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Comment by rbancroft | Hacker News Reader

The bar is being set high for these vaccines because they are being pushed and mandated with very exaggerated justification, that they will end the pandemic. Rational people will agree that there are significant benefits to the vaccine, but I don't believe there is any evidence to suggest that these vaccines will get us to an end state where the virus is no longer circulating.

If you want people to go along with a medical intervention, state clearly the expected outcome and don't move the goalposts when the data changes. If the data is strong, you most likely wouldn't need mandates to convince people.

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Vaccines have mostly eradicated other viruses. It's at least possible we could do the same here if we didn't have such a high level of resistance to getting vaccinated.

It was only after (in the US) vaccination rates levelled off and Delta came along that I began hearing people talk about COVID as endemic.

As for evidence, the continued efficacy of some vaccines against variants suggests that, with high levels of adoption, it's at least possible that after a few years of periodic boosters and targeting emerging strains that we could have reached an extremely low level of circulation.

Also why wouldn't you move the goal posts when the data changes? You get new data, you reevaluate prior assumptions and models, and adjust accordingly. Is there a particular instance you're referring to here?

When the primary message to the populace is that the vaccine will stop the spread, then the vaccines do not stop infection, large swathes of the public begin to feel lied to.

Where can I read that message? I don’t follow many news channels. But I visited CDC website and their primary message is that vaccines protect from getting seriously ill.

Part of "serious illness" is being ill for longer. The longer you're infected, the more people you're likely to infect. How could vaccination not reduce the spread?

"So even though there are breakthrough infections with vaccinated people, almost always the people are asymptomatic and the level of virus is so low it makes it extremely unlikely — not impossible but very, very low likelihood — that they're going to transmit it," Fauci said.

Fauci added that vaccinated people essentially become "dead ends" for the virus to spread within their communities.

"When you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health and that of the family but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community," Fauci said. "In other words, you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere. And that's when you get a point that you have a markedly diminished rate of infection in the community."[1]

This is more or less the messaging I recall seeing around the early stages of the vaccine being available.

[1]https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/553773-fauci-...

Try visiting archive.org and looking up the CDC site, because we are almost a year removed from the "95% efficacy" propaganda they peddled.

Wait I'm so confused, why were the efficacy studies propaganda?

We have never even come close to eradicating a respiratory virus. There is a huge difference between a disease like smallpox and covid19

A nice summary of human attempts to fully eradicate pathogens - a feat we have accomplished precisely two (2!) times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise...

we have for all intents and purposes eradicated polio in the areas that trust vaccines. it's in basically 2 places now because of a few factors but a large one is that the taliban doesn't trust them and think it's a sterilizing campaign... pakistan, and afganistan.

Don't get it twisted: the CIA disguised its spies as polio vaccine administrators[1]. We could have eradicated the virus had the medical staff not been weaponized.

1. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/05/20/314231260...

You can both be right. CIA poured fuel onto the fire.

But I do find it is interesting that we almost had polio eradicated until the vaccine was politicized...

There have been both blunt and sharp political forces in play. As far as I know, CIA never operated this way in northern Nigeria, yet that was one of the anti-vax hold-outs where polio was kept alive.

Seems we've forgotten all about how viruses work over the last couple of years.

Without a vaccine, viruses will still evolve to be less virulent and more transmissible, leading to endemic status. Within this a large number of the population gain natural immunity also reducing spread.

Vaccines, done poorly and too frequently, cause vaccine escape where the immune system actually does a worse job fighting infection and you get more virus (aside other immune system issues). Which is exactly what we're seeing now where a lot of places have more hospitalisation and death per capita in the vaccinated...two years into the pandemic

The most ignorant thing to think at the moment is 'just need more jabbing.'

Incorrect.

Smallpox has been around for thousands of years, and it has not evolved to be less virulent.

More transmissible (specifically fitter) but not necessarily, or even usually, less virulent. That is just an urban myth sadly.

Endemic just means 'regularly found', it does not mean mostly harmless!

Vaccine escape refers to a virus evolving to avoid vaccine induced immunity - and can happen with infection induced immunity too. As it happens T cell immunity against severe disease has been holding up just fine - and has saved countless lives. If vaccine uptake was universal, and we took a few sensible precautions, a virus can be completely suppressed, like measles, so wouldn't have a chance for escape mutations.

Your per capita statement is plain wrong.

Now you've been taught a few things about viruses, you can stop spreading misinformation!

For viral diseases, especially coronavirises. Source for the explanation of the myth/urban legend?

Immune system escape can occur, usually in adults, but generally not in children because their immune systems are young and not 'trained' so do a great general response effort.

Vaccines force a targeting of the immune system (e.g. particular spike proteins) that specifically leads to escape, as we're seeing with the vaccines being not only mostly useless, but potentially worse for Omicron.

Per capita not wrong, just not everywhere yet. Example:

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/new-data-on-vaccine-effic...

I have to wonder:

If we had protected the vulnerable the best we could, focused on treatments, and let the vaccine rip through the remainder of the population (particularly healthy children) as fast as possible would we have arrived at Omicron levels of deadly much sooner and saved more lives overall?

Not suggesting we should have done that. Just wondering if it might be the case. Guess we'll never know for sure.

You're assuming that Omicron is going to be the last variant.

No guarantees that we can't get another wave of Delta 2.0 in five months.

> Without a vaccine, viruses will still evolve to be less virulent and more transmissible, leading to endemic status. Within this a large number of the population gain natural immunity also reducing spread.

This is a thorough misreading of the evolution of viruses.

> Vaccines have mostly eradicated other viruses

No, vaccines have eliminated exactly one human virus, smallpox.

>It's at least possible we could do the same here if we didn't have such a high level of resistance to getting vaccinated.

why hasn't the flu been eradicated then?

