Seems like if we want the straight poop, on where Omicron is ACTUALLY heading, we need to hope that @Buhbye’s source for the sewage data is not run as shoddily as the the State’s hospitalization reporting.
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In mountaineering it’s known as “smelling the barn”… at least, that’s what we always called it.
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Yes, but what will come next? Sigma ? Gamma? Chi?
Chi Omega, then.
For me it’s now at too many. The recent passing of a good friend really hit me hard. He was only a couple of years younger than me. Tailgating will never be the same with him gone.
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Gotta go bury more family tomorrow. At least this time it isn’t COVID, just old age and a lifetime of living with the effects of having had polio as a child.
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– RockNorrisUte.
I actually don’t personally know anyone who died from COVID-19 though some went through the hospitalization route. I guess I’m fairly sheltered… or my hermit tendencies manifested.
Our free tests came in the mail yesterday. I jokingly suggested that I give one a try, then chucked them in the medicine cabinet. Hope I never have to use them.
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Sorry to hear of your loss. Just last night I was talking to some friends about anti-vaxxers and, we’re all in our mid-60s, I pointed out that we’re at the age now as the last generation who actually know people who had polio. It’s maddening when I hear my anti-vax DIL rant about the evils of vaccines when she is totally ignorant of how things like the polio vaccine saved countless lives. Same with smallpox, measles (that my mother had as a child), and rubella.
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As my in-laws and their siblings that are still alive are all in their 80’s and 90’s, this is just getting started. Surprisingly, during the pandemic only two of the younger ones died of COVID.
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My grandmother had two brothers die within a week of each other of rubella. One was 5, the other was 7.
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My grandparents were living in India at the time so the polio vaccine wasn’t available. My aunt was two years old when she got polio and died a few days later. Her sister got sick on the day of the funeral. The sister survived but was disabled her entire life. Somehow my sister is still anti-vax.
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Mid-60’s here also. I still recall as a very young person going to the old VA hospital at about the age of 5, and getting the polio vaccine in a sugar cube, while listening to my mother talk about the miracle vaccine that we were getting and wishing that she had had access to it at our age. She was born in '34 and never learned to swim as a result of the (largely irrational) fear of spread of polio in swimming pools.
I seriously wonder if the current anti-vax and anti-mandate attitudes will undo 60+ years of societal protection from a number of diseases. If young parents, in significant numbers, start avoiding the vaccines for many diseases mandated before entering public schools, and the current political climate allows it, society (after I’m long gone) may have to learn those lessons all over again.
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I remember the sugar cube also as a kid, along with standing in line at a school to get a rubella shot administered by a pressure gun thing. These things worked. It’s indisputable unless you just invent stuff like RFK, Jr and Jenny McCarthy like to do. And speaking of Jenny McCarthy, why would anyone listen to that gas head? Being a Playboy centerfold hardly qualifies as one as an immunologist.
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I was probably about 8 years old and stood in line at Highland High School to get my sugar cube, Oddly, I still remember that it was the Sabin Oral vaccine. I was mainly happy about the sugar cube aspect of the deal.
But I also clearly recall how thrilled everyone was that we had a vaccine and that it was so easily available. I also remember friends in school who walked differently from the other kids because they were disabled from polio. I never heard a word about any downside to taking the vaccine.
This weird opposition to vaccines is not limited to the uneducated. For decades every single hospital I work with in California has required its caregivers to be vaccinated against TB and everything else you can imagine. No physician can get privileges to care for patients without full vaccination. There are very rare medical exceptions that require other safeguards if granted.
Even so, with COVID there are more than a few physicians who are resisting the state health department mandate that they all be vaccinated. Some have medical exemptions, the other resisters claim religious grounds. This has taken up about 1/3 of my time since last fall. The most common claim is that fetal cells from elective abortions were used in development of the vaccines. That’s false for all of the mRNA vaccines. It’s technically true for Johnson & Johnson, but the connection is very attenuated. Interesting times. I would not want to be a patient in a hospital where caregivers are not fully vaccinated.
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Price has always been full of sh!t
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I didn’t need to be born in an earlier era to know about the effects of polio. It shouldn’t that hard to learn from history.
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