While many African countries need more vaccines, South Africa was in the process of throttling shipments because less and less people were getting vaccinated.
So the other big challenge is raising acceptance of the vaccines and fighting denialism.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/di...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/opinion/31washington.html
We have, in the wealthy west, millions of vaccine-hesistant and vaccine-denialist people.
I'm not just talking about poor or uneducated people, either.
I personally know wealthy, educated, analytical people who have bought into the fearmongering and propaganda. I was shocked to find how deeply skeptical they were. I was even more shocked to be linked to propaganda with hard-to-miss flaws, like the fact that the promoter is not talking on behalf of the AMA, but on behalf of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physic... ... and I'm not even in America.
I also know people who got a dose of vaccine, read propaganda, became skeptical and delayed their second dose for a long time.
It's not just the poor, the ignorant, or people we've betrayed. It's bigger than that. I don't think anyone fully understands it yet.
Watching the people around me has stirred in me many new questions.
Same, including medical professionals who fit this description.
It's clearly an emotional and tribal issue at this point. The animating factor of nearly all of this denialism is a narrative of distrust and outright animus for the "establishment" and the organizations that represent it.
The problem here is as that "The Science" is being claimed as a source of authority with the same blind reverence that the church used to claim God or "The Bible" rather then being presented in all it's messy and inconclusive glory.
I'm going to place a few cases here, but you're going to have to accept that there is a cherry-picking-esque effect here, there isn't really solid data on this, unfortunately, only surveys and general opinion. A decent chunk of my social circle are academics in the state though anecdotal as that is. I'm also going to try to contrast the clash of opinion on both sides.
>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/health/jama-bauchner-race...
Dr Livingstone claims that medicine is not structurally racist, gets placed on administrative leave by journal.
While the endemicity of structural racism is generally accepted on the left, it's very much not so on the right, and in a sizable chunk of the center.
>https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2021/03/16/u...
Professor Kindsvatter made a video about how he felt that the way "whiteness" was applied to him like "some kind of disease" was dehumanizing. This gets him an immediate attempt to get him to step down.
The concept of "whiteness" as a clear negative is pretty common in left and progressive aligned media. See [1], and imagine the fireball would be if "white" was replaced with "black". This definition of "whiteness" is certainly not the mainstay outside of said circles.
>https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/georgetown-law-profes...
“I hate to say this. I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks, happens almost every semester." This results in David Batson's resignation and the firing of his colleague.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/magazine/classics-greece-...
I love the way you prove my point by immediately going with a barely more civil version of "You're retarded". For the record, I'm both Vaccinated and, in a previous life, was a biomedical researcher, critically evaluating scientific literature was literally my job. I'm mostly on your side as far as policy goes, but Jesus Christ, with friends like you, who needs enemies.
I ask anyone here, if someone were to go to you, talk down to you and continuously declare their contempt for you and your kind. Then suddenly flip around and say that they mean the best for you and X policy is for your own good. What would your initial reaction be, assuming you have no idea about the ground truth.
So go on, insult them, demonize them and continue your tribal war. Then complain to your own tribe why the enemy tribe doesn't take your perfectly good advice at face value.
You're more a victim of tribal thinking than you think. You talk almost purely in terms of "sides" and profess to be on my "side" because you agree with me on policy. So, you are surprised when I call out your poorly constructed argument, as if I should have just gone along. That's tribal thinking.
OTOH, you can agree with me on 99 out of 100 issues, but if your position on that one issue makes no sense to me then I'll tell you exactly that. That's not tribal thinking.
You don't even have a damn argument here. You've lobbed personal attack after personal attack without any backing. I'm going to quote paraphrase the zen of python here on this. Be explict. Tell me exactly which part of my argument you're dismantling, rather than yelling "YOUR ARGUMENT SUCKS" and declaring victory.
>You talk almost purely in terms of "sides"
Of course I do. That's how American political lines on this are drawn. Deny the existence of this all you want, but your covid debate is almost perfectly modeled by tribal politics.
So, give your counterargument to this point, not some spiel about how I'm a bad person, or some unsupported claim about how my argument is bad. Give a proper, good faith rebuttal
- Most people function with heuristic trust evaluation. That is to say, they gauge trustworthiness by some measure of the source.
- Generally, people who detest you are not going to give you advice that is in your best interest.
- Left aligned spaces are often, if not generally, against, if not outright hostile to any right-aligned individuals. You don't really need to look very hard for this, reddit front page popular posts will give you a fantastic slice
- Given that lefty spaces are so open with their disdain of the right, it is expected that right-aligned individuals do not trust left-aligned authorities.
Despite what a good chunk of the internet seems to believe, screaming at them about how they're horrible people and deserve to die is really really unlikely to change their mind. It is however a fantastic way of signaling to your the ingroup though.
Obviously, there's a lot of hostility just beneath the surface. Unfortunately, you seem to have bought into exactly the right-wing persecution narrative I mentioned, which is designed to produce the emotional effect you're exhibiting here.
>reddit front page popular posts will give you a fantastic slice
To start detoxing, maybe stop taking Reddit comments as organic and consider the well-known manipulation of online spaces, meant to reinforce bad narratives.
I mean, you offering Reddit comments as proof of anything reveals just how susceptible you are to manipulation. It's bad. Really bad. Your reality is skewed.
>Tell me exactly which part of my argument you're dismantling
Thing is, I told you exactly what's wrong with your argument. Go back and read if you're really interested. I won't enter the infinite loop of re-explaining because every additional comment you make just piles on more bad logic--this, while your anger visibly increases. No coincidence there.
In general, you are regurgitating virtually every talking point you've been programmed to repeat, and even using the language of your programmers ("lefty", "signalling").
It's becoming a case study on exactly how the right has been manipulated, and especially how emotional and tribal vectors are used to circumvent intelligence and critical thinking; which is, of course, my assertion that started this subthread.
