5 ms·

That's what I thought.

epgui 5y ago
All the behaviour changes, vaccines, masks and other public health intervention have the effect of reducing Rt, geometrically, by some factor. When Rt goes below 1 for long enough, not only do variants go away, covid goes away. When you do all kinds of halfass measures and either Rt does not go below 1, or keeps going below and above 1, then you’re giving time for the virus to mutate, and this has the effect of moving people from the “immune” bucket back to the “vulnerable” bucket. When you’re beyond the very beginning of the infections S-curve, this results in an increase of Rt, which further prolongs everything. The longer this happens, the more things change (and more likely than not, for the worse), hence goalposts needing to be adjusted.
- spurgu 5y ago
  So what do you do when variants are still ravaging in Africa for example? Isolate the continent?
  - epgui 5y ago
    The short answer is yes, but this deserves a much longer answer than this comment.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  Right, I'm not disputing the math of herd immunity. What I'm getting at is that we "lost the race". Delta emerged from India in Dec 2020 before vaccines became publicly available. Maybe Rt of the original strain would have been pushed below 1, but the Rt of delta among the vaccinated is way above 1. Omicron is even worse w.r.t immune escape. We know there are many viruses we can manage with mass vaccination and herd immunity, such as smallpox and measles. But the important difference is those diseases don't mutate as quickly as covid. Therefore it's not a given that covid is something that can be snuffed out with the same methods. We're clearly in a position of playing catch-up and fire-fighting. Your post implies a sentiment like: "if only we didn't half ass things, we could've beaten this virus. The problems aren't with the measures themselves, just that we didn't go far enough." Ok, how much further should we go compared to countries that have the strictest measures? Take Australia for example, they have quarantine camps, lockdowns for the unvaccinated, advanced tracing and databases, etc. For a while this worked pretty well. But their cases have been skyrocketing as of July this year, and it's likely a delta wave. What will omicron look like once it gets there? Would you say their measures were half-baked? You express indignation but don't say what we should have done differently or what we should do now. Those who share your mindset come off as having a kind of denial-ism, and an urge to point the finger. The fact is we're not as "in-control" as we like to think. Nature is inevitable. Our technology and ability to organize is bad. Let's recognize that an endless state of emergency also has consequences, health measures should be proportional, and for the most part we've done our best. If we can't snuff out the disease and the variants are getting milder anyway, then it's time to start thinking about moving past covid.
  - epgui 5y ago
    Your assumption that we would need to take measures in excess of the countries with the strictest measures in order to have eradicated SARS-CoV-2 is probably wrong, and is definitely not what I would think. I would take New Zealand, Greenland, Taiwan and even China as models of most of what needed to be done. None of them did things perfectly, but they all had some of the right ideas.
    - disambiguation 5y ago

All the behaviour changes, vaccines, masks and other public health intervention have the effect of reducing Rt, geometrically, by some factor. When Rt goes below 1 for long enough, not only do variants go away, covid goes away. When you do all kinds of halfass measures and either Rt does not go below 1, or keeps going below and above 1, then you’re giving time for the virus to mutate, and this has the effect of moving people from the “immune” bucket back to the “vulnerable” bucket. When you’re beyond the very beginning of the infections S-curve, this results in an increase of Rt, which further prolongs everything. The longer this happens, the more things change (and more likely than not, for the worse), hence goalposts needing to be adjusted.

spurgu 5y ago
So what do you do when variants are still ravaging in Africa for example? Isolate the continent?
- epgui 5y ago
  The short answer is yes, but this deserves a much longer answer than this comment.
disambiguation 5y ago
Right, I'm not disputing the math of herd immunity. What I'm getting at is that we "lost the race". Delta emerged from India in Dec 2020 before vaccines became publicly available. Maybe Rt of the original strain would have been pushed below 1, but the Rt of delta among the vaccinated is way above 1. Omicron is even worse w.r.t immune escape. We know there are many viruses we can manage with mass vaccination and herd immunity, such as smallpox and measles. But the important difference is those diseases don't mutate as quickly as covid. Therefore it's not a given that covid is something that can be snuffed out with the same methods. We're clearly in a position of playing catch-up and fire-fighting. Your post implies a sentiment like: "if only we didn't half ass things, we could've beaten this virus. The problems aren't with the measures themselves, just that we didn't go far enough." Ok, how much further should we go compared to countries that have the strictest measures? Take Australia for example, they have quarantine camps, lockdowns for the unvaccinated, advanced tracing and databases, etc. For a while this worked pretty well. But their cases have been skyrocketing as of July this year, and it's likely a delta wave. What will omicron look like once it gets there? Would you say their measures were half-baked? You express indignation but don't say what we should have done differently or what we should do now. Those who share your mindset come off as having a kind of denial-ism, and an urge to point the finger. The fact is we're not as "in-control" as we like to think. Nature is inevitable. Our technology and ability to organize is bad. Let's recognize that an endless state of emergency also has consequences, health measures should be proportional, and for the most part we've done our best. If we can't snuff out the disease and the variants are getting milder anyway, then it's time to start thinking about moving past covid.
- epgui 5y ago
  Your assumption that we would need to take measures in excess of the countries with the strictest measures in order to have eradicated SARS-CoV-2 is probably wrong, and is definitely not what I would think. I would take New Zealand, Greenland, Taiwan and even China as models of most of what needed to be done. None of them did things perfectly, but they all had some of the right ideas.
  - disambiguation 5y ago