Omicron variant concerns

sprout said:

Redfruit said:

it’s sweet that your coming to Peter’s defense but you’re not exactly a guy who gets interesting. 

I think I get it now... you don't think of research, intelligent conversation, or word play as particularly interesting. Well, some others do.

Let’s stay on the topic please. The newly discovered variant is the focus. Thank you. 


Redfruit said:

as I said, this is not a story for you to play reporter on. It’s too serious a subject.  Just Copy and paste your findings.  Don’t interpret them. 

You're trying to make a lot of limiting rules for this thread. 

Research and science is all about interpretation and attempts at prediction. You guess (create a hypothesis), and test your guess, etc....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method


sprout said:

Redfruit said:

as I said, this is not a story for you to play reporter on. It’s too serious a subject.  Just Copy and paste your findings.  Don’t interpret them. 

You're trying to make a lot of limiting rules for this thread. 

Research and science is all about interpretation and attempts at prediction. You guess (create a hypothesis), and test your guess, etc....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

look, since you’re new here, Peter Wick had a head injury and now thinks he’s a scientist.


Redfruit said:

sprout said:

Redfruit said:

as I said, this is not a story for you to play reporter on. It’s too serious a subject.  Just Copy and paste your findings.  Don’t interpret them. 

You're trying to make a lot of limiting rules for this thread. 

Research and science is all about interpretation and attempts at prediction. You guess (create a hypothesis), and test your guess, etc....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

look, since you’re new here, Peter Wick had a head injury and now thinks he’s a scientist.

I have known Peter (bikefixed) since before the head injury, and he is a Ph.D. scientist.

(And since you keep forgetting (and you don't have a head injury?), I've been here since 2004).


Classic douchebaggery from someone with no obvious brain injury, but seems to have a malfunction in the forebrain (cerebrum)….the part of the brain that controls a range of social, emotional and cognitive functions …as well as motor function and memory…

The one with the real brain injury seems much more coherent and has all his faculties intact. MOL needs new members?  I find this to be enough entertainment….


    In the past 7+ years, I've had my share of societal challenges and stigma to deal with regarding my TBI. Did you know that over 1.5 million TBI's occur in the U.S. each year? There are many people you know that have some degree of brain injury since the odds of that incrementally increase by about a 1 in 222 chance each year just in the U.S. Probably more but for now I'll just use 1.5 out of 334 million. Maybe you might think about that before you go disparaging someone you don't think measures up to your estimate of your own intelligence and cognitive skills.

    A quick search for that stat comes up with this report from 1999.

    https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/pubs/tbi_report_to_congress.html

    That, by the way, doesn't include brain injuries from strokes, AVMs, benign or malignant cancers, anoxia (like from rescued drowning, carbon monoxide poisoning, or cardiac arrest), or infections such as the different forms of meningitis or encephalitis. MS, Parkinson's disease, prion disease, Lewy-body dementia, and others are also included in the list of things that **** with your mind.

    One key aspect of brain injuries is that the person often looks like they always did before whatever caused their injury. Trying to navigate the world under the influence of that injury even though you "look just fine" is difficult, especially when the people you meet can be quite ignorant about it. 

    Another thing about them is the fact that it is hard to know exactly how a person with their own unique personality and intelligence has been injured. A snarky way to say this would be "When you see one brain injury, you've seen one brain injury."

    By the way, if you're at all interested in my short science career before I changed paths and went into medical software development you can go here. 

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Wick%2C+PF

    Be warned though - those manuscripts have been known to cause drowsiness. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery after reading them. I know this from a limited clinical study involving my wife. If she was unable to get to sleep she would ask me to talk about G-protein coupled transmembrane receptors or calcium channels and it would work like a charm.

    Anyway, this is getting way off topic since someone said we should really be discussing the new variant of COVID-19 here.


    PeterWick said:

    In the past 7+ years, I've had my share of societal challenges and stigma to deal with regarding my TBI. Did you know that over 1.5 million TBI's occur in the U.S. each year? There are many people you know that have some degree of brain injury since the odds of that incrementally increase by about a 1 in 222 chance each year just in the U.S. Probably more but for now I'll just use 1.5 out of 334 million. Maybe you might think about that before you go disparaging someone you don't think measures up to your estimate of your own intelligence and cognitive skills.

