Regarding the article, I think many people wanted to know that there was an "end" in sight to COVID. This narrative was attached to Vaccines as "the end" by much of the press that I watch in the states.
Here in NZ the press is putting pressure on the Govt. to ease lock-down restrictions as the vaccination rate goes up. But we're still reluctant to allow covid in "and just live with it" even as levels of vaccination rise.
I think the only realistic "end" is when the multiplicative effect of masks, caution (social distancing for eg) and the vaccine reduces R below 1 in each individual country long enough to achieve elimination over time.
It would be a pity if in some communities Covid is never eliminated.
The amount of lockdowns and Covid restrictions was one of most restrictive in the world.
And after all of that, you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started.
What a tough situation there.
It like all being locked down for years and having the borders closed for years didn't change a thing.
I think you need to check the stats again, NZ is finding about 20 covid cases per day. They have had fewer than 4,000 cases of covid since March 2020. It’s one of the lowest rates of infection in the world and appear on track to eliminate the delta variant from their country for now. (I suspect it’s only a matter of time till it escapes their quarantine system though, but they’re successfully buying time to finish a vaccination campaign.)
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
People enter lockdown, realise they are a case and are moved to quarantine almost immediately. Unfortunately those few days between infection and quarantine are enough now to spread Delta.
So doesn't look like anything has changed.
I feel bad for you all. All of that for an endemic virus that's never going away.
The spread stopped, though we detected cases for the next two weeks (as normal for Covid) which had been infected pre-lockdown.
Then we spent a whole year with no restrictions, no masks, normal gatherings, no covid. There were a couple of minor lockdowns lasting a few weeks in there from small border breaches.
This time, we did the same thing. Same lockdown, same cases afterwards. The only difference is that Delta spreads now within families post lockdown, otherwise everything is the same.
In a month from now, we'll be back to open with no restrictions or deaths.
Our total deaths so far since Covid began in 2019? 27.
We currently have 4 people in critical condition at hospital.
How do the totals look where you live?
I’m not from NZ. I’m from USA, a country that took the opposite approach and allowed the virus to spread before vaccines were available. Over 600,000 of my fellow citizens died as a result. The NZ approach may not have been effective in the USA for various reasons, but we can’t dispute it was very effective in NZ at preventing the death of their citizens.
Now, even if they reopen to the world without any controls and allow the virus to become endemic in a few months, they’ll have saved many of their citizens’ lives. Vaccination reduces the death rate from Covid-19 by around 10-20x so 90% or 95% of Covid-19 deaths are preventable if you vaccinate before letting the virus become endemic.
This is because they are an island, and they eliminated Covid once and are aiming to do so again.
I feel like "only NZ could have done this, since they are an island" is a cop-out.
Any nation could adopt other pillars of our system also, such as free testing, free healthcare, free vaccinations. Or Contact tracing, quarantine of infected people. Clear scientific communication by those in charge.
It's not magic, it has been well documented what to do in pandemic situations for 20 years. Only the specific tools (the test, the vaccine itself) are specific to Covid-19.
The only way to eliminate it to a basic endemic state, is via the immune system.
And the fact that vaccines just reduce the symptoms and don't stop it's spread....means it's never going away.
Eliminate revolves around the strategy of stopping viral spread in a given population until there are no new cases. That population in this case is NZ, not the world.
For more info on "Keep it out, Prepare for it, Stamp it out," read https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...
Will never happen happen except temporarily. That's just fundamental epidemiology.
It's a pity that more nations aren't doing so.
Before this we had a seven week nationwide lockdown from March 23 to May 13 2020, and a lockdown in one city for two weeks, August 14 to 30 2020, and a lockdown of three days and then one week in one city in February 2021. Other than this, we've spent a few weeks in alert level 2 (large gatherings banned) and most of the last year and a half in alert level 1 (no meaningful restrictions aside from border controls and masks required on public transport). Over this time, 27 people have died of COVID-19.
Yes our lockdowns have been harsh, but they worked, and thanks to that, we've spent most of our time with less restrictions than the rest of the world and relatively few deaths.
Full details can be found here, (alert levels 3 and 4 are lockdown, level 2 is gathering restrictions and level 1 is no day-to-day restrictions): https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-levels-and-updates/history-of-...
