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Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

news.harvard.edu

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Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#81
post #77

OT: Imagine "experts" from our industry explain the mainstream our world: e.g. what's the right programming language, or database technology, why types matter, or not? Why do we trust "experts" from other industries?

Because software development is a skilled trade, not a science. The consortium discussed in the article is made up of actual scientists who do actual science.

"I am surrounded by bullshitters therefore all fields are equally deep in it" is not a correct view.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#82
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed.

Maybe China can help with a cite. They did have a 5-6 month head start and first encountered: brain-blood barrier pass, blood cloths and brain/lung aneurisms, reinfection, patient 0, airborne COVID, effect of mask wearing, pets getting infected, and more. Too bad they don't allow the WHO full access to investigate, nor share critical information with the rest of the world, now suffering thousands of deaths. Most like…

Well no, sorry - all your allegations here have zero to do with the initial “it’ll Peter out in 20-30 months” claim.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#83
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the Czech Republic, doctors in Brno are trying a combination of remdesivir and convalescent plasma in oncological Covid patients. They say that the combo has, so far, worked much better than either of the components in isolation. Out of the small cohort, they lost no one so far. Source in Czech: https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/jihomoravskykraj/3278822-brnen...

One thing I've learnt from the whole C19 treatment debacle is to never ever trust any single study. Unlike computer science where if you test something and it works once you and then you expect it to work for everyone, in medical research if you see an effect in one treatment study you probably won't see the same effect elsewhere. For treatments (unlike controlled vaccine studies) the cohorts are too small and there…

I broadly agree but I usually trust one of the big ones (e.g. ‘recovery’ in the UK) since they have pretty big sample sizes and seem to be on top of stats.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#84
post #68

What I don't understand is this: with tens of millions of people already vaccinated, why aren't we seeing a huge drive to collect plasma from vaccinated people with high level of antibodies? In the early days of the pandemic (about 1 year ago), I remember China sent a large amount of plasma to Italy. Why can't the US do the same now? The US is sitting on millions of AstraZeneca vaccines (that are not even approvad by…

The United States has administered 2.3 million vaccination doses. Oh, lol no, not cumulatively. I mean Yesterday. We administered 2.3 million doses in about 14 daytime hours on March 12th. Naturally, the number of vaccinated individuals grows every day. That's what vaccinations do. But the number of doses we are administering every day is growing every day. One week ago, on March 8th, we administered about 2.05 milli…

Well yes, but saying "It'll disappear" as a way of passing the buck is more subtle than how you describe it

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#85

These kind of pandemic tend to end themselves after about 20-30 months. We’re about half way there anyway.

The last pandemic with a death toll anything like (actually much worse than) COVID-19 is the still-ongoing HIV pandemic. It's entering its 40th year .

The response to Covid has also been night-and-day compared to AIDS - e.g. Trump was - I would argue - criminally negligent and disrespectful to the victims, but the Reagan admin were cracking jokes about it for example.

https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids

PEPFAR is also one of the more important things the US has done, i.e. there are something like 20 million people alive today thanks to the program.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#86
post #34
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. The pandemic may end after about 20-30 months, but this novel coronavirus will stick around. It is going to be a community virus, such as the Spanish flu turned into seasonal influenza. People pushed back hard against the experts when they started talking about preparing for herd immunity and 70%+ infected. So, this messaging has become more careful. A few months later the debate will turn to this be…

I can't believe you are getting downvoted! This is a real risk! Relevant quote: > Under normal conditions, highly virulent strains of the virus are not selected. A highly virulent strain would kill the host before the virus would have an opportunity to transmit to other potential hosts and replicate. Thus, less virulent strains are selected. These strains are virulent enough to induce symptoms but not enough to kill…

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Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#87
post #34
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. The pandemic may end after about 20-30 months, but this novel coronavirus will stick around. It is going to be a community virus, such as the Spanish flu turned into seasonal influenza. People pushed back hard against the experts when they started talking about preparing for herd immunity and 70%+ infected. So, this messaging has become more careful. A few months later the debate will turn to this be…

I can't believe you are getting downvoted! This is a real risk! Relevant quote: > Under normal conditions, highly virulent strains of the virus are not selected. A highly virulent strain would kill the host before the virus would have an opportunity to transmit to other potential hosts and replicate. Thus, less virulent strains are selected. These strains are virulent enough to induce symptoms but not enough to kill…

> Under normal conditions, highly virulent strains of the virus are not selected. A highly virulent strain would kill the host before the virus would have an opportunity to transmit to other potential hosts and replicate. Thus, less virulent strains are selected.

This is not correct. What is selected against is deadliness, which is not correctly referred to as "virulence."

By example, the virulence of the kind of herpes that most Americans call "cold sores" is off the charts: you can get it from a single kiss. But because the host barely notices, it's not a big deal.

Similarly, a great number of diseases occur to AIDS patients because they're omnipresent, but cause no harm in normal conditions.

Don't even get me started on mononucleosis.

And then, of course, this is just a generalization; measles and many kinds of meningitis are ridiculously virulent, as well as extremely deadly.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#88
post #77

OT: Imagine "experts" from our industry explain the mainstream our world: e.g. what's the right programming language, or database technology, why types matter, or not? Why do we trust "experts" from other industries?

Because no two fields are alike? We don't do anything even remotely scientifically in this industry because it's one of the few where we don't need to for various reasons

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#89
post #81
post #77

OT: Imagine "experts" from our industry explain the mainstream our world: e.g. what's the right programming language, or database technology, why types matter, or not? Why do we trust "experts" from other industries?

Because software development is a skilled trade, not a science. The consortium discussed in the article is made up of actual scientists who do actual science. "I am surrounded by bullshitters therefore all fields are equally deep in it" is not a correct view.

Then take data science or deep learning which is a science as sophisticated, same there.

We trust experts from other industries so much that we do not tolerate any other view without having a clue what is going on ourselves. The reason is simple, we have our views, they are political and we refer to "experts" to make our views scientific. Just my opinion and I bet that a huge number will disagree again with this comment. But—could I be right? Why not admit that I might be right? Because it's a political topic and your opinion is set.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#90
post #84
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States has administered 2.3 million vaccination doses. Oh, lol no, not cumulatively. I mean Yesterday. We administered 2.3 million doses in about 14 daytime hours on March 12th. Naturally, the number of vaccinated individuals grows every day. That's what vaccinations do. But the number of doses we are administering every day is growing every day. One week ago, on March 8th, we administered about 2.05 milli…

Well yes, but saying "It'll disappear" as a way of passing the buck is more subtle than how you describe it

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