Already 61% of the US have gotten their first jab, and it is only natural that the pace will slow down a bit. Distribution is always a bit of a long-tail. Especially when the last 13% are going to be the least interested.
After my second jab I honestly don’t care. Time to get on with life.
We have someone in our family that can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons and they feel the same way. The risk goes down significantly when the whole family is vaccinated.
It’s time to put covid in the “managed risk” section of our life and get on with things.
Depends on your vaccine. NEJM had a RWE study on Pfizer from Israel's data [1] that showed the 2nd shot had 92% efficacy against asymptomatic infection. Symptomatic infection was 94%.
You should care because your vaccine doesn't necessarily prevent you from catching a mutated variant . Given a long enough timeline and enough hosts such a strain will evolve, it's only a matter of time.
You want a source for what? That viruses are subject to evolutionary pressures and will mutate to better adapt to their environments like literally everything else as advantageous random mutations are found?
You seem to be overstating the likelihood of covid-19 mutating into another strain, like the flu does. It's a coronavirus and those are known to be different in this regard. I haven't seen a source saying that we should expect immunity-evading strains. Do you have anything decent?
>You should care because your vaccine doesn't necessarily prevent you from catching a mutated variant . Given a long enough timeline and enough hosts such a strain will evolve, it's only a matter of time.
Yes, I know there are variants. But I've seen no science saying that it is likely or expected that the vaccine won't work against covid-19 variants. Have you?
> They literally already exist!
Ok, I googled and found this: "Variant or strain? Experts explain what's happened to the coronavirus" [0]
From the article: "However, Soucy noted that all currently known variants of COVID-19 belong to the SARS-CoV-2 strain and have not mutated enough to either be classified as their own strain or be ineffective against current and prospective COVID-19 vaccines."
Another quote from the article: "Infectious disease expert Dr. Lisa Barrett told CTV News Channel on Sunday that viruses often mutate, but some viruses do it more than others. She noted that while the genetic code of coronaviruses does typically change over time, she says the mutations aren’t normally a cause for concern."
Here's another article, with references to multiple studies: "We now have the best evidence yet that everyone develops long-term coronavirus immunity after infection — and it's not just about antibodies" [1]
From that article: "Many people who've never gotten COVID-19 seem to have memory T cells that can recognize the new coronavirus." ... "In this case, experts think these cross-reactive T cells likely come from previous exposure to other coronaviruses — those that cause common colds."
That's the kind of stuff I find when I dig into this. What are you seeing?
>Yes, I know there are variants. But I've seen no science saying that it is likely or expected that the vaccine won't work against covid-19 variants.
Absolutely it is the case that even in the extremely limited time that Covid has existed it's already built tolerance to some vaccine mechanisims - for example the Novavax vaccine is something like 89% effective normally, but drops to 50% effective against variant B.1.351. [1] Any vaccine that relies on the covid-19 spike protein (all of them) is best case less effective and worst case useless if a small change to that spike protein is made. In a long enough timeline such a random mutation will happen. Most of them will not result in viable viruses but eventually one of them will. It's just a matter of statistics.
>"Infectious disease expert Dr. Lisa Barrett told CTV News Channel on Sunday that viruses often mutate, but some viruses do it more than others.
This language is a little bit weasley in that it implies that COVID-19 varies at a relatively slow rate. This is a widespread but incorrect assumption. Covid-19 mutates at a rate of ~10^-3 nucleotide substitutions per site per year, which is comparable to ebola or other RNA viruses [0]
>We now have the best evidence yet that everyone develops long-term coronavirus immunity after infection — and it's not just about antibodies"
This is saying that after you get the virus and your antibodies fade you have some residual resistance in the form of T-cells that stay in your immune system. Those T-cells are virus-specific. T-cells have all kinds of different mechanisms to detect infected cells in your body but, for example, it can detect viral peptides emitted by the cell. Where do viral peptides come from? The virus protein spike! The same thing that, when mutated, reduces or eliminates vaccine effectiveness.
As far as whether this is current happening and what it means- researchers have modified other viruses to use the COVID-19 protein spike and then gave the virus suitable conditions to replicate and mutate. The result was a covid-19 spike protein that had resistance to both monoclonal antibodies and antibodies taken from patients[2].This isn't some academic exercise, this is something that is literally happening in the real world right now.
Even worse on further inspection those same researchers realized these spike protein modifications were *already present* in the wild, they just weren't present in large numbers yet.
Thanks for the links! I made a first pass through them, and will look at them more. I appreciate the extra data. There's a lot of details to mull over, some of it seemingly conflicting.
For example, your linked article [0] mentions "Currently available vaccines will likely offer protection against prevailing variants of SARS-CoV-2", but also says "The risk of immune escape is hard to predict long term"
You linked article [1] says "it takes about eight times as many of the antibodies produced by the Moderna vaccine to neutralize the B.1.351 variant" but also says "so there is enough antibody still to neutralize the virus."
And your linked article [2] says "coronaviruses change more slowly than most other RNA viruses" and "other genome data have emphasized this stability" and "sluggish mutation rate" and "if a mutation did help the virus to spread faster, it probably happened earlier, when the virus first jumped into humans" and "no signs of natural selection for any of the variants" and “probably the virus binds to ACE2 about as well as it needs to right now" and "these strains remain constant, more or less".
At one point in [2] it is mentioned "I wouldn’t be surprised if this virus is maintained as a more common, cold-causing coronavirus". I've heard that mentioned as a likely outcome in other places [3].
The above article wrapped up with "Worrisome mutations could also become more common if antibody therapies aren’t used wisely", "Vaccines arouse less concern on this score because, like the body’s natural immune response, they tend to elicit a range of antibodies."
This reminded me of this doctor [4], who was warning about the dangers of the covid vaccination campaign setting us up for a much worse disaster by pressuring the widely circulating virus to evolve into something much more dangerous. The statement above near the end of article [2] seems to indicate that vaccines are not as likely to
cause this as are antibody therapies.
I'm not sure what you were trying to get at with t-cells. I keep reading things that say t-cells from prior coronaviruses infections confer some protection against covid-19, even from other coronaviruses. Here's another link [5]. Are you saying that is not so?
When it comes to the fear of immunity-evading coronavirus mutations I seem to keep hearing scientists say it is possible, but not likely. I think that is an important distinction to make.
Does the distribution matter here? I wonder if there'll be pockets of unvaccinated people in areas of higher vaccination hesitancy and what that means for herd immunity.
There always will be, but the nature of "herd" immunity means that such outbreaks will not be able to jump to the broader population, because on average outbreaks in a herd-immune community shrink and don't grow.
It’s not clear. US health officials say it’s higher (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/heal...), although Fauci’s credibility in this interview is kinda compromised by the statement that he wasn’t previously telling people what he really thought.