So, while I appreciate you offering yourself as a working demonstration of my point, I'm afraid I have no interest in continuing to participate in your demonstration. Fixing the damage here is well-above my pay grade, and I have no delusion otherwise.
Good luck.
> mean, you offering Reddit comments as proof of anything reveals just how susceptible you are to manipulation. It's bad. Really bad. Your reality is skewed.
For all the ills of social media, they're very much a reflection of their readers. It's easy to say bots bots bots, but I'd bet that the vast majority of those are very much real people. If you think reddit and twitter aren't major players in the public zeitgeist, I don't know what to say. The same applies to facebook.
It's also easy to say "I rebutted your argument" without actually doing so. That you didn't do so, despite all attempts to make it convenient (point by point logical chain), instead resorting to the standard non-answers and personal attacks.
If your best response to this is effectively "no u brainwashed", that says more about you than it does about me.
> The first Marek's disease vaccine was introduced in 1970. The disease would cause mild paralysis, with the only identifiable lesions being in neural tissue. Mortality of chickens infected with Marek's disease was quite low. Current strains of Marek virus, decades after the first vaccine was introduced, cause lymphoma formation throughout the chicken's body and mortality rates have reached 100% in unvaccinated chickens. The Marek's disease vaccine is a "leaky vaccine", which means that only the symptoms of the disease are prevented.
However, that's also a long process that involves many people, as most modern scientific endeavors are. He might have played a role, but he certainly didn't single-handedly invent the field.
Make no mistake, they don't care about you or right/left wing. It might be right wing this time around, but only because they are still looking for a message that will appeal to the left wing as strongly.
The biggest spreaders seem to have a supplement store. Follow the money often works very well.
It might have tighter correlations with economic and education status, but that’s not all of it.
Whatever skill allows some to see the signal through the noise while others descend down rabbit holes that lead to delusion is hard to teach.
The best community I’ve found that works towards it is the less wrong rationality community, but none of us are immune from cognitive bias or motivated reasoning. It’s all about recognizing it and trying to correct for it in order to struggle closer to the truth.
Even so, I worry most people continually exposed to false ideas will eventually get infected by them - even if you have really good tools, it’s hard.
A looooot of voices.
https://thevaultproject.org/ron-johnson-holds-expert-panel-o...
Have you ever considered they might have a point? More and more data is coming out, like https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circ.144.suppl_1.107..., in the highest-impact cardiology journal, showing that the mRNA vaccines are not particularly "safe" by any reasonable interpretation of the word.
A professional cardiologist with decades of experience who now runs his own cardiology practice. Do you feel you're more qualified to assess his qualifications than the editors of Circulation just because you read a wikipedia article?
>psudoscience plant-based debunked theories
He has published papers demonstrating health improvements in patients after treatment, which is more than can be said of most supplements. The absence of large RCTs for something does not mean it's been "debunked".
> If there's something to this wait for a real research group to come out and say it - if there's a chance of world-changing science that will happen (would have already happened).
You understand doctors have been fired for questioning the safety of coronavirus vaccines? You understand that publically-funded research groups risk having their funding withdrawn if they question the safety of the coronavirus vaccine?
Also, and this is something I'm not clear on, but is this just an abstract? It doesn't seem like there's an associated paper or any data beyond what's mentioned there.
There's a few other issues, too; like, for example, they don't compare mRNA vaccine recipients to people who have recovered from COVID-19 (one would expect that a test that measures inflammation would see increased inflammation in both populations); or that, frankly, the PULS test the publishing doctor developed doesn't seem to explain how it turns a set of arbitrary biological markers into a score that correlates to risk of heart issues.
I would, at best, say that this abstract could be used to establish a hypothesis for a future study. On its own, it tells me basically nothing.
It's from a report presented at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions 2021; https://www.thecardiologyadvisor.com/home/topics/acs/acute-c... . Presumably the actual paper is upcoming.
>"...there is no data in the abstract regarding myocardial T-cell infiltration, there are no statistical analyses for significance provided, and the author is not clear that only anecdotal data was used."
Presumably deeper analysis will be presented in the actual paper. The author claims the data is from 566 people at a preventative cardiology practice, so unless the PULS measurements have an incredibly high degree of variance, it'd be quite unlikely to see such a large increase in the underlying factors measured purely by chance when there are 500+ samples.
>they don't compare mRNA vaccine recipients to people who have recovered from COVID-19
This would be useful for comparing the relative safety of the mRNA vaccines vs getting covid. Such comparison is however not necessary to assess the safety of mRNA vaccines; an mRNA vaccine does not become safe just because covid is more dangerous. The absolute, not relative, risk is important to know as even if the risk of covid is greater, the chance of getting covid is not 100%. And with regular boosters, one might be exposed to the risk of the mRNA vaccine more often than one is exposed to the risk of covid.
> the PULS test the publishing doctor developed doesn't seem to explain how it turns a set of arbitrary biological markers into a score that correlates to risk of heart issues
https://pulstest.com/articles/analytical-performance the PULS test "measures the most clinically-significant protein biomarkers that measure the body's immune system response to arterial injury". There's peer-reviewed research demonstrating its effectiveness: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23530883/.
