I worry this carrot isn’t tied to an adequate stick - the unvaccinated can simply go without a mask regardless of their status. Will this move actually counter our slowing vaccination rates?
More for my understanding than anything else, and with every guarantee that I won't present any follow-up questions or statements, but why was this the tipping point and not the actual disease risk mitigation resulting from the vaccine?
It is a low-risk, higher-reward proposition for everyone.
And even if all the virus does is fry your sense of smell you're better off with a few days of influenza-like symptoms from the vaccines.
>About 8% of all participants said at least one activity of daily living suffered long-term consequences, most commonly household chores.
That puts the net risk for non-vaccinated people at no less than 0.8%.
By contrast, the incidence of blood clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine, which caused its ouster, was about 0.001%. That's a factor of 800 in favor of vaccination with the worst of the vaccines.
Note that reverse transcription of COVID RNA also is a convenient explanation for post symptomatic positive tests as well as long COVID symptoms.
I think it's irresponsible to downplay the risks associated with this novel technology, especially when people still have the option of continuing to socially isolate to some degree.
And we have a long track record of understanding this because viruses and vaccine cause the same kinds of autoimmune conditions. I had viral pericarditis once from a common cold that struck a month or two after I got over it. We've got hundreds of years of experience with it.
The issue with vaccines taking a long time to get approval is development time and efficacy data. Both of those were able to be done quickly due to the massive pandemic and due to the 10 years of preparatory work done on SARS-CoV-1 and mRNA vaccines.
And your interpretation of the reverse transcription article is just bullshit misinformation.
And you're still not escaping from being exposed to SARS-CoV-1 mRNA, it'll become endemic. You're getting it from the virus or the vaccine, there's not really going to be any skipping out.
(And if the LINE-1 results are correct this is how we pick up genetic material from all kinds of RNA viruses, our genome is littered with historical pandemics).
Not only that, but Operation Warp Speed (hate the name, but have to give it some credit) removed bureaucratic hurdles that allowed many of the normal steps to be done in parallel rather than serially. That doesn't mean that those steps were rushed or done in an unsafe manner.
This doesn't make sense because the mRNA-based spike protein, unlike the natural spike protein, is specifically tuned to annoy the immune system. Any cells incorporating the vaccine mRNA into their DNA will be summarily executed for the very same reason that the vaccine works as a vaccine in the first place: it's an antigen.
>I think it's irresponsible to downplay the risks associated with this novel technology
What's irresponsible is couch-quarterbacking the epidemiological community and the medical authorities of ~every developed country in the world, based on preprints, in the face of a pandemic that has claimed ~10M lives globally.
I'm not sure if your group's experience or mine is more typical. That's why comprehensive data is required to sort things out, and limited-number anecdotes are useless.
The risk of hospitalization among even 18-29 year olds is not negligible. Neither is the risk of permanent side effects like diabetes. Those autoimmune conditions can and do strike even perfectly healthy individuals.
It is weird how the vaccine is probably 1000x safer than getting the virus, but young people in particular are happy with the idea that "that won't happen to me, I'm healthy and young" when it comes to the virus, while they're deeply concerned about vaccine side effects that really aren't concerning at all.
(And BTW "robust immune system" doesn't help you if your own immune system turns on you due to the virus).
But for the last 3 months, there was nothing to make the tradeoff worthwhile to him.
Every decision is a risk/reward calculation.
The vaccine does carry the risk of side effects and adverse reactions. That risk, for most, is VERY small.
But if the person in question also has very low risk of contracting or spreading Covid (works from home, rarely goes out, young, healthy) and if being vaccinated doesn’t actually enable you to live any differently than you already are, then there’s no compelling reason to get vaccinated and assume the risk of side effects, no matter how small.
Put another way, if going out feels like a big hassle, and getting vaccinated doesn’t remove enough of the rules to make going out NOT feel like a hassle, then there’s no reason to change one’s “going out” habits. And if there’s no incentive to change one’s “going out” habits, then there’s no reason to go through any process or procedure that only perceivably benefits you if you leave home.
I will be getting my vaccine soon myself.
But the world has changed. If I was isolated and nervous to “put myself out there” pre-pandemic, then I’m nearly agoraphobic now.
Nobody I work with wants to return to the office, nobody wants to return to having fun outings (at least not outside their own social circle).
