOP25]

5 minutes ago, NorCalCoug said:

We really didn’t...  not when there are countries like India with a quarter of the world’s population and a 10%-15% vaccination rate. 

We could have in the industrialized world while gradually bringing the third world into the fold, similar to smallpox. It was such an amazing thing how people got behind the smallpox vaxx campaign without politicizing it. 

[NorCalCoug]

1 minute ago, BSUTOP25 said:

We could have in the industrialized world while gradually bringing the third world into the fold, similar to smallpox. It was such an amazing thing how people got behind the smallpox vaxx campaign without politicizing it. 

Now that the adult population is mostly vaccinated here - wonder if vaccine inventories aren’t better served going to some of these countries instead of our 12+ age group. 

[BSUTOP25]

8 minutes ago, NorCalCoug said:

Now that the adult population is mostly vaccinated here - wonder if vaccine inventories aren’t better served going to some of these countries instead of our 12+ age group. 

“Mostly” is not an accurate description. We’re still under 50% for even one dose of the adult population.

[Old_SD_Dude]

14 minutes ago, NorCalCoug said:

Now that the adult population is mostly vaccinated here - wonder if vaccine inventories aren’t better served going to some of these countries instead of our 12+ age group. 

California is among the most vaccinated states and it is only a bit above 50% fully vaccinated adults. 

[NorCalCoug]

6 minutes ago, BSUTOP25 said:

“Mostly” is not an accurate description. We’re still under 50% for even one dose of the adult population.

Just now, Old_SD_Dude said:

California is among the most vaccinated states and it is only a bit above 50% fully vaccinated adults. 

I worded it poorly...  we’re getting to the point where most adults that want or are going to get the vaccine will have done so.  Obviously not there yet but not far off.  Vaccine inventories at that point are better served going to other countries that are behind instead of focusing on a <18 segment that doesn’t contract or spread the virus as much as adults.

[Old_SD_Dude]

Just now, NorCalCoug said:

I worded it poorly...  we’re getting to the point where most adults that want or are going to get the vaccine will have done so.  Obviously not there yet but not far off.  Vaccine inventories at that point are better served going to other countries that are behind instead of focusing on a <18 segment that doesn’t contract or spread the virus as much as adults.

I agree with that vaccine that (unfortunately) won’t get used here should be sent to where people want it. 

[smltwnrckr]

1 hour ago, BSUTOP25 said:

I was DMing with @halfmanhalfbroncothis morning. Traveling back to Boise in a couple weeks for the first time in a year and a half. Will be the first time for my 10 month old. I’m going to take some heat from family and friends for my stance that anyone who isn’t vaccinated needs to wear masks and wash their hands around my little daughter but I’m just trying to be a dad and protect her. You’d think people would respect that but I’m already taking flak. 

Dude, you got to shut that shit down right now and enforce boundaries with a vengeance. Not just with covid, but that is a good opportunity to flex your authority as a dad. 

Make it clear what the rules are and follow through. If anyone gives you shit for it, make it clear that they're just pissing in the wind and you as the parents get to decide what you want, how you want, when you want and you dont owe anyone anything in terms of explanations or access to the kid. let them think you're weird control freaks and if they want to see the kid, they have to bow down to your nutty demands. 

Both my wife and I have families with boundaries issues in certain areas. We saw it early with the baby. Best decision we ever had was to be hard asses about little routine things in ways that define and reinforce boundaries with our parents and others. Most of it was around routines like nap, bed, eating, travel times, schedules, stuff like that. Some safety things too. We were like, this is how we do it so this is how it's done. You dont like it, theres the door. No budging. Ever. It was hard at first, because we would occassionally get comments from the peanut gallery. And sometimes I felt a little silly holding the line on something that really wasnt a big deal just to reinforce who was boss. But think of it as training... for when the kid is 4 and starts pushing boundaries too.

It wasnt long before our families deferred to us on things they didnt even have to. Now theres no tension kts just the norm that they ask me or the wife and keep any comments to themselves.

There is nothing I hate more than people who think they know best how people should raise their kids. And it can be crazier among families where dynamics are already weird, and sometimes every decision is read as commentary on the way they all raise or raised their kids. I have friends who didnt or dont do that, and they have parents and/or siblings who will do things or let their kid do things they my friends forbade (smoking, letting the small baby sleep with blankets, etc) because that's how they raised their kids so it's good enough. Like it was a statement. 

