7 ms·

Bill Gates warns Covid lockdowns could drag on into 2022

maxharris 6y ago
Remember when the New York Times tried to tell us a vaccine could take much longer than expected? Scroll down to "Assume We Already Understand the Coronavirus" and check "Start trials early" and "Don't wait for academic research" https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/opinion/coronavirus-covid-vaccine.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/opinion/coron...
- person_of_color 6y ago
  Uh, if you keep taking shortcuts (like we did), then it shortens it to Feb 21.
  - maxharris 6y ago
    Which proves the value of allowing innovation. When we put in too many regulations, we kill many more people than we save.
- atonse 6y ago
  Even the most experienced people told us it'll take 18-24 months. This kind of progress is unprecedented and frankly quite amazing.
  - symlinkk 6y ago
    It’s almost too good to be true isn’t it?
    - LimaBearz 6y ago
      How so? There was a time in this nations history when we put a man on the moon in less than 10 years. A vaccine against an invisible bug, phhtt..
    - atonse 6y ago
      It's just a great lesson in what we can accomplish with a singular purpose.
- bewaretheirs 6y ago
  Moderna finalized the "code" for the vaccine on January 13th, 2020, had synthesized the first clinical batch on February 7th, shipped it to the NIH on the 24th, and it was first administered to a human (in phase 1 trial) on March 16th. https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-against-covid-19 https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-ag...
  - maxharris 6y ago
    Yes! On November 22, the New York Times published a fascinating account of the race to produce a coronavirus vaccine. The Times report included a number of interesting facts, but one really grabbed my attention: It turns out that the Moderna vaccine, which was just shown to be 95 percent effective, was actually developed by the company in just two days in January 2020. That’s right, they developed the vaccine in two days in January, but then needed to spend the following ten months performing tests in order to meet the FDA’s standards for vaccine safety and efficacy. During those ten months, 1.3 million people, including a quarter million Americans, have died from the coronavirus. From https://news.yahoo.com/release-vaccine-113037217.html https://news.yahoo.com/release-vaccine-113037217.html
    - krimpenrik 6y ago
      I always cringe when I see this. Of those 1.3 million, a lot of people died with corona, not from corona.
- andyst 6y ago
  You're misinterpreting this article by skipping to a certain section, each of the graphs and the options you select combine together.
- root_axis 6y ago
  So is your point that medical trials are a waste of time and we should have just started injecting the masses with something developed in two days?
Barrin92 6y ago
I've already seen people treat the vaccine as the end of the pandemic but I agree with Gates here, the next months are going to be brutal. 50% of Americans are apparently not willing to be vaccinated to begin with and rollout to significant parts of the population is going to take months. While I'm obviously glad that vaccine development happened quickly, I really wish rather than being so focussed on vaccinations exclusively we paid more attention to the fact that some countries, Taiwan, China, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia have managed to quell the disease through correct social policy and appropriate levels of social coordination. If every disaster will rely on us conjuring up a panacea we'll be screwed sooner or later.
- volak 6y ago
  Just wanted to point out that 3 of those 4 countries are surrounded by miles of open water/ocean. And the final one has been lying about the outbreak the entire time. https://www.independent.co.uk/world/covid19-china-mishandle-pandemic-leaked-documents-b1764276.html https://www.independent.co.uk/world/covid19-china-mishandle-...
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    You can add Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to the list, none of which are surrounded by ocean. As for China, I don't think anybody trusts their figures, but it's also quite clear that they do have the outbreak well under control. If their ICUs were full, we'd know about it.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    Vietnam got it under control quite well despite a land border with China. Key to success likely were: - a population that had experience with prior pandemics and was thus willing to play along - a strong centralized government (this is a guess, and I'm not just talking about the power, but specifically the centralization - other nations that have states/provinces each implementing their own policies showed the dangers of that approach, e.g. USA, Switzerland, Germany) - extremely aggressive contact tracing and enforced quarantine (for high risk cases, they were put in hotels or barracks, not told "please stay home"). Not just contacts but also contacts-of-contacts (the latter were only ordered to home quarantine). AFAIK they didn't even have much of a shutdown, because the quarantining was so effective.
guscost 6y ago
The lockdowns will not end, period, until the war is over. There’s already probably a new COVID[0] ready to be hyped, even if we get population immunity to COVID-19. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/14/new-strain-of-covid-19-may-be-cause-of-rise-in-cases-hancock-tells-mps https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/...
- seattle_spring 6y ago
  What do you mean by "the war"? That could be interpreted in a lot of different ways.
  - rwcarlsen 6y ago
    The war on freedom.
    - jschwartzi 6y ago
      Please explain. What do you mean by that?
      - unityByFreedom 6y ago
        I wish you would not feed the trolls.
      - rwcarlsen 6y ago
