Live data from Hacker News

Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

nature.com

121–130 of 165 posts

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#121
There are 3 possible scenarios related to viruses and humanity on Earth.

1) Normalcy: People live their lives as they have for thousands of years, and some percentage of people die from any number of viruses, but never enough to permanently trigger one of the other scenarios.

2) Extraterran: Humanity can no longer survive one or more of the viruses on Earth. Those of us who continue to live here must do so as if it were a foreign planet filled pathogens that will surely kill us, because they do.

3) Extinction: Humanity is ended by one or more viruses.

Of these 3 possible scenarios, the 1st one seems more likely than the others, and is what we should aim for before being forced into the 2nd one to avoid the 3rd. Right now we are living somewhere between the 1st and 2nd, and my intuition tells me that all our efforts related to coronaviruses, regardless of the strain, won't be able to save those whom are genetically unlucky enough to be predisposed to die from them forever. They will mutate, and eventually infect everyone, not unlike the common cold, and humanity will move on having lost somewhere between 1% and 10% of it's population, just as it would have had no curtailing measures been taken or vaccines developed at all; no different than it has been through the vast majority of our time on earth. While a higher population and the ease of global travel does mean that the virus side of the immunological arms race is boosted, all that does is raise the bar for ours. Either we'll pass, or we wont. Finally, while the deaths that have happened, and the future deaths that are likely to happen, on our path back to normalcy are certainly tragic: they have been, and will be, part and parcel of existing as organic beings living on a wild world. We cannot expect to only exist in nature when it is convenient for us. As long as we remain natural beings, we must accept that some of us will be eaten.

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#122
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way forward requires coming to terms with the fact that none of this needed to happen in the first place. This disease is really just not that deadly for non-elderly and non-obese people, and we've known for a while. Every institution under the sun failed. We say we need to trust the science, but the scientists were all wrong: LANL put out a preprint paper that estimated r0 at ~7 near the beginning of the pandemi…

> The scientists told us that a vaccine wouldn't be ready for years, it was actually ready in months I remember the messaging at the beginning of last year being to expect at least 18 months, possibly much longer. For most people, 18 months will be about accurate, for a few people, they will have beat the estimate, but that's not surprising - it's an estimate. It's a hell of a lot more accurate than a couple months.…

Messenger RNA vaccines, which are a new technology, turned out to work much better than expected. They can be synthesized fast. It took two days to make the first mRNA vaccine molecules for coronavirus. Traditional vaccine technology is slower. Bulk production was a problem; encapsulating those fragile mRNA molecules without breaking them requires a difficult bit of microfluidics technology. But it's difficult in the sense that IC manufacturing is difficult. Once the manufacturers got the tooling and the process right, it worked well.

Here's the list of vaccines under development.[1] There are 105 different vaccines in the pipeline. Most of those are more traditional approaches and don't work yet, need further testing, don't work as well, or have other problems. What we have now is the minimum viable product - two doses, difficult handling and distribution, requires an injection. Some of the ones in the pipeline are skin patches, nasal sprays, or pills. The Merck pill, though, turned out to be a dud - provides only weak protection.

The non-injection schemes may help overcome some of the vaccine resistance problems.

Throwing money at the problem did help. Usually, vaccine R&D consists of finding the most likely candidate, setting up the Phase I/II/III trials, and waiting to see how it works. If it doesn't work, the developers go on to another candidate. Developing 100 different vaccines in parallel improved the odds. A lot.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus...

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#123
post #109

This is a lot less depressing when you consider that vaccines have shown astounding results so far at preventing disease. COVID is a lot less scary if you’re extremely unlikely to get very sick from it. This article touches on that a bit, but it’s buried until the end. There’s a lot of optimism to be had here, I think. Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good — maybe we can’t eradicate COVID, but we can make it a l…

>This is a lot less depressing when you consider that vaccines have shown astounding results so far at preventing disease. I'm less convinced by the common narrative. It appears that sanitation and nutrition played a key role in preventing diseases and co-coincided with wide spread vaccine use. Put another way vaccines did not work where sanitation + nutrition was abysmal. (Cannot find references, because I came acro…

You cannot find references because this is total nonsense.

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as Covid is concerned, surface transmission is not considered and has not been considered a major transmission pathway since May. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/s0522-cdc-updates-co...

i wonder what kind of damage we're doing with all the disinfection of touch surfaces. what dangerous microbes we're selectively breeding, and what beneficial ones we're destroying.

