Merck says research shows its Covid-19 pill works against variants
reuters.com
reuters.com
Not only are many of the people who have chosen not to get vaccinated likely not going to get vaccinated, the vaccines don't prevent infection and transmission and they seem to work the least well in the vulnerable people who need their protection the most.
At this point it just makes good sense to focus more on prophylactic antivirals and not bet the farm on vaccines and drugs that target the spike protein.
Unless you mean that those people are lost sheep to begin with and the prophylaxis benefits the rest of us -- in which case, I agree!
Hilariously, Ivermectin is made by Merck.
Many people who are vaccine skeptics are also living under the delusion that they aren't likely to get COVID. Or they believe if they do, it will be mild. If they do get it and it turns out not to be mild, then they are much more likely to be willing to try an "experimental" treatment.
You say it as if it were a bad thing, but competitive algorithms are a perfectly valid approach to many problems, including this one.
Consider the following parable. A village in the Middle Ages is harassed by a dragon, which demands one gold coin in tribute per day. The villagers can either pay the tribute every day, or give 50 gold coins to a knight who will slay the dragon. The dragon is old and may die any day, at which point they don't need to pay the tribute, but nobody knows the future. What are the villagers supposed to do?
One way to proceed is for the villagers to estimate the probability of the dragon dying on each day, and build a strategy that minimizes the expected expense. Another way to proceed is the "competitive" algorithm: pay the tribute, and if the dragon is still alive after 50 days, hire the knight. This strategy minimizes "regret", defined as the ratio between what you actually do and what you could have done had you known the future in advance. (For this strategy the regret is 2. A more complicated strategy exists with regret e/(e-1).)
These kind of decisions happen all the time in life. I worked at a company whose attitude was, effectively, ship now and we'll fix bugs only after the first outage. (This is the competitive algorithm.) I also worked at a company that tried to predict in advance all possible problems that may arise in the next ten years, thinking that this strategy would lead to better long-term results. Both were successful, though I think the competitive approach was more successful in the specific domain I was working on.
My point is that the strategy that you describe could be motivated by ignorance, but it could also be motivated by a pretty sophisticated understanding of the world.
The _common_ outcome for an anti-vaxxer who gets a severe case is that they go to hospital, accept treatment, and sometimes die. Usable antivirals would help reduce deaths and hospital resource consumption in this common case (and also with breakthrough infections).
You can put the blame on people who don't want to get vaccinated, but looking at the countries that have high % vaccinated, it doesn't look like it's the solution either. It's just moving goalposts.
First it was "let's vaccinate the elderly and we can reopen", then "let's vaccinate most people and then we can reopen", now it's "let's vaccinate everyone, children included and then we can reopen". I wonder what the next goalpost will be. A new variant like with Delta? "Yeah, those vaccines were good for Delta, but now with Omega variant we have to shut down to wait for a new vaccine".
If you want to live few more years in fear, you are free to do that. Otherwise, let people live their lives. For many people, the pandemic only exists on TV and in the government. Stop fearmongering every day about "rising number of cases" and we can go back to normal.
I simply stated:
> It's clear that vaccines are not going to "end the pandemic".
"End the pandemic" is in quotes for a reason. It's obvious that this virus is going to be endemic, if it isn't close to already. Given time, it will almost certainly become another cold-causing coronavirus.
None of this means that having prophylactic antivirals is a bad thing, especially right now for high-risk individuals who have been vaccinated but are more likely to have bad breakthrough infections. If anything, having more treatment options available will make it harder to justify restrictions that negatively impact the lives of the majority who are at lower risk to begin with.
Many countries have reduced mask requirements to "just on public transport, in shops, in hospitals etc". You should expect some of those rump restrictions to hang around for years.
> no vaccine passports and no test/quarantine required to enter the country.
Realistically, international travel to most places is probably going to require a vaccine passport or else a test for the next few years. Other uses of vaccine passports (restaurants and bars etc) are likely to be more time-limited, and many places are already phasing them out.
However, beyond those items, many countries are fully opened or will be soon.
(Obviously, this is all based on current circumstance; if tomorrow a vaccine which gives 99% sterilising immunity comes out, 7 billion doses are rapidly manufactured, distributed and administered, all of this goes away. But that's very much the hopelessly optimistic outcome...)
Masks on public transport or vaccine requirements for entering another country are very small things that can have a big effect on the virus. It's unreasonable to demand a "pure" response to the virus.
I don't think many people would consider having to wear a mask to an event/store to mean that the event/store is closed.
The new status quo seems to be determining what "politically acceptable death levels" are.
> For many people, the pandemic only exists on TV and in the government
You're lucky. For many people, it exists in the form of a death of someone they knew. And for more it exists in the form of a chronic condition.