The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

If the state is practically mandating you to be vaccinated for covid they (or the companies that make the vaccine) should be held responsible for anything that happens to you.

You can't have it both ways; either there are no distinctions between vaccinated and unvaccinated people (no measures that only affect unvaccinated people) or someone can be held responsible for any resulting disability or death.

And there's no better way to help the virus than lying to people about the masks. Even the Chinese government didn't lie about masks, while all the western governments did. If masks became a strategic product, then there are enough laws to regulate them (and France did so).

"independent hesitancy risk factors included younger age, non-Asian race, having a PhD or ≤high school education, living in a rural county, living in a county with higher 2020 Trump support, lack of worry about COVID-19, working outside the home, never intentionally avoiding contact with others, and no past-year flu vaccine. " https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...

The factcheck word twisting is getting out of control.

But if anything, this distinction is worse, because instead of saying don't trust a controversial product, it's saying don't trust this controversial product because you shouldn't trust the/this government promoting it.

And that's largely what made this, or magnified it, as a political issue: the broader acceptance of saying it's ok to distrust the government depending on what politician is speaking.

Harris:

"If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it. Absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it."

Kamala says she would not take a vaccine recommended by Trump, even if recommended by scientists. There is no way in the US for a vaccine to be publicly available without FDA approval so the only interpretation that makes sense is one where even if the FDA approved it, if Trump also approved it she would not take it.

Biden:

"Look at what’s happened. Enormous pressure put on the CDC not to put out the detailed guidelines. The enormous pressure being put on the FDA to say they’re going, that the following protocol will in fact reduce, it will have a giant impact on COVID. All these things turn out not to be true, and when a president continues to mislead and lie, when we finally do, God willing, get a vaccine, who’s going to take the shot? Who’s going to take the shot? You going to be the first one to say, ‘Put me — sign me up, they now say it’s OK’? I’m not being facetious."

Biden says he does not trust the CDC and FDA (at the time) because of political influence.

Not sure I understand this. Can you elaborate?

> should

Who's calling them stupid? I don't recall any politicians or government health officials calling anyone stupid. Sure, there are people on Facebook/Twitter/etc... name-calling, but that's always been the case, and there's plenty of it on both sides.

You nailed the issue in the first 2 sentences. All of those things listed are technically true, as long as the context is provided and understood. But when you have the whole situation turn into a bipartisan shitshow, context goes immediately out of the window (both intentionally and unintentionally, just like nuance being lost in twitter discussions). It is you vs. them for everyone emotionally invested into this.

"CDC said COVID is airborne, and if you disagree, you are a science denier and probably a nazi too. No, I am not gonna listen to your 'context'".

"CDC said there is no evidence that COVID came from the wet markets, which means that you claiming that it is possible is a conspiracy theory".

"CDC said that people don't have to wear masks, but now they say people have to wear masks, they don't know what they are doing and are just trying to pacify the population. I don't need context, I am just reciting what CDC said."

Actually looking into the context of the official statements on COVID, there isn't really a contradiction, and their recommendations make sense. But then if you actually absorb the context, then there is no team sports fight to be had, there is no side to cheer and root for, and there are no opponents to defeat who are dumb and wrong (unlike you and your team). The intensity and excitement of the "battle" is positively correlated with willingness to omit context and refusal to consider it.

The culture war was fabricated by billionaires. Stop listening to their stooges.

> no idea

However, you are correct that the second Trump touches anything, it seemingly becomes impossible to have a rational conversation about it. I can't see any reason for you to have been downvoted, for instance.

It's difficult to stay on top of things as the scientific process is a poor fit for fast moving things. Pre-prints vs. peer review and so on?

Of what? Vaccines?

> 2) There is no FDA approval (although there is now!)

Which is just a matter of bureaucracy. The emergency authorization and deployment is a de-facto approval.

> 3) There is no recompense for people hurt by the vaccine - even if that number is 0.

And? There's also no recompense for many things.

> but we can setup funds for people with side-effects.

The problem is that this makes no sense. Why would you set up funds for people with side-effects? What about funds for people who die in car wrecks on the way to get their vaccines or trip and fall down a flight of stairs?

> 1 is an argument from ignorance.

Ain't that the truth. Can you articulate the exact long-term effects that you're worried about or that anybody should be worried about? Why are you (or anybody) concerned about these specific unknown and unknowable long-term effects? What's the likelihood of those effects and how do they compare against the likelihood of contracting and dying from COVID-19?

