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Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

>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.

> Vaccines have mostly eradicated other viruses

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

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?

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.

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