Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[JoeCamel]

I'm headed to my basement until July 4th, 2023.

Does your mom know?

 

[Lilofan]

I'm headed to my basement until July 4th, 2023.

Did you win the Lotto jackpot then had SurvivalCondo.com builders to build you a luxury bunker condo?

 

[matt9112]

Why should I, the business owner, put myself, other employees, and customers at risk because one employee has an irrational opinion about vaccines?

You dont have to. Just dont complain about how tight the labor market is.

 

[mmascari]

Yeah, sure. Then why didn't you get tested and know before going ahead and exposing "Aunt Sally". I am sure she would have appreciated canceling the meeting so as not to expose her more.

I think you missed that unless you tested right before the meeting, you probably didn’t know. Even if you did, with the home test, you might still not know.

If you did a lab test right before, you would likely know. However, if that lab test was 48 hours before because the result took that long, still might not have known as you developed in that time. Generally, the closer the test to the event the better.

So, even doing all that stuff, knowing after the fact may still be the only result. Which is still better than not knowing at all.

 

[correcaminos]

Bill Gates cancels holiday plans due to omicron, believes pandemic will end in 2022

The Microsoft co-founder says the first part of the new year could be bad, but believes an omicron wave could last less than three months.

www.cnet.com

This is not someone I would listen to about covid. Having money doesn't mean he knows anything. Also those noting, he is canceling some plans, not all. So even if one listens that just means he isn't locking himself in the basement.

 

[DisneyDebRob]

Good thing nobody suggested individuals have to pay that. I posted the cost breakdowns of 300 million people testing 4 times a week earlier this week. Short answer, at $7 retail price per test, it's half a trillion for a year. Better answer, if they can drive the price to $3.50, then 1.5 billion tests "only" costs $273 billion dollars. Compared to the cost and impact of the pandemic that's not that much.



From this link: https://www.investopedia.com/govern...sis-4799723#toc-stimulus-and-relief-package-1

Across 4 relief packages, mostly the third one, we've already spent $2,793 Billion. Making spending $273 billion on a huge testing and early identification while not cheap also not outrageous. Drop it to 3 tests a week and it's "barely" over $150 billion.


I wish people would think about costs of the pandemic dragging on as they continue to do Pro-COVID actions.


If this was a late night commercial, it would be something like: For the cost of a Micky Bar every day, you too can help to limit the spread of COVID. Your Micky Bar contribution will help save Aunt Sally's life, help a kid go to school, save a cancer patient. PLEASE, will you give your Micky Bar today?

This being a WDW forum, I assume nobody would give up a Mikey Bar, but many would probably give up a Starbucks Coffee.

Take a quick look on Amazon at the outrageous gouging going on for the tests. The cheapest I saw was 34 bucks and it doesn’t look like anything Thats a name anyone would know. But you could spring for a 10 pack of another one for $870.00 or the 90 pack for close to 1,500.00. Unreal.

 

[Touchdown]

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, as cases go up it’s only going to get harder to get this stuff

Hospitals in New York region say they've run out of antibody treatment for omicron variant

Federal supply of the one monoclonal antibody treatment that has proven effective is now "limited," with more doses expected in January, a Health and Human Services spokesperson said.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[LittleBuford]

At this point, I. Do. Not. Care. Period. The end. Their willful ignorance and stupidity has dragged this out for MONTHS longer than it should have gone.

You should care, because it impacts all of us, as you yourself note.

If they haven't gotten vaccinated by now, they aren't ever going to be vaccinated.

Not true. If it were, there would be no-one at all getting their first or second shots now.

If they are unvaccinated and end up hospitalized or dead, oh well. They made their choice.

A person's hospitalisation can have knock-on effects for others, including the vaccinated. A person's death is tragic, even if it's the result of a stupid decision.

This pandemic has already deprived us of so much. I refuse to let it take away my ability to recognise others' humanity and worth.

 

[LittleBuford]

Actual posters that have been here over the last year with personal concerns about vaccination have all been met with support and encouragement to get vaccinated. I think most (all?) of them ended up getting vaccinated eventually then, even if it took a few months for some.

