There's some real irony that the people most likely to spread COVID -- those who are vaccinated and thus don't show symptoms -- are the ones "allowed" to engage in the most risky behaviour like large gatherings at restaurants, bars, theatres, sports arenas. Meanwhile those second-class citizens who are non-vaccinated won't take those risks and will also definitely know if they are sick, hilariously probably behaving the most safely/cautiously, as everyone should. Just as expected, infection rates just skyrocket due to new variants and people thinking "I'm protected" as they act as if there's no pandemic at all. Great.

I think you have that backwards. Asymptomatic infection with likely transmission (plus presyptomatic transmission) was a big characteristic of COVID since day one (and one of the reasons it’s so hard to contain compared to say, Ebola). Research seems to show that vaccinated people have shorter windows of spreading virus, and (at least before omicron variant) were much less likely to have virus in their nose without symptoms.

From a policy perspective, it’s not clear that unvaccinated individuals will stay home with symptoms since some percentage of them seem to think is not real, not a real threat, etc.

Edit: summary article that covers some of this (though keep in mind science is still working through this and each variant changes things) https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/new-data-on-covid-19-trans...

I don't think I have it backwards at all. Non-vaccinated people are not going out and partying (partly because they legally can't, and partly because they probably don't feel like dying). There's very little avenue for them to even catch the virus, let alone spread it, especially because catching it means _probably_ being symptomatic and thus knowing not to be around people.

I mean, "breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals remain uncommon" is simply false?? My friend's entire family of 15 people all got Omicron despite being double-vaccinated and boosted. After they already all had Delta last year as well! That's not "uncommon", that was literally a 100% infection rate, twice, for the family members who gathered.

> Non-vaccinated people are not going out and partying (partly because they legally can't, and partly because they probably don't feel like dying).

Here is a equally unsubstantiated claim: voluntarily unvaccinated people are going about partying and otherwise carrying on because they largely don't believe that COVID is real or has ever been a problem worse than a cold or flu, or don't care either way.

We don't know how differently vaccinated and unvaccinated people are behaving right now. Nobody is collecting that data. The only thing we know is that most of the severe hospitalized cases now are among the unvaccinated, and that the hospitalization/infection rate is significantly lower with Omicron than Delta.

Everyone is just trying to figure out how to keep the health system from being overwhelmed since The infection rate for this variant is so much higher. With the exception of the voluntarily unvaccinated, there is little blame to be laid on anyone in this situation. We are all just trying to do a controlled landing into the endemic stage of this virus.

> Non-vaccinated people are not going out and partying (partly because they legally can't, and partly because they probably don't feel like dying).

Do you live in the US? It’s not illegal in most southern states to go to bars and clubs with COVID, people do it often enough. Places aren’t checking your temperature or vaccination status.

Also, you must have missed the non-vaccinated college parties and then them returning home for break.

> I mean, "breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals remain uncommon" is simply false??

The CDC defines a vaccine breakthrough infection as one in which a nasal swab can detect the SARS-CoV-2 RNA or protein more than 14 days after a person has completed the full recommended doses of an FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine. [1]

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effective...

Everybody, vaccinated or not, was in lockdown in many parts of the world last year. Which meant asymptomatic infections were far less likely to result in transmission.

Now, we have vaccinated people allowed to mingle and do "high risk" activities without being tested, despite the vaccine increasing the likelihood of asymptomatic infection. Unvaccinated people, who are more likely to be symptomatic, and therefore more likely to know if they have covid, cannot do those high risk activities.

So the irony is that the people more likely to be unknown carrier, have more freedoms and can therefore spread the virus more easily.

> Asymptomatic infection with likely transmission (plus presyptomatic transmission) was a big characteristic of COVID since day one

It was a guess from day one (because "novel virus"), that got treated as fact. (From memory) asymptomatic spread before the vaccines was found to be virtually nonexistent near the end of 2020. I don't recall findings about presymptomatic.

This is all crystal clear by now. We know how Covid-19 spreads.

The height of infectiousness is just before or around the start of symptoms. You are infectious maybe a day or so before symptoms start. You aren’t infectious for that many days. This means pre-symptomatic spread is a major factor.

Truly asymptomatic cases also exist but they aren’t that common (and many of those, if examined very closely, turn out to be cases with symptoms, just extremely mild ones). So presymptomatic spread most certainly is a major factor. It’s how this virus can spread so effectively without non-medical interventions and vaccines (which, yeah, also reduce transmission).

