They don't protect society at all. The herd immunity goal flew out the window with Delta and left the galaxy with Omicron. We will not ever eradicate Covid-19 with vaccination.
>It ends when the the threat subsides.
It should end right now, then. The threat has subsided. We have vaccines and other treatment programs.
So fix the capacity issue and your problem is solved without toxic, corrosive and highly controversial government mandates with dubious efficacy. I mean, thus far they've had 2 years to fix the "overwhelmed with COVID patients" problem so we wouldn't have to do all this. At this point it's all just excuses. What gives?
even if a government build 100 new hospitals in a state do you think they can get enough healthcare workers? at least in Chicago reagion, they are having hard time finding healthcare workers. it's not like hospitals can go to a Med school and ask for 1000 new doctors, respiratory therapists and nurses.
So… …seems like one solution, eh?
Oh please, if you want to say it's low-risk, or lower-risk than catching covid, go ahead. But don't just assert outright falsities.
To quote you: "Should the whole country pay for that", too?
Or maybe those metropolitan hospitals should say "sucks to be you", and let's just see how quickly those rural hospitals collapse under the weight.
My local ER, which is certainly not "in the most metropolitan of areas", which used to _never_ have a bed unavailable, has got to the point where ambulance crews _routinely_ (as in dozens of times, every single day) spend 2 to 6 HOURS with a patient in a hallway, "holding up a wall" (and unable to respond to calls in their community), until the ER can free a bed for them.
Anecdotal, I'm sure you'll scream. But "agenda-based sensationalism" is also entirely your opinion, too.
> The thread will never subside
Threat from diseases? No, probably not. But the threat from this virus will be manageable without us changing much.
I should have said this, but they mail it.
Tell that to the increasing number of footballers facing cardiac arrest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_association_footballer...
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N2SL1NJ
> FIFA is not aware of a rise in episodes of cardiac arrests… and no cases have been flagged in relation to individuals receiving a COVID vaccine.
Is there any evidence the deaths you're posting about were caused by the mRNA vaccines?
I’d say it’s over when Paxlovid is available widely whenever folks catch it, which should be in a couple months.
Pazlovid reduces risk of death or hospitalization by 90%. Basically turns an unvaccinated into a vaccinated person in terms of outcomes.
I think what you mean to say is "We cannot eradicate COVID-19 with the current vaccines," but to swear off vaccines as if they can't do the work is frankly, dumb.
I know that we eradicated smallpox, but only because there are no animal hosts.
Covid has many animal hosts [0]. You'd have to vaccinate them all to eliminate covid, that includes bats, cats, dogs, primates, deer, etc.
Otherwise covid will keep evolving in animals, and jumping back into the human population, as it appears happened with omicron over the course of about a year in mice [1].
I believe that the parent you replied to is correct, we will not eradicate covid with vaccines.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/...
[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-did-omicr...
Come now. I said no such thing. This is straw man.
>"We will not ever eradicate Covid-19 with vaccination" is the most small minded statement possible to make. We have eradicated so many diseases with vaccination
I suppose with a long enough time horizon we may invent some vaccine to eradicate Covid-19, the common cold, and Influenza.
We have eradicated exactly one human disease with vaccination.
The problem is that so many elected officials don't abide by the rules that they push. Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, London Breed, etc. When the powerful can ignore their own rules, they're more likely to enact sweeping mandates.
The sweeping mandates are for our public health. These folks aren't asking us to mask up or vaccinate for their own benefit. And they can only sorta ignore their own rules, because aren't they being roasted in the media when they mess up? The fourth estate at work. It will affect their re-election chances.
> The problem is that so many elected officials don't abide by the rules that they push.
Hypocrisy sucks, everyone agrees. Gavin Newsom having maskless restaurant meals when asking the rest of us to stay home is wrong. But it's wrong mainly because _masking is good for public health_ and he didn't listen to the advice of the medical professionals that he was parroting, nor did he conduct himself in the way a public servant held to a higher standard should. It doesn't change that masking and staying at home _does_ help everyone, by keeping hospitals from exceeding capacity and minimizing needless death.
