Eh, everyone has been moving goalposts. First it was "flatten the curve" to prevent hospital overrun. Then at some point it became "no one can ever get covid again" and we did wild things like close schools even if a person so much as got near a person with COVID.
I don't think one side has a monopoly on losing trust, behaving badly, or making anti-science decisions.
Closing schools and so forth was part of the flatten-the-curve effort. Really though, the CDC has been driven by the available science and by the reality of the pandemic, and when the CDC's guidance has changed it has invariably been in response to new data on COVID or to changing conditions (e.g. community spread, N95 mask availability, new variants).
It is overly generous to speak of "one side" as if there is another equally valid side to compare with. The CDC is not a political institution and they always cite published research in their guidance and public statements about COVID-19. The anti-mask/anti-vax crowd are going around spreading one fantasy after another, coming up with new and ever more outrageous conspiracy theories and excuses for refusing to cooperate; none of their claims have ever been based in reality, and that is why the story changes on a daily basis and why there are so many contradictory claims being made.
To put this in perspective, the high-level direction of the CDC's guidance has, since the very beginning of the pandemic, been to reduce the rate at which COVID spreads; the changes in their guidance have been about the details. The anti-mask/anti-vax crowd has gone from denying that there is a virus to saying that the virus is no worse than the flu to claiming that masks would suffocate them to whining about how mask mandates violate to their freedom and that they would rather die of COVID than comply with a mask mandate. They went from heaping praise on the last President simply because he was in office when the vaccines were first becoming available to complaining that the current President was being given too much credit for the vaccination effort to claiming that the vaccine is made from aborted fetuses, that the vaccine alters DNA, that Bill Gates inserted microchips into the vaccine, that the vaccine causes people to become magnetized, and that vaccine mandates are proof that the vaccine is the "mark of the beast."
How can you write so many words defending the CDC? Their "guidance" is based on cherry picked science at best, and gut feelings and political narratives at worst. There are plenty of studies that suggest lockdowns, closed schools and other "mitigation" efforts are ineffective or net harmful, but eh, just ignore those right?
Look at the most recent issue of vaccine boosters. The FDA panel of experts (whom we're supposed to trust now, right?) said boosters are not necessary. CDC comes in and says the FDA is wrong, boosters are good jk lol. What a joke.
Can you point me to a well done study on cloth masks and their efficacy? 19 months in and I have yet to see one. But people "feel" that masks must work, so CDC guidance says wear them. Surely at this point we should have so much compelling data about masks if they are effective...
Slipping in here with a question that will probably seem obnoxious, but isn't intended so.
If cloth masks are effective (I'm not arguing either way) and those who wear them felt endangered by those who don't, could they simply double their mask? Particulates passing in or out, in either direction, would be subject to the same amount of material as if both were wearing a single mask.
guy with mask + guy with mask = two masks
guy with 2 masks + guy with 0 masks = two masks.
I'm not suggesting that anyone should have to bear the responsibility of another, but the effect should be the same for the wearer if non airborne contaminated surfaces are of low risk. Unless it's a matter of directionality.
Could it be tested to observe a controlled situation where group A) exhales only through cotton while inhaling without, while a seperated group B) does the opposite, exhaling without and inhaling with?
Is this absurd to consider? I'm not feeling well and might actually be absurd right now.
That's actually a good question and has to do with the physics of respiration. When you inhale, you're creating negative pressure that pulls particles closest to you into your lungs, leaving a void that other particles fill as they randomly redistribute themselves. This causes aerosolized droplets to follow the path of least resistance around the mask, as if they are pulled, rather than landing against it. That's why real N95/100 masks require a proper fit: if there's even a sliver of space between the mask and face, inhaling will simply suck air in through that space instead of through the filter, which has a higher "resistance".
When you exhale, on the other hand, you create positive pressure which violently expels the droplets regardless of what's in the way. This creates droplets with high velocity and turbulent flows within the mask that prevent them from traveling a straight path through the mask and cause most of them to collide with the fabric.
Basically, once it's exhaled it's a hazard to anyone who doesn't have a properly fitted N95/100 mask (which requires specialized equipment, though it's relatively common)
Those guys who used to say 2+2=5 might have been on to something, but more correctly, it was probably 3 for fluid dynamics here.
I remember as an OTR driver the truckstop bathrooms I survived each day. The olfactory violence was palpable enough to feel it crawling through the mask and see it grinning as it coursed through what must have been an unusual ratio of gas to air. I'd think to myself in that sometimes surreal environment where photons seemed to sweat and stagger, that even an n95 was pointless, perhaps life itself. If rona be here, every particle is riding a pale horse in a hazmat suit. I'll always consider myself a permanent petri dish for that.
The idea is that the masks filter particulates at the source, and then again at the destination. See https://www.livescience.com/face-mask-visualization-droplets... for a visualization. Reasonable. Wearing masks when having symptoms is elementary courtesy, and self quarantining is even better. Unfortunately we've embraced the 'asymptomatic spreader' idea a bit too much and now we regard anyone that doesn't take the most extreme measures at all times as a de facto murderer, because there might be a tiny chance they are infectious. Not healthy.
I think part of the benefit of everyone wearing masks is that there is more value in limiting the distribution of virus laden particulates from the source, ie the infected persons mouth or nose, at least to an extent. That is best done when an infected individual has a mask on. Additionally, if we assume that wearing a mask limits spread, then unmasked individuals overall are a higher risk for receiving infection. Therefore community risk is higher.
