38 ms·
Could anyone explain the significance of this finding?
The mRNA encoding for the spike protein in the BioNTech vaccine is different enough from B.1.1.529 where your body doesn't recognize the spike protein on sight but is the same enough where after you're infected the body can muster a far quicker and more complete reaction to the infection.
Edit to add: the fact that vaccine + previous natural infection has a better immune response over just the vaccine likely has to do with the rest of the virus being more similar to older variants of the virus and your body recognizing some other part of the virus versus the spike itself.
> Edit to add: the fact that vaccine + previous natural infection has a better immune response over just the vaccine likely has to do with the rest of the virus being more similar to older variants of the virus and your body recognizing some other part of the virus versus the spike itself.
This may be a factor. But, repeated exposure means more breadth of antibodies. B cells aggressively replicate and mutate in response to pathogens, and those that match are selected for. Repeating this process gets more B cells, but also broader varieties of resultant antibodies matching not just the original pathogen but things that are close to it. This is why:
* 1 dose of mRNA was pretty effective against B.1.1.7, but not very effective against Delta, which had some immune escape mutations.
* 2 doses of mRNA vaccines targeted at B.1.1.7 were pretty effective against Delta, but only slightly effective against Omicron, which had a lot of (different) immune escape mutations.
* 3 doses of mRNA vaccines targeted at B.1.1.7 seem pretty effective against Omicron.
As I understand it, the boosters do a much better job "training" (for lack of a better term) B cells.
That being said, I'm going off the preliminary study that shows that vaccine >= infection for older variants whereas vaccine + infection >> vaccine for omicron.
As an aside, I've got three shots of Moderna in me and I caught omicron during the covidtastrophe a few weeks ago. It was extremely mild but I'm now resigned to the idea that vaccines are an assurance against getting actually sick more than a silver bullet.
> That being said, I'm going off the preliminary study that shows that vaccine >= infection for older variants whereas vaccine + infection >> vaccine for omicron.
More exposure basically means broader protection-- whether it's exposure through infection, vaccination, etc.
Whatever you're exposed to, the compliment and quantity of antibodies widens and is drawn towards whatever you're exposed to. You end up with antibodies that bind against whatever you're exposed to in many different ways-- many of which will be cross-reactive against other variants.
Obviously, it'd be nice if we had a omicron-based booster, because it would be broadening the protection more in that direction.
> As an aside, I've got three shots of Moderna in me and I caught omicron during the covidtastrophe a few weeks ago.
Sorry to hear that. We still have relatively little data, but it looks our best current guesses are:
* Vs. Delta: 2 doses of Pfizer/Moderna: about 60-70% effective against infection, 80-90% effective against symptoms, and 95%+ effective against severe illness.
* Vs. Omicron: 2 doses of Pfizer/Moderna: ???% (poor) effective against infection, 30% effective against symptoms, 50-70% effective against severe illness. 3 doses of Pfizer/Moderna: ???% (maybe moderate) efficacy against infection, 60%??? effective against symptoms (evidence quality poor), 85% effective against severe illness. It also looks like this is short lived and sloping down relatively fast.
In any case, you're protected every step of the way: Less likely to become infected, less likely to become symptomatic if infected, and less likely to develop severe illness if symptomatic.
One interesting epidemiological question is: vaccinated people are pretty likely to be asymptomatic with Omicron, so they may be more likely to spread it.
Only having 2 Pfizer/mRNA vaccines are'n enough to greatly reduce symptomatic covid infection. A booster (or previous covid infection) looks like it is needed.
Though this is only looking at the drop in vaccine efficacy with respect to symptomatic infections, two shots of an mRNA still might give decent protection against severe disease; don't know if there is a change with this.
>two shots of an mRNA still might give decent protection against severe disease; don't know if there is a change with this.
There's not. Severe disease is caused by your body attacking your own lungs because the virus did so much damage between initial infection and your body recognizing the problem. Vaccines, any vaccine, dramatically shortens the time between initial infection and immune response. Shorter duration == less damage to your body in that time.
This is all about antibody neutralization titers.
Researchers mix diluted blood plasma with viral samples, and then see whether it can grow in cell cultures. They figure out the concentration of plasma needed to neutralize all the virus.
2 doses of the vaccine produces plasma that can still neutralize the virus, but it requires 20x as much plasma on average. In turn, this means that the virus is more likely to be able to replicate and infect new cells before all the virus is neutralized.
However:
- There is still antibody efficacy against the virus, just not nearly as much.
- Memory B cells have a head-start at further developing specific immunity to new variants.
- This ignores the effect of T-cell mediated immunity.
- This mentions evidence that people who were previously infected and vaccinated have good neutralizing titers against Omicron.
- Other evidence suggests people who are boosted have much better neutralization titers against Omicron. That is, boosting doesn't just increase the number of antibodies, but increases the breadth of antibody protection.
Can you explain how it increases the breadth of antibody protection if the booster is exactly the same as the original shot?
Is there any way to know whether that increased breadth of antibody protection isn't coming from a post vaccination exposure that wasn't tested for not tested? Since vaccinated people aren't generally required to do asymptomatic testing, let alone symptomatic testing in many places.
> Can you explain how it increases the breadth of antibody protection if the booster is exactly the same as the original shot?
It's complicated! The short answer I gave elsewhere: B cells aggressively replicate and mutate in response to pathogens, and those that match are selected for. Repeating this process gets more B cells, but also broader varieties of resultant antibodies matching not just the original pathogen but things that are close to it.
> Is there any way to know whether that increased breadth of antibody protection isn't coming from a post vaccination exposure that wasn't tested for not tested?
Yes. We collect plasma from people, and then test it against a variety of variants in assays. We have plenty of old plasma to do this with.
Indeed, there's some evidence that many people who were both infected with SARS-CoV-1 and subsequently vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 may have exceptionally broad immunity to coronaviruses, not isolated to just SARS-CoV variants but also to wild-type coronaviruses circulating in animals and human coronaviruses causing the common cold.
> These data support the notion that, provided high neutralization capacity is elicited by vaccination/boosting approaches, reasonable effectiveness against Omicron may be maintained.
I think the "reasonable effectiveness" part speaks for itself. My reading of the "provided high neutralization capacity" part is that, we know vaccines lose effectiveness over time, so the "reasonable effectiveness" has a caveat of "provided you get a booster, and possibly regular boosters in the future".
