7 ms·

Society Will Never Be Free of Covid-19–It’s Time to Embrace Harm Reduction

39 points by hncurious 5y ago

DoreenMichele 5y ago
There are a lot of things we could do that are effective that would boil down to cultural changes. I just know how to effectively promote such approaches. I have a compromised immune system. Germ control is a big part of my life. I do simple things that are readily available, like get takeout instead of eating at the restaurant and use self checkout as much as possible. I know these strategies are effective. I just don't know how to get past a bunch of people wanting to dismiss it as anecdotal and "That's just your opinion, man!" Which makes no sense to me given the current state of things. But that's how it tends to go, if people are bothering to be polite. It sometimes is a lot uglier, which makes it hard to bring up such ideas at all.
simonh 5y ago
The way to address it is to treat public health as a national security issue. This is actually what happened here in the UK after WW1 and pushed forward hard after WW2 with the establishment of the NHS. In WW1 the UK armed forces were shocked at the low levels of health and nutrition in recruits, such that large numbers were unfit to serve. This also affected labour available for strategic industries like arms and munitions. This is why the establishment of robust public health systems and a public primary care system were not controversial here and mostly still aren't. I say this as a lifelong conservative voter. This isn't about socialism. We're not a huge nation and we needed a healthy capable population. We're waging a global war on this virus, whether we like it or not. What we need is co-ordinated and effective action on a global scale to combat it. The virus itself, and the delta variant has showed that what happens in one country is of vital interest to the rest of the world, we're all in this together. However the first step to effective international action is for the nations with the resources to act globally to put their own houses in order first. Here in Britain this is what we've done, with a few missteps and misjudgements along the way, but we're finally on top of this thing. Vaccination, vaccination, vaccination. All the other tools we have - lockdowns, mitigating treatments, masks, they're all useful tools in their place, but the Vaccine research efforts were our Manhattan project. The vaccines are the wonder weapons. They're the path to getting on top of this thing. We're in this for the long haul. New variants will arise that are more infection, more deadly, vaccine resistant, or all three. We need to be ready for them. This is the real deal, it's a proper global war with a massive global body count, and we need to stop bickering about it and get organised.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  We really don't know if/how the virus will mutate. Especially in the sense of how a given set of mutations will impact transmissibility, virulence and vaccine effectiveness.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Technically true, we can't predict when or if specific mutations will or won't occur. We do know this virus has in fact already mutated significantly on two of these axes though (virulence and vaccine resistance), as variants have emerged that vary in some degree in those ways, and it seems somewhat optimistic to think it won't continue to do so. Fortunately it's not mutated too much in terms of vaccine resistance. Delta seems significantly more resistant to single doses than Alpha but a second dose so far does the job. We've only recently exposed the virus to large numbers of vaccinated people though, so there's not been much time for resistant variants to gain an advantage.
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  "Wars on X" have NEVER worked except in elementary symmetric warfare (where both sides where well visible uniforms and do not practice any stealth techniques). The "War on Drugs", "War on Poverty", "War on Terrorism", "War on Alcohol" (Prohibition) all are 100% failures.
retrac 5y ago
> public health officials should be telling individuals some basic things that they can do to really reduce harm: people with symptoms of a respiratory infection, vaccinated or unvaccinated, should stay the hell away. They shouldn’t visit vulnerable friends or relatives. They should cancel social plans. They should call in sick for work. They should get tested and stay home until recovered. Employers should insist that sick employees stay home. Not only telling people. We should work to enable this. Missing a week of work can be expensive and many are broke. There is a perverse incentive here. I'm not sure the best way to address it.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  In the US, employers are legally permitted to mandate vaccinations. Countries can mandate them for border crossings (air, sea, and land). Mandate them. Those who opt out (without legitimate medical reason) are the ones who can face the costs of their choice, instead of society collectively carrying the burden. Like Cato says, "embrace harm reduction."
  - errantmind 5y ago
    Sure, as long as we also ban fast food, tobacco, alcohol, and raise the minimum standard for food at the grocery store to USDA Organic. I'm tired of carrying these unhealthy peoples' burdens. Might as well target the actual big causes of death, like heart, lung, and liver disease.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      No, we don’t have to do those at the same time as a public health crisis, and ICU beds are not overflowing due to the maladies you enumerated. They are overflowing because of the unvaccinated.
      - errantmind 5y ago
        Most of the unvaccinated in the ICU are either overweight, have preexisting conditions, or are old. I don't see any reason not to attack other root causes to clear out the ICUs while we are at it, right?
unearth3d 5y ago
