> ...is that if you want to challenge the scientific status quo...
That is a bit of a straw man though, people who care to challenge the scientific consensus are extremely rare. The people claiming "the science is settled" are also adding in an unspoken and-therefore-we-can-overrule-your-choices rider on the end.
In Australia I have been appalled by the treatment of my anti-vax neighbours. As far as I can tell they had their human rights suspended for an extended period for reasons that were totally wrong - them getting the vaccine doesn't protect others, everyone I know who had COVID was vaccinated. I still expect to get COVID eventually, nothing that has been done in the last 2 years has changed the basic calculus. It turns out that all we could do in hindsight was vaccinate the people who want to be vaccinated then let the virus go wild.
I don't particularly care what the science is, as far as I can tell there were no scientists involved in the decisions made that I disagreed with. The people claiming "the science is settled" and then pushing their agenda were just trying to short circuit the political process, overturn long established traditions of liberty and get the result they wanted. They weren't being intellectually honest. They may have been trying to help, but the damage they've done has been pretty extreme - a lot of Pandora's boxes have been opened politically, the economic damage is breathtaking and the world seems to be facing "unexpected" inflation, famine and war that is probably linked to the (global) knee jerk.
We'd have been better off ignoring them and sticking to old-established political norms that are well tested.
Australia was a special case. It became a victim of its own success, because it managed to avoid COVID so thoroughly and so long that there was no chance to determine which measures were cost-effective and which weren't. China is still in a similar situation.
In more interconnected parts of the world, the first waves were often really bad. Nobody really knew how to mitigate the spread, except by crude lockdowns. Hospitals became overcrowded and many people died, because doctors didn't know what was the exact problem and how to treat it. People also died from other preventable causes, because there was no one left to treat them.
The economy tanked, and not simply due to the lockdowns but also because of the disease itself and the voluntary actions people took. Facilities were shut down, because too many people were sick at the same time. The demand for some products and services crashed, because (for example) people started working from home. At the same time, there were shortages because the demand for other things increased but there was no way to scale up the production quickly enough.
Things started getting better by mid-2020. There was a better understanding of what worked and what didn't, what was cost-effective and what wasn't, and what was possible within the existing legal framework and what wasn't. People also started adjusting to the new normal instead of being afraid of the unknown. Different jurisdictions around the world made different choices based on their specific circumstances and the values of those in charge.
What statistics are you basing this on? NSW in Australia has a vaccination rate of somewhere in the mid 90%s [0] before opening up from lockdown. It did absolutely nothing to slow the spread of COVID [1], anyone who has an active social life got vaccinated, had a short break, then got COVID.
The evidence is pretty overwhelming at this point - vaccinations provided personal protection but failed to control the risk of infection. Most people I talk to had COVID and caught it off a vaccinated individual. The R value for the January outbreaks got to about 5. The vaccinations did nothing to even slow that down. The case numbers were high enough that it was physically impossible for the unvaccinated to be the main issue in the story, it was clear vaccinated->vaccinated transmission.
In 2020 pre-vaccine it was obvious that everyone was going to get COVID sooner or later. Now, in 2022 post-vaccine, it remains clear that everyone is going to get COVID sooner rather than later and the vaccine didn't change that. The unclear part is whether suspending all those basic political freedoms on the way through made sense.
[1] https://chrisbillington.net/COVID_NSW.html - State population of around 8 million, the case number records broke down sometime in January and has probably gotten progressively less reliable as time goes on as people get sick of reporting it.
> > > them getting the vaccine doesn't protect others
> > Of course it does.
> What statistics are you basing this on?
I'm not basing it on statistics, I'm basing it on basic knowledge of the mechanics of infectious diseases. The more people in a population have immunity to a disease, the slower it will spread.
> Most people I talk to had COVID and caught it off a vaccinated individual.
The people you talk to may think this is true, but there is no way anyone can possibly know this.
> The vaccinations did nothing to even slow that down.
Again, there is no way you can possibly know this. Without vaccines, the situation may have been much worse.
> The unclear part is whether suspending all those basic political freedoms on the way through made sense.
Yes, I agree that is unclear. But that is a completely different question than what is under discussion here.
> I'm not basing it on statistics, I'm basing it on basic knowledge of the mechanics of infectious diseases. The more people in a population have immunity to a disease, the slower it will spread.
