4 ms·

One of the biggest failures still happening is the lack of communication on this. Many people think we're going to eradicate covid-19. Even before the delta va

One of the biggest failures still happening is the lack of communication on this. Many people think we're going to eradicate covid-19. Even before the delta variant that seemed like an impractical longshot, and that it was inevitable that it would be endemic. I'm already starting to see polarizing politics on the fringes start to turn endemic into a dirty word instead of the likely reality. People should be prepared and understand that over a 2+ year time frame they have a 99% chance of catching covid-19. And getting the vaccine so they don't start from zero immunity is likely the best we can do.

graeme 5y ago
> I'm already starting to see polarizing politics on the fringes start to turn endemic into a dirty word instead of the likely reality. When you say all this, do you mean to say endemic means benign? Or do you mean to say out world is a fair bit worse than it was, but that’s the reality. Endemic is consistent with “fairly harmful”. Malaria, Dengue, tuburculosis, HIV are all endemic diseases. Time has not made them milder either. I’m asking as a genuine question because the people arguing for endemicity seem to often conflate it with “mild, like a cold”, but that isn’t what the words means. I think “our world is worse now but very unlikely to eradicate” is probably true, but I’d like to get a sense of what people mean by endemicity.
- TheCowboy 5y ago
  Basically trying discredit people who communicate in any way the possibility that covid-19 will be endemic.
  - graeme 5y ago
    Yes, but what do you or those people mean by “it will become endemic”. If Malaria became endemic in every country that would be a catastrophe. There’s nothing gentle about the word. The common cold is endemic and so is dengue. So: are you describing a scenario that is: 1. Business as usual (once we get enough immunity medium/long run) 2. A small bit worse than 2019 3. Quite a bit worse than 2019 4. Substantially worse than 2019 ? My point is the word endemic doesn’t mean anything other than “disease is present”. But people say it as if the word includes severity. When people say that I take them to indicate belief in scenario 1, or possibly scenario 2. I think it probably will be endemic but we’re minimum scenario 3. I don’t think that is what endemicity proponents believe however.
    - unclebucknasty 5y ago
      >I think it probably will be endemic but we’re minimum scenario 3 I think the variables are: 1. Vaccine that prevents infection/transmission at a significantly more substantial rate 2. Significant waning of vaccine effectiveness per new variants 3. Unexpected increase (or decrease) in virulence of new strains. 4. Significant improvements in treatment (including medications) These are, of course, unknowns. But, holding these constant, I believe we can calculate with fair accuracy how bad it will be as a direct function of the percentage of the population that's vaccinated.
      - graeme 5y ago
        Thanks! I’m personally hopeful on point 1. Nasal vaccines seem to offer a fair bit of potential for mucosal immunity which could go further in blunting both breakthroughs and transmission.
    - kongin 5y ago
      > Yes, but what do you or those people mean by “it will become endemic”. It sounds like you're tone policing people based not on what basic mathematics says, but what you want the world to be like. Eradicating covid is impossible, ergo it will become endemic. What that looks like depends on what the next mutations of the virus look like. I don't have a crystal ball to guess that.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- jhanschoo 5y ago
  > Endemic Endemic's basic and technical meaning is just that it's persistently present in the community, with no connotation on severity, and ancestor comment was using it in that force. Vaccinated people overwhelmingly don't experience severe symptoms when they get COVID. I expect that new vaccines will soon be developed as well that can better target these variants. The biggest losers are those who cannot get vaccinated for legit medical reasons.
  - kongin 5y ago
    This is the point where not teaching people how to multiply bites us in the ass. Without the vaccine you have a small number of cases and a large portion being severe enough to end up in hospital. With the vaccine you a have large number of cases and a small portion being severe enough to end up in hospital. You can end up with a collapsing health system even if everyone is vaccinated if the number of people who get sick despite the vaccine is large enough, where large means more than 5 in 100,000.