That’s basic virus 101 and while we didn’t know a lot about this in mid 2020 we do know a lot about this know. This isn’t even speculative or on shaky ground, this is quite solid science.

It blows my mind that people do not know this.

Studies show unvaxxed people: * are five times more likely to catch covid * significantly more likely to underestimate the risks of Covid * are less likely to wear masks and follow other non-vaccine related best practices

You’ve basically chained a series of specious conclusions together and it definitely seems like those conclusions serve to support a particular political narrative.

All those public health decisions are taken behind closed doors, we are never told the full story. I suspect the point of the vaccine passports is really to protect the unvaccinated.

Totally, but that trust has been long gone in the US.

1/2 the population stopped paying attention to Dr. Fauci after he lied about masks (understandably). Then we were told that that funerals were bad, but outdoor protests were ok. Then it was racist to even consider the virus came from a lab leak. Then Fauci claimed that technically, he didn't fund gain of function research (in the most scripted,PR speak possible). Then we were told that vaccines would allow us to go back to normal. The level of trust lost by major institutions in the US, both medical and media-based is astounding. Biden said he would end the virus, then he said that there is no federal policy to stop the virus. Trump was racist/xenophobic for closing boarders to China, but Biden closed boarders with South Africa and wasn't racist/xenophobic.

This isn't about politics, im double vaxxed and survived omicron. This is about a huge failure across the board, and I'm not sure how you turn it around. We need to change some of the political systems in the US. There needs to be term limits (in congress, supreme court, executive branch). The executive branch needs age limits, with a hard cut-off at like 65. The fact that the choice in 2020 was between septuagenarians is pathetic.

If you spent 1% of your time paying attention to anything called media, the gaslighting is obvious.

> Trump was racist

Trump is racist. He called COVID the kung flu. Closing a "boarder" is a bit different than blaming a demographic.

Biden is not an overt racist, so it's not likely that a border closing will get characterized as racist. It's up for debate whether it was good or bad, however.

Trump was a racist, without a doubt. But so was Biden: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/joe-biden-didn-t-just-co...

What did Fauci lie about regarding masks? There were higher infection rates in other countries but Trump focused on China. That does sound racist given other comments he made.

Biden Blocking SA flights was dumb given SA alerted the world but wasn’t necessarily the source of Omicron.

this isn't a deep fake: https://youtu.be/_2MmX2U2V3c?t=18

Neither is it evidence of anything. The issue is nuanced and this video is 80% pundits and zero percent damning.

Please add the nuance.

He admitted he lied about mask effectiveness to prevent runs on PPE.

A lot of people at all levels are having a huge boost in the power (or influence) they can exert. It's hard to convince them to give it away, especially when they have still a sizable crowd cheering them on.

Vaccines were never expected to stop the pandemic. They were expected to stop people from dying from the pandemic. They are doing that. So far, vaccines have saved 1.1M Americans from dying from covid and saved 10.3M Americans from needing hospital treatment for covid [0].

Preventable Covid-19 cases can lead to higher health and life insurance rates. Firing employees who refuse the vaccine is smart business.

Vaccine mandates save the government a lot of money in several ways:

- US government pays $770B a year for medical care for older people and poor children [1]. Covid cases increase those costs. Fortunately, vaccines prevent most cases and reduce severity of all cases.

- US government has 23M veterans and pays $40B a year for their medical care [2]. Covid cases increase those costs. Fortunately, vaccines prevent most of the cases.

- When a person goes to the hospital and cannot pay, the hospital takes a loss and reduces the tax they pay. Hospitals write off about $40B in uncompensated care every year [3]. Uncompensated covid care makes those numbers bigger and taxes lower. Fortunately, vaccines prevent most serious covid cases.

- Workers can't work when they have covid or their dependents have covid. Covid sickness reduces economic output. Because taxes only apply to profits and most businesses have low margins, small reductions in revenue cause large reductions in taxes. Fortunately, vaccines reduce severity of all cases, so people recover more quickly and workers can get back to work faster.

[0] https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/there-is-good...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)

[2] https://www.va.gov/vetdata/docs/QuickFacts/Expenditures_quic...

[3] https://www.aha.org/fact-sheets/2020-01-06-fact-sheet-uncomp...

"Vaccines were never expected to stop the pandemic."

That's complete bullshit. You can find many examples of experts, governments and politicians claiming that's exactly what was likely going to happen.

That was the message people were sold.

For good reason, there are many diseases that have been wiped out by vaccination.