Not just pfizer, everything, MABS and including previous infection too
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03796-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03796-6
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03826-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03826-3
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021
The question is if you get omicron can you then turn around and get delta which is still out there, just being out-competed at the moment.
Perhaps some good news from a paper out of Japan: https://twitter.com/SystemsVirology/status/1474759694971727872?s=20 https://twitter.com/SystemsVirology/status/14747596949717278...
"The 6th preprint from G2P-Japan - #Omicron is less infectious and pathogenic than #Delta and even an early pandemic SARS-CoV-2 in infected hamster model."
Note: less infectious here means intra-cell, it's still more transmissible than Delta.
Another thread summarizing what this means: https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/1475097966939721729 https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/147509796693972172...
Are they specifically trying to use confusing English?!
I wonder how Moderna compares --- besides the higher does, the mRNA is a slightly different sequence.
https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid
It would appear that mass vaccination had a minimal effect on the already low case fatality rate. I think it’s getting harder and harder to justify lockdowns and forced masking.
Is there any evidence that shows that omicron is even particularly dangerous?
There has a been a “savior” strain that a lot of us have been hoping for which is: extremely transmissible, and relatively benign. So far it seems like omicron could be that, but I haven’t actually seen good data on mortality yet.
If anybody has good mortality data I would love to see it.
Recommendation of boosters is short-sighted and is only valid while this variant is active. Give vaccines to Africa instead so there will be no new variants. A first dose is much more valuable than a third
This is interesting, except that you have no idea what you are talking about and no support for this argument. First of all, we don't even know that Omicron originated in Africa to begin with; it was merely first detected there. Second, no, halting booster efforts in rich countries in order to vaccinate Africa will not mean "there will be no new variants". Third, as to which is more "valuable", well, tell the people whose lives have already been saved by the booster doses.
Certainly I get the argument, various arguments actually, for vaccinating Africa, etc., but this isn't a very good version of that argument.
Does Africa have a shortage of vaccines or a lack of distribution infrastructure? If we dropped a billion doses into the continent today, how many people would actually get them?
The current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. Vaccines aren't very effective for those people.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-may-arise-in-people-with-compromised-immune-systems/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...
This is completely untested but i would assume that the more times you get infected or vaccinated, the more resistance you get to subsequent infections. The alternative is that covid variants keep reinfecting people over and over and people who just barely make it out of the hospital come back, which is really bleak.
So Omicron is reinfecting people but it’s not as severe, not only because of specific mutations, but because most people have already been infected / vaccinated multiple times.
This would also apply to other diseases. So if someone has been infected with e.g. the flu 5 times, it debunks this theory. IIRC there are multiple common colds which would explain why some people get sick with cold almost every year (and even then infections tend to be spread out). Anecdotally there was one time i was infected with some sort of stomach bug 4 times in a short span, but i’ve never had a stomach bug since then.
And 4 doses for the coming Sigma variant? It seems never ending with these leaky vaccines
> And 4 doses for the coming Sigma variant? It seems never ending with these leaky vaccines
On the other hand, these "leaky vaccines" have already prevented a massive amount of mortality. Yes, the duration and quality of protection, even boosted, against Omicron is unfortunate... but even 2 doses can still be expected to save a high number of lives from Omicron.
I doubt that in the long term. The long term health effects of the vaccine are largely unknown but already looking grim.
Not longer term if they end up creating hotter variants through vaccine escape. Look into OAS, I think it's a good thing the latest variant came from Africa and not Israel
Wait until you see how many doses people need for tetanus, pertussis, and diphtheria
(4 in 18 months with boosters every decade)
Thanks! This clears up a lot for me.
I want to compliment your responses. Factual and non aggressive which is needed in this time. Thank you.
I thought that was what these vaccines specifically don't do: they select for the spike protein of the original variant and ignore others, whereas natural infection generates a broader response that will target a variety of proteins. Has that changed?
It's something I have seen a lot of people say here on HN, but I don't know if it's true. If having the whole virus was more effective than just the spike protein, wouldn't Sinopharm and Sinovac—which are inactivated virus vaccines—be more effective than Pfizer and Moderna? We still don't know their efficacy against Omicron, but they were less effective than mRNA vaccines against all previous variants.
Initially perhaps, but do we have good longer term data on how the sinovac holds up, given we're now saying Pfizer needs to be 3-monthly and Moderna is a much stronger dose? I think there was some over-selling of the mRNA vaccines that needs strong follow-up review given the state of the virus vs last year without vaccines with a more potent variant.
We won't have long-term data until a long time had passed, but so far, it doesn't seem inactivated virus vaccines fare any better than mRNA ones.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02796-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02796-w
What you're saying here isn't untrue, but it's nuanced and I think it misses some of the clear distinction.
> they select for the spike protein of the original variant and ignore others
Repeated exposure causes you to get many different kinds of antibodies that react against many things like the original spike protein. There's ample research showing that a 2 shot (and 3 shot) series of mRNA vaccination creates a very broad response that cross-reacts to many spike protein variants.
Reaction against the spike protein is best, because this binding doesn't just activate the rest of the immune system, but it's neutralizing against the virus: it prevents its entry into cells.
Compare this figure:
https://cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_public/journal/jama/938696/jld210021f1_1620430716.03243.png?Expires=1643331214&Signature=rz8bX-qJI3d7tkA5NEoxkkNRkng1o61I6BFjex8xJqgcCSt1x3GHNKXwlnuDTBGUgxqSzarDwB4qaL8lifemA5AZXAhRveLWD1vhphX~tierYtKPCo3xxvaKbs6iaAQnqwbCsne3rK0dn~xfrlTu8T77xTLhaW0BiE9raVb0Jxydve3P8aFGehxq5JGRURXt4~3EatE7eQAifu73Ri3PRHLFCldEPUSvNHVmsA-BvjCD9cbOsHgSP38ku-oT2PkoV4d~bZ7K5He4bLdnjUeCH1epOkHA~x30m2JIWcjDp~byTmhDTmCRB6he4Wu4omm8VkUfJUz8BhU4Bz4egbLzmQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIE5G5CRDK6RD3PGA https://cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_public/journal/jama/...
Many convalescent (prior infected) individuals had very low neutralization activity against variants. All vaccinated individuals had good neutralization titers against all variants measured in this study, though they were still definitely better against A.1 than other types.
> whereas natural infection generates a broader response that will target a variety of proteins.
