3 ms·

It's amazing to me that this article presents the "hard choices" as mostly "should we trade off harming children against harming adults?", rather than "should w

by mithr 5y ago

It's amazing to me that this article presents the "hard choices" as mostly "should we trade off harming children against harming adults?", rather than "should we trade off not harming anyone against people's freedom to choose to go about their normal lives while unvaccinated?" and only mentions the unvaccinated offhandedly. It's less that the US has chosen to prioritize adults over children and thus children are suffering, and more that the US has chosen to prioritize the freedom to be selfish and ignorant over both adults and children, and thus everyone is suffering. Make vaccination a requirement for (both foreign and) domestic flights. Make it a requirement for attending any public event. Make it a requirement for eating at any restaurant. Make it a requirement for parents who want to send their kids to school. Make a process whereby those relatively few adults who legitimately can't be vaccinated due to e.g. medical reasons have an exception (other countries have already done so). Make the willfully unvaccinated have to stay at home because society is closed to those who care more about making a point about "freedom" than about harming everyone else in it.

shmel 5y ago
Will it even help? In what country did it help? France mandated vaxx passports literally everywhere (pretty much like you suggest) and yet they reported, what, 270k cases just today? Why do you expect a different result in the US from the very same policy?
- mathgorges 5y ago
  I believe that the comment you're replying to is meaning to imply that remote learning mandates are primarily to protect the unvaccinated (who are at a considerably greater risk of death due to COVID complications). That is to say: if there were more vaccinated people there would be less need for remote learning since the risk calculus would be very different. (My science isn't strong enough to take a stance here, I'm merely providing my understanding of the comment you're replying to)
- mithr 5y ago
  I don't know what exactly France did and why it does or doesn't work for them, but the article was less about the net number of new cases, and more about the impact of shutting down schools/society. We know that, if you're vaccinated, you're both less likely to get COVID (not necessarily unlikely, with the new super-infectious variants, but less likely), and once you have it, are less likely to have a high viral load and thus spread it, especially if you don't have symptoms. If we knew that, for example, all of the diners and all of the staff at a restaurant were fully vaccinated, then the likelihood of catching COVID at that restaurant would be drastically reduced -- we'd still be exposed to the odd symptomless-but-contagious person as well as to the occasional person who has symptoms but decided to dine out anyhow, but it'd be very different math than "anyone working or dining here may not be vaccinated in the first place and may have attended an unvaxxed 300-person indoor wedding two days ago". Same with schools: today, you can be an anti-vaxxer and send your kids to the same school as mine. Being an anti-vaxxer not only means that you're not vaccinated, but also that you're more likely to discount the entire pandemic and spend time in large gatherings with other unvaccinated people. And of course your children go with you. And you pick them up from school, and go to their basketball practice, and attend meetings. By allowing willfully-unvaccinated people to seamlessly mingle with the rest of society, we're increasing everyone's risk. No one claims that by doing this we'll bring the number of cases down to zero, that's not actually the point. The point is that we'll be far less likely to catch COVID at any regulated place.
  - shmel 5y ago
    It is funny how much you are talking math. Can you put any hard numbers on your intuition about "risk drastically reduced"? Or is it your own psychological feeling of safety similar to the one when people are scared of airplanes, but don't think twice before driving? Here is a recent omicron case study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021v1.full-text https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021v... Two thirds of the gathering was infected. Everybody, every single