Or the Isle called Niue [1] who have the ccTLD .nu
Nu means now in Dutch, but I don't see that as problematic (do see problem in English). New would be nieuw, with the 'w' being hearable, kinda sounding knew but with more articulation on 'i' so kniw.
> We know that B.1.1.529 is not a “Delta plus” variant. The figure below shows a really long line, with no previous Delta ancestors. So this likely means it mutated over time in one, likely immunocompromised, individual (see my P.S. note at the end of the post).
How does that work ? Virus mutate inside the host until either death or the immune system stops it ? Why is the absence of selective pressure producing a virus more efficient at spreading ?
This isn't really my area so this is conjecture and guesswork.
If various immunocompromised people get infected then by a fluke their immune system could be just powerful enough to contain the infection but not eradicate it, this will remain the case until the virus becomes too powerful and the host dies.
It's not the absence of selective pressure that is driving the mutation here, it's the mere fact that the virus might survive the selective pressure that does it.
Also from some of the explanations I've read of Covid-19 the mere duplication of the virus isn't all that damaging, the harsh way the immune system eradicates infected cells is more damaging. So someone with a limited immune response might survive for a surprisingly long time.
This is closer to my area, you're basically right. Viruses copy a lot in immunocompromised people for a long time. Lots of copying is all ya need to make variants.
Since immunocompromised people haven't "produced" super flu variant so far, is it safe to assuming we won't have it with Covid? I may spread faster, but won't be more deadly.
Possibly, but spreading faster is much more deadly than being more deadly - at least for a disease that already starts at a high death rate like Covid does.
This happens because living sick people help spread the disease, while dead people don't.
The general tendency is for viruses to become less deadly with increasing mutations. Highly deadly strains kill too quickly to spread well, whereas the common cold kills relatively few but hangs around long enough to keep moving from person to person.
Viruses dont "care" to kill people, viruses only "want" to spread. That's what drives a viruses growth
That is not true for Covid. It's an upper respiratory virus which infects others before causing symptoms. It's possible to develop a variant that spreads, but kills everybody (highly unlikely in practice). There is no strong evolutionary pressure like in case of SARS-COV-1
There is selective pressure, and in fact more than for a normal person! It is coming from them being treated with some kind of antibody treatment (e.g. convalescent plasma) but not to a level that would actually cure them.
I think his confusion is that there doesn't seem to be a novel force that causes the virus to change. The person is the same, so the virus's situation is the same. But like you say, you don't need a new constraint, you just need enough time.
Genome replication mistakes occur rarely but naturally. The covid virus has a proofreading enzyme, but it isn't foolproof. Selective pressure is selective, not creative.
With more complex organisms, its more, well, complex because they can do things like horizontal gene transfer. [EDIT]: But even here selective pressures just impose consequences, they don't cause HGT
The selective pressure would typically not be completely absent, but hampered enough that the game can stay on much longer than usual.
Conditions like that could be imagined to set up continued high copy numbers of virus, alongside a fierce internal competition for infection. The clone will get opportunity to diversify much more due to the long infection, so there is more of a chance for novel alleles to arise and compete against their ancestral form.
And a weakened immune system gives more leeway for incremental improvement of marginal advantages. Somewhat allegorically, a new slight advantage escaping antibodies is worth nothing in context if every extra virion who escapes falls to phagocytes and cytotoxic T-cells. But if the other components are weakened, the selection pressure is unmasked. (At least it seems to me that should be the case in theory, I'm not sure if the effect is strong enough to be very important in practice in this context).
> We know that B.1.1.529 is not a “Delta plus” variant. The figure below shows a really long line, with no previous Delta ancestors. So this likely means it mutated over time in one, likely immunocompromised, individual (see my P.S. note at the end of the post).
This really stood out to catch my attention and imagination too.
With "immunocompromised" and Sub-Saharan Africa juxtaposed, it's hard not to think HIV. If (when, really) they co-infect, SARS-CoV-2 would be working in the context of HIV reverse transcriptase, and that could potentially mean going from RNA to DNA (possibly with incorporation into host DNA) and then back again by route of regular transcription. No big stretch if that would mess with copying fidelity and introduce lots of new opportunities to pick up new sequences and corresponding abilities.
The Presidential COVID-19 Task Force in Botswana informs that the new variant was first found in 4 fully jabbed travelers. Good to know the "worst variant ever" (as it has been labeled by MSM) is NOT a pandemic of the unvakzeenated.
I think the term "pandemic of the unvaccinated" is commonly misunderstood.
What most people think it means is a pandemic that only ravages and evolves among the unvaccinated. This is not what it means however.
What "pandemic of the unvaccinated" means instead is that the unvaccinated population is the key driver for the ongoing spread of the virus. The pandemic however will still infect all people be carried around by all people and evolve in all people. The unvaccinated are just the fuel that starts the fire. If you vaccinate everybody quick and early you can have it like e.g. Israel.
> Because the change is small, an updated vaccine doesn’t need Phase III trials and/or regularity approval. So, this whole process should take a max of 6 weeks.
This appears to be incorrect, Moderna says it needs 60 days to just get into trials (https://twitter.com/megtirrell/status/1464225637590310938) . The FDA has not said what the approval process will look like, but its safe to say it will be non-zero
> It would take six weeks for researchers to go from “plugging new variants into the vaccine” to “make a new vaccine ready to go into people,” he said, but that does not account for the time it would take to have a drug approved. Weissman compared the process to the way the vaccines for the seasonal influenza are modified each time it circumnavigates the globe.
> BioNTech says it could produce and ship an updated version of its vaccine within 100 days if the new Covid variant detected in southern Africa is found to evade existing immunity.
The question has never been about how long it would take to adjust the vaccine. mRNA has been a platform capable of rapid alterations since the beginning. The question is regarding ensuring that the changes are safe and efficacious.
Why would you not need to show it’s safe? A new mRNA vaccine would be introducing different mRNA, which produces new antigen proteins and elicits a different immune response.
You would think software engineers would understand this. It's like approving subsequent pull requests on any and all code changes because the integration tests already passed once.
It's possible that mRNA would reduce the time to the market, which would give use more time to gather data and have better predictions of dominant strains.
Yeah i'm pretty pro vaccine but it seems like safety should be evaluated because it's creating a different antigen. maybe this is some relic from the flu-shots being made yearly without any real safety testing to my knowlege(which, to be fair for the flu, I haven't really followed so i don't know how accurate that is but i don't think much meaningful safety testing can be done every year)
> Travel bans are not evidence-based: It may seem like travel bans for individual countries are a necessary step, but I cannot stress enough that they do not work.
This one point compromised the article for me. The standard for “working”, like all measures, is to slow down the spread. We all know travel bans got a bad name because you-know-who proposed them. But all countries imposed travel bans and we ought to be concrete about the level of delay they create or not. Let’s not hold any measure to a different standard due to political signaling. If travel restrictions are good on a risk adjusted basis to buy time for the “weeks” of analysis needed that could help with further reducing risk, let’s talk about it not write it off as “not working” which is non-sensical. Masks “don’t work”, vaccines “don’t work”, nothing “works” if that is taken to mean a silver bullet.
>A travel ban is not an evidence-based solution unless you stop all travel from every country.
Okay, why not do that? China's done it. Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand require a week+ quarantine for international travelers. It obviously works: it stopped two Omicron carriers at the border in Hong Kong. Why not do that?
If COVID-19 is such a serious threat that it requires shutting down all schools for more than a year, why not take the comparatively minor step of halting or drastically limiting international travel?
1) It's too late (for this variant). So you can't act reactively.
2) When would you ever open then (since you need a proactive approach)?
3) How would trade look? I can't think of a single way of halting a contagious virus between countries that wouldn't completely shut us down as a race. The cost to humanity would be beyond imagination. Perhaps on the order of 100x-1000x that of corona.
Maybe you imagination is limited. China has done this precisely. They have kept the virus in check while limiting international travel and while being the world's factory. You open up when enough of your population is vaccinated.
I wonder why you feel that it is fine to say "too late" for this measure that obviously works. Do you also say too late to lockdowns, vaccine mandates, restaurant and schools closures, and mask requirements. If you don't, then maybe spend a moment thinking if your epidemic response is guided by your political allegiances
China is an authoritarian state that can almost anything it wants to do to limit the freedoms of its population. That same tactic won't work in (real) democratic countries, especially after 2 years of lockdowns.
A 14 day quarantine isn't a lockdown, even NZ is getting sloppy with virus measures. If the people there get tired of it there is nothing the government can do to stop them. In China you will get quarantined forcefully by the police state, and if you don't like it you can go to prison or get disappeared if you raise to big of a commotion.
New Zealand has cases, so what exactly is your point? The initial argument is that locking borders could prevent the spread of a highly contagious virus into a country. It cannot.
Your last paragraph is begging the question: closing schools wasn’t required and was likely a major mistake. Closing borders just heaps more ineffective but costly action into the pile.
From the outside it looks like a lot of policies are reactive, they aim at where the target was days before, not where it is now or where we'll anticipate it might be by the time policies go into effect.
We already know we're acting on imcomplete, time-delayed information, i.e. we will only learn a few days later when the variant arrives in another country. So we have to compensate for that either by shutting everything down or by introducing artificial delays. And that's assuming all countries are testing and reporting the spread early. Some countries might lack coverage and thus act as dark hubs.
In America it would disproportionately affect working class immigrants who get a measly two weeks a year to see their families.
We do not have and shouldn't have a zero covid goal and negative tests + vaccine checks are a reasonable enough. AU/NZ are outliers, but there are countries with strict border policies like them but that failed to contain their spread, such as Australia's neighbor Indonesia. That suggests there's more to the story that requires further study. Australia + NZ are not good case studies for Europe + NA to follow because they are rich islands with limited ports of entry that get less international air traffic in a year than busy European or NA airports get in a month. Furthermore I don't see what the major quality of life improvements for Aussies/Kiwis has been as a result of their overly strict policies. They have a statistic they can be proud of but at what cost?
Yeah, I think the article missed the point on this one - travel bans aren't a panacea, but they definitely slow the spread and can buy valuable time at the start of an outbreak.
There's been too much binary thinking by the media and politicians - for example masks aren't 100% effective, but they do reduce the viral load by 30-50% which could be the difference between getting mildly sick and getting a fatal exposure. We shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of better.
I think the effect is much larger than that, but yes, absolutely. This is an important point that is constantly lost in the public discourse. We realize there's a big difference in dosage with poisons and radiation, but it's the same with viral infections; viruses do take time to replicate, so having a low initial exposure can give the immune system to ramp up sooner, before the infection has become severe (and then the immune response will also be severe).
Here's a link to a real actual science study that used tuberculosis-sized particles and found filtration efficiencies of 99.5% or higher by N95 masks. Which isn't minor. It's been over a year. If you're not using an N95, you're doing yourself and those around you a disservice.
That's nice, but filtration efficiency =/= real-world efficiency. Unless you plan on super-glueing mask fabric to everyone's face holes, of course.
