Not sure why you’re downvoted. It’s not significantly more lethal at this point than seasonal flu. The only difference to the population that I see is that vaccines for COVID have less efficacy than those for influenza.
My concern is that there isn't going to be much research on a proper vaccine since the Pharma companies are making money hand over fist on this half-assed one currently available.
It was good when it came out, but based on it's effectiveness, it seems more of a stop-gap than a proper vaccine.
The big concern with covid is long covid which affects around 5% of people who got covid. Thats what scares me. When I got covid it were only 2-3 bad days and the rest was like a normal flu but I noticed it took me roughly 3 more weeks to feel 100% like I did before, mostly fitness and stamina.
I've never recovered. I permanently lost the ability to taste certain things and can literally get 10 hours of sleep the night before and feel exhausted by noon.
I look forward to people who pretend that it's the same as the flu catching it for themselves so that they can enjoy this "no big deal."
Sorry that you're suffering this way. It's infuriating to me that people downplay Covid infections when the risk of suffering from long Covid effects is very real.
Sorry. I have a brilliant, extremely driven friend who did undergrad at an ivy. After getting covid, She had to drop out of her grad school program and her new life is a shell compared to what it used to be like. 2 years later, and there's a tiny fraction of improvement which she attributes to extreme rest. I forward her literature about emerging LC treatments and mechanisms of which her physicians are laughably ignorant.
> The big concern with covid is long covid which affects around 5% of people who got covid.
Where did you get 5%?
Last I saw you have a 20% chance of long covid, but it seems that was with older variants.
The thing that scares me is:
> up to two years after infection, at an elevated risk for many long COVID-related conditions including diabetes, lung problems, fatigue, blood clots and disorders affecting the gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal systems.
> The only difference to the population that I see is that vaccines for COVID have less efficacy than those for influenza.
So far COVID vaccines seem to confer protection for longer than flu ones, and the initial protection is generally higher.
Not sure if it's your case, but people often forget that every year there's a new flu shot per hemisphere, and its effectiveness generally hovers at around 40-60%.
The difference is that flu vaccines actually prevent infection in many cases, whereas COVID vaccines do not prevent them, but merely lessen the symptoms and risk of hospitalization.
> The difference is that flu vaccines actually prevent infection in many cases
OK
> whereas COVID vaccines do not prevent them, but merely lessen the symptoms and risk of hospitalization.
Is this something I can read on a peer reviewed study, or is it yet another creative definition of what "infection", "vaccine" or "symptom" really means?
> Irrespective of vaccination and/or prior natural infection, SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections and reinfections remained highly infectious and were responsible for 80% of transmission observed in the study population, which has high levels of both prior infection and vaccination. This observation underscores that vaccination and prevalent naturally acquired immunity alone will not eliminate risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially in higher-risk settings, such as prisons.
“There were 8996 hospitalizations (538 deaths [5.98%] within 30 days) for COVID-19 and 2403 hospitalizations (76 deaths [3.16%]) for seasonal influenza,”
“Compared with hospitalization for influenza, hospitalization for COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of death (hazard ratio, 1.61 [95% CI, 1.29-2.02]).”
In terms of genetics and symptoms, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is more similar to other common cold coronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43. It has very little in common with influenza.
From what I read, for both Covid and Influenza, a certain percentage have lingering symptoms, but you cant say they are similar because some symptoms are much more life altering that others. A nagging cough is not the same as brain fog, for example. The life altering symptoms "seem" to be much worse with Covid.
Which was projected to be the trajectory from the start. Transmissible diseases usually mutate to be less deadly over time, because killing the host is a bad reproduction strategy. Spanish Flu is still here today, it's just not crazy deadly anymore.
It's just not guaranteed to be monotonic (particular strains can bump lethality upwards), and it doesn't help the people who die early on to the stronger strains, especially with an overloaded medical system.
Like, we don't have hospitals overflowing into makeshift tent farms outside with freezer trucks used to handle the overload of bodies until the crematoriums can get around to them anymore, either. It's definitely trended towards reduced lethality over time.
Yes. The latest variants are less deadly. There is a pretty good reason for that. If the infected lives longer it has a higher chance of a successful transmission.
What are you basing this on?
Looks like deaths peaked in 2004, but more people in Africa are receiving treatment. Without treatment the avg life expectancy seems to be 11 years, and doesn't look like that's changed.
I imagine we won't know because of HIV's long life in the body, properly medicated. No one is willing to run a study to determine that, as it essentially sentences the control group to death.
If you take into account the lifecycle of HIV, it can take 2-15 years to develop stage 3. (Stage 3 is the symptomatic part. People on medication may never reach stage 3.) As such, a transmission generation even of SARS-CoV-2 is going to be on the order of days. HIV can be on the order of years.
So, there are different evolutionary pressures. If we find out that Covid is actually latent in all of us years later (unlikely because we would have likely seen it with SARS-1 or MERS), then all bets would be off.
This makes sense. Would also make sense why AIDS hasn't evolved to become less deadly, but it also brings up that covid hasn't had a bottleneck in terms of transmission. The main reason why one strain has replaced another has been that more recent strains are more transmissible. Delta was more deadly (and transmissible) than alpha, beta & the original strain, and came later for instance. I think we got lucky with omicron, which evolved from alpha if i'm not mistaken.
> Transmissible diseases usually mutate to be less deadly over time, because killing the host is a bad reproduction strategy.
Incorrect. This virus has already spread by the time you're dying in the hospital and it doesn't "care" if you die or not. If it could spread more effectively during the transmissible period of the disease, while more effectively murdering you on the tail end, it'll murder you more, no problem.