>It was only after (in the US) vaccination rates levelled off and Delta came along that I began hearing people talk about COVID as endemic.

that's because most people have no idea what's going on. experts were saying this was the likely outcome from the begining

> experts were saying this was the likely outcome from the begining

Well only those other experts... the "kooks" and "right wing" ones who "care more about the economy than lives". The ones that got their reputations destroyed.

The mainstream "experts" who are the ones we are only supposed to ever listen to have never really made any of this clear. If they did, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

If they cared about the economy, they'd be screaming at everyone to get vaccinated so that life could go back to business as usual. The economic cost of millions of people requiring life-saving, high-intervention healthcare is crippling.

They don't actually care about the economy, though. They care about two things - fighting a culture war, and bending over backwards for businesses, at the expense of literally anything else. It doesn't matter that millions of people are racking up billions in preventable medical bills, so long as the Mar-o-Lago can stay open as if nothing happened.

They aren't making a 'trade-off' between the economy and human life. They are utterly failing at protecting both. If you want to see a trade-off between the economy and human life, look at how China handled the pandemic. Harsh lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and as a result[1] - strong economic growth through the pandemic.

[1] Also only 4,000 dead, as opposed to 900,000, but who's counting?

There are likely numerous reasons, but the flu vaccine update was generally around 40% for adults in the US[0]. COVID is something like 70% and the OP is saying if we got even higher it might've worked. (I suspect the bigger issue was getting it distributed globally.)

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/coverage-1920estimates.ht...

The vaccines aren’t effective enough to stop omicron even if everyone in earth took all three shots.

If they stayed 90% effective like they were originally, we could have ended the virus. But vaccine efficiency wanes over time. New omicron+delta vaccines will help somewhat, but their effectiveness will probably wane over time too.

Time to get used to cold, flu, and covid season every winter.

That 94% was against symptoms, not infection. They didn't measure infection, so there was no way to distinguish between stopping infection and still being infected but stopping symptoms (and so still being able to spread it). Turns out, even before Omicron, it was mostly the second case.

CDC said 90% for asymptomatic infection once they did measure infection. https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2021-03-29-cdc-authorized-...

The change is partly that the effectiveness wanes after a few months and partly that its less effectively again new variants like Delta and Omicron. You can create delta+omicron mRNA vaccines to deal the second problem, but the first problem is much harder--and maybe impossible--to deal with.

This is why we had low cases during the summer of 2021. The vaccine mostly worked at stopping the spread. It no longer does.

That’s not the end state anyone who knows anything about this virus is expecting or aiming at at the moment. And it hasn’t been for months and months.

Universal vaccination can make the transition of this virus from pandemic to endemic much more pleasant. In terms of deaths, serious cases (with potential long term effects), but also in terms of smoothing out hospital and infrastructure load.

In that respect the vaccines are an awesomely effective tool that can greatly reduce suffering with minimal or no real downsides.

Side note: an omicron infection is no replacement for the vaccination. Omicron doesn’t confer great immunity against delta and other, “older” virus variants which are still out there, potentially ready to come back next winter.

"Omicron doesn’t confer great immunity against delta"

It is my impression that it actually does, and that is why Delta was outcompeted so fast. If it didn't, both strains would likely co-circulate together.

Does anyone know where I can find graphs that show the % of infections that each variant represents over time?

I used to see them all the time on Reddit in the r/Coronavirus subreddit.

Searching very quickly, I found this from Dec 21, 2021:

https://www.statnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/c7efM-om...

BC, Canada: http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-Site/Documents/VoC/VoC_Weekl...

The CDC publishes weekly data on variant percentages.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportion...

Outcompeting is an immediate association between the two variants. Conferring x-variant immunity means that once you've recovered from one, you will have lasting immunity to other variants.

There is a possibility that the large majority of the population has been infected with omicron, and recovered. But then delta could come in at that point and produce another wave. At this time, the body would be much more successful at holding off omicron, but maybe not so much with delta.

So purely from the fractions of current infections, you cannot draw conclusions about x-variant immunity.

Why should I care what "anyone who knows anything about this virus" is expecting? The people writing the policies around vaccination are the ones who matter.

There have been mass firings on the basis that this vaccination will end the pandemic and people who don't get vaccinated are actively harming everyone else. The truth of that claim is far too murky to justify the agressive policies that are being used to force people to get vacinated. Policies which, I note, appear to be deploy what are effectively human rights violations. These are not policieis that should be used. The policy response is what is important here.

People who are not vaccinate are definitely behaving in a deeply antisocial way and enforcing vaccines is very much a justified policy in my eyes, even if “only” to smooth over the transition from pandemic to endemic.

To my eyes vaccine mandates are not, in general, human rights violations. They just are not.

Tie them down and forcibly inject them then. Have some courage. Quit pussy footing around with economic threats and shaming.

Why?

Because morally it's the same thing, and it would get done faster and more effectively.

Depends whether you are more concerned about vaccination rates, or with punishing people for being antisocial.

> To my eyes vaccine mandates are not, in general, human rights violations. They just are not.

Are they really though? If vaccines work so damn great why do I still need to wear a mask in a place where everybody is vaccinated? And why did Ontario shut down most of the places that required proof of vaccine during this omicron wave? Shouldn't those places be exempt from shutdowns?

If proof of vaccine still requires masking and shutdowns... maybe it isn't a really an effective policy?

If stop signs and traffic lights work so dann well why am I being forced to wear a seat belt? If I require a seatbelt even after taking a drivers licence exam, maybe following traffic rules isn’t really an effective policy?

One would think that on this forum of all places, people would understand the concept of defence-in-depth. Furrfu…

Vaccines are both the seat belt and the airbags. Masks? Those aren’t even close. They are more like rain dances or amulets.

Besides why does the government get to decide if a vaccinated person has to wear a mask? Makes no sense.

You can add as many layers of defense as you want. Don’t force me to. I’m boosted. I could care less about Covid. If I still have to wear a mask post shot, why the hell did I even bother?

> Masks? Those aren’t even close.

They're to reduce transmission to others. You can call them not good enough but it's a respiratory disease, it's what we've got. The alternative is lockdowns.

