People at high risk should go first, then people who are super social (or stupid + spreading the plague).
Especially younger people, they need to get pricked. Do you really think they're going to avoid drinking close physical contact in spring? Me neither.
When it's available to you, go get it.
Is it that one, or some other administration you’re thinking of?
Then when they're wrong - they say "oh yeah we lied, we didn't want a run on masks for health workers". Such BS. They didn't know non-surgical/non-(k)n95 masks could be useful.
It's ok to admit when you're wrong. Better than saying you lied. Especially when there's enough distrust of government.
The US administration is culpable. But so are the experts. People need to be able to trust their experts.
Separately - I find it ridiculous we have people that are all about science, except when their agenda conflicts.
We end up with exceptions for religion. Exceptions for protests. Exceptions for filming movies. Whatever. If you have enough influence or can cause enough outrage about something you can get your way.
Nobody has the balls to take hard stances. They create these illogical plans based on who is influencing them.
Is there any official who was consistent and pragmatic with their pandemic plan?
That was forever ago and only a few weeks into the US crises(couple weeks after first lockdowns started). There absolutely was a PPE shortage at the time, and there absolutely was new information coming in about the efficacy of wearing non N95 masks. That's a lot of attribution to malice or incompetence for such a dynamic situation that shaped up in such a relatively short amount of time..
Meanwhile the current admin had their last maskless rally what, just in the past week or so?
You seem to be ok glossing over that because you want to talk about the current admin when I'm not even talking about that. I agree with the culpability there.
Fauci - In March he said "there's no reason to be walking around with a mask" [1] The CDC and WHO were doing the same.
Also regarding the lie, "“We were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and public face head of the federal government’s coronavirus response, told The Street in an interview this week." [2]
You can go utilitarian if you want and say that's cool. Maybe you are ok with them lying to you because you believe them and think that was their only option. My point stands that there's enough distrust of the government. I don't believe they should do that, connect a lie to experts we are supposed to trust, and I don't believe that was their only option to prevent a shortage.
A lot of incompetence.
#1 not having enough masks in the first place, replenishing our supply
#2 talking about things they don't know and
#3 because they were incorrectly claiming cloth masks weren't useful for the public, they ended up parlaying that into a lie to try and prevent a shortage.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23hvLiA2akE
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/dr-fauci-admits-feds-initi...
edit As was correctly pointed out, I should mention I'm speaking purely about the US and not any other country.
Which creates a force field around the warehouses in which it sits? Come on.
I guess I’ll revise to I know of people with substantial resources, hundreds of millions and billions at their disposal, who have been injected with something they believe to be the Pfizer vaccine.
There are easier ways for people in power to get vaccines. In China, the government has granted exceptional permissions to vaccinate a number of people with a vaccine that has not yet completed phase 3 trials. The list of people who qualify for that vaccine is said to be several million people long. It's much easier to get on said list in China than it is anywhere else. A number of other governments have also made exceptions for political leaders and such, treating them with non-approved medication or vaccines. For example, the sheikh of Dubai has been vaccinated with the Sinopharm vaccine before approval (in a very public display of faith in said vaccine, in order to promote vaccination to the population). Some countries are saying they won't bother waiting for phase 3 trials to end on some products and will make vaccines generally available based on current data. This is the case for Russia (with Sputnik-V) and Morocco (with the Sinopharm vaccine). I consider it highly likely that their heads of state are vaccinated under an exceptional authorization.
This is a global pandemic, trials with 30 000 patients x 5, each one of those vials worth an absolute fortune, there's a 100% chance quite a bit of it has fled into the black market and a sophisticated one at that.
And to wit - there are a lot of people being 'officially' vaccinated right now behind the scenes they're not going to tell us about.
It might be dangerous for politicians to get it early, because if asked by reporters either they have to lie, or say 'yes' and then public outcry.
Special Forces, the Secret Service and some other security personal - just a some examples are going to get it long before we plebes. Among others.
https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(20)30027-1
and has had good results in trials from March.
Also, I'm guessing that JumpCrissCross doesn't know specifically that it is the Pfizer vaccine. It could be the Moderna one.
> A more promising vaccine was developed in January 2020 and requires only -4C
Which vaccine is this? The link you just posted talks about Moderna, which started trials in August.