Our lockdowns might be the most restrictive, but that makes them the most effective. So I'm not too worried about that. I'd prefer a short sharp lockdown and then total freedom (within the borders) over the lingering fear that appears to be happening overseas.
Personally I'm happy to be winning another few months or a year free of Delta by staying at home for a while. If there was no official lockdown I would still want to stay at home.
You are never past the point of lockdowns stopping it. It just takes 14 days of strict lockdowns and all the people who are currently infected without knowing it have progressed to either known or recovered.
Then you just do some testing and contact tracing (while remaining in lockdown) to mop up the rest of your infected population.
This applies to any infected population. Note that most lockdowns define "essential" too widely - beyond just supermarkets, doctors & hospitals.
The problem is you need to keep utilities running and hospitals open. Then there are slightly less strict lockdowns where people can get limited exercise outdoors, buy groceries, and food production continues. NSW tried this, and it's failing. I suspect it's a combination of delta is too contagious for lockdowns to work in practice, too many people will violate them, 14 days doesn't account for asymptomatic household spread, and 14 days is more like p95 than p999.
A further 14 days and any regions with no cases are safe to exit lockdown, as long as you have good border controls.
But I imagine that if your hospitals are flooded with patients and Covid is rocking your area, you need those initial 14 days just to reduce the caseload to the point where you can test and contact trace again. That's all it takes to get back from "impossible to eliminate" to "we just need to stamp this out now"
Hopefully the vaccine works against the variants.
The protection seems to be waning already in Israel.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...
> you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started.
I don't think so?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?ta...
I think part of our successful economic recovery is because it wasn't only OPEN but SAFE. In the US and UK there are families living in fear of infection, leading to less consumer behavior.
Politicians saw this as an opportunity to gain ground. In the absence of any trusted authority it became an us vs. them thing for too many people.
Don't lie to the public. Tell them the truth, tell them what they ought to do, and why you think so. Earn trust. It'll be easier to get people to do the right thing.
This is false.
The big problem here is that many people don’t think democracy is worth preserving, and they’re fine being lied to as long as they’re comfortable and have competent leaders. Except…. when the democratic checks and balances that keep the powers that be in check fail everything goes to shit. First slowly, then quickly.
I don’t want to turn this into an overly political rant, but if you look at recent history it’s not hard to see how bad things happen when politicians and other authority figures can lie with impunity.
If I know you lied about the efficacy of the vaccine then how do I know you didn't lie about the chance of bad side effects too?
Where to start.
First of all, dignity.
Mental pollution.
Problematic instancing of what is «greater good».
Retribution.
Precendents and possibility of abuse.
Alienating all those who immediately cease trust [against the matter] in front of what smells of a lie.
Cessation of trust [against the agent].
...There must be more.
That's not how I remember it. IIRC, the CDC dragged their feet on recommending masking because of the same lack of explicit studies you cite and supply chain worries. Then once they did recommend masks, you have a much of people citing their "flip flop" as a reason not to trust them.
> It was obvious that this was going to be with us for the rest of our lives back all the way in April of last year (or earlier).
IIRC, no one knew shit in April 2020. Your statement feels like its heavily influenced by hindsight bias.
> We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. Is their purpose to exact change on society, or is their purpose to do good science and tell us honest results? All of the confusion in this article stems from the misrepresentations they sell us.
I think you're confused. I'm not sure exactly who you're counting as "science agencies," but if it's the kind of agencies I'm thinking of, I wouldn't say their purpose is either to "exact change on society" or to "do good science and tell us honest results." Their purpose it to come up with public policy to solve actual problems in the face of rather severe uncertainty. Hopefully that based on good science (which may be psychology/sociology), but that's often not possible.
It's not "lying" to not share your exact level of pessimism/cynicism or to be unable to make statements about the future with the benefit of hindsight.
This is the "Science is a Liar sometimes"[1] defense, and it can be used to discredit any sort of scientific research. You are basically asking that our agencies be 100% correct the first time and be perfect predictors of the future.
