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Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by bufferoverflow on Monday November 09, 2020 @08:58AM (#25034836)
I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person.

But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own.

The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as flu, it will be a challenge.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by gizmo on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:21AM (#25035038)
Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere. It's a nice idea conceptually, but the problem is psychological. People stop caring about tracing when 98% of all trace connections are false positives. If a person is infectious for a week and the r0 is around 1 then only 1 person of all the people they've been in contact with will actually contract the virus on average. The other 50+ people, assuming they can even be traced, get a false positive. Or to put it differently, people have to be called 50 times and get tested and self-isolate 50 times before they actually test positive. And for younger people 80% of cases are completely inconsequential. You might think 50 contacts is unrealistically high, but most people still go to work, to school, see friends, use public transportation, etc.

Covid19 would also be over if people with symptoms would just stay home. But that's clearly not happening either. We've got to be realistic about how people behave in the real world.

Mutations aren't a serious concern. Because when viruses mutate it's the strains that are more infectious and less lethal that win out.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mumblemumble on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:36AM (#25035208)
There's also participation on the contact side. In Western countries, surveys indicate we can't convince even half of people to install a contact tracing smartphone app. According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview.

> Covid19 would also be over if people with symptoms would just stay home.

No it wouldn't. One of the things that makes SARS-CoV-2 such a problem is that people get contagious long before they show symptoms. Similarly to for influenza and the common cold, many people get contagious without ever developing symptoms.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mjmahone17 on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:21AM (#25035659)
> According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview.

More than anything I suspect this is a result of allowing so much unfiltered spam calls. If you only get one unexpected, unknown call a month you will almost always answer it. If you get three a day you will almost never answer it.

We are allowing private businesses and scammers to steal the “commons” of our societal attention. We are doing a very poor job of keeping useful communications channels open: almost every communication medium people rely on for important information gets cluttered with must-ignore spam, making it decreasingly likely an important message is actually received.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by ultrarunner on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:34PM (#25038823)
I got an automated message from my local states's department of health services. It simply said they're "trying to contact me and the interview will only take 5 minutes." However, having not scheduled any interviews with the government I had no idea what they were talking about, so I chalked it up to spam or polling attempts and ignored several similar calls.

I'm now wondering if it was an attempt at contact tracing. Had they simply stated what they wanted in the message I would have been pretty likely to call them back myself or answer a later call.

I have no idea where they got my cell phone number from, but the whole thing seems poorly handled at best. Anyone with legitimate business will state the nature of that business and allow for a return call. There's just so many solutions to this problem but nearly zero aligned with incentives.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by reaperducer on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:45PM (#25039664)
It simply said they're "trying to contact me and the interview will only take 5 minutes."

Yep. That was probably about COVID. Health privacy laws prohibit even the vague mention of a condition. The caller has no way of knowing if they have the right phone number, and the last thing you want is "Attention, Rando McUltrarunner at 42 Crustacean Crest Drive, Cleveland, Ohio! You have been infected with COVID! Run, don't walk to your nearest testing facility!" on some stranger's voicemail. Or worse, "We are following up to see if you're doing well after your abortion" ending up on the voicemail or texting app of a 15-year-old girl whose parents might have access to her phone.

Source: Recently completed my company's mandatory annual HIPAA training.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by seb314 on Monday November 09, 2020 @06:59PM (#25041414)
how would authentication work when you/someone does pick up the phone?
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by reaperducer on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:02PM (#25041443)
Sadly, it breaks down. You ask someone if they are who they are, and that's about all you can do. Someone can lie. Has it ever happened? Probably, but I've never heard of it, and my legal department is pretty good about keeping up on these things. But the way the law is written, asking the question absolves the caller of legal liability.

It's not IT-grade authentication, but for wetware it works.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by csense on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:33PM (#25039535)
Privacy regulations (HIPAA) may forbid them from saying "Hey we think you might have COVID" on your voicemail, unless you've already filled out paperwork saying "It's okay to leave a message on my voicemail with detailed health information."

Your doctor's office can do it because you probably have an existing patient relationship, and you already filled out that paperwork on your first visit.

But in the situation of a cold-calling contact tracer, you haven't signed anything at all, so all they can say is "This is the health department and we want to talk to you."

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by nytesky on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:21PM (#25038634)
I have seen some companies that call have pre-loaded Caller ID. Why don’t Apple or Google provide a service that guarantees that the Contact tracing service always calls with a Caller ID, and Apple/Google could even mark it as verified. I think many businesses would pay for this service as it saves money on having to contact existing customers and reduces fraud.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by usrusr on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:42PM (#25039628)
One thing that comes to mind, if a call comes in accompanied by screen message of a kind that I have never seen before I'd be twice as alarmed as with just some random unknown number calling. I might end up googling recently updated apps for news of a malware takeover instead of answering the call.

But it would be a good idea nonetheless, it only requires to be accompanied by a serious information campaign preparing first time receivers for the surprise.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by therealx on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @12:30AM (#25043053)
Semi related, but some services (trapcall, for one) offer a very cheap service that punches through called ID spoofing via AMI, and offer blocking on public and private lists, really help.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by throwaways885 on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:31PM (#25038797)
I believe they already do this.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by nytesky on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:41PM (#25039612)
Then why aren’t pollsters and contact tracers doing this so none of miss those calls?
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by throwaway3699 on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:07PM (#25041471)
I don't want pollsters calling me. Nor contact tracers. They can send an email if it's essential.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by cozzyd on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:52AM (#25035996)
I imagine contact tracers would at least leave a voicemail? I always let numbers I don't recognize and aren't local (my cell phone number is out-of-state and spam calls usually originiate from that area code, not my current local) go to voicemail since I assume if they're important, they'll leave a voicemail.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by banana_giraffe on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:42AM (#25036612)
We already have contract tracing scams. I got a call claiming to be a contract tracing call asking for my SS# to tell me if I was at risk.

No clue how widespread this is, but I can't exactly blame people for assuming any call or voicemail they get is a scam, there are so many out there.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by cozzyd on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:18PM (#25040619)
That's...both unsurprising and super disappointing.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by jhardy54 on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:35AM (#25036521)
FWIW I get lots of spam voicemails, to the point where the 'new voicemail' notification doesn't glass any confidence that a human called me.

I can, of course, listen to every voicemail, but that's not much better than just picking up the phone when I get a spam call.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by FalconSensei on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:17PM (#25037746)
I would say 95% of the voicemail is spam. The other 5% also sends me an email if they couldn't reach me.

So basically the only reason I check my voicemail is to get rid of the notification on my phone

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by usrusr on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:56PM (#25039783)
It's funny how you remain completely unaware of the merits of your country's set of laws unless you hear from how things are elsewhere. We do have spam calls, but they are rare enough that people bonding over spam call infuriation might reference one that happened a year earlier.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by dannyincolor on Wednesday November 18, 2020 @06:57PM (#25144375)
yeah it's a total shitshow in the United States; I get 20-25 spam calls a week unless I shell out for a service to block them (TrapCall, Robocaller, etc.)

I'm sure there are bills in the works, but those same bills are likely bundled along with completely unrelated nonsense.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by cozzyd on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:18PM (#25040625)
Use something like Google Voice that gives you a transcript. In fact, I bet Google could probably automatically flag spam voicemails if they tried.

Of course, you may not be comfortable with giving Google access to this data...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by jhardy54 on Monday November 09, 2020 @06:46PM (#25041353)
I have transcripts, but I still have to read them. You're right though, it's better than listening to the audio.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by xav0989 on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:35AM (#25036520)
That only works if you have and check your voicemail. Many people either don't have a voicemail or don't bother ever setting it up. When the carriers start charging you a lot of money to have a voicemail, plenty of people will forgo it, and instead say things like "if it's important enough they'll call back" or "they'll send me a text message".
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by logifail on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:38PM (#25038883)
> Many people either don't have a voicemail or don't bother ever setting it up.

I actively turned my voicemail off completely.

