Careful here. There is no guarantee that once 95% of the world is vaccinated that this will be solved. Respiratory viral infections are notorious for mutating and spreading regardless of vaccines or treatment.
IMO its important not to simplify the situation and say if group A just did this than everything would be okay. Its quite possible this virus is simply here to stay and a multi array of treatments will hopefully continue to improve outcomes.
Well said. And at this point we should pray this doesn't turn into a Marek's disease replica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease#Prevention
I'm not going to ban you right now, because I did notice a few previous comments that weren't doing this—though I had to look pretty hard for them. If you keep this up, though, we're going to have to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I do agree that more dissent and conflicting expert opinions were needed in this crisis. Especially dangerous is the idea that "if only everyone did X", then all will be well. This is rarely true.
I think the government's role should be to transmit the best possible information available at the moment, give some strong recommendations and incentives (and change them when new information comes to light), but never use force and coercion. It simply doesn't work in the long run.
Especially true since the virus lives in animals, so it will never be eradicated.
We could vaccinate all of those. If we needed to do the last 4% of wild animals, I'm betting we could vaccinate more than half of those too.
There are remarkably few mamallian species with > 1m population. Virtually all are grazing animals, sea mammals, or rodents.
I'm not sure what species SARS-COV-2 is compatible with, though I've mostly heard of animals > 5kg mass (e.g., domesticated cats, dogs, deer, wildcats), with the very notable exception of bats.
The virus has been detected in 20--40% of sampled deer in the US in multiple states, which is a particularly bad sign.
If it's gained foothold in rodent populations ... well, it could be around for a while.
From April of 2021:
Results obtained from experimental studies indicate that animal species such as cats, ferrets, raccoon dogs, cynomolgus macaques, rhesus macaques, white-tailed deer, rabbits, Egyptian fruit bats, and Syrian hamsters are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and that cat-to-cat and ferret-to-ferret transmission can take place via contact and air. However, natural infections of SARS-CoV-2 have been reported only in pet dogs and cats, tigers, lions, snow leopards, pumas, and gorillas at zoos, and farmed mink and ferrets. Even though human-to-animal spillover has been reported at several instances, SARS-CoV-2 transmission from animals-to-humans has only been reported from mink-to-humans in mink farms.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8128218/?report...
That's not to say that broader transmission isn't possible (the abstract doesn't mention deer, and I'm aware they're found to be infected). The science is still being established.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/zealand-once-paragon-covid-zero-0...
Don't forget that, yes, a certain percentage of that remaining 10% have either natural immunity or aren't going to experience symptoms.
I'm pretty skeptical at this point that any doubling-down is going to lead to anything but more doubling-down.
You also can't vaccinate everyone at once. Vaccinating the world inevitably takes years, not months.
That leaves a lot of room for mutations. I don't see logistically how you get over that, you just can't. It sounds good but I don't see the practical solutions.
(And then we haven't even talked about cross infection with animals, deers are now 80% infected or something with covid? What happens when they cross over back with some new variant?)
It takes multiple people among one's friends and family dropping like flies to convince people in vaccine-hesitant places with ample supply (e.g. Bulgaria) to chose to get vaccinated.
Also it wouldn't hurt if vaccines were actually effective at preventing infection (rather than allowing infection but preventing severe disease)... and if they lasted more than half a year.
If a large portion of the population is vaxxed, it stops spreading as much even among the unvaxxed, which reduces opportunity to mutate.
Deer don't have the same selective pressure as we do.
Also, the vaccine has been shown to reduce viral load which has an impact on rate of mutation even if you are infected.
This doesn't seem to be the case⁰:
A new study from the University of California, Davis, Genome Center, UC San Francisco and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub shows no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who tested positive for the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. It also found no significant difference between infected people with or without symptoms.
When they analyzed the data, the researchers found wide variations in viral load within both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, but not between them. There was no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated, or between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups.
⓪ - https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim... (Link to study in the article)
But there is a multiplicative effect - the sparser unvaxxed people become, the less general spread there will be.
The vaxxed are still spreading and it is true they cause selection, but this has been well studied and widespread vaccination absolutely would help reduce the rate of mutation.
I don't understand how this could be. Studies have shown that peak viral load is the same for vaccinated/unvaccinated, that means roughly the same number of replicative cycles in vaccinated as in unvaccinated. Each replication is a chance for the virus to aquire mutations, so same number of replicative cycles in vaccinated/unvaccinated means same rate of mutation in vaccinated/unvaccinated.
