"Los Angeles County will again require all residents to wear masks indoors in public spaces, regardless of vaccination status, amid a rapid rise of coronavirus cases and concerns over the delta variant

County health officer Muntu Davis told a virtual press conference Thursday that a public health order requiring masks indoors will go into effect Saturday at 11:59 p.m.

Some exceptions will apply, but the order will be similar to masking requirements that were in place prior to the state's June 15 reopening, he said."

My school district is going to start off the school year with masks on, and I think that's wise. I am wearing a mask while in stores and other public buildings.

At the same time, I'm wondering if we'll ever be able to get rid of them. We are not yet approaching herd immunity. When I'm out and about, I look at other people (some of whom are likely not vaccinated,) and think, do you really want to keep doing this? Don't you want to be over this?

Even though I'm fully vaccinated, I still don't want to get the virus. I realize that the chances of being hospitalized or dying are remote, but I don't want any possible long-term health issues.

I have the same feeling, I proudly had my shot, wore the mask, and followed the guidelines from the politicians. The stocks tumbled yesterday over fears over the delta strain, inflation is hitting everything, and this fall we're headed for another wave of this china virus. I keep thinking we've spent trillions on this yet people refuse to take the shot. In my county (surrounded by wonderful Utah republican Mormons) we are sitting at 34% fully vaccinated. It's pathetic!

My feeling is that America has deeper issues than this flu. There is obviously a large chunk of the nation that is disengaged with what's taking place, they have no allegiance to any political party. They are simply uninterested/indifferent. They work, they eat, they sleep, They don't read books or watch or read the news. It's really bad...

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have the same feeling, I proudly had my shot,
> wore the mask, and followed the guidelines from
> the politicians.

Actually, the guidelines came from the medical and science experts. The smart politicians were on board with the expert advice. The others - well, would you take your sick horse to a car mechanic and then expect the horse to win the Kentucky Derby?

Nightingale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Actually, the guidelines came from the medical and
> science experts. The smart politicians were on
> board with the expert advice. The others - well,
> would you take your sick horse to a car mechanic
> and then expect the horse to win the Kentucky
> Derby?

As a writer, I say:

Perfect analogy.

Well Done, Nightingale!

Thanks, T!

Haha. I made myself laugh. It was fun coming up with that one.

However. The topic itself is far from humourous. Obviously.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2021 07:34PM by Nightingale.

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... and this fall we're headed for another
> wave of this china virus.

This terminology is racist maca. Do you not realize that or are you using it on purpose?

That's why the experts have switched to using terms like Delta for the latest virulent strain rather than calling it by a country or place name. Because many humans have a most unfortunate propensity to blame and scorn and belittle and objectify and target and be prejudicial towards other humans.

So. Why do you persist?

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have the same feeling, I proudly had my shot,
> wore the mask, and followed the guidelines from
> the politicians. The stocks tumbled yesterday over
> fears over the delta strain, inflation is hitting
> everything, and this fall we're headed for another
> wave of this china virus.

Ridiculous. 1) inflation is both irrelevant to the topic and a phenomenon beyond your comprehension, 2) you use the racist "China virus" terminology but don't say "India virus" for Delta, indicating some unique anti-Chinese bias, and 3) you pretend the advice came from politicians rather than scientists. Why is that? Do you hesitate to recognize Fauci as a scientist because you drink the Trump Kool-Aid?


----------------
> I keep thinking we've
> spent trillions on this yet people refuse to take
> the shot. In my county (surrounded by wonderful
> Utah republican Mormons) we are sitting at 34%
> fully vaccinated. It's pathetic!

No, more than pathetic it's inevitable. When you start with a population of Kool-Aid drinkers and science skeptics, that's what you get. And you are chief among the Kool-Aid crowd. Remember your diatribes against science and math? And how exactly do you explain taking an mRNA vaccine when it is based in exactly the same genetics that proves the presence of Neanderthals and other creatures whose existence you deny?