    - jhanschoo 5y ago
      This is the point where speaking before you think bites you in the ass. > Without the vaccine you have a small number of cases and a large portion being severe enough to end up in hospital. Without the vaccine you have an even larger number of cases (than with the vaccine) and a large portion being severe enough to end up in hospital. Vaccination blunts both symptoms and transmission (I didn't mention the latter in my initial comment).
      - kongin 5y ago
        >Vaccination blunts both symptoms and transmission (I didn't mention the latter in my initial comment). Not when you have lockdowns without the vaccine, but don't with the vaccine. But hey, talking points save you valuable time from thinking. The hilariousness out of Israel where it looks like you need a top up every three months is doing great for the 10k I put in Pfizer stock earlier in the year though. To the mooooooooooooooooooooon!
- tomjen3 5y ago
  Time has rendered them less harmful because we have better tools to deal with them. Malaria can be defeated with money (hence it is mostly a poor persons problem), HIV is no longer a death sentence, we have decent treatment for Tuberculosis and it is no longer the problem for Europe it once was. Probably the same could happen to covid, assuming that the we could stop seeing testing treatments for covid as a political issue and strictly keep it as a discussion of science.
shirro 5y ago
It was possible to keep covid entirely out of remote populations like Iceland, NZ, Australia using biosecurity measures. Actually turned out to be almost embarrasingly easy compared with the reality in many countries. It is not practical, economical or desirable to maintain this status forever but it is nice to know we have that capability and many other countries don't. All we can do is get fully vaccinated, have good public health measures such as masks in high density areas and isolation of sick people (with income support) and that is about it. When we hit 80% full vaccinated here in Australia the non-essential flights are going to resume and states that have maintained Covid zero for nearly 2 years are going to be asked to give that up. It is a public discussion we are having here and I think people are accepting. The arguments are mostly about when and how we pull down the quarantine measures rather than if we will do it. I think we are walking into this with our eyes open.
- TheCowboy 5y ago
  That's good for Australia. I'm definitely expressing a US-centric observation here where I'm hoping we can avoid polarizing this.
- jimmydorry 5y ago
  This is a very optimistic take for Australia. After enduring so many lockdowns, people are going to be reluctant to open up and give up on #COVIDzero. Opening up will need to happen at some point, but apart from NSW and maybe Victoria who have lost control of the spread, I don't see the other states doing anything but kick the can down the road. I predict 80% will become 90% which will become booster shoot #1.
chrismcb 5y ago
We can't eradicate it, but he can coral it, make it less deadly. Not sure where your 2 year statistic from. In 2020 about 6% of US population caught it, since then another 6% of so have caught it. It will take like 10 years to hit that 99% mark.
- angelzen 5y ago
  According to CDC estimates, it's 20% of US population up to late July 2021. And that's before Delta, which everyone agrees is significantly more infectious than Wild/Alpha. It gives me no pleasure to say it, but as a parent with school kids I see no way to avoid covid in the medium term. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab
- TheCowboy 5y ago
  I don't know where you're getting these numbers. They seem way on the low end. If you're going by CDC tracked cases (seems like 12% there, 40m cumulative cases/328m pop=12%?) to infer the total number of people infected then you're making a huge error. I'd also point out that the CDC said earlier this year that it would not track asymptomatic/minor cases among the vaccinated (bad decision IMHO). I also think extrapolating from those numbers to 10 years doesn't make sense given the multiple variables involved. Here's a Nature published study that says probably at least double what you suggest: https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/one-three-americans-already-had-covid-19-end-2020 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...
raxxorrax 5y ago
Wouldn't it be best to contract the disease under vaccine protection? Basically instead of wearing a mask you should kiss the next stranger you meet on the street?