    A quick search for that stat comes up with this report from 1999.

    https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/pubs/tbi_report_to_congress.html

    That, by the way, doesn't include brain injuries from strokes, AVMs, benign or malignant cancers, anoxia (like from rescued drowning, carbon monoxide poisoning, or cardiac arrest), or infections such as the different forms of meningitis or encephalitis. MS, Parkinson's disease, prion disease, Lewy-body dementia, and others are also included in the list of things that **** with your mind.

    One key aspect of brain injuries is that the person often looks like they always did before whatever caused their injury. Trying to navigate the world under the influence of that injury even though you "look just fine" is difficult, especially when the people you meet can be quite ignorant about it. 

    Another thing about them is the fact that it is hard to know exactly how a person with their own unique personality and intelligence has been injured. A snarky way to say this would be "When you see one brain injury, you've seen one brain injury."

    By the way, if you're at all interested in my short science career before I changed paths and went into medical software development you can go here. 

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Wick%2C+PF

    Be warned though - those manuscripts have been known to cause drowsiness. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery after reading them. I know this from a limited clinical study involving my wife. If she was unable to get to sleep she would ask me to talk about G-protein coupled transmembrane receptors or calcium channels and it would work like a charm.

    Anyway, this is getting way off topic since someone said we should really be discussing the new variant of COVID-19 here.

    you remind me of that Simpsons episode where Homer gets the crayon stuck up his nose and becomes a genius.


    {Hey Peter, it’s nearly 4am Sunday here. I’ve forgotten to fall asleep! Oops! And your papers are just the kind of nerdy topics I used to edit, until the last few years, and still read as a hobby}

    Edited for typos


    Redfruit said:

    you remind me of that Simpsons episode where Homer gets the crayon stuck up his nose and becomes a genius.


    tpb said:

    Redfruit said:

    you remind me of that Simpsons episode where Homer gets the crayon stuck up his nose and becomes a genius.

    I’m not trying to be funny so your meme doesn’t apply. 


    I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I’ll hold off on my professional opinion until later.


    Redfruit said:

    tpb said:

    Redfruit said:

    you remind me of that Simpsons episode where Homer gets the crayon stuck up his nose and becomes a genius.

    I’m not trying to be funny so your meme doesn’t apply. 

    He's just trying to be the Homer Simpson sans crayon.


    sprout said:

    Redfruit said:

    tpb said:

    Redfruit said:

    you remind me of that Simpsons episode where Homer gets the crayon stuck up his nose and becomes a genius.

    I’m not trying to be funny so your meme doesn’t apply. 

    He's just trying to be the Homer Simpson sans crayon.

    since you’re new here, Historically I’m compared to Mr Byrnes, not Homer. 


    I dunno about that. Is that you with the ladder at the top of the mountain?

    https://maplewood.worldwebs.com/forums/discussion/a-guide-to-salvation-on-mol


    sprout said:

    I dunno about that. Is that you with the ladder at the top of the mountain?

    https://maplewood.worldwebs.com/forums/discussion/a-guide-to-salvation-on-mol

    I forgot about that poster. Who made it? 


    Still seeking redemption…


    Jaytee said:

    Still seeking redemption…

    I feel bad for the person who spent way too much time on that poster. A year later everyone was on FB. 


    Redfruit said:

    I forgot about that poster. Who made it?

    I feel bad for the author/artist as well, as he apparently didn't put "as revealed to ricardus2" close enough to Strawberry's avatar for Straw to see it.


    sprout said:

    Redfruit said:

    I forgot about that poster. Who made it?

    I feel bad for the author/artist as well, as he apparently didn't put "as revealed to ricardus2" close enough to Strawberry's avatar for Straw to see it.

    funny, I don’t remember that poster. I really didn’t pay that much attention to non political posters back then. It really was the best place to debate politics. 