Natural infection will generate a variety of nucleocapsid antibodies, too (against non-spike portions of the virus).
This is a mixed bag: it means the immune system can be activated and it also means that the immune system will try and break down things that have antibodies bound elsewhere on the virus... but the spike antibodies around that could directly prevent infection of new cells are less effective against variants.
On that part about not entering the cells, as we're seeing that the vaccine does not prevent illness, if covid does escape the vaccine and enter cells, at that point what is the difference between vaccinated or not? I haven't been able to work that out as the explanation has always been that the vaccine blocks cell entry.
We already know that infection does not "generate a broader response", actually. Nor does it generate a more effective one.
The opposite is the case.
How can this possibly be true, when we now have real world data from Ontario.
The case count of the vaccinated has now surpassed the unvaccinated and seems to be growing exponentially. 3rd graph.
32.39 cases / 100,000 people double vaccinated vs 31.93 / 100k of the unvaccinated.
https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0OetspYalQy0Otcc41JS6b-L9BnzLOdhl1eZ1L4FHg https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0...
The vaccines don't seem to confer any lasting difference.
That's interesting data. It's not in agreement with other jurisdictions, so far. Elsewhere, including South Africa, we see (poor quality) protection from vaccination.
One concern with observational studies: people who choose vaccination don't behave exactly the same as people who don't. They may assume more risks out of perceived safety. They may also be more likely to test or seek medical care. This is why, at a minimum, you need case control to start to believe the conclusions.
“The vaccines don't seem to confer any lasting difference.“
Why would we expect vaccine derived coronavirus-19 immunity to be substantially longer than natural other-coronavirus immunity, which we know to be months, not years.
There is something odd with the stats. If we look at individual age groups listed, the cases for unvaccinated is multiple x higher than fully vaccinated. Then if one looks back at "all ages", the cases per 100,000 people are almost the same. Is there a bug with the charts?
The data broken down by age is less recent for some reason. Only goes to Oct 24.
Edit: Disclaimer at the top of the page says technical difficulty.
I suggest reading up on Simpson's paradox, which keeps showing up in these kinds of data evaluations regarding covid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
In this case it's not relevant, because it couldn't explain these similar magnitude trend lines adding up to something so tremendously different.
The effect is caused by the age data ending in mid-October, before the spike we're looking at in mid-December. So, the age-segregated data couldn't show that spike at all.
Way too many confounders to draw that conclusion from the data. Vaccinated in Ontario are allowed to participate in a whole host of risky activities like going to gyms, dining at restaurants etc. that unvaccinated technically can't do. And the people left unvaccinated at this point are mostly ideologically opposed; do you think they're actually testing and reporting their cases? We're also just way behind on tests in general.
The first problem with this hot take is, you're completely ignoring the severity of cases, and death, in favor of just a raw case count.
> Yes, sorry, that's not what I thought "outcompeting" meant in the epidemiological sense. I thought it implied that one variant grows to the detriment of the other.
I mean, it does, but ... we don't really know that Omicron is outcompeting Delta in that sense. We know that Omicron case counts are growing, relative to Delta, but we don't know how well Omicron prevents later infection by Delta, etc.
You asked "Wouldn't the fact that it's outcompeting Delta imply that there is some cross immunity?" The only fact that we have right now is that Omicron is growing quicker than Delta, not that Omicron is somehow suppressing Delta with cross-immunity.
> Otherwise, we could say something like "COVID outcompetes the flu".
Well--- COVID causing everyone to be careful, combined with influenza's lower Rt due to not being novel, really put a dent in influenza. So even then, without cross-immunity, you can have growth in one suppress growth in the other.
People making minimum aren't self-isolating, that food you ordered is being prepped and delivered by someone who went to work telling themselves "it's just a cold and they need that paycheck".
Afaict, you've completely missed the question embedded in the comment. You then reacted to the "isolated" keyword with some aimless statement. To restate simply:
If you are infected with omicron and are isolated, can you be infected by Delta from say...a shoe that picked it up days ago?
Answer: No, but that doesn't mean either disappear in the short term.
> The question is if you get omicron can you then turn around and get delta
On Google, the top results seem to say that yes you can get both. But the data looks very preliminary.
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/can-you-get-infected-omicron-more-than-once-reinfection-covid-variant-1369789 https://inews.co.uk/news/health/can-you-get-infected-omicron...
> Can you get Omicron after previous infection with Delta? Yes. UK studies into Omicron have also suggested that previous Covid infection provides poor protection against the new strain.
https://www.wxyz.com/news/health/ask-dr-nandi/can-you-get-infected-with-both-omicron-and-delta-at-the-same-time https://www.wxyz.com/news/health/ask-dr-nandi/can-you-get-in...
> epidemiology experts have indicated that people could get infected with both delta and omicron together. We’ve seen co-infection before. Two studies — one in Brazil and one in France — have researched patients infected with two different strains of the virus at the same time.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article256786862.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25678686...
> Already had COVID? You can still get infected with the omicron variant.
https://whyy.org/articles/what-do-we-know-about-omicron-today/ https://whyy.org/articles/what-do-we-know-about-omicron-toda...
> what was clear from that is people who have recovered from previous COVID-19 disease can get infected with omicron
Japan is a very conformity based society which has plenty of its own problems, just not this one. Countries often have a broad common ethos which are quite variable around the world and each has its strengths and weaknesses.
Americans quite like splitting into factions, telling the other factions what the moral imperatives of the day are, and rebelling against what other factions tell them to do. It is a part of a somewhat broken sense of anti authoritarian bent which doesn’t recognize that authoritarian actions by your own group are equally problematic. Just a signal that once quite good ideology is degrading into something a bit strange, mostly just because of how information is distributed and education done.
The problem in America is that the other side really doesn’t believe in American values, but instead wants to take away our constitutional freedoms. They preach a hypocritical sense of morality while inflicting violence on those who cannot defend themselves. They use gerrymandering and political tricks to hold on to power, even when most people hate what they’re doing. Because of their incompetence, we’ve become a laughingstock on the world stage. And their response to the coronavirus could not be more misguided or dangerous.
And almost all Americans agree with this, because I didn’t actually name a political party. If there’s one thing that brings Americans together, it’s knowing that the other half is pure evil.
