*** OFFICIAL *** COVID-19 CoronaVirus Thread. Fresh epidemic fears as child pneumonia cases surge in Europe after China outbreak. NOW in USA (4 Viewers)

[Doug B]

From the same Atlantic article:

In the United States, the public was initially told that “close contact” meant coming within six feet of an infected individual, for 15 minutes or more. This messaging led to ridiculous gaming of the rules; some establishments moved people around at the 14th minute to avoid passing the threshold. It also led to situations in which people working indoors with others, but just outside the cutoff of six feet, felt that they could take their mask off. None of this made any practical sense. What happened at minute 16? Was seven feet okay? Faux precision isn’t more informative; it’s misleading.

 

[Doug B]

Last piece I'll pull -- this one hits home because my wife and daughter are still petrified of outside air due to social-media misinformation from early in the pandemic:

Perhaps worst of all, our messaging and guidelines elided the difference between outdoor and indoor spaces, where, given the importance of aerosol transmission, the same precautions should not apply. This is especially important because this pathogen is overdispersed: Much of the spread is driven by a few people infecting many others at once, while most people do not transmit the virus at all.

After I wrote an article explaining how overdispersion and super-spreading were driving the pandemic, I discovered that this mechanism had also been poorly explained. I was inundated by messages from people, including elected officials around the world, saying they had no idea that this was the case. None of it was secret—numerous academic papers and articles had been written about it—but it had not been integrated into our messaging or our guidelines despite its great importance.

Crucially, super-spreading isn’t equally distributed; poorly ventilated indoor spaces can facilitate the spread of the virus over longer distances, and in shorter periods of time, than the guidelines suggested, and help fuel the pandemic.

Outdoors? It’s the opposite.

There is a solid scientific reason for the fact that there are relatively few documented cases of transmission outdoors, even after a year of epidemiological work: The open air dilutes the virus very quickly, and the sun helps deactivate it, providing further protection. And super-spreading—the biggest driver of the pandemic— appears to be an exclusively indoor phenomenon. I’ve been tracking every report I can find for the past year, and have yet to find a confirmed super-spreading event that occurred solely outdoors. Such events might well have taken place, but if the risk were great enough to justify altering our lives, I would expect at least a few to have been documented by now.

EDIT: I lied -- one more bit:

We’d have been much better off if we gave people a realistic intuition about this virus’s transmission mechanisms. Our public guidelines should have been more like Japan’s, which emphasize avoiding the three C’s—closed spaces, crowded places, and close contact—that are driving the pandemic.

 

[belljr]

Last piece I'll pull -- this one hits home because my wife and daughter are still petrified of outside air due to social-media misinformation from early in the pandemic:

Yeah I have very little concern outside coaching softball. Yeah I'll pull my mask up if I'm talking to the girls up close for a bit but I'm almost 0% concerned

 

[belljr]

From the same Atlantic article:

It's so stupid that people always take things so literal about everything.  Not just about this.  If I'm close to someone for 3 to 4 minutes I'm not overly panicked on the flip side I don't want to sit inside for 2 hours either

 

[Doug B]

I lied again -- this article just keeps giving and giving:

Socializing is not a luxury—kids need to play with one another, and adults need to interact. Your kids can play together outdoors, and outdoor time is the best chance to catch up with your neighbors is not just a sensible message; it’s a way to decrease transmission risks. Some kids will play and some adults will socialize no matter what the scolds say or public-health officials decree, and they’ll do it indoors, out of sight of the scolding.

And if they don’t? Then kids will be deprived of an essential activity, and adults will be deprived of human companionship. Socializing is perhaps the most important predictor of health and longevity, after not smoking and perhaps exercise and a healthy diet. We need to help people socialize more safely, not encourage them to stop socializing entirely.

Last but not least, the pandemic response has been distorted by a poor balance between knowledge, risk, certainty, and action.

Sometimes, public-health authorities insisted that we did not know enough to act, when the preponderance of evidence already justified precautionary action. Wearing masks, for example, posed few downsides, and held the prospect of mitigating the exponential threat we faced. The wait for certainty hampered our response to airborne transmission, even though there was almost no evidence for—and increasing evidence against—the importance of fomites, or objects that can carry infection. And yet, we emphasized the risk of surface transmission while refusing to properly address the risk of airborne transmission, despite increasing evidence. The difference lay not in the level of evidence and scientific support for either theory—which, if anything, quickly tilted in favor of airborne transmission, and not fomites, being crucial—but in the fact that fomite transmission had been a key part of the medical canon, and airborne transmission had not.