[happycamper]

On 5/14/2021 at 2:17 PM, thelawlorfaithful said:

Dr. Shi then teamed up with Ralph S. Baric, an eminent coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina. Their work focused on enhancing the ability of bat viruses to attack humans so as to “examine the emergence potential (that is, the potential to infect humans) of circulating bat CoVs [coronaviruses].” In pursuit of this aim, in November 2015 they created a novel virus by taking the backbone of the SARS1 virus and replacing its spike protein with one from a bat virus (known as SHC014-CoV). This manufactured virus was able to infect the cells of the human airway, at least when tested against a lab culture of such cells.

The SHC014-CoV/SARS1 virus is known as a chimera because its genome contains genetic material from two strains of virus. If the SARS2 virus were to have been cooked up in Dr. Shi’s lab, then its direct prototype would have been the SHC014-CoV/SARS1 chimera, the potential danger of which concerned many observers and prompted intense discussion.

“If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” said Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Dr. Baric and Dr. Shi referred to the obvious risks in their paper but argued they should be weighed against the benefit of foreshadowing future spillovers. Scientific review panels, they wrote, “may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue.” Given various restrictions being placed on gain-of function (GOF) research, matters had arrived in their view at “a crossroads of GOF research concerns; the potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens. In developing policies moving forward, it is important to consider the value of the data generated by these studies and whether these types of chimeric virus studies warrant further investigation versus the inherent risks involved.” 

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1  

Now about them bats...who should be allowed in those caves, if we  ever find them? Should anyone even be allowed to be messing around in there? Might we stop to consider that perhaps government funds amongst respectable countries should not be granted for certain spelunking in some caves?

well shit

On 5/14/2021 at 9:05 PM, halfmanhalfbronco said:

In an L4...just not going to happen.

The gap in security between L4 and 2 is like the gap between a horse and buggy and Space X

no I gotta agree with lawlor here. A single escape will have killed what, 5 million? Conservatively? Christ, look at how infectious this virus is; imagine if it were only a little more deadly, or we made a deadly disease just a little more infectious. Imagine how much research we could have funded with the eleventy trillion dollars we spent. 

15 hours ago, soupslam1 said:

Oregon was one of those outliers that missed the worst of the pandemic. 

Oregon doesn't get too hot or too cold. that is my take anyway. 

[halfmanhalfbronco]

10 minutes ago, happycamper said:

well shit

no I gotta agree with lawlor here. A single escape will have killed what, 5 million? Conservatively? Christ, look at how infectious this virus is; imagine if it were only a little more deadly, or we made a deadly disease just a little more infectious. Imagine how much research we could have funded with the eleventy trillion dollars we spent. 

Oregon doesn't get too hot or too cold. that is my take anyway. 

 

I mean, it really is looking like at this point gain of function research for coronaviruses from bat populations in a low security lab is far more likely than a bat to human transmission, given the feeble affinity for bat cells.  Bat to intermediary species to human seems far fetched now too.  China has tested some 6000 possible species, and has come up empty.

It came from the lab, guys.  

An L4 lab is like what we would use to identify a pulsating glob that fell from the sky and all the sheep nearby died with exploding eyeballs.  They are about as secure proof as you can get.  An L2 lab....is like gloves and goggles and a lab jacket where you grab beers afterwards and may forget to wash your hands.

 

 

[BSUTOP25]

4 minutes ago, halfmanhalfbronco said:

 

I mean, it really is looking like at this point gain of function research for coronaviruses from bat populations in low security labs is far more likely than a bat to human transmission, given the feeble affinity for bat cells.  Bat to intermediary species to human seems far fetched now too.  China has tested some 6000 possible species, and has come up empty.

It came from the lab, guys.  

An L4 lab is like what we would use to identify a pulsating glob that fell from the sky and all the sheep nearby died with exploding eyeballs.  They are about as secure proof as you can get.  An L2 lab....is like gloves and goggles and a lab jacket where you grab beers afterwards and may forget to wash your hands.

 

 

It’s my pure anecdotal novice opinion that COVID-19 was leaked from the lab. I don’t think it was intentional, simply an unfortunate breach of security measures, a mistake. I also don’t think it was lab created, merely being studied. 

[soupslam1]

13 minutes ago, happycamper said:

well shit

no I gotta agree with lawlor here. A single escape will have killed what, 5 million? Conservatively? Christ, look at how infectious this virus is; imagine if it were only a little more deadly, or we made a deadly disease just a little more infectious. Imagine how much research we could have funded with the eleventy trillion dollars we spent. 

