Now what's our plan exactly? Get vaccinated every 6 - 12 months indefinitely and always wear masks? What's our goal and what's our new normal?
I had untreated kidney stones for about a week at the peak of the pandemic. When I was in the middle of an attack I could not work, the pain was too severe. I was missing several hours of work everyday just dealing with pain.
I finally got to the emergency room which did basic imaging and gave me painkillers and muscle relaxers.
I didn’t get the actual stones removed until 6 months later!
So yes, I’d rather vaccinate and mask up then be denied healthcare.
A non-trivial percentage of healthcare workers were infected in 2020 and recovered with natural immunity to Covid. Some of those feel strongly enough about vaccine mandates that they are prepared to move jurisdictions or retire, which would exacerbate existing staffing shortages in some hospitals. If we don't want more hospital shortages, we should reconsider unnecessary vaccine mandates for those with hard-earned natural immunity, which includes nasal/mucosal immunity, unlike intramuscular vaccines that were developed for symptom reduction, https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/10/covid-intranasal-vaccine...
> Vaccines that are injected into the arm have done a spectacular job at preventing severe disease and death. But they do not generate the kind of protection in the nasal passages that would be needed to block all infection. That’s called “sterilizing immunity.” The fact that the vaccines don’t block all infections and don’t prevent vaccinated people from transmitting isn’t a big surprise, said Kathryn Edwards, a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt School of Medicine.
The UK's SAGE also commented on nasal (inhaler) vaccine development and the consequences of non-sterilizing intramuscular vaccines for variants, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...
> Whilst we feel that current vaccines are excellent for reducing the risk of hospital admission and disease, we propose that research be focused on vaccines that also induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity in order to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated individuals. This could also reduce the possibility of variant selection in vaccinated individuals.
"The study of hundreds of Kentucky residents with previous infections through June 2021 found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated. The findings suggest that among people who have had COVID-19 previously, getting fully vaccinated provides additional protection against reinfection."
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...
The CDC's report is a fantastic example as to why the CDC don't deserve our trust. They are dishonest. They cherry pick data to fit their narrative. They are unburdened by the constraints of peer review. They admit in their own study that it can't apply causation and yet they remain silent as the media run wild and report the study as causative fact.
This analysis has, to my knowledge, not been debunked at all: https://arieh.substack.com/p/inside-israels-delta-outbreak-p....
It shows natural immunity far outclassing vaccine immunity in Israel.
In terms of peer reviewed studies, they all show that natural immunity is fantastic:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781112
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2589-5370(21)0...
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8209951/pdf/RMV...
> it looks like recovered people — people who had tested positive for the coronavirus in a past PCR test — are massively under-represented. Recovered people are around 9% of Israel’s population, but they’re less than 1% of current cases.
> That has led to speculation that recovery from past Covid is more protective against infection from the Delta Variant than vaccination. Known recovered people in Israel are mostly not vaccinated, though some chose to get a single booster dose ... From data I was passed last week, recovered people were testing at only 0.1% positivity, compared to more than 1% for vaccinated people.
> I wouldn’t be surprised if natural infection turned out to be more protective against variants than spike protein vaccination. It makes sense that the body’s immune system would find more ways to attack the whole pathogen and would recognise different parts of it compared to the changing spike in variants.
In the case of vaccine efficacy vs. severe disease, it is
the fact that both vaccination status and risk of severe
disease are systematically higher in the older age group
that makes overall efficacy numbers if estimated without
stratifying by age misleading, producing a paradoxical
result that the overall efficacy (67.5%) is much lower
than the efficacy for either of the age groups (91.8% and
85.2%).As far as I can tell, the analysis you link also continues to support the notion that natural immunity works wonderfully well, on par with or better than vaccine immunity as far as we can tell.
> Also what should be obvious is this study doesn’t really look at the relative strengths of naturally acquired immunity vs vaccination acquired immunity, it is looking at whether vaccination can add further to the robust protection elicited by covid infection.
