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I won't go back without a vaccine. The easing of bans without a vaccine is dumb. Once you have the vaccine, then you're free to go back to normal. Without it,

I won't go back without a vaccine. The easing of bans without a vaccine is dumb. Once you have the vaccine, then you're free to go back to normal. Without it, nothing has really changed. Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the beginning. It makes sense for companies to protect employees and wait for the vaccine - especially now that it's so close. In California the vaccine is still restricted, but hopefully we'll get wide availability by the end of April. I've see lots of people on Twitter get it with nebulous pre-existing conditions. I wonder how many people are just lying.

heavyset_go 6y ago
> Once you have the vaccine, then you're free to go back to normal. Only after a critical mass of people are vaccinated, otherwise vaccinated people can still spread the virus to those who are unvaccinated.
- fossuser 6y ago
  This is still uncertain, but accumulating evidence suggests that vaccinated people are unlikely to spread the virus. That said, masks will still likely be common for a while due to unknowns around variants and just the logistical hurdle of not knowing who has had the vaccine and who is lying about having it so they don't have to wear a mask.
- SigmundA 6y ago
  If vaccinated people can still spread the virus why would a "critical mass" of vaccinations change anything? Herd immunity relies on the fact that either having been vaccinated or recovered from the disease prevents you from spreading the disease to those that have not yet been vaccinated or can't get vaccinated.
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    A virus spreading to a pandemic level is a stochastic process. If you have enough people vaccinated, then there aren't enough carriers to push r over 1 even if unvaccinated people are catching and actively transmitting the disease. Doesn't matter at an individual level, but the restrictions are a societal issue due to lack of capacity for care and treatment.
    - SigmundA 6y ago
      Right so if you are vaccinated you are no longer a carrier and cannot infect those who are not vaccinated. If enough people get vaccinated they act as a barrier between the carriers and the unvaccinated, hence herd immunity.
      - arrosenberg 6y ago
        Ah, I misunderstood your original question a bit. If the vaccinated were still acting as carriers, the critical mass would still be important (though I'd imagine the math would be different) because the window of transmissibility would be much shorter and drive R way down. Vaccine would mean less viral load, less viral load means less transmission overall. This seems less likely to me than what is actually happening (vaccine inhibits transmission), but I could picture mechanisms by which that would happen.
      - refurb 6y ago
        It’s not black and white “vaccinated = no longer a carrier”, but rather a gradient where vaccinated people have antibodies which reduce the amount of viral shedding to such low levels (some will be zero) that transmission is potentially an order of magnitude less.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Vaccines tend not to be 100% effective. The Covid-19 vaccines appear to be very good in real world use, but the less effective a given vaccine is, the larger percentage of the population you need vaccinated to stop the virus spreading. That can get misscommunicated/misunderstood, and in addition lots of public health folks have been very conservative about saying anything that wasn't demonstrated in the trials, which didn't measure overall infection rates (they tracked symptomatic infections). Data is finally coming out about overall infection rates in vaccinated people and they appear to be very low.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      It's wild to me that in the trials they didn't test all participants (including asymptomatic people) when asymptomatic transmission is the reason we're in a pandemic.
      - SigmundA 6y ago
        So have there ever been vaccines that prevent you from getting getting the disease while still allowing you to spread it? This is a genuine question.
        fossuser 6y ago