"The original studies for the PULS Cardiac Test were initiated at Stanford University and Kaiser Permanente. Researchers analyzed gene expression profiles in the lesions of mouse models of ACS (mice do not form hard plaque) . Over 250 candidate proteins were identified in mice lesions and many of them were shown to be conserved in humans by analysis of soft lesions during CABG. The number of biomarker candidates was narrowed from 50 to 9 pathways during additional studies. Various permutations of these biomarkers with existing biomarkers like LP-PLA2 and hsCRP, and global risk factors were tested by 3 software systems (Akaike, Bayesian, and Drop-inDeviance) to predict a 5 year risk of ACS. This process resulted in all three systems identifying the same 9 biomarkers and 4 global risk factors (age, sex, diabetic status, and family history). These biomarkers and global risk factors were then incorporated into a benchmark algorithm format with performance superior to gold standard measures of risk such as Framingham, Reynolds, etc. The resulting algorithm yielded a clinical net reclassification index of 43% (this index penalizes an algorithm for falsely up-classifying and down-classifying patients; values above 10% when compared to Framingham are considered good). The algorithm (PULS) was then independently validated by the NIH NHLBI group in MESA which confirmed the findings. These clinical trials were all longitudinal outcome-based studies."
mRNA vaccines have been administered to millions of people around the world. A sizable percentage had the first shot six months ago or longer.
The effects the author is warning against also occur supposedly with high probability and across age groups and sex. (He makes no mentions about pre-existing conditions, which would probably be important: usually, you visit a cardiologist for a reason)
If there was actually an increased risk of e.g. ACS, shouldn't we have seen a significant increase in actual ACS cases among vaccinated by now? Wouldn't this have been detected during the clinical trials?
Sadly I can't dig too much into that paper because the page is being really buggy.
But having had three shots now and no symptoms I've stopped really caring much to hear any fear mongering. I'm a lot more concerned by new variants.
The side effects of the vaccines, while generally not that severe, are very real. Discounting them just because you were lucky isn't the best way to go about it imo.
I'm not looking forward to the mandatory booster.
But I'll add one thing, it's not only ignorance, it's straight up spite and sadism from the anti-vax crowd
Because they will take any BS and try to run it as far as they can with it. Including a 2001 paper like the one it was posted yesterday
Though I agree that recommendation to wait is not great.
Ironically, if only they were lucky enough to not get infected meanwhile and managed to eventually change their mind, that may actually turn out for the better since additional vaccine doses seem to produce stronger antibody response when delayed.
None of them argued the vaccines they're receiving are an experimental vaccines, or that the vaccines are a trick. They seem to mostly seem to have concerns about the actual vaccines similar to western anti-vaxxers.
You mean the western anti-vaxxers who say it is an experimental vaccine tricking the world into steralizing itself?
America's inability to curb its own propaganda machines and its capitalism uber alles rhetoric and group-think boomerangs right back. This pandemic has certainly shaken a lot of nuts out of the rug, but where did those nuts came from ?
I really am tried to seeing capitalism blamed on all the worlds problem when it has been capitalism more than anything else that has brought both peace and prosperity to the world
I don't know if you can blame FDA's risk adverse views on capitalism.
They were released earlier, though I got the impression they were released really without very much phase 2/3 testing at all. If you think the anti-vax folks are having a field day with the current western vaccines being given special accelerated roll-out...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01813-2
Not being approved could very well be a political move on Europe's part - they have plenty of motives not to approve it, and equally they have plenty of reasons not to trust Russia's claims. In my country it was a running joke that if it's ever available here, the viles would be laced with novichok.
The paper is somewhat questionable though as it shows a 100% effectiveness against severe infection.
Most likely it is a similar effectiveness to other adenovirus based vaccines, which is less than mRNA vaccines, but still better than no vaccine. It has been reported that some countries are paying close to $20 per dose, so it's not any cheaper than mRNA vaccines.
Moderna and Pfizer both had their vaccines ready almost as soon as Chinese scientists unveiled the genetic sequence.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/03/how-moderna-made-its-mrna-co...
Cuba, which is as far away from capitalism as you can get these days, has created five different vaccines. And in any case it wasn't capitalism that created the popular vaccines... the mRNA vaccines build up on decades of public-funded research, the Oxford/AZ vaccine was funded by the university endowment IIRC.
According to Wikipedia, that vaccine was developed with Venture Capital money from Oxford Sciences Innovation, Google Ventures, and Sequoia Capital, among others. However even if it was "public funding", that public funding is only possible due to the tax base created by the capital system the governments of the world tax to get their funding.
As to Cuba, I believe only 2 has passed Phase II Trials, and none are approved for international use by the World Health Organization. Time will tell if they are effective as they claim.
https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1353330538292121602?lan...
It never fails to surprise me how little thinking technolibertarians do outside of their professional domains. I so wish we trained more generalists capable of recognising at a glance how ludicrous an argument like that is. People who's only qualification is that they're good with computers should really just stop thinking their opinions are useful on topics outside of their domains of expertise.
The current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience persistent infections. Vaccines aren't very effective for such patients.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...
I completely agree that we should donate vaccines to low income countries. The US federal government has donated 264M doses so far with more on the way.
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
With Omikron herd immunity is impossible. 100% vaccinated population wouldn't get us there.
But, as the linked page says:
> Transmissibility: It is not yet clear whether Omicron is more transmissible
We do not know enough about Omicron for you to be able to make a statement like that. Do you have a source that has a better understanding than the WHO?
In addition, even if there are covid variants that our current vaccines are not effective enough with a 100% vaccinated population to cause herd immunity, that doesn't mean it's impossible, just that we need better vaccines. There are some viruses that mutate so quickly that it's unlikely for us to ever have full herd immunity (i.e. the flu, though even for the flu, if we had good enough vaccines and coverage, it might cease to exist), but I don't see you making a compelling argument about that.
But lots of preliminary data suggests it will be. That's why Omicron was designated a variant of concern. I think this guy has made a pretty compelling case. https://twitter.com/DrEricDing
What do you think the chances are that Omicron is more than 20% more transmissible among the 1) infected : 85% 2) vaccinated : 80% 3) unvaccinated/uninfected : 75%
If the Delta and other contagious variants are spreading more in communities with lower vaccine adoption, then I think it would stand to reason that immunocompromised people would be safer in communities with higher vaccine adoption.