> Besides why does the government get to decide if a vaccinated person has to wear a mask?

Why do they get to decide if an unvaccinated person has to wear a mask? You're simultaneously arguing that vaccines are effective and so masks are pointless but also that vaccines are ineffective. Which is it?

> Don’t force me to. I’m boosted. I could care less about Covid.

It's not about you. If the only risk was only to yourself then nobody would care.

> If I still have to wear a mask post shot, why the hell did I even bother?

Because if you get covid you'll have a mild flu instead of being hospitalized or die? You can say it's low chance but 3,000 corpses today I guess were unlucky.

I would have gotten mild Covid. I have no real need to get the vaccine at all. Only reason I got the vaccine was I had no reason not to. I really don’t care about Covid at all. It isn’t a risk I focus on. Never had been. I’m way more concerned about what this hysteria has done to society and our communities.

Others can get a vaccine too if it truly helps them or they just want piece of mind. We all have the choice. Transmission no longer matters. It isn’t a problem each individual needs to worry about. It’s not ethical or moral to keep pushing this as the only concern society can focus on. We need to move on.

And you can use scare words like “3000 corpses a day” but that is propaganda and fearmongering. The more scary the wording, the less the words mean to me. Way more than 3000 people die a day. And people die of many things all the time. Death is one of the only things that will happen to us 100%.

Life is way to short to piss away on this. You are free to continue hunkering down in fear. But kindly stop forcing others to cater to your fear. It is quite selfish to ask that, especially given you can get a freely available, highly effective vaccine.

Get your vaccine and move on. Covid ends for you when you stop being afraid of it. It’s actually that simple.

> And you can use scare words like “3000 corpses a day” but that is propaganda.

You're confusing emotionally charged, high-impact words with propaganda. Having a policy of talking about the dead in a sterile detached way is also a rhetoric choice that affects perception and is just as much "propaganda" by your own standard.

What you're calling "propaganda" is "using words that make something sound more serious than I think it is" or "using words to make something sound less serious than I think it is."

> Only reason I got the vaccine was I had no reason not to.

That's the reason I wear a mask.

> You are free to continue hunkering down in fear. But kindly stop forcing others to cater to your fear.

The only thing that's being asked of anyone is to get vaccinated, wear a mask indoors, and stay home if you're sick. The first two cost you nothing and you should be staying home with any illness anyway.

> Get your vaccine and move on.

I have moved on, except for wearing a mask when in close contact and having to show proof of it for large events, life has literally gone back to normal.

We never had the nation’s top scientist say “if you wear a seatbelt you’ll never get into accident”

> People who are not vaccinate are definitely behaving in a deeply antisocial way

Are chain smokers antisocial ? What about over eating obese ?

I hate risk-adverse fearful societies.

Second-hand smoke strikes me as antisocial if produced in an unavoidable setting.

Obesity ... seems like an entirely personal matter, except perhaps in children where they might be considered victims.

Highly infectious viruses several times more harmful than the usual ones are indeed turning the world upside down. I imagine with time most societies will come to accept such things after they've become endemic for a while.

> Obesity ... seems like an entirely personal matter

Just like vaccination for Covid is personal. Remember that the vaccine does not prevent transmission of omicron. And that if the vaccine works, if an unvaccinated person transmits the virus to a vaccinated one, there should be no risk, right ?

Also, obese and overweight people account for 50% of hospitalizations in ICU for Covid in France.

I disagree with every one of your statements.

> To my eyes vaccine mandates are not, in general, human rights violations. They just are not.

We're talking specifically about the Covid vaccine mandates, not mandates in general. I think there's certainly a serious debate to be had on whether these morally questionable Covid policies are human rights violations.

Please define what you mean by ending the pandemic.

> human rights violations.

Which ones?

I have no idea what ending the pandemic means. It is a stupid wooly phrase with multiple meanings, often conflicting. That is why I'm unhappy about the policies used to achieve it - whatever it is.

> Which ones?

Well, looking at a relevant wiki article [0] I'd say the policies I know best (Australia) are bumping up against the articles dealing with freedom of movement, big chunks of articles 18-21 (underlining peaceful association a few time), I'd argue 22-27 - I forget where 'right to earn a living' is but I'm pretty confident it is in thge UDHR somewhere and that is probably in 22-27.

At some point (and 2 years is past that point) these philosophical issues like human rights start to matter.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...

As with every document of this nature, some of the rights outlined may conflict with each other. You wind up having to reconcile those conflicts.

For example, Article 29:

> Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

> In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

It's pretty easy to see vaccination and other public health measures as one of these scenarios.

“Articles 28–30 establish… the areas in which the rights of the individual cannot be applied, the duty of the individual to society…”

Does that justify how countries like Cuba dealt with HIV? The problem is that public health can reach fairly extreme levels unless it is checked by a strong conception of individual rights. Otherwise you literally get situations like what happened with HIV in Cuba (for those who don't know, HIV positive people were rounded up and sent to institutions as a public health measure to prevent HIV spread). That's why I find it incredibly concerning that people seem to just be happy to suspend individual rights so rapidly. The state of Victoria in Australia recently passed legislation that lets it ignore certain human rights - such as the right to employment - in the face of the pandemic.

> Does that justify how countries like Cuba dealt with HIV?

The declaration says “in a democratic society”. Are we counting Cuba as one?

> That's why I find it incredibly concerning that people seem to just be happy to suspend individual rights so rapidly. The state of Victoria in Australia recently passed legislation that lets it ignore certain human rights - such as the right to employment - in the face of the pandemic.

One might argue they prioritized the Article 3 right to life over that of employment; loss of life being permanent, and employment not, this seems like a justifiable use of Article 29, especially given Australian per capita deaths being massively lower than here in the States. We’ve killed two Tasmanias worth of people over here.

(I have relatives in Ballarat, Melbourne, Sydney, and Hobart, incidentally. I’d trade my pandemic experience here in upstate NY with them in a heartbeat.)