 

[Doug B]

Yet more!

And sometimes, the way that academics communicate clashed with how the public constructs knowledge. In academia, publishing is the coin of the realm, and it is often done through rejecting the null hypothesis—meaning that many papers do not seek to prove something conclusively, but instead, to reject the possibility that a variable has no relationship with the effect they are measuring (beyond chance). If that sounds convoluted, it is—there are historical reasons for this methodology and big arguments within academia about its merits, but for the moment, this remains standard practice.

At crucial points during the pandemic, though, this resulted in mistranslations and fueled misunderstandings, which were further muddled by differing stances toward prior scientific knowledge and theory. Yes, we faced a novel coronavirus, but we should have started by assuming that we could make some reasonable projections from prior knowledge, while looking out for anything that might prove different. That prior experience should have made us mindful of seasonality, the key role of overdispersion, and aerosol transmission. A keen eye for what was different from the past would have alerted us earlier to the importance of presymptomatic transmission.

Thus, on January 14, 2020, the WHO stated that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” It should have said, “There is increasing likelihood that human-to-human transmission is taking place, but we haven’t yet proven this, because we have no access to Wuhan, China.” (Cases were already popping up around the world at that point.) Acting as if there was human-to-human transmission during the early weeks of the pandemic would have been wise and preventive.

Later that spring, WHO officials stated that there was “currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection,” producing many articles laden with panic and despair. Instead, it should have said: “We expect the immune system to function against this virus, and to provide some immunity for some period of time, but it is still hard to know specifics because it is so early.”

Similarly, since the vaccines were announced, too many statements have emphasized that we don’t yet know if vaccines prevent transmission. Instead, public-health authorities should have said that we have many reasons to expect, and increasing amounts of data to suggest, that vaccines will blunt infectiousness, but that we’re waiting for additional data to be more precise about it. That’s been unfortunate, because while many, many things have gone wrong during this pandemic, the vaccines are one thing that has gone very, very right.

... as soon as we began vaccinating people, articles started warning the newly vaccinated about all they could not do. “COVID-19 Vaccine Doesn’t Mean You Can Party Like It’s 1999,” one headline admonished. And the buzzkill has continued right up to the present. “You’re fully vaccinated against the coronavirus—now what? Don’t expect to shed your mask and get back to normal activities right away,” began a recent Associated Press story.

People might well want to party after being vaccinated. Those shots will expand what we can do, first in our private lives and among other vaccinated people, and then, gradually, in our public lives as well. But once again, the authorities and the media seem more worried about potentially reckless behavior among the vaccinated, and about telling them what not to do, than with providing nuanced guidance reflecting trade-offs, uncertainty, and a recognition that vaccination can change behavior. No guideline can cover every situation, but careful, accurate, and updated information can empower everyone.

Take the messaging and public conversation around transmission risks from vaccinated people. It is, of course, important to be alert to such considerations: Many vaccines are “leaky” in that they prevent disease or severe disease, but not infection and transmission. In fact, completely blocking all infection—what’s often called “sterilizing immunity”—is a difficult goal, and something even many highly effective vaccines don’t attain, but that doesn’t stop them from being extremely useful.

 

[Biff84]

My personal sense is that the rest of the nation is still mentally stuck in January (or November maybe) and hasn't fully grasped how big a deal widespread vaccination is.  If I were governor of a state with a mask mandate and various lockdown orders -- both of which I strongly supported a few months ago -- I would not be lifting them yet, but I'd be making plans to do so in the near future.  If I were suddenly made governor of a state that didn't have those measures in place, I wouldn't bother spending political capital on them at this point. 

I'm seeing a lot of this stuck-in-two-months-ago mindset in my corner of academia at the moment.  This is the time of year when we need to seriously firm up our plans for the upcoming fall semester.  Under normal circumstances that's completely routine and no big deal at all, but I'm hearing lots of chatter along the lines of "What is fall going to be like?"  It seems like it should pretty obvious to everyone that the fall semester is going to be mostly or entirely normal, but that's not obvious at all to a lot of people, because they're looking at case counts right now and not really thinking ahead to what case counts are going to look like six months from now.