The answer is of course that your desire to survive trumps your anti-science rhetoric.


-----------------
> My feeling is that America has deeper issues than
> this flu. There is obviously a large chunk of the
> nation that is disengaged with what's taking
> place, they have no allegiance to any political
> party.

False. The vaccine opponents are just like you. Look at a map. The Delta surges are occurring precisely where Trump is most popular and among the right-wing media's most dedicated viewers. What you are doing now is trying to shift the blame away from Trump and the GOP.

But the truth remains: you are the hypocrite. You are the one who is violating his oft-trumpeted principles. The ones at risk of dying, and threatening others with death, are simply more consistent than you.


------------------
> They are simply uninterested/indifferent.
> They work, they eat, they sleep, They don't read
> books or watch or read the news. It's really
> bad...

False. They watch news every day. They watch exactly the same news as you. And as for reading, you list your sources and ideas here every day. They are right-wing fairy tales. Don't act like you are superior to people who are just like you. You just lack their moral consistency.

20 years after Hitler, you couldn't find a German who had been a Nazi. Every single one of them had been in the resistance. And 20 years after Trump and COVID, you'll be telling your grandchildren that you were always in the resistance against him, his attempts to overthrow the constitution, and his anti-vaccine propaganda. THAT's "pathetic."

You are no democrat, no patriot, no friend of science.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2021 04:04PM by Lot's Wife.

Note to self, don't take on Lot's wife

You're in no danger, MH. I'm simply sick of MR's constant racism, anti-scientific rants, and political hypocrisy.

He embodies the COVID problem even if in this one instance he, like the equally detestable Trump and Tucker Carlson, did what was in his interests while stoking the fires of obscurantism that have killed over half a million of his countrymen. To hear him complain of his neighbors' political gullibility and medical stupidity is infuriating.

<it was back handed compliment> We are on the same page

Yep.

Exactly. When I read MR's comments, Liz Cheney's words to Jim Jordan came to mind if you know what I mean.

It's true.

If anyone takes macaRomney's words seriously, he is to that extent responsible for the spread of the virus as well as other equally invidious phenomena. For him and others to turn around now and brazenly disavow that responsibility is absurd.

moehoward Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Note to self, don't take on Lot's wife

Ditto.

That is an absolute!


PS: Well said, LW. The whole thing is a phenomenon I've never seen before in my life. Scary to think it was bubbling below the surface and ready to be unleashed. To the very great detriment of many people and things.

PPS: I was goofing around with my initial response at the top of this post. I would consider exchanging views about academic topics with LW if I were really up on my info and had a well-informed opinion about it. Otherwise, I'd make a fool of myself in my ignorance. That's where I was coming from with my off-the-cuff comment above. Not of substance, iow.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2021 07:55PM by Nightingale.

You have never proposed that the "Anglo-Saxon" race resume their use of violence against other races. You have never urged people not to get vaccinated. To the contrary, you are about saving lives.

Even if you and I disagree about some things, as we do, I cannot help but respect you--as I do in spades.

Not sure if you're addressing me here, LW. (However, I identify as Anglo-Celtic, not Saxon - being Scottish, Irish, English. Not sure if Anglo-Celtic is a thing - need to do more research).

In any case, I put in a PPS above.

Because I was fooling around with an off the cuff remark up there. Sometimes they don't come off that well. You'd think I'd know that by now.

Yep. Replying to you.

All respect from my perspective. You'll never be in the uncomfortable position of denying your own past rhetoric in order to justify self-preservation.

Thanks LW. Hope you're right.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Even if you and I disagree about some things, as
> we do,

Out of interest, what do we disagree about?

I don't know, but you are far too smart to agree with me on everything.

Thanks for the belly laugh.

don't take on Curly.

The unvaccinated need to get the clue that this is not over by a long shot. And not just the virus itself but the havoc it has wreaked across the board.