That was estimated for the original Wuhan sequence and the early single mutation D614G variant. Current variants with the 501.Y change have almost twice the virulence (they infect people more easily). And the 501Y.V2 and V3 have the E484K mutation (sequenced first in South Africa and Brazil) that makes them escape immune responses to the original Wuman and D614G variants. This also applies to a lesser degree to L452R sequenced first in California, USA but it does not share the increased virulence of the 501Y variants of concern.
Herd immunity might have been 70% in March 2020 but much more than that is required now. This is especially true as various ignorant populations have decided that no particular protectective behaviors are needed raising the R number even higher.
Please be careful with your terminology. Virulence refers to damage caused to the host, not how quickly the virus spreads or how quickly it infects the host.
Thanks for your concern but it's not quite that clear cut and you may have misunderstood my phrasing. Virulence refers to the ability to infect and multiply. Pathogenicity refers to the damage to the host.
Since the 501Y variants do not survive the environment any better than original sequence virus it is assumed their increased observed spread is due to their virulence. This makes sense given that the 501Y change is on the ACE2 contact residues of the spike and probably gives greater binding affinity.
>The virulence of a pathogen is often correlated with the so-called virulence factors. A virulence factor is defined as the factor that enables an organism to invade a host and cause disease. It also determines the extent of damage to the host. These factors may be secretory, membrane-associated, or cytosolic in nature. An example of a virulence factor is the ability of microbes to multiply within their host cells.
It is, in fact, clear cut. Virulence refers only to the degree of damage done. [0]
There are several interrelated terms, which you conflated in your previous comment. It's important for all of us to have the right mental model about how these fit together, so I'm going to press on this point.
- Transmissibility: how easily a pathogen travels from one organism (vector or host) to another
- Infectivity: how easily a pathogen can establish infection in a host
- Pathogenicity: degree of ability to cause disease in host
- Virulence: degree of damage done to host
- Virulence factors: factors that, in aggregate, can affect virulence
Virulence is affected by virulence factors, but these are not equivalent to virulence, and increasing a virulence factor does not necessarily mean that virulence will go up. (Another way of saying this: Taken individually, virulence factors are necessary but not sufficient for the definition or measurement of virulence.)
So of course, if a pathogen has higher transmissibility or infectivity, it has a greater potential for virulence. At the same time, that does not mean it is actually more virulent.
So taken in the context of your comment, the clearest word to use is almost certainly transmissibility or infectivity, depending on the data you're referring to.
Even if it was a uniform distribution, herd immunity is just enough to slow down the spread. The distribution isn't uniform, however. The people who are refusing the vaccines are doing so on ideological lines. The ideological lines are in turn largely driven by geography. So the result is that we have social clusters of people with much lower vaccination rates where the virus can spread.
Not yet, per this link we're at 39%. Maybe you're looking at data for total doses given? Lots of the vaccination in the US has been (IMHO, inappropriately) focused on completing the course, so while we might have had enough doses to put one in 60% of the population, we actually put two in most of those people.
The UK did the opposite, where slightly more total vaccine led to only 13% of people being completely vaccinated but 49% having at least one dose. And clearly their outbreak curve looks much better.
Though it's worth pointing out that the UK curve seems to be levelling off at an asymptote of about 50% vaccination, which is too low and broadly confirms the contention in the linked article.
The UK “leveling off” is likely a result of vaccine availability, especially as the number of second doses are ramping up (they have decided to use a longer gap between the first and second dose). I believe 95% of over 50s are vaccinated and the program just opened up eligibility for non at-risk people aged 45-50 a few days ago.
Now with potential fear around blood clots, future uptake is yet to be seen, I think it’s too early to say that vaccinations are leveling off.
You arent reading the article. From the first paragraph: "Over 127 million adults—38.5 percent of the US population—have received at least one shot. Over 80 million adults—24 percent of the US population—are now fully vaccinated."
I would be very disappointed if things don't get relaxed any time soon. I mean, why the hell did all these people take the vaccines then? Where I live, we don't have lockdowns, but I'm very tired of wearing masks everywhere.
I got vaccinated (well, I'm between shots, but whatever) as a reasonably healthy person in their 40s for 2 reasons: It makes me less likely to transmit the virus to other people, and because even though my risk of severe illness is low, the vaccines still reduce it.
I certainly expect restrictions to continue to relax. It is unfortunate that people didn't have a few more weeks patience, that along with higher vaccine uptake would have ended things sooner.
Just stop; I have for the past four months or so. I carry one with me and will put it on if requested like in a shop or public building (Increasingly no one asks.) And I voluntarily wear it in situations where it might actually help e.g. on the train. Other than that I conduct my life exactly as I did before the pandemic. It hasn’t affected my health or the health of anyone I know in the least.
The finding may be linked to a partisan divide. Rural areas often swing Republican, and Republicans have consistently been among the most resistant to vaccination across many surveys. In the latest KFF data, 29 percent of Republicans reported that they would “definitely not” get vaccinated.
At this point I am like, okay, fine, just stay out there on your tractor with your new covid variants and don't come into the city; maybe if enough of these anti-vax Republicans die off to change the voting profiles of all these intensely gerrymandered districts and make Fox News' ratings fall off a cliff then we can actually have some nice things.
The last five or so years have really exhausted my patience with trying to convert, educate, or understand these people, and if they wanna do things that will increase their risk then I am just gonna throw up my hands and say "have fun with your sneezing parties, stay the fuck out of my city, see you next life".
I know quite of a few of these people and I’m consistently surprised at how little is understood about their motives from comments like this. People pretend like they’re some alien race immune to logic. If that’s what you want to believe about your countrymen than that’s on you.
Which is a shame because there’s things we could do to change vaccine rates among these groups. For example find alternatives to aborted fetal stem cells for testing and research (or worse, ingredients).
I'm vaccinated, but it's also remarkable to me that people think that not taking a drug developed on an emergency use basis with no long term studies is somehow irrational or ridiculous. Some reasons are clearly silly, but being nervous about being a guinea pig for a new medical treatment is surely reasonable. I got it because I decided it made sense for me, but I still feel some anxiety about it and definitely am not going to judge other people for feeling the same way.
The mRNA vaccines are expected to achieve full FDA approval over the next few months. For all of the people claiming the EUA as their reason to avoid these shots, how many of them do we believe are going to suddenly change their tune when this happens? In contrast, how many will find some new excuse?
Totally fair, and there's certainly a lot of irrational skepticism. Nonetheless, this is people's health. They're allowed to be protective of it, and it's still true that we have no long term studies because they simply haven't existed long enough.
I'm not saying you're wrong but the feeling about being a guinea pig feels to me like it must be rooted in either ignorance or disinformation because while this whole thing is definitely sped up (pipelining), there have been trials with a lot of people that were the actual guinea pigs.
No one picked up the blood clot issue in the trials. What other long term issues could come up? Being skeptical is rational.