Old people, health care workers, and other folks who used to be "high risk" that we worried about a lot, are now way down in the "basically zero risk" category.  We're not quite there yet, but it won't be long at all before people like us -- late-40s or early-50s, basically good health -- are the highest-risk people remaining.  And honestly, there's little justification for continuing to shut down society on our account.     

I agree with almost everything except widespread vaccination. We’re not there yet. True that we have gotten a big chunk of the high risk people but depending on where you’re at, they may not have gotten a chance.

Regardless, the people most likely to take advantage of opening are not the same ones who have been vaccinated. And while I share the skepticism about the variants being anything to worry about, we really don’t know. If a variant emerges that’s able to evade the current immunizations then suddenly we have a ton of virus in the community.

I do think that we can make some of these moves when we have widespread vaccinations, we’re just not there yet. Maybe in two months that will be true, but not now. If these relaxations of restrictions spread to more states, my biggest worry is that we will never hit widespread vaccination. 

 

[parasaurolophus]

mrip541 posted this in the Political Forum's thread, but it ties in nicely to today's discussion here: 5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating (The Atlantic, Zeynep Tufenki, 2/26/2021). It's a little too long to quote in full, but I'll pull a few choice quotes.

There's a ton more in there ... those quotes are just a taste.

Ahem, ahem

 

[parasaurolophus]

Lots of people have pandemic fatigue.

Going to be quite interesting watching all the people with pandemic withdrawal.

 

[culdeus]

Looking back here are the things I can't prove, but I think make sense.  I'm interested to see if science ultimately backs these up.

1) Masks don't really work in the way we think they might work.  If you are in an environment where you are spending more than 10min with someone nearby that you can't distance from, they work.  Sort of.  

So for schools, hospitals, some office environments, and indoor spaces it makes sense.  For grocery stores, not so much.  For this reason these mask mandates probably coming off won't matter.

2) This thing is mostly spread by people that are symptomatic.  The fear of asymptomatic spread was for the most part overblown.  There simply isn't much compelling out there on Asym spread.

3) Variants are a non-story in the short term, and have minimal long term implications.  Variants might be worse however for one factor, re-infection.  I'm worried that maybe looking at Brazil and some parts of California we aren't dealing with a more deadly variant but a variant that seems to get thru prior antibodes.  

4) Prior exposure to similar but non COV19 viruses played a bigger role than previously let on.  Our lack of exposure to COV viruses in day to day by mostly staying home or masked increased the risk as we got closer to the end of the year as that resistance was waning.  

 

[JaxBill]

so if I only got the first shot, can I go to semi crowded bar and get half lit?

 

[Doug B]

This is important and worth quoting -- again from Zeynep Tufenki in The Atlantic:

As Paul Sax, an infectious-disease doctor at Boston’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital, put it in early December, it would be enormously surprising “if these highly effective vaccines didn’t also make people less likely to transmit.” From multiple studies, we already knew that asymptomatic individuals—those who never developed COVID-19 despite being infected—were much less likely to transmit the virus. The vaccine trials were reporting 95 percent reductions in any form of symptomatic disease. In December, we learned that Moderna had swabbed some portion of trial participants to detect asymptomatic, silent infections, and found an almost two-thirds reduction even in such cases. The good news kept pouring in. Multiple studies found that, even in those few cases where breakthrough disease occurred in vaccinated people, their viral loads were lower—which correlates with lower rates of transmission. Data from vaccinated populations further confirmed what many experts expected all along: Of course these vaccines reduce transmission.

 

[Doug B]

2) This thing is mostly spread by people that are symptomatic.  The fear of asymptomatic spread was for the most part overblown.  There simply isn't much compelling out there on Asymptomatic spread.

When you write this ... do you distinguish between (a) infected persons who never have symptoms and (b) "presymptomatics" who can spread illness in those two or three days before their symptoms become apparent?

One thing I thought was pretty locked down was that infected persons could and did shed virus for a few days before they came down with symptoms. I could see those who remain asymptomatic (e.g. their immune system beat the virus quickly) not being all that contagious -- their viral load probably stays low the whole way through. But what about the presymptomatic infected folks who are going to be sick as dogs in a day or two, but look fine now?

 

[Doug B]

4) Prior exposure to similar but non COV19 viruses played a bigger role than previously let on.  Our lack of exposure to COV viruses in day to day by mostly staying home or masked increased the risk as we got closer to the end of the year as that resistance was waning.  

