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This is very true. I personally find it mad that the UK is the nation with the highest covid infection rate in western europe, with ~30k new cases/day. Long cov

This is very true. I personally find it mad that the UK is the nation with the highest covid infection rate in western europe, with ~30k new cases/day. Long covid is a real, debilitating condition and if anything is going to affect the young -- who are least vaccinated -- the most, thus creating a long-term disease burden and morbidity cost on both those individuals and the country as a whole. Ignoring the human cost of this, from an economic point of view alone, surely this is mad! -- it's very much not in the national interest. I'd therefore naïvely think that the integrated burden would be greater than the short, sharp dip that comes with more conservative measures -- but this government is rolling ahead full-steam with pretending that the disease isn't there and telling us all to "get on with our lives". That makes me feel deeply, deeply unhappy. One in ~70 people nationally have covid at the moment. Nightclubs, etc, typically contain far more than 70 people!

thinkingemote 5y ago
The country has one of the highest vaccination levels in the world also.
MatteoFrigo 5y ago
You have the right to be unhappy. However, looking at the latest data from the UK at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1016465/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_36.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/..., it is not clear whether pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. For example, that report says that 97% of the blood donors has some kind of antibodies, either from vaccine or previous infection. This number is almost 100% for older people. Maybe blood donors are not representative of the population, but if they are, it's not obvious that the extra 3% buys you anything, even if you could capture it. For some age groups (Table 4), the vaccinated are more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. I am sure there are good reasons for this, e.g. people more at risk may be more likely to be vaccinated, but whatever the reason is, the vaccine does not seem to be powerful enough to compensate for the extra risk.
- quotemstr 5y ago
  > pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. Given that even highly-vaccinated localities like Iceland (74% vaccinated) keep seeing waves of COVID cases and that COVID waves peak and decline without countries achieving the 90% rate vaccine proponents suggest as the threshold for herd immunity, we have to begin seriously questioning the public health case for mandatory universal vaccination. I wish more people would think critically about this issue instead of adopting an aggressive attitude of enforced conformity to an orthodoxy that doesn't appear to have all its facts lined up. Looking objectively at experiences of countries around the world, one is forced to conclude that in the case of COVID, with the non-sterilizing vaccines currently available, vaccine passports are neither sufficient nor necessary for safeguarding public health and present serious challenges to privacy, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
  - dia80 5y ago
    Vaccines cut severity of disease and thus the societal burden of infection. While I agree these measures are potentially draconian it's wrong to say they convey no benefit.
    - kuraudo 5y ago
      Well said, but I think the problem we're fighting is that people don't view these as vaccines so much as preventive treatment now. The Israel, Malta, and Iceland cases with very high vaccination rates and growing number of hospitalizations means we need to acknowledge that these things don't confer immunity, but that their benefit is still tangible and real in that it confers better outcomes to those that do contract the disease.
      - quotemstr 5y ago
        > benefit is still tangible and real in that it confers better outcomes to those that do contract the disease The thing is that a treatment having real and tangible benefits is not an adequate justification for the state imposing that treatment by force. And yes, laws requiring vaccine passports for participation in public life are a use of state force. If the police stop you doing something, that means the state is using force to stop you doing that thing. If the state mandates that businesses require papers under the threat of fines or losing their business license, that's also an application of force on the part of the state. Informed consent has been the bedrock of medical ethics for the past 70 years and it would be unwise to throw away this principle just to impose a preventative treatment that might be mildly good for people. People are right to point out that the push for vaccine passports --- because the vaccines are merely preventative individual therapies --- is a gravely concerning break with nearly a century of tradition and law. In general, we don't mandate things merely because they're good for people, and it would be extremely dangerous to start doing that in general. Look: elsewhere, people have suggested that I'm claiming that because the vaccines can't stop the spread, they have no benefit. That's not true. They do seem beneficial. Lots of things are beneficial. Vitamin D deficiency, for example, is common and vitamin D supplementation would benefit most people. Do we require that people present evidence of vitamin D supplementation to eat at restaurants? No, of course not! That's an individual medical decision. The whole point of mandating traditional vaccines is that eradicating a disease has huge positive externalities, ones large enough to justify public health measures --- like vaccine requirements for admission into schools --- that would ordinarily fail on civil liberties grounds. COVID vaccines simply do not have the same large positive externalities. Yes, they might be good for you, but this fact alone does not justify coercive state action. COVID vaccines are not like the vaccines that have been mandated for a long time in public schools and at border crossings. COVID vaccines are non-sterilizing. The previous vaccines were sterilizing. These are two completely different categories of medical tools, and pointing out that we've done thing X with previous vaccines is not an argument that we should do thing X with respect to COVID vaccines.
