Pretty interesting to see Alberta go full SOS yesterday. Conservative government there being made out to be totally inept. Their antimask/antivax position as a province now has them getting nuked by COVID. And honestly it doesn't bother me that much that antivaxers are filling up ICUs. What bothers me is the stories of the folks who can't get care for other conditions as a result. That's the nut low for me.

Will be interesting to see how Alberta votes in the election next week. Obviously it'll stay blue (conservatives are blue here), but I wonder by how much.

The one thing the right wing seems correct about right now with regards to all of this hoopla is that the media absolutely plays up certain angles for clicks and sows division for profit. Of course, state run media has its own pitfalls. How do you mitigate these factors? I’m not sure apart from a healthy dose of regulation or a massive increase in education/IQ in the population over time.

Even apart from misinformation and bias, the average person still can’t make heads or tails of reality if given factual information.

Derps being derpy is always a source of entertainment, so not a real shock that a chunk of the coverage of it caters to that need. The TV show "America's Funniest Home Videos" had about half its content featuring videos of dudes getting hit in the groin by mistake. Now its well known singers talking about vaccines causing swollen testicles and the Herman Cain awards. Hardly a new phenomenon.

https://twitter.com/walidgellad/stat...135360007?s=21

Lol, sounds about par for the course.

Yeah they are shamelessly setting narrative with zero fear people will treat it like the clown show it is. They love creating a divisive narrative. "This is a fiery but mostly peaceful protest" As an entire block is blazing with mass looting and rioting. A reporter explaining the Taliban seem quite friendly as they are standing behind her chanting death to america or whatever.

The same people that think they're smart have been parroting the transparently idiotic narratives in this thread with zero awareness. For example Ivermectin is this tiny fringe thing in magnitude but also there's just a ton of misinformation and narrative generation. Our local troll dolt has been spamming this for weeks as if he wasn't the worlds most obvious useful idiot mimicking the trending nonsense on social media etc



Alberta

WOW

This is nauseating to watch.

Haven't posted anything for a while, but I noticed that public health scotland has started to report their hospitilization not only broken down by vaccination status but further split it into age categories. See here: https://publichealthscotland.scot/me...ion_report.pdf

From these numbers I calculate a vaccine efficacy to prevent hospitilization for age category 60+ for the previous 4 weeks around the 60% without much variation (range: 58.1 - 63.6, calculated for each week seperately). Although 60% efficacy is definitely better than nothing, this doesn't seem to stop overflooding hospitals once R picks up over the winter. So more restrictions are going to happen in the northern hemisphere one would think.

At the same time, Denmark (the country where I live in) has since last week completely abandoned ALL restrictions. No masks, no negative test/vaccine requirements for anything, including nightclubs and fully packed concert halls. Before that, clubs and concerts were already fully open (but with coronapas requirement). Meanwhile, number of cases is going down now for a couple of weeks straight. Anyone any thought how this is possible? Is R of delta a bit lower than originally thought?

thx , nice to know.

How much sympathy should we have for people like this?
Will the Right to Death cult welcome a new addition?

I am sure some will call those questions 'mean' but they are serious. These people fighting of a right to face death and arguing they should be able to impose that on you... how much sympathy should they get?



A Florida councilman who denied the pandemic was real has been hospitalized with COVID-19

- A councilman in Florida's Volusia County, Fred Lowry, was hospitalized with COVID-19.

- Lowry had previously denied the pandemic was real and mocked Dr. Fauci.

- He faced calls for his resignation in June after his comments came to light.

...He had been sick for two weeks and was hospitalized on Monday for double pneumonia, per the outlet.

Double pneumonia is a lung infection that affects both lungs at the same time and can develop in cases of severe COVID-19...

do you disagree for what alberta is doing now ?

fwiw:

https://calgaryherald.com/news/local...ovid-19-update

"Kenney said the measures were necessary in the face of a fourth wave of COVID-19 that could result in Alberta hospitals running out of staffed care beds in the next 10 days."

