D&D and the rising pandemic

[Umbran]

Meanie! I'm no troll.

Mod Note:

Yes you are. That's enough of this thread for you.

 

[Umbran]

Except most people infected get infected late in the outbreak, with fewer people left to be infected...

We are, alas, nowhere near that point yet. Even if we are generous on how many infections we don't ever detect, on the order of 10% of the country has been infected. There's still plenty of people left to get sick and die.

 

[NotAYakk]

We are, alas, nowhere near that point yet. Even if we are generous on how many infections we don't ever detect, on the order of 10% of the country has been infected. There's still plenty of people left to get sick and die.

There are many areas of the USA that are far, far past 10% infected.

Deaths are a reliable lagging indicator of Covid-19 infection.

Look at areas with 0.1% already dead to Covid-19 and deaths/day approaching 2% of existing deaths. If we presume deaths lag infections by about a month, that means you are seeing a death rate from the infection rate 1 month ago. If 0.5% total death rate, multiply by 200x. So 0.1% death rate with 2% day-over-day growth in deaths means on the order of 40% already infected.

This isn't "diagnosed", but should rougly include asymptomatic people.

Without aggressively quarantining the red zones, this will spill over to areas that haven't decided to sacrifice their population.

You can see it spread here in this gif:


That is 1 months spread. Dark green is under 0.02% diagnosed over last 2 weeks. Dark purple is over 2% diagnosed over last 2 weeks (a factor of over 100x). The plague lands spread like a stain, as aggressive border control isn't occurring; areas that "do the right thing" get dragged down by the plague carriers driving over county lines.

Areas with outbreaks are going to undercount infected more than areas without, because testing gets overwealmed, and who wants to go to a testing center for a 4 hour lineup with a sniffle when 50% of the people in line will test postive to Covid-19.

 

[Eltab]

Thank you for providing some data to support my own thought: containment lines, not lockdowns, stop spreading diseases in their tracks.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Which eould mean testing safety is sufficient, speeding up other vaccines. (safety is still lots of work, but effectiveness requires finding areas with an active outbreak and waiting for a statistical difference between the two groups. Hard, and harder when you need to compare it to "best practices" without harming your test subjects...)

The article specifically points out why this was an efficacy test, namely, hat they saw distinct differences between the test groups in levels of post-exposure infection as predicted by the blood test,.

 

[Imaculata]

One of my D&D friends seems to have fallen so deep down the covid conspiracy rabbithole, that he has severed ties with us, unfriended us on social media and Steam, and left our D&D group. All because we told him he was wrong. In his last message to us he proudly proclaimed to be part of the resistance, and that he'll refuse any and all measures against the epidemic. This happened just today as I'm writing this.

 

[Zardnaar]

One of my D&D friends seems to have fallen so deep down the covid conspiracy rabbithole, that he has severed ties with us, unfriended us on social media and Steam, and left our D&D group. All because we told him he was wrong. In his last message to us he proudly proclaimed to be part of the resistance, and that he'll refuse any and all measures against the epidemic. This happened just today as I'm writing this.

I'm not really friends with most of my group. I suspect one if them leans that way but hasn't gone that far down the hole and I'm not 100% sure.

 

[monsmord]

One of my D&D friends seems to have fallen so deep down the covid conspiracy rabbithole, that he has severed ties with us, unfriended us on social media and Steam, and left our D&D group. All because we told him he was wrong. In his last message to us he proudly proclaimed to be part of the resistance, and that he'll refuse any and all measures against the epidemic. This happened just today as I'm writing this.

I'm really sorry you're left dealing with that. I went through something similar during the 2016 US elections. It was tough, still haunts me a bit, but in the end I'm much better off, and that's without the extra layer of pandemic/health concerns. I hope you'll be able to look back with a "that sucked but it's better this way" hindsight; you're probably at least a little better off without that sort of irrationality in your circle.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of my D&D friends seems to have fallen so deep down the covid conspiracy rabbithole, that he has severed ties with us, unfriended us on social media and Steam, and left our D&D group. All because we told him he was wrong. In his last message to us he proudly proclaimed to be part of the resistance, and that he'll refuse any and all measures against the epidemic. This happened just today as I'm writing this.

We’ve got someone close to our family who is in Conspiracyland as well, in more than one way, but we still communicate. She actually pushed back on medical science to my Dad on a couple occasions.

I find it stunning. I have read it’s a coping mechanism, and other explanations, but when I see it up close, it still boggles my mind.

 

[Imaculata]

There's simply no reasoning with people who have allowed themselves to be swallowed by the social media feedback loop which endlessly regurgitates more conspiracies back at them. Heck, I even invited my friend to meet my neighbor who recovered from the virus. But he is not interested in things that contradict his new found religeon, if that is the right term.