Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

news.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 370 posts

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#331

Post by vladTheInhaler »

nl wrote: post #32
inglor_cz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the Czech Republic, doctors in Brno are trying a combination of remdesivir and convalescent plasma in oncological Covid patients. They say that the combo has, so far, worked much better than either of the components in isolation. Out of the small cohort, they lost no one so far. Source in Czech: https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/jihomoravskykraj/3278822-brnen...

One thing I've learnt from the whole C19 treatment debacle is to never ever trust any single study. Unlike computer science where if you test something and it works once you and then you expect it to work for everyone, in medical research if you see an effect in one treatment study you probably won't see the same effect elsewhere. For treatments (unlike controlled vaccine studies) the cohorts are too small and there…

Even in computer science I don't think that holds. Lord knows there are enough stories about issues with unusual hardware and unreproducible heisen-bugs that I would never assume that something will work for everybody just because it worked once, on your own machine.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#332

Post by vladTheInhaler »

WalterBright wrote: post #57
BurningFrog wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, and it's even worse in social sciences. Outside of the "hard" sciences, there is always a study that "proves" X and another that "disproves" it. Not because scientists cheat, but because science is hard.

Social science studies tend to be agenda driven, too.

Do you have any evidence showing that social scientists are any more agenda driven than, for instance, biologists?

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#333

Post by mikem170 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #297
mikem170 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you put "one-in-tens-of-thousands" in quotes? I looked it up, in 2019 there were 89 million 20-39 years olds in the U.S. [0], and 7000 ages 18-39 died dies of covid19 [1]. Mathematically that works out to 1 in 12,714, and would be a bit higher were 18-19 years added to the denominator. I didn't mean to exaggerate this number. You mentioned family in vulnerable groups. Lets grant common sense, that someone who…

> Lets grant common sense, that someone who lives with their Grandparent's isn't going to go clubbing? Our recent history does not make me feel comfortable granting that. > Do you think it is unreasonable for a young person to go clubbing under any circumstances at the moment? I think it's unreasonable for local governments to permit said club to be open in the first place. > So why are per capita covid19 deaths high…

You bring up a valid point about NY vs. FL. NY [0] had more initial cases (initial outbreaks), Florida [1] had more over the summer (perhaps inside with a/c?), and they have been pretty much identical the last several months. I don't propose that Florida is doing better. But numerically it's hard to say they are doing worse. And there are at least some crowded nightclubs in Florida, and have been for months. I don't know of that happening in NY, I've heard of the ones there that tried getting shut down.

I'm not sure what to do with the idea of the someone who would willingly expose their Grandmother. Some grandmothers don't care. Some care a lot and won't take any chances. Most young people don't live with their grandmother's. I wouldn't go clubbing if I lived with my grandmother. When I'm visiting other people I'm sure to let them know about any recent exposure I've had, allowing them to decide if they're comfortable.

Maybe we should return to the main question of this thread, so we don't stray too far: Is it reasonable for young healthy people (who don't live with vulnerable people) to go out clubbing?

Given the numbers (7000 out of 89+ million 19-39 year olds have died in the country), my answer is still "yes!"

Another way of looking at it (for young people): Young people are 20x more likely to die of something besides covid [2]. Nobody thinks it's reasonable to hide from those other things, do they?

I'm in a different demographic, my odds aren't as good as those of an 18-39 year old, and I'm still comfortable going out and ignoring the pandemic when the urge strikes and I'll have a good time. I've paid close attention to the numbers, and only 1 in 600 people have died from this so far, tending to be older and with existing health issues. So my odds are even better than 1 in 600.

You may look at the same numbers and asses the risks differently. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and to isolate as they see fit.

Perhaps a better way to continue this conversation would be to agree on some numbers, then discuss why we look at the numbers differently?

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/new-york/ [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/ [2] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Counts...

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#334

Post by luxuryballs »

viraptor wrote: post #143
luxuryballs wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we learned should be not to decimate small businesses like tossing leaves to the wind “don’t worry we’ll build back better!” and let people decide their own risk taking. I think that it’s almost more terrifying than the thing itself that more people aren’t mostly incredibly disturbed by the insane violations of privacy and speech. Literally you should not, in a free society, be able take such injurious actions b…

> No amount of “but people could die” can justify this, that’s an irrelevant point, because there never a time when it was proper to remove autonomy for such a reason! Would you be interested in allowing unregulated tobacco adverts and smoking in any public spaces again as well?

I think making an addicting product and getting people hooked on it is another topic all together. Smoking is something you should be able to do, and not to do. If you are unable to move about without inhaling smoke that is injected into the scene by someone else it’s an active scenario. Getting sick is part of life, viruses and bacteria don’t have morals. You shouldn’t smoke around people who don’t want to smell it just like you shouldn’t set someone’s yard on fire. But literally controlling the movement and assembly of people because of microscopic organisms that have existed for millennia? That’s totally absurd and wholly different than intentionally burning chemical laden plant material around others.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#335

Post by luxuryballs »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #45
credit_guy wrote: post #19

What I don't understand is this: with tens of millions of people already vaccinated, why aren't we seeing a huge drive to collect plasma from vaccinated people with high level of antibodies? In the early days of the pandemic (about 1 year ago), I remember China sent a large amount of plasma to Italy. Why can't the US do the same now? The US is sitting on millions of AstraZeneca vaccines (that are not even approvad by…

The FDA won't allow convalescent plasma collection from vaccinated people ( https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan... ), on the grounds that their antibody response might be different than the response from a natural infection. (I don't know enough to judge whether or not this could be expected to cause practical issues.)

