And still "[vaccination] is better than a naive immune system" with the conspicuous gap of where "already infected / recovered / might not have had symptoms even" might go.
"effective vaccines actually suppress variant formation" is going to get him yelled at for supporting antivaxer arguments, I bet.
As he explains in the very next sentence strengthening the immune response lowers the risk of prolonged battles and chances for mutation which is what we want
Are you implying that since variants exist, then the vaccines aren't effective?
That's not what the data shows[1].
I'd point out that South Africa, where the Omicron variant was first characterized, vaccines have only ~30% penetration in the population[0], making it a good reservoir for mutated variants to spread.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
[1] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20211123/Systematic-review...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...
(Yes, I know the vaccine isn't completely sterilizing, but it still has significantly tamped down the degree of spread).
Isn't the fact that folks with malfunctioning immune systems are surviving rather than dying evidence that the vaccine is working? Granted, their survival has the side effect of a prolonged infection, but immunocompromised folks don't fare well against COVID.
A very good point.
At the same time, in areas where vaccination rates are low, more folks are infected and a larger proportion of the immunocompromised (as well as the at-large) population will likely be infected.
Making places like South Africa, with less than 1/3 of the population vaccinated, more likely to be reservoirs for the virus, increasing the likelihood of both more variants and an easier foothold for those variants to have their initial spread.
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
That's as may be. But it's orthogonal to my point.
And yet you call this simple, scientific fact that wouldn't have been remotely controversial two years ago an "antivaxer argument"
Although vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection are much less likely to become severely ill than unvaccinated, the new study shows that they can be carrying similar amounts of virus and could potentially spread the virus to other people
Could potentially spread is not the same as saying their equally likely to spread. Fewer infections and less severe cases both reduce transmission to the general population at least in the short term. Long term it may be that effectively everyone gets either COVID and or the vaccine.
That said, if people are equally infections while sick, but their sick for a shorter period then their less likely to infect others.
The problem is that vaccines are not completely effective (efficacy goes down with time, is lower against new variants, there are breakthrough infections, etc.) so variant formation is not completely supressed.
Everything being equal (given one exposed or even one infected person) you may have less variant formation with vaccines. But when you have more infections you will end up having more variants.
That the number of infections would increase as people's behaviour adapted to the lower fatality rate was not unexpected: people take more risks because the prognosis of an infection is not so bad anyway, once infected they may have a mild, undiagnosed evolution and still contribution propagation...
And it's no longer an hypothetical scenario. In many European countries there are more infections now than ever before.
I still don't get what makes covid different from the flu. Yes, covid is a little bit more deadly, but other than, why don't we just accept it as part of our lives like we did with the flu?
The flu typically kills the extreme elderly or people with extremely compromised immune systems. Aka they might die at 94 vs 95. COVID on the other kills people who are relatively much healthier, someone that dies at 75 vs 95 lost 20 years not 1.
This is also why people 70+ are almost fully vaccinated in the US. For that age range it’s an extremely serious disease with a high chance of killing them after infection.
Older people certainly dominate the vulnerable groups, but there are many other people living with various forms of immune system dysfunction. This is why the rest of us need to mask, vaccinate, and get boosters to minimize our chance of propagating the disease to the more vulnerable parts of our population. Not doing so is basically saying you don't care about other people.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3
The average age of COVID-19 deaths in developed countries is about 80. Fortunately the vaccines and other treatments have greatly reduced the risk of death.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid-age-penalty-115920032...
Edit COVID has actually killed 800,000 Americans.
20x of 30k < 800k. You can cut argue it should cover multiple years of flu, except the first US COVID case was less than 2 years ago and it really only got started in March 2020. Per month COVID has killed more people than the flu does per year on average and it’s not exactly stopping this winter.
Years lost are then on top of that deaths multiplier.
That said coronavirus have long been one of the causes of the common cold and occasionally cause diseases of significant concern like SARS, COVID, etc. That’s likely around for the long haul unless some massive medical breakthroughs show up.
Because several areas are very near 100% hospital capacity with COVID patients still, and a COVID ICU visit is much more demanding from a timespan and resource perspective in terms of staff and equipment. We can't risk relaxing restrictions when hospitals are unable to bear an increase in patients.
From a cynical point of view, COVID policy is about protecting infrastructure - and only save lives as a side effect.
This is why many places had specific policy for essential services and essential workers, daycare and schooling, transportation, - as well as putting restrictions on private industry which in some countries has become significantly more centralized like meat processing.
What's more, regular care and non-urgent surgeries are put on hold, increasing the risk that patients experience more severe symptoms. Nurses and doctors are burned out and consider leaving their jobs.
That's why we can't "just accept it".
Primarily because our health infrastructure has no capacity as is. Most places are really struggling, both with space and staff. Add to that the PTSD a lot of healthcare workers will be dealing with for decades to come.
And losing 1-3% of our total population isn't great.
But to your point: we will end up living with COVID as an endemic, so long as more people get vaccinated. We need to look at global vaccination rates beyond just local ones, too, as variants will continue to mutate throughout the world. With the vast, vast majority of folks winding up in the hospital being unvaccinated--taking up space, time and money--we're going to be struggling for a while.
And COVID patients are impacting the capacity for people to get routine check ups, and in some locations emergency work, done. It's bad for everyone. Until the numbers are low enough that our doctors and nurses aren't being pushed beyond their limit, we can't consider it sustainable.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
> Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.
https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-dir...
We know this number was likely under-reporting the total cases, due to asymptomatic cases we didn't test for, but I think a range of 1-3% mortality for COVID, letting it go unchecked, is reasonable. This isn't even accounting for variants, as Delta evidenced.
Deaths will climb as our hospitals become encumbered, so we can't rely on the low-range estimates if fewer people are able to receive treatment. This is why we can't just accept COVID as something we live with and do nothing about quite yet.
The additional amount of hospitalizations from COVID19 is crushing our hospitals, even with some vaccine support. A number of states have run out of hospital beds in the August 2021 COVID19 Delta-variant surge.
Fortunately, we've got vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and dexamethasone today compared to March 2020. With all of these new techniques, the death rate has dropped, and treatment of COVID19 has gotten easier.
Still, we're stressing our hospitals to severe limits in parts of the country. We'd ideally want more slack, so that our nurses / doctors can get a well deserved break from this pandemic.