There’s literally nothing for me to return to doing. I’ve built up a relatively solitary life with my dad in the last 12+ months, and everything outside of it is gone.
If you feel that you have so much to return to that the idea of rarely going out, forever, sounds unrealistic, then I would consider yourself lucky.
I intend to get vaccinated just to be safe to anyone I might come in contact with, but to your point, even once I get vaccinated, I honestly see no trigger to change my behavior. I highly doubt I’m alone in this.
I don't really ever go out willingly, so I didn't really have an incentive to get vaccinated. Now I can get vaccinated and not wear a mask at work when it's 100+F in a few months.
Now that it's socially acceptable to wear a mask when in businesses and isn't a fashion trend, I will continue to do it since it should impede facial recognition. Except if it's a bit hot, I now can choose not to :)
I think this will be a great incentive to drive vaccination rates.
But the thing that really bothers me about your previous rationale is that it doesn't take anyone else into account. What about people who would like to get vaccinated, but can't because they're deathly allergic to components of the vaccine (or some other medical reason)? What about people who would like to get vaccinated but can't afford to take time off work for the shot, or to rest during possible side effects?
You getting vaccinated protects those people too, when you walk past them in that grocery store. They deserve to be out and about without fear of infection just as much as you or I do.
Also, if vaccination doesn’t change the risk enough for you to drop some of the other precautions, that also lowers the perceived value of the efficacy of the vaccine as well.
and civic duty is voting, educating yourself on policy issues, obeying reasonable laws, and tolerating and even celebrating differences of perspective and opinion. it's about participating effectively in our democratic republic. it doesn't encompass every possible responsibility to every other human, like the term 'moral duty' might.
American individualism also tends to downplay a person's responsibility to anyone outside their family, which some even restrict to their immediate nuclear family.
It's a shame, and I think it's one of our biggest failings as a culture. Ironically this is one of the few things where the American left and right are fairly on the same page, even if most won't admit it.
(I'm painting a pretty dire picture here, but it really isn't that bad. Communities exist everywhere, and people who care about others exist everywhere. It just seems like when the chips are down, people tend to turn inward rather than outward.)
I’m back in SF now and everybody is wearing the mask. Everybody. The adults, the children, Even the vaccinated people. Yesterday the waiter asked me if we could put back our mask so she could hand us our plate.
Country of extremes. I feel like there’s no going back to normal eventhough I’m fully vaccinated.
It spreads so poorly outdoors (this has been abundantly documented), especially if your exposure to someone is brief, that the main reason is a combination of virtue signaling, hygiene theater, and because it makes you feel safer.
Or, because you feel it's a conservative decision which is respectful of others. I'm not worried about incidental exposure from passing someone on the sidewalk, but I can only make that decision for myself, so I either mask up or get out of the way.
Etiquette is a rational enough reason.
> the waiter asked me if we could put back our mask so she could hand us our plate
I get the feeling behind this, but it's also silly. Either you're outdoors and the risk is already pretty low, or you're indoors, and 30s of exposure won't be a big deal, especially when it's not like everyone is wearing N95 respirators and aerosols are a bigger concern than we used to think.
Personally they lost my trust when they told us to not wear masks for some time early in the pandemic.
The problem is natural human bias to require higher levels of evidence to refute a practice than were required to institute it.
Making masks into that big punishment and unfairness definitely killed my trust into whole lot of people and groups of people.
Like, on one end you have states waiting for an impossibly high threshold of vaccination before masks go away or nightclubs open up with dance floors. And now they can say “oh ok that was old guidance, we’re good now”
On the other hand it also caters to the states that ignored old guidance “ah! Sanity has prevailed! Now can these few businesses that demand masks stop fighting us on this?”
I liked the idea of paying people to get vaccinated [1], but since that encountered public opposition, this is the next best thing.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/955594105/should-the-governme...
A stranger on the sidewalk is giving away free cookies. If in addition they offer $100 to each person who eats one, does that make me more, or less likely to accept a cookie?
I think the point is about how much you trust the person handing out the cookies/vaccine and money. There are plenty of people who trust the government about as much (or less) than a random stranger.
https://www.wiscnews.com/news/national/a-million-dollars-in-...
I don’t know of many other ways to cheapen the significance of one’s own healthcare or the science that drives it than something like this.
Edit: Minnesota will be ending their mask mandate tomorrow.