I would disagree that there is a side that doesn’t believe in American values. American values are instead being interpreted in disagreeing ways, and are being applied to different circumstances. (For example, the sovereign citizen movement clearly at least attempts to take on aspects of the American constitution, and interprets them very differently to the court system.)
> I would disagree that there is a side that doesn’t believe in American values.
As an outsider, one of the US's core values is democracy and the democratic process.
Given the current push to undermine it, and the recent coup attempt intended to overthrow a democratically elected representative to install an authoritarian despot, and given the current level of support given to this dictatorial push, I have to say that from an outsider's perspective one side of America's political establishment clearly does not believe in American values.
Consider that the information you get could be one-sided because the major platforms ban dissenting views (in cooperation with partisan NGOs identifying it).
> Consider that the information you get could be one-sided because the major platforms ban dissenting views (in cooperation with partisan NGOs identifying it).
Could you please explain how exactly the recent coup attempt intended to overthrow a democratically elected representative to install an authoritarian despot is not profoundly anti-democratic and thus anti-american, or how the coup was just a reflection of a "one-sided" coverage by the media? Regardless of how dissenting your view is, a coup to overthrow a democratically elected representative is still a coup.
Indeed I'm inclined to agree, however, may of those folks literally believe the election was stolen.
Which is false of course, but consider how you would react if there were serious election irregularities, and your current PM/President was effectively a pretender?
A lot of people angry about the election are, at least superficially, acting in 'good faith'. They think they are fighting 'for democracy'.
Don't discount how segregated US information clearing is - I was visiting a family member today and heard some of their Facebook feed videos, it was totally shocking. This person does not absorb any kind of mainstream news information.
All day every day, they hear misinformation about vaccines and the election, so it becomes easier to understand how they believe nonsense.
One particular video, from an Irish Politician and MD no less, made claims that Omicron was 'just the flu' etc. and deferred to both the Irish government and Medical System for legitimacy. It was a very convincing video that I suggest most regular people would be moved by it, even though to a keen observer it was clear they were lying.
Indeed, the very article upon which we are commenting is hard to parse, to the point where in the interest of Public Good I wish all of these articles had some kind of translation for us plebes, at least during a pandemic where in it's a 'war of information'.
My understanding is that one group literally believes that the President was elected undemocratically, and are trying to correct for the mass fraud that was used to install the current President illegitimately. In that view, the coup attempt is in fact an attempt to overthrow an undemocratically installed despot, and follows along with an American ideal of representation in the government.
Now, I don’t personally believe this. But I also think sovereign citizens are stupid. I still think both sovereign citizens and “big lie” proponents are trying to interpret and apply American values, even if I think they’re misguided. I hope to be able to convince “big lie” proponents to understand my worldview in that the current President was legitimately elected, but first I think it’s important to understand their position.
> My understanding is that one group literally believes that the President was elected undemocratically, and are trying to correct for the mass fraud that was used to install the current President illegitimately.
That blend of belief is shared by a subset of militants, but that's the result of the years-long propaganda campaign devised by the militant group's leadership in preparation for the election campaign.
We're talking about a política group which dedicated itself simultaneously to sabotage the election campaign by attacking voting methods believed to be disproportionally and massively favoured by other candidates , and included the preparation of a coup to overthrow the political regime to continue holding power.
The myth about fraudulent elections, which preceded the election by over a year, was made up by the militant group's leadership, and we should not interpret it as a reasonable and natural excuse to push a self-serving myth.
So which side are you talking about?
--- "Take away our constitutional freedoms."
Right now, who is ordering who to stay home, to not go to the gym, to church, to a restaurant, to a private gathering - by force of law - and even imposing curfews?
For context, these might be some of the most broad and assertive challenges ever made on constitutional freedoms.
--- "They preach a hypocritical sense of morality while inflicting violence on those who cannot defend themselves."
There is one group of people in America who are killing themselves at 6x the rate of other Americans, and about 20x the rate of people of other countries.
They have hypocritically 'blamed' (at least in terms of populism) the issue on policing, which is very demonstrably not a direct cause, requiring police to pull back in many areas, and now we see the result, a 150% increase in violence among those same poor and vulnerable communities, that were already extremely violent. The major increase in lives lost is directly measurable in the thousands.
The #1 cause of death among this group, is violence from their own group.
Not 'some other group' assaulting them.
--- "They use gerrymandering and political tricks to hold on to power"
One group is trying to give voting rights to huge numbers of non-citizens at every level of government, because that group feels the new voters would vote for them, which is in terms of raw numbers, the most gigantic form of election gerrymandering ever conceived.
--- "Because of their incompetence, we’ve become a laughingstock on the world stage. "
New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire etc. are some of the worst hit by COVID in terms of deaths per capita, as for 'laughing stock' the Governor went down on sexual assault allegations, and charges of misrepresenting COVID information. Despite the careless populist rhetoric of some political fools, frankly, there isn't much of a serious political pattern across the nation in terms of outcomes - there's a pretty big 'obesity' pattern, which correlates strongly with race, but it also points to an issue in America overall vis-a-vis the rest of the world (i.e. obesity). But that isn't really a politically 'sided' issue so much.
...
I think you really did make the OP's point by pointing out how 'each side likes to blame the other' - I couldn't even fathom who you were talking about for sure.
However much I personally might support mask, separation and other restrictions, it's pretty oddly lacking in self awareness to talk about the 'Authoritarianism Of The Other Side' when literally politicians are ordering the most assertive transgressions of basic rights in history however legitimized or not.
As for Omicron ... we really don't know yet. Maybe this is the last real lockdown wave before lethality, treatments and vaccines provide enough protection.
It’s less confusing to me because I specifically do not want to live in a society where people willingly cover half their face. And I most particularly have no interest in living in a country where I am shamed, ridiculed, or outcast for not doing so as well.
Im ok with the repercussions that society may face (eg, higher covid counts etc) to avoid such a society. Call me a monster but I want my daughter to know a world much more similar to what I knew 2 years ago than the one in black mirror, which I believe we tend to be accelerating towards.
The masking is temporary and in limited situations. People don't think you're a monster for not wearing one, they think you're a selfish baby.
There’s nothing selfish about not wearing a mask if vaccines are safe and effective.
It's like saying you don't need to wash your hands because the food is cooked and hot.
> There’s nothing selfish about not wearing a mask if vaccines are safe and effective.
If you really want to parrot that line, the very least you need to do is get informed about the issue you're trying to discuss.