Secondly I don't understand how you were mislead about vaccines. The efficiency rates were always described in preventing you from going to the hospital. With COVID, the main issue has always been overstressing the health system - thats where the breakdown happens and thats why everyone needs to take the vaccine. Even now, ICU beds are not majority unvaccinated COVID cases, which overworks nurses and prevents people with other diseases from getting proper treatment.
That isn't how I read this comment at all :/.
First off, the person isn't even saying not to trust scientists at all, much less because they are wrong: in each case the idea was that they are acting in their best understanding of what the effect of a certain kind of intervention will be; the comment isn't blaming scientists for getting something wrong or failing to predict the future: it explicitly even seems to agree with each intervention as being a sensible thing to do given the information at the time and the risk/benefit analysis.
And then secondly, the issue of someone overstating their confidence on purpose and knowingly is very different from someone misunderstanding something and later realizing they were wrong. "I think this is our best course of action to mitigate the impact" is an honest thing to say. But people seem to want to hear "this will solve the problem fully". People seem to not want to deal with "I realize this might not help much, but it certainly won't hurt: let's try it and see how effective it is" (another honest thing to say), but instead want to hear "trust me: you need to do this as I know it is going to work".
I was--and am!--fully willing to do things that are only going to mitigate the impact, whether to myself or to others, and I am willing to do it even on reasoning as flimsy as "it is unlikely to hurt". But I feel like I am in a vast minority, and so everyone instead is motivated to overstate their confidence and overstate their intended result in the hope of getting more compliance, which is why we have people who don't just feel "scientists and doctors are trying their best to work in our best interests, and this is our best hope as of today" but help get on the bandwagon of "if you disagree with how effective this is going to be you are an idiot who is anti-science and you are part of the problem in our attempts to get compliance".
Your problem is, as I understand it, is you understand that they can be wrong, but they didn't use your preferred language? Are you asking the USG to personally message to 300MM Americans?
Do you get mad at your doctor for being wrong sometimes for the same reason?
No, this is not "Science is a liar sometimes" defense.
When we were misled about mask efficacy with a number of circular lies (you don't need masks, you do need masks, double mask!, cloth masks are as effective as N9ts, N95 is overkill, it is not aerosolized, etc) a good number of those were well-known lies of varying proportion, and not the scientific method in progress.
The truth was that people were lying to us consciously to preserve N95 mask supply for frontline workers, but that truth would have gone much further than the mistruths and half truths we were told.
At the same time as the hyperbole was spreading about covid taking over ERs and News coverage was emphasizing this fact, my surgeon wife was telling me how empty all of the hospitals were, and the on-call cases dropped to nothingness because people were isolating and not going outside. But still, the drumbeat of 24/7 news cycle kept putting out bogus info about saturation of ERs and ICUs chock full of intubated covid patients.
If there has been any damage done to science by our authorities during this crisis, it is completely self-inflicted.
The original consensus is that there was no need for widespread mask wearing, and a supply shock would have been dangerous. We only know now (or rather a couple months later), that advice was wrong. Again, I'm not sure how you can feel misled about the advice with regards to a novel virus. It just sounds like you are frustrated because the data wasn't 100% accurate on day one.
>At the same time as the hyperbole was spreading about covid taking over ERs and News coverage was emphasizing this fact, my surgeon wife was telling me how empty all of the hospitals were, and the on-call cases dropped to nothingness because people were isolating and not going outside. But still, the drumbeat of 24/7 news cycle kept putting out bogus info about saturation of ERs and ICUs chock full of intubated covid patients.
Your anecdote is not a good replacement data. Maybe your wife's hospital or experience was different but that may not reflect the hundreds of thousands of other hospitals. If you don't believe ICU reports, it could help to look at how salaries for traveling nurses have grown in the same time period. If hospitals are empty why are their salaries rising? Did hospital administrators suddenly get charitable?
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/nursing/going-back-to-...
Please do not project anger or frustration. It was clearly respiratory in nature from day one, and I always thought it was bad advice intentionally given out to control supply, rather than the painful truth of "we don't have enough and we need to save it for medical workers".
> Your anecdote is not a good replacement data. Maybe your wife's hospital or experience was different but that may not reflect the hundreds of thousands of other hospitals. If you don't believe ICU reports, it could help to look at how salaries for traveling nurses have grown in the same time period. If hospitals are empty why are their salaries rising? Did hospital administrators suddenly get charitable?
