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Hopefully something like this will work and can be put to use at scale. It's clear that vaccines are not going to "end the pandemic". Not only are many of the

Hopefully something like this will work and can be put to use at scale. It's clear that vaccines are not going to "end the pandemic". Not only are many of the people who have chosen not to get vaccinated likely not going to get vaccinated, the vaccines don't prevent infection and transmission and they seem to work the least well in the vulnerable people who need their protection the most. At this point it just makes good sense to focus more on prophylactic antivirals and not bet the farm on vaccines and drugs that target the spike protein.

notafraudster 5y ago
What explains why someone who chooses not to get vaccinated (because: "vaccines don't work", "it wasn't tested enough", "we don't know enough about long-term side effects", "5g microchips satanic Fauci ran Moderna NWO Bill Gates", "COVID is overblown") would take at prophylactic that is more invasive, produced by the same companies, had approximately the same amount of testing under more challenging testing circumstances, etc.? Many of these people are additionally rejecting in-hospital medical treatments in favour of their preferred alternatives. We're seeing a lot of instances of people berating the doctors saving their lives for not treating them with something they found out about on the internet. Unless you mean that those people are lost sheep to begin with and the prophylaxis benefits the rest of us -- in which case, I agree!
- pjc50 5y ago
  > produced by the same companies Hilariously, Ivermectin is made by Merck.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  I think the big difference is, you administer an antiviral after infection. Many people who are vaccine skeptics are also living under the delusion that they aren't likely to get COVID. Or they believe if they do, it will be mild. If they do get it and it turns out not to be mild, then they are much more likely to be willing to try an "experimental" treatment.
  - headsoup 5y ago
    The most common thing I see of late is people apparently reading the minds of the unvaccinated and drawing conclusions on their behalf so they can judge them.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      “Listening to people while they tell you what they’re thinking” is not normally classified as mind reading.
    - javagram 5y ago
      No need to read their minds. Go to https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ or elsewhere and social media posts of people who have followed these trajectories have been catalogued. They post anti-vaccine stuff but then mostly go to the hospital when they start getting really sick and accept treatment with ventilators, ECMO, and other intrusive treatments.
      - peteradio 5y ago
        Ah yes, HermanCainAward because if you want information about someone its always best to view them through the lens of people who are happy they are dead.
  - MatteoFrigo 5y ago
    > Many people who are vaccine skeptics are also living under the delusion that they aren't likely to get COVID. Or they believe if they do, it will be mild. If they do get it and it turns out not to be mild, then they are much more likely to be willing to try an "experimental" treatment. You say it as if it were a bad thing, but competitive algorithms are a perfectly valid approach to many problems, including this one. Consider the following parable. A village in the Middle Ages is harassed by a dragon, which demands one gold coin in tribute per day. The villagers can either pay the tribute every day, or give 50 gold coins to a knight who will slay the dragon. The dragon is old and may die any day, at which point they don't need to pay the tribute, but nobody knows the future. What are the villagers supposed to do? One way to proceed is for the villagers to estimate the probability of the dragon dying on each day, and build a strategy that minimizes the expected expense. Another way to proceed is the "competitive" algorithm: pay the tribute, and if the dragon is still alive after 50 days, hire the knight. This strategy minimizes "regret", defined as the ratio between what you actually do and what you could have done had you known the future in advance. (For this strategy the regret is 2. A more complicated strategy exists with regret e/(e-1).) These kind of decisions happen all the time in life. I worked at a company whose attitude was, effectively, ship now and we'll fix bugs only after the first outage. (This is the competitive algorithm.) I also worked at a company that tried to predict in advance all possible problems that may arise in the next ten years, thinking that this strategy would lead to better long-term results. Both were successful, though I think the competitive approach was more successful in the specific domain I was working on. My point is that the strategy that you describe could be motivated by ignorance, but it could also be motivated by a pretty sophisticated understanding of the world.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  While there are people who both refuse the vaccine and subsequently refuse real treatment, and those people are largely beyond help, they're the exception. The _common_ outcome for an anti-vaxxer who gets a severe case is that they go to hospital, accept treatment, and sometimes die. Usable antivirals would help reduce deaths and hospital resource consumption in this common case (and also with breakthrough infections).
skocznymroczny 5y ago
What will end the pandemic then? You can put the blame on people who don't want to get vaccinated, but looking at the countries that have high % vaccinated, it doesn't look like it's the solution either. It's just moving goalposts. First it was "let's vaccinate the elderly and we can reopen", then "let's vaccinate most people and then we can reopen", now it's "let's vaccinate everyone, children included and then we can reopen". I wonder what the next goalpost will be. A new variant like with Delta? "Yeah, those vaccines were good for Delta, but now with Omega variant we have to shut down to wait for a new vaccine". If you want to live few more years in fear, you are free to do that. Otherwise, let people live their lives. For many people, the pandemic only exists on TV and in the government. Stop fearmongering every day about "rising number of cases" and we can go back to normal.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  I think you're a bit quick on the trigger there. If I want to live a few more years in fear? I've probably traveled to more countries during the pandemic than 99.999% of the people on the planet. Let people live their lives? Did I miss the part where I suggested people can't? I simply stated: > It's clear that vaccines are not going to "end the pandemic". "End the pandemic" is in quotes for a reason. It's obvious that this virus is going to be endemic, if it isn't close to already. Given time, it will almost certainly become another cold-causing coronavirus. None of this means that having prophylactic antivirals is a bad thing, especially right now for high-risk individuals who have been vaccinated but are more likely to have bad breakthrough infections. If anything, having more treatment options available will make it harder to justify restrictions that negatively impact the lives of the majority who are at lower risk to begin with.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  You might want to poke your head out from behind your computer screen. Most of the world has been fully opened, albeit in some places with masks required, for months now.
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    What places have fully opened? I don't know of any. My definition of fully opened is no masks, no vaccine passports and no test/quarantine required to enter the country. I don't know of any country that fits even half of these criteria at the moment.

