Kung Flu

[easymon1]

Should we be worried?

 

[WeToddDid2]

Lower cognitive ability linked to non-compliance with social distancing guidelines during the coronavirus outbreak
BY ERIC W. DOLAN JULY 11, 2020

https://www.psypost.org/2020/07/cov...elines-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak-57293/

New research provides evidence that working memory is associated with engaging in social distancing in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The new study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

On March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2 to be a global pandemic. Governments around the world urged people to follow preventive health measures such as frequent hand washing and physical distancing. But not everyone abided by the safety guidelines.

“At the moment, successful containment of the COVID-19 outbreak critically relies on people’s voluntary compliance with social distancing guidelines. However, there is widespread non-compliance in our society, especially during the early stage of this pandemic (and more recently after reopening),” said study author Weizhen Xie (Zane), a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

The researcher noted that there have been numerous media reports about Americans failing to physically distance themselves from one another in public spaces.

“As a researcher in cognitive psychology, I feel that it is our duty to figure out why some people follow the developing norm of social distancing while others ignore it. Addressing this issue may help mitigate the current public health crisis due to the COVID-19,” Xie said.

In two studies, the researchers surveyed 850 U.S. residents between March 13 and March 25, 2020 — the first two weeks following the U.S. presidential declaration of a national emergency about the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to collecting demographic information and assessing social distancing compliance, the surveys included assessments of working memory, personality, mood, and fluid intelligence.

Xie and his colleagues found that those with better working memory capacity were more likely to indicate that they had followed social distancing guidelines, such as not shaking hands and avoiding social gatherings.

“Our findings reveal a novel cognitive root of social distancing compliance during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said co-author Weiwei Zhang.

The researchers also found that higher levels of fluid intelligence and agreeableness were associated with greater social distancing compliance. But the link between working memory and social distancing held even after controlling for these factors and others.

Those with better working memory capacity also tended to view social distancing has having more benefits than costs and were more likely to have a preference for fairness during an Ultimatum Game, which partially explained the association.

“The decision of whether or not to follow social distancing guidelines is a difficult one, especially when there is a conflict between the societal benefits (e.g., prevent straining public health resources) and personal costs (e.g., loss in social connection and financial challenges). This decision critically relies on our mental capacity in retaining multiple pieces of potentially conflicting information in our head, which is referred to as working memory capacity,” Xie told PsyPost.

“Realizing this cognitive bottleneck, the bottom line is that we should not rely on people’s habitual following of a norm because social distancing is not yet adequately established in U.S. society. Policy makers should develop strategies to aid people’s decision by making information or debriefing materials succinct, concise, and brief.”

As with all research, the study comes with a few caveats.

“We expect that the contribution of working memory will decline as new social norms, such as wearing a mask or socially distancing, are acquired by the U.S. society over time,” Xie said.

“Our observations are correlational in nature. It remains to be established whether or not certain strategies to break the cognitive bottleneck, such as working memory training and translational brain stimulation, could reduce social distancing non-compliance and subsequently mitigate a public health crisis.”

The study, “Working memory capacity predicts individual differences in social-distancing compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States“, was authored by Weizhen Xie, Stephen Campbell, and Weiwei Zhang.

So, you think that Democrats have low cognitive abilities?

Do you think all of the people in the pictures below are stupid and have low IQs?

That article is racist.

 

[vanzandt]

Hey I was wondering about this... will we be seeing people this winter that contract Covid AND the (regular) flu? How's that work? Wtf would that be like?

 

[TreeFrogTrader]

Hey I was wondering about this... will we be seeing people this winter that contract Covid AND the (regular) flu? How's that work? Wtf would that be like?

I posted a little bit about that last winter- although in reverse- I said that it would help immensely to have regular flu season end because it is would make the picture much more clear. If you have are having flu like symptoms in flu season chances are good that you have the flu, but if you fast forward to may and are having flu-like symptoms you need to be tested for covid, probably anyway. The presence of a heavy flu season puts very high demand on medical care outpatient and inpatient facilities as it is, so it helps dramatically to get those hoardes out of the system by having flu system go away, particularly when testing is limited. Having the percentage of covid testees test positive is not necessarily a bad thing, if a few months earlier people who had the flu were running to get a covid test. That raises the overall number of tests.

Of course, this being the forum, where we would expect no less, several of the usual suspects would see my post and launch into big dismissals of my alleged assertion that the covid was like the flu and would go away when flu season went away WHICH WAS NOT EVEN REMOTELY WHAT I WAS SAYING BUY YOU CANNOT FIX STUPID.

No doubt the demand for flu shots will be heavy as we go back into flu season because many people will think that if they are at risk of getting covid they definitely don't want to have the flu when/if they get it. I can make that statement and it will make perfect sense to most here. But several of the part-time thinkers will hear me saying that I think the flu vaccine prevents covid. Again, can't fix stupid.

But yeh, having both a flu epidemic and a covid epidemic going in the same place at the same time is not pretty and highly demanding on resources.

Bonus comment just to end on a positive note:

I can't get into it all right now, but there is some reason, to believe that -if and when- we have a covid vaccine, it is reasonably possible that it will will confer some additional immunity against the common cold which is also a corovirus. I am talking the common cold, not the flu.
Note that I said "additional immunity" not prevention. We know that that corona virus mutates often. If anyone read one or two of the articles I linked last week, they would see that there is increased speculation that the common cold coronavirus or an unknown but circulating virus is triggering T-cell/antibody responses that roughly mimic what is helpful for covid, and in theory helps to explain the plethora of mild cases. And, refer again to those articles, it is more than theory because plasma tests show that many people already seem to have the rough combination of T-memory cells to put on a good fight for covid- even if not enough to neutralize immediately- and that the antibodies were generated in response to some virus or antigen. What was it? Common cold corona is in the mix of suspects.