This wasn't anecdotal, as the 4 hospital systems she supports are circulating daily covid lists, and the numbers were quite low. Because I have an interest, this data was shared with me. The CDC's own numbers for covid patients also reflect this fact [1].
A travel nurse is a poor proxy for a Covid staffing problem, since what you are probably pointing out is instead common staffing issues from school closings, and nurses prioritizing their own family over work. More recently, many nurses are resigning from covid vaccine mandates [2].
Many nurses go through advanced training in order to be able to treat specialized patients, also known as Critical Care [3]. Most travel nurses are not Critical Care / ICU / ID qualified [4] , nor experienced to work an infectious disease unit either, nor are they respiratory therapists, or Infectious Disease docs, the two medical pros most likely to be impacted by a covid outbreak.
Saying a travel nurse is like a Critical Care / ICU / ID nurse, is like going to an Orthopedic surgeon to have your heart surgery, or visiting an interventional radiologist to get your ACL repaired. While both an Orthopedic surgeon and an interventional radiologist are medical doctors, they have specific residencies, fellowships, and advanced medical education that equates to thousands of hours. In this type of education for nurses, that likewise translates to a specific number of hours working in the field, learning the equipment, practices for Standard of Care.
The more mid-level Critical Care certifications can be found at [5] and the graduate-level / advanced certifications at [6]
Here is a useful reference I found on the transition of nursing into advanced specialties focused on Critical Care / ICU / disciplines [7]
If you wanted to provide accurate data around travel nurses, you would need to pull out the small subset of travel nurses trained in Critical Care, ICU/ID, or advanced educated like Nurse Practicioners, and then expand on it. But you haven't done that, and are just conjecturing.
The medical establishment has a rapidly growing body of knowledge and a huge number of specializations, to treat all the injuries, pathologies, and maladies that plague us.
[1] https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html
[2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/lewis-county-hospital-halts-ba...
[3] https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/nursing/list-nursing-speci...
[4] https://www.gmercyu.edu/academics/learn/types-of-nurses
[5] https://www.aacn.org/certification/get-certified
[6] https://www.aacn.org/certification/advanced-practice
[7] https://www.americannursinghistory.org/nursingspecialty-crit...
This is false.
My problem is the implication what they lied. That's why I posted the "Science is a liar sometimes clip". You can't call someone a liar for giving you bad advice on imperfect information. Was Aristotle lying when he said the sun revolves around the earth or was he just wrong?
They're not asking for science to be perfect.
This is simply not true, anyone who claims this is ignoring a vast body of scientific evidence supporting the fact that individuals who’ve recovered from previous infection will be at least as well protected as vaccinated individuals against reinfection.
If you were to say “most people who don’t already have natural immunity ought to be vaccinated” that would be a much more sensible recommendation, in-line with general scientific consensus (and public health policies in other countries).
It might be scientific consensus, but I do not consider this good public policy. There are several problems:
1. How do you verify if someone has gotten COVID already? The PCR test can report negative for as short as 2 weeks after symptoms go away.
2. Do you then parallel documentation where people have vaccine documents or positive test requirements?
3. How should businesses/schools treat positive testing individuals who did not get vaccinated?
4. Should the government just wait for the unvaccinated to get COVID and just roll the dice if they survive or not?
I'm not sure how you can seriously argue that point versus the massively simpler to execute policy plan of just getting everyone vaccinated.
Antibody tests?
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
"Effectiveness of two doses remains at least as great as protection afforded by prior natural infection. The dynamics of immunity following second doses differed significantly between BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1, with greater initial effectiveness against new PCR-positives but faster declines in protection against high viral burden and symptomatic infection with BNT162b2. There was no evidence that effectiveness varied by dosing interval, but protection was higher among those vaccinated following a prior infection and younger adults."
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.18.21262237v...