Designed by Jan 13, manufactured and first trial by mid-Feb.
Also quote ..
>as early as July the MIT Technology Review reported that a group of 70 scientists in the orbit of Harvard and MIT, including “celebrity geneticist” George Church, were taking a totally DIY nasal-spray vaccine,
This is likely complete misinformation. Why is there so much misinformation on HN today?
Yup. It’s sitting in warehouses ready for distribution. No idea how. And no idea how they trusted it to be legitimate.
That was frankly my line of questioning. But at least in the German case, the vials and packaging looked legitimate. And it was a reputable doctor administering it at their home who claimed to have directly procured it, though I’m sure that meant warehouse workers or something in the middle, so who knows.
Agree. From how prevalently I watched tests get mis-allocated a few months ago, however, I’m not optimistic about enforcement. Particularly given the political implications it would have for the leaders in power, who are supposed to be doing a better job at this.
Same thing happened with tests a few months ago in Palo Alto. Billionaires with boxes of them at their homes while public stocks ran low.
PS: They were no COVID vaccine in October but clinical trials.
What you're talking about is literally a black market. The people you are hanging out with are literally criminals, who are at best injecting themselves with an unknown substance provided by criminal doctors. Most of us probably wish to see such people prosecuted.
Maybe you knew someone participating in a study but that's not queue skipping.
Don't get me wrong I hate billionaires but this just seems like it can't factually be correct.
It's easily conceivable that billionaires have been pushing to be 'in the loop' on the meds from the start, and will have gained access long ago to whatever was used in the most promising trials. They can take it as soon as the insider doctors flag that it's ok, likely many weeks before any public announcement, and certainly before any governmental validation.
The value of said vaccines are considerable, there's massive money involved, I wonder if the R&D institutions themselves may have been able to find a loophole to allow for it.
With the sheer number of doctors and patients involved in the trial, and vials worth possibly $100-500K on the black market ... it's bound to get out.
And frankly, who cares? A couple thousand early vaccines is basically meaningless from a public health standpoint. It might even be moral to have publicly auctioned off the first mini batch and put the money into production. It's rational because the 'willingness to pay' of some billionaires for the almost arbitrary early access to a vaccine which will soon be cheap and plentiful ... works well as a 'win win' both for the buyer, and society.
Boxes of the test kits. I was giving precedence. Frankly surprised this is news to so many people. It’s well known in e.g. D.C. circles.
Trump isn't sitting in the Oval deciding which Walgreens are getting the vaccine when.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is paying for the vaccine doses. It is up to individual's insurance plan to pay for administration of the vaccine. I'm not sure how that works for somebody who lacks insurance.
More details: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/28/health/cms-medicare-covid-vac...
But to your point, from sending humans into space to clearing snow off the roads, "government" absolutely destroys the private sector in efficiency and effectiveness for many important things. I'd rather let the CDC work on vaccine distribution protocols than leave it to Taco Bell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_government_respon...
Or, specifically:
> Due to the slow response to the hurricane, New Orleans's top emergency management official called the effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly desperate city.[10] New Orleans's emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). "This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy", he said. "FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."[10]
On COVID:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelyncorley/2020/04/10/us-g...
I think that two colossal failures are enough to convey a "The government responds inefficiently and generally poorly to significant humanitarian issues".
> absolutely destroys the private sector in efficiency and effectiveness for many important things.
Maybe. Lots of private sector work is held up specifically _by_ government.
> I'd rather let the CDC work on vaccine distribution protocols than leave it to Taco Bell.
I mean... I agree. But I never suggested we leave vaccines in the hands of chain businesses. I just pointed out that, historically, the US government botches jobs like this spectacularly. The confidence lots of these comments have in the govt efficiently distributing the vaccinations based on need, to me, is not in line with the realities of the US government wrt issues of public health and safety.
I'm not going to be trying to jump ahead in that line because i'm not an asshole and i know other people need it more than I do. but also I'm a little bit of an asshole, so i'm kind of reassured to know that hundreds of millions of people will have gotten it before me, and if there are any issues there will have been plenty of time to sort them out.