Latest UK data shows 137 confirmed cases of reinfection out of 5.2 million first-positive PCR tests, which works out to 0.003%, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... (see chart on page 18)
Is it more or less than scientists arguing against man-made climate change?
> I’d rather vaccinate and mask up then be denied healthcare
You've presented a false dichotomy here - mass vaccination and masking will not necessarily prevent overwhelmed hospitals.
Israel is a prime example - with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world - their hospitals are being overwhelmed right now due to the variants. The CDC is reporting similar data from the U.S. [1][2][3]. There's no doubt that vaccination is saving some lives, but it also may be partly to blame for the increasing dominance of variants of concern. [4][5]
And counterintuitively, compulsory masking is likely setting us up for a very bad winter in terms of endemic illnesses such as influenza and RSV - which poses an increased risk of overwhelming medical facilities even further.
I only raise these counterpoints to help inform others and bring much needed nuance to these discussions.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e3.htm
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/08132021_covidupdate.htm...
[4] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
[5] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...
[6] The impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on the future dynamics of endemic infections https://www.pnas.org/content/117/48/30547
3 million of blissfully and deliberately ignorant individuals who won't adapt their social behavior to avoid viral spread is more than enough to overrun any health system.
It's not the ultra orthodox who really stand out. There's about 30% in the general 20-29 groups who haven't taken their shots (going down to about 20% in 30-39 and down to 10% in the 60+ group), and many Arabs who are reluctant to do so too.
The original spring 2020 outbreak in the UK was huge, affecting a sizable percentage of the population. However at that time PCR testing was nowhere near scaled up to the point that all of these cases could be tested.
Therefore if you were infected in the first wave, recovered, and are now reinfected 16 months later you probably aren't going to be one of those 137 because it's quite unlikely you were PCR tested the first time around.
That's not to say reinfection is super-common either, but it's probably at least an order of magnitude (or possibly even two) more common than that raw percentage would suggest. In other words, you've produced a statistic with zero significant figures of accuracy.
Israel has 60% of the population fully vacced, compared to iceland with 71%
>Israel's ICUs overflow as unvaccinated patients fall severely ill
It seems like it just disappeared regardless of restrictions.
The previous flu version is not as potent due to vaccination and people having had it, thus the herd immunity is achieved.
That’s a very disingenuous way of presenting things: we can’t extinguish the house fire so we might as well leave the kids upstairs. It’s used far too much by people keen to profit from a cultural war that has nothing to do with health policies. It’s a sad news that a simple solution isn’t enough, but in no way it should called “a counter-point”. It’s not. “Vaccines alone are not enough” isn’t a counter point to saying that they are a necessary aspect of getting the pandemic to acceptable levels. It’s just saying they are insufficient.
Vaccines are incredibly effective; if hospitals are overwhelmed there would be far more deaths without the vaccines and you cannot in good conscience argue against widespread vaccination by claiming they are not enough on their own. There are many more things that can be done, and put all together last year, they have helped delay infection, spread the wave of hospitalisation to manageable levels. If we need more efforts now, let’s not throw the most effective tool we have because it’s not a cure-all.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/
https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/175...
Eventually almost all of us will be infected by some variant of SARS-CoV-2. Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing death.
More info on the 1889 pandemic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic
Yes individuals who have been vaccinated or recovered from natural infection will have durable immunity and significantly lower risk of severe outcomes like hospitalization and death. [5][6]
The real question: is mass vaccination effective at preventing the spread and increasing trasmission/virulence of variants of concern? A growing body of the scientific literature and evidence suggests not. [1][2][3][4]
This doesn't mean we shouldn't be using vaccines, rather we should use them in a highly targeted way, and supplemented by other therapeutic modalities.
[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
[2] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...
[3] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...
[4] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016...
[5] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...