There is simply no-one who I want to talk to who would choose to leave me a voicemail if I don't answer.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by bluGill on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:33AM (#25036490)
I've got enough IRS and social security calls on my voice mail as to ignore them all too. If I don't know the voice and I'm not expected the call it is ignored.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by peterwoerner on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:54AM (#25036751)
I have a similar problem with voicemail: the spammers leave voicemail too so I don't want to check that either.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by cozzyd on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:17PM (#25040614)
Yeah, I use Google Voice and just read the transcript since that takes a lot less time.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by _jal on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:46PM (#25041745)
> More than anything I suspect this is a result of allowing so much unfiltered spam calls.

Yep. I never answer unrecognized numbers anymore, and nobody I've talked to about it does, either.

Welcome to what society looks like when social trust declines. It will keep getting worse unless and until people discover that the commons actually matters and is more than something to scam and find some way to parasitically monetize.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by jscheel on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:44PM (#25038982)
Or, like me, your health department doesn't even bother to contact you. I had to do my own contact tracing when I tested positive.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by wolco2 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:14PM (#25039333)
How is that possible? Did you call all of the places you were and got contact information from anyone in that area that day?
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by rehangs_plot on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:10PM (#25036939)
It isn't a western thing. Less than half of Singaporeans installed their TraceTogether app[0].

[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/less-than-half-in-singapore-wi...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by gizmo on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:32AM (#25035765)
People are contagious a few days before they show symptoms, but most infections are by unambiguously symptomatic people, because they carry the highest viral load. If symptomatic people stay home you cut down infections by 2/3rd if not more. R0 goes from 1.5 to 0.5 and that's sufficient.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Jommi on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:13PM (#25037699)
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by gizmo on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:07PM (#25041479)
The work you cite is speculative.

> Available evidence from contact tracing reported by countries suggests that asymptomatically infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms. A subset of studies and data shared by some countries on detailed cluster investigations and contact tracing activities have reported that asymptomatically-infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms.

http://www.emro.who.int/health-topics/corona-virus/transmiss...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mohammad_ali85 on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:33AM (#25035779)
> No it wouldn't. One of the things that makes SARS-CoV-2 such a problem is that people get contagious long before they show symptoms. Similarly to for influenza and the common cold, many people get contagious without ever developing symptoms.

Agree with the main thrust of the point but if everyone did stay home for 14 days you may well eradicate the virus. Problem of course that its economically/socially/medically impossible to facilitate a complete 14 day lockdown.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by usrusr on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:06PM (#25039900)
Another reason why that synchronous 14 day lockdown would fail to eradicate the virus: unless you are going for total solitary confinement, intra-family transmission chains would be able to sustain the virus much, much longer than those 14 days. Even a household as small as a two child nuclear family could sustain the virus quite long if each infection happens to have a fan-out of one and happens rather late in the contagiousness window.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by ptx on Monday November 09, 2020 @06:31PM (#25041268)
China did isolate infected people away from home for precisely this reason. Seems to have worked.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by usrusr on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:19PM (#25041576)
But that surely was only known positive isolation, not the blanket "everybody stay home" thing grandparent was suggesting. That's a huge difference particularly wrt (child)care: someone will take over until you are healthy again vs nobody can take over because everybody else is going through the same solitary confinement thing.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by ngcc_hk on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @03:17AM (#25043778)
The big question is do they really work. Not according to country which measure traveller from china. We know in the long term. But trusting on their stat., not my default.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mikem170 on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:45PM (#25037355)
>if everyone did stay home for 14 days you may well eradicate the virus

This would not be possible. There are at least several species of animals (mikes, civets, and bats) than can transmit this virus. We would need to quarantine and test, or kill, each and every one of these animals to be sure we eliminate this virus, or else it will eventually make its way back to humans.

My opinion, based on what I read, is that this will be a bit of a scourge until such time as enough people have immunity from either catching it or getting vaccinated.

Over time, as this new coronavirus makes its way through the human population, the experts it to become less virulent in general and/or appear less often. [0]

[0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Vrondi on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:56PM (#25038259)
Also, cats and dogs can catch Covid-19. We think it's rare, but it is documented.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by macintux on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:35PM (#25037989)
Latest headline I saw, didn’t read because I didn’t want to be depressed, was that asymptomatic carriers were shedding the virus for months.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by usrusr on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:28PM (#25039481)
> One of the things that makes SARS-CoV-2 such a problem is that people get contagious long before they show symptoms.

I also wonder how effective the vaccine is at preventing its receivers from even reaching that asymptomatic but already contagious stage. If "90%" is just "90% less reach symptomatic stage" then the percentage of receivers that are prevented from reaching contagiousness could be much lower.

This would basically mean that the virus is almost guaranteed to become endemic despite vaccination (unless another vaccine also removes the contagious stage quite well) and that everyone who doesn't get a vaccine will eventually test their immune system against the virus.

Natural immunity often follows a similar pattern. After a while you become susceptible to a light reinfection but the immune system will be in a very good position for a quick - but not instantaneous - victory on its second encounter with the virus. Under those circumstances, herd immunity effects fail to realize unless the first wave is so lightning fast that it fizzles out before the immune systems of early survivors (or the similarly vaccinated) fall back into standby mode.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by borispavlovic on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:21AM (#25035660)
don't know about other countries but in Switzerland somehow people do not get the codes for Covid app with positive test results. even if they had the app installed and running the crucial step of entering the official code is failing
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by sandworm101 on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:40AM (#25036579)
I'll line up to get a vaccine because I trust in the scientific/medical community. I haven't installed my local contact-tracing app because ...

1) When I did try to install it said I need to update to a new OS, meaning my five year old phone likely wasn't good enough. 2) My local app doesn't provide alerts to me rather it alerts government contact tracers who today stated that they are only responding to alerts regarding medical/care home workers. I am neither. 3) My phone is not with me at work, the place where I interact with the most people by far, rendering the entire scheme basically useless.

But yes, I would get a vaccine in a heartbeat.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by thu2111 on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:51AM (#25035984)
that people get contagious long before they show symptoms

I don't think that's correct. Pre-symptomatic phase is supposed to be about 2-3 days. I wouldn't describe that as 'long' before they show symptoms.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by ticmasta on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:34PM (#25037227)
if it's before though, then how would isolation after symptoms prevent the spread? I think the original post stand if perhaps overstated.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by alistairSH on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:38PM (#25038016)
Not symptoms, but positive test results...

In the US, people are going to work (or other events) WITH positive test results. Some because they won't get paid otherwise, others because they want to make a political statement, and some because they're ... well, I dunno why...

So, yes, even having people stay home after a positive test would be helpful, because currently, they aren't even doing that.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by treeman79 on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:57PM (#25038277)
Why on earth would allow some government agency to track me.

Some health departments have taken it upon themselves to arrest people that won’t sign documents.

It’s like HOA battles, except now you can be put in jail on a whim.

Even being an common case, and will likely be overturned in courts, it’s just too risky.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Dylan16807 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:03PM (#25039214)
> Some health departments have taken it upon themselves to arrest people that won’t sign documents.

Which health departments, what documents, and how many people?

And how did they get arrest powers?

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by throwaway201103 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:27PM (#25039466)
Health departments can order you to quarantine. In practical termss that's like house arrest.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by treeman79 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:38PM (#25039581)
Not like house arrest. But actual house arrest. Ankle monitors.

http://www.wvih.com/wp1/index.php/2020/07/19/couple-on-house...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by scelerat on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:59PM (#25041000)
That web site looks sketchy
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by dmitrygr on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:00PM (#25041429)
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Dylan16807 on Monday November 09, 2020 @08:44PM (#25042044)
Oh, that's what they meant? That's not about signing documents at all, really. It's about whether they will agree to supervise their own quarantine, or whether the state has to do it. Then there was some stubbornness and/or misunderstanding in regards to making that decision and agreement.

"Some health departments have taken it upon themselves to enforce quarantine on people that just tested positive." doesn't really inspire the same kind of outrage.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by claytongulick on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @03:56AM (#25043978)
It should.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by scelerat on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:12PM (#25041517)
Thanks
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by alasdair_ on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:15PM (#25039342)
>Some health departments have taken it upon themselves to arrest people that won’t sign documents.

