Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm' • Hacker News Board

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#361

Post by christkv » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #352

christkv wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you vaccinate your kid he will still get it and spread it. I don't understand why this fact is just ignored by people. The vaccine is not sterilizing, it does not stop transmission, only lessens disease severity. The chain of transmissions will only be broken by natural immunity unfortunately.

The studies I've read suggest reduced transmission ability by vaccinated individuals. If you know of ones that state otherwise please share them, I'd love to read them as well for a broader understanding. If in fact vaccination reduces transmission of the virus, then that's an advantage I'll stack in our favor, among other precautions like wearing masks.

Sure https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597 shows barely any reduction in transmissibility for alpha and delta. But but just looking at the numbers in high vaccinated countries already can tell you it. If transmissibility was significantly reduced you would expect this wave to be smaller than the last but it’s bigger.

More studies available on https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/search?q=Transmission&restr... if you want to deep dive

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#362

Post by tzs » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

dham wrote: post #316

throwaway6734 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it is still an indirect concern because the unvaccinated are taking up hospital resources that I might need. The solution to this is to bump the unvaccinated to the lowest priority of hospitals. If beds are full they should be removed from the hospital.

Sure sounds good, let's do that with obese people too. Let's see, no need to treat lung cancer for people who smoked anymore. I think we just give a check list to doctors and let them decide on who to treat based on decisions someone has made in their life. Good idea. I'm on board

Those aren't really comparable. Those conditions all can land you in the hospital but there is enormous variation from person to person in how long it takes for that happen. You make the decisions that lead to that condition and then sometime in the next ~60 years it gets you.

The effect is that these decisions result in a small increase in the steady state hospitalization levels. If obesity or smoking increases the effects of that increase on hospitalization will be spread out over decades giving plenty of time for hospital capacity to be adjusted to deal with it. (Same if obesity or smoking decreases--hospitals won't suddenly be laying off staff. Hospitalizations would fall over several years giving hospitals plenty of time to reduce capacity by simply not replacing as many workers who retire or change professions).

COVID-19 is bad for hospitals because it is short term. That's why in the US we are currently getting about 20x as many daily COVID-19 hospital admissions as we got cancer admissions before COVID-19 (that's for all cancers, not just lung cancer).

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#363

Post by kcplate » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 10:52 PM UTC

tagoregrtst wrote: post #282

MildlySerious wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [2] ironically, a person who doesn't understand that doesn't have much to live for. What's the point of concluding with such a cynical and subjective-at-best remark?

Im sorry if it came out as cynical. What is worth living for that isnt also worth dying for?

Easter of 2020 I watched my granddaughters hunt eggs in my front yard while “safely” behind a window. I cried like a baby when my 2 year old granddaughter upset and inconsolable didn’t understand why she couldn’t come in to see me.

My wife and I in May of 2020 decided that a hug from our grandchildren and children was worth way more the minimal risk we had of dying from Covid should we have caught it. We ended our exile in May day and decided to let fate be fate and not let fear consume us and prevent us from enjoying our family.

I don’t begrudge others for their own decisions, but for me, the pandemic ended for me mentally on Mothers Day 2020. Time with my family is worth dying for…so if I catch it and it kills me, so be it.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#364

Post by acdha » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 11:15 PM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #358

acdha wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone knew? I mean I can send videos if you'd like of Biden and left-wing politicians saying the vaccine would prevent you from getting it. If you were paying attention, note the difference between saying it will prevent all retransmission versus reducing it, which is what happened. Also, try to compare what actual medical experts said as opposed to the political entertainers whose talking points you're repeatin…

Oh look, you're wrong again: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/22/joe-biden/... > Biden said Dec. 14 that people vaccinated for COVID-19 "do not spread the disease to anyone else."

Biden is not a medical expert — as you might note, I tried to get you to focus on what they were saying — and that statement is clearly imprecise, which is why it was rejected by medical experts. He had at other times expressed this concept more accurately as improving the odds so this seems more like overstatement (“anyone” versus “as many”) as part of a broader point which has been quite accurate: getting vaccinated is the best way to end the pandemic.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#365

Post by zapdrive » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 11:27 PM UTC

ryanbrunner wrote: post #97

version_five wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue a lot of people have already gone crazy and will do anything to avoid going back to normal and letting people live their lives. The obsession with the need for a "new normal" amongst some is really terrifying. There needs to be some targeted campaign to "deprogram" the people that have become obsessed with covid and make them move on. I'm serious about this, if we just pretend it will get better on it's own…

People have different situations. I'm severely immunocomprimised - while I get and understand that the world can't remain locked down indefinitely for a small segment of the population, I'm absolutely going to advocate for my own survival, and that doesn't make me "crazy" or that I need "deprogramming". It's not irrational to not want widespread transmission of a virus that has a 20% CFR for people like me.

It's unfortunate for you, I understand. But where do we draw the line? I'm severely allergic to birch tree pollen, should I start advocating to burn down all the birch trees in the world?

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#366

Post by bcoughlan » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 11:30 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #295

bequanna wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless your toddler has some serious co-morbidities they are in a super low risk group if they contract. The number of hospitalizations/deaths under age 18 are incredibly small.

Two things. First, low != zero. Second, it isn’t always about taking the most pragmatic approach but the most humanitarian one. People during this whole pandemic have been very cavalier with putting others at risk to not get inconvenienced. “Your kid probably won’t die” is not a winning argument.

