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Comment by thechao | Hacker News Reader

I’m trying to understand your comment in the most positive way I can. However, you seem to be implying that either mechanical prevention measures (masks; distancing) or biomedical (vaccines) would be ineffective in treating and/or preventing the spread of COVID and its variants?

Is there a reason you think this? I used to work as a biostatisticians in the depth of epidemiology at UTMB Galveston. I think the basic advice of: “distance, mask, vaccine” is the most effective form of disease prevention known to science. It is very effective.

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Reality often astonishes theory.

Sweden, Gibraltar and Israel would like to have a discussion with this science.

I have family and friends in Israel; also, about a dozen close colleagues. Israel has used a fairly sophisticated version of mask+distancing+vaccines since day one. This has flattened their infection curve, admirably.

Or … just to make sure we’re on the same page: do you think these prophylaxes permanently prevent infection? That’s a misunderstanding of what these prophylaxis are for.

It is more about I see reports of increasing number of breakthrough infections in Israel.

https://trialsitenews.com/breakthrough-infections-continue-t...

There is a lot of discussion about these vaccines being leaky ( they don't stop transmission ). Therefore the whole premise on which the pandemic response is based is flawed. We are not on a path to elimination.

A vaccine, a mask, and social distancing reduce the probability of getting sick. In particular, a vaccine does not make you immune, like some sort of cartoon superhero. Instead, a vaccine dramatically improves the response time of your immune system to infection. If you’re surrounded by the infected, you’re gonna get sick.

If we had high rates of vaccination plus dedicated masking & distancing we could kill this virus. Just like we eradicated smallpox.

We didn't have leaky vaccines for smallpox. These vaccines work substantially different than previous generation vaccines.

How do you explain covid still spreading in Gibraltar which is 100% vaccinated?

How do you explain Sweden which has had the least intervention and yet now has one of the best outcomes?

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted; for sure, one issue that I see skipped over is what we called “competence” — HIV is incompetent, whereas flu is competent: regardless of transmissivity (Re), you can ask how easily a virus infects. HIV rarely infects; flu infects quite well. It might be that COVID is supercompetent. That might explain the “breakthroughs” you’re reading about.

There's a reason Pharma pays the corporate media spokesholes billions a year to sling its sludge. Do you think that reason is altruism?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

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