[citation needed]

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by treeman79 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:38PM (#25039582)
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by howlgarnish on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:32AM (#25035162)
Contract tracing seems to work just fine in the Asian countries that have successfully stopped the virus in its tracks, and if China's 1.3 billion people isn't at scale, I'm not sure what is.

But yes, it does require having few enough infected people to make it feasible, and places like the US and most of Europe are waaaaay beyond that point now.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by maxerickson on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:52PM (#25037453)
China has also done mass testing when their contract tracing broke down.

If we could get high compliance with isolation of positives, the US/Europe could use mass testing to "reset" without lockdowns. Test all of Michigan across a couple days and you will identify a significant portion of the infected. Then do Wisconsin. Encourage people to limit travel during those periods and so on.

You wouldn't get to 0 in one cycle, but it would hammer the transmission rate.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by rlt on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @03:18AM (#25043786)
> If we could get high compliance

For better or worse [1], complying with mass government orders is simply not part of the collective American psyche.

1. it still remains to be seen if this individualism and distrust of government is one of America’s greatest strengths, or its future downfall

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by maxerickson on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @06:47AM (#25044904)
Yes, I phrased it that way quite on purpose.

I'd prefer not to get Covid19, but the real worrying thing about it is the potential for a worse disease. Say it's almost as transmissible but much more deadly. How will we respond?

I'm sure many people would do more to protect themselves, but I wonder how deadly it would have to be for some people, and how deadly would it have to be to make community minded cooperation the obvious path (this is a reasonable description of mask wearing…).

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by roywiggins on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:04PM (#25039233)
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by hcknwscommenter on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:19PM (#25037780)
"Covid19 would also be over if people with symptoms would just stay home."

That is unlikely to be true. There are asymptomatic super spreaders. The fact that R0 is currently hovering around 1 is that society has greatly reduced contacts. Even in areas where social distancing is a mere suggestion, most people are not behaving completely normally (a good thing). Flights are super low, movie theater visits are super low, hotel occupancy is super low. Social distancing and contact tracing work. Better social distancing and contact tracing work better.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by samatman on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:19PM (#25038610)
> Mutations aren't a serious concern. Because when viruses mutate it's the strains that are more infectious and less lethal that win out.

If only it worked that way! It doesn't, of course.

A random walk can lead anywhere in the adjacent landscape. That includes moving up in lethality without moving down in infectiousness. What you have written here is plausible-sounding nonsense; if it were true, the 1918 flu would never have occurred.

The good news is that influenza is almost pathologically mutation-prone, and coronaviruses are not.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by freewilly1040 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:05PM (#25039237)
The oft-cited theory about 1918 is that WWI upended the traits that were selected for in the virus. Whereas in peace time a more serious case would reduce the mobility of the victim, in war a serious infection would result in the patient (a soldier) being transported off the front lines, spreading the more serious version of the virus more.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by sellyme on Monday November 09, 2020 @06:48PM (#25041365)
Moving up in lethality while maintaining the same "infectiousness" still results in a real-world decrease in infection rate, as more infected hosts will die (and/or infected hosts will die more quickly), preventing them from spreading it further.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by samatman on Monday November 09, 2020 @08:08PM (#25041864)
In the case of COVID-19, which is highly contagious, has a long latency period, and is in fact not especially fatal by the standard of diseases ending in -RS, this might be true on paper, but would be cold comfort in practice.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by empthought on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:23PM (#25038673)
Thank you for pointing this out.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by lostlogin on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:53PM (#25037460)
> Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere.

Could you go a little deeper in this? It seems to have worked in Australia, South Korea and NZ as far as I’m aware, what am I missing?

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by usrusr on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:14PM (#25039996)
The claim becomes conveniently tautological when you equate "at scale" with "tracers getting overwhelmed". GP might argue that all successful tracing never reached scale. That would make it a completely worthless claim, but, well "truth" (big sarcasm quotes).
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by tomhoward on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:44PM (#25041730)
It completely broke down in Victoria, Australia when daily case numbers got into the hundreds, so a full lockdown was imposed.

It’s working fine again now that case numbers are negligible.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by FalconSensei on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:19PM (#25037779)
Worked to slow down the spread, but not to catch all cases. Remember the gay pub in South Korea?

Many people are not going to say they cheated on their SOs, or went to a swing bar, or a gay pub.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by landryraccoon on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:40PM (#25038055)
They didn't have to catch all cases. They reduced the fatality rate per capita by 90% compared to western countries. South Korea has less than 5% the cases per capita of the US.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by FalconSensei on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @10:54PM (#25055348)
I was referring to the following (grand)parent:

> I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by disgruntledphd2 on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:09PM (#25037656)
And Japan. To be fair, Aus and NZ caught their epidemics very early, and are islands.

Korea and Japan appear to have contained theirs through the use of reverse contact tracing.

The big problem in the "West" (i.e. Europe and US) is that lots of people don't engage with the contact tracing system, which makes the epidemic almost impossible to control.

Any amount of community transmission will eventually lead to an out of control epidemic, unfortunately.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Teever on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:55PM (#25039125)
I keep hearing the 'they are islands' thing and it has never made much sense to me. Can you explain why being an island is intrinsically better than not being an island?

Does the size of the island matter? Does the location of the island matter? What if there are multiple islands?

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by novok on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:37PM (#25039574)
Travel into islands is far harder than travel into cities in large land masses. You need to get a ticket on an airplane or a boat, which makes travel time a minimum of 1 hour usually and costs a whole bunch of money. This creates a natural barrier where people on islands don't interact with people on mainlands nearly as much.

Look into covid numbers and you'll notice cities even in the same country that are on an island of some sort have significantly less covid numbers, such as Hawaii or Vancouver Island in Canada.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by lostlogin on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:27PM (#25040716)
How do you apply the “islands do better” logic to the UK or Hawaii? Hawaii might have done well by US standards, but it has performed badly compared to other islands. The UK has not done well.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by josephg on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:06PM (#25042162)
Yes. Also Australia is an island, but Victoria (my state) peaked over 700 cases/day and other states during the same period managed to keep their case numbers controlled at the same time (~10 cases / day in NSW iirc). It wasn't magic. We closed the state borders, making each state basically its own island. Victoria imposed strict lockdowns to get the case numbers down and the rest of the country went about business as usual.

I don't see why the same strategy wasn't used in Europe or the US. Its hard to control a virus when there's a constant stream of new cases coming over the border. I suppose its way too late for that now.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Ichthypresbyter on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @09:16AM (#25046129)
The UK is a remarkably un-island-like island in terms of the frequency and ease of travel between it and the mainland.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by greenyoda on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @01:28PM (#25049283)
In particular, the UK and France are connected by a high-speed train tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel

The travel times quoted by that article: "London to Paris taking 2 hours 15 minutes, to Brussels 1 hour 51 minutes."

That's faster than some people's daily commutes into NYC.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by corty on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:37PM (#25039571)
Islands don't really matter, but closed borders do. Europe has very different policies and rates of spread, but open borders mean that no country in the EU can eradicate Corona if the rest doesn't eradicate it at the same time. Case in point, Germany was at practically zero (around 1% positive tests with a 1% false positive rate) 6 weeks ago, currently it is lagging 3 weeks behind all its neighbors in the number of cases, rising exponentially.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by 867-5309 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:05PM (#25039240)
agreed. if anything, being an island would be worse because you have to condense a lot people into confined spaces just to cross the border
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by robocat on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:10PM (#25038468)
> Any amount of community transmission will eventually lead to an out of control epidemic, unfortunately.

The countries mentioned have had community transmission, but they use contact tracing, testing, and shutdowns to stop it.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by freeone3000 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:03PM (#25039218)
How is north america not an island?
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by citrusybread on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:47PM (#25039685)
porous border with Mexico? and by the time it arrived it was too late.

if you say Mexico is in your definition of North America then it should include all of central america, almost all these countries have a lot of land-based trade.