Vaccines are safe and effective in training your immune system to handle a COVID-19 infection. That's how vaccines work. They are not, nor they ever were, a silver bullet that stops everyone from catching the disease and transmitting it to everyone the come across.
To put it very clearly and unambiguously to you, vaccines don't stop the virus from spreading, they only improve your chances of not dying from it.
Also, it's disingenuous to pretend that the current generation of vaccines, which was developed for the original Wuhan strain, also have the same effectiveness against subsequent strains such as the Delta and now Omicron strains.
Your blend of vocal ignorance is tiring. It feels like you're arguing in bad faith. A brief one-minute read on the topic is enough to clear up any possible misconception regarding the topic. Is that too much to ask?
Why one or the other?
The primary goal of masks is to reduce transmission.
The primary goal of vaccines is to reduce deaths.
Vaccines reduce deaths very well, but they only modestly reduce transmission. Using both together is much more effective and inexpensive than only using vaccines or natural immunity.
Someone could start by giving me data points that show if I’m asymptomatic and not exposed to someone with covid that I’m being “selfish” for not adopting your disposition of fear.
1. There are thousands of articles, studies, tweets, blog posts, and essays that explain all of this to you. If you were sincerely interested in educating yourself on this topic, you easily could be.
2. Covid can spread asymptomatically. Again, if you were sincerely interested in understanding this topic, you would know that extremely basic fact.
3. You have no way to know whether you were exposed to someone with Covid or not, unless you are never around other people. If you're never around other people, masks are a moot point, anyway.
4. We have been forced to wear (sometimes uncomfortable) clothing in public places due to fear for a long time. Women can't go into restaurants topless, even if it's not a city law. Fear-based or not, you don't get to decide whether you wear a mask on private land.
That's fine, but in some places, that's basically saying you're the type of person to walk through dirty streets barefoot. No matter how #freethefoot and for personal choice you may be, people won't want you bringing your dirty feet and whatever they carry into their home.
I think you're looking for another example!
Walking in the world barefoot is a natural and normal thing. We should all probably be doing more of it, not shaming people for it.
The issue is mostly one of public health that has materially adverse affects on others.
Maybe it would be like driving on the highway without snowtires in the winter: it's reckless and you're going to hurt people. I think if most of us saw that happening (it happens) it kind of makes you mad to see how irresponsible it is.
Also the commentor above wrote about 'voting' concerning masks - it's not such a simple issue.
Democracy is not a 'Tyranny of the Majority'. It's why we have Constitutions etc.. Requiring people to do stuff in the normal course of their day is a pretty big step, we have to be mindful of regulating normative behaviours. It's easy to let rights slide away, we should have a bit better of a process for these kinds of things, and maybe tuck in a couple of laws after this is over for that purpose because the Courts don't have a lot to work with on a lot of these things.
I completely agree. It’s concerning how eager and compliant people are with these nonsensical mandates. These last two years hammered home to me that there are way more people than I thought who either enjoy dominating other people or who like being told what to do.
It's a little bit weird if you ask me. I totally get you and your parent's sentiment of "they push me, so I push back". I think that's a natural reflex of many people and a good one as well. I'm much the same in many situations. If you simply tell me and push me to do X, I will push back, simply because you did not explain yourself. It's a principled thing. We're not in the military and I didn't sign up for this.
Explain yourself, give me reasoning and talk to me about pros and cons of various things and we can probably get along very well.
Now there's a problem here. While you can debate such things with me and you and and many other people, there are also a lot of people out there that just do not respond at all to that. I would argue it's actually most people and that is what politicians have to deal with. That sucks for you and me.
I think wearing a mask indoors makes absolute sense. We can debate whether a cloth, surgical mask or N95 mask are in order but some type of mask that goes over mouth _and_ nose just makes sense given the airborne nature of this and other viruses. I will readily admit that I always found it weird seeing Asians running around w/ a surgical mask when they think they're sick w/ something but I've come to realize that it just made sense. They're doing the right thing.
I don't think putting alcohol on my hands multiple times a day is great for my skin or the natural skin bacterial flora at all but I really like the fact that I've seen less people run past the hand sanitizer at the store than people leaving the washrooms without washing their hands.
Are you telling me that you're one of those people that go to the toilet and don't wash up? I'm sorry but I don't want to second hand touch your junk! Ever!
Yeah, when we are two years into the pandemic, with 5.4 million deaths and over 280 million infections by COVID, with tens of millions of health workers globally working long hours and overtime in their sweat-filled protective gowns and gears, all you could care about is whether your daughter can see a world with faces uncovered.
If people can just stop their BS, get vaxxed, cover their face, and avoid gatherings, the pandemic would be over in a month, and we wouldn't need to do all this shit, would we?
That is misinformation. While I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, the vaccines don't reliably prevent infection or transmission. The main benefit is in reducing severe symptoms. Likewise face masks only marginally reduce the risks of transmission in individual interactions. But since the virus is endemic it will never be "over". Everyone can expect to be exposed periodically. You can't expect people to wear masks forever.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
> Likewise face masks only marginally reduce the risks of transmission in individual interactions.
Even if your personal assertion regarding the effectiveness of facial masks in containing COVID spread had any bearing in reality, don't you believe that such a low effort/high reward move is well justified given the current public health scenario, and more importantly the need to avoid escalating to higher-impact measures?
This irrational opposition to facial masks reads like ranting against other basic personal higiene etiquette, such as covering coughs and sneezes.
How did you get "high reward" from "only marginally reduce the risks"? Also, do you wear glasses? Masks are way worse if you do.
> This irrational opposition to facial masks reads like ranting against covering coughs and sneezes.
To me, it feels more like if you got told to keep your mouth covered all the time because sometimes you suddenly cough or sneeze.
I specifically do not want to live in a society where people cannot willingly cover half their face, especially when they’re sick or it’s flu season. (Not to mentioned during a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in my country.)
Luckily my country is also a representative republic where we can vote for what policies we want. (Although I certainly have issues with the many ways my vote is subverted or rendered less-than others votes based on land.)
You don't really have to vote on whether you're allowed to wear masks for health reasons, only on telling other people the have to. Just wear them if you want, don't if you don't.
Before a couple of years ago, masks were often banned at the local level in the US. There's no good reason for bans or mandates in normal circumstances, and that includes being a democracy.
> Call me a monster but I want my daughter to know a world much more similar to what I knew 2 years ago
I think you have your causality mixed up a bit.
