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Reopening the economy or not is a political choice and doesn't necessarily depend on vaccine effectiveness. The economy in Florida has been pretty much open since September. We can argue about whether that is wise but the reality is they are open today.

The question was not about wrong political choices, but about the right ones.

But how do you evaluate right?

Public health, economic, liberty, community cohesion?

Those compatible with the scientific research.

Which scientific research? That which only takes the virus related deaths into account, or that which balances other factors such as depression, suicide, substance and spousal abuse, and long term economic factors?

At least whatever does not contradict all scientific results.

There’s truth to this, but it’s more complicated. In my neighborhood, even if our mayor “opened” things back up, very few would be willing to, say, dine indoors. I can say this confidently because we were less locked down in the late summer.

It’s not just a political choice.

Are you sure of this? Here every time restrictions are lifted all restaurants are crowded the very same day.

Yep. This is what we've seen where I live.

But I agree this can depend on the community. I even specified neighborhood rather than city because I'd imagine this is different in other neighborhoods in my own city.

Israel has managed to give the first shot to 20% of its population, and at this rate will be into herd immunity territory by the end of the month.

As far as pressures on healthcare systems though, once over 65s have been vaccinated (and the northern winter ends) the pressures pretty much vanish.

> Similar to how we’ve never really admitted that people who’ve had COVID are immune and can no longer spread it.

Well we don't know that. In many cases the virus reproduces and spreads without any symptoms. If the spread occurs before the immune system kicks in you could still be a carrier even though the vaccine makes your symptoms pretty much zero.

"once winter ends" I've been wondering about that. In June things were just great, but at the same time our health agency (RIVM) claims COVID-19 is not affected by seasons. Are they lying (since they're saying "is not" instead of "might not" / "unknown"), or was what happened around June a coincidence?

I can't believe it is not a bit seasonal, whatever the reason is.

First wave ended in June in the northern hemisphere and started in the southern hemisphere at about the same time. We are seeing a similar shift in the second wave.

It can be a coincidence but since people are more likely to stay inside when it is cold outside, and transmission is more likely inside, it makes sense.

"It can be a coincidence"

Since the cold season is usually when it is cold outside, yeah. Might be more than coincidence.

More non-covid hospital pressure in winter. More people inside.

On what basis are they saying it? Every single other coronavirus is seasonal, so I don’t see why this one wouldn’t be.

Have a look at hcov’s seasonality in figure 2 here: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-virology-0...

“It’s not seasonal” is one of the mantras health agencies repeated in february, along with “masks aren’t shown to work” and “it doesn’t” spread by aerosol.

My guess is your health agency simply hasn’t re-examined their beliefs as evidence came in.

Hello from summer in Australia right now

NZ doesn't count as there's no cases. Austrialia has big problems in Austrailian 'winter', July through September, when daily cases were far higher

Easier in summer to just open every window and get enough of a breeze that it's harder to infect people.

> Well we don't know that. In many cases the virus reproduces and spreads without any symptoms.

We know that asymptomatic people who are not immune can possibly spread the virus. But that’s a slightly different question.

We know that it’s very rare for someone with antibodies to be symptomatically reinfected with COVID. That’s also a slightly different question.

The specific question on the likelihood of someone with natural immunity to be able to later spread COVID without a symptomatic infection;

I’ve never heard of a single confirmed case of this happening. And the point is not that it never happens, the point is it’s a negligible risk. Smaller than, for example, someone who isn’t immune who is wearing a mask.

But from a public policy perspective, we’ll never actually admit this, just because the second order effects — where some people can rightfully walk around without a mask and are rightfully not subject to mitigations and lockdowns - are political untenable.

Well more the idea that immunity passports bring back memories of really bad old societal sequelae from the yellow fever days

Yellow fever days? You mean before international travel mostly stopped?

I have to show my yellow piece of paper with the stamp from my jab when I travel to several countries, most recently Nigeria

In antebellum New Orleans, people would often try to get infected with yellow fever as soon as they got here to get it over with so if they survived they could claim immunity.

From the phase 3 trials you'd absolutely expect cases to occur after vaccinations. That's what the 95% efficacy after 2 doses means, that 5% of people had symptomatic infections.

Hopefully it is the case that the 5% are people that have a weak response to the vaccine and the remainder mostly aren't infectious. They can study this by monitoring for asymptomatic infections (I don't know if they are going to or not).

95% effectiveness does not mean 5% of people had symptomatic infections. It means there were 20 times more infections in the placebo group compared to control.

If you gave the vaccine to 1000 people and placebo to 1000 people, and 100 of the placebo and 5 of the treatment group got sick, that's 95% effective, as is if all 1000 in the control group got COVID and only 50 in the treatment group.

You’re saying the same thing as the parent comment.

Parent said 5% had symptomatic infections, 50 in this example, while the correct number is 0.5% percent or 5 people.

Yep, thanks for clarifying.

None of the data you'd need to have policies based on calculated immunity is going to come quickly, if at all.

I don't think it's reasonable to try to run an open economy for those who are likely immune and a parallel economy for those who are unknown. There's no way anyone can verify any of that in a day to day setting.

I would expect that some international borders might reduce quarantine requirements if you can show evidence of probable immunity, but not right away.