In Canada we have not had any cases related to truckers, but there's a lot of them who have to do the cross-border route, as well as people who commute daily across the border. heck in Canada and the US there are a few spots where crossing the border is necessity -- the only school is in the other country, nearest hospital, the local library, a popular golf course, etc.

or places like point roberts, extremely small but extremely isolated, or Hyder, Alaska.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by freeone3000 on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:08PM (#25039918)
A sea border is used more for trade -- Australia trades nearly as much with China as Canada does with the US! This idea that islands are somehow LESS dependent on foreign trade is afactual, you can see it in the 2019 import/export figures. And people have been barred for US/Canada crossings for those reasons for months. And there's not a lot of Coronavirus coming from Canada... So really, what advantages does an island have?
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by wolco2 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:37PM (#25039568)
It is a continent.

A primary landmass on its tectonic plate.

Plus it's connected to South America.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by SaintGhurka on Monday November 09, 2020 @06:40PM (#25041319)
Not debating your point, but I want to point out that there is literally no overland travel between South America and North America because of the Darien Gap. If you want to get to the US from Bogota, you'll need to fly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari%C3%A9n_Gap

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by tomhoward on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:49PM (#25041767)
I guess the key point is being an “island” is not enough when you have 300M+ people with huge amounts of intermingling, and the virus has already taken hold.

Australia and NZ were able to control their outbreaks (even then with great difficulty in the case of my state of Victoria AU) because the populations are much smaller and the virus was not widespread when the severity of the threat became apparent.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by lostlogin on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:06PM (#25042476)
> the virus was not widespread when the severity threat became apparent.

It was pretty bad in Victoria and it was an impressive effort to get it back down. Not many places have achieved success like that. To me the key was the population and its leaders having the will to fight.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by tomhoward on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @02:07AM (#25043467)
Yep, I lived through it.

I'm talking relative terms; our numbers were 50-100/day when they realised the problem was getting bad, and up to 700/day when we hit crisis point, but that's still lower than the figures that some U.S. and European cities had even back in March/April when the world was still yet to understand what was really going on.

And yep, I think what's happened here has been impressive, but we've had some factors in our favour that other parts of the world don't have.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by schoen on Monday November 09, 2020 @08:23PM (#25041936)
I thought there was a ferry there, but it only operated for three years!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucero_Express

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by singingfish on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:44PM (#25038992)
Contact tracing is working extremely well here in New South Wales. But we have very low incidence of virus in the community, sufficient to get useful early warnings when DNA analysis picks up virus in the sewage system.

So once you're down to low levels of incidence in the community, given a robust well organised system, efficient contact tracing does prevent the virus from spreading in the community unchecked.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by hnick on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:22PM (#25040657)
Reference if anyone cares: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-08/why-pm-says-nsw-is-go...

They have done very good at tracking and locking down the few cases that get out, even with very low mask use in the general community based on what I've seen. People were sensible when it mattered most.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Certhas on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:30PM (#25037176)
> Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere.

I am not sure this is true. At least some articles I read attribute the successes in many Asian countries to aggressive contact tracing and quarantining. You don't ask people kindly to self-isolate, you move them to hotels and quarantine them. You don't ask them to remember their contacts, you aggressively investigate them using every source of data available.

I think an argument can be made that Europe simply got it wrong in the details. In order to find less invasive means of controlling covid that respect privacy we ended up limiting freedoms much more and for longer.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by ptx on Monday November 09, 2020 @06:41PM (#25041324)
Taiwan did ask people kindly to self-isolate at home in most cases, and it worked extremely well. Certainly a lot better than telling travellers returning from high-risk areas to go straight to work the next day, as the brilliant minds in charge did in some other places.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by spullara on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:35PM (#25037238)
Asia results are from strict compliance to protocols across the population.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by lostlogin on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:57PM (#25037520)
> In order to find less invasive means of controlling covid that respect privacy we ended up limiting freedoms much more and for longer.

There is limited freedom during a lockdown, but a short sharp one can lead to almost complete normality soon after. Short and sharp or long and drawn out?

The drawn out option would seem a dubious freedom. My perspective is heavily skewed by being in NZ and reading US and UK news.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by josephg on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:10PM (#25042206)
Yep. People seem to think that more lockdown = worse economy. NZ shows the relationship isn't so simple. A stricter lockdown seemed to work better from both a health perspective and an economic perspective.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by wolco2 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:25PM (#25039446)
Asian and Italian strain were different covid strains.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by wolco2 on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:23PM (#25040101)
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by TomVDB on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:06AM (#25035494)
“Anywhere” as in “the western world”?

Because contact tracing seems to work very well at scale in Asia.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by ChrisMarshallNY on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:21AM (#25035656)
I would say most specifically in the US.

It's a cultural thing. Asian cultures vary dramatically between each other (don't mistake Koreans, Chinese, or Japanese for each other -it won't end well), but they have one thing in common: They have a real sense of every person is part of a collective. Maybe it's because most Asian societies are quite crowded.

The US, on the other hand, has a real sense of everyone is an individual, to the point of actually considering people that follow rules and norms to be "sheeple" (see "antimaskers").

Europeans seem to be in the middle.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by arethuza on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:40AM (#25035850)
In the UK, and England specifically, another factor is ideology - vast amounts of money have been spent on outsourcing contact tracing even though the statistics suggest the result performance isn't very good. Meanwhile, local government run contact tracing has been really effective but seems to be starved of resources because they are public sector and therefore, apparently, must be bad at what they do.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by makomk on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:17PM (#25037756)
Those comparisons are misleaidng and themselves the result of ideology - the local contact tracing and national contact tracing have different success rates in large part because they handle different kinds of contacts. Local contact tracing handles "complex" cases, which are generally things like workplace outbreaks where they have the help of employee records and attendance lists. National contact tracing handles all the other, less robustly recorded social contacts. I believe that in Canada, where all contact tracing is local, a lot of areas have recently abandoned tracing the kinds of contacts that are handled by the UK's national scheme altogether because they don't have the resources and it doesn't work well.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by wolco2 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:40PM (#25039602)
I found this informative. It is often the details that make the difference.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by ianmobbs on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:15PM (#25037000)
Contact tracing should not be the the responsibility of the individual, it should be the responsibility of the government (with cooperation of the individual of course). This is how Asian countries have succeeded at it. The US isn't even trying yet - I still don't think I can even get a rapid test where I live.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by dkdk8283 on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:21PM (#25040068)
China is a full blown police state.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by btilly on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:44PM (#25037331)
It isn't just cultural, it is also genetic.

The 5-HTR1A gene affects whether we more easily make relative versus absolute judgments. And this seems to be true for everything from the length of lines, to quality of life. The allele that is most common in East Asia makes relative judgements easier, in America it is absolute judgements that are easier.

Politically, having the relative form of the gene encourages more community thinking while the absolute encourages more individualism. This leaning holds within whatever society you're in. But when a culture is dominated by one form of the gene, it will naturally shift the entire society.

I learned this from pages 183-186 of https://www.amazon.com/Whos-Charge-Free-Science-Brain/dp/006... and I've wondered ever since how many of my opinions are reason (as it feels) versus genetics.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by telotortium on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:02PM (#25038356)
Scanning the Wikipedia page for 5-HTR1A, it looks like most of the studies were done in the first decade of the 21st century, when the candidate gene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidate_gene#Criticisms) approach was at its height, before it became known that many of these studies were statistically underpowered and thus likely detecting noise. So I'd be skeptical of any associations between 5-HTR1A and personality unless there's been recent follow-up.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by btilly on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @12:11AM (#25042987)
That would make sense given that the book I read was from 2012. Thanks for the correction!
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by DissidentSci on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:22PM (#25040080)
Spot on
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by jccooper on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:44AM (#25036634)
Did it work at scale, or did it work because it was employed early enough (along with other strict measures) that it didn't have to scale much? The latter is my understanding.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by levosmetalo on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:32AM (#25035763)
Luck of choice, human rights, data protection and privacy, collectivist society and strong government enforcement bodies are prerequisites for a successful contact tracing. I guess that work much better in Asia than in the "western world".
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by vkou on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:06PM (#25036901)
Yes, because Korea, Taiwan, and Australia can all be defined by lack of human rights and a collectivist society.