I commend them for speaking openly about their concerns, because if I'd been in their position, I probably would have held back for fear of being called stupid, selfish, etc. This thread can turn very hostile indeed. My own comments have, on more than one occasion, prompted angry kneejerk reactions that have nothing to do with what I've actually written.

 

[matt9112]

Yeah

Yeah, nope.

Unless you have some kind of medical condition preventing you from getting vaccinated - choosing not to get vaccinated is a moronic decision.

Done with pretending unvaccinated by choice have any semblance of intelligence. Done.

You must be fun a parties.

 

[LittleBuford]

The vast majority of unvaccinated people do not believe that they are at risk of being hospitalised with COVID. They are acting (or rather not acting) out of misguided fear and/or on the basis of disinformation. Frankly, I have more sympathy for them than I do for someone who knowingly chooses not to help a fellow human being.

I've mentioned my father's experience in ICU a few times on here, but I don't think I've brought up the fact that he was heavy smoker all his pre-COVID life, which of course played a huge role in the severity of his case. Should he have been turned away from the hospital because of his self-inflicted comorbidity? And while we're at it, should those who get COVID while on holiday at Disney be denied treatment because they decided to travel to Florida in the middle of a pandemic?

It's really not as black and white as some of you are making it seem.

I'm quoting an earlier post of mine that provides some context for why I feel as I do. Perhaps the rest of you are lucky enough not to have someone close to you who has made stupid and selfish decisions but isn't themselves stupid or selfish. In my case, that person is my father. My feelings towards him have helped me avoid the kind of dehumanising anger and callousness that is such a feature of this thread. Pouring scorn on people is not the way out of this pandemic.

 

[Touchdown]

Conspiracies are stupid, people who believe them are stupid. Smart people can do stupid things but when committing these stupid things they are being stupid.

 

[dreday3]

Yeah

You must be fun a parties.

Yes, I am!

 

[Nubs70]

So government is providing 500 million test kits for the US.

1.67 tests per person?? Now that's a robust national resting scheme.

 

[dreday3]

I'm quoting an earlier post of mine that provides some context for why I feel as I do. Perhaps the rest of you are lucky enough not to have someone close to you who has made stupid and selfish decisions but isn't themselves stupid or selfish. In my case, that person is my father. My feelings towards him have helped me avoid the kind of dehumanising anger and callousness that is such a feature of this thread. Pouring scorn on people is not the way out of this pandemic.

Are you not pouring scorn on others with these statements? Get off your pedestal, you judge just as much as the rest of us, just in a different way.

(the answer is yes)

 

[correcaminos]

I commend them for speaking openly about their concerns, because if I'd been in their position, I probably would have held back for fear of being called stupid, selfish, etc. This thread can turn very hostile indeed. My own comments have, on more than one occasion, prompted angry kneejerk reactions that have nothing to do with what I've actually written.

As someone who has talked privately with people here and of course elsewhere, I think sometimes people want to be convinced. Some have legitimate fears of the vaccine for whatever reason. They need a virtual (sometimes literal) hand held. Not all who are scared are head in the sand people. I know I vent here, but when I see someone who is truly worried I try to meet them at their level. Many of us are annoyed and I know it shows sometimes. However the few here who have posted really were legit worried and said as much which is so much easier to be compassionate with.

Kind of like my cousins who are numpty poohs about this, I have little patience for them. It's not a legit worry. One is a vet who has been vaccinated for more than we could ever thing of likely and it's not that. It's purely a sad follow the crazies for them. Then another relative via marriage was truly trying to talk and find out real facts. Their fear and inability to vaccinate was totally different. Granted they tested positive before they could get vaccinated but this time they won't hold back. As soon as the 3 months have passed (monoclonal treatments) they'll be vaccinated. They were going to a month ago but rural pharmacy caused issues and well... anyway. The former is an impossible feeling to deal with. The latter is not.

 

[LittleBuford]

I come here to rant occasionally, knowing that this is mostly safe territory.

It's kind of hard to really define "stupid" precisely. I've run into people who arrived at their antivaccine and antimask beliefs by perfectly logical thought processes. Aristotle himself might be proud of the reasoning.

But... these sound logical arguments are based on completely faulty premises that they have either implicitly or explicitly accepted as valid. And often, these individuals lack the insight to understand their own knowledge gaps. I've found that they can not accept this and employ all kinds of mental roadblocks to justify holding on to their positions.