There will always be virtue signalers and hypocrites but let's not allow them to stand in the way of sane public health policy.
No one is asking for a higher standard.
> aren't they being roasted in the media when they mess up? The fourth estate at work
Was there any coverage in NYT/CNN/WaPo of Biden shopping maskless? I only heard about it because I happened to read some news from a right-leaning site.
> It will affect their re-election chances.
I'm pretty sure Nancy Pelosi is safe. This only affects politicians in purple districts.
I have a difficult time believing Biden does any shopping on his own.
I am.
Not a single "expert" or government official who pushed these mandates lost their income or livelihood. Many live in big houses and have the financial means to enjoy themselves regardless of their own restrictions.
In my opinion every "expert" and politician should have lost their paycheck the day they enacted this stuff. All these "work from home" people too--none of what most HN readers do is "essential" so they should have been shut down even if they could work from home. If the playing field was level, perhaps more people in positions of power would have questioned things. It takes an incredible amount of privilege to do virtually any of what we did over the last two years.
It's hard to break rules that don't exist.
> It's hard to break rules that don't exist.
Wait, what's your argument again?
I'm having a harder and harder time believing this (that herd immunity is actually possible) considering that the vaccine does nothing to stop it from spreading.
(Am vaxed and caught it, fwiw)
Completely untrue. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01575-4
And, Omicron is not Delta. Omicron is the current pandemic. Vaccines slows the spread, but keeps its R0 well into the "everyone on earth will probably get it" range.
You just skipped past their entire point, after helping build it (mandates to protect "society" indeed). Society will never be completely safe. Government has a tendency to hang on forever to powers gained during emergencies.
That used to be the estimate, however with current vaccines' limited effect on new variants and the extreme infectivity of omicron it seems likely to me that herd immunity is unachievable. At the very least 85% vaccination isn't enough.
Vaccines and booster vaccines seem to be very effective against reducing the severity of an infection though. It's not ideal but it's the best we can do for now. Well, I say 'can' but perhaps it's more accurate to say 'could'.
> The people you elect to represent you (for those of us with a democracy-like government)
The answers are not as simple as you have suggested. Problem is that there are unelected officials and scientists that are deciding these things, many of which have perverse relationships and incentives that may bias their decisions. I guess these things aren't obvious if you have blind trust in the politicians and media in power.
In Australia we're over 93% double dosed. We're also in our worst outbreak with the most deaths. What is this "heard immunity threshold" meant to do?
The vaccines aren't completely effective against transmission, so those numbers were already underestimated for the original virus. With the low efficacy against the omicron (and higher transmission rates), I don't believe any amount of vaccination alone would be enough to stop it (but AFAIK, nobody actually knows it yet).
Still, any amount of vaccination will reduce the transmission rate. What is not clear if it's enough to get it lower than 1.
The US is where it is because we have individuals willing to fight for individual rights. If casualty of individuals is the cost to keep individuality in this country then I say let it be.
The vaccinated are protected and therefore you are safe (assuming you are vaccinated). So why do you need to proselytize your doctrine on those around you? You're allowed your own opinions, chant your religious beliefs, but don't turn it into law.
You might believe a mandate might be the logical solution, and maybe by some computer models it will save the greatest number of people, but its still a breach of individual rights.
I personally believe what makes the US great isn't the number of people but the quality of people. And I'd rather give up the quantity than the quality. Sure we may end up having a higher proportion of herd people if we dont mandate and many of the individuals end up dying, but we won't have a government that can control those individuals as easily, and that's what matters most.
My point is that you have to be reasonable and draw a line somewhere between respecting people's liberties, and holding them responsible / preventing them from harming other people.
For instance, if someone wakes up with a sore throat and dry cough but does not postpone a visit to their grandparents in an old-folks home, shouldn't that person be held accountable for the danger they are putting other people in?
