Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by TheDong » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 4:54 AM UTC

luxuryballs wrote: post #124

DoreenMichele wrote: post #110

I hope they are correct. I also hope we will continue to be more careful about germ control from here on out in myriad ways. I hope we do not blithely go back to "business as usual" in a way that fosters future pandemics as if we learned absolutely nothing here.

What we learned should be not to decimate small businesses like tossing leaves to the wind “don’t worry we’ll build back better!” and let people decide their own risk taking. I think that it’s almost more terrifying than the thing itself that more people aren’t mostly incredibly disturbed by the insane violations of privacy and speech. Literally you should not, in a free society, be able take such injurious actions b…

There's a massive difference between contagious diseases with exponential growth potential and the other freedoms you talk about.

For a closer analogy than "what people are wearing or eating", what about "what people drive and how fast in public areas".

The government introduced speed limits, regulations on vehicles, and driver licenses, all of which significantly limit who can drive what, and how fast. All of this is enforced by police.

Why is it fair for the government to do that? Because dangerous driving kills other people too, not just you. It's not a personal choice in a vacuum to drive drunk at 100mph, but a personal choice that kills others.

Covid is similar. Limits on gatherings, requirements to wear masks, etc are all because personal decisions also affect others at a larger scale. A pandemic, when it's not controlled, will spread exponentially and cause significant death and health problems.

I think there might be a reasonable discussion to be had about the role of the government in this, but that reasonable discussion does not start with claims that the government is treating us like cattle or that "but people could die" is not a valid justification for government action.

The chance of people dying is a valid justification. I think it was a valid justification for requiring a driver license, for making drunk driving illegal, and I think it's probably a valid justification for the current restrictions and regulations. You can apply this similarly to some of your other points: a tiny group of experts determine what standards make cars street-legal in the US and decide that drunk driving is dangerous, and their decisions impact everyone, etc.

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

#132

Post by tasogare » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 4:54 AM UTC

luxuryballs wrote: post #124

DoreenMichele wrote: post #110

I hope they are correct. I also hope we will continue to be more careful about germ control from here on out in myriad ways. I hope we do not blithely go back to "business as usual" in a way that fosters future pandemics as if we learned absolutely nothing here.

What we learned should be not to decimate small businesses like tossing leaves to the wind “don’t worry we’ll build back better!” and let people decide their own risk taking. I think that it’s almost more terrifying than the thing itself that more people aren’t mostly incredibly disturbed by the insane violations of privacy and speech. Literally you should not, in a free society, be able take such injurious actions b…

> I think that it’s almost more terrifying than the thing itself that more people aren’t mostly incredibly disturbed by the insane violations of privacy and speech.

Exactly this. I find myself very lucky to have avoided authoritarian measures by living in Japan, but I feel very sorry for my home country which multiplied freedom violations after violations. I find it very scary that nobody complained about it, despite the fact the lockdowns and curfews were stronger than any measures taken under Nazi German occupation. If the disease was actually very deadly I would understand, but in the covid case once the data were out after a few months, it was clear that elderly and obese persons were the only real at risk group. It thus make no sense to destroy economy, social, work and education lives of millions of people for this. And again, lot of countries dealt with it without heavy liberty privations and did fine (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan come to mind).

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

#133

Post by dragontamer » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 4:55 AM UTC

kikokikokiko wrote: post #128

de6u99er wrote: post #112

A globally coordinated approach, similar to NZ's approach could have ended the oandemic already a year ago. Thanks to COVID-19 fatigue amongst the population, such an effort very close to impossible.

Comparing an island nation of 5 million people, that can effectively close it's borders and "avoid" new focuses of infection, to countries of 100+ million of people, where the difficulties of border closing are effectively unsurmountable, is extremely disingenuous. The whole approach governments took in facing this pandemic needs to be studied in the next decades. It's an eye opening thing to see how viruses spread p…

Its likely illegal for California to close its borders to Florida. But that probably would have slowed the spread significantly, at least in the 3rd wave where the Mid-Western / anti-mask states led the 3rd wave.

This country was in this together. For better or for worse. Closing the borders of states was never an option.

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

#134

Post by astura » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 4:56 AM UTC

Trasmatta wrote: post #41

monoideism wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that's > 3 million over 12 months vs 32 million over 40 years, the majority before 2010. AIDS was a huge deal back when there was no treatment for it.

Right, I don't mean to downplay the severity of COVID at all. It's just interesting that we generally don't hear a lot about HIV/AIDS anymore, even though there were still 690,000 deaths associated with it in 2019. I also realize that probably depends largely on where you live.

HIV is only transmitted during the exchange of bodily fluids.

Beyond that, we learned to treat it extremely effectively, today if someone who is HIV-positive adheres to their antiretroviral therapy they have a normal life expectancy.

