Coronavirus

This is an honest question I am genuinely curious about:

Why is this CDC-issued guideline suspect when most people were on board with everything up until this point? If it is strictly because people think it will be abused, shitheads are going to be shitheads, there's not a lot you can do about it. If it's not that, what is it?

I think some people are having difficulty accepting it for the following reasons:
1. They have been cautious for so long, it is hard to let your guard down
2. They might be a bit suspicious of the timing, with businesses all crowing about having a hard time getting low pay workers to.... work.
3. They fear those unvaccinated shitheads who will happily not wear a mask.

I saw Dr. Fauci himself saying it was okay, and that the decision was based on weeks of disease transmission study data. He has had numerous opportunities to give up his principles and take the easy way out, and he never did it. If he says it, I believe it.

I can only speak for myself, but my beef is that the behavioral elements are not well thought through. So this, basically:

Our governor lifted the mask mandate recently, but left individual counties or cities with the option to continue their own mask mandates. The two most densely populated counties have opted to continue their mask mandates for now. My workplace now allows fully vaccinated people to go unmasked, but isn't verifying anybody's vaccination status. My girlfriend's workplace is now requiring her to come into work part of the time, even though she has a weak immune system due to cancer. She works as an event coordinator, so her job will eventually force her to attend crowded events, probably this fall. I suggested that she start looking at project coordinator job ads, in hopes of landing a similar job that doesn't require her to spend a lot of time in crowded locations.

The CDC has fucked this up from start to finish so badly that the administration should fire everybody in CDC administration that they can, tell everybody not fired to not say a damn thing about covid anymore, and hope that the CDC can get a shred of credibility back in a few years time. A lot of this isn't the CDC's fault, and a lot of this is human nature to do what it takes to keep their jobs. But at this point, I don't believe a thing they say. Is this coming from some government apparatchik trying to keep their job, or is it from some Trump POS appointee that used to drive that orange POS's golf cart that hasn't been fired yet?

I don't want to have to research to find out if what they say is correct, but I guess that's our new normal now.

The current infection and death rate is similar to Influenza, and there are way more people vaccinated for Covid than there are for Influenza. At some point you have to reason that either a) the masks stay on forever because thousands die from Influenza and other infectious diseases each year and we need to stop all of them; or b) Influenza death-rate has been deemed an acceptable level of risk for decades, and we should continue with that assessment for other communicable diseases as well.

Epidemiologists only have so much political capital to spend, and they measure it out in careful doses.

As for "the CDC has fucked this up from start to finish" . . . I'm curious what other data sources you're using as a baseline to determine that. Most of the world has continued to use them as their primary source, even when it required reading between the lines of their official (and unofficial) statements.

Sagrilarus wrote: As for "the CDC has fucked this up from start to finish" . . . I'm curious what other data sources you're using as a baseline to determine that. Most of the world has continued to use them as their primary source, even when it required reading between the lines of their official (and unofficial) statements.

CDC had that covid test fiasco right at the start. Then like you said, "reading between the lines". IMO the CDCs job in offering pandemic advice is to be as unambiguous as possible, not to force people to play Kremlinology with their pronouncements. And just within the past couple of weeks the CDC advice has gone from, "Everyone should wear a mask outside at all times," to, "Fuck it, go nuts, lick a doorknob, whatever." No, pretty sure they haven't exactly covered themselves in glory here.

I'm far from being a "but mah rahts," Y'all Qaida member, but now I don't trust the CDC's announcements and I don't think I'm the only one. I think now that either they themselves are trying to second guess how the public will react to their announcements (not easy to do under the best of circumstances) and spinning it accordingly, or they're taking advice from their bosses, who even if they have the best intentions aren't the subject matter experts. I don't think it's malicious, but I do think it's of limited usefulness.

The family just finished their second round of shots -

I had Moderna and the 2nd one kicked by but the following day - achy, lethargic, and hot and cold flashes

Wife and daughters had Pfizer - wife powered through but the 21 year old was wiped for a day

My wife and I got our second Pfizer shots last week. We had about a 12 hour window where we felt achey and tired, but it was all gone within a day or so.

RobertB wrote: (Lots of stuff)

The CDC had to play the hand they were dealt, and I think they did pretty well. As it stands they have been systematically slimed in the press for the last year (and this continues), an overt political effort to damage their credibility and further other peoples' agendas. Like it or not the CDC was made a political entity and then systematically damaged. I'd be curious to hear if there's any disagreement with that assessment. The question remains -- who would you look to for better information, both last Fall and now?

