The MSFN café - A Penny for Your Thoughts

[NotHereToPlayGames]

In the US, there has been 73,100,000 cases and 876,000 deaths.  Divide that out and that's 0.01198.  So is the mortality rate 0.01198?  Or 1.198?  At any rate, it's not the "90%" that our media would have had you believe a year and a half ago.

[Tripredacus]

14 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Forgive me for being a bit unorthodox.  But I feel that if we all went around licking each others hands and faces a year and a half ago, we would have achieved natural immunity in less than a MONTH and this thing would be over already.

Well the measures that were undertaken in the US (and are still ongoing in some places) are the unorthodox responses, not what you have posted.

Also there is a misnomer in regards to the term "natural immunity" which is not being used appropriately. It is the same type of situation where people misuse the term retro to mean anything old rather than being something new designed to look or feel old. Natural immunity is an immunity granted through passing down genetic traits through generations, you can't achieve it during your lifetime but it is something your children or further down can "acquire" when they are born. Natural immunity for any new disease exists but is extremely rare, it is where you have an innate immunity and the disease does not effect you. You can still be a carrier. In fact look into disease carriers in the animal world for examples of natural immunity whereas a rat can spread a disease but not get sick from it.

What people are talking about when they misuse the term natural immunity is acquired immunity, which is natural, but could be said to be naturally acquired immunity. That is where your immune system fights off a disease and is able to recognise it. And sure, we could have gotten to that point much earlier if nothing was done but there is a large amount of social pressure put upon "leaders" by people who do not understand the laws of nature and macro level of society. The idea that any one person can be responsible for death due to a disease or that all people can be saved are extreme viewpoints but are a common theme in talks by government, media or on social media. The "if you do/do not do x, then people will die and you are a bad person" whereas humans do not have the ability to actually control these types of things at the macro level and we cannot (yet) defy the law of nature. You can't save everyone and it is natural (and normal) for some people to die if they get sick. And then the "logical" rebuttal to your proposal would have to be then how many more or less people would have died if there was no extraordinary response to the discovery of the disease? For people who think you can save everyone, there is no answer that is acceptable to them.

[jaclaz]

@NotHereToPlayGames

The tiny nitpick being that the variant that we had a year and a half ago was far more dangerous than the one that is around now.

And numbers have a meaning.

Worldometer, in this moment, sets the US deaths at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ 902,140 (in roughly two years time), which is a number that could be compared to - say - Civil war  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war 1,129,418 or WWII 1,076,245 (but both over the course of roughly 4 years).

If you want to compare to another pandemic, the Spanish Flu killed roughly 675,000 US people, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html (and US had all in all a smaller amount of deaths per milllion than most EU countries).

jaclaz

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by jaclaz

[NotHereToPlayGames]

41 minutes ago, Tripredacus said:

And then the "logical" rebuttal to your proposal would have to be then how many more or less people would have died if there was no extraordinary response to the discovery of the disease?

I'm no doctor, but my neighbor is.  She threatened to quit her job three/four weeks ago due to a vaccine mandate that would have required she be vaccinated (she still to this day is NOT vaccinated).  She's a consultation physician and to me at least it sounds like when I do jobs as a "consultant".  I am exempt from "union rules" at most of the companies that I do consultant work for.  The way she tells it, the only reason she was allowed to keep her job and remain UNVACCINATED is because of a Supreme Court ruling (which I have not been following).

At any rate, that aside, me and my neighbor are both of the "opinion" (we acknowledge that is is "opinion" but there is "some" studies that back it up, but just as many studies that refute it, but I cannot claim to be following these studies personally, the neighbor is however and I kinda take her word for it), where was I, oh, it is my "opinion" that the folks that have died from covid were in such a state of health that they were going to die anyway, not from covid but something much less "deadly" than covid.

So in my view, all of this "crap" that the US and other countries have been doing in the "guise" of 'safety' is all just BS.

Opinions vary, of course.  But that's mine  

 

1 minute ago, jaclaz said:

The tiny nitpick being that the variant that we had a year and a half ago was far more dangerous than the one that is around now.

True.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Forgot to mention, and again I kinda rely on the neighbor for most of this info, not the news, but somebody that works IN THE FIELD - she claims that a large number of deaths that are reported as covid deaths were not in fact covid deaths.  A gunshot victim or car crash victim would be counted among the covid numbers even if that gunshot or car crash was the "real" cause of death, but since "covid" was found in the lungs (my assumption here), then they were "counted" as a covid death.

 

At any rate, I'm just tired of all of the BS and still have my fingers crossed that we return to "normal".  I have no intention of wearing a USELESS mask for the next TWENTY YEARS all because "politicians" don't want to give up their "control" over rules we must follow but they don't think apply to them.

 

Any whoo...

Edited January 28, 2022 by NotHereToPlayGames

[UCyborg]

There are real people behind those numbers and others are left with awful consenquences.

I'm a lucky bastard in a sense that the virus didn't (knowingly) get to me (yet), but not everyone was so fortunate.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

I'm only in my upper 40s and don't drink or smoke and decent BMI so basically "healthy as a horse".