Perhaps they could make some allowances like they did with the vaccine approval method. Wasn’t the fastest vaccine ever previously a 4+ year endeavor with animal testing?

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#336

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #319
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also no randomized trial proving that parachutes prevent death during skydiving. But it stands to reason that not slamming into the ground at terminal velocity is good for your health, and it stands to reason that preventing the spread of a deadly disease saves lives. Countries that have prevented the spread of the disease (China, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and others) have orders of magnitude…

The principles underlying gravity are well understood. Covid and everything about it is not.

The germ theory of disease is also well established.

For SARS-CoV-2, while there are still some uncertainties about precisely how important different modes of transmission are, it's clear that it's a respiratory disease. Quarantine works to stop transmission. Lockdowns like the one in Wuhan or those in Australia work, because they stop infected people from coming into close proximity with susceptible people. This much is understood, despite whatever other uncertainties there are.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#337

Post by trulyme »

scott_w wrote: post #262
trulyme wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We wouldn't? That seemes like a bold statement. To put your numbers in perspective, in a population of 330mio with life expectancy 70-75y (USA numbers), every year around 4mio people die for some reason or another. Not saying covid is not a problem, but these numbers don't really support the claim.

The numbers absolutely do support my claim. A quick check shows the U.K. death toll increased by 15% in 2020 (600,000 in 2019, 690,000 in 2020). That was WITH the lockdowns in place. 40,000 people died of Covid in January 2021 alone as a result of the government's ineffective response leading up to Christmas. Compare that to New Zealand’s 26 total Covid deaths, or South Korea’s 1,669 total Covid deaths. I think my nu…

> Oh, and we wouldn’t have 130,000 dead in the UK and 500,000+ dead in the USA!

No they don't. Unless you have a way to create and investigate a parallel universe where you can put your thesis to a test, but I assume you don't.

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#338

Post by mikem170 »

Animats wrote: post #177
mikem170 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If it means snogging random strangers ... might not be a reasonable thing to do until late 2021 or after for most of us" 7000 people ages 18-39 have dies of covid19 in the U.S. [0][1]. There's at least 75 million people in that age group! (maybe more, sorry no handy/easy/exact reference) That's 1 in 10,000 odds of dying for that age group. They are 20 times more likely to die of something else. I think it is unrea…

Dying is 1 in 10,000. But about 10% of people who get coronavirus have some problems for months thereafter.[1] This is not well understood. "More than a third of them hadn’t returned to their usual state of health 2 to 3 weeks after testing positive. The older the patients, the more likely they were to say they their pre–COVID-19 health hadn’t come back. But even a quarter of the youngest, those aged 18 to 34 years,…

There is a lot of precedent for this. For example, here's a paper talking about the flu and heart swelling: [0]

> During the Sheffield, England influenza epi- demic from 1972 to 1973, the cases of 50 consecutive patients who were initially diagnosed as mild cases and were treated on an outpatient basis were followed. Transient electrocardiogram (ECG) changes were seen in 18 patients, and long-lasting changes were seen in 5 patients.

It could be that the flu is worse than covid in this regard, the few studies I looked at were surprising/sobering. They were talking for years about "long-flu" after the 1918 pandemic.

Until we have numbers to back it up I would not make the assumption that covid is any worse or different in this regard. Conventional wisdom is that every virus that attacks the body leaves some people with long term lung, heart, and or brain damage.

The article you referenced itself references a paper that has that 10% figure, that many patients who remain unwell beyond three weeks (an example was given of a healthy 40 year old laid low, but back to moderate exercise after 12 weeks). The article you linked to mentioned that a quarter of 18-34 year olds were still affected after 2-3 weeks.

I appreciate the additional numbers, the most impactful that anyone has brought up in this thread. It doesn't change my personal equation, but I appreciate the data. The world is a dangerous place. 18-39 years olds are about 20 times more likely to die of something beside covid [1]. Life goes on.

[0] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.685...

[1] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Counts...

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#339

Post by girvo »

helloworld11 wrote: post #302
girvo wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did a 3 day lockdown in Brisbane to give our contact tracers time to track down a single case. It worked, too, which was neat.

So the population of a whole city is normalized on lock down as if they were inmates of some large prison camp, while the government uses all sorts of surveillance mechanisms to track whoever they please freely for some very marginal public health benefit, and this whole situation is considered "great". What kinds of things have been normalized in the supposedly free countries by this pandemic.

That’s beyond ridiculous, and your assumptions about “marginal health benefit” are wrong on their face. You’re american, I assume?

Re: Vaccines should end the pandemic, despite the variants, say experts

#340

Post by viraptor »

luxuryballs wrote: post #334
viraptor wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No amount of “but people could die” can justify this, that’s an irrelevant point, because there never a time when it was proper to remove autonomy for such a reason! Would you be interested in allowing unregulated tobacco adverts and smoking in any public spaces again as well?

I think making an addicting product and getting people hooked on it is another topic all together. Smoking is something you should be able to do, and not to do. If you are unable to move about without inhaling smoke that is injected into the scene by someone else it’s an active scenario. Getting sick is part of life, viruses and bacteria don’t have morals. You shouldn’t smoke around people who don’t want to smell it…

> If you are unable to move about without inhaling smoke that is injected into the scene by someone else it’s an active scenario.

Walking around while infectious is also an active scenario.

> Getting sick is part of life, viruses and bacteria don’t have morals.

Part of death as well. Unless you're willing to get infected by anything and never seek healthcare, this stance is disingenuous.

Post reply on HN