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It will take 100 days to tailor a vaccine to a new variant

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: It will take 100 days to tailor a vaccine to a new variant

#61
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those problems were present in 1957 flu epidemic, the 1968/69 epidemic the 1977/79 flu epidemic People were just less anxious and depressed back then, especially according to recorded stats the most severe was the 68/69 it was basically the peak of huge human gathering, between marches, students protests, Woodstock, Summer of love, Beatlemania, surf culture. In short nobody gave a darn about the flu. It seems to…

> All those problems were present in 1957 flu epidemic, the 1968/69 epidemic the 1977/79 flu epidemic Those were all influenza A sub-types viruses which we've had experience with. The closest we've come to COVID is SARS/MERS both of which had significantly high case fatality rates (~10% for SARS, 33% for MERS), but neither of those resulted in a pandemic of the same scale. Even then, early COVID symptoms puzzled doct…

> Those were all influenza A sub-types viruses which we've had experience with.

Let's be serious. Most doctors back then couldn't tell the flu from a coronavirus, and it was probably for the better.

You are taking the present-day degree of information and discounting it back at a much too generous rate.

People, even doctors, were all but alarmed in those years of flu epidemic, even though people died, and young people at that (the flu is a notorious killer of babies and young people)

They were not alarmed because in the great scheme of things nobody died. Most importantly nobody or almost nobody they knew died, so the process of extrapolation and panic didn't start, because those people perceived stuff which didn't happen in their circle of acquiantaces as not relevant to them, which is true even today, but we forgot about it.

Re: It will take 100 days to tailor a vaccine to a new variant

#62
post #32

It is already hard to make people vaccinate with 1 year vaccine, imagine how many will die refusing 100 day vaccine. Natural selection in progress.

Sounds like you should be happy with the covid purge of the fat, old, and infirm. That is natural selection also.

So many antivaxxers in the forums that thinks of itself as "hacker" lol.

Re: It will take 100 days to tailor a vaccine to a new variant

#63
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Team programming competitions are like that, and basically the strategy is to give everybody on the team 10 minutes to read all tasks and choose the one they are confident they can solve and then work in parallel. No time for coordination overhead. If you talk about everything you won't finish even one task. But COVID response is nothing like that - we've had months before it got to Europe and over a year at this poi…

My point was about how well can a society work when there is mutual trust between leadership and followers, not about solving a problem efficiently. Although I did go off the subject with the anecdote. What is your take on handling the Covid crisis in Europe?

I don't think trust and coordination is the main problem. There were some mistakes caused by things we didn't knew about the pandemic early on, but most of the things experts said were correct, and most regular people treated the restrictions seriously early on. Governments simply had other priorities than listening to experts.

For example I've seen a lot of people taking the restrictions seriously early in 2020 in my country (Poland), but the restrictions often made no sense (they banned people from going to forests but never banned them from going to churches and kept schools working most of the time for political reasons, ministry of health first said that masks aren't necessary because they do nothing against covid, then he made masks mandatory, prime minister asked people to stay at home and closed down the economy when we had 100 cases in the country, then because of elections gave away free holidays trips and said Covid is behind us when we had thousands of cases, president said he doesn't believe in vaccination to get antivaxer support before elections, then again they introduced very strict (and random) restrictions, then banned abortion agaisnt the public opinion knowing full well it will cause mass protests in the middle of the 3rd wave in autumn 2020 - then healthcare was completely paralyzed and 60 000 surplus people died in a 38 000 000 country in a few months).

Basically limiting the loss of lives caused by covid was never a priority for the government - the priority was to keep as much support as possible, show that they are doing something, get favors done for their political vassals and get politically ahead of the opposition at whatever cost.

So I really can't be surprised by all the antivaxers and tinfoilers that showed up after all of that :/

Re: It will take 100 days to tailor a vaccine to a new variant

#64

Endless variants, endless boosters, endless profits. No wonder natural immunity is being suppressed. Having broad and long-lasting antibody and T-cell immunity is bad for profits and continuing this state of affairs.

Suppressed by whom? You think eg. my local belgian government has a vested interest in butchering its own economy so some american drug company can make profits? Or is it more likely that they're pushing vaccines over natural immunity because the former doesn't involve furthering spread and risk of hospitalization as a prerequisite for getting it? Please think before going full tinfoil.

Natural immunity has become a party line issues, sadly. The CDC also has done its part in shunning studies that confirm that it is at least as effective (when not more) than vaccine induced immunity, and boasting only those specific that confirm their narrative, be it nonseroconversion cases among PCR positive to controversial study with cherry picked cohorts.

Public health policy is hard, I gather, but disingenuous information (disinformation?) is a red line that public authorities should never pass (eg Iraqi WMD)

Re: It will take 100 days to tailor a vaccine to a new variant

#66
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All those problems were present in 1957 flu epidemic, the 1968/69 epidemic the 1977/79 flu epidemic Those were all influenza A sub-types viruses which we've had experience with. The closest we've come to COVID is SARS/MERS both of which had significantly high case fatality rates (~10% for SARS, 33% for MERS), but neither of those resulted in a pandemic of the same scale. Even then, early COVID symptoms puzzled doct…

> Those were all influenza A sub-types viruses which we've had experience with. Let's be serious. Most doctors back then couldn't tell the flu from a coronavirus, and it was probably for the better. You are taking the present-day degree of information and discounting it back at a much too generous rate. People, even doctors, were all but alarmed in those years of flu epidemic, even though people died, and young peopl…

You're absolutely right with the last sentence.

Nobody remembers the flu seasons and want to treat Corona differently. Which makes zero sense when the vaccines are now in effect.

And as long as we get bombarded with Corona news on a daily basis, there will be no significant change in people's attitude.

Re: It will take 100 days to tailor a vaccine to a new variant

#67
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was about how well can a society work when there is mutual trust between leadership and followers, not about solving a problem efficiently. Although I did go off the subject with the anecdote. What is your take on handling the Covid crisis in Europe?

I don't think trust and coordination is the main problem. There were some mistakes caused by things we didn't knew about the pandemic early on, but most of the things experts said were correct, and most regular people treated the restrictions seriously early on. Governments simply had other priorities than listening to experts. For example I've seen a lot of people taking the restrictions seriously early in 2020 in m…

>he doesn't believe in vaccination to get antivaxer support before elections

Just, wow!

Essentially, the same thing here in Croatia. Our people have a wide spectre of ideologic views with a very different take on crisis, out of which currently very few trusts the government.

In the initial wave, government made very good results with keeping covid numbers down, and they were very widely accepted and respected. Even though there were some non-sense, people were glad just to know government reacting effitiently and strategically.

But the government lost all the trust now with promoting vaccination with some very odd restrictions and suprisingly stupid rhetoric, without honesty or explanations. There is probably much more truth to why everything just went down the drain, but I would say the main goal is to force out vaccination with no exception.

I do not respect or support our government ideologically nor due to their competence. The crisis would just be more managable if they had our trust right now, but they've lost it and I don't see it turning back. And I do not see how will they handle the crisis with so little support.

I may have sounded like I was proposing blind trust, rather than trust in return of transparency, honesty etc from leaders/governement. Because in essence I think we are talking about the same thing.

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