Mastodawn

Three people hospitalized eating raw cookie dough, and "the CDC recommends following recipe or package instructions to fully cook cookies, cakes and other foods made with raw flour, and using warm water and soap to wash hands, utensils, countertops and anything else that comes into contact with raw four."

2,000 people die a week from #COVID19 and the CDC won't recommend wearing a mask or altering behaviors.

Make it make sense.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/31/health/salmonella-outbreak-flour/index.html

KyRad Apr 2, 2023

@augieray Can't afford to lose profits by upgrading air flow systems and having all of the country taking the vaccine. Just hide the numbers and pretend Covid is gone.

Alexey Merz Apr 2, 2023

@KyRad1669 @augieray CDC diea recommend wearing masks. Why would you lie about that?

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/types-of-masks.html

Masks and Respirators

Wear a mask with the best fit, protection, and comfort for you.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Augie Ray Apr 2, 2023

@merz @KyRad1669 That info you shared is not current. Here is the current masking guidance from the CDC. The CDC only says to wear a high-quality mask or respirator where community levels are high (0.78% of the US). It says to wear a mask in medium areas (8.7%) “if you are at high risk of getting very sick.” You “may choose to wear a mask at any time” everywhere else.

Accuse me of lying again, and I'll block you.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/covid-by-county.html

COVID by County

COVID-19 Community Levels help you decide your prevention steps.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

sleepy.Apr 2, 2023

@augieray @merz @KyRad1669 block away.

Augie Ray Apr 2, 2023

@iamverysleepy @merz @KyRad1669 Not sure the point you think you're making. If you think the CDC lightly recommending less than 1% of the US mask contradicts my other statement statement,i think you're wrong. Half the US is at high or substantial transmission. COVID is rising in wastewater. Around 2,000 Americans die from COVID weekly. Suggesting 0.78% of the US mask is NOT reasonable or serious mask guidance.

Alexey Merz Apr 2, 2023

@augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 At this point morbidity and mortality are comparable to a relatively bad seasonal flu year. And a large majority of that morbidity and mortality are due to lack of vaccination or under-vaccination. But highly effective COVID-19 vaccines are in fact available.

Sure, mask in public indoor spaces, on transit, etc. I do. But I don't pretend that masking is remotely as important as vaccination and the bivalent boost.

Because it's not.

sleepfreeparent Apr 2, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 the top 3 causes of death in the US were consistently these:
All forms of heart disease combined, 650k/yr
All forms of cancer combined, 400k/yr
All forms of accidental death combined, 180k/yr

COVID, just one single disease, has been around or over 250k/yr for 3 years, knocking out accidental death for the top 3 spot. It's the number one single-cause killer there is.

Seasonal flu kills around 60k/yr, except for that one year when we were all masking and isolating and we just didn't have a flu season. Not only is it not even close to COVID, countermeasures for COVID can eliminate flu season altogether, making your point doubly wrong.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sleepfreeparent @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

Yes, the last three years have been awful. A catastrophe. But the immune system is a learning organ (whether by vaccine or infection), and past years do not tell us much about present conditions.

Hospitalizations and death rates are way, way down and are, indeed, closer to a bad flu year than to the previous pandemic years.

As for flu season, go ahead and advocate that everyone stay home in perpetuity. See how that goes.

sleepfreeparent Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 you...do know that COVID has auto-immune properties, right? Right?

In any case, the worst year for flu deaths in the last decade was 2017-2018, with 52k confirmed deaths (142/day avg) according to CDC figures. So far this year confirmed COVID deaths have averaged more than double that, even with some states not reporting their numbers anymore.

The correct response to COVID is to change the building code, to fix air systems in buildings and use upper-room UV where possible, and to implement full masking until that is complete. That same response would eliminate flu season. The only reason we don't have ANY of that is that it would impact corporate profits.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sleepfreeparent @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

Newsflash: the US is not going to completely gut and revise HVAC in public buildings to deal with COVID-19. And the reason we won't is that almost no one would want to pay for it, corporate or otherwise.

