6 ms·

> ineffective I don't think it's clear evidence of this, but you could definitely say it's not 100% effective. Whether it is useful is not something that you c

> ineffective I don't think it's clear evidence of this, but you could definitely say it's not 100% effective. Whether it is useful is not something that you cannot determine from this story alone.

Gigachad 5y ago
The problem is being 99.9% effective just isn't good enough. One person slips through and it's all over. It isn't realistically possible to keep covid out of areas.
- midasuni 5y ago
  New Zealand has done a pretty good job over the last two years. Whether the costs outweigh the benefits is a separate question
  - TeeMassive 5y ago
    They had 1000 community cases today https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-current-cases https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...
    - throwaway788 5y ago
      Thats over the last 21 days. There was 47 community cases yesterday.
    - midasuni 5y ago
      Since vaccinating they’ve relaxed restrictions
      - lostlogin 5y ago
        And poorly behaved DJs aside, it’s going ok. Time will tell if the policies in place will deal with Omicron, though.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    Economically or in terms of mortality/morbidity, it’s not obvious that there was a better strategy for New Zealand. The article claims that covid is in all Antarctic bases, but I wasn’t aware that Scott base had any. I can’t find any reports of it either. Edit: Their report from August had it covid free. https://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/media/news/antarctica-new-zealand-covid-19-update https://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/media/news/antarctica-new-z...
    - midasuni 5y ago
      That’s beside the point. It is possible to keep covid out. There are costs and benefits to that. The ISS has remained covid free. Kiribati has too. Tonga had one person arrive with covid but it didn’t progress.
- pen2l 5y ago
  It is understood that it's not 100% effective, we enforce these restrictions upon ourselves in part so that we just slow it down and spread it out over time, so that medical centers are not overwhelmed and unable to provide care to those who really it, so that we have time to create better and better therapeutics.
- baxtr 5y ago
  What is good enough though? I always thought the whole prevention thing is because we want to “flatten the curve”, remember? Not to prevent every single infection, which is impossible.
  - jerlam 5y ago
    Different places, different goals. If you're on an Antarctic base where medical facilities are meager and the time and cost for evacuation is high, zero infections is likely the goal. As an extreme example, the US grounded an astronaut for being exposed, not infected, by measles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly#Apollo_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly#Apollo_13
    - mattkrause 5y ago
      As another fun example, the doctor (and only the doctor) overwintering in Antartica needs to have had their appendix out. Medical evacuations are tricky, especially in the winter, and the logic is that the (single) doctor could remove someone else's appendix, but it would much harder for them to remove their own. Leonid Rogozov did remove his own in the 1960s, but I think most stations would prefer to avoid a repeat of that. It did make for a fascinating BMJ Christmas Article though, written by his son: https://web.archive.org/web/20100925041337/http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b4965.full https://web.archive.org/web/20100925041337/http://www.bmj.co...
  - tonfreed 5y ago
    China is still pursuing a zero case strategy and locking down huge sections of the country. Apologies for daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10349531/China-Covid-Xian-residents-starving-lockdown-rules-tightened.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10349531/China-Covi...
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    In the US there are literally thousands of different public health agencies headed by health officers with strategies ranging from herd immunity by any means necessary to attempting COVID 0. Vague gripes about public health tag lines in such a fractured environment is unproductive.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  That’s really not true though. 99.9% effective might not be good enough for an Antarctic research base, but that’s a pretty unusual circumstance. We’d be thrilled if our current countermeasures against Covid were 99.9% effective; we would’ve ended this in 2020 if that were the case. If I understand correctly, you can mathematically model how effective countermeasures have to be in order to suppress a virus with a given R0. Given that the measles vaccine is 93% effective and sufficient to suppress one of the most infectious diseases we’ve ever seen (R0 of 12-18), I think 99.9% would be in the overkill category.