That's how we end up with a calculus that determines that impinging individual liberty (requiring masks) has a net benefit (limiting overall community spread).
I guess a similar analogy might be: driving half the speed limit might in a weird sense feel like you're protecting yourself from harm in an accidental if else someone drives too fast, but the better policy would be that both directions of traffic maintain speed at or under the limits. Again, this is an instance where we limit individual freedoms when there is a perceived net benefit to community safety.
Stocks vs. flows. The idea is that masks reduce the flow into a reservoir (like inside air of a building), and not just direct transmission. In your example double masking might reduce your personal intake from a large reservoir (refilled by unmasked people who happen to be sick), while everyone wearing a mask should reduce the size of the reservoir.
Solid math and reasonable general principles, with an element or two I question. He comes close to clarifying it, though not quite. And while the percentage of 50 was a disposable placeholder to illustrate valid points, I doubt cotton could be quite so effective as 50% leading to 75% (and certainly not 100%) and some assumptions are required to flow along with the logic, as was mentioned. This is still reasonable for a fast-paced video; some finicky details must be overlooked. However, it is primarily based on math and no data was shown giving any unambiguous indication for cotton efficacy. Also, he addresses directionality as nearly equal for the illustration, but later provides another resource that accounts for it in detail. Was this prefactored? Otherwise surprisingly apropos and worthwhile.
you’re welcome. i’m a bit low on sleep so i missed part of your question, and don’t think the video addresses it — that is, are two [cotton] masks more effective than one. i honestly think that this is an interesting question. for most people, their intuition would be to answer “probably,” but i suspect there are some complexities that someone smarter than i am would have to address.
wearing two masks instead of one wouldn’t make things worse, though. but better? again, good question.
Cloth masks don't work at all, and surgical masks only reduce infections by 11%. N95s are probably a lot more effective but this study didn't measure those.
The problem with getting your science news from FB memes is that some nuance tends to get lost.
"Studies show that after getting vaccinated against COVID-19, protection against the virus may decrease over time and be less able to protect against the Delta variant. Although COVID-19 vaccination for adults aged 65 years and older remains effective in preventing severe disease, recent data pdf icon[4.7 MB, 88 pages] suggest vaccination is less effective at preventing infection or milder illness with symptoms. Emerging evidence also shows that among healthcare and other frontline workers, vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infections is decreasing over time. This lower effectiveness is likely due to the combination of decreasing protection as time passes since getting vaccinated (e.g., waning immunity) as well as the greater infectiousness of the Delta variant.
SCIENCE! or whatever agenda the current administration wants to push. This was the same reason all these "leaders" (including Joe and Kamala) were telling everyone to be skeptical of the jab previously, because "you can't trust the orange man's CDC and the vax he pushed through so fast!"
Big tech Co is pushing a bigger agenda and silencing dissent.
Greenwald used to be great but has turned into an alt-right shill at this point. He's intentionally not talking about the FDA panel and hiding that in his tweets, and neither does your NYTimes source.
They're talking about a different CDC committee that went against the FDA panel, and the CDC director sided with the FDA panel(which meant going against one recommendation of the CDC panel). So yes, you and Greenwald blaming the CDC for siding with the expert FDA panel.
This kind of misinformation spread on the right is insane and permeates every discussion. It's easier to spread misinformation than to fight it, this is such a sad state of affairs.
> CDC has been driven by the available science and by the reality of the pandemic
The Trump-appointed CDC directer Redfield exerted a ton of pressure in CDC to hide or manipulate data, overrode career civil servants’ decisions, fired or marginalized CDC scientists for doing their jobs, publicly spouted nonsense on Trump’s behalf including promoting conspiracy theories about China, etc.
People inside CDC were (for better or worse) not willing to stick their necks out to resist. CDC screwed up a ton in the first 6–12 months of the pandemic; 2020 was pretty much the worst year ever for the CDC. Federal agencies are sadly not fully functional without effective good-faith leadership and support from the top.
Is it the official stance of the CDC or WHO that a country with 99% of eligible adults double-vaccinated would have no need for masks, lockdowns, social distancing, travel restrictions or other restrictions?
I'm vaccinated, and in a country with 80% of people on two doses and 90% on one dose. But we still have a lot of cases, and a lot of people stuck on ventilators in hospitals.
It depends on the R0 of the mutation, and the efficacy of the vaccine.
For instance if Delta has an R0 of 8, and we're 100% vaccinated, and the vaccine has an efficacy of 85% against infection, the resultant Rt would be 1.2:
8 * (1 - (1 * 0.85))
So that means that some other form of mitigation on top of 100% vaccination would be necessary to stop the spread.
But for mutations with lower R0, or higher vaccine efficacy, herd immunity may still be possible.
That's kind of a moot point since the Delta variant has now out competed all other variants in the wild. If another new variant takes over from Delta it's unlikely to have a lower R0. At this point nothing we do can really stop the spread. Everyone should get vaccinated if they can because herd immunity won't protect anyone from infection.
> At this point nothing we do can really stop the spread. Everyone should get vaccinated if they can because herd immunity won't protect anyone from infection.
I think that's an overstatement of the links you are sharing.
Several parts of the country have pushed Rt < 1, so there are clearly things we can do to stop the spread, through a combination of vaccination and other mitigation measures.