We just tried to order a product critical to our business we get all the time easily and were told it wouldn't be available until January and the price would be whatever market value is at that time. And this is not isolated. We are having a hard time getting materials of all types and the prices are skyrocketing.

Orders are dropping since the Delta Virus has come into play because companies are going back into a wait-and-see mode.

Flights are being cancelled. People are being arrested for hitting flight attendants. An article in the NYT talking about waiters finding other jobs because they can't take the rude customers anymore. I feel bad for the restaurants but not the diners. I would never work with the public.

Meanwhile idiots everywhere are celebrating that "It's all over!"

I have no sympathy for any unvaccinated person (except those with special health issues) getting sick or even dying. Smug stupidity should be its own reward.

Humanity has turned the earth to a cage.

Cache Valley, Utah. I've had many neighbors who had COVID, but I never got it. I still ran out and got a vaccination as soon as I hit the opportunity. I was driving my dogs to the Logan River Walk to walk them and on the radio it said that my age group could get the vaccination. I called my "husband" and he set up a appt immediately. (They made him get one right off the bat as he works at the hospital.) I hate shots and there was no way in hell I wasn't getting it.

I have a sister who got COVID a month or so ago. She just put it off. She wasn't worried much. She is now.

When I heard about those people from TX where 6 now have it and all vaccinated, scared me to death.

I personally don't think those not vaccinated are wearing masks.

My daughter's and her husband's jobs are really effected by this. Cruises to Alaska just started yesterday, but the tours to Denali started in May, so they are working, but they have really good jobs that I don't want to see them lose. Luckily, my "husband," boyfriend, and I all have jobs that impacted financially by COVID. We probably have more work--my "husband" and I since we both work in the medical field.

cl2notloggedin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I personally don't think those not vaccinated are wearing masks.

I've gotten used to not eating in restaurants. I'll order a meal and pick it up for take out. The other night I was picking up some food from a packed sports bar/restaurant. As I was waiting for my order, I noticed that nobody there was wearing a mask or socially distancing. I turned to my gal and said, "Statistically speaking, about 40% of the folks here are unvaccinated. How many masks do you see?"

The "Honor System" of the unvaccinated voluntarily wearing masks is not working. Because of this, I would have no problem with the implementation of a vaccine passport.

For some reason I began laughing too hard at seeing the term "Honor System." What a joke. We are talking Americans here. The honor system didn't work for the snack trays that started it nor anything else since.

It's just an excuse of the unvaccinated to lie by omission.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's just an excuse of the unvaccinated to lie by
> omission.
===============================

Good thing the virus will believe them, and so leave them alone

cl2notloggedin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>> When I heard about those people from TX where 6 now have it and all vaccinated, scared me to death.

I heard a similar story via my niece in New Orleans. This is why I will continue to wear a mask when in a public building.

Yes. But it's important to remember (especially those who are unvaccinated) that if you have had your two doses of any vaccine there is still a chance of a "breakthrough" infection but reportedly your illness will be much milder than if you had not been vaccinated.

Many MDs and hospitals are reporting that most of those who are very ill with COVID currently, and most of those who die at this point, are people who did not get vaccinated.

So, by getting the vaccine and continuing to observe common sense precautions (masks, handwashing, avoiding crowds and other known risks) vaccinated folks can be as safe as it's possible to be.

That's about all we can ask for, with COVID or any communicable illness.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2021 02:18PM by Nightingale.

cl2: I always have to laugh when you mention your husband and boyfriend at the same time. For someone not familiar with your story it must be a bit startling. Your life is certainly not dull, it seems.

I'm nervous too about the variants. They've said that as long as much of the world's population remains unvaccinated (and it does, not through fault of the population in most of the areas - the vaccine is just not available to them - so how fortunate are we) then we are all still at some level of risk, the unvaccinated much more so. It's definitely a case of all for one and one for all in this instance. But not everybody sees it that way, most unfortunately.

