Earlier quoted context omitted.
New Zealand is an island nation, which gives it a pretty significant advantage when it comes to controlling pandemics.
So is Britain.
There is a tunnel, it’s a transportation hub, lots more people, and boris..
Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
221–230 of 370 posts
Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
#222Earlier 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…
I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen, who naturalized (by descent, via my 4 Croatian great-grandparents, even though I only needed 1) as Croatian over the US healthcare system. Because I am an European Union citizen, I can live/work/retire in the EU and EFTA countries (minus Lichtenstein--has an immigration quota), due to Freedom of Movement rights. I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent). Anyways, even though the neurological diseases are in pharmaceutical remission, I require a lot of unusual and expensive treatments to stay alive. I am an electrical engineering graduate student, who has studied healthcare systems and delivery, and I understand the logistics and the bureaucracy involved. I am also an expert on processes involving acquiring citizenship. Feel free to shoot me an email, if you want (see my profile).
Ironically, the best resource for navigating the various intricacies of various countries' health systems, globally, with respect to living a long life, is the IMHE group. You know, the group that was famous for the coronavirus projections at the beginning of the pandemic in the USA. All of their peer-reviewed publications are open access, too.
This is probably the most important research article to consult and study (although there are several others): Forecasting life expectancy, years of life lost, and all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 250 causes of death: reference and alternative scenarios for 2016–40 for 195 countries and territories using data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016: http://www.healthdata.org/research-article/forecasting-life-...
This is an easy, but startling read: How healthy will we be in 2040?: http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/how-healthy-will-we-b...
Anyways, feel free to shoot me an email, if you want advice on this sort of stuff. I will be glad to help. I have studied this for hundreds of hours.
Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
#223Earlier 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…
well vietnam also did extremely well. and new zealands managed isolation (which i just went through) could easily be replicated anywhere there are hotels
In Europe, a lot of people (including many essential workers) commute across a border every day to work. What do you do with them?
Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
#224Earlier 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…
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…
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 keep hearing that but I don't really know where that idea comes from. I am skeptical of that idea.
I don't think things are simple at all. That's part of why my desire to write on the topic hasn't really gone anywhere.
Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I guess I was deleting that line as you were writing.
Sorry, I don't really want to get into it. That seems like a shit show waiting to happen and all downside.
Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
#226Perhaps 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 l…
The size of groups is different - it would take 2-4 times much longer to vaccinate kids and working age groups
Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
#227A 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.
Vietnam isn’t, though.
Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
#228A 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.
I live in the Azores on an island with less than 15k people which was mostly closed last year. There are only two ways to enter the island: the port and the airport there isn't a lot of movement and everyone coming in is tested twice. On top of that people here are terrified of the virus and take it very seriously (masks, distancing, etc) and can even be hostile to newcomers.
Still, cases keep popping up even without systematic testing. There are no deaths or even ICU cases but the virus keeps finding its way in. I believe that, like New Zealand, we are just postponing the inevitable.
Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
#229Earlier 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…
>US will be one of the first countries back to normalcy I live in Australia. The country has been to normal for a long time now, and my state specifically had a lockdown at the start of the pandemic, and since August 2020, we have not had a major lock down (except for one week in Jan 2021 due to a outbreak scare) and have been living in normalcy since then. Just saying because it seems like people erasing and forgett…
Restrictions remain on large gatherings in Australia, with capacity limits. Most of Australia has regulations regarding social distancing. Australian cities are locked-down when a single case is detected. You mentioned the last lock-down in your city was as recent as January.
There are currently ~40,000 Australian citizens registered with the government who are trying to get back to Australia, receiving little to no assistance.
Flights are restricted into the country.
Australian citizens are banned from leaving the country.
This is not yet "normal", I hope.
Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts
#230A 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.
What could've ended the pandemic around 6 months ago was human challenge trials on vaccines, and paying much more for earlier supplies of vaccines including those donated to other countries. (What counts as an impossible supply challenge is very different at the $500 price point than at the $50 price point.)