Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe • Hacker News Board

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#101

Post by simonsarris » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

kickout wrote: post #40

This story is also an example of the conflicting stories we get out of leaders? How it is possible we'll _never_ reach herd immunity? They were saying we needed that just last summer! That loss of trust in giving us correct/congruent information from leaders is absolutely hurting America right now

Manipulating the population behavior by manipulating goalposts seems to have been intentional the whole time. From the NYT in December titled How Much Herd Immunity Is Enough?

> In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.

> "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent," Fauci said. "Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85."

The rest of the interview doesn't make it sound any better.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212003533/https://www.nytim...

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#102

Post by jimbob45 » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

mr_cyborg wrote: post #28

I wanted to add that a lot of the people I know who are “vaccine hesitant” are just waiting a little longer to see how things go. I don’t see a whole lot of representation of folks who intend to get the vaccine this summer when I read publications and articles about it, but I would wager that there’s more people intending to get it but not quite yet than we think.

I know this is anecdotal but I’ve been closely following my friends who have been on the fence about getting vaccines in several states and the number one blocking issue they encounter is bad website design in signing up for the vaccine. I’ve had friends all ready to such up even though they’re not 100% on board who get bored after five minutes of not being able to sign up and just leave.

For example, at HEB, I signed up for a vaccine time and upon receiving my first dose, the second appointment was automatically assigned in exactly six weeks. Easy. My buddy who tried to sign up at Fred Meyers had to schedule both of his appointments at one. Although he had a time-slot for his first appointment, he couldn’t get a second appointment time-slot and gave up.

Almost invariably, it’s the West Coast pharmacies that have garbage sites. I really don’t understand why. Again, this is all anecdotal.

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#103

Post by thu2111 » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

paperwasp42 wrote: post #77

aphextron wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People are losing faith in the scientists because of their ever changing statements. I'd say this perfectly illustrates the complete lack of understanding of how science works among the public. There is never one specific stance that will always be right and hold up to all scrutiny. It's just highly intelligent educated experts giving their best possible estimate based on current data. As the data evolves, so do the…

I agree a general lack of understanding of the scientific method is a large part of the issue. I think an additional issue is how some politicians/political individuals treat science--"Scientists say X, therefore X is now gospel, and anyone who even questions X is morally at fault and an uneducated idiot." Those sorts of inflammatory, controversial statements get amplified far more loudly than the actual statements o…

It'd be really nice if that were the case. Unfortunately, at least in many countries, it's been scientists/academics attacking anyone who questioned the reliability of scientific output.

For sure, politicians deserve their fair share of the blame, but they're by and large not the ones attacking people who say "you have limited data and it does not seem to support your conclusions". Nor are they the source of all the anti-COVID policies that now control people lives, nor are they routinely presenting the output of entirely unverified models as "science" that is beyond any rational questioning. Boris Johnson has been reported to have been furious about how he and other ministers were repeatedly bounced into policies he disagrees with by scientists who instantly run to the press and claim he's ignoring The Science/doesn't care about lives/will kill millions if he doesn't do exactly as told today without even the tiniest delay to double check things. And then days later the data presented by these experts has been torn apart by people who simply downloaded and double checked the maths.

To put it bluntly, people are losing trust in academics because they keep doing untrustworthy things. It's not a failing of the public, or a result of distortion of what innocent scientists are saying. It's an accurate perception of what's really been happening.

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#104

Post by aphextron » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

alibarber wrote: post #54

Honest question - I'm after good articles to read about this: Why is it that we have been able to eliminate things like Polio and Smallpox, yet there's doubt about COVID? They were both viruses, must have mutated, were fairly easily spread and it must have taken longer to vaccinate enough people given the advances in logistics and vaccine tech we now have. What's the fundamental difference?

>"Why is it that we have been able to eliminate things like Polio and Smallpox, yet there's doubt about COVID?"

COVID is incredibly more contagious, but also far less deadly than those. The real sinister thing about this virus is that 20 people can pass it to each other without anyone knowing, then all of the sudden someone's grandma is dying from a hug. It's just so much more contagious than anything any living person has seen before. No one in general had ever experienced literally just being in a room with someone completely asymptomatic leading to transmission of a deadly virus.

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#105

Post by _-david-_ » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #32

_-david-_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is this an education problem? Is there not a consistent minimum science curriculum for K-12 which covers pathogens, treatments and the history of vaccination programmes? Are there other factors that are relevant? I think it is more complicated than just education. The general sentiment I hear from people is in the past we were told that once we get vaccinated we could return to normal. Now we are told we still need…

>People are losing faith in the scientists because of their ever changing statements. I'd say this perfectly illustrates the complete lack of understanding of how science works among the public. There is never one specific stance that will always be right and hold up to all scrutiny. It's just highly intelligent educated experts giving their best possible estimate based on current data. As the data evolves, so do the…

The issue with changing their statements is not so much that they changed their statements, but how certain they were with their original statements. Some of the scientists did not start their statements with stuff like "with the available data we believe". They made it sound like what they were saying was 100% determined. Anybody who disagreed (even if it is now the prevailing view) was called anti-science.

It is not strictly just the scientists making statements based on the available data, but them explicitly lying.

Some of the scientists said masks were not needed for the general population. This is understandable since they wanted people who were at the greatest threat to have enough masks. The problem is when some of the earliest statements they made were lies people lose trust.