I consider myself lucky that I caught covid in January 2020 - before we even really knew what it was.

We had close to a dozen folks at work taking sick days for the flu - that's all we thought it was.

When March rolled around, we finally knew what it was and it was this time that the local Fiat Chrysler Transmission Plant basically scared the entire town with a confirmed case.

I say scared the town because the local media basically had covid pegged as "if you catch this, you WILL die!"

You'd think I was exaggerating, but I promise you that I am not.

This thing scared the Living Sh#t out of this community.

Others at work didn't see the writing on the wall, but I kinda did.

I had antibody tests performed by my doctor to find out if what I had in January was covid or not.

I am exempt from company vaccine mandates because my antibody tests confirmed that what I had was not the flu, but was in fact covid.

Others have the choice of weekly covid tests or getting vaccinated and not having to do weekly covid tests.

Didn't miss any work (Mon thru Fri) but "took a point" and skipped a Saturday because of flu-like symptoms.

Needless to say, coworkers (at the time) were kind of ticked off at me for being at work that Friday when they found out I didn't miss work.

But again, none of us knew about covid at the time, it was just regular ol' seasonal flu.

We've had close to three dozen have covid since and they've all been extremely minor - but mandated 14 days off work.

I do consider myself lucky that I had covid before we really knew what it was and at "healthy as a horse".

I do reallize that it is much MUCH different for "unhealthy" folks.

 

edit - I say "lucky" because at the time my thoughts were basically along the lines of "20yr olds catch this and don't loose a day, 60yrs old catch this and die, I *want* to catch this at 40+ so I don't have to live a life of never catching it but then catching it at 70 and dying from it".  But then we found (at least so far) that each "mutation" is less and less of an issue.  So (fingers crossed) the variant that will be around when I'm 70 will just be a runny nose after so many mutations.  But yeah, mutations can go the other way also.

Edited January 29, 2022 by NotHereToPlayGames

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Snow storm and I have some shoveling to do.

I'm kinda guessing on some of the numbers because I never actually measured my driveway, but I know that my carport is 20 feet wide (I carried the lumber home from Menards, on foot!).

So my driveway is roughly 19 feet wide.  The length of my blue truck is 178.9 inches.  I'm guessing three and a half of those will fit in my driveway bumper-to-bumper from the end of the carport.

But I used 5 to account for area into the road, at mailbox, and sidewalk.  That's 894.5 inches.  Divide by 12 to get 74.5 feet.

74.5 feet long multiplied by 19 feet wide gives me 1415.5 square feet.

Divide by 60 because I cleared roughly 60 square feet at the back door and timed that at 21 minutes.  That's 23.6.

Multiply by 21 because I cleared those 60 square feet in 21 minutes.  That's 495.6.

Divide by 60 to convert minutes to hours.  That's 8.26 hours.

LONG day of shoveling ahead of me  

[jaclaz]

You are missing the third dimension.

Having snow 2.54 cm thick or 25.4 cm (1 vs 10 inches in your local dialect) is not the same thing, and actual shoveling performance is traditionally expressed in cubic units (per hour or per minute)w*l*h/t.

jaclaz

Edited February 4, 2022 by jaclaz

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Very true.

I'm assuming the heighth/depth to average itself out.

It's 14" deep at the back door, the drift along the driveway is 31" at its peak, I have some areas as low as 5".

[UCyborg]

There goes my streak of being a healthy horse. I think I got omicron. f****** bul*****, as if life wasn't miserable enough as it is.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Ouch!  Sorry to hear that.  

Forgive the curiosity, but I'd be curious to know your "before and after" perceptions of covid/omicron.

I've known roughly a dozen folks to have had covid and each and every one of them walked away thinking, "That wasn't bad at all, the media had me thinking it was going to kill me, it was nowhere near that."

 

edit - Also know one person that did die from it.  But she was diabetic and very unhealthy to begin with.  Even her husband tells everyone she was knocking on Death's Door before her covid diagnosis.

Edited February 4, 2022 by NotHereToPlayGames

[mina7601]

2 hours ago, UCyborg said:

There goes my streak of being a healthy horse. I think I got omicron. f****** bul*****, as if life wasn't miserable enough as it is.

Oh dear! I am sorry to hear that you got omicron! 

I hope you get well soon!

[Wunderbar98]

Hang in there @UCyborg. Drink plenty of fluids and get lots of rest to help your body fight the infection. If your lungs become problematic, minimize sleeping on your back and stay reasonably active (gaming don't count). With a little luck you'll be feeling good in no time.

Healthy as a horse is a misnomer, humanoids are incredibly fragile. A friend had an uncle who went to the doctor for routine exam. The doctor told him he was good and healthy. Well he died before leaving the office, heart attack. Make every day count :)

[NotHereToPlayGames]

20 minutes ago, Wunderbar98 said:

stay reasonably active (gaming don't count)

Um, what sane person in the universe thinks that "gaming" is the same thing as "active" ???