5 ms·

> 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,

by 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.

by graeme 5y ago

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.