> Several scientists said they suspected that the variant had been spreading undetected in countries with lackluster sequencing efforts before it surfaced in Botswana and South Africa, giving it more time to scatter globally. Nevertheless, European nations did not find the variant until after South Africa alerted them to it, demonstrating the gaps in their own surveillance efforts. [0]
More on this can also be found here [1].
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/africa/coronavirus-...
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graemecodrington_interesting-...
Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/new-concernin...
Globally speaking, most of the HIV positives live in sub-saharan Africa, with South Africa having 17.30% of adults carrying HIV, and countries around it in similar ballpark. This points to the variant being evolved in South Africa or its neighbors
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_...
"peak viral load did not differ by vaccination status or variant type"[1]
[1]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
I guess those people would be more likely to be exposed at all in countries with less vaccination though.
> At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days
> Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.
> There also appears to be no significant signaling of COVID-19 cases decreasing with higher percentages of population fully vaccinated
Of course that could be different for third world countries.
Looking at one data point here. Israel. The data point pretty much represents the peak of the wave caused by the Delta variant. The story in Israel goes that the vaccines worked so well against the previous variants that the entire country went back to normal. But with 60% of the population vaccinated and Delta the effective R number is easily over 1 when there's no other measures in place. Once Israel introduced some new measures (and booster shots), most of the measures are around limits to not-vaccinated people btw, their case rate went down by a factor of 20!
So what does this tell us about vaccines, covid, and this "study"?
I was responding to a user who claimed that the more covid goes around, the more it mutates, and as far as I understand it's what viruses do and therefore is a correct statement.
I then linked this study and cautiously pointed out that it is "disputed", which may still be the wrong term in that case or I was erroneously giving too much credit to the paper itself.
You then point out that the study highlights the Delta variant peak when dealing with the Israel data, and I could agree on that.
What the study is trying to highlight, as far as I can tell, is not to undervalue *vaccination which has strong evidence ww to greatly lower hospitalisation and death risk from covid infection*, but it instead tries to tell that even in vastly vaccinated communities there are a lot of cases and they can't be distinguished from those in communities with lower vaccination rate.
So my argument was: if cases are rising in largely vaccinated communities, the virus will inevitably mutate in those communities too and it is not a pattern only related to third world countries with low vaccination rates.
At any rate, the methodology of the paper is just way off. If you truly wanted to understand the correlation between vaccination and infection rates you need to try to control for other factors. That is just experiment design 101. If you control for nothing while there are other significant factors then you get nothing. If the paper is saying "there can be high covid rates with 60%-70% vaccine coverage and the delta variants" then sure, but also duh.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity...
They are hovering around R=1 with very minimal restrictions and still a significant amount of people that won't take the vaccine ("citing the fact that a third of the population remains unprotected. This refers to 670,000 unvaccinated Israelis, more than a million people who haven’t received the booster, and children under 12"). They're making up for the vaccine coverage to some extent by:
1. Lots of people got sick. Israel has a young population and a very strong healthcare system so they were able to manage a very high daily case rate per capita.
2. Booster shots.
3. And now, vaccinating children.
I don't think anyone knows yet exactly what sort of waning effect you have after the third booster. It's also hard to say what portion of the change is behavioral changes vs. the vaccine's wane.
Now the new variant completely changes the calculus yet again.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/693A0D3B374ACED0103ADDEA0D9...
The PubPeer browser extension is worthwhile: https://pubpeer.com/static/extensions
What you do is that you compare within the same country where conditions are similar. It’s the same everywhere, virus spread more and leads to more deaths and hospital cases among the unvaccinated.
Also [1] doesn't mention what countries the diplomats were coming from my guess would be an African country.
Even if it were possible and achievable to vaccinate all humans, we'd still have a problem because COVID has spread to other mammal species. There's no reasonable plan that I know of to vaccinate animals in the wild.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/10/1054224...
> We’re all in this together. When COVID spreads in Africa and makes a new strain, it may as well be on your own doorstep. The world needs to step up and distribute vaccines to every corner of the globe, for FREE, or we’ll never get out of this.
But you're 100% right about this. I don't want what I said about your last sentence to diminish the importance of wealthy nations sharing the vaccine with other countries. We're all in this together. The idea that a country can vaccinate only their own citizens and then consider this problem solved is completely false.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/covid-19-vaccine-delive...
"zero covid" is still the right strategy for a disease for which the population is unvaccinated; even if it doesn't achieve full elimination.
So did countries that didn't.
Compare Australia vs UK.
They avoided COVID delta for months (6+) despite locking all incoming arrivals in shared air hotel quarantine systems and workers coming into the quarantine zone day in and day out (i.e. not taking quarantine seriously quarantine). Some Australian states who had better border control policies were able to keep COVID out indefinitely (e.g. WA, QLD, TAS, SA, etc).
Knowing some people who live in WA, despite overseas travel restrictions, life is pretty much pre-2019. Clubs are open, schools are running, no masks, nothing. They are thankful for zero COVID policies - the biggest one being border control and for some areas dedicated, but well resourced, quarantine facilities (NT). Only recently did NT get cases, and it didn't come internationally, but from the NSW outbreak. It's a concern since the indigenous population there typically have less health facilities.
Of course it is much easier to do this in Australia than the US or UK for a variety of reasons. Europe definitely can't do this IMO - land borders aren't strong enough.
Can you define this term for me please? What exactly is a preventable death during a global pandemic and where is the data that measures it?
- pseudo-science is not gonna help.
- we could be in a better place if we had the capacity to act as a group.
Where I live this was managed perhaps better than other places, not as well as it could have been.
I generally agree that we should depart from a covid zero strategy, but not because the vaccines aren’t effective; rather, because too many people are making decisions based on FUD and there doesn’t seem like much that can be done about that in the sort of timeframe during which a “covid-zero” strategy might work.
Treshold of herd immunity depends on transmitability. For delta variant, if r=6 estimates are true, you would need 100% of population vaccinated in last 5 months (because after that infection immunity drops too low).