I have a close friend who runs clinical trials for a biotech company. This is her area of expertise. She has had entire trials cancelled when 1 person has died from the drug. So the tact they are taking with AZ and J&J is a lot more lenient than normal. Not that I disagree with it, but understand that there are drugs that have been cancelled for less than what these drugs are exhibiting.
The risk of a blood clot after the vaccine (which may or may not be causally linked) appears to be about 20 per million.
The risk of randomly dying from a fall in a given year appears to be on the order of 120 per million. The most likely way to fall and die if you are in decent health is probably from a ladder.
Therefore I feel like owning a ladder is probably (conservatively) on the order of five times as dangerous as getting the vaccine every year.
Also, Covid killed on the order of 1600 people per million in the US in the past year. I just don't understand what risk-reward calculation people think they are doing.
The blood clot issue was completely unexpected after the clinical trials. Who’s to say that more issues won’t come up as time goes on? You don’t know if the blood clot issue will get worse over time or new things crop up. That’s the problem with short clinical trials, many of the long term effects aren’t found.
>Who’s to say that more issues won’t come up as time goes on?
I don't think I was saying that they wouldn't.
My estimate was based on pessimistically assuming there is a new issue every year. That could be because of a new vaccine or because of delayed issues uncovered with the existing ones.
If the companies involved and US government were confident that speeding development of the vaccines presented no additional risk, they would not have requested and been granted immunity from legal action due to potential issues.
Covid also doesn't have long term studies determining its safety. On the contrary, it seems like some people have serious consequences that don't go away, even though they survive.
People keep repeating that the death rate for younger people is very low, as though death is the only bad thing that can happen.
Furthermore, it sounds plausible to me that as people get vaccinated, before reaching "herd immunity", the virus is going to be forced to evolve to get nastier and infect younger people more severely. So maybe millions of people being vaccinated is actually increasing the urgency. There have been some reports supporting this theory, that severe cases in young people are rapidly increasing coincident with most of the elderly getting their shots.
Its not just about the vaccination. If the end product is developed unethically, what avenues do you have to protest against those methods? Choosing not to buy or support the product is the most fundamental economic freedom we've got.
Here's an example that used to be farther removed from today's social touchstones: Premarin. Premarin is manufactured by keeping mares continuously pregnant in stalls for the continuous collection of their urine. Should you be free to protest those methods by avoiding the product? Should a pharmacist be free to avoid stocking those products entirely if it conflicts with their ethics?
Before she passed away, my grandma boycotted premarin for those reasons. That was decades ago, before transitioning became more common. Now it's more of a hot button topic, since premarin is one of the commonly prescribed drugs for transitioning women in addition to post-menopausal women. Should a pharmacist still be allowed to avoid stocking those products?
They always have the option of not working in the field.
Depending on how licensing is done, it may not be unreasonable to expect people to make the decision about whether they want to work in a profession with state requirements for service before they enter the profession.
Of course it's messier if the requirements change after they have invested the time to become licensed, but it isn't that different, they shouldn't enter the regulated profession if they want autonomy.
Closely related: Should an engineer be obligated to work on weapons projects? How about weaponized machine inference?
Individual practitioners within their field should have some level of autonomy, especially when it comes to ethics. I'm not willing to yank that away from someone just because their ethics disagree with mine. Same thing with consumers.
Some of the reasons for avoiding GMO foods are absolutely bonkers in my opinion, but I still believe in the right of consumers to make their own choices. How would the pharma landscape change if prescription drugs were obligated to carry a label that they were developed and tested with human fetal tissue or cell cultures?
Product safety requirements are imposed on engineers. If they don't like them, the option is to not offer products.
(this examines the obligations and loss of autonomy more than the ethical disagreement, but there's literally no remedy for someone that believes antilock brakes are unethical, we'd tell them to pound sand. The analogy would be better if that person existed, but I think it still works okay.)
The general logic behind these people is that they have lost almost all faith in the main stream news. Its so bad that if you trust the news right now, then you are most likely left leaning or moderate. This culminates in a general distrust of what the news reports and now that the news is reporting that the vaccines are safe - which statistically is true - these people are tired of being lied to and are being skeptical of a quickly developed vaccine based on newer technology.
So in that population of people that distrust the news, there will be crazies that will never take the vaccine and there will be varying levels of reasonable people who decide to wait on taking the vaccine while weighing their own personal risk level with the risk of taking a quickly developed vaccine with no long term studies behind it. The longer we wait, the more of these people will decide taking the vaccine is less risky than getting covid as more studies come out, especially once the FDA promotes it from emergency approval to full authorization (which requires 6 months of data). Some of these people will of course wait longer than full authorization, they may want to wait a year or longer depending on how must they mistrust the news, its unfortunate but its going to take decades for these people to regain trust in the main stream news and the crazies I don't think will ever trust the news again.
Hi, I'm under 40 and a Republican. Less than 15,000[1] Americans in my age group have died with COVID and they almost all had comorbities, most commonly obesity. I have none. I'm a healthy weight. I live in an urban area. COVID is in no way an existential threat to me. I will not be getting vaccinated, especially with a vaccine that the FDA has NOT approved[0], only authorized, and recommends only for emergency use for high risk individuals, one of which I am not. I will not be dying, and I do vote. Have a nice fuck you
Oh yeah and by the way, the pandemic has made me WAY more Republican, because of comments like yours and the reaction of Democrats and the media to use this pandemic for unending [3] control so just keep calling us yokels you fucking racist, see how that goes
It's okay though, the Democrats are focused on important things like abolishing policing[4], that and being shamed into taking an experimental vaccine for a disease that is not dangerous will definitely win us over. Unity and healing!!!!
I'm not trolling, I'm serious. Reposting because it was flagged for presenting dissent:
Hi, I'm under 40 and a Republican. Less than 15,000[1] Americans in my age group have died with COVID and they almost all had comorbities, most commonly obesity. I have none. I'm a healthy weight. I live in an urban area. COVID is in no way an existential threat to me. I will not be getting vaccinated, especially with a vaccine that the FDA has NOT approved[0], only authorized, and recommends only for emergency use for high risk individuals, one of which I am not. I will not be dying, and I do vote. Have a nice fuck you
Oh yeah and by the way, the pandemic has made me WAY more Republican, because of comments like yours and the reaction of Democrats and the media to use this pandemic for unending [3] control so just keep calling us yokels you fucking racist, see how that goes
It's okay though, the Democrats are focused on important things like abolishing policing[4], that and being shamed into taking an experimental vaccine for a disease that is not dangerous will definitely win us over. Unity and healing!!!!
Your comments haven't been flagged for "presenting dissent" but for flagrantly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with.
"Hi, I'm extremely insecure with myself and need to validate my beliefs by trying to bait people on the internet. Since I don't personally know anyone who died from Covid that wasn't fat, obviously it is a hoax and won't affect me so I won't be getting a vaccine because I don't believe in science."