Also, last time I checked, most people aren't wearing N95 masks. Probably because they're annoying and difficult to wear.
> Which isn't minor. It's been over a year. If you're not using an N95, you're doing yourself and those around you a disservice.
I am vaccinated. Which brings up an important point: there is absolutely no evidence that a mask of any sort provides any benefit to those around me, a vaccinated person.
At some point, you have to put up evidence for your increasingly implausible claims -- you can't just keep leaning on lab studies of filtration efficiency. It's been two years now. Where is the real-world data backing your claims?
Feels like you’re slinging a lot of assertions without substantive evidence, seemingly asking people to “Google that for you”.
Among other things, vaccinated persons can and do contract, carry, and spread, during which a decent* mask does do its thing.
And who doesn’t wear an N95 class mask? I see about 2/3rds N95, KN95, or KF94s, 1/3 useless masks, appearing to be mostly correlated along economic lines ($2/masks vs. $0.50/masks).
Put those two concepts together, you get humdinger models suggesting:
“… if only around half of the population opted to wear respirator-type masks from the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 would have failed to establish in the United States.”
> And who doesn’t wear an N95 class mask? I see about 2/3rds N95, KN95, or KF94s, 1/3 useless masks, appearing to be mostly correlated along economic lines ($2/masks vs. $0.50/masks).
I can't comment on the rest of the science, but fwiw, I live in NYC and I'd estimate that maybe 1 / 20 people I see on the street are wearing N95/KN95/KF94 masks. Everyone else just wears cloth masks, or paper surgical masks.
I mean, I’m talking everywhere I go, throughout Manhattan and northern Brooklyn (haven’t been to the other burrows in a long time). Lots of very affluent areas.
> PS. This is bigger than “fractions of a percent”:
No, it isn't. If you'd bothered to read the content of the link I posted in the comment to which you're replying, you'd see that it's about the same paper.
That paper is mentioned numerous times in the thread you're commenting on, I've linked to it, as have others, and I've cited the absolute effect size: 0.09%.
The paper showed that there was an 11% drop on a baseline infection rate of 0.79%, in a fully unvaccinated population with very little natural immunity. It is the absolute best possible argument for masks, and it showed that cloth masks had no detectible effect, and that surgical masks had an effect size measured in tiny fractions of a percent.
1) There are a lot of comfortable masks which have high filtration. They're used widely in Asia. It's no >99%, but it is >90% when used reasonably. If both sides use them, that brings viral loads down by >99%, though.
2) You're right that Americans are idiots who mostly can't tell the difference between a piece of cloth, which reduces viral loads marginally, and a proper mask.
3) Vaccinations have minimal impact on spread for extended in-door socialization (~30% reduction in odds of spread at this point). They do pretty well for reducing risk to you (e.g. death or hospitalization), and they seem to do pretty well for avoiding casual spread (e.g. passing someone on the street).
- fwiw, I personally plan to wear n95 mask outside of home in enclosed public spaces for the foreseeable future, and for things like shopping etc (where I'm exposed to strangers) basically indefinitely / as long as social norms and laws will allow.
- I would like for strangers around me to wear masks. There's too much uncertainty and I don't know how to quantify and otherwise address risk from stranger e.g. In waiting / cashier line, or worse yet elevator (enforced enclosed proximity). I really see no good reason to be in an elevator with unmasked stranger.
- how long and where do we legally mandate masks? Whooeee, I'm glad I don't have to make that awful formal call! :-)
But yeah. If risk is forever, than at least some of us will use ways to mitigate the risk forever in turn. It's not binary, it's a sliding scale that's very individual. so... Yeah. Welcome to the new world! Cyberpunk dystopia future is here! :-)
> There's too much uncertainty and I don't know how to quantify and otherwise address risk from stranger
You know what would help with this? A randomized controlled trial. This isn't tricky at all, except that we can't do the science because it has become political, because people insist that they know the answer already! And if the study shows what they don't want to see, then they censor it, bury it, downvote it into oblivion, or...write missives about how they're going to ignore it.
Also, are you vaccinated? Yes? Then the answer is almost certainly no risk at all. This much we know from ~all of the data regarding vaccines and serious illness, worldwide.
>>"Also, are you vaccinated? Yes? Then the answer is almost certainly no risk at all"
That is not my lay person interpretation of the currently best available data.
A vaccinated person can get infected, can get seriously ill, and can spread out to others more vulnerable. It helps, drastically, and I sure as heck got mine, but my understanding is that it does not confer individual invulnerability.
> A vaccinated person can get infected, can get seriously ill, and can spread out to others more vulnerable.
I can get hit by a car when I walk down the street, but I've been doing it my entire life and I'm still here. I can die in a horrible plane crash when I fly, but I still do it. I can have a heart attack when I go to the gym, but it's still a net positive for my life.
Do you have a grasp on the actual risks involved here? You do realize that, even unvaccinated, unless you're elderly or obese or severely immunocompromised, the risk from this virus is measured in fractions of a percent, right? And if you've had even a single dose of an approved vaccine, you can take that number and divide it by 10?
At some point, you have to let the terror go.
> my understanding is that it does not confer individual invulnerability.
I think we agree on a base point of personal risk assessment. With that in mind, some people jaywalk, some take extra minute to get to a crossing. Some run across, some double check both sides. Some wear black pants and leather jacket at night, some have reflective strips. And it's all good. We share the old adage that "whoever drives faster than me is a maniac whoever drives slower is an idiot" - but most of us understand when pressed that different people have different risk acceptance in their life and that's ok.
The Thing that makes covid tricky is which actions am I making for myself vs others. Safety belt and helmet are largely for myself (but still enforced in many places due to agreed societal cost that goes beyond Individual). Mask, we don't have common universal agreement to yet. (this is not to say I don't have am opinion on it, but I understand looking around that while mainstream it's not universal).
So while I think we have agreement in framework, we may disagree on personal implementation. Mostly, I don't know that I agree with "at some point you have to let terror go". This ain't over yet, may never be over, so some mitigation steps may never be over, is the sobering world to raise offspring Into. Alberta took foot off the brake for just a little while and next thing they were begging other provinces for ICU spots. And there's a whole conplicated interlocked system of individual causes and effects rather than some simple binary rule that have rise to that reality.
Actually, no. I live in a big city. We're apparently all just free-wheeling, death-defying risk-takers here. YOLO.
But you make an excellent point: the average NYC citizen probably takes bigger risks crossing the street on a daily basis than she would by going un-masked.
>>"I'm doing great without one. No need to worry about longterm risks from a rushed vaccine. 1 year does not equal 10. Ever."
There are categories of knowledge where I'm profoundly uninterested in any individual's experience (best friend or stranger on the internet alike:). Simply put - a person surviving Russian Roulette does not make playing Russian Roulette a good idea, no matter how convinced they are and loudly proclaimed that it worked out great for them :).
I do not know your situation - maybe you've gone hermit; maybe you're in an area of low risk; maybe you're being careful; maybe you're the one asshole around and everybody else is vaccinated/wearing mask/implementing lockdown while you're taking credit for not getting your sorry ass sick; or (most likely but I have no way of judging), you're just lucky - see the Russian roulette above.
But in risk evaluation of this sort, again, I'm far far more interested in verifiable statistics than individual's lived experience.Don't get me wrong - we can have a nice round of drinks and talk about how last year's been to us and approaches we've taken and it'll be interesting and we can share; but it's not a policy-guiding thing.
Isn’t this statistic in itself a little misleading though? Given that so many people are vaccinated now, the proportion of hospitalizations would be expected to trend higher in that group as the pool of unvaccinated people is shrinking at the same time.
Also, the eldest people (largely those most at risk of hospitalisation) are substantially more likely to have been vaccinated already, no?
In the context of the claim that, once vaccinated, you are in "no risk at all" for symptomatic COVID19, I don't think it's misleading: significant numbers of fully vaccinated individuals can and do become sick with the disease. Ergo, even when fully vaccinated, you still face some risk.
None of this is an argument against vaccination, of course.
We cannot do the science, because such a randomized test would be deeply unethical. Compare to having pregnant women smoke cigarettes to study effect on the fetus. You do this only afterwards with observational data.
Next to politization there is also public health, which is more of a management science than an emperical science. And economic concerns.
From all the data worldwide, you only reduce risk of hospitalization and death, not for spreading to your grandmother or catching it from a bypasser sneezing in your face. To act like there is no risk for the leaky vaccinated, is to actually increase your risk. Data shows that asymptomatic breakthrough infections are able to cause long-COVID. Now you did not even feel sick and gave your body and immune system rest to clear the virus. Very risky!
> We cannot do the science, because such a randomized test would be deeply unethical.
Thank you for perfectly illustrating the problem. I was actually sort of worried that people wouldn't take me seriously when I said that science has become so political that we actually can't do any. It sounds conspiratorial, doesn't it? But, alas:
1) I post results of RCTs showing that masks do little, if anything.
2) Someone replies that the evidence is insufficient for reasons X, Y, Z.
3) I say "great, let's gather more evidence to resolve those uncertainties".
4) Someone replies "we can't, it's unethical".
Quite a fine castle you've built on that cloud, good sir. Very safe indeed.
In a First, Randomized Study Shows That Masks Reduce COVID-19 Infections
A large study co-authored by Yale SOM’s Jason Abaluck and Mushfiq Mobarak tested the effectiveness of a mask-promotion program in Bangladesh in increasing mask use and preventing symptomatic infections. The study found that masks significantly lower symptomatic infections, especially among older people and when surgical masks [instead of cloth] are used.
That's literally the study this thread is talking about. It's great that they did it -- it should have been done in early 2020, all over the world. We should have dozens of other studies just like it.
The fact that we don't is an indication of how hard it's been to pursue any sort of science in this area. Almost nobody funds it, you can't get it published if it doesn't fit the public health narrative, and even if you do, the the news media won't report on it, and it might just get censored on social media.
Make that zero. To their credit, the authors of the Bangladesh mask study released the raw data. "The difference between the two groups was small: only 20 cases out of over 340,000 individuals over a span of 8 weeks." Drawing any conclusions from such small amount of data is deeply unserious.
It isn't a political issue to not do studies that require doing things that actively and intentionally put people at things we know are highly likely to put them at risk of physical harm. The world decided this was unethical long before the current political climate.
In masks + covid context it feels like "unethical" is used as a thought terminating cliche.
* The pandemic is affecting 8,000,000,000 people all around the world. A large size RCT enrolls X0,000 participants. For example, the Pfizer covid mRNA vaccine clinical trial had 21,728 placebo participants. For every RCT participant, the RCT results are going to inform the course of action for hundreds of thousands of people. This is to say that such RCTs are extremely valuable given the high infectiousness of the virus.
* The risk to the participants is at worst a moderate increase in the chance of being infected with covid. The covid fatality risk to a healthy adult is small. In the US there have been about 50,000 deaths with covid in <50yo age group. An RCT with 20,000 <50yo people on the placebo arm may see about 3 covid deaths assuming all the placebo participants are going to be infected. Realistically, only a fraction of participants are going to actually be infected with covid, thus there is a good chance every single one of the RCT participants will continue their lives just fine, especially if the study designers are careful to not include people with serious comorbidities.