When I was younger I would take my coat off in the cold early spring to protest the fact that it hadn't warmed up enough, and, mostly in jest, insist that it was taking your coat off that harked warmer weather (when obviously the reverse is true).
In this case you are trying to do this same with masks, hasten the end of something you don't like by pretending it isn't happening. Unfortunately this ultimately makes a worse world for the both of you.
You obviously aren't the "monster", the monster is the thing that scares you so much you lose all reason, and confuse your causal arrows so much.
It's unfortunate that the world is in a state of decline right now, and I understand wanting to turn it back. But like all people who have tried to stop change by resisting you only ultimately end up making it worse.
It's because you can't accept the way the world is changing that it will progress this way faster.
Japan under-tested a lot pre-Olympics in a desperate attempt to salvage the event. After that point they had no more reason to hide the data. Tests that have been carried out since show very low positive rates, so there likely aren't too many hidden, untested cases out there.
That is incorrect. Japanese people don't wear masks all the time everywhere. Please stop spreading misinformation.
> Although multiple antiviral and host target activities have been reported for ivermectin in SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, it is still unclear if any of these activities will play a role in the prevention and treatment of the disease. The controlled clinical trials that are underway will reveal if these activities will translate into clinical efficacy.
Clinical trials for ivermectin have been stopped at least 2 times now due to weird reasons. First one in Australia was stopped due to apparently being too few COVID infected people. In the last couple of weeks the Oxford trial was stopped because apparently there was a supply problem with ivermectin, according to Merck.
Fluvoxamine is the new off-label thing, combo sigma-1 and "ASM Functional inhibitor"
https://c19fluvoxamine.com/ https://c19fluvoxamine.com/
But this time the science is a bit more solid because it works similar to the pfizer antiviral pill. The problem is SSRIs are not something to be taken casually.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.17.21268008 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.17.21268008
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2786140 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01309-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01309-5
A Covid treatment with happiness as a side effect? Sign me up! ;)
Is there a problem with taking SSRI's for 10 days though?
It's a misunderstanding SSRIs "make you happy".
They are powerful manipulators of brain (and body) chemistry.
And yes, you are right to suspect taking SSRI for 10 days is a problem, most SSRI have serious withdrawal symptoms too and interact with common things like caffeine very badly.
But that pfizer pill is months away from significant quantities which is way too late for omicron and nothing else works on it (like MABs) so doctors have a big problem with no tools in the toolbox.
Taking fluvoxamine or other SSRIs for a few days to treat an acute condition is highly unlikely to cause serious negative side effects. The real problems with SSRIs only appear after weeks of chronic use.
Anecdotally I've heard several physicians report good results with fluvoxamine. It appears to be well tolerated for most patients.
There appears to be a genetic component in certain populations.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Genetic-factor-may-soften-COVID-blow-for-Japanese-study https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Genetic-factor...
Also, underreporting and asymptomatic rates are much higher than initially assumed.
Meanwhile Japan it’s hard to get tested and they now have community transmission happening in major cities with unknown origin. Given the Japanese governments propensity to save face, they’d never admit it if they did have a problem.
I’d be skeptical.
Not to be pedantic, it there is a difference between a paper and a Twitter thread
No it's not.
The current question is if lockdowns are required if the severity is way down.
It just takes a while since they want to be sure of data coming in.
Just relax ... It will take some weeks/months to confirm, if omicron is mostly harmless.
Have you considered that the spread was happening there because of the lockdowns?
The lockdowns made it worse, I'm convinced of that. Healthy people staying indoors for months, not allowed to go to the gym, gaining weight and damaging their immune system and mental health.
Lockdown didn't always mean stay inside.
Eg. In Belgium you were free to run, walk, sport everywhere outdoors. People bought a lot of homegym machines too.
Additionally, the self-claimed strongest man of Belgium just died of delta because he was also in denial out COVID.
Yeah, he was in the ICU but wanted to be released since he could handle it... Died within 3 weeks before a fight ( match)
Ps. Yes, his wife even said it's not COVID but just his lungs "suddenly".
My uncle keeps playing the lotto 6/49 because he hears about people winning all the time. He has a hard time grasping how large, a large number is. So one time I found a site, where he could punch in any numbers to check if they ever won before in the decades proceeding. He sat there for an hour checking, getting more and more frustrated, and he couldn't do it.
Odds of winning are approximately 1 in 14 million.
Population of Belgium 12 million.
Strongest man in Belgium one in 12 million.
It would take you about half a year to count up to 12 million.
And even than, the strongest man was probably a very large man who abused steroids. At that size, size is probably inversely related to life expectancy.
So I wouldn't make too much of the apparent risk, based on that one individual.
You're again misunderstanding the core issue. Are you trolling?
Just in case, the core issue is that healthy people aren't immune to COVID-19 ( and mostly delta), even if they/you would like to think that.
You should really look into the basics of why COVID is dangerous.
It's your immune system having a too strong reaction to a new virus and damaging itselves and the lungs severely, even until death.
You being convinced of something isn't really an argument.
Rightfully so, in free countries these measures should be used with extreme care.
This winter should mark the end of any and all restrictions regarding the Corona virus.
> It would appear that mass vaccination had a minimal effect on the already low case fatality rate.
Why would one focus on any impact on the case fatality rate? A lot of vaccination's benefit is preventing infections and cases in the first place, isn't it?
That graph is also misleading, because it's looking at the cumulative case fatality rate, not the fatality rate at a given point in time. That is, it's the ratio between the red and purple lines on this graph. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-deaths-and-cases-covid-19?country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-deaths-and-cas...
I would also love to see this. I fear that we're not bringing a first principles approach to Omicron. It's different enough that I don't think we can apply many findings from previous strains. Is fomite transmission still rare? Asymptomatic spread still happening?
By the same token, does infection with omicron have any impact on your likelihood to catch Delta or other variants? The inverse appears to be vanishingly small.
General consensus seems to suggest it is less severe to some degree: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YBB9yZNJuz5j8hLdP/omicron-post-9 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YBB9yZNJuz5j8hLdP/omicron-po...
The problem is that there's so many factors to isolate (testing rates, vaccination rates, behavior changes, demographics of the infected population, etc.) that it is hard to get a precise number yet.
Of course, even if it's less severe, it's also more infectious which could make overall outcomes worse.
> Is there any evidence that shows that omicron is even particularly dangerous?
