Author Topic: Vaccine  (Read 34170 times)

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Offline coppice

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #100 on: March 20, 2021, 04:06:45 pm »
Being dangerous doesn't require a death. Traffic accidents result in larger number of injured than deaths and nobody thinks it's all well as long as you don't die.
Quite right. There are still people in Hong Kong suffering the after effects of SARS in 2003. SARS2 seems to be showing all the same qualities as SARS1, although they are less aggressive with SARS2. I assume many people's health (e.g. lung performance) will be affected for decades, and the health services will be carrying a financial burden for just as long.
 

Offline Habropoda

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #101 on: March 20, 2021, 04:44:47 pm »
Plus we don't know the possible very long term effect like HPV causing cancer or chickenpox causing shingles.
 
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Offline Zero999

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #102 on: March 20, 2021, 06:15:37 pm »
Do note that measuring the awfulness of this disease simply through number of deaths gives the wrong impression it's only dangerous to elderly and some specific risk groups.

Being dangerous doesn't require a death. Traffic accidents result in larger number of injured than deaths and nobody thinks it's all well as long as you don't die.

It's true younger population and those not in risk groups are extremely unlikely to die, but it seems much more common to have a near-death experience, being weeks to months in ICU, then leave severely injured for months to a year, possibly the rest of your life, nobody knows yet if they can ever work again due to symptoms such as extreme fatigue or paralysis so now you are in a wheelchair, in extreme pain, sleeping all day long and nobody counts you as a number anywhere because you are not dead.

This is now clearly visible even in Finland because we finally have managed to vaccinate the most obvious risk groups (but practically no one else yet), and you can already see the result of that: the ratio of deaths vs. cases has gone down significantly (by about 5x), but the ratio of hospitalized vs. cases, or even in ICU vs. cases have not gone down almost at all, suggesting that a significant part of those in really bad condition are not in the obvious risk groups.
Yes, you're right. The person I mentioned in the other post who was hospitalised with COVID-19, at the tender age of 19, back in early summer 2020, still hasn't fully recovered. Long term damage due to COVID-19 is a definite concern, which is why it shouldn't be allowed to infect everyone. Children also can suffer from long term health problems, albeit to a lesser degree than older people, even if the initial disease was mild. Fortunately vaccination should minimise the risk of long COVID.

Just to be clear, I'm not trivialising the disease, as some do. It's killed millions, injured many more and will continue to do so, for awhile yet. It's just that all of the evidence seems to point towards it getting better, in the long term. It's highly unlikely it will be harming millions of people in 10 years time. Unlike the other coronaviruses which cause the common cold and influenza, it mutates relatively slowly. It's also not infected farm animals, except for mink, like influenza does, so there's no disease reservoir close to human contact.
https://www.biospace.com/article/https-www-nature-com-articles-s41422-020-00430-4/

Being dangerous doesn't require a death. Traffic accidents result in larger number of injured than deaths and nobody thinks it's all well as long as you don't die.
Quite right. There are still people in Hong Kong suffering the after effects of SARS in 2003. SARS2 seems to be showing all the same qualities as SARS1, although they are less aggressive with SARS2. I assume many people's health (e.g. lung performance) will be affected for decades, and the health services will be carrying a financial burden for just as long.
Yes, it's nothing new. It's happened in previous pandemics.

The fact that it seems to be similar to the original SARS is good news for immunity. There's evidence to suggest those who've had SARS back in 2003 still have some level of immunity today and may have a level of cross-immunity to SARS-CoV-2. This is why it seems unlikely it will cause severe disease forever.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #103 on: March 21, 2021, 02:31:15 am »
Again, fallacious assertions.  Australia has the virus.  Some 10 to 20 people get infected each day. 

If you are going to argue with numbers, at least get them right, we have ZERO local covid spread here.
Here is a the last 3 months for the entire country.
Practically all of our cases are people coming into the country and we catch them at the border.
How long do you think you'll be able to keep it up for?