And the definition of herd immunity is literally what protects people from infection. (Herd immunity includes vaccine immunity.) And even before the HIT, vaccination reduces contagion, reduces the doubling rate, buys time to implement further mitigation to drive down Rt < 1, and saves lives.
Anyway, what the Astra Zeneca guy is saying is just that our vaccines are not effective enough against infection to get Rt < 1 on their own.
mRNA Vaccines do have efficacy against infection, and additional effectiveness against infecting others; it's just that they're still not quite as effective as their effectiveness against hospitalization and death.
Improved vaccines, or the third-shots happening now (which do temporarily improve infection efficacy) improve those stats. Herd immunity isn't yet theoretically impossible even if it's a practical impossibility in our populations.
It probably is true that we can't go back to the way we were pre-covid, no distancing, no masks, and avoid COVID spread. We're not there and may never be since there's a likelihood that some variant of COVID will be endemic.
But there's plenty we can do - vaccination, and mitigation to get Rt < 1 during spikes. Those two practices protect people from infection.
Wait are you seriously saying masks, lockdowns, etc. during spikes _forever_? “The covid season is upon us, let’s stock up on masks, pull kids out of school, and cancel our overseas trip”? For the foreseeable future?
The point is Rt. If Rt is above 1, and the disease has a degree of mortality similar to what it has now, then it means the case count will double at some rate. And ICUs will fill up, and people will start dying from things like broken legs and pneumonia from not being able to get sufficient care. Does that make sense? That's just what Rt > 1 means; case counts are doubling. If Rt is above 1, then if you don't want the disease to eat the world, something needs to happen to get Rt back below 1. If not, it will happen naturally, solely through natural immunity and unnecessary death.
So the goal simply needs to be to keep Rt below 1, or to knock it back below 1 before prevalance becomes dangerous and threatens ICUs.
But that doesn't necessarily mean lockdowns. If there's a spike but already a good level of immunity, it might just mean masks on public transportation for a couple of months, or people naturally choosing to go out to eat three fewer times a month, or whatever.
The measure of required mitigation depends entirely upon the circumstance in the moment. If Rt spikes a little, you don't need to do much. If it spikes a lot, you need to do more. But with enough vaccination, we might not ever need full lockdowns for covid again.
> For instance if Delta has an R0 of 8, and we're 100% vaccinated, and the vaccine has an efficacy of 85% against infection, the resultant Rt would be 1.2:
For herd immunity, you also need to take into account that infected people—even symptomatic ones—are less infectious to others, if they're vaccinated.
Yeah, I'm familiar with that - I think that can be bundled into the efficacy number if you look at it as "efficacy against infecting others".
Last I heard, the CDC gave a 95% CI of the mRNA vaccines being 26% - 84% against infection (from Delta), and there's an additional 40% - 60% protection against infecting others (I've seen that estimate in multiple places but I don't know the source). If that's true, it suggests an overall range of 55.6 - 93.6 effectiveness against infecting others.
300 new cases / day, 5500 active cases, and 2 deaths / day, for a country with 10M people. (3 new cases / day, 55 active cases, 0.02 deaths / day, per 100,000.)
Compared with, say, the US: 112,000 new cases / day, 9,800,000 active cases, 2000 deaths / day. (34 new cases / day, 3000 active cases, 0.6 deaths / day, per 100,000.)
This always makes me laugh. The virus comes in waves and someone will point out one country is doing “better” when it’s just the fact the country is past the latest wave.
I even saw different regions of my country do this. Fast forward 2 months and the situations are reversed and so is the finger pointing.
Nobody is willing to take a stance that strong, because they can't know that for sure. There could be further viral mutations, an unexpectedly sudden decline in immunity from vaccines, a string of unlucky superspreader events, a completely unrelated pandemic, or any of a lot of other uncontrollable, unknowable factors that could make continued restrictions necessary in an almost-fully-vaccinated population.
It's an unfortunate circumstance that 90% of people being fully vaccinated might not be enough to stop COVID-19 in its tracks. Even just 1% of people being unvaccinated makes millions of people who could catch, mutate, and transmit the virus. Especially if those people were loosely clustered together, and didn't take precautions against spreading disease, they could possibly keep the virus active (and hospitals busy) for a long time on their own.
I agree in theory, but... we as a nation already crossed that boundary ages ago. Kids can't consent to anything, adults can't do certain drugs, adults also can't drink or smoke if they're under 21, and a lot of this isn't even recent. World War II saw the nation doing a lot of gymnastics to avoid letting people do things with their bodies. Further, we already ban certain forms of abortion, and it's not universally controversial that we do.
I think you're arguing from a fictional frame of reference.
Ideologically I'm somewhere in the right half of the spectrum, and even I'll admit that the state has absolutely taken the right to bodily autonomy, and I don't think it's a universally bad thing.
That is a good point. I used to fantasize of living in a fictional world where there is such a thing as inalienable human rights. I struggle to swallow the hard pill that a disease with a survival rate of 99.9% in under 65s has upended that fiction. (BTW, I am not facetious, and the coming winter risks being brutal).
I have long suspected that the modern 80 year life expectancy was a grand illusion. I wonder if the covid pandemic is Mother Nature's way of signalling that the party is over and it's time to return to 'Gaudeamus igitur, Iuvenes dum sumus'.
Look, if you could actually show up with actual bodily autonomy then this would be a different conversation.
The fact of the matter is that no one is capable of being autonomous in the face of communicable diseases because if you are infected you turn into a factory for the disease that affects everyone else.