Are you going to try and argue that such a policy would have been on the right side of history as long as it was bought in by a democratic society?

No. Did any democratic society take the concentration camp approach for HIV? Or COVID, for that matter?

Again, the UDHR asserts a variety of rights. You're correct that Article 23 asserts a right to employment, but the apparent desire to read that as the only provision in the document appears to be a motivated one. The document lays out other rights, which naturally may be in conflict with each other at times, a fact that is explicitly acknowledged in Article 29.

I don't object to disagreeing with Victoria's balancing of the various rights, but I do object to the assertion that it's somehow a clear violation of human rights for them to prioritize the rights to life and health over the right to employment.

> The document lays out other rights, which naturally may be in conflict with each other at times

Ok, so we've taken away all these rights from unvaxxed people. What rights do you believe this has that allowed others to exercise?

Because from where I sit:

1. It doesn't reduce the odds of people getting COVID. We just had ... probably between 2-3 million COVID cases between NSW and Victoria, both with highly vaccinated populations. That is only possible if vaccinated people are infecting each other (as most reporting I've read suggests is happening).

2. Doesn't otherwise affect anyone's rights.

Note that there isn't even a right not to get sick from time to time. Although it even if such a right did somehow exist it isn't obvious how an unvaxxed person would be affecting your right to excercise ti since the problem is how much you come into contact with other humans vs anything any other individual is doing. There has been no threat to our hospital systems at any point that justifies what has been done to the unvaxxed. The pressure the hospital system has come under appears to be from the COVID restrictions (and, ironically, probably things like laying off workers for resisting the unreasonable vaccination policies - although if they've got the capacity to start sacking people then they clearly don't see a problem).

So it seems to me that we're doing this just for fun / for the joy of being authoritarian.

And your damn right the reasoning is motivated. Motivated by a desire to let people earn money and make their lives better at will. To be able to go places and visit friens and family without being arrested. To make their own medical decisions. These are reasonable motivations. These rights are the easy ones with practical justifications.

> Ok, so we've taken away all these rights from unvaxxed people. What rights do you believe this has that allowed others to exercise?

The Article 25 right to medical care, which unvaccinated people can put at risk by overwhelming hospitals with ICU cases.

I also consider getting vaccinated to be one of the Article 29 "duties to the community".

There is no risk to the hospital system. There have been 2 years to prepare and we just had 1,000,000 covid cases is NSW and there was barely a blip. There were around 3,000 hospitalisations at peak and it seemed to mostly be vaccinated people although the table over at covidlive.com.au might be misleading me.

This isn't an emergency any more, this is routine.

> I also consider getting vaccinated to be one of the Article 29 "duties to the community".

That is an extreme hand wave. It appears the argument is "We can violate your human rights because you have a duty to do what I tell you". These are serious concerns, you may just handwave things like free travel or ability to see family with "you have a duty, but I don't feel a need to justify it" - but that isn't a respectable position.

What is the real risk to the community of these unvaccinated people? We've pretty much seen the worst case COVID scenario play out in the last 2 months and it doesn't seem like the unvaxxed have been a problem in the slightest. The campaign of bullying should end.

Why would you set up a straw man that you don't even know the definition of yourself?

For me ending the pandemic is a return to regular life and a health care system that is no longer stretched beyond typical capacity. This can be achieved by many outcomes but the most likely one given the state of the world today is getting everyone to take the safe and effective vaccine for as long as necessary.

While we can argue about what are the boundaries for human rights in 1st world countries, it's important to know there have been some very strict and harsh policies regarding Covid in different parts of the world.

In Quebec where I live, the unvaccinated are now barred from entry in large retail stores like Walmart and Costco. If you don't have your vaccine passport with you that shows you're vaccinated in these places, then you can't enter, even for groceries.

There was curfew in place that prevented everyone from being outside during the evenings and nights for the most part of January.

On top of that, the prime minister said publicly in the media that the unvaccinated would start paying an additional tax, even though health care is supposed to be free and accessible for everyone here. The government just backtracked about this the last couple of days.

A lot of these policies are extreme and have shown to be completely incoherent and not backed by science, given what we know about the virus since the last couple of months.

> people who don't get vaccinated are actively harming everyone else.

Aren’t they? Hospitals are overflowing and elective procedures cancelled due entirely to people refusing to get vaccinated.

No they're not.

A) there's more vaccinated in hospital per capita of late. Why aren't we demanding lockdowns again instead of just blaming the "unvaxxed" still

B) the unvaxxed still aren't allowed into many places, yet the virus spreads readily

C) Why, rather than just "argh unvaxxed lepers!" are we not guiding better health and wellbeing instead?

D) a covid case is counted when people are in hospital for any other reason and catch it

E) you are counted as unvaxxed during the two week window after getting vaccinated, which is exactly when your immune system is weaker and succeptible to catching a bad case of covid. Interesting how hard it is to find this data, you'd think it would be strongly monitored

> A) there's more vaccinated in hospital per capita of late. Why aren't we demanding lockdowns again instead of just blaming the "unvaxxed" still

Do you have a source for this. This directly conflicts the data I've been seeing. e.g.: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily — weekly hospitalizations peaking at 92/100k for vaccinated vs. 772/100k for unvaccinated.

There was data from Denmark, Germany, and a third place a couple of weeks ago where the share of Omikron infections in the vaccinated was 10-15% points greater than the share in the total population (like 70% vacc/total vs 80% vacc/infected). I've checked one of the original sources (country's public health agency) and it confirmed the claim. To be fair, that could be because there are more restrictions for the unvax'd versus the vax'd.

Share of infections is different though. We were talking about the hospitalization rate.

Oops, sorry for the mix-up! I can't speak to the hospitalisation numbers, but I'd be very surprised indeed if the situation there was similar.

Here's one example: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/new-data-on-vaccine-effic...

This is such incredibly disingenuous statistics. Of course there are more vaxxed with COVID than unvaxxed in a sample of 100,000 people. The vast majority of people are vaccinated!