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#106

Post by passivate » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

alibarber wrote: post #54

Honest question - I'm after good articles to read about this: Why is it that we have been able to eliminate things like Polio and Smallpox, yet there's doubt about COVID? They were both viruses, must have mutated, were fairly easily spread and it must have taken longer to vaccinate enough people given the advances in logistics and vaccine tech we now have. What's the fundamental difference?

You must have missed it - its in the article itself.

>But as vaccines were developed and distribution ramped up through the winter and into the spring, estimates of the threshold began to rise. That is because the initial calculations were based on the contagiousness of the original version of the virus. The predominant variant now circulating in the United States, called B.1.1.7 and first identified in Britain, is about 60 percent more transmissible.

>As a result, experts now calculate the herd immunity threshold to be at least 80 percent. If even more contagious variants develop, or if scientists find that immunized people can still transmit the virus, the calculation will have to be revised upward again.

>Though resistance to the vaccines is a main reason the United States is unlikely to reach herd immunity, it is not the only one

>“Disease transmission is local,” Dr. Lipsitch noted.

>“If the coverage is 95 percent in the United States as a whole, but 70 percent in some small town, the virus doesn’t care,” he explained. “It will make its way around the small town.”

>At the same time, the connectivity between countries, particularly as travel restrictions ease, emphasizes the urgency of protecting not just Americans but everyone in the world, said Natalie E. Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Any variants that arise in the world will eventually reach the United States, she noted.

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#107

Post by thu2111 » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #64

thu2111 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was "institution skeptics" who made COVID a political issue. How many months did it take before academics were claiming that anti-lockdown protests were dangerous and must not happen but BLM protests were to be encouraged, because "systemic racism" is a public health issue? Not many. How many other academics condemned this blatant politicization of science? Not enough. Lockdowns don't work: US states…

Lockdown worked fine in New Zealand it not? The thing is, it’s something you have to commit to. You can’t just half ass it.

Was it lockdowns or was it border closures or was it the geographical location of New Zealand or was it chance?

This is the whole problem with the pro-lockdown position. It's turned into an exercise in cherry picking. We don't need to do this, we have global datasets and those can be analysed to try and detect correlations between policies and outcomes. When this analysis has been done, there are no correlations.

Here's a summary of an unusually thorough analysis of global geography vs excess mortality:

https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/05/03/geography-not-lockdo...

Here's an analysis of mortality vs control stringency across all US states:

https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/04/24/more-people-died-in-...

Here's a published, peer reviewed paper which says the same thing:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...

The thing is, it’s something you have to commit to. You can’t just half ass it.

Some countries have now accrued more public debt than after World War 2. At some point, even the most ardent true believers in this policy have to accept that if entire continents can take measures as extreme as they have done and get no results whatsoever then it is a failed policy.

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#108

Post by sebow » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

devonbleak wrote: post #92

kickout wrote: post #40

This story is also an example of the conflicting stories we get out of leaders? How it is possible we'll _never_ reach herd immunity? They were saying we needed that just last summer! That loss of trust in giving us correct/congruent information from leaders is absolutely hurting America right now

It's not conflicting. New evidence changes science-based understanding and decisions. This is at the core of how science works. It's impossible to know everything about everything immediately so you make the best decisions you can based on the information you do have. Herd immunity is still the holy grail of dealing with an infectious disease like this. If new evidence says we're not going to reach it, for whatever r…

You're right,except the fact that last year when some of the "less-popular" specialists(not random facebook boomers) were saying exactly this, they were called conspirationists,fake news, extremists,what have you.

So while you're right, the problem with predictions is that not everybody sees as far in the future as other people.Anecdotal experience is the most important factor here.While you can definitely say that you don't accept someone's expertise/prediction to be valid given current data, saying that they're _definitely_ fake news , again, given current data, is also disingenious.

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#109

Post by jeofken » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #5

distribot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't people who've been infected count toward the herd immunity. That ~30% of Americans. I know there's some overlap but if we can get to 70% of people vaccinated I think we'd be really close, no?

There have been high-profile cases of re-infection in India, and the experience from Manaus tells the same story. Expecting herd immunity from letting the disease spread is wishful thinking.

There has been 70 cases and 3 deaths of reinfection worldwide [0]. If this source is not false, reinfection is negligible, and I am yet unconvinced herd immunity will not materialise

[0] https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-t...

Re: Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ from Covid Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe

#110

Post by passivate » Mon, May 03, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

kossTKR wrote: post #79

passivate wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in biotech (vaccines), so we have some overlap with pharma, and none of what you said resonates with me. Sorry, but you're applying a pretty broad brush to millions of hardworking people in this industry that is completely unwarranted. As an aside, nobody I know is going to refuse life saving medication because 'pharma industry is bad'. The pharma industry is no different than any other industry. The vast majo…

I don't disagree. Most people actually working with the actual science are good people - just as in tech. The problem comes from ruthless profit incentives, lobbying, marketing, investor pressure etc. Nowhere did i say that the everyone in the industry are bad people, my whole point was about history of shadiness. That's not controversial - again just as in the sector big-data / internet business that i work in. Anyo…

>Anyone should be highly sceptical of any huge corporations.

That is completely different than saying calling it a vulture-like industry, or implying something about the entire industry. There are many companies - small and large in this industry. Again, you're simply diluting your own argument by making it absurd and easy to refute. I won't argue with you over specific examples of when companies (in any industry) engage in terrible behavior.

'big corp' exists in every industry. When there is a lot (money/power) at stake, there are perverse incentives to protect their 'golden goose' so to speak. Its our primitive reptilian brain taking control. There are such examples in every industry. But again, that doesn't make the entire industry bad - which was my point.