Citing a 99.9% survival rate is disingenuous when it’s infecting everyone. That’s blatantly obvious with Covid shooting up to 2-3 place for cause of death and if recall correctly one of those other major causes of death it’s competing with is cancer which is actually a basket of diseases with unrelated causes.
Even with the vaccine “mandate” the US gov has set, you still have the option to get tested frequently and not be vaccinated.
You can’t refuse the vaccine, refuse to get tested and prove you are immune, and want to walk around uninhibited in public when you could be carrying this disease. That’s not bodily autonomy that’s just saying “fuck you I do what I want” to society, so don’t be surprised when claims of “my body, my choice” or clamoring about rights falls on deaf ears to the rest of society
I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, it's the smart thing to do. But vaccinated people can still carry and spread the virus. They may be somewhat less contagious but we don't have clear data on that yet.
I feel like you read part of my response and then wrote yours immediately.
You are talking about how the vaccinated can spread the virus, which is I agree is true, but ignoring that they can only spread the virus when they get a breakthrough infection. The vaccine massively limits the chance of being infected.
If you cannot recognize the fact that the change of infecting someone else is a function with two variables where x*y where x is a Boolean of isInfected and y is a floating point of chanceOfBeingInfected then I don’t know how we can continue talking as you are in a different reality than I am.
If you get the vaccine your y value in the previous function drops dramatically. If you only look at the x value then of course you won’t see a value in getting vaccinated because you are ignoring the effects of vaccinating
CDC data shows that breakthrough infections are common. Since the virus is now endemic in the worldwide human population and can't be eradicated, all of us can expect to be exposed to it multiple times in our lives (just like the other 4 endemic human coronaviruses). Whether we're exposed by a vaccinated or unvaccinated individual is irrelevant.
Since exposure is inevitable, the smart move is to get vaccinated yourself. And take other steps to maximize your odds of surviving a breakthrough infection.
> CDC data shows that breakthrough infections are common
What do you mean by common? Do you mean that it happens or that it’s the same rate of infection as being unvaccinated? Your argument only works if the breakthrough infections are as “common” as getting infected without the vaccine.
> Whether we're exposed by a vaccinated or unvaccinated individual is irrelevant
But it is relevant that the chance of a vaccinated individual being contagious is _massively_ lower. You can’t argue that breakthrough infections of vaccinated individuals exist, so therefore coming into contact with a vaccinated person is as risky as coming into contact with an unvaccinated person.
You're not thinking this through clearly. Zoom out and consider longer time periods.
For any single interaction, your risk of virus transmission is probably lower with a vaccinated individual than with an unvaccinated individual (although the magnitude of the difference is unclear). But unless you're living as a hermit you're going to be in contact with thousands of people over the next several years. Some of those people will be infected and contagious. So you will inevitably be exposed multiple times.
The length of time does not matter when talking about infection rates and population groups.
If you have two population groups A and B and A has a massively lower infection rate then population group A is not going to have the virus surge through the entire population.
But this is all veering off my original point that you can’t claim bodily autonomy as a reason/right to not take preventative measures like the vaccine if you aren’t actually being autonomous.
It isn't infecting everyone or affecting everyone equally. Generally, more dense and poor areas have higher case rates. It doesn't make sense to apply the same restrictions everywhere, if your odds of catching the virus happen to be slim.
>It isn't infecting everyone or affecting everyone equally.
You are 100% correct. The vaccinated are barely affected while the unvaccinated are heavily affected.
>It doesn't make sense to apply the same restrictions everywhere, if your odds of catching the virus happen to be slim.
Correct again. We should not limit the vaccinated and prevent the unvaccinated who refuse to take routine tests from affecting the public.
Just so you think I am not allowing for any other option. I am 100% fine with someone who takes a Covid test and gets a negative every single day being allowed the same public privilege's as someone who gets the vaccine. My actual issue is with people who conflate not getting the vaccine with not getting tested as well but still somehow being allowed to walk around in public
You deliberately missed my point, which was about how and where the virus spreads, regardless of vaccination rates.
Transmission happens where people are crammed together. The Provincetown case from the summer vividly illustrated how this applies in highly vaccinated populations.
> You deliberately missed my point, which was about how and where the virus spreads, regardless of vaccination rates.
I didn’t deliberately miss your point, I’m saying your point is wrong.
You can’t talk about the “how and where the virus spreads” if you are acting as if vaccinated and unvaccinated populations have the same rate of spread. The existence of breakthrough infections does not invalidate the fact that the vaccine lowers transmission rates in the population.
It isn’t some binary field of isUseful where the presence of single transmission of the virus from someone who is vaccinated flips the value to false
As we delight at the thought of bringing misery to our fellow man, let's take a look at this intriguing report from UK, specifically the covid cases table at page 13 and covid case rates at page 17. Something strange: covid case rates among vaxxed/unvaxxed are roughly the same for >30 age group, showing a 2x-5x decrease in the vaxx population only for younger ages. Me thinks that this data warrants forcing all older people, vaxxed or unvaxxed, take a covid test every living day of their lives to prove their cleanliness and gain the priviledge of walking amongst the rightful. Hmm...
Making a second separate post. As this actually made me question things I went looking down this rabbit hole. Lo and behold this looks like a google bomb of bad material[1]. I then follow this through and find a whole set of people already pointing out how the paper does not claim that the vaccine is known to cause issues and pointing our your cherry-picking[2].
