Notices by Bas Schouten (schouten_b@mastodon.social)

@hacks4pancakes What exactly is the point of this? Trying to make the Republicans win harder? Was the Trump win not enough?

If people want to do something, do something that actually makes a difference rather than helping the GOP win the mid-terms.

@Infoseepage Two of my infections I'd been in an at least moderately busy place the week before (although one of them with an FFP2 mask). The other one I hadn't really ever seen more than one person at a time. Also had countless close interactions with people who (turned out to be/)were positive and didn't get it. Not sure it's very deterministic. If I hadn't tested so often I would solidly believe I'd never been infected 🙂.

@Infoseepage I'd say people lying or doing the test poorly (no nasopharyngeal swab) is a more likely explanation for that ;-). But yeah, no guarantees in life. Like I said, at least three infections. Don't really know where I caught them. Not obvious.

@Infoseepage Ridiculous

@Infoseepage Then again if there's not enough shedding to trigger an LFT maybe you're also just not very infectious. A friend of mine whose a virologist suggested, while he admitted it was hard to prove, that the chances of you infecting someone with a negative LFT were much smaller than the chance of you having an infection.

@Infoseepage Oh yeah. In the Netherlands LFTs were always at your own expense. (But affordable, I brought 50 for American friends in the COVID days for like 60 euros) We got two free ones at the start of the pandemic but that's about it.

As you said, they certainly don't rule out infection. Sensitivity isn't high enough for that, although they seemed to work well on me :-D. (But who knows, maybe they missed some infections with less shedding)

@Infoseepage Well that is no longer really the case. Most countries in Europe don't vaccinate anymore and tests are pretty hard to come by. You also can't get a proof of vaccination issued anymore. (The centralized record has been destroyed in accordance with privacy laws I believe.)

Tests are hard to come by now. You can still order them online though of course. During the pandemic I bought them in sets of 100 :).

@Infoseepage I was. Yeah. Until 2022 I tested whenever I left the house and until 2023 I tested whenever I went to an event. (Clubs in Germany also required same day tests during the latter part of the pandemic)

@Infoseepage It's difficult to theorize about why you guys had a summer wave and we didn't. One possibility is the denser population means fewer uninfected people. 85%-ish vaccinated and over 95%+ have been infected. I've been vaccinated 4 times and had COVID at least 3 times (we stopped boosting healthy people in 2023 and I stopped testing when asymptomatic now and haven't had a symptomatic infection, so infections might be higher).

Possibly that means broader population immunity? Hard to say.

@Infoseepage Which is what you'd expect given Omicron not giving complete immunity against Delta, it would take a long time to completely die out. But yes, it's good to see in the data.

@Infoseepage We tend to be good with open data and monitoring data. Glad to know it was helpful! 🙂

@Infoseepage Well since the site seems to count hospitalizations -with- SARS-CoV in the ICD list rather than primary that's a little misleading.

Also in the last two waves post-viral sequela have dropped to similar/lower levels than Influenza (and lower than for example EBV, both of which there are of course fewer infections). And nationwide the number of LC sufferers at least appears to have dropped.

Sure, it's a real disease with consequences. But not terribly concerning anymore.

@Infoseepage (Fwiw in a regular year we have about 3500 hospital admissions (so not visita) for Influenza. I sadly can't find good data on total admissions with COVID as a primary diagnoais in 2024. But based on data of individual hospitals it looks like that number is similar or lower. Obviously before 2023/2024 burden from SARS-CoV-2 was much higher.)

@Infoseepage Oh interesting! This looks like it includes -any- COVID diagnoses rather than COVID as a primary diagnosis. That's not what most places in the world are tracking and might explain some of the differences.

The death data does suggest it's COVID as primary cause.

In any case, in most places, and in the Netherlands, SARS-CoV-2 hospital load has not exceeded Influenza over the last year. (Sorry, no English version but should be readable)

@Infoseepage @violetblue (Basically it's ~10% during mild waves, a lot higher during more rare severe Influenza waves. And just like SARS-CoV-2 negligible during the warm summer months. It is mainly during the waves that influenza is somewhat more severe and that creates a higher average.)

@Infoseepage @violetblue Do you have the source for data, I wonder how it's qualified. That is a very low Influenza peak (like right now we're in a fairly serious Influenza wave and the numbers are -much- higher in most places than that). I also wonder if influenza might spread less in more rural areas then? Very peculiar.

@Infoseepage @violetblue Really? Where I live Influenza is well over 2% (more like 4%), I wonder why Influenza ED visits would be so much lower there.

@Infoseepage @violetblue I believe that number would be slightly lower than Influenza. So not super shocking since we don't track Influenza the same way.

An argument could be made that we should, but the question of course is what you do with that information, collecting that information can be valuable but mostly if it is somehow actionable.

For detecting a new variant or a large surge you don't need wastewater measurements at a very fine granularity.

@EricFielding @elticoloco Looks like I'm getting old 🙂. I thought they were still operating these:

@elticoloco @EricFielding Winds were too strong for using fire fighting planes. Plenty were available but during high winds water gets blown away and fire fighting planes can't be used effectively. (They actually have very expensive 747-400s)

Not everything is about your political pet peeve. (Though in this case if your pet peeve is climate change it kinda is)