What about the costs: tourism, business lost, quarantine hotels, the occasional lockdown, when it does escape?

I don't see how it's sustainable.

Apart from tourism and related things, Australia is actually doing really well. Almost everything is open. Few service businesses like restaraunts went under, kids have been back in schools since May 2020 etc etc. We were having 50,000 people without masks in a sports stadium when the rest of the world was still completely shut.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-18/state-of-origin-3-queensland-home-advantage/12892044

But yes, untimately we have to get out of the mindset of panicing and shutting things down for a week when we get ONE case. Yes, ONE single case here is enough to trigger panic here and localised lockdowns. It's ridiculous and is unsustainable. We still have ridiculous mandatory mask orders on public transport even though we got through this entire thing without any mask madates or community takeup.

At some point we have to allow international travel without quarantine happen. Sure test people and quarantine the possitive, but let everyone else in.
Local tourism has actually boomed here, but yeah anything reliant upon overseas tourism or overseas students has been hit hard.

We often make the news for our draconian lockdowns, but I wouldn't want to be living anywhere else at the moment. Life is pretty much normal here, and apart from a week or two here and there over the last year, always has been for me.
 

Online Siwastaja

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #104 on: March 21, 2021, 09:19:34 am »
Wide-scale (basically the whole planet) real-world human experiments and testing have undeniably revealed the following:

1) While most of the "West" have theorized about the advantage to the economy of letting the disease spread without restrictions, not a single nation, not even Sweden, have had guts to go all the way (or even close) to see if this works. The breaking point seems to be the army mass-transporting dead bodies under the windows of people. At this point, losers try the strategy of the winners, but it's too late. What that means, "economy vs. human life" is, and was from day one, a completely false dichotomy. In reality, they go hand-in-hand.

2) Statistically signicant number of nations, mostly in Asia (and Oceania), have definitely proved that strong early actions (that seem "excessively strong" or "panicking" to many at that stage) result in least death, least injury, least suffering, but also least damage to the economy, and maybe most importantly, least amount of restriction of human rights like the right to go shopping or have a coffee with friends. While most of the EU and USA is still more or less closed, people in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea or Singapore are sipping their coffee in restaurants almost normally. These nations have proved that seemingly "excessive" but scientifically rational actions which look like "panicking" to some are effective to guarantee people can quickly go back to normal life at some 90% duty cycle and don't need to suffer for 1.5 years nonstop from this shit.

Doing too little too late has clearly led to having to go to much stronger limitations than what "strong" limitations would have originally been, and also for much longer time. It is devastating to see how pretty much all of the "West" has utterly failed to understand this blatantly obvious relationship even WHO, despite all of their shortcomings, talked about from day one.

Our Western approach seems to be, panic panic panic, "no we are not panicking! need to show that off", until the death scares the shit out and then we start to visibly panic, still unable to make rational choices based on expert analysis - or even common sense.

A large handful of nations have clearly proved though all of this suffering is completely optional tragedy bought to us by our incompetent leaders, but what can we do.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2021, 09:34:33 am by Siwastaja »
 
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Offline Microdoser

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #105 on: March 21, 2021, 10:25:41 am »
IMO the world is heading in one of a few directions. Either we just accept that COVID is a fact of life and just get on with it allowing it to infect whoever, whenever, or we have unsustainable lockdowns when the cases surge, or there are regular rounds of whatever new vaccine covers the latest variants, but this may be three rounds a year or more.

The cynical part of me says that just getting on with it is the 'least effort' option for governments, so that is what they will end up doing.

Anyway, once they implant all the nano-devices they won't need to do it again.
 

Online Siwastaja

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #106 on: March 21, 2021, 10:39:25 am »
Anyway, once they implant all the nano-devices they won't need to do it again.

Oh but all the nanodevices need upgrades, 5G will be soon outdated so at least a 1G update patch needs to be injected to everybody for 6G.
 