The Delta wave was a good example of the virus mutating to become both more transmissible and lethal, quite successfully from its perspective.
The mechanism for waning virulence is that we've got T-cells which recognize conserved T-cell epitopes so the human race has some level of relatively permanent immunity now against the novel virus, and because immunity to neutralizing antibodies causes the virus to mutate and it is always competing with the immunity to its past self and that has a cost.
I wouldn't. For me, covid was just a couple of days of fever with no other symptoms. Strange feeling to get fever isolated like that. But I'd take
it multiple times over the typical knocked out for a week flu with multiple flavours of suffering. That said, I did have covid vaccine up front.
I didn't take the vaccine (I decided it didn't make sense for me) and have had covid twice. Once was likely Beta, the other likely Omicron.
The first time around sucked. It was basically a very bad flu for about five days. I caught it on a trip to southern Mississippi, and it didn't help that I had to drive >10 hours back home without stopping anywhere that I might spread it. I ordered medicine, food, and supplies for contactless delivery and drove it nonstop.
The second time I only knew it was covid because I was testing every time I had an inkling that I might have gotten it. I had a very mild fever and a runny nose for two days and nothing else. I isolated myself in my home office and managed to keep anyone else in my family from getting it, too.
Everything I've experienced, heard, or read strongly indicates that each round is significantly less bad than the last.
I've had covid 3 times. Would rather get it 3 more times than get the flu a single time. Other than paranoia about having it, the actual symptoms have been a mild to bad cold for all my family/friends.
For the open-minded people who were paying attention, yes, for a while now. But for the hall monitors in the back? Not really...or maybe they were just being willfully ignorant? I'm glad there's more evidence coming along so the hall monitors in the back hear it louder and clearer. The fact that this study was funded by the Gates Foundation makes it even sweeter. :)
Bill Gates has been funding Covid research/Covid vaccination since basically the beginning of this whole mess. Various conspiracy theories are around as to why, if you're into that sort of thing.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds a lot of basic research. When Covid came out, they pivoted a lot of funds into it, obviously, as it's directly in line with their charter.
The B&M Gate Foundation devotes $1.6B to fighting disease annually. It's an everyday occurrence for the organization to publish data like this and only contrarians living outside of reality will say otherwise.
My point is that the vaccines abilities were oversold and underwhelmed people with their efficacy. This and several other policy missteps have severely undermined people’s trust regarding public health institutions.
Probably true, though most things in life are oversold. Including how well a past infection will help you out. :D
I don't want to demand that we listen to experts, but I do regret people seem to have expected experts to never be wrong. And the current culture has gotten to where admitting a mistake is literally the worst thing you can do for a political stance. :(
I'm vaguely curious on which ones you mean. Especially with regards to the vaccines, the data is pretty overwhelming that they were a net good. The charts that were showing hospitalization/deaths of vaccinated versus not were fairly conclusive. Did they live up to some of the initial hype about them? I don't actually know. The pipe dream that many were saying of a sterilizing vaccine were always a distant hope.
I’m mostly talking about the partial lockdowns where only specific categories of businesses or employees were considered essential. Many of these designations were arbitrary at best and politically motivated at worst.
Please cite your sources here. Lockdowns were effective.
1) Lacking a nationalized infrastructure to deliver food, utilities, and healthcare, some businesses are clearly essential
2) It is impossible to have unanimous consensus on what "essential" means
3) In some areas, businesses are not tightly scoped - the primary source of food for a neighborhood may also sell non-food items.
4) Even the definition of "essential" cannot be tightly defined - are manufacturers of spare infrastructure components essential? What about their suppliers? What about the contractor who refills their coffee machine?
Decisions had to be made, and administrators largely made the best decisions with the information available to them.
Programmer logic leads some to the libertarian path. Not everything is a zero sum game. Life is messy and it’s not always governments fault. Getting it right more than wrong saved countless lives. You can’t quantify the amount of lives saved.
> White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci that the chances of scientists creating a highly effective vaccine — one that provides 98% or more guaranteed protection — for the virus are slim.
> Scientists are hoping for a coronavirus vaccine that is at least 75% effective, but 50% or 60% effective would be acceptable, too, he said.
> The FDA has said it would authorize a coronavirus vaccine so long as it is safe and at least 50% effective.
The initial vaccine was absolutely tested for infection and was based on infection rates, not based on "severity of symptoms." They changed the narrative after it was clear that vaccination did not provide protection from infection from variants but did maintain protection from severe symptoms.
No vaccine prevents an infection. None. Zero. Never happens.
The best a vaccine can do is train your immune system to identify and react to the infectious agent before it gains enough of a foothold to impact you. Often, especially if you've been vaccinated with the specific strain that infected you, it can do this before you notice you've been infected. Practically giving you an immunity, but not truly, you still got infected and your immune system still fought it off.
For viruses though it's a different story. Viruses mutate, the strain you got vaccinated against may not be the one that enters your body, but the vaccine means your immune system can mount an effective response. In these cases, it significantly reduces risk of hospitalizations and death from the vaccine, but does not mean you won't have some effects from the virus.
This is another anti-science post trying to spread misinformation about how vaccines work. I suggest you educate yourself more on how all this works before posting more misinformation.
> No vaccine prevents an infection. None. Zero. Never happens.
As quoted from the CDC:
"A new CDC study provides strong evidence that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections in real-world conditions among health care personnel, first responders, and other essential workers."
Here is your entire post in case you try to change it:
>"they" didn't change the narrative.
>No vaccine prevents an infection. None. Zero. Never happens.
>The best a vaccine can do is train your immune system to identify and react to the infectious agent before it gains enough of a foothold to impact you. Often, especially if you've been vaccinated with the specific strain that infected you, it can do this before you notice you've been infected. Practically giving you an immunity, but not truly, you still got infected and your immune system still fought it off.