Spread is also less common among the vaxxed as I said, so even if it turns out to be no difference in load, there is still less opportunity for selection.
https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1462816243245719558?t=9OCuB...
How so? Load means number of virus particles. Number of virus particles increases with the number of replication cycles. The probability of mutation increases with the number of replications. So, same number of replication cycles, (roughly) same chance of mutation.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2786040
The science around viral dynamics re: viral loads is much more uncertain than this - so I am not saying it is definite that the viral loads are less, only that there is both a mechanism and some evidence to suggest it is either less or quicker to go down (but the evidence here is mixed and it likely wears off).
But nonetheless, the science on transmissibility - even with breakthrough, is more certain.
Here[0]'s a study from Nov 19th, saying that:
No significant differences were detected in duration of RT-PCR positivity among fully vaccinated participants (median: 13 days) versus those not fully vaccinated (median: 13 days; p=0.50), or in duration of culture positivity (medians: 5 days and 5 days; p=0.29).
[0] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.12.21265796v...
Please provide some citations to back up your claims.
A few citations on why the evidence leans towards reducing the spread being more effective at reducing variant selection: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1462816243245719558?t=9OCuB... Here is a citation regarding viral load. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01575-4
It's not just the matter of shipping out vaccines to the developing world.
...and also don't need it (boosters for healthy, young people). The WHO has repeatedly begged the western world to stop prioritizing boosters for healthy people, but the west continues to do this, instead of getting shots to the rest of the world:
https://archive.md/BnEtn#a-scandal-who-says-the-rate-of-boos...
This all seems to be a tragic attempt by politicians to appease their terrified base, coupled with incompetent scientists who continue to pursue eradication as a goal.
I do think the politicians are getting terrified. They have been incompetent since at least the 90's. Until now, first world circumstances were good enough that nobody cared much.
Corona changed that. There is a need for coordination on a massive scale, and they simply aren't up to it. You can't blather your way out of Covid. People are looking at them, and it's almost impossible to notice they aren't good for just about anything.
Agreed about the politicians being terrified, but I tend to be more sanguine: this is a modern re-telling of Canute and the tide, but the leaders aren't intelligent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_tide
The people are demanding that the tides be pushed back, and the leaders are doing the bidding of the people (and CNN is on 24/7, with Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon telling people that the tides are coming to get them and their children.)
The original sin here was giving them the power to take away our fundamental rights in the first place. The rest was sadly predictable.
No, not all elderly people -- I was careful to put "healthy" in there, and I meant it. Honestly, I probably should have added "not obese" as well. There is not enough risk stratification happening in discussions of this illness.
But sure, at a high level, if we want to put third doses in the arms of people over 65, I think that's more evidence-based than the current recommendations.
Cases have been surging for at least a month in 70-95% vaccinated countries. It is absolutely clear at this point that these vaccines will not eradicate covid. This madness over vaccines needs to end.
The 1918 flu pandemic ended without a vaccine. Covid will pass as well. In many parts of the US life is effectively back to normal - and if ICUs are still out of capacity after two years of this pandemic then clearly there's a different, more readily solvable problem. Covid is not going anywhere but the hysteria is not justified - people are dramatically overestimating the risks.
In short, it's never been about saving the population in general, although that is a desirable side effect. The entire lock down and vaccination push has been about preserving the healthcare system. Doctors and nurses take many years to make, it's not exactly a quick fix.
...or get fired because of vaccine mandates. Let's not forget about that, because it really does put the lie to the underlying concern here. Are folks worried about "health system collapse", or are they just indiscriminately terrified?
If you're truly worried about the former, then it probably doesn't make a ton of sense to place a vaccination mandate on a group of people who largely got infected and recovered early in the pandemic -- at least offer recognition of natural immunity for health care workers!
I don't see coronavirus going anywhere.
While it is probably an under-count, it appears that Covid has killed at least 5 million.
Public health measures and vaccines have prevented a rather spectacular number of deaths as we have worked to find a way to coexist with this virus.
It seems likely that with a sufficient number of infections and waves, yes, humans would eventually force Covid to evolve in the direction of other more-benign viruses. The question at hand is really: how many waves and variants are we willing to tolerate to get there (and how much human suffering is acceptable?)?
We have tools and tactics that can help to speed the end of the pandemic and decrease the number of people who die. We should use them well.
> The 1918 flu pandemic ended without a vaccine. Covid will pass as well.
You're begging the question here. As best as we can tell, variants tend to come up when individual people mount a marginally effective immune response to the virus -- just enough to keep it in check but not enough to eradicate it. Effectively, they become a walking "gain of function" experiment.