[6] Rapid induction of antigen-specific CD4+ T cells is associated with coordinated humoral and cellular immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(21)00308-3
In any case, even if vaccines lead to stronger variants (as some of the research you cited states is possible), a game theoretical situation is created where enough people are vaccinated that those who are not are just leaving themselves in greater danger. And in the case of a mutation breaking out of the vaccine, [2] suggests just to immediately start making a new one with the same technology.
Take a look at what happened with Marek's disease virus in chickens to get a taste for why this could be a very bad idea [1][2].
> a situation is created where enough people are vaccinated that those who are not are just leaving themselves in greater danger
Yes this is exactly what happens, and is corroborated by the citations I provided in this comment.
Do you want to live in a world where you literally cannot survive without vaccination, because multiple generations of vaccines have been undermined by viral evolution? What you're suggesting is exactly how that can happen.
[1] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...
[2] Marek’s disease in chickens: a review with focus on immunology https://veterinaryresearch.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.118...
Excerpts from [1]:
- "The spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 is the molecular target for many vaccines and antibody-based prophylactics aimed at bringing COVID-19 under control."
- "Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these biomedical interventions. With the emergence of new strains of SARS-CoV-2 with altered transmissibility and immune evasion potential, a critical question is this: how easily can the virus escape neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) targeting the spike RBD?"
- "Our modeling suggests that SARS-CoV-2 mutants with one or two mildly deleterious mutations are expected to exist in high numbers due to neutral genetic variation, and consequently resistance to vaccines or other prophylactics that rely on one or two antibodies for protection can develop quickly -and repeatedly- under positive selection."
- "The speed at which nAb resistance develops in the population increases substantially as the number of infected individuals increases, suggesting that complementary strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral prophylactics) or that do not exert a specific selective pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration, masking, ultraviolet air purification) are key to reducing the risk of immune escape"
- "Strategies for viral elimination should therefore be diversified across molecular targets and therapeutic modalities"
[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (April 2021) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
And yet, the Delta variant evolved in an 100% unvaccinated population - and is quite happily punching through some of the protections afforded by vaccines, despite not having any evolutionary pressure to do so.
> "The speed at which nAb resistance develops in the population increases substantially as the number of infected individuals increases, suggesting that complementary strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral prophylactics) or that do not exert a specific selective pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration, masking, ultraviolet air purification) are key to reducing the risk of immune escape"
Doesn't this mean that the problem is in having a large number of infected individuals? Which is exactly what happens when a virus sweeps through the unvaccinated population - see, delta.
Also, since Covid and its variants seems to happily re-infect people who have already had it, the same evolutionary pressures will still be present, as long as there's a large reservoir of sick people, regardless of whether they are rubbing shoulders with vaccinated individuals, or 'caught it eight months ago' individuals.
We have two broad options for reducing the number of dangerous COVID mutations.
1. Harsh lockdowns, Australia/NZ/China style, to bring cases down. It works, but everyone hates it.
2. Mass vaccination, that gets us to herd immunity against the most prevalent strains of COVID, so that we no longer have millions of active cases. We're not there with 50% of the population vaccinated. We might be there if we were at 85%.
Since you seem to think that #2 is not the solution, what is your plan for stopping the evolution of the virus? #1?
1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782139
Your understanding of the situation differs by two and a half orders of magnitude from reality.
And that number has nowhere to go but up, as antibody levels in survivors drop.
i.e., the questionable number is orders of magnitude larger than the reliable number.
> as antibody levels in survivors drop
Recovered survivors have multiple mechanisms of defense, including antibodies against components of SARS-CoV-2 (not just spike protein) and T-cells, which have been proven effective against SARS1 after 17 years. They also have both nasal/mucous and blood/serum antibodies, unlike the vaccinated which have primarily blood/serum antibodies against one spike protein variant for symptom reduction.
Survivors don't need boosters. Those who take non-sterilizing intramuscular vaccines may need boosters.