Proven 5y ago
You have the right to not go to nightclubs, or get your 3rd shot and double-mask before you do, if you like. What exactly are you mad at? That the government won't send its goons to weld your doors?
paul_f 5y ago
I think we are long past "short" anything related to COVID. It is now clearly endemic and will persist indefinitely. People need to make their own decisions on how to protect themselves and get on with their lives.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  So should we invest in vastly increasing hospital staffing and facilities because the current ICU loads are the new normal?
  - kryogen1c 5y ago
    why not? it seems absurd to think that at no point in the future will there be infectious endemic diseases. hospital infrastructure hardly seems like the wrong thing to overbuild.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      We already spend a lot on healthcare as it is, more so here in the USA than in countries with universal healthcare. Should we go from spending 17.7% of our GDP to 30%? Just because some people aren’t interested getting a vaccine?
      - pessimizer 5y ago
        The USA doesn't spend the amount it does on healthcare out of necessity, it does it because of graft. If we're willing to spend twice as much as everyone else for no reason, why not four times as much?
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        So? If healthcare needs rise, what is to assume that the graft won’t rise with it? The same people against vaccines are also against universal healthcare (at least in the states), so these problems will just keep being compounded.
NoblePublius 5y ago
How do you distinguish between the symptoms of “long covid” from the effects of being locked inside for a year? There have been over a billion covid infections globally (assume confirmed cases are 1/5 infections, which is a low estimate according to John’s Hopkins) so if “long covid” is so real, where are all these sufferers? If 1% have long covid, there should be at least ten million sufferers.
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  Before Covid started, when a person had a particularly bad flu, it sometimes happened that they'd feel like crap and weak for a good long while after recovering: sometimes for weeks and months. I'm not completely certain about what "long-covid" is, but this phenomenon could be a combination of this known effect as well as the after effects of the inhuman living conditions society is forcing on people: unnatural social isolation, constant media induced fear and stress, lack of sunshine and exercise, bad diets (because there's fewer fun entertainment options), etc.
  - NoblePublius 5y ago
    The official symptoms list of Long Covid, according to Mayo Clinic, includes “depression” and “headache and muscle pain” and “confusion.” This is lockdown-driven depression. If the virus had lingering physical effects, there would be tens of millions of sufferers seeking treatment, and there arent.
hcykb 5y ago
So don't go out yourself, but don't tell others what they can do.
shucksley 5y ago
the CDC recognizes long covid, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/..., but not necessarily as a result of mild infections. it is also worth noting that the CDC, so far, does not recognize vaccine-induced long haul syndrome as a real syndrome. edit: re vaccinating the young, you need to pay special attn to the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, which can potentially outweigh the benefits of the vaccine. vaccine advocates already made this mistake of ignoring vaccine risks with young women / GBS previously in the context of another vaccine and it would be a tragedy to needlessly maim the young with these new innovative vaccines. edit: dear creeps who are downvoting me without a reason, please take note of another HN submission at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...
commandlinefan 5y ago
> short, sharp dip Short? It’s been a year and a half with no end in sight.
eynsham 5y ago
I think of restrictions as falling into three buckets— - restrictions we could put up with ~forever, - restrictions we could put up with temporarily while waiting for something (e.g., vaccines), - restrictions we could put up with temporarily to mitigate some disaster by delay tactics (e.g. March lockdown.) Now the question is what further restrictions now would do. I think there are some things we should definitely encourage as not very intrusive (especially when it’s encouragement not law)—e.g., using FFP stuff rather than surgical/cloth masks in crowded spaces when possible, ventilation, &c. I don’t think that we’re really waiting for anything though. We are not throwing everything at getting better vaccines. Nor are we going to massively boost vaccine uptake. (Maybe we should wait for the 12-15 category I suppose, since then we’d be closer to herd immunity.) Finally, the NHS is not imminently going to be inundated. This might change in a few weeks. But delay right now isn’t necessary to avoid a March 2020/December 2020 apocalypse. So in my view restrictions now would merely delay the inevitable since nothing would actually change. This is in contrast to last year when we were waiting for the enormous breakthrough of vaccines, or in February/March as we vaccinated the vast majority of adults. I do think it would be a plausible strategy to dampen things for a month whilst vaccinating those aged 12-15 though—I suspect vaccination would do nearly all the work there though. (On a tangent, I don’t see why we don’t just administer the first dose to them anyway—even if the second is too risky the first is much safer.)

thinkingemote 5y ago

The country has one of the highest vaccination levels in the world also.