Likewise, universal masking will not happen. Not because of "corporate interests," but because people don't want universal masking.

If you actually cared, you'd be working to get people vaccinated and boosted.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sleepfreeparent @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

Additionally, the evidence in support of vaccination is diverse and robust. Moreover, vaccination is not expensive and vaccine technology is improving at breathtaking speed.

The benefits of improved HVAC with respect to infectious disease transmission are far, far less well documented, and systemic changes would be hugely, prohibitively expensive.

New construction will probably improve here. Existing buildings mostly won't.

sleepfreeparent Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 A vaccine-only approach benefits big pharma but is not effective against a virus that you can be reinfected by in less than a month. It just evolves too fast.
Look at cholera if you wanna see where your approach will get you. Half the world is still in the grip of the 7th cholera pandemic, which has been going on for decades. Countries that revamped their water and sewer infrastructure don't have a cholera problem. At all. Likewise, countries that change their building codes to include robust filtration, ventilation, UVGI will see an end to the COVID pandemic; countries that don't, won't.

"Almost no one would want to pay for it" is bullshit corporate apologia. The ruling class NEVER want to pay for ANY new safety regs, but we impose them anyway, because if we didn't people would keep dying and corps would keep profiting off of it. All building codes and safety regulations are written with the blood of the workers.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sleepfreeparent @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

Golly. How could I possibly have guessed that you'd be an antivax loon?

Go back to the birdshit site, where you belong.

Plonk.

sleepfreeparent Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 and the dude accused me of being antivax and blocked me. Whatever. Just another thing he's wrong about to add to the list 🙄

KyRad Apr 4, 2023

@sleepfreeparent @merz @augieray @iamverysleepy
You are correct in your statement 💯. Vaccines are a small part of it. It truly is a shame that the EPA/CDC weren't able to make schools and businesses update their air systems and instead have decided to hide that 1K plus are still dying from Covid and there are new strains that the vaccine isn't working against.

MexicanYenta Apr 3, 2023

@KyRad1669 @iamverysleepy @augieray @merz wow, you are so loudly wrong. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 That's not remotely true. This year was a bad flu year, do you want to see how it compared to covid deaths?

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

What I wrote: "At this point morbidity and mortality are comparable to a relatively bad seasonal flu year."

What part of "at this point" are you finding it difficult to parse?

Please let me know. I'd be delighted to help you understand this.

PS, take a look at the CURRENT situation (as in, right now — that means the farthest right part of the graph, i.e., "At this point") and how far the red line is from the double black line. It's not far.

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 The data shows that is not true.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 The data shows that what, exactly, is not true?

Be specific. Show your work.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

The lower black line shows expected flu and pneumonia (which is largely due to un-coded flu) mortality for a typical year. We can see this pattern with the overlay of the red and black lines in 2019.

The red line is not "many times" higher in 2023. It's about 1.5X to 2X as high. And right now, it's only a few percent higher.

In other words, for 2013 generally, COVID-19 mortality is indeed comparable to flu mortality.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

If your claim was correct, we'd expect to see a LOT more excess deaths over the Seasonal Baseline than we do in 2023 — as we DID see in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 I mean, if you want to completely ignore the 2022/2023 winter . . .

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 For winter 22-23, excess mortality was about 2x over baseline. Awful, but — exactly as I said — about comparable to a bad seasonal flu year. And not remotely the abbatoir that we saw in the preceding winters.

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 No, this year was a bad flu year and covid was much more deadly.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 Yet again, look at the graph. Combined mortality for pneumonia, COVD, and flu (red) was about 2x over pre-COVID baseline (double black). Not, as you suggested, many times worse.

Again, this is the graph that *you* shared. It is useful and will repay closer study.

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 It's not as high right now because the winter is over. It's higher because that increase is all covid.

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 Do you believe that every single pneumonia death that isn't covid is caused by the flu? Because that isn't true. The increase you saw during the flu season was mostly because of the flu, but many other illnesses can cause pneumonia, and are present all year.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

The largest fraction of pneumonia deaths have historically been from secondary infections due to influenza. That's been established for decades.

