Mega Thread COVID & AFL

[Van_Dyke]

Team,
as the season is approaching and there’s still much to discuss with regards to covid, please use this thread to talk about it and the potential impacts of it on the AFL season and the league more broadly. Please note however that if you want to talk about the politics of covid, the politics thread is the place for this and political posts in this thread will be deleted, please keep this thread to how it may impact the competition

 

[holybishop]

The whole country should be vaccinated already. The fact that it's not, despite the head start as far as low case count went is a blight on the country's leadership. Absurd that it's still causing these snap lockdowns randomly.

Every adult can now go and get the vaccine this week

 

[Purple Jesus]

Point is, it's probably even sillier now to ignore covid than it was before given we know the impacts on long term health etc in the general population and the key point i'm trying to make, before it got derailed, is that it shouldn't even be an issue or affecting AFL games this far into 2021 with the vaccines being as widely available as they are. Look at the states and how messed up they were - practically back to normal now due to the mass program they had.

 

[gotterdamerung]

We'll just ignore the over 7000 people under 60 who died in the UK then. fu** em eh?

Yes. Part of living involves risk of dying. Shall we shut everything down every time there’s a worse than usual flu season? Good luck holding a continent wide sporting comp.

 

[gotterdamerung]

Point is, it's probably even sillier now to ignore covid than it was before given we know the impacts on long term health etc in the general population and the key point i'm trying to make, before it got derailed, is that it shouldn't even be an issue or affecting AFL games this far into 2021 with the vaccines being as widely available as they are. Look at the states and how messed up they were - practically back to normal now due to the mass program they had.

Long covid is a myth.

 

[Purple Jesus]

Long covid is a myth.

 

[gotterdamerung]

Many of the self reported long covid cases are in people who never had the disease.

 

[Purple Jesus]

Many of the self reported long covid cases are in people who never had the disease.

I don't know what Facebook group you're getting your info from mate, but as someone who's had it twice, you do not want it. If you're not fitter and healthier than average, you do not want it. If you care about anyone over 50 who might be a bit chunky or has any sort of lung or heart condition you do not want them to get it either.

 

[G Mus]

Perth doesn't have room in the hospitals before covid.

Better hope this run of nobody dying from it continues.

Get private health everyone, we have room

…
Please

 

[gotterdamerung]

I don't know what Facebook group you're getting your info from mate, but as someone who's had it twice, you do not want it. If you're not fitter and healthier than average, you do not want it. If you care about anyone over 50 who might be a bit chunky or has any sort of lung or heart condition you do not want them to get it either.

How can you have it twice and a vaccine be expected to work? Is your immune system shot to s**t?

Anyway

First, consider that at least some people who identify themselves as having long Covid appear never to have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In Yong’s influential article, he cites a survey of Covid long-haulers in which some two-thirds of them had negative coronavirus antibody tests — blood tests that reveal prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. Meanwhile, a survey organized by a group of self-identified long Covid patients that recruited participants from online support groups reported in late December 2020 that around two-thirds of those surveyed who had undergone blood testing reported negative results.

We need to start thinking more critically — and speaking more cautiously — about long Covid

Make no mistake: the suffering described by people with long Covid is debilitating and real, and every one of them deserves careful, empathetic evaluation and appropriate treatment and referrals.

www.statnews.com

 

[BeinPurplenGreen]

Doesn't Victoria have active cases too? What's the rationale behind moving our game there?

Carlton want to win?

 

[Randomizor]

Yes, we should vaccinate the vulnerable, eg the over 60s, and then completely open up. FYI everyone I know over 60 is vaccinated.

Fewer people younger than 60 die from this disease than die from seasonal flu.

Let’s handle the flu like COVID then compare numbers yeah?

 

[Purple Jesus]

How can you have it twice and a vaccine be expected to work? Is your immune system shot to sh*t?

Anyway

We need to start thinking more critically — and speaking more cautiously — about long Covid

Make no mistake: the suffering described by people with long Covid is debilitating and real, and every one of them deserves careful, empathetic evaluation and appropriate treatment and referrals.

www.statnews.com

I got it in March 2020 and then the Kent variant in Dec 2020. I didn't get my first vaccine until May 2021 but carry on champ.

 

[gotterdamerung]

I got it in March 2020 and then the Kent variant in Dec 2020. I didn't get my first vaccine until May 2021 but carry on champ.

If your immune response disappears so quickly then there is no defeating this thing. Imagine how many Greek letter variants there are in Africa that we don’t know about.

 

[Purple Jesus]

If your immune response disappears so quickly then there is no defeating this thing. Imagine how many Greek letter variants there are in Africa that we don’t know about.