Simply don't understand the rush to open; historically pandemics have disrupted societies for decades. This is a chance to do something new and move away from a financial system that is destroying Earth.
- emptysongglass 5y ago
  People have roamed and moved their bodies about since the first human walked. The unnatural state is one of prohibited movement where the doldrums of the everyday with its same walls, same chipped paint corner of a bedroom, same routine, same one yellowed box of a shelter are The Encounter. Novelty, curiosity and exploration made the Human. You can no more take it out of us than the cat's meow. These cycles of lockdown can't last much longer without mass revolts. I say that not as one who is some great conspiracy thinker or who has a particular anger toward the G-Man for penning me in. We've done that now, tried our best. It's time for a new approach.
  - ljw1001 5y ago
    There's nothing about things not being "open" that relates to someone's ability to "move around" in spite of the poorly chosen terms like "lockdown", which means in this context "I can't go hang out in my favorite bar" or "I have to wear a mask" when it used to mean "All the inmates must return to their cells"
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  > historically pandemics have disrupted societies for decades Per-capita, the 1918 flu pandemic killed far more people (and far younger people) than Covid. Why is there nothing in history books about major disruptions to society and normal throughout the 20s and 30s as a result?
  - Andaith 5y ago
    I thought that most info was suppressed throughout Europe due to WW1, and that's why it was also why it's called the Spanish Flu. They weren't at war so were happy actually putting information on the radio/newspapers while everyone else suppressed it because they didn't want troops at the front line worrying about their families dying of plague behind them...
Gravyness 5y ago
I sincerely think Covid is now just being used to decrease carbon emissions by having everyone work from home or at least not exit houses as much due to mass hysteria of "yet another variant". Viruses of all kinds will keep trying to kill us regardless if we call it the flu or covid, if we keep everyone scared to exit their houses they will invariably use less resources from the world. So yeah, a world free of covid isn't on anyone's best interest.
- sjwalter 5y ago
  > a world free of covid isn't on anyone's best interest LOL!
- maxerickson 5y ago
  A limited set of knowledge workers are working at home, not 'everyone'.
- simonh 5y ago
  Arguably it's in the interests of the people dying, and getting crippled by long covid.
kazinator 5y ago
I'm sick of these "Covid will not be eradicated" doom and gloom articles; it seems they are always peddling politics or a poorly disguised anti-vaxx messaging. > The only human virus ever to be eradicated was smallpox, and that took 200 years Bullshit; it would not take 200 years with our current level of technology and understanding. Smallpox was declared by the WHO to be eradicated in 1980. The last naturally occurring case was in 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine "The smallpox vaccine was the first vaccine to be developed against a contagious disease. In 1796, the British doctor Edward Jenner demonstrated that an infection with the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against the deadly smallpox virus. Cowpox served as a natural vaccine until the modern smallpox vaccine emerged in the 20th century. From 1958 to 1977, the World Health Organization conducted a global vaccination campaign that eradicated smallpox, making it the only human disease to be eradicated." Really, if we honestly look at it, the actual eradication of smallpox took only 20 years. The 1796-195x years were just hobbling along with poor vaccines and half-assed effort. Also, most of the focused effort was only the last 10 years of that. "Smallpox was eradicated by a massive international search for outbreaks, backed up with a vaccination program, starting in 1967. It was organised and co-ordinated by a World Health Organization (WHO) unit, set up and headed by Donald Henderson. The last case in the Americas occurred in 1971 (Brazil), south-east Asia (Indonesia) in 1972, and on the Indian subcontinent in 1975 (Bangladesh). After two years of intensive searches, what proved to be the last endemic case anywhere in the world occurred in Somalia, in October 1977." So, there is support in taking the viewpoint that when the effort was properly stepped up, it was licked in ten years.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  Were there animal and insect reservoirs for smallpox? How quickly did it mutate relative to SARS-CoV-2? Were the vaccines developed for it sterilizing vaccines, or did they allow vaccinated people to continue getting infected in large numbers?
  - mikem170 5y ago
    No, there were not animal reserves for smallpox. And that makes a huge difference. There are a lot of mammals that can host coronaviruses. We'd have to eliminate it from those animals, also. Things like bats, civits, minks, etc. This is not likely to happen, given the difficulty of inoculating animals.
mint2 5y ago
Harm reduction would mean keeping masking and mandating vaccines for a couple years until the situation stabilizes whereupon more traditional flu measure would be enough. While areas are still seeing icu and LO2 shortages when restrictions are relaxed, any valid harm reduction requires at a minimum continued masking and vaccinations.
joelbondurant 5y ago
Queue the low life communist cry babies who think the coronavirus endemic started in 2019... iF eVeRyOnE wOrE 4 mAsKs tO sLeEp fOr 2 wEekS, tHe fLu wOuLd be eXtiNct, derp derp. Tyranny of the degenerates.
ljw1001 5y ago
In the spirit of embracing harm reduction, perhaps it's time to consider whom pronouncements by the Koch-funded Cato Institute are intended to benefit. Bring on the downvotes.