Offline Syntax Error

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #107 on: March 21, 2021, 11:04:36 am »
A salient tale for any place which thinks it can get back to normal. The Isle Of Man (IoM) in the Irish Sea, had long prided itself on being Covid free; on having "defeated the virus." So much so, it became a 'party island' for the 86,000 residents, whilst surrounding UK and Ireland were in total lockdown. So no social distancing, no early closing, no face coverings, no home schooling, no nothing. And then... possibly from a single case of Covid in a crewman aboard the island's ferry, an outbreak which proved their confidence was based on complacency. The IoM (which has more registerd mega yatchs than critical care hospital beds) is now in full lockdown.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/isle-of-man/
 
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Offline madires

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #108 on: March 21, 2021, 11:53:25 am »
A large handful of nations have clearly proved though all of this suffering is completely optional tragedy bought to us by our incompetent leaders, but what can we do.

Plus many idiots ignoring anti-COVID-19 measures and holding superspreader events. :--
 
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Offline Zero999

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #109 on: March 21, 2021, 01:13:51 pm »
Wide-scale (basically the whole planet) real-world human experiments and testing have undeniably revealed the following:

1) While most of the "West" have theorized about the advantage to the economy of letting the disease spread without restrictions, not a single nation, not even Sweden, have had guts to go all the way (or even close) to see if this works. The breaking point seems to be the army mass-transporting dead bodies under the windows of people. At this point, losers try the strategy of the winners, but it's too late. What that means, "economy vs. human life" is, and was from day one, a completely false dichotomy. In reality, they go hand-in-hand.

2) Statistically signicant number of nations, mostly in Asia (and Oceania), have definitely proved that strong early actions (that seem "excessively strong" or "panicking" to many at that stage) result in least death, least injury, least suffering, but also least damage to the economy, and maybe most importantly, least amount of restriction of human rights like the right to go shopping or have a coffee with friends. While most of the EU and USA is still more or less closed, people in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea or Singapore are sipping their coffee in restaurants almost normally. These nations have proved that seemingly "excessive" but scientifically rational actions which look like "panicking" to some are effective to guarantee people can quickly go back to normal life at some 90% duty cycle and don't need to suffer for 1.5 years nonstop from this shit.

Doing too little too late has clearly led to having to go to much stronger limitations than what "strong" limitations would have originally been, and also for much longer time. It is devastating to see how pretty much all of the "West" has utterly failed to understand this blatantly obvious relationship even WHO, despite all of their shortcomings, talked about from day one.

Our Western approach seems to be, panic panic panic, "no we are not panicking! need to show that off", until the death scares the shit out and then we start to visibly panic, still unable to make rational choices based on expert analysis - or even common sense.

A large handful of nations have clearly proved though all of this suffering is completely optional tragedy bought to us by our incompetent leaders, but what can we do.
There are reasons for the differences between the west and Asia/Oceania.

The west is a long way from China and appears to be very disconnected from it. When most people here heard about an outbreak of a new type of pneumonia in China, which killed thousands of people, they thought it's sad but couldn't possibly effect them. Oceania and Asia have strong connections with China, which is almost on their doorstep, so there was a greater sense of urgency, hence the rapid reaction, with fewer deaths and less economic damage. Oceania is more geographically isolated from the rest of the world, so it's easier to quarantine people and prevent the disease from spreading to from one place to another. China has an authoritarian government and can exercise almost absolute control over their population, imposting stricter lockdowns than anywhere else. The Wuhan lockdown was the most strict. People were confined to their homes and food was delivered to their door. The only legitimate reason to leave was to go to hospital in an ambulance. Other parts of Asia such as Japan and South Korea aren't so authoritarian, but people are better at following rules and mask wearing, than people in the west. For example South Korea have a very good contact tracing programme, which people comply with. Many people in the west are too worried about big brother and privacy for a similar scheme to work there.