You're comparing two entirely different denominators. This is just sloppy.

Edit: Digging through the source data, I found

> In the last week from 08 January to 14 January 2022, in an age-standardised population, the rate of acute COVID-19 related hospital admissions in individuals that received a booster or third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was between 2.3 to 3.9 times lower than in individuals who are unvaccinated or have only received one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine

Your own data is saying the opposite of what you purport it to.

You didn't read at all. The stats are adjusted for populations within those cohorts.

It is an appropriate use of statistics regardless. The main thrust of headsoup's argument was that the focus on unvaxxed people isn't helpful because they aren't important in absolute terms.

The rate doesn't matter so much in this instance, because most resources would still be spend on vaccinated people. Much like the fact that when I eventually catch COVID the odds are really good that I'm going to get it off someone who is vaccinated.

If we hypothetically rounded up all the unvaxxed tomorrow most of the strain on the hospital system faces in Scotland would still be there. Vaccination campaigns can't really change that.

A) This is counter to everything I can find online. Going to need citations.

B) This is true. Not sure how it relates to my point though.

C) Aren't we doing both? I've seen both "get vaccinated" and "be healthy" messaging this whole pandemic. Again though, not sure how it relates.

D) True. Again, not sure how this relates.

E) That was a big effect when vaccines just came out, but is a much smaller effect now.

Though I hadn't heard this before, and would be curious to see a study on it if you have one: "when your immune system is weaker and succeptible to catching a bad case of covid."

Edit: Your thing about susceptibility after vaccination is incorrect. It's an Alex Berenson talking point that has been thoroughly debunked.

> Minimal to no real downsides

Yet... Guess we gave up caring about full research and monitoring a couple of years ago.

We're even at the point where we want to vaccinate our small children because 'it's marginally better than nothing' ignoring that side effects are also marginally more than nothing and we have very little good long term data.

> Omicron doesn’t confer great immunity against delta and other, “older” virus variants which are still out there, potentially ready to come back next winter.

Care to share a paper to back this up ? This statement seems hard to prove right now.

Where I live, the goalposts are exactly the same as they were two years ago: don’t let the health care system get overwhelmed. I have no idea what your politicians have been telling you.

>the goalposts are exactly the same as they were two years ago

Shouldn't the politicians have made progress on this issue over the course of two years? At what point is it incompetence or corruption, if the billions being spent to fight the pandemic make zero discernable impact on the most critical issue?

>Shouldn't the politicians have made progress on this issue over the course of two years?

What do you mean? Should they should magically cause the number of doctors and hospitals to double inside two years?

>if the billions being spent to fight the pandemic make zero discernable impact on the most critical issue?

What leads you to believe that measures such as pushing vaccination haven't been having tremendous impact on that issue?

>What leads you to believe that measures such as pushing vaccination haven't been having tremendous impact on that issue?

Do you believe that health care systems are currently overwhelmed by COVID?

Mainly in areas where many people haven't been vaccinated. Where I'm at, hospitals are fine.

If the definition of "overwhelmed" is "past the point of functioning at all" then no. But if the definition is "at the point of functioning with an appreciably lower quality of care", then definitely yes in many areas (less so now, but more so a month ago).

In the United States, they are currently paying traveling nurses up to $10k per week. That is a 500% increase over normal pay. It's so bad that the Texas legislature and Congress are trying to limit interstate commerce and impose wage caps. These gigs are not hard to come by - anyone qualified can easily get them.

If that doesn't say "understaffed and overwhelmed", I'm not sure what evidence would.

You don't seem to have an "elective surgery" planned and then cancelled and postponed indefinitely, haven't you. Or a biopsy you cannot have for that worrisome mass down there... all because your local facilities are at capacity trying to keep no-vaxxers alive.

Good for you

I'm sorry, I don't understand the relation between me asking if a poster believes hospitals are overwhelmed, and your comment. I assume you believe hospital systems are still overwhelmed after two years, based on your sentiment.

Your comment is likely a rhetorical question. If you disagree to a statement please add some countering facts rather than simply challenging the statements with artifices and shifting the burden.

> Should they should magically cause the number of doctors and hospitals to double inside two years?

It's not even magic. It just needs to be done. Find a way. There is an emergency. You don't just get to whine and complain that it is too hard. Your solution doesn't need to be perfect. Far from it, in fact. It just needs to patch the issue so we don't need to do restrictions of any kind.

Anybody that claims it is impossible to double or even quadruple healthcare capacity specifically for covid just isn't being creative about it enough. It's not magic. You just make it happen. You have almost infinite resources to do it even up to and including relaxing licensing laws or removing any other political or bureaucratic hurdle.

> You just make it happen.

Funny you're light on specifics. We talk about a situation where people die if it doesn't happen. So better propose something solid.

> almost infinite resources

Build hospital tents.

> relaxing licensing laws

Employ untrained people.

> removing any other political or bureaucratic hurdle

Eh that tends to happen, once you're in that triage situation.

Look you can't will medical care. You have to build it. It takes decades.

If we had started training more nurses at the beginning of this pandemic they would have graduated already.

You mean, training at home during lockdown?

Paying them more would also help...

In most of the US life has been back to normal (give or take) for a year or more. A lot of people are still dying, but they are primarily higher risk individuals who have chosen not to get the vaccines that have been free and readily available for about a year.

So in terms of goalposts, what exactly is your goal? I'd like to see international travel normalize - it's maybe one of the few restrictions I still feel is constraining me - but there is little my government can do about that.

There's been plenty of progress on the issue of not overwhelming the healthcare system. In the areas with high vaccination rates. Most hospitalizations are by the unvaccinated. In those cases where unvaccinated overwhelm the system, that's not the politicians' fault except for the ones also spreading anti-vaxer misinformation.

They did make a lot of progress on it: they supported the extremely fast invention and roll out of vaccines that accomplish these goals. People have refused to take those vaccines and have refused to support politicians mandating that people take them. It is thus outside the hands of the politicians at this point, and in the hands of society at large.