  - _0w8t 5y ago
    Can you give a source for that 93% efficiency of measles vaccine? Accuracy for 2 digits is very suspicious. Measles symptoms depend strongly on nutrition deficiencies with insufficient vitamin C being especially bad. If that is not the case, one can be asymptomatic and then we never know about infection.
    - eesmith 5y ago
      https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/measles/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/measles/index.html > The MMR vaccine is very safe and effective. Two doses of MMR vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing measles; one dose is about 93% effective. Prevention of Measles, Rubella, Congenital Rubella Syndrome, and Mumps, 2013 Summary Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24832555 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24832555 > One dose of measles-containing vaccine administered at age ≥12 months was approximately 94% effective in preventing measles (range: 39%–98%) in studies conducted in the WHO Region of the Americas (141,142). Measles outbreaks among populations that have received 2 doses of measles-containing vaccine are uncommon. The effectiveness of 2 doses of measles-containing vaccine was ≥99% in two studies conducted in the United States and 67%, 85%–≥94%, and 100% in three studies in Canada (142–146). The range in 2-dose vaccine effectiveness in the Canadian studies can be attributed to extremely small numbers (i.e., in the study with a 2-dose vaccine effectiveness of 67%, one 2-dose vaccinated person with measles and one unvaccinated person with measles were reported [145]). This range of effectiveness also can be attributed to age at vaccination (i.e., the 85% vaccine effectiveness represented children vaccinated at age 12 months, whereas the ≥94% vaccine effectiveness represented children vaccinated at age ≥15 months [146]). Furthermore, two studies found the incremental effectiveness of 2 doses was 89% and 94%, compared with 1 dose of measles-containing vaccine (145,147). Similar estimates of vaccine effectiveness have been reported from Australia and Europe (Table 1) (141). No mention of vitamin C. Given that "After exposure, up to 90% of susceptible persons develop measles", it seems very unlikely that differences in vitamin C play an important role. What are your sources? I found nothing on PubMed nor Google Scholar, though I did find that vitamin C is promoted to antivaxxers (eg, http://www.amcli.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/bmj-measles-filipp.pdf http://www.amcli.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/bmj-measles-f... ). You write "depend strongly on nutrition deficiencies", which my cited article describes as "In low to middle income countries where malnutrition is common, measles is often more severe and the case-fatality ratio can be as high as 25%". That's calorie deficient, but not specifically vitamin deficient.
taurath 5y ago
I think if you take the strictest possible quarantine and test paradigms and even those are failing, its certainly fair to call them ineffective.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  It would be to anyone thinking about this logically, but belief in the measures seems to have become like a religion to some. The craziest discussion I had about this was with a friend who insisted the number of administered tests for a given location hadn't risen in 2021. I showed them the official government stats but they still claimed there hadn't been a rise. When I sent them a graph they said they'd looked at it and it confirms there was no rise. The graph showed a clear rise, like line going straight up! How do you even deal with this? I can have more rational discussions with fundamental Christians.
- GaylordTuring 5y ago
  I don’t know. If a medicine cures 99 % of all cases (or even 10 %) would you say it’s ineffective? I’d say it’s effective, but depending on the your overall goal, not effective enough (if you’d like to call it ineffective, it would be ineffective with respect to a certain macro outcome, not with respect to individual cases). At some minuscule percentage (let’s say 0,1 %) I would probably be tempted to actually starting to call it ineffective.