One factor that makes this really difficult is: exactly as much as you believe you are right, so do they believe that they are right. And as exasperated as are you with them, so too are they with you.
I don't like to think this way either, but Darwin may end up needing to be the ultimate decider. Along the way though, we all will suffer, as our economy and healthcare systems do not get to discriminate.
The irony here is that when blue cities in red states pass liberal laws at the local level, the state legislatures aggressively work to countermand the cities.
No downvotes here, but boy are you as much part of the problem as the people who grow your food and you so despise. Can you blame people in country-side from not believing the same health authorities that so cynically lied at every stage of the pandemic? Or the politicians that mismanaged the lock downs, grievously injuring the economy for all but the people who have the luxury of working from home? Can you blame anyone if they believe Fox News over say CNN, MSNBC or the NYT? Come on man, have some intellectual honesty. The enemy is extremism, lack of perspective, lack of humility, the god awful media we are stuck with, not your rural countryman. Like you they just want to raise their kids safely and pursue happiness. You would probably like them if you got to know them. And they might like you as well.
Dude, those people voted for the same idiot who completely botched the national response. You can't say I should blame "the politicians" without looking at the fact that they voted for, and aggressively revered, a lunatic who trashed the national stockpile of ventilators that GWB set up to be ready for exactly this sort of event, and pushed out the top of the CDC's pandemic response team. And then when it started, Trump took every opportunity he could to make this a bigger mess.
I can blame these for constantly voting for dumbasses who defund the public education that would make them less vulnerable to Fox's bullshit.
You would probably like them if you got to know them. And they might like you as well.
Given that I am a trans woman and these people keep on voting for people who want to deny my right to exist in normal society, I think there is a pretty large barrier to that. The current wave of anti-trans bills is yet another reason I am just fucking done trying to have any goddamn sympathy for them.
Flamewar comments like this are not welcome on HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. It is not only the opposite of what HN is for, it is highly destructive of what it is for. Therefore we ban accounts that post like this. Please review the rules and don't post like this again.
Speak for yourself, i guess: people in my state are tripping all over themselves (and the vaccination signup official website(s), unofficial website(s) and twitter bot(s)) to get in line for appointments.
If you're in CA and happen to have a car, just plan a road trip to one of the "red" counties in the middle of the state. Sad stereotype but true. We're in the Bay area and got ours at a nearly empty "mass-vaccination" facility in the central valley.
I was able to get myself and my family signed up through UCI Health. But I got a friend, and his girlfriend, who drove up to the central valley (he's originally from the Fresno area) to get theirs. Another friend, who lives on my street in south OC, drove out to Redlands to get his. Another friend and his wife who live down here got their first shot this weekend up in Livermore, where her family is. They'll make another trip up north to get the 2nd.
It's all pretty dumb and arbitrary to me, the way this thing is being handled. In each case they were unable to get theirs locally, everything was booked with no insight into when the next availability would be.
There's probably close to 800-1000 appointments available there right now.
Also follow @vaccinetime on Twitter.
Right now about 80% of the over 16-18 year olds are eligible the remainder become eligible on Monday. There's been lots of appointments for the last week or so despite the J&J setbacks (MA had a big drop of J&J from the Feds recently and consequentially had to cancel & rebook some big vaccine events).
I’m in CA, so I’m not familiar with that site in particular, but the similar tracker sites here also say there are tons of appointments available, but once you actually try to sign up there’s nothing available. I’d be surprised if 10% of those “available” vaccines are actually available.
I've helped a number of people get appointments in MA and had zero issues securing probably a half-dozen appts for people in the last 10 days. If the trackers are showing say >3-5 appts then there are usually some actually available (the macovidvaccine site is scraping/updating quite frequently).
Also, because of the way the MA state reservation system works -- they give you 25 minutes to fill out the appointment details once you "claim" a slot, often times you'll find a decent number of timed-out appointments showing up after the fact. Not to mention there are plenty cancellations (as presumably people are booking for family or maybe just vaccine shopping).
I don't get it. Yesterday the mayor of our city sent out an email detailing how many people have gotten it, broken out by age:
Residents who are partially or fully vaccinated include 95%+ of those who are 75 years old or more, 95%+ of those 65-74 years old, 81% who are 50-64 years old, 65% who are 30-49 years old, 38% that are 20-29 years old, and 8% who are 0-19 years old.
My wife and I are in our 50s. We signed up for the state registration system, we got email updates from our healthcare providers (affiliated with one of the major Boston medical centers) stating that we are eligible ... but no notifications of when we can actually go somewhere to get the jabs.
There's definitely not a great way to see all of your options. I was able to through my county's program, but there is also a city driven program, options at CVS, private practice doctors, clinics, and so on. None of them seemed to be aware of each other. My spouse was notified by the hospital that her primary care physician practices at, and got her vaccinations that way.
My son drove to a rural town, where there's a larger "not interested" crowd, and was able to get both shots in a walk-up fashion with no appointment.
In my state I was advised to call Pharmacies at the end of they day to see if they had extra doses that would otherwise spoil. Perhaps you could try the same if you are concerned about how long the authorities are taking?
If you are eligible your provider should be able to give you the shot. They likely have a sign up on there website or health portal for you and you wife. Here in NorCal, PAMF has a simple sign up. Not going to link to it has I do not want it to get hugged to death :)
Don't rely exclusively on Massachusetts letting you know. Check with your county's and city's health departments, and every major pharmacy chain in your area for appointments.
Thanks. We were able to book an appointment for my wife at a clinic for educators that is accepting non-educators ... but I got bounced from the screening app because it hasn't been updated for the latest eligible age ranges yet (she's older than me).
I think one issue is we were told after somebody gets both shots they are still required to wear a mask, dine outdoors, socially distance, have their office closed, etc. It causes some people to feel there is no reason to get the shot.
The only way I can interpret this is that you believe the cost-benefit is not there without a substantial altruistic motive. Do you think that, and if so, why?
The cost in this case is yet another step (or giant leap, depending on what you think of the past year) towards tyranny, to say nothing of the millions who will suffer and die from the actions that have already been taken.
The benefit has not been worth the cost, and I will never go along with it. I will literally die on that hill if necessary.
At this point I will not spend any more time trying to convince you. The only other thing to answer now is, are you ready to fight a war over this?
Taiwan's had 1070 cases! And concerts and mostly normal life.
(do note that I'm not calling for endless lock downs there, I'm calling for control measures that we didn't really work very hard to put into place; we could have done a lot more to reduce household and workplace spread and so on)
What the theory of "Evolutionary Dynamics of Viral Attenuation" implies is that a lot more people were dying of colds when it first entered the human race.
