3 ms·

> a few months later everyone can come out and play. I'm not so sure. Governments can't admit that fighting such a contagious virus with non-pharmaceutical int

> a few months later everyone can come out and play. I'm not so sure. Governments can't admit that fighting such a contagious virus with non-pharmaceutical interventions is extremely difficult on the long run. You're just buying time for a cure (not necessarily a vaccine: drugs work, too).

arcticbull 6y ago
The problem is people aren’t doing it so it doesn’t matter what the intention is. You need to tailor the public policy towards what people will actually do not what you wish they would do. Otherwise you’re left with the half measures that achieve absolutely nothing you see today.
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  If there's literally nothing suitable that would be automatically done, what would you do? Allow people to do whatever at the cost of lives or force them to do what is right? Usually in law, number 1 is called negligence.
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    > Allow people to do whatever at the cost of lives or force them to do what is right? You're invoking police power to massively disrupt people's lives indefinitely. That's unacceptable. Let people exercise their inalienable freedoms and assume whatever risk they want. We saw people preempt the government in avoiding risky behavior as the pandemic started, and we'll see people preempt the government in resuming normal life avoiding risk as they deem fit.
AstralStorm 6y ago
In case of this virus, probably not a vaccine. Or not alone. And any vaccine would need some period of widespread testing, comparable to how long it took to devise flu vaccines. This one can jump species, reinfection cases have been described already, and coronaviruses in general are known to cause seasonal infections.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  > And any vaccine would need some period of widespread testing That's what the current Phase III trials are doing (30K people for Pfizer, 30K people for Moderna, ~12K people for Oxford/AstraZeneca). This should be enough to check for efficacy, while probably not enough for potential long-term effects. Reinfections are, so far, a minuscule number compared to the total cases (2 properly documented cases), so I expect immunity to last at least a year, basing on the current data. Time will tell if I'm wrong, of course.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  There have not been any re-infections. Any people who tested positive a second time saw either false positives or residual viral fragments.

arcticbull 6y ago

The problem is people aren’t doing it so it doesn’t matter what the intention is. You need to tailor the public policy towards what people will actually do not what you wish they would do. Otherwise you’re left with the half measures that achieve absolutely nothing you see today.

AstralStorm 6y ago
If there's literally nothing suitable that would be automatically done, what would you do? Allow people to do whatever at the cost of lives or force them to do what is right? Usually in law, number 1 is called negligence.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  > Allow people to do whatever at the cost of lives or force them to do what is right? You're invoking police power to massively disrupt people's lives indefinitely. That's unacceptable. Let people exercise their inalienable freedoms and assume whatever risk they want. We saw people preempt the government in avoiding risky behavior as the pandemic started, and we'll see people preempt the government in resuming normal life avoiding risk as they deem fit.

AstralStorm 6y ago

In case of this virus, probably not a vaccine. Or not alone. And any vaccine would need some period of widespread testing, comparable to how long it took to devise flu vaccines. This one can jump species, reinfection cases have been described already, and coronaviruses in general are known to cause seasonal infections.

lbeltrame 6y ago
> And any vaccine would need some period of widespread testing That's what the current Phase III trials are doing (30K people for Pfizer, 30K people for Moderna, ~12K people for Oxford/AstraZeneca). This should be enough to check for efficacy, while probably not enough for potential long-term effects. Reinfections are, so far, a minuscule number compared to the total cases (2 properly documented cases), so I expect immunity to last at least a year, basing on the current data. Time will tell if I'm wrong, of course.
arcticbull 6y ago
There have not been any re-infections. Any people who tested positive a second time saw either false positives or residual viral fragments.