Here We Go Again - Remote Learning

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Vonnegut, Dec 19, 2021.

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  1. Vonnegut

    Vonnegut Well-Known Member

  2. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    We were learning online before it was cool! Of course, not at Harvard prices.

    The only people I have heartburn over are the performing arts, music, etc., programs that were somehow moved online with no reduction in the fees to pay for the performance space and equipment they're no longer able to use.
     
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  3. AsianStew

    AsianStew Moderator Staff Member

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  4. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    There is a difference between the coronavirus and Covid-19.

    The vaccine helps the body fight off the infection of the coronavirus so the person doesn't come down with Covid-19. In other words, that's how vaccines work: they build your immune system in specific ways to fight off specific infections so you don't come down with the ensuing disease.

    We've melded the two ideas when they can be utterly separate...by the vaccine.

    It is perfectly normal for people who are fully immunized to test positive for the coronavirus. Because Omicron is so prolific in its movement, it's showing up in a lot of people who are (a) vaccinated and (b) tested. In that regard, it far outperforms Delta. But....

    Are immunized people getting sick from it? Only about 30% of Americans are fully immunized (including the booster). It's still too early to tell. But unvaccinated people are in much more danger than ever before. Thus, once again, we'll need to implement societal measures to cope with the reality that so many people are vulnerable, even though that is primarily due to their own (in)actions.

    The political end of this is unfortunate--one party using the virus as as a tool, convincing as many of their voters as possible to object to the vaccine and, thus, get infected. The toll this will bring to the economy and society at large will then be blamed on the party in charge--even though that party has pulled out all the stops to make this vaccine available nationwide. Since a large portion of America is prone to act like little kids who won't eat their carrots, the tactic is hugely successful. There are millions of pieces of evidence to support this, even if about 800,000 of them can't speak to it anymore. But the politics aren't killing anyone. Directly.

    Take your vaccine. Mask up. Keep your distance. Avoid crowds, especially indoors. Take away the opportunities for this virus to spread as much as we can and it will lessen to a point where it will no longer be a general threat to public health.

    Or, keep it up. That's going so well so far.
     
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  5. AlK11

    AlK11 Active Member

    This post started out as well written. Would've done better to leave it at that instead of editorializing and making false claims against one political party. Just let the facts speak for themselves and let people make choices for themselves.
     
    Last edited: Dec 21, 2021
  6. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    Keeping in mind that we are not in the political forum, the facts are that the unvaccinated die at 20-29x the rate of the vaccinated, and that much of that difference can be explained by party affiliation: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/10/01/for-covid-19-vaccinations-party-affiliation-matters-more-than-race-and-ethnicity/

    People aren't just making choices for themselves when they can quickly infect others, some of whom will die. They're making that choice for all of us.
     
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  7. AlK11

    AlK11 Active Member

    To your first point, okay. To your second point, if you're vaccinated and have a 20-29x higher chance of living than the nonvaccinated, you shouldn't be worried about the nonvaccinated.
     
  8. LearningAddict

    LearningAddict Well-Known Member

    USA Today has posted some interesting information:

    Based on our research, we rate PARTLY FALSE the claim that a given person has a 2.4% chance of getting COVID and a 0.05% chance of dying from it. These figures are roughly correct on a global scale, but at an individual level the risk varies hugely, experts say. The chances of getting sick or dying from COVID-19 vary based on individual factors like age, health history and location. - August 13, 2021

    Individual risk is always an important matter, it always has been with every disease and lots of study is put behind each in order for health professionals to make the individual decisions that are best for each individual patient...

    What's interesting about that posting compared to some of their others is how they've at times used the macro (global scale) to drive home the covid mortality point using the global covid death total, but here they marginalize the macro--which shows a low percentage risk--in order to spotlight the micro (individual risk). I suppose it could be argued that because of the type of posting it is they had to find a fault, but I find the necessity of that questionable there since two (or more) things can be true at the same time. It's true about individual risk, and it's true about the global numbers, the two facts can co-exist in the same space, and not just that they can, they do. Then there was this posting:

    Of the 73 million children in the U.S., fewer than 700 have died of COVID-19 during the course of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. - October 8, 2021

    As a percentage, if we ignore "fewer than" and use 700 that would be 0.00096%, and to get there you have to round up.

    When we talk about the chance of dying from covid-19 while not having taken a covid-19 vaccine, we're talking about an extremely low chance as the total percentages show, so the "X times more likely" information we often hear (while factual based on the reported numbers) sounds a lot worse on the surface than it actually is, like the comparisons made between people who have taken the vaccine and their risk of myocarditis, and those without the vaccine and their risk of myocarditis. Without the vaccine that small number of myocarditis cases is a lot higher by comparison of the percentages, but it's like comparing the content of a thimble to the content of a smaller thimble, we're still talking about a chance so low it's infinitesimal in either direction, not to mention that you have to actually get the virus first and then have a case that results in the inflammatory disease, both of which carry a statistically low chance overall, obviously differing by risk group (some higher, some lower), but still low overall.

