8 ms·

the flu cuases a certain annual death toll as well and has for a long time. Once the initial lack of partial or even full immunity to COVID diminishes in the U.

the flu cuases a certain annual death toll as well and has for a long time. Once the initial lack of partial or even full immunity to COVID diminishes in the U.S and elsewhere, it will become part of the regular background of manageable infectious diseases, and this is what people will adapt to, fairly well I think. Your extrapolating the large existing death toll forward over the years is misguided. Aside from all this, what alternative would you prefer? Perpetual rolling lockdowns and endless streams of prohibitions until some highly ambigious future time?

legerdemain 5y ago
Measles is more infectious than Covid, less fatal than Covid, and (outside of pockets of anti-vaccination activists) has been largely vaccinated out of existence.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  The big difference is that measles vaccine has an efficacy of ~100%. [1] From the start of the pandemic, health experts and the media did lots of what I can only call expectation management and said that any vaccine with over 50% efficacy would be good, more than 60% or 70% would be absolutely marvellous. I think because this was the first time people were tuning in to news about vaccine efficacy, it has skewed people's perception and many think all vaccines are 65-85% effective. In reality, while flu vaccine is like that, the vaccines commonly used for more serious diseases such as measles are close to 100% effective. And this efficacy is not just against death or serious disease, but against catching the disease at all or passing it on. Vaccine efficacy against transmission greatly affects the percentage of the population that need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity. With low enough efficacy and high enough R value, herd immunity is impossible even if 100% of the population is vaccinated. And some variants of COVID may have high enough R value for this. [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/healthy-living/canadian-immunization-guide-part-4-active-vaccines/page-12-measles-vaccine.html#p4c11a4 https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications...
  - helloworld11 5y ago
    Despite this, vaccination against COVID coupled with acquired immunity through infection (partial or complete for a certain period of time) will almost certainly do what it has always done throughout history for most diseases, which is reduce the general deadliness across subsequent reinfections. Yes there are some exceptions caused by mutations but those may or may not happen at who knows which time. Global policy absolutely should not repress a vast amount of normal social activity based on such unlikely what-ifs. Even if the current vaccines remain much like the flu vaccine (only partly effective) COVID itself will almost certainly settle into a pattern that's similar to that of the flu, with a certain low-level death toll that becomes part of the annual mortality landscape. Even to begin with, this was never close to a truly lethal disease like smallpox or the plague. More fundamentally, these questions and the policy around them should not be the domain of abstract science to decide for social rules and laws. Other considerations that affect all of us, economic, freedom-related, emotional and social have to be considered. Scientists can easily get carried along by narrow policy advocacy based on their science, without considering external factors. As another comment here mentioned, that's a dangerous mentality for legal decision making.
- bjourne 5y ago
  That one disease has almost been eradicated doesn't mean that Covid can be eradicated. Covid may be much more similar to the flu than to Measles.
- zikduruqe 5y ago
  Shit. Where did chicken pox go? As children we were sent to chicken pox parties so that we would get them young and not as an adult. I haven’t heard of a case of chicken pox in forever. Oh, wait. There’s a vaccine now.
  - kongin 5y ago
    And yet flu is still here. Different viruses respond differently to vaccines. It's like asking where's the dodo gone when trying to eradicate the rat.
- chrismcb 5y ago
  Measles spent have a nonhuman reservoir making it possible to eradicate it, even without a 100% effective vaccine.
- yyyk 5y ago
  Measles doesn't have 'safe harbours' in so many other animals. It's a human-only virus. Coronaviruses infect many other animals. Merely vaccinating all the humans is tough (who's going to be doing it in all of the world's failed states?), now try vaccinating all the deer/minks/cats/dogs/bats.
unclebucknasty 5y ago
>what alternative would you prefer? Perpetual rolling lockdowns and endless streams of prohibitions... Only about half of US adults are vaccinated. Parents are literally fighting with and attempting to "arrest" school officials who are trying to keep kids safe with commonsense measures. Then, there's the whole family of theories on the "gov't is trying to kill us with 5G and take away our freedom" continuum, some of which motivates the former behavior and has them preferring anything but science-backed treatments (bleach, animal de-wormer, etc). I could go on, but I think you get the point. Many of the same people who resist efforts to get the virus under control are the ones decrying lockdowns and prohibitions. So, perhaps one answer to your question of preferable alternatives is in there somewhere. That is, I don't see how we can ignore this outlandish disinformation pipeline that motivates counterproductive behavior and mistrust of the most basic things required for a functioning society, then just throw our hands up and say, "well, some people are just going to die. What choice do we have?"
- helloworld11 5y ago
  It's grotesque to lump together people with reasoned concerns about lockdowns, forced vaccines and other measures with the most extreme anti-vac conspiracy types who go on about 5G and microchips. This kind of smug disdain for millions of individual considerations is a kind of elitism that not only lacks sympathy for others but also has no business making binding legal decisions for whole populations. As for this idea of controlling "disinformation pipeline that motivates counterproductive behavior". What I hear is nearly Orwellian terminology there... It's based on very tenuously sustained affirmations about an information problem that magically only started being a problem under specific recent political circumstances and also tries to undermine some very important parts of how the free societies we've built over centuries work.
  - unclebucknasty 5y ago
    >It's grotesque to lump together people with reasoned concerns I didn't lump "those people together", which is evidenced by the transitional sentence that began, "Then, there's the whole family of theories...". "Then" is used here, as in "additionally". So, no reasonable people were "smugly disdained" in the production of that comment. Secondly, I did indeed state that some of the egregious behavior I described is directly linked to this massive peddling of the idea that the government's efforts to fight the pandemic are really efforts to curb freedoms and/or harm them in some way. And to further clarify, those ideas do exist in degrees, up to and including the insane conspiracy theories at the extreme end. But, let's be clear: the very idea that what the gov't is doing to control the pandemic is really intended to harm people or confiscate their freedoms is itself a conspiracy theory. And, if it motivates effectively the same behavior, then it functions in the same manner, irrespective of what its adherents believe about 5G or vaccine microchips. So, I do think some who don't go as far as believing the extreme stuff can still be demoralized by disinfo and cultivate a distrust of gov't as a result, in much the same way as ads affect us all, even when we don't think they do. >As for this idea of controlling "disinformation pipeline that motivates counterproductive behavior". What I hear is nearly Orwellian terminology there I never wrote "controlling". That was your word. But, what I did state was that it's a problem when disinformation motivates behavior at scale, and that it's a threat to a functioning society. >very tenuously sustained affirmations about an information problem Some polls show up to 56% of Republicans believe that a theory that involves Dems eating babies and running a global pedophile ring is all or partly true. The theory involves a secret person who provides them with clues. That's 25% of the population. It's become a cult and a growing mass psychosis. So, I'm not understanding why you think the idea of addressing problems like that is "Orwellian", but the problems themselves are of little concern. I find this mass psychosis chilling beyond whatever comes after Orwellian. >that magically only started being a problem under specific recent political circumstances and also tries to undermine...free societies... Magically? I'm sorry my friend, but that reads like a conspiracy theory. The plain read is that we had a president who trafficked in lies and disinfo, was buttressed by elements who did the same, and benefitted from it. If the "magic" that you're alluding to finds no culpability there, then it's magic indeed.