Dagny explains it well (below), including that likely there will have to be an annual booster, like the flu shots we're accustomed to.

I think if we stay informed and have had our two vaccinations (and booster/s as and when advised) and selectively wear a mask when it makes sense, even though vaccinated (such as indoors in a crowd) we are as safe as it's possible to be.

So we can be informed and cautious but not overly fearful.

Or that's my philosophy so far anyway. I'm not saying I'm completely comfortable, even being double-vaccinated. Fortunately for me, the Cdn govt mandated mask-wearing through the crisis period and even now when it's no longer mandatory, most merchants still ask customers to mask up here in BC, and most do so. The biggest difference I've noted recently is that many people no longer wear them out and about on the streets. It's great to take in some fresh air and see smiles on others' faces. Except for all the smoky skies from rampant forest fires raging ever closer. But that's another issue.

Does it seem that life is a case of lurching from one challenge to another, especially lately? I'm getting tired.

Did you know that the smoke from the Canadian wildfires has made it to the mid-Atlantic? Normally today would be blue skies and sunshine here in Maryland, but the sky is overcast with a haze.

I'm not personally fearful about the virus, but I treat it with respect and caution. I just want it to be over with. Given the number of people who don't want the vaccine, that may be a long time.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Did you know that the smoke from the Canadian
> wildfires has made it to the mid-Atlantic?
> Normally today would be blue skies and sunshine
> here in Maryland, but the sky is overcast with a
> haze.

Sorry about that.

We're expecting the haze any time now here in Vancouver while the fires are hundreds of miles away. Today there are evac orders for areas in the Okanagan, which is where we used to go for summer hols, and where I have friends and family. I keep checking in with them all as it's getting very scary.

Added to the excruciating situation of wildfires all over the province, there are arsonists around and about. Some are setting grass fires (one just a few blocks from my home several weeks ago) and others are burning down churches. The latter may be part of a different issue than ordinary arson - we don't know - nobody's been caught yet. A historic church was burned to the ground by arson the other night in a friend's neighbourhood in the city. Emergency services and personnel are getting overwhelmed by excessive demand. Everybody, no matter where you are, is advised to have a go-bag by the front door. Sometimes there are just minutes in which to get out. Fire is just about the scariest emergency I can think of. I can't relax. Even though I'm in the city and while there is risk here due to excessively dry weather, it is much less than elsewhere in the province.

We need rain. I love the rain anyway but it would be very welcome any time now. None in the forecast for weeks, unfortunately. We sure need it.

Climate change anyone? And human carelessness in some cases. And criminal activity in others.

Gosh, that's really terrible. I'm sorry about the arsonists. That's insanity, especially at this time of the year with everything so hot and dry already.

This is all so disappointing. In the USA, a delta wave could have been prevented had it not been for mostly politicians poisoning the well on the issue using misinformation.

The viral load for the delta variant is something like a thousand times greater than the variant that caused the last peak. This means the virus spreads much easier. We are finding more and more vaccinated people testing positive. With that level of contagiousness it makes sense to wear masks when indoors. Thankfully the vaccine is working well enough that the vaccinated people are not ending up in the hospitals so much.

I am coming to accept the possibility that covid will be with us a long time and we might need seasonal boosters. It is a global virus and most of the world along with the antivaxxers here are not vaccinated. This means the virus will continue to mutate and do its thing making the rounds where it can.

but it doesn't work on a virus

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am coming to accept the possibility that covid
> will be with us a long time and we might need
> seasonal boosters. It is a global virus and most
> of the world along with the antivaxxers here are
> not vaccinated. This means the virus will continue
> to mutate and do its thing making the rounds where
> it can.

I've thought this from the start. I'm not sure what China is hiding--whether the virus escaped from a lab or Beijing suppressed evidence of the disease for weeks and thereby enabled it to gain purchase globally--but if there was a chance to contain COVID it was probably gone by last spring. As soon as the infection spread to countries that were both huge and poor (India, Indonesia) or big and badly governed (Iran, the UK, the United States), the odds of eliminating it completely had shrunk considerably.