* Vaccines are available to reduce the death risk by another order of magnitude if deemed necessary. Alas, while the vaccines have strong effects in preventing serious covid, they only have a middling effect on preventing infections [edit: after a few months]. The mask/no mask infection effect remains measurable.
* Covid is endemic. Everyone is at risk to to be infected with covid sooner or later. Wearing a mask may decrease the daily risk by a moderate margin, unfortunately integrated over many days the infection probability approaches 1. The RCT is merely speeding the risk by a moderate margin for the placebo arm participants.
* There is a large pool of potential volunteers that don't (want to) wear masks anyways. Adults have the right to volunteer for risky activities, including activities that may result in death.
This is a well written argument, and I don't disagree with the majority of it. However, there is one key point that I do disagree with, and makes the rest of it moot:
>* There is a large pool of potential volunteers that don't (want to) wear masks anyways. Adults have the right to volunteer for risky activities, including activities that may result in death.
This is certainly true. But the difference is that once we begin performing medical studies that ask this of people, the medical industry is now complicit in adults performing risky activities that may result in death and is asking people to do so, or if doing so, to do so for the benefit of medical research. This is a line that has not been crossed by the modern medical research industry as it has been long decided that this extra pressure, however small, is a lever they do not want to pull because it is fundamentally incompatible with 'Do no harm.'
It isn't 'do no harm, except a little when we think it might outweigh the downsides'
It's a line I don't think we should cross. I understand why someone would disagree with that.
The hypothesis for why masks work is due to the laboratory-measured reduction in transmission from the host. The only way to test this is to have a large population where most do not wear masks or most do wear masks. You will not find enough volunteer to make such a test possible. Individual mask wearing does not test this hypothesis.
I feel like I am going insane. Pure psychopathy or scientism to want randomized controls for studying infection of a deadly virus. Absolutely disgusted. No wonder we had a lab-leak...
It is unethical. All your accusations of narrow-mindedness, but you can't see the obvious, glaring ethical problems with such a trial.
Not the least because it would be completely infeasible. You may pretend that we can "simply" do a "controlled experiment" but you ignore how impossible it is to tell any sizeable group of people to behave in a certain way and report honestly about it.
"Randomised control trials" are the platonic ideal but in the real world, you can't endanger people for your curiosity, and you will have greatest problems to actually enforce your test protocol. It's more than "tricky". Unless you have access to some spherical people in a vacuum.
You actually want to be exposed to the virus (after vaccination) during the summer and if possible as often as possible after a successful exposure. It's the only way forward. You can't lock it out forever, and you need to play catch up with it as it evolves or by the time you get it your immune system won't know what to do with it
Probably because we should have been, and now some of us have learned. It’s been a pleasure going two years without any upper respiratory illnesses for me. I look forward to being steadfast in that since it’s really not that hard to wear a mask, and it’s not hurting anyone else when I do so.
It's nice not to have upper respiratory illnesses, but I'm not going to be wearing masks forever because of that, especially since it's not clear cut that not ever getting illnesses is a good idea. (Especially since you're bound to get infected at some point. Might as well exercise the immune system a bit.)
Now, I look forward to it being more socially acceptable to wear masks when you have an infection.
Are you suggesting that one’s immune system becomes stronger after year over year infection? If so, to what end? Every year? Even when I’m 80? When does my system break down. Isolation seems to solve all of these issues and I hate people so isolation is easy.
> Isolation seems to solve all of these issues and I hate people so isolation is easy.
Ah, so this is the real reason. That's fine, but it's also not really applicable to the wider population and hence isn't about what I originally asked -- which is why we would universally continuing wearing masks forever.
The answer is we wouldn't, because that makes no sense.
It has nothing to do with sense and only to do with feelings on all sides. I also mask because I have elderly family and I care that they will die if they get sick at this point, I’m doing my part to minimize the impact on others with what is essentially a zero cost effort. It’s literally the least one can do, next to washing their hands thoroughly, and covering the mouth when coughing or sneezing. That last one is something many people still don’t do, so I’d be happy with a social expectation of fully covering one’s face when expelling saliva and mucus.
I've never seen anyone in public with an N95 mask since the pandemic started but I've seen plenty of cloth masks, bandanas and those cheap hospital masks.
The recent Bangladesh study with 350k people found a ~10% reduction in cases, from only 40% mask adoption.
The two-cities trial early in 2020 in Germany saw a ~20% reduction. Those are in the number of infections - the number looks low but can make a massive difference in the actual transmission rate. In the German case, after a month infections dropped close to zero.
That study is flawed in many ways. And one thing to point out, if you do take the study at face value, cloth mask do virtually nothing, only surgical masks did something ( AKA the intervention group).
The study was not blind, so the intervention group (those that wore surgical masks and showed the large efficacy increase) we're paid money to be part of the group. The non-intervention groups (cloth and control) did not receive any monetary compensation.
Recording of masking was done via people observing mask wearing, which also could potentially mess with the data ( as this was not blind).
Reporting of covid symptoms was entirely based on the population manually reporting it, there was no random testing to see variances in covid.
Only around 30 to 40% of cases were actually verified via a test.
The education that came with the intervention group may have caused the older population to stop going out as much, which impacted the result.
My take is that the study proved you could pay people to mask, but it's efficacy result is dubious.
I'm pretty sure the cloth masks debacle was settled sometime around Q1 2020, a year and a half ago. Anyone arguing about this needs to find a better hobby. They've been not recommended, or explicitly banned from airlines and other places, for a long time. They just confirmed this in a very rigorous controlled study.
It says they tested monetary & non-monetary incentives, but if you look at the execution table, it's all "Public Reinforcement". The conclusion was that Nudges and incentives outside of the core NORM [1] intervention had no effect on mask-wearing..
> Recording of masking was done via people observing mask wearing
This is good. It means they observed the overall effect on the entire population. Some previous studies relied on self-reporting which is not as reliable.
> Only around 30 to 40% of cases were actually verified via a test.
You can't force people to take a test. But the rate of positives within the ones that agreed to collection was similar to the overall self-reported one. The study goes into this at length. There is a whole section trying out a different approach where they assign the average soropositivity to non-consenters, instead of excluding them, and that makes the results even stronger.
> The education that came with the intervention group may have caused the older population to stop going out as much, which impacted the result.
That sounds like a very random hypothesis. I can come up with another dozen of these. Maybe it rained more? Too cold? Maybe there was a soap opera on, that 60 year olds love to watch? You'd think a dozen scientists from Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, John Hopkins & others would find a way to control studies for external factors... if it was this easy to challenge results you could do it for basically every paper ever published.
Cloth Masks: I think you're wrong here? Per the CDC[0] (which all airlines seem to link to), it says:
> Cloth masks should be made with two or more layers of a breathable fabric that is tightly woven (i.e., fabrics that do not let light pass through when held up to a light source).
So cloth masks are allowed. Also, this is an issue that I agree has been settled for a while, but the media/political effort to push it has been minimal, it's always "mask up", without going into the details, which can be very important.
Intervention & Money: The doc you link just says they tried different approaches, but don't seem to details the differences with the different motivational types. It's not clear to me from what I saw that they really dived into this. And when there are any kind of rewards (ie: not blind), you will get different results in the intervention group that you were not expecting (people change behavior).
Observations of Mask Usage: I agree, this is probably the better than survey based (as from what I've seen, people self-report very differently than what they really do). This was a weak critique on my part and I would have to understand what alternatives there are that could be better.
Positivity Testing: I think my original point was moot here as well. I think the better argument here is that we do not know the change that covid had already spread in any given area prior to this test. I understand that they tried to group control and intervention groups that were near one another to try to cut down on this, but it is still a big blind spot for this study.
My other issue here is that there was no random testing done to find asymptomatic cases. This is a huge issue with this virus in general, and it makes our numbers not as good (The UK being one of the few countries that has this kind of data, but it's not truly randomized still).
Older Population Education: See this post on the topic[1]. The point she makes is that the reduction in covid by age group should have been equal if masks worked equally, but the results from the study show that the reduction in cases was mainly in the older age groups.
I think I’ve heard that before, but how is it higher? From the usual dashboards Scotland has 130 cases per million, while England is at 150/million. The number of cases right now is also stable while the UK overall is going up?
Vinay Prasad seems to be a contrarian who recently compared the US COVID-19 policies to Hitler's Germany[1]. In the article you linked, he's citing his own study on cloth masks. Most would agree that cloth masks are the least effective masking option at stopping viral spread. Cloth masking is just the easiest target to attack in an anti-mask agenda. He also implies doctor's have inherent bias against HCQ and Ivermectin, while being pro-mask.
Basically the dude has his own biases and agenda here, and the study he cites isn't a definitive nail against mask wearing.
His review is targeting the weakest mask type while cherry picking and downplaying even from studies showing benefits of masking, such as the Bangladesh study others have cited, to paint the picture he wants to paint.
I have. I've skimmed through the PDF, and it seems he wants to highlight the "ineffectiveness" of cloth masks, and downplay benefit from other types. It is also odd to put "cloth masks" in the title, if that is not the main focus of the review.
I can't speak to the framing of the paper or the title. Maybe that's where he felt the evidence was least solid (which I understand; there is almost no evidence supporting cloth masks).
Regardless, the paper covers pretty much ~all of the prior literature for masks and respiratory illness.
> To date, I'm aware of no study that has quantified a difference in infection, hospitalization or death that is attributable to travel bans.
You have got to be joking, because NZ, Taiwan, and Australia all achieved COVID zero by effectively quarantining their countries, i.e. travel bans. It's basic logic that viruses cross borders and oceans via infected people, not by wafting magically through the air.
That said, travel bans are only effective in the very early phase, when infections are near zero. The US, Europe, and most of Asia are highly connected and by the time COVID infections were spreading, it was pretty much too late. Also, the US's travel bans were not particularly ineffective. Like the US's entire response, haphazard, half-hearted, and actively opposed by lots of weaponized ignorance.
> To date, I'm aware of no study that has quantified a difference in infection, hospitalization or death that is attributable to travel bans.
Why would you need a study to tell you that if nobody with covid travels to a country, that country remains covid-free? Perhaps you are unaware, but there are countries on this planet that covid hasn't gotten to, and those countries have travel bans.
Yup, this is such a huge pet peeve of mine. Throwing away science in the name of empiricism. What I mean by that is that science is about understanding the world by being able to make certain empirically verified models (mathematical usually), and then using the validated models (such as the germ theory of disease) to predict what the results would be even if we haven’t already measured that exact thing.
Like, because of an experiment done on Wednesday, a piece of meat kept carefully covered with metal is not going to sprout maggots and flies. Because maggots and flies are caused by flies laying eggs. That same piece of knowledge can then be used to predict with decent certainty that you’re still not going to sprout maggots and flies if you cover it with glass instead of metal and do it on a Tuesday.