It's like all of a sudden there's these spooky and mysterious "but what about the long term effects!1!" without any scientific justification. Even if there were potentially long-term effects, those effects are equally likely to be of no-consequence as they are to have us all turned into zombies or something. The search space of "effects" are unknown and have an unknown probability distribution.

The only purpose of talking about "long-term effects" by any pundit or layperson who can't even describe the mechanics of an mRNA vaccine (why not take the JnJ one if you're worried about that anyway?) is to introduce fear, uncertainty, and doubt either out of ignorance or malice.

If you're a virologist, by all means educate us. If not, stop spouting bullshit and hurting people.

There are a couple of government funds, but they rarely pay out. They require you to prove your issues are the result of a vaccine, which is extremely difficult to do. Did this person have a thrombosis because of COVID or because of some other genetic or environmental reason? It's really hard to rule out "everything that isn't the vaccine".

Yet you still have to sign a liability waiver........

- Coughing - Sneezing - A runny nose - Weepy eyes - Vomiting or diarrhoea - Mild breathing difficulties - High temperature - Reduced appetite

https://www.pdsa.org.uk/taking-care-of-your-pet/pet-health-h...

Furthermore, if the corona virus does not exhibit the same symptoms which are a consequence of an infection of the respiratory tract, then transmission will be very different and probably significantly lower which does not fit the data, i.e. mass infections in the wild.

I'd say I'm disappointed and surprised that more people aren't concerned about it but there's a reason it's a historical trope.

But in my callousness I would simply illegalize treating people that are anti-vaccine.

Thanks, but I’ll still be thinking about it.

If previously-infected had as much resistance as vaccinated, they should not be more scared than the vaccinated. Even if they would have more resistance if they were also vaccinated.

Did you mean to say that previously-infected have much less resistance than the vaccinated? I would very grateful for a source on that. I tried to find out numbers on that but couldn't find apples-to-apples comparison.

Please stop using atomic anecdotes to percieve the world, or at least stop propogating them.

I'm sorry about your experience. Having Covid sucks. But your anecdotal data here is inaccurate at best, especially since it was from pre-Delta variant (you said December 2020 was your time of this happening) and we do have studies from that time showing how robust immunity was for those who had natural infections:

"Available scientific data suggests that in most people immune responses remain robust and protective against reinfection for at least 6-8 months after infection (the longest follow up with strong scientific evidence is currently approximately 8 months)." [0]

No offense, but these kind of anecdotal reports that "someone said" (even a health official), which sound authoritative because of the context, are how misinformation spreads.

0: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/341241/WHO-...

This is insane. No vaccine works better then natural protection from real stuff - simply because its less stressful to the body and more stress equals better immunity.

I have nothing against vaccines in general but this is nothing but pharma propaganda.

Headlines and policy have adopted the narrative that the unvaccinated are driving the most severe cases. Those previously infected are not acknowledged and could significantly overlap with the unvaccinated population.

Those who have previously had an infection with mild to no symptoms should be acknlowedged as a third group in evaluating public health policies (vaccinated, previously infected, and unknown exposure).

> If so, then your position is hard to justify.

Sorry, no. For the record, I'm fully vaccinated, but that argument doesn't work. If we all stopped driving cars, fewer people would die in accidents. That's no belief etc, it's a fact. Yet we obviously don't, because cars are super convenient and relatively few people die. We're perfectly fine accepting some people dying for lots of convenience for everyone.

The same will have to eventually be accepted for Covid. We can't live in a perpetual half-lockdown because the omega-variant will kill 0.1% of seniors otherwise.

Unfortunately you can't isolate a world-altering issue like this from its psychological and political context, so for me any respiratory-disease-related risk is secondary to the much bigger threat. "Live free or die" is not an empty slogan. I will be standing with the unvaxxed to the bitter end, although it probably won't go that far.

That is a mischaracterization. I mean, it's true, but only in a specious sense that all organisms respond to changes in their environment (including vaccination techniques!). It's absolutely not an argument that pandemic mitigation strategies are universally doomed to failure!

> We cannot control this pandemic long term via social distancing

Again, this is wrong. And in fact it worked to control covid (not perfectly, but well, well under what you'd expect from the early exponential curves in places like Milan and New York) for almost a year before vaccines showed up.

