Coronavirus

charlest wrote: At this point studies seem to conclude that vaccinated people are spreading the Delta variant perhaps on par with non-vaccinated. I've seen conflicting reports on whether the vaccines provide strong protection against the Delta variant in terms of avoiding hospitalization.

My understanding from what I read is the Delta variant stays in the nose of those who are vaccinated and can spread from there. Once it goes down towards the lungs the vaccine kicks in and helps you beat it. Basically until it drops the immune system isn't involved. Also the mRNA vaccines are far, far better at helping prevent serious complications. Happy to be educated from someone smarter than me though.

Michael Barnes wrote: But Dragon Con is still on! With no mention on their web site of requiring masks, vaccines, or social distancing! Everything is back to normal!

Fuck’s sake, it’s getting to be close to time to round up anyone who won’t get vaccinated or wear a mask and launch them into the sun.

When I bought tickets to Gen Con, the situation was looking much brighter than it is now. I am now hoping they just cancel it outright but I know they won't. I suspect I will not be doing much "gen con" at Gen Con.

I support your sun launch initiative.

This is going to be the same situation as last year, where the stakeholders in these events are going to wait for some official action that allows them to file a claim with their insurance. It's a bit of brinkmanship.

If you look at epidemics through history, and not just the flu, there's always follow-on flair-ups, sometimes decades later. We're still living with influenza variants from 100 years ago. This is going to become an HIV, a TB, a malady that will need to be managed for decades or even longer, both in order to suppress and in order to treat. A drag on the world economy.

But one of the things I got into a conversation about on Washington Post is that the Delta variant has switched the game theory on this.

-- Before Delta, not getting vaccinated meant you got to free-ride off of your vaccinated neighbors, and as long there was a small enough number of unvaxed they got the protection of the people around them more or less for free.

-- With Delta, every vaccinated person appears to be a gun to the unvaccinated's head, a potential vector for sickness. The free-ride has disappeared, replaced by threat. The "I'm gonna cough in your face" attitude favors the vaccinated now.

As might be expected, vaccination rates have started going up again. People respond to stimulus. Medical officials are telling everyone including the vaccinated to mask up again and that's the responsible thing to do for people that can't get the vaccination. But there's a part of me that wants to just look at these anti-vaxers and say, "not my damn problem anymore" and blow a big exhale their way.

I won't do it because I'm a nice guy (and the death culters depend on that, hiding behind the immunosuppressed and children instead of the vaccinated) but you know what? I respond to stimulus as well. I'm not nearly as concerned about these people as I was. The path for these people to immunity may be contracting the disease, and that is certainly happening right now. This is a problem that may solve itself in a very expensive, very inconvenient way for the rest of us.

So much of the world’s population is unvaccinated and, until there is a concerted effort to get them done, there are millions of variant incubators roaming around that are a threat to all of us.

Yay for me, I’m privileged enough to live in a country that has the means to get me these vaccines and I have been provided with enough education and sense to take advantage of that.

The people in poor countries are not so lucky.

Michael Barnes wrote: But Dragon Con is still on! With no mention on their web site of requiring masks, vaccines, or social distancing! Everything is back to normal!

I'm curious about that as well. Are they capping attendance at a much lower number or somehow rerouting traffic flow to prevent the MASSIVE congestion clogs at the skybridges? Not to mention the general congregations for cosplay appreciation. If they banned costumes that would probably mitigate some of that but then it just wouldn't be Dcon. They just cancelled some sort of celebrity con thing near me, probably because enough of the heavy hitters pulled out from autographs/photos to make the whole experience moot and I imagine Dcon will suffer greatly without the hall of autographs, vendors hall, and pop alley simply because the normal contributors to that sort of thing won't come even if there are fans awaiting them. Celebs in particular are probably very sensitive to any perception that they contributed to a super-spreader event. Sitting in a room watching a bunch of video calls (even if that is basically the same thing as being on the back watching on a monitor) isn't very appealing either.

Ultimately I think it will go virtual this year like all of my other conferences.

Omg can you imagine the sky bridge to the food court on Saturday afternoon, let alone the food court itself?

But nope, not addressed at all. There is no front page link “how we are keeping you safe at Dragon Con link or anything. I expected to see “we require guests to mask up in the registration lines, the dealer’s room, the gaming hall, and in all panels and perfomances.” Maybe we are limiting capacities in key areas”. But nope. Just the legal clause that if you get COVID at Dragon Con and die, they are not at fault.

As for the celebs, it’s pretty much the usual bunch of D-list lifers, was interested in seeing Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper as well as like the entire cast of BSG but oh well, I hope they stay safe. Shatner is listed but I can not imagine he won’t cancel. Saw him -with- Nimoy a couple of years ago so that life goal is already complete anyway.

As a veteran of 10 GenCons, I can testify to the fact that a significant number of gamers have poor hygiene, at least while at GenCon. Actually, I didn't notice a problem at my first GenCon, in 1982, because apparently everybody still bathed normally back then. But all of my subsequent GenCons took place in the span of 1993 - 2003, and the stench was always problematic by day three. The last few times that I went to GenCon, I armored myself with a moderately heavy dose of cologne, to create a protective aura of scent. In a pinch, I could pull up my shirt to cover my nose if caught in close quarters with a stinker, like in a long line. So I can't even imagine going to a live convention this year, with an ongoing pandemic and stinky gamers who never wash their grimy hands. Ick.