There is also mathematical evidence that compares the probabilistic error rates of COVID replication to the amount of mutations already encountered and it is looking good for us. COVID mutation rates are very high and most if not all have been encountered in humans. While some resist anti-bodies better it appears that none will do so entirely and thus COVID will devolve to a "common cold" as humans themselves are selected out (multi-generationally) for higher amounts of resistance.
It's basic biology in action.
It is important to remember that almost all diseases work this way (possibly ALL diseases if we could morally afford the extremely high death rates of some of them e.g., a 99.9% death rate for some diseases like rabies).
Probably true. Too bad a big part of the population is so easily inconvenienced and seemingly unable to understand a complex situation given the information landscape that exists.
It makes perfect sense. People want to get back to normal and every time we do what we are told needs to be accomplished the goal posts move. People are fed up of the constant changes and are starting to lose faith in the experts.
>every time we do what we are told needs to be accomplished the goal posts move
It sounds like you feel there is or was some sort of bargain going on.
I think I recognize the feeling. For instance, I went for about a decade with no cavities, and I continue to go to the dentist every six months, so I have felt like there was a bargain in some sense - brush and floss and get a checkup regularly, and I won't have any problems.
But in between x-rays, it turns out I had some serious decay and had to get a root canal.
This produced a strong feeling of betrayal, but at the same time, it's obviously childish and irrational to feel this way, isn't it? I wasn't betrayed by my dentist. Just by fate, if you will.
Your analogy is not correct. Our public health officials explicitly told us to do X and we could get back to normal. The officials then changed what needed to be done to get back to normal. It would be like if your dentist just said if you get a cleaning every 6 months you will not get a cavity. You then get a cavity and they say you need to brush your teeth once a day and get a cleaning every 6 months to avoid cavities. Next time you go the dentist you have a cavity so they say just brush your teeth, get a cleaning every 6 months and floss and you won't get a cavity. Next thing you know you have a cavity and they add brushing your teeth twice a day. This is not a feeling, but explicit statements by public officials.
I do not believe either the dentist in the analogy or the public health officials can actually know with any certainty what will happen in the future. Which is why I do not believe they just have made the statements they made. They can perhaps provide a sense of what could happen, but that is not what happened.
If the officials just said MAYBE after two weeks we can get back to normal if XYZ have happened then I, and many others, would have far less issues. We would understand that XYZ needs to happen prior to returning to normal. The problem is they explicitly said we just need to do X to get back to normal.
When can we actually go back to normal? There doesn't appear to be an explicit end goal that hasn't changed.
Our public health officials said just stay at home for two weeks and we can get back to normal. Then don't wear masks. Then always wear a mask. Next it was just wait until it gets warmer in the summer. Then it was just wait until the vaccine. Now some of them are actually saying wait until there are no new cases despite also saying that it will be with us forever and will become seasonal like the flu. If they actually want no new cases and if this does become a seasonal thing then we will literally never return to normal. That is the problem that many of us see. If they were just honest and straight forward with us from the beginning and may not argue we should remain locked down forever there would be far less issues.
In my city, my wife and I got phone notifications telling us to sign up. I've had my second one for 2.5 months, but my wife signed up immediately (SAHM, 27yo, no risk factors), and was able to get a next day appointment. The operation was big enough that the queue involved continuous walking. Apparently the whole thing was being done by military.
The military in each country should've deployed it because they are logistics first. Leaving it to commercial and local interests just leads to amateur fumbling for something of life-safety importance.
I was going to wait until I could just schedule an appointment at the drugstore in my neighborhood. Right now, they are still doing vaccines en masse at far away spots that would require significant commuting, and anyways, they just opened up eligibility a couple of days ago in my state.
I live in a major city and I'm having to drive an hour away to get one. I have also discovered a lot of people I know are cautious about getting it. That isn't isolated to conservatives either.
Well, in Israel, where there has been a highly effective vaccination campaign with a head start on most other places, and orderly distribution by the "sick funds" (= healthcare provider non-profit organizations; there are only about 4 of these) - the 2nd-dose vaccination rate is only 57.3%:
I'm eager but can't find an outdoor site. You couldn't pay me to go indoors with a bunch of other unvaccinated people right now.
Early in the vaccination effort (when the weather was a lot nastier!), there was a lot of press around these giant parking-lot sites with tents and you'd just roll down your window and get the shot. I wasn't eligible then. Now that I'm eligible, they seem to be gone?
Michigan. There's a drive-up site in Detroit but it's for city residents only, and I'm a few miles out in the burbs. Literally everything I can find is indoors in one fashion or another.
The weather's bad _today_ but it's been mostly beautiful for the last two months, and will be beautiful all summer.
I just don't think they're thinking of inherent safety.
They're working on "six feet, fifteen minutes", which is increasingly useless and I'd argue now actively harmful guidance given the new variants.
If anything, the CDC recently _walked back_ some recommendations around fomite transmission, which I think was based on extensive study of the early variants which dominated the last year, and may or may not even be valid with the UK variant which is now prevalent.
In essence, we have enough delay between the situation on the ground, and the studies coming out, that the feedback loop is driving a wild oscillation. And I don't wish to get caught in it.
Just got my 2nd Moderna appointment. I kept trying for weeks because the local health department mismanaged appointments (lost thousands too) and made it a free-for-all like a Black Friday. I think it was deplorable that they just didn't take requests from everyone who wanted it, prioritized them, and ran appointments as a lottery as inventory appeared.
For people who don't want it long-term, emulate K-12 schools and vaccines policies: make the anti-vaxxers experience (or should) consequences as punishment for being irrational wingnuts.
> We usually call it the overheated discussion detector now, even though the phrase is clumsy, because sometimes the discussions are just low-quality rather than outright flamewars.
I think that's fascinating. Lots of niceties behind the curtain. (maybe the opposite of most sites, sort of like stopping trading)
I somehow lucked out and was able to find an appointment on my first try. My friend, in contrast, couldn't find anything and ended up driving to Yakima from Seattle to get a shot from FEMA.
I don't understand this. Why would a large city, which is much higher risk but with far more hospitals and ultra-cold storage be far less capable of providing drive-up vaccine service than Yakima? Did we allocate far too many vaccines p/person to rural communities?
The article suggests rural communities are less likely to want the vaccine but it doesn't make it clear if distribution was based on demand at all.
The last few weeks in Michigan, 2x as much vaccine per person has been going into the Detroit region than has been coming here. I don't really know what demand looks like here though. We could have a few hundred unused doses, while it appears there's tens of thousands in the counties around Detroit (but they also have much more capacity to administer).
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadedit: misread article re: 200 million doses
We have someone in our family that can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons and they feel the same way. The risk goes down significantly when the whole family is vaccinated.
It’s time to put covid in the “managed risk” section of our life and get on with things.
But even with that I know I won't be able to help but have a "screw 'em" stance pretty quick with the people who are choosing to not get vaccinated.
