It's like trying to decide if it's too rainy to go out by figuring out how many people are watering their yards right now, when you could just look out and see if it's raining.
Looking at the vaccine numbers for this week is a worse proxy. How does it help?
Sure, you could use the projected vaccinations for next March to decide how likely it is that you'll be able to go and watch a broadway show in March, but, like the weather forecast, you'll need to know what the actual positivity is in March to make the final decisions.
Israel is over 40% on first dose and should have interesting reault sun the next month or two.
Name a vaccine that doesn’t reduce onward transmission even as it cures disease. It’s overwhelmingly likely that the vaccine will slow transmission and foolish to throw our priors in the garbage bin.
What we don’t know yet is how much onward transmission will be reduced.
Whooping cough - that treats the symptoms but does not stop the patient from spreading the disease
Edit: Added context
* Those positive for antibodies but pcr negative —> had been exposed, cleared virus without infection
* those pcr positive but asymptomatic
* those pcr positive and symptomatic
About 30% were in the seropositive group which didn’t have pcr positivity. So it seems like transmission was reduced at least 30%. It’s also possible the other two groups would have had lower transmission rates than if they had had no vaccine.
If you have a more precise source I’d be interested to see it, but if this is the worst case it’s pretty good!
> We used PCR, EIA, and culture to confirm B. pertussis infection in two highly vaccinated groups of children in two day-care centers. Three (10%) of 30 2- to 3-year-old children were seropositive for recent infection; one had nasopharyngeal colonization and a clinical illness that met the modified WHO case definition. In the day-care center for the 5- to 6- year-old group, 9 (55%) of 16 children were IgM positive, 4 (25%) of whom had nasopharyngeal colonization. Of these four children, three had nonspecific cough, and only one met the modified WHO definition for pertussis. None of the children in our study, including those who met the WHO definition, had been examined by a physician before our investigation.
>Children who were seropositive and re- mained both asymptomatic and PCR negative probably had sufficient immunity from vaccines or natural boosters to protect them against persistent colonization and clinical disease. Their seropositivity could not be due to vaccine because the children were tested more than a year after having been vaccinated.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627963/pdf/109...
There is a difference between HIV vs SARS-Cov2: If you get AIDS, your body does not have the capacity to recover from it on its own. So, 1) the chances of detecting dead material from a long gone infection are nil; and 2) the cost of a false negative is much higher than the cost of a false positive.
Since most people seem not to be seriously affected by a SARS-Cov2 infection, neither is true for SARS-Cov2. So, not agreeing on a fixed, reasonable, standard number of cycles which everyone uses has the consequence of inflating false positives for no gain. Note WHO's updated information[1].
> WHO guidance Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed (1). The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load.
If you are not sick and your viral load is barely detectable, what's the point?
See also Figure 1 in WHO's lab guidance[2].
[1]: https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-not...
[2]: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/334254/WHO-...
Everyone should use the same number in all tests. From what I understand, about 20 is a reasonable number which might still result in positives up to a month post-infection. I consider having a standard more important that the specific number chosen. It seems when people go to > 30 it is in a quest to ensure a positive test result.
Also I’d only heard of people speak in terms of “positive” for pcr. You can be positive but not infectious, if there are a lot of cycles and you’re tested as the disease winds down.
The real worry here is unfortunately human behaviour and not science. The science is clear, and it's been said/written/screamed/spraypainted that the #1 reason we have all of these restrictions is actually human behaviour as opposed to the virus itself.
Nope, if the virus didnt exist, there would be no restrictions; therefore, it is the primary reason.
Has there ever been a control group or any historical precedence to scientifically support the questionable hypothesis that a highly contagious virus can be can be globally controlled simply by controlling human behavior? (i.e. locking down entire nations while "essential workers" -- poor people -- are still forced to go to work)
As someone mentioned upthread, Israel will be an early indicator here.
If you look at the entire population, it's only about 28% got 1st dose and 12% got second dose, many within the last week.
But with a population of about 9.3 million (size and population comparable to New Jersey) and they just ramped up to about 1million vaccinations a week, we could be at "full" vaccination March 26th - 85% of eligible population, 2nd dose, and 1 week for it to take affect.
Source: Israel's ministry of health https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general and wikipedia's population information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Age_str...
Sticking only with positivity rates is misleading even if one ignores all the costs of lockdowns. As the WHO pointed out on 13 January 2021[1]:
> WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.
You may find this comment[2] by me and the link to the calculator to understand the impact of varying prevalence keeping false positive and false negative rates constant.
Note also,
> Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.
In plain English, that says that with no illness and no contact with people suffering from Covid19 etc, a positive test does not necessarily mean that the person testing positive is infected.
This is all basic Stats but it has been conspicuously ignored for almost year now.
> The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load.
So, before the test, pick a Ct, and stick with it instead of keeping on going until you get a positive result. At higher counts, the test might be detecting left over material from a long gone infection.
> Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.
So, if you are sick and get a negative, test again to make sure you can rule out SARS-Cov2. But, equivalently, if you are not sick and test positive, also make sure that this is not a false positive.
The latter is what has been globally ignored with one positive test on healthy people is regarded as proof of infection and illness. It is what is being ignored when people are not allowed to travel or work due to a positive test result. Basically, a positive test result, even without symptoms, and even with a subsequent negative, puts a scarlet letter on you which cannot be erased.
The flowchart in Figure 1 in this document[3] might also be useful. Note the first box is labeled "Patient meets the clinical criteria for COVID-19". That's where these diagnostic tests are applicable as proof of infection.
The fact that the test is useful for confirmation of infection conditional on presenting symptoms doesn't mean it is useful for screening an entire population or deciding on how much GDP to destroy because of the simple facts that in that scenario a large portion of positive test results will be false positives and these tests have high false negative rates.
[1]: https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-not...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25894449
[3]: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/334254/WHO-...
So, even if you're the required 2 months post vaccinated you probably shouldn't stop wearing a mask or social distancing until 100% of the population around you has either also been vaccinated or been infected and recovered.
When will the entire population be vaccinated or already infected? At current rates it may be a year or two.
There's at least one nasal covid vaccine on the way https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/story/india-n...
Apparently it works very well in monkeys. "We have completed studies on monkeys. It demonstrates 100 per cent sterilising ability."
I'm not sure if under-16 cohorts' trials are underway already. If they are, and if children are going to be vaccinated before their next school term starts, then society as a whole may consider dropping the current precautions.
To be fair you can't be sure that wasn't covid, unless you have come up seronegative. Not every adult gets it bad
Prior to the pandemic she used to be in a tiny school with 4-6 kids and 2 teachers and she was sick seemingly every other week. The difference seems to be the combination of teachers sanitizing everything, keeping kids in smaller groups, temperature checks, and parents not sending sick kids to school.
