Poll of the Day > Do you think COVID-19 will make a comeback?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yes. Since we didn't properly vaccinate worldwide, it's going to mutate. There's no way new strains won't continue to crop up; this is just how contagious diseases work when you do a half-assed job at stopping them.

Microorganisms mutate at a much faster rate than the species we typically think of in our day to day lives due to their very short generations, so if you want to stop the spread of one, you have to be decisive and thorough, or the mutations will allow the organisms as a whole to adapt to your countermeasures, and it will have been for nothing.

I wish I could say I believe that we'd develop a natural resistance to it, but frankly... well, we don't adapt as fast as this disease does.

I think the only thing left to do is just more permanently establish the international efforts that were made to develop the vaccines, so that we can also rapidly develop vaccines for resistant strains.

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It hasn't left yet.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-singapore-75-percent-of-covid-infections-are-among-vaccinated-people-report-says/ar-AAMunyw?ocid=AMZN
Yup.

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COVID is something we will just live with. Not sure how something can comeback if it never leaves.

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adjl posted...

Yesterday (July 21, 2021), it was 41,310, and given that there were 60,000 new cases yesterday, you can expect that today's 7-day average will be even higher once that data has been collected.

To follow up, yesterday's 7-day average was 45,351, and there were 63,877 new cases. As predicted, it continues to climb. Big surprise there.

Looking at the last 7 days (specifically at the difference between the daily count and the 7-day average), I'm not able to pick out a consistent trend that would allow me to predict that this surge is slowing down, so I can pretty confidently say that it isn't. I was hoping the difference would fit a trendline with an apparent x-intercept (when the 7-day average is roughly equal to the daily case counts, the wave has plateaued), but it doesn't.

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And yesterday saw 82,505 new cases, bringing the 7-day average to 49,856 (and still climbing). Are these numbers large enough to qualify as "impressive" now, @Reigning_King ?

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adjl posted...

And yesterday saw 82,505 new cases, bringing the 7-day average to 49,856 (and still climbing). Are these numbers large enough to qualify as "impressive" now, @Reigning_King ?

With the mortality rate still being sub 2% and of those dying most having one foot in the grave already or less than a decade of life left in them, not to mention that number being artificial bloated to begin with and the current situation and treatment being better anyways compared to the peak?

Nah.

@ me when you can add another zero to your numbers and I might glance over.

It has already made a comeback and getting worse. Bad things will always happen and never go away while good things will never happen. If good things happen, then it's too good to be true and will be gone right away and replaced with something much worse. Things will always get worse, never better. If they get better, then it's too good to be true and will suddenly get much worse than they've ever been.

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fishy071 posted...

It has already made a comeback and getting worse. Bad things will always happen and never go away while good things will never happen. If good things happen, then it's too good to be true and will be gone right away and replaced with something much worse. Things will always get worse, never better. If they get better, then it's too good to be true and will suddenly get much worse than they've ever been.

That's a terribly negative outlook.

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I doubt it will ever be gone.

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fishy071 posted...

It has already made a comeback and getting worse. Bad things will always happen and never go away while good things will never happen. If good things happen, then it's too good to be true and will be gone right away and replaced with something much worse. Things will always get worse, never better. If they get better, then it's too good to be true and will suddenly get much worse than they've ever been.

Correct.

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Rotpar posted...

Correct.

Yeah if you think about it the power of despair is always stronger than the power of joy. No matter what good things might happen in life or how happy someone is it can all be stolen from them in a single moment.

Reigning_King posted...

With the mortality rate still being sub 2% and of those dying most having one foot in the grave already or less than a decade of life left in them, not to mention that number being artificial bloated to begin with and the current situation and treatment being better anyways compared to the peak?

Nah.

The question was whether or not it's making a comeback, not whether it was inexplicably more lethal now than before or any other metric. Case numbers very obviously and measurably are surging. You can look at the graph yourself to see. What will the death toll be from this surge? Hard to say. We won't know that for another couple weeks, especially where we don't know where this surge will peak. I can, however, tell you that the slope of this surge looks steeper than the one that happened last summer, and that involved about a month of having over 1000 deaths a day on average. As you say, advances in treatment and whatnot may help keep it from getting that bad, as will vaccines (though it's primarily sporeading among the unvaccinated), but the proliferation of variants may also throw a wrench into the comparison in the other direction.

Reigning_King posted...

@ me when you can add another zero to your numbers and I might glance over.

What is your basis for that threshold? To my knowledge, no disease has ever managed to have over 820,000 new American cases in a day, so unless you're going to suggest that no disease in history has ever been worth worrying about the spread of (which would be utterly ludicrous), I'm really not sure what point you think you're making with that criterion.