notafraudster 5y ago

What explains why someone who chooses not to get vaccinated (because: "vaccines don't work", "it wasn't tested enough", "we don't know enough about long-term side effects", "5g microchips satanic Fauci ran Moderna NWO Bill Gates", "COVID is overblown") would take at prophylactic that is more invasive, produced by the same companies, had approximately the same amount of testing under more challenging testing circumstances, etc.? Many of these people are additionally rejecting in-hospital medical treatments in favour of their preferred alternatives. We're seeing a lot of instances of people berating the doctors saving their lives for not treating them with something they found out about on the internet. Unless you mean that those people are lost sheep to begin with and the prophylaxis benefits the rest of us -- in which case, I agree!

pjc50 5y ago
> produced by the same companies Hilariously, Ivermectin is made by Merck.
jjeaff 5y ago
I think the big difference is, you administer an antiviral after infection. Many people who are vaccine skeptics are also living under the delusion that they aren't likely to get COVID. Or they believe if they do, it will be mild. If they do get it and it turns out not to be mild, then they are much more likely to be willing to try an "experimental" treatment.
- headsoup 5y ago
  The most common thing I see of late is people apparently reading the minds of the unvaccinated and drawing conclusions on their behalf so they can judge them.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    “Listening to people while they tell you what they’re thinking” is not normally classified as mind reading.
  - javagram 5y ago
    No need to read their minds. Go to https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ or elsewhere and social media posts of people who have followed these trajectories have been catalogued. They post anti-vaccine stuff but then mostly go to the hospital when they start getting really sick and accept treatment with ventilators, ECMO, and other intrusive treatments.
    - peteradio 5y ago
      Ah yes, HermanCainAward because if you want information about someone its always best to view them through the lens of people who are happy they are dead.
- MatteoFrigo 5y ago
  > Many people who are vaccine skeptics are also living under the delusion that they aren't likely to get COVID. Or they believe if they do, it will be mild. If they do get it and it turns out not to be mild, then they are much more likely to be willing to try an "experimental" treatment. You say it as if it were a bad thing, but competitive algorithms are a perfectly valid approach to many problems, including this one. Consider the following parable. A village in the Middle Ages is harassed by a dragon, which demands one gold coin in tribute per day. The villagers can either pay the tribute every day, or give 50 gold coins to a knight who will slay the dragon. The dragon is old and may die any day, at which point they don't need to pay the tribute, but nobody knows the future. What are the villagers supposed to do? One way to proceed is for the villagers to estimate the probability of the dragon dying on each day, and build a strategy that minimizes the expected expense. Another way to proceed is the "competitive" algorithm: pay the tribute, and if the dragon is still alive after 50 days, hire the knight. This strategy minimizes "regret", defined as the ratio between what you actually do and what you could have done had you known the future in advance. (For this strategy the regret is 2. A more complicated strategy exists with regret e/(e-1).) These kind of decisions happen all the time in life. I worked at a company whose attitude was, effectively, ship now and we'll fix bugs only after the first outage. (This is the competitive algorithm.) I also worked at a company that tried to predict in advance all possible problems that may arise in the next ten years, thinking that this strategy would lead to better long-term results. Both were successful, though I think the competitive approach was more successful in the specific domain I was working on. My point is that the strategy that you describe could be motivated by ignorance, but it could also be motivated by a pretty sophisticated understanding of the world.
rsynnott 5y ago
While there are people who both refuse the vaccine and subsequently refuse real treatment, and those people are largely beyond help, they're the exception. The _common_ outcome for an anti-vaxxer who gets a severe case is that they go to hospital, accept treatment, and sometimes die. Usable antivirals would help reduce deaths and hospital resource consumption in this common case (and also with breakthrough infections).

skocznymroczny 5y ago

What will end the pandemic then? You can put the blame on people who don't want to get vaccinated, but looking at the countries that have high % vaccinated, it doesn't look like it's the solution either. It's just moving goalposts. First it was "let's vaccinate the elderly and we can reopen", then "let's vaccinate most people and then we can reopen", now it's "let's vaccinate everyone, children included and then we can reopen". I wonder what the next goalpost will be. A new variant like with Delta? "Yeah, those vaccines were good for Delta, but now with Omega variant we have to shut down to wait for a new vaccine". If you want to live few more years in fear, you are free to do that. Otherwise, let people live their lives. For many people, the pandemic only exists on TV and in the government. Stop fearmongering every day about "rising number of cases" and we can go back to normal.

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
I think you're a bit quick on the trigger there. If I want to live a few more years in fear? I've probably traveled to more countries during the pandemic than 99.999% of the people on the planet. Let people live their lives? Did I miss the part where I suggested people can't? I simply stated: > It's clear that vaccines are not going to "end the pandemic". "End the pandemic" is in quotes for a reason. It's obvious that this virus is going to be endemic, if it isn't close to already. Given time, it will almost certainly become another cold-causing coronavirus. None of this means that having prophylactic antivirals is a bad thing, especially right now for high-risk individuals who have been vaccinated but are more likely to have bad breakthrough infections. If anything, having more treatment options available will make it harder to justify restrictions that negatively impact the lives of the majority who are at lower risk to begin with.
jjeaff 5y ago
You might want to poke your head out from behind your computer screen. Most of the world has been fully opened, albeit in some places with masks required, for months now.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  What places have fully opened? I don't know of any. My definition of fully opened is no masks, no vaccine passports and no test/quarantine required to enter the country. I don't know of any country that fits even half of these criteria at the moment.