[1]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2101765
Yes, I know there are variants. But I've seen no science saying that it is likely or expected that the vaccine won't work against covid-19 variants. Have you?
> They literally already exist!
Ok, I googled and found this: "Variant or strain? Experts explain what's happened to the coronavirus" [0]
From the article: "However, Soucy noted that all currently known variants of COVID-19 belong to the SARS-CoV-2 strain and have not mutated enough to either be classified as their own strain or be ineffective against current and prospective COVID-19 vaccines."
Another quote from the article: "Infectious disease expert Dr. Lisa Barrett told CTV News Channel on Sunday that viruses often mutate, but some viruses do it more than others. She noted that while the genetic code of coronaviruses does typically change over time, she says the mutations aren’t normally a cause for concern."
Here's another article, with references to multiple studies: "We now have the best evidence yet that everyone develops long-term coronavirus immunity after infection — and it's not just about antibodies" [1]
From that article: "Many people who've never gotten COVID-19 seem to have memory T cells that can recognize the new coronavirus." ... "In this case, experts think these cross-reactive T cells likely come from previous exposure to other coronaviruses — those that cause common colds."
That's the kind of stuff I find when I dig into this. What are you seeing?
[0] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/variant-or-strain-...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/long-term-coronavirus-immuni...
Absolutely it is the case that even in the extremely limited time that Covid has existed it's already built tolerance to some vaccine mechanisims - for example the Novavax vaccine is something like 89% effective normally, but drops to 50% effective against variant B.1.351. [1] Any vaccine that relies on the covid-19 spike protein (all of them) is best case less effective and worst case useless if a small change to that spike protein is made. In a long enough timeline such a random mutation will happen. Most of them will not result in viable viruses but eventually one of them will. It's just a matter of statistics.
>"Infectious disease expert Dr. Lisa Barrett told CTV News Channel on Sunday that viruses often mutate, but some viruses do it more than others.
This language is a little bit weasley in that it implies that COVID-19 varies at a relatively slow rate. This is a widespread but incorrect assumption. Covid-19 mutates at a rate of ~10^-3 nucleotide substitutions per site per year, which is comparable to ebola or other RNA viruses [0]
>We now have the best evidence yet that everyone develops long-term coronavirus immunity after infection — and it's not just about antibodies"
This is saying that after you get the virus and your antibodies fade you have some residual resistance in the form of T-cells that stay in your immune system. Those T-cells are virus-specific. T-cells have all kinds of different mechanisms to detect infected cells in your body but, for example, it can detect viral peptides emitted by the cell. Where do viral peptides come from? The virus protein spike! The same thing that, when mutated, reduces or eliminates vaccine effectiveness.
As far as whether this is current happening and what it means- researchers have modified other viruses to use the COVID-19 protein spike and then gave the virus suitable conditions to replicate and mutate. The result was a covid-19 spike protein that had resistance to both monoclonal antibodies and antibodies taken from patients[2].This isn't some academic exercise, this is something that is literally happening in the real world right now.
Even worse on further inspection those same researchers realized these spike protein modifications were *already present* in the wild, they just weren't present in large numbers yet.
[0] https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n771#xref-ref-8-1
[1] https://www.advisory.com/en/daily-briefing/2021/04/16/varian...
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6
For example, your linked article [0] mentions "Currently available vaccines will likely offer protection against prevailing variants of SARS-CoV-2", but also says "The risk of immune escape is hard to predict long term"
You linked article [1] says "it takes about eight times as many of the antibodies produced by the Moderna vaccine to neutralize the B.1.351 variant" but also says "so there is enough antibody still to neutralize the virus."
And your linked article [2] says "coronaviruses change more slowly than most other RNA viruses" and "other genome data have emphasized this stability" and "sluggish mutation rate" and "if a mutation did help the virus to spread faster, it probably happened earlier, when the virus first jumped into humans" and "no signs of natural selection for any of the variants" and “probably the virus binds to ACE2 about as well as it needs to right now" and "these strains remain constant, more or less".
At one point in [2] it is mentioned "I wouldn’t be surprised if this virus is maintained as a more common, cold-causing coronavirus". I've heard that mentioned as a likely outcome in other places [3].
The above article wrapped up with "Worrisome mutations could also become more common if antibody therapies aren’t used wisely", "Vaccines arouse less concern on this score because, like the body’s natural immune response, they tend to elicit a range of antibodies."
This reminded me of this doctor [4], who was warning about the dangers of the covid vaccination campaign setting us up for a much worse disaster by pressuring the widely circulating virus to evolve into something much more dangerous. The statement above near the end of article [2] seems to indicate that vaccines are not as likely to cause this as are antibody therapies.
I'm not sure what you were trying to get at with t-cells. I keep reading things that say t-cells from prior coronaviruses infections confer some protection against covid-19, even from other coronaviruses. Here's another link [5]. Are you saying that is not so?
When it comes to the fear of immunity-evading coronavirus mutations I seem to keep hearing scientists say it is possible, but not likely. I think that is an important distinction to make.
[0] https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n771#xref-ref-8-1
[1] https://www.advisory.com/en/daily-briefing/2021/04/16/varian...
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6
[3] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...
[4] https://www.deblauwetijger.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Ge...
[5] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/t-cells-found-covid-...
Herd immunity might have been 70% in March 2020 but much more than that is required now. This is especially true as various ignorant populations have decided that no particular protectective behaviors are needed raising the R number even higher.
Since the 501Y variants do not survive the environment any better than original sequence virus it is assumed their increased observed spread is due to their virulence. This makes sense given that the 501Y change is on the ACE2 contact residues of the spike and probably gives greater binding affinity.
[0]: https://covariants.org/variants/S.N501 [1]: https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/virulence
>The virulence of a pathogen is often correlated with the so-called virulence factors. A virulence factor is defined as the factor that enables an organism to invade a host and cause disease. It also determines the extent of damage to the host. These factors may be secretory, membrane-associated, or cytosolic in nature. An example of a virulence factor is the ability of microbes to multiply within their host cells.
There are several interrelated terms, which you conflated in your previous comment. It's important for all of us to have the right mental model about how these fit together, so I'm going to press on this point.
Virulence is affected by virulence factors, but these are not equivalent to virulence, and increasing a virulence factor does not necessarily mean that virulence will go up. (Another way of saying this: Taken individually, virulence factors are necessary but not sufficient for the definition or measurement of virulence.)So of course, if a pathogen has higher transmissibility or infectivity, it has a greater potential for virulence. At the same time, that does not mean it is actually more virulent.
So taken in the context of your comment, the clearest word to use is almost certainly transmissibility or infectivity, depending on the data you're referring to.
[0]: https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/virulence
The UK did the opposite, where slightly more total vaccine led to only 13% of people being completely vaccinated but 49% having at least one dose. And clearly their outbreak curve looks much better.