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
The goal in western countries is to get to the "endemic phase" of the infection - i.e. "live with the virus". That's all well and good, unfortunately this requires the disease to become significantly less deadly than it still is. We're not there yet.
> Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern acknowledged an end to the elimination strategy seven weeks into a lockdown that has failed to halt an outbreak of the Delta variant, announcing that restrictions would be gradually lifted in Auckland, the country’s largest city.
> “We’re transitioning from our current strategy into a new way of doing things,” Ms. Ardern told reporters. “With Delta, the return to zero is incredibly difficult, and our restrictions alone are not enough to achieve that quickly. In fact, for this outbreak, it’s clear that long periods of heavy restrictions has [sic] not got us to zero cases.”
> “What we have called a long tail, feels more like a tentacle that has been incredibly hard to shake.”
If NZ would have kept their borders locked this would have not happened. They will come to regret that decision.
ie. South Australia has the ocean borders of Australia and the psychological borders of unpopularity. The combination of which has proven incredibly effective.
That said, the US has a lot of people crossing its land borders—even if it completely hardened its ports, outlawed border crossings, and was much better at reducing internal contagion, it would still have to deal with thousands of people who cross illegally and who aren’t going to quarantine for two weeks or abide by any kind of contact tracing programs.
Are we really trusting China's data? They still have less than 100k cases reported. That makes zero sense from what we've seen from other countries. How would they have tracked down every case after it ran rampant for 3 months in a major city?
But I can say this: (a) there really is a pervasive nationwide effort to track and trace, which affects everybody and everything, and (b) the minor outbreaks that do happen get shard pretty faithfully on social media -- even if there is also censorship, it seems it's not as fast as the grassroots spread of news.
For people outside of China, the figures would seem really suspect and unbelievable but if you are/was in China then you will understand why infection rates have been low vs countries outside of East/SE Asia.
Reason one: face masks.
People in Shanghai were wearing them from mid Jan 2020 indoors and outdoors. From about mid May 2020 onwards, less people were wearing them outdoors. When I left in Oct 2020, face masks were still required in public venues like museums and on public transport. From seeing photos that my Chinese friends have sent to me recently, face masks are still required on public transport and everybody wears one. Yes, everybody.
This is in contrast to the London Underground (London is my hometown) where people don't bother even though it is required (as a Condition of Carriage). Now you know why the UK has stupidly high infection rates.. people here don't care about their fellow citizens.
Reason two: health QR code thing on Alipay/WeChat (tracking movements).
If you wanted to get into certain places like museums, you had to show a green QR code which meant you was not in a high risk area of the country with outbreaks. So if you was in say another city like Guangzhou that had an outbreak within the last 14 days, then your QR code would be red and they would refuse you entry. In essence, you were tracked by Alipay or WeChat. I have not asked my Chinese friends if health QR codes are still required.
Reason three: limiting movement of people via lockdowns, etc.
I think China got lucky in that the outbreak during Jan 2020 coincided with Chinese New Year so the majority of migrant workers in cities (外地人) were in their hometowns or villages. In other words, cities like Shanghai were virtually empty. People outside of Shanghai returned around the second half of Feb 2020 (after the Chinese New Year holiday break was extended). This extension limited movement of people at the time and thus the potential spread of the virus.
I was living on campus at a Shanghai university. They locked down the campus from the beginning of March 2020 where you could not leave the campus unless it was an emergency. Only university staff could enter and leave freely. TBH, this was too draconian because it was 'safe' from May 2020 but entry to campus was still restricted! As a result, I found ways to sneak out lol. All universities in Shanghai had lockdowns in case you was wondering.
They also locked down residential estates (小区) during the first few months of 2020. Only residents could enter and all deliveries (parcels, food etc) were left at the front gate for you to collect. They were manned with security guards to check if you lived there.
There have been movement restrictions for people in certain industries, e.g. education. Earlier on this year one of my Chinese friends that works at an international school told me she was not allowed to leave Shanghai when taking annual leave.
Reason four: keeping tabs on who buys medicines for flu or colds
You heard that right. One of the most bizarre things ever. When I wanted to buy medicine for the common cold in a pharmacy, they asked me the reasons for purchase and I had to show my original passport and they entered my details into the computer. This was not required when I bought cold/flu medicines during Autumn (fall) 2019. This red tape was not limited to foreigners, when I didn't have my original passport on me on one occasion, my Chinese friend kindly used her Chinese ID which was scanned.
Reason five: mass testing for just a few cases of COVID
Google the news stories of mass testing at Shanghai Pudong Airport last year, Shanghai Disneyland recently or the outbreaks during this summer.
Reason six: all those that test positive have to be treated in hospital and their homes are disinfected. People that live nearby have to quarantine in a government specified venue and have their homes disinfected.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-59249485
Reason seven: China's borders are still closed with entry restrictions.
Tourists and international students (except from S. Korea) have not been allowed in since early 2020.
Reason eight: quarantine for anybody entering China really early on
The Chinese friend I mentioned above that teaches at a school had to quarantine for around 14 days when she returned to Shanghai from the UK during Feb 2020. Yes mate, Feb 2020. When did the UK government require 14 day self isolation for people entering the UK? June 2020! Too late mate.
This gives you an idea of how serious China has taken COVID-19 to the point of being draconian at times. China didn't want to take chances and took action early last year unlike countries like the UK that dragged their feet until it was too late.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safrican-doctor-says-pa...
> Initial reported infections were among university students—younger individuals who tend to have more mild disease—but understanding the level of severity of the Omicron variant will take days to several weeks.
