291–300 of 361 posts
Until we have challenge trials, how do we know whether or not other variables, such as natural herd immunity and seasonality are not also significant contributing factors to the 'substantial reduction'?
Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? The line I've heard repeatedly is we're waiting for "total" herd immunity, as in ensuring almost all of a population is potentially protected from the virus. Frequently quoting fall / end of 2021, potentially into 2022. Shouldn't the only benchmark be those with medium-to-…
Yes 100%. As soon as the "vulnerable" have received their vaccine we should remove all restrictions even if the vaccine doesn't 100% prevent the "old fat cigarette smoking weak people" from dying from this cough virus because after the vaccination there is nothing more we can do.
Vaccines are the single most effective way to prevent disease after clean water. It is the cherry on top of a cake in terms of what humans can achieve medically. A vaccine is literally the dream to achieve for any illness which could affect us. As a result, as soon as we have deployed our best and most effective weapon against this virus we must open up again. If the vaccine doesn't prevent fat people from dying then nothing will and we just have to accept that fat people will die due to their own wrong doings. After all that's how the world is designed to work.
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I agree completely. The only reason they used for shutting everything down at first was so hospitals don't get overrun. That's clearly not happening right now in most places. Also, it's not uncommon for the flu to cause hospitals to exceed capacity and we don't shut down for that.
> was so hospitals don't get overrun. That's clearly not happening right now in most places Citation needed. Up to 3 weeks ago, California, the Southeast were in field hospital territory. Anecdotally, Alabama hospitals have been in overflow since July. Georgia re-established a field hospital in January at their conference center [1] hospitalizations only stopped dropping beginning at the end of January [1] https://ww…
And that article is from December.
https://www.covid-georgia.com/today-in-georgia/hospitalizati...
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I agree completely. The only reason they used for shutting everything down at first was so hospitals don't get overrun. That's clearly not happening right now in most places. Also, it's not uncommon for the flu to cause hospitals to exceed capacity and we don't shut down for that.
This is what I found bizarre about NZ's approach. Their goals was 0 _cases_ in the entire country. It's a great accomplishment but perhaps unnecessary.
Still, I think you're right when you say perhaps unnecessary: some countries have successfully suppressed COVID without eliminating it. That said, it's some but not many countries.
I'm a bit ambivalent. Regardless, it certainly wasn't necessary for NZ to close their border to asylum seekers.
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> Group 1C is pretty much "everyone". No, it's not. It's “essential workers”, which isn't everyone in the listed sectors but people in the listed sectors whose work cannot effectively be done remotely; approximately, the people that were exempted and allowed to work on site during the strongest lockdowns, where they occurred at all. > Doesn't that cover pretty much everyone on HN ? Probably not; lots of people on HN…
I disagree, "everyone" isn't too much of a hyperbole. The system is gamed and most of the "essential workers" aren't essential in the sense their work could be done fully remote. I work for a large corporation and we were all deemed essential workers. The employees shifts in office are rotated so that it's not a full capacity at any given time. I know a handful of other corporations doing the same thing. Outside of b…
Now people are going to game this stuff, but the distribution is wide enough that it’s not really that import to be completely precise.
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The AZ vaccine still needs to be produced, it isn't sitting in a warehouse somewhere. The amount of time it would take to make AZ vaccine is the same as making the other Pfizer/Moderna vaccines. It's unlikely it would increase supply at all.
I disagree, 3 vaccine sources should be better than 2. Now, if the US hasn't contracted any AZ vaccine, then you're right and the whole discussion is moot.
According to bloomberg the US has purchased 300M doses each of Moderna, Pfizer and AZ. That doesn't mean they actually have production capacity though.
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> was so hospitals don't get overrun. That's clearly not happening right now in most places Citation needed. Up to 3 weeks ago, California, the Southeast were in field hospital territory. Anecdotally, Alabama hospitals have been in overflow since July. Georgia re-established a field hospital in January at their conference center [1] hospitalizations only stopped dropping beginning at the end of January [1] https://ww…
That's why I said "in most places". And that article is from December. https://www.covid-georgia.com/today-in-georgia/hospitalizati...
Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? The line I've heard repeatedly is we're waiting for "total" herd immunity, as in ensuring almost all of a population is potentially protected from the virus. Frequently quoting fall / end of 2021, potentially into 2022. Shouldn't the only benchmark be those with medium-to-…
> You may, and indeed we have, shut it down if a large part of the population were at risk of hospitalization or death I wouldn't really call 1% of the population "a large part" of it. It's just, our healthcare capacity relative to the size of the overall population is miniscule. So even a disease that threatens .1% of the population with death and 1% with hospitalization is enough to overwhelm the healthcare system.…
The IFR for COVID is likely ten times that, at least in societies with decent numbers of older people.
> Almost nobody notices or remembers blips of abnormally high "excess deaths" for a particular year
This isn't a bad flu season in a 5 year cycle. The excess deaths caused by COVID last year are not just 'abnormally high'. They're more like once in a lifetime abnormally high.
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> was so hospitals don't get overrun. That's clearly not happening right now in most places Citation needed. Up to 3 weeks ago, California, the Southeast were in field hospital territory. Anecdotally, Alabama hospitals have been in overflow since July. Georgia re-established a field hospital in January at their conference center [1] hospitalizations only stopped dropping beginning at the end of January [1] https://ww…
That's why I said "in most places". And that article is from December. https://www.covid-georgia.com/today-in-georgia/hospitalizati...
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> Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? No. This is the "flatten the curve" logic which was a horrible misjudgment. Having the disease in circulation in the community is not only doing tremendous damage to many, many people (even if the hospitals aren't full), but is also allowing the virus to mutate and poten…
> Countries like Australia and New Zealand have shown that if you keep up lockdown measures for just a month or two after the hospitals free up (AND if you institute and keep real travel quarantine restrictions), you can get the virus to effectively ZERO community spread and keep it there. It's too late for that anywhere that isn't super remote like AU/NZ. Even South Korea and Japan, isolated as they are and with ver…
With vaccines and a decent uptake, the difficulty level to achieve zero spread should go down significantly.
That said, I totally agree that short but strict lockdowns would be much better than permanent half-assed measures.