>For viruses though it's a different story. Viruses mutate, the strain you got vaccinated against may not be the one that enters your body, but the vaccine means your immune system can mount an effective response. In these cases, it significantly reduces risk of hospitalizations and death from the vaccine, but does not mean you won't have some effects from the virus.
I understand some vaccines provide sterilizing immunity, others do not. Which is what is causing so much confusion as people are lazily refering to the vaccine "working" or "not working" without specifying what they mean by working.
There was certainly no reason to believe, even at the time, that these vaccines would be any more durable over the long term against a rapidly evolving coronavirus than all of the previous attempts to develop such a vaccine. Seems like a lot of people were just hoping that would be the case because of the shiny new tech involved and because they were aggressively sold on the idea the vaccines were the key to "ending the pandemic." Plenty of immunologists at the time predicted that SARS-CoV-2 immune escape would come quickly and that vaccine protection would wear off quickly.
Many very smart virologists at the time noted that other coronaviruses in circulation didn't mutate that much (as compared to something like influenza), so it really was not known to what expect and at what speed the virus would or could mutate.
During the vaccine trials, the test population was never tested for covid unless they developped symptoms. So you can't infer any information on whether the vaccine provided immunity against the virus (as in you won't get infected if you are vaccinated), or whether the vaccinated population got infected (and were possibly contagious) but without symptom. For that it would have required to test for covid the full test population regularly.
Claims that the vaccine provided immunity were always baseless. What the trials demonstrated was that the vaccine was effective at suppressing symptoms and hospitalisations.
And this is not something that came after the fact, I remember that this approach was discussed on HN when the results were initially published.
So your belief is that being infected with COVID is entirely uncorrelated with having COVID symptoms?
Even if there were a minor correlation, then you can infer some information from the trials.
I'm not also suggesting that what you describe isn't part of the story, but there is no reason to believe it's a major part of the story. Viral infections lead to symptoms (most of the time). The vaccine is not a magic totem that allows for massive amounts of viral replication while just taking away the symptoms. That isn't how the immune system works.
He said that AND ALSO at the same public appearance: "vaccinated people are less likely to catch the virus than unvaccinated people and, if they do catch it, are less likely to get sick"
Why somebody take first statement as absolute and not the second one?
Why after that statement ignore all other statements made by properly medically and scientifically prepared experts?
HN is not a good representation of the population.
> Why somebody take first statement as absolute and not the second one?
Because 90% of the US population is incapable of nuance and only listens to the first few words of a sentence? Maybe lead with the important part instead of wish casting?
Why muddy the waters? Why even say the first part when you KNOW it's going to confuse most people?
This might be factually correct that the Covid vaccines were not tested for immunity, but immunity in this case is not a guarantee, it’s a statistical concept. And we do have a large body of evidence that suggest vaccines, in the general case, do provide both immunity and reduction in symptoms. I think it is disingenuous to say that they don’t provide immunity, or to think it’s crazy people would think that, because it is most likely true.
What would really be wild is if Covid vaccines were this effective at reducing hospitalizations and symptoms and provided no immunity at all.
All the analysis I have seen comparing the vaccinated and unvaccinated population suggest they reduce the risk of getting infected by 20-30% in the short term, which for a virus that infectious doesn't really change anything.
At the time we were told the delta variant was 20 times more infectious than the previous strains, so downgrading it to 15 time more infectious won't really make any difference (those numbers were probably bullshit like most numbers comming from epidemiologists but that logic stands whatever the real infection rate was, as long as it is a very high rate).
I tend to get every cold and flu that comes around. I was really sick with what I thought was the flu in Feb 2020. I never got covid-19 (afaik) even though I never went to great lengths to avoid it. Only wore masks when asked, and hung around all different crowds of folks - maskers and non-maskers. Got early vaccine but no boosters. Perhaps I got the early alpha or beta version of the disease and that is what has kept me well. Thus article hints that could be the case.
My wife at the time was in the same boat. A virus hit our household in Feb 2020, she got super sick with many of the expected symptoms for COVID and remained foggy for months. However, we were living in Oregon, near the vaccine research facility in Hillsboro, which also happens to be near the primate research facility. So my theory is that the authorities saw COVID was coming and released the closest COVID (Coronavirus family) analogue they had into the population in a hope that there would be some cross protection.
Oregon had one of the lowest COVID infection rates the entire pandemic. Surely not due to anyone being particularly careful.
As an ex-Oregonian, this is particularly interesting. To most this must just sound like craziness, and the intentional release part may be, but for sure there's a primate research facility right in Hillsboro, OR.
Apparently my grandfather helped design something with the cages, which is just weird for me.
You're right. It's just most of the time these sort of claims are so distant. I just find it interesting to have been proximate to the places mentioned. That's all.
Or she could have just gotten Covid-19. First laboratory confirmed Covid-19 case was in Washington state on January 18, 2020. Oregon's not too far away from Washington.
Also there was likely cases floating around in the US before then, that was just the first confirmed case.
According to this timeline on the CDC website[1], there was reports of presumptive cases of Covid-19 in Oregon on February 28, 2020 as well. That's close enough to your timeline that I think it's more likely she just got Covid-19 (or a particularly bad case of the flu).
I also never really went to great lengths to avoid it. I was late 20's when it started (early 30's now), and live a very healthy lifestyle and have never had respiratory problems. I wore a mask wherever required or when others would feel more comfortable, but I did not go out of my way to always wear one when not required, and I got the vaccine and two boosters.
