irq11

> But what if they're never over?

They’re over. The only people clinging to them are either playing political games, or are completely uninformed about the scientific evidence (and yes, I include the CDC and LA county’s public health authorities in those groups).

Masks were maybe slightly better than nothing when we didn’t have vaccines. They are utterly pointless now. There is zero evidence that they have any marginal benefit in a vaccinated population. This stuff has risen to the level of superstition, and like any superstition, there will be adherents who refuse to let go. That’s fine, but they’re not reflecting science or rational thinking. They are marginal.

Those who are scared of the virus should get vaccinated. Those who are not can do whatever they like, but their choices do not affect me, and they don’t affect you.

Oh stop it.

Smallpox has exactly one host (us), had an amazingly effective vaccine, the virus doesn’t mutate quickly or spread as readily, and it still took almost 200 years to eradicate it.

Polio is NOT eradicated, it spreads only through contact with fecal matter, and the remaining areas where it is endemic make a great illustration of exactly why this virus isn’t going anywhere either: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

That you would suggest that either of these make an argument for eradication of a flu-like illness with multiple non-human hosts shows how detached from reality you have become.

> Delta, so far, seems to infect whole households with ease in a way that we didn't see.

According to the latest data out of the UK, Delta is approximately as contagious as Alpha:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

There is simply no basis for these claims of dramatically increased contagion. It’s a meme that was based on early speculation, and repeated mindlessly by the press.

It is endemic. What you think of that fact is irrelevant. It’s a contagious respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs. Even if you could somehow vaccinate every person on earth tomorrow, the virus would still be here.

This virus is not going to be eliminated, and it’s well past time to move on from that discussion.

Those are called “trade schools” in the US, and most community colleges have programs for trades. For example, a lot of community colleges have programs in auto repair and heating/cooling.

It gets more complicated in the US because of unions. In many places, you can’t become a plumber or electrician without an apprenticeship, which is controlled by the trade unions. Therefore, community colleges might offer classes on plumbing or electrical, but there’s no equivalent to a certification program, because it’s not possible to become a professional just by going to school.

Please, stop with the social justice posturing. You can literally walk into just about any major pharmacy in the US and get a shot.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.newsobserver.com/news/coron...

No, it’s a scientific term. It has a definition. Not just something you’ve made up based on your feelings.

Herd immunity is when Rt = 1, or 1 - 1/R0

It is the point when infections begin to decline due to acquired immunity.

https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/set-c/set-c...

So, I made a comment about how vaccines are widely available in the US, on an article about the US, and you’re nitpicking it because you have an ideological problem with what I wrote.

The article is about the US.

The article is about the US. Did you read it?

Herd immunity is not a fixed vaccination percentage pulled from Anthony Fauci’s latest media appearance. It’s the immunity level at which cases stabilize and begin to decline. It is defined by observation.

Cases are at all-time lows in the most vaccinated locations, and are dropping rapidly nationwide.

Vaccines have been readily available to anyone who wants them (in the US) since mid April, even in the highest demand parts of the country. If you are not vaccinated, at this point, there is no excuse.

(edit: obviously, I’m assuming the article is talking about a company in the US, since the article is about the US.)

> as far as the "human cost" of wearing a mask... grow up. Asian societies like China/Japan/Korea have been wearing masks forever and they're fine

This is a racist meme that needs to die. You would see some people wearing masks. By no means did everyone wear them. Not even close.

The only people claiming that mask adoption was common across asia have never spent significant time there.

You will not be protected from influenza and common cold. All prior literature on masks and these viruses have found little/no effect.

Moreover: “mask-wearing countries” like Japan, Korea and China have plenty of cold and flu to go around.

This isn’t a paper, it’s an editorial, and it’s utter trash, printed in a bad “journal” (New Scientist is essentially a mass-market magazine, on par with Discover). The only evidence advanced for the claim is this:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.23.21250375v...

This is a survey of parent-reported symptoms in 129 children, and of the “long-term” symptoms, all are vague, (e.g. headache, fatigue, muscle pain) overlapping substantially with the aches and pains of daily life.

They don’t even bother to link to it directly in the editorial; they simply mention the doi in the text. This wasn’t even proofread by an editor.

No, the point is, you probably don’t. Most anecdotal “reinfections” are from people who think they were infected, but never had it confirmed.

These stories are also typically second- or third-hand, and resemble whatever story was most recently in the news: “my ‘friend’ had a bad cold in March 2020, then got tested in July and had Covid. He was reinfected!” Stories that are heavy on hearsay, but light on details.