39 points by hncurious 5y ago

There are a lot of things we could do that are effective that would boil down to cultural changes. I just know how to effectively promote such approaches. I have a compromised immune system. Germ control is a big part of my life. I do simple things that are readily available, like get takeout instead of eating at the restaurant and use self checkout as much as possible. I know these strategies are effective. I just don't know how to get past a bunch of people wanting to dismiss it as anecdotal and "That's just your opinion, man!" Which makes no sense to me given the current state of things. But that's how it tends to go, if people are bothering to be polite. It sometimes is a lot uglier, which makes it hard to bring up such ideas at all.

simonh 5y ago

The way to address it is to treat public health as a national security issue. This is actually what happened here in the UK after WW1 and pushed forward hard after WW2 with the establishment of the NHS. In WW1 the UK armed forces were shocked at the low levels of health and nutrition in recruits, such that large numbers were unfit to serve. This also affected labour available for strategic industries like arms and munitions. This is why the establishment of robust public health systems and a public primary care system were not controversial here and mostly still aren't. I say this as a lifelong conservative voter. This isn't about socialism. We're not a huge nation and we needed a healthy capable population. We're waging a global war on this virus, whether we like it or not. What we need is co-ordinated and effective action on a global scale to combat it. The virus itself, and the delta variant has showed that what happens in one country is of vital interest to the rest of the world, we're all in this together. However the first step to effective international action is for the nations with the resources to act globally to put their own houses in order first. Here in Britain this is what we've done, with a few missteps and misjudgements along the way, but we're finally on top of this thing. Vaccination, vaccination, vaccination. All the other tools we have - lockdowns, mitigating treatments, masks, they're all useful tools in their place, but the Vaccine research efforts were our Manhattan project. The vaccines are the wonder weapons. They're the path to getting on top of this thing. We're in this for the long haul. New variants will arise that are more infection, more deadly, vaccine resistant, or all three. We need to be ready for them. This is the real deal, it's a proper global war with a massive global body count, and we need to stop bickering about it and get organised.

maxerickson 5y ago
We really don't know if/how the virus will mutate. Especially in the sense of how a given set of mutations will impact transmissibility, virulence and vaccine effectiveness.
- simonh 5y ago
  Technically true, we can't predict when or if specific mutations will or won't occur. We do know this virus has in fact already mutated significantly on two of these axes though (virulence and vaccine resistance), as variants have emerged that vary in some degree in those ways, and it seems somewhat optimistic to think it won't continue to do so. Fortunately it's not mutated too much in terms of vaccine resistance. Delta seems significantly more resistant to single doses than Alpha but a second dose so far does the job. We've only recently exposed the virus to large numbers of vaccinated people though, so there's not been much time for resistant variants to gain an advantage.
xyzzy21 5y ago
"Wars on X" have NEVER worked except in elementary symmetric warfare (where both sides where well visible uniforms and do not practice any stealth techniques). The "War on Drugs", "War on Poverty", "War on Terrorism", "War on Alcohol" (Prohibition) all are 100% failures.

retrac 5y ago

> public health officials should be telling individuals some basic things that they can do to really reduce harm: people with symptoms of a respiratory infection, vaccinated or unvaccinated, should stay the hell away. They shouldn’t visit vulnerable friends or relatives. They should cancel social plans. They should call in sick for work. They should get tested and stay home until recovered. Employers should insist that sick employees stay home. Not only telling people. We should work to enable this. Missing a week of work can be expensive and many are broke. There is a perverse incentive here. I'm not sure the best way to address it.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
In the US, employers are legally permitted to mandate vaccinations. Countries can mandate them for border crossings (air, sea, and land). Mandate them. Those who opt out (without legitimate medical reason) are the ones who can face the costs of their choice, instead of society collectively carrying the burden. Like Cato says, "embrace harm reduction."
- errantmind 5y ago
  Sure, as long as we also ban fast food, tobacco, alcohol, and raise the minimum standard for food at the grocery store to USDA Organic. I'm tired of carrying these unhealthy peoples' burdens. Might as well target the actual big causes of death, like heart, lung, and liver disease.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    No, we don’t have to do those at the same time as a public health crisis, and ICU beds are not overflowing due to the maladies you enumerated. They are overflowing because of the unvaccinated.
    - errantmind 5y ago
      Most of the unvaccinated in the ICU are either overweight, have preexisting conditions, or are old. I don't see any reason not to attack other root causes to clear out the ICUs while we are at it, right?

unearth3d 5y ago

Simply don't understand the rush to open; historically pandemics have disrupted societies for decades. This is a chance to do something new and move away from a financial system that is destroying Earth.