legerdemain 5y ago

Measles is more infectious than Covid, less fatal than Covid, and (outside of pockets of anti-vaccination activists) has been largely vaccinated out of existence.

smnrchrds 5y ago
The big difference is that measles vaccine has an efficacy of ~100%. [1] From the start of the pandemic, health experts and the media did lots of what I can only call expectation management and said that any vaccine with over 50% efficacy would be good, more than 60% or 70% would be absolutely marvellous. I think because this was the first time people were tuning in to news about vaccine efficacy, it has skewed people's perception and many think all vaccines are 65-85% effective. In reality, while flu vaccine is like that, the vaccines commonly used for more serious diseases such as measles are close to 100% effective. And this efficacy is not just against death or serious disease, but against catching the disease at all or passing it on. Vaccine efficacy against transmission greatly affects the percentage of the population that need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity. With low enough efficacy and high enough R value, herd immunity is impossible even if 100% of the population is vaccinated. And some variants of COVID may have high enough R value for this. [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/healthy-living/canadian-immunization-guide-part-4-active-vaccines/page-12-measles-vaccine.html#p4c11a4 https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications...
- helloworld11 5y ago
  Despite this, vaccination against COVID coupled with acquired immunity through infection (partial or complete for a certain period of time) will almost certainly do what it has always done throughout history for most diseases, which is reduce the general deadliness across subsequent reinfections. Yes there are some exceptions caused by mutations but those may or may not happen at who knows which time. Global policy absolutely should not repress a vast amount of normal social activity based on such unlikely what-ifs. Even if the current vaccines remain much like the flu vaccine (only partly effective) COVID itself will almost certainly settle into a pattern that's similar to that of the flu, with a certain low-level death toll that becomes part of the annual mortality landscape. Even to begin with, this was never close to a truly lethal disease like smallpox or the plague. More fundamentally, these questions and the policy around them should not be the domain of abstract science to decide for social rules and laws. Other considerations that affect all of us, economic, freedom-related, emotional and social have to be considered. Scientists can easily get carried along by narrow policy advocacy based on their science, without considering external factors. As another comment here mentioned, that's a dangerous mentality for legal decision making.
bjourne 5y ago
That one disease has almost been eradicated doesn't mean that Covid can be eradicated. Covid may be much more similar to the flu than to Measles.
zikduruqe 5y ago
Shit. Where did chicken pox go? As children we were sent to chicken pox parties so that we would get them young and not as an adult. I haven’t heard of a case of chicken pox in forever. Oh, wait. There’s a vaccine now.
- kongin 5y ago
  And yet flu is still here. Different viruses respond differently to vaccines. It's like asking where's the dodo gone when trying to eradicate the rat.
chrismcb 5y ago
Measles spent have a nonhuman reservoir making it possible to eradicate it, even without a 100% effective vaccine.
yyyk 5y ago
Measles doesn't have 'safe harbours' in so many other animals. It's a human-only virus. Coronaviruses infect many other animals. Merely vaccinating all the humans is tough (who's going to be doing it in all of the world's failed states?), now try vaccinating all the deer/minks/cats/dogs/bats.