graeme 5y ago

> I'm already starting to see polarizing politics on the fringes start to turn endemic into a dirty word instead of the likely reality. When you say all this, do you mean to say endemic means benign? Or do you mean to say out world is a fair bit worse than it was, but that’s the reality. Endemic is consistent with “fairly harmful”. Malaria, Dengue, tuburculosis, HIV are all endemic diseases. Time has not made them milder either. I’m asking as a genuine question because the people arguing for endemicity seem to often conflate it with “mild, like a cold”, but that isn’t what the words means. I think “our world is worse now but very unlikely to eradicate” is probably true, but I’d like to get a sense of what people mean by endemicity.

TheCowboy 5y ago
Basically trying discredit people who communicate in any way the possibility that covid-19 will be endemic.
- graeme 5y ago
  Yes, but what do you or those people mean by “it will become endemic”. If Malaria became endemic in every country that would be a catastrophe. There’s nothing gentle about the word. The common cold is endemic and so is dengue. So: are you describing a scenario that is: 1. Business as usual (once we get enough immunity medium/long run) 2. A small bit worse than 2019 3. Quite a bit worse than 2019 4. Substantially worse than 2019 ? My point is the word endemic doesn’t mean anything other than “disease is present”. But people say it as if the word includes severity. When people say that I take them to indicate belief in scenario 1, or possibly scenario 2. I think it probably will be endemic but we’re minimum scenario 3. I don’t think that is what endemicity proponents believe however.
  - unclebucknasty 5y ago
    >I think it probably will be endemic but we’re minimum scenario 3 I think the variables are: 1. Vaccine that prevents infection/transmission at a significantly more substantial rate 2. Significant waning of vaccine effectiveness per new variants 3. Unexpected increase (or decrease) in virulence of new strains. 4. Significant improvements in treatment (including medications) These are, of course, unknowns. But, holding these constant, I believe we can calculate with fair accuracy how bad it will be as a direct function of the percentage of the population that's vaccinated.
    - graeme 5y ago
      Thanks! I’m personally hopeful on point 1. Nasal vaccines seem to offer a fair bit of potential for mucosal immunity which could go further in blunting both breakthroughs and transmission.
  - kongin 5y ago
    > Yes, but what do you or those people mean by “it will become endemic”. It sounds like you're tone policing people based not on what basic mathematics says, but what you want the world to be like. Eradicating covid is impossible, ergo it will become endemic. What that looks like depends on what the next mutations of the virus look like. I don't have a crystal ball to guess that.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
jhanschoo 5y ago
> Endemic Endemic's basic and technical meaning is just that it's persistently present in the community, with no connotation on severity, and ancestor comment was using it in that force. Vaccinated people overwhelmingly don't experience severe symptoms when they get COVID. I expect that new vaccines will soon be developed as well that can better target these variants. The biggest losers are those who cannot get vaccinated for legit medical reasons.
- kongin 5y ago
  This is the point where not teaching people how to multiply bites us in the ass. Without the vaccine you have a small number of cases and a large portion being severe enough to end up in hospital. With the vaccine you a have large number of cases and a small portion being severe enough to end up in hospital. You can end up with a collapsing health system even if everyone is vaccinated if the number of people who get sick despite the vaccine is large enough, where large means more than 5 in 100,000.
  - jhanschoo 5y ago
    This is the point where speaking before you think bites you in the ass. > Without the vaccine you have a small number of cases and a large portion being severe enough to end up in hospital. Without the vaccine you have an even larger number of cases (than with the vaccine) and a large portion being severe enough to end up in hospital. Vaccination blunts both symptoms and transmission (I didn't mention the latter in my initial comment).
    - kongin 5y ago
      >Vaccination blunts both symptoms and transmission (I didn't mention the latter in my initial comment). Not when you have lockdowns without the vaccine, but don't with the vaccine. But hey, talking points save you valuable time from thinking. The hilariousness out of Israel where it looks like you need a top up every three months is doing great for the 10k I put in Pfizer stock earlier in the year though. To the mooooooooooooooooooooon!
tomjen3 5y ago
Time has rendered them less harmful because we have better tools to deal with them. Malaria can be defeated with money (hence it is mostly a poor persons problem), HIV is no longer a death sentence, we have decent treatment for Tuberculosis and it is no longer the problem for Europe it once was. Probably the same could happen to covid, assuming that the we could stop seeing testing treatments for covid as a political issue and strictly keep it as a discussion of science.

shirro 5y ago

It was possible to keep covid entirely out of remote populations like Iceland, NZ, Australia using biosecurity measures. Actually turned out to be almost embarrasingly easy compared with the reality in many countries. It is not practical, economical or desirable to maintain this status forever but it is nice to know we have that capability and many other countries don't. All we can do is get fully vaccinated, have good public health measures such as masks in high density areas and isolation of sick people (with income support) and that is about it. When we hit 80% full vaccinated here in Australia the non-essential flights are going to resume and states that have maintained Covid zero for nearly 2 years are going to be asked to give that up. It is a public discussion we are having here and I think people are accepting. The arguments are mostly about when and how we pull down the quarantine measures rather than if we will do it. I think we are walking into this with our eyes open.

TheCowboy 5y ago
That's good for Australia. I'm definitely expressing a US-centric observation here where I'm hoping we can avoid polarizing this.
jimmydorry 5y ago
This is a very optimistic take for Australia. After enduring so many lockdowns, people are going to be reluctant to open up and give up on #COVIDzero. Opening up will need to happen at some point, but apart from NSW and maybe Victoria who have lost control of the spread, I don't see the other states doing anything but kick the can down the road. I predict 80% will become 90% which will become booster shoot #1.

chrismcb 5y ago

We can't eradicate it, but he can coral it, make it less deadly. Not sure where your 2 year statistic from. In 2020 about 6% of US population caught it, since then another 6% of so have caught it. It will take like 10 years to hit that 99% mark.

angelzen 5y ago
According to CDC estimates, it's 20% of US population up to late July 2021. And that's before Delta, which everyone agrees is significantly more infectious than Wild/Alpha. It gives me no pleasure to say it, but as a parent with school kids I see no way to avoid covid in the medium term. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab
TheCowboy 5y ago
I don't know where you're getting these numbers. They seem way on the low end. If you're going by CDC tracked cases (seems like 12% there, 40m cumulative cases/328m pop=12%?) to infer the total number of people infected then you're making a huge error. I'd also point out that the CDC said earlier this year that it would not track asymptomatic/minor cases among the vaccinated (bad decision IMHO). I also think extrapolating from those numbers to 10 years doesn't make sense given the multiple variables involved. Here's a Nature published study that says probably at least double what you suggest: https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/one-three-americans-already-had-covid-19-end-2020 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...

raxxorrax 5y ago

Wouldn't it be best to contract the disease under vaccine protection? Basically instead of wearing a mask you should kiss the next stranger you meet on the street?