        I'll try hard to keep the discussion nuanced. Governments are basically institutions that we allow to restrict our freedoms for some benefits - safety, various common-good things, etc. We all have our preference for where we draw this line personally on the liberty/convenience <--> safety spectrum. A lot of people (including myself) feel like these lockdowns, pandemic mitigations, etc. have far crossed the acceptable line in this spectrum. In my opinion, I'm not fighting a virus any more. I'm fighting people trying to steamroll my rights and lifestyle. Others may feel differently - they may feel like for the sake of global/community safety, I should have fewer rights. I don't feel that way. This isn't binary. Nobody is right or wrong - we are all fighting for our line on the spectrum.
rando123456 6y ago
People are trying so hard with lockdowns to save the one demographic that is quite opposed to the lockdowns. Kind of ironic. Pretty sure those people would rather die than live in the sort of world liberals and politicians are making for them. How many old people died alone (regardless of whether it was from covid or not) because of lockdowns purported to save them... had the last months of their lives ruined because people were trying to save them.
dudeithinkBLM 6y ago
I wasn't going to get the vaccine but Bill Gates said he would take it publicly, so now I will! Lol, not.
howlgarnish 6y ago
The Economist has an interesting map of the world colored by predicted vaccination ability: https://i.redd.it/2fuq0qge0y461.jpg https://i.redd.it/2fuq0qge0y461.jpg TL;DR: Large parts of the world won't have vaccines available to the general population until 2023.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Can the US spend money to speed this along? With a vaccine or two in hand, I don't see why we wouldn't do it if it is possible. We'd easily make back $50 billion or whatever, it's not even an economic question.
- Exmoor 6y ago
  Whoever designed that map really had a grudge against people with red-green color blindness. I see two colors.
  - WillYouFinish 6y ago
    I thought color blind people would configure the color blind mode in their OS? Is it not common or is it just bad?
mfDjB 6y ago
So I don't know if he is saying that lockdowns will "generally" continue on a global stage remain until 2022, or if he saying that there will be lockdowns "somewhere" in the world into 2022. Initially I take this to mean the former because of this statement in the article: "BILL Gates predicts global Covid-19 restrictions could last until 2022". If this is the case could someone explain the reasoning here? The UK is expected to complete its vaccination program by April 2021 [1]. I can't imagine other Western countries will be very far behind them. I imagine the isolated nations such as AUS and NZ will allow travel with the necessary vaccination certificates [2]. I feel like I'm missing the link as to why lockdowns dragging on to 2022 is likely? 1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-vaccine-uk-april-covid-b1759633.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-vaccin... 2: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/qantas-coronavirus-vaccination-intl-hnk-scli/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/qantas-coronavirus-va...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
unityByFreedom 6y ago
His main point seems to have been that the upcoming period will likely be worse than we've seen and that preventative measures like wearing masks, washing hands, and distancing will save lives. I didn't see the context of the 2022 comment quoted in the article.
dyeje 6y ago
The Sun? Really HN? You're better than this.
- just-juan-post 6y ago
  The article is from The Sun, the video is from CNN.
  - derision 6y ago
    Not sure that makes it any better
IronRanger 6y ago
At what point does this whole charade end?
- valbaca 6y ago
  What "charade"?
  - jeofken 6y ago
    Using government force to limit freedom of people for “safety” - as if government existed to be served, rather than to serve and protect the rights of free citizens. In Sweden where we have no lockdown or similar there are no more deaths this year than other years, clearly showing that forcing people to lock down is not only immoral, but also inefficient. Article in English but statistics from the public statistics bureau (SCB). https://emanuelkarlsten.se/number-of-deaths-in-sweden-during-the-pandemic-compared-to-previous-years-mortality/ https://emanuelkarlsten.se/number-of-deaths-in-sweden-during...
    - hvac 6y ago
      To be clear, this is the same country that banned events of more than eight people.
      - jeofken 6y ago
        Only very recently, unlike the statistics mentioned which cover every month of the year. It can also not be moral to use force to stop free people from meeting, as my government now intends to do
abellerose 6y ago
I'm predicting a bit longer until laws start passing that mandate a legal requirement for all to get vaccinated for covid-19. I'm still unsure how long that will take, for it to come into law but I assume the vaccine will be pointless for stopping the virus spread and until everyone is being vaccinated. Basically, the ones that firstly get vaccinated will have to continue doing so until everyone if forced to follow. I could be wrong but I assume people not getting vaccinated will keep the virus going host to host and until the vaccination wears off; requiring another one and repeat.
- jdhn 6y ago
  Why do you think that the vaccine will have to be taken beyond its recommended dosage?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  Wouldn't immune people getting exposed to the virus likely "refresh" the vaccination?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Remember when the New York Times tried to tell us a vaccine could take much longer than expected? Scroll down to "Assume We Already Understand the Coronavirus" and check "Start trials early" and "Don't wait for academic research" https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/opinion/coronavirus-covid-vaccine.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/opinion/coron...