"We examined whether sera from recovered and naïve donors, collected before and after immunizations with existing messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, could neutralize the Wuhan-Hu-1 and B.1.351 variants. Prevaccination sera from recovered donors neutralized Wuhan-Hu-1 and sporadically neutralized B.1.351, but a single immunization boosted neutralizing titers against all variants and SARS-CoV-1 by up to 1000-fold. Neutralization was a result of antibodies targeting the receptor binding domain and was not boosted by a second immunization. Immunization of naïve donors also elicited cross-neutralizing responses but at lower titers. Our study highlights the importance of vaccinating both uninfected and previously infected persons to elicit cross-variant neutralizing antibodies."
- A previous history of SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with an 84% lower risk of infection, with median protective effect observed 7 months following primary infection. This time period is the minimum probable effect because seroconversions were not included. This study shows that previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces effective immunity to future infections in most individuals. [1] (N=25,661)
- In conclusion, documented SARS-CoV-2 reinfections were exceedingly rare, with an incidence of 0.3 infections for every 1000 persons-week, and none were severe. Seroconversion after symptomatic or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection seems to be associated with a 10-fold reduction in risk of successive viral infection contamination, lasting at least 8 months. [2] (N=1,494)
- The study results suggest that reinfections are rare events and patients who have recovered from COVID-19 have a lower risk of reinfection. Natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 appears to confer a protective effect for at least a year, which is similar to the protection reported in recent vaccine studies. [3] (N=15,075)
- Reinfection is rare in the young and international population of Qatar. Natural infection appears to elicit strong protection against reinfection with an efficacy ~95% for at least seven months. [4] (N=192,967)
- The degree of protection (10-fold) associated with seropositivity appears to be comparable to that observed in the initial reports of the efficacy of mRNA vaccines in large clinical trials.* [5] (N=3,257,478)
2) The preprint you cite is a "large community-based survey". I'll trade you pre-prints, this one is a retrospective observational study with data out of Israel [6]:
"This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant."
3) Natural infection elicits antibodies that vaccination alone does not (for example nucelocapsid protein antibodies) [7]. The paper you cited does not provide evidence that vaccination on top of existing immunity confers any significant benefit to health outcomes in the face of viral mutation and variants of concern.
[1] SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/
[2] Risk of Reinfection After Seroconversion to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): A Population-based Propensity-score Matched Cohort Study https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...
[3] Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection 1 Year After Primary Infection in a Population in Lombardy, Italy https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
[4] SARS-CoV-2 antibody-positivity protects against reinfection for at least seven months with 95% efficacy https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258953702...
[5] Association of SARS-CoV-2 Seropositive Antibody Test With Risk of Future Infection https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
[6] Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
[7] Immunogenicity and crossreactivity of antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2: utility and limitations in seroprevalence and immunity studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7879156/
Sure, the mainstream media oversimplified what the scientists were saying. But much of the actual early data was available in open archives, sci-hub, and library genesis. How much of the real science did you read, or did you use the MSM as a placeholder for scientists?
> It started with masks. The studies that we had about masks really were not great, but they did a risk-reward calculation behind closed doors: worst case scenario, the surgical masks don't impact the spread and it changes nothing; best case scenario, we reduce community spread. The problem with this is that if they told the public that this was how they were thinking about the problem, they wouldn't get people wearing the masks, so they overstated their confidence in it when speaking to the public. A good amount of people truly believe that the science was clear. But it wasn't.
It's simple to understand masks when you look at another tech : HVAC filters.
The better the filter (keeping surface area =), the harder it is to breathe. The less filtering the filter, the easier to breathe.
N95's and better were stupidly hard to get hold of early on. But they have a toll on breathing. Again, it's not "maskless" and "heavy filtration". It's a gradient of filtration... And most materials don't have rated filter properties. That's not to say they can't filter - they do. They're just not as good as an N95.
And even surgical masks are there primarily to prevent talking, breathing, coughing, and sniffling from being as impactful to other people.
Anybody in IT would know there's no one solution, and no perfect solution. Everything's a tradeoff, and early on, cloth masks were leaps and bounds better than none at all.
> It continued with tests. It's much better to have a high rate of false positives than to have any rate of false negatives, so they pumped up the cycle count to accomplish this. They later toned it down. To the public, the tests aren't even questioned, most people believe they're pretty accurate, and most people are unaware that they have changed the criteria throughout the last year and a half. They sold it to the public like this because they knew that people would avoid getting tested and staying quarantined if they didn't trust the tests.