As long as there are deep pools of unvaccinated people, mutations are inevitable and sooner or later some of those mutations will escape the existing vaccines. So yes, the end state is probably an endemic illness that mutates like the flu but is much more dangerous.

True. I was hopeful but the increased contagiousness of the delta virus quashed any delusions I had.

The virus did not escape from a lab. Consult your local biologist.

Scientists say the virus *probably* did not escape from a lab, not that it *definitely* did not.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01529-3

Fauci's position is that it is "highly likely" that COVID came from animals and not from a lab leak, which explicitly and intentionally falls short of your position.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/fauci-flip-flops-on-lab-leak-theory-highly-likely-covid-19-originated-naturally/ar-AAKloXm

Even the WHO believes the possibility needs more dedicated analysis.

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/31/983156340/theory-that-covid-came-from-a-chinese-lab-takes-on-new-life-in-wake-of-who-repor

With the best authorities in the world saying more work is necessary before reaching a final conclusion, it's too early to say the virus did not leak.

I liked this: "badly governed (Iran, the UK, the United States)".

I agree, of course ;-)

We should all be so lucky as to live in Paris (although I see Macron is moving to the right to outflank Le Pen and hence may end up little better than the Anglo-American governments).

Dave, here it is again--from today.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/china/china-who-second-origin-study-intl-hnk/index.html

Why is it that China won't permit the WHO to investigate the lab leak theory? Three options: 1) China reckons the theory is correct and wants to prevent the world from proving it, 2) China is unsure but doesn't want to take the risk that it will be proved responsible, or 3) China knew about COVID weeks or months before it came clean and doesn't want the world to know that its delays prevented timely international action.

I don't know which explanation is the correct one, but the aforementioned authorities explicitly believe the lab leak theory needs full examination. As the article notes, the G-7 as a group and the WHO director general agree with that consensus.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2021 04:25AM by Lot's Wife.

I'm still going to pass on the vaccines. But I did opt for a tetanus and diphtheria shot today--seeing as my thigh met a chain saw. If only there was a shot for carelessness!

Ouch.

Diphtheria? Haven't heard of that being caused by a laceration. It's considered a respiratory illness. Tetanus - yes, good move.

Here's to a quick recovery.

Let's just say, this was a profound learning experience. No more solo chain saw work for me! A local EMT bound it, but it was a 40 minute drive to the ER. The downside of country living.

The blueberry field we bought wasn't cultivated for maybe 10 years. I had to dejungle the bushes, and I'm cutting the encroaching woods back. I'll go back to the ER with a few quarts of blueberries for the med student (who did the actual suturing--I'm an excellent practice DUMMY) and the supervising MD. I can feel it healing already.

Thanks for your concern. AZsteve deserves it more. Hang in there, Steve!

Getting back on thread(!!): The President wants to send agents in pairs, door to door, looking for (us) unvaccinated. They'll be called "JaCOVID Witnesses!"

Yeah, blueberry and blackberry bushes can be quite nasty. The last time that I picked wild blackberries, I was scratched by the bushes, and got a horrible staph infection on my skin. This was during the summer, and my doc gave me a two week time out from open water swimming. I learned my lesson -- suit up first.

"Some elected Republicans are the ones spreading the falsehoods. Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, a Senate candidate, warned on Twitter of “KGB-style” agents knocking on the doors of unvaccinated Americans — a reference to Mr. Biden’s door-to-door vaccine outreach campaign."

Actually Dave, the mask order went into effect last Saturday at 11:59 PM.

Headline : "Mask requirements can't exempt the vaccinated, because the unvaccinated will simply cheat"

One answer to, "Are you vaccinated?" is, "I identify as vaccinated."

If you are not vaccinated you will identify as dead.