Germ theory of diseases says if you quarantine travel, you can prevent (or reduce probability of) novel COVID diseases sprouting up in your country. Because the disease is caused by germs carried by infected people during the few weeks they’re contagious. You don’t need an exact study to prove that, although it’d certainly be nice.
Seriously. Empiricism is great. Using a kind of mindless empiricism (“models don’t tell you anything, so unless every situation is measured, you have no idea”) to throw doubt on science is not.
The same applies to "lockdowns don't work." That is obviously complete BS considering there are plenty of examples of lockdowns that did work (e.g. the Aug 2020 lockdown of Victoria, NZ lockdowns, Taiwan, South Korea). But lockdowns can fail easily with noncompliance and inability to effectively quarantine the infected.
It's like saying boats don't work after trying to build one out of grocery bags or untreated plywood. Yeah, crappy boats are going to have leaks. Lockdowns are hard; it's not something we really practice (and worse, there are malicious defectors who want lockdowns to fail). A lot of people, we have learned, are selfish and unwilling or unable to make any sacrifice, even in the face of severe collective consequences, and worse, will sabotage efforts either for political gain or just the sheer pleasure of watching everyone else fail (and die!). I really don't know how we can expect global society to continue given how craven some people are.
While true, it only provides protection during the duration of the travel ban. And at the same time gives the population zero exposure to the virus and no chance to build up antibodies. So when it does hit, it will be like day 1.
So it's perpetually locking you into travel bans to be effective, which is in itself very harmful to a country in today's world.
It only works if everyone did it and you succeed in killing the virus. Right now that is no longer possible because the animal kingdom will keep it alive.
Well that's obvious. No country plans to remain isolated forever; only until a significant population has been vaccinated. Fiji are opening up to the world on December first now that 90% of the eligible population are vaccinated. New Zealand will remain closed until April because their vaccination was delayed by letting less developed nations get first dibs to the vaccine.
"In October 2021, Prasad prompted social media controversy when he published a blog post comparing the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic response to the beginnings of Hitler's Third Reich. Bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan said that Prasad's arguments were specious and ignorant, and science historian Robert N. Proctor said that Prasad was "overplaying the dangers of vaccination mandates and trivializing the genuine harms to liberty posed by 1930s fascism"."
Theoretically masks would be much more effective than this - I think the 30-50% number came from a study where they looked at actual non-professional usage of masks. Most people have bad mask hygiene, so there is substantial air leaking around the nose or chin. Many of the makeshift masks people used are insufficient to capture viruses, but they do greatly reduce the "blast radius" of your breathing and coughs.
For example if we assume it gets to the US eventually, what is, say, an extra few weeks buying the US?
On day 1 or in year 1, I see the value in those weeks. You can build ventilators, field hospitals, and learn treatments. At this point, are there new useful ways to use a few weeks of lead time?
Yep, we ought to be evidence-based about everything we have done: travel bans, masks, respirators, distancing, plexiglass, closing businesses, forcing healthy kids to wear masks in schools, forcing everyone to get vaccinated, rubber gloves in the grocery store. All of it.
So far, our track record isn't that great. The two RCTs for masks and Covid showed minimal (if not zero) effect [1], and you can barely say the results out loud lest you get silenced by the angry mob (as you can see from the color of this comment). I'm not hopeful.
But please let me know when someone actually does an unbiased study of travel restrictions. I have yet to see one. The biggest tragedy of this pandemic is the number of people who are willing to substitute their (popular) opinions for evidence and call it "science".
I guarantee that every response to this comment will be from someone asserting that "masks work", and linking to a paper that they haven't actually read, or worse: an editorial about papers they haven't read. Most people have literally no idea what the data is on any of this.
Read the study, not a press release. It said quite explicitly that cloth masks had no effect, and surgical masks had an extremely minor overall effect (11.3% reduction in symptomatic seroprevalence), with an absolute effect size of 0.09%:
"Symptoms" are self-reported. Symptomatic seroprevalence is objective.
What this should tell you is that "symptoms" are a bad endpoint for a randomized-controlled trial, not that if the good endpoint doesn't show you what you want, you should rely on the bad one.
If 11.3% fewer people were infected overall up to that point in time, how many people are likely to be infected at T+1? 11.3%. It's not even a trick question.
But again, that's not what the study measured. You're extrapolating incorrectly.
First, the study conflates distancing and mask-wearing. They admit this in the paper (there is a significant increase in distancing amongst the mask wearers). There is also a large change in the size of the populations that could easily swamp the effect size (i.e. the size of the mask population was something like 9% bigger than the control).
Second, just because you observe effect size X at time T does not mean that you will see an equivalent effect at T+1. It also doesn't mean that you will see a compounding effect. In human terms: maybe you get a surge of behavior at the start of the intervention that doesn't continue, due to burnout or non-compliance. Or maybe you got lucky at time T, and randomly saw a population that yielded a result. You can't make the assumption.
But, that's not what you want to measure. You want to measure whether an intervention works if people adhere to the protocol. Again, as I asked you in another comment, would you expect masks to work if people don't wear them?
> that's not what you want to measure. You want to measure whether an intervention works if people adhere to the protocol.
No, you want to measure if an intervention works if you do everything reasonable to enact it. You don't get to invent an alternate reality where people are 100% compliant and there are chocolate rivers and gumdrop trees.
Otherwise, I have the perfect diet plan that will end all obesity, worldwide: don't eat if you're fat. Simple! If it fails, it's because you didn't follow my brilliant advice.
No, these are not public policy studies. These are medical studies. Do they measure the effectiveness of an experimental medication on people who stop taking it? No. If I were to measure things as you propose, I guarantee you I could conduct a huge study showing that exercise doesn't make people healthier, just because most people won't adhere to an exercise program. That has no bearing on the effectiveness of the intervention.
The point of these studies is to show people that the intervention works if people do it. And, yes, there are public policy studies showing that mask mandates don't work, but that doesn't mean they don't work for the people actually wearing them. It just means people who refuse are cutting their noses off to spite their faces. As noted in another comment, this isn't the beginning of the Third Reich, and should not be controversial at all.
If you show that a drug works in a petri dish, that's completely irrelevant if it's so toxic that people don't take it because of side-effects.
If you show that full-face respirators work on a mannequin in a box, that's completely irrelevant if real-world people don't wear full-face respirators because they suck.
> If you show that a drug works in a petri dish, that's completely irrelevant if it's so toxic that people don't take it.
> If you show that full-face respirators work on a mannequin in a box, that's completely irrelevant if real-world people don't wear full-face respirators because they suck.
And these examples are straw men. That's completely irrelevant to the point.
I would take any study performed during the heat of the moment with a huge grain of salt. Especially in an environment where saying anything but “masks work” gets you labeled as some wacko spreading misinformation.
It's pretty clear at this point that restrictions and masks help reduce the spread. Of course it's another question how does that balance out in the longer term, e.g. how did the lockdowns affect the economy, or the mental and physical healtht of people.
Is it? Cite the evidence. Editorials and commentaries don't count.
All of the good evidence (RCTs) on masks is extremely marginal, at best, and there hasn't been a single RCT I'm aware of that showed any effect of the other interventions.
In a lot of places in Germany public transport was only restricted to using N95 masks. This summer in Berlin all the stores required N95 masks, as did universities. They have relaxed the rules since then and you can see in the recent infection statistics how that worked out for them.
In the US, you can hardly get them. Amazon was restricting them to medical professionals until recently, and all the local stores have been out of stock since spring 2020. Now, if you currently look at Amazon for 3M N95, you'll see that a lot of the purchasers are doubtful that the products offered are genuine.
We've had two years to increase the output of N95s and expand the hospital facilities to handle severe COVID. Almost nothing has been accomplished.
Moldex are domestically manufactured and nobody knows about them. Their process also takes more work to copy. At this point anything "3M" is too risky to buy as it is likely a fake.
Right now FP2/N95 are the only masks allowed for adults in public transport/supermarkets in Bavaria Germany. Cloth or surgical mask are treated like wearing no mask at all, unless it's a child up to a certain age.
Compliance in public transport and supermarkets is extremely high, pretty much never see any adult with just a mask, everybody wearing actual respirators.
I find that the worst counter to being called a snowflake, is calling others a snowflake in return because they simply called you out on trying to silence opinions that aren't your own.
Here we see the GP disappointed that every time he and others bring up salient points, they are silenced by an angry mob. It's a real stretch to call him the snowflake in this situation. Nobody calls people a snowflake for disagreeing, it's the way that traditional snowflakes disagree that people have a problem with.
> A large, randomized trial led by researchers at Stanford Medicine and Yale University has found that wearing a surgical face mask over the mouth and nose is an effective way to reduce the occurrence of COVID-19 in community settings.
> The researchers enrolled nearly 350,000 people from 600 villages in rural Bangladesh. Those living in villages randomly assigned to a series of interventions promoting the use of surgical masks were about 11% less likely than those living in control villages to develop COVID-19, which is caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, during the eight-week study period. The protective effect increased to nearly 35% for people over 60 years old.
Earlier studies said there wasn’t sufficient evidence, not that masks aren’t effective:
> Results: Fourteen studies were included in this study. One preclinical and 1 observational cohort clinical study found significant benefit of masks in limiting SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Eleven RCTs in a meta-analysis studying other respiratory illnesses found no significant benefit of masks (±hand hygiene) for influenza-like-illness symptoms nor laboratory confirmed viruses. One RCT found a significant benefit of surgical masks compared with cloth masks.
> Conclusion: There is limited available preclinical and clinical evidence for face mask benefit in SARS-CoV-2. RCT evidence for other respiratory viral illnesses shows no significant benefit of masks in limiting transmission but is of poor quality and not SARS-CoV-2 specific. There is an urgent need for evidence from randomized controlled trials to investigate the efficacy of surgical and cloth masks on transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and user reported outcomes such as comfort and compliance.
The cost of wearing a mask is basically zero when there is sufficient supply. While waiting to gather evidence, it seems like an easy low cost precaution while gathering evidence.
Slate Star Code (March 2020):
> Please don’t buy up masks while there is a shortage and healthcare workers don’t have enough.
> If the shortage ends, and wearing a mask is cost-free, I agree with the guidelines from China, Hong Kong, and Japan – consider wearing a mask in high-risk situations like subways or crowded buildings. Wearing masks will not make you invincible, and if you risk compensate even a little it might do more harm than good. Realistically you should be avoiding high-risk situations like subways and crowded buildings as much as you possibly can. But if you have to go in them, yes, most likely a mask will help.
Your comment is currently the only one on this subthread that I would characterize as an accurate and evidence-based response.
Once we agree that the evidence for masks is weak and mixed, then sure, we can debate costs and benefits of the intervention. Or...we can do more studies.
It's been almost two years now. I think it's rather shameful that we haven't done the science, and we're still guessing, don't you?
The whole mask discourse has been heavily riddled with communication and terminology errors since the very beginning.
A mask is not a respirator, yet the two of these are regularly confused not just in the public discourse, but were even confused in official messaging during the beginning of the pandemic.