If you are going to spread misinformation across the internet, please at least run your clips through a thesaurus so they aren't a few seconds of googling away to discover the issue.
I am interested in push back, because the publication is internally inconsistent. One one hand they say on page 5 "With the delta variant, vaccine effectiveness against
infection has been estimated at around 65% with Vaxzevria and 80% with Comirnaty", on the other hand their own data says roughly no difference in infection rates between vaxx/unvaxx in >30 age group.
Alas, your link [1] is just a random reddit screenshot and link [2] is accidentally missing.
My apologies for missing that link last night especially as the user appears to have scrubbed the comment. Let me quote the same information I meant to have linked to.
This is from page 12 of your linked source, the bit with words before the nice graphs you wanted me to focus on.
> These data should be considered in the context of vaccination status of the population groups shown in the rest of this report. The vaccination status of cases, inpatients and deaths is not the most appropriate method to assess vaccine effectiveness and there is a high risk of misinterpretation. Vaccine effectiveness has been formally estimated from a number of different sources and is described earlier in this report.
In the context of very high vaccine coverage in the population, even with a highly effective vaccine, it is expected that a large proportion of cases, hospitalisations and deaths would occur in vaccinated individuals, simply because a larger proportion of the population are vaccinated than unvaccinated and no vaccine is 100% effective. This is especially true because vaccination has been prioritised in individuals who are more susceptible or more at risk of severe disease. Individuals in risk groups may also be more at risk of hospitalisation or death due to non-COVID-19 causes, and thus may be hospitalised or die with COVID-19 rather than because of COVID-19.
Your own source is saying your interpretation of the data is incorrect and explaining why you’d see higher rates of vaccinated individuals hospitalized. Why are you claiming that the study proves what it says it doesn’t prove?
Thanks for sharing. Just to make it clear, I am in full agreement that covid vaccines are very effective at reducing covid infection severity, especially in older age groups. The document we are discussing confirms as much.
> simply because a larger proportion of the population are vaccinated than unvaccinated and no vaccine is 100% effective.
They are computing case rates. This part of the argument doesn't explain that the case rates are similar in vaccinated vs unvaccinated population.
> This is especially true because vaccination has been prioritized in individuals who are more susceptible or more at risk of severe disease.
The cumulative vaccination uptake rates are 85%+ in >50 ages group, see charts on pages 9-10. While prioritization may have a sizable effect at small vaccination rates, once almost all of the population is vaccinated we have to assume the most of the vaccinated are not 'more susceptible or more at risk of severe disease', otherwise we are simply saying that (almost) everyone is more susceptible. Also, it is 'susceptible of severe disease' not simply 'susceptible of getting infected with covid'. If 10-15% of the population were to have 90% smaller susceptibility to covid infections within the same age group from natural causes, we would have heard about that by now.
For me, the mystery remains.
I could speculate a number of hypotheses, the first one being that there is something about they count 'covid cases' that doesn't match the rest of the literature, but I was unable to find the specific paragraph describing that. Perhaps there is something really dumb that escaped me :(
On the flip side, I also don't have visibility in how 'vaccine effectiveness' rates are computed in the rest of the literature. Perhaps there is something about how other people count 'covid cases' that presents a different picture.
That being said, theirs is a real life measurement of an entire country on natural timeframe, vs. studies that are usually done on population samples on limited timeframes, and then extrapolated to entire countries on natural timeframe. So while this is a single source, it is from a highly credible org with a highly credible setting, making it difficult to dismiss offhand.
For the record, somebody provided an alternate explanation along the lines of 'they are doing a dumb thing'. Specifically, population estimates are less reliable than vaccination counts, and as vaccination rates go near 90% and over, the unreliability greatly increases when computing unvaccinated_estimated = pop_estimate - vaccinated. A corrected graph using a different population estimate:
Oh hey, you finally posted data from a not immediately bad source that backed up your point. This is legitimately something that makes me look at the data and question current course.
Now question for you. Do you have other data sets backing this up, or only the single one that goes against the other data sets?
I actually am taking this into account, but a single set of data or studies that purports one conclusion is not going to make me ignore the hundreds of other studies that disagree
There’s no concentration camps for Covid, you can stay home.
You don’t catch hiv by walking by someone positive with it, and if you did like you do with Covid and it caused the same level of casualties then yes I would be all for the measures as we are using against covid
I happen to agree with that logic. Corporations have too much power. What I don't agree with is limiting regulation to a few companies based on the current situation.
When Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission got decided on narrow technical grounds this is the kind of thing my political ideology warned about. We gave far too much power to corporations to decide who they do business with. The laws around that sort of power were decided long before everyone could find out some of the most intimate aspects of your life in a few google searches.
The only reason I am against the anti vaxxers/anti covid measure people trying to take down the faang companies ability to stop their speech right now is because they only want to limit corporate power and private property as it extends to themselves.
Look at the florida law for instance that tried to damage social media companies that blocked people based on their political speech unless they owned a theme park, which was an explicit carve out for Disney.
I can get behind a movement that wants to prevent corporations from having enough power to limit individual rights. I cannot get behind a movement that only wants to prevent corporations from limiting rights on a group of people that I believe are hurting me, but will not limit corporations from limiting rights on everyone else.
Either the logic applies to all, or people are lying about caring about rights and just want to be the people on top.