And yet, just like China, they have also beaten the virus. Meanwhile, Russia has failed on all counts.

The West has the laws on the books, and the legal precedent necessary to enforce them, when it comes to epidemics. What it lacks is the political will.

It doesn't matter how effective these measures are, or how bad an idea it is to let the virus run unchecked - under it's current leadership, states like Kentucky will never do what is necessary to get the virus under control, because these measures are anathema to it's current regime. And states like Washington won't either, because while those measures are not anathema to them, their governments are afraid of a backlash that will replace them.

This wasn't an inevitable outcome - nothing fundamentally stopped bipartisan cooperation on this point. Political expedience and the desire to own the libs did. Had the right not used the pandemic as an opportunity to grab power, and start a culture war, we wouldn't be where we are today.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by sudosysgen on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:36PM (#25039560)
Just a nitpick, but Russia isn't a collectivist society. It's very individualistic in many ways since 1993.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by throwaway3699 on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:15PM (#25041535)
Don't be partisan. The democrats pulled shenanigans too, like tacking on random stuff about green energy and international trade on the covid relief bill.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by vkou on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:47PM (#25042886)
A Covid relief bill is not sufficient, or even necessary to stop Covid. Quarantine, lockdown, and widespread testing is. The bill just deals with some of the financial fallout.

And you can't blame the Democrats for choosing to make resistance to following best practices in disease control a wedge issue.

Don't equate the damage caused by 'a relief bill didn't pass because two parties couldn't agree on which pork could be added to it' and 'one of the parties is not following basic epidemic control practices'.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by kalleboo on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @06:19AM (#25044718)
The financial aid is required in order to get public support for the lockdown.

Sweden squashed their cases down from a massive peak without any lockdowns or masks, but with a social welfare system that supported anyone who felt even slightly sick to stay home

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by jariel on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:45PM (#25040335)
"Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere."

It works 'at scale' in Taiwan/Korea if by 'scale' you mean 'large country' but yes, it does not work when there are many infected, it's best suited for when there only small numbers and the government can keep a lid on that.

But that's entirely possible. Remember that countries have local agencies and national numbers are not everything.

Ontario is only 12M people, British Coloumbia 5M people and they have active contact tracing of literally every patient.

So with 90% effectiveness, the numbers will be brought way down, and in many areas, the threshold of cases will be low enough that contact tracing can be enacted.

So about the 50 people - we have to basically still maintain a degree of isolation, and that's entirely possible.

We don't need to tell the grocery store workers to 'self isolate' because someone came into the store with COVID that's already happening, those are low-risk events.

During social isolation, people should absolutely not be contacting 50 people.

So masks, basic social isolation at very least (no unnecessary contact) can remain in place.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by raducu on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:28PM (#25038737)
Covid would be over if everybody used a properly fitted respirator.

I stayed at home even before symptoms, I infected 3 adults and my daughter in my house.

It was only luck that the adults showed symptoms like myself on day 3 and day 3 was a Sunday and my test results came back that day.

Otherwise, they woul have infected others just like I infected them, before I showed any symptoms.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by easytiger on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:09PM (#25039926)
> Covid would be over if everybody used a properly fitted respirator.

AND gave up all human interaction. It is absurd to suggest that we should sacrifice civilisation for a virus

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by __david__ on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:49PM (#25040919)
I'd happily give up all human interaction for a month or 2 if it meant that this annoyance wouldn't last an entire year like it has.

Also, we _are_ sacrificing civilization for a virus. Or at least 1.2 million people's worth of civilization…

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by easytiger on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @03:46AM (#25043929)
That's a false bargin. People did similar universally do the above in many nations and it had little benefit. In turn they have lost and entire year. In turn that is the foundation of circular logic as above

> Or at least 1.2 million people's worth of civilization…

1.x million natural deaths with an average age of 82 years old, in the UK.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by seunosewa on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:20AM (#25036333)
Contact tracing has been working in South Korea and many other countries from the beginning.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by blago on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:14PM (#25037708)
> Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere.

It's worked pretty well all over Asia.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Taniwha on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:21PM (#25038635)
It seems to be working here in New Zealand - we have an ongoing problem getting people to use the Covid app, but that just makes it easier, doesn't replace calling people on phones

Of course it helps to get the actual rate so close to 0 that the contact tracers are not overloaded

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by heavyset_go on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:44PM (#25040872)
It worked really, really well in South Korea and New Zealand. Besides, that's just your opinion and epidemiologists agree that contract tracing plays a significant role in reducing the spread of COVID.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by bbojan on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:41PM (#25037305)
Contract tracing has worked at scale at South Korea for example.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by WanderPanda on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:43PM (#25038093)
> Mutations aren't a serious concern. Because when viruses mutate it's the strains that are more infectious and less lethal that win out

What if it has the contagiousness of covid but the long term lethality of hiv? The long term lethality would have low evolutionary pressure to be less harsh to its host as the implications only follow after many infectious years.

Is there anything fundamentally prohibiting the emergence of such a virus, or are we just lucky?

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Thiez on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:25PM (#25038702)
Virusses mutate all the time. What if a normal flu virus mutates and kills us all? There is no reason to believe that covid is more likely to become more lethal compared to any other type of virus.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by bigbubba on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:03PM (#25038364)
> What if it has the contagiousness of covid but the long term lethality of hiv?

What if we get hit by a comet?

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by WanderPanda on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @01:53AM (#25056110)
To me it's not so obvious that the probabilities are that low, thats why I was asking
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by fungiblecog on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:59PM (#25038302)
What you're describing is not a false positive as it is usually used. A false positive is a test that returns a positive result when the person does not actually have the virus. What you're describing is that most of the contacts return a negative test (and don't have the virus).
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by latchkey on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:02AM (#25036149)
Contract tracing worked in Vietnam.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by f311a on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:51PM (#25039073)
It worked in a few countries that now have close to zero cases.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by bufferoverflow on Saturday November 14, 2020 @09:09AM (#25092368)
> Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere

In South Korea it did. They now have very few cases and deaths in single digits per day.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by throwaway2245 on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:48PM (#25038149)
Except that contact tracing has worked at scale, in most countries of Asia, Africa and Australasia.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by JSavageOne on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:49PM (#25040375)
> Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere.

It's worked in South Korea

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by hndamien on Monday November 09, 2020 @06:06PM (#25041067)
It's worked in Australia.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Gravityloss on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @06:26AM (#25044758)
So how is the corona situation currently in South Korea?
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by virgilp on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @04:51AM (#25044234)
It's different now - because of the strict quarantine requests, coupled with the knowledge that there's no known treatment/vaccine, coupled with the fact that you have literally tens of thousands of cases per day - means that people don't cooperate that much, and the system is already over-stretched.

Also, "hasn't worked at scale anywhere is false" - AFAIK it worked fairly well in South Korea, Japan, New Zeeland, China.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mancerayder on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:34AM (#25035784)
> I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing.

People (rightly, or wrongly) don't trust technology enough, after the reputation Silicon Valley has built and can't shed, around privacy.

I'm on an Android phone, and sure, Citizen and a local State app can do the contact tracing. But what's Citizen doing with that data? It also requires interactivity (another Silicon Valley favorite thing to do - call out for people to perform actions via alerts and notifications).

It's a lower bar for people to wear masks than to accept to use an app for contact tracing, if you were to compare the policy actions. Now, you can have the contact tracers call people, but how many spam calls do you get that you ignore? And phishing attempts? I received numerous texts from "the Democrats" with a person's name, urging me to vote, from all sorts of US numbers, and asking for a reply. To this day I don't know how real that is.