You're pretty good on assumptions aren't ya? Second time was vastly different to the first. Much more mild.

Anyway - kinda sick of engaging with someone as thick as you so I'm going to get on with my day.

 

[gotterdamerung]

You're pretty good on assumptions aren't ya? Second time was vastly different to the first. Much more mild.

Anyway - kinda sick of engaging with someone as thick as you so I'm going to get on with my day.

You’ve had this virus twice in nine months, and the vaccine, and you’re still worried about variants. May I suggest you’ve lost your mind? If the variants break through all that exposure to the virus, then there is no defeating it, and we may as well get on with our lives.

 

[Purple Jesus]

You’ve had this virus twice in nine months, and the vaccine, and you’re still worried about variants. May I suggest you’ve lost your mind? If the variants break through all that exposure to the virus, then there is no defeating it, and we may as well get on with our lives.

You may suggest nothing of the sort. My over 60s parent live in Perth and I'd like them not to be killed by science denying morons such as yourself.

Again, I've survived it multiple times because I'm not a fat heck. you wouldn't be so lucky old man.

 

[Gekko71]

A virus being more transmissible as the delta variant supposedly is means it is less deadly. Viruses evolve to attenuate their lethality and enhance their transmissibility. Eventually this virus will become endemic globally and rapidly mutating like the cold (which itself includes coronaviruses).

Virus evolution isn't a linear process.

You're describing the ultimate long term outcome of evolutionary processes, where any more lethal variants eventually over time will die out due to their very lethality.

In the interim however, various more lethal variants can and will arise, some of those variants may well be more readily transmissible than the original strain, and people can and will potentially die from those variants.

The Delta strain for example is clearly the result of an evolutionary process that has selected for transmissibility first.

Secondly, you can't assume that lethality arrives as a primary outcome of the virus.

A virus may cause various conditions that impact survival rates via secondary or tertiary outcomes of infection over time. Those secondary or tertiary outcomes may increase lethality, but do so over a far longer timeframe than the initial illness caused by the virus.

The type of HPV infection that causes cervical cancer for example has high transmissibility but low lethality on its own... But the cervical cancer that it causes however is far more lethal than the HPV virus itself.

This Delta strain is not necessarily more lethal, but it does more than double the rates of hospital admission, and also carries with it increased incidences of secondary complications such as gangrene arriving from blood clots. Both those factors contribute to lethality via other factors, such as a shortage of hospital beds, or decrease in a patient's overall immune health (For example, people don't die from an HIV infection, they die from other disease vectors that become lethal to the patient through them having next to no functioning immune system, thanks to the HIV virus destroying their T-cell count.)

This is all readily identifiable information that can be discovered through any Google search.

I respect your right to state your views here, but please be sure to make more than a surface assessment of the issues before discounting the threat posed by variants like Delta out of hand. There's far more important things at stake currently than curtailing a footy season.

 

[Square Peg]

The variants d, k etc are not relevant to the prime issue at hand. They were shutting the place down for single cases before any one had heard of these variants.
The prime issue is the sheer unsustainable madness of an elimination strategy against a virus that as Clay says is inevitably going to be endemic. It's coming people. The vast majority of healthy people that get it are fine. The average life expectancy in most countries besides the US in the pandemic has reduced 0.2 years, from 81 to 80.8 years FCS. Get the vaccine and live with it. And yes, curtailing a footy season is important. Mental health is important. Opportunity cost and government debt s important. Business sustainability is important.

 

[Gekko71]

The variants d, k etc are not relevant to the prime issue at hand. They were shutting the place down for single cases before any one had heard of these variants.
The prime issue is the sheer unsustainable madness of an elimination strategy against a virus that as Clay says is inevitably going to be endemic. It's coming people. The vast majority of healthy people that get it are fine. The average life expectancy in most countries besides the US in the pandemic has reduced 0.2 years, from 81 to 80.8 years FCS. Get the vaccine and live with it. And yes, curtailing a footy season is important. Mental health is important. Opportunity cost and government debt s important. Business sustainability is important.

I respect your opinion Square Peg, truly I do... but on this occasion I don't share it - not even close.

With enormous respect, IMO the presence of any potentially dangerous, highly transmissible and completely novel communicable virus in society IS ALWAYS the main issue (regardless of the variant or lethality). In arguing otherwise, one is really to some degree making pragmatic arguments about the health and course of other people's lives, as well as the very nature of the underlying social contracts that give those lives any sort of intrinsic value at all.... That's a bloody slippery slope frankly, and it doesn't end anywhere good.