Vaccines help at the outset by strengthening the immune response. They also help on a statistical basis by simply reducing the background rate of covid in a society. Given the development of new mutations with vaccine availability, we'd be likely to see as many or more mutations without widespread vaccination. If "covid will pass" without vaccination, then it will pass faster with, and the reverse implication is not necessarily true.
Remember, while the media often calls variants of concerns "vaccine escapes," the real effect is immune escape. If a new variant is more likely than average to cause a breakthrough case in a vaccinated person, it's also more likely than average to cause a reinfection in a recovered person.
If you want to be optimistic, then you can still hold out hope that new, more infectious variants may be less severe. The "human gain of function experiment" process for creating variants would select for both infectivity and non-severity. However, I do not have any data on the relative severity of B.1.1.529, and summer/early fall reporting on Delta suggested that it tended to cause somewhat more severe illness than Covid Classic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemic
There hasn't been limited international travel for a long time.
You can't just spawn medical personnel, especially in the conditions that are prevalent due to Covid cases ( lots of work, burnout, etc.). It literally takes years to educate medical personnel, you can't just YOLO it.
Also I don’t think anybody has said vaccines are going to eradicate covid, it is just a matter of saving peoples lives from completely preventable suffering and death.
If the global Covid #s are accurate - the majority of the Covid infections happening are in the developed world.
It'd be great if we could stop the spread in the developing world - but we need to stop it in the developed world, too - or else mutations are still bound to happen.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/exclusive-south-africa-...
We could have 100% worldwide vaccination including animal reservoirs and still get mutations.
There is no easy out here unless we develop sterilizing immunity. Life is just a bit more dangerous now and that's that.
Not saying the factors you brought up aren’t important. They are, but it’s not so simple.
If the scenario is that they'd still have their mRNA IP if they had decided not to make a vaccine, that is not the incentive structure we want to setup.
It's also not where the constraint lies.
Further, the world should be reacting to Covid at the global level. So far it’s like we’re not even addressing the beast on the turf it’s attacking us. And the price to do so, say 70 billion USD at a cost of 10$/dose (which it probably isn’t), is nothing compared to the reacting we’re seeing here today and will continue to see.
BTW, with some of the newly designed vaccines, if the virus mutates, the vaccine can be rapidly changed to respond to that (because it's sequence based). That changes things a lot.
I’m not saying that vaccine availability isn’t a problem anywhere in the emerging world but it’s not the only issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...
But if I donate 10 billion to promote child education does not make me an expert on it.
I am however, aware of some his efforts to restrict global access to vaccines something that will definitely be shown to be a mistake as new Covid mutations emerge outside of the rich "triple vaccinated world"
"How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines" https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-gl...
I think it takes some exceptionally motivated reasoning to believe that Mr. Gates is doing this because he only wants money.
"The wise person reduces the importance of governments And simplifies the modes of living, So that people use fewer tools and wares And treasure simplicity in their lives, So that, though there are vehicles, People do not take them. And, though there are weapons, People do not carry them. And, though there are records, Tying knots will serve the record-keeping purpose. Thus, the highest political achievement is one In which people savor their food, Like the beauty of their clothes, Appreciate their safe and peaceful homes, Enjoy their social customs; And in which roosters and dogs Can be heard between countries; But people, all their lives, Have no need to go across the borders." - Translated by Liu Qixuan, Chapter 80 of the Tao Te Ching by Laozi
[1] relative to bubonic plague, smallpox, polio, etc.
Meanwhile, our schools remain fully packed, with no additional resources for air quality, and the government have even told schools not to inform parents of COVID cases in classrooms.
I can't help but wonder if all this cack-handedness is in relation to the contracts Pfizer "negotiated" with governments - https://www.citizen.org/article/pfizers-power/
PS Bill Gates is still responsible for an almost incalculable amount of harm, because of his actions against free and libre software and small businesses.
Free and libre software was always doomed because people who are worth their weight in gold due to their programming abilities want a nice mansion in Naples, FL with a nice dock and a 40 footer boat , not just a tap on their shoulders for a job well done.
.. Then why did Bill have to try so incredibly hard to fuck them up?
This will only be solved or contained once we vax the developing world, so that we curb and slow down the emergence of variants.
Problem is that nobody in the developed world wants to be found with their briefs down and no vaccine availibility so the West is stockpiling jabs for people who essentially don't want it.
The west has been stuck around 67-70% for months now, with no tangible progress.
Those jabs, are the "use it or lose it" kind, if a vaccine resistant variant emerges in the 3rd world, all those stockpiles won't do any good, at that point for nobody.