You're making another common mistake here, and imagining that all arguments are about absolutes. In your mind, mask wearing either Works Perfectly or Must Be Abandoned.

In the real world, you wear masks when the pandemic is at a high infection rate and growing, (like now) because marginal improvements are important ("every little bit helps"), and not as much when it's low and shrinking (as it was in June, when I even went to a few restaurants unmasked!).

It's not about protecting those that are unvaccinated by choice. It's also about protecting those that cannot get vaccines for whatever reason and also to stop breakthrough infections.

Also the majority of UK residents at least are still wearing masks[1] so I think at least that's some evidence that people do share this compassion.

1 - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/20/uk-still-weari...

It looks like flu (influenza) hospitalizations run at about 0.15% of total population, per year.

SARS-CoV-2, at 1-5%? Although that might be vs confirmed cases (?), which would muddle the numbers.

But suffice to say substantially higher. So I think there's an argument to be made for this being a COVID only measure (and probably measles, etc too).

IMHO, people are entitled to freedom regarding their choice to vaccinate.

But if they choose to exercise their freedom in ways that limit my freedom (via resulting lockdowns, mandatory masking, banned social gatherings, preventing businesses from operating normally, etc.), then that doesn't feel very fair.

They're externalizing the consequences of their decisions onto me, and the rest of society.

So yeah, IMHO, their decisions: their bill to pay. With their life, if necessary.

(But I may be biased, as I have family working ICU, triaging unvaccinated coronavirus deniers who show up at the ER, begging to be saved, who are then sapping care from non-COVID patients...)

However, the calculus changes when the health system is at or over capacity. Now, if two people come in and both are critically ill, but you only have room for one, I'm ok with choosing the one that was vaccinated. Likewise with many other situations and illnesses. If you cause a car accident, and both you and the person you hit require the ICU, but there is only one spot open, I'm ok with the person that got hit getting the spot.

Now, I'm assuming you are jaded like me and know that actual answer is probably the person with the most money tends to get the treatment, but that's another bitter, cynical discussion.

Our health care system is unsustainable. And it's unsustainable because of one very simple reason: we want people to have absolute freedom and an absolute right to emergency care.

I don't think those two are compatible. I don't think they've ever been, but historically that contradiction has been papered over with others' money (either in the form of your insurance premiums or your tax dollars).

Cue present situation.

We have a scenario where there is a (1) free, (2) available, (3) well-tolerated, (4) effective preventative option in vaccines.

If someone chooses to remain unvaccinated, without medical reason, that is a pure personal choice.

And moreover, unlike in normal scenarios, their making that choice directly burdens everyone else.

Economically, through damage to normal economic functioning. And medically, through consuming limited hospital capacity.

These arguments could be made for other conditions (e.g. obesity), but in a much murkier and more tortured manner. COVID is crystal clear: if you can be vaccinated, and you choose not to be, you are imposing a greater burden on society.

Last I heard, the anti-vax crowd was big on personal responsibility. So why shouldn't individuals pay that debt of their own making?

My understanding was that masks were primarily effective at preventing high viral load droplets from spreading the virus during short interactions.

I don't have any source to prove that to be the case because data on the effectiveness of masks seems frustratingly sparse.

Key paragraph: Between Nov. 16 and Dec. 11, researchers found that infection rates were 37% lower in schools where teachers and staff members were required to wear masks. The difference between schools that did and did not require students to wear masks was not statistically significant.

A good recent article in NY Mag also discussing this issue, including the fact that the World Health Organization recommends against masking kids under six: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/the-science-of-maski...

Many countries in Europe have decided against masking for any students in K-12 schools because it is unclear that the harms outweigh the benefits. The idea there is some "simple" scientific & research consensus on this is wrong.

Is it worth the cost? That’s a different question.

I’m not really opposed to masks in a classroom as a mitigation method, but if people believe it will significantly alter the trajectory of the infections I have a bridge to sell them.

They can be too loud to run while class is in session, especially if they move enough air to be worth a damn. Double-especially if you're also masked (so speaking is already a bit muffled).

There is no "best" here, mitigations all mitigate different things and work together to provide a safer environment.

Specifically, anything that covers your mouth.

If we had enough N95 masks to give to everyone (and they’d actually wear them) we could stop the virus within a few weeks :P

Hell, just switching to surgical masks would make a ton of difference.