I think it's pretty well established at this point that the case fatality index for children is vastly lower than for older adults, about 0.1% for people under age 29. [1]
0-19 years: 0.003%
20-49 years: 0.02%
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/delhi-may-be-head...
Note that seroprevalence studies will underestimate the number of infections because some recovered patients don't produce detectible levels of antibodies.
Also, do you know what else has unknown long-term effects in children?
What should a schoolteacher do then, die? I'm not going to ask them to do that.
They should be put in one of the top priority categories for vaccination, and THEN we can expect them to go in classrooms (but we shouldn't be doing that anyway unless all kids are also vaccinated - otherwise they will keep the virus in circulation. They tend to have extremely mild or completely asymptomatic cases, but they DO catch it and spread it further)
Feudal traditions aside, no one has the right to draw an income from a position where they are not doing the job. So, if teachers don't want to teach, then they can find another occupation which they are comfortable doing.
Why not the same thing a grocery clerk is expected to do? Or do you not consider primary education to be “essential” ?
The Academy of Pediatrics says this. It's not just some politicans who don't know anything about epidemology and likely have never even taken a college-level biology course.
The whole "COVID fatigue" thing is one of the craziest things I keep hearing with regard to this pandemic. The virus doesn't care if you're bored of the disease and "won't tolerate" staying home from more football games. It's not like it's just going to go away because we're tired of it! I sincerely hope governments aren't going to just open things up because 2021 is a different year and everyone's just really bummed of it all. Surely we have better sense than that.
Said another way: imagine an alternate reality where none of the vaccines worked, and we kept getting winter flare-ups of Covid year after year - would you think we should continue the restrictions _forever_ ? If not, why not?
And yes, of course it’d be worth a slightly lower life expectancy in order to not live under permanent lockdown. If you don’t agree with that, we probably have such a fundamentally different worldview that we will never see eye-to-eye.
Then, many/most will say _fuck it_, I'm taking my life back. I'm visualizing that day, and will welcome it.
How are you going to protest your way into a concert that isn't performing?
How are you going to demand your way into a university that isn't teaching?
How are you going to riot your way into a Disneyland that isn't running?
How are you going to force your way into a sports stadium that isn't playing?
How are you going to disobey your way onto a cruise ship that isn't sailing?
We are much more at the whim of our authoritarian overlords destroying everything joyful in life than we ever realized. We are no longer ever allowed to make personal risk management decisions.
Your freedom borders with mine - you should be allowed to do EVERYTHING which doesn't affect others without their consent.
Ignoring COVID-19 precautionary measures isn't one of those things, and I am happy the joy-destroying authoritarian overlords took that choice from you.
People don't exist in vacuums. Nearly every decision you make is going to affect society somehow. If you decide to eat fast food for every meal and become obese, that isn't happening in a vacuum. Sooner or later you will start putting strain on the healthcare system and if enough people do the same, the "joy-destroying overlords" are going to start taxing sugar and fat (or other agency-limiting measures) to save you from yourself. Is that the world you want to live in - where the government has to increasingly limit everyone's agency in order to save more lives?
States seem to be able to punish that kind of risk taking without complaints about "joy-destroying authoritarian overlords".
What if I and 500 of my friends want to have a comics convention? With everyone fully aware and accepting of any risks?
Nope, absolutely not allowed anywhere in the entire damn world.
It's right there in the US Constitution. "No law abridging the freedom of the people to peaceably assemble." It does not say "except in case of arbitrarily-declared forever-lasting so-called emergency." If you want it to say that, amend it. If such an amendment wouldn't pass, that's because it damn well shouldn't.
This is freedom-destroying authoritarianism, and the frightened sheep like you eat it up. This is where democracy breaks, if 51% of people want to lock down the other 49% forever, the other 49% are fucked forever.
If you fear contagion and think you need to stay away from me, that is on YOU to restrict YOUR activities. You do not get to restrict mine.
Do you agree that a higher number of people will die if they do this? Are you OK with that?
If not, then you must admit that, _of course_, increasing longevity to the absolute maximum possible extent should not be the only goal of public policy. And then it becomes clear that we’re talking about degrees. How many deaths are worth how much misery, suffering, and lost time among healthy people? Reasonable people can answer that question in different ways, but clearly the answer isn’t “zero”.
People should choose their own risk management decisions, not have a government forcibly do it for them. If you're concerned, you can choose to restrict yourself, but you have no business restricting me and any number of people that mutually wish to interact with me.
Living life like there's no pandemic is not just personal risk, it's risk to other people and to society as a whole. If you don't understand that a year in, you're either not capable of understanding or you just don't care.
Obesity and heart disease have been killing far more people in the US than covid and yet Mcdonalds and Coke advertisements are everywhere inbetween television entertainment.
Also note obesity/heart disease are among the greatest risk factors of poor health outcomes for covid.
Why is there little to no mention of eating healthy and exercising in the government's health guidelines to combat this threat?
There are countless other examples of bureaucrats caring more about money and power than public health - while putting on the appearance of caring for public health. See also: the war on drugs.
If not, how much more deadly (be precise) would the flu need to be before we should ban group socialization?
Trying to figure out if you're thinking in terms of a logical metric based risk analysis, or just emotion and terror of death.
Seems like this ratio would vary greatly among such demographics.
Obese people are twice as likely to be hospitalized for covid.
When hospital beds are being overrun, someone elses life long decisions to disregard their own health does indeed affect other peoples health negatively.
Are you into apocalypses? There's the British quick-spreading strain, and there are the Brazilian and South African variants that the vaccine does not offer good protection against. I predict that COVID will be like Picardy Fever, not like the Spanish Flu - there will be outbreaks every few years here and there.
If this thing can basically be treated no differently than the common cold once vaccinated by most people and in the outliers something a little worse there will be no popular support to continue draconian lock down measures.
The goal is to stop the bleeding. The patient is on the floor right now and haemorrhaging liters blood. We want to stabilize the patient and let them get on with their life as quickly as possible. We cannot let perfect be the enemy of "Good Enough" here.
At least in the west, global logistics of vaccination seem to have collapsed. We need to, as a species, get on top of vaccine rollout for next time. It’s delayed at the moment because we didn’t make enough vials over summer FFS.
And? The world doesn't end when new strains of the cold or the flu happen. Every year. As it's happened for as long as there have been humans.
Humans have "eradicated"... Polio? Because it's rather serious? What else have we eradicated?
COVID is here to stay.
However, in the US a lot of diseases were eradicated locally. Malaria used to be endemic, and tuberculosis.
There’s also a list here: Diptheria, Mump, Measles, Rubella
Some have made small comebacks due to anti-vaxxer sentiment, but eradication certainly isn’t some impossible goal.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/6-diseases-the...
https://theconversation.com/tuberculosis-kills-as-many-peopl...
