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I don't think the virus could ever be stopped with today's vaccines, even if everyone was vaccinated. Data from fully or almost fully vaccinated countries clear
by Hermel 5y ago
I don't think the virus could ever be stopped with today's vaccines, even if everyone was vaccinated. Data from fully or almost fully vaccinated countries clearly show that this doesn't eliminate the virus. It of course helps, but we have to depart from the idea that the "zero covid" strategies work.
- djbusby 5y agoWe got to zero polio. What's stopping it from happening here?
- artificial 5y agoDifferent type of disease for starters. No animal reservoirs either and the vaccine is effective with a single dose (and doesn’t require boosters). Perhaps we can focus on more health generally? Diet and exercise to curb the massive obesity in the western world.
- flatiron 5y agoHonestly I think it’s easier to cure Covid than western obesity.
- chrisjs95 5y agoIt's probably easier to cure every type of Cancer than it is to cure obesity.
- gus_massa 5y agoThe number and type of recommended polio vaccines depends, but the WHO recommends at least four doses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Schedule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Schedule
- artificial 5y agoInteresting. The CDC[0] in the US (IPOV insert [1]) states a single doze of 0.5ml for children and adults. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/composition-dosage-administration.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/composition-dosag... [1] https://www.fda.gov/media/75695/download https://www.fda.gov/media/75695/download
- gus_massa 5y agoIn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_schedule#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_schedule#United_St... it says 4 doses. Also in your second link, in page 8 says > All children should receive four doses of IPV at ages 2, 4, 6 to 18 months, and 4 to 6 years.
- spartanatreyu 5y agoDenialism and lack of economic support.
- Eelongate 5y agoIt takes serious denialism to believe the covid vaccines are anywhere close to the effectiveness of polio vaccines.
- adrr 5y agoPolio was a 1st world issue. "It's a paradox of public health that being too clean can sometimes lead to disease. For centuries, infants were routinely exposed to the poliovirus in their unsanitary living conditions. Polio rarely causes paralysis in infants, partly because of the maternal antibodies still present in their systems. In the 1900s, many countries cleaned up their water and sanitation systems, and houses in more affluent communities were routinely cleaned, reducing exposure to microbes. By the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, new mothers, especially those in the middle class, had no antibodies in their immune systems to pass on to their children. When children were exposed to the poliovirus in later years, they were defenseless against the disease." https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/series/diseases/polio.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/series/diseases/polio...
- Muromec 5y agoWe didn't get to zero polio really and people in some countries stopped vaccinating children against it.
- incrudible 5y agoThe lack of sterilizing immunity. You can not expect your immune system to mount a permanent immediate defense against coronaviruses. Once everybody has encountered SARS2 at least once, it may become as harmless as the other endemic coronaviruses. That is to say, not entirely harmless, but nothing to lose sleep over. It will never go away. How we deal with that is up to us.
- scotty79 5y agoPeople get sick with covid multiple times. Our immune systems are just naturally not good enough to deal with this virus. Covid will stop being a concern only after safe and incredibly efficient antiviral drug is developed, which might take decades.
- incrudible 5y agoYou can get reinfected with all sorts of respiratory viruses. Like I said, nothing to lose sleep over. Antivirals have a very limited window of opportunity. Nothing will make our concerns disappear. At some point, we need to move on.
- scotty79 5y agoI don't think we can move on because we haven't adjusted our health services to way larger number of sick and dying people every flu season.
- Stranger43 5y agoWe might have to, there is no guarantee that mRNA vaccines or lockdowns will ever stop covid to to point where no one ever gets hospitalized with covid. This is the inconvenient truth that absolutely nobody in the establishment is even remotely willing to even consider and a big part of the debate that is being replaced with an accusation contest. What do we do when the vaccination program only works as promised by the scientists developing it, and not as hoped for by the politicians ordering it?
- edmcnulty101 5y agoTwo doses of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) are 90% effective or more against polio; three doses are 99% to 100% effective. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-duration-protection.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-dur...
- xg15 5y agoI mean, there are Zero Covid strategies that work, see China or New Zealand. The problem is just that those measures are so drastic that many countries would probably not accept them. The goal in western countries is to get to the "endemic phase" of the infection - i.e. "live with the virus". That's all well and good, unfortunately this requires the disease to become significantly less deadly than it still is. We're not there yet.