Oregon doesn't get too hot or too cold. that is my take anyway. 

You may be onto something, Washington was similar.

[soupslam1]

3 hours ago, BSUTOP25 said:

I was DMing with @halfmanhalfbroncothis morning. Traveling back to Boise in a couple weeks for the first time in a year and a half. Will be the first time for my 10 month old. I’m going to take some heat from family and friends for my stance that anyone who isn’t vaccinated needs to wear masks and wash their hands around my little daughter but I’m just trying to be a dad and protect her. You’d think people would respect that but I’m already taking flak. 

I understand your concern about your 10 month old daughter, but based on statistics she has an extremely low probability of contacting the virus. 

[halfmanhalfbronco]

Just now, BSUTOP25 said:

It’s my pure anecdotal novice opinion that COVID-19 was leaked from the lab. I don’t think it was intentional, it was an unfortunate breach of security measures. I also don’t think it was lab created, merely being studied. 

 

The lab in question was doing gain of function research on from bat Coronaviruses, specifically making the spike protein bind better in humanized mice.  Not intentional, but...yeah.  Not sure if "lab created" in the sense you are using is the right word, but if it was a virus mutated in the lab using gain of function research, and it seems more likely than not that is the case right now.

The fact it JUST HAPPENED to be an outbreak by said lab, and there are no bat populations or intermediary species populations.  I mean come on.

 

[BSUTOP25]

1 minute ago, soupslam1 said:

I understand your concern about your 10 month old daughter, but based on statistics she has an extremely low probability of contacting the virus. 

Almost as low as getting a blood clot from one of the vaccines. 

[halfmanhalfbronco]

2 minutes ago, soupslam1 said:

I understand your concern about your 10 month old daughter, but based on statistics she has an extremely low probability of contacting the virus. 

With top 25 it is also about the issues it would cause if she was to get a positive result and child care.  It would be a huge disruption to his life and pose significant problems for a young family going through changes in household dynamics already.  Not to mention, new variants are shown to infect kids at much higher rates.  And long term effects are not known.

Wearing a mask is a small inconvenience, it also as @smltwnrckr stated a chance to set boundaries.  

[BSUTOP25]

18 minutes ago, halfmanhalfbronco said:

With top 25 it is also about the issues it would cause if she was to get a positive result and child care.  It would be a huge disruption to his life and pose significant problems for a young family going through changes in household dynamics already.  Not to mention, new variants are shown to infect kids at much higher rates.  And long term effects are not known.

Wearing a mask is a small inconvenience, it also as @smltwnrckr stated a chance to set boundaries.  

I guess that’s the thing that I find so frustrating. I’m not crusading or shaming them to get vaccinated. I’m even welcoming a visit from them. Simply asking them to wear a mask and wash their hands before being with my girl. Yet you’d think I’m asking them to convert to another religion. Not sure how or why it’s offensive given that we’d prefer to keep her healthy and not have to deal with the logistical nightmare of having to pull her out of daycare for weeks if she tested positive. I guess masks and clean hands are just such a huge ask. 

[SalinasSpartan]

5 minutes ago, BSUTOP25 said:

I guess that’s the thing that I find so frustrating. I’m not crusading or shaming them to get vaccinated. I’m even welcoming a visit from them. Simply asking them to wear a mask and wash their hands before being with my girl. Yet you’d think I’m asking them to convert to another religion. Not sure how or why it’s offensive given that we’d prefer to keep her healthy and not have to deal with the logistical nightmare of having to pull her out of daycare for weeks if she tested positive. I guess masks and clean hands are just such a huge ask. 

WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM!?

[East Coast Aztec]

3 minutes ago, BSUTOP25 said:

I guess that’s the thing that I find so frustrating. I’m not crusading or shaming them to get vaccinated. I’m even welcoming a visit from them. Simply asking them to wear a mask and wash their hands before being with my girl. Yet you’d think I’m asking them to convert to another religion. Not sure how or why it’s offensive given that we’d prefer to keep her healthy and not have to deal with the logistical nightmare of having to pull her out of daycare for weeks if she tested positive. I guess masks and clean hands are just such a huge ask. 

I predict it to get weird when you are there, if it is already a problem now.  I am guessing they are going to "forget" what you have requested quite a bit.  Prayers sent, and remember, they are still family, ya gotta love em even when they push your buttons.