Not to mention the perverse incentive: if you feel sick, you want to avoid getting tested and counted as a positive if you don't want your locality or employer to shut down. There is a theory that this accounts for much of Japan's perceived success - antibody studies show just as much prevalence as everywhere else, what happened was that all the mild cases never got tested.
There are also non-perverse incentives. If I feel sick and live alone, a test test result doesn't give me much actionable information, takes time, and puts the people giving the tests at slightly more risk.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/around-65-75-of-the-populatio...
(Obviously vaccination is by far the preferable of those two options!)
Research suggests that after infection with some coronaviruses, reinfection with the same virus — though usually mild and only happening in a fraction of people — is possible after a period of months or years. Further research is needed to determine the protective effect of antibodies to the virus in those who have been infected.
Even if infection with the COVID-19 virus creates long-lasting immunity, a large number of people would have to become infected to reach the herd immunity threshold. Experts estimate that in the U.S., 70% of the population — more than 200 million people — would have to recover from COVID-19 to halt the epidemic. If many people become sick with COVID-19 at once, the health care system could quickly become overwhelmed. This amount of infection could also lead to serious complications and millions of deaths, especially among older people and those who have chronic conditions. [1]
So no. The concept of defeating COVID by relying on a "natural herd immunity" is a bad idea on all fronts.
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...
I'm not quite sure how you can convince someone to get a vaccine if they don't trust the science on it.
My girlfriend's grandma also passed from COVID a few weeks ago. When it rains it pours, eh?
The whole thing is just horrible to deal with. Not having a chance to say goodbye or go through the grieving process together.
It's just so hard to comprehend how 419k+ other families in the US have experienced similar loss.
I really just can't put my feelings into words.
He was in a physical rehab facility after surgery. When the pandemic hit, visitation was forbidden. Turns out most of the staff were scared and basically abandoned the patients. The specific facility specialized in elderly patients who had severe mobility issues.
He told us on the phone once at the beginning that he was scared because all he heard at night were people screaming for help as they stopped being able breathe as COVID was destroying their lungs. He figured it wasn't long before he caught it. However, no one would sign off on discharging him, and by the time we got the bare minimum to care for him at home and the legal crap sorted out, he caught it.
He lived practically opposite the country to me (I'm in LA, he was in Boston), so I didn't see him very often. He also wasn't the kindest person to me growing up, so I didn't really talk to him all that often either.
With that, it just doesn't feel real that he's gone. There was no funeral, no memorial service, as everything is tabled until after the pandemic. I don't think it'll really set in until I visit my grandmother and he's not there.
And you see the assholes who want to say taking precautions should be a personal choice or are an invasion of their personal freedoms. I wish every single one of them could experience the fear my grandfather did. Stuck in a bed, unable to walk, waiting for a plague to take them as their fellow patients succumb one by one. It's just disgusting.
My grandmother, wearing a full hazmat suit with an oxygen tank, was able to be there with him when he passed.
I am at the same level of loss-shock as you, I suspect. My mom lives and my grandma lived on the Iron Range in Minnesota, so a very rural area, which seemed to help keep infections at bay for a while.
It's been incredibly hard for my mom, because my grandma was her best friend and her rock. The day she passed, I remember my mom saying "I never got a last hug", which was heart breaking. My mom has MS, so there was no possibility of her visiting her through that whole process.
It's been really hard. I want to see my mom and give her a hug. But I also don't trust the time in between getting the results of a negative test to feel confidant about visiting her.
Hopefully we'll all find some closure once we have a chance to grieve together, properly. There are many memorial/celebration services that have been postponed. I hope we can reach the day where we can hold them safely together.
Perhaps the best option would be for us to get drunk and rage about this for a few hours or days. I bet I could rant for a lot longer than you, and I bet I understand your position better than you understand mine. Perks of being in the counterculture, I guess.
> I wish every single one of them could experience the fear my grandfather did. Stuck in a bed, unable to walk, waiting for a plague to take them as their fellow patients succumb one by one.
Sensitivity is a nice-to-have, but the goal right now is averting outright war. If none of these bubbles can be cracked open, and everyone just keeps lurching toward violence, where it ends will make today’s tragedy look like mild inconvenience.
People rarely have to confront the extent of the results of their actions and as a result don't really think on those terms. Personal experience is an effective, often painful teacher.
I can't claim to know your entire perspective, but from the outside, refusing to accept a temporary, minor inconvenience to one's life so we can reduce how many people have to die an agonizing death seems ... selfish, at best.
I myself am a person who suffers from depression issues that have only been magnified by isolation. And yet here I am, following the guidelines as best I can. I'm not at much of a risk of dying from COVID, but if I got it and infected someone who ended up dying from it - I'd never forgive myself.
Refusing to accept a temporarily increased risk of disease, and instead dramatically increasing the chance that your fellow humans will be crushed under the boot of fascism is... also selfish at best.
Put it this way: your liberty to spread your germs ends just where my nose begins. Else we're just permitting tyranny by another route.
Currently there's a very infectious and deadly germ on the loose, so -under the above rule- everyone's freedom becomes more constrained than we'd ideally like.
It's certainly evil; but it's not the human evil of fascism causing it, but rather the natural world evil of a pandemic.
I wonder if that helps any?
And to borrow a page from the global warming folks, we’re not going to wait and see whether that hunch is right, because by then it will be too late. It’s time to end this.
The USA actually dealt with a similar situation just over 100 years ago in 1918, and people did similar things, and the USA came through just fine as a nation (albeit 600000 citizens lighter :-( ) .
Just as a tip: this is super annoying and not very clever.
I recommend you look for conversations outside your usual bubble, and when you find someone to ask questions of, don’t pair the questions with insults.
Lots of stuff went wrong, and it's tragic that Teknoman117's grandfather couldn't get discharged quickly. It would have been better to be at home without appropriate mobility care than to be in a facility without appropriate mobility care and an active outbreak.
Heart disease is a systemic issue of our lifestyle and diet, and we don't know how to prevent cancer. A pathogen is fairly simple by comparison - if you don't catch it you can't die from it. Prevent the spread and people won't die from it.
See: Australia, New Zealand
> fairly simple
Until you start looking at how many lives are saved vs the second and third tier effects. Higher suicide rates from losing jobs and stress? People in third world countries dying from a cratered world economy? etc.
COVID needs to be handled and those more affected by it need protected. More hospital prep and masks around grandma... but the "fascist" and unproven shutdowns which by any measurements not only don't work but - as mentioned - causes more damage than it prevents?
nowhere near as simple as you proclaim it to be.
But that isn't what has happened in the US, largely for political reasons.