Secondly, while I agree this virus will most likely become endemic, using that as justification for doing nothing, still assumes that some more lethal variant may not temporarily emerge, then cause massive devastation around the world before eventually dying out after killing off a large chunk of the human population.

In most cases, highly virulent and lethal varients of novel pathogens typically DO NOT arise if you shut their parent strain down before it can spread or mutate (like Australia did so successfully with the Hendra virus for example, which crossed from flying foxes, to horses, to humans in Queensland back in 1994). Always a more preferable approach to contain any new killer virus as much as possible in my view, rather than treating sections of human society like a giant Petri dish in some Darwinian "survival of the fittest" experiment based around pragmatic arguments of inevitability.

Relying on the observation that "most healthy people who get it are fine" is really an assumption that future strains will only be equally virulent or else incrementally more virulent, and ignores the possibility of any exponential growth in virulence or lethality.

Besides which, I dunno about you, but personally I don't know that many perfectly "healthy" people in any age group. Consider that in the US in 2020, the original strain was more deadly for all people who were obese, or had underlying health issues like asthma, heart disease, vascular disease or diabetes ( in most cases that just happened to be the elderly).

This new Delta variant however is far more virulent across the board and is twice more likely than the Alpha variant to result in hospitalisation, regardless of the patients age bracket or overall health prior to infection.

Sweden's social experiments with herd immunity when confronting the original Covid strain, all had a fatalistic, financially-based argument to them too... but that approach has backfired on them hugely.

The Delta strain seems to have comparitively higher levels of resistance to existing vaccine-acquired immunity than earlier strains.

This means that quite possibly the naturally-acquired herd immunity Sweden was pursuing is now probably ALSO similarly compromised.

But hey - maybe I'm in the minority.

If people really genuinely see the progression of this whole disease as inevitable, and sincerely believe protecting the health of others isn't something that society should worry about on matters of economic principle, then I invite them all to cancel their health insurance, take off the mask, let the disease spread unchecked and then go volunteer as an orderly at a hospital.

They'll save both themselves, the hospital and the wider health system a tidy sum of money in the process, they get to live a life consistent with their principles, and they get to tell all those poor saps who are literally choking to death on the phlemn and blood of a preventable disease, all their wonderful theories on financial pragmatism being more important than the quality of human life.

Pardon my satirical tone folks, but this whole argument is fallacious in my view... dangerously so.

My fear lies not in the end result of Covid-19's evolution, but in the damage that will be caused to society in general in the process of getting to that end point, not to mention just how many more millions of people will die from it first.

People were literally stacking the dead like firewood, and burning their dead in carparks in India not three months ago from the same variant that's now crawling across our lawn.

These poor suffering people burnt their dead in public spaces, because they had to - every hospital, mortuary, crematorium and graveyard was already full to overflowing.

With respect, isn't an abundance of caution a no-brainer here?

 

[theGav56]

Would anyone actually have begrudged AFL players and staff "jumping the queue" and all getting the Pfizer months ago.
I mean it's not as though the average deadbeat lazy lockdown-supporting moron that populates this country by the millions s clamouring at the doors demanding vaccination.

Or requiring the vaccinations for supporters to attend.

 

[Taylor]

Consider that in the US in 2020, the original strain was more deadly for all people who were obese, or had underlying health issues like asthma, heart disease, vascular disease or diabetes ( in most cases that just happened to be the elderly).

It's important to remember this was the period of time when states there were sending people they knew had covid into facilities that housed the elderly, in Michigan there were cases of young people being roomed with very elderly people.

It shouldn't be a surprise that so many of their deaths were from this period, this decision tree.

 

[gotterdamerung]

The Delta strain seems to have comparitively higher levels of resistance to existing vaccine-acquired immunity than earlier strains.

This means that quite possibly the naturally-acquired herd immunity Sweden was pursuing is now probably ALSO similarly compromised.

But hey - maybe I'm in the minority.

If herd immunity cannot be achieved either by vaccine or contracting the virus, then it is something we will just have to live with. It will be IMPOSSIBLE to vaccinate the whole world in a timely enough fashion to defeat the virus’s own evolution, which means there will always be a significantly sized population for the virus to evolve in (eg Africa, India and Brazil, where many of these variants have arisen).

In which case it should be considered the same as seasonal flu, against which we vaccinate the elderly and those who work with vulnerable people, and let everyone else get on with their lives.

 

[gotterdamerung]

You may suggest nothing of the sort. My over 60s parent live in Perth and I'd like them not to be killed by science denying morons such as yourself.

Again, I've survived it multiple times because I'm not a fat fu**. you wouldn't be so lucky old man.

Are your parents vaccinated?

If you’ve contracted it multiple times this suggests that either the virus cannot be defeated by immunisation or your immune system is rubbish.

