I think the two emails shown are good for highlighting how little was known about this virus in the early days, and that you can pull any two emails out of the sky and come up with a conspiracy theory.
Weâd have variants.
Seriously, considering that it started filming before the pandemic even hit the US, the writers for the new Loki show were either very smart or very lucky in referring to the split-timeline version of Loki as a âvariant.â Very appropriate to our times.
Well, ran your idea by the higher ups. After they stopped chuckling, they pointed out that currently anyone here can go into Costco, CVS or Rite aid and get the vaccine with no appointment and no wait. And no charge. So we would be unlikely to get any takers. That will change when the 2-11 yo kids are eligible, because those places wonât vaccinate younger kids, but currently the answer is, there is more vaccine than arms available. Which is a good thing, and a very first world problem, but I still feel bad about it.
It is true. At first, people seemed to bet on the low lethality of the virus and that no one needed to worry too much about the disease. Then came the famous silver bullets, miracle drugs and snake oils. Today we know a lot more. Anyone who insists on this kind of thing shouldnât be exactly stupid, but rather evil.
There is a famous quote attributed to Cardinal Richelieu that serves as a good example of this.
New thing this Summer âŚ
In lieu of a lemonade stand, a vaccine stand instead.
Iâm about ready to start using a tranc gun, but loaded with PfizerâŚ
I disagree with this assessment.
It is important to go where the people are, and supermarkets are already a place where people are. Thatâs great.
However, especially religious communities have group dynamics to be taken into account. In addition, their leaders carry an authority within the community (of which a medical professional could have an idea: doctors sometimes do carry similar authority, and of course something have to battle with religious authority on matters of health).
Especially high-risk communities rely on both, group dynamics and in-group authority.
While our situation in Germany is very different from yours, there have been such outreach activities. Cologne recently administered 2000 doses in a couple of hours at the cityâs greatest mosque. People started to arrive in the early morning hours to (safely) queue. AFAIK, those were âleftoversâ which could have gone to waste, but of course not from already opened vials.
They also had mobile vaccination teams going to hotspots in high-risk communities, but as far as I am aware had to stop that because they couldnât get enough doses and would not âcannibaliseâ efforts of the vaccination centres.
Frankfurt today and tomorrow is administering1500 doses in two mosques (with appointments), and already held vaccination events organised in and by Synagogues and Christian churches.
Finland will soon hit the target of getting the first of two Covid vaccine doses into the arms of 70 percent of the adult population â but that may not be enough to achieve herd immunity.
Iâm in the first world and I could reach out and grab you any number of takers for that vaccine at a momentâs notice.
itâs almost like people believe that scientists can never be wrong and can never learn new things
which of course is pretty much the opposite of how science ( and people ) work.
anyone who doesnât change their mind in response to new data canât be trusted - theyâve proved their positions were never based on knowledge in the first place
This is especially so in a situation like this, in which a novel virus of (at the time) uncertain characteristics and danger arises. A year later, we know a hell of a lot more, and yet I still need to throw my favorite acronym out (WDKS) a lot of the time, because we are still learning, and there is a very real chance that things that we âknowâ now will turn out to not be so. This is one of the problems that the right wing has with science. They were raised on a theory of âthere is one answer, it is known and settled and immutable, for ever and ever amenâ when it just ainât so. When I was in med school, HIV did not exist, childhood leukemia was a death sentence and we still believed that babies did not feel pain. Lots has changed since then. If you stop learning and changing, you start dying.
i think that calls for a citation. our bunkerboy bet on low lethality - or really didnât actually care much at all one waynor the other - but most everyday people - not to mention most of the rest of the world - thought otherwise.
the exact method and timing of transmission wasnât known. there was pretty good evidence it was primarily respiratory - but ( and thereâs an article above somewhere about this ) many scientists, including i think fauchi, were stuck on an old, unexamined belief about droplets based on studies of measles tuberculosis. ( edited: thanks @LutherBlisset )
hence some of the incorrect choices about masks.
earlier mask usage could have saved lives. but the trump administration intentionally sabotaged our countryâs response. it was most definitely the latter that has caused the most damage. ( ex. even knowing about masks and vaccines, the former presidentâs followers refuse to use them )
Slight disagreement, he (or Jared, actually) was counting on a high lethality, but expected it would be limited to urban, Democratic strongholds, and therefore was fine with letting it run rampant. It only became a âcrisisâ when it started affecting rural white people.
Dafuq? People used to believe that? OMFG! Thatâs wild.
Yup. The early numbers in the US were all that, by the time it spread out to rural America theyâd already done fucked up.
Also: I genuinely blame racism for why we didnât mask up. Countries with experience with this kind of thing did, we, in the rich North, didnât and acted like we could spend our way out of it.
Also I was just thinking about how your granny or mam thought (well maybe not yours specifically) that fresh air cured everything. Itâs obviously folk wisdom from the flu and TB pandemics. Old schools in Ireland (from middle of last century) are built with a corridor with windows with classrooms on one side which have large windows and smaller ones leading onto the corridor so that airflow can happen. Now buildings are sealed for energy efficiencyâŚ
Yup. It was not that much prior to my start that we did major surgery on babies using paralytics, but no anesthesia. Not a proud moment for medicine, in hindsight.
You mean this one?
Not âmanyâ, basically all. It still is textbook knowledge that most diseases spread through droplets.
Based on work on tuberculosis, btw. And tracking the original citations apparently was difficult. The whole thing is a great story.