You overstate the case. The odds of dying are small, though not what could be described as “vanishingly small.”

One thing you can say with near certainty is that an unvaccinated person has a dangerously poor grasp of probabilities and risk assessment.

Unfortunately it’s pretty common for people to have pretty poor risk assessment skills, especially for low probability events.

The bond market is unsexy and pretty opaque to most people (me among them), but people who work in the bond market are experts at comparing risks and assigning an appropriate price to risk. I think they are way better at that than the stock market is.

And yes, the stock market has risks, but I practiced "dollar averaging," investing a set amount each paycheck through much (but not all) of my working life. Whether the stock market was up or down, I kept putting those $$ in. My income is now adequate to my retirement. And it far surpasses anything Social Security could do. This, from NPR's Marketwatch:

"So to simplify, I'll assume that the reader's Social Security contributions were spread out evenly over each month from January 1972 through December 2014. That's 42 years, or 504 months. I assume $512.59 is invested each month. Assuming that the reader held a portfolio with 80% in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index SPX, +0.20% and 20 % in a fund with 10-year Treasurys, rebalancing monthly and paying 0.5% as a portfolio management fee each year, I calculate that the reader would have accumulated $1.17 million. With a 5% withdrawal rate, that would be $58,500 a year, or $4,875 a month."

Source:
ttps://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-view-social-security-vs-a-long-term-stock-portfolio-2015-06-29

I now make sure that all my children's Roth IRAs get the maximum contribution each each year. Two have their own private plans.

I think you misread BoJ's point. Or perhaps I did.

Anyway, psychologists, behavioral economists, and game theorists have consistently found that humans are systematically bad at evaluating low-probability high-risk events. If the probability of a catastrophe is low, humans will tend to act as if it were zero. At the extreme, in other words, human judgment sucks.

There are plenty of financial examples, but COVID is at least as good an illustration of the phenomenon. How many times have we heard that it is not dangerous because only 1% of people will die from it, that for most people it is only like a bad flu, or that the vaccine is riskier than the disease? And now 600,000 Americans are dead, countless others have suffered chronic or permanent injury, and half of US citizens and residents remain unvaccinated even as a new and more dangerous variant is spreading fast.

Your chainsaw mention is apposite. The odds of seriously hurting yourself with a chainsaw are small so you, like all of us in some situations, decided that wielding it alone was safe. It wasn't. Yet I bet that for an older man the probability of dying from a machinery accident is smaller than for a COVID infection.

I make no pretense of knowing what I am talking about WRT the bond market, so feel free to ignore or correct that at will.

But I agree completely that low probability events tend to be evaluated quite poorly by a large swath of the population.

As for covid, in 2020 in the US, about 35,000 people died in car accidents. That's a pretty firm statistic. 600,000 died from covid in the last year, and some reports say the number is underreported, and is likely closer to a million. But let's stick with 600,000. That is sufficiently awful.

So, the covid death toll for the last year was 20 times higher than the auto death toll.

And while nearly everyone rides in a vehicle from time to time, only about a third of the US residents contracted covid. That would mean that 600K out of about 110 million infected people died, while about 10K per 110 million US residents died in vehicle accidents in the last year. That makes covid 60 times more lethal.


You can split hairs about mostly old people die of covid and mostly younger people die in car accidents, and blah blah blah. The point is that we all know that driving is at least a little risky. Covid, while still not a huge risk unless you are in a vulnerable group, is way riskier than driving.

The chainsaw example is also spot on.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2021 04:46AM by Brother Of Jerry.

I won't question your skill with a chainsaw, but I have some doubt about your intelligence assessment of viruses.

We shall see how the next year goes.

Has anyone who has contracted COVID referred to it as a stupid virus with that connotation?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2021 05:59AM by Nightingale.

What slap in the face to those who have lost their loved ones to a virus. Very thoughtful of you.

Enjoy your chainsaw.