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

New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 432 posts

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#131

Post by tinus_hn »

gfodor wrote: post #3

> Travel bans are not evidence-based: It may seem like travel bans for individual countries are a necessary step, but I cannot stress enough that they do not work. This one point compromised the article for me. The standard for “working”, like all measures, is to slow down the spread. We all know travel bans got a bad name because you-know-who proposed them. But all countries imposed travel bans and we ought to be co…

You need to be clear about the cost of these measures and about the benefit of the delays they buy.

> to buy time for the “weeks” of analysis needed that could help with further reducing risk,

We’re not going to learn anything useful in the few weeks bought by stopping these flights.

And remember, even though the general public insists on these bans, international law proscribes no country can prevent its own citizens from returning home, so no ban can be absolute.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#132

Post by wwweston »

bmeski wrote: post #55
tgv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you going to tell those 12000 people: sorry, but you need to die for my exceptionally limited view of economy?

Yes. How many people die in car accidents each year?

An order of magnitude less than the covid deaths in a year. And yet automobile engineering and usage are heavily regulated in order to improve safety and reduce fatalities.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#133

Post by humaniania »

timr wrote: post #24
soperj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask... There's one from Stanford & Yale that says they do.

Read the study, not a press release. It said quite explicitly that cloth masks had no effect , and surgical masks had an extremely minor overall effect (11.3% reduction in symptomatic seroprevalence), with an absolute effect size of 0.09%: https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publicati...

Why is poverty-action.org more reputable than Stanford?

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#134

Post by timr »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #90
timr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Cite the evidence. Editorials and commentaries don't count. All of the good evidence (RCTs) on masks is extremely marginal, at best, and there hasn't been a single RCT I'm aware of that showed any effect of the other interventions. https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/do-masks-reduce-risk...

Surprisingly, masks with poor filtration underperform at filtering. Show a study that demonstrates the ineffectiveness of an N95.

You're making the claim. Provide evidence of effectiveness.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#135

Post by throwaway23487 »

gus_massa wrote: post #41
bingohbangoh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the _total deaths_? What is the total mortality rate?

Death per million inhabitants in these 4 countries: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... You can also compare with other neighbors and Europe: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Seems like a minuscule percentage.

Is that a pragmatic-enough reason to significantly deteriorate the economy and mental health of the enormous majority of people?

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#136

Post by graeme »

dragontamer wrote: post #10

Look, I'm about as pro-vaccine, pro-lockdown, pro-mask as they come. But the hyperbolic reporting on this variant is not helpful. News articles in mainstream press are already wrong: WHO has named this Omicron (while many publications came out with Nu). This is a virus that takes weeks to months before a variant becomes dominant. You can afford to wait a day or two to get information correct before publishing. Edit:…

This variant is moving much faster to dominance in South Africa than Delta. About 6x faster. You can make some quibbles (small case numbers etc) but this is quick.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/d42bcd3d-e70...

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#137

Post by spookthesunset »

flunhat wrote: post #75
timr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This review says that none of the community mask trials showed a significant effect. It says that 3/6 studies on respirators in medical settings had no significant effect. It said that 3/5 studies for masks as source control showed no significant effect. Here's a review of every mask study ever performed: https://www.cato.org/working-paper/evidence-community-cloth-... Here's a summary written by the same author, in c…

Why is everyone you're referencing -- and for that matter, you too -- so damn hysterical? Vinay Prasad, case in point: > When democratically elected systems transform into totalitarian regimes, the transition is subtle, stepwise, and involves a combination of pre-planned as well as serendipitous events. Indeed, this was the case with Germany in the years 1929-1939, where Hitler was given a chance at governing, the pr…

Humans are meant to see faces. Requiring people, including kids, to wear them for 8+ hours a day with absolutely no metric to get rid of them is insanity. Especially when said people are fully vaccinated. Vaccinated individuals have no business wearing a mask, period.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#138

Post by runarberg »

ptr wrote: post #72
lokl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard, as of now, Sweden has had 15,145 deaths; Norway has had 1,050 deaths; Denmark 2,863; Finland 1,309. With populations from Wikipedia (10,402,070 for Sweden; 5,402,171 for Norway; 5,850,189 for Denmark; 5,536,146 for Finland), this yields deaths per 1,000 people of: Sweden 1.456 Norway 0.194 Denmark 0.489 Finland 0.236 Saying Sweden has "just survived" doesn't capture…

Not saying it’s the reason, but Sweden has higher urbanization than its neighbors. The country also has more people who don’t speak the native language. Belgium has a similar population size but more deaths (27k).

Sweden does not have higher urbanization then Denmark (both at 88%). Also what has native language anything to do with the spread of the virus and its mortality rate? I fail to see a logical link between the two.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#139

Post by msie »

timr wrote: post #91
titzer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they do reduce the viral load by 30-50% I think the effect is much larger than that, but yes, absolutely. This is an important point that is constantly lost in the public discourse. We realize there's a big difference in dosage with poisons and radiation, but it's the same with viral infections; viruses do take time to replicate, so having a low initial exposure can give the immune system to ramp up sooner, bef…

All current evidence is that masks have a minor effect, measured in tiny fractions of a percent. https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/do-masks-reduce-risk ... To date, I'm aware of no study that has quantified a difference in infection, hospitalization or death that is attributable to travel bans.

"In October 2021, Prasad prompted social media controversy when he published a blog post comparing the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic response to the beginnings of Hitler's Third Reich. Bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan said that Prasad's arguments were specious and ignorant, and science historian Robert N. Proctor said that Prasad was "overplaying the dangers of vaccination mandates and trivializing the genuine harms to liberty posed by 1930s fascism"."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinay_Prasad

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#140

Post by chmod600 »

jljljl wrote: post #63
bingohbangoh wrote: post #2

Does anybody think these variants will ever stop? I hate, __hate__ this constant fear of a lockdown. Hell, a good part of europe is in lockdown right now. I get that the lockdown is being haphazardly enforce for those countries who've decided on it but I dislike these even being rules on the books. Leave me the hell alone! If we couldn't overcome it after a year of lockdowns, why is this gonna be the time it changes?…

I don’t understand the recent celebrating of Florida’s COVID performance — in September, after vaccinations and treatment options were widely available, Florida was losing more than 300 people per day to COVID. They went from ~25th in the nation for COVID Deaths per capita to 8th worst since the pandemic started. That “just surviving” came at a huge cost of lives.

After the vaccine was available it was mostly unvaccinated dying. It's called freedom.
Post reply on HN