“We are facing an emergency that requires immediate action to save lives and to prevent an ongoing crisis in our health-care system,” he said.

"“The impact of this wave on our health system is already worse than any of the three waves that came before,” Hinshaw said. “Our hospitals cannot sustain care for all Albertans with the dramatic and rapid increase of COVID patients we are seeing.”

"Alberta now has more than twice as many COVID-19 hospitalizations as Ontario, despite having a population one-third the size. Ninety-one per cent of ICU patients are not fully vaccinated."


would it be better to just let if go further and stop the admission of people at hospitals being full ?

what would you have done ?

He asks what's the difference between polio, measles and mumps vaccine compared to covid? They aren't ****ing respiratory and can be "vaxxed out" from the population.

Why is there never anybody there to answer such a simple question?

He's also asking in reference to children where covid is no more dangerous than any other flu we mindlessly let circulate through kids annually forever. That's uh, kind of a big difference to polio, don. What are the myocarditis numbers looking like don?

What is the largest demo of vax hesitancy? Black people. Watch the rant again and substitute "trump supporters" with black people. Its just grotesque and divisive rhetoric from what is supposed to be a news network

Not sure that I would suggest "blame black people" as your next form of anti-vaxx messaging after all the other ones fizzled, but that is your choice in the end. Guess we will see how that goes!

The government of canada has spent almost half a trillion dollars on the pandemic. I would have funneled at least some if not most of that money into making the health care system better in the face of inevitable spikes of the virus. How much was spent? Not enough, since Alberta has had ~200 ICU beds for who knows how long. To provide care for 4.5 million people. By comparison, Montana, a state with just over a million people, has twice as many ICU beds.

Now onto the obvious, how often do you think the ICU is at or near full capacity in non-pandemic times? Do you have any idea? I'll tell you. It's close to 100%. Why? Because wasted ICU beds are a loss of efficiency. As far as I know most ICUs are designed to run close to full capacity. They are regularly stretched to the limit, and that's without a pandemic. Not enough money, and not enough staff.

Yet the unvaccinated are being blamed for this. I suppose they have something to do with it (if you really stretch), but the ultimate problem is the health care system itself and that's run by the government, so they're responsible.

Well to be fair that is a dumb answer.

It is the avoidance of death we care about. It is the crashing of the health care system we care about.

Alberta is Canada's Texas with the highest percent of Freedum Derps. Alberta is now facing its worst wave since this pandemic started as unvax'd Freedum Derps are flooding the hospitals at an unrelenting rate, making them have to cancel other procedures for other people, putting so many others at unnecessary risk.

The numbers are stark and completely unnecessary as it is almost all unvax'd derps heading to the hospital.

When is enough, enough? When does one segments derpy'ness impacting others become enough?

Especially when its not accurate.

But you know, racist gonna racist.

Fact check: Texas lieutenant governor falsely implies Black people to blame for Covid surge

Facts First: Just on raw numbers, Black people, at about 13% of the total population, are not the "biggest group" of unvaccinated people either in Texas or across the US. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that White adults account for the largest share of unvaccinated adults. Even if we dive into the rates, the implication from Patrick that Black people are especially to blame for spreading the virus is not accurate.

The results here are beyond reproach, at least in Canada. The antivax and no mask provinces are getting their asses pummelled and will have a brutal winter. The places with good vaccine coverage have higher cases but hospitals for now are super chill. We'll get boosters till they get a version that lasts longer, so be it.

Everyone I know got a jab (other than 3-4 people), and my wife is actually the only person I know with side effects that have really lasted (and her health is quite poor to begin with). Delta would have very likely been an absolute disaster for her with her immune system, so we're just taking it in stride.

The "muh freedom" crowd gets smaller and smaller up here every day. And honestly at least half of them are some of the dumbest in our society. Makes me wonder how the other half wants to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. You want to be allies with the chem trails guys? That's the side you want to be on? Ooooook.

