4 ms·

NZ's strategy (and all lockdown strategies) never made any sense and it was obvious from the get-go. Very early into the pandemic, we learned three crucial fac

NZ's strategy (and all lockdown strategies) never made any sense and it was obvious from the get-go. Very early into the pandemic, we learned three crucial facts: 1) Covid is non-transmissible outside. 2) Vitamin D is a potent inhibitor of respiratory illness in general and covid in particular. 3) Obesity is the greatest risk-factor associated with covid. With these taken into account (and all are very well-supported by many of those peer-reviewed studies everyone seems to need in order to take any action), the best course of action is to encourage everyone to go outside, hang out with friends, don't wear masks outside (because this discourages going outside), exercise, and soak up lots of sun. The next "big wave" of covid in the northern hemisphere is going to come in the winter, just as all "seasonal illnesses" do. In fact, there's at least one study out lately that indicate that there's nothing seasonal about illnesses, but that vitamin D deficiency, brought on by staying inside during the cold months lowers group immunity and causes increased illness.

mmastrac 5y ago
1) might not be true with Delta. There are cases of "passing" transmission of <30s contact. Too soon to tell, but what we learned early in the pandemic pre-delta may not apply now. 2) is still up in the air with studies going both ways (but get your vitamin D still, it has multiple benefits outside of this) 3) is somewhat true, but there are other big comorbidities as well (Diabetes, Downs Syndrome, etc), it's just that it's one that's highly visible in Western society and hypertension is very common in obese people.
- sjwalter 5y ago
  It seems like you're of the mind that every new novel virus that enters the biosphere requires several months worth of randomized control trials to determine best paths forward. The precautionary principle would tell us that it's best to ensure your immune system is as strong and healthy as it can possibly be, which requires going outside, getting fresh air and sunshine, visiting with family and friends, and getting fit. The way your reply is phrased, it makes it seem like every time a new variant or whatever is announced, we should all default to locking down, staying inside, and slowly killing our immune systems. That doesn't seem to make sense. We know what makes humans healthy, and we should be constantly reminding people to do the daily things to build their natural immunity, which is an amazing and effective defense against covid and myriad other ailments. Imagine if we'd spent the past 1.5 years collectively working to lower the BMI of the USA and getting everyone a little more tanned. We'd be far better off along basically every metric and the pandemic would've been far less impactful. That our Public Health Professionals know all these things work and never ever talk about them and instead seem to always recommend staying inside and spiking cortisol levels, we shouldn't really pay them any mind whatsoever.
  - mmastrac 5y ago
    Your attempt at reading my internal mindstate was wrong, I'm afraid. I was simply correcting your assertions that have not been backed up by real data, and the fact that you've glossed over the changes in the virus that have been observed in the wild over the last few months. But let's talk about this: having an immune system be as strong as possible is not a good thing. Weak immune systems are bad. Overly "strong" immune systems result in auto-immune disease. "Natural immunity" to COVID is no different ($) than vaccine immunity, and our vaccine-given immunity comes with far less risk. We've been given a miraculous vaccine technology, tested it at scale and found that it's safe. If you want to make some real change, focus on changing the minds of the anti-vaxxers that are extending the pandemic through their lack of action. Sure, getting everyone fitter would help. Getting people more vitamin D will help with other things (but again, probably not to a great extent with COVID). But that doesn't change the fact that we were grappling with a deadly virus that can quickly overwhelm health care systems and cause long-term "long-COVID" damage that we are still not completely understanding. ($) I don't have the numbers at hand, but the last study I read suggested that getting COVID was slightly better at preventing future COVID than a single Pfizer dose, but worse than two Pfizer doses. Will look for this again. EDIT: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/past-covid-19-infection-provides-some-immunity-but-people-may-still-carry-and-transmit-virus https://www.gov.uk/government/news/past-covid-19-infection-p... is the study.
    - sjwalter 5y ago
      > "Natural immunity" to COVID is no different ($) than vaccine immunity You can't find any studies to back this up, can you? It'll be hard without clarification at first, because it's not clear what you mean--do you mean "natural immunity" as in somebody who, when encountering the virus for the first time, has an immune system which fights off the infection without any symptoms and low/no transmission to other hosts? If that's what you mean, then no, natural immunity, present in basically everyone sub-40 who's not fat, is far superior to vaccines, because it comes with zero long-term risk and from what everyone can tell has a death rate too small to measure: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(21)00089-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8... If you're talking about someone who has fought off covid and has naturally-produced antibodies, then you have I presume no citation to say it's "as good as vaccines". Natural immunity in every case it's been studied has been shown to be robust, long-lasting, and superior to vaccines. In fact, the survivors of Sars-Cov-1 from back in 2005 still have robust immunity against sars-cov-2. In fact, some large percentage of the population had t-cell reactivity to sars-cov-2 without ever having contact with the virus: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 It's also super-weird to have people like hold the bar as "vaccine-level immunity". The human body is a genius achievement of evolution, and THAT is the bar. Zero studies have ever shown any way in which vaccine-based immunity is superior. And now we have all this talk of boosters. LOL! Don't need no booster for natural immunity. But there sure are some people who want you to have 'em anyway!

