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

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

#251

Post by saiya-jin »

sgt101 wrote: post #235
FooBarWidget wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Signs of covid have been found in Europe dating back to October 2019 I've always been skeptical of this; test enough samples and you will get positives. More careful and systematic analysis is required on this one.

It has been already analyzed in very fine detail, what you mention is an obvious double/triple check. If you have a sample that changes whole global narrative, you can make enough detailed tests on it to have statistical chance of error close to 0. Too bad they don't have earlier samples, we could possibly find it way earlier.

It wasn't October 2019, actually Italy had September 2019! A few countries had it back-identified before official Wuhan ones. France had December. Its very well possible that Covid originated elsewhere, but that's another topic.

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

#252

Post by peteretep »

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.

Thailand isn’t and has had an identical approach work _pretty well_.

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

#253

Post by statstutor »

makomk wrote: post #236
tshaddox wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence a global approach similar to New Zealand’s. The globe has similar advantages to New Zealand when it comes to controlling pandemics.

Not really. There are two basically insurmountable problems with taking New Zealand's success and expanding it to the entire globe. Firstly, the effectiveness of this is limited by wherever it works the least well. Secondly, even if everywhere could implement the same measures as New Zealand as well as they did, over that large a scale there would be places which had much worse success just through random chance alon…

> You can see a few places where New Zealand got lucky already

This is a case of "you make your own luck".

The UK has presumably been lucky more often, but we have never had the opportunity to observe it.

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

#254

Post by wlpu »

odiroot wrote: post #243
silisili wrote: post #140

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 l…

> 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. Many people agree with you. Vaccinating the most mobile people and isolating the most "immobile" (retirees, children, sick) is very logical. My guess is politicians know it but they would never make such a decision. It'd be…

Nice idea, but being vaccinated against something does not mean you can't carry and spread it.

Given that's true, those older folk, at the most risk are the place to start.

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

#255

Post by peteretep »

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…

Thailand’s 50m people with 3,000km of mostly unpoliced border, they made it work. Vietnam made it work. Locking borders early and moving to quarantined entry apparently works, and when some knobs walk over the border with Covid, as has happened with both countries, you can unleash an almighty track-and-trace and isolated lockdowns because the health system isn’t already on its knees.

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

#256

Post by tubularhells »

Trasmatta wrote: post #74
tubularhells wrote: post #58

What nobody wants to talk about is that it might take several more years for things to go back to somewhat normal. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... >In developing its COVID-19 Scenarios Project, the ISC has consulted with WHO and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. The ISC has established in February, 2021, a multidisciplinary Oversight Panel made up of globally representative wo…

> it might take several more years for things to go back to somewhat normal. People always make statements like this, but nobody defines what "normal" actually means. Some things will probably never go back to the way they were. Does that mean things won't be "normal"? Normal also means entirely different things for different countries and different individuals. That's why I dislike statements like this, unless there…

For my fellow autists: normal = 2019.

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

#257

Post by bachmeier »

silisili wrote: post #140

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 l…

> the US vaccination system is about the worst when it comes to preventing spread

You have to take a few factors into account when deciding if preventing the spread is your objective. Given the staggering number of cases already out there, the time it takes to vaccinate so many people, and the number of people not willing to be vaccinated, your preferred strategy would be slow (if it worked at all, due to some people refusing to be vaccinated).

In addition, people in the high-risk groups are not fully isolated. Some work, some walk around without masks, some travel. People tend to cluster in age groups, so if one person in the 65+ group gets it, they're going to interact with others in that age group. If a college student gets it, the probability of sustained interaction with someone over 65 is much lower.

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

#258

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

makomk wrote: post #242
ern wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that, like New Zealand, we are just postponing the inevitable New Zealand (and Australia) don't have cases, because every single traveler who enters those island nations is kept in hotel quarantine, and tested multiple times before being released only after the quarantine period ends. It isn't the same as testing people when they come in and letting them straight into the community if they test negative. Th…

New Zealand and Australia have had cases outside of quarantine despite every single traveller who enters those island nations being kept in hotel quarantine, tested multiple times, and being released only after the quarantine period ends. Some of those cases are directly traceable to quarantined travellers, some aren't. In any case, even those measures which aren't practical except in an island nation aren't effectiv…

China successfully followed the same strategy, so the strategy certainly can work for large, non-island countries.

China had a few outbreaks (after Wuhan, obviously), but it responded to each one with quick restrictions on the affected location and mass testing of everyone in the region. That worked to contain these subsequent outbreaks.

As a result, China has been essentially CoVID-19-free for about a year now.

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

#259

Post by ern »

makomk wrote: post #242
ern wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that, like New Zealand, we are just postponing the inevitable New Zealand (and Australia) don't have cases, because every single traveler who enters those island nations is kept in hotel quarantine, and tested multiple times before being released only after the quarantine period ends. It isn't the same as testing people when they come in and letting them straight into the community if they test negative. Th…

New Zealand and Australia have had cases outside of quarantine despite every single traveller who enters those island nations being kept in hotel quarantine, tested multiple times, and being released only after the quarantine period ends. Some of those cases are directly traceable to quarantined travellers, some aren't. In any case, even those measures which aren't practical except in an island nation aren't effectiv…

Some of those cases are directly traceable to quarantined travellers, some aren't

One of those countries has been able to trace all cases in the last few months and makes extensive use of genomic sequencing. The leaks have all come out of hotel quarantine breaches. I believe that some Australian states that do not receive overseas travelers have not had a single case in months.

It may (or may not) not be feasible for bigger and non-island countries, although I suspect that the border closures will happen far more swiftly if there's another pandemic in our lifetimes.

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

#260

Post by MaxBarraclough »

rimliu wrote: post #196
fhunt wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To put that another way: most people who call themselves data scientists do not have a PhD and have zero research publications.
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