Here's an example that's very fresh in my mind. The governor of my state, rather than show the political courage to re-implement a statewide indoor mask mandate while the entire state has become saturated with COVID cases, has left the decision up to the individual towns to decide. Against some small but very vocal opposition, my town board of selectors voted for the mandate. I and the handful of other health care providers who live in this very small rural town wrote an open letter of support for the mandate, and our letter was largely the deciding factor in the vote.

Flash forward a few days ago, and I'm taking my two dogs on our usual walk down to the village green. I see a woman standing on the corner holding a sign that says "Honk for no masks". Well, because I live in the town, our local hospital is bending but not yet breaking from COVID cases, and I have two children too young to get vaccinated (one not yet a week old), I could not let this go unaddressed.

So, I walked over to talk the woman. I asked her why she is against mask mandates in the middle of a pandemic, and what alternative solution she would suggest to slow the spread of COVID when the local medical system is at risk of overcapacity (turns out she was also antivaxx, but I didn't go down that route). She had no answer to the question, only to give her credentials as a "former health teacher" and to pull out a study that showed people had a slight but statistically significant increase in their pCO2 while exercising and wearing an N95 mask. She kept hammering that we don't know the long-term damage of this increase. I tried explaining that because of basic concepts like the Henderson-Hasselbach equation for acid-base buffering and the oxygen-carbon dioxide dissociation curve, this increase in pCO2 can be quickly dissipated by increasing the respiratory rate or tidal volume, or more slowly compensated by increased H+ secretion in the urine. To which, she replied, "Oh, do you have any studies that show that?" Of course I didn't, because these are fundamentals of chemistry and physiology that have been textbook knowledge for over a century. I also pointed out that I have 20 years of clinical experience as a physician and even patients with severe COPD and congestive heart failure can easily tolerate mask wearing. Which was answered again with, "Do you have a study for that"? (There are studies that show this, but I couldn't name them off the top of my head). As of if 20 years of health care experience counts for nothing.

Anyway, it was very clear that her knowledge of medicine was very superficial and the understanding of the underlying chemistry and physics was almost non-existent. But she was just incapable of reaching the realization that her own understanding was extremely superficial.

So, again, what is "stupid"? Is it someone who can not digest complex topics that require multiple levels of base knowledge to comprehend? If so, then count me as stupid, because there's a lot of economic and scientific concepts in which I have no formal training and I struggle to comprehend (I stumble everytime I hear about "bond yields" in business news). Or is it someone who willfully closes themselves off to information that conflicts with their belief system? Or is it someone who refuses to accept that their understanding a superficial point of surface data belies ignorance of the underlying concepts necessary to put that data in the proper context?

I try to have compassion for those who do not have the background to distinguish between good and bad information. I have less patience, though, for those who lack the self-awareness to recognize their own deficiencies. And I have even less patience for those who not only lack this quality, but have the potential to cause active harm through it. Hence, I couldn't let this situation on the village green go unaddressed.

End of rant... for now.

Your post proves my point, though. You didn't just go over and tell this woman she was stupid, did you? You actually tried to have a conversation with her and get to the bottom of why she felt as she did. True, it seems you weren't able to get very far in this instance, but you tried, and you did so by engaging with rather than berating and belittling her.

To be absolutely clear: I am in no way saying that such people should be coddled or left unchallenged. That is very far indeed from my stance. All I'm saying is that we're likely to get a lot further by treating sceptical or brainwashed individuals as fellow human beings.

 

[LittleBuford]

Are you not pouring scorn on others with these statements? Get off your pedestal, you judge just as much as the rest of us, just in a different way.

(the answer is yes)

Yes, I am, and I don't deny it. As I've said before, I judge those who knowingly mistreat others more harshly than I do those who do so through ignorance.

 

[dreday3]

Yes, I am, and I don't deny it. And I've said before, I judge those who knowingly mistreat others more harshly than I do those who do so through ignorance.

Sure. Whatever gets you through the day.

 

[lazyboy97o]

You dont have to. Just dont complain about how tight the labor market is.

The labor market isn’t tight because of the incredibly small number of people who have proved themselves willing to be unemployed instead of vaccinated.