Where I live (which may be different from the previous poster), the health system has not been overwhelmed yet. So guess that counts as success?

We didn't have to rig tents to use as hospitals, burn dead bodies on the street, or to pay exorbitant sums for oxygen on the black market, as it has happened in other countries.

And if you ask me, yes, that's worth billions, and a bit of self-discipline.

Where I live health systems are not overwhelmed. They were never overwhelmed even before the vaccines. They are occasionally under some pressure here and there like in a bad flu season. But I have to show a vax card to eat in a restaurant.

Is it possible your area is not overwhelmed because vaccinations are required? Here's a medical system overwhelmed in part because vaccination rate is (was) so low: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/coronavirus/article25438...

I believe the vaccines are a big part of why they're not overwhelmed now during the Omicron wave. But we achieved the bulk of our vaccination rate before mandates.

I’m struggling to understand your point, since we agree that vaccines are working to prevent hospital overflow. Is the issue the method of enforcement (show a card to eat at a restaurant)? Because I can also agree that it’s a little roundabout.

So...let everyone else get vaccinated and fix it, not me?

What is the burden that would make this a problem? If the typical narrative is to be believed the unvaccinated are in a much worse position, facing the dangers of terrible disease and death!

If there was no burden then the person would get vaccinated. I personally don’t believe there is a burden but they must.

I think they believe it’s up to everyone to decide if there is a burden (and a risk), for themselves.

Is it possible this rock provides effective protection against tigers?

> Where I live health systems are not overwhelmed. They were never overwhelmed even before the vaccines.

This is an interesting statement.

Where I live, one hospital 30 minutes in one direction was never overwhelmed. In fact, they had to fire people because they were so empty due to cancelling all optional procedures.

Another hospital 30 minutes the other direction had to place patients in offices, conference rooms, and tents in the parking lot.

So I guess the health system where I live was overwhelmed. Or it wasn't. Depending upon who you asked and/or the narrative you wanted to convey.

Yes this is an important observation. The bad things all happen, but they’re usually not everywhere at once. One grocery store has empty shelves, another one is better stocked. Makes it easy to look credible saying everything is fine, or everything is terrible.

> don’t let the health care system get overwhelmed

So add more capacity. It's an emergency. Find a way to add it. Why are we into this two years and still have this problem? It's inexcusable at this point.

> So add more capacity. It's an emergency. Find a way to add it.

We did. The government deployed a floating hospital called the USNS Comfort to NYC to massively increase hospital capacity and... it basically just sat there unused for a month and then left after Governor Cuomo said it wasn't needed.

And then rather than celebrate Covid not being nearly as bad as forecast, these same governors doubled down and extended their stay at home orders.

It was that day I realized that none of this has a damn thing to do with science or data.

Vaccines are like seat belts: they don't prevent car crashes, but they help you survive them.

Good one!

Here’s my version for pre-Covid vaccines:

Vaccines are like seat belts: they prevent car crashes.

No they're more like airbags. The don't stop the accident but they do make it immensely more survivable.

It's amazing how much we've forgotten about how vaccines and immunity work over the last couple of years.

Flu vaccines were always described as a pretty stochastic thing and not a guarantee, though that may have been more for uncertainty of which strain ended up dominant.

Why is why they're colloquially referred to as "flu shots", not "flu vaccines".

> If the data is strong, you most likely wouldn't need mandates to convince people.

That's an awfully naive and rosy view of "people".

> The bar is being set high for these vaccines because they are being pushed and mandated with very exaggerated justification, that they will end the pandemic.

At what point does the justification become 'exaggerated'?

Is "This vaccine would have saved the lives of at least half a million Americans in the past two years" not a good enough justification?

Is "End the pandemic" the only set of goal posts for vaccination that you will accept?

Is not, is there a number of corpses that will be an acceptable justification? How much higher does it have to get? A million? Five? Fifty?

> that they will end the pandemic.

And that they will prevent the appearance of mutated strains.

Or the corollary that the appearance of mutated strains is to be blamed on people being unvaccinated, either because they don’t have vaccines or don’t want them.

Oh no, not this talking point again.

For the last time, you can spawn mutations regardless of vaccination status.

This phenomenon of the unvaccinated being “Petri dishes” for mutations occurs in the vaccinated as well. So let’s not spread misinformation based on a complete misunderstanding on how mutations form in the body.

Disagree? No problem, just show me the data that backs up that claim. Certainly not above having my mind changed.

I should probably have quoted a larger part:

> with very exaggerated justification, that they will end the pandemic

Hopes are high because if they don’t prevent spread, and breakthrough cases or effects on the unvaccinated/ineligible are bad enough, then there’s no off-ramp for NPIs.

> I don't believe there is any evidence to suggest that these vaccines will get us to an end state where the virus is no longer circulating.

Who is saying there is?

President Biden said you can't get COVID if you get the vaccine, implying it would stop the virus from circulating.

>One last thing that’s really important is: We’re not in a position where we think that any virus — including the Delta virus, which is much more transmissible and more deadly in terms of non — unvaccinated people — the vi- — the various shots that people are getting now cover that. They’re — you’re okay. You’re not going to — you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...

technically, COVID is the disease and SARS-COV-2 is the virus. So the virus can circulate with only a very small fraction of people getting COVID if the vaccines are highly effective.

I'm not sure what you're technically proving, but the quote said nothing about "small fraction of people", it was categorical.

refuting your statement:

> you can't get COVID if you get the vaccine, implying it would stop the virus from circulating.

It is entirely possibly that vaccination can leave a virus circulating while still preventing disease. Whether it does in this specific case is something you could debate, but you can't draw that implication stand alone.

>It is entirely possibly that vaccination can leave a virus circulating while still preventing disease. Whether it does in this specific case is something you could debate

But breakthrough cases of the COVID disease do occur in this specific case.

What is the relevance of a hypothetical alternative scenario where breakthrough cases don't exist?

