No they haven't. There's a pervasive anti-vax myth that Fauci "admitted" the vaccines don't work. Not true and didn't happen.
The data are very clear that vaccines reduce your chances of getting infected (not just seriously ill or dying, but getting infected in the first place). https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effective...
Masks are also effective at preventing infection. Even "bad" masks are measurably better than nothing: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
Vaccines and masks absolutely work to reduce your chance of getting infected with covid. Further, if you do get breakthrough covid, vaccines greatly reduce the chances you will end up hospitalized or dead.
So to be more precise - vaccines work against Omicron, but not as well as the original strains and only if you keep up with boosting every few months. Vaccines are less effective against omicron in general, and the effectiveness wains very quickly.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e3.htm?s_cid=mm...
Its fine for right now. You will need another booster in a few months to remain protected (original estimate was every 6 months, CDC lowered that to 5 months already). Israel is already rolling out a fourth shot, and the CDC now recommends 4 doses for immune compromised people.
I never understood the preoccupation with the number of shots. Is it the hassle and discomfort of the shot itself?
Is there any other vaccine that needs boosters every 5 months?
Considering that the initial schedule of 2 doses in a month was kinda rushed, and that Israel is not proceeding with a fourth dose because the current wave has been manageable despite the very high number of cases, it seems very unlikely that COVID will need periodic boosters in the general population.
DTAP, for example, is one of the vaccines that kids need. It has a 5 dose schedule. But, an adult that was never vaccinated can get one shot of Tdap instead.
Notably, the DTAP vaccine is 71% effective after 5 years[1]. Compare to the covid vaccine being 38% after 6 months[2].
[1]https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/dtap-tdap-td/hcp/about-vacc...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e3.htm?s_cid=mm...
Every disease is different. Every vaccine is different. What would it prove?
Mask mandates aren't worthless, but I agree they'd be a lot better if they required better masks. I believe that's already the case in other countries and I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually comes to the US.
It might be healthier for you to see things less as "there are two sides" and reconsider how you analyze individual topics. When you say "this is the view of side L and this is the view of side R" you are in danger of missing nuance and views that cut across. If you identify with say, side R, you will bias yourself toward those specific viewpoints.
Don't assume I have a manichean approach to everything. This was just one example where her popularity is very polarized along political lines.
Not everything is partisan. But abortion surely is.
My other point is that Planned Parenthood and abortion are of course polarizing topics but pro-choice folks are not as monolithic in ideology as the core republican base, so it's weird to see statements like this which you made:
> She is especially respected on the political left. That makes her statement especially surprising because the left has been the side pushing the mask mandates.
This rings untrue, and like someone's been watching too much angry news. And characterizing mask mandates as some nonexistent "left-wing agenda" is also really unfair to folks who may not have progressive politics but support masking. My parents for example are Christian capital-R Republicans but think it's bonkers that we can't get folks to do what is best for the common good, in the name of "freedom." At least they understand, very minimally, the difference between fascism and emergency measures.
There are not two sides to this issue until one angry group of people decide "you're either with us or against us" and generate those two sides out of thin air. It's really stupid to do that. Abortion and masking are not related. That are you surprised an individual has a unique opinion different from "their team" is very telling.
If you can't see that abortion is polarized along partisan lines, we live on different planets.
Yeah I'm going off of the ~20 sentences I've spent time reading from this anonymous person on the internet. You're not doing much in these responses to demonstrate comprehension of my points so maybe it's gg.
> If you can't see that abortion is polarized along partisan lines, we live on different planets.
I didn't dispute this very basic fact. But again, this wasn't what my comments were about.
The Washington Post has a good explainer on this. [1]
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/08/...
The comment I was responding to said "masks don't really work," which isn't true. Even cloth masks provide some benefit. Whether that benefit justifies a mask mandate is something reasonable people can disagree about.
Clearly something isn't adding up. Meanwhile the rosy estimates of safety and effectiveness have been repeatedly and consistently walked back. I think it's time to recognize that our institutions have had their analyses and recommendations tainted by strong and pervasive political and social biases, from the laypeople who have no incentive to report breakthrough cases, all the way up through the chain past academics and policymakers who have their careers riding on the validity of 2 years of covid research and policy that cannot be contradicted without trashing credibility. That's not to mention the career and social stigma associated with speaking out or publishing negatively against the vaccines.
It doesn't help that dozens of hours of testimony on behalf of researches and clinicians before congresspeople is simply being ignored[0]. Add media to the rabidly biased groups and you're getting closer to reconciling what is being published and communicated about the vaccines and virus with what is happening in the real world.
Here's the data from Sen Johnson's state: https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/vaccine-status.htm#ca...
And once again, the real world data shows that the virus is spreading across the globe at record pace regardless of vaccination rate.
I know it sounds like dangerous conspiracy talk, but sometimes we need to think outside of our official sources. Ultimately it is up to the people to hold our institutions to account. The real world data does not line up with the official claims.
You think Wisconsin health officials are cooking the books? Along with every single other state? C'mon
None of this requires a conspiracy. None of this requires explicit communication or collusion. That's not how bias works. Bias works as subtle (sometimes not so subtle) pressure. Pressure against asking certain questions, against publishing certain results (this is hardly unique to covid), massaging data and models (often unconsciously) in favor of certain conclusions.
