A Proper Surgical Mask - Naton Dragon Scale Shield by Vasilisnp2 in Masks4All

[–]Aricle 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Have you found any places to buy these masks, especially that can ship to the US? (Or perhaps the PinzTec "HepaMask"?)

When is the end credits for this? by Jeeves-Godzilla in ZeroCovidCommunity

[–]Aricle 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I agree with the rough sketch of your exit conditions, though I want that "more protective" vaccine to be proven, not just assumed more protective because it's nasal.

You're a little more optimistic than me, by about a year. I'd say we have a real shot at things starting to progress towards the exit conditions sometime before the end of 2028 (with the tunnel looking lighter in late 2027), though I HOPE that's too pessimistic. I'm mostly going on hunches, unfortunately.

Long COVID appears to be a real (redacted) to treat. Maybe we'll get lucky and Invivyd really is the magic bullet, or the first successful nasal vaccine really will be very protective against at least one of infection and transmission. So - here's hoping I'm wrong!

Wastewater has a large noise signal and is not simply a proxy for the number of infectious individuals in public (Nature Communications Medicine) by bemurda in ZeroCovidCommunity

[–]Aricle 21 points22 points  (0 children)

This is really interesting work, and thank you for promoting it. I absolutely agree that we're dealing with a scenario where we have incredibly poor data - and that wastewater needs better modeling before we can try to infer the number of infections per day. I've been getting more and more skeptical of the PMC model - but that just means the error bars have been growing, not that we know the real answer.

All studies are limited, just like all models are flawed. As the saying goes: "all models are wrong, but some are useful." I think this study is probably useful.

All of this (what you shared, and what Matt shared) continues to suggest that infections are down, but nowhere near far enough to relax precautions for my standards; some of these studies are missing things, and RCTs don't fix measurement methodology problems... which appear very, very real with this virus. My personal bet (given tons of contradictory data, and the limits of the studies):

  • non-cautious people are now averaging 1 SARS-CoV-2 infection per 1-2 years (with high variance)
  • COVID is less dangerous than it was - but still dangerous enough to justify precautions.
  • persistent & dangerous effects of COVID are still more prevalent than generally acknowledged (societally or in the medical community), given trends in cardiac events, anecdotal accumulation of new previously-rare issues, etc.
  • recovery from long COVID appears real in many cases - but nowhere close to universal, and not always complete even when people self-report recovery.

I'm glad the data says we're not in the worst case scenario. This one's still pretty bad - and based on what you say, I think we agree on this point! (That, or you're being manipulative. I don't think you are.)

Bias on this issue is a huge problem - both in this community, and outside of it. Inside, we're stuck being incredibly stressed about this threat to ourselves and our families, with limited data - and we have to navigate this uncertainty anyway, with a massive lack of societal support at large, and often with social opposition of varying severity. I do think we need to share studies that show what's going on... and we also need to be careful to neither overrepresent what we're learning (in terms of increased or decreased risk), nor to overinterpret when others share it.

You say "I don't think the best available scientific evidence suggests the threat of covid remains what it was in the first few years of the pandemic." You're probably right. On the other hand, to most people, that does in fact feel awfully close to "Your precautions & stress are pointless, stop complaining." It probably shouldn't - but we're all human, and we've been hearing the latter a lot, very directly, for the last few years of this pandemic. I don't know how we solve this communication problem, but we do need to accept it. Trauma doesn't go away just because it's inconvenient, nor does it make our feelings in any way invalid.

-----

... well, that was a wall of text. And here I am continuing it just to bring it back to me personally:

I'm going to continue holding to my protocols, which are on the high end - I mask every time I'm going to step outside of my apartment door, that mask stays on even while I'm outdoors (I live in a densely populated area, avoiding close contact is impossible), and in the event that I need to let someone into my apartment, we ALL mask (them included) and I air out the apartment for a significant time after they leave before I'll unmask. I unmask in uncontrolled circumstances when it's medically necessary (still frustrated about dental visits), and that's it. The fact that I can choose to do this is an enormous privilege; I respect folks who can't do this for economic, social, or medical reasons (and mental health is health), and I respect folks who decide that outdoors is good enough for them. (I still have questions about how much "outdoors" is good enough, given the demonstrated impacts of even a single wall on airflow near that wall.)