Your understanding must be faulty, because that isn't how it has played out in practice. I've got an 8 million person state's worth of cases for evidence here. Very well vaccinated, fast and pervasive spread. Based on the official case numbers I can estimate about half the state has had COVID. Possibly more.
Follow the science, not your uninformed opinions, and all that jazz.
> The people you talk to may think this is true, but there is no way anyone can possibly know this.
It doesn't matter what they think, it is impossible for it to be the vaccinated. There aren't enough of them and they've been locked out of a lot of places where superspreader events are happening We had one case in the newspaper of a vaccinated individual who managed to infect ~20 people at a party for example. Or maybe it was 100, I forget. that was early in the 2021-2022 outbreak when a superspreading event was still rare enough to make the news.
> Again, there is no way you can possibly know this. Without vaccines, the situation may have been much worse.
There most certainly is, the failure was so complete it can be observed from the high level statistics.
It can't, the number of cases is basically worse case - we're talking 2.5 million cases with a state population of 8 million. Those are official cases, the actual number of cases is higher. And the case count continues to slow burn/rise.
Now, noting that the vaccine claims a >70% reduction in cases on the Pfizer wiki page ... that suggests everyone in the state has been exposed to COVID. At face value there is literally no impact on slowing the spread from the mass vaccination program.
The picture here is painted and dried. Vaccines provide good personal protection but have had no impact on the spread of COVID cases. Unvaccinated individuals only posed a threat to themselves. Well meaning people - much like you - were saying things that have turned out not to be true.
> I've got an 8 million person state's worth of cases for evidence here.
But the only way you can draw any conclusions is with a control experiment, another country where the vaccination rates were lower but which otherwise imposed the same restrictions, and lifted them under the same initial infection conditions.
> it is impossible for it to be the vaccinated
I presume you meant "unvaccinated" here.
Look, no one disputes that vaccinated people can get infected and so can spread the disease. That does not change the fact that vaccinated people are infected less frequently and recover more quickly than non-vaccinated people, and so they don't spread the disease as efficiently as unvaccinated people.
> the number of cases is basically worse case - we're talking 2.5 million cases with a state population of 8 million
That's about 6.5 million cases shy of the worst case.
> Vaccines provide good personal protection but have had no impact on the spread of COVID cases.
Just because everyone who wasn't vaccinated eventually got or will get infected does not mean that the vaccinations had no impact. The rate of spread matters a lot. 2.5 million cases over two years is a lot different than 2.5 million case over two weeks.
> That does not change the fact that vaccinated people are infected less frequently and recover more quickly than non-vaccinated people, and so they don't spread the disease as efficiently as unvaccinated people.
Disease spread is an exponential process. That will delay the date that everyone has gotten COVID by for a week or two. Who cares?
> That's about 6.5 million cases shy of the worst case.
2.4 recorded cases is evidence that literally everyone was exposed to COVID. Worst case for what I could have predicted in advance (8 million residents, 70% reduction from vaccine-induced symptomlessness so people don't get teted, predicts around ~2.4 million cases expected if everyone is exposed to COVID. Which is about what happened.
High vaccination rates did nothing to delay the spread. The idea that it could has been debunked. It didn't.
> The rate of spread matters a lot.
That is a different argument, but the evidence I've seen is that that isn't true either - and I already have reason to believe you aren't cross-checking your assumptions against ground truths. The high vaccination rates basically meant that speed of spread was a non-issue.
The targeted attacks against unvaccinated people were unwarranted and have look even worse than expected in hindisight. I too was expecting the vaccine to do something about the spread. It just turns out it doesn't.
And how do you arrive at that figure? You cannot possibly have arrived at it by any principled means, because...
> Disease spread is an exponential process
Indeed. And because it is an exponential process, decreasing the rate of spread will not result in a fixed delay for all infections, it will result in a decrease in the exponent. Some people will get it a week later than they otherwise would have, some two weeks later, some three weeks... and if you reduce the exponent enough, the result will be exponential decay rather than growth, and some people will never get it at all. And even if you don't get to that point, reducing the exponent can make the difference between hospitals having enough capacity, and being overloaded and having people dying in the streets and having to rent refrigerator trucks to store the bodies.
Furthermore, vaccines are dramatically effective at reducing the rate of severe illness and death, so even if everyone gets infected and even if they get infected as quickly as they otherwise would have, you still have fewer people dying from covid, and you also have fewer people dying from other causes because the hospitals are overloaded with covid patients. That seems like a win to me.