And then there is the very real stigma - also something which does not depend on an overt conspiracy, just an army of true believers who will publicly castigate those who speak out, putting the livelihoods of dissenters at risk.
And yes, what you're implying heavily in your posts would require some sort of conspiracy to be plausible. You're going against dozens of countries' thousands of experts and numerous studies, then choosing to believe quacks on panels on youtube whose wikipedia articles have giant "covid-19 misinformation" sections in them with ample citations.
Look, regardless of whether what I'm saying is true, your primary argument is that it is implausible because of the logistics of organizing such a vast conspiracy. This is false. All it takes is an emergent culture to instill an implicit bias under threat of ostracization/unemployment/unpersoning and then without any overt conspiracy you will see discourse, studies, and policy all align in a single direction regardless of that direction's validity.
This is the mechanism by which authoritarian governments flourish while simultaneously oppressing their peoples. Life in the Soviet Union was miserable, but the average person would not publicly speak against their leaders. Note that I don't mean to imply that anything about the covid response is "socialist" or anything to that effect, only that emergent consensus, especially when bolstered by propaganda, can influence individuals and society to together behave in an irrational manner in an emergent, implicit fashion.
Let's try to materialize an example. Suppose that you indeed have a society which is irrationally biased in favor of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, and you are trying to study adverse effects. Moving up the chain
1. Patients are less likely to connect adverse effects to their vaccines (e.g. it only recently came out that monthly cycles were disrupted, originally a "conspiracy theory")
2. Doctors are less likely to acknowledge that strange symptoms are related to vaccines (remember, I'm alleging that they're biased)
3. Researchers are less likely to look into adverse events, especially when from the bottom they now have substantially less data to review
4. Policymakers see this lack of evidence of adverse events as proof of safety when it is only bias which has an emergent muting effect on cataloging of adverse events. They continue to distribute "safe and effective" propaganda in good faith (no conspiracy).
5. The cycle continues.
You may not agree that this bias exists, but my point again is that none of this requires a conspiracy, only a pervasive bias.
Now remember, the phrase "safe and effective" was repeated across media from day one, long before there was ample time to gather evidence of harm. The seed of bias was planted early. I hope you'll at least acknowledge that this is far more plausible than some cooky "conspiracy theory".
... to Dr. McCullough, this guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_A._McCullough#COVID-19
Literally one of the main guys on the panel you cited yourself a post or two ago. Sounds like the definition of a conspiracy theorist / quack to me.
(Edit: wrong person, here's video of what I'm remembering: https://mobile.twitter.com/townhallcom/status/14733056927149... ) (Anyway that was just intended as context for below, what I think may have been the starting point for a larger shift)
Thing is, the virus didn't change size, so right after this it's as if people started to realize the droplets-vs-aerosols mistake from 2020 that a minority have kept on since then, and what they've been saying for over a year is slowly becoming accepted:
Masks and social distancing were mandated under the assumption SARS-CoV-2 spread primarily through heavy droplets that would quickly fall to the ground, which were also large and heavy enough to easily be caught by masks. However, it turns out the primary spread vector is aerosol - too small for cloth masks to catch, light enough to quickly diffuse through a room, and light enough to easily slip around the sides of an unsealed mask.
A well-sealed N95 might work, but considering how bad even pro-mask people are at wearing cloth masks correctly, I don't think very many would manage to wear the N95 right.
And here's a quote not a "paraphrase": "What I will say is the best mask that you can wear is the one that you will wear and the one you can keep on all day long that you can tolerate in public indoor settings and tolerate where you need to wear it," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, told reporters this week. from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/cdc-warns-loosely-woven-clot...
Masks absolutely work to prevent covid infection. Higher quality masks are much better than cloth ones, but any mask is better than no mask.
That's a reallty dangerous thing to try and paraphrase - what did they actually say? Less effective? Have limited effectiveness? There's no evidence of any effect whatsoever? You have to be precise.
"The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm, with the rate of ILI statistically significantly higher in the cloth mask arm (relative risk (RR)=13.00, 95% CI 1.69 to 100.07) compared with the medical mask arm. Cloth masks also had significantly higher rates of ILI compared with the control arm. An analysis by mask use showed ILI (RR=6.64, 95% CI 1.45 to 28.65) and laboratory-confirmed virus (RR=1.72, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.94) were significantly higher in the cloth masks group compared with the medical masks group. Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%
Becasue we don't want sick people spitting all over the place when they talk, even when we aren't inhaling their breath.
"Don't really work" - they do work, just with varying degrees of effectiveness.
> We know vaccines don't prevent you from getting or spreading Covid
Again, it looks like the vaccinations with booster do still provide some, limited protection against infection and may also reduce viral load reducing infection risks https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788105
So you think. Ok, we have gotten to the point where these measures are ineffective, so lets do away with the measures. And that is precisely where you bump up against these "feel good" policies.
We know masks don't really work, but lets keep mandating them because they give us the sense of security that they are doing something. We know vaccines don't prevent you from getting or spreading Covid but we feel like it does something, so mandate it anyways.
I'm afraid that we are moving from "we need mandates to keep people safe" to "we need mandates to keep people feeling safe". In 20 years we're all still going to be wearing masks at the airport because "it makes people feel safer".