Looks like death rates are climbing in jurisdictions who were on the leading edge of the Omicron wave. If I had to guess, it's significantly better if infected than Delta, but still much worse than we're used to dealing with with influenza.
> There has a been a “savior” strain that a lot of us have been hoping for which is: extremely transmissible, and relatively benign.
This is only able to have any benefit to the extent that it also is strongly and durably protective against infection from other variants.
I'm hopeful that things go much better this time around, both because vaccines are still somewhat protective and it looks somewhat less dangerous than Delta.
There is barely any solid data on hospitalization yet; the first batch of preprints with enough signal to start assessing intrinsic virulence vs prior immunity and other covariates were all posted like less than a week ago, out of South Africa, the UK, and Scotland. The lesswrong post in the sibling comment covers these pretty well
I don’t think it’s been long enough that anyone will have reliable enough data to form a solid conclusion.
The good news is that prior immunity seems to be very protective against severe outcomes, and that’s been clear for a bit
We are weeks into Omicron obsession and I’ve yet to see panic about the death rates. So you have reason to be optimistic, although I know plenty of people still yearning for this to be another round of horrors.
Doesn't it go: influenza < SARS-CoV-2 < SARS-CoV-2 delta <= SARS-CoV-2 omicron? At least for how transmissible each is. The disease covid would depend on which variant you contract.
Yes I know influenza isn't a corona virus. My point partly being we've become complacent at just how dangerous SARS-CoV-2 is and its variants are probably worse, but at the very least they're more transmissible.
I think omicron is seen as less severe because so many people have had at least one shot of the vaccine. It's slamming anyone who is not vaccinated at all most ICUs are 75% un-vaccinated, the remaining two shot no booster, or two shots plus a booster, or two shots plus booster but elderly and sick. It's like MMR vaccine nobody is asking why doesn't everyone have measles, mumps, and rubella - because nearly everyone has been vaccinated for those.
Also the MMR vaccine actually works as a vaccine. It does not just reduce symptoms while allowing infection and transmission.
The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines seem to do all of these: they reduce infection; reduce chance of symptoms given infection; and reduces the chance of severe illness given symptoms. It's much less so for Omicron than for past variants.
MMR is similarly effective at infection vs. mumps as the mRNA vaccines are against infection with pre-Omicron SARS-CoV-2.
Transmission is a harder question: if you prevent infection in a bunch of people, but also create more asymptomatic people who are likely to go out and about: which effect wins out?
> but at the very least they're more transmissible.
The "more transmissible" may be partially confounded by novelty. E.g. what's influenza's R0 in an immunologically naive population? Who knows.
Vaccination doesn't fully answer what the equilibrium transmissibility will be. either, because there's things like mucosal immunity.
> I think omicron is seen as less severe because so many people have had at least one shot of the vaccine.
So far the (weak) evidence we have points to both:
- A somewhat lower severity of infection from omicron than delta regardless of vaccination status.
- Moderate protection against severe disease from a 2 shot mRNA vaccine series, and pretty good protection against severe disease after a recent 3rd booster shot.
So, that is, it's not one or the other, it's both: Omicron is probably less severe overall and has its severity reduced further by vaccination.
Keep an eye on Denmark. After South Africa it's the country I keep my eye on.
The UK had a high infection rate of Delta, so it's still mixed data there.
> There has a been a “savior” strain that a lot of us have been hoping for
The critical piece for a “savior” strain would be granting immunity to other less-benign strains. It’s still very early on, but so far it doesn’t look like Omicron has that feature as people are reportedly contracting both Omicron and Delta:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29698080#29699001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29698080#29699001
Without providing protection against other strains, it’s just another transmissible disease in addition to what we had before.
I don't quite understand your question. To be infected, the virus must be able to enter your cells.
Against Delta, if you compare a vaccinated population with 2 doses of the mRNA vaccine against an equivalent unvaccinated population that ended up with 100 infections, with about 70 people having symptoms and 10 people with severe illness, you'd expect:
* 60 people who would have otherwise been infected to show no evidence of infection. That is, the vaccine is so strongly neutralizing that a large proportion of people that would otherwise be infected show no evidence of virtal replication at all.
* Another 30 people or so to end up infected, without symptoms. The virus replicated some in their cells, but the severity of the disease before an immune response was mounted was so low that it went unnoticed. Note that this number has not changed too much from the unvaccinated population.
* About 10 people with symptoms, of whom 1 has severe illness.
You could view this as mostly shifting severity "downwards" -- some people who would have been infected ending up not; some people who would have had symptoms instead just being infected; some people who would have had severe illness instead just having symptoms.
From a pure mechanical view: if an infected cell produces 1000 copies of the virus, ordinarily resulting in 50 other cells being infected... and antibodies from a vaccine glom up on spike proteins and reduce this 50 number to 10-- the virus still grows in your body, but the rest of your immune system has a whole lot longer to react before illness becomes severe. And this ignores other benefits from vaccination (earlier mobilization of immune system, T-cell mediated immunity, training of B cell lines to target spike proteins resulting in faster maturation of variant-specific antibodies, etc). So even if the antibody concentration and affinity isn't quite sufficient it's still a benefit.
It’s not a binary thing. One virus enters a cell and it makes thousands of copies to spread in the body. Each of those get attacked by the antibodies and T cells pre-generated from the vaccine. No vax or no prior infection and the body is learning while also getting ravaged by the virus.
And as for immunity from infection, your body makes antibodies for the prefusion spike (the free floating form that infects cells), the post fusion spike (after it binds to ACE2), and the nucleocapsid. Since prefusion spikes are what bind to cells for entry, you’d want your immune system focused entirely on attacking that vector. China’s sinovac vaccine generates nucleocapsid antibodies and it’s failing in the face of omicron.
That s the joke, he wasnt talking of any one side. BOTH think the other is evil anti american.
> For context, these might be some of the most broad and assertive challenges ever made on constitutional freedoms.
The US has organized, in recent history, concentration camps based on the premise that national security was at stake.
More recently, the US employed secret prisons to torture people who were deemed persons of interest, both foreign and US citizens.