- jordanthoms 5y agoYou can strike New Zealand from that list, our isolation systems for people arriving were never very good and didn’t stand a chance once delta became dominant.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoCovid is currently endemic in New Zealand. Delta spreads too fast for their old strategies to work, and Omicron looks to be substantially worse.
- thelittleone 5y agoOmicron might spread faster but we dont know yet. The doctor in SA who first treated people infected with omicron says synptoms are far less severe for example, no loss of taste or smell and no hospitilization. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safrican-doctor-says-patients-with-omicron-variant-have-very-mild-symptoms-2021-11-28/ https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safrican-doctor-says-pa...
- zzzeek 5y agoper the linked article here these were students who are young, so would not be expected to have severe symptoms: > Initial reported infections were among university students—younger individuals who tend to have more mild disease—but understanding the level of severity of the Omicron variant will take days to several weeks.
- Izkata 5y ago
- YZF 5y agoWhich are the fully vaccinated countries you're talking about here? Vaccines for kids 5-12 are just starting and even the countries with the most vaccine intake still have 10%-20% that won't take it. At any rate it's really enough to bring this to a low enough case per capita which generally the vaccines do help with. The less active cases the lower the number of random mutations.
- luxuryballs 5y agoYeah it’s my understanding that you can’t make a very effective or lasting vaccine for a coronavirus. It’s my opinion that this mRNA vaccine is just a great way to make money and an excuse to bring about rapid social changes.
- _joel 5y agoWhat a silly comment, especially as there are recombinant vaccines for covid, not just mRNA. mRNA based treatments (not just vaccines) have the possibility to save a significant amount of lives in future.
- throwaway894345 5y agoI don’t know. You don’t need 100% efficacy to achieve herd immunity (obviously I’m not an epidemiologist and my terms are imprecise) if you have a sufficiently vaccinated population. I generally agree that we should depart from a covid zero strategy, but not because the vaccines aren’t effective; rather, because too many people are making decisions based on FUD and there doesn’t seem like much that can be done about that in the sort of timeframe during which a “covid-zero” strategy might work.
- Ginden 5y ago> You don’t need 100% efficacy to achieve herd immunity (obviously I’m not an epidemiologist and my terms are imprecise) if you have a sufficiently vaccinated population. Treshold of herd immunity depends on transmitability. For delta variant, if r=6 estimates are true, you would need 100% of population vaccinated in last 5 months (because after that infection immunity drops too low).
- nradov 5y agoThe Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
- dunco 5y agoDefine "work". Countries that pursued zero covid largely avoided hospital overcrowding and massive amounts of preventable death. It might never have been possible to actually zero covid out to extinction, but it was possible to be close to zero for long enough to get everyone vaccinated. Millions of lives have likely been saved because of these strategies. "zero covid" is still the right strategy for a disease for which the population is unvaccinated; even if it doesn't achieve full elimination.
- edmcnulty101 5y ago>> Countries that pursued zero covid largely avoided hospital overcrowding and massive amounts of preventable death So did countries that didn't.
- hiharryhere 5y ago"Massive amounts of preventable death" Compare Australia vs UK.
- edmcnulty101 5y ago>>"preventable death" Can you define this term for me please? What exactly is a preventable death during a global pandemic and where is the data that measures it?
- throw868788 5y agoThe ironic thing is Australia really only got it when their zero COVID policies weren't taken seriously enough by its weakest actor who was more into "opening up". For people who don't know Australian politics it was the NSW state. They avoided COVID delta for months (6+) despite locking all incoming arrivals in shared air hotel quarantine systems and workers coming into the quarantine zone day in and day out (i.e. not taking quarantine seriously quarantine). Some Australian states who had better border control policies were able to keep COVID out indefinitely (e.g. WA, QLD, TAS, SA, etc). Knowing some people who live in WA, despite overseas travel restrictions, life is pretty much pre-2019. Clubs are open, schools are running, no masks, nothing. They are thankful for zero COVID policies - the biggest one being border control and for some areas dedicated, but well resourced, quarantine facilities (NT). Only recently did NT get cases, and it didn't come internationally, but from the NSW outbreak. It's a concern since the indigenous population there typically have less health facilities. Of course it is much easier to do this in Australia than the US or UK for a variety of reasons. Europe definitely can't do this IMO - land borders aren't strong enough.