Hacker News Reader

Comment by murgindrag | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the goal posts are moving with lightening speed.

Whenever I read a sentence like "The goal was never to eradicate COVID from being annoying—it was to eradicate it from being a killer." Those same experts, a year ago, were assuring us that COVID would never become endemic.

Same thing with vaccines. Yes, everyone should get vaccinated. Yes, we were given a ton of guidance that vaccines would stop the spread of COVID.

I feel like there are two camps:

1) Liberals, who are in control of the health establishment, who lie to get the behavior they want (starting with "no mask" advice, to now overselling vaccines, and rewriting history)

2) Conservatives, who ignore all science.

Liberal media emphasizes how we've always been at war with Eastasia, and liberals believe it. Conservatives point to inconsistencies and open lies, and use that to discount everything from medical, academic, and government establishments.

View on HN

Not. Fauci a year ago:

Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday he believes the world will “get control of” Covid-19, but “I don’t really see us eradicating it,” expressing a view in line with public health experts—but directly contradicting President Donald Trump’s claims made as recently as Tuesday that the virus will “disappear”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/07/22/contrad...

But he has dangled the goal of herd immunity, while gradually upping the percentage of vaccination required to get there. Herd immunity to many people means “eradication” and the media has helped foster that belief.

It's not medical personnel's fault that people don't know what words mean. Again, medical personnel were clear that herd immunity would prevent widespread, but not local, outbreaks. It definitely didn't mean, and was never claimed to be, that you had no risk of getting sick.

Even on random fox news article that comes up via searching herd immunity, the subtitle is

"Herd immunity doesn’t make any one person immune"

https://www.foxnews.com/health/herd-immunity-looking-unlikel...

The percentage required was never a solid number in the first place and the shift is due to our better knowledge of the virus and the new strains that necessitate higher vaccination rate.

Fauci pretty openly stated that he moved the goalposts based on public sentiment regarding vaccination, not better knowledge of the virus. It has been very frustrating watching policymakers who really should know better (mask debacle, anyone?) repeat the same mistake of sabotaging their long-term credibility for short-term PR reasons.

> Fauci indicated that he based his shifting statements on public polling on the popularity of coronavirus vaccines.

> "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent," Fauci said. "Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85."

> He continued: "We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fauci-shift-herd-immunity-9...

My friend, that’s the definition of moving goalposts. But of course everything changes over time, as it should. Are we still trying to reach herd immunity? What percentage vaccinated would be required for that? Two questions for you to research.

Edit: Do we have enough doses even today to vaccinate everyone, worldwide? I think we do not.

Well, I am not your friend. I am very particular about who my friends are.

As to goalposts, the goalposts moved themselves. If everybody vaccinated when they had a chance there would not be any talk of goalposts.

Instead we will have more millions of people die because couple people died of vaccine and everybody else does not understand law of large numbers.

The level of discourse and critical thinking in the mainstream media is made for uneducated people who don't understand even basic biology.

There is a certain breed of scientist that just spouts bullshit. Unfortunately the media is so obsessed with "narratives" that it will seek these people out (and these bullshit artists seek out the media) so all nuance is lost.

The moral of the story is, don't let other people do your thinking for you.

The average person has no ability to understand lipid nano particles. Many scientists and most doctors do not understand, so how is the average dolt like me going to figure it all out?

It's not the lipid nano particles that's the issue but basic high school biology that is missing.

People get confused because the media throws around high level concepts without building an appropriate mental model of how viruses, cells and vaccines actually function. This creates a fertile breeding ground for misconceptions.

For example there is a misconception that after people have been vaccinated they can shed SARS-CoV-2 as a result of being vaccinated. This seems to have started by the media saying that "people who are vaccinated can still pass on the virus" (a true statement).

So the media tries to counter this by saying "MYTH: people who have had the vaccine can't shed the virus" which just confuses the issue even more.

If the media was actually functional then it would educate people on basic biology and then they would be able to figure out on their own that A is false and B is true. Unfortunately this is not the media we have.