From AHS website:

Chance of getting hospitalized if you catch covid in 30-39 age group: 2.2%
Chance of going to ICU: 0.3% or 3 in 1000
Chance of dying: 0.03% or 3 in 10000

That's if you catch covid. Now divide the chances by at least a factor of 2 (conservative) to take into account for all the cases that weren't reported. And then adjust based on your health/BMI. Most of the hospitalized have high BMI/are unhealthy. The situation is no different in any other jurisdiction.

You can spout all the arrogant vitriol you want. The numbers don't lie. The odds of getting covid and dying under the age of 50 are about the chances of getting struck by lightning. Totally worth ruining mental health, our economy, and destroying everyone's rights....

If you don’t think that matters , I just don’t know what else I can tell you ….

You complain about freedom and all but what we do now , nothing ?

Alberta and Saskatchewan did exactly that , nothing with mask and let anyone do w.e they wanted .

Now its all turn to ***** by a flood of unvaccinated people at the emergency with drastic lock down measures to save the health care system form failure .
Cancelling surgeries and other cares to accommodate those unvaccinated people’s at thr hospitals .
I keep hearing covid not dangerous and yet hospital gets on the brink of failure in places where unvaccinated places were the most .

If you think it would better without doing anything , I don’t know what to tell you .

Ps: btw you could of put 100 trillions in the hospitals it wouldn’t changed anything .

Money do not create out of thin air nurses and doctors .
It takes years to make them .
And during a world pandemic good luck to have help from foreigners….
Fwiw in Canada they already had a lacking of doctors and nurses prior to covid .
They even called the army at one point during covid !
It ain’t as easy as you seem to imply .

Money do not solve everything .

How many low risk un-vaxxed are taking up the beds? The problem is people are being categorized as one big group. So they are trying to force the vax on everyone including kids before long to "free up hospital beds".

And how many of those people who need the beds have heart disease? You know, the thing that has been killing more then covid for many years but nobody gives a **** about it. I have a 1 in 4 chance, actually probably higher of dying from heart disease and why hasn't the government cared so much about me before and forced me to eat better and outlawed **** food? Instead they want to force me to "fix" something that I have a 1 in 50,000 chance to die from.

I'm much better off watching my cholesterol then I am getting the vax. Like RIDICULOUSLY much better off. Yet they focus on the vax.

So in your mind a covid virus is simply impossible to be dangerous ?
What does it take ?
You think those red neck in Alberta like to have been wrong to promote the anti vaxxer modo ?

Im actually surprise prime minister Kenney for once admitted he was wrong …..
If there is one place Trump would have a chance to win in Canada it would definitely be In Alberta .
Just so you know before in what kind of province you implying it is not real and they play with the numbers ….
They hate anything that is liberal over there or leftish .
It’s pro oil , anti tax , pro religion , pro life , anti government, anti climate changes etc …

I think it's dangerous to high risk people. So if your going to force the vax on people which I don't agree with, FFS don't force it on low risk people. Having had covid has proven to be the best immunity even more so then the vax and they still want to vax those people. When you see them using logic like that, you can pretty much discredit anything that comes out their ****ing mouths.

It's their own fault for having so much doubt towards them.

I do not know where you got that idea ?

https://globalnews.ca/news/8120176/c...ugust-17-2021/

« “Alberta is not considering mandatory vaccine mandates at this time,” Alberta Health spokesperson Lisa Glover said ».

That was less then 1 month ago .

It's not a pandemic of the unvaccinated. It never was.

It's a pandemic of the obese and elderly.

This guy gets it.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/2/...-church-christ

Obese people will always get a higher probabilities to have complication than a normal person for any sickness .

Why does this have to be something special for Covid in particular ?
No idea ..

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/causes.html

« Obesity is serious because it is associated with poorer mental health outcomes and reduced quality of life. Obesity is also associated with the leading causes of death in the United States and worldwide, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some types of cancer ».

Regardless of covid .