I unlike you though have caught covid-19 nearly every year since 2020 at least once a year. For me it seems like it provides protection for about a year but it doesn't last, and is individual. I kinda just expect to catch it every once in a while at this point.
This study is ridiculous. The way it's worded, it makes it sound like Omicron is immune to previous infection. What they didn't study specifically was immunity of Omicron to previous Omicron infection.
We all know that Omicron defeated previous immunity, but once you get infected by Omicron, you're immune to Omicron variants. This is basic science, and the fact that some doctors were trying to convince previously-infected people to get vaccinated was anti-science.
“Some” doctors? This was the entire medical establishment, top-down, including several government agencies.
I won’t forget what a clown show the last few years were.
We shouldn't forget. We should know who kept advocating for lockdowns, masking, and unnecessary covid vaccinations. They should be asked why, when the data was clear even a couple years ago.
Putting aside many of the substantial problems with analyzing data in this field, along with not covering key issues in the overall risk-management decision such as weighing the known/unknown short/long term risks from the vaccines themselves balanced against Covid, I'd like to say that this section from the summary caught my eye.
> The immunity conferred by past infection should be weighed alongside protection from vaccination when assessing future disease burden from COVID-19, providing guidance on when individuals should be vaccinated, and designing policies that mandate vaccination for workers or restrict access, on the basis of immune status, to settings where the risk of transmission is high, such as travel and high-occupancy indoor settings.
Note that the summary posits "when individuals should be vaccinated" not "if", as a base assumption and leaves no room for individual choice and risk-management decisions. Ditto on "designing policies that mandate vaccination".
To me, the way some of these things are worded displays a starting bias and lack of credibility.
A certain subset of the population which supported mandates, a now obviously failed and unjustifiable policy which caused immense harm, are going to soldier on as though that was always the right thing to do, rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance involved.
This is easy to say in hindsight. You would be singing a far different tune had the initial numbers turned out to be worse, or had one of the mutations led to far more severe risk.
When dealing with the unknown at "global pandemic" scale, it seems better to be safe than sorry, given that you're potentially juggling millions of lives.
All other things being equal, it is better to be safe than sorry.
But that's not the choice offered.
One thing that you never needed the benefit of hindsight to understand is that there's a non-trivial risk to the vaccines as well. This always exists. For instance, it took science years to understand the full impact of Thalidomide.
In the small chance that these injections end up having substantial long-term problems with something like cancer or fertility, a universally applied treatment could be the destruction of humanity.
Trying to compel universal injections was always a foolish risk-management decision.
Where do you draw the line? Did you see how Australia was dealing with it? They stopped being a democracy once their politicians got a taste of the immense and inordinate new powers to control the average person. This happened in the United States to a lesser extent too, with hall monitors enjoying new unwarranted authority over people's bodies and livelihood even when evidence like from this latest study was already known. Anybody who questioned the narrative or warned about the direction was treated like a pariah.
In my corner of Australia healthcare is effectively closed to me, as GPs around here demand wearing masks and allow no exemptions. I guess that's democracy in action. No mask - no rights, as per majority decision.
One of the biggest regrets is letting my US GC "win" to lapse a few years ago. Oh well, it all went down the toilet over there just the same, isn't it?
> In my corner of Australia healthcare is effectively closed to me, as GPs around here demand wearing masks and allow no exemptions. I guess that's democracy in action. No mask - no rights, as per majority decision.
This is like whining that the pub requires shirt and shoes but more bizarre.
It has nothing to do with 'democracy'; in QLD at least GPs have no requirement for mask wearing so it's just up to the good old "free market" where businesses can set their own rules. Complaining that a GP requires basic healthcare precautions is truly bizarre to me.
How long do you think it will be reasonable to continue requiring ineffective cloth masks to visit a doctor's office? Should this new requirement remain in effect indefinitely? Were we just failing to institute "basic healthcare precautions" pre-2020?
They're not required here, as I noted - not sure what your question is about? Just asking generally?
I don't think 'cloth masks' should be used at all; I think people should probably be required to wear respirators in certain healthcare circumstances - particularly at GPs - as long as there are virulent airborne illnesses around.
And there are all the time, to the point where respiratory disease is a top five killer.
I think if we review indoor air quality guidelines & get better at indoor air filtration we can probably relax that requirement. But sitting in a closed indoor space with a bunch of sick people not wearing even the most basic protective equipment is not my idea of a good time. (FWIW my GP requires people who have cold/flu symptoms sit outside in a separate area and then they have to come in via a back entrance. So there's some segregation of symptomatic people, but not a huge amount.)
"If this set of facts had been slightly different, then your take on firing people and excluding them from public venues for refusing to agree to an unproven and experimental medical procedure might be different."
I mean, not really? Some things in life are more important than assiduously avoiding death by a respiratory infection.
Sorry, that’s not how this works. Burden of proof is not new, nor is it complicated. Thus:
> what may be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.
It’s trivial to find sweeping and unsubstantiated opinions. It’s trivial to find arguments on both[1] sides[2]. Why should I trust either? Either way, what evidence trivially and unquestionably supports “immense harm”?
This argument has been going in circles for 2+ years, it’s not like I haven’t seen more rigorously defended and less hyperbolic opinions before. That stuff, I’ll consider. What you and OP are doing is just noise.
You've at least stopped speaking for everyone else in the thread, but you've simply arrived at the same point these threads tend to reach, where you stop addressing arguments and fall back to simply impugning other's intelligence and motives.
> You've at least stopped speaking for everyone else in the thread ...
I never spoke for anyone else in this thread. In your dichotomy of "us vs them", I am neither. You need a finer brush.
> but you've simply arrived at ... where you stop addressing arguments and fall back to simply impugning other's intelligence ...