"It's a paradox of public health that being too clean can sometimes lead to disease. For centuries, infants were routinely exposed to the poliovirus in their unsanitary living conditions. Polio rarely causes paralysis in infants, partly because of the maternal antibodies still present in their systems. In the 1900s, many countries cleaned up their water and sanitation systems, and houses in more affluent communities were routinely cleaned, reducing exposure to microbes. By the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, new mothers, especially those in the middle class, had no antibodies in their immune systems to pass on to their children. When children were exposed to the poliovirus in later years, they were defenseless against the disease."
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/series/diseases/polio...
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/composition-dosag... [1] https://www.fda.gov/media/75695/download
Also in your second link, in page 8 says
> All children should receive four doses of IPV at ages 2, 4, 6 to 18 months, and 4 to 6 years.
Once everybody has encountered SARS2 at least once, it may become as harmless as the other endemic coronaviruses. That is to say, not entirely harmless, but nothing to lose sleep over.
It will never go away. How we deal with that is up to us.
Covid will stop being a concern only after safe and incredibly efficient antiviral drug is developed, which might take decades.
Antivirals have a very limited window of opportunity. Nothing will make our concerns disappear. At some point, we need to move on.
This is the inconvenient truth that absolutely nobody in the establishment is even remotely willing to even consider and a big part of the debate that is being replaced with an accusation contest.
What do we do when the vaccination program only works as promised by the scientists developing it, and not as hoped for by the politicians ordering it?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-dur...
Not to mention that climate in central Europe effectively stops virus from May to October so it will be way more efficient to vaccinate people in August and September.
I think it is the problem of supply and demand because EU and even more US* are making vaccines way more expensive.
* EU is buying vaccines together to not compete for price between states but the price is probably way higher than African countries can pay. Imagine the whole world teamed up together and vulnerable people would be vaccinated at the same time before young healthy people as it is done now in EU.
Boosters and supply chain issues have rather upended that plan, though.
But I also just don’t want to get sick at all because getting sick sucks.
That’s the same reason I’ve been getting yearly flu shots every year since college. Before COVID I never even really considered the personal risk of long-term side effects or death from flu (although I’m sure there’s some measurable risk) or the fact that flu kills tons of people every year. I just hate getting sick and from the evidence I’ve seen the flu vaccine is very safe and usually fairly effective at preventing the flu. Same goes for the COVID shots. I’d take common cold vaccines if they were similarly safe and effective and readily available.
In certain cases it may be that getting a mild infection does help prevent later more serious infections, but AFAIK those cases are generally getting infected as an infant or child. I’m not aware of evidence showing that current widespread vaccines for adults have this effect of trading mild illness now for more serious illness later.
But it's not universally true, varies for different viruses, and also isn't fully understood whether it's the case for covid. So far seems like a safer and less miserable opinion to get vaccinated rather than get sick with covid.
Your only "sick" because you didn't pro-actively teach your immune system to handle that flu.
This is precisely what vaccines do, without the "falling sick" part first.
This is better said as "they are not produced fast enough". That will lead you directly to the solution, instead of losing time discussing the price.
It's a very similar thing, the price poor countries pay is not enough to justify investing in extra productive capacity. There is a confounding factor that new capacity takes a long time to arrive, but even when that is taken into account, there are just not enough vaccines and there won't be on the near future.
All for greater support of less developed countries in terms of vaccine supplies, but not sure this is the argument for it.
a) eradication to be a possibility (intuitively, it would seem not); or, failing that
b) to lower the possibility of novel mutations emerging to a negligible level (I don’t have the knowledge to answer, so this is a genuine question, but again intuition would suggest not)
if, say, 99% of the population is vaccinated.
I’m asking if that makes sense given the evidence, and commenting that my (lay) intuition says it isn’t.
Besides, you are not even going to vaccinate 100% of any western country, let alone all of them or the entire world.
Milder mutation are what is actually going to make the virus endemic, like it happened to the Spanish flu. Reports from the South African government seem to suggest that this variant is mild, although it's early to say.
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/will-covid-19-evolve-be-mo...
covid has no such issue as it spreads well before it has any severity and for a few days before any symptoms. all the deadly stuff happens a week later once you've been transmitting for many days.
the above link explains this well
> So, unless SARS-CoV-2 becomes so virulent that it causes people to become severely ill and self-isolate before they transmit the virus to other people, there is no pressure on it to become less deadly.
Also, there is solid literature on the fact that vaccines during an epidemic cause stress that induces the virus to mutate. https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org
Stress doesn't cause mutations. Mutations happen because of genetics and whatever mutations increase their suvival end up being the mutations prevelent in society.
What viruses need though are willing hosts who aren't vaccinated who carry the virus, allow it to thrive and mutate and more importantly - those who spread it.
Blaming vaccinations is like blaming immune systems when the real issue is people who carry the disease and allow it to continue to spread.
They have an extensive list of peer reviewed studies from plenty of other scientists:
https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/blog/supportive...
It's unfortunate scientists love to stake a claim on trying to win a huge argument when they can't see the forrest from the trees and they exclude as much evidence as they cherry pick.
We've defeated things before with immunization. No one ran around saying get the whooping caugh because if you get a shot it will mutate...
Says who? Vanden Bossche has been a credentialed expert in vaccines for 20 years. I'll take his opinion over some HN comment.
> No one ran around saying get the whooping caugh because if you get a shot it will mutate
That was never his argument.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-24/s-africa-...
When I hear words like everything, everyone, everywhere to describe any system I get disheartened failure is almost assured. I wouldn't design software like that for example. Whether they are engineering systems, social systems, or in this case viruses. Relying on every part to comply is the opposite of redundancy. The probability of getting everyone to comply in a group as large as this planet all at once, at the same time without lags (e.g. vaccine rollouts), etc is sadly IMO extremely small.
We probably need new approaches, some which may challenge the current status quo. I remember watching a video early in COVID where isolating populations into smaller groups allows quick treatment of each group and the ability to contain the spread (i.e. limiting the R factor). As long as highly available world air travel is around, reducing redundancy and increasing the interconnectness of our populations into a single system the virus will have an advantage IMO.