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

#135

Post by DoreenMichele » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

Covzire wrote: post #125

DoreenMichele wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate this kind of logic. I get where it comes from but I still hate it. I have a genetic disorder that causes a compromised immune system, so germ control is my life. My life got better in some important ways with the entire rest of the world being less germy and disgusting. About one of out every five people is officially labeled "handicapped" and at least one study suggests that up to three out of every fi…

Don't get me wrong I'm very open to a cleaner world. I watch videos of people walking around Tokyo and I marvel at the clean streets. Minimizing places for viruses to grow and mutate is a common ground I think nobody would attack anyone for suggesting, if they're well thought out and not attached to something already political anyway.

I'm still thinking about it. I think positioning, attitude and so forth would be hugely important for any hope of success.

Some things take more thinking than others to figure out a good approach to them.

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

#136

Post by viraptor » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #133

kikokikokiko wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing an island nation of 5 million people, that can effectively close it's borders and "avoid" new focuses of infection, to countries of 100+ million of people, where the difficulties of border closing are effectively unsurmountable, is extremely disingenuous. The whole approach governments took in facing this pandemic needs to be studied in the next decades. It's an eye opening thing to see how viruses spread p…

Its likely illegal for California to close its borders to Florida. But that probably would have slowed the spread significantly, at least in the 3rd wave where the Mid-Western / anti-mask states led the 3rd wave. This country was in this together. For better or for worse. Closing the borders of states was never an option.

> Its likely illegal for California to close its borders to Florida.

I wonder if that's really the case. A year ago I'd say the same for Australia. Yet most Australian states closed their borders at some point as a response to local cases spiking. (I agree it's less practical in the US, but I do wonder about the legality)

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

#137

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

mikem170 wrote: post #129

maxerickson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The denominator could be an estimate of the number of people in the group that have been infected, that would probably be a better estimate of the individual risk from getting infected than just averaging the deaths so far out over the whole group.

I used the population of that age group as the denominator. The numbers of infected by age group are not as easy to find, and perhaps not so accurate (confirmed vs non-confirmed, etc). I've approached this numerically since numbers started coming out of NYC last spring. It's just the way I've been comfortable estimating/qualifying the risk.

1/2 the population is almost certainly closer than all of it.

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

#138

Post by kikokikokiko » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #133

kikokikokiko wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing an island nation of 5 million people, that can effectively close it's borders and "avoid" new focuses of infection, to countries of 100+ million of people, where the difficulties of border closing are effectively unsurmountable, is extremely disingenuous. The whole approach governments took in facing this pandemic needs to be studied in the next decades. It's an eye opening thing to see how viruses spread p…

Its likely illegal for California to close its borders to Florida. But that probably would have slowed the spread significantly, at least in the 3rd wave where the Mid-Western / anti-mask states led the 3rd wave. This country was in this together. For better or for worse. Closing the borders of states was never an option.

I do not live in the US, but I love that your system allows you guys to have effectively 51 experiments on how to deal with the spread of a virus, and see the results of every strategy. Do you really think that, if you can't even control your borders between states, your border on the south with Mexico for instance, would ever be effectively controlled to avoid the virus to come through it? The complete failure of California (even when compared to states where the demographics tend more to the older generations) tells me everything that is needed to understand if the lockdown approach works or not.

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

#139

Post by ddingus » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:09 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #123

Covzire wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry also about an overreaction. At some level people who can survive a virus with little to no symptoms are better off contracting it than not, if only to form the antibodies to be ready for future mutants they might come in contact with. The behavior changes we make because of COVID could be dooming a lot of people to one day encounter much worse mutant viruses they could have been ready for.

I really hate this kind of logic. I get where it comes from but I still hate it. I have a genetic disorder that causes a compromised immune system, so germ control is my life. My life got better in some important ways with the entire rest of the world being less germy and disgusting. About one of out every five people is officially labeled "handicapped" and at least one study suggests that up to three out of every fi…

I do not have those problems. I am sorry you do. Sucks.

But, I am definitely not returning to "normal" pre Covid behavior.

I got Covid early on. It was extremely rough. Should probably have been in the hospital, but frankly worried about that a lot given what was happening.

Made it through, as did my family.

Those experiences were why we played it very safe. Lots of negatives in doing that, but there were some positives, damn good takeaways:

We basically saw a no flu season. Haven't caught much more than a sneeze. That is awful nice.

Travel, work, life balance got reset. Turns out a whole lot more can be done without doing those things as much. Good for the planet, good for a lot of people, me, mine.

Health care in the US is broken, and so is our governance. This whole thing has made me see just how severe cost and risk exposure for way too many people really is!

Our response, information distribution, and I could go on for a long while here is frankly and completely unacceptable.

There is real work to do and we have been running balls out and basically ignoring it, marginalizing costs and risks and in general just do not have our national priorities in order.

Just know others hear you. We felt it too. Felt it differently, but I do not think that matters.

Stay safe. Bet your ass I am going to.

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

#140

Post by silisili » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:11 AM UTC

Perhaps unpopular opinion, but the US vaccination system is about the worst when it comes to preventing spread. Instead, it seems to be attempting to prevent death.

I've always argued that preventing spread would as a byproduct prevent death, but I'm obviously not studied in the field.

Put shortly, I would have vaccinated college kids and working age folks first. They are not likely to die from it, but are far more likely to spread it than elderly and severely diseased folks.