I am MOST PLEASED with that entire line of research. My earliest posts back in the winter were to say that there needs to be more research on how people who recover rapidly are doing it given the fact that it is a novel virus and no one is carrying the code for the needed antibodies until they get the disease. So how are they doing it? MOST PLEASED. We are making progress on that line of inquiry.

 

[Hotcakes]

View attachment 235498

This.

 

[Buy1Sell2]

Numbers have really remained tame in the US since the pandemic ended several months ago. Any bump that there may have been in daily numbers recently has ended and we should be looking as good as Sweden soon.

 

[Buy1Sell2]

Fortunately, our executive branch is now in charge of numbers and so the readings will be more accurate than they have been in the past. CDC et al have been playing games with the numbers in my view.

 

[Wallet]

I posted a little bit about that last winter- although in reverse- I said that it would help immensely to have regular flu season end because it is would make the picture much more clear. If you have are having flu like symptoms in flu season chances are good that you have the flu, but if you fast forward to may and are having flu-like symptoms you need to be tested for covid, probably anyway. The presence of a heavy flu season puts very high demand on medical care outpatient and inpatient facilities as it is, so it helps dramatically to get those hoardes out of the system by having flu system go away, particularly when testing is limited. Having the percentage of covid testees test positive is not necessarily a bad thing, if a few months earlier people who had the flu were running to get a covid test. That raises the overall number of tests.

Of course, this being the forum, where we would expect no less, several of the usual suspects would see my post and launch into big dismissals of my alleged assertion that the covid was like the flu and would go away when flu season went away WHICH WAS NOT EVEN REMOTELY WHAT I WAS SAYING BUY YOU CANNOT FIX STUPID.

No doubt the demand for flu shots will be heavy as we go back into flu season because many people will think that if they are at risk of getting covid they definitely don't want to have the flu when/if they get it. I can make that statement and it will make perfect sense to most here. But several of the part-time thinkers will hear me saying that I think the flu vaccine prevents covid. Again, can't fix stupid.

But yeh, having both a flu epidemic and a covid epidemic going in the same place at the same time is not pretty and highly demanding on resources.

Bonus comment just to end on a positive note:

I can't get into it all right now, but there is some reason, to believe that -if and when- we have a covid vaccine, it is reasonably possible that it will will confer some additional immunity against the common cold which is also a corovirus. I am talking the common cold, not the flu.
Note that I said "additional immunity" not prevention. We know that that corona virus mutates often. If anyone read one or two of the articles I linked last week, they would see that there is increased speculation that the common cold coronavirus or an unknown but circulating virus is triggering T-cell/antibody responses that roughly mimic what is helpful for covid, and in theory helps to explain the plethora of mild cases. And, refer again to those articles, it is more than theory because plasma tests show that many people already seem to have the rough combination of T-memory cells to put on a good fight for covid- even if not enough to neutralize immediately- and that the antibodies were generated in response to some virus or antigen. What was it? Common cold corona is in the mix of suspects.

I am MOST PLEASED with that entire line of research. My earliest posts back in the winter were to say that there needs to be more research on how people who recover rapidly are doing it given the fact that it is a novel virus and no one is carrying the code for the needed antibodies until they get the disease. So how are they doing it? MOST PLEASED. We are making progress on that line of inquiry.

Somewhere in the equation you have to factor in the effect of social distancing on the normal flu outbreak patterns.

In the past a good percentage of the population took the annual flu vaccine, which may or may not have provided some immunity. It’s a crap shoot on which strains will be present. But the social distancing aspect was minimal at best. People still went to work, sent their kids to school, etc. Society, for the most part, promoted the “work through it (being sick)” mentality.

It’s a different world today, and probably the only benefit from this mess. Increased personnel hygiene and people now understand if you’re feeling sick, stay the hell at home.

Yeah, it would suck, having both. But imo, the normal flu season will be muted going into the winter.

If you haven’t started taking preventative measures to build your immune system, it’s time.

 

[Bugenhagen]

www.wsj.com/amp/articles/covid-19-measures-have-all-but-wiped-out-the-flu-in-the-southern-hemisphere-11595440682

As expected, numbers for seasonal influenza and other respitory illnesses are way down in the Southern hemisphere due to Covid-19 measures.

 

[TreeFrogTrader]

Somewhere in the equation you have to factor in the effect of social distancing on the normal flu outbreak patterns.

In the past a good percentage of the population took the annual flu vaccine, which may or may not have provided some immunity. It’s a crap shoot on which strains will be present. But the social distancing aspect was minimal at best. People still went to work, sent their kids to school, etc. Society, for the most part, promoted the “work through it (being sick)” mentality.

It’s a different world today, and probably the only benefit from this mess. Increased personnel hygiene and people now understand if you’re feeling sick, stay the hell at home.

Yeah, it would suck, having both. But imo, the normal flu season will be muted going into the winter.

If you haven’t started taking preventative measures to build your immune system, it’s time.

Indeed.

And where influenza does spread it is and should be examined differently than in the past because it is an early warning system that an area or facility has a weakness there in their infectious disease defense effort. If the flu is running unchecked or at will then that is a bad sign for defending against covid. If you are not stopping the flu substantially you have "doors" open that covid is also going to use.