The chance of transmission even amongst the unvaccinated in the outdoors with distancing kept in place is very small, and allows people to get some valuable mental health boosts back. I'll admit that I'm still wearing a mask for indoor venues, and it appears everyone else around me is doing the same. Seems like the appropriate compromise at the moment.

I don't know what the situation actually is on the ground in the US, but I'm sure it varies location to location. That said, if the US is truly in a place where everyone at risk who wants a shot has had an opportunity to get a shot for free, the treatments are there for those who do get sick, and there is no chance of overcrowding of the hospitals. . .if not now, when?

What additional factors are you waiting for? Gangs of officials checking the vaccine scar door to door? America in 2021 isn't capable of doing that. There is a giant propaganda campaign going on in the US (the elites, Russia, China, and a few selfish opportunists) and we aren't going to solve that first and then be able to move onto COVID. I dunno man.

The CDC has been demonized over the past year for political reasons, no doubt.

But it also deserves criticism.
It hasn’t been clear in communicating. It hasn’t been consistent.

And, for the first time in my life, I have lost some faith in public health agencies because they have bent to political pressure. My health is not to be compromised to fit a political agenda.

My biggest fault with the new CDC recommendations isn't about the science--I would bet the science behind it is solid as a rock. The issue is it assumes people follow and have followed CDC guidance to this point. It is not "tested for bad actors" in my profession's parlance. People will fake the cards, people will not wear masks when called for, &c. And removing the CDC guidance removes a solid, easily conveyed excuse to handle the Rick Schroeders of the world (that's my local Costco, God bless) that want to give people a hard time for doing their already-hard jobs. I think they could have made the recommendation and included metrics or other measures to explain why it's being done, so folks know why it might have to go back in place if/when the numbers climb again.

On the flu--it is really mind-boggling. I think the US had less than 3000 cases of the flu this season. Cases, not deaths. The previous full season saw 22k deaths from millions of cases. Ironically, there is a downside here, as no circulating flu (worldwide) means we don't know which sub-types (H#N#) could be prominent. Pretty much winging it.

I still cringe at folks directly comparing circulating flu and COVID-19. COVID is more deadly and has much worse long-term effects that aren't well understood yet. Should you wear a mask in flu/cold season? Like, probably? There are plenty of places around the world where this is not weird, especially in mass transit or other crowded venues. It's okay to be better about this.

jeb wrote: Ironically, there is a downside here, as no circulating flu (worldwide) means we don't know which sub-types (H#N#) could be prominent. Pretty much winging it.

Ouch. I have been getting the flu shot every year for the last 8 years, because the last two times that I had it were pretty intense. So I haven't spent much time worrying about the flu as a result, and forgot that the flu shot is always based on the prominent new strains at the end of the previous flu season. I will get whatever shot is available this fall, but maybe I will also go back to mask-wearing for the upcoming flu/cold season.

Popular author Michael Lewis (The Big Short, Moneyball, etc) has come out with a book arguing that the CDC totally screwed things up. His interview with Ezra Klein was interesting. Here is the transcript that I am too lazy to summarize:

www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/podcasts/ezra...ewis-transcript.html

He does go into the history of the agency, and argues that the shift from career civil servant to political appointments has damaged the agency, but there is a lot going on. I'm not super invested in defending or destroying the CDC, just frustrated, like all of us.

MICHAEL LEWIS: Key failure number one, not facing up to the severity of what was going on in Wuhan as early as you could have done it. I would say January 20, when my characters have a real bead on what the transmissibility and the lethality of it is. And they had connections within the CDC. They’re talking. They’re trying to get them to pay attention. The “head-in-the-sandness,” kind of, of it.

Two, being proprietary about COVID testing so that they created in our government a single point of failure. So that when their test didn’t work, we had no test. And that’s not just the CDC. That’s the FDA, because the FDA was insisting that people use the CDC’s test.

We have more microbiology labs than any other country on Earth. They could all have whipped up COVID tests and some of them did. We could have done it a completely different way. Not just that the tests failed, but instead of responding to the failure by saying, this isn’t working, we got to find a different way, clinging to the authority to create a test. That would be two.


Three, in the midst of all this, not being able to stand up to Donald Trump and say, what you’re saying about this is false. You’d lose your job maybe. But there was a public information role that they failed repeatedly with. And they failed in both directions. It’s interesting. Saying that masks didn’t do anything, because they didn’t have masks. But also, remember early on there was an obsession with fomites. You can get this thing off of surfaces. And you were cleaning your newspaper before you got it off your front porch if you got —

EZRA KLEIN: Yeah, people were Lysoling their groceries.

MICHAEL LEWIS: All that. Think about the expense that the whole society has gone to because the CDC only like last week said, actually, that’s not that big a deal. They could have said that last May. So the guidance has been bizarre.