Apropos of nothing, I was just listening to NPR and they had someone on to talk about how we don’t donate vaccines to third world countries because they are predominantly non-white and how this is “vaccine apartheid” rather than the more likely “rich countries provide for their own citizens before providing for others” sort of thing. Is there any legitimacy to this, or is it just racemongering?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
Its very "on brand" as the kids say now on twitter for NPR to platform a race-baiter though. The west, a product of mostly european people, came up with the vaccine but blah blah blah racism. Come up with your own vaccine then NPR race bait lady.
I think you've forgotten that you're the one arguing that Africa's experience with contagion means they're ahead on the logistical hurdles for distributing this particular vaccine. :) You have yet to explain how that experience is relevant for tackling these cold distribution challenges, especially in light of the countries' extreme levels of poverty and corruption.
I understand the impulse to cheer for third world countries, but we can be realistic about their challenges while also opposing poverty and prejudice.
I'm for your proposal in the general aspect of it, but how do we take it forward as an actual plan?
I still don't think we'll eradicate it, but perhaps with lower levels of community transmission we'll reduce the flare ups of problematic variants?
When some nation donates 1-million doses, there will be a market value for those doses: maybe $20 million for the batch or so.
It's not even black market vs grey market. This is just standard market economies between nations.
Corrupt officials receiving free vaccine shipments could very well do this.
If the country/county/area/suburb next door is poor, and a locality has lots of cases then I'm guessing anyone who can afford it has an incentive to acquire a dose of vaccine early, or a booster dose, by buying out someone in that neighbouring locality.
You need strong local government without corruption to distribute vaccines fairly.
This isn't quite true. All epidemics come to an end eventually, vaccines or no vaccines. There were no vaccines to end the 1918 flu epidemic, but that one too died out just like all the ones before it in a few years' time. At a far greater cost to human life, of course, but we "got out" of it.
> What’s even more remarkable about the 1918 flu, say infectious disease experts, is that it never really went away. After infecting an estimated 500 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919 (a third of the global population), the H1N1 strain that caused the Spanish flu receded into the background and stuck around as the regular seasonal flu.
> But every so often, direct descendants of the 1918 flu combined with bird flu or swine flu to create powerful new pandemic strains, which is exactly what happened in 1957, 1968 and 2009. Those later flu outbreaks, all created in part by the 1918 virus, claimed millions of additional lives, earning the 1918 flu the odious title of “the mother of all pandemics.”
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/news/1918-...
Yeah, but sometimes only after wiping half of all humans.
I understand the negative reaction to any authority figure forcing something, and I react negatively, to the point of using technical workarounds, to Australia's metadata retention rules and other privacy-related political BS.
Living in a functioning society requires the sacrifice of some freedoms for the benefits that a society provides. People that can get the vaccine have a certain responsibility to get vaccinated on behalf of those members of that society that cannot get vaccinated for valid health reasons, or even for the sake of children currently below the vaccination age range. The vaccinated are forming a shield around the more vulnerable members of their society.
Freedom of personal choice versus 'doing your bit' to protect the weak, elderly, and vulnerable. And most of us have family and friends and co-workers and acquaintances that will fall into this vulnerable category that we'd probably rather they stay alive for a little longer.
I just don't hear it presented this way very much. There's a lot of publicity around the actions of the freedom flag-wavers without too much of the other side of that particular coin being explained.
Like the economics of uber-capitalism being an unhealthy extension of capitalism, this is an unhealthy uber-individualism outgrowth of individualism. It's far more prevalent than I thought it would be, probably because we've had it so good for so long - nearly 80 years since WWII ended.
Edited to add two explanatory things:
1. If COVID sticks around, or if there's a new "thing" in one, two, three, decades' time, we'll be getting into that 'vulnerable' category. When that happens, how will you feel about large groups of 'kids' (25 - 45 year olds) protesting getting vaccinated against a disease that may be very mild for them but fatal for you?
2. I personally know someone, of my age, with COVID-long. The symptoms are something like chronic fatigue syndrome. As a result they're essentially a non-productive member of society who used to be a productive member of society.
1. I, personally, would not care about it in the slightest. If the current "response", dictating that I should fixate on this one thing, and, more importantly, strictly controlled and prosecuted if not fixated enough, holds any longer I simply won't be around in 10yrs. My "life score" is satisfying to me as it is, any day of life under lockdown, curfew, mask, vaccine mandates only subtracts from it. So I'm looking to "cut my losses" soon, so to speak.
2. It may also mean that "we" failed to give these "kids" proper upbringing. I, certainly, did fail. When the panic started our son, 16 at the time, one day wanted to casually go to the shops to buy some junk. Suggestion that maybe it is better to minimise the cumulative number of shop visits because of this new unknown virus out there, and get your chips and coke once a week in bulk rather than on whim, was met with "I don't care, I need my fix". Did we get emotional after that. Sure we did. Did we berate or disown him, or even forced him to not go? Not at all. Love is not conditional on absence of inconsiderate behavior. As it stands, my chance of dying within a year at my age is around 1/300. Covid, if caught, about doubles it. No point in losing respect to those respected before over such numbers. We will all die anyway.
3. Our kids were always accurately immunised according to the recommended schedule. Did it ever come to mind that "freeloaders" must be forced to do so by mandates? Quite the opposite, my thinking was always - isn't it a wonderful side-effect of vaccination that people can act according to their conscience. These childhood vaccines are so good now that everyone refusing them must have very good (for them) reasons to do so. I have absolutely no interest in knowing the reasons of their choice, but I was always very pleased that we were able to contribute to their ability to make such choice. (Although my expectation to be afforded the right to define my own "validity", "eligibility", "vulnerability" and "essential" status turned out to be naive. But that's on the society conscience, not mine). No medical procedure, however beneficial on a population level, must be forced upon people. I'm fine with myself dying for this principle. Maybe not quite so for my loving ones, but there is no escape from the fact that everyone is mortal. I'll hold the fort for my kids until they are 14, but after that I cannot do much more - they will have to settle their own scores and live with their conscience. It is far better to live a short but free life than a looong but thoroughly mandated and controlled.