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I've managed to avoid having a single message modded on this account but I'll risk that by just outright saying I tuthfully don't think this whole situation has been nearly as big of a deal as people have been making of it.

Other people itt have said they don't think covid will make a comeback because in their eyes it never left and I'm the exact opposite as I don't think it'll make a comeback because that implies it was something to really be worried about in the first place.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

No.

Because "making a comeback" implies it ever left in the first place.

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Variants are actually good because 99/100 times they become less lethal.

Reigning_King posted...

I've managed to avoid having a single message modded on this account but I'll risk that by just outright saying I tuthfully don't think this whole situation has been nearly as big of a deal as people have been making of it.

Other people itt have said they don't think covid will make a comeback because in their eyes it never left and I'm the exact opposite as I don't think it'll make a comeback because that implies it was something to really be worried about in the first place.

How many people have to die from it before it becomes "a big deal"

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InfernalFive posted...

How many people have to die from it before it becomes "a big deal"

I wrote out a long post but my phone ate it and I don't want to type it all out again but basically for me it isn't really about the number but the types of victims. Beyond that someone watching the news last year would have thought we were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, the amount of blind panicking was disgusting and definitely excessive.

Reigning_King posted...

I've managed to avoid having a single message modded on this account but I'll risk that by just outright saying I tuthfully don't think this whole situation has been nearly as big of a deal as people have been making of it.

In just over a year, it's killed nearly as many Americans as the HIV epidemic killed in 40, despite unprecedented public health measures to keep it in check. At its peak, as many Americans were dying to Covid every day as died in 9/11. This is, without question, the worst public health crisis the world has faced in over a century, and if not for countermeasures implemented, it likely would have done an even better job of giving the 1918 flu pandemic a run for its money. It is a big deal. Anyone suggests that it isn't has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

Reigning_King posted...

I wrote out a long post but my phone ate it and I don't want to type it all out again but basically for me it isn't really about the number but the types of victims.

So... "it's mostly old people dying and I don't care about them." Got it.

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adjl posted...

Anyone suggests that it isn't has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

Please go back and look at who you're talking to. That's basically a given.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Please go back and look at who you're talking to. That's basically a given.

Obviously, but he doesn't seem to know that. I feel like it's a given that I'm not explaining this to a more general audience.

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there will always be an asterisk next to how many people it killed. they counted people as dieing from it, when it was actually people dieing with it
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Krazy_Kirby posted...

they counted people as dieing from it, when it was actually people dieing with it

Prove it

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adjl posted...

So... "it's mostly old people dying and I don't care about them." Got it.

Close, but not quite.

Cant make a comeback if it never left

but yeah I dont think were done with the rough of it yet

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Reigning_King posted...

Close, but not quite.

A thoroughly uninformative response. You must be very confident in your position.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

there will always be an asterisk next to how many people it killed. they counted people as dieing from it, when it was actually people dieing with it

On what, exactly, are you basing that belief?

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We need to subtract all the deaths from the massive, unexplained pneumonia spike, so as not to unfairly inflate covid numbers.

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Blightzkrieg posted...

We need to subtract all the deaths from the massive, unexplained pneumonia spike, so as not to unfairly inflate covid numbers.

That's a moronic reasoning because COVID literally causes pneumonia.

THEGODDAMNBATMA posted...

Blightzkrieg posted...

We need to subtract all the deaths from the massive, unexplained pneumonia spike, so as not to unfairly inflate covid numbers.

That's a moronic reasoning because COVID literally causes pneumonia.

You can get pneumonia from other things too. Just sayin'.
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Not at all. It will be Covid-21.
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Nah. The media will create something new for you to fear and be controlled by.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

Nah. The media will create something new for you to fear and be controlled by.

No wonder you didn't vaccinate your kid.
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Revelation34 posted...

No wonder you didn't vaccinate your kid.

Still choosing to repost lies, I see. You must be news reporter.

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THEGODDAMNBATMA posted...

That's a moronic reasoning because COVID literally causes pneumonia.

that'sthejoke.jpg

LeetCheet posted...

You can get pneumonia from other things too. Just sayin'.

You can, but generally speaking, you can find other explanations for pneumonia cases if one exists. There's no such explanation here, so odds are the otherwise-inexplicable uptick in fatal pneumonia cases can be attributed to the respiratory virus running rampant across the globe.

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Reigning_King posted...

The reason I feel so strongly about this bullshit is because the over the top counter measures that were and are being taken are ultimately going to cause more human suffering than if they hadn't been taken. Even worse the people pushing them act like they're in the right, I might understand if they would openly admit that it was more about saving their own skin and keeping their power but instead they flood the media with all this sickening, sappy trash when they're the villains here.

Can you go back to being that dumbass that draws shitty swords?

adjl posted...

