Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta • Hacker News Board

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#21

Post by pizza » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

morpheos137 wrote: post #18

pizza wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are still dying from breakthrough cases. Children (w/o vaccine) are dying of delta. Not to go full scaremonger but we don't know that much about long covid at this point. Plus the CDC admits that there is likely an undercount of people who got COVID post-vaccination https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre... It's an "ounce of prevention, pound of cure" type of situation

Every human that ever lives will die someday. A good life involves a prudent balancing of risks and costs. Nobody alive can ever be 100% safe before or after the advent of covid. Covid maybe a good thing if it forces mature adults to deal with their inevitable mortality like mature adults. Instead we have been seeing pervasive infantilisation of society. Safety has a cost. The world is not black and white. Disclaimer…

Well let's talk about infantilization then: I don't mind fearing or being at peace with death. Our society could use that.

It's just that we're in a global plague right now and a large chunk of people just want to do whatever they want no matter if others are affected by their actions. Basically a stage of development such as children before they realize others are also people. It's like ten people walking a tightrope and the last one is jumping up and down. A non-infantilized society is one where we can expect everyone to be a grownup and avoid the bad quadrant of the prisoner's dilemma, and guess what? We've found out that you get an infantile society if people are just asked nicely

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#22

Post by koolba » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:12 AM UTC

jdhn wrote: post #11

pizza wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are still dying from breakthrough cases. Children (w/o vaccine) are dying of delta. Not to go full scaremonger but we don't know that much about long covid at this point. Plus the CDC admits that there is likely an undercount of people who got COVID post-vaccination https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre... It's an "ounce of prevention, pound of cure" type of situation

>Children (w/o vaccine) are dying of delta The number of children who are dying of covid has been ridiculously low for a virus that spreads so easily. Hasn't covid deaths for children under the age of 12 been under 1000 since the pandemic started?

It’s even lower if you factor in that the vast majority of those that died had existing underlying health issues.

The level of social isolation the elderly have unilaterally imposed on the youth is a travesty.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#23

Post by landemva » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #9

There were several prominent epidemiologists who said early on “Covid will end up like the flu, you’ll need a yearly vaccine, we’ll have new variants and we’ll get waves of infections through out the year”. And here we are.

I havent (needed) a flu shot in a couple decades. I'm not interested in yearly jabs. Better to lose the waist inches and high BMI. Few want the self-responsibility of healthy living.

And I don't agree with headline of "grim", as it was obvious a year ago this was coming. Who lost any excess weight in the past year?

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#24

Post by brodouevencode » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

jdhn wrote: post #2

Is this necessarily a bad thing? If it protects the vast majoriy of people from going into the hospital and they gain additional immunity from covid, then I don't really see a downside.

The pretense all along as far as I can tell from most countries has been one of "zero COVID". Meaning a total removal/extermination of the virus. Whether or not this was ever realistic is really the underlying debate that hasn't yet fully surfaced.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#25

Post by totony » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:15 AM UTC

suchire wrote: post #16

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to mutate regardless of how many people are vaccinated. The entire point is to make it so that people don't have the runaway immune system responses that are melting lungs and brains.

The likelihood of mutation is directly proportional to how widespread a virus is multiplied by the amount of time it stays that way (more specifically, the area under the curve for infections over time). Vaccination and control of spread is critical to preventing further variants

Likehood of mutation might be, but spread of variants is a more complicated function. Vaccination for sure might affect how likely one variant predominates against others.

Considering cross-immunization between variants with natural immunity, it might be more efficient to refrain from vaccines to give cross-immunity with a weaker variant.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#26

Post by morpheos137 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:15 AM UTC

pizza wrote: post #21

morpheos137 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every human that ever lives will die someday. A good life involves a prudent balancing of risks and costs. Nobody alive can ever be 100% safe before or after the advent of covid. Covid maybe a good thing if it forces mature adults to deal with their inevitable mortality like mature adults. Instead we have been seeing pervasive infantilisation of society. Safety has a cost. The world is not black and white. Disclaimer…

Well let's talk about infantilization then: I don't mind fearing or being at peace with death. Our society could use that. It's just that we're in a global plague right now and a large chunk of people just want to do whatever they want no matter if others are affected by their actions. Basically a stage of development such as children before they realize others are also people. It's like ten people walking a tightrop…

I would respectfully submit that the death rate of covid does not justify the scale of the response. It is unreasonable to shut down society for a disease whose median age victim is about 80 and whose whole population case fatality rate is in the low single digit percent at worse.

The elderly and well off want to minimize their risk at the expense of the young and the poor. Who do you think delivered your Amazon packages while you worked from home?

At both extremes a part of the population is unwilling to compromise and is willing to force another part to pay for their "freedom." In my opinion the yuppies obessively using instacart and Amazon are just as selfish as the Trump supporters and rednecks who may have denied covid existed. Both groups want what they want the cost be damned.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#27

Post by berkut » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:16 AM UTC

There seems to be some evidence that having a longer duration between the first and second doses provides better long-term protection, i.e. gaps of 7+ weeks, compared to the 3+ weeks the US and Israel have generally done.

NZ is currently thinking about increasing the gap to > 6 weeks because of this.

I wonder how much that would affect things.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#28

Post by bob33212 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

jdhn wrote: post #11

pizza wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are still dying from breakthrough cases. Children (w/o vaccine) are dying of delta. Not to go full scaremonger but we don't know that much about long covid at this point. Plus the CDC admits that there is likely an undercount of people who got COVID post-vaccination https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre... It's an "ounce of prevention, pound of cure" type of situation

>Children (w/o vaccine) are dying of delta The number of children who are dying of covid has been ridiculously low for a virus that spreads so easily. Hasn't covid deaths for children under the age of 12 been under 1000 since the pandemic started?

Yes, the old and sick are the real people at risk.

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#29

Post by bob33212 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:18 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #19

refurb wrote: post #9

There were several prominent epidemiologists who said early on “Covid will end up like the flu, you’ll need a yearly vaccine, we’ll have new variants and we’ll get waves of infections through out the year”. And here we are.

Except that it is still much more dangerous for unvaccinated people than the flu, which is an important distinction.

The original strain of the flu was also more deadly. But it eventually mutated and became less

Re: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

#30

Post by graderjs » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 2:19 AM UTC

berkut wrote: post #27

There seems to be some evidence that having a longer duration between the first and second doses provides better long-term protection, i.e. gaps of 7+ weeks, compared to the 3+ weeks the US and Israel have generally done. NZ is currently thinking about increasing the gap to > 6 weeks because of this. I wonder how much that would affect things.

I heard that as well. My feeling is that with all the treatments we are deploying against the virus, one thing we are doing is creating a selective pressure, forcing it to evolve to promote more resistant and transmissible variants. Whether those transmissible variants also contain higher mortality might be a crapshoot game of chance, but I don't hear this sort of idea spouted a lot and I think it's worth considering. It might be similar to the way that antibiotics have helped select for 'treatment-resistant' 'superbugs'.