Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 370 posts

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

#211

Post by Pyramus »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #195
onetimemanytime wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> The attitude was basically: it's only a disaster in China, outside China it's not serious.

Your comment is on point. I'm certain that many European countries benefitted from the escalation in Italy and pictures of army trucks filled with body bags. From then on, most took the virus a lot more serious.

'It's only a disaster in X, in our country it's not serious' has been a recurring theme and it's one of the things that makes me bearish going forward.

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

#212

Post by tinus_hn »

stormbrew wrote: post #13
thepangolino wrote: post #4

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 .

With PReP and PEP HIV is preventable, containable, manageable and no longer leads to AIDS and death. It’s just a chronic infection with no health effects. Is it really still considered an ongoing pandemic?

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #138
dragontamer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ca…

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by DoreenMichele »

hutzlibu wrote: post #193
DoreenMichele wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gen…

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

No, I don't expect people to wear masks as the new norm.

I haven't managed to write in earnest because I think people treat masks like plus two magic items in the game of Pandemic and I mostly hate them and this is not exactly a good place from which to gain an audience and yadda under current circumstances.

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

#215

Post by DoreenMichele »

rimliu wrote: post #192
DoreenMichele wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nor do I expect it to.

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

#216

Post by jxramos »

erklik wrote: post #93
spyspy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalistic interpretation of these tiny, rushed studies has also been god awful since the beginning. This is true during the best of times, but every clickbait headlines spreading disinformation during an actual pandemic should not be tolerated, especially amongst the more reputable news sources (looking at you NYT).

This right here. If people look at the actual study, they'll see the number of caveats and various exact conditions where the study proved something, whereas the media tends to pretend that those caveats or conditions don't exist therefore, the study works everywhere. That's why people don't trust science, "oh, its probably wrong again".

That's a fascinating idea, the learned doubtfulness towards science due to its exaggerators.

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

#217

Post by kmonsen »

ddingus wrote: post #148
mcny wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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! There are a lot of people who benefit from health care being broken so I’m very pessimistic if we will see single payer in our lifetime. We all need to keep fighting for it but to be realistic it might not happen in the next thirty years.

There is an order, if not two more who do not benefit, and it is unnecessary. I agree with you. However, I will also no longer be quiet about it. My own costs and risks have been insane. Future impacted in the negative multiple times now. Would not have been most other parts of the world. Frankly, the cost and risk exposure will hit a point where people move in mass, or it won't and we trundle along for a decade or t…

M4A is socialism and is just too easy a target in the U.S. At some point there will beer a republicans president, and due to the structural advantages it’s likely he will have full control over all branches. Not sure that a real democracy can survive that.

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

#218

Post by hutzlibu »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #214
hutzlibu wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gen…

But for the rest, do you expect people to continiue to wear masks after this? No, I don't expect people to wear masks as the new norm. I haven't managed to write in earnest because I think people treat masks like plus two magic items in the game of Pandemic and I mostly hate them and this is not exactly a good place from which to gain an audience and yadda under current circumstances.

Oh, that is surprising, I mean, I hate the masks, too, but my immune system is quite good, so I wear it only for the sake of other people. May I ask, why you object to masks for yourself?

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

#219

Post by Pyramus »

edanm wrote: post #168
tasogare wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. This isn't your main point, but I'd just like to point out that that comparison is... wrong, to put it mildly. Under Nazi Germany occupation, large populations were put into an effective prison, severely underfed, forced into labor, and, sometimes, just…

I would like to understand how parent thinks our current situation is anything like Nazi Germany. It's bizarre.

I assume they are angry and feel wronged. Do they know the comparison is flawed but just want to make a point? Do they have superficial knowledge of the Holocaust? Do they think it could not happen to them?

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

#220

Post by labster »

refurb wrote: post #166
jedberg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the answer I feel like it would take the courts a few weeks at least to figure it out. California (or more realistically Hawaii) could have had a full three week border closure before anyone settled the case law.

They certainly could have “closed” the border but how effective would it have been? How many road cross into CA? How many open fields? You’d need an army of hundreds of thousands to ensure nobody crosses.

Not very many roads enter California, as it has natural geological borders. An ocean to the west, hilly forest to the north. On the east, a 3 km high mountain range which leads into a hot desert, cut by the mighty Colorado. The terrain is a lot more forgiving to the south, but there’s an artificial border with Baja California there.

Plus, most of the infrastructure is there for the agricultural inspection stations. Just use it to stop human disease instead of plant disease.

Post reply on HN