I made no comments about yours or anyone's intelligence. Again, you need a finer brush to paint other people's opinions. If I felt you weren't intelligent enough, I wouldn't have attempted to talk to you. But your responses to me are giving me reasons to rethink the (f)utility of this attempt.
> ... and motives.
Nor did I make any comments about your motives; only your conduct. I have neither condoned nor denounced your motives. I only pointed out that you attacked your parent. You justified the attack by claiming that you had many people on your side.
This is HN, not a schoolyard. Having many people on your side does not give you the right to attack participants in this forum.
If you still do not understand this, know this: it only makes your point harder to agree with. The harder you are to talk to, the harder you will find people to talk with. I'd hoped you were intelligent enough to see your conduct was not helping you argue your case. I have no such hopes now. Goodbye.
The vaccines' ability to reduce transmission was never demonstrated in any rigorous controlled trial at all. Almost no one except those in very high risk groups takes them anymore. People lost valuable careers, including a friend of mine who poured his heart and soul into caring for old folks in an assisted living facility, for no public health benefit whatsoever.
> The vaccines' ability to reduce transmission was never demonstrated in any rigorous controlled trial at all.
Ok, so you’re presumably referring to this[1]? _Because manufacturers weren’t required to prove a reduction in transmissibility_, only safety and _efficacy_, and conflating transmissibility with effectiveness is misleading. An honest and more important question would be why did governments more or less call the crisis a wrap despite shitty immunization rates (at least in the US) and data that despite a significant and desirable impact on hospitalizations and mortality, transmissibility was still a problem[2] particularly with omicron? Or whether the vaccine technology or policy can keep up with variants today or tomorrow[3]? But a blanket statement like “no public health benefit whatsoever” is absurd.
> Almost no one except those in very high risk groups takes them anymore.
I don’t know what you’re getting at, here.
> People lost valuable careers
And people lost valuable lives. Including my mother in law who was not completely vaccinated when her husband brought it home. And my great uncle who was exposed in nursing care at a place that refused mandates. And my coworker’s brother who was forced to work despite his coworkers all being sick on the job. And so on, if we’re gonna start trading anecdotes.
> poured his heart and soul into caring for old folks in an assisted living facility
I’m sorry, am I to infer that he lost his job because he wouldn’t/couldn’t vaccinate while working with high risk people? Because, based on what I just said about my uncle, barking up the wrong tree for sympathy.
I think you are perhaps reading too much into the phrasing. If they had said "... providing guidance on when individuals should be hospitalized...", I would not take that as assuming hospitalization either.
> as a base assumption and leaves no room for individual choice and risk-management decisions.
We're still having this dance in 2023? Businesses can likewise reject people for increasing the risk profile of the business provided such rejections don't touch on suspect classifications. And even that last bit is less likely to pose regulatory risk to businesses now that businesses in the US have been enabled by the Supreme Court to reject clients for things like sexual orientation.
> Ditto on "designing policies that mandate vaccination".
Workers under mandates can just as easily quit the job that has the mandate, or they can be terminated at will. Or rather, such is the typical argument I hear from the a certain crowd when workers complain about employers doing silly things that workers disagree with. If you're concerned that these workers should bargain for a right (to reject a vaccine) without fear of termination, maybe they should form a structure that can collectively bargain for said right for them.
I'm inclined to agree with others who say that your own biases are tainting your interpretation, but your biases are also particularly revealing.
The most likely outcome is that the majority of jobs will not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of someone's covid information. I predict it will be a new protected class soon, especially seeing as one can demonstrate equivalent or better immunity from past infection and the vaccinations do not prevent infection or spread.
If we had governments that weren't entirely corrupt for money and power, your train of thinking would be entirely rational and perfect.
But there's substantial government interest in having things like medical passports/IDs that provide them with substantial power and bureaucratic expansion (and more importantly, a huge financial win for the medical-industrial complex)
Additionally, those vaccines served as an idealogical purge mechanism where people who were willing to go against the grain and not just follow orders were drummed out of the government.
Hard to believe that they're just going to give up on this because it's the right thing to do.
Stop getting infected. Stop choosing to prolong the pandemic.
All you seflish, entitled people that haven't helped or have "moved on" while serious illness continues to pervade society and unknown risks of repeated infection remain, have really shown your colours.
Your comment is so full of emotion and offers zero insight into how to actually achieve it - therefore, it’s pretty safe to say your advice isnt helpful here.
Masks and vaccinations dont prevent infections in a meaningful way. This is backed by real data and anecdotal data.
Here's my anecdotal data: I'm sitting on a bus writing this wearing a respirator, as I have every bus trip for the lady few years. I've had several vaccinations. I've changed a few behaviours, but not many (e.g. I avoid packed indoor environments where possible).
I am yet to get COVID.
Saying "masks" without qualifiers is mostly pointless. Most people still associate masks with basically useless blue surgical masks.
Maybe I'm just lucky but the science of respirators is compelling and I find it hard to believe we wouldn't see a dramatic reduction in infection rates if everyone wore them.
If anything and everything you're doing isn't stopping spread and encouraging/normalizing behaviours that promote it in any way, that's where to start. The pandemic never ended.
Not even talking about vaccinations (we can't vax our way out of this, was always only part of it). Masking goes a long way but is also only part of it. Stop moving around. Stop gathering. Take precautions like distancing and avoiding indoor spaces. Stop the spread. COVID never ended and as it's airborne all spaces are unsafe.
Are the 45% (with HUGE error bars btw) protective effect for reinfection with BA.1 referring to the protective effect where the first infection is BA.1 and the second infection is BA.1, or where the first infection is any variant and the second infection is BA.1?
