How many people close their windows and use air conditioning in India nowadays? Is it that season now?
India’s second wave
201–210 of 477 posts
Re: India’s second wave
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point of wearing masks is mostly to prevent you from infecting others if you're already infected. They're somewhat effective at preventing infection but that's not what they're best at - if you're wearing a mask in a room with an unmasked, contagious case, you're still in danger.
>If you’re already infected. And if you’ve had it or been vaccinated?
Requisition (symptoatic or asymptomatic), or simply acquiring viral particals and re-distributing them, are both possible.
It's also far easier to establish (and verify) a "masks requried" policy (visual inspecition is sufficient) than a "masks or fully-completed vaccination schedule required" one.
The ultimate goal isn't protecting individual health but public health, and here, social measures including distancing, quarantine, masks, sanitation (though perhaps less so than first thought), etc., all reduce the probability of transmission through the population at large.
We're used to thinking of individual health. Public health is related, but is not the same thing. Logics and measures that are appropriate or sensible in the case of individual health may not be for public health. (And vice versa.)
Public health is an emergent phenomenon of individual health.
Re: India’s second wave
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No, the EU doesn't, unfortunately. The EU did . For a year. And now it doesn't, since the UK and USA do not.
> For a year The first vaccine only came out about 4 months ago. However, you are right - the EU has donated about 30 million doses, enough for 15 million people. It's not nothing, but not that much either.
One month ago:
> Overall, 77 million doses have been shipped from the European Union since early December, 88 million will have been distributed internally by the end of the week, and 62 million shots have been administered within the bloc, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/covid-vaccines-e...
The EU tried to play nice and it was screwed over by other countries and by AstraZeneca.
If you look at the numbers, the EU exported almost as many vaccines as it used, while its vaccination rate was half the UK/US one.
Re: India’s second wave
#204Wearing mask might just delay getting the infection. I wore mask all the time, wfh and go out only for groceries, still got infected. And when the CM gets Covid a second time after vaccination anyone can get it even with mask or vaccination.
People don't understand that the area under the curve will remain the same. Mask or no mask, the same percentage of people will be needed to reach herd immunity.
The only exception to this is vaccinations. They may give you immunity without being infected. (They are not without risk though.)
Re: India’s second wave
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think we need a UBI that makes it easy to live in a city where ~$3000 month ($2400 + normal unemployment) won't cover expenses including housing.
2400 a month is rent here in Austin - and not even expensive rent. Without income, those rentals will foreclose/be evicted. Are you saying future pandemic responses should imply much of society simply deserves to be destitute?
Unable to afford $2400 month housing in an expensive city isn't the same thing as destitute.
There's houses available in much of the country for $100,000 or less. I'm fine arguing that people can have the option to struggle paying high rent or move, we don't need to pay the high rent just because they prefer the place.
Re: India’s second wave
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eventually there will be a variant which spreads epidemically in even a fully vaccinated population. But such an complete escape mutation is likely to come at a cost to fitness for the virus so it will be less transmissible and virulent. And in vaccinated individuals they will still have cross-reactive immune responses. The 1918 H1N1 pandemic just evolved into seasonal influenza (or co-evolved with the human immune s…
And vaccine escape is non-binary as well. Variants able to do that may displace other variants, but be unable to push R0 over 1 in a largely vaccinated population. The "South African" variant B1351 can break through Pfizer, but it does seem to be controllable.[1] A booster shot has already been developed, and I expect we'll be able to win the arms race against this virus. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2…
We've most likely already won the arms race against this virus. I'll take a variant booster if I'm offered one, but in a population where 60%-70% of the population is vaccinated and a good chunk of the rest have natural immunity I doubt any of the existing variants can spread. And if it does spread it is only a matter of time before there's enough immunity to push R0 below zero for all the existing variants.
An actual immune-escaping variant is going to have to do more than just a few mutations and will have to substantially change along 20 or so different epitopes of the spike protein, which will almost certainly come at a cost to fitness.
It probably will eventually do that and it'll become endemic, but won't be anywhere near as transmissible or virulent as it has been.
Re: India’s second wave
#207Lockdowns hurt poor people very badly; they need to earn to survive. All the more reason everyone should mask up. And yet, most people stopped masking months ago. Crowds are as bad as they were in 2019. On top of that, doctors here have created a craze for remdesivir, resulting in a blackmarket for it. The central and state governments have mismanaged plenty of things. While they deserve their share of blame, the ord…
What I don't get is why we call ourselves democracies and speak as "lockdowns hurt poor people very badly" In a representative democracy, you wouldn't lock down and force people to starve - you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status. locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does. It's like this pand…
Precisely.
What you described is exactly what happened in China and Vietnam: one short strict lockdown while taking care of people's material necessities. Unsurprisingly, both countries have eliminated community transmission.
Re: India’s second wave
#208https://archive.is/VYm6A
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Re: India’s second wave
#209Lockdowns hurt poor people very badly; they need to earn to survive. All the more reason everyone should mask up. And yet, most people stopped masking months ago. Crowds are as bad as they were in 2019. On top of that, doctors here have created a craze for remdesivir, resulting in a blackmarket for it. The central and state governments have mismanaged plenty of things. While they deserve their share of blame, the ord…
What I don't get is why we call ourselves democracies and speak as "lockdowns hurt poor people very badly" In a representative democracy, you wouldn't lock down and force people to starve - you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status. locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does. It's like this pand…
> you would lock down and provide income/food/capabilities for people to live regardless of their social/economic status.
You are mistaking democracy with other virtues. income/food/capabilities do not come from thin air, it is eventually generated by people and under lockdowns when most economy is at a standstill this is incredibly difficult. So even the "redistribution" does not work that well. India is also a far poorer country so there is not much to distribute in first place.
> locking down isn't why poor people hurt, locking down and doing nothing to feed them does.
What we need is some humility that we do not fully understand what others need and the only way to find it out is by giving people freedom. Poor people in India right now do not want anyone's alms. They are more interested into going out, doing what they want to do rather than just get food clothing and shelter. The previous lockdown did ensure that everyone had food clothing and shelter through government and private charity efforts but people were in general pretty upset.
I think we should stop assigning blame to democracy just because realities don't match up our expectations, partly because we are not infinitely smart to understand what other people want.
Re: India’s second wave
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> We have not been desperately waiting for a pittance of $1200. No, we've been desperately waiting for vacinnes after being repeatedly promised there will be plently for everyone ("look at all these contracts we've signed!") while they pay you off with massive borrowing that someone is going to be responsible for when the music stops. Meanwhile Texas, the poster-child for bad behaviour, is headed back to normal.
Texas is not normal :) Most of us are staying home still, in the major cities we collectively wear masks regardless of our goofy gov. Large places of employment still aren't opening offices and many that are talking about opening are doing so with the realization it won't be like it used to be...
Not sure where you live - but I travel full time in an RV and have stayed and traveled through El Paso, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and everywhere in between in the last 3 months. Maybe some are still hiding at home, but from my experience the overwhelming majority of Texans seem to be out enjoying the sunshine and open businesses.