Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial | Hacker News Reader

Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial

wsj.com

19 pointsmrfusion58 comments

Many people are quick to say that no one should trust an opinion piece (some claiming further that WSJ in particular is suspect). People should be cautious of anything they read from any source. Further, just because an idea is expressed in an opinion piece doesn't automatically make it invalid.

In this case it is not difficult to get at the cited document from which the author's claims are drawn. For those interested, it is available here:

https://www.cmadocs.org/Portals/CMA/files/webinars/COVID-19%...

These data don't necessarily mean anything without an understanding of the context, but they are definitely useful and shouldn't be ignored out of hand, even if the author is using them to support a conclusion different than your own. In other words: accept the data for what it is worth and then use it to form/strengthen a reasonable conclusion.

EDIT: Punctuation

People are past the point of caring, if I really wanted to go out to a bar tonight, I could drive to one of the states which allow it.

Even the meetup groups in my area, are all revving to resume in person events. I strongly suspect most people are going to do whatever the hell they want the moment they get the vaccine.

The economy is still going to take a long time to recover, even if tomorrow covid just disappeared it would probably take a couple of years for the jobs to come back. Most of us hacker News folks are comfortable upper middle class, we work remote. Working class people have been taken through the ringer for this I know if I was making a middle-class income as a bartender, Corona happened and my income evaporated I'd be a mix of upset and depressed.

Note: this is part of the WSJ “opinion” section, separate from the news division.

https://archive.is/yKKNj

The variants — and their uncertain effect on immunity (natural or vaccine-induced) mean that herd immunity is not that helpful of a concept to track.

What matters are the data on infection rate.

With the infection rate being highly erroneous, largely dependent on the testing rate, the test quality, the immense rate of asymptotic infections and the extremely high false positive rate of some tests, the best data is still the hospitalization rate.

Relying on the infection rate with these unknowns is unreliable. Reminds me in the middle ages to find out who is a witch or not. They thought of themselves highly scientific and rational those times. Better burn some more witches than letting some escape.

Nobody should be getting facts from the opinion section of a newspaper.

While I appreciate the sentiment generally, I think this opinion, at least expressed as it is here, is a little exaggerated. In this case the author is a doctor, which probably makes him more qualified than your average Fox News commentator. He's a surgeon, though, so he probably isn't the most qualified person so, sure, grain of salt etc. What if this had been an opinion piece from an esteemed epidemiologist? Should we still disregard what they say?

Generally, I think the best strategy is to be open to what people might have to say if one is also diligent about checking sources.

EDIT: Missing words.

Especially not the WSJ which leans incredibly right and pro-big business. They’ve been publishing bad COVID takes since the beginning of the crisis.

Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN.

Why even link this trash?

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