When we actually go and look for reinfections using rigorous standards, we find that they’re incredibly rare. It’s highly unlikely that there’s a huge wave of reinfections that we’re simply not seeing after hundreds of millions of infections and months of effort to find them.

That is a joke of a “review”, and should never have been published.

Consider that it doesn’t mention the only randomized controlled trial of masks and Covid ever performed (it showed no significant protective effect), which was conducted during the period the “review” was being compiled:

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-6817

There’s simply no excuse. the authors cherry-pick and misinterpret top-line data to craft a narrative. It’s not a review, it’s an editorial.

Anecdotally, I spent an entire week, unmasked, in an apartment with someone sick with symptomatic Covid, and never caught it.

Anecdotes are not data.

That is not “very much yes”, that is “an anecdote suggests yes”.

The statistical illiteracy here is astounding from professional scientists.

”0% of ths sick passengers wore masks, compared to 47% of the healthy passengers. Another way to look at that is that 0% of the mask wearers got sick, but 35% of non-wearers did”

And another way to look at it is that 65% of non-wearers didn’t get sick. The group of sick people is also quite small, meaning that the error bars on the effect size are large.

Sloppy, sloppy thinking.

The “logistical” and “political” problems being that they’re endemic in countries with major political and economic instability, where the locals have a bad tendency to kill the people doing the vaccinations.

It isn’t a trivial problem. And oh yeah: Covid is in those countries now, too.

For all the reasons I cited above, we are not going to “stop this strain”.

Covid is endemic. It is not going away. It doesn’t meet any of the standards set up by the WHO for eradication, and even if it did, it would take decades of intensive work, on par with what we’ve been doing for polio.

You’re making the claim. Prove it. Don’t give me an editorial. Don’t give me a wikipedia page. Link to the controlled studies, showing the widespread damage that you’ve claimed.

You can’t, because they don’t exist. You linked to the best there is, and it doesn’t rise to any reasonable standards of scientific evidence. Self-reported data is almost worthless. Uncontrolled, self-reported data is worthless.

I’m perfectly willing to believe you, but editorials won’t convince me.

Are there? This is an opinion piece. This is your evidence? Really?

The OP linked to an uncontrolled, self-reported survey of those who claim to have long covid, and the most that showed is that a small (<13%) number of people show a constellation of mild symptoms, like hypertension. Even the much-discussed “brain fog” was only reported 2% of the time in that biased sample.

Downvote all you want, but you keep making big claims, and backing it with anecdotes and editorials.

Want people to believe you? Bring data. Not blogposts. If there’s so much evidence, it should be easy for you.

So your best evidence of this phenomenon is an uncontrolled survey of people who knew they had covid, asking them if they feel bad? And the most commonly reported symptom is hypertension, at 13%?

I’ll let the researchers do the talking here:

”Study limitations include small sample size, single study location, and potential bias from self-reported symptoms, the researchers acknowledged.”

This is certainly not a rebuttal to the fact that there have been hundreds of millions of infections globally, yet the cumulative evidence for “long covid” continues to be a vague constellation of self-reported, mostly mild symptoms in a tiny fraction of people.

If even .1% of 100M infections had severe, long-lasting damage, it wouldn’t be a debate. There would be hundreds of thousands of people to point to.

It is not possible to stop all strains. SARS-CoV2 has multiple zoonotic reservoirs, transmits easily, and persists in the population via asymptomatic infection.

We have eradicated one human virus in all of history, and it took a highly effective vaccine and a hundred years. The long tail is very long.

Here’s the problem: you cite anecdotes of second- and third-hand stories that are exceptional at best, implausible at worst, then you claim these to be representative of the common case. They are not.

There have now been hundreds of millions of infections, worldwide. Of these, the vast majority (>99.9%) resolve with no major sequelae. These are facts. People need to know this.

That’s great for tiny New Zealand, but the suggestion was that this path will lead to eradication.

It will not.

> Fortunately, it turns out that they were never essential.

HN user doesn’t see the need for something, therefore it must not be essential.

Until they open their borders.

The micrograph shown in that link was taken from this NEJM article, which clearly says that the patients in the study died from Covid:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2015432

Dying from Covid is not “asymptomatic Covid”. So your evidence for this phenomenon consists of a local news article where they’ve quoted the opinion of one person, mis-represented a figure from a journal article, and showed x-rays with no citations or context.