> ineffective I don't think it's clear evidence of this, but you could definitely say it's not 100% effective. Whether it is useful is not something that you cannot determine from this story alone.

Gigachad 5y ago

The problem is being 99.9% effective just isn't good enough. One person slips through and it's all over. It isn't realistically possible to keep covid out of areas.

midasuni 5y ago
New Zealand has done a pretty good job over the last two years. Whether the costs outweigh the benefits is a separate question
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  They had 1000 community cases today https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-current-cases https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...
  - throwaway788 5y ago
    Thats over the last 21 days. There was 47 community cases yesterday.
  - midasuni 5y ago
    Since vaccinating they’ve relaxed restrictions
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      And poorly behaved DJs aside, it’s going ok. Time will tell if the policies in place will deal with Omicron, though.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Economically or in terms of mortality/morbidity, it’s not obvious that there was a better strategy for New Zealand. The article claims that covid is in all Antarctic bases, but I wasn’t aware that Scott base had any. I can’t find any reports of it either. Edit: Their report from August had it covid free. https://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/media/news/antarctica-new-zealand-covid-19-update https://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/media/news/antarctica-new-z...
  - midasuni 5y ago
    That’s beside the point. It is possible to keep covid out. There are costs and benefits to that. The ISS has remained covid free. Kiribati has too. Tonga had one person arrive with covid but it didn’t progress.
pen2l 5y ago
It is understood that it's not 100% effective, we enforce these restrictions upon ourselves in part so that we just slow it down and spread it out over time, so that medical centers are not overwhelmed and unable to provide care to those who really it, so that we have time to create better and better therapeutics.
baxtr 5y ago
What is good enough though? I always thought the whole prevention thing is because we want to “flatten the curve”, remember? Not to prevent every single infection, which is impossible.
- jerlam 5y ago
  Different places, different goals. If you're on an Antarctic base where medical facilities are meager and the time and cost for evacuation is high, zero infections is likely the goal. As an extreme example, the US grounded an astronaut for being exposed, not infected, by measles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly#Apollo_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly#Apollo_13
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    As another fun example, the doctor (and only the doctor) overwintering in Antartica needs to have had their appendix out. Medical evacuations are tricky, especially in the winter, and the logic is that the (single) doctor could remove someone else's appendix, but it would much harder for them to remove their own. Leonid Rogozov did remove his own in the 1960s, but I think most stations would prefer to avoid a repeat of that. It did make for a fascinating BMJ Christmas Article though, written by his son: https://web.archive.org/web/20100925041337/http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b4965.full https://web.archive.org/web/20100925041337/http://www.bmj.co...
- tonfreed 5y ago
  China is still pursuing a zero case strategy and locking down huge sections of the country. Apologies for daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10349531/China-Covid-Xian-residents-starving-lockdown-rules-tightened.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10349531/China-Covi...
- jdavis703 5y ago
  In the US there are literally thousands of different public health agencies headed by health officers with strategies ranging from herd immunity by any means necessary to attempting COVID 0. Vague gripes about public health tag lines in such a fractured environment is unproductive.
ashtonkem 5y ago
That’s really not true though. 99.9% effective might not be good enough for an Antarctic research base, but that’s a pretty unusual circumstance. We’d be thrilled if our current countermeasures against Covid were 99.9% effective; we would’ve ended this in 2020 if that were the case. If I understand correctly, you can mathematically model how effective countermeasures have to be in order to suppress a virus with a given R0. Given that the measles vaccine is 93% effective and sufficient to suppress one of the most infectious diseases we’ve ever seen (R0 of 12-18), I think 99.9% would be in the overkill category.
- _0w8t 5y ago
  Can you give a source for that 93% efficiency of measles vaccine? Accuracy for 2 digits is very suspicious. Measles symptoms depend strongly on nutrition deficiencies with insufficient vitamin C being especially bad. If that is not the case, one can be asymptomatic and then we never know about infection.
  - eesmith 5y ago
    https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/measles/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/measles/index.html > The MMR vaccine is very safe and effective. Two doses of MMR vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing measles; one dose is about 93% effective. Prevention of Measles, Rubella, Congenital Rubella Syndrome, and Mumps, 2013 Summary Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24832555 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24832555 > One dose of measles-containing vaccine administered at age ≥12 months was approximately 94% effective in preventing measles (range: 39%–98%) in studies conducted in the WHO Region of the Americas (141,142). Measles outbreaks among populations that have received 2 doses of measles-containing vaccine are uncommon. The effectiveness of 2 doses of measles-containing vaccine was ≥99% in two studies conducted in the United States and 67%, 85%–≥94%, and 100% in three studies in Canada (142–146). The range in 2-dose vaccine effectiveness in the Canadian studies can be attributed to extremely small numbers (i.e., in the study with a 2-dose vaccine effectiveness of 67%, one 2-dose vaccinated person with measles and one unvaccinated person with measles were reported [145]). This range of effectiveness also can be attributed to age at vaccination (i.e., the 85% vaccine effectiveness represented children vaccinated at age 12 months, whereas the ≥94% vaccine effectiveness represented children vaccinated at age ≥15 months [146]). Furthermore, two studies found the incremental effectiveness of 2 doses was 89% and 94%, compared with 1 dose of measles-containing vaccine (145,147). Similar estimates of vaccine effectiveness have been reported from Australia and Europe (Table 1) (141). No mention of vitamin C. Given that "After exposure, up to 90% of susceptible persons develop measles", it seems very unlikely that differences in vitamin C play an important role. What are your sources? I found nothing on PubMed nor Google Scholar, though I did find that vitamin C is promoted to antivaxxers (eg, http://www.amcli.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/bmj-measles-filipp.pdf http://www.amcli.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/bmj-measles-f... ). You write "depend strongly on nutrition deficiencies", which my cited article describes as "In low to middle income countries where malnutrition is common, measles is often more severe and the case-fatality ratio can be as high as 25%". That's calorie deficient, but not specifically vitamin deficient.

taurath 5y ago

I think if you take the strictest possible quarantine and test paradigms and even those are failing, its certainly fair to call them ineffective.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
trompetenaccoun 5y ago
It would be to anyone thinking about this logically, but belief in the measures seems to have become like a religion to some. The craziest discussion I had about this was with a friend who insisted the number of administered tests for a given location hadn't risen in 2021. I showed them the official government stats but they still claimed there hadn't been a rise. When I sent them a graph they said they'd looked at it and it confirms there was no rise. The graph showed a clear rise, like line going straight up! How do you even deal with this? I can have more rational discussions with fundamental Christians.
GaylordTuring 5y ago
I don’t know. If a medicine cures 99 % of all cases (or even 10 %) would you say it’s ineffective? I’d say it’s effective, but depending on the your overall goal, not effective enough (if you’d like to call it ineffective, it would be ineffective with respect to a certain macro outcome, not with respect to individual cases). At some minuscule percentage (let’s say 0,1 %) I would probably be tempted to actually starting to call it ineffective.