There are human "rights", and then there is Mother Nature's reality. Rather than thread after thread of arguing over whose fault it is and taking potshots at our respective outgroups, perhaps we should instead consider finding The Experts on reality. Perhaps they do not exist, just as we once did not have various other experts.
If you/society do not like people walking around spreading viruses that affect other’s bodies, then perhaps you and society should do something about it.
For example, when the covid virus broke out on the scene, some experts developed a vaccine that seems to be pretty darn good at rectifying the situation. Now there seems to be a related but different problem: a fair amount of people who are opposed to taking that vaccine (walking around spreading viruses that affect other’s bodies), so perhaps a similar approach should be taken: find some people with expertise in the problem, and let them do their thing (maybe throw a few ten or hundred million at them to grease the wheels). As it is, the people who have been tasked with this job seem to be not performing up to the expectations of lots of people, so it might be a good idea to start looking for some who can.
We(society) are doing something about it. The convincing based on logic is over and now economic pressure and choosing who or who not to associate with is occurring.
I am sorry that you can’t have your hand held every step of the way as you and your group continually shit on everything and put the rest of us at risk.
Sucks to suck for everyone who loses their job cause they want to take a stance. They’ll be remembered as martyrs should they be proven right, but I wouldn’t put money on it.
> Based on my observations, when people lose their income (particularly as a result of policies they disagree with), they often become angry. On one hand, this can be enjoyable for observers. But then on the other hand, sometimes Mother Nature has a surprise in store that more than makes up for the pleasure. Let's hope for everyone's sake that this is not one of the times that the law of unintended consequences pays us a visit.
Would you mind not being cryptic and stating what you actually mean? I don’t expect people to find my beliefs tasteful or agree with them, but I am laying them out on the table to discuss at least.
If your claim is "handle these people with carebear gloves or they are gonna domestic terrorism you", then I ask you to consider why that logic would not work in reverse. If you have an entire group of people saying "let me spread this virus amongst your people and if you even try to say I am wrong, I will terrorize your people" what do you think the response from any rational group is?
While you haven't said it directly as you are, in my opinion, a coward. I see how you are implying that society should let the crazy do as they like or they will attack anyone who disagrees.
You should consider how well that went for the Confederate States of America when they decided their gumption could dominate industrial might and innovation.
Good luck sir, Mother Nature has a surprise in store for those who think they can outfeel logistics. Say hi your boog bois too
Yeah, because in the USA nobody ever instituted vaccine mandates until COVID happened. Oh wait, sorry, I forgot about all the vaccines we require children to receive before they can go to school.
> Oh wait, sorry, I forgot about all the vaccines we require children to receive before they can go to school.
Weren't those just for public schools? If someone was homeschooled, couldn't they have made it to adulthood without those vaccines, and then never again be asked about them?
This pandemic isn't a scenario in a board game where the rules are clear cut and easy to parse. A lot of the "wishy-washy"-ness that people attribute to the CDC is actually just them responding to the changing situation on the ground. People demand to know what percentage of the population needs to be vaccinated to return to normal so answers are given - but those answers will change as our understanding evolves.
Vaccinations save lives - and not only your own. Do it.
Not quite true. Vaccines protect people against the worst effects, but they're not as effective against infection. So a lot of unvaccinated people with the disease might have caught it from vaccinated people. (I'm pro-vaccination, I just don't like the practice of blaming it all on the unvaccinated people.)
> If vaccinations encourage new variants is a total different question. It is very possible. Evolutionary pressure is a bitch.
Fewer infected people means fewer mutations. As to whether those fewer mutations spread better (thanks to selective pressure)? It's a legitimate question, but thankfully the answer appears to be the no, the opposite, thanks to the neutralising antibody response. See https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/142544990582960128...
The messaging now at least here in BC is all about increasing vaccination coverage. To a degree that I'm reminded of Goodhart's law "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Who cares how many people are vaccinated, what the goal should be is reducing hospitalizations, deaths and long-Covid for the good of people (don't die) and that of the health care system (ICUs not overrun). If there's a community who doesn't want to get vaccinated, who cares as long as the overall goal is still reached. We're focusing too much on cases and vaccinations to reduce cases at the moment in my view. We've lost touch with what's important, at least our messaging doesn't reflect that.
> the goal should be is reducing hospitalizations, deaths and long-Covid for the good of people (don't die) and that of the health care system (ICUs not overrun).
I agree, that's an excellent goal! Universal vaccination seems to be an excellent means of achieving it. Besides that, what other thrusts would you like to see?
Well, see, universal vaccination I would say is sufficient to achieve this goal but not required. I wonder if it would be better to focus on vaccination coverage in hotspots where we do have issues with hospitalizations.
What triggered me to wrote this is articles like this one [0] that, in my opinion, don't do anything to convince anybody to get vaccinated. All they do is shame people or groups of people. And what's missing from this article? While it talks about case numbers
> Manitoba's Southern Health region, which encompasses the RM of Stanley, made up roughly half of the province's new COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, but is only home to around 15 per cent of the population.
it completely leaves out what's actually going on in the hospitals in that particular region. Case numbers aren't meaningful. Especially with vaccines that are great at preventing serious symptoms but only good at preventing spread. Don't get me wrong, I'm vaccinated and I believe everybody should be. But the vaccines aren't gonna protect us from ever getting the virus. We all will get it. What matters is to strategically focus on vulnerable groups and difficult geographical areas. But unfortunately we seem to be looking for a one size fits all approach. But maybe people in rural Manitoba need to be taken care of differently than people in urban Toronto.