Most brick and mortar was barely viable during the best market in history so all we gotta do is wait! And also not go to them lol have fun with that gofundme
Very nice.
Some businesses give in to security theater and it is immensely frustrating. For example here in Belgium some shops force you to take a trolley even if you just want to buy a single item and have your own bag. They do this "because COVID". So what happens? A pile up of people at the entrance trying to move caddies over, leading to far more risk there than there otherwise would be if you left people to their own device.
Our swimming pools are open, but they closed the showers "because COVID". So what happens? People are gross, get in the water right away, don't soap up or whatever, and it's far less clean/healthy than it would be for no good reason.
Overabundance of caution is not always a good excuse.
“That’s not approved!! Get out of here!”
Different things are happening
I don’t know the circumstances of the situation you mention, but it hardly qualifies as security theatre. Also, I doubt they screamed ‘not approved’ but I guess no anti-mask narrative sounds dire enough without a little exaggeration.
Its 100% Machiavellian.
Many businesses could have made their patrons equity owners but instead went for the gofundme as nondilutive capital. Many bad tastes in my mouth, so long and goodnight. Evictions restarting soon too.
"The effectiveness against any documented infection with the B.1.351 variant was 75.0% (95% CI, 70.5 to 78.9). Vaccine effectiveness against severe, critical, or fatal disease due to infection with any SARS-CoV-2 (with the B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants being predominant within Qatar) was very high, at 97.4% (95% CI, 92.2 to 99.5). Sensitivity analyses confirmed these results (Table S3)."
so it's still quite effective at preventing severe illness, which is why I'm not terribly worried, but still spooky that strains are starting to mutate away from our protection.
I wish there was data on fully vaccinated people being able to spread infection to others, but that won't be available for a long time.
There is such data. That data is what led the CDC to make this change.
(what in the world is going on with downvotes in this thread? Are HNers really unable to have difficult conversations?)
Which isn't zero, colds and flu kill a few children a year.
I support you in keeping your children healthy, not trying to second guess you as a parent. But "think of the children" is not a good basis for policy here.
> The risk of complications for healthy children is higher for flu compared to COVID-19.
It's not evil, it's common sense. COVID may be the first pandemic you've lived through/remembered, but it's not the first pandemic, and there are far more dangerous diseases out there we don't want coming back.
I was vaccinated as a child of things i am still immune to today.
Yes. So they don't get sick, i.e. it's for their own benefit.
New variants are still emerging, and some of them are pretty worrying. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Unless the President said that, your message is not going to get across.
848 Americans died today marked as a Covid contributed death. There were lockdowns across 90% of the country a year ago when less people were dying from this. So we’re just past that, sorry. Good luck to them.
The goal was just to keep ICU capacity available for the normal distribution of emergencies in society. We’ve done that.
It means we’ve all been reduced to statistics for 15 months and we have now simply reverted to a mean where the world is not compatible with immunocompromised people and good luck to them, just like before Covid, and just like during and after Covid. They had a 15 month time period where people and the state would help reduce exposure to them, and that was the luckiest time for them to be immunocompromised and thats over now.
That's a nice feature of the RNA-based vaccines.
[1] https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disea...
Good lord. It is almost like they want to discourage people to not get vaccinated.
I think people should take care about their own health, if you are in risk group get vaccinated, if you are not in risk group what's the point urging someone to get vaccinated if risk groups are vaccinated or are ready to bear risks?
Low-risk people can still become infected, never show symptoms, and pass the virus to someone else without realizing it. Risking that happening while a vaccine is available is just irresponsible and selfish.
Throughout this pandemic, my biggest fear was not getting COVID myself, but unwittingly giving it to someone vulnerable who then died.
If most of the new cases start to be among the unvaccinated, that could make for a stick.
I really wish that stick worked, but it seems like it won't, at least not universally. But presumably there are some people for whom it will work, if one of their loved ones gets infected and ends up in a bad way.
Oh, the humanity.
> Will this move actually counter our slowing vaccination rates?
Yes, loosening controls does that. It also reduces the harms imposed by the controls. Vaccination and infection affect the cost/benefit analysis between those effects.
Edit: MN mask mandate goes away tomorrow.
If you’re vaccinated along with a decent majority of people, why would you want to wear a mask? The vaccines have been overwhelmingly good so far at preventing hospitalization and death, they’re more effective than influenza vaccines.