Earlier quoted context omitted.
And so what are you suggesting? Everyone wear N95 masks all the time forever?
There is no end game to masking. It will be in perpetuity in some places.
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New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
281–290 of 432 posts
Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forever? Why would we need to do it forever when we don't do it for any other virus?
Probably because we should have been, and now some of us have learned. It’s been a pleasure going two years without any upper respiratory illnesses for me. I look forward to being steadfast in that since it’s really not that hard to wear a mask, and it’s not hurting anyone else when I do so.
What happens when you eventually do catch an upper respiratory disease, and your immune system is no longer used to the challenges it presents?
Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Leave me the hell alone! As long as that makes essential things such as grocery shopping more dangerous for others, such as myself, no.
Ok, then when does this end? I'm all ears!
It doesn't end until you make it end. When I close my laptop, I am unaware there is even anything going on; I don't wear a mask, I am unvaccinated, and I am fortunate enough to live in a place where people largely behave in this same way. My life is 100% the same as it was 3 years ago.
If you're restricting your own behavior, stop. If you're being restricted by third parties, seriously consider moving or outright disobeying. This doesn't end until people (not politicians) make it end.
Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Locking down has tremendous costs whether mental or economic, you just can't compute and make a nice graph of it The gorilla in the room that no one’s wants to acknowledge…we locked down to allow people who were likely to die within the next 3-5 years to maybe survive a couple of those years. The price of the lockdowns economically, physical health, mental health, and in education will be paid by folks who were pro…
Harm the young to help the old... why are we doing this to ourselves?
The old are more reliable voters, while the youngest aren't even permitted to vote (even though they have more at stake, since they will have to live with the consequences longer.)
Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it elicited the same immune response it wouldn't be much of a use though, right ? Anyway, how do they know the usual but new seasonal flu vaccine is safe ? Can't the same framework apply ?
They run clinical trials on them to make sure they are safe and effective. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectivenessqa.htm Manufacturers guess which flu strain will predominate and start working 9-12 months early to capture the data for approval. There is no way a new Covid mRNA vaccine will be approved with safety and efficacy data from a clinical trial. That will be take months to complete.
It's possible that mRNA would reduce the time to the market, which would give use more time to gather data and have better predictions of dominant strains.
Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facts don’t dictate policy. Even if masks were incredibly effective so some point we’d have to stop wearing them. Now that we have countless effective medical interventions, I’d say that time is now. Vaccinated individuals have zero business being required to wear masks. They’ve done their part and should be able to return to a fully normal life. COVID is never going away. There is so much more to live for than being…
> Facts don’t dictate policy They absolutely should, and I think this is an intractable disagreement we have. Sorry. But I agree that COVID is never going away -- I'm saying that all of these measures should go away once the pandemic has abated to such an extent that it no longer poses a substantial threat to human lives. I.e. there is a version of COVID where we have tamed its lethality to the point where it's a sha…
> I.e. there is a version of COVID where we have tamed its lethality to the point where it's a shadow of its former self.
We have that today.
Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
#287For a fully waxed person, Would it make sense to try to get infected by Delta to build more immunity to fight off that omicron thing? With so many significant variations on the spike protein the vaccines will be no help..
Brazilian?
Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
#288> We know that B.1.1.529 is not a “Delta plus” variant. The figure below shows a really long line, with no previous Delta ancestors. So this likely means it mutated over time in one, likely immunocompromised, individual (see my P.S. note at the end of the post). How does that work ? Virus mutate inside the host until either death or the immune system stops it ? Why is the absence of selective pressure producing a vir…
There is selective pressure, and in fact more than for a normal person! It is coming from them being treated with some kind of antibody treatment (e.g. convalescent plasma) but not to a level that would actually cure them.
I just wrote a comment on this a few hours ago in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29354300
Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
People also forget that it wasn’t a Muslim ban. The world’s largest Muslim country was not included in it.
Well, those excluded countries included places where Trump had business interests and longtime allies of the US (Saudi Arabia). https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-trump-immigration-ba...
So it wasn't a Muslim ban then?
Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Will it increase exponentially if not cared about?
Yes, car deaths have decreased by multiple orders of magnitude in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
No, the fatality rate has. Unhappily, every safety advance seems to lead to an increase in crashes IIRC. Which sounds about like how we in the US approach COVID too.