It doesn't have to personally protect you at high effectiveness from getting infected to reduce spread at a population level.

Even a 50% reduction in spread is huge in a population. Maybe we aren't getting that with masks, but it's not a binary "you are protected"/"you are not protected" problem.

Would be interested to see the exact breakdown here. If 19 children are hospitalized with RSV+Covid, 5 with just RSV, and 1 with just Covid, it could just indicate RSV is particularly virulent for children and they are likely to also have Covid given they have been exposed to RSV. This would certainly fit with what we already know about the relative risks posed to children by RSV vs Covid.

This article from the Guardian suggests that the reason RSV is having an off-season surge is because children now have an "immunity debt" from being isolated as part of Covid protocols. It would probably not be a good idea not for us to double down on the measures that have brought us to this point. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/new-zealand-ch...

Good thread by an MD here discussing these issues and saying that coinfection rates are 50% for kids: https://twitter.com/contrarian4data/status/14298548764151316...

So basically, the masks are effective, but people take the masks off around family and friends and if one of their friends or family has COVID they will pass it on during the unmasked time.

We now know that Covid is spread by minute particles so small that they float on the air for hours. Cloth masks do not filter the air you breathe from particles of that size.

You would need an n95 mask or better to do that job.

Remember that mask wearing almost completely did away with last year's Flu season while we simultaneously had a huge Covid surge.

They can simulate blowing stuff through various types of filter material all they want, it doesn't change that none of the epidemiological curves reacted to mask mandates anywhere.

They do work great as an ideological symbol though, thanks to the topic's polarisation.

That sounds like an argument against bullet proof vests. People still die while wearing them. LEO have been wearing them for years. Obviously, they don't work.

You don't understand the actual goal of wearing masks: protected people and reducing the spread of covid. It's not going to magically eliminate covid when half the country doesn't actually wear them.

Unfortunately, given that 1910s America and 2020s America both had significant (and in my mind, unwarranted) resistance to wearing face masks; I would not be surprised if "wear a mask if you feel sick" fails to make it into common understanding in America a second time.

Most I've seen cited by mask proponents either don't use control groups (and thus can't really distinguish btwn other factors that correlate with mask wearing) or are laboratory tests just testing what % of particles are blocked by masks--which ignores almost every relevant question about mask mandates and relies on suspect theoretical models about how covid actually transmits between people.

I'm mystified why people on both sides are so up in arms about masks, but nobody gives one shit about uncontroversal and more effective mitigation techniques like air filtration and circulation.

An infected kid in classroom without proper air circulation could fill the classroom with enough virus to cause a super spreader event--mask or no-cotton/surgical mask.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article...

"surprised at seeing a horseshoe above the door of Bohr's country house, the fellow scientist visiting him exclaimed that he did not share the superstitious belief regarding horseshoes keeping evil spirits out of the house, to which Bohr snapped back: "I don't believe in it either. I have it there because I was told that it works even when one doesn't believe in it at all." This is indeed how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware of their corrupted nature, but we participate in them, we display our belief in them."[1]

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8859145

[1] - http://brooklynbooktalk.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-ideology-st...

As to your climate change example—here, the US is again the odd one out. Other developed countries are not masking toddlers, like the CDC recommends.

I have noticed that wealthy, educated, conservatives (for tax benefits) work hard to justify and provide some vaguely scientific and logical grounding to all kinds of weird conservative talking points. This might be by punching hard at some corner of the liberal/scientific consensus on an issue that is not quite well developed or the audience lacks full detail on. This equalizes both liberal and conservative positions as some what unscientific, while the reality is quite opposite. You will never find rayiner attack conservative talking points, only liberal ones.

You think you are in a scientific discussion, but you are actually participating in a political one.

A counter-argument says that wearing a physical thing can act as a constant reminder of covid, causing people to act more responsibly.

Back on the harms side again, there's a possibility that teaching kids "just do this and don't ask questions" can have negative consequences. Again, the counter argument of letting them ask questions and carefully explaining what we do and don't know can be a positive.

Socializing in masks is massively inferior. It sucks talking to other people and not being able to read facial expressions or to see smiles. Right now American health officials are asking children to an spend the majority of their waking hours for an entire year of their lives (or more??) around friends and teachers without that essential human experience of seeing smiles. That is harm in an of itself. Even if the kids bounce back, and you can't find a developmental difference in any statistic, that year of their life, a year they will never get back, will still have been a year of being deprived of essential human connection.