[deleted]

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way forward requires coming to terms with the fact that none of this needed to happen in the first place. This disease is really just not that deadly for non-elderly and non-obese people, and we've known for a while. Every institution under the sun failed. We say we need to trust the science, but the scientists were all wrong: LANL put out a preprint paper that estimated r0 at ~7 near the beginning of the pandemi…

I don't really wanna be part of a society that sacrifices the old and unfit at the expense of the whatever point you are trying to make. 500,000 COVID deaths across the country shouldn't be taken lightly. I am surprised if you are taking all "scientists" as a collective group that you are focusing on early attempts to create models rather than the delivery of a vaccine (by scientists) and overall improvement of disea…

It sounds tragic to “let” 500k people die, but it is also tragic that millions die yearly of hunger. And most people do nothing about it.

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as Covid is concerned, surface transmission is not considered and has not been considered a major transmission pathway since May. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/s0522-cdc-updates-co...

i wonder what kind of damage we're doing with all the disinfection of touch surfaces. what dangerous microbes we're selectively breeding, and what beneficial ones we're destroying.

No human-infecting microbes can survive pure alcohol or bleach, so selection pressure is not an issue. And beneficial microbes don’t grow much on tabletops and guardrails either.

At most, the cleaner environment might lead to ill-calibrated immune systems in kids.

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way forward requires coming to terms with the fact that none of this needed to happen in the first place. This disease is really just not that deadly for non-elderly and non-obese people, and we've known for a while. Every institution under the sun failed. We say we need to trust the science, but the scientists were all wrong: LANL put out a preprint paper that estimated r0 at ~7 near the beginning of the pandemi…

I don't really wanna be part of a society that sacrifices the old and unfit at the expense of the whatever point you are trying to make. 500,000 COVID deaths across the country shouldn't be taken lightly. I am surprised if you are taking all "scientists" as a collective group that you are focusing on early attempts to create models rather than the delivery of a vaccine (by scientists) and overall improvement of disea…

I don't understand this reasoning, it's such hyperbole, we are not sacrificing anyone. You are already part of a society that makes these types of tradeoffs and calculated risks all the time. We don't spend an endless amount of money on extending everyone's life at any cost. And people who are overweight and unfit have a personal responsibility as well, and can also isolate themselves, why do we have to traumatise a whole population of healthy people unnecessarily with lockdowns.

It's so unbelievable far fetched, that asymptomatic people should still transfer virus through contact surfaces and that this will in any significant way increase the infected health care professionals at the elderly peoples homes, despite them having professional equipment, and those elderly people, who are a part of the risk group, while another VERY large part of the risk group can isolate themselves, still would be enough to motivate a lockdown.

It's getting so incredibly unreasonable, everything will be impossible if you put an endless price to every second of a human life.

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really wanna be part of a society that sacrifices the old and unfit at the expense of the whatever point you are trying to make. 500,000 COVID deaths across the country shouldn't be taken lightly. I am surprised if you are taking all "scientists" as a collective group that you are focusing on early attempts to create models rather than the delivery of a vaccine (by scientists) and overall improvement of disea…

It sounds tragic to “let” 500k people die, but it is also tragic that millions die yearly of hunger. And most people do nothing about it.

How many million people die of hunger in the US each year? (500k is the US only number, many more than that have died worldwide)

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way forward requires coming to terms with the fact that none of this needed to happen in the first place. This disease is really just not that deadly for non-elderly and non-obese people, and we've known for a while. Every institution under the sun failed. We say we need to trust the science, but the scientists were all wrong: LANL put out a preprint paper that estimated r0 at ~7 near the beginning of the pandemi…

I don't really wanna be part of a society that sacrifices the old and unfit at the expense of the whatever point you are trying to make. 500,000 COVID deaths across the country shouldn't be taken lightly. I am surprised if you are taking all "scientists" as a collective group that you are focusing on early attempts to create models rather than the delivery of a vaccine (by scientists) and overall improvement of disea…

You realise that cancer kills many many times the number of people that die from corona, but we still continue to "sacrifice" those people just to have a functioning society, make profits and also just for fun, by producing cigarettes etc. How can you be part of such a society?

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or: make vaccinations mandatory if you want to protect those who cannot get a shot for health reasons. To put this one in perspective, we already make vaccinations mandatory for public school attendance, and colleges go one step further and require vaccinations for attendance, too.

Does COVID vaccination prevent infection and transmission?

Yes, it certainly looks that way: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-israel-va... https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-pfizer...
Post reply on HN