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The pretense all along as far as I can tell from most countries has been one of "zero COVID". Meaning a total removal/extermination of the virus. Whether or not

The pretense all along as far as I can tell from most countries has been one of "zero COVID". Meaning a total removal/extermination of the virus. Whether or not this was ever realistic is really the underlying debate that hasn't yet fully surfaced.

hcknwscommenter 5y ago
Of course it was realistic. China basically achieved it (I am not a China fan or defender), but the rest of the world failed. The whole world achieved it for the first SARS. However, that ship sailed a long time ago. Probably before the first surge in Italy of COVID-19.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- brodouevencode 5y ago
  You have a lot more faith in the data coming out of China than I do. The CCP has lied from the beginning and attempted (successfully in most cases) to silence the researchers from the Wuhan lab that attempted to report early on.
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  China didn’t really achieve Zero Covid if they exported it to the rest of the world. They may have stamped out some local outbreaks.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > China basically achieved it No, it didn't. > (I am not a China fan or defender) Then why are you making B.S. “rah rah China” claims that even Chinese state media doesn't?
legerdemain 5y ago
Europeans learned to live with the bubonic plague, which has never been eradicated, and Native Americans, over time, overcame the smallpox that was introduced among them. The people of today can do the same with Covid. It is the only way.
- brodouevencode 5y ago
  Agreed. Events like this should remind us to not be so arrogant.
- jollybean 5y ago
  "The people of today can do the same with Covid."? The plague wiped out 1/2 of Europeans and Smallpox maybe the majority of Aboriginals. Or something like that. Yes, 'we can survive' I don't think anyone doubts that. The question is, is it going to kill several million Americans or more during it's run. Hopefully not but I'm also someone can show us what the light at the end of this tunnel looks like.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    Covid has a below 1% case fatality rate. It is not going to ‘kill several million Americans’.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Covid has a below 1% case fatality rate. The US has 622K fatalities on 37M cases, which is a 1.68% CFR (and is an undercount, because some current cases that will be fatalities aren't yet.) Of course, CFR isn't a constant, it varies with current healthcare overload and the lethality of different strains, among other factors.
      - tinus_hn 5y ago
        I love how now the fatalities are an undercount and the number of cases is a certainty so it fits this shoehorned argument. In reality the fatalities are ‘people who died within a certain period after being tested positive’ and an enormous amount of cases without any symptoms go undetected.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > I love how now the fatalities are an undercount and the number of cases is a certainty so it fits this shoehorned argument. Cases are a certainty basically by definition (now, if you want to do the usual thing and argue that we should look at IFR and not CFR, that’s a different story, but I’m not the one who introduced a false claim about CFR.) > an enormous amount of cases without any symptoms go undetected. By definition, if an infection goes undetected, its not a case.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I don't know who was saying this (I wasn't personally reading it), but it was obviously dumb. The question really isn't whether vaccinated people get sick, or even whether they spread the virus, but whether they end up in the hospital. Right now, if you're vaccinated, you are extraordinarily unlikely to end up in the hospital.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  That's the topic of the article. You are much less likely to end up in a hospital or ICU if you are vaccinated, but it won't be extraordinary, especially if you are old. > What is clear is that “breakthrough” cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older.
  - nl 5y ago
    > > What is clear is that “breakthrough” cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older. This is a bad interpretation by the article's author. At some point (at 100% vaccination rate) we'd expect 100% of people in hospital to be vaccinated. Talking about "breakthrough" cases and how rare they are depends on the absolute number of infections. This article doesn't have that data but it does say this: > Yet the country is now logging one of the world’s highest infection rates, with nearly 650 new cases daily per million people. The population is 3.9m, so 2500 cases per day. According to https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/israel https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/israel it is actually up to 6000 cases per day. So there are probably 100K+ active cases. 303 (ie, 0.59 * 514) cases of vaccinated people is 0.26%. That's a pretty low rate.
    - edanm 5y ago
      Not super important, but yesterday there were 8,646 new cases detected.
lamontcg 5y ago
The goal was to get as many people vaccinated first before being naturally exposed to the virus. That should cut down the fatality rate, along with the rest of the lifelong damage the virus causes, by at least an order of magnitude. The goal was also to avoid the hospital system and ICUs collapsing, which should be a natural result of everyone getting vaccinated. Vaccine boosters yearly or every other year were also always discussed as early as March 2020 to deal either with waning immunity or reformulations to address antigenic escape.