The WHO and health agencies the world over were suddenly asking people to "prioritize masks for at risk groups", which in some places was parsed as "no need to wear masks", as everybody was struggling to get medical masks, and particularly respirators, for the HCW treating infected patients.
This review says that none of the community mask trials showed a significant effect. It says that 3/6 studies on respirators in medical settings had no significant effect. It said that 3/5 studies for masks as source control showed no significant effect.
Here's a review of every mask study ever performed:
That's a mischaracterization. The non-significant results are as a result of "intention to treat" analysis. ITT analysis considers a subject to be part of whatever group they are initially assigned, regardless of what treatment they ultimately receive and/or how adherent they are to the protocol. Some of those studies even note low adherence. You wouldn't expect masks to work if people don't wear them, would you?
You don't understand medical literature. ITT is the standard -- you don't get to invent a magical world where everyone does whatever you tell them to do, and people frolic amongst the chocolate rivers and gumdrop trees. If people don't listen to your brilliant medical intervention after you make a best effort to get them to do so -- or don't do it "correctly" -- that's on you, not them.
Otherwise, I have a brilliant plan to end all obesity, worldwide: don't eat when you're fat. Guaranteed to work. If it fails, it's your fault for not following the plan.
Why is everyone you're referencing -- and for that matter, you too -- so damn hysterical? Vinay Prasad, case in point:
> When democratically elected systems transform into totalitarian regimes, the transition is subtle, stepwise, and involves a combination of pre-planned as well as serendipitous events. Indeed, this was the case with Germany in the years 1929-1939, where Hitler was given a chance at governing, the president subsequently died, a key general resigned after a scandal and the pathway to the Fuhrer was inevitable.
It's a mask & a vaccine, not the beginning of the Third Reich. The fact that your sources can't see the two as different things (and not as part of some slippery slope), tells me they've already arrived at a conclusion and will ignore all contrary evidence.
I know masks & vaccines feel oppressive -- but facts simply do not concern themselves with your feelings. There is a world of difference between the Third Reich and public health measures to slow the tide of preventable deaths. To be honest, I can't believe I'm having this debate here.
> I'm sure the downvoting here has nothing to do with the fact that comments get sorted to the bottom and grayed out.
Would you stop with the hysteria? You're getting downvoted not only because people disagree with you, but also because you've managed to turn that disagreement into some kind of cause for martyrdom.
People post scientific studies, and you repeatedly go back to the same person who has shown an obvious political bias against masks and vaccines to attempt to debunk them.
I'm just feeding into the problem by replying to you, but none of us can expect any discourse with you to be productive when you are working from a position that relies on believing someone acting in obvious bad faith.
Humans are meant to see faces. Requiring people, including kids, to wear them for 8+ hours a day with absolutely no metric to get rid of them is insanity. Especially when said people are fully vaccinated. Vaccinated individuals have no business wearing a mask, period.
Facts simply do not concern themselves with your feelings. I know it feels like oppression (a new Third Reich!!111!) & like there is no metric to get rid of masks, but your feelings alone do not make these true statements. The fact -- and we should concern ourselves with facts, not vague feelings or bouts of hysteria -- is that all of these measures will go away once the pandemic has abated to such an extent that it no longer poses a substantial threat to human lives. It's as simple as that: given that masks do an excellent job of slowing the spread, ceteris paribus, wearing a mask is better than not wearing one.
This kind of "feelings logic" is why Trump lost, more or less -- most people are willing to undergo mild inconvenience to save lives & slow the spread of a deadly virus. Despite the feelings of frustration, which we all have.
Facts don’t dictate policy. Even if masks were incredibly effective so some point we’d have to stop wearing them. Now that we have countless effective medical interventions, I’d say that time is now. Vaccinated individuals have zero business being required to wear masks. They’ve done their part and should be able to return to a fully normal life.
COVID is never going away. There is so much more to live for than being treated as a vector for exactly one disease.
And what I said is a value statement. Facts or science have nothing to do with it besides they guided and informed my opinions.
They absolutely should, and I think this is an intractable disagreement we have. Sorry.
But I agree that COVID is never going away -- I'm saying that all of these measures should go away once the pandemic has abated to such an extent that it no longer poses a substantial threat to human lives. I.e. there is a version of COVID where we have tamed its lethality to the point where it's a shadow of its former self.
> Vaccinated individuals have zero business being required to wear masks. They’ve done their part and should be able to return to a fully normal life.
Masks help prevent you from spreading the virus to other. As a vaccinated individual, you are highly unlikely to have serious illness from CV19, but you can still get it and spread it to others, even if you are only mildly symptomatic.
And this is based on data from the prior variants. Who knows how things are with Omicron - we need more data.
>Humans are meant to see faces.
Humans are/aren't meant to do X is a bad argument. We have made all sorts of behavioral changes over our time as a species. We adapt. I like having cars, and planes, and an industrialized society. But humans weren't "meant" to do any of that, until we did. All of these things have real, serious, drawbacks. But the overwhelming majority of people would agree that having these things is better than not having them.
If the new normal is to have a deadly and highly transmissible disease with us from now until forever, then yes, masks should also be the new normal. I don't think that's the case - the stakes and motivation for figuring out alternatives is quite high - but if it is, then, well, it's better than the alternative.
For those who wish to wear them, sure. But for those who don’t? That is fine too. Masks should be a personal choice at this point. Not something forced by the state.
We have vaccines. Getting one ends your obligation to participate in this Covid stuff. Forcing these NPI’s on vaccinated individuals is completely immoral in my opinion.
If wearing masks were solely a matter of your own personal protection, I would agree. Particularly since being vaccinated nearly eliminates your chances of having a serious covid infection.
But vaccines do not prevent you from catching and transmitting covid to others. And some people are precluded from getting vaccinated for legitimate medical reasons, same as they are precluded from other vaccines. A vaccinated person wearing a proper mask is less likely to transmit the virus to an unvaccinated person than they would be without the mask.
Your argument says we should be doing this forever. There will always be viruses that we transmit to each other. Always was. We never took this kind of moral grandstanding before. Why are we doing this for this one specific virus?
I’m sorry, your argument just doesn’t make sense. You are arguing we should always be masked forever.
>Your argument says we should be doing this forever.
Yes, I did say this is a possibility. I don't think it's likely, but it is a possibility.
>We never took this kind of moral grandstanding before. Why are we doing this for this one specific virus?
This is the first virus with this sort of reach in the era of modern science. It's pretty simple - we have never before had a virus that has infected and killed this many people while also having an understanding that masking cuts down on transmission rates.
>I’m sorry, your argument just doesn’t make sense.
You disagreeing with it doesn't mean it doesn't make sense, it just means that you, for whatever reason, value people not having to wear a mask over cutting down on the loss of human life during a global pandemic.
>You are arguing we should always be masked forever.
If we live in a state of perpetual covid-esque pandemic from now until forever, yes, that would be a perfectly prudent thing to do.
Agree 100% -- that whole paragraph has some flimsy logic. The only bit of evidence they provide for travel bans not working is:
> For example, we had a travel ban with China in March 2020, only to be infiltrated with a European strain.
Isn't this a good sign that the travel ban actually worked -- i.e. created enough of a delay in the spread of covid to result in a meaningfully different pandemic than we would have otherwise experienced?
For a variant with this level of transmissibility, doesn't it seem likely that it's already present in every nation with significant international travel?
The issue with the 2020 travel ban was indeed that it was for a single country only (later added Iran too), and AFAIK only included direct flights, which kinda defeats the point. You have to go all in or nothing.
Italy only banned direct flights from China which was indeed worse than useless, but the US travel ban was based on whether someone had been in China in I think the last 14 days and most subsequent travel restrictions have been modelled on that one.
I agree with about 95% of this, but, I don't think "travel bans got a bad name because you-know-who proposed them." I think they got a bad name because you-know-who proposed them previously, targeting countries with you-know-what religion, for a political reason. Had it been just "we're going to reduce air traffic into the country to slow the spread of the virus," I don't think that would have been terribly controversial.
It's also worth noting that a lot of the narrative makes it sound like people called him racist for the ban, but it was mostly his use of "Kung-flu" and "china virus" that people had an issue with, not the ban itself.
This was a missed opportunity. Have one group mask up for the China virus* and one for covid, with masks indicating which group you belonged to. Make it a competition to see who can wear the most masks.
* we have always named diseases from where they are found, and China/Wuhan virus would have been more catchy. However that hurt the pride of Xi and suddenly we all changed our minds.
For the other ban, the fact that he called it a "muslim ban" and the specific countries that were picked is what made it racist and ineffective. It's hard to claim it's for security when they didn't include UAE, KSA, Egypt or Lebanon where the 9/11 hijackers were from [0]. It also happened to exclude all muslim countries where Trump has business in.
So yes, it had no other purpose than being racist. Just like Trump didn't really care to use the time bought by the Chinese travel ban to actually develop tests or ramp up PPE. It always was a show rooted in xenophobia.
Joe Biden called it "hysterical xenophobia and fear mongering [against] science." Pelosi was on the ground in San Fransisco's Chinatown with similar words. Maxine Waters too, though she had been talking that way since 2015, predicting every possible racist act.
It failed to apply to populous or notorious Muslim countries like Indonesia or Pakistan, only to those which Obama had previously put on a list. It got a bad name for political reasons, not for the facts of the executive order.
The China travel ban wasn't opposed, it was ineffective because it was both late, and then they wasted all the useful time you could've gotten by not stopping indirect travel or travel from Europe where it was already spreading at the time.
By the time a European travel ban was created, it was basically pointless because spread within the US was at wildfire levels compared to any possible contribution from international travel (the question of the morality of forcing flight crews to expose themselves to a deadly novel virus is of course quite a different one).
The story of the Trump pandemic response is taking weak action months too late.
You need to be clear about the cost of these measures and about the benefit of the delays they buy.
> to buy time for the “weeks” of analysis needed that could help with further reducing risk,
We’re not going to learn anything useful in the few weeks bought by stopping these flights.
And remember, even though the general public insists on these bans, international law proscribes no country can prevent its own citizens from returning home, so no ban can be absolute.
I have no such obligation nor a strong opinion. The author of the article said they don’t work. The burden you state is on them, not me. The passage you quoted had an “if” in front of it on purpose.
> If travel restrictions are good on a risk adjusted basis to buy time for the “weeks” of analysis needed that could help with further reducing risk, let’s talk about it not write it off as “not working” which is non-sensical.
The unstated alternative to writing it off as not working is just enforcing bans on the basis of “better safe than sorry”. To me it’s clear that experience with the other variants shows that it just isn’t safe, so there is no “better safe than sorry”.
Let’s talk about not just writing off the alternative as well.
The standard for something "working" is very much up for debate though, even if it is carefully avoided.
"Slowing the spread" is not a good enough argument in my opinion. Everyone wants to slow the spread, the only question worth asking is: at what cost?
At what point do you deem something effective and worthy of sacrificing your freedoms for? 1% efficacy "slows the spread". Is that worth it? Where do you draw the line? 20%? 50%?
