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If you read what I wrote, you would have noticed that I said a vaccine (which, for most people qualifies as “medical intervention”) does make a difference. New

If you read what I wrote, you would have noticed that I said a vaccine (which, for most people qualifies as “medical intervention”) does make a difference. New Zealand can only maintain being infection free by remaining disconnected. This is not a long term solution. If they are lucky, they’ll be able to maintain it until an effective vaccine is widely available. If one is never available then they will only be able to maintain it by total disconnection from the world, even if the rest of the world has herd immunity. Which would probably be much more harmful economically in the long term than the virus would. What I am saying, is without cure or vaccine there is no long term feasible solution other than to get it, and that would only change distribution of disease outcomes over time (to first order) Also the 70-90% is based on assumptions that do not bear out in practice, as they ignore T-cell and cross reactivity which are known to have an affect. (I do not know of a reliable estimation, but when one is figured out it can easily be in the 20%-50% range)

iudqnolq 6y ago
In your mind, what makes a vaccine special then? After all, vaccines don't tend to work perfectly. You are correct that absent a perfect vaccine we will not be able to perfectly prevent covid without any effort, but you don't explain why that invariably means we can only change distribution of disease outcomes. What you're saying is like saying "the only way to have no technical debt is to have no code. You have code. I have code. Therefore there is nothing meaningful we can do besides pray for a world in which we don't need code, because stuff like refactoring only moves tech debt around". Consider two universes in which we both get a vaccine in two years. In one, people get infected at a rate of x. In another, they get infected at a rate of 2x. In neither universe does the x or 2x exceed the number of infectable people. Doesn't one universe have half as many people infected?
- beagle3 6y ago
  A vaccine is special in the sense that it lets you get the disease without incurring the downside of the disease. So it lets you get to the herd immunity without incurring the deaths. Similarly, a new effective medicine can change the expected outcome (it's possible the Vitamin D supplementation has that property, for example). Herd immunity doesn't mean the disease disappears completely or that everyone is immune. It means, however, that if someone does get, the number of people that they can transitively infect is limited by a constant independent of the population size. If US, UK, Australia, Sweden, ... have herd immunity due to disease, and NZ doesn't, it means that NZ cannot afford travel (and many kinds of exports) to or from the rest of the world. > Doesn't one universe have half as many people infected? You insist on misreading and/or misrepresenting my claim. I specifically said "other than vaccine", which you obviously did read because you asked "what makes a vaccine special". Why would you do that? Take those two universes, but in which there is no vaccine in two years, or in which "x" does exceed the number of infectable people. Does lockdown, or even masks, change the overall outcome? Or just the speed over time in which the dead and long-term residuals accumulate? A handful of countries (New Zealand, Vietnam, and a few more) have some chance to stay in your universe. Most of the world already has, after 6 months of serious (and economically catastrophic lockdowns), over 10% infected. It is not unreasonable, that if an effective vaccine is not effectively administered within those two years, we'll have 50% infected.

iudqnolq 6y ago

In your mind, what makes a vaccine special then? After all, vaccines don't tend to work perfectly. You are correct that absent a perfect vaccine we will not be able to perfectly prevent covid without any effort, but you don't explain why that invariably means we can only change distribution of disease outcomes. What you're saying is like saying "the only way to have no technical debt is to have no code. You have code. I have code. Therefore there is nothing meaningful we can do besides pray for a world in which we don't need code, because stuff like refactoring only moves tech debt around". Consider two universes in which we both get a vaccine in two years. In one, people get infected at a rate of x. In another, they get infected at a rate of 2x. In neither universe does the x or 2x exceed the number of infectable people. Doesn't one universe have half as many people infected?

beagle3 6y ago
A vaccine is special in the sense that it lets you get the disease without incurring the downside of the disease. So it lets you get to the herd immunity without incurring the deaths. Similarly, a new effective medicine can change the expected outcome (it's possible the Vitamin D supplementation has that property, for example). Herd immunity doesn't mean the disease disappears completely or that everyone is immune. It means, however, that if someone does get, the number of people that they can transitively infect is limited by a constant independent of the population size. If US, UK, Australia, Sweden, ... have herd immunity due to disease, and NZ doesn't, it means that NZ cannot afford travel (and many kinds of exports) to or from the rest of the world. > Doesn't one universe have half as many people infected? You insist on misreading and/or misrepresenting my claim. I specifically said "other than vaccine", which you obviously did read because you asked "what makes a vaccine special". Why would you do that? Take those two universes, but in which there is no vaccine in two years, or in which "x" does exceed the number of infectable people. Does lockdown, or even masks, change the overall outcome? Or just the speed over time in which the dead and long-term residuals accumulate? A handful of countries (New Zealand, Vietnam, and a few more) have some chance to stay in your universe. Most of the world already has, after 6 months of serious (and economically catastrophic lockdowns), over 10% infected. It is not unreasonable, that if an effective vaccine is not effectively administered within those two years, we'll have 50% infected.