person_of_color 6y ago
Uh, if you keep taking shortcuts (like we did), then it shortens it to Feb 21.
- maxharris 6y ago
  Which proves the value of allowing innovation. When we put in too many regulations, we kill many more people than we save.
atonse 6y ago
Even the most experienced people told us it'll take 18-24 months. This kind of progress is unprecedented and frankly quite amazing.
- symlinkk 6y ago
  It’s almost too good to be true isn’t it?
  - LimaBearz 6y ago
    How so? There was a time in this nations history when we put a man on the moon in less than 10 years. A vaccine against an invisible bug, phhtt..
  - atonse 6y ago
    It's just a great lesson in what we can accomplish with a singular purpose.
bewaretheirs 6y ago
Moderna finalized the "code" for the vaccine on January 13th, 2020, had synthesized the first clinical batch on February 7th, shipped it to the NIH on the 24th, and it was first administered to a human (in phase 1 trial) on March 16th. https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-against-covid-19 https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-ag...
- maxharris 6y ago
  Yes! On November 22, the New York Times published a fascinating account of the race to produce a coronavirus vaccine. The Times report included a number of interesting facts, but one really grabbed my attention: It turns out that the Moderna vaccine, which was just shown to be 95 percent effective, was actually developed by the company in just two days in January 2020. That’s right, they developed the vaccine in two days in January, but then needed to spend the following ten months performing tests in order to meet the FDA’s standards for vaccine safety and efficacy. During those ten months, 1.3 million people, including a quarter million Americans, have died from the coronavirus. From https://news.yahoo.com/release-vaccine-113037217.html https://news.yahoo.com/release-vaccine-113037217.html
  - krimpenrik 6y ago
    I always cringe when I see this. Of those 1.3 million, a lot of people died with corona, not from corona.
andyst 6y ago
You're misinterpreting this article by skipping to a certain section, each of the graphs and the options you select combine together.
root_axis 6y ago
So is your point that medical trials are a waste of time and we should have just started injecting the masses with something developed in two days?

Barrin92 6y ago

I've already seen people treat the vaccine as the end of the pandemic but I agree with Gates here, the next months are going to be brutal. 50% of Americans are apparently not willing to be vaccinated to begin with and rollout to significant parts of the population is going to take months. While I'm obviously glad that vaccine development happened quickly, I really wish rather than being so focussed on vaccinations exclusively we paid more attention to the fact that some countries, Taiwan, China, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia have managed to quell the disease through correct social policy and appropriate levels of social coordination. If every disaster will rely on us conjuring up a panacea we'll be screwed sooner or later.

volak 6y ago
Just wanted to point out that 3 of those 4 countries are surrounded by miles of open water/ocean. And the final one has been lying about the outbreak the entire time. https://www.independent.co.uk/world/covid19-china-mishandle-pandemic-leaked-documents-b1764276.html https://www.independent.co.uk/world/covid19-china-mishandle-...
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  You can add Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to the list, none of which are surrounded by ocean. As for China, I don't think anybody trusts their figures, but it's also quite clear that they do have the outbreak well under control. If their ICUs were full, we'd know about it.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  Vietnam got it under control quite well despite a land border with China. Key to success likely were: - a population that had experience with prior pandemics and was thus willing to play along - a strong centralized government (this is a guess, and I'm not just talking about the power, but specifically the centralization - other nations that have states/provinces each implementing their own policies showed the dangers of that approach, e.g. USA, Switzerland, Germany) - extremely aggressive contact tracing and enforced quarantine (for high risk cases, they were put in hotels or barracks, not told "please stay home"). Not just contacts but also contacts-of-contacts (the latter were only ordered to home quarantine). AFAIK they didn't even have much of a shutdown, because the quarantining was so effective.

guscost 6y ago

The lockdowns will not end, period, until the war is over. There’s already probably a new COVID[0] ready to be hyped, even if we get population immunity to COVID-19. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/14/new-strain-of-covid-19-may-be-cause-of-rise-in-cases-hancock-tells-mps https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/...