If masks are ineffective, wearing them amounts to theatrics/fiction.

If that fiction creates a false sense of safety, it can encourage people to take risks like interacting in closer proximity than they would otherwise.

I have no knowledge or expertise on if masks are effective nor have any children, this is just an observation of what seems like an obvious potential harm.

You might think the public health benefits outweigh this concern, but it's disingenuous imo to just assert that there are no conceivable negative effects for a two year old having their first social experiences.

Teachers have been vaccinated. Parents have been vaccinated. Kids aren’t at risk. Why this obsession with reducing cases if we took the sting out of covid?

Kids need to be children. They aren’t human shields for adults. Adults are expect to sacrifice for kids, not the other way around. Kids deserve their one and only childhood. They don’t deserve to be treated like disease vectors that need to be muzzled to make frightened parents and educators feel safe. Double so when all those adults can get a free, highly effective vaccine.

Making them mandatory is even worse. The state has no right to force my kid to wear a mask at school in order to have an education. Parents should be making that call for their own kid.

This is as an article by medical professors at USC and Stanford:

> At the same time, the long-term harm to kids from masking is potentially enormous. Masking is a psychological stressor for children and disrupts learning. Covering the lower half of the face of both teacher and pupil reduces the ability to communicate. In particular, children lose the experience of mimicking expressions, an essential tool of nonverbal communication. Positive emotions such as laughing and smiling become less recognizable, and negative emotions get amplified. Bonding between teachers and students takes a hit. Overall, it is likely that masking exacerbates the chances that a child will experience anxiety and depression, which are already at pandemic levels themselves.

I don’t know if you have young children, but facial expressions are a huge part of communication. My kids are constantly looking at my face to for “is this okay” signals. Kids learn to look at facial expressions of peers to understand what they’re thinking and feeling. There’s just tons and tons of research on this.

Masks for kids isn’t like masks for adults, where you can say “well even if they don’t work there’s no harm.” What we don’t have is research showing that wearing masks has persistent negative effects on kids, but based on what we do know that’s a real possible harm that has to be weighed against the possible benefits of masking.

Statistical significance has a specific meaning in the context of hypothesis testing. It is a measure of likelihood that the observed result occurred due to a real difference between groups (rather than random chance).

This is not a rebuttal.

If you establish a policy, and people do not follow the policy, that's on you, not on the people. You don't get to compare your intervention against an ideal world and claim that "it would have worked, if only for those darned humans!"

> Basically was relying on self reporting. If a student contracted and was asymptomatic, not shown here, etc.

A great many of the pro-mask papers in 2020 that claimed to "prove" that masks work started from self-reported data (the infamous "hairdressers" CDC report comes to mind...if a customer was asymptomatic, they were ignored; there was no control, so it's impossible to know what would have happened otherwise; etc.) The standards for "proof" across the pandemic have been dismally low, and tribalism and politics have supplanted science.

The difference here is that we actually have examples from across the globe where kids weren't masked in schools, and no matter how you look at it, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. If we're going to be skeptical (we should!) let's be skeptical of every claim, and demand proof of effectiveness for our medical interventions before imposing them across all of human society.

1) Is your government adopting a comprehensives and realistic plan to achieve zero covid? (Such a policy must include 100% international travel shut-down, zero exceptions. If there are exceptions, your government does not have a zero covid policy.)

2) Is ICU or hospital usage approaching capacity in your area?

If the answer to those questions is both "no" (as it is in my jurisdiction which is requiring school kids to mask) then your statement is not true. A 21% lower incident rate is not helpful at all, everyone will still all get exposed to covid eventually.

New York Magazine is an “anti-vax site?”

You’re misreading the article. He’s not saying they’re not effective. He’s saying that a high-powered study couldn’t prove them effective, which is the same thing you’re saying.

And "I'm so wise and noble and everyone who doesn't share my opinion is a selfish ass" is still a dumb way to frame it.

The reality is if you're a health adult, an overburdened ER or OR poses a very small risk. Probably much less than what could be made up by eating one extra daily serving of vegetables.[2] You have far more to fear from lockdown induced supply chain disruptions that cause fresh produce shortages at the local grocer.

[1]https://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-med... [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4727264/