Come on, a little "con crud" that lingers for weeks and that fetid, almost palpable and VISIBLE atmosphere of BO and moist, humid, stale sweat and skin particulate haze is a core feature of the hallowed halls of gaming! If they actually ran the A/C all the girls would just be complaining of being cold...you know its true

Definitely feeling the "not my damn problem anymore" vibe. The antivax 'publicans have acted with extreme selfishness and willful ignorance for over a goddamn year. No doubt there are more patient and compassionate people than me, but in my friend circles there is a definite feeling of "fuck em, they had their chance" that I can't help but subscribe to. Any shreds of empathy I have left are for the parents who are being forced to send their kids back to Delta-infested schools because their state legislators decided COVID was over and mask mandates are in fact our biggest threat to "freedom" in this country. That's the insane discourse being tossed around in Utah, anyway.

Any mask-wearing I do in public is done to trigger the precious antivax goons as much as it is to mitigate chances of a "breakthrough" or whatever.

I have zero empathy or concern for anyone who won’t wear a mask or get vaxxed The world is better off without selfish shits that think mAh FReeDum is more precious than human lives. At this stage COVID denial should be held in the same rightful contempt as Holocaust denial.

Once again it just shows how right wing politics are to all about cruelty, selfishness, and denial of even the most simple of facts.

Last weekend both my father in law and mom mom had to go to the hospital for non-COVID issues.he hag a COVID patient in the room with him and they were so slammed with unvaccinated cases that they could not even spare a nurse to clean up blood. They handed him a pack of baby wipes. My mom couldn’t get a room and was in an ER room for three days with the whole hospital shut down because they had to go into a lockdown. My family and others, all of us really, have been impacted and will continue to be impacted by selfish, ignorant assholes. This is going to continue indefinitely 100% because of people who won’t do their part to end this to “own the libs”. So no, I’m not really overly concerned at this point when I hear that these anti mask/anti vaccine people are getting sick and dying.

I wish I could join you on the "fuck the unvaccinated" parade float, but unfortunately I'm too fucking angry at how their selfishness has now turned back onto those of us who actually had some sense and got vaccinated. I'm going to be sending my kids back to school in the fall. They are both vaccinated but I'm sure many of their classmates will not be, let alone the staff.

I'm back to wearing a mask in public. I don't like it, because of course, and that alone is enough to make me want to jettison every anti-vaxxer into the sun.

There was something going around the internet yesterday that someone didn't want to get vaccinated because they were scared that they would turn into a monster like in "I am Legend." There are so many things wrong with that, and it is so ridiculous that you want to believe no one could be that stupid, yet you know they are.

hotseatgames wrote: . . . I'm too fucking angry at how their selfishness has now turned back onto those of us who actually had some sense and got vaccinated.

I don't think this is a fair assessment. Delta was first detected in India and likely did not develop in the United States to start. We're just downwind. The problem isn't about how these people behaved, it's that they now have a huge target on their backs because this particular strain can be carried by vaccinated people and spread to them by just about anyone in the general population.* Their bet that they could be protected by other peoples' actions just went bust.

So now it's really on them. They can "own the libs" all they want, but the libs just don't care no more. The libs have moved from "we all need to pull together" to "not really my problem anymore" and that makes for a big difference in the calculus of the F-You politics they practice. They are literally killing themselves to no effect on the rest of us.

What remains is the potential for a new strain to appear here in the States, which could occur, but frankly could occur anywhere. The majority of the world is not immunized. This is a long war, decades likely. Normal has changed, we each need to protect ourselves and our own.

I'm calling the odds of my boys going to in-person classes in September at 3-1 against. Recent record number of confirmed cases in the U.S. occurred yesterday, by a fair margin. We need to go back in the hole until things cool off a bit.


_{* At least if the current theory holds.}

My kids went back to school last Wednesday. Over the weekend, one of my sons teachers tested positive so JUST the 6th graders are back to virtual foe the week. We are supposed to quarantine River for 11 days...but Scarlett is still going to in person class and...it makes no fucking sense. And the school is trying to keep it on the downlow, they’ve ONLY notified 6th grade parents. Like everyone isn’t going to find out.

The school needs to be closed. But because of Republican driven policies in Georgia...

Sagrilarus wrote: I don't think this is a fair assessment.

It's based on the potential for mutations to slide past the vaccination, the chances of which would be greatly minimized if we had a higher vaccinated population. I don't want to get this fucking virus, even a mild case. It is diabolical in its randomness. Would I be one who shrugs it off, or would I be one who gets decimated? I don't want to find out, and every motherfucking GQP out there is increasing my changes of having to roll the dice.

My sister works as a nurse at a hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana. They got slammed last year during the first wave, and they are getting slammed again now. Some of the patients have the Lambda variant that may have originated in Peru. Lambda is less contagious than Delta, but more contagious than the original recipe. Lambda also seems to be vaccine-resistant, and therefore more likely to cause a breakthrough case with a vaccinated individual.