Politics play a huge part. The WHO didn't react quickly enough, recommending everyone suspending flights from China, which many put down to them not wanting to upset the Chinese. I remember Trump being strongly criticised when he stopped flights from China, only for most of the world to follow suit shortly after.

Countries with close ties need to act in a similar manner. I doubt there's anything a single EU country could have done alone, which would have significantly reduced the spread. The whole of the EU needed to act in a similar manner.

We've been lucky. The disease could have been much more deadly, contagious and harder to develop a vaccine for. What would have happened if the vaccines were a failure? As the disease is now endemic to most of the world, the only choice we'd have is to allow it to slowly infect people, at a rate our health systems can cope with. Hopefully we'll react more quickly from day one in future. The problem is, if we do that, many will see it as a gross overreaction, as nothing bad happened, so there will be less incentive to do the same again.

A salient tale for any place which thinks it can get back to normal. The Isle Of Man (IoM) in the Irish Sea, had long prided itself on being Covid free; on having "defeated the virus." So much so, it became a 'party island' for the 86,000 residents, whilst surrounding UK and Ireland were in total lockdown. So no social distancing, no early closing, no face coverings, no home schooling, no nothing. And then... possibly from a single case of Covid in a crewman aboard the island's ferry, an outbreak which proved their confidence was based on complacency. The IoM (which has more registerd mega yatchs than critical care hospital beds) is now in full lockdown.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/isle-of-man/
The fact they've done so well is proof of the benefits of being an island.

This should provide motivation for other places which are COVID-free to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #110 on: March 21, 2021, 01:25:22 pm »
Plus many idiots ignoring anti-COVID-19 measures and holding superspreader events. :--
If only there was a way to find out who they are and charge them extra for health insurance since they are raising costs for everyone. Problem is, I can't think of a good way to do that without causing its own problems.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #111 on: March 21, 2021, 02:42:45 pm »
Plus many idiots ignoring anti-COVID-19 measures and holding superspreader events. :--
If only there was a way to find out who they are and charge them extra for health insurance since they are raising costs for everyone. Problem is, I can't think of a good way to do that without causing its own problems.
Don't forget, the person you're responding to is in Germany, which has universal health cover, like most developed countries, baring the US. Perhaps the money raised from heavy fines could be diverted to the public health system?

The biggest problems we've had in the UK is the police haven't been seen to handle breeches of the COVID-19 restrictions equally and media bias. The police didn't do anything about the BLM riots, which blatantly broke the rules and the media reported them to be peaceful demonstrations, when in reality there was widespread vandalism and destruction. More peaceful, yet also illegal events such as the gatherings on armistice day and women paying their respects to Sarah Everard, who was brutally murdered, allegedly by Wayne Couzens, a police officer, where met with a heavy handed response. This has badly eroded trust in in the authorities, making people less inclined to respect the police, who are seen as cowards for picking easy targets, rather than violent mobs, and follow the rules.
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #112 on: March 21, 2021, 03:13:40 pm »
Politics play a huge part. The WHO didn't react quickly enough, recommending everyone suspending flights from China, which many put down to them not wanting to upset the Chinese. I remember Trump being strongly criticised when he stopped flights from China, only for most of the world to follow suit shortly after.

Except his "ban" (which came after 45 other countries had already implemented restrictions) was a joke. 27,000 US citizens still travelled from China to the US after the ban, along with 8,000 Chinese and other non-US nationals. Meanwhile, countless thousands of people were still travelling between the US and Europe in spite of the rising COVID-19 cases in the New York region. Trump failed miserably.

They did the stupidest thing imaginable - "evacuate" people from the epicenter of the outbreak to locations on a different continent. They failed to quarantine and test them properly after arrival in the US. What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/world/2020/3/2/Wuhan-evacuee-released-quarantine-Texas-positive-coronavirus-.html



 

Offline Terry BitesTopic starter

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #113 on: March 21, 2021, 03:24:07 pm »
Astra Zenica, first dose. Do I get chipped on the second dose then?
 