The particular way requires both the original diagnosis of the first infection AND the diagnosis of the second infection to be done the same way.
Most infections never get diagnosed that way in the first place, which is why such a comparison is impossible for the vast majority of cases.
What exactly is your theory? That those 35,000 people never had COVID in the first place, or that what they got the second time around isn't COVID? Or that we can disregard every other word in that report, because the only word that matters in it is '137'?
> , which have been proven effective against SARS1 after 17 years.
Unfortunately for those people, we're not dealing with a SARS1 outbreak.
How many years have they been proven effective against SARS2?
> Survivors don't need boosters. Those who take non-sterilizing intramuscular vaccines may need boosters.
The science disagrees with your gut feeling. [1]
This is a false dichotomy, we have way more than two options. Below you'll find that I have supported my claim with exceptionally well cited publications and results from recent high quality clinical trials showing promising results.
A) strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral prophylactics) [1][2][3][4][5][6]
B) strategies that do not exert a specific selective pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration, masking, ultraviolet air purification)
C) Vaccines are absolutely part of the answer here. However, compulsory mass vaccination alone is exceedingly unlikely to be a solution - for all the reasons and evidence put forth in the citations of my previous comment - and because data from all over the world is showing that high vaccination rates alone are not preventing the dominance of VOCs [7][8].
[1] Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
[2] Multidrug treatment for COVID-19 https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ddt/advpub/0/advpub_202...
[3] Ivermectin in combination with doxycycline for treating COVID-19 symptoms: a randomized trial https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33983065/
[4] Baricitinib plus Remdesivir for Hospitalized Adults with Covid-19 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33306283/
[5] A review of therapeutic agents and Chinese herbal medicines against SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7237953/
[6] Fluvoxamine: A Review of Its Mechanism of Action and Its Role in COVID-19 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2021.6526...
[7] Update on Emerging SARS-CoV-2 Variants and COVID-19 vaccines https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...
[8] COVID-19 Science Update released: August 13, 2021 Edition 102 https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/08132021_covidupdate.htm...
Intramuscular vaccine delivery did not confer high levels of mucosal immunity. However, subsequent infection of the vaccinated may provide excellent systemic protection while allowing mucosal immunity to naturally develop as a consequence of infection.
If high levels of mucosal immunity develop as a result of breakthrough infection, that may go a long way towards reducing r0.
Further, nasal delivery covid vaccines are underdevelopment. These may also provide mucosal immunity.
So there is still a very plausible way out of the pandemic that includes the near eradication of the disease.
We know they're far more effective, and there's been plenty of time to ramp up production. I don't see why the 'normal' option is to wear a non-medical mask.
It's also surprising that societies are entirely incapable of doing a hard lockdown for 3 weeks with mandatory testing at the end. I imagine that would be enough to reduce the case count to near zero, but it seems this cannot be done at a national scale even with time to prepare.
edit Turns out I'm not alone here, here's a Harvard professor pushing for mass use of N95 masks: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/26/n95-masks...
What's bizarre is that it's rare for public health officials to care, either. It makes me think they're actually very effective (which I doubt with delta), they want to people to feel safe to keep the economy running, or they're worried about how much more contagious it could get facing a real obstacle.
As for the hard lockdown, I think we're past the point of that being a theoretical option. Looking to Australia, it's still spreading. There's a level of contagiousness where the minimum amount of interaction is still to much to stop the spread. We'll see what happens in New Zealand.
You're right about the national scale for everywhere other than Singapore. There are just too many people too spread out to actually enforce it. Borders are too porous, and enough people are onboard with letting it spread that this option isn't practically or politically viable.
With the disclaimer that I'm not an expert: this is wrong. Cloth masks are moderately effective in preventing the wearer from infecting others. N95/N99 masks do this job much better, as well as significantly protecting the wearer, unlike cloth masks. We've known this for some time.