It's not surprising that "old" variants don't result in protection against BA.1, but it would be a bit surprising to me if BA.1 didn't trigger protection against BA.1
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 228 ms ] threadIt was good when it came out, but based on it's effectiveness, it seems more of a stop-gap than a proper vaccine.
I look forward to people who pretend that it's the same as the flu catching it for themselves so that they can enjoy this "no big deal."
It's a sad state of affairs.
Where did you get 5%?
Last I saw you have a 20% chance of long covid, but it seems that was with older variants.
The thing that scares me is:
> up to two years after infection, at an elevated risk for many long COVID-related conditions including diabetes, lung problems, fatigue, blood clots and disorders affecting the gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal systems.
https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/long-covid-still-worrisome-2...
So far COVID vaccines seem to confer protection for longer than flu ones, and the initial protection is generally higher.
Not sure if it's your case, but people often forget that every year there's a new flu shot per hemisphere, and its effectiveness generally hovers at around 40-60%.
OK
> whereas COVID vaccines do not prevent them, but merely lessen the symptoms and risk of hospitalization.
Is this something I can read on a peer reviewed study, or is it yet another creative definition of what "infection", "vaccine" or "symptom" really means?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02138-x
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm
“Compared with hospitalization for influenza, hospitalization for COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of death (hazard ratio, 1.61 [95% CI, 1.29-2.02]).”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2803749
What would be interesting is to compare the numbers when flu was first happening vs covid.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30658-0
It's just not guaranteed to be monotonic (particular strains can bump lethality upwards), and it doesn't help the people who die early on to the stronger strains, especially with an overloaded medical system.
Like, we don't have hospitals overflowing into makeshift tent farms outside with freezer trucks used to handle the overload of bodies until the crematoriums can get around to them anymore, either. It's definitely trended towards reduced lethality over time.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30254697
So, there are different evolutionary pressures. If we find out that Covid is actually latent in all of us years later (unlikely because we would have likely seen it with SARS-1 or MERS), then all bets would be off.
Incorrect. This virus has already spread by the time you're dying in the hospital and it doesn't "care" if you die or not. If it could spread more effectively during the transmissible period of the disease, while more effectively murdering you on the tail end, it'll murder you more, no problem.
The Delta wave was a good example of the virus mutating to become both more transmissible and lethal, quite successfully from its perspective.
The mechanism for waning virulence is that we've got T-cells which recognize conserved T-cell epitopes so the human race has some level of relatively permanent immunity now against the novel virus, and because immunity to neutralizing antibodies causes the virus to mutate and it is always competing with the immunity to its past self and that has a cost.
But it's not. I'd rather get the flu than covid.
The first time around sucked. It was basically a very bad flu for about five days. I caught it on a trip to southern Mississippi, and it didn't help that I had to drive >10 hours back home without stopping anywhere that I might spread it. I ordered medicine, food, and supplies for contactless delivery and drove it nonstop.
The second time I only knew it was covid because I was testing every time I had an inkling that I might have gotten it. I had a very mild fever and a runny nose for two days and nothing else. I isolated myself in my home office and managed to keep anyone else in my family from getting it, too.
Everything I've experienced, heard, or read strongly indicates that each round is significantly less bad than the last.
Was this really not already well understood?
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about
I don't want to demand that we listen to experts, but I do regret people seem to have expected experts to never be wrong. And the current culture has gotten to where admitting a mistake is literally the worst thing you can do for a political stance. :(
1) Lacking a nationalized infrastructure to deliver food, utilities, and healthcare, some businesses are clearly essential
2) It is impossible to have unanimous consensus on what "essential" means
3) In some areas, businesses are not tightly scoped - the primary source of food for a neighborhood may also sell non-food items.
4) Even the definition of "essential" cannot be tightly defined - are manufacturers of spare infrastructure components essential? What about their suppliers? What about the contractor who refills their coffee machine?
Decisions had to be made, and administrators largely made the best decisions with the information available to them.
Only the alt-right spun it as a cure so they could also merrily point out to everyone when that didn’t come true.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/one-year-biden-said-...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/07/coronavirus-vaccine-dr-fauci...
> White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci that the chances of scientists creating a highly effective vaccine — one that provides 98% or more guaranteed protection — for the virus are slim.
> Scientists are hoping for a coronavirus vaccine that is at least 75% effective, but 50% or 60% effective would be acceptable, too, he said.
> The FDA has said it would authorize a coronavirus vaccine so long as it is safe and at least 50% effective.
vaccines do not function like a benedryl.
The initial vaccine was absolutely tested for infection and was based on infection rates, not based on "severity of symptoms." They changed the narrative after it was clear that vaccination did not provide protection from infection from variants but did maintain protection from severe symptoms.
No vaccine prevents an infection. None. Zero. Never happens.
The best a vaccine can do is train your immune system to identify and react to the infectious agent before it gains enough of a foothold to impact you. Often, especially if you've been vaccinated with the specific strain that infected you, it can do this before you notice you've been infected. Practically giving you an immunity, but not truly, you still got infected and your immune system still fought it off.
For viruses though it's a different story. Viruses mutate, the strain you got vaccinated against may not be the one that enters your body, but the vaccine means your immune system can mount an effective response. In these cases, it significantly reduces risk of hospitalizations and death from the vaccine, but does not mean you won't have some effects from the virus.
> No vaccine prevents an infection. None. Zero. Never happens.
As quoted from the CDC:
"A new CDC study provides strong evidence that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections in real-world conditions among health care personnel, first responders, and other essential workers."
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0329-COVID-19-Vacci....
Here is your entire post in case you try to change it:
>"they" didn't change the narrative. >No vaccine prevents an infection. None. Zero. Never happens.
