Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 1001 posts

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#611

Post by polished85 »

outside1234 wrote: post #229
h3cate wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion but as countries get majority vaccinated they have to learn to not be as scared of it.

I don't think that's unpopular. More precisely, once the vaccine is available to all age groups, the only people that need to be scared of it are the unvaccinated. And they will have had every opportunity to get vaccinated, so we shouldn't optimize for them.

Once my family and I are vaccinated I assume we are protected and don't have much to worry about. Why should I care if someone else is not vaccinated? If everyone that wants the vaccine can get it, why does it matter if some people don't get it?

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#612

Post by l30n4da5 »

beloch wrote: post #489

"The transition to endemic COVID-19 is also a psychological one. When everyone has some immunity, a COVID-19 diagnosis becomes as routine as diagnosis of strep or flu—not good news, but not a reason for particular fear or worry or embarrassment either. That means unlearning a year of messaging that said COVID-19 was not just a flu. If the confusion around the CDC dropping mask recommendations for the vaccinated earli…

> Turning vaccines into a political wedge issue is one of the stupidest things I've seen in my life.

This is just history repeating itself, unfortunately. The Spanish flu had people protesting the counter-measures put in place to reduce transmission, as well.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#613

Post by mikedilger »

beachy wrote: post #584
hcurtiss wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. For small island countries like New Zealand it works "great." This was never an option for countries like the US, or even most of Europe. Much less so for countries like India. But we'll see how it goes. If New Zealand and Australia persist in this notion that they're going to stay locked down until the virus goes away, particularly with its endemicity now inevitable, I think you will soon find vast swaths of th…

I live in NZ and can assure you from the front lines of the revolt that we don't think we're going to stay locked down until the virus goes away. The game has always been to play it by ear. That's been a great call so far, we've lived normal lives for the last year while incredible scientific advances have delivered vaccines. This is a long game, and we've done well in the first quarter. I hope the politicians contin…

While not disagreeing with that, I think we can continue to eliminate. During level-4, the R value is clearly lower than 1.0 meaning the infection shrinks. And the infection is small since we locked down immediately when a community case was first found. Six weeks will probably do it... so long as we don't have (a) new cases coming in through the border, or (b) infected people flaunting the lockdown rules and spreading it faster than we can contain it. Indeed, if it blows out past a couple thousand or so, we will need to pivot.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#614

Post by rajin444 »

ajross wrote: post #314
outside1234 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's unpopular. More precisely, once the vaccine is available to all age groups, the only people that need to be scared of it are the unvaccinated. And they will have had every opportunity to get vaccinated, so we shouldn't optimize for them.

Alternatively: the unvaccinated are simply mistaken, and represent people's cousins and friends and children and grandparents, and their suffering and death would represent real loss and tragedy even to people who did everything right and got their shots. The desire to see this pandemic solely in terms of an individual moral play (on all sides of the debate!) is really strong on this website, and I think it's very un…

> We're all in this together

No, we aren't. Obesity is an epidemic. Nearly all of those people made a decision to make themselves more likely to contract covid, more likely to exhibit symptoms longer (thus spread it), and more likely to occupy critical healthcare infrastructure - as well as more likely to die from covid.

There has been almost 0 acknowledgement of this as well as 0 promises to fix this issue. If you're still obese (or not calling for mandatory weight loss) and upset others aren't getting a vaccine you're not fairly applying "every little bit helps".

You're picking and choosing which issues we should bear "collective responsibility" for. It's some kind of irony we're passing out krispy kremes when you get your vaccination.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#615

Post by jjoonathan »

autokad wrote: post #602
jjoonathan wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, GP has a couple of interesting ideas mixed in there (NY lockdown policy and building hospital capacity) but the rest are bog standard anti-mask, anti-vax talking points. Masks help, vaccines help -- it's all about pushing R below 1, and a measure doesn't have to be 100% effective (or anywhere near that) to push. Lockdowns do flatten the curve, and while we might have built new hospitals in a parallel universe,…

I am not anti vax, I am vaccinated and I recommend to everyone to do the same. However, relying on this vaccine as a long term solution is a very bad idea. Also you are stating I am anti mask when I stated how I recommended mask usage. Do you not read or do you just force your expectations on people? Sure, go ahead and dig through my history. not sure what you mean by 'a silent first wave'.

Complaining about vaccine inefficacy is absolutely anti-vax: these vaccines aren't just good enough to be useful to the population, they're actually good enough to significantly protect individuals. The only scale on which these vaccines are ineffective is a scale with a heavy thumb on it.

"CDC was anti-mask at one point" is absolutely an anti-mask talking point. They quickly figured out their error and fixed it. There's only one reason to bring up the old policy.

I'm not familiar with the Germany talking point, but I am familiar with the Texas talking point and the Sweden talking point -- which both aged very poorly. I tend to suspect Germany is the new pivot.

The silent first wave is an anti-lockdown talking point that became prominent on the downswing of the first and second waves, the idea being that a silent first wave of asymptomatic infections had already immunized everyone and that we could therefore lift the lockdown because there wouldn't be another wave. Then... there was another wave.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#616

Post by hnuser847 »

at_a_remove wrote: post #218
User23 wrote: post #132

What baffles me is the total failure to highlight one of the best ways to mitigate the risk of severe covid complications: don’t be obese[1]. It’s also a good life choice for those who also prefer not to die of non-covid conditions. Edit: And it increases your risk for long covid[2]. [1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/latest-evidence-on... [2] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210608/obesity-increases-r...