Offline Terry BitesTopic starter

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #114 on: March 21, 2021, 03:27:20 pm »
Since shown to be total BS invented by bored media people. Aspirin is far more dangerous.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #115 on: March 21, 2021, 03:29:46 pm »
IMO the world is heading in one of a few directions. Either we just accept that COVID is a fact of life and just get on with it allowing it to infect whoever, whenever, or we have unsustainable lockdowns when the cases surge, or there are regular rounds of whatever new vaccine covers the latest variants, but this may be three rounds a year or more.

The cynical part of me says that just getting on with it is the 'least effort' option for governments, so that is what they will end up doing.

Anyway, once they implant all the nano-devices they won't need to do it again.
It'll be a combination of both. COVID won't go away, but having lived through the first waves and either being infected or vaccinated means people's immune systems can cope with future iterations more effectively. The problem wasn't COVID as such, the problem was that it was brand new with people having essentially no base immunity. Having that problem on a world wide scale meant swathes of people falling seriously ill, overwhelming health care and leading to many deaths otherwise preventable.

Despite spectacular claims from media trying to generate a story, immunologists felt that vaccines would likely still protect against variants. We seem to be seeing that confirmed in the field. If anything, COVID seems to mutate slower than initially expected. Once immunity is built up and things start balancing out, normal life can resume. People will still die from COVID, but coldly put on a manageable scale.
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #116 on: March 21, 2021, 03:30:21 pm »
Astra Zenica, first dose. Do I get chipped on the second dose then?

AstraZeneca
 

Offline madires

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #117 on: March 21, 2021, 03:31:59 pm »
Plus many idiots ignoring anti-COVID-19 measures and holding superspreader events. :--
If only there was a way to find out who they are and charge them extra for health insurance since they are raising costs for everyone. Problem is, I can't think of a good way to do that without causing its own problems.

Simply apply the law and charge them with attempted assault.
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #118 on: March 21, 2021, 03:42:32 pm »
IMO the world is heading in one of a few directions. Either we just accept that COVID is a fact of life and just get on with it allowing it to infect whoever, whenever, or we have unsustainable lockdowns when the cases surge, or there are regular rounds of whatever new vaccine covers the latest variants, but this may be three rounds a year or more.

The cynical part of me says that just getting on with it is the 'least effort' option for governments, so that is what they will end up doing.

Anyway, once they implant all the nano-devices they won't need to do it again.
It'll be a combination of both. COVID won't go away, but having lived through the first waves and either being infected or vaccinated means people's immune systems can cope with future iterations more effectively. The problem wasn't COVID as such, the problem was that it was brand new with people having essentially no base immunity. Having that problem on a world wide scale meant swathes of people falling seriously ill, overwhelming health care and leading to many deaths otherwise preventable.

Despite spectacular claims from media trying to generate a story, immunologists felt that vaccines would likely still protect against variants. We seem to be seeing that confirmed in the field. If anything, COVID seems to mutate slower than initially expected. Once immunity is built up and things start balancing out, normal life can resume. People will still die from COVID, but coldly put on a manageable scale.
That's true. There are lots of fear-mongering in the media about it going on forever, but all the scientific evidence points towards it getting better in the long term. Once we have herd immunity, due to vaccination and infection, the virus is unlikely to be causing widespread severe disease and death in 10 years time. If it mutated rapidly and immunity were short lived, then reinfection would be more common and vaccines developed against the virus circulating a year ago, would have little effect against the current variants. It's just the media trying to make more money and fear sells.

Politics play a huge part. The WHO didn't react quickly enough, recommending everyone suspending flights from China, which many put down to them not wanting to upset the Chinese. I remember Trump being strongly criticised when he stopped flights from China, only for most of the world to follow suit shortly after.

Except his "ban" (which came after 45 other countries had already implemented restrictions) was a joke. 27,000 US citizens still travelled from China to the US after the ban, along with 8,000 Chinese and other non-US nationals. Meanwhile, countless thousands of people were still travelling between the US and Europe in spite of the rising COVID-19 cases in the New York region. Trump failed miserably.