emptysongglass 5y ago
People have roamed and moved their bodies about since the first human walked. The unnatural state is one of prohibited movement where the doldrums of the everyday with its same walls, same chipped paint corner of a bedroom, same routine, same one yellowed box of a shelter are The Encounter. Novelty, curiosity and exploration made the Human. You can no more take it out of us than the cat's meow. These cycles of lockdown can't last much longer without mass revolts. I say that not as one who is some great conspiracy thinker or who has a particular anger toward the G-Man for penning me in. We've done that now, tried our best. It's time for a new approach.
- ljw1001 5y ago
  There's nothing about things not being "open" that relates to someone's ability to "move around" in spite of the poorly chosen terms like "lockdown", which means in this context "I can't go hang out in my favorite bar" or "I have to wear a mask" when it used to mean "All the inmates must return to their cells"
AndrewBissell 5y ago
> historically pandemics have disrupted societies for decades Per-capita, the 1918 flu pandemic killed far more people (and far younger people) than Covid. Why is there nothing in history books about major disruptions to society and normal throughout the 20s and 30s as a result?
- Andaith 5y ago
  I thought that most info was suppressed throughout Europe due to WW1, and that's why it was also why it's called the Spanish Flu. They weren't at war so were happy actually putting information on the radio/newspapers while everyone else suppressed it because they didn't want troops at the front line worrying about their families dying of plague behind them...

Gravyness 5y ago

I sincerely think Covid is now just being used to decrease carbon emissions by having everyone work from home or at least not exit houses as much due to mass hysteria of "yet another variant". Viruses of all kinds will keep trying to kill us regardless if we call it the flu or covid, if we keep everyone scared to exit their houses they will invariably use less resources from the world. So yeah, a world free of covid isn't on anyone's best interest.

sjwalter 5y ago
> a world free of covid isn't on anyone's best interest LOL!
maxerickson 5y ago
A limited set of knowledge workers are working at home, not 'everyone'.
simonh 5y ago
Arguably it's in the interests of the people dying, and getting crippled by long covid.

kazinator 5y ago

I'm sick of these "Covid will not be eradicated" doom and gloom articles; it seems they are always peddling politics or a poorly disguised anti-vaxx messaging. > The only human virus ever to be eradicated was smallpox, and that took 200 years Bullshit; it would not take 200 years with our current level of technology and understanding. Smallpox was declared by the WHO to be eradicated in 1980. The last naturally occurring case was in 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine "The smallpox vaccine was the first vaccine to be developed against a contagious disease. In 1796, the British doctor Edward Jenner demonstrated that an infection with the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against the deadly smallpox virus. Cowpox served as a natural vaccine until the modern smallpox vaccine emerged in the 20th century. From 1958 to 1977, the World Health Organization conducted a global vaccination campaign that eradicated smallpox, making it the only human disease to be eradicated." Really, if we honestly look at it, the actual eradication of smallpox took only 20 years. The 1796-195x years were just hobbling along with poor vaccines and half-assed effort. Also, most of the focused effort was only the last 10 years of that. "Smallpox was eradicated by a massive international search for outbreaks, backed up with a vaccination program, starting in 1967. It was organised and co-ordinated by a World Health Organization (WHO) unit, set up and headed by Donald Henderson. The last case in the Americas occurred in 1971 (Brazil), south-east Asia (Indonesia) in 1972, and on the Indian subcontinent in 1975 (Bangladesh). After two years of intensive searches, what proved to be the last endemic case anywhere in the world occurred in Somalia, in October 1977." So, there is support in taking the viewpoint that when the effort was properly stepped up, it was licked in ten years.

AndrewBissell 5y ago
Were there animal and insect reservoirs for smallpox? How quickly did it mutate relative to SARS-CoV-2? Were the vaccines developed for it sterilizing vaccines, or did they allow vaccinated people to continue getting infected in large numbers?
- mikem170 5y ago
  No, there were not animal reserves for smallpox. And that makes a huge difference. There are a lot of mammals that can host coronaviruses. We'd have to eliminate it from those animals, also. Things like bats, civits, minks, etc. This is not likely to happen, given the difficulty of inoculating animals.

mint2 5y ago

Harm reduction would mean keeping masking and mandating vaccines for a couple years until the situation stabilizes whereupon more traditional flu measure would be enough. While areas are still seeing icu and LO2 shortages when restrictions are relaxed, any valid harm reduction requires at a minimum continued masking and vaccinations.

joelbondurant 5y ago

Queue the low life communist cry babies who think the coronavirus endemic started in 2019... iF eVeRyOnE wOrE 4 mAsKs tO sLeEp fOr 2 wEekS, tHe fLu wOuLd be eXtiNct, derp derp. Tyranny of the degenerates.

ljw1001 5y ago

In the spirit of embracing harm reduction, perhaps it's time to consider whom pronouncements by the Koch-funded Cato Institute are intended to benefit. Bring on the downvotes.