MatteoFrigo 5y ago

You have the right to be unhappy. However, looking at the latest data from the UK at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1016465/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_36.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/..., it is not clear whether pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. For example, that report says that 97% of the blood donors has some kind of antibodies, either from vaccine or previous infection. This number is almost 100% for older people. Maybe blood donors are not representative of the population, but if they are, it's not obvious that the extra 3% buys you anything, even if you could capture it. For some age groups (Table 4), the vaccinated are more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. I am sure there are good reasons for this, e.g. people more at risk may be more likely to be vaccinated, but whatever the reason is, the vaccine does not seem to be powerful enough to compensate for the extra risk.

quotemstr 5y ago
> pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. Given that even highly-vaccinated localities like Iceland (74% vaccinated) keep seeing waves of COVID cases and that COVID waves peak and decline without countries achieving the 90% rate vaccine proponents suggest as the threshold for herd immunity, we have to begin seriously questioning the public health case for mandatory universal vaccination. I wish more people would think critically about this issue instead of adopting an aggressive attitude of enforced conformity to an orthodoxy that doesn't appear to have all its facts lined up. Looking objectively at experiences of countries around the world, one is forced to conclude that in the case of COVID, with the non-sterilizing vaccines currently available, vaccine passports are neither sufficient nor necessary for safeguarding public health and present serious challenges to privacy, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
- dia80 5y ago
  Vaccines cut severity of disease and thus the societal burden of infection. While I agree these measures are potentially draconian it's wrong to say they convey no benefit.
  - kuraudo 5y ago
    Well said, but I think the problem we're fighting is that people don't view these as vaccines so much as preventive treatment now. The Israel, Malta, and Iceland cases with very high vaccination rates and growing number of hospitalizations means we need to acknowledge that these things don't confer immunity, but that their benefit is still tangible and real in that it confers better outcomes to those that do contract the disease.
    - quotemstr 5y ago
      > benefit is still tangible and real in that it confers better outcomes to those that do contract the disease The thing is that a treatment having real and tangible benefits is not an adequate justification for the state imposing that treatment by force. And yes, laws requiring vaccine passports for participation in public life are a use of state force. If the police stop you doing something, that means the state is using force to stop you doing that thing. If the state mandates that businesses require papers under the threat of fines or losing their business license, that's also an application of force on the part of the state. Informed consent has been the bedrock of medical ethics for the past 70 years and it would be unwise to throw away this principle just to impose a preventative treatment that might be mildly good for people. People are right to point out that the push for vaccine passports --- because the vaccines are merely preventative individual therapies --- is a gravely concerning break with nearly a century of tradition and law. In general, we don't mandate things merely because they're good for people, and it would be extremely dangerous to start doing that in general. Look: elsewhere, people have suggested that I'm claiming that because the vaccines can't stop the spread, they have no benefit. That's not true. They do seem beneficial. Lots of things are beneficial. Vitamin D deficiency, for example, is common and vitamin D supplementation would benefit most people. Do we require that people present evidence of vitamin D supplementation to eat at restaurants? No, of course not! That's an individual medical decision. The whole point of mandating traditional vaccines is that eradicating a disease has huge positive externalities, ones large enough to justify public health measures --- like vaccine requirements for admission into schools --- that would ordinarily fail on civil liberties grounds. COVID vaccines simply do not have the same large positive externalities. Yes, they might be good for you, but this fact alone does not justify coercive state action. COVID vaccines are not like the vaccines that have been mandated for a long time in public schools and at border crossings. COVID vaccines are non-sterilizing. The previous vaccines were sterilizing. These are two completely different categories of medical tools, and pointing out that we've done thing X with previous vaccines is not an argument that we should do thing X with respect to COVID vaccines.