    Where I think USA Today has the greatest point which both of those posts show for different reasons (the latter unintentionally) is that we have to consider the differences in risk per risk group like we have for every other disease, and to do that each cannot be treated in the same way. One group (children) with a death percentage at 0.00096% (CDC data) can't be treated the same as another group with a death rate of 8 out of 10 covid-19 infections (65 or older - CDC data). All of that being said, the first post points out the importance of examining risk groups which actually contradicts their official position on the vaccines as they don't consider risk groups as part of the medical decision-making equation.
     
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  9. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Is there a "What's my risk?" online calculator where you input your age, preexisting conditions, vaccination status, etc., and it tells you your risk of hospitalization and death? If not, there should be.
     
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  10. Rachel83az

    Rachel83az Well-Known Member

    I like this idea. I would think that there would be, but I haven't gone looking. Assuming that there isn't one for some reason, I would be tempted to make one myself if I had a decent grasp of every single number.

    It should also take into account your location. Someone living on an isolated ranch in the Outback has a much lower chance of having anything to do with covid than someone living in NYC would.
     
  11. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Fortunately, you don't make that decision. I do.
     
  12. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Some factors to consider:

    Republicans are on average older and more obese than Democrats. Age and obesity are two of the strongest factors contributing infection rates, severity of symptoms and deaths.

    Also, Republicans are more rural than Democrats and there is a big disparity in healthcare access between urban and rural areas of the country.

    Lastly, blue collar workers are currently more often than not Republicans. By the nature of their jobs, blue collar workers have less opportunity for remote work and would need to put themselves at risk to keep making a living.

    Vaccination rates are an important factor, but not the only one, when it comes to how hard a segment of the community has been hit by COVID-19. Tertiary variables matter.
     
  13. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    My daughter cannot be vaccinated due to health conditions which, incidentally, put her at higher risk of complication from COVID-19.

    So I shouldn't be worried about my daughter?

    Think very carefully before you choose to respond to that rhetorical question.
     
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  14. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I say you shouldn't, in that "you shouldn't have to." I say you should, in that "it's scary, you should be worried."

    Herd immunity would make it nearly impossible for her to be exposed. I wish more people would accept their responsibilities as members of society and think a little bit more about the needs of others.
     
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  15. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I agree with this for other maladies, but since being vaccinated doesn't stop people from having COVID or passing it on, he would still have to worry even if compliance were as near to 100% as it should be.

    That said, at least if everyone who could be vaccinated were, it would free up medical resources for those who really can't be vaccinated.
     
  16. Rachel83az

    Rachel83az Well-Known Member

    It may not stop people from catching it, but it does (or did) at least slow it down. Now it's got the Omicron mutation and vaccines are much less effective at doing even that much. With more vaccinated people, it might never have reached the person in whom Omicron mutated and we might not be in this specific situation now. But we might still have issues. There's no way to be sure.
     
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  17. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Thus far, I've seen nothing but conflicting information on what omicron has in store for us. One interesting, highly optimistic, projection is that since it is less deadly than the main variant & delta, it might wind up helping the planet achieve herd immunity faster than vaccines and safer than having to survive a bout of the stronger variants.

    Even under that projection, I see some huge problems. There will still be people who get severely sick, and some vulnerable people who will die. Immunity is not permanent, so some people will get sick again and again. Also, there's no telling what the next mutation will be like. What if omicron mutates in such a way that it keeps its increased transmissibility and replication rates, but becomes as deadly or more deadly than delta?

    :emoji_confounded:
     
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  18. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    The people who are not getting vaccinated more often than not believe that they ARE doing the right thing for others.

    There are a variety of segments of the population that aren't getting the vaccine, but the universal motive amongst them (including, as we know, a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats, but also similar differentials among racial, age, gender and economic lines) has been a lack trust in the media, the government and large corporations. A lot of that distrust is warranted. It will be a monumental task trying to convince people that this is one of those times when they actually can trust those very same institutions.

    I mean, if Donald Trump, himself, getting vaccinated 3 times and publicly encouraging others to do the same isn't enough for his adoring cult to follow suit, then what could possibly be?!

    Donald Trump told his supporters he got a coronavirus booster shot. They booed him.
     
  19. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I agree with your observation that vaccine hesitancy is fueled by mistrust in societal institutions, and that those institutions have largely earned that mistrust. But most of the steadfastly hesitant I've seen are not motivated by concern for others, but for themselves. Part of that is fear of side effects, but a lot of it is just a desire to believe that they see something that others don't see.
     
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  20. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I'm not so sure this is really true. While no vaccine can provide 100% assurance against infection, the vast majority of people getting sick from the virus are unvaccinated. Yes, we're seeing a surge of cases where vaccinated people are testing positive for the virus, but they're not getting sick and dying from it. In other words, the vaccines seem to be doing what they're supposed to to. Now, it's still early, and we don't yet know the full effect of the Omicron variation, but that's the story so far.

    I think what unvaccinated people should be worried about is that vaccinated people can, as a natural course of such things, get and carry the virus while their immune systems fight it off to prevent the coronavirus from causing COVID. I'd have to think that they still might be contagious at that point, even if they never actually come down with COVID.

    And remember, you don't catch COVID from someone else. You catch the coronavirus that can cause COVID.
     
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