I'd figure that requiring basic personal higiene and public health measures, such as wearing a mask in public places to avoid spreading a disease which is already killed well over 800k US citizens, shouldn't even register as a concern regarding "constitutional freedoms". Yet, why is this only a concern, and the "most broad and assertive" one to boot, regarding constitutional rights in the US?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
It's extremely simple - that's because the people complaining about masks were not in these concentration camps and were not tortured in secret prisons, while it's them who have to wear masks. Therefore, what you mentioned didn't really exist in practice, and being forced to maintain hygiene during a deadly pandemic is the most broad and assertive violation on constitutional rights.
> It's extremely simple - that's because the people complaining about masks were not in these concentration camps and were not tortured in secret prisons, while it's them who have to wear masks.
You see, that assertion does not pass any smell test. Think about it: any discussion, and complain, regarding the constitutionality of any policy is purely conceptual and abstract, and the conclusion is always absolute: either the constitution is violated, or it isn't.
Therefore, if anyone is honestly worried about the constitutional implications of a policy, they do not care if it affects everyone or even anyone. The discussion is purely conceptual: either the constitution is violated, and thus it must be upheld, or not.
With this in mind, any discussion on extrajudicial imprisonments, violations of the Geneva convention, and even extrajudicial assassinations, feature at the top of any concern.
And not whether you need to wash your hands or wear a face mask.
Think about it: how many times did the constitutionality of jailing people for pooping on the street was discussed in an election? Did fining people for not picking up their dog's poop ever became a divisive political talking point? Did you ever saw radical militant groups threatening with political action for being barred from urinating in public? Never, right?
> Therefore, if anyone is honestly worried about the constitutional implications of a policy
This is the important part. They aren't worried about the constitution, they're worried that they have to do something they don't want to.
Responding to my own comment, I can see the commenter was making a 'double sided' point which I failed to see - that said, I think it reads a bit more strongly as one side.
(I fully agree with their satirical point however ... it's just the wording of the examples was a bit off in my purview.)
After listening to a family member scroll through some shocking Facebook tirades today, I'm ready to believe a lot of Americans will believe almost anything about the 'other side', it's tragic.
If you see that as biased towards one side, it’s your own bias. I encourage everyone to try to understand the opposite political persuasion.
It’s rather easy to come up with these. Take “your party believes in inflicting violence on innocent children.” The replies would be “But they broke the law, and we need to send them back to their own country” and “Embryos are not yet children.” But both sides are appalled at how the other can hate little children so much.
> How did you get "high reward" from "only marginally reduce the risks"?
Don't you believe that reducing or outright eliminating the chance that a single person you come across to not experience hospitalization or death due to covid constitutes a worthy reward given the tradeoff?
> Also, do you wear glasses?
Why do you feel this is relevant?
> Don't you believe that reducing or outright eliminating the chance that a single person you come across to not experience hospitalization or death due to covid constitutes a worthy reward given the tradeoff?
I agree that reducing the risk constitutes a reward. I don't agree it constitutes a high reward, since the reduction is only marginal.
> > Also, do you wear glasses?
> Why do you feel this is relevant?
Based on this response, I assume that you don't wear glasses, or you'd know exactly why it's relevant: masks make them fog up all the time.
> I agree that reducing the risk constitutes a reward. I don't agree it constitutes a high reward, since the reduction is only marginal.
I suggest you review your definition of "marginal". Even the use of low-effecriveness cloth masks have been observed as reducing the symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 by about 9%, and in the outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt it was associated with a 70% reduced risk of infection.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
I also couldn't help notice how you base your personal assertions in no evidence or observation, and instead you simply repeat your baseless assertions without any substance. Do you feel this conveys any relevance to these personal beliefs?
" the vaccines don't reliably prevent infection or transmission. "
I think his is actually misleading.
The vaccines significantly reduce transmission overall - mostly due to the fact people are much less likely to get COVID in the first place if they are vaccinated.
Where you can maybe have a point, is that people who are vaccinated - who do get COVID - may transmit it at the same rate as those who were unvaccinated and infected. Maybe.
But this is a secondary effect to the first order issue, which is that vaccines significantly reduce infections in the first place, and therefore reduces R0.
Yes, cloth masks are marginal, but they are at least 'another layer' of protection.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/fully-vaccinated-people.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
Masks were not "often" banned at the local level. Tons of Asian tourists, Muslims, and people in cold places wore them.
I think we are on the same line except im merely saying that it’s considered socially acceptable for a parent to over correct for easily preventable death, which very likely includes “wear a mask and socially distance from my child, who isn’t old enough to take a treatment that will drastically reduce their already reduced chance for severe illness”. I think I’m being broadly misunderstood as somehow advocating much more strongly than I actually am. I’m merely saying that certain populations may very reasonably advocate for their specific circumstance when it comes to resisting going back “to normal”. I hope that makes sense.
I think a lot of people don't realize that they're never making just one simple dice roll.
> Parents often can and will do whatever they can to protect their child...
I'd adjust that to "parents can and will do whatever they think will protect their child based on whatever the current wisdom (or scary headline) suggests".
Consider parents not letting their kids go trick or treating because they don't want to roll the dice on someone putting a razor blade in their candy. As a result, their kid will never eat a razor blade (though really they almost certainly never would have anyway), but what's the cost of missing out on that experience? Even if missing the experience is costly, maybe it ends up being a win because the kid now has a better relationship with sugary garbage food as an adult? Seeing the whole picture is difficult.
The furniture thing seems straightforward to me. I'd feel relatively confident that we won't learn anything surprising in the coming years about pros/cons of anchoring a book shelf to the wall. You can make that decision today with pretty good confidence that you understand the risk profile (and it seems like all upside, especially since its reversible anyway).
What are the odds that we don't learn something surprising in the next year about covid, the vaccines, the interaction between the two, any new variants, etc? It seems reasonable to me to make the same "even from low chances of danger" argument about skipping the vaccines for kids.
Everyone is going to do their best, and some people are going to be wrong. The confidence that I see people having that they're the ones who are going to be right is baffling to me (edit: in general, not talking about you specifically).
I think the problem here is that your argument defines millions of people and then their loved ones as “a problem” that just… has no answer except that they’re too inconvenient to consider that maybe their concerns aren’t overblown?? I’m not advocating for broad sweeping stuff here (why are you ranting at me about this??) or literally any action except “hey maybe some people are advocating reasonably according to their circumstances here”. I think again you’re still imposing your view on others including myself. If you read what I’m literally saying, at no point did I advocate that society should drastically change to adjust for immunocompromised people. I am merely pointing out that assuming there are no reasonable advocates is very likely a sign of personal bias .