Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

If we're not back to normal until 2022, things have gone wildly and unexpectedly wrong. That's not "slow vaccine rollout" levels, that's "mutation into a completely new virus" levels of delay.

At current levels, California is seeing about 0.3% of the population of the state infected every day, with about 23% already infected (COVID-19 Projections | California | US Infection Estimates). So even without vaccinations, if it stayed at this level, we would run out of people to infect in early September. Now obviously, viruses don't work that way and the more people it infects, the more it will slow down.

But this will be over by the fall one way or the other. The success of the vaccination program will decide how many people die in that time more than how fast it ends.

 

I read antibody protection might only last 5 months so we can’t count on it just running out of people.

I fully expect the vaccine rollout to get better. Especially as lower populated states need less, higher populated states will get their shares. I said 22 because there was a projection based on vaccination rates it was going to take us much longer than we all think to roll it out.

 

Haven't been keeping up on all the state-by-state shenanigans lately.

Is California still under some delusion that haircuts are dangerous?

 

I heard one in three in Los Angeles is infected. That is not auspicious.

I don't think we're out of this until early next year.

 

At a time when people are literally laying in ambulances for hours waiting to get into the hospital, yeah certain activities like haircuts need to stop. At some point you have to admit some things are not essential to day-to-day life and not dying for lack of a hospital bed is far greater than letting my hair get longer.

 

That's one of those tricky wordings they use because they don't want people to get complacent. They do a study where they look at if people have antibodies five months after infection, they still do, then the scientist says "well, we've only proven they last up to five months, so even though it would be incredibly unusual for them to just disappear after that, we can only be sure that they last five months because that's the study we've done."

Then the headline reads "Immunity may only last five months!"

And we really don't want to try to split people into "have antibodies, can do what they want" and "no antibodies, have to live under lockdown," it's easier to just enforce the same rules on everybody, so anything that plays down the role of immunity has been played up in the press.

I haven't seen any evidence yet that reinfection due to waning immunity has been an issue so far, and the disease has been around over a year.

 

California had some breakouts traced to hair salons last spring.

That's not unusual. Estimates are that at least 25% of the entire nation is infected, LA is just a little ahead.

But that doesn't mean it's gonna last longer. That actually means it's gonna end faster. The harder this burns now, the quicker it's over. That's not a good thing, burning through quickly means way more people die or are permanently injured. But that's the cold, hard math of pandemics. Failing to control it gets you out of it faster than the countries that handled it responsibly.

 

Maybe. I do know they had some breakouts FALSELY traced to hair salons last spring.

Entering a new year sparkling? Not so for beauty businesses in Little Saigon

Meanwhile, Chicago's mayor wants everything opened ASAP to keep people from gathering . . . at homes.

I'm not a science denier. I'm a pull-shit-out-of-a-hat denier.

 

Regardless, there needs to be a line drawn for which things are essential and which things we can live without. If long hair and unmanicured nails alters your ability to live life, you need to reevaluate your life. If you tell me salon owners need to make money, so does everyone else who is being told they can’t operate right now. I feel bad for all of them, but in the middle of a crises that has claimed at least 400,000 and has so inundated hospitals to the point people are being sent home or wait in an ambulance hoping for a spot to open to get care, some things must be closed. We have decided things to keep people fed and to fix modes of transit and your dwelling are most important and haircuts just aren’t. Live with it. Key word in that sentence is live.

 

Rick, if you are sanguine then I shall try to be. I guess we're going to find out a lot about the curve over the next 10 days, maybe more than ever.

 

I dunno if sanguine is how I would describe it. It just can’t last forever. Eventually 100% of people are infected or vaccinated (well, not literally, it goes away a little before that, but close enough).

Things are so out of control right now that we are barreling toward that 100% fairly quickly. It’s just a race now to see how many of that 100% get vaccinated and how many risk death or permanent injury because the virus gets to them first.

The best metaphor I can think of is a town with a fire burning out of control. Early on, we hoped we could keep the fire contained to a small part of town. That would prolong the fight, but minimize the damage. That failed and the fire is everywhere now. Firefighters are just trying to scramble to save individual buildings in the middle of the blaze.

Once you get to that point, it’s gonna be over soon one way or another. Losing to a pandemic goes quicker than beating one, and we lost.

 

I think that makes sense. Does the math bear it out? Why do the variants keep strengthening?