So anyway as I understand it we have a pretty technical readership here on HN.

Technically, the virus is called SARS-CoV-2 and the disease is called COVID-19[1].

That does mean, technically, that due to vaccination the virus can indeed circulate but that people are not affected by the disease. Is that what Biden has said? Certainly from the excerpt you posted, that seems to be the case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

>That does mean, technically, that due to vaccination the virus can indeed circulate but that people are not affected by the disease.

Are you suggesting that breakthrough cases of COVID don't exist?

I never suggested any such thing

That's cherry picking a slip of the tongue: he was very clear earlier in that post that you can still get infected:

>If you’re vaccinated, even if you do catch the “virus,” quote, unquote — like people talk about it in normal terms — you’re in overwhelm- — not many people do. If you do, you’re not likely to get sick. You’re probably going to be symptomless. You’re not going to be in a position where you — where your life is in danger.

So you can cherry pick and attribute an absurd interpretation while ignoring everything else he said, or go for the reasonable view that he knows infection is still possible based on multiple other points in the conversation. The man isn't a great speaker, but nonetheless it's inappropriate to choose the worst possible interpretation of something when context contradicts that interpretation.

It's one example of many that could have been chosen, and needs no interpretation, his words stand on their own. The fact that there are incoherencies in his various statements is not relevant.

>one example of many

Then show me the many examples where he's said that vaccines are perfect proof against infection. Because now you're moving the goal posts as your point is refuted by context, so you expand to more vague ad hominem attack against him. The burden of evidence is on you to support that, and to do so with more than brief out of context soundbites.

>out of context soundbites

A link to the entire transcript of an event is an "out of context sondbite"? You're clearly not discussing in good faith.

Review your comment. You link to the entire transcript yet use only a single out of context quote. You chose, from a long transcript a single out of context sound bite. My accusation stands. I was the one who pointed out that you ignored the rest of the context that contradicted you.

So there you are-- posting an article, maybe failing to read it or more likely deciding to ignore most of it, and then accuse me of discussing in bad faith? That is quite brazen, accusing me of the exact thing you are doing, A poor, failed attempt at a diversionary tactic to distract from your avoidance of the question.

>out of context quote

It's not out of context, it's completely in context. Biden said you won't get COVID if you take the vaccine, full stop. There's no additional context that changes the meaning of those words.

The fact that he also made other statements about COVID doesn't render the quote out of context.

The entire transcript is the context, and everything else in it contradicts your unreasonable belief that a small slip of the tongue takes precedence over the rest. It's the type of non-argument & deliberate misunderstanding that I expect of the most cynical pundits or political partisans, whereas HN folks usually do a little better than such recycled flame bait.

So, I don't think you and I can have a productive conversation. Perhaps you are capable of doing so when it doesn't involve a political figure, but it seems clear that you have a vendetta in this case and are unable to look past it.

If you'd like to reply for posterity, for anyone else who comes along, go for it, but don't do it on my account, I see no point in revisiting this thread. If we encounter each other in a different conversation then I look forward to the possibility of a reasonable discussion & exchange of ideas, but you don't currently, on this topic, seem interested in that.

https://twitter.com/NickKao13/status/1475641334597832705?t=o...

There you go. From the head of the CDC and a few other quotes from biden too.

Haven’t the older vaccines been mandated for much longer?

There's never been a vaccine that was mandated in order to conduct basic commerce.

Smallpox no? I mean it was criminal to not be vaccinated in many places and upheld by courts. Seems a stronger mandate to me.

If you're referring to Jacobson v. Massachusetts, that case was about whether the state has a right to impose a fine on someone who refused to be vaccinated. A fine is very different than being barred from conducting commerce.

In several states it was a criminal charge that could see you fined and/or imprisoned. Having a criminal record bars you from employment and commerce opportunities no?

I know wearing a mask and taking the bare minimum to try to control a pandemic that has killed millions infringes on YOUR PRECIOUS FREEDOM but it seems a reasonable trade off for the state.

Also what restrictions to basic commerce are you facing? That you can't go get wasted in a bar? Give us a break.

Listen, friend. The vaccine

1) Didn't

2) Can't

3) Will never

Stop Sars-CoV-2. You can vaccinate to 100% and double, triple, quadruple boost everyone. In this Omicron wave, almost everyone I know here in Florida has come down with symptomatic COVID. That includes my wife and kids, the entire families of all my best friends, my coworkers, my boss, my kids' teachers, everyone, and they are ALL VACCINATED to the man. The prior two waves never got within 3 degrees of freedom to me, vaccine or not.

This isn't surprising. COVID doesn't care about our stupid vaccine. It doesn't even know it's there. As far as I know we've never beat a bug like this with a vaccine. Consider that while we sit around and put on the mask and point the finger at the guy next door, the outbreak started in Wuhan, Omicron developed in South Africa, and the next variant is probably starting to incubate in yet another remote location. In fact the entire trajectory of this disaster is basically orthogonal to all of our activities.

The politics of COVID, however, the self-inflicted economic and social damage, are entirely our own doing. I believe this is actually comparable to, if not worse than, the direct effects of the virus itself. And since nothing we have done or can do will prevent the direct damage, I say we should stop inflicting all the secondary damage on ourselves.

> hat includes my wife and kids, the entire families of all my best friends, my coworkers, my boss, my kids' teachers, everyone, and they are ALL VACCINATED to the man. The prior two waves never got within 3 degrees of freedom to me, vaccine or not.

And did they die? Because the vaccines are tremendously effective at reducing symptom severity, hospitalization and deaths.

More likely than not the outcome would have been the same even if they were unvaccinated, because covid-19 just isn't that bad of a virus. If you're under 30 years old, even with Wuhan/Alpha/Delta variants, you were at lower risk than with the yearly flu.

> If you're under 30 years old, even with Wuhan/Alpha/Delta variants, you were at lower risk than with the yearly flu.