Though it's worth pointing out that the UK curve seems to be levelling off at an asymptote of about 50% vaccination, which is too low and broadly confirms the contention in the linked article.
Get your shots, folks.
https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...
Now with potential fear around blood clots, future uptake is yet to be seen, I think it’s too early to say that vaccinations are leveling off.
I certainly expect restrictions to continue to relax. It is unfortunate that people didn't have a few more weeks patience, that along with higher vaccine uptake would have ended things sooner.
At this point I am like, okay, fine, just stay out there on your tractor with your new covid variants and don't come into the city; maybe if enough of these anti-vax Republicans die off to change the voting profiles of all these intensely gerrymandered districts and make Fox News' ratings fall off a cliff then we can actually have some nice things.
The last five or so years have really exhausted my patience with trying to convert, educate, or understand these people, and if they wanna do things that will increase their risk then I am just gonna throw up my hands and say "have fun with your sneezing parties, stay the fuck out of my city, see you next life".
I await my downvotes from angry Trumpies.
Which is a shame because there’s things we could do to change vaccine rates among these groups. For example find alternatives to aborted fetal stem cells for testing and research (or worse, ingredients).
I have a close friend who runs clinical trials for a biotech company. This is her area of expertise. She has had entire trials cancelled when 1 person has died from the drug. So the tact they are taking with AZ and J&J is a lot more lenient than normal. Not that I disagree with it, but understand that there are drugs that have been cancelled for less than what these drugs are exhibiting.
The risk of randomly dying from a fall in a given year appears to be on the order of 120 per million. The most likely way to fall and die if you are in decent health is probably from a ladder.
Therefore I feel like owning a ladder is probably (conservatively) on the order of five times as dangerous as getting the vaccine every year.
Also, Covid killed on the order of 1600 people per million in the US in the past year. I just don't understand what risk-reward calculation people think they are doing.
The risk calculations you are attempting to make have important variables that are undefinable.
I don't think I was saying that they wouldn't.
My estimate was based on pessimistically assuming there is a new issue every year. That could be because of a new vaccine or because of delayed issues uncovered with the existing ones.
Covid also doesn't have long term studies determining its safety. On the contrary, it seems like some people have serious consequences that don't go away, even though they survive.
People keep repeating that the death rate for younger people is very low, as though death is the only bad thing that can happen.
Furthermore, it sounds plausible to me that as people get vaccinated, before reaching "herd immunity", the virus is going to be forced to evolve to get nastier and infect younger people more severely. So maybe millions of people being vaccinated is actually increasing the urgency. There have been some reports supporting this theory, that severe cases in young people are rapidly increasing coincident with most of the elderly getting their shots.
Here's an example that used to be farther removed from today's social touchstones: Premarin. Premarin is manufactured by keeping mares continuously pregnant in stalls for the continuous collection of their urine. Should you be free to protest those methods by avoiding the product? Should a pharmacist be free to avoid stocking those products entirely if it conflicts with their ethics?
Before she passed away, my grandma boycotted premarin for those reasons. That was decades ago, before transitioning became more common. Now it's more of a hot button topic, since premarin is one of the commonly prescribed drugs for transitioning women in addition to post-menopausal women. Should a pharmacist still be allowed to avoid stocking those products?
Depending on how licensing is done, it may not be unreasonable to expect people to make the decision about whether they want to work in a profession with state requirements for service before they enter the profession.
Of course it's messier if the requirements change after they have invested the time to become licensed, but it isn't that different, they shouldn't enter the regulated profession if they want autonomy.
Individual practitioners within their field should have some level of autonomy, especially when it comes to ethics. I'm not willing to yank that away from someone just because their ethics disagree with mine. Same thing with consumers.
Some of the reasons for avoiding GMO foods are absolutely bonkers in my opinion, but I still believe in the right of consumers to make their own choices. How would the pharma landscape change if prescription drugs were obligated to carry a label that they were developed and tested with human fetal tissue or cell cultures?
(this examines the obligations and loss of autonomy more than the ethical disagreement, but there's literally no remedy for someone that believes antilock brakes are unethical, we'd tell them to pound sand. The analogy would be better if that person existed, but I think it still works okay.)
So in that population of people that distrust the news, there will be crazies that will never take the vaccine and there will be varying levels of reasonable people who decide to wait on taking the vaccine while weighing their own personal risk level with the risk of taking a quickly developed vaccine with no long term studies behind it. The longer we wait, the more of these people will decide taking the vaccine is less risky than getting covid as more studies come out, especially once the FDA promotes it from emergency approval to full authorization (which requires 6 months of data). Some of these people will of course wait longer than full authorization, they may want to wait a year or longer depending on how must they mistrust the news, its unfortunate but its going to take decades for these people to regain trust in the main stream news and the crazies I don't think will ever trust the news again.
0: https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
Oh yeah and by the way, the pandemic has made me WAY more Republican, because of comments like yours and the reaction of Democrats and the media to use this pandemic for unending [3] control so just keep calling us yokels you fucking racist, see how that goes
3 https://reason.com/2021/04/16/michigan-moving-to-make-emerge...
It's okay though, the Democrats are focused on important things like abolishing policing[4], that and being shamed into taking an experimental vaccine for a disease that is not dangerous will definitely win us over. Unity and healing!!!!
4. https://mobile.twitter.com/rashidatlaib/status/1381745303997...
Hi, I'm under 40 and a Republican. Less than 15,000[1] Americans in my age group have died with COVID and they almost all had comorbities, most commonly obesity. I have none. I'm a healthy weight. I live in an urban area. COVID is in no way an existential threat to me. I will not be getting vaccinated, especially with a vaccine that the FDA has NOT approved[0], only authorized, and recommends only for emergency use for high risk individuals, one of which I am not. I will not be dying, and I do vote. Have a nice fuck you
0: https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
Oh yeah and by the way, the pandemic has made me WAY more Republican, because of comments like yours and the reaction of Democrats and the media to use this pandemic for unending [3] control so just keep calling us yokels you fucking racist, see how that goes
3 https://reason.com/2021/04/16/michigan-moving-to-make-emerge...
It's okay though, the Democrats are focused on important things like abolishing policing[4], that and being shamed into taking an experimental vaccine for a disease that is not dangerous will definitely win us over. Unity and healing!!!!
4. https://mobile.twitter.com/rashidatlaib/status/1381745303997...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
SAD!
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't like to think this way either, but Darwin may end up needing to be the ultimate decider. Along the way though, we all will suffer, as our economy and healthcare systems do not get to discriminate.
How is this not flagged? HN MODS?? @dang This is not even politics it is just calling for mass death.
Is this Hitler News or Hacker News? That is not sarcasm.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I can blame these for constantly voting for dumbasses who defund the public education that would make them less vulnerable to Fox's bullshit.
You would probably like them if you got to know them. And they might like you as well.