A good reason why our testing was so terrible and laggard was because of trump. Elections matter, and his brand of "inject bleach", "take hydroxyclorquine", and continual fall of fake news got a whole hell of a lot of people killed. And he retarded federal government's access to tests, and also severely impacted democratically led states in testing. (citation: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/did-trump-kushner-igno... )
"Trump has made no secret of his ambivalence about testing. "When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people," Trump said in June at an ill-timed rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. "You're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'""
"Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner's team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. "The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy," said the expert."
I believe those speak for themselves.
> Lately, it's about the vaccines. There is no serious scientist that believed that the vaccines would prevent COVID from becoming endemic. It was obvious that this was going to be with us for the rest of our lives back all the way in April of last year (or earlier). There are no serious scientists that believe that 2 shots and a booster is going to be the end of it, and yet they're happy to tell us that we "might" need boosters. Do any serious scientists actually believe that? These aren't "breakthrough" cases, because it's not truly a vaccine in the sense that the Polio vaccine was a vaccine. It's a prophylactic. We always knew it was a prophylactic, but they sold it to the public as something else, because people wouldn't get it if they didn't lie.
You only need to study your history about the Kansas Military Base Flu... Errr, the "Spanish Flu". Lasted 2.5 years. Had anti-vaxxers. Had anti-maskers. Had nearly the same groups on both sides saying the same stuff. Cats, dogs, and other mammals could also get and spread it (they even masked their cats and dogs).
And regular Covid is pretty much gone. Now, it's delta and newer greek char variants. That's because people won't limit the spread using reasonable and working methodologies (vaccine, masking, social distancing, limiting group sizes). And those mutations migrate away from the original vaccine's work on the initial Sars-CoV-n19. I'd be reasonably sure my vacc would protect against the original.
> We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. Is their purpose to exact change on society, or is their purpose to do good science and tell us honest results? All of the confusion in this article stems from the misrepresentations they sell us.
Scientists aren't lying - you're just listening to the wrong research (protip: main stream media are the usual culprits of lying/oversimplifying/lies of omission).
The vaccines work in varying degrees, primarily keeping people who do happen to get a variant out of the hospital.
frankly, this is conspiracy talk and it's pathetic to see it upvoted.
It's a violation of basic reasoning skills as well as the HN rules, but it will always will get upvoted because it satisfies a certain kind of hubris: "If I don't know something then no one could possibly know it and therefore the idea I came up with after 10 seconds of thought is just as valid as anyone else's."
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Do you have a source for this?
Inaccurate and dangerously wrong conjecture. Research published long before COVID-19 proved the efficacy of masking in blocking particulate matter. That's why terms like N95 even exist.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7
That study came out last year, but there are similar studies published many years ago. I don't have time to google for them all right now, but they are out there for those who want to find them.
The science on masking was clear and your statement is irresponsible.
I'm not claiming that masks do or don't work. I'm just claiming that they lied about it (twice) to suit their interests.
> Research published long before COVID-19 proved the efficacy of masking in blocking particulate matter. That's why terms like N95 even exist.
Sure, but what about for aerosols? If you want to see what the self-proclaimed rational community thought of masks and research available at the time in March of 2020 as it pertained to COVID, see this article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-t...
My intention was to say that, outside of Fauci, the science around mask efficacy was well-known because you said that it wasn't.
Sure, but what wasn't certain was things like: Was covid transmitted in the air by particles (yes)? Was it transmitted via aerosols (no)? Was it transmitted by touch (no)? How many particles are needed to infect someone (unsure)? Do masks protect me or someone else? What type of masks are needed to protect? How many masks do I need to wear?
From my exposure, I saw non experts being very emphatic about answers that actually took a long time to get answers to. These emphatic non experts alienated people that continued continued be unsure. In some cases, the experts were emphatic - and then wrong - which further alienated people.
OSHA doesn't, and you shouldn't either.
None are as effective as a non-woven material. But they are still more effective than no mask.
Edit: > asbestos dust or second hand smoke
You have to know what size of particulate matter that you're looking to filter is in order to determine whether that mask material works for the given application. What you're saying is too broad to be useful and isn't very insightful.