There are no good options, only less worse ones, and aggressive lockdowns have got Australia, for example, back to work. The cumulative cost of the US's failure to grasp the nettle and just shut everything down for two months properly back last March is enormous.
> Political reasons ... aggressive lockdowns in Australia
Locking down a small country like Australia is much different than locking down a country like the US. Australia is only 20% smaller than the US yet has 10% of the population. The layout is different. Temperature. Density. etc.
https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/united-states.au...
Locking down Australia would be like locking down one of our less densely populated states - not only does the President not have the ability to do it - he's a President not a King... but locking down the country make zero sense for a virus with a 99%+ survival rate.
again... we can take precautions to protect our hospitals and to "flatten the curve" (which we are loooooong past) and to protect the vulnerable (old, existing conditions, etc)... but locking down America? Coast to coast? No chance this side of turning the President into a Dictator - which was never on the table for Trump and definitely not for Biden.
This is very wrong. Australia is very, very dense, where people live: it just has a lot of absolutely uninhabited land. Functionally Australia is almost entirely urban.
They seem to be doing a pretty good job with vaccination though, so there's that!
There's also no indication that the suicide rate in 2020 changed significantly from previous years (https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/co...)
And depression can be a slow killer, I’m more interested in the 2020 numbers for strokes and heart attacks. People have been hesitating in emergencies for almost an entire year (and counting).
Basically you're trying to control R. As long as you keep R under 1, you can increase and reduce measures to keep the disease under control. If R goes too far over 1, you bleeped up, and you need to resort to a lockdown to get it back under control.
The theory a lot of (european) western countries are working on is that they want to allow as much freedom as possible, but keep the worst of the disease out.
I'm not entirely convinced this is actually the strategy that optimizes freedom though. It might be better to use the method some asian countries used: close the borders, do maximum effort lockdowns anytime the virus shows up at all; and you might have less days total in lockdown or restrictions, and more days where you are free to go out and eat indoors etc.
The naïveté on display here is staggering. "You can vote your way into fascism, but you have to shoot your way out."
Right now, they're all outside enjoying summer with almost normal freedoms, while we're still stuck indoors. I must admit I'm jealous!
I don't think the Kiwis are currently preparing to shoot their way out of anything right at the moment. Probably because they're pretty much free to do whatever they want.
I will grant that New Zealand had an easier time of it as an island nation with a low population density, but it does give you pause for thought. Maybe we all could do better next time when the next pandemic rolls around.
Theory vs Practice. Who's more free right now?
But I think it's fair to say that the excess deaths [1] in 2020 have certainly amplified the reality of death, especially within the context of a shared experience. My grandma was otherwise healthy and I had had a lot of conversations with her about how much we looked forward to seeing each other once the pandemic was "over".
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
But in any case their reply is, “We would rather take the risk.”
If they get sick and die like your grandma (condolences), they will have done so at least partially by choice, a choice which they have damn well earned by their mid-nineties. I would not prefer that to them avoiding the disease entirely (they would be especially mad at being shut away in a closed ward to die alone), but it sure as hell would still be better than seeing them enslaved by technocrats.
It seems that those who are vaccinated can still spread it, and I don't believe we're going to be in a place where COVID is eliminated altogether anytime soon. There will continue to be outbreaks, and it's possible that those who are vaccinated will pick it up and pass it around, and the further mutations of it seem to be increasing its rate of spread.
But you're right. It is their choice.
I think you might be blind to how a person who values freedom more than safety, and who sees more danger to free civilization than to public health in this affair, would receive this threat. It would be an utterly awful thing to say.
I personally don't comprehend how someone can extrapolate receiving a vaccination to a loss of freedom, but I'm fortunate that I don't really have to.
Best of luck and safety to you and your family. I look forward to the day that we get to begin returning to some semblance of normalcy. Hopefully it's sooner rather than later.
The last part is the problem!
Pretty much - sacrificing common sense on the altar of p-hacked statistics. It’s disturbing to witness.
> And don't you dare question it.
Nope, it is our civic duty to question all of it, until we are gagged or killed. Fuck that noise.
Much of what the NZ govt does would for sure be seen by many Americans as "massive overreach".
The vast majority of NZers will be getting vaccinated when it's available.
Without a vaccine you're cut off internationally.
An example. We had one person in Brisbane (capital of Queensland) who was infected with the UK variant whilst working in one of the isolation hotels (used to isolate people returning to Australia for 14 days).
The infected person reported that they had travelled extensively through the greater Brisbane area during the previous days. Given the unknown factors around the increased ability to transmit of the UK variant, the Queensland government called a 3 day lockdown on Brisbane. No travel unless absolutely necessary (food, medical care, critical job) and if you were outside your house for any reason masks were required.
The three days were to allow the health department to trace all the contacts of the infected person and get them tested. General public were also told to get tested if they had any symptoms and testing facilities were reactivated across the area.
Three days later, no new infections and the restrictions, only retaining the mask mandate in confined areas for another three weeks. We are now about three weeks later and no new community cases.
So was the three day lockdown excessive. I don't believe so. Would the outcome have been any different if we didn't have the three day lockdown? As it turns out, probably not, but it has to be noted that the purpose of the lockdown was to force a stop in possible transmission and give the health department a chance to find out how many people had been infected. Turns out that the infection rate was very low (some immediate family).
If we'd found from the tracing that there was active community transmission there would have been an extension to the lockdown until the rate reduced.
But here we are, essentially living lives unrestricted our freedoms intact until the next time this thing escapes into the community. Then I trust that the government will take prompt action and the public will groan but comply and we will be inconvenienced for a short period before we again return to normal.
Australia has learned a lot about what works and are acting on it. I don't know what lessons can be transferred to the tragic situation in the US apart from showing what would have been possible if your government had taken this seriously from the start.
I feel very sad for your country and wonder how the greatest democracy on the planet has allowed individual freedom (if you want to call it that) to be considered so important that it has been allowed to compromise the freedom of all.
I don't think the two concerns are all that neatly separable. I find it impossible not to notice the relentless campaign to put forth _vaccinating everyone with an experimental jab_ as the only legitimate escape from indefinite lockdowns and distancing. Evidence piles up in favor of easy & cheap measures like vitamin D supplementation or ivermectin treatment having the potential to significantly reduce the threat of Covid and it just gets drowned out by media noise.
I view mRNA vaccines in much the same way as nuclear power: they could be an important technology to address our problems, if we could trust our institutions to adequately guard against their potentially enormous hazards or misuse. But we can't. And while I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to get the vaccine, one thing that will make me much more likely to fall into the "refuse" camp is if they decide to impose some kind of restrictions on basic freedoms and make travel or attending concerts contingent on getting a vaccine.
Even with all these concerns, if I was in my 90s, I think I would still find the danger from Covid so severe as to tilt the risk/reward balance in favor of getting the shot. But I don't find your relatives' approach absurd by any stretch.