Proven 5y ago

You have the right to not go to nightclubs, or get your 3rd shot and double-mask before you do, if you like. What exactly are you mad at? That the government won't send its goons to weld your doors?

paul_f 5y ago

I think we are long past "short" anything related to COVID. It is now clearly endemic and will persist indefinitely. People need to make their own decisions on how to protect themselves and get on with their lives.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
So should we invest in vastly increasing hospital staffing and facilities because the current ICU loads are the new normal?
- kryogen1c 5y ago
  why not? it seems absurd to think that at no point in the future will there be infectious endemic diseases. hospital infrastructure hardly seems like the wrong thing to overbuild.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    We already spend a lot on healthcare as it is, more so here in the USA than in countries with universal healthcare. Should we go from spending 17.7% of our GDP to 30%? Just because some people aren’t interested getting a vaccine?
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      The USA doesn't spend the amount it does on healthcare out of necessity, it does it because of graft. If we're willing to spend twice as much as everyone else for no reason, why not four times as much?
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        So? If healthcare needs rise, what is to assume that the graft won’t rise with it? The same people against vaccines are also against universal healthcare (at least in the states), so these problems will just keep being compounded.

NoblePublius 5y ago

How do you distinguish between the symptoms of “long covid” from the effects of being locked inside for a year? There have been over a billion covid infections globally (assume confirmed cases are 1/5 infections, which is a low estimate according to John’s Hopkins) so if “long covid” is so real, where are all these sufferers? If 1% have long covid, there should be at least ten million sufferers.

logicalmonster 5y ago
Before Covid started, when a person had a particularly bad flu, it sometimes happened that they'd feel like crap and weak for a good long while after recovering: sometimes for weeks and months. I'm not completely certain about what "long-covid" is, but this phenomenon could be a combination of this known effect as well as the after effects of the inhuman living conditions society is forcing on people: unnatural social isolation, constant media induced fear and stress, lack of sunshine and exercise, bad diets (because there's fewer fun entertainment options), etc.
- NoblePublius 5y ago
  The official symptoms list of Long Covid, according to Mayo Clinic, includes “depression” and “headache and muscle pain” and “confusion.” This is lockdown-driven depression. If the virus had lingering physical effects, there would be tens of millions of sufferers seeking treatment, and there arent.

hcykb 5y ago

So don't go out yourself, but don't tell others what they can do.

shucksley 5y ago

the CDC recognizes long covid, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/..., but not necessarily as a result of mild infections. it is also worth noting that the CDC, so far, does not recognize vaccine-induced long haul syndrome as a real syndrome. edit: re vaccinating the young, you need to pay special attn to the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, which can potentially outweigh the benefits of the vaccine. vaccine advocates already made this mistake of ignoring vaccine risks with young women / GBS previously in the context of another vaccine and it would be a tragedy to needlessly maim the young with these new innovative vaccines. edit: dear creeps who are downvoting me without a reason, please take note of another HN submission at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...

commandlinefan 5y ago

> short, sharp dip Short? It’s been a year and a half with no end in sight.

eynsham 5y ago

I think of restrictions as falling into three buckets— - restrictions we could put up with ~forever, - restrictions we could put up with temporarily while waiting for something (e.g., vaccines), - restrictions we could put up with temporarily to mitigate some disaster by delay tactics (e.g. March lockdown.) Now the question is what further restrictions now would do. I think there are some things we should definitely encourage as not very intrusive (especially when it’s encouragement not law)—e.g., using FFP stuff rather than surgical/cloth masks in crowded spaces when possible, ventilation, &c. I don’t think that we’re really waiting for anything though. We are not throwing everything at getting better vaccines. Nor are we going to massively boost vaccine uptake. (Maybe we should wait for the 12-15 category I suppose, since then we’d be closer to herd immunity.) Finally, the NHS is not imminently going to be inundated. This might change in a few weeks. But delay right now isn’t necessary to avoid a March 2020/December 2020 apocalypse. So in my view restrictions now would merely delay the inevitable since nothing would actually change. This is in contrast to last year when we were waiting for the enormous breakthrough of vaccines, or in February/March as we vaccinated the vast majority of adults. I do think it would be a plausible strategy to dampen things for a month whilst vaccinating those aged 12-15 though—I suspect vaccination would do nearly all the work there though. (On a tangent, I don’t see why we don’t just administer the first dose to them anyway—even if the second is too risky the first is much safer.)