Given that I am a trans woman and these people keep on voting for people who want to deny my right to exist in normal society, I think there is a pretty large barrier to that. The current wave of anti-trans bills is yet another reason I am just fucking done trying to have any goddamn sympathy for them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's all pretty dumb and arbitrary to me, the way this thing is being handled. In each case they were unable to get theirs locally, everything was booked with no insight into when the next availability would be.
Check out: https://www.macovidvaccines.com
There's probably close to 800-1000 appointments available there right now.
Also follow @vaccinetime on Twitter.
Right now about 80% of the over 16-18 year olds are eligible the remainder become eligible on Monday. There's been lots of appointments for the last week or so despite the J&J setbacks (MA had a big drop of J&J from the Feds recently and consequentially had to cancel & rebook some big vaccine events).
Also, because of the way the MA state reservation system works -- they give you 25 minutes to fill out the appointment details once you "claim" a slot, often times you'll find a decent number of timed-out appointments showing up after the fact. Not to mention there are plenty cancellations (as presumably people are booking for family or maybe just vaccine shopping).
The "definitely not" view is interesting.
Residents who are partially or fully vaccinated include 95%+ of those who are 75 years old or more, 95%+ of those 65-74 years old, 81% who are 50-64 years old, 65% who are 30-49 years old, 38% that are 20-29 years old, and 8% who are 0-19 years old.
My wife and I are in our 50s. We signed up for the state registration system, we got email updates from our healthcare providers (affiliated with one of the major Boston medical centers) stating that we are eligible ... but no notifications of when we can actually go somewhere to get the jabs.
My son drove to a rural town, where there's a larger "not interested" crowd, and was able to get both shots in a walk-up fashion with no appointment.
http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2021/04/16/how-to-book-coro...
It scrapes pharmacy websites for availability
The federal and state resources are:
https://vaccinefinder.org
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-vaccination-locat... (probably the page you visited already)
https://vaxfinder.mass.gov
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/annual...
https://mobile.twitter.com/guscost/status/134299803981702758...
The benefit has not been worth the cost, and I will never go along with it. I will literally die on that hill if necessary.
At this point I will not spend any more time trying to convince you. The only other thing to answer now is, are you ready to fight a war over this?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22908490
Taiwan's had 1070 cases! And concerts and mostly normal life.
(do note that I'm not calling for endless lock downs there, I'm calling for control measures that we didn't really work very hard to put into place; we could have done a lot more to reduce household and workplace spread and so on)
There is also mathematical evidence that compares the probabilistic error rates of COVID replication to the amount of mutations already encountered and it is looking good for us. COVID mutation rates are very high and most if not all have been encountered in humans. While some resist anti-bodies better it appears that none will do so entirely and thus COVID will devolve to a "common cold" as humans themselves are selected out (multi-generationally) for higher amounts of resistance.
It's basic biology in action.
It is important to remember that almost all diseases work this way (possibly ALL diseases if we could morally afford the extremely high death rates of some of them e.g., a 99.9% death rate for some diseases like rabies).
https://jcm.asm.org/content/48/8/2940
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4181476/
It sounds like you feel there is or was some sort of bargain going on.
I think I recognize the feeling. For instance, I went for about a decade with no cavities, and I continue to go to the dentist every six months, so I have felt like there was a bargain in some sense - brush and floss and get a checkup regularly, and I won't have any problems.
But in between x-rays, it turns out I had some serious decay and had to get a root canal.
This produced a strong feeling of betrayal, but at the same time, it's obviously childish and irrational to feel this way, isn't it? I wasn't betrayed by my dentist. Just by fate, if you will.
I do not believe either the dentist in the analogy or the public health officials can actually know with any certainty what will happen in the future. Which is why I do not believe they just have made the statements they made. They can perhaps provide a sense of what could happen, but that is not what happened.
If the officials just said MAYBE after two weeks we can get back to normal if XYZ have happened then I, and many others, would have far less issues. We would understand that XYZ needs to happen prior to returning to normal. The problem is they explicitly said we just need to do X to get back to normal.
When can we actually go back to normal? There doesn't appear to be an explicit end goal that hasn't changed.
Our public health officials said just stay at home for two weeks and we can get back to normal. Then don't wear masks. Then always wear a mask. Next it was just wait until it gets warmer in the summer. Then it was just wait until the vaccine. Now some of them are actually saying wait until there are no new cases despite also saying that it will be with us forever and will become seasonal like the flu. If they actually want no new cases and if this does become a seasonal thing then we will literally never return to normal. That is the problem that many of us see. If they were just honest and straight forward with us from the beginning and may not argue we should remain locked down forever there would be far less issues.
It is a feeling. How do I know? Because you use the vague phrase "public officials".
When people are talking about a group that is not specific, they are necessarily talking about feelings as facts don't constrain it.
https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general
(sorry - linked dashboard is in Hebrew, they haven't translated it)
Among seniors it is well over 90%, but younger people have gotten vaccinated at much lower rates; and of course, nobody under 16 is vaccinated.
(Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza are, unfortunately, not counted among those to be vaccinated.)
Early in the vaccination effort (when the weather was a lot nastier!), there was a lot of press around these giant parking-lot sites with tents and you'd just roll down your window and get the shot. I wasn't eligible then. Now that I'm eligible, they seem to be gone?
Time to make another round of calls, I guess.
I just don't think they're thinking of inherent safety.
They're working on "six feet, fifteen minutes", which is increasingly useless and I'd argue now actively harmful guidance given the new variants.
If anything, the CDC recently _walked back_ some recommendations around fomite transmission, which I think was based on extensive study of the early variants which dominated the last year, and may or may not even be valid with the UK variant which is now prevalent.
In essence, we have enough delay between the situation on the ground, and the studies coming out, that the feedback loop is driving a wild oscillation. And I don't wish to get caught in it.
For people who don't want it long-term, emulate K-12 schools and vaccines policies: make the anti-vaxxers experience (or should) consequences as punishment for being irrational wingnuts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537821
@dang, not sure I'd consider this discussion so far a flame-war!
> We usually call it the overheated discussion detector now, even though the phrase is clumsy, because sometimes the discussions are just low-quality rather than outright flamewars.
I think that's fascinating. Lots of niceties behind the curtain. (maybe the opposite of most sites, sort of like stopping trading)
I don't understand this. Why would a large city, which is much higher risk but with far more hospitals and ultra-cold storage be far less capable of providing drive-up vaccine service than Yakima? Did we allocate far too many vaccines p/person to rural communities?
The article suggests rural communities are less likely to want the vaccine but it doesn't make it clear if distribution was based on demand at all.
The last few weeks in Michigan, 2x as much vaccine per person has been going into the Detroit region than has been coming here. I don't really know what demand looks like here though. We could have a few hundred unused doses, while it appears there's tens of thousands in the counties around Detroit (but they also have much more capacity to administer).