161–170 of 223 posts
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I mean...kind of like the excuses we need masks ad infinitum, regardless of vaccine status? Both points are valid IMO
It was timid, but the CDC has in fact released relaxed mask guidance for vaccinated people.
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> How many years would make you feel comfortable? Five? 10? 50? How long do you plan on living? To give a vaccine to say, an 8 year old child, with no health concerns and excellent natural immunity to a disease (better than say, for seasonal flu), then it stands to reason that you would need so much data to show that the absolute risk reduction was greater than 0 (and not below 0), that the question is barely even wo…
I wasn't actually talking about children, however, while they themselves are not at elevated risk from COVID, children are little filth monsters who spread disease to everyone around them. The risk is they pass it on, and we are talking about aggregate population risk. Nothing is risk-free, and demanding 80 years of data to know a vaccine has absolutely no long-term results when vaccine risk profiles are pretty well…
Honest question - I'm after good articles to read about this: Why is it that we have been able to eliminate things like Polio and Smallpox, yet there's doubt about COVID? They were both viruses, must have mutated, were fairly easily spread and it must have taken longer to vaccinate enough people given the advances in logistics and vaccine tech we now have. What's the fundamental difference?
The vaccines for polio and smallpox are extremely effective (some polio vaccines are up to 100%) and pretty much everyone received them, for decades. Covid vaccines are likely somewhat less effective, and there's considerable hesitancy in some countries. The US will be lucky to get to 70%, at the moment, and France may be even worse, for instance.
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The data didn't evolve, though. The only thing that ever changed was the political winds. Throughout this whole pandemic, experts have bent over backwards to defend and justify political decisions--and most humiliatingly, decisions that _directly_ contravene their prior advice. Two examples: - Experts encouraged the George Floyd protests because "racism is the real virus," despite their prior anti-protest stance. Giv…
Politicians don't make decisions based on the opinions of experts, they make them based on what they think is going to win them the next election. Yeah, public health authorities might be saying we need to be careful with reopening schools, but if 70% (This is an example number pulled out of my ass, not an actual poll number) of the population wants schools to reopen because parents are tired of their kids being home…
Parents: open the schools.
Experts: no, it's unsafe.
Progressive politician: open the schools.
Experts: great idea sir, just as we've been saying all along!
This story is also an example of the conflicting stories we get out of leaders? How it is possible we'll _never_ reach herd immunity? They were saying we needed that just last summer! That loss of trust in giving us correct/congruent information from leaders is absolutely hurting America right now
Manipulating the population behavior by manipulating goalposts seems to have been intentional the whole time. From the NYT in December titled How Much Herd Immunity Is Enough? > In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally read…
Maybe government officials should just give the facts straight and not try to manipulate the public. Even if the lies work in the short run they have longer lasting effects on government trust (as I'd argue we're seeing now, a year later)
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I wasn't actually talking about children, however, while they themselves are not at elevated risk from COVID, children are little filth monsters who spread disease to everyone around them. The risk is they pass it on, and we are talking about aggregate population risk. Nothing is risk-free, and demanding 80 years of data to know a vaccine has absolutely no long-term results when vaccine risk profiles are pretty well…
there are between 0 and 1 years of data right now. most vaccines take many years for approval, 80 is a bit of a stretch
However, there's far more than 1 year of data on mRNA and adenovirus vector vaccines.
The thing is lay people really have no basis for saying "there's not enough data" and "it's too fast" -- the scientists who study this are the ones with the background to make that assessment. All we really have are gut feelings and anecdota.
This story is also an example of the conflicting stories we get out of leaders? How it is possible we'll _never_ reach herd immunity? They were saying we needed that just last summer! That loss of trust in giving us correct/congruent information from leaders is absolutely hurting America right now
The Michael Osterholm podcast goes into this last week.
"So when B117 came along and we see anywhere from 50 to 100 percent more transmission than previous strains, that automatically had to move herd immunity levels up to accomplish the slowing down of transmission. And we don't know what that is. I can truly tell you, as an epidemiologist in the trenches for 46 years, B117 is much more infectious than the strains we dealt with 6 months ago. But I can't tell you with any certainty what that means. So let's just at the outset say, you know, we'd all like to try to achieve concepts of herd immunity, but I don't know what they are. And I can only hope that we can slow down transmission. But I don't have a sense that by itself will ever stop it." [0]
I think this problem is more complex than many talk about and it ends up just being fear based news. People aren't hesitant to get the vaccine because it might have Bill Gates microchips, they are hesitant because this was the fastest rolled out vaccine in human history (>3x faster than the second) and people don't trust the government. Their concerns aren't founded in science, but they are reasonable. So treating th…
I totally agree that many people aren't following the news closely and they'll probably eventually get vaccinated. However, I don't see what you're criticizing in the Nature article. They're pretty clearly distinguishing between herd immunity from infection vs from vaccination: > In early October, a libertarian think tank and a small group of scientists released a document called the Great Barrington Declaration. In…
The title is "The false promise of herd immunity for COVID-19", which is in contradiction of what we're seeing today. Today we're aiming for herd immunity and actively promising it. But of course, the subtitle adds nuance. This is because at that time we were only talking about herd immunity in the context of Sweden and Trump's "let it run its course". So this conflates herd immunity with herd immunity through natural infection.
> The writers of the declaration received an audience in the White House, and sparked a counter memorandum from another group of scientists in The Lancet, which called the herd-immunity approach a “dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence”
While you and I know that they mean "we should quarantine people and not let the infection run its course" this claim is a bit confusing.
The article ironically brings up what I'm saying
> “I’m a bit puzzled that it’s now used to mean how many people need to get infected before this thing stops,” says Marcel Salathé
Here's two adjacent sentences that contradict.
> Will herd immunity work? (subsection totle)
> Many researchers say pursuing herd immunity is a bad idea.
The next sentence is
> “Attempting to reach herd immunity via targeted infections is simply ludicrous,” Andersen says.
The reason to push on the Nature article is because Nature, above all else, should be much clearer. They write these articles as scientific communicators and have the expertise. I think reading as a scientist you'll miss those "herd immunity is dangerous" moments and fill in the gap in your head because of your prior knowledge, but others don't and we saw that become widespread (as noted in my quote). It's subtle, but the distinctions matter. And we should have a high bar for more prestigious sources like Nature. There are other articles from less (scientifically) prestigious sources which were even more convoluted (iirc, WaPo, WSJ, and CNN made similar mistakes).
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Yeah, sure, the kids are incredibly unlikely to die from COVID, but what about the grandma they hug when they get home from school? What about the teachers? I agree on the outdoor activities thing, though. I go for a daily walk through trails behind my house, and I never bothered with a mask.
> what about the grandma they hug when they get home from school? Why not say "don't go to Grandma's house" instead of "don't go to school"? The former is way less disruptive. > What about the teachers? Most teachers aren't high-risk. Let the ones who are teach over Zoom or get paid leave.
That ignores the issue that teachers don't want to return until schools can offer PPE and safety regs.
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You sure about that? From what I've seen, the experts have gladly admitted they were wrong. It's the politicians who refuse to go back.
I mean yes I am sure, lol. Kids (IMO) and schools should've been opened and outdoor activities (non-mass events) should be restriction-free _everywhere_ as the risks associated to those populations or activities are vanishingly small. But several states still have onerous (IMO) restrictions.