    PhilC was also cartooning for us back then, before he moved out west. I really miss him and his sharp eye for visual puns. 


    https://www.reuters.com/world/concerns-over-covid-variant-trigger-more-travel-curbs-southern-africa-2021-11-27/

    LONDON/BERLIN/AMSTERDAM, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Britain, Germany and Italy detected cases of the new Omicron coronavirus variant on Saturday and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced new steps to contain the virus, while more nations imposed restrictions on travel from southern Africa.

    joanne said:

    PhilC was also cartooning for us back then, before he moved out west. I really miss him and his sharp eye for visual puns. 

    Yeah, it's his work. Still friends with him on Facebook. I was a "matriarch." 


    Early snapshot of variant spread (Wikipedia).


    Can we please keep banter in other areas?   I'm going to prune this thread to keep it focused on the new variant later today.


    dave said:

    Can we please keep banter in other areas?   I'm going to prune this thread to keep it focused on the new variant later today.

    I am sure it has made its way to the US by now. 


    Dave,  we have at least 9, possibly 16 cases that we’re keeping an eye on, who have travelled from South Africa. There may also be a couple from HK (I haven’t read news in a couple of hours). In these cases, the individuals tested negative before travel (around Thursday, our time) and developed symptoms by yesterday/this morning. 


    It is impossible to tell whether this sharp rise is due to COVID+ omicron cases. That data breakdown isn't available at the moment. In the first two weeks of November, South Africa's new daily active case rate hadn't risen even close to 500. Two weeks later it is solidly in the mid-2000s.

    It's too early to say what the death rate will look like but they did have that reading of 114 when the past month had seen the death rate go steadily down.

    EDITED: Whoops, forgot to attach the graphic. It's from Worldometer


    I remember this "ehh, maybe it won't be serious" feeling when we were first hearing about delta. I thought I was too much of a worrywart and toned down my Cassandra imitation because I figured that we'd come around and see the value of the vaccines.

    Sadly, even if the U.S had achieved a super high vaccination rate, there are still areas of the globe that have plenty of virus and not enough vaccine doses. I don't want to have the bitter feelings that well up in me about people not only refusing the vaccine but also campaigning against others getting it. However it is clothed, those efforts are contrary to the greater human good. Terp and CHTP (?) had put forth the canard about vaccines causing the appearance of resistant viral strains through natural selection as a reason to not put our trust in them. They conveniently or obtusely overlook (or truly don't know) the fact that natural selection is ongoing regardless of any selective pressure. Mutations happen at a steady rate in any organism. Some have low rates and long generation times and at the other end of the continuum, they reproduce quickly and have more fragile gene replication procedures. COVID is an example of the latter.

    The extent to which the rate is reduced is unknowable but it is absolutely true that the fewer hosts COVID has to reproduce in, the lower the risk of new mutations occurring that help the virus perform better. The vaccines do not prevent all the future possible infections but they're effective at knocking those breakthrough infections down much faster which reduces the spread as well as the morbidity and mortality rates.

    I started this thread because I was startled at hearing how many heretofore unrecognized mutations showed up in this variant even though South Africa has been running a very active COVID genome sequencing program in their tracking system. How the hell did this just pop up so suddenly and so widespread?


    joanne said:
    In these cases, the individuals tested negative before travel (around Thursday, our time) and developed symptoms by yesterday/this morning. 

    Dave, it's comments like this that call for more than just a 'like' button. AYFKM and OFFS are among the candidates that come to mind.


    When history looks back on the covid pandemic it will be the people who actively fought against the virus who will be the heroes.    These include real scientists and doctors, nurses, health care workers, and public health workers, elected officials, business leaders, and all the people who understood the danger and got vaccinated to protect themselves and family and communities.    The naysayers and those who refuse to get vaccinated will be seen as the foolish obstacles to stopping the pandemic.   

    After all this time and nearly 800,000 deaths in the US, there are still way too many people sticking their heads in the sand and denying the harsh reality of this virus.   So, kudos to all who have actively fought this virus.  Do not let the trolls get you down.   


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