You can, but generally speaking, you can find other explanations for pneumonia cases if one exists. There's no such explanation here, so odds are the otherwise-inexplicable uptick in fatal pneumonia cases can be attributed to the respiratory virus running rampant across the globe.

I read on the news earlier about a disease called Mucormycosis that's currently spreading in India.

The Black fungus seems to be taking advantage of the Covid pandemic as people's immune systems are weak after being infected.

That probably explains why people suddenly started dying in droves in India.
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Ask people in the South if its made a huge comeback or not. Their hospitals in many areas are already filled to capacity, and in many areas there are more cases then there was last summer.

fettster777 posted...

Ask people in the South if its made a huge comeback or not. Their hospitals in many areas are already filled to capacity, and in many areas there are more cases then there was last summer.

Sadly, aside from the health care workers trying desperately to keep up and some of the actual victims themselves, most would still say no. The people driving this wave are the ones that have been denying the significance of the pandemic from day 1. They've fought public health measures, they've refused vaccines, and they've been extra-reckless now that measures have started to relax (not that they're vaccinated enough to actually qualify for those relaxations). They'd never admit to creating this problem because they've never admitted there was even a problem in the first place.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

Nah. The media will create something new for you to fear and be controlled by.

Because it's just a hoax, right?

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There's no major war going on so the Man is going to point his finger and distract us with something.

CaptainStrong posted...

If the government keeps enabling fearmongering media, yes.

Fix'd.

DDirtyDastard posted...

Fix'd.

What does the media have to do with the fact that case numbers are increasing?

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adjl posted...

DDirtyDastard posted...

Fix'd.

What does the media have to do with the fact that case numbers are increasing?

If the media didn't report anything then most people wouldn't even give a fuck.
They would just move on with their lives as usual.

Not that's any good either. People should know if people started dying from something.

The sad thing is that people are egotistical. If something isn't affecting them then they don't give a shit.
Everyone isn't like this but many are.
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LeetCheet posted...

If the media didn't report anything then most people wouldn't even give a f***.
They would just move on with their lives as usual.

That wouldn't change the answer to "is Covid making a comeback?", though. It'd just change whether or not people realized that it was. Covid making a comeback is objectively true.

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adjl posted...

Covid making a comeback is objectively true.

When peak cases were 3x higher than what we have now and a good percentage of the population is either vaccinated or has already been infected calling to this a comeback is objectively overstating things no matter how you look at it.

Reigning_King posted...

When peak cases were 3x higher than what we have now and a good percentage of the population is either vaccinated or has already been infected calling to this a comeback is objectively overstating things no matter how you look at it.

"Comeback" doesn't mean "it's going to be just as big as it was at its biggest." It just means "it was gone and now it's coming back." Regardless of how large of a surge it ends up being, it is objectively true that cases are surging compare to where they were a month ago. That surge is probably not going to be as bad as it was in December/January, no, but it's very much on track to end up with a higher 7-day average than was seen at the peaks of the waves in July 2020 and April 2021, and those were periods that averaged 1000 and 700 deaths a day, respectively. That's not a small deal.

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adjl posted...

"Comeback" doesn't mean "it's going to be just as big as it was at its biggest." It just means "it was gone and now it's coming back." Regardless of how large of a surge it ends up being, it is objectively true that cases are surging compare to where they were a month ago. That surge is probably not going to be as bad as it was in December/January, no, but it's very much on track to end up with a higher 7-day average than was seen at the peaks of the waves in July 2020 and April 2021, and those were periods that averaged 1000 and 700 deaths a day, respectively. That's not a small deal.

July 4th celebrations. It will be even worse for the winter holidays.
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Revelation34 posted...

July 4th celebrations.

The timing works out for that: cases started climbing around the 8th-10th (particularly where the 4th was a Sunday, so I'm guessing a lot of people made a long weekend of it and started travelling on the 2nd). If that was all that was at play, cases would have spiked around the 10th-12th, but because so many people are doing nothing to slow it down, it seems to be turning into a full-on outbreak. Lovely.

Revelation34 posted...

It will be even worse for the winter holidays.

One can only hope people are being less stupid about vaccines and precautions by then.

108,775 cases yesterday, by the way, bringing the 7-day average to 63,248, almost six times what it was on June 27th and showing no signs of slowing down. Still think it's not a comeback, @Reigning_King ?

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The Alberta government just announced that COVID positive people will no longer be required to isolate while sick starting August 16th. This comes as Alberta is beginning their 4th wave.

Jesus Christ.

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faramir77 posted...

The Alberta government just announced that COVID positive people will no longer be required to isolate while sick starting August 16th. This comes as Alberta is beginning their 4th wave.

Jesus Christ.

Every time I forget what a colossal knob Kenney is, he does something incomprehensibly insane to remind me.

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