I don't know what to say to this, other than reconsider what other options there are that may allow for further opportunities to feel privileged to be alive; big things, small things, simple things, complex things.
> It may also mean that "we" failed to give these "kids" proper upbringing. I, certainly, did fail
Sounds like you're being too hard on yourself. There are uncountable facets to upbringing, and "proper" is indefinable. I'm happy with how my kids are turning out, but I'm yet to see what the 'jungle of the real world' will bring out of them once they've launched into it on their own. Like that Chinese proverb, "we'll see".[0]
> It is far better to live a short but free life than a looong but thoroughly mandated and controlled.
I'll just say that things are more nuanced than that; those are the two extremes within which a whole spectrum exists.
I don't want to stamp my opinions, borne from my personal life experience, upon your opinions formed from a life experience I am entirely unfamiliar with. Good luck with whatever you choose is the right thing for you and your loved ones.
I agree with lot, especially with this: "things are more nuanced than that". I also understand the need for somewhat restrictive response to health crisis. Unfortunately, the nuance appears to be lost on many "in the power", who seem to be pushing the most restrictive approach just for the sake of being restrictive. They completely ignore the fact that many employed measures concern some people on a much, much different level than, say, some new taxes or road rules would. The division of society that they create now goes much deeper than disagreement on almost any other political issue, and they either incompetent enough to not give it a thought, or just plain evil to be doing it deliberately. I don't see any other explanation. I understand that in politics moderate position is almost impossible to hold, but no one is even pretending.
They all seem to be in a race to impose a mountain of most conspicious, symbolic and hostile measures on top of a handful that make sense, and then pretend that people are rejecting the good part. No, people are just unable and unwilling to fish for an ounce of gold in the barrel of fertilizer that is pushed upon us. No one is willing to acknowledge and discuss the nuance, hence people are forced to assume a radical position and find themselves in a company which they, in the normal times, would avoid.
In short, I don't expect for it all to end well and end soon. The regimes based on premise that 100% of participants are marching in lockstep, even involuntary so, always end in blood, in my opinion. And, as I said, the issues with worldwide "response" to "pandemic" go so very deep, at primal level, so the explosion of violence is inevitable. At the moment I don't see what can compel someone to hang around to witness the destruction.
So vaccinated populations are creating the pressure on the virus to mutate. And un-vaccinated population may get effected (irrespective of which version of virus they encounter at the time)..
my 2 cents.
Those mutations absolutely require an unvaccinated population to thrive but more importantly, a population with a laissez fair attitude that allows the mutation to spread to other humans. If you do everything in your power to cut down the transmission and vaccinate yourself, we could have defeated this thing.
But nope.. and here we are.
The problem in South Africa is vaccine hesitancy, not vaccine availability
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-11-24/exclus...
I guess, we don't have good enough brain washing media compared to a civilized world. And when people are using their own heads, without trusting government, it sometimes results in a wrong common knowledge.
There is a high chance Covid-19 will flow the same path.
That’s not to say that a more deadly variant won’t appear it almost certainly will (or has already) but it is unlikely to become the dominant variant.
Transmission seem to be recuded only for 2 months after vaccination.
On the other hand, it seems like a kind of inverse prisoners' dilemma.
If no one vaccinates, this particular pathway for the evolution of super-viruses is closed (although others remain open). If some people vaccinate, and a super-virus evolves, they're fine and the rest are screwed, classic P.D.
But it deviates where unlike the classic P.D. where things get worse if everyone defects, once everyone vaccinates, it doesn't matter if a super-virus evolves, because everyone is protected.
So while this raises an interesting policy question on whether non-sterilizing vaccines are worth the risk, once people begin "defecting" by getting vaccinated, it seems like a bad move to risk staying unvaccinated yourself.
Unlike most viruses, COVID-19 does not have the same selective pressure to become less deadly.
This isn't guaranteed, there are plenty of viruses that are still cause severe illness despite being around for quite some time. It's entirely possible that the virus mutates to be more lethal[1], as well.
And if mortality does decrease, it could take many human lifetimes before such an equilibrium is reached. In the meantime, the virus can mutate, wreak havoc and kill a lot of people.
It's also important to point out that virus evolution depends on selection pressures, and one of the selection pressures for decreased viral lethality is a severe reduction of host organisms that the virus can replicate in. That is to say that the selection pressure that causes a virus to be less lethal can very well be the eradication of large populations of host organisms.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/14/fac...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/14/fac...
The examples they give in the article are Ebola in 2016, West Nile Virus in 1999, and the Spanish flu in 1918.
I don't really care much for the finger pointing, but for sake of setting the record straight .. aren't most of the omicron mutations in the spike protein? ie it evolved to evade vaccine based immunity
I feel like that would help greatly to this end.
It is like proving one source file but no Make file and no list of open source dependencies.
Viruses can't do gene exchange, so the only factor for developing resistance is the total number of viral particles produced, so even if it's a weak vaccine or half dose of antiviral drug, it would be helpful
A partial dose of antibiotics scenario is exactly what we have done with these vaccines.
This happened because there isn’t enough vaccines in third world countries. They can’t afford them. The moral of the story?
It doesn’t matter if you 100% vaccinate your western country. We’re all in this together. When COVID spreads in Africa and makes a new strain, it may as well be on your own doorstep. The world needs to step up and distribute vaccines to every corner of the globe, for FREE, or we’ll never get out of this.
The only way you’ll stop this thing from mutating into a variant not covered by the vaccine is by eradicating it everywhere, simultaneously.