Who said that?
There are quite a few ways out: we can reach a state of herd immunity (as a practical matter, this would mean that going back to normal would result in a low enough rate of serious infections as to not be a big deal), we could find an effective, practical treatment or prophylactic, or we could vaccinate everyone. Or a combination.
Many things are wrong with the process, but, right now, all credible models suggest that we are nowhere near herd immunity. We have two vaccines that, in proper RCTs, appear very effect. We have a third vaccine that had an incompetently run RCT and appeared somewhat effective.
As for other treatments, we have some things that help a little. There’s ivermectin, which (if you read Derek Lowe’s blog, for example), seems dubious. It’s cheap and safe, but the dosage that works in vitro is impractical in vivo. The studies saying it’s effective are, in my opinion, dubious. Vitamin D (injected) looked good in a tiny study. Fluvoxamine looked good in a well run but very small study. HCQ does not appear effective. Convalescent plasma looks so-so. The mABs look less effective than hoped, and they don’t really scale well enough to use for everyone who gets exposed. Remdesivir seems to be barely effective.
We should absolutely run serious, expedited trials of everything credible. The fact that we haven’t set up a national clinical trial system for this is an embarrassment.
But please check your assumptions. Under the previous administration, the federal government did not impose significant restrictions on your freedoms (even your freedom to go around in indoor public spaces without a mask). The government did not do much of anything useful. To the contrary, the government gave premature EUAs to untested treatments that actively interfered with the private sector’s ability to run trials. The current restrictions have been largely imposed by the states, democrat and republican, whose governments have been some combination of ill-equipped to do anything else and insufficiently creative to come up with anything better. There is no “they” setting up a campaign to convince people that the new vaccines are the only way out. Heck, there isn’t even a “they” doing a good job of jabbing people at all — note the bizarre contrast between the number of doses shipped, the number administered, and the medical providers who have run out of doses.
If you want to look at a country with an organized vaccine campaign, try Israel. If you want to look at countries that are managing COVID effectively with minimal invasion of peoples’ freedom, look at Taiwan, New Zealand, and China. (China has taken extremely harsh measures, and their administration is not dumb. Taiwan’s measures are not particularly harsh. All of these countries have serious travel restrictions, which the US states cannot implement on their own.)
I find any "the required dose for in vitro neutralization is too high" reasoning to be dubious for the simple reason that we are not trying to battle the virus in vitro. A good meta-analysis on ivermectin: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-148845/v1 There are also some accounts of possible successful use as prophylactic in Chiapas and India but I'm not familiar with any studies on that subject.
HCQ appears effective when combined with a TMPRSS2 inhibitor: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
In the vaccine trial, when suspected COVID cases are included (they dwarfed the confirmed positive tests used in the 95% number), the effectiveness estimate drops to 19%-29%: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-...
I don't really feel any cognitive dissonance in observing that the same TPTB (if you prefer that term to "they") which clearly strongly desires that everyone gets a jab is not necessarily all that competent at running the administration and logistics side, particularly not on the enormously compressed timescales which have characterized Operation Warp Speed.
Japan used to be included in the usual lists of "here's how it's done" countries until they had some relatively significant community spread this winter. New Zealand has been in their summer but just reported their first case of community spread in months as their autumn gets underway -- being an easily isolated island I imagine they might have more success keeping things under control, but if Covid goes endemic I don't expect lockdowns to halt it in its tracks there any better than they have in the US or Europe. I don't buy China's numbers given that they have laughably reported a single Covid-19 death for a country of 1.4B people in the last 8 months, and find including them on a list characterized by "minimal invasion of peoples' freedom" bizarre.
Ding ding ding, I’m already refusing in solidarity with anyone else who wants to refuse for whatever crackpot reason they like. The system pushing the vaccine is far too corrupt, and the bullying is already far too aggressive, to justify any other position. But it is still a tough decision, because the expected risk of war and fascism is pretty fucking hard to calculate.
By the way in a vacuum I like both MRNA vaccines and nuclear fission, despite the risks.
But it absolutely is a creepy, fascist, disgraceful fiasco, and I’m also not in the habit of lying to people I care about.
[0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/23/challenge-trials-live-co...
As of October, "The confirmed examples worldwide [of re-infections] could possibly be counted on your fingers" [0].
Immune memory cells, which are more potent than antibodies, persist for longer than 6 months [1].
We don't have data to support 2 years of immunity, but current evidence is pointing at it being long-lasting [2].
[0] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/10/14/im... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03207-w [2] https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1349898485756162048
It appears that Russia has a different distribution of coronavirus strains than the rest of Europe [0], but the strains in Russia are certainly found elsewhere. If hundreds of thousands of Russians were re-infected this would be observed elsewhere and documented.
The closest thing I can find to reporting on this matter is here [1]. The Siberian Times does not appear to be a reputable news source [2], and its claims do not match the magnitude of those above. It reports that Russia’s chief sanitary doctor Anna Popova said, "in Russia there was not a single confirmed case of coronavirus reinfection." Furthermore, the doctor on the other side of this disagreement has "heard about other cases [of re-infection] elsewhere in Russia from colleagues" (and claims to have been re-infected).
This is not "lots and lots (hundreds of thousands)"...
There is evidence of re-infections in the scientific literature, but they are exceedingly rare (tens of people worldwide). Long-term immunity will have to be measured, especially in light of new variants, but current evidence points in that direction.
[0] https://nextstrain.org/ncov/europe?transmissions=show
[1] https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/virology-profess...
Got tested for antibodies, the test did detect some but concluded I didn't have immunity anymore.
* Herd immunity numbers assume no ongoing vaccination -- they more or less say, "If life went back to normal, would the virus slow down or speed up?"
* Age-related mortality and age-related vaccination rates are important. If we vaccinate all of the people who are at serious risk, the danger is mostly gone. There have obviously been deaths in populations not at serious risk, but not in proportion to the economic costs of locking down the economy.
And as an aside, vaccine immunity is estimated to be about as good as post-infection immunity. And most estimates of the actual infection rate put them several times (some estimate 8-10x, but that's looking unlikely IMO) the measured case rate.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/01/14/asymptomatic-covid-l...
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2015432
Dying from Covid is not “asymptomatic Covid”. So your evidence for this phenomenon consists of a local news article where they’ve quoted the opinion of one person, mis-represented a figure from a journal article, and showed x-rays with no citations or context.
Also, we're not going to get much research on this until after the pandemic is over, because of pandemic related lack of routine medical care.
Its likely that a some places will heavily ease restrictions as soon as next month.
Will that be too early? Depends.
Also, I don’t know where you live, but I think in most places on earth you can legally have dinner with a small amount of friends, without some “influential” person giving you permission.
