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Comment by chki | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of highly problematic claims in the article. This one stood out to me:

>Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long.

Actually it might very well just be half a year until we have a vaccine. Multiple candidate vaccines are in phase 3 and they are already being produced en masse, ready to be released if the vaccines prove to be successful. And it's not like other countries in Europe "shut down completely" and remain shut until today. In Germany people are leading their normal lives, the only difference being that people wear masks in super markets, register on a list when visiting a restaurant and there are no mass events/discotheques. Remaining at this status for half a year or maybe a year to prevent tens of thousands of deaths seems extremely doable.

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If Covid has taught me anything, it's to stop assuming a best case scenario.

Even if a vaccine is approved in Q'21, due to manufacturing, supply chain and just general operations issues, it's going to be a while before a large part of the population is vaccinated.

I assume they'll prioritize medical workers and the elderly, then start working through the rest of the population. It wouldn't surprise me if it takes another 6 months to vaccinate less than 50% of the population (which, to be fair, may be enough).

We're probably looking at end of 2021 for enough vaccinations to happen for things to go back to "normal".

That's another year.

> We're probably looking at end of 2021 for enough vaccinations to happen for things to go back to "normal".

In my eyes, that is the best case scenario.

Yeah, you're most likely right. If we have a couple vaccines fail in phase 3, add another 6 months. And there is a chance it's another year before we have a somewhat effective vaccine.

That pushes out herd immunity to late 2022.

The positive thing is there a lot of vaccine in development. I feel confident we'll find one that's at least somewhat effective.

But vaccines don't just pass or fail: likely outcomes include a lot of middle ground with partial protection or side effects that are only prohibitive for some groups (mostly age groups). Stopping fractions of infections will make it possible to lift more and more social interventions while maintaining R <= 1 suppression.

I don't think anyone involved in COVID-19 vaccination work believes the first vaccines will be more than 50% effective and that only for a short period. I believe the Oxford vaccine project is expecting 6 months of resistance to infection. This isn't good enough for things to go back to the way the way things were.

We'll be dealing with this virus permanently and it will likely be years, or decades, until there's a good enough vaccine for it to be safe for to return to the way they were.

In the mean time, things will change enough that going back to the old normal won't be an option by the time it's eventually safe enough to do it.

It's unlikely that it will be politically feasible to stop vaccinated people from going back to normal, whether or not we think it's good enough in some abstract sense.

i am in the pessimists camp who believes there wont be a COVID vaccine for decades. SARS is a corona virus and no vaccine has been found in 13 years. the common cold is a corona virus and no vaccine has been found since vaccination was invented.

the new normal is going to be with us for a very long time, so adjust and plan accordingly.

The common cold is a multitude of corona viruses and a large number of other causes both viral and bacterial. There is zero business case for developing a vaccine for a single-digit percentage of common colds.

Unfortunately, it appears that a significant chunk of people are not interested in taking the vaccine. [1] If only half of Americans are going to get the vaccine (that figure is from May polling, referenced below), we can't pin all of our hopes on it.

I should note that I'm not saying it's unreasonable of people to be hesitant to take this particular vaccine, given how it is being rushed. Even scientists have said that there is not currently enough evidence of safety/efficacy that they would feel comfortable taking it or giving it to their families. [2]

1: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

2: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opinion/sunday/coronaviru...

I suspect once it's generally available you'll see it required at many schools, workplaces, etc. Assuming it's available next year, expect this to be a massive controversy that doesn't fall along the usual political battle lines.

Those that don’t take the vaccine will get the virus and, if they survive, similar immunity.

Clarification: You can still get infected by viruses after you receive vaccines for them. Your severity of infection will be lower, but it's still possible to get sick even with a vaccine, just less sick than you would've.

I'm by no means anti-vaccine, but I don't have any faith in a trump-led FDA not taking shortcuts to rush a vaccine in hopes that it'll preserve trump's reign. I won't take any vaccine that hasn't been through some other country's approval process that I can trust. Most likely, I'm looking for something with EU approval.

the vaccine will work as well as it can. The nvax vaccine has a spike protein that is stable and effectively generates neutralizing ABs : https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.06.234674v1

the german gdp is down over 10 percent. A decade of growth is gone because of this failed policy. The young generation will suffer from this for a long time. Seems like the current politicians dont care about our future.

>the german gdp is down over 10 percent. A decade of growth is gone because of this failed policy.

The swedish GDP is down 9% despite them (according to the article which is misrepresenting a lot of things) not locking down at all. Even if Germany took a completely different approach (which would have led to a New York Style situation in the whole country) there would basically not be a difference in gdp numbers.

Could that be the result of trade with lockdown countries falling?

Where are you getting those numbers? Swedish GDP is up this quarter, as about the only nation in Europe

The official numbers from the statistic agency in sweden https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje...

Those are preliminary flash estimates, we'll see how they hold up in a month.

Even if true, it's still less down than any other European nations, and the only one not in a recession, because you're not taking the previous quarter into account as well.

>Those are preliminary flash estimates, we'll see how they hold up in a month.

> Swedish GDP is up this quarter, as about the only nation in Europe

so... is it possible to talk about the estimated gdp right now or not? Because those two statements don't fit together.

I communicated badly and meant the last quarter for which we have final results, Q1. Technically, "this" quarter is Q3 and we're already halfway.

What would be the cost of not having a "failed policy"? Panic when hospitals start refusing patients?

This is so callous.

You're casually talking about the deaths of hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people.

_Of course_ your government cares. They _also_ care about needless death. They're trying to walk the tightrope.

If you want a look at a country that just goes: Eh, whatever - check out sweden, and the US.

Which have at least as much economic damage, if not far more.

> If you want a look at a country that just goes: Eh, whatever - check out sweden

You couldn't be more wrong.

> it might very well just be half a year

it has already been half a year.

There are alot of ongoing trials and indeed unprecented global effort towards a vaccine but we can’t forget the usual time to market, and the fact that no vaccine has ever been created for a coronavirus. 6 months is very optimistic.

I donct want to be overly pessimistic but took years for Ebola. It was first discovered in the ’76 and we only have an approved vaccine for it since last year. That's 44 years.

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