As far as I know there's no reason to believe the new variants have changed things, other than making it even more beneficial to switch to N95/N99.
A slight aside: apparently Austria now requires use of FFP2 masks (roughly equivalent to the N95 classification): https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n432
There have been countless looks at mask efficiency over the past year. "Normal" masks cut infenction risk in half. Yeah it's not 100%, but it's 50%!
Acting like everything is an "all or nothing" solution is going to be the death of us.
Same thing for lockdown: it works. It might not be enough, or there are too many edge cases in Australia, but dismissing distancing because the first attempt wasn’t enough, or perfect is the opposite of what Hacker News stands for.
It could be that cost/actual benefit looks worse when you factor poor usage.
Fauci: There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.
LaPook: And can you get some schmutz, sort of staying inside there?
Fauci: Of course, of course. But, when you think masks, you should think of health care providers needing them and people who are ill.
https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...
> "Well, the reason for [not telling people to wear masks in March, 2020] is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."
Laudable as his intentions may be, and while I doubt he makes it a habit, he lied.
The COVID-19 vaccines are a boon and a vital component for ending this crisis. However, they're not the panacea those in charge made them out to be. Make no mistake, those vaccines, particularly those of the mRNA variety are more successful and have been available much more quickly than one could've reasonably hoped them to be.
Still, it should have been clear right from the start that virus variants against which vaccines are not as effective anymore are a distinct possibility.
Hence, my suggestions for a "new normal" (though I dislike that term because it implies both that the world in general is static and that on the other hand we have to accept the current situation as the new default indefinitely) for the time being (that is until COVID-19 has become endemic and most of the population has built up at least some level of immunity - through vaccines or by "natural" means) are these:
1. getting vaccinated, if possible
2. getting booster shots and / or updated vaccines regularly, in case that's proven to be useful (the jury still being out on both counts)
3. wearing masks in certain settings, e.g., on public transport
4. the most important one: having everyone - vaccinated or not - tested for indoor gatherings or large-scale events (rather than prohibiting those outright)
Other than that, life has to continue as normal: No further lockdowns, no social distancing, no civil rights restrictions.
Unfortunately, and totally incomprehensibly, #4 seems to be highly controversial, with some countries now even shutting down their previous - if perhaps not exemplary then at least adequate - testing schemes or implementing truly asinine measures such as mandating people to pay for tests and only requiring those not vaccinated to be tested at all.
Yeah, right. What could possibly go wrong? I suppose the rationale behind that one is: "No tests. No problem."
If we can improve the tests sufficiently, though, then I think your plan makes a lot of sense. I think of COVID as fire. Keep the fuel damp (#1, #2, natural immunity), don't pile up too much in one place (#3, low cost forms of social distancing), and watch for flare ups so you can douse them quickly (#4, sorta). Don't worry about putting the fire out, just keep it from burning down the forest.
Still, that's at least by orders of magnitude better than simply doing nothing. Besides, an accuracy >= 95% with results in less than 15 minutes isn't that bad at all already.
I don't understand the fear the catch covid once your vaccinated, why not make the same measures for the flu for example?
#3 because it further reduces the risk to get even mildly sick at little to no cost. I'll continue to wear a mask on public transport even after this pandemic is over. I don't need to catch the flu or even the common cold either, if I can avoid it.
#4 because it enormously helps with keeping new infections at a minimum. Hence, further lockdowns neither required nor justifiable anymore.
I don't know about the specifics of UV air filters but I'm not sure they'd be an alternative in this particular scenario. They seem to be more useful in situations where the same people are in the same room for a prolonged period of time.
I'm all in favour of small, incremental improvements. Those can be a huge contributing factor, so we don't have to wield the blunt instrument that is lockdowns anymore.
Using air filters probably is more of such an additional improvement, rather than a complete solution in its own right.
That an object has been exposed to a compound during that object's lifetime doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be exposed to that compound upon touching the object.