For precision, I'll amend this to "... similar but non-COVID-19 coronaviruses" and I agree with you. When the story of COVID-19 is written in 2030 or whatever, one of the stories will be "If you had a bad cold sometime after 2000-05 or so, you had pretty good COVID-19 protection without knowing it".

 

[Doug B]

And yet, from the beginning, a good chunk of the public-facing messaging and news articles implied or claimed that vaccines won’t protect you against infecting other people or that we didn’t know if they would, when both were false. I found myself trying to convince people in my own social network that vaccines weren’t useless against transmission, and being bombarded on social media with claims that they were.

What went wrong? The same thing that’s going wrong right now with the reporting on whether vaccines will protect recipients against the new viral variants. Some outlets emphasize the worst or misinterpret the research. Some public-health officials are wary of encouraging the relaxation of any precautions. Some prominent experts on social media—even those with seemingly solid credentials—tend to respond to everything with alarm and sirens. So the message that got heard was that vaccines will not prevent transmission, or that they won’t work against new variants, or that we don’t know if they will. What the public needs to hear, though, is that based on existing data, we expect them to work fairly well—but we’ll learn more about precisely how effective they’ll be over time, and that tweaks may make them even better.

 

[jamny]

I am still on the fence. I will prob get tested in a week or so. If I had/have it like I suspect, I will skip the vaccine. 

If I do not/did not... not sure. Honestly leaning towards no now where as before my daughter/son got it I was leaning to yes. 

We had the virus in early January and neither of us plan on getting the vaccine at the moment. I would have if we never got it but for now I'm ok with waiting a couple of months to make a decision.

 

[Cowboysfan8]

Gov Wolf of Pa announced today that all of Pa’s Johnson n Johnson vaccine will go to teachers and school staff

The rest of Pa citizens will get moderna n phizer

joke imo

 

[parasaurolophus]

Gov Wolf of Pa announced today that all of Pa’s Johnson n Johnson vaccine will go to teachers and school staff

The rest of Pa citizens will get moderna n phizer

joke imo

It is a joke is if it doesnt get teachers back in school and just allowed them to skip the line. But if using the one dose solution gets them back in school asap, why is that a joke?

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Gov Wolf of Pa announced today that all of Pa’s Johnson n Johnson vaccine will go to teachers and school staff

The rest of Pa citizens will get moderna n phizer

joke imo

It is interesting to see how all the different states are going about their vaccine distributions. This may not be a bad if the idea is to get teachers back to work since the JnJ vaccine only requires one dose and would allow them to be protected sooner.

 

[parasaurolophus]

2) This thing is mostly spread by people that are symptomatic.  The fear of asymptomatic spread was for the most part overblown.  There simply isn't much compelling out there on Asymptomatic spread.

When you write this ... do you distinguish between (a) infected persons who never have symptoms and (b) "presymptomatics" who can spread illness in those two or three days before their symptoms become apparent?

One thing I thought was pretty locked down was that infected persons could and did shed virus for a few days before they came down with symptoms. I could see those who remain asymptomatic (e.g. their immune system beat the virus quickly) not being all that contagious -- their viral load probably stays low the whole way through. But what about the presymptomatic infected folks who are going to be sick as dogs in a day or two, but look fine now?

Going to add that I think only a select group of mouth breathing asymptomatics actually ever spread this. 

 

[Cowboysfan8]

It is a joke is if it doesnt get teachers back in school and just allowed them to skip the line. But if using the one dose solution gets them back in school asap, why is that a joke?

There’s no guarantee that they’ll go back 

The school year is nearly over

Why should they jump the line over other workers? A lot of people have jobs where they can’t even social distance the whole day ?

 

[culdeus]

When you write this ... do you distinguish between (a) infected persons who never have symptoms and (b) "presymptomatics" who can spread illness in those two or three days before their symptoms become apparent?

One thing I thought was pretty locked down was that infected persons could and did shed virus for a few days before they came down with symptoms. I could see those who remain asymptomatic (e.g. their immune system beat the virus quickly) not being all that contagious -- their viral load probably stays low the whole way through. But what about the presymptomatic infected folks who are going to be sick as dogs in a day or two, but look fine now?