I think the bigger problem is exponentials, rates of change, and control systems.

Right now, we lock down when numbers get high, and open up when numbers get low.

There's about a month lag between actions and hopsitalizations, so we act on month-old data. We don't look at rates-of-growth. This results in a roller-coaster.

We ought to take whatever measures we need to keep R0<1.

You don't need to know about lipid nanoparticles; they're an implementation detail.

Seeing the “goalposts” argument is so tiring. We learn something new every day, of course our understanding of COVID changes and thus the recommendation of how to keep ourselves healthy does too.

"The goal was never to eradicate COVID from being annoying" does sound surprising considering all we've been hearing about the effectiveness of the mRNA at preventing infections of non-Delta COVID. But then, that high effectiveness was once itself a surprise, so it may make sense if the point of reference is before the original clinical trials were finished.

Getting rid of COVID became impossible the moment governments decided to wait with restrictions until there is enough cases.

Now it is a bit too late to think about getting rid of it completely but the pandemic will not be over until people realize you can't lift restrictions until it is really over and that everybody needs to get vaccinated.

Unfortunately, viruses are not politically motivated and are not swayed by fake news.

Rather than bitchin at liberals or conservatives, better read up on what people who really know something about viruses say.

> overselling vaccines

Oh my... it is not overselling. It is dealing with people like children they are. People reverted to the point where you can't have merit-based discussion about vaccines in public, and so simplifying the message is IMO the right strategy.

The point is, vaccines work and the more people vaccinate the less will die and all other finer points are less important.

“ Getting rid of COVID became impossible the moment governments decided to wait with restrictions until there is enough cases.”

No, Chinese government stalled, suppressed doctors and scientists who were screaming out about the virus months, literally, before anybody outside the Chinese government was aware. That’s a matter of record and easily verified.

Chinese government did what Chinese government usually does. Then the rest of the world decided to wait for couple of months to react even with full knowledge of seriousness of the situation.

"Let's wait before putting any restrictions on the population until we have enough cases."

Restrictions were probably unavoidable, but most of deaths could have been avoided by quick reaction.

> Oh my... it is not overselling. It is dealing with people like children they are. People reverted to the point where you can't have merit-based discussion about vaccines in public, and so simplifying the message is IMO the right strategy. > > The point is, vaccines work and the more people vaccinate the less will die and all other finer points are less important.

Repeating a point over and over, based on falsehoods, hasn't worked out very well either here or in global warming.

At some point, people notice you're lying. The conclusion might be correct, but if you get caught lying along the way, you undermine your case.

People didn't "revert." Years of this kind of oversimplification and "dealing with people like children they are" led to this ignorance. And in a rapidly-evolving situation like COVID19, this ignorance sometimes ends up biting you just months later. In my community, vaccine efficacy is well below 70%. People don't believe that since we've had months of messaging.

Yes, I do think we would have higher vaccination rates if we stopped patronizing people, and started educating them.

No time like the present to start.

> were assuring us that COVID would never become endemic.

no they weren't. endemic disease and booster shots every year or three were always on the table from the start.

>I feel like the goal posts are moving with lightening speed.

The goalposts have been moving ever since we were told "only 2 weeks to stop the spread".

When did anyone say "2 weeks to stop the spread"

I remember "2 Weeks to slow the curve" and Trump's "15 days to slow the spread" but I don't remember anyone ever saying eradication was simply 2 weeks of lockdown away.

Even if it was as simple as 2 weeks away, many people chose to ignore the stay-at-home orders, so it's not really achievable. I think you're confusing 'moving goal posts' with constant failure to reach a goal followed by readjustment to new data.

Stop the spread, slow the spread, the idea was that by doing just 2 weeks of isolation, everything would be manageable. This has really not been achieved anywhere in the world anywhere else other than New Zealand, and at what cost?

>I think you're confusing 'moving goal posts' with constant failure to reach a goal followed by readjustment to new data.

No, I don't think I am. That is a textbook definition of moving the goalposts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com