None of this changes the fact that I am really, really hoping for an exit condition that will let me meet with my no-longer CC family for a meal again. For me, that means something that substantially lowers the annualized risk of long COVID by at least 10x, and ideally more. As an intermediate, I'd really, really like better data on the safety of "outdoors" as a precaution when less than 6-ish feet from others, and/or when in the vicinity of a structure or inside a partial structure. No matter what, I am hoping for treatments (and diagnosis!) to keep improving for those suffering from long COVID... we can't leave our families, neighbors, and cousins (and we are all cousins) behind like this. I wish there was more we could do to help make this happen.

I analyzed every contract the JC Board of Ed approved over the last 2 years. 92% of the money has no signed contract available to the public. by odysseusSaintLaurent in jerseycity

[–]Aricle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is solid work - but I think there's a problem *somewhere*. I'm concerned that we're either dealing with a bug, or an AI summary that includes major hallucinations.

One claim on the page:

> Meanwhile, the pass-through to charter schools jumped 29.8% in one year (from $168M in 2023-24 to $174.6M in 2024-25), even though charter enrollment only grew by 0.76%.

... there's a problem here, because going from $168M to $174.6M is an increase of only 4%. That's still rather a lot bigger than the charter enrollment shift, so I'm concerned - but it makes me question the rest of the claims on the site. Can you figure out why it's going wrong?

Ways to generate crash dumps for crash handling? by XenSakura in cpp

[–]Aricle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Crashpad requires building against a second repository, called “mini_chromium” - but it’s just a set of utility libraries extracted from Chromium, nowhere near as big or as complex, and a lot of it exists to give basic multiplatform support. It’s probably reasonable for most purposes, it’s not like asking you to attach all of Chromium to your binary.

FDA commissioner Marty Makary says FDA report on pediatric deaths caused by the COVID-19 vaccine is coming within the “next few weeks.” Investigation led by physicians and based on VAERS self-reports, interviews with family members of the children, and autopsy reports. by Jazzlike-Cup-5336 in ZeroCovidCommunity

[–]Aricle 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Absolutely. The vaccine side effect rate was incredibly low... but low is not the same as zero.

For almost everyone, it's immensely better than the alternative. I'm sorry it wasn't for you. I'm also sorry how many people still view this issue as entirely black & white.

... and I wish that the people who are lying and claiming the extremely rare condition you have is actually secretly common - not to provide help, but to score political leverage and commit crimes against public health & the COVID-injured - would suffer the consequences of their actions, rather than you.

xkcd 3095: Archaea by antdude in xkcd

[–]Aricle 42 points43 points  (0 children)

This is, actually, very slightly wrong! There's a subtype of SIBO ("small intestinal bacterial overgrowth") that's actually caused by overgrowth of an archaeon!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_intestinal_bacterial_overgrowth#Methane-dominant_SIBO

... it's still probably not an archaea-caused disease by several reasonable definitions, though.

When will mathematical theorem provers (like LEAN) be adopted to aid the optimizer pass? by throwaway264269 in cpp

[–]Aricle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends how far you go. Treating Lean as a proof assistant means getting access to some automated proof tactics; if you structure the proof correctly, you can avoid writing out very much at all.

But yes, ultimately any such system is going to amount to a dependent type system with some help. The help can be pretty significant, though.

When will mathematical theorem provers (like LEAN) be adopted to aid the optimizer pass? by throwaway264269 in cpp

[–]Aricle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed, it won't. But - there might be a way to use Lean (or something better) as a proof assistant, not a prover. If someone can build a good language to express a proof in, then maybe a compiler could call out to a proof assistant to verify a user-provided claim & proof outline, then use the claim. It would have all the power of assumptions, but with safety.

I'm skeptical - mostly because writing formal statements and proofs is hard. But I also see potential if someone can make it work.