        I don't know - I'm also not the person that was arguing that. I have pretty high confidence that if you have the vaccine you won't transmit the disease - I suspect the scientists are just being overly cautious because they don't have the data yet (though it is now starting to prove this out). They don't have the data in part, because the trials did not test asymptomatic people. This means it's possible that some of the vaccinated people in the trial caught the virus, but at a reduced severity that was asymptomatic (but still transmissible). Pretend that the vaccine reduced severity, but most people still caught it and were just asymptomatic. In that world, the vaccine wouldn't be enough (and the trials would not have revealed this). Since we know that some people who get the vaccine do catch the virus, but just have a mild case - it seems like a plausible outcome that others catch it without symptoms, but can still transmit it. That said, it's looking like that's not the world we're in - and the vaccines do just stop you from contracting the disease in addition to reducing severity in the rare case you catch it anyway. mRNA vaccines are new and given the asymptomatic transmission of the virus is why we have a pandemic, it's a reasonable thing to be cautious about (which is why I was surprised the trials only tested symptomatic patients).
rconti 6y ago
Agreed. My Silicon Valley tech company had me start working from home on March 6. The valley was VERY early on shutdowns. It seems silly and insane to go back to in-office in a very hurried manner when, for most people, this is working fine. Daily infections are many orders of magnitude higher today than they were in early March of last year when there were only, what, a couple hundred cases in the entire STATE? I won't discount how hard remote work has been for many people, but the fact of the matter is, continuing to do it for a little while longer is far less risky from the company's perspective than pulling the trigger in the first place, 1 year ago. It's largely been a successful move. As for lying to get the vaccine, yeah. I'd say that once the 65+ population had been eligible for awhile, and the state opened it up to a lot more people, whatever moral hesitancy towards lying that there might have been, has largely evaporated. I've heard plenty about strategies, what vendors don't check. I'm no in a huge hurry, so I'll wait. But that's just me.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm also just waiting for them to open it up to general availability - but it's irritating.
  - rconti 6y ago
    Which part? I think the rollout has been quite good. Particularly compared to, well, most countries. Every state and locality can have different rules, which I get is frustrating from a consistency and public messaging standpoint, but people get equally frustrated with a top-down approach where the rules don't make sense everywhere. Each locality has generally started with healthcare workers, old-age homes, and 65+.. beyond that I think there are diminishing returns with slicing and dicing the populace more carefully, so some states throw open the doors and others try to be more targeted. shrug It doesn't seem to be affecting the speed of vaccinations, which seems quite good, so I'm okay with waiting. I'm also somewhat okay with people jumping the line because at this point I think it's mostly important to get the numbers up, not gatekeeping.
    - fossuser 6y ago
brutal_chaos_ 6y ago
> Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the beginning. I have friends that work retail floors who are required to work in person, but aren't considered essential, so no early vaccination. WTF?! Just because a job is deemed less useful, that doesn't make the people less susceptible... <rant> Corporate America has grown so greedy, so disconnected from reality, it hurts a lot of people without notice nor reprecussions. </rant>
- RussianCow 6y ago
  Don't get me started. My state (Oregon) has announced that the next wave of vaccinations will go to agriculture and food processing workers. I get why those industries are super important to protect from a supply chain standpoint, but it also seems insane to me that people in those specific positions get special treatment while workers in retail, restaurants, etc--who interact closely with potentially hundreds of human beings daily--won't get the vaccine until it's generally available to everyone. And if you're, say, a single food service worker in the city, it's not like you can afford to just choose not to go back to work.