> > The rate of spread matters a lot.
> That is a different argument
Different from what? Your original claim was there is no societal benefit to vaccination, only an individual benefit, and that is just plainly false. One of the reasons it is false (but far from the only reason) is that lowering the rate of spread has societal benefits in and of itself, even if everyone eventually gets infected anyway, and even if there were no other benefits, like reducing the risk of serious disease and death.
BTW, there are more logical holes in your argument:
> Most people I talk to had COVID and caught it off a vaccinated individual.
Well, of course they did. That's because:
> it is impossible for it to be the vaccinated. There aren't enough of them and they've been locked out of a lot of places where superspreader events are happening
If you isolate all of your unvaccinated population, then of course all of the transmission is going to happen among the vaccinated. The vaccines aren't perfect. That doesn't mean they confer no public-policy benefits. They clearly do.
Honestly, the quality of your reasoning is comparable to a flat-earther.
> And how do you arrive at that figure? You cannot possibly have arrived at it by any principled means, because...
Trough to peak of the initial outbreak was 4 weeks, and the 2nd wave peaked after another 12 weeks. How quickly do you think the virus can spread? :p
Voila, the stats [0]. You need to ground-check your assumptions.
> You also have fewer people dying from other causes because the hospitals are overloaded with covid patients. That seems like a win to me.
We're two years in to this, we could have beefed up the hospital staff. I suppose strategies that are human-rights friendly are off the cards in Australia because they aren't exciting enough.
Frankly, the idea that this response was needed because COVID patients would overwhelm the hospital system is a bit of a reach. Ordinary flu season overwhelmed the hospital system. An ordinary day overwhelmed the hospital system. We do not go to extreme lengths to stop the hospital system getting overwhelmed. We certainly don't lock people in their houses, ban free association, ban people from working, or start forcing people to undergo what is effectively a medical procedure. Furthermore we had a lot of time to beef up the hospital system to cope as this pandemic has been a thing for more than a year by now. The argument is underdeveloped.
> lowering the rate of spread has societal benefits in and of itself
What are they and how are you measuring them? Because intuition hasn't been a good guide so far.
> BTW, there are more logical holes in your argument:
Point them out, I reckon I can patch them up with evidence.
> If you isolate all of your unvaccinated population, then of course all of the transmission is going to happen among the vaccinated. The vaccines aren't perfect. That doesn't mean they confer no public-policy benefits. They clearly do.
Well, they confer enormous benefits to people who get vaccinated. But Australia has been in human-rights-abuse mode for a while now and it makes me very uncomfortable. I'd rather people had been honest up front that the vaccine wasn't going to have any impact on the spread of COVID. A lot of people were saying they would and they've turned out to have ... charitably I might say an immeasurable ... impact on the spread.
> Frankly, the idea that this response was needed because COVID patients would overwhelm the hospital system is a bit of a reach.
It is hard for me to imagine that anyone with internet access could be so profoundly ignorant, but there were actually bodies being stored in refrigerator trucks [1] and critically ill patients housed in tents [2] in many parts of the world before vaccines became widely available. It's not a reach, it was the actual situation on the ground for months.
That is a bit of a straw man though, people who care to challenge the scientific consensus are extremely rare. The people claiming "the science is settled" are also adding in an unspoken and-therefore-we-can-overrule-your-choices rider on the end.
In Australia I have been appalled by the treatment of my anti-vax neighbours. As far as I can tell they had their human rights suspended for an extended period for reasons that were totally wrong - them getting the vaccine doesn't protect others, everyone I know who had COVID was vaccinated. I still expect to get COVID eventually, nothing that has been done in the last 2 years has changed the basic calculus. It turns out that all we could do in hindsight was vaccinate the people who want to be vaccinated then let the virus go wild.
I don't particularly care what the science is, as far as I can tell there were no scientists involved in the decisions made that I disagreed with. The people claiming "the science is settled" and then pushing their agenda were just trying to short circuit the political process, overturn long established traditions of liberty and get the result they wanted. They weren't being intellectually honest. They may have been trying to help, but the damage they've done has been pretty extreme - a lot of Pandora's boxes have been opened politically, the economic damage is breathtaking and the world seems to be facing "unexpected" inflation, famine and war that is probably linked to the (global) knee jerk.
We'd have been better off ignoring them and sticking to old-established political norms that are well tested.