Do not confuse *coded* flu deaths (on the graph you posted) with TOTAL flu deaths.

Graph: Time series graph of influenza as a proportion of total pneumonia and influenza mortality, all ages

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3827586/

Influenza as a proportion of pneumonia mortality: United States, 1959–2009

As causes of death, influenza and pneumonia are typically analyzed together. We quantify influenza’s contribution to the combined pneumonia and influenza mortality time series for the United States, 1959–2009. A key statistic is I/(P+I), ...

PubMed Central (PMC)

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 As the above linked article says, "What gets recorded on the death certificate and why has long been a subject of interest for historical demographers (Alter and Carmichael 1996, 1997, 1999). This study shows that, influenza versus pneumonia death classification is, in part, influenced by medical-social factors...

These results strongly endorse the standard practice of combined analysis of pneumonia and influenza mortality."

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 It's not rational to assume that they are just far worse at testing for flu than they are for covid, and to just dismiss what the actual data shows.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 It's not a question of testing. It's a question of what the death certificate says. And, as the linked article shows, that is wildly variable.

That's why the graph you posted specifies *coded* flu deaths, and why estimates of flu prevalence, morbidity, and mortality are always much higher than the number of coded cases.

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 I'm talking about the actual data showing confirmed cases.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 Those data don't tell you about actual clinical outcomes. What does? The black and red lines on the graph that you posted.

Note that the worse the flu data are for 2022-23 season, the smaller the fraction of that red line that's attributable to COVID-19.

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 Only if you assume that all of the things like masking, social distancing, going out less, and handwashing had absolutely no impact on flu infections.

Which is a completely illogical assumption that ignores all the actual data. The data shows clearly that there was a significantly reduced flu season, and, correspondingly, flu deaths are not happening at the same amount as they were pre-covid. We didn't see any decrease in pneumonia deaths because covid killed so many people that the decrease in flu deaths was erased by all the additional covid deaths.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

And, again, note that people who have been vaccinated and boosted with the bivalent booster are FOURTEEN (14) times less likely to die from COVID-19 than people who are unvaccinated.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7206a3.htm

Going back to the original post in this thread, there is no field study of mask efficacy that shows anything remotely like that protective effect.

COVID-19 Incidence and Death Rates Among Unvaccinated ...

This report describes higher protection against COVID-19 infection and death among people who received an updated booster than people who received a monovalent booster.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 So, your argument is that it's a coincidence?

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 Why do you believe the number of flu deaths decreased so much when we instituted covid prevention, such as masks?

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 If your argument is just "vaccines are more effective than masks, so we don't need masks", that's also another completely illogical argument.

That's like saying "If the most effective way to reduce your chance of a car accident is to not drive drunk, then I don't need to bother with anything else as long as I'm sober."

You still want to use turn signals and not speed.

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 Do you see how the deaths from covid are many times higher than the deaths from the flu? In 2023?

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

No, I don't. Because they aren't. Most influenza deaths are not coded as such. But they are coded as pneumonia deaths. Hence the red line.

Compare the seasonal baseline for 2019 to conditions NOW. I.e., AT THIS POINT, as I wrote.

And if you're going to post a graph, at least make /some/ effort to figure out what it's showing.

Alexey Merz Apr 3, 2023

@sashafox @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669

Very seriously: I hope that this graph provides you with at least some solace. Things were much, much, much worse in the very recent past than they are now.

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 So now you've moved the goalposts from "it's the same as the flu", which is objectively false, to "It's not as bad as it was in previous years".

Sasha Fox Apr 3, 2023

@merz @augieray @iamverysleepy @KyRad1669 And so you see the increase in the red line as a coincidence?

skyfishgoo Apr 2, 2023

the more ppl affected the greater the impact on profits

Pam Apr 2, 2023

@augieray Also, why in the world does raw flour make anyone sick!?