My pharmacy does COVID testing but only if you show no symptoms. The gov health networks tell symptomatic people to be tested in hospital set up centers. But high risk people are still high risk people, whether they are showing symptoms or not.
My hunch is most of the queues for vaccines will be type A e.g. the elderly. Not necessarily more likely to have COVID, but more likely to be at risk of severe symptoms if they were to get it.
If my local bike shop has figured out the concept of no-contact service appointments by now, I'm pretty sure the health department can do it.
I’ve gone whole months without drinking close physical contact!
My complete layman understanding would be that it should at least somewhat prevent the spreading because replication has to be limited if a vaccine works and replication is also an important part of giving the disease to others? If less cells are infected you can't cough out the virus as much? But the exact timeline is important here, obviously. Again, complete layman, I know basically nothing about this.
Bizarrely, Prison Officers' unions are arguing that prisoners should get ahead of people who haven't committed crime to get the Coronavirus Vaccine. See this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/2020/12/11/h...
This is just the beginning. There will be plenty of such public employee unions that will be jockeying for access over private citizens. And these unions spend huge amounts of money on their preferred candidates in elections to the State Legislatures, among other governments.
Many such people will have antibodies already. As do I. I’ll get the vaccine if it becomes a requirement to travel or whatever, but I see no need for it in the short term if you’re low risk and already had Covid.
We don’t have enough information yet to say how protected someone might be from being infected again if they have antibodies to the virus.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti...
How long IgM and IgG antibodies remain detectable following infection is not known.
...
it remains uncertain to what degree and for how long individuals with antibodies (neutralizing or total) are protected against reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 or what concentration of antibodies may be needed to provide such protection.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti...
Sure, but it seems to have worked so far. And if having natural antibodies doesn't give long-term immunity, then will vaccine-induced antibodies? We don't know.
> "How long IgM and IgG antibodies remain detectable following infection is not known."
Having detectable antibodies is not the same thing as immunity.
What if somebody has asymptomatic covid infection? He or she spreads it without intent, you can not blame them.
Yes, given what is widely publicly known about the disease, I can very easily blame people who are involved engaging in high-spread-risk behavior despite being a-(or, more likely if they are actually spreading it, pre-)symptomatic and who are thereby spreading the virus they don’t know they have.
On the other hand, if someone knows they've been exposed and still behave carelessly, I'm absolutely fine with charging people with attempted murder, endangering the public health, or something similar.
What's the difference between passing this on unintentionally and passing any other virus or disease unintentionally?
No, attempted murder requires specific intent. For the most egregious conduct when they know they are at particularly high risk of being a spreader, even without intent, if someone actually dies, it might arguably be close to depraved-indifference rather than intent-to-kill murder, but more generally negligent homicide if they actually kill people and reckless endangerment, otherwise, would be closer selections from the generically-common American set of crimes. But I’m not arguing they should be criminally liable; saying that an act is not beyond moral blame is not the same that it technically fits — or, even if it does, should necessarily be prosecuted as — a crime.
Mingling with other people at a similar comfort level of contract Covid - that’s just adults being adults. That’s freedom.
But if those people then go to unavoidable places like grocery stores, they’re putting people at risk who don’t have much of a choice.
In the situation of Covid it would be something like infecting another person without the intent to infect, but where the person's health might be endangered as a result of the negligent or reckless actions of the defendant (the one who spread the virus).
https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/hiv-exposure-sex-crimes-sna...
If you are spreading COVID in the US, whether or not you're symptomatic, it's a conscious choice.
This virus has been primarily spread by people who are pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic, particularly indoors and maskless.
At this point, if you're indoors and maskless with anyone outside your family or "pod" you are completely culpable if you spread the disease. Probably not legally, but morally.
Same. Just like first generation Apple hardware, even if looks as good as the M1, I'd rather have other people take the plunge before I do.
In about a year, I may. By then, we'll have 2 years worth of data from the test group - good enough!
If I perceive any serious risk, I won't. Being young and with no risk factors, I have little to gain - so the rational move for me is to leech off the group herd immunity effect.
So people, please, do the right thing and get vaccinated!! Protect your parents and your neighbors!!!
If it’s your turn to get the vaccin, take it or you stay in quarantine until you get it. That’s my take