seattle_spring 6y ago
What do you mean by "the war"? That could be interpreted in a lot of different ways.
- rwcarlsen 6y ago
  The war on freedom.
  - jschwartzi 6y ago
    Please explain. What do you mean by that?
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      I wish you would not feed the trolls.
    - rwcarlsen 6y ago
      I'll try hard to keep the discussion nuanced. Governments are basically institutions that we allow to restrict our freedoms for some benefits - safety, various common-good things, etc. We all have our preference for where we draw this line personally on the liberty/convenience <--> safety spectrum. A lot of people (including myself) feel like these lockdowns, pandemic mitigations, etc. have far crossed the acceptable line in this spectrum. In my opinion, I'm not fighting a virus any more. I'm fighting people trying to steamroll my rights and lifestyle. Others may feel differently - they may feel like for the sake of global/community safety, I should have fewer rights. I don't feel that way. This isn't binary. Nobody is right or wrong - we are all fighting for our line on the spectrum.

rando123456 6y ago

People are trying so hard with lockdowns to save the one demographic that is quite opposed to the lockdowns. Kind of ironic. Pretty sure those people would rather die than live in the sort of world liberals and politicians are making for them. How many old people died alone (regardless of whether it was from covid or not) because of lockdowns purported to save them... had the last months of their lives ruined because people were trying to save them.

dudeithinkBLM 6y ago

I wasn't going to get the vaccine but Bill Gates said he would take it publicly, so now I will! Lol, not.

howlgarnish 6y ago

The Economist has an interesting map of the world colored by predicted vaccination ability: https://i.redd.it/2fuq0qge0y461.jpg https://i.redd.it/2fuq0qge0y461.jpg TL;DR: Large parts of the world won't have vaccines available to the general population until 2023.

maxerickson 6y ago
Can the US spend money to speed this along? With a vaccine or two in hand, I don't see why we wouldn't do it if it is possible. We'd easily make back $50 billion or whatever, it's not even an economic question.
Exmoor 6y ago
Whoever designed that map really had a grudge against people with red-green color blindness. I see two colors.
- WillYouFinish 6y ago
  I thought color blind people would configure the color blind mode in their OS? Is it not common or is it just bad?

mfDjB 6y ago

So I don't know if he is saying that lockdowns will "generally" continue on a global stage remain until 2022, or if he saying that there will be lockdowns "somewhere" in the world into 2022. Initially I take this to mean the former because of this statement in the article: "BILL Gates predicts global Covid-19 restrictions could last until 2022". If this is the case could someone explain the reasoning here? The UK is expected to complete its vaccination program by April 2021 [1]. I can't imagine other Western countries will be very far behind them. I imagine the isolated nations such as AUS and NZ will allow travel with the necessary vaccination certificates [2]. I feel like I'm missing the link as to why lockdowns dragging on to 2022 is likely? 1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-vaccine-uk-april-covid-b1759633.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-vaccin... 2: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/qantas-coronavirus-vaccination-intl-hnk-scli/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/qantas-coronavirus-va...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

unityByFreedom 6y ago

His main point seems to have been that the upcoming period will likely be worse than we've seen and that preventative measures like wearing masks, washing hands, and distancing will save lives. I didn't see the context of the 2022 comment quoted in the article.

dyeje 6y ago

The Sun? Really HN? You're better than this.

just-juan-post 6y ago
The article is from The Sun, the video is from CNN.
- derision 6y ago
  Not sure that makes it any better

IronRanger 6y ago

At what point does this whole charade end?

valbaca 6y ago
What "charade"?
- jeofken 6y ago
  Using government force to limit freedom of people for “safety” - as if government existed to be served, rather than to serve and protect the rights of free citizens. In Sweden where we have no lockdown or similar there are no more deaths this year than other years, clearly showing that forcing people to lock down is not only immoral, but also inefficient. Article in English but statistics from the public statistics bureau (SCB). https://emanuelkarlsten.se/number-of-deaths-in-sweden-during-the-pandemic-compared-to-previous-years-mortality/ https://emanuelkarlsten.se/number-of-deaths-in-sweden-during...
  - hvac 6y ago
    To be clear, this is the same country that banned events of more than eight people.
    - jeofken 6y ago
      Only very recently, unlike the statistics mentioned which cover every month of the year. It can also not be moral to use force to stop free people from meeting, as my government now intends to do

abellerose 6y ago

I'm predicting a bit longer until laws start passing that mandate a legal requirement for all to get vaccinated for covid-19. I'm still unsure how long that will take, for it to come into law but I assume the vaccine will be pointless for stopping the virus spread and until everyone is being vaccinated. Basically, the ones that firstly get vaccinated will have to continue doing so until everyone if forced to follow. I could be wrong but I assume people not getting vaccinated will keep the virus going host to host and until the vaccination wears off; requiring another one and repeat.

jdhn 6y ago
Why do you think that the vaccine will have to be taken beyond its recommended dosage?
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
Wouldn't immune people getting exposed to the virus likely "refresh" the vaccination?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]