They did the stupidest thing imaginable - "evacuate" people from the epicenter of the outbreak to locations on a different continent. They failed to quarantine and test them properly after arrival in the US. What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/world/2020/3/2/Wuhan-evacuee-released-quarantine-Texas-positive-coronavirus-.html
Oh no, I'm not saying Trump handled it well, just that it was funny the way he was criticised by the media for stopping flights from China, which was the right thing to do.

Trump has been rightly criticised for his handling of the pandemic, but I doubt having a different president would have made as much difference, as many believe. The fact that he wanted to quarantine New York, when cases were high there, but realised he couldn't, proves that. Individual states have too much autonomy from central government, for the president to have much effect. If Trump were re-elected, I very much doubt the US could be that much different now, COVID-wise. Biden made a big deal about ramping up the vaccination programme, but it was started by the previous administration and has been endorsed by the ex-president, so it would have happened anyway.
 
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Offline coppice

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #119 on: March 21, 2021, 04:38:13 pm »
COVID won't go away....
Really? So this epidemic is unique? Most other epidemics have just gone away. They weren't beaten by human action, or by the disease running out of victims to infect. Herd immunity is obviously a part of the picture, but it doesn't explain a lot about the way infection patterns reduce. Our understanding of why epidemics go away is very weak, but we do know they generally go away.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2021, 04:40:03 pm by coppice »
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #120 on: March 21, 2021, 05:10:04 pm »
COVID won't go away....
Really? So this epidemic is unique? Most other epidemics have just gone away. They weren't beaten by human action, or by the disease running out of victims to infect. Herd immunity is obviously a part of the picture, but it doesn't explain a lot about the way infection patterns reduce. Our understanding of why epidemics go away is very weak, but we do know they generally go away.

An epidemic has a finite duration but the causal agent persists. More specifically, an epidemic is characterized by an unexpectedly large number of infections in a population in a short period time. Exactly what numbers are used depends on the infectious agent. Just because the number of infections falls below the limit arbitrarily defined to indicate an epidemic doesn't mean the infectious agent has magically gone away.

The viruses responsible for the common cold haven't gone away but we don't hear common cold epidemics.

Eventually, some mutations of the original COVID-19 will persist at sub-epidemic levels and we'll adapt to live along side it like other endemic diseases.

 
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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #121 on: March 21, 2021, 05:43:51 pm »
Really? So this epidemic is unique? Most other epidemics have just gone away. They weren't beaten by human action, or by the disease running out of victims to infect. Herd immunity is obviously a part of the picture, but it doesn't explain a lot about the way infection patterns reduce. Our understanding of why epidemics go away is very weak, but we do know they generally go away.
COVID not going away and the pandemic not going away are two very different things. As we develop at least a base immunity, the impact of COVID will dwindle. Historic immunology tells us it's also likely COVID will evolve into a less severe, possibly more contagious variant. There's interesting reading material on how that gets selected for in society. It'll likely become another common human disease, like the flu, cold and many others. We've seen similar patterns with many other epidemics. You either eradicate a disease, or if that's not possible mitigate its effects to the point of regular life being possible. Odd as it may sound, both humans and the virus itself benefit from it being comparatively benign. The common cold is an incredibly successful disease by virtue of people being mildly inconvenienced and generally carrying on while being highly contagious. Conversely, Ebola tends to kill off its victims so rapidly it hampers its own succes.
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #122 on: March 21, 2021, 07:25:10 pm »
Really? So this epidemic is unique? Most other epidemics have just gone away. They weren't beaten by human action, or by the disease running out of victims to infect. Herd immunity is obviously a part of the picture, but it doesn't explain a lot about the way infection patterns reduce. Our understanding of why epidemics go away is very weak, but we do know they generally go away.
COVID not going away and the pandemic not going away are two very different things. As we develop at least a base immunity, the impact of COVID will dwindle. Historic immunology tells us it's also likely COVID will evolve into a less severe, possibly more contagious variant. There's interesting reading material on how that gets selected for in society. It'll likely become another common human disease, like the flu, cold and many others. We've seen similar patterns with many other epidemics. You either eradicate a disease, or if that's not possible mitigate its effects to the point of regular life being possible. Odd as it may sound, both humans and the virus itself benefit from it being comparatively benign. The common cold is an incredibly successful disease by virtue of people being mildly inconvenienced and generally carrying on while being highly contagious. Conversely, Ebola tends to kill off its victims so rapidly it hampers its own succes.
That's right. The disease won't go away, but it's likely to have less as an impact, as time goes by.