The, uh, tone of your comment suggests that there is this epidemic of obese people who simply have neglected to press the STOP BEING OBESE button. "All you have to do is ..." "Can't you just ..." In technology, we hate hearing that from people who do not have a grasp of the situation -- why are you doing it here? That button doesn't exist. That's the source of your bafflement.

Perhaps we should have nutrition passports. People wouldn’t be allowed to visit fast food restaurants until they have sub-30 BMI.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#617

Post by craftinator »

l30n4da5 wrote: post #612
beloch wrote: post #489

"The transition to endemic COVID-19 is also a psychological one. When everyone has some immunity, a COVID-19 diagnosis becomes as routine as diagnosis of strep or flu—not good news, but not a reason for particular fear or worry or embarrassment either. That means unlearning a year of messaging that said COVID-19 was not just a flu. If the confusion around the CDC dropping mask recommendations for the vaccinated earli…

> Turning vaccines into a political wedge issue is one of the stupidest things I've seen in my life. This is just history repeating itself, unfortunately. The Spanish flu had people protesting the counter-measures put in place to reduce transmission, as well.

It just boggles my mind that with modern understanding of how these things work (and we have a MUCH more complete understanding than they had during the early 1900's), we repeat this ignorant mistake.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#618

Post by [deleted] »

gowld wrote: post #531
autokad wrote: post #521

There is lots of competition for the top of the stupidity list. NYC locking down all summer and then 'opening up' in September seemed top of the list to me. It's not that I thought they should have stayed locked down the entire time, its that they should have opened in the summer so they could lock down in the winter if they really needed it. But seriously though, locking down in the summer to only open up in flu sea…

Blaming the US Southern border for coronavirus spread is a racist and Republican (anti-immigration excuse-making) trope.

[deleted]

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#619

Post by criticaltinker »

werm82 wrote: post #546
autokad wrote: post #521

There is lots of competition for the top of the stupidity list. NYC locking down all summer and then 'opening up' in September seemed top of the list to me. It's not that I thought they should have stayed locked down the entire time, its that they should have opened in the summer so they could lock down in the winter if they really needed it. But seriously though, locking down in the summer to only open up in flu sea…

> some research has shown that they don't do very well at stopping spread, so why all the fuss to force people to get vaccinated? Do you have a link/links to where you read that vaccines don't do well at stopping the spread? Everything I've read is that vaccines, while not 100% effective at stopping the vaccinated person from infecting someone else, significantly lower the risk of spreading the virus[0]. That risk dr…

GP's statement contradicts the scientific literature - vaccination does reduce viral load of subsequent infection, and consequently reduces transmission [1].

However folks should be aware that immunity acquired through natural infection is robust and durable, and also has the same effect of reducing viral load and transmission [2].

It has been documented that people with asymptomatic infection will clear the virus quickly compared to those who are symptomatic [3]. Recent meta-analyses [4] and large population serological studies [5] have estimated the asymptomatic proportion lower bound to be at least ~33%, and the upper bound to be ~65% (even higher for young adults). Considering recent evidence that cases may be massively under-reported, the true asymptomatic proportion could be even higher than suggested [6].

Taken together, these results imply that a majority of the population has been already exposed to the virus, and either through natural infection or vaccination has acquired some degree of immunity that reduces the transmission of the virus.

Analogous to antibiotic resistance, vaccine resistance can evolve if vaccines are used indiscriminately [7][8][9][10]. So the benefits of compulsory mass vaccination may not outweigh the risks of such a policy, given the current state of affairs.

> so why all the fuss to force people to get vaccinated?

It is an important question with tremendously complex factors that go beyond the expertise of most lay people.

[1] Initial report of decreased SARS-CoV-2 viral load after inoculation with the BNT162b2 vaccine https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01316-7?origin=ap...

[2] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...

[3] The Natural History and Transmission Potential of Asymptomatic Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Infection https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266652472...

[4] The Proportion of SARS-CoV-2 Infections That Are Asymptomatic https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M20-6976

[5] Estimating the asymptomatic proportion of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the general population: Analysis of nationwide serosurvey data in the Netherlands https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00768-y

[6] Evaluating the massive underreporting and undertesting of COVID-19 cases in multiple global epicenters https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S253104372...

[7] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/

[8] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...

[9] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016...

[10] The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26302775/

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#620

Post by nkozyra »

recursive wrote: post #567
masklinn wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diseases that are endemic today, such as chicken pox, once caused epidemics with massive body counts, notably in North America. No vaccines, no advanced medical care, and no natural immunity meant that some villages just ceased to exist. You may be confusing chickenpox and smallpox? Chickenpox is generally considered a pretty mild disease (many countries still don't routinely vaccinate against it), and was so histo…

Chickenpox is mild in children. More severe in adults. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickenpox#Adults If you get you case in childhood, as most do, then you have immunity through adulthood. If introduced in a new population, the consequences to adults would be much different.

> If you get you case in childhood, as most do, then you have immunity through adulthood.

Sort of. I got shingles (early 40s) this year. Completely knocked on my ass for a week and maybe 2-3 months to be mostly back to normal. I recommend the shingles vaccine to anyone who will listen.

Post reply on HN