This is objectively false; the IFR of all Covid variants is one order of magnitude greater than the flu, with the possible exception of a few years in the century with particularly virulent seasonal flus.

Sure COVID-19 will be endemic, can't put the genie back in the bottle now, but that doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't be trying to end the pandemic: r0 < 1. The vaccines and masks do a great deal to reduce those basic reproduction numbers.

Maybe millions dead, countless others not entirely recovered, isn't helping economies or folks mental health? I agree, that's all our own doing, but not because we "locked down" it's because we never actually did. There was never a lockdown (at least here in the US), middle class folk just stayed home while the lower class brought us our groceries and died.

You're lucky the virus hasn't effected you till now... guess you don't have any friends in the service, hospitality, or health care industries.

Also if you're in Florida, what do you care. Y'all basically YOLOing this and I don't think there's much in the way of government mandates.

Maybe step away from the keyboard, put on your mask, and chill the fuck out friend. People are dying. Stop being selfish.

My, and this goes for everyone, freedom is indeed precious.

That seems like a stretch. Physically taking money from you is almost by definition an imposition on one's ability to conduct commerce.

Many jobs require vaccinations. In my state (and many others) college students are required to have an MMR vaccine to attend school. Students living in residence halls also need a hepatitis vaccine.

Vaccines have long been required in a variety of environments.

Conducting basic commerce is not the same thing as some jobs having specific job requirements.

Many things have been done in the past. Just because something was done in the past, that doesn't automatically make it the right thing to do.

I'm not talking about the past, I'm talking about now. Schools require vaccines, and required them pre-covid, and that has been upheld as constitutional. (In the US) From the perspective of law, it is not wrong. YMMV in other countries.

What are your goalposts here on "basic commerce"? School and many jobs seem like they should be included in that, which refutes your original comment on the topic of vaccine mandates for basic commerce not having precedent.

There's never been mandates that bar you from entering stores to conduct commerce, until now.

That narrows down the scope of your claim a little. It is somewhat incorrect though: During smallpox in the early 1900's, Baltimore would jail people if they refused a vaccine. That's certainly a barrier to entering stores and conducting basic commerce.

England did the same thing.

Going back another 100+ years, Virginia passed a law that could see someone not inoculated via variolation jailed & fined if their failure to inoculate spread the disease. I also consider this jailing a barrier to basic commerce.

The precedents exist.

Slavery also used to be legal in Virginia. What's your take on that?

That's a non sequitur. Your claim was that there has never been a mandate that interfered with "basic commerce". Your interlocutor was disputing that claim. Whether such a mandate is morally equivalent to chattel slavery is an entirely different claim.

My take is that slavery is bad and that you your statement about basic commerce was wrong.

You clearly don't like the restrictions and mandates. If you want to have a productive conversation on the topic with other reasonable people then focus less on precedent and more on why these things are bad regardless of precedent. You'll have to do that with someone else though: your method of discussion up to this point has verged more towards reflexive provocation than productive conversation.

>focus less on precedent

I'll let the reader determine who is furiously trying to list every vaccine mandate precedent. As is often the case, the bad faith argument is one of projection.

furiously trying to list every vaccine mandate precedent

Strange phrasing given that you claimed that there were no precedents and I merely brought up precedents in response. I'm not sure how listing historical legal occurrences would cause you to infer such emotional weight to them as to describe them as "furiously" obtained. It's a discussion, that's all. It's been a bit one-sided discussion, because when you are met with counter evidence you level vague accusations of subtle psychological motivations instead of giving a reasoned response.

I'll give you an example of a more productive & reasonable way to respond to the precedents I listed: The precedents are too old and the current situation too varied from them to have any bearing on current legal decisions on these matters. The United States has had more than 100 years of growth & maturity surrounding decisions on constitutional matters and advancements in constitutional scholarship, and during that time has had occasion to revisit decisions that now seem problematic in light of those advances in legal thinking. Additionally, smallpox was significantly more lethal than COVID. Up to 30% might die of it, raising the stakes far above COVID. As such, even granting that the US constitution would, today, allow for those historic measures, we are not now in a situation comparable enough for them to be required.

There you are. That response would have been a more productive conversation to have, specifically addressing my counterclaims without resorting to ad hominem attacks or avoiding the issue all together. We could then have gone on to discuss that in more depth, even if I partly disagree with what I just wrote, a devil's advocate rebuttal to my own rebuttal of your claim. It's a shame you didn't go down that route. It's pretty pointless to be here unless you're simply looking for rhetorical point scoring instead of discussion. Which bring me to:

>let the reader determine

That would be a major difference between you & I: I don't think about other readers when I post. It simply doesn't occur to me to filter what I write through that lens. Until you mentioned it, what other people reading this might think hasn't crossed my mind. It's simply not what I focus on.

Prior to this pandemic, I've never needed to reveal private medical history to go to a kindergartener's birthday party at a venue. Have you?

(and the kicker was we all still needed masks anyway... "science"!)

I suspect that prior to this pandemic most venues hosting a birthday party for a kindergartener would frown upon any guest attending who is currently infected with a contagious disease or who is not vaccinated against any highly infectious diseases experiencing a local outbreak at that time. This is not "private medical history" in any sense other than that any guest is free to not attend if they don't wish to share this information.

Sure but I’m also free to not go to that business. When the government mandates it, now I have no choice.

What would it take for you to accept that people should get vaccinated by law? Or do you think it should just not be mandated ever?

We already have these requirements for other infectious diseases as well as health codes that cover clothing and sometimes protective equipment and procedure requirements for workers and customers in public settings.

I liken masks to the requirement to have at least minimal clothing on. Sanitation is the same (wash your hands, here's how to scrub for 30 seconds).

You do not have to get your child vaccinated. If they're going to mandate vaccines, why haven't they done it already? What would have had to change before the pandemic for you to want them to be mandated?

No need to require vaccinations for a flash in the pan event. These things come and go. In the grand scheme of things, human civilization, this will be quickly forgotten.

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