There are too many people to blame for this state of affairs, but the greed and competition for eyeballs are the definite drivers.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by loeg on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:09PM (#25036922)
Some of the contact tracing apps collect full GPS history; some just use the BLE token exchange mechanism. Unfortunately, the former is the mechanism my state has chosen to roll out in their app.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by feanaro on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:14PM (#25039997)
Luckily, contact tracing can be done efficiently the traditional way, by gathering the contacts of an infected person that tested positive and contacting them manually.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mancerayder on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:13PM (#25040574)
But in a world of telephone scams and texts, how do you trust who's calling you and why?
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by throwaway2245 on Monday November 09, 2020 @06:44PM (#25041343)
The emergency alert system (which plays its own alarm tone) seems pretty trustworthy.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mancerayder on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:37PM (#25042840)
Maybe, but it doesn't sound targeted? I have no idea how it works in that back end, but I've never heard of emergency numbers being specific to individual phone numbers.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by feanaro on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:12PM (#25039972)
> If it mutates as efficiently as flu, it will be a challenge.

It doesn't. Coronaviruses have a proofreading protein which prevents significant RNA changes: https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(20)3...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by garethrowlands on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:03AM (#25034882)
Corona viruses cannot mutate as efficiently as flu. They are very different beasts.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by thelittleone on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:17AM (#25034995)
17 million mink culled in Denmark for mutated Covid which was passed on to humans.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-denmar...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by dboreham on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:21AM (#25035033)
"as efficiently"
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by lbeltrame on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:26AM (#25035096)
This vaccine targets the entire spike protein. It is very difficult, from an evolutionary point of view (very high affinity for the ACE2 receptor), that the spike protein would change so much that the vaccine would be completely ineffective.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by thu2111 on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:53AM (#25036010)
So why are they slaughtering millions of animals, on the basis that any mutation might reduce the effectiveness of a vaccine? If you're right then Denmark is engaging in mass cruelty to animals on an epic scale.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by napier on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:58PM (#25037536)
They slaughter 80% of a given mink farm stock every year for their fur anyway — after raising in horrifically unpleasant stacked, cramped, caged conditions which are ideal for disease spread, mutation and recombination with coinfections.

Sweden already has around ten detected SARS2 outbreaks on mink farms and is planning not to cull the entire population for the above harvest cycle related reason; the survivors will have ‘more space to socially distance’ and a ‘resultantly lower herd immunity threshold’.

Dense factory farming of all kinds is a biohazard nightmare.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by deeeeplearning on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:15AM (#25036281)
I believe the mass cruelty was farming minks on a massive scale. Culling them is likely merciful in comparison. Never mind the fact that I'd happily trade 10 million minks to save a few human lives.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mkolodny on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:30PM (#25037934)
I think both are mass cruelty. The way we treat animals is the slavery of our time, if not much worse.

We keep using words like "cull" instead of "kill" or "mass murder", as though it's not killing if the animal doesn't look like us. Just because you're more intelligent or more capable than a different kind of animal, that doesn't mean that your life is worth more than theirs. And it definitely doesn't mean your life is worth millions of times more than theirs.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by deeeeplearning on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:04PM (#25039884)
>The way we treat animals is the slavery of our time, if not much worse

The woke police would like a word with you lmao...

>Just because you're more intelligent or more capable than a different kind of animal, that doesn't mean that your life is worth more than theirs

What kind of rinky dink PETA argument is this? If you have kids I hope you explain to them that in an emergency you are likely going to save the dog and not your child because "your life isn't worth more than the dog's."

[dead]
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Falling3 on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:26PM (#25037872)
No. It's addressing a nonsensical claim in the parent comment. It is relevant in the context of that comment. And it's no more an appeal to emotion that the original comment was - which is to say not at all.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Falling3 on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:49AM (#25036689)
You do understand the end state of effectively all animal farming is slaughter - right? This culling does absolutely nothing to make an already incredibly cruel process any more cruel.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by ragged on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:14AM (#25036269)
As if their life in small cages wouldn't be cruelty enough.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by easytiger on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:10PM (#25039939)
That doesn't make it a rational act. Welcome to the zero risk society.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by EamonnMR on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:34AM (#25035186)
Flu has a unique capability to recombine that allows it to mutate more readily than other viruses. Hoping that the more simple coronavirus will be less fortunate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by f38zf5vdt on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:50AM (#25035332)
Ability to recombine is not unique to the flu. SARS-CoV-2 is suspected to have been formed through a recombination event in vivo. [1] Mutation rates can also be manipulated through selective pressure e.g. vaccine-based herd immunity. For example, a vaccine-resistant polio virus has recently emerged. [2]

[1] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/27/eabb9153 [2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141104111408.h...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by hcknwscommenter on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:27PM (#25037899)
The comment you respond to states "more readily." This is undoubtedly true. Influenza virus is designed to recombine at every single replication cycle. Coronaviruses as a whole do not do that. We have a lot of data on coronavirus mutation rates and they are dramatically lower (1000x) than influenza. The point is not that mutation/recombination can't happen (it can and will happen), it is just that this mutation/recombination is relatively rare and we will not get the standard twice-yearly seasonal flu effect where we have to tweak the vaccine every year.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by f38zf5vdt on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:54PM (#25038233)
Influenza undergoes recombination seemingly exclusively through reassortment whereas betacoronaviridae undergoes homologous recombination -- but to think of the latter as much less effective at producing genetic diversity may be incorrect.

> In fact, there is evidence of at least seven potential regions of recombination in the SARS-CoV genome in the replicase- and Spike-coding regions, with possible recombination partners that include porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), bovine coronavirus (BCoV), HCoV-229E, MHV, and IBV [1]

> Unlike other viruses that have emerged in the past two decades, coronaviruses are highly recombinogenic. ... For coronaviruses, however, recombination means that small genomic subregions can have independent origins, identifiable if sufficient sampling has been done in the animal reservoirs that support the endemic circulation, co-infection and recombination that appear to be common. [2]

> Recombination seems to be rampant in HCoV-OC43 viruses and contributed to originate the A to E viral genotypes, as well as viruses that do not belong to these major genotypes. [3]

Unfortunately, nature doesn't "design" anything, it's just the consequence of natural selection and fitness of new generations. While the mutation rate might low compared to influenza, the mutation rate is very high compared to something like a prokaryote, enough so that there's an article entitled "Why are RNA virus mutation rates so damn high?" We've already seen a gain of function mutation creating enhanced infectivity and a recombination event involving ferrets, so it's not a stretch that we might see a new more of this in the future. Whether or not it will impact the toxicity of the virus or whether or not its susceptible to a vaccine is up in the air, but once an effective vaccine exists strong selective pressure will be placed on versions of the viruses that evade it.

[1] https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/7/3134 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7111218/

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by hcknwscommenter on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:07PM (#25039264)
Check out Figure 1 of your cite [3]. Of course mutation rate is high compared to a prokaryote. The point is that coronaviruses (as proven by Fig. 1 of [3]) do not have a high mutation rate for an RNA virus. Indeed, the mutation rate is much lower than influenza.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by robocat on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:15PM (#25038547)
> a vaccine-resistant polio virus has recently emerged

A perfect example of why we won’t be able to eradicate Coronavirus. Polio was an easier target with stronger reasons to wish it gone, and we have failed.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by sanp on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:04AM (#25034887)
Yup. But we do need the government to step in and do this (contact tracing etc.). Hopefully, with the new administration...
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mancerayder on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:40AM (#25035846)
I wrote a post about it above. I live in the bluest of blue states, which in the other comments here, in that narrative, you expect cooperation and all this stuff. A false media narrative, if I do say so, but that's not the point - the point is no one trusts the folks behind the technology, nor do we trust random phone numbers.

So the Citizen App has contact tracing. But you have to check into the app, and furthermore, do you trust some private company with the information? About you? Your location and all this ? And contact tracing via government calling you - do you trust random numbers calling you and asking you questions? No one knows when Silicon Valley (in the case of the app) wants to steal some more of your private data, and no one knows when some phisher is phishing as opposed to some volunteer calling you up for contact tracing.

