In the States right now and the difference in attitudes to Europe is staggering. I’m hearing arguments and justifications that are unthinkable at home. The basic assumptions seem to be that it’s not a big deal, the people who are dying are all old and likely to die anyway, and that we should all just hurry up and get infected to create herd immunity.
It’s tempting to conclude that this is a reflection of a general selfish and callous attitude towards society in general which is completely at odds with the Christian beliefs that so many profess to hold.
You’re not just in the States, but Florida. You’re also not just in Florida, but beachside.
About 10 years ago I came close to moving to Melbourne Beach (the nicest beach town in Central Florida…how close are you to there now?) and in the end just couldn’t pull the trigger because of the town culture. It was MAGA before MAGA was even a thing.
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This is exactly the attitude I’ve encountered here locally.
“We’ve had it, not a problem, we’ve been lied to because Delta was supposed to be the worst variant. My 72 year old uncle was fine but those that are dying are 80 years old or more in the main. That’s fine, let’s go to the pub without a mask.”
Well, I’ve just jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire - now in Tennessee 
Have heard this stuff from a wide range of people.
Oh wow, all that even after over five million deaths? Is there no hope for humanity?
I feel the CDC here in the states has really fucked up with our latest recommendations that may be difficult to come back from.
New guidelines are that people can end isolation 5 days after their first appearance of symptoms if they are now asymptomatic, or their symptoms are getting better. There is no requirement to test negative. This is absolute madness. They are predicating this on at home tests not being a a reliable indicator of contagiousness. I am unsure whether this is an honestly held interpretation (which is difficult to justify and not in line with the consensus opinion of testing experts), or more akin to old school “you dont need to wear a mask” attitude of trying to cover for the lack of supplies.
I think the reality is that is at home Ag tests were used in the way experts like Michael Mina recommend then we have only a fraction of the production capacity to do that at present. I’m not sure how much that is factoring into these comments, but regardless, the result is either a guideline that is dangerously lax because they have wrong people in the room (very common on consensus committees where specific expertise in 1 area gets diluted by the opinion of people who are experts in other areas but not in the specific issue being debated), or because a need to find a way to move forward without the tests they think we need. Either way it is a dangerous guideline.
It is hard to know wtf to make of the CDC now. In 2020, I assumed it was political interference. Now, I really have no idea, institutional rot?
Trump unquestionably broke a lot of what was good and effective about the CDC. However, there are more foundational issues. Michael Lewis’ Premonition is a really good take on it. It was published surprisingly early in the Pandemic for a book looking to layout the underlying flaws in our response. Coming so soon after the publication of The Fifth Risk, a very anti-Trump book about how they had no interest in actually running a government, it would have been easy to write this as a sequel to that. He did a really good job though to trying to ignore the elephant in the room, and instead focus on the pre-existing issues that would created problems even for a President who wanted to fight the pandemic.
From what I can remember, the tl:dr is 1) too beurocratic, 2) too aligned with political admirations, 3) not suited to dealing with rapidly changing situations (or even slowly moving situations).
The CDC is an example of the flaws of the “believe the science” argument, because fundamentally the CDC is not a scientific body. They are a public policy body, albeit one that uses “the science” to guide its recommendations. What they generally do is employ risk-benefit analyses, and those are never pure science. They are human guided decisions, where two reasonable people can use the same science to come to different conclusions based on inherent biases. I think we need to be more honest that this is what the CDC is. This leaves them and their guidelines unable to hide behind “its the science”, but also makes it that much harder to defend when they are calculating the risk-benefit on a misunderstanding of the science. I am increasingly convinced that ttoo many of the people they have in the room are simply wrong about the utility of rapid antigen tests.
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According to the conspiracies there haven’t been 5million deaths from Covid. The fact that Covid may accelerate existing conditions or create other issues is entirely lost on them.
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I will have to read that, I had meant to pick it up. That certainly makes sense, because so many of their decisions have been nearly incoherent over the past two years - and it is one thing when that is just an external layman opinion like mine, but public health authorities here have quietly complained about having to fight back against the results.
Watched it as well. Interesting, isn’t it? Replace the comet with covid-19 or earth warming, and you have a precise depiction of what’s currently happening.
(Not a great movie btw, but still interesting.)
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My daughter recommended that to me, haven’t had the time yet but will do over the weekend. Just saying as I need the attention, sorry. 
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A further 332 deaths within 28 days of a positive test reported in the UK today/yesterday. Highest single day since 2 March this year.
No doubt a lag effect from Christmas, when unrepresentative low figures were reported and still a reduction on the rolling 7-day figure, but still not great.
I think we’re probably in an okay place though. 90% of all over 12s have now had at least one jab. 82.4% double jabbed. 58.3% booster/third jab.
Cases continue to climb though. Just under 190k further cases reported yesterday.
Anyway fuck off holidays and northern europeans travelling south to warmer climates. France and Spain heading off the charts.
Dutch coughing all over breakfast at 6 in the morning, thank my lucky stars for plexiglass.
It’s legit trumpian…it solves A problem, just not the right one.
To me perfect sense. Doesn’t accomplish much to test players when you’ve got 50,000 seat mass of humanity slobbering over themselves and creating a massive virus cloud across the entire stadium. Just reinforces that we must have bread and circus.
Given up or don’t give a f***?
I smell a player’s strike coming if this shit keeps up. that’s incredibly callous of the FA to risk their lives.