Your false statement is that people are just inconvenienced. Younger generations will be picking up the tab for our actions.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#367

Post by igetspam » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 11:34 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #319

thdespou wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me but there have been times last year where Ireland had the highest infection cases in Europe (shamefully). To be honest I wasn't very convinced that there was a ever a real lockdown here, just people using their cars less. Now it's back to normal almost.

Infections or lock downs should never be the barometer of success. Success should be measured by death tolls, happiness, and economic prosperity.

How would you account for happiness in relation to death tolls? Are they neutral or negative? Or maybe positive, if they're religious?

An increase in per capita infections feels like a pretty solid negative indicator of success. Happiness during this whole ordeal is often directly related to faith in science and willingness to make hard choices to ultimately strive for a reduction in infections. People who make hard choices to protect others aren't doing it to be happy, they're doing it to be right. Maybe you could convince me to agree to economics as indicator but not an immediate one. The results of our choices will take years to fully manifest and understand and the if you want to look at it in th immediate term, the US markets just took a dive and that will have global impact.

So... success?

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#368

Post by shadowgovt » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 12:16 AM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #357

acdha wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a lower rate and with far less severity, which is exactly what we expected based on the initial data. Omicron's arrival means that more people are getting sick but when they do, it's still considerably less severe — which is good because Omicron is sending more people to the hospital even though it's ~40-50% less likely to do so compared to Delta. I realize that you don't want to admit having been so wrong about t…

Again, there you go quoting CDC ignoring the authorization which is for prevention and moving the goal posts quicker than QAnon. Some vaxxed people are in a constant state of Stockholm Syndrome. The evidence you speak of is unattainable at this point and VAERS is one of the only outlets which is significantly backlogged, and according to pro-vaxxers can't be trusted anymore because it doesn't fit their narrative.

VAERS was never trustworthy as a raw data source, only as a source of information on what to investigate. It is the antithesis of medical research... Self-reported, no control for any known bias effects, no scrubbing for obviously erroneous data.

Here's a VAERS entry about a patient turning getting abducted by aliens and turning into the Incredible Hulk after the MMR vaccine. https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?IDNUMBER=221...

Reasoning from VAERS without controlled studies is, at best, like cutting the ends off a roast before you bake it because you heard your grandmother did it that way. At worst, it's like irradiating a spider and enticing it to bite you because you read once that somebody got spider powers that way.

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#369

Post by shadowgovt » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 12:24 AM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #334

acdha wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you? You’re just regurgitating right-wing talking points, conspicuously short on sources or demonstrated understanding. When you do read the lengthy material at https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro... note that the approvals are based on fighting the disease. Reducing transmission — at which the vaccines were clearly highly effective prior to Omicron — is one part of that but an even more…

Well, for one you are quoting the CDC which is not who approves vaccines. https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro... > The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine is authorized to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in individuals 18 years of age and older. https://web.archive.org/web/20211103065325/https://www.fda.g... > The vaccine…

Covid-19, the disease, is a family of symptoms up to and including death.

SARS-COV-2 is a transmissible virus that causes the disease COVID-19.

In the medical jargon, disease and its causality are separate concepts (and this bifurcation honestly makes sense... There are quite a few diseases where the treatment is to regulate symptoms without any hope of doing anything to modify the underlying active agent other than wait out the immune system to deal with it). It is entirely possible for a therapy to "prevent disease" without reducing the transmission of the underlying virus that causes the symptoms that make up a disease.

It is unfortunate that because of the conflation of these ideas in the layman terms space, people misinterpreted what the vaccine was cleared to do. But blaming doctors or the FDA for that is like blaming computer engineers when users turn off their computer and then don't understand that everything in volatile memory wasn't saved to disk. "Where's my spreadsheet go? It was in the computer's memory, it should be here."

Re: Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of 'Omicron storm'

#370

Post by encryptluks2 » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 12:37 AM UTC

rsfern wrote: post #359

encryptluks2 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, there you go quoting CDC ignoring the authorization which is for prevention and moving the goal posts quicker than QAnon. Some vaxxed people are in a constant state of Stockholm Syndrome. The evidence you speak of is unattainable at this point and VAERS is one of the only outlets which is significantly backlogged, and according to pro-vaxxers can't be trusted anymore because it doesn't fit their narrative.

Why are you continuing to misrepresent the EUA documents? They don’t support your assertion. (If you point to where in the authorization docs they specify the goal is to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection, I’ll change my mind. I linked the moderna application in another sub thread, and the pfizer one is easy to find) Also VAERS is not the only data source we have for vaccine safety, it’s our hypothesis generation system. W…

They clearly do, it is like the very first sentence:

https://labeling.pfizer.com/ShowLabeling.aspx?id=14471&forma...

> The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to permit the emergency use of the unapproved product, Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 in individuals 5 years of age and older.

https://www.modernatx.com/covid19vaccine-eua/eua-fact-sheet-...

> The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to permit the emergency use of the unapproved product, MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINE, for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 in individuals 18 years of age and older.

https://www.fda.gov/media/146305/download

> You are being offered the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine to prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2. This Fact Sheet contains information to help you understand the risks and benefits of receiving the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine, which you may receive because there is currently a pandemic of COVID-19.

The real question should be, why do you refuse to even just acknowledge basic facts right from the official EUAs? They are for prevention, not for lessening symptoms, and they simply are not preventing COVID-19 with Omicron.