There's a breakdown of trust.

Oh, and saying, 'maybe this administration' is further evidence of that. I live in a blue state, and your perceptions are, I believe, wrong, about the magic around that or the cooperation of the citizenry.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by throwaway201103 on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:31PM (#25039511)
Exactly this. I'm not installing anything on my phone, and I don't answer phone calls that are not from my contacts. I've never been tested because I don't trust the testing companies.

If I'm sick, I'll stay home. I wear a mask where I'm required to. That's the limit of my participation in this hysteria.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Gene_Parmesan on Monday November 09, 2020 @08:32PM (#25041982)
Well over 250,000 dead Americans with over 100,000 new cases per day and your word is "hysteria"? I'd rather use the word "crisis." In a bad year the flu kills 61,000 here. We're over four times that now and with no signs of slowing down.

And I'm really not sure what there isn't to trust about the testing companies.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by mancerayder on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:12PM (#25040570)
I'm not that extreme. I'm happy with being tested, and I'll be happy with vaccines and so forth.

It's Silicon Valley and its entire "you signed an agreement, you belong to us" morality and "get your attention span" business model that I distrust. Well, that and phishing phone calls/texts (I seem to get those regularly, after all this time).

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by smt88 on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:00AM (#25035434)
I assume you're talking about the US.

My belief is that contact tracing is a cultural non-starter here. There are people who protest with large, semi-automatic rifles because they don't want to wear masks inside private businesses.

There's absolutely no way they're going to trust a contact-tracing process championed by the government, even if there's no way for the government to access the data.

I suspect much of the population will continue to ignore the virus and winter weather will cause a spike that will cripple hospitals.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by nickthemagicman on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:17PM (#25037023)
They don't mean make sure everyone is comfortable with it. They mean by force via executive order and penalty of fines or imprisonment. If people don't want to obey they will make you obey and a large part of the country thinks this is a great idea.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by throwaway4220 on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:45PM (#25038111)
Please don't push false narratives here. There has never been a mention of an executive order, let alone fines or imprisonment.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by nickthemagicman on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:19PM (#25042246)
Are you kidding me? Its all over the news. Have you read a single article since the election? Literally every single article is talking about the executive actions he's going to take. And the consequences for violating an executive order are fines and imprisonment.

Maybe they should compare your throwaway account Ip with the rest of the account ips and see if this is a sock puppet account.

Select ip_addy as source_ip from account_log where account_name=throwaway4220 join account_log on ip_addy=source_ip

Ban you.

Please stop pushing your fantasy narratives and puppet accounts here please.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by dkdk8283 on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:26PM (#25040130)
This will never happen, no matter how much you want it to. Nobody but isolated pockets of extremists think this way.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by procombo on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @09:33AM (#25046355)
It appears one person's "extremism" is another person's "wisdom". If you've ever worked in state/federal government you'll get the sentiment. Sure it's speculative, but definitely not extremist.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by nickthemagicman on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:31PM (#25042308)
I'm screenshotting this comment.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by dkdk8283 on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @01:50AM (#25043393)
Why? Sounds hostile and isn’t additive. Go ahead, flag. I am not the throwaway account you commented under.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by procombo on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @09:40AM (#25046443)
If you don't mind me saying, Nick is just claiming your comment won't age well.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by nickthemagicman on Sunday November 15, 2020 @10:57AM (#25102101)
I forgot comments can't be deleted from HN.

I'll be responding to you early to mid 2021 with a link to an article about Bidens executive order for a mask mandate.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by freebasenic on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:15AM (#25034984)
Our rate of transmission is too high to do a nationwide contact tracing effort I think. We need to reduce the daily number of cases before we properly implement a contact tracing program.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by standardUser on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:58AM (#25035417)
Perhaps a better way to say this: we need to implement a national contact tracing program immediately so that when the transmission rate declines to manageable levels it is operational.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by eric_b on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:30AM (#25035739)
This disease will never be "eradicated" and it is not helpful to use that word to discuss policy decisions. Sars CoV-2 has numerous animal reservoirs and an incredible transmission rate. It will never be gone from this Earth.

We will get vaccines and we will come up with better treatments negating its effects, but this coronavirus is here to stay. It will be a fifth endemic human coronavirus.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by prox on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:41PM (#25038919)
There are a lot of coronaviruses and all tend to become mild overtime. In 1800, Influenza killed thousands of people daily. This endured through the 19th century,

Coronaviruses also have plagued humanity in the same way, for instance look up “bovine coronavirus”

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Bluestein on Monday November 09, 2020 @03:01PM (#25039190)
Case in point, these poor things ...

"Denmark to cull millions of minks after mutated coronavirus spreads to people"

- https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/05/denmark-to-cull-millions...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by legulere on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:06PM (#25039901)
Only time will tell. At the beginning of the pandemic the strategy was to simple hold out until a vaccine is found (Which is the strategy developed for influenza). Doing lockdowns reducing the infection rates to almost nothing or even eradicating it in some countries was seen as impossible. Yet that’s exactly what we did. I think eradication is possible.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by coryfklein on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:00PM (#25036843)
Can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find this - but this is exactly true. Since the virus has a non-human animal reservoir that means that even if every human receives the vaccine, all it takes is re-transmission from the animal reservoir back into the human population after the immunity period expires.

This means we'll probably have to receive Covid vaccination on a regular basis along with the flu vaccine in order to maintain a permanent broad-scale immunity. At least until we have a radical new treatment for this family of viruses that can confer a "permanent" immunity - something that for now is in the realm of science fiction.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by DiogenesKynikos on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:34AM (#25035190)
This is 90% protection against disease, not necessarily 90% protection against infection. There's an important distinction:

* Protection against disease means that you don't get sick. You may still contract the virus and spread it to others (the Salk vaccine against Polio works this way).

* Sterilizing immunity means that you can't even get infected, so that you can't pass the virus on to other people. It does not look like there's any information about sterilizing immunity in this press release.

Importantly, this means that even with this vaccine, the virus may still be able to spread, and only vaccinated people will be protected (i.e., no herd immunity).

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by djrogers on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:04PM (#25037597)
> Importantly, this means that even with this vaccine, the virus may still be able to spread, and only vaccinated people will be protected (i.e., no herd immunity).

Can't we still hit herd immunity as a byproduct of this though? If everyone can pass it along without symptoms, then eventually everyone will have it...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by DiogenesKynikos on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:24PM (#25037853)
Herd immunity is when people who are not immune are protected by other people's immunity.

If enough other people have sterilizing immunity, the virus doesn't spread, and the susceptible people are safe.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by estomagordo on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:48AM (#25035310)
Without sterilizing immunity, will the amount of virus a vaccinated individual carries match that of a non vaccinated individual, though? I guess what I (a layman) is asking is, even if the vaccinated individual contracts the virus, won't they spread less of it than someone truly sick?
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by in_cahoots on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:27PM (#25037139)
Someone truly sick is likely to isolate at home, due to the social stigma if nothing else. Someone who is asymptomatic may continue as normal, spreading the disease more easily.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by DiogenesKynikos on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:55AM (#25035383)
It depends on the virus and the vaccine. We'll have to wait for further data on this vaccine candidate.

The Salk polio vaccine does not prevent infection in the digestive tract, so you can still spread the virus, but it does prevent the virus from spreading beyond the digestive tract and causing paralysis. You could imagine something similar happening with a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine: that it would block infection in the lower respiratory tract but not the upper respiratory tract, allowing you to spread it by coughing and sneezing while never getting severe respiratory issues.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by frogpelt on Monday November 09, 2020 @05:07PM (#25040536)
Contact tracing might work really well with a submissive populace. We don't have one.

Said another way: I don't think voluntary contact tracing will work in the U.S. And I don't think you can implement involuntary contact tracing in the U.S.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by CrazyCatDog on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @06:49AM (#25044923)
Contact tracing: must be required. I work someplace where we have been grappling with the legality of telling coworkers about infected colleagues (when exposed)—the government needs to create liability for failure to inform others as opposed to threatening liability for over sharing!