As a British Columbian who spent over a decade living in Australia, I learned there that name-and-shame is indeed very effective at changing behaviour!
I wasn't arguing whether or not name-and-shame works, I was arguing that it's wrong to do to begin with because it doesn't bring us closer to our goal.
I don't know, I never had an issue with that point. "Flatten the curve" is alright, but then what? It would be stupid to "flatten the curve" for a while, then call "mission accomplished" and pretend covid is over if that causes the situation to immediately go critical again.
So far the playbook seems to have been:
1) Flatten the curve: Use lockdowns, masks and social distancing measures to maintain a situation where hospitals can still cope. This is not a one-time goal, it's an ongoing effort: As long as there was no vaccine, "no significant transmission right now" does not mean everything is back to normal - because if measures are lifted, transmission can quickly increase and become critical again.
2) Because the situation in 1) seriously sucks for everyone, try to come up with solutions to end the pandemic permanently (or at least make it permanently nonthreatening for the health system so we can leave "pandemic mode" and treat it as an ordinary disease). So far the most obvious strategy for this is vaccination - hence the increasing push to get everyone vaccinated.
3) Evolutionary pressures on the virus might cause the vaccines to become less effective. This unfortunately calls into question whether 2) is really able to bring an end to the pandemic. If this is really the case, then new plans are needed, such as boosters, new vaccines, I don't know. This stuff is currently being figured out.
1) and 2) does not seem like "moving the goalposts" to me. The goals were the same since the beginning of the pandemic, though of course the situation and circumstances were changing (you can only keep up a lockdown for so long, vaccines changed from "vague hope" to "viable strategy", etc)
3) is a new development that was apparently somewhat unexpected (I remember the virus was being talked about as relatively mutation resistant, which evidently wasn't the case.) - but this was simply new knowledge and new developments that might require a change in strategy - the overall goal to get out of this mess (by either eradicating covid or make it nonthreatening) did not change IMO.
Of course if this goal turns out to be permanently unarchievable, the goalpost shifting might start...
There is no scientific proof, e.g. RCT, that lockdowns work. When did 'stay at home if sick, live life otherwise' become obsoleted?
Edit: "3) is a new development that was apparently somewhat unexpected". That evolutionary pressures on the virus might^H^H^H will cause the vaccines to become less effective was and is the #1 concern of the critics of mass mRNA vaccination campaigns.
> "There is no scientific proof, e.g. RCT, that lockdowns work.
You want to make a randomized, controlled study on entire countries? That's your idea of ethics in science?
> That evolutionary pressures on the virus might^H^H^H will cause the vaccines to become less effective was and is the #1 concern of the critics of mass mRNA vaccination campaigns.
No, it was one argument of whatever seemed convenient at that point to argue against vaccines. Consequently, their only advice how to cope with that problem seems to basically give up and don't do anything.
Honestly, I don't understand what strategy you guys would propose to end the pandemic. Apart from pretending it doesn't exist of course.
Sometimes I picture a lot of the covid measures as raising sandbag walls in front of a tsunami. Feels good to do something, anything, but the tsunami is going to do its thing, at best delayed a bit. The second the earthquake hit, Sendai was gone. There was nothing anybody could do about it. If that's "pretending it doesn't exist", then so be it.
* Vaccines are useful in preventing severe disease. Get one, especially if your are not a child. But they are also fragile and it's anybody's guess how they'll interact with a 'likely vaccine evading variant' (quoting Pfizer CEO here).
* It is unclear what effect the vaccines have on the virus evolution. We assume its going to be positive, but have no actual data on it.
* It is unclear what effect the vaccines have on disease spread. The big question is the effect of vaccines on the rate of 'asymptomatic spreaders', which may increase under a regimen of reducing symptom severity.
* Lockdowns have massive costs. Keeping the world running also saves lives, and it's not at all clear that the balance favors hard covid measures.
* Suspended school, masks and social distancing have severe costs in children. I am not sure we thought through the consequences on the next generation.
* The scapegoating shaping online is grotesque. Being a fortunate to be born post WW2 world with its bounty of health, I never understood the story of touching the leper. Until the reaction to the covid pandemic finally illuminated my mind.
The costs of attempts to cure the disease may be worse than the disease. And the disease is horrible.
I think it's an interesting discussion. Thanks for explaining your viewpoint, even if I don't agree with it.
But I'd like to ask again: You've listed a lot of points on what not to do. But so what should we do to tackle this virus? A virus that will quickly cause enough severe cases to require triage at hospitals.if left unchecked and that will not go away anymore on its own.
Or do you really view this as some sort of slow-motion Armageddon, destinied to bring in the end times - so any resistance is futile on principle?
The reality: The tsunami didn't end Japan. <50 age group covid is survived by 99.9% of the population. There is no Armageddon, at least not if the virus doesn't get significantly worse. Life expectancy might get a hit, fewer people are going to make it all the way to 80 and beyond.
The hope: Eventually everyone is getting exposed to covid, via vaccines, infection or both. At that point, hopefully, epidemic spikes will become minor, though sadly I don't think there is a path back to pre-pandemic innocence.