 

[Square Peg]

I respect your opinion Square Peg, truly I do... but on this occasion I don't share it - not even close.

With enormous respect, IMO the presence of any potentially dangerous, highly transmissible and completely novel communicable virus in society IS ALWAYS the main issue (regardless of the variant or lethality). In arguing otherwise, one is really to some degree making pragmatic arguments about the health and course of other people's lives, as well as the very nature of the underlying social contracts that give those lives any sort of intrinsic value at all.... That's a bloody slippery slope frankly, and it doesn't end anywhere good.

Secondly, while I agree this virus will most likely become endemic, using that as justification for doing nothing, still assumes that some more lethal variant may not temporarily emerge, then cause massive devastation around the world before eventually dying out after killing off a large chunk of the human population.

In most cases, highly virulent and lethal varients of novel pathogens typically DO NOT arise if you shut their parent strain down before it can spread or mutate (like Australia did so successfully with the Hendra virus for example, which crossed from flying foxes, to horses, to humans in Queensland back in 1994). Always a more preferable approach to contain any new killer virus as much as possible in my view, rather than treating sections of human society like a giant Petri dish in some Darwinian "survival of the fittest" experiment based around pragmatic arguments of inevitability.

Relying on the observation that "most healthy people who get it are fine" is really an assumption that future strains will only be equally virulent or else incrementally more virulent, and ignores the possibility of any exponential growth in virulence or lethality.

Besides which, I dunno about you, but personally I don't know that many perfectly "healthy" people in any age group. Consider that in the US in 2020, the original strain was more deadly for all people who were obese, or had underlying health issues like asthma, heart disease, vascular disease or diabetes ( in most cases that just happened to be the elderly).

This new Delta variant however is far more virulent across the board and is twice more likely than the Alpha variant to result in hospitalisation, regardless of the patients age bracket or overall health prior to infection.

Sweden's social experiments with herd immunity when confronting the original Covid strain, all had a fatalistic, financially-based argument to them too... but that approach has backfired on them hugely.

The Delta strain seems to have comparitively higher levels of resistance to existing vaccine-acquired immunity than earlier strains.

This means that quite possibly the naturally-acquired herd immunity Sweden was pursuing is now probably ALSO similarly compromised.

But hey - maybe I'm in the minority.

If people really genuinely see the progression of this whole disease as inevitable, and sincerely believe protecting the health of others isn't something that society should worry about on matters of economic principle, then I invite them all to cancel their health insurance, take off the mask, let the disease spread unchecked and then go volunteer as an orderly at a hospital.

They'll save both themselves, the hospital and the wider health system a tidy sum of money in the process, they get to live a life consistent with their principles, and they get to tell all those poor saps who are literally choking to death on the phlemn and blood of a preventable disease, all their wonderful theories on financial pragmatism being more important than the quality of human life.

Pardon my satirical tone folks, but this whole argument is fallacious in my view... dangerously so.

My fear lies not in the end result of Covid-19's evolution, but in the damage that will be caused to society in general in the process of getting to that end point, not to mention just how many more millions of people will die from it first.

People were literally stacking the dead like firewood, and burning their dead in carparks in India not three months ago from the same variant that's now crawling across our lawn.

These poor suffering people burnt their dead in public spaces, because they had to - every hospital, mortuary, crematorium and graveyard was already full to overflowing.

With respect, isn't an abundance of caution a no-brainer here?

There's a lot of hyperbole here. I'm not aware of anyone suggesting doing nothing.
I'm pissed off with myself for posting in this thread, I don't think you're in the minority, I think you're in the vast majority that can't calibrate risk and cost and are scared witless by something that actually can be managed but who think it can't. All good, you make some interesting points but I am out of the thread for my own sanity.
Everyone please get vaccinated FFS.

 

[Taylor]

There's a lot of hyperbole here. I'm not aware of anyone suggesting doing nothing.
I'm pissed off with myself for posting in this thread, I don't think you're in the minority, I think you're in the vast majority that can't calibrate risk and cost and are scared witless by something that actually can be managed but who think it can't. All good, you make some interesting points but I am out of the thread for my own sanity.
Everyone please get vaccinated FFS.

You can make an argument that nobody outside Australia should be allowed back into the country at all if the risk is too high and the cost of even one life here is too high.

If we put the inconvenience of Perth at 2,000,000 x 4 days at a factor of 1/10 then that's a local score of 800,000 days of local impact with the intent of saving local lives.

That's 1000 families of four waiting an extra six months to get home.

It's just so much easier to put 1000 families faces on the news than local impact, even weighted and minimised to suit a lower figure.