>The best a vaccine can do is train your immune system to identify and react to the infectious agent before it gains enough of a foothold to impact you. Often, especially if you've been vaccinated with the specific strain that infected you, it can do this before you notice you've been infected. Practically giving you an immunity, but not truly, you still got infected and your immune system still fought it off.
>For viruses though it's a different story. Viruses mutate, the strain you got vaccinated against may not be the one that enters your body, but the vaccine means your immune system can mount an effective response. In these cases, it significantly reduces risk of hospitalizations and death from the vaccine, but does not mean you won't have some effects from the virus.
It was not known at the time whether that protection would maintain or not, nobody knew how the virus would mutate.
Claims that the vaccine provided immunity were always baseless. What the trials demonstrated was that the vaccine was effective at suppressing symptoms and hospitalisations.
And this is not something that came after the fact, I remember that this approach was discussed on HN when the results were initially published.
Even if there were a minor correlation, then you can infer some information from the trials.
I'm not also suggesting that what you describe isn't part of the story, but there is no reason to believe it's a major part of the story. Viral infections lead to symptoms (most of the time). The vaccine is not a magic totem that allows for massive amounts of viral replication while just taking away the symptoms. That isn't how the immune system works.
I think we can give people some slack considering it was trumpeted by many elected officials and most of the national news networks for over a year.
He said that AND ALSO at the same public appearance: "vaccinated people are less likely to catch the virus than unvaccinated people and, if they do catch it, are less likely to get sick"
Why somebody take first statement as absolute and not the second one?
Why after that statement ignore all other statements made by properly medically and scientifically prepared experts?
> Why somebody take first statement as absolute and not the second one?
Because 90% of the US population is incapable of nuance and only listens to the first few words of a sentence? Maybe lead with the important part instead of wish casting?
Why muddy the waters? Why even say the first part when you KNOW it's going to confuse most people?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-021-00578-z
"Most COVID-19 vaccines are designed to elicit immune responses..."
It's crazy how many people spreads information without giving any prove.
What would really be wild is if Covid vaccines were this effective at reducing hospitalizations and symptoms and provided no immunity at all.
At the time we were told the delta variant was 20 times more infectious than the previous strains, so downgrading it to 15 time more infectious won't really make any difference (those numbers were probably bullshit like most numbers comming from epidemiologists but that logic stands whatever the real infection rate was, as long as it is a very high rate).
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0607-mrna-reduce-ri...
Oregon had one of the lowest COVID infection rates the entire pandemic. Surely not due to anyone being particularly careful.
Apparently my grandfather helped design something with the cages, which is just weird for me.
Also there was likely cases floating around in the US before then, that was just the first confirmed case.
According to this timeline on the CDC website[1], there was reports of presumptive cases of Covid-19 in Oregon on February 28, 2020 as well. That's close enough to your timeline that I think it's more likely she just got Covid-19 (or a particularly bad case of the flu).
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html
I unlike you though have caught covid-19 nearly every year since 2020 at least once a year. For me it seems like it provides protection for about a year but it doesn't last, and is individual. I kinda just expect to catch it every once in a while at this point.
We all know that Omicron defeated previous immunity, but once you get infected by Omicron, you're immune to Omicron variants. This is basic science, and the fact that some doctors were trying to convince previously-infected people to get vaccinated was anti-science.
> The immunity conferred by past infection should be weighed alongside protection from vaccination when assessing future disease burden from COVID-19, providing guidance on when individuals should be vaccinated, and designing policies that mandate vaccination for workers or restrict access, on the basis of immune status, to settings where the risk of transmission is high, such as travel and high-occupancy indoor settings.
Note that the summary posits "when individuals should be vaccinated" not "if", as a base assumption and leaves no room for individual choice and risk-management decisions. Ditto on "designing policies that mandate vaccination".
To me, the way some of these things are worded displays a starting bias and lack of credibility.
When dealing with the unknown at "global pandemic" scale, it seems better to be safe than sorry, given that you're potentially juggling millions of lives.
All other things being equal, it is better to be safe than sorry.
But that's not the choice offered.
One thing that you never needed the benefit of hindsight to understand is that there's a non-trivial risk to the vaccines as well. This always exists. For instance, it took science years to understand the full impact of Thalidomide.
In the small chance that these injections end up having substantial long-term problems with something like cancer or fertility, a universally applied treatment could be the destruction of humanity.
Trying to compel universal injections was always a foolish risk-management decision.
(And, I'd argue, more freedom than the average American citizen in many areas, most notably healthcare.)
One of the biggest regrets is letting my US GC "win" to lapse a few years ago. Oh well, it all went down the toilet over there just the same, isn't it?
This is like whining that the pub requires shirt and shoes but more bizarre.
It has nothing to do with 'democracy'; in QLD at least GPs have no requirement for mask wearing so it's just up to the good old "free market" where businesses can set their own rules. Complaining that a GP requires basic healthcare precautions is truly bizarre to me.
I don't think 'cloth masks' should be used at all; I think people should probably be required to wear respirators in certain healthcare circumstances - particularly at GPs - as long as there are virulent airborne illnesses around.
And there are all the time, to the point where respiratory disease is a top five killer.
I think if we review indoor air quality guidelines & get better at indoor air filtration we can probably relax that requirement. But sitting in a closed indoor space with a bunch of sick people not wearing even the most basic protective equipment is not my idea of a good time. (FWIW my GP requires people who have cold/flu symptoms sit outside in a separate area and then they have to come in via a back entrance. So there's some segregation of symptomatic people, but not a huge amount.)
I mean, not really? Some things in life are more important than assiduously avoiding death by a respiratory infection.
Citations needed.
> what may be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.