* Encourage vaccinations for everyone over 18, and especially over 65 where the bulk of the burden is. I say this with a heavy heart, because there appears to be at least one instance of leaky vaccines selecting for hypervirulent variants in veterinary applications. This is what gives me nightmares. I won't link to it, it's somewhere in my comment history if you are super-curious. Praying for the best. Maybe it's just me being prone to overweigh worst case scenarios. Maybe it's my grandma saying "God's punishment" for instances of lack of humility turning for the worse.
* Lift restrictions for children, especially under 12. I've seen credible data indicating that unvaxxed child covid risk is less than vaxxed parent covid risk. Keep schools open, remove blanket mask mandates, stop pushing vaccines, when it's beyond clear the risk and benefits for them are minuscule, and there are long-term questions around virus evolution trajectory. If I'm not mistaken, something like that happens already in a number of European countries: Swe and Den, possibly UK and NL.
* Exercise regularly, vitamin C & D, zinc, especially in winter season. This is a good time to open the conversation about obesity and diabetes. One side effect of the lockdowns is increased child obesity rates; this metric is trending the wrong way.
* Stay at home if having symptoms. Employer pays no questions asked.
* Probably a system of aid for symptomatic long covid cases. It is unclear how prevalent it is, but, for example, losing lung capacity is an absolute nightmare. Source: I could barely climb a flight of 5 stairs after a bout of pneumonia a few years back. Can't imagine holding a blue collar job in those circumstances.
* Probably skip eating out, partying or sports during an active infection spike, usually about 2 months. See covidestim.org for a very useful resource in estimating whether there is an ongoing spike or not.
* Hospitals are going to get overwhelmed during a spike because they are simply not built for spikes. If that is a concern, we should think on how to quickly scale capacity up and down. Might be very expensive. Perhaps something crazy like a National Health Guard.
* There are going to be victims, mostly old but some young. Please try to keep a bit of decency instead of rushing with every single case on social media for clicks and fear and panic. We are incurring great loss, we are supposed to mourn. It's disturbing.
* Stop scapegoating. The situation is miserable as is, no need to make it even worse through a hellish social landscape.
* Finally, please stop playing God. Recently a grant proposing to essentially design covid at WIH was leaked to the press. The grant was thankfully denied, but the thought that we are 2 inches away from triggering the next pandemic is troubling.
Edit: Come to think of it, this is how the system is supposed to work. People have different stations in life and different concerns. We stand together through hell and high water. We compromise. What we are getting instead is extremes: either hyper drastic measures or, I presume, complete lack of caution.
> When did 'stay at home if sick, live life otherwise' become obsoleted?
When we figured out there was asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread. Your advice probably leads to significantly more than 219 million cases worldwide, and 4.5 million dead.
That is not a RCT, that is comparing 2 data points selected after the results were known. The reason we have RCTs is that it is very easy to fool oneself, for example by filtering the experiment populations after the results are known. Remember when peer reviewed journals published experiments 'proving' ESP. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/psychologists-confront-imposs...
Re asymptomatic. Vaccinated people also spread the disease asymptomatically. I have seen zero rigorous studies showing how vaccinated asymptomatic spread compares with unvaccinated asymptomatic spread. No, picking 3 studies and linking data between them is not a replacement for a rigorous RCT. This is a particularly salient question as the biggest selling point of vaccines is that they reduce symptom severity.
> I have seen zero rigorous studies showing how vaccinated asymptomatic spread compares with unvaccinated asymptomatic spread. [...] This is a particularly salient question as the biggest selling point of vaccines is that they reduce symptom severity.
And why are you linking spread & symptom severity?
Asymptomatic spreader: Person with an active infection that exhibits symptoms under their own personal threshold for self quarantine.
Core vaccines observable effect: Reduce manifestation of symptoms in infected persons.
It is possible that the vaccinated population has a larger rate and/or absolute numbers of people with no/low symptoms, aka 'asymptomatic spreaders'. It is also possible the other way around. I don't have hard data, nobody else seems to do.
Given that I don't actually know, I'm happy to refrain from speculation. I wish I could say the same from the 'any measure that may have some conceivable effect of reducing R0 must be mandated yesterday, or else you are personally responsible for the death of 4M people worldwide, and counting' crowd.
> I wish I could say the same from the 'any measure that may have some conceivable effect of reducing R0 must be mandated yesterday, or else you are personally responsible for the death of 4M people worldwide, and counting' crowd.
>> This is a particularly salient question as the biggest selling point of vaccines is that they reduce symptom severity.
You mean the 'any measure that may have some conceivable effect of reducing symptom severity must be mandated yesterday, or else you are personally responsible for the death of 4M people worldwide, and counting' crowd.
When did it ever get to no one can ever get Covid again? We tried to “flatten the curve” and still had large spikes. After we got some semblance of control we only kept infections down with lockdowns and other measures.
This is a tech based forum, surely everyone here has experience with a boss who complains that he’s paying you when the system never breaks, not knowing that it’s not breaking because of active measures being taken to prevent it
> Then at some point it became "no one can ever get covid again" and we did wild things like close schools even if a person so much as got near a person with COVID.
Anecdotally, I have never heard anyone make the argument "no one can ever get covid again" nor heard of a school being closed because "a person got near a person with COVID".
Sorry, yeah, I should have been more clear: I have heard of schools being closed, just not for the reason that "someone got near someone with covid". Inslee's statement says the reason is due to "increasing rates of COVID-19 related infections, hospitalizations and death", but maybe you have additional information about the real reason.
I don't think one side has a monopoly on losing trust, behaving badly, or making anti-science decisions.