Here in the UK you may only meet other people for exercise purposes, outside. No visiting each other's homes. It's been this way in most parts of the country for months. Same in Ireland
In France there is a curfew from 8pm-6am and restaurants cannot open. There have been rules preventing meeting others at home, can't tell if they're active right now.
In Germany one person not of that household may visit another household, but only one. This is also true in Belgium.
Some areas of Spain are not allowing meeting in others homes at all.
So ... YMMV.
I was sitting in the park in a riverbank the other day, cops patrolled and asked people where they lived. Whoever you're with must live in the same household as you, and you may not be more than a km from home. I didn't see anyone get fined (although I believe they have the discretion to do so) but I saw some groups of friends be dispersed by the police.
Not here you can't.
We are not supposed to go outside for anything other than food / exercise and no meeting people from other houses.
People have been fined for going out walks because they didn't go to the closest park to their house.
The vaccine grants 95% protection with those measures in place. We have no idea how effective it is without those measures. If we're all going to dance parties, the vaccine might not be adequate.
I think the question is the point at which we can send kids back to schools and reopen our businesses with precautions in place -- in other words, stem the pain and bleeding.
It makes sense to keep masks on and 6-foot distance until the virus is gone, though. Vaccine+masking/distancing should be enough to get rid of it. It's not clear vaccine alone will do that.
If not, we'll be on a dance for decades with new mutations, vaccines, and whatnot. We want this thing dead and gone for good.
I don't think we're on a path to get there, though. People are fed up. If we can't get this under control, I suspect the new normal will be outbreaks for the rest of our lives. Perhaps the vaccine will be 95% without distancing. Or perhaps not.
The public is treating the vaccine for like the vaccine for polio, which is that once you get it, you're good. If 80%+ of Americans get the vaccine and we still have to mask and social distance, you're going to see a lot of angry people.
Then people need to do better. Getting angry at reality doesn't change it. If this is how things work out, throwing a fit only makes the situation even worse.
Carl Sagan once pointed out the perils of basing a society on all this science and technology, when only a few people (relatively speaking) actually understand it. I didn't truly understand this warning until this pandemic.
When COVID19 hit China in January, it was clear it was coming to the US. At the time, I thought the US government was preparing. Nope. Complete denial.
When it hit in March, I thought schools would prepare. Nope. Complete denial. It's 2 weeks. 4 weeks. It'll be gone come the summer.
And so on....
... Anger against reality has led to over 400,000 deaths so far.
From a month ago:
Dr. Anthony Fauci now says as much as 90 percent of the population may need to get vaccinated or infected to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 — admitting in a new interview that he has been intentionally raising the bar based, in part, on what he thinks the country is ready to hear.
“We really don’t know what the real number is,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert told the New York Times.
“I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”
Ref: https://nypost.com/2020/12/24/fauci-covid-herd-immunity-requ...
He does have a track record of being dishonest about things. Part of the reason he drug his feet on masks was he was worried about shortages. It makes sense, but I really don't like the "I know what's best for you" paternalism.
TheStreet asked him "why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning?"
> Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.
https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...
He didn't say "because we didn't know any better," he said (paraphrased) so the general public doesn't go out and buy them, causing a shortage. I find that dishonest.
Another example, when Trump (like him or not) pretended to be best pals with Kim Jon Un, he was being diplomatic. CNN accused him of being dishonest and called for him to announce publicly to his country that "actually I'm lying".
Was he 'lying'? Yes. Should he have told the truth to Kim Jon Un's face for the sake of 'honesty' and destroy all the diplomatic progress he had made at a time when KJU was flaunting his nukes? Maybe. Probably not.
Back to Fauci. Was he 'lying'? Yes. If he had told people 'masks work and will save your lives but health professional lives are more important' would that have had the same effect? Maybe. Probably not.
Also, since we love our fallacies in this place. Accusing someone of being dishonest for no good reason is effectively a variant of the outcome fallacy (judging the quality of an argument/action based on knowing the eventual outcome, rather than judging whether it was a reasonable course of action given what was known at the time). We simply do not know had Fauci been 'honest' whether the death toll would be halved or doubled right now. We can only speculate.
How is that dishonest? He was completely transparent about this motivation from the start, as shown from my clip from the earlier interview.
At best, they are grossly incompetent at communicating with the public.
https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12447444277357813...
https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12440202923658158...
This has stood up remarkably well, a year on we know that masks are mostly effective to prevent people spreading the virus and not to prevent contracting it and we know much more about how readily it spreads asymptomatically.
I don't think they stood up to anything. We didn't learn much more.
We know masks work for a century, and these officials lied to prevent mask shortage.
It's very short-sighted and incredibly incompetent.
Did they know we could have worn cloth masks?
> “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”
I think it’s fair to characterize this as dishonesty, and to be less charitable about whether his past communications were in retrospect honest.
In seriousness, I believe him when he said he's not a politician. What he doesn't get is that that's half his job.
It's damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
About 25 million have recovered so far. That puts us at about 12% 'immune'.
There's this early study from July as well https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2025179?query=fea...
And cdc guidance https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-suggests-reco...
Additionally, a lot of the additives in the vaccine are intended to make your immune system perceive it as much more of a threat (while a virus will try to be perceived as not a threat), increasing the priority your immune system gives the virus (and the duration it will be able to stay immune)
I think the length of time recovery and vaccination confer are still not really nailed down
Facing this reality, the policy will probably be once everyone who wants it has had a chance to get it, things will or should move towards normal.
https://www.ipsos.com/fr-fr/59-des-francais-prets-recourir-u...
Once the sane ones are vaccinated, open everything up and let nature take care of the dumb ones. If you insist on drinking gasoline, good luck
There are definitely people who may not benefit as much from the vaccine because they are immuno-compromised for example.
The only reason not to take it is if your doctor tells you not to. Unless they've told us not to for medical reasons, we should take it if we can get it, ASAP.
And I think pressuring people to take it is appropriate, given that it's not just them at risk.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/who-can-and-cant-safe...
Pressuring in form of awareness efforts will take probably years, and who knows how many deniers will even get it. I'm starting to read posts and "studies" about paying people off, which I think is insane - (1) the whole idea of people who want to fix this problem actually having to bribe via their taxes those people who refuse to accept reality, and (2) payoffs can simply be abused in a million ways - but whatever, say we all take one for the greater good. But then even a large-scale payoff effort will also take months if not years.
What else can you do to pressure people? Restrict their rights until they get a shot? Tell them their kids can't go to school until they show a QR proof of vaccine? Realistically, just how can you pressure people if you are not in North Korea? So then we're back to everyone on lockdown because of the stubborn few?
That largely works pretty well at keeping the pool of deniers down to the true-believers; it turns out that many anti-vaxxers give up their beliefs when it becomes personally inconvenient to hold them.
