Earlier quoted context omitted.
>For the first few months of 2020, media outlets were constantly downplaying the threat of pandemic. They consistently under-reported the risk. "Should we be worried? No! The threat is remote!" This hasn't been my experience, in fact the British government's SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) was advising the government to lean on the press in order to increase 'the perceived level of personal threat' e…
I think GP is referring to earlier than that: when Covid was in China and was starting to blow up in Italy
Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
521–530 of 1001 posts
Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One is that the vaccine programme has now completely failed You mean succeeded ? As in, prevented many people from dying, and forced the virus to mutate into Omicron, which is far less dangerous.
Failed as in the vaccines, that were being advertised as being 95% effective with no talk of any boosters only 6 months ago, no longer provide any protection at all. As for the vaccines forcing mutation, SA is only 25% vaccinated so that doesn't work. Have the vaccines succeeded in preventing many people from dying? That is something for history to judge. There just isn't good enough data on vaccine deaths to judge t…
I don't think I've ever seen so many wrong sentences in a single HN comment.
I would love to go through and debunk them all, but I don't have the time or the crayons, nor would I think it would be effective in changing your beliefs. You're too far gone.
Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
NIH report says it does. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ 'Ivermectin is an FDA-approved broad-spectrum antiparasitic agent with demonstrated antiviral activity against a number of DNA and RNA viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).'
That's not an NIH report -- that's a random paper posted on the NIH domain. IVM may have some benefit in countries with parasite problems, unfortunately it doesn't do much in the rest of the world. Has already been discussed to death, there's no conspiracy, everyone would have loved for it to help but it really just doesn't; https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
Yeah, it's so silly. It's not like there aren't studies and doctors willing to investigate cheap, effective treatments for covid with existing drugs.
We know that steroids work because they were studied, they definitely work, they're cheap and now they're the standard of care. Why didn't the anti-ivermectin conspiracy come for dexamethasone? It's left unexplained...
Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
> acceptable levels Define acceptable levels? And does this suggest we continue masking every winter when "cases surge"? There will always be a variant of covid. Always. It's never going away. Basing mask mandates of any metric, be it cases, hospitalizations or deaths means every winter you'll be wearing a state mandated mask.
Are you trolling or do you really think that "every winter you'll be wearing a state mandated mask"? We've been in this pandemic now for close to 2 years. At every single point, government rules and guidance have lagged recommendations from the experts. I'm confident that there is exactly 0 chance that any governmental body in the US is going to continue to mandate masking after it's no longer necessary.
> Are you trolling or do you really think that "every winter you'll be wearing a state mandated mask"?
At this point, in the states that have mandates? I'm honestly not sure. There sure seems to be no rush to remove them despite having low "cases" and hospitalizations not being an issue. And given none of these states have given a single hint as to when they will go away... who knows?
States that continue this are absolutely normalizing mandated masks. Vaccines were sold as the end of masks (and they morally should have been regardless of what politicians say). Vaccines are the best we can do. Mandated masks in a post-vaccine world makes absolutely no sense at all. What other target could a government reasonably set after a vaccine? "Cases"? "Hospitalizations"? Well... those will always be there. So do we just keep doing this forever?
And if you say "hospital capacity" shouldn't these governments have fixed that already? We gave them two years and it was an emergency so where is the hospital capacity we put our lives on hold for? I mean, its still an emergency right? Shouldn't people be super pissed that government hasn't dealt with the actual problem they keep saying we have?
Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
it’s worth always keeping in mind that the only dichotomy that matters in political economies is that between the wealthy and powerful and everyone else, not left-right, black-white, east-west, socialist-capitalist, or anything else. it’s been this way for all of human history past and will likely be so for the rest of it too. that’s a sober position to take, not a cynical one, as some might argue. the more dynamic o…
Your second paragraph assumes our governments have the means to do that. They don't. Which breaks the logic of your conclusion. And masks do add protection. Their political leverage is null. What is gained by authorities ? There's no advantages. > if we were worried about public health, vaccination status wouldn’t be considered at all, only infection status. Ww are worried. Infection status is considered. Vaccination…
Of course there's a political advantage. It's something that forces everybody to visibly declare an affiliation with a side at all times in public. That will always be used for political advantage.
Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going away. Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got vaccinated simultaneously, the virus has an animal reservoir. Good news, selection pressure is for more-contagious and less-deadly. It will happen eventually, and then covid will be just another common cold.
> It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going away. Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got vaccinated simultaneously, the virus has an animal reservoir. You know that Smallpox was in cows (aka: Cowpox), right? We still wiped it out. Smallpox, Measles, Polio. We've wiped out diseases before, and we can do it again if we so try. I'm frankly more flabbergasted that people don't even know the history of dis…
Measles is making a strong comeback. It's a bit early to declare victory.
Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide. No, this scenario wouldn't be good news at all. Firstly, a marginally lower case fatality rate is a linear improvement, whereas much higher transmissibility is an exponential worsening. In other words, the reduced risk of an infected person getting into hospital is dwarfed by the exponential inc…
The thing is, vaccines were never advertised as tools to prevent infection. The story has always been that it reduces symptoms and hospitalization, so there are plenty of opportunities for the disease to get “tickets” in the evolution lottery. Between that, the animal reservoirs (COVID can spread to different species), and the millions of people in undeveloped countries who will never get a vax, COVID was guaranteed…
This isn’t true, and the lack of testing during the phase 3 trials to see if there were non-symptomatic cases was a deliberate design choice to avoid answering that question.
I’m all in on vaccination, but let’s not rewrite history.
Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is the only endgame. The covid virus is not going away. Even if everyone on the planet suddenly got vaccinated simultaneously, the virus has an animal reservoir. You know that Smallpox was in cows (aka: Cowpox), right? We still wiped it out. Smallpox, Measles, Polio. We've wiped out diseases before, and we can do it again if we so try. I'm frankly more flabbergasted that people don't even know the history of dis…
Measles is making a strong comeback. It's a bit early to declare victory.
Largely in antivax communities though.
It's not a problem in any area with high vaccine compliance.
Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
#529This is honesty good news. The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide. Way too many comments and articles that try and keep the fear train running full steam. A mild strain of covid that is contagious, leads to natural immunity and doesn’t require a vaccine is an absolute win win for the world.
> The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide. No, this scenario wouldn't be good news at all. Firstly, a marginally lower case fatality rate is a linear improvement, whereas much higher transmissibility is an exponential worsening. In other words, the reduced risk of an infected person getting into hospital is dwarfed by the exponential inc…
Natural immunity is the ONLY way back to a sane planet. It's time you take a step back, look at what happened for two years now, and realize we don't need this insanity anymore.
Re: Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe Covid: study
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The best case scenario is a new less deadly highly contagious strain that become the most dominant and spreads worldwide. No, this scenario wouldn't be good news at all. Firstly, a marginally lower case fatality rate is a linear improvement, whereas much higher transmissibility is an exponential worsening. In other words, the reduced risk of an infected person getting into hospital is dwarfed by the exponential inc…
The thing is, vaccines were never advertised as tools to prevent infection. The story has always been that it reduces symptoms and hospitalization, so there are plenty of opportunities for the disease to get “tickets” in the evolution lottery. Between that, the animal reservoirs (COVID can spread to different species), and the millions of people in undeveloped countries who will never get a vax, COVID was guaranteed…
I've heard that but then why do people say we need to get vaccinated to protect the most vulnerable members of society if the vaccine isn't actually slowing the spread and doesn't prevent infection?
EDIT:
To be clear I already had COVID and didn't have any serious symptoms so the argument about a hospital bed doesn't necessarily apply to me. Beyond that I actually got vaccinated, my question centers around the disparity of treatment we are giving individuals who are vaxxed and those who are not if both are capable of spreading. Further it brings in the question of vaccine mandates if they are much less effective then we were led to believe.