An annual Flu and COVID shot seems perfectly reasonable. Wearing masks in public is already normal (or at least not uncommon) in many places, and I don't have a problem with where I live being one of those places.
Or another question in a similar vein, what if I don't have a problem wearing a mask but my neighbor does?
Also I'd point out, seasonal flu vaccines are not mandatory and in most places have a low vaccination rate. Would you be fine with a non mandatory covid vaccine?
Smocking raised the same questions.
I don't have an answer to masks, though I think they'll get more and more normalized as time goes on. Even if COVID were to be basically suppressed, I'd probably still keep wearing them on public transit.
Should the flu vaccine be combined with newer vaccines which have numerically less safety data?
Perhaps you could try to make a case that we need more time to evaluate the long-term effects of the vaccines. Historically speaking, we know that side effects for any vaccine are incredibly rare after more than a few months. mRNA vaccine technology has been researched for decades and there are no indicators that there are long-term complications resulting from their use. Other vaccine technologies show similar long-term safety.
Because it's safe and easy. I have immuno-compromised friends and elderly family members. Vaccines are almost literally the least I can do to help keep them safe. I have kids and taking care of sick kids is awful. Also I really really really hate having the flu personally. Bleh.
> If you believe official reports, it’s basically been eliminated by virtue of simple mask mandates that everyone swears no one is following.
I have not seen official reports that determined the drop in flu was due to masks. I would assume the drop in flu was due to many factors combined: schools and businesses going remote, other physical distancing, more people getting the flu vaccine to avoid getting sick and potentially straining our strained healthcare system, masking, and who knows what else...
...at any rate I expect the flu will return as kids go back to school, workers return to offices, etc. I'll keep getting vaccinated for the flu as long as my doctor recommends it for my reasons stated above.
The takeaway isn't that official reports are baseless propaganda. It's that we were really bad about handling the flu before 2020. How many times did one of your coworkers show up with a persistent cough, running nose, or sneezing fits? How often did you see people with symptoms in grocery stores or buffets? I'm not surprised even a modicum of care greatly outperforms our previous habits.
I feel like this is what most experts were saying from near the beginning: this is not a few months problem. This is an ongoing problem that will require us to adapt just as it adapts. I remember many articles in 2020 projecting what the virus might look like 5 or 8 years out.
Lockdowns and other extreme measures were about flattening infection curves to keep from overwhelming health systems, not about eradicating the virus outright.
Masks and distancing are about getting the virus to a manageable infection rate to minimize impact on our new normal lives.
Vaccines are the only way out without high mortality and extreme pressure on our health systems. Whether it requires vaccines like polio (one or two and safe forever) or flu (annual) is yet to be determined AFAIK. It seems like somewhere in the middle is most likely at least for many years to come.
I agree that it was never a few months problem - but I think we had a window to stamp it out and low vaccination production and adoption rates have killed that window dead. I don't believe it's impossible that we beat this - but I would not be surprised if mutation rates simply outrun vaccination adaptation.
What do you base that on? That seems highly unlikely to me. Even as the virus tapers down in one country, it or a variant surges back in five others and then it spreads to others. I haven't seen any chance of stamping that out.
The world could have seen this pandemic and gone all war-industry on it - convert factories and gear up production as if the nazis were days away from invading our shores - we simply didn't.
What do you mean? We have yearly flu vaccinations.
Oh also - a small pedantic correction. There is a formal thing in the US called the No Fly List and I've heard absolutely nothing about putting people onto it for not getting vaccinated - there has been discussion to restrict your ability to fly if you're unvaccinated though which... would be easy to fix (unlike getting off the No Fly List) by simply getting the shot.
Second, their are religious exemptions to mandatory vaccinations. We can argue whether there should be, whether they're abused and all that, but as long as they're going to exist, shouldn't they apply across the board?