I think of it much the same way I think of driver's licenses. I believe if you are driving on your own private property you don't need one. But if you are using public roads and putting people at risk, there's an expectation of training and the ability to revoke permission if you harm others.
This is a new standard. Even though the flu is very dangerous in small children, adults who mix with adults in work settings while infected with the flu have never been held to this standard. And since everyone might carry something that might be dangerous to someone under the right circumstances, I never wanted to go down the road of locking people up just in case someone somewhere may possibly be spared an infection.
Keep in mind that solitary confinement is an additional punishment for most inmates in most prisons in the world. Yet, that has been inflicted on people without so much of a second's thought to what the costs are.
So, by your standard, nevermind the kid who kills himself because he has now been put in solitary due to forces completely out of his control. Or, the grandmother who lives in another country who may be spared a SARS-Cov2 infection, but lost most of her mental faculties due to lack of contact with other human beings.
Do you think the only bad thing that can happen to someone is a SARS-Cov2 infection?
If not, they one must take into account how much of one bad thing one is willing to tolerate in return for a given reduction in some other bad thing. Because the probability of some bad thing happening to someone is 100%.
Do you know this is verified yet?
It was in the news today and it didn't seem like it was known yet here in Norway. I think we are using the Biontech vaccine.
And, FTR, yes I'm generally pro vaccines.
But based on past vaccines for other viruses and the way they and the covid vaccines help your body be better prepared to fight the virus, it's a reasonable guess that they may well at least limit spread, perhaps even close to prevent it.
So you're right to point out that it's not a sure thing, but I (admittedly, not an expert, but basing on views of experts) also think it would be more surprising if the vaccines didn't slow spread at all, the bigger question will be to what extent (both with and without current protective tools like masks and social distancing).
My uncle got the vaccine, and then a week later his family comes down with Covid, including him. They did fine, but it's not a guaranteed thing.
This particular vaccine isn't even a vaccine in the traditional sense, where they give you an inhibited version of the virus and let your immune system work on it. It's an mRNA cellular protein booster that is supposed to help fight it. It's all pretty new.
The traditional way (as used by the Oxford/Astrazenica covid vaccine, and others) is to show the body what the virus looks like by giving it non-harmful bits of protein that look like the bit of the virus the immune system will need to recognise.
The mRNA ones (like Pfizer's or Moderna's) use mRNA code to tell your body to create those harmless proteins, and then the rest is the same - your immune system learns to recognise them, which is good because it will be more likely to recognise the real virus.
The mRNA technique is just moving the "create these harmless things" from the lab to inside the body. It doesn't change how your body fights the virus compared to traditional vaccine methods.
(mRNA vaccines have also been undergoing safety tests for years, these ones for covid are the first approved but not because previous/ongoing ones were shown to be unsafe.)
e.g. info from CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...
However, there is not yet any evidence I've seen that the vaccine can cause Bell's Palsy. There's not conclusive evidence it can't, but the FDA says: "The observed frequency of reported Bell’s palsy in the vaccine group is consistent with the expected background rate in the general population."
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covid-vaccine-bells-palsy/
(Please do correct me if I'm out of date and there's anything showing statistical significance, but I don't see anything new from a quick Google.)
When you vaccinate a lot of people, some of them will develop medical problems that would have developed regardless of the vaccine. It's not impossible you will be proven right once there is more data, but until then it is spreading misinformation to say that the vaccine did cause the problem.
If we average 1 million per day, we have 231 days to go, which is Aug 25th.
Right now we are production-constrained, and somewhat distribution constrained since every state is handling it differently. But soon enough we will be constrained by people's unwillingness to get vaccinated, and then things will get really fucking annoying.
There was no reason for us to stay as locked down as we have been.
[0] https://news.wttw.com/2020/03/30/mccormick-place-be-transfor...
[1] https://abc7chicago.com/doctors-and-nurses-coronavirus-pande...
[2] https://news.wttw.com/2020/05/01/field-hospital-mccormick-pl...
[3] https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/11/13/21562828/mccormick-p...
So New Zealand was even more successful. By July, they got things well and truly under control: https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-IE&mid=%2Fm%2F0ctw...
Or take France: https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-IE&mid=%2Fm%2F0f8l...
All of these are having a bit more trouble with the second wave, Clearly something has changed about the nature of Covid. But you can see them weathering the first wave, and dealing with the second wave. You see how the number of cases drops off to near 0 during summer?
---
This is the USA: https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-IE&gl=IE&ceid=IE%3...
Take care: that Y axis is much larger than the other examples above.
On June 1 2020 there were still 22000 measured new cases on that day alone. Sure that's a slight drop from the 34000 cases on April 9. But that's not really safe to loosen restrictions, now is it?
(Now we do know that that's an aggregate and some individual states have done better. You can drill down to get that information.)
https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-IE&gl=IE&ceid=IE%3...
You can see that restrictions did have clear effects in first and second wave. By June, restrictions had beaten back the virus almost far enough.
You can also see the effect of strong restrictions at the end of November (up to "Tier 3" by Nov 20) : the number of infections is trending back down.
Looks like Illinois is doing a fair job! Thank goodness those extra beds weren't needed.
Due to the way that Covid is stealthy, you don't see the effects of policy measures for 14 days or more. It's not very surprising that policy measures would lag behind the curves.
And I don't really see a problem with the extra hospital beds. This particular pandemic is really hard to manage. If someone accidentally prepares more hospital beds than they need, that's perfectly fine by me. That's a much better plan than not having enough.
Unless you think that protecting citizens from harm (foreign or domestic) is not a duty of the government, I guess they're doing as good a job as they can, given the circumstances. It's not pretty, but then again it can't be.
Eh, probably not.
You'd know that some people who are hospitalized also die.
Also; knowing the difficulty of trying to deal with an exponential curve, how would you be sure to cut off at just the right time, before people start dying in the streets?
Ok, no, that can't be it. I don't think people are monsters, so you're unlikely to be one :-) .
Not completely filled, but yes, this is exactly what I've been saying. If we had allowed the extra capacity to get used, instead of getting rid of it, the lockdowns wouldn't have had to be as strict. Less strict lockdowns means less economic problems, which means we could sustain them longer.
Which gets right back to my original point: As it is now, people have ended up with more pressing concerns than the virus and so care less and less about following the lockdowns.
Also another quick aside, back on that original point - "two weeks to slow the spread"? Lockdowns were sold to us specifically on slowing the spread while we increased capacity, to deal with the increase in patients. There was always an understanding that as long as we don't go past that capacity, no extra lives would be saved, they'd just be spread over a longer period. That's why the original slogan was "two weeks" - it was what we needed to build the extra capacity, then we could stop the lockdowns as long as we kept masks/social distancing.