If I’m wrong, PLEASE provide a .gov link and I will personally make sure that our large academic org pulls out of reverse, and into first gear!

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by remote_phone on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:25AM (#25035087)
It can’t die out on its own. Animals are getting infected by it, meaning it will be around forever. But as long as we can tolerate it, that’s all that matters.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by legulere on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:15PM (#25040005)
Animal reservoirs make it harder but not all animal reservoirs have as big of an effect. Birds don’t seem to be able to get infected which already is a very good sign.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by m4rtink on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:41PM (#25037300)
IIRC there have been infections that had animal reservoirs and still were eradicated.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by ramblerman on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:30PM (#25037172)
> 90% efficiency reduces R so much

You’re assuming 100pct of the population takes the vaccine. I’d be surprised if it’s more than 50% the first year

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by gonzo on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @12:13AM (#25042994)
Can only make 1.5b doses in 2021, and 2 does/individual required, which is 750m individuals out of a world population of 7.8b.

Less than 10% can get it I the first year.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by jwineinger on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:05AM (#25035480)
I haven't seen much chatter about it, but this will only be prescribed for adults (18+) correct?
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by OJFord on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:25AM (#25036398)
Yes, and only/primarily/first at-risk groups, incl. at risk to themselves or others because of workplace in healthcare/residential home/etc. - but nothing firm I don't think.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f...

We're still months away from all 20M (of a >60M population) people that vaccines have been ordered for being administered with them, (BBC reports 'up to' 10M doses 'may' be 'delivered' this year, i.e. 5M people max) so I suppose they still have plenty of time to decide the most effective pecking order.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by bluGill on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:36AM (#25036533)
I would assume the trials in kids will start soon. Though today I haven't heard of them so far. (kids are hard to test because each age reacts differently)
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by logifail on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:46PM (#25039025)
> With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread

Aren't you assuming 100% coverage at 90% effectiveness?

What if it's - say - only 50% coverage, at 90% effectiveness. That's not looking so good.

I'm still trying to understand why an otherwise young and healthy person would want to get take one, or more likely multiple, shots of a C19 vaccine, given the risk from C19 is so low. What's the benefit to them?

In HN-speak: how well does a C19 vaccine deployment scale?

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by DobryMorozov on Monday November 09, 2020 @08:01PM (#25041828)
There are long term complications from contracting the virus
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by dvsfish on Monday November 09, 2020 @07:00PM (#25041425)
To return to a less paranoid culture is reason enough. The possibility of international travel. To prevent the spread to the vulnerable.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by stjohnswarts on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:29PM (#25042297)
That will work in Europe, it will never go over in the USA people are very averse to being tracked or giving up privacy or health information.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by weaksauce on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:21PM (#25038644)
To continue this... I don't think the flu vaccine is nearly 90% effective. I am pretty sure the flu vaccines hover around 60-70% effective. A 90% effective vaccine would stop the spread drastically to the point where it might just stop it wholesale. in addition the virus envelope is so fragile that it won't stay in the environment for more than a few days compared to something like the norovirus that can last for a long time on surfaces(iirc) because of a lack of a fragile lipid enclosure.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by rich_sasha on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:11AM (#25034955)
Measles et al never died out, despite very aggressive, and for years successful vaccination programmes (thank you anti-vaccesrs for messing that up).

But even if we all need to get vaccinated once a year, for a 90% immunity, that sounds manageable. So good news, if it all holds up.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by howlgarnish on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:33AM (#25035182)
Measles is also famously contagious, with R values on the order of 3-6x higher than COVID-19.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by wbl on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:17AM (#25036300)
Measles was eradicated in the Americas. Wasn't until an antivaxer brought it back from Europe we had an outbreak.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by rich_sasha on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @05:49AM (#25044547)
Which is another way of saying, it wasn't eradicated.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by nradov on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:32AM (#25035758)
It's not possible to totally eradicate a virus that has animal reservoirs. The virus apparently jumped from bats to humans once before so it will probably happen again. We can't vaccinate all the bats.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by hackerfromthefu on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:07AM (#25036194)
Why not?

What if we can? How would we do that?

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by coryfklein on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:01PM (#25036856)
Because it's cost prohibitive to find every animal on the earth that has the virus and medicate or eliminate them.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by dorgo on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:15PM (#25038537)
Humans already eradicated a disease (I think it was a virus). It was done with a vacine of an altered version of the virus. The vacine itself was a virus which could infect others and spread among the population.

So, you don't really have to find every animal. Most should be enough.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by bluGill on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:39AM (#25036565)
There have been efforts to put vaccines into treats that various animals would eat. However not all vaccines can be delivered in this way, and even of those that can, getting the right animals to eat them is tricky.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by inglor_cz on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:03PM (#25039865)
It is fairly efficient with rabies. Aside from bats, most European wildlife is now rabies-free. But to pull this off worldwide is not realistic.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by vmurthy on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:06PM (#25039894)
> We can't vaccinate all the bats. It is possible. It isn't "vaccination" as we traditionally know it but there are gels that take advantage of bats' grooming behaviour. Put gels that kill virii on some bats. Other bats groom these bats and the gel(s) get(s) into these bats [0]

[0]https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_streicker_what_vaccinating_...

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by djanogo on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:11AM (#25034954)
If you get the vaccine then get infected I wonder for how long you will be spreading it to others while you don't show any signs of virus.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by gus_massa on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:52AM (#25036003)
I'm not sure about this vaccine, but it is a real possibility with other vaccines.

The injectable vaccine for polio stops the symptoms, but it doesn't stop the propagation of the virus from person to person.

The oral vaccine for polio also stops the propagation (that is better) but it is a live virus that can escape and produce polio in other unvaccinated persons (that is bad).

[So the current recommendation is to use oral version when polio is endemic, the injectable version when there has been no cases for a few years, and a mix of them in between.]

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by Moghammed on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @03:26AM (#25043834)
That's not how vaccines and viruses work.

Normally when you get infected you get small number of viral particles in your system. Those then hijack your system to create more, and those new particles spread to other people through sneezing etc. In time your immune system learns how to recognise and kill the virus and eventually removes it from your system.

Now let's say you get vaccinated and you get that same small number of viral particles in your system. Your immune system will already know how to recognise and kill the virus, and immediately starts doing this. It doesn't multiply in your body, so it can't spread to others either.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by abeppu on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:25AM (#25035090)
I think we can control it well with a vaccine and contact tracing. But though this is not my area, I've heard experts say that "eradication" is unlikely, in that we've still only actually eradicated one human viral disease. But if covid-19 was well enough controlled that most of us wouldn't come across an infected person in normal life, or need to think about it for months or years at a time ... I think that's good enough for most of us to think of it as "gone".
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by throwaway2245 on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:52PM (#25038204)
>we've still only actually eradicated one human viral disease

SARS-CoV-1 was eradicated.

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by abeppu on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:53PM (#25039102)
It seems that this is a subject of debate among experts. From what I understand, the disagreement is over when we can say that a reduction in cases to zero is "permanent" if animal reservoirs still exist.

> To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared only 2 diseases officially eradicated: smallpox caused by variola virus (VARV) and rinderpest caused by the rinderpest virus (RPV).

> Although successful containment strategies eliminated transmission of SARS among people, the continued presence of an animal reservoir means that SARS is not yet an eradicated disease.

https://asm.org/Articles/2020/March/Disease-Eradication-What...

> ... the 2003 SARS epidemic was permanently reduced to zero as a result of deliberate efforts, requiring no further intervention methods. This is precisely the definition of eradication.

https://biomedgrid.com/pdf/AJBSR.MS.ID.001017.pdf

Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by forgot_user1234 on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:04PM (#25038389)
it's a mRNA vaccine and a lot easier to change in case of a mutation
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by dkdk8283 on Monday November 09, 2020 @04:16PM (#25040025)
Except people like me refuse to participate in contact tracing and will actively evade it.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote... by bufferoverflow on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @06:49AM (#25044919)
What are your fears exactly?