Re:Vaccines and our return to office plans
by PaulDavisThe1st on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @03:04PM
(#27988204)
> The world is not going to get safer. The only reasonable option is to adjust our expectations to be alright with a less safe world. You will get sick. I can say with certainty;
You cannot say these things with certainty. The evidence so far is overwhelming that a significant percentage of people who become infected with SARS-COV-2 do not become symptomatic. If the numbers in the recent study from UWashington are correct, the percentage of Americans who have been infected but remain asymptomatic has been massively under-estimated. The evidence so far is overwhelming that fully vaccinated people are extremely unlikely to become notably sick (though of course some will).
The influenza virus remains a potent killer of human beings, occasionally (as in 1918) developing a variant that kills millions of us world-wide. SARS-COV-2 (especially Delta) is more transmittable than influenza, and has a higher death rate, but that's really the best model we have for how this plays out. And how is that? Most people do not become sick with influenza each year, most variants of influenza are not particularly worse than the others, there is a vaccine that dramatically reduces the likelihood of severe symptoms (but does not guarantee immunity), and tens of thousands of Americans die from it each year anyway.
That's the likely end-game with SARS-COV-2 based on everything I've read. So not "you will get sick", but "you might get sick, but you're much less likely to do so if you're vaccinated, and either way, next year could be different". The world does indeed get safer sometimes, but then it also gets less safe at other times (and sometimes both at the same time, for different reasons).
You cannot say these things with certainty. The evidence so far is overwhelming that a significant percentage of people who become infected with SARS-COV-2 do not become symptomatic. If the numbers in the recent study from UWashington are correct, the percentage of Americans who have been infected but remain asymptomatic has been massively under-estimated. The evidence so far is overwhelming that fully vaccinated people are extremely unlikely to become notably sick (though of course some will).
The influenza virus remains a potent killer of human beings, occasionally (as in 1918) developing a variant that kills millions of us world-wide. SARS-COV-2 (especially Delta) is more transmittable than influenza, and has a higher death rate, but that's really the best model we have for how this plays out. And how is that? Most people do not become sick with influenza each year, most variants of influenza are not particularly worse than the others, there is a vaccine that dramatically reduces the likelihood of severe symptoms (but does not guarantee immunity), and tens of thousands of Americans die from it each year anyway.
That's the likely end-game with SARS-COV-2 based on everything I've read. So not "you will get sick", but "you might get sick, but you're much less likely to do so if you're vaccinated, and either way, next year could be different". The world does indeed get safer sometimes, but then it also gets less safe at other times (and sometimes both at the same time, for different reasons).