A few of the thinly supported studies called into question whether the timing of what we call/indicate as pre/post/non symptomatic is flawed.  That there is self-reporting issues with this, as admitting you were symptomatic is tantamount to a crime/moral issues.  These are more psychological studies but go the central point in that presym/sym is self reported and prone to bias.  

My guess is people spreading this were symptomatic in some way and didn't want to admit it so they could sleep at night after killing grandma.  

Again, I'm not claiming I have evidence for this. It's a hypothesis.  

 

[Doug B]

Going to add that I think only a select group of mouth breathing asymptomatics actually ever spread this.

Unpack a bit? Do you mean that asymptomatic spread should barely exist but for some reckless behavior among 'mouthbreathers'? Or something else?

 

[Doug B]

Again, I'm not claiming I have evidence for this. It's a hypothesis.  

It's all good. It helps to flesh things out and see what underlies what other people are thinking.

 

[parasaurolophus]

There’s no guarantee that they’ll go back 

The school year is nearly over

Why should they jump the line over other workers? A lot of people have jobs where they can’t even social distance the whole day ?

I agree that they could easily take the vaccine and still say they were then staying home. That would suck. But one thing is for sure is that would kill the support teachers get for future issues. Parents would never forget that.

 

[parasaurolophus]

Unpack a bit? Do you mean that asymptomatic spread should barely exist but for some reckless behavior among 'mouthbreathers'? Or something else?

No I literally mean the process of breathing through the mouth. I am trying to find the study but something like 30% of people that breath through their mouth a certain way emit a massively increased % of aerosol particles. 

Because of breathing through your mouth a certain it would cause a part of your airway to be drier and the particles broke off more efficiently and made their way into the air. If they covered that part of the airway with saline, it practically eliminated the emissions.

ETA: I am not having good luck finding it. It was a flu study and I remember it was definitely saline because they had tried something else first and I believe just using the saline to rinse off the other chemical let them stumble upon this. I remember thinking that this would really explain super spreading events quite well too. I gotta hit the road, but will look more later. It was all pretty fascinating.  

 

[Chadstroma]

We had the virus in early January and neither of us plan on getting the vaccine at the moment. I would have if we never got it but for now I'm ok with waiting a couple of months to make a decision.

I am not anti-vaccination. I typically get flu shots every year, the kids get all their vaccines, etc. But I am not seeing the point of getting it for now. My thinking is if I have/had it.... then I have natural antibodies plus on top of that for me it was barely noticeable and honestly if I wasn't hyper sensitive about anything and everything wondering if it was rona or not, I wouldn't have noticed it at all. 

 

[Chadstroma]

Gov Wolf of Pa announced today that all of Pa’s Johnson n Johnson vaccine will go to teachers and school staff

The rest of Pa citizens will get moderna n phizer

joke imo

What is the joke about that? (not baiting you, honestly have no clue what you are saying there or why)

 

[Cowboysfan8]

What is the joke about that? (not baiting you, honestly have no clue what you are saying there or why)

There’s no guarantee that they’ll go back 

The school year is nearly over

Why should they jump the line over other workers? A lot of people have jobs where they can’t even social distance the whole day ?

 

[Chadstroma]

So..... what does the different manufacturers different vaccines have to do with it? 

 

[dawgtrails]

There’s no guarantee that they’ll go back 

The school year is nearly over

Why should they jump the line over other workers? A lot of people have jobs where they can’t even social distance the whole day ?

Because them not working because of contracting covid has a far bigger effect on far more people than just about any other worker out there.

IMO, teachers should have been lumped in with health care workers and 65+

 

[Chadstroma]

So..... what does the different manufacturers different vaccines have to do with it? 

I think Kilgore Trout answered it... because the J&J is one does versus two and the wait between shots. 

Yea, it would be pretty silly if it was not tied to the teachers getting back in the classroom. Otherwise, they don't need any priority for sure. I mean, I don't think zoom is a recognized venue for spreading. 

 

[Chadstroma]

Because them not working because of contracting covid has a far bigger effect on far more people than just about any other worker out there.

IMO, teachers should have been lumped in with health care workers and 65+

IF they were in the classroom yes. IF they are not, then it is pointless. My kid's school is up and running and has been through most of the school year. There was one small outbreak which shut down the school but that was more about being careful as there were people at a golf outing (why they had that I have NO idea) that had it and the people that needed to be quarantined plus people already out they just had to go to remote learning for two weeks. 

The other outbreak has been the one my kids got caught in.... it seems it shut down two grades plus my sons 2nd grade class. 

