Comment by anedcata | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anedcata | Hacker News Reader

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It used to be common to reply to this sort of fear mongering with "anecdotes aren't data." Cool anecdote, bro.

Sorry for that person you, a random internet person I have no reason to trust, allegedly know, who is very, very unlucky.

The people in power want us to stay afraid and easy to control. Fauci says vaccines work but doesn't trust them enough to stop going into public with TWO masks! Despite being vaccinated!

Why would I get a vaccine that doesn't quell the fears of "the nation's top doctor" enough for him to stop wearing the masks? Or are the masks just for show?

We may still be in a pandemic but it's time to stop panicking, face the danger, and get on with society and our lives before we cause bigger problems like famine societal breakdown!

Some people may die of COVID in the process, but someone is going to die no matter what choice we make, from deprivation, from isolation, from side effects, from economic distress

COVID might suck but there are far worse things, I think it's safe to say, after a year, this thing isn't Ebola.

Now commence downvoting to show you disagree! Surely it will change my mind this time!

Isn't mask wearing still required after vaccination because of the enforcement costs? I.e. it's too difficult to prove whose been vaccinated in every situation, so by requiring masks until the community reaches the target threshold

Vaccination is variolating: it lessens the impact of the infection, not preventing the infection, and thus the potential to be contagious.

A vaccinated person who has been infected is still contagious, just less so than an unvaccinated person.

Think it's still preferable just because vaccinated people can still catch and potentially spread it, and the risk of exposure is still pretty high due to all the people not vaccinated.

Most places don require masks at all. The recommendation (for now) is to keep wearing mask as before.

I assume this will change as/if/when more people become vaccinated.

Mask rules will change as active cases fall. There is a 10-30% of the population that refuse vaccines for political reasons. All we can hope for is everyone else getting the vaccine, and most of the anti-science people getting immunities via an infection.

Answering these two questions will help you uncover the errors in your thought process:

1. Are masks suggested to protect the wearer from contracting the virus or to prevent the wearer from spreading the virus?

2. Are vaccinated individuals still able to host and transmit the virus, despite not contracting the disease caused by the virus?

> Are vaccinated individuals still able to host and transmit the virus, despite not contracting the disease caused by the virus?

If that is the case, herd immunity cannot be achieved with vaccinations.

This is fundamentally incorrect.

Vaccinated people have a lower viral load, thus are less contagious, thus lower the R1.

If the r1 is below 1, then you eventually get to herd immunity. The more vaccinated people there are, the less dangerous the disease is, and the less contagious it becomes.

Herd immunity is not binary: it's a gradient, and if you are on the right side, things get better.

Even if vaccinated people can contract the virus, they are likely to fight it off relatively quickly and keep the virus load in their bodes low, keeping their chances of transmitting it much lower than an unvaccinated person would.

Lets say being vaccinated halves your chances of passing on the virus compared to an unvaccinated person. If almost all the population get vaccinated, we can ease the lockdown to the point where we tolerate doubling the chances of re-infection. The lockdown easing and vaccination effect should cancel out. If vaccination reduces your chances of passing on the virus by 10x, then we can tolerate a 10x increased risk due to easing lockdown measures.

Worst case we may have to retain some limitations in social contact for a bit longer, but hopefully nowhere near as onerous or we've had to so far.

But if the vaccines don't prevent infection, you won't achieve herd immunity until 70% have been infected one way or another.

It may well be that having already been infected doesn't prevent you passing on the virus, in exactly the same way.

Whether your immune system knows how to fight the virus from previous infection, or from a vaccine, it can take time for your immune system to kick in and fight of a new infection. During that time you might be infectious.

Israel data doesn’t make this look to be the case. I don’t see any evidence this is the case.

Which is a huge problem.

> Or are the masks just for show?

The masks are so that the wearer doesn't infect and the vaccine is there to help the immune system fight COVID, not prevent infection entirely.

These anecdotes are useful to remind us that many covid survivors still suffer from its damage.

The data doesn't quantify these things yet, so cynical people, maybe people especially like you, might do well to pay them attention. Just because you're unlikely to die from covid, doesn't mean you won't be part of the 10% who retain symptoms past 3 months.

It's not a binary outcome.

"Of these, the vast majority (>99.9%) resolve with no major sequelae."

Citation needed. > 99.9% is an extraordinary number and probably needs extraordinary support.

"99.9%" is usually what you see when people are talking about the numbers of people in their whole population who haven't died from it yet. I appreciate the problems in test data when talking about case-mortality, but population-mortality is utter nonsense.

Not to mention that in many places the whole population-mortality is now more than 0.1%. 0.2% of the UK has died from Covid. A few places are worse than that, and many places are on a trajectory for 1% if they can't control it.

Yes, including the Czech Republic, where I live. We have about 0,25% of the entire population dead from the Covid pandemics, one of the worst results worldwide, if not number 1...

So I was really interested in OPs sources.

Worldwide deaths are a little over 2% of total cases so it doesn’t seem extraordinary, just wrong.

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.

'Earlier studies focused largely on long-term effects in hospitalized COVID patients, McCulloch noted. "Our study is unique in characterizing a group consisting of mostly outpatients: 90% of our cohort experienced only a mild COVID-19 illness, yet one-third continue to have lingering effects," she said.

'"Many of these individuals are young and have no pre-existing medical conditions, indicating that even relatively healthy individuals may face long-term impacts from their illness."'

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/91270

0.01%, 33%... Basically a rounding error, right?

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.

There are hundreds of thousands of people to point to. You're just trying to ignore them.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-tragedy-of-the-post-...

How many more cites do you want? There are plenty out there.

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.

That was the "let me Google that for you" response to your own completely unsupported claim. It seems like you're unwilling to look at evidence contrary to your opinions; the 'debate' is amongst deniers who aren't looking at evidence. I suggest some self reflection is in order; you're arguing with the same tactics as a climate change denier.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-tragedy-of-the-post-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID

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.

I'm sorry to hear your search engine got a flat tyre. Belligerently sniping about exactly what it is you want us —your research assistants, seemingly— to hand deliver you, doesn't seem like the best way to retain karma here, let alone have a discussion about something...

But anyway, some more material for you.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.19.20214494v... https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3026

It's going to be many years until we have a proper handle on this. Until then you might have to be willing to accept a flood of more anecdotal field data as having some analytical value.

There are two studies linked directly from the Harvard health article, one tracking Italian outpatients, and the other using randomized phone follow-up. Feel free to go read them, and more besides.

There's a constellation of individually imperfect studies pointing in the exact same direction; that's basically how science happens. The studies exist in the first place because people observed Something Strange was happening, and wanted to quickly get a sense of severity and prevalence, to inform public health response.

And if you're not willing to update your priors, I'll be here waiting for the perfect study that proves long covid doesn't exist...

I did not downvote you, but I feel need to comment on this:

"COVID might suck but there are far worse things"

Compared to, say, Auschwitz, everything else is trivial. But that is misleading.

The dead are, well, dead, but we do not yet know how the survivors of severe Covid cases will fare long term. Given that the cohort was fairly big, they may constitute a significant challenge for healthcare capacities.

Even in warfare, crippling an enemy soldier alive is considered more efficient than killing him outright. A disabled survivor requires much more energy and attention than a dead body.

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