  - toast0 6y ago
    From my mind, agriculture gets priority because food is important and harvesting is time sensitive. Food processing gets priority because closures of large facilities due to outbreaks caused significant disruption last year. Kind of meh to reward an industry for having low spare capacity, but it is what it is. Retail, restaurants, etc workers have higher risks, but disruption is limited. Maybe a restaurant has to close (and several did over the past year), but there are other restaurants. Same for retail, even supermarkets. I think there's a limit to how many people you can prioritize over general population before people start really gaming the rules even though I know some people have been gaming the rules since the beginning. It's not reasonable to expect vaccination facilities to check patients' employment to determine priority, so it's going to be on people to follow them.
    - fossuser 6y ago
throwaway122378 6y ago
What number of the population needs to be vaccinated before we are “allowed” to go back to normal? Can you cite to back up your statement.
sg47 6y ago
The state of vaccine distribution/availability in California is pathetic. I'm a former thyroid cancer patient and since going through treatment a year and a half ago, I've become more susceptible to infections. Yet I'm not eligible for a vaccine since I don't have cancer currently.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dawnerd 6y ago
Right? This idea that just because we're at the levels we were over the summer means we can open everything up is just insane. We're so close to the end of this so why risk it. Why do schools need to open right before the end of the school year? Certainly don't think theme parks and movie theaters (which are serving food) should be open. Ah well, I got my first shot yesterday so soon I wont have to worry about everyone else.
- wffurr 6y ago
  My state (MA) is at 5X over summer case levels and somehow proceeding with reopening. It boggles my mind.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    I have the same reaction to this as one year ago when people said "only X people have died, so what's the big deal?". In both cases, the important thing is the exponential growth (shrinkage?) in the other direction. Not the absolute numbers right now.
  - tjs8rj 6y ago
    New infections isn’t the metric people care about - if young people get sick then there’s little harm. The metric is deaths, and MA is trending with its lowest new deaths from covid since nearly the beginning of the pandemic
    - wffurr 6y ago
      "little harm" is an anodyne way to talk about people dying and suffering. Maybe not as many, but I sure as hell don't want to take my chances and catch it. Also are you sure about that metric? This chart looks like deaths/day are 2X above summer levels (30 vs 15): https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/10/nation/latest-coronavirus-numbers-massachusetts/?p1=Covid_Widget https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/10/nation/latest-coronav... "Only" 2X deaths per day when cases are 5X per day is an improvement, but I am not rushing to eat indoors or go to a concert or gym. In fact, I am nervous as hell that loosened restrictions are going to increase spread the way they did last fall, and a bunch of people are going to get sick, suffer, and maybe die who wouldn't if we just buckled down for another month or two and got vaccinated.
minimaxir 6y ago
For San Francisco anyways (where this article is more focused), vaccine distribution is moving at a fast pace: an estimated 39% of the eligible population has received atleast one shot. (https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations/a49y-jeyc https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations/a49y-... )
deelowe 6y ago
These plans are being put into place b/c vaccine availability is rapidly improving.
- fossuser 6y ago
  If it was about vaccinated people returning then fine. To my knowledge they’re not saying that and that’s the important bit.
  - deelowe 6y ago
    AFAIK, that violates HIPPA.