mmastrac 5y ago

1) might not be true with Delta. There are cases of "passing" transmission of <30s contact. Too soon to tell, but what we learned early in the pandemic pre-delta may not apply now. 2) is still up in the air with studies going both ways (but get your vitamin D still, it has multiple benefits outside of this) 3) is somewhat true, but there are other big comorbidities as well (Diabetes, Downs Syndrome, etc), it's just that it's one that's highly visible in Western society and hypertension is very common in obese people.

sjwalter 5y ago
It seems like you're of the mind that every new novel virus that enters the biosphere requires several months worth of randomized control trials to determine best paths forward. The precautionary principle would tell us that it's best to ensure your immune system is as strong and healthy as it can possibly be, which requires going outside, getting fresh air and sunshine, visiting with family and friends, and getting fit. The way your reply is phrased, it makes it seem like every time a new variant or whatever is announced, we should all default to locking down, staying inside, and slowly killing our immune systems. That doesn't seem to make sense. We know what makes humans healthy, and we should be constantly reminding people to do the daily things to build their natural immunity, which is an amazing and effective defense against covid and myriad other ailments. Imagine if we'd spent the past 1.5 years collectively working to lower the BMI of the USA and getting everyone a little more tanned. We'd be far better off along basically every metric and the pandemic would've been far less impactful. That our Public Health Professionals know all these things work and never ever talk about them and instead seem to always recommend staying inside and spiking cortisol levels, we shouldn't really pay them any mind whatsoever.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  Your attempt at reading my internal mindstate was wrong, I'm afraid. I was simply correcting your assertions that have not been backed up by real data, and the fact that you've glossed over the changes in the virus that have been observed in the wild over the last few months. But let's talk about this: having an immune system be as strong as possible is not a good thing. Weak immune systems are bad. Overly "strong" immune systems result in auto-immune disease. "Natural immunity" to COVID is no different ($) than vaccine immunity, and our vaccine-given immunity comes with far less risk. We've been given a miraculous vaccine technology, tested it at scale and found that it's safe. If you want to make some real change, focus on changing the minds of the anti-vaxxers that are extending the pandemic through their lack of action. Sure, getting everyone fitter would help. Getting people more vitamin D will help with other things (but again, probably not to a great extent with COVID). But that doesn't change the fact that we were grappling with a deadly virus that can quickly overwhelm health care systems and cause long-term "long-COVID" damage that we are still not completely understanding. ($) I don't have the numbers at hand, but the last study I read suggested that getting COVID was slightly better at preventing future COVID than a single Pfizer dose, but worse than two Pfizer doses. Will look for this again. EDIT: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/past-covid-19-infection-provides-some-immunity-but-people-may-still-carry-and-transmit-virus https://www.gov.uk/government/news/past-covid-19-infection-p... is the study.
  - sjwalter 5y ago
    > "Natural immunity" to COVID is no different ($) than vaccine immunity You can't find any studies to back this up, can you? It'll be hard without clarification at first, because it's not clear what you mean--do you mean "natural immunity" as in somebody who, when encountering the virus for the first time, has an immune system which fights off the infection without any symptoms and low/no transmission to other hosts? If that's what you mean, then no, natural immunity, present in basically everyone sub-40 who's not fat, is far superior to vaccines, because it comes with zero long-term risk and from what everyone can tell has a death rate too small to measure: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(21)00089-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8... If you're talking about someone who has fought off covid and has naturally-produced antibodies, then you have I presume no citation to say it's "as good as vaccines". Natural immunity in every case it's been studied has been shown to be robust, long-lasting, and superior to vaccines. In fact, the survivors of Sars-Cov-1 from back in 2005 still have robust immunity against sars-cov-2. In fact, some large percentage of the population had t-cell reactivity to sars-cov-2 without ever having contact with the virus: https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 It's also super-weird to have people like hold the bar as "vaccine-level immunity". The human body is a genius achievement of evolution, and THAT is the bar. Zero studies have ever shown any way in which vaccine-based immunity is superior. And now we have all this talk of boosters. LOL! Don't need no booster for natural immunity. But there sure are some people who want you to have 'em anyway!