To the second point - I think religion does a lot of harm to modern society so I'd rather those all went away - yes even for the amish as inoffensive as they are.
Where I live (Eastern Europe) those are taken by a minority of the population.
I too had a similar series of events and my second infection was both worse and better than the first. My first bout was longer but consisted of just a mild cough with a tolerable shortness of breath but 9 months of long haul hell. My second was rife with congestion, headaches, and muscle pains but it came and went in the span of a week, no long covid this time around (so far).
There have been at least 3 distinct variants, separate from the original strain, since the virus was detected in late 2019 / early 2020.
As part Native American, I am reminded of what happened when Europeans from a densely populated area came here. Estimates vary but maybe 90% died from the “new” diseases to them. The fact that Europeans weren’t decimated by native diseases makes me think that one of the prerequisites for societies free of disease is lots of empty space between people and limited travel. This will continually decrease with time in the anthropocene.
So my take is that at some point, we just need to deal with it as a background event and move on. The infection fatality rate for COVID is incredibly low, particularly for those under 50. It is irrational to worry about it to the extent we are, since we don't typically worry about such rare possibilities. I am also betting that phenomenon like "long COVID" will either be found to be other conflating factors, or found to be a phenomenon associated with any illness. It's just that we're so focused on COVID as an entire species, that we're spotting all the little things we would normally ignore.
The infection fatality rate is relatively low when hospitals aren't overwhelmed and when we have oxygen available, and let's not forget all the mask and vaccine measures you disparage.
That rate isn't going to remain low with the 'I've got mine, %$#@! you' attitude some people have, when even the lowest cost intervention (like wearing a mask) is unacceptable. With no interventions, infections spike and the death rate will be higher.
Ultimately, restrictions will remain until enough people have been vaccinated, either via the vaccine and/or in the 'natural' way. The attitude of some just means we'll all suffer for a bit longer.
Congrats to Ben Jackson, @maciekboni, @viralverity, @AineToole, @robertson_lab, @EvolveDotZoo, @arambaut et al for their recent Cell paper.
Rock solid evidence of alpha/non-alpha recombination in #SARSCoV2 in the UK.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00984-3
[1]: https://twitter.com/MichaelWorobey/status/142851583662971699...
Also, note that older people and immune-deficient people (who are most likely those needing a shot every year) have been dying from ordinary cases of flu before, too.
Just think about how bacteria/viruses which were not really dangerous for Europeans wiped out entire populations in Middle and South America.
80% of US medical personnel already take the yearly flu shot.
Even though the vaccine doesn't prevent to catch covid to high degree, it still prevent deaths and hospitalizations to more than 90% (whether Delta or not, and whether Aztrazaneca or Pfizer or Moderna)
Long Covid seems to exists, but it is about 2-3% of cases so nothing to really worry about more than any other disease.
Maybe at some point the vaccine won't protect from a new variant and things will change. But so far so good. And even at this point, Lockdowns and masks mania doesn't seem to be give a better output than asking citizen to be careful and try to limit meeting too many people (Sweden)
Here for more details https://cspicenter.org/blog/waronscience/why-covid-19-is-her...
So what I already do for influenza.
Relatively early in 2020, some grocery and pharmacy shelves were completely emptied of Vit C/D/Zinc/Quercetin. When they were restocked, they would sell out again, even with per-customer quotas. This took place even with a complete news blackout on early treatments. As with HCQ/Ivermectin, we have decades of data showing very low risk of adverse effects from these early treatments. So the worst case is that people waste money on placebos. But there are studies showing that early treatment helps some (not all) patients to recover more quickly.
Just as we don't know why some people are injured by vaccines, we don't know why some people are not helped by early intervention with supplements. More studies are need for both, including funding for autopsies of those who die and retroactive genomic sequencing of virus/vaccine/supplement samples collected from the most severely affected cases.