hcknwscommenter 5y ago

Of course it was realistic. China basically achieved it (I am not a China fan or defender), but the rest of the world failed. The whole world achieved it for the first SARS. However, that ship sailed a long time ago. Probably before the first surge in Italy of COVID-19.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
brodouevencode 5y ago
You have a lot more faith in the data coming out of China than I do. The CCP has lied from the beginning and attempted (successfully in most cases) to silence the researchers from the Wuhan lab that attempted to report early on.
jdminhbg 5y ago
China didn’t really achieve Zero Covid if they exported it to the rest of the world. They may have stamped out some local outbreaks.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> China basically achieved it No, it didn't. > (I am not a China fan or defender) Then why are you making B.S. “rah rah China” claims that even Chinese state media doesn't?

legerdemain 5y ago

Europeans learned to live with the bubonic plague, which has never been eradicated, and Native Americans, over time, overcame the smallpox that was introduced among them. The people of today can do the same with Covid. It is the only way.

brodouevencode 5y ago
Agreed. Events like this should remind us to not be so arrogant.
jollybean 5y ago
"The people of today can do the same with Covid."? The plague wiped out 1/2 of Europeans and Smallpox maybe the majority of Aboriginals. Or something like that. Yes, 'we can survive' I don't think anyone doubts that. The question is, is it going to kill several million Americans or more during it's run. Hopefully not but I'm also someone can show us what the light at the end of this tunnel looks like.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Covid has a below 1% case fatality rate. It is not going to ‘kill several million Americans’.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Covid has a below 1% case fatality rate. The US has 622K fatalities on 37M cases, which is a 1.68% CFR (and is an undercount, because some current cases that will be fatalities aren't yet.) Of course, CFR isn't a constant, it varies with current healthcare overload and the lethality of different strains, among other factors.
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      I love how now the fatalities are an undercount and the number of cases is a certainty so it fits this shoehorned argument. In reality the fatalities are ‘people who died within a certain period after being tested positive’ and an enormous amount of cases without any symptoms go undetected.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > I love how now the fatalities are an undercount and the number of cases is a certainty so it fits this shoehorned argument. Cases are a certainty basically by definition (now, if you want to do the usual thing and argue that we should look at IFR and not CFR, that’s a different story, but I’m not the one who introduced a false claim about CFR.) > an enormous amount of cases without any symptoms go undetected. By definition, if an infection goes undetected, its not a case.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

I don't know who was saying this (I wasn't personally reading it), but it was obviously dumb. The question really isn't whether vaccinated people get sick, or even whether they spread the virus, but whether they end up in the hospital. Right now, if you're vaccinated, you are extraordinarily unlikely to end up in the hospital.

smnrchrds 5y ago
That's the topic of the article. You are much less likely to end up in a hospital or ICU if you are vaccinated, but it won't be extraordinary, especially if you are old. > What is clear is that “breakthrough” cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older.
- nl 5y ago
  > > What is clear is that “breakthrough” cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older. This is a bad interpretation by the article's author. At some point (at 100% vaccination rate) we'd expect 100% of people in hospital to be vaccinated. Talking about "breakthrough" cases and how rare they are depends on the absolute number of infections. This article doesn't have that data but it does say this: > Yet the country is now logging one of the world’s highest infection rates, with nearly 650 new cases daily per million people. The population is 3.9m, so 2500 cases per day. According to https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/israel https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/israel it is actually up to 6000 cases per day. So there are probably 100K+ active cases. 303 (ie, 0.59 * 514) cases of vaccinated people is 0.26%. That's a pretty low rate.
  - edanm 5y ago
    Not super important, but yesterday there were 8,646 new cases detected.

lamontcg 5y ago

The goal was to get as many people vaccinated first before being naturally exposed to the virus. That should cut down the fatality rate, along with the rest of the lifelong damage the virus causes, by at least an order of magnitude. The goal was also to avoid the hospital system and ICUs collapsing, which should be a natural result of everyone getting vaccinated. Vaccine boosters yearly or every other year were also always discussed as early as March 2020 to deal either with waning immunity or reformulations to address antigenic escape.