It’s trivial to find sweeping and unsubstantiated opinions. It’s trivial to find arguments on both[1] sides[2]. Why should I trust either? Either way, what evidence trivially and unquestionably supports “immense harm”?
This argument has been going in circles for 2+ years, it’s not like I haven’t seen more rigorously defended and less hyperbolic opinions before. That stuff, I’ll consider. What you and OP are doing is just noise.
[1] https://www.heritage.org/public-health/commentary/the-failin...
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccine-mandates-...
It's clear to us all that you're not here in good faith.
I never spoke for anyone else in this thread. In your dichotomy of "us vs them", I am neither. You need a finer brush.
> but you've simply arrived at ... where you stop addressing arguments and fall back to simply impugning other's intelligence ...
I made no comments about yours or anyone's intelligence. Again, you need a finer brush to paint other people's opinions. If I felt you weren't intelligent enough, I wouldn't have attempted to talk to you. But your responses to me are giving me reasons to rethink the (f)utility of this attempt.
> ... and motives.
Nor did I make any comments about your motives; only your conduct. I have neither condoned nor denounced your motives. I only pointed out that you attacked your parent. You justified the attack by claiming that you had many people on your side.
This is HN, not a schoolyard. Having many people on your side does not give you the right to attack participants in this forum.
If you still do not understand this, know this: it only makes your point harder to agree with. The harder you are to talk to, the harder you will find people to talk with. I'd hoped you were intelligent enough to see your conduct was not helping you argue your case. I have no such hopes now. Goodbye.
Ok, so you’re presumably referring to this[1]? _Because manufacturers weren’t required to prove a reduction in transmissibility_, only safety and _efficacy_, and conflating transmissibility with effectiveness is misleading. An honest and more important question would be why did governments more or less call the crisis a wrap despite shitty immunization rates (at least in the US) and data that despite a significant and desirable impact on hospitalizations and mortality, transmissibility was still a problem[2] particularly with omicron? Or whether the vaccine technology or policy can keep up with variants today or tomorrow[3]? But a blanket statement like “no public health benefit whatsoever” is absurd.
> Almost no one except those in very high risk groups takes them anymore.
I don’t know what you’re getting at, here.
> People lost valuable careers
And people lost valuable lives. Including my mother in law who was not completely vaccinated when her husband brought it home. And my great uncle who was exposed in nursing care at a place that refused mandates. And my coworker’s brother who was forced to work despite his coworkers all being sick on the job. And so on, if we’re gonna start trading anecdotes.
> poured his heart and soul into caring for old folks in an assisted living facility
I’m sorry, am I to infer that he lost his job because he wouldn’t/couldn’t vaccinate while working with high risk people? Because, based on what I just said about my uncle, barking up the wrong tree for sympathy.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-pfizer-vaccine-tra...
[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
[3] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/23/1150032...
Consider: "How do I know when to go to the emergency room?"
The word "when" here is discussing circumstance, aka "whether", not the calendar.
If this was a casual blog post or something, I think you'd have a fair counterpoint that would muddy the waters sufficiently.
But this is published in a renowned scientific journal. Every word choice should be carefully chosen, and it's fair game to critique it as such.
In a parallel universe words only ever have a single meaning and nobody ever misinterprets anything, but not in this one.
> and it's fair game to critique it as such
Ambiguity was not the given critique, so this statement is both true on its own and also in context a giant nonsequitur.
It's not their fault that when assessing members of the response set for "when" you neglect to consider "never".
We're still having this dance in 2023? Businesses can likewise reject people for increasing the risk profile of the business provided such rejections don't touch on suspect classifications. And even that last bit is less likely to pose regulatory risk to businesses now that businesses in the US have been enabled by the Supreme Court to reject clients for things like sexual orientation.
> Ditto on "designing policies that mandate vaccination".
Workers under mandates can just as easily quit the job that has the mandate, or they can be terminated at will. Or rather, such is the typical argument I hear from the a certain crowd when workers complain about employers doing silly things that workers disagree with. If you're concerned that these workers should bargain for a right (to reject a vaccine) without fear of termination, maybe they should form a structure that can collectively bargain for said right for them.
I'm inclined to agree with others who say that your own biases are tainting your interpretation, but your biases are also particularly revealing.
But there's substantial government interest in having things like medical passports/IDs that provide them with substantial power and bureaucratic expansion (and more importantly, a huge financial win for the medical-industrial complex)
Additionally, those vaccines served as an idealogical purge mechanism where people who were willing to go against the grain and not just follow orders were drummed out of the government.
Hard to believe that they're just going to give up on this because it's the right thing to do.
All you seflish, entitled people that haven't helped or have "moved on" while serious illness continues to pervade society and unknown risks of repeated infection remain, have really shown your colours.
We know what you did last COVID wave(s).
Your comment is so full of emotion and offers zero insight into how to actually achieve it - therefore, it’s pretty safe to say your advice isnt helpful here.
Masks and vaccinations dont prevent infections in a meaningful way. This is backed by real data and anecdotal data.
I am yet to get COVID.
Saying "masks" without qualifiers is mostly pointless. Most people still associate masks with basically useless blue surgical masks.
Maybe I'm just lucky but the science of respirators is compelling and I find it hard to believe we wouldn't see a dramatic reduction in infection rates if everyone wore them.
Not even talking about vaccinations (we can't vax our way out of this, was always only part of it). Masking goes a long way but is also only part of it. Stop moving around. Stop gathering. Take precautions like distancing and avoiding indoor spaces. Stop the spread. COVID never ended and as it's airborne all spaces are unsafe.
It's not surprising that "old" variants don't result in protection against BA.1, but it would be a bit surprising to me if BA.1 didn't trigger protection against BA.1