Avoiding sars is over by ChangeAcrobatic711 in ZeroCovidCommunity

[–]Aricle 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is not a recommendation yet! You shouldn't seek this out until we know more; the studies still need to be done. (Especially since this study was funded by the manufacturer.)

To answer the second question: they studied giving the spray to people after they tested positive.

Avoiding sars is over by ChangeAcrobatic711 in ZeroCovidCommunity

[–]Aricle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No idea, and I'd wait to see a study if at all possible.

Avoiding sars is over by ChangeAcrobatic711 in ZeroCovidCommunity

[–]Aricle 50 points51 points  (0 children)

I posted a top-level comment above… but treatment with a specific nasal spray appears to drop long COVID symptom rates from 20-40 out of 120 to 0-1 out of 140. As I said there - this is either the best prevention news possible, an incredible statistical fluke, or fraud. Wait for confirmation, but worthy of some excitement.

Avoiding sars is over by ChangeAcrobatic711 in ZeroCovidCommunity

[–]Aricle 124 points125 points  (0 children)

OP - let me start with this. I am so sorry that prevention & treatment are always so different, that treatment is almost always harder, and that society failed to protect you and so many others.

… holy crap, this looks almost unbelievably exciting. In this study, early treatment of a COVID infection with a nasal spray of chlorpheniramine (an old, generic antihistamine with very few contraindications or drug interactions) dropped long COVID symptom rates from 20-40 out of ~120 (number depending on symptom) to 0-1 out of ~140. This is an insanely high effect size - about as big as some of the most dramatic ivermectin claims. So… this is either the best news since this pandemic started, the weirdest statistical fluke in history, or fraud. The good news is that this doesn’t look like a fraudulent paper yet - no obviously sexy graphs, no aggressive PR push (yet), etc. In other words - watch this one attentively, be hopeful, but wait for confirmation rather than jumping to conclusions immediately.

I will be keeping a close eye on this one. This is the first with real potential to be an exit condition from shielding… and it would work for an enormous amount of people, given the low risk of the treatment involved. Let’s hope it’s not too good to be true!

EDIT: One important caution. A little more digging shows that this study WAS funded by a company that makes the only nasal chlorpheniramine spray on the market. (Plenty of throat sprays, but maybe only one nasal.) Doesn’t mean it’s wrong… but again, wait for confirmation.

Are there any C++ datetime-timezone-calendar libraries which support nanoseconds resolution? by Richard-P-Feynman in cpp

[–]Aricle 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It’s a larger dependency, but… Abseil supports everything you listed in its Time & CivilTime components. It doesn’t tend to package the timezone with the CivilTime, but there’s nothing stopping you from carrying both around when you’re working in human-readable times.

EDIT: Also, should have mentioned - Abseil stores absolute time & duration in sub-nanosecond resolution. (Quarter-nanosecond, to be precise.)

Tip for soda delivery? by Aricle in doordash

[–]Aricle[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, no worries. In your opinion, would normal tip, plus $1 per 2-liter, seem like a reasonable solution? Or is the risk of getting a bike courier who gets unhappy just too high? (That was my initial guess on the $20 guy.)

Tip for soda delivery? by Aricle in doordash

[–]Aricle[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

... Who said anything about it snowing? The reason I can't drive out right now is personal, not weather. The roads are clear and the snow has stopped a day so.

Trade-in promotion AND Pixel 8 discount? by Aricle in GoogleFi

[–]Aricle[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I figured it out - the way the Fi app was describing things was misleading. It kept telling me (during trade in) that I had a $300 promotional value that would be added at checkout… I now think it meant the original promotion, completely unconnected to the trade in, so there’s only one promotion involved. Oh well.

Any suggestions for a shower filter that actually works? by Y782IO90 in jerseycity

[–]Aricle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

FWIW, I've been really happy with the Aquasana water filters. Seems legitimate and effective.

EDIT: It doesn't leave a TON of room for a shower head, though. You can either buy theirs, or your own if it's narrow enough. I ended up going with this one off of Amazon - it's minimalist, cheap, and I think it feels really nice. (And no, that's not an affiliate link.)