The death toll for kids is still, very fortunately, very small. I don't know if that will last with Delta.
OP1: I mean, that's still true, but the mindworms that evolved in the environment of complacency turned out strong enough to survive its end.
Or they would have emerged anyway, with or without visible evidence to the contrary, because we have a massive misinformation problem.
The RSV outbreak is more dangerous for kids than delta is.
I do think that covid is in a weird situation where it's dangerous enough to cause the health care system to collapse, but not so dangerous to be super scary for people under 40. For example, a lot of people ride motorcycles without helmets, and if that's something you're willing to do then getting covid seems like no big deal. I don't know that we'd see the same kind of vaccine resistance if it were deadlier.
My sister-in-law was all about not letting people sneeze on the baby because of RSV.
It makes me lose my mind that people ride motorcycles without helmets. YOU'RE SOMEBODY'S BABY! Don't do that to the people who love you!
If you don't have people that love you, think of the poor EMT.
Everybody is loved by someone.
(That's one of my nested quantifier examples. There are eight different ways to fill in the blanks of "____ X ___ Y, X loves Y" and "____ Y ___ X, X loves Y", where your choices are "For every" or "There exists". Then they have to figure out in plain English what each one means, and there are six distinct meanings. So the example above is "For every Y there exists an X such that X loves Y.")
The other thing that I can't get over with this current surge is how our (Texas's) hospitalizations are very close to our January peak number, but now it's concentrated in the unvaccinated half of the state. Like, the unvaxxed half has a mindblowing rate of hospitalization. If you travel in those circles, you surely know multiple people who have either died or had a fairly awful experience.
The Alamo was a really awful experience and they seem to like to remember that.
We're using up all our collective RAM with that one memory.
The current US Covid fatality rate exceeds the rate of one year go, which was very close to the summer peak. Freedom!
A quick Google query shows that "Live Free AND Die" is not even close to an original bon mot.
There's a confusing thing where the usual numbers you see are *new* cases and *all* current hospitalizations. Texas is seeing something like 400 new hospitalizations a day for the last few weeks, but out of a population of 29 million. So if it's 12K people in a month and around 13 million unvaccinated people, you're looking at basically 1 unvaccinated person per thousand getting hospitalized this month. So even if those are your circles that's still not likely to be that many people you know.
(Now if you know a lot of unvaccinated *old* people that's going to be quite different, but most republican old people are vaccinated so you have to be pretty fringe if your circles are mostly unvaccinated old people.)
Antivaccinationism has been a thing for as long as vaccination has. Longer, really, since there was extensive opposition to inoculation too. That was slightly more reasonable, though, since inoculation really is risky and can increase the spread of infection if not done carefully.
So if it's 12K people in a month and around 13 million unvaccinated people, you're looking at basically 1 unvaccinated person per thousand getting hospitalized this month. So even if those are your circles that's still not likely to be that many people you know.
I suppose, but over the past 18 months and 53K deaths, (admittedly spread out before vaccination was a thing), it's hard to imagine an anti-vaxxer isn't aware of someone who had a rough go of it or died.
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Everybody is loved by someone.
I think I have a REALLY GRIM counterexample of this from my own life! Do not read this comment if you are squeamish or depressed- it is a gross story about death with basically no redeeming features and also no real connection to the post or thread. But it did just happen, in proximity to me if not TO me:
My partner's extremely abusive ex-stepfather just died. He was a terrible person who caused a huge amount of trauma and pain to lots and lots of other people over the course of his life and died alone in unbelievably squalid conditions.
His 3rd or 4th wife left him a few years ago, at which point he started drinking so much, in addition to a longstanding meth additiction, that he was fired, after which he just spent several months solid sitting in his apartment drinking (and I guess probably also doing meth), to the point that his leg muscles atrophied so much that he stopped being able to walk. His doctor set him up with a wheelchair and physical therapy but instead of doing the physical therapy he just kept drinking/smoking from the wheelchair, and then got some kind of blood cancer on top of all of that. By last week, his oldest daughter (my partner's half-sister) and the friend of one of his other sons were the only two people still in touch with him- the daughter would call him once a week, and the son's friend would stop by to check on him sometimes.
On Friday, the friend found him drunk and high in a blood-soaked diaper and nothing else but couldn't get him to eat or let him in. On Saturday the friend found him dead. The daughter thinks he killed himself intentionally but no one really knows what happened; they're waiting on the autopsy. His family of origin are refusing to come to Montana or help with anything; they want the daughter to arrange (and pay for) getting the body to Washington and have a funeral of some sort there.
Anyway, there are some people who have feelings related to grief but I don't think that anyone loved him, by the end.
WHAT A TERRIBLE STORY, THANKS CECILY
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Holy shit, what a grim demise.
That was an unpleasant thing to read, but it means I'm right.
You win insofar as that one guy could have ridden a motorcycle without a helmet. But you lose, because now he won't.
Maybe the autopsy will reveal he did.
I suppose I was picturing something inside him being revealed during the autopsy, as opposed to splatter analysis.
It's possible that I'm bored preparing for classes to start.
I feel very bad for the half-sister, for a variety of reasons, and also it's pretty hard to think of the correct sentiment to say in general. "I'm so sorry/congratulations"?
If he had, instead, died from riding a motorcycle without a helmet while someone still loved him, would that have been a better or worse outcome? Like, net Greater Good of Humanity wise
17: Jesus Christ.
I know you warned me, but I failed to heed your warning, I just kept reading on.
I'm just going to go and hug my dog now, okay? Jaysus.
I've been lurking (mostly) on this blog for over a decade, and I'm finally ready to ask: what does NMM stand for? (I know what it MEANS, but unless it's No More Mutants, I don't get the acronym.)
The important thing is that Charlie Watts has died and you should be prepared to figure out if it affects you.
Google search TFA for "Dan Savage Anna Nicole Smith" and you will be enlightened.
This remains, even in its late decadent period, a full service blog.
I lost the fruit basket a decade ago. And it was always a terrible fruit basket.
At least partially because of the "tomatoes are fruit" crowd.
17: OK, that was a grim story, but I feel like at least there was some justice in it. I know at least one person, an abusive asshole who I think pretty much deserves the same fate, but he does have people who care about him. I think the story would be far more grim if the person who died lonely and unloved had actually been a good person instead of an abuser who had caused pain to many.
36: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2007_02_25.html#006374
An old abusive academic in one of my disciplines (though not my subfield) died a week or so ago, and it was really interesting/alarming to see how many people (mostly women) on Academic Twitter were relieved by his passing. It's infuriating how this dude was able to pervasively harass and fuck over so many people over such a long career. I've never seen the death of someone who wasn't a public figure so openly celebrated, which tells you what a creep he must have been.