GingerSnapped Apr 2, 2023

@PamB @augieray

This is just regarding the raw flour question, but it can make you sick.

“while its powdery consistency looks like it's been cooked, it's actually as much of a raw food as lettuce or carrots. Flour is made from grains that are grown in fields where they may be exposed to a variety of harmful bacteria like Salmonella and E. coli. The processing that flour goes through to convert from plant to powder doesn't kill them.”

https://www.southernliving.com/food/kitchen-assistant/can-you-eat-raw-flour

People Still Don't Know Eating Raw Flour Isn't Safe

We explain why raw flour can pose real problems and isn't safe to eat without cooking. Plus, we provide an edible recipe for cookie dough.

Southern Living

GingerSnapped Apr 2, 2023

@PamB @augieray I didn’t realize until recently. An edible cookie dough recipe I found called for baked/heat-treated flour.

That being said, the response to cookie dough and Covid are disproportionate imho.

Alexey Merz Apr 2, 2023

@augieray The CDC recommends vaccination and boosts, which are considerably more effective at preventing morbidity and mortality than wearing masks is.

Moreover, CDC does indeed recommend wearing masks.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/types-of-masks.html

Why would you lie about this?

Masks and Respirators

Wear a mask with the best fit, protection, and comfort for you.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

hramrach Apr 2, 2023

@merz @augieray This is actually backwards. CDC says to wear a mask to protect yourself. That would work with a mask like this which is not what they propose to wear.

The simple masks they propose primarily protect others when worn by an infected person, and because most infected persons do not have any symptoms initially the effectiveness depends on everybody wearing the masks.

Their recommendation completely misses the point.

Alexey Merz Apr 2, 2023

@hramrach @augieray Wrong. From the CDC page I linked:

"To protect yourself and others from COVID-19, CDC continues to recommend that you wear the most protective mask you can that fits well and that you will wear consistently."

Your comment is silly, misrepresents the CDC position, and is wrong about the available data on mask efficacy, as well.

Peter Cohen Apr 2, 2023

@augieray a modest proposal: let's make masks out of cookie dough

paul Apr 2, 2023

https://www.projectcensored.org/regulatory-capture-of-the-fda-and-cdc/

Regulatory Capture of the FDA and CDC - Validated Independent News

When COVID-19 arrived, a frightened nation turned to two federal health agencies—the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and

projectcensored

Gen X-Wing Apr 2, 2023

@augieray Flour? I’ve never taken a single precaution with flour. I thought it was the egg that people were afraid of?

Then again we are the nation afraid of some men in a dress (the child abusing robed cult leaders are somehow exempt) being entertaining and thinking shooting someone because we feel like it is a great idea…

Steve Downey Apr 2, 2023

@augieray
It's at least partly because the CDC has been saying not to eat raw dough for decades, and every bag of flour in my house has the same warning.

Voron Apr 2, 2023

@augieray Recommending following the instructions on cookie dough packages doesn’t reduce consumer spending like talking about valid Covid concerns
#profitsoverpeople
👆
It’s not confusing

Yudron Apr 2, 2023

@augieray @notes 1596 people are currently dying per week of covid 19 in the U.S., according to the cdc.

Augie Ray Apr 2, 2023

@Yudron @notes Yes, that was last week's reported total, but if you look over the last year, almost every week saw more than 2,000 deaths from COVID-19.

sleepfreeparent Apr 2, 2023

@augieray here, I'll make it make sense for you: when people get sick from eating food they bought, that decreases confidence in food safety, which reduces the profits of large agribusiness corporations.
When CDC recommends masking at all times, people are less likely to leave the home, less likely to eat at restaurants, less likely to go shopping when they're bored. That reduces corporate profits across the board. Oh, and it makes police mass surveillance a little harder too.
The ruling class looked at each option, calculated the costs to them and the costs to you, and chose whatever benefits them at your expense. It's that simple

Big Worker Apr 2, 2023

@augieray yeah get off our backs about the cookie dough thing, jeez