heavyset_go 6y ago

> Once you have the vaccine, then you're free to go back to normal. Only after a critical mass of people are vaccinated, otherwise vaccinated people can still spread the virus to those who are unvaccinated.

fossuser 6y ago
This is still uncertain, but accumulating evidence suggests that vaccinated people are unlikely to spread the virus. That said, masks will still likely be common for a while due to unknowns around variants and just the logistical hurdle of not knowing who has had the vaccine and who is lying about having it so they don't have to wear a mask.
SigmundA 6y ago
If vaccinated people can still spread the virus why would a "critical mass" of vaccinations change anything? Herd immunity relies on the fact that either having been vaccinated or recovered from the disease prevents you from spreading the disease to those that have not yet been vaccinated or can't get vaccinated.
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  A virus spreading to a pandemic level is a stochastic process. If you have enough people vaccinated, then there aren't enough carriers to push r over 1 even if unvaccinated people are catching and actively transmitting the disease. Doesn't matter at an individual level, but the restrictions are a societal issue due to lack of capacity for care and treatment.
  - SigmundA 6y ago
    Right so if you are vaccinated you are no longer a carrier and cannot infect those who are not vaccinated. If enough people get vaccinated they act as a barrier between the carriers and the unvaccinated, hence herd immunity.
    - arrosenberg 6y ago
      Ah, I misunderstood your original question a bit. If the vaccinated were still acting as carriers, the critical mass would still be important (though I'd imagine the math would be different) because the window of transmissibility would be much shorter and drive R way down. Vaccine would mean less viral load, less viral load means less transmission overall. This seems less likely to me than what is actually happening (vaccine inhibits transmission), but I could picture mechanisms by which that would happen.
    - refurb 6y ago
      It’s not black and white “vaccinated = no longer a carrier”, but rather a gradient where vaccinated people have antibodies which reduce the amount of viral shedding to such low levels (some will be zero) that transmission is potentially an order of magnitude less.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Vaccines tend not to be 100% effective. The Covid-19 vaccines appear to be very good in real world use, but the less effective a given vaccine is, the larger percentage of the population you need vaccinated to stop the virus spreading. That can get misscommunicated/misunderstood, and in addition lots of public health folks have been very conservative about saying anything that wasn't demonstrated in the trials, which didn't measure overall infection rates (they tracked symptomatic infections). Data is finally coming out about overall infection rates in vaccinated people and they appear to be very low.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    It's wild to me that in the trials they didn't test all participants (including asymptomatic people) when asymptomatic transmission is the reason we're in a pandemic.
    - SigmundA 6y ago
      So have there ever been vaccines that prevent you from getting getting the disease while still allowing you to spread it? This is a genuine question.
      - fossuser 6y ago
        I don't know - I'm also not the person that was arguing that. I have pretty high confidence that if you have the vaccine you won't transmit the disease - I suspect the scientists are just being overly cautious because they don't have the data yet (though it is now starting to prove this out). They don't have the data in part, because the trials did not test asymptomatic people. This means it's possible that some of the vaccinated people in the trial caught the virus, but at a reduced severity that was asymptomatic (but still transmissible). Pretend that the vaccine reduced severity, but most people still caught it and were just asymptomatic. In that world, the vaccine wouldn't be enough (and the trials would not have revealed this). Since we know that some people who get the vaccine do catch the virus, but just have a mild case - it seems like a plausible outcome that others catch it without symptoms, but can still transmit it. That said, it's looking like that's not the world we're in - and the vaccines do just stop you from contracting the disease in addition to reducing severity in the rare case you catch it anyway. mRNA vaccines are new and given the asymptomatic transmission of the virus is why we have a pandemic, it's a reasonable thing to be cautious about (which is why I was surprised the trials only tested symptomatic patients).

rconti 6y ago

Agreed. My Silicon Valley tech company had me start working from home on March 6. The valley was VERY early on shutdowns. It seems silly and insane to go back to in-office in a very hurried manner when, for most people, this is working fine. Daily infections are many orders of magnitude higher today than they were in early March of last year when there were only, what, a couple hundred cases in the entire STATE? I won't discount how hard remote work has been for many people, but the fact of the matter is, continuing to do it for a little while longer is far less risky from the company's perspective than pulling the trigger in the first place, 1 year ago. It's largely been a successful move. As for lying to get the vaccine, yeah. I'd say that once the 65+ population had been eligible for awhile, and the state opened it up to a lot more people, whatever moral hesitancy towards lying that there might have been, has largely evaporated. I've heard plenty about strategies, what vendors don't check. I'm no in a huge hurry, so I'll wait. But that's just me.

fossuser 6y ago
Yeah, I'm also just waiting for them to open it up to general availability - but it's irritating.
- rconti 6y ago
  Which part? I think the rollout has been quite good. Particularly compared to, well, most countries. Every state and locality can have different rules, which I get is frustrating from a consistency and public messaging standpoint, but people get equally frustrated with a top-down approach where the rules don't make sense everywhere. Each locality has generally started with healthcare workers, old-age homes, and 65+.. beyond that I think there are diminishing returns with slicing and dicing the populace more carefully, so some states throw open the doors and others try to be more targeted. shrug It doesn't seem to be affecting the speed of vaccinations, which seems quite good, so I'm okay with waiting. I'm also somewhat okay with people jumping the line because at this point I think it's mostly important to get the numbers up, not gatekeeping.
  - fossuser 6y ago

brutal_chaos_ 6y ago

> Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the beginning. I have friends that work retail floors who are required to work in person, but aren't considered essential, so no early vaccination. WTF?! Just because a job is deemed less useful, that doesn't make the people less susceptible... <rant> Corporate America has grown so greedy, so disconnected from reality, it hurts a lot of people without notice nor reprecussions. </rant>