What could possibly be a more pressing concern than people's health?
Indeed in many countries the original restrictions were lifted or ameliorated after the first wave. However -just looking at the numbers- obviously something went terribly wrong in the United States overall, and authorities were not able to keep their promise.
This sucks terribly. It doesn't magically make it safe to not have restrictions, of course.
"Health" is far more encompassing than "don't get the virus". I'm also talking mental health and security (food and shelter), both of which have been badly affected by the lockdowns and lost jobs from the lockdowns.
> obviously something went terribly wrong in the United States overall
There's (at least) two things going on here, neither of which has to do with the response:
* The US is big. Half the country has a different climate than the other half, and all evidence is that SARS-CoV-2 is heavily seasonal. What you're seeing in the country graph is as it recedes in one set of states, it grows in another set. Check out the curves for southern states like Florida, Mississipi, or Arizona - their first wave doesn't start until the summer, after first wave in the northern states like Illinois have already ended. Add them together and you get the consistently high rates for the whole country.
* Too-high-cycle PCR positives without symptoms being counted as a "case". The WHO just changed their recommendations last week because PCR testing has been being misused (as people have complained about since at least last summer) to take into account the false positives and symptoms; if these new recommendations are actually followed, expect the case rate to plummet pretty rapidly (though perhaps not sharply as different states may adopt it at different times).
In those countries, those forms of security are already factored into the "Operating System" of society.
That was enlightening. Thanks for taking the time and patience to talk with me! :-)
You might argue in this case they could have theoretically backed down restrictions to a lower level, once they saw that the lower level was already having an effect.
But in leadership, it's often good to stay a given course, if it is at all helpful. In this case, it is, You get back down to lower infection numbers faster, thus allowing people more freedoms again sooner.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200927/florida-lifts-covid...
With those that are the most vulnerable (front-line workers, elderly and health compromised), hopefully the death rate will start to fall as they are getting the vaccine first. That is what I'm looking forward to.
As number of immune people goes up, R goes down, and you can start reducing measures. (until R goes to near-0, at which point you're done) .
At least, that's the theory.
All the rest is pure fear-driven bullshit
Sadly it didn't have to be this bad. Compare the US to New Zealand.
I'm an expat living in Thailand, which has an exceptionally low number of cases due to consistent mask use and social precautions.
Even if the vaccine reaches a level of saturation that is deemed safe, wearing a mask is a sane precaution that does not hurt you in any way and potentially saves lives of those unable to receive the vaccine.
Who cares if my action causes problems for anybody else, yeah Freedom FREEDOM!!!! I'm the most important person in the world!!! ME ME ME ME ME My rights!!!! Freedom, oh and anything else is ism.
swap in whatever ism is the flavour or the month, I have no idea what any of them mean, but they are all BAD!!!
Sorry... couldn't help myself. There is something disgusting about how people cry freedom as an excuse to take actions that place everybody they encounter at risk.
In a high profile case Dave Ramsey had a holiday party and told employees to not wear masks .
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/caterers-finance-guru-d...
Not long after we’re allowed to carry more than 3 ounces of liquid on an airplane, if I had to guess.
I imagine they’ll lie again and say something like 70%. Screw the “vAcCiNe iSnT 100%”. Nothing is sure. But we gotta keep going w our lives
In the shrill world of the media, point-scoring politicians, and people that believe we live in some kind of movie world where we can save everyone from everything, probably when everyone is vaccinated.
Also if your media perception is shrill world then you might want to change your perceptions/media channels.
Do you have a link for that?
> so we might not want stop wearing masks until the case numberes have fallen to less than 5 per 100.000 per week. - we might not want risking that the virus mutates, so we shouldn't use infections amoung the young to get back to normal.
Which backs up my point about being pragmatic. 50% of the UK population are over 50 where COVID risks are dramatically higher. The likelihood of death or serious hospitalization for under 50s is much, much lower. 20-something men in the UK are much more likely to commit suicide, or die driving a car than dying from COVID, or having long-COVID (it's something like 100x more likely IIRC but I can't find a link right now).
> Also if your media perception is shrill world then you might want to change your perceptions/media channels.
I'm not sure what country you are in, but in the UK, at least, the closest to neutral reporting is the BBC, and only for its news bulletins. For everything else, Sky News, newspapers, and so on, the whole approach is just unrelentingly negative, and point scoring against the Government and its advisors.
So as long as COVID can be used as a way to achieve long-standing political goals, there will be absolutely no political will to relax the restrictions, even as infection rates start to fall as a result of vaccinations. It will take serious pushback by the populace - people making it clear that incumbent politicians will lose their next elections unless restrictions are relaxed - to return to any sense of normalcy in a reasonable period of time.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2021/01/covid-19-...
I assume you know the answer to the question you asked, and were just being argumentative, because the answer is quite obvious. But in case you really wanted to know, instead of answering directly, I'll point you to a few resources:
1) "For authoritarian-minded leaders, the coronavirus crisis is offering a convenient pretext to silence critics and consolidate power. Censorship in China and elsewhere has fed the pandemic, helping to turn a potentially containable threat into a global calamity. The health crisis will inevitably subside, but autocratic governments’ dangerous expansion of power may be one of the pandemic’s most enduring legacies." - https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/03/how-authoritarians-are-e...
2) "The outbreak of Covid-19 and subsequent pandemic has led to an alarming uptick in authoritarian behavior by governments across the globe, who are using the crisis to silence critics, an open letter signed by more than 500 former world leaders and Nobel Laureates claims." - https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/europe/coronavirus-authoritar...
3) "...as the crisis goes on, some leaders could order restrictive measures that make public health sense at the peak of the crisis and then extend them in the hope of quashing dissent once the disease declines....A harbinger of what is to come may have appeared in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban asked parliament on 21 March to indefinitely extend a state of emergency that prescribes five-year prison sentences for those disseminating false information or obstructing the state’s crisis response." - https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/sb4-covid-19-and-conflict...
Ultimately, having vast swaths of the population reliant on the government for money, food, and healthcare, with oppressive taxes for those who are lucky enough to be employed/in business, and a currency that is rapidly being devalued, is a pretty significant step on the road to socialism.
”...the letter's chief warning is that countries with strong democratic traditions could use the pandemic to introduce extraordinary measures that in the long run become ordinary, doing permanent damage to global democracy...”
You, and those who think and act like you, really should educate yourselves before you criticize things you apparently know absolutely nothing about. You guys are turning the Internet into a toxic place where discussion of undeniable facts, from your own news sources and in this case brought to light by a collection of 500 of the world’s most credible people, are dismissed as wild conspiracy theories - simply because those facts might call into question the motives of politicians you blindly support.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/europe/coronavirus-authoritar...