Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday he believes the world will “get control of” Covid-19, but “I don’t really see us eradicating it,” expressing a view in line with public health experts—but directly contradicting President Donald Trump’s claims made as recently as Tuesday that the virus will “disappear”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/07/22/contrad...
Even on random fox news article that comes up via searching herd immunity, the subtitle is
"Herd immunity doesn’t make any one person immune"
https://www.foxnews.com/health/herd-immunity-looking-unlikel...
> Fauci indicated that he based his shifting statements on public polling on the popularity of coronavirus vaccines.
> "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent," 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."
> He continued: "We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fauci-shift-herd-immunity-9...
Edit: Do we have enough doses even today to vaccinate everyone, worldwide? I think we do not.
As to goalposts, the goalposts moved themselves. If everybody vaccinated when they had a chance there would not be any talk of goalposts.
Instead we will have more millions of people die because couple people died of vaccine and everybody else does not understand law of large numbers.
There is a certain breed of scientist that just spouts bullshit. Unfortunately the media is so obsessed with "narratives" that it will seek these people out (and these bullshit artists seek out the media) so all nuance is lost.
The moral of the story is, don't let other people do your thinking for you.
People get confused because the media throws around high level concepts without building an appropriate mental model of how viruses, cells and vaccines actually function. This creates a fertile breeding ground for misconceptions.
For example there is a misconception that after people have been vaccinated they can shed SARS-CoV-2 as a result of being vaccinated. This seems to have started by the media saying that "people who are vaccinated can still pass on the virus" (a true statement).
So the media tries to counter this by saying "MYTH: people who have had the vaccine can't shed the virus" which just confuses the issue even more.
If the media was actually functional then it would educate people on basic biology and then they would be able to figure out on their own that A is false and B is true. Unfortunately this is not the media we have.
Right now, we lock down when numbers get high, and open up when numbers get low.
There's about a month lag between actions and hopsitalizations, so we act on month-old data. We don't look at rates-of-growth. This results in a roller-coaster.
We ought to take whatever measures we need to keep R0<1.
Now it is a bit too late to think about getting rid of it completely but the pandemic will not be over until people realize you can't lift restrictions until it is really over and that everybody needs to get vaccinated.
Unfortunately, viruses are not politically motivated and are not swayed by fake news.
Rather than bitchin at liberals or conservatives, better read up on what people who really know something about viruses say.
> overselling vaccines
Oh my... it is not overselling. It is dealing with people like children they are. People reverted to the point where you can't have merit-based discussion about vaccines in public, and so simplifying the message is IMO the right strategy.
The point is, vaccines work and the more people vaccinate the less will die and all other finer points are less important.
No, Chinese government stalled, suppressed doctors and scientists who were screaming out about the virus months, literally, before anybody outside the Chinese government was aware. That’s a matter of record and easily verified.
"Let's wait before putting any restrictions on the population until we have enough cases."
Restrictions were probably unavoidable, but most of deaths could have been avoided by quick reaction.
Repeating a point over and over, based on falsehoods, hasn't worked out very well either here or in global warming.
At some point, people notice you're lying. The conclusion might be correct, but if you get caught lying along the way, you undermine your case.
People didn't "revert." Years of this kind of oversimplification and "dealing with people like children they are" led to this ignorance. And in a rapidly-evolving situation like COVID19, this ignorance sometimes ends up biting you just months later. In my community, vaccine efficacy is well below 70%. People don't believe that since we've had months of messaging.
Yes, I do think we would have higher vaccination rates if we stopped patronizing people, and started educating them.
No time like the present to start.
no they weren't. endemic disease and booster shots every year or three were always on the table from the start.
The goalposts have been moving ever since we were told "only 2 weeks to stop the spread".
I remember "2 Weeks to slow the curve" and Trump's "15 days to slow the spread" but I don't remember anyone ever saying eradication was simply 2 weeks of lockdown away.
Even if it was as simple as 2 weeks away, many people chose to ignore the stay-at-home orders, so it's not really achievable. I think you're confusing 'moving goal posts' with constant failure to reach a goal followed by readjustment to new data.
>I think you're confusing 'moving goal posts' with constant failure to reach a goal followed by readjustment to new data.
No, I don't think I am. That is a textbook definition of moving the goalposts.
Whenever I read a sentence like "The goal was never to eradicate COVID from being annoying—it was to eradicate it from being a killer." Those same experts, a year ago, were assuring us that COVID would never become endemic.
Same thing with vaccines. Yes, everyone should get vaccinated. Yes, we were given a ton of guidance that vaccines would stop the spread of COVID.
I feel like there are two camps:
1) Liberals, who are in control of the health establishment, who lie to get the behavior they want (starting with "no mask" advice, to now overselling vaccines, and rewriting history)
2) Conservatives, who ignore all science.
Liberal media emphasizes how we've always been at war with Eastasia, and liberals believe it. Conservatives point to inconsistencies and open lies, and use that to discount everything from medical, academic, and government establishments.