It is a small catholic primary through middle school. The classrooms are small and the overall campus is small and tight. If they can do it then all schools can do it. 

 

[Cowboysfan8]

Because them not working because of contracting covid has a far bigger effect on far more people than just about any other worker out there

A lot of them haven’t worked here in a year. 
Joe says everyone will have access to a shot by May. Why rush into it now?

And again, the school year is 3/4 over

There are people with medical issues that can’t get an appt. Shouldn’t they go before young healthy teachers ?
 

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

Get the first shot you can get and be happy about it IMO.  All of them provide fantastic protection against hospitalization and death -- even with one shot.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

Early days, but...

The estimated infection rate in the population is currently modeled to be ~30%.

Estimates on severe cases seems like they're in the 10-14% range of all cases.

So maybe 3-4% of the population ends up with a severe case. That's ~10-12MM people.

If overall mortality is .75% - 1%, then ~700-900k total in the US.

Obviously that's the scenario for a full blown pandemic.  Hopefully it's not that bad, but this is what's got people worked up.

Sadly, this isn't going to be too far off the mark by the time we get everyone vaccinated at the end of 2021.

 

[DallasDMac]

We have an individualistic-minded society, right or wrong, good or bad.  It's part of what makes us the greatest nation on earth -- and 90% of the time that is great, 10% of the time it really sucks.

I didn't realize people still believed this. Not knocking you, I'm just surprised to see anyone still feels this way.

 

[Alex P Keaton]

I didn't realize people still believed this. Not knocking you, I'm just surprised to see anyone still feels this way.

Feel free to name one that is better, on balance

 

[Capella]

Gov Wolf of Pa announced today that all of Pa’s Johnson n Johnson vaccine will go to teachers and school staff

The rest of Pa citizens will get moderna n phizer

joke imo

What is bad about this?

 

[Biff84]

J&J should IMO be used for high benefit recipients rather those with high risk factors. Groups that have high exposure risk, low morbidity risk but their vaccination brings great public benefit. Teachers fit that. Getting them vaccinated makes in person learning safer, decreases the risk of interruptions in schooling and most importantly, decreases the reasons not to go back in person. I would have prioritized them before this for the same reasons.

 

[DallasDMac]

Feel free to name one that is better, on balance

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings

 

[krista4]

Feel free to name one that is better, on balance

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings

You're both high-quality posters and great dudes, but I hope you will take this debate to the PSF or anywhere else, please.  In fact, I think tim might have had a thread over there about American exceptionalism.  He has a thread about everything.

 

[Alex P Keaton]

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings

Edited because I can’t delete and am afraid of krista

 

[Alex P Keaton]

You're both high-quality posters and great dudes, but I hope you will take this debate to the PSF or anywhere else, please.  In fact, I think tim might have had a thread over there about American exceptionalism.  He has a thread about everything.

Thx for the nudge, will do.

 

[DallasDMac]

Why do you live here?

Why wouldn't I? Family is all here, mother, kids, grandkids. etc. Job is here. Medical care is here. It isn't like picking up and moving to another country is simple. Especially in the current environment, gaining citizenship in another country can be a long and expensive process. That being said, not being able or willing to pick up and leave right now doesn't mean I have to feel this is the number one country in the world. In fact, that seems like a really odd take to me.

Edit: Message received and valid point Krista. I'll shut this convo down.

 

[krista4]

Edited because I can’t delete and am afraid of krista

Thx for the nudge, will do.

  I know this thread gets into some sidebars now and then, but it's generally kept on focus and been a great source of information.  Thanks!

 

[krista4]

Edit: Message received and valid point Krista. I'll shut this convo down.

Thanks!  See, I told you you're both great guys.   

 

[DallasDMac]

Thanks!  See, I told you you're both great guys.   

In our defense, I don't think it was a contentious discussion, just a difference in viewpoints. But definitely heading off topic, so point taken!

 

[krista4]

In our defense, I don't think it was a contentious discussion, just a difference in viewpoints. But definitely heading off topic, so point taken!

Maybe not contentious between the two of you, but was going to invite others to pop in with possibly more contentious and politically charged takes.

 

[Leeroy Jenkins]

So if you were fully vaccinated as were 3-4 other friends, but their wives and kids were not, would you hang out with those guys without their wives?  Or is there concern they could bring something home?