Not going to disagree here as that's the information I've heard as well. As someone who sees the situation from the outside however, let me tell you that you are the frog in the boiling pot. The goalpost of the claimed efficacy of the vaccine has moved almost to a point where they are barely acceptable. Again, you are the frog in the pot so it's seems okay because it was only yesterday that you were told the vaccine
> holding them responsible / preventing them from harming other people.
But you also have to draw a line between putting people who aren't sick at threat of blood related health issues including myocarditis for young men (who are not at high risk of death), and period irregularities for young women (who again are not at a high risk of death).
> if someone wakes up with a sore throat and dry cough but does not postpone a visit to their grandparents in an old-folks home, shouldn't that person be held accountable for the danger they are putting other people in?
Absolutely! The old-folks better do their due diligence to tell people they think could make them sick to stay away from them. They'd better hold other people around them accountable or else they could die!
They can also take the vaccine if they believe Dr. Fauci.
Or if they believe Joe Rogan they can acquire Ivermectin and take it along with the other drugs quick and early.
Or if they don't believe Joe Rogan but believe the doctors he talks to, they can take what the specific doctors he interviews recommends. For example, sunlight, vitamin d, and exercise, as an example.
Or if they believe Donald Trump they can take monoclonal antibodies.
Or if they believe Gwyneth Paltrow they can buy a mystical egg from goop.com.
Or if they believe Kenneth Copeland ministries they can bow down to let Jesus to exercise judgement on Covid 19.
But that's all going back to individual responsibility. You can't get the state to impose that unto the individual, because no one can guarantee who is at power in the state. To you Joe Biden might be the second coming of Christ, the protector from covid, the abolisher of student loans. To someone else he could be an lying, cheating(on his first wife), geriatric, people pleasing, pedophilic (or at least very creepy towards young girls) career politician. What if he chooses to keep in power the people who lined his pockets and I happen to disagree that their mandated drug which they profit from is the best solution to the problem? What if I don't believe Dr Fauci represents the way, the science, and the light?
Since I can guess your political leanings, and I can guess your biases, and we're coming up with theoretical possibilities, what if Joe Rogan becomes president, then mandates a treatment of "horse dewormer" based on evidence he hears from a doctor who has friends who hold patents on said horse dewormer?
Will you now be hold yourself responsible and prevent yourself from harming others by shoving a vial of horse dewormer into your good self? Then would you impose your friends and everyone they know shove a horse dewormer vial up into their good selves?
To be honest I don't know what you would do, whether you're a "submit to all authority" type, or if you're a "other side is a bad guy" type, or a "we have to fight this together type". But I know what I would say, because I'd say the exact thing I'm saying now: the state should not have that kind of power, and the individual needs to take responsibility.
What I'm getting at is that this isn't a question of health. This is an issue of state power. The health implications have no regards because the mandating of anything at that level is, by the standards upon which this country was founded upon, unconstitutional.
>
> This attitude disgusts me. Be better.
You've said absolutely nothing. The entire response was to condescend.
Many have died when people look downwards on others with disgust towards them without rationale. Just look at what hitler did to the rats he held power over. Its truly astounding narcissism to think oneself so much greater than another individual.
But what's even more selfish is imposing one's will onto another. That is narcissism.
To believe that you know better for another than he knows for himself. That's not just selfishness, thats narcissism.
> narcissism
Is "narcissism" here the choice to be an unvaccinated, unmasked spreader and therefore imposing your sickness on your community, or the imposition of public health requirements on yourself, personally?
From my previous comment:
> To believe that you know better for another than he knows for himself. That's not just selfishness, thats narcissism.
I never said "unvaccinated, unmasked spreader". You're putting words into my mouth to fit your argument. The narcissism comes from "the imposition of public health requirements", to believe one knows "better for another than he knows for himself".
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Sources:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-much-of-the-populatio...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html