If this were a flu that spread primarily as droplets, cloth masks would have their place. As it is, we have known since early on that wasn't the case, and that cloth masks are about as useful as a cloth bonnet would be useful as a motorcycle helmet.
"Materials were microimaged and tested against size selected NaCl aerosol with particle mobility diameters between 50 and 825 nm. Three of the top five best performing samples were woven 100% cotton with high to moderate yarn counts, and the other two were woven synthetics of moderate yarn counts"
This image in particular: https://pubs.acs.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/achs/jou...
You can see N95 non-woven performs the best, but cotton twill does provide protection.
Cool analogy tho.
I guess we should call OSHA and tell them that it is okay to consider cloth masks as safety equipment around asbestos.
This might not seem like a big difference but it is. The former creates arbitrary roadblocks: people refusing the vaccines no matter the incentives. It causes people to form junk "science" to justify why 2 + 2 actually equals 5. The latter allows people to compromise: I'm not intrinsically opposed to X, I'm just opposed because of Y, and if you can solve Y than I no longer care about X.
People need to accept cognitive dissonance more. And accepting cognitive dissonance means accepting that sometimes you're the dumb guy or the bad guy. But everyone is the dumb guy or bad guy at some point, whether or not they accept it. Accepting means that you can correct your mistakes and be the dumb/bad guy less often.
Unfortunately it's against human nature to accept cognitive dissonance: it literally causes stress. I don't even think I can fully accept cognitive dissonances. But I believe we can teach people how to resolve cognitive dissonance better, so that people can accept that they have flaws and make mistakes, without accepting that they're a failure.
Zen shout-out: This is non-dualism in another guise, and a key Zen practice is to confront irreducible dissonance and batter yourself against it until you are forced to develop and internalize higher-order cognitive and emotional models that can represent contradictions and reason/feel over them to produce useful results.
I not aware of any evidence that increased cycle counts have a significant effect on false positives. To the best of my knowledge, the false positive rates of of PCR tests are extremely low. My understanding is that cycle counts were changed to balance false negatives against testing time/lab loads. If you have evidence that contradicts this, I would love to see it.
> These aren't "breakthrough" cases, because it's not truly a vaccine in the sense that the Polio vaccine was a vaccine.
The polio vaccine is also not 100% effective. Both polio vaccines and covid vaccines reduce but do not eliminate your chance of being infected. In what sense is the covid vaccine not a "true vaccine"?
Edit: We have other vaccines that have even lower level of preventative efficacy than the covid vaccines do against delta and we still administer them.
It started with masks. The studies that we had about masks really were not great, but they did a risk-reward calculation behind closed doors: worst case scenario, the surgical masks don't impact the spread and it changes nothing; best case scenario, we reduce community spread. The problem with this is that if they told the public that this was how they were thinking about the problem, they wouldn't get people wearing the masks, so they overstated their confidence in it when speaking to the public. A good amount of people truly believe that the science was clear. But it wasn't.
It continued with tests. It's much better to have a high rate of false positives than to have any rate of false negatives, so they pumped up the cycle count to accomplish this. They later toned it down. To the public, the tests aren't even questioned, most people believe they're pretty accurate, and most people are unaware that they have changed the criteria throughout the last year and a half. They sold it to the public like this because they knew that people would avoid getting tested and staying quarantined if they didn't trust the tests.
Lately, it's about the vaccines. There is no serious scientist that believed that the vaccines would prevent COVID from becoming endemic. It was obvious that this was going to be with us for the rest of our lives back all the way in April of last year (or earlier). There are no serious scientists that believe that 2 shots and a booster is going to be the end of it, and yet they're happy to tell us that we "might" need boosters. Do any serious scientists actually believe that? These aren't "breakthrough" cases, because it's not truly a vaccine in the sense that the Polio vaccine was a vaccine. It's a prophylactic. We always knew it was a prophylactic, but they sold it to the public as something else, because people wouldn't get it if they didn't lie.
We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. Is their purpose to exact change on society, or is their purpose to do good science and tell us honest results? All of the confusion in this article stems from the misrepresentations they sell us.