unclebucknasty 5y ago

>what alternative would you prefer? Perpetual rolling lockdowns and endless streams of prohibitions... Only about half of US adults are vaccinated. Parents are literally fighting with and attempting to "arrest" school officials who are trying to keep kids safe with commonsense measures. Then, there's the whole family of theories on the "gov't is trying to kill us with 5G and take away our freedom" continuum, some of which motivates the former behavior and has them preferring anything but science-backed treatments (bleach, animal de-wormer, etc). I could go on, but I think you get the point. Many of the same people who resist efforts to get the virus under control are the ones decrying lockdowns and prohibitions. So, perhaps one answer to your question of preferable alternatives is in there somewhere. That is, I don't see how we can ignore this outlandish disinformation pipeline that motivates counterproductive behavior and mistrust of the most basic things required for a functioning society, then just throw our hands up and say, "well, some people are just going to die. What choice do we have?"

helloworld11 5y ago
It's grotesque to lump together people with reasoned concerns about lockdowns, forced vaccines and other measures with the most extreme anti-vac conspiracy types who go on about 5G and microchips. This kind of smug disdain for millions of individual considerations is a kind of elitism that not only lacks sympathy for others but also has no business making binding legal decisions for whole populations. As for this idea of controlling "disinformation pipeline that motivates counterproductive behavior". What I hear is nearly Orwellian terminology there... It's based on very tenuously sustained affirmations about an information problem that magically only started being a problem under specific recent political circumstances and also tries to undermine some very important parts of how the free societies we've built over centuries work.
- unclebucknasty 5y ago
  >It's grotesque to lump together people with reasoned concerns I didn't lump "those people together", which is evidenced by the transitional sentence that began, "Then, there's the whole family of theories...". "Then" is used here, as in "additionally". So, no reasonable people were "smugly disdained" in the production of that comment. Secondly, I did indeed state that some of the egregious behavior I described is directly linked to this massive peddling of the idea that the government's efforts to fight the pandemic are really efforts to curb freedoms and/or harm them in some way. And to further clarify, those ideas do exist in degrees, up to and including the insane conspiracy theories at the extreme end. But, let's be clear: the very idea that what the gov't is doing to control the pandemic is really intended to harm people or confiscate their freedoms is itself a conspiracy theory. And, if it motivates effectively the same behavior, then it functions in the same manner, irrespective of what its adherents believe about 5G or vaccine microchips. So, I do think some who don't go as far as believing the extreme stuff can still be demoralized by disinfo and cultivate a distrust of gov't as a result, in much the same way as ads affect us all, even when we don't think they do. >As for this idea of controlling "disinformation pipeline that motivates counterproductive behavior". What I hear is nearly Orwellian terminology there I never wrote "controlling". That was your word. But, what I did state was that it's a problem when disinformation motivates behavior at scale, and that it's a threat to a functioning society. >very tenuously sustained affirmations about an information problem Some polls show up to 56% of Republicans believe that a theory that involves Dems eating babies and running a global pedophile ring is all or partly true. The theory involves a secret person who provides them with clues. That's 25% of the population. It's become a cult and a growing mass psychosis. So, I'm not understanding why you think the idea of addressing problems like that is "Orwellian", but the problems themselves are of little concern. I find this mass psychosis chilling beyond whatever comes after Orwellian. >that magically only started being a problem under specific recent political circumstances and also tries to undermine...free societies... Magically? I'm sorry my friend, but that reads like a conspiracy theory. The plain read is that we had a president who trafficked in lies and disinfo, was buttressed by elements who did the same, and benefitted from it. If the "magic" that you're alluding to finds no culpability there, then it's magic indeed.