Life is risky, everything is a gamble, yet somehow with COVID, all nuance has disappeared, life is not worth living until we can be 100% sure that there is no risk at all.
The cost is something absolutely nobody wants to discuss but it is vital to do so. Yeah “slowing the spread” is important in a vacuum where we live with no friction and spherical cows but here in the real worth that one goal competes with literally everything else.
Asking society to myopically focus on nothing but “slowing the spread” of one very specific illness for years on end is, quite frankly, madness. There is vastly more to life than just living it to slow the spread of exactly one disease.
At some point in the near future, perhaps right today, people need to acknowledge that Covid and all its variants past present and future will be around forever. They can either learn to return to full normal 2019 life or piss an entire generation of people away on a battle that cannot ever be won.
Well said. Any of the measures we have only delay the inevitable. They may have worked at the start to eradicate it but they didn't. Now it's pretty much guaranteed we will all get covid, and probably multiple times. Any of the tools we have now will not prevent that, just delay it.
I'm not recommending dropping them altogether but we'll need to find a balance. To go from crisis mode into discussing long-term strategy.
Travel bans slow down the spread only if they are done for all travelers. The piece meal approach done by many countries where only certain countries are banded do little to stop the spread. The virus spreads too quickly and eventually it will come in via the travelers that are allowed to come in. Testing and retesting is probably the only way to slow it down other than a complete band on travelers.
These travel bans serve to slow down the spread, but at the expense of keeping thousands of families separated and harming diplomacy between countries. Even air cargo has taken a big hit. And aviation has barely opened up, now to be put on hold again. The long term consequences of slowing a virus from entering a country for make a week or two are not being considered.
Right now we don't know the severity or impact of this variant, and several signs point in a bad direction. Maybe in 2 weeks we won't be worried about this variant, but right now being being proactive may slow down or even stop the spread of this variant. If China had instituted a travel ban in the early weeks instead of covering it up we may have never had a global pandemic - contact tracing and quarantines may have been enough to contain it in the early days.
apparently the US is now doing a travel ban for eight African nations yet somehow I'm not holding my breath for these to be considered problematic in any way
- "Travel bans don't work": supports banning the unvaccinated from traveling to particular establishments, supported preventing anyone from traveling pretty much anywhere during the first lockdown stages last year
- "Walls don't work": closes and locks door when entering own home, probably has walls in house too
- "Ivermectin is horse paste": is actually not good for COVID, but is on the WHO list of essential medicines and has saved countless lives and has a side effect profile that's tamer than most of the antibiotics that most US doctors will prescribe as a precautionary measure for a multitude of things
The more they BS-us, the less we listen. Is that what they really want?
> "Travel bans don't work": supports banning the unvaccinated from traveling to particular establishments, supported preventing anyone from traveling pretty much anywhere during the first lockdown stages last year
The reason travel bans don't work is because we apply them too late and too selectively, because otherwise trade shuts down and we have other issues. A travel ban targeting African countries is not effective when the variant is already spreading on two other continents.
You also cannot ban people from returning to their home country, so there is no way to truly prevent variants landing on the soil of a country with a travel ban.
Establishments requiring vaccines acknowledge that you cannot stop the spread of the virus but require you take some minimal steps to reduce the risk profile.
They are not the same thing.
>- "Walls don't work": closes and locks door when entering own home, probably has walls in house too
Doors and windows will not stop a motivated person from entering your home. Neither does a wall.
People crossing the border illegally are motivated people, and a wall would not stop them either.
Doors and locks are there to increase the effort required to break in, which is often a crime of opportunity. Border crossings are not a thing of opportunity.
They are not the same thing.
> "Ivermectin is horse paste"
While I'm sure some people do not understand that Ivermectin is more than just horse paste, this largely has come out of people literally buying it in horse paste form from Tractor Supply and taking it because they think it will help with CV19. If someone is dealing with a parasitic infection then we should not mock them for taking ivermectin, but that has not been the context for 99.999% of all ivermectin related discussion over the past year.
> The reason travel bans don't work is because we apply them too late and too selectively
So then don't do either of those things.
> You also cannot ban people from returning to their home country
You can quarantine them for two weeks.
> Establishments requiring vaccines acknowledge that you cannot stop the spread of the virus but require you take some minimal steps to reduce the risk profile. They are not the same thing.
But that's exactly what the US acknowledges with travel bans. They are minimal steps to reduce the risk profile and slow the spread.
> Doors and windows will not stop a motivated person from entering your home. Neither does a wall.
And yet you lock your doors, because they still provide a net-positive benefit and protection.
> People crossing the border illegally are motivated people, and a wall would not stop them either.
And yet mere talk of a wall gave us the lowest illegal border crossings in decades, while welcoming them with open arms, unsurprisingly, has now given us the highest number of illegal border crossings in decades.
You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. Do you also not use hand sanitizer because it "only" kills 99.9% of germs and bacteria?
> this largely has come out of people literally buying it in horse paste form from Tractor Supply and taking it because they think it will help with CV19
No, it comes from the establishment demonizing ivermectin (or any vaccine alternative) from the beginning, causing a few loonies to become paranoid and try to secure some ivermectin for themselves. Then, the establishment took those few loonies, and shut down any legitimate discussion about ivermectin for use against COVID by repeating "horse paste" over and over and over ad nauseum. That doesn't sound very scientific to me. It sounds like treating the vaccine like a religion, and anyone who doesn't follow the establishment-party line is a heretic.
Do you know how many times the average American gets an antibiotic prescription in the US over their lifetime? It's given out like candy. Ivermectin is just as harmless if not more so. And yet the media is real big on these new Merck pills which we're now finding out are probably barely effective and have plenty of side effects, much more so than ivermectin.
Yea, it’s clear that even saying the world “Trump” triggers people enough that you stand to get more signal in responses if you avoid writing it. Don’t shoot the messenger, I don’t have TDS.
Look, I'm about as pro-vaccine, pro-lockdown, pro-mask as they come.
But the hyperbolic reporting on this variant is not helpful. News articles in mainstream press are already wrong: WHO has named this Omicron (while many publications came out with Nu).
This is a virus that takes weeks to months before a variant becomes dominant. You can afford to wait a day or two to get information correct before publishing.
Take some time, get the damn details correct. You can afford a day or two before reporting to double check facts.
At least this blog had pointed out that Nu was an expected name as opposed to the actual name. But still, getting details like this wrong or speculating on the name is very counterproductive to the issue of trust.
This variant is moving much faster to dominance in South Africa than Delta. About 6x faster. You can make some quibbles (small case numbers etc) but this is quick.
Your link is broken, but if you're talking about that FT chart with the title that starts with "A new variant is spreading rapidly..." then I might be able to to put you at ease a bit, without quibbling about "too early to tell".
It is a time vs percentage share of cases chart, comparing Beta, Delta and Omicron. Omicron is growing very fast in percentage share relative to Beta and Delta. But Beta and Delta were competing with other variants when they first emerged, whereas Omicron is currently not. So its percent share is growing fast.
Yeah, thanks for expanding on that. It’s a very valid point.
On the other hand, Israel, Hong Kong and Belgium have all reported breakthroughs from recent travellers. In Hong Kong it did so between two units in an isolation hotel.
So it certainly looks troubling. But yes if there a massive Delta wave in South Africa the relative growth rate would be slower.
Small case numbers are not a "quibble". You need high case numbers to establish that a variant outcompetes another variant or else all you potentially have is luck and founder effects.
I agree. I haven't learned anything new from reporting except the designation, which some reports got wrong..
I was an idiot and commented/replied to two posts on Reddit on this topic. I showed actual research paper receipts yet was still mega downvoted, told I am wrong and don't know anything. It's so pointless and frustrating.
I'm sorry you're getting downvoted that's not what HN is about, though I'm guilty myself in the CCP threads imho on deserving posts but maybe I'm blind there.
This type of click bait reporting is dangerous. Whatever push notification text gets clicks !== news.
People don't want to hear anything that doesn't fit their viewpoint, especially if that viewpoint is the world is ending, vaccines don't do anything, and let's buy 200 rolls of TP - because they use 1/8th of a roll at a time ;)
The countries impacted feel villainized and punished. In the future they might decide to not report their findings or other countries seeing these countries become pariahs may decide to not their findings of new variants, lest they be cutoff.
With 32 mutations spread out over the ~1300 base pair spike protein, we're approaching the point where antibody resistance will be an issue. But knowing how our bureaucracy works, there is basically zero chance they'll update the vaccine to target omicron (which is very likely to become the dominant variant within a few months).
At the same time, a change in the spike protein that is radical enough to make the antibodies completely ineffective may also make the virus non-functional. The key can change a little, but it still needs to open the lock.
Like I've said for a while now. The EU has done stellar job of demonstrating a new level of hypocrisy & complete inability to be effective in a crisis.
Travel ban imposed overnight, but dear lord - don't restrict the unfettered movement to Majorca or Sardinia or elsewhere (that would just be unconstitutional)....
It is true that the variant has major escape mutations on the relevant epitopes (the antibody target).
But this does not mean that it will completely escape the polyclonal antibodies created by illness/vaccine. And also keep in mind that there are T-cells, which are more robust to virus mutation.
I hate, __hate__ this constant fear of a lockdown. Hell, a good part of europe is in lockdown right now.
I get that the lockdown is being haphazardly enforce for those countries who've decided on it but I dislike these even being rules on the books. Leave me the hell alone! If we couldn't overcome it after a year of lockdowns, why is this gonna be the time it changes?
Particularly embarrassing is how Sweden and Florida have just survived without much restrictions.
According to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard, as of now, Sweden has had 15,145 deaths; Norway has had 1,050 deaths; Denmark 2,863; Finland 1,309. With populations from Wikipedia (10,402,070 for Sweden; 5,402,171 for Norway; 5,850,189 for Denmark; 5,536,146 for Finland), this yields deaths per 1,000 people of:
Sweden 1.456
Norway 0.194
Denmark 0.489
Finland 0.236
Saying Sweden has "just survived" doesn't capture these numbers well, I think. If this is "embarrassing" for anyone, it's Sweden, but I wouldn't use the word embarrassing. It's tragic.
The aggregated over-mortality rate for Sweden at this point puts it in the lower part among the EU, at place 21 of 31 compared countries IIRC. The covid-related death-count at 15000 has been more or less constant since May even while it's surging now in the other countries.
Besides, people keep comparing Sweden to Norway, Denmark and Finland, which is a bad comparison as the demographies are very different.
And yet you just decided to compare it to a host of EU countries whose demographics are radically different from Sweden.
Rather surprised you don't think Norway and Denmark are appropriate peers against which to compare Sweden. So please provide better suggestions for peers, rather than comparing it as you are, apparently, against Greece.
Not saying it’s the reason, but Sweden has higher urbanization than its neighbors. The country also has more people who don’t speak the native language.
Belgium has a similar population size but more deaths (27k).
> Not saying it’s the reason, but Sweden has higher urbanization than its neighbors.