The reason why Ebola doesn't spread, has more to do with the fact that it's not airborne, so close contact is required and it's only spread by those who are obviously ill, rather than high virulence.

Viruses generally mutate to become more contagious and less deadly over time, but that doesn't seem to be the case with COVID-19 so far, because most of the spread occurs before it causes severe disease, just like HIV, so there's not the same selective pressure for decreased virulence. The newer strains seem to have a higher case fatality ratio, than the original one. This might be in part due to health care being overwhelmed in the case of the P1 strain in Brazil, but isn't true for the B.1.1.1 found in the UK, where care has improved and hospitals were never overwhelmed.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/961042/S1095_NERVTAG_update_note_on_B.1.1.7_severity_20210211.pdf
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CADDE-CENTRE/Novel-SARS-CoV-2-P1-Lineage-in-Brazil/main/manuscript/FINAL_P1_MANUSCRIPT_25-02-2021_combined.pdf

It doesn't mean this will continue to become infinitely more deadly. Herd immunity will probably be the dominant factor in the reduction in widespread severe disease, than the virus mutating to become more or less deadly, because even the more virulent stains less often cause severe disease in those who've been previously infected, or vaccinated.
 

Offline Microdoser

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #123 on: March 21, 2021, 07:43:37 pm »
Anyway, once they implant all the nano-devices they won't need to do it again.

Oh but all the nanodevices need upgrades, 5G will be soon outdated so at least a 1G update patch needs to be injected to everybody for 6G.

Couldn't they do that with an OTA update?

I hear some variants are airborne now
 

Offline tom66

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Re: Vaccine
« Reply #124 on: March 21, 2021, 08:40:09 pm »
COVID-19 has an IFR of approximately ~0.4% [1] in England.   So, if we take base case assumptions, at a 100% infection rate (more realistic would be 75-85%) and 56 million in England, we'd expect to see cca ~224,000 deaths in England.  Instead, we have seen about 85,000 in England.

So, interventions have potentially saved ~139,000 lives -- although the true figure may only be known by the end of the year once vaccinations are complete and this pessimistically assumes that behaviour wouldn't change at all with COVID present.

The question is was the cost of the interventions worth the numbers saved? At first glance it seems so,  but I would argue it is more difficult to say. The NHS typically spends around £30,000 per person-year saved, and the average COVID patient who dies has around 10 years of quality life remaining.   This seems cold, but every healthcare system, public or private, has to determine whether the cost of an intervention is proportionate to its benefit.   So the maths is fairly simple: £300,000 (total cost of typical intervention for 10 years gained) * 139,000 = £41.7 billion.

The actual cost spent is closer to £300 bn in direct Treasury costs, plus around 4% in GDP loss after the pandemic's effects are over [2],  plus additional unknown costs in the form of permanently lost jobs and social development.   Ignoring the last term as it is impractical to assign a direct cost to it, but we have easily spent around £400 bn on COVID - ten times what we would spend on, for instance, lung cancer, or heart disease.

Why did we decide to assign such a drastic cost to COVID that we did not assume to other diseases?

[1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/estimating-the-infection-fatality-ratio-in-england/
[2] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8866/
 


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