RussianCow 6y ago
Don't get me started. My state (Oregon) has announced that the next wave of vaccinations will go to agriculture and food processing workers. I get why those industries are super important to protect from a supply chain standpoint, but it also seems insane to me that people in those specific positions get special treatment while workers in retail, restaurants, etc--who interact closely with potentially hundreds of human beings daily--won't get the vaccine until it's generally available to everyone. And if you're, say, a single food service worker in the city, it's not like you can afford to just choose not to go back to work.
- toast0 6y ago
  From my mind, agriculture gets priority because food is important and harvesting is time sensitive. Food processing gets priority because closures of large facilities due to outbreaks caused significant disruption last year. Kind of meh to reward an industry for having low spare capacity, but it is what it is. Retail, restaurants, etc workers have higher risks, but disruption is limited. Maybe a restaurant has to close (and several did over the past year), but there are other restaurants. Same for retail, even supermarkets. I think there's a limit to how many people you can prioritize over general population before people start really gaming the rules even though I know some people have been gaming the rules since the beginning. It's not reasonable to expect vaccination facilities to check patients' employment to determine priority, so it's going to be on people to follow them.
  - fossuser 6y ago

throwaway122378 6y ago

What number of the population needs to be vaccinated before we are “allowed” to go back to normal? Can you cite to back up your statement.

sg47 6y ago

The state of vaccine distribution/availability in California is pathetic. I'm a former thyroid cancer patient and since going through treatment a year and a half ago, I've become more susceptible to infections. Yet I'm not eligible for a vaccine since I don't have cancer currently.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dawnerd 6y ago

Right? This idea that just because we're at the levels we were over the summer means we can open everything up is just insane. We're so close to the end of this so why risk it. Why do schools need to open right before the end of the school year? Certainly don't think theme parks and movie theaters (which are serving food) should be open. Ah well, I got my first shot yesterday so soon I wont have to worry about everyone else.

wffurr 6y ago
My state (MA) is at 5X over summer case levels and somehow proceeding with reopening. It boggles my mind.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  I have the same reaction to this as one year ago when people said "only X people have died, so what's the big deal?". In both cases, the important thing is the exponential growth (shrinkage?) in the other direction. Not the absolute numbers right now.
- tjs8rj 6y ago
  New infections isn’t the metric people care about - if young people get sick then there’s little harm. The metric is deaths, and MA is trending with its lowest new deaths from covid since nearly the beginning of the pandemic
  - wffurr 6y ago
    "little harm" is an anodyne way to talk about people dying and suffering. Maybe not as many, but I sure as hell don't want to take my chances and catch it. Also are you sure about that metric? This chart looks like deaths/day are 2X above summer levels (30 vs 15): https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/10/nation/latest-coronavirus-numbers-massachusetts/?p1=Covid_Widget https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/10/nation/latest-coronav... "Only" 2X deaths per day when cases are 5X per day is an improvement, but I am not rushing to eat indoors or go to a concert or gym. In fact, I am nervous as hell that loosened restrictions are going to increase spread the way they did last fall, and a bunch of people are going to get sick, suffer, and maybe die who wouldn't if we just buckled down for another month or two and got vaccinated.

minimaxir 6y ago

For San Francisco anyways (where this article is more focused), vaccine distribution is moving at a fast pace: an estimated 39% of the eligible population has received atleast one shot. (https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations/a49y-jeyc https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations/a49y-... )

deelowe 6y ago

These plans are being put into place b/c vaccine availability is rapidly improving.

fossuser 6y ago
If it was about vaccinated people returning then fine. To my knowledge they’re not saying that and that’s the important bit.
- deelowe 6y ago
  AFAIK, that violates HIPPA.