The urbanization % for the four countries are: 82.9%, 87.9%, 85.5%, and 88.1%. Which one of those do you think is Sweden? Do you think it's at all plausible that such small differences could account for an order of magnitude more deaths?
> The country also has more people who don’t speak the native language
What are the numbers, and why would that be relevant?
Sweden does not have higher urbanization then Denmark (both at 88%). Also what has native language anything to do with the spread of the virus and its mortality rate? I fail to see a logical link between the two.
Europe "just survived" the black plague (1/3rd of Europe died). Life on Earth "just survived" the Chicxulub impactor (the Dinosaurs and 90% of species on Earth died). People who say flippant things like this are unserious and frankly, dangerous.
You're missing the forest from the trees here; no one's suggesting that. Instead, we're saying that perhaps you shouldn't use Sweden as evidence supporting non-intervention when their deaths per capita was an order of magnitude higher than similar countries with more aggressive policies.
Potentially you're also missing the forest from the trees: it may be an order of magnitude higher, but in relation to the population size, the number of deaths is minuscule regardless.
Your argument seems to approach that any measures against covid that significantly impact daily life are bad utilitarian policy, since even the most extreme outcomes where healthcare capacity has collapsed leads to less than 1 percent of the total population dying.
Could you post a clarifying remark on what you consider the correct place to draw the line where more inconvenient quarantine measures are warranted?
It's pretty obvious that this is a very contentious subject. But it's also very obvious that a considerable democratic majority in most Western countries seems to agree on where the line should be drawn for their community, and that this line is much more conservative (on the side of public health getting priority over business as usual) than with most earlier pandemics. This is an interesting policy development.
Well then I have to ask: what hypothetical rate of death could exceed your definition of minuscule? How many per capita deaths do we need to reach before you will agree that societal intervention is warranted? A number would be appreciated.
The simple answer is public policy always lags the public therefor is always a bad idea to implement NPIs. Public policy should be concentrating on increasing hospital capacity, therapeutic/prophylactic distribution. Presumably never on "lockdowns" or travel bans or masks. People will lock themselves down if it's bad enough, and more importantly at finer granularity and with more equity.
Right, but I could make the same argument about influenza. We had an order of magnitude of deaths higher in 2019 compared to 2020 due to influenza. That fact alone isn't enough to justify lockdowns for influenza, so it shouldn't alone be enough to justify lockdowns for COVID.
So Sweden had proportionately 5 times more deaths for not locking down with a death / population ratio of 0.00145? I don't think it's ridiculous to consider not locking down with those stats.
Locking down has tremendous costs whether mental or economic, you just can't compute and make a nice graph of it.
> Locking down has tremendous costs whether mental or economic, you just can't compute and make a nice graph of it
The gorilla in the room that no one’s wants to acknowledge…we locked down to allow people who were likely to die within the next 3-5 years to maybe survive a couple of those years. The price of the lockdowns economically, physical health, mental health, and in education will be paid by folks who were probably never in much danger from this virus for decades.
I fully believe that historians will look back at this time and talk of the lopsided cost/benefit.
The old are more reliable voters, while the youngest aren't even permitted to vote (even though they have more at stake, since they will have to live with the consequences longer.)
You can’t infer that from the graph. Yeah, they will go back to pre-pandemic levels, but they won’t increase exponentially from then on - which is not the case for COVID with no restrictions, which will only plateau at ridiculously high amount of infected (and dead).
> COVID with no restrictions, which will only plateau at ridiculously high amount of infected (and dead).
I'm curious what you think of Florida, which has had almost no restrictions for a majority of the pandemic and yet is actually doing better than some other states. Seems to disprove your assertion?
Airborne transmission being heavily climate-dependent? We can’t make everything into Florida (and that would be a much bigger problem than any virus in itself :D)
I'd imagine we'd have studies on this by now if that were actually the case though, right? It's been almost 2 years... so it seems like there's something else going on.
No, the fatality rate has. Unhappily, every safety advance seems to lead to an increase in crashes IIRC. Which sounds about like how we in the US approach COVID too.
An order of magnitude less than the covid deaths in a year. And yet automobile engineering and usage are heavily regulated in order to improve safety and reduce fatalities.
So I actually live in a small town of 800 people somewhere in Europe. I can take the train if i need to get anywhere further than is comfortable by bike.
I understand that's not currently the case in a lot of the world, which is why I think cars need to be banned eventually, not right now.
That's fair, although instead of banning them I'd prefer to just have better alternatives that people naturally transition to. Cars are certainly not a very efficient mode of transport.
What consequences do the lockdowns have on birth rates? In some western countries it has been shown that births have decreased by more than 10%. What are you going to tell those thousands of people who will remain childless because of these policies?
The problem with this line of argument - "if only the state didn't impose a lockdown, we could trade lives for life as it was before" - aside it from being kind of despicable, is that you can't get people to just continue previously normal activities once they know the danger. When Covid appeared in Seattle, the first US city, all the bars and restaurants downtown went out of the business before any restrictions went into place. Sweden had a lot of people working at home even with the supposed "no restrictions" policy. Indeed, see the list of policies that were, in fact, restrictive; https://sweden.se/life/society/sweden-and-corona-in-brief
There's no problem with people imposing their own restrictions on their movement and association. That's the whole point, and is what Swedish policy was predicated upon, that the people could largely be trusted with taking appropriate measures without the state imposed lockdowns.
There's no problem with people imposing their own restrictions on their movement and association.
Which implies you have some problem with the ordinary state lockdowns. These were certainly poorly executed and yet we can Sweden with nearly ten times the casualties-per-capita of an equivalent nation (Norway). Where my actual point about people taking their own measures is that life was sucky in Sweden as well as the rest of the world.
So what you effectively saying is: "I don't care if things were not that different in practice, for my principle of freedom, I'll 10K deaths without quality of life that different."
Edit:
"the people could largely be trusted with taking appropriate measures"
Trust is a pretty disingenuous term here. What's actually happened is that the people who took risks were the people who economically forced. Ironically, that include workers who took care of the elderly; poorly paid in Sweden and elsewhere, they then took their infections to the elderly concentrated in homes. Stopping this would have required more measures than any of the nations were will to do.
Let's not get personal and connect his business and your expected social norms into some shaming activity.
I disagree with him but I wouldn't want to silence him. He needs to feel free to express his viewpoint and we should feel free to attack those views with other views and maybe throw in some facts to strength our case.
OP might have meant it as a personal attack and shaming, but it does point out a bias. The first benefit on the business's homepage is "Unlock the value of your community" and it's centered around jobs. Lockdowns (at least in the US) was tied with quite the wave of unemployment and continues to have lasting impact on that segment.
Of course, someone can also say everyone has bias what with it being a global pandemic, but it's still useful to be cognizant of said biases.
The GDP change in 2020 for Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland were -2.8%, -0.8%, -2.7% and -2.8%, respectively.
Sweden had no advantage over its neighbors on the economic outcome, and you'd need to cite real data in order to make an argument for mental health. Naïvely assuming a causal relationship with quarantine measures for both without considering positive effects of better health outcomes (and other factors) is fallacious.
You can view JHU's raw data sources at https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19. According to that, they are getting COVID death numbers for Sweden from the Swedish Public Health Agency via https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6.... I am not fluent in Swedish, but perhaps someone who is can tell you exactly how the Swedish Public Health Agency measures them. Likewise for the other countries cited.
Sweden kept its freedom and paid the price. Considering that Sweden is not now experiencing another wave while the other countries are, it remains to be seen what the price is the other countries ultimately will pay.
“If we could not extinguish even the small fire, stop pouring buckets of water on it, let the whole thing burn down”
It is still an exponential curve that will overflow all the hospitals the moment you stop paying attention, causing hundred thousands of additional deaths indirectly due to overworked med staff.
What I can't understand is the risk/benefit of firing thousands of unvaccinated medical staff across the US while we're in the middle of a pandemic and already experiencing hospital staff shortages.
Isn't that just exacerbating the problem? Were those unvaccinated medical workers really killing more people than they saved? I honestly don't know but it doesn't feel like we really did the calculus and are instead just shooting from the hip.
If they are so stupid to not vaccinate themselves as a goddamn med worker, I doubt they were too useful in the first place, if not criminally dangerous.
Do you think the unvaccinated medical workers with natural immunity who were fired were criminally dangerous? I think denigrating nurses and doctors who have been working overtime to save lives for the last two years is pretty harsh and callous (vaccinated or otherwise).
These are the people we all called heros just a year ago. Again, are they really killing more people than they saved?
When you can prove in a court of law that person "x" infected person "y" at "Z" date/time - then you can say this with even a minimal level of confidence.
Don't want to get sick? Order groceries online and have them delivered to your door.
As far as I know the current view is that it won’t end, but it will become a regular the same way the flu is. There may even be yearly shots combined with flu shots for all the new variants that may evolve.
I truly hate that guy, but “facts don’t care about your feelings”.
Bingo. It’s long since time to stop spending this much energy on this myopic fixation on Covid. There are billions of other things for each individual to worry about besides the spread of Covid. And that is a fact, which doesn’t care about the feelings of people pushing society to continue waging an impossible war on a respiratory virus.
Except that when these variants strike in waves they overwhelm hospitals that even the fittest among us still need from time to time. Perhaps permanently increased hospital capacity and a few million fewer people is a better trade off. Assuming there aren't other less visible costs.
The existence of Covid won’t end, but the pandemic has to. Living with overloaded hospitals forever, or doubling/tripling our health systems capacity to deal with it permanently don’t sound like very good ideas.
Endemic aerosolized variants could ultimately cull / mame everyone with a weakened immune response. The end game could be permanently higher overall mortality and reduced respiratory fitness in a significant part of the population.
If humans evolve to adapt then those adaptations may come at the cost of something else, given large enough time scales.
I agree with it's constant forever, just like flu. maybe we get a breakthrough treatment / vaccine for all virus' like that.
But we don't regular wear masks during winter nor enforce limited capacity or hours or quarantines. Personally of those options I'd be down for short term, financially assisted family quarantine and punishments for going to work sick.
Maybe it doesn't? At least not until medical science catches up to allow the level of social/global interaction we had been taking for granted for decades.
In the history of our species, we have never been this connected on a global level before, we were potentially sitting on a timebomb just waiting for the appropriate viral trigger to bring it down.
It doesn't end until you make it end. When I close my laptop, I am unaware there is even anything going on; I don't wear a mask, I am unvaccinated, and I am fortunate enough to live in a place where people largely behave in this same way. My life is 100% the same as it was 3 years ago.
If you're restricting your own behavior, stop. If you're being restricted by third parties, seriously consider moving or outright disobeying. This doesn't end until people (not politicians) make it end.
Unless you live in a 100% isolated, self sufficient community, your number will be called eventually. If that's the tradeoff you want to make then enjoy your life. But bragging about your life being the same as it was 3 years ago isn't the brag you think it is. Meanwhile, everyone else is living 90% of the life they were 3 years ago, but they'll continue that for a long and healthy life.