This was a possibility at some point, but it required a very high number of people to get vaccinated quickly, before more variants. That did not happen, so the newer variants the vaccines had lower efficiency, which required even more people to be vaccinated, which is now seen as impossible, and so instead of hoping to get rid of Covid, now we hope to make it endemic, which is also achieved through more immunity, that which can come from either surviving Covid, or a vaccine. In the endemic state, most everyone has had immunity through a vaccine or recovering from Covid at least once. Covid is still around, since it evolves quickly to bypass immunity and spreads too fast to be eradicated, but as something that people get say yearly, or at a rate more similar to a cold or the flu, you get in this sort of balance where you're always immune enough to survive the next one and evolve your immunity along the way.

The issue is getting to this state with the least casualty, and vaccines are best for that.

I checked for other pandemics to see how they ended, and they all seem to end the same way, by reaching large herd immunity either through vaccination, or just everyone catching it and having the weak die off, and the survivors pass on immunity to the next generation.

>This was a possibility at some point, but it required a very high number of people to get vaccinated quickly, before more variants.

it required vaccines that actually slow the spread of disease

Exactly! What was all that talk about using the vaccine to achieve herd immunity and reduce the R0? That was SO the narrative.

Do you have sources? Who said the vaccines were going to stop the pandemic, as opposed to death from covid?

Politicians, media, social media... It was just about everyone except scientists who were saying that from like April through November 2021.

Around November/December people suddenly started treating it as if no one ever said that, as if they suddenly realized they were lied to and didn't want to look like they were fooled.

I should not have written "Vaccines were never expected to stop the pandemic." Vaccines were expected to stop the pandemic.

PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries had SARS-CoV-1 in 2003 [0]. It kills 9% of people who catch it, even young people. Their governments performed effective contact tracing and forced quarantining. Everyone in those countries was careful not to catch or spread the disease. It nearly became a pandemic, but the people stopped it.

I hoped that Americans would do the same with SARS-CoV-2 (covid).

Instead, we went half the pandemic without a pandemic expert (epidemiologist) on the National Covid Task Force [1]. Our national leader downplayed the pandemic, refused to be careful not to catch or spread the disease, caught the disease, exposed his political opponents to it during debate, recovered, and consistently undermined and contradicted our national pandemic experts (CDC) [2].

Our government contact tracing programs have been underfunded and ineffective. Only schools performed effective contact tracing. Quarantine is not enforced or even checked. There are no fines or prison time for sick people who go to work or to gatherings and spread the disease.

Many Americans refused to take simple precautions to avoid catching or transmitting the disease. Some places even banned such precautions [3]!

About 20% of adult Americans refused the vaccine [4].

Americans refused to cooperate and achieve herd immunity. Do not blame epidemiologists for telling us what was possible. We should blame callous & incompetent politicians for undermining our medical professionals, blame callous & greedy media companies for targeting medical advice with their anti-establishment dogma, and blame callous & gullible Americans for refusing vaccines and carelessly spreading the disease.

Cities with cooperative people did achieve herd immunity. For example, San Francisco did in 2021-06 [5].

Then Delta and Omicron variants arrived. They break through existing immunity. USA now has 700,000 new cases of Omicron per day [6]. So we should reach herd immunity for Omicron in March. Then the pandemic will be over for us, unless another breakthrough variant arises.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Coronavirus_Task_F...

[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-fall-of-the-cd...

[3] https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-issues-execu...

[4] https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_San_F...

[6] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&cumulative=0&...

> Vaccines were never expected to stop the pandemic. They were expected to stop people from dying from the pandemic.

Unless you listened to Joe Biden, the President, who said this in October 2021:

“We know there is no other way to beat the pandemic than to get the vast majority of Americans vaccinated”

https://www.aol.com/news/biden-defends-vaccination-requireme...

Well it’s true without vaccinations we won’t have a chance to beat it. Doesn’t mean we will. It’s just one big part of a public health epidemic, and without we fail.

You're right that they're achieving the goals of the governments, but they're not living up to the public's understanding of "vaccine" -- it's vaporware, or over-promise under-deliver from what we all expected when we were enticed by "vaccine" to take the jab.

in a lot of ways this is a PR issue and undermining of good faith more than a facts/data issue. There may not be any specific conspiracy but for whatever reason they're acting in an untrustworthy manner.

At the same time though, opening up completely comes at hospitals being overwhelmed, supply chains breaking apart (already happened in my country).

It is a bit of a paradox. There is no right action it seems, locking up doesn't make sense but neither does opening up.