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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

#191

Post by neilwilson »

Method-X wrote: post #176
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.

New Zealand is an island nation, which gives it a pretty significant advantage when it comes to controlling pandemics.

It's a distant island nation at the end of the transport network.

One of the reasons New York, London and Brussels have been hit so hard is that they are global hubs in the world transport and financial power networks.

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

#192

Post by rimliu »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #173
refurb wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn’t we go back to normal? We’ve done that after stock market crashes, housing crashes and other pandemics. That’s what humans do. It takes about a decade or two before people assume it will never happen again.

For one shining moment, while the world burned, my life sort of worked because people were willing to let me take a wide berth around them without them glaring at me like I was some evil, hateful bitch for not wanting to be coughed on. I don't want the pandemic to persist, but I desperately hope that the end of the pandemic doesn't have such a negative impact on my life as an individual with a compromised immune syst…

Yes, it may be a news, but the world does not revolve around you, and it should not.

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

#193

Post by hutzlibu »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #130
luxuryballs wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your genetic disorder shouldn’t be extended to negatively impact others, knowing your unique situation means you need to manage your risks. It’s entirely unfair and a violation of privacy for people to have to be brought into your health decisions and vice versa. Why would it ever be reasonable to expect the government to keep tabs on random strangers just because I have a genetic health condition? I would much r…

I shouldn't have to tell people I have a genetic disorder to have them respect my desire to keep their damn hands off of me. Expecting random strangers to not touch me is not some huge invasive expectation. Quite the contrary: The people who think they are entitled to touch me are being invasive and making an imposition. People should not feel that because I'm poor or an attractive woman or whatever that touching me…

I very much agree to getting rid of the mandatory handshaking habit. And quite some similar customs. Like in the supermarket yesterday, with everyone wearing masks, limited people inside etc. - but then at the cashier I was expected to use the same dirty digital pen to sign the payment by card, like everybody else did. Such idiocity.

But for the rest, do you expect people to continiue to wear masks after this?

In general, are you aware, that the youth of this planet is pretty much on standby since a year? They are not really threatened by covid, yet they have to pay the highest toll in the restrictions - because their life is not established, they have to move around to set up their life. Which they cannot really do now. They could also say, fuck the old and weak, we won't sacrifice more for them - we got to live our lives now - but they are largely not doing it. So maybe it is not such a shitty egoistic world after all?

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

#194

Post by Asparagirl »

marcodiego wrote: post #38
bsaul wrote: post #11

i'm very surprised to see remdesivir mentionned in this article at all... Isn't this drug officialy not working at all against covid-19 , and as such should be banned because of perfusion side-effects ? (in addition to the fact that it seems to be known to increase the amount of virus genetic mutations in people treated with it)

Isn't remdesivir being used only in cases of viral pneumonia on ICU patients?

No, my thirty-five-year old sister-in-law was given remdesivir twice during her stay in a Los Angeles hospital during the December wave, and while she had early stage covid pneumonia she was not in the ICU.

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

#195

Post by FooBarWidget »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #157
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.

The only chance for lockdowns was in China, early on. Being a country with virtually unlimited money, manpower and an authoritarian regime Covid could have died in there. Quarantine enforced by millions of soldiers and police. Once out, you're dealing with about 200 countries divided in tens of thousands of localities and hundreds of thousands of politicians with their own goals and beliefs. So, not doable.

That's impossible. China is not North Korea. All it takes is just 1 asymptomatic infected person to leave the country - perhaps 1 hour before the hypothetical country-wide lockdown - for the virus to spread.

No, it's even worse than that. Signs of covid have been found in Europe dating back to October 2019, before anyone in China knew that this existed.

Besides, western countries didn't take the virus seriously in the beginning at all. Even a month after the Wuhan lockdown, the Dutch didn't take much action, while Trump said it's just the cold. The attitude was basically: it's only a disaster in China, outside China it's not serious.

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

#196

Post by rimliu »

fhunt wrote: post #89
rfrey wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comm…

Data science is a science in a name only.

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

#197

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#198

Post by vanviegen »

jb775 wrote: post #179
scott_w wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine the fatigue of what I’m currently going through of constantly locking down for 4 months at a time! Compared to that, having to lock down every couple of months for a week or two doesn’t seem anywhere near as bad. Oh, and we wouldn’t have 130,000 dead in the UK and 500,000+ dead in the USA!

To bad that simply isn't realistic when accounting for hundreds of millions of people. Not to mention the whole "freedom" thing. Quit virtue signaling using conjecture and bogus stats (i.e. my way would have saved everyone!).

Virtue signaling? That seems like a stretch. GP is only saying how they think covid-19 should have been handled.

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

#199

Post by rimliu »

gregwebs wrote: post #70

These articles are missing an important aspect of the vaccine: the immunity gained is non-sterilizing. [1] The vaccine stops the infection from becoming severe and spreading throughout the body, but it doesn't actually stop infection (and transmission) in the upper respiratory tract. So we don't have any evidence showing we can achieve herd immunity even with a 100% vaccination rate (this article is wrong). The only…

Transmission is greatly reduced.

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

#200

Post by cjblomqvist »

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…

Imo it's hard. Different people get different consequences from different approaches. Now, I'm no expert, but I know a little bit about allergies - and I believe it's fairly well known that not being exposed to dirty environments, animals and nature have caused a huge increase in allergies all around the world (but very much the most in the developed world). I guess what I'm saying is that it's not that simple, and a lot comes down to politics.
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