I don't think my number will be called. In the US, the hysteria is already fading even in the most liberal areas. In certain states like SC and FL, the people have pretty much decided that the pandemic is over. I really don't foresee this flipping back to lockdown in those areas. Self sufficiency is a virtue, one that I have been cultivating long before any of this happened; owning land and knowing how to use it makes a lot of the bullshit happening in the cities rather trivial. Working remotely takes care of the rest.
There's no reason for me to brag here. You can pretend I am an unhealthy, fat hick if it makes you feel better. For anyone else who is thinking of becoming a bit more self sufficient and is chafing under the yoke, I would recommend leaving the large cities foremost, and buying a house on some arable land. Read "The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency" for a primer on what is possible.
That's fair, if you're really that isolated then fair enough. Self sufficiency is great if you're able to achieve it, I commend you for that. My point is merely that the behaviours you describe (not wearing a mask, not being vaccinated) are counter to the self-sufficiency you're so fond of. Being that self sufficient sounds like something you wouldn't want to lose because you happened to catch COVID from your irregular contact with the rest of civilization.
It really is though. Early in the pandemic I was consuming the daily COVID stats, worrying myself over and over about it. Then one day I just decided to quit the news cold turkey. I immediately started feeling a lot better.
I also am thinking of moving again.. I'm not so worried about covid and I'm 100% willing to vaccinate but using masks forever is not something I'm ok with. I have some medical issues that make that really nasty and there is still no proper process or ID for this. I'm willing to accept more risk. I've lived in 4 countries so far so this is fine for me.
But the problem is that governments change. I'll move somewhere and a new government will get voted in that'll change the game again..
When society in your country or in every country strays too far from what you know is right, you can either become a revolutionary, or become self-sufficient, alone, or as a community. I don't have much advice for revolutions. For the other, all you can really do is move somewhere with like-minded people, rely as little as possible on the government, and try to live among your peers unmolested. This will be very hard if you like city life; the city is antithetical to self sufficiency for obvious reasons. But if you can accept a simpler life (and this does not mean lonely, boring, or anti-intellectual), I highly recommend it.
> Does anybody think these variants will ever stop?
No but they tend to become less severe for the surviving population. Either because susceptible individuals don't make it or the immune system is learning and the virus runs out of good mutations. So far it seems that higher transmissibility was the driving factor. We still have a large percentage of the population waiting for their first infection. Next we will see more immune escape variants and then probably come the variants that diversify but they will probably run out of useful mutations and our trained immune systems are better at preventing severe infection. It could take some more years and some more severe waves (and some calm years in between) until we arrive there.
The new Joker we have are mRNA vaccines with which we might quickly sharpen our immune response before the main wave of a new variant arrives.
I don’t understand the recent celebrating of Florida’s COVID performance — in September, after vaccinations and treatment options were widely available, Florida was losing more than 300 people per day to COVID. They went from ~25th in the nation for COVID Deaths per capita to 8th worst since the pandemic started.
That “just surviving” came at a huge cost of lives.
Florida has a higher proportion of elderly residents at higher risk. When you adjust for demographics the death rate in Florida is about average for the USA.
1. Can't access the vaccine,
2. Can't take it for medical reasons
3. Who are scared/skeptical of getting it due to misinformation (often spread by those in power). Florida could have pushed for higher vaccination rates, but mainstreamed misinformation and skepticism instead
> If we couldn't overcome it after a year of lockdowns, why is this gonna be the time it changes?
Lockdowns are not about overcoming it; they're about saving lives. I think it's fair to say that the lockdowns saved quite a lot of them. Looking at how the death charts correlate with lockdown impositions might support this viewpoint.
Lockdowns don’t make any progress. They put everything on pause. But as soon as you unpause, all of those saved lives are at the same risk they were at before. And you can’t pause forever. Each lockdown becomes less and less effective as people stop caring.
We did. We have multiple vaccines and treatments. That was the end game. If those didn’t work, we have no choice but either live in some dystopian hellscape to save people from exactly one illness at the cost of literally all other issues… or we accept the risks and move on with our lives.
We do have another choice, continuing to buy time to add to the arsenal of weapons we have against the virus. Things are only simple when you frame the issue simply; reality is complicated. You need only imagine yourself flickering out to see the value in doing what you can to keep someone from the same fate.
We are all alive in our heads just like you are in yours.
You are free to live that existence all you want but that is your own personal risk assessment. Vaccines were the end of the game for governments being able to dictate our own risk assessments. There is literally nothing else we can do besides vaccines and treatments.
To suggest it is totally cool to play this game 2 years into this requires an awful lot of privilege.
Just repeating that something is "the end game" doesn't make it so. That isn't how public health works.
There is no certain amount of privilege required to "play this game" for 2 years than 1 year, or 1 month. You're setting up arbitrary lines in the sand and pretending they're laws of nature or maybe government.
I understand 2 years is as long as you want to wait, but we're all doing things we don't want to be doing. Such is the cost of living in a society.
You are wrong. The virus has a higher chance of mutating if left to spread. By slowing the rate of transmission we also slow down the rate of mutation. I bet we would be seeing far more dangerous variants at this point if all countries would have just kept business as usual and allowed it to spread unhindered.
In the mean time we have developed numerous vaccines and possible treatments, and have only seen a handful of dangerous mutations. The lockdowns certainly seem to be working as intended.
Don't the vaccines put evolutionary pressure on the virus to mutate in order to escape them? I'm thinking of the hospital superbugs which are resistant to antibiotics.
> Does anybody think these variants will ever stop?
RNA viruses have high mutation rates and variants will never end in the same way that flu & common-cold variation continues. The more interesting question is how will our immune systems adapt and will vaccines continue to provide protection against severity of illness at the same time as they apply selective pressure that enhances viral transmissibility?
Of further interest is why Japanese and Taiwan infection and severity rates remain comparatively low and what - if any - role their openness to a certain anti-parasitic, protease inhibiting drug has played in their success.
Also of great interest is why aspiration isn't mandatory in the US to prevent the vaccine from entering the bloodstream (primarily the heart) rapidly and in large quantities.
We know that obesity is a large driver not just in severity, but transmission.
When you compare a world map of obesity rates to Covid death rates, you'll find a better match than any other single variable, far better-matching than income, masking, density, or any other single variable.
>role their openness to a certain anti-parasitic, protease inhibiting drug has played in their success.
It's their willingness to wear masks, follow social distancing guidelines, not the secret magic of ivermectin.
> nd what - if any - role their openness to a certain anti-parasitic, protease inhibiting drug has played in their success.
There's a trial study currently in progress in Japan to investigate this, but all the evidence we have points to ivermectin being of no benefit to Covid patients unless they have parasitic worms. See, for example: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
It's not an unanswered question, in other words. Ivermectin doesn't help against Covid.
> why Japanese and Taiwan infection and severity rates remain comparatively low
Wearing face masks in public places.. indoors and outdoors. Social distancing is non existent considering how crowded places can be.
The same story applies to China, Hong Kong, Macau and S. Korea as well as some countries in SE Asia like Vietnam. Face mask wearing is culturally acceptable/normal in this part of the world so that's why people there started wearing them as soon as stuff started kicking off in Jan 2020 without their governments telling them.
People on HN are arguing over scientific papers on whether face masks are effective. You don't need scientific papers when these countries are proof that face mask wearing is effective.
Less people infected, lower chance of mutations. You will not hear about new SARS-COV-2 variants first being detected in these countries.
The world survived the 1918 flu without any vaccines and only sporadic and limited social distancing... but it killed 50 million people. That sucks, and we can do better.
Societies survive these things, usually; it's people who die.
Mutagenesis will continue as long as there are viruses making more viruses.
If I had to guess our future, COVID will become endemic but with less potency. We will manage it with vaccines and anti-virals.
Lockdowns and restrictions? Frankly, I don't think business will allow it, particularly given how hard it is to demonstrate their efficacy (we can't look at the parallel universe where restrictions weren't imposed by a nation).
> Does anybody think these variants will ever stop?
We have managed to clear out measles, so we should be able to stop COVID as well with high enough vaccination rates. Although this is not apples-to-apples comparison.
No, we have not. In fact, there has been a rather significant resurgence in measles over the course of the last two years. One of the many side-effects of our reaction to Covid that is not properly accounted.
Stop. The articles explicitly tell you that the rate of people missing vaccines went up during global lockdowns. People missed their appointments and stopped vaccinating their children.
Peak anti-vax for measles was like two decades ago, at least over here in the UK - we were at pretty much an all-time record high for MMR vaccinations of kids before Covid came along and disrupted all the vaccination programs. (I know the BBC ran a very misleading article making it sound like Facebook was causing a vaccination crisis and putting us at risk of a measles outbreak, but in reality the actual danger is from all the people who weren't vaccinated years ago due in part to their own bad reporting.)
What is the fraction of the population who is anti-vax with regard to measles? I don't know anyone. I do know many people who are reluctant/refusing to get the COVID vax.
Measles is a VERY different virus than COVID and even flu.
> The surface proteins that the measles virus uses to enter cells are ineffective if they suffer any mutation, meaning that any changes to the virus come at a major cost.
Since the COVID shots doesn't prevent catching and transmitting the virus, at least the current shots aren't going to achieve herd immunity / get rid of COVID.
AstraZeneca vaccine's lead researcher and head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, Andrew Pollard, stated that the "idea of achieving herd immunity is mythical" and "not a possibility" because "vaccinated people can still be infected and transmit the virus". He also warned against making any vaccination policies and programs based on the idea of herd immunity because the virus may mutate to an even more transmissible variant among vaccinated populations.
Yet it seems that's the road we are taking. Some bro science: In 5-10 year heard immunity is what will happen.
Every year it will be a little less. Vaccines and other medicines will dampen the casualties. Partial lockdowns and restrictions will be kept in place so it doesn't get too much out of control.
Kids and teenager will grow up with corona being just one of the viruses they get among many others and build up, it not a full immunity at least a decent ability to handle it.
And slowly less and less it will control our society. But will definitely take a while.
Mutations happen during spread, so as long as we have huge swaths of unvaccinated people in every country around the world, the mutations will continue to happen. Luckily, variants of concern have slowed significantly as more and more people have gotten vaccinated (and practiced social distancing, masks, wash hands, etc), but there's still a long way to go before we can finally put this pandemic behind us.
Mutations are happening in vaccinated people. It's similiar to what happens when you spray a new poison on an insect group. Most die but the bugs with mutations live replicate and quickly spread making that poison useless.
South Africa, where this strain originated, has a vaccination rate of 25%.
Though I'm also curious why this only happens for this virus, and not any of the others we've destroyed with vaccination like smallpox, or reduced to nothingness like polio or measles. (short version: you don't know what you're talking about).
Mutations are happening in both populations. Specific mutation that make the vaccine ineffective are happening in vaccinated people.
This vaccine doesn't prevent covid the way the smallpox vaccine does. This is a new type of vaccine trying to reduce deaths. Calling the same is a marketing trick.