India (origin of Delta) provides comparative data because some areas have rejected Ivermectin while other areas have embraced it. This is a ZH (sorry) article, but it uses data from Johns Hopkins, https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/indias-ivermectin-blackou...
> This data shows how Ivermectin knocked their COVID-19 cases and deaths - which we know were Delta Variant - down to almost zero within weeks. A population comparable to the US went from about 35,000 cases and 350 deaths per day to nearly ZERO within weeks of adding Ivermectin to their protocol.
> Let us look at the August 5 numbers from Uttar Pradesh with 2/3 of our population. Uttar Pradesh, using Ivermectin, had a total of 26 new cases and exactly THREE deaths. The US without Ivermectin has precisely 4889 times as many daily cases and 191 times as many deaths as Uttar Pradesh with Ivermectin.
At present, there are billions of dollars of economic incentives for suppression of early treatment, because vaccines are still under EUA that could be questioned by the availability of therapeutics with decades of safety data. If the FDA fully approves one or more vaccines in September 2021, perhaps there will be more economic incentives to perform research and studies of therapeutics.
Merck (original holder of the Ivermectin patent) is developing a new patented therapeutic for early treatment of Covid. Time will tell whether this is a genuinely new treatment or an "evergreen" variant of Ivermectin to obtain patent revenue. Either way, it would mean that at least one Big Pharma company has an economic incentive to promote early therapeutics for Covid, which could provide some balance to the currently polarized treatment landscape.
Conspiracy theory. Rather old and naive, I should add.
Zero Hedge is a cesspool of pseudo-science when it comes to COVID. The best data source can be twisted into complete nonsense when folks have political agendas - so namedropping JHU in that context is just empty rhetoric.
Well, maybe it's not "empty" rhetoric, since clearly some naive folks are persuaded by it.
"There are financial incentives to sell vaccines" might be a conspiracy theory, but anyone not considering this reality a factor is delusional. I don't think they're selling us snake oil and scaring us into getting it, but there is definitely a motive beyond (but probably including) public health and that is to recoup the cost of development of the vaccine, at the very least.
Instead of mandating this vaccine worldwide, why don't we focus on collectively building a better / stronger health that would prevent the large majority of severe cases?
> etiology of Covid is closely linked to vascular health...
Also considering perhaps 30% of the world has had covid now (anyone have the exact figure?) that would be an unbelievable amount of brain damage. I’d think we’d be aware of that if one in three people had recent brain damage.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32696341/ https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Current-Research/Coronavirus-and-N...
I’ll admit I don’t understand the first one. Somehow they’re claiming covid causes Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s? How can we know that after less than two years?
The second one is clear to mention “ Most people infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus will have no or mild to moderate symptoms associated with the brain or nervous system. However, most individuals hospitalized due to the virus do have symptoms related to the brain or nervous system, most commonly including muscle aches, headaches, dizziness, and altered taste and smell.”
So They are claiming an effect but not for mild cases like OP said and not really claiming brain damage anyway.
- None of those were advocated by governments during this pandemic.
- Some measures (lockdowns, etc.) were detrimental to individual health and (imo) contributed to complications we've been seeing.
This is generally backed up by common sense (which - just like the flu - has mysteriously disappeared in the past 2 years)
E.g. diseases can evolve in Europe then spread to Native American populations. Evolve in bats, or apes, then spread to humans.
Now that this virus has shown that humanity has become one population... and it will spread everywhere if we let it... we should let it.
If we do strict testing, vaccination, etc. and prevent international travel, and otherwise fiercely prevent the virus from spreading across populations, then we'll have just created a situation where the virus could mutate to become harmful.
As long as we do nothing we're safe.
Estimates about the fatality of COVID put it way below the small pox epidemic in North America but that's an absolutely terrible example to draw on.
1. Assume your parents had two children - you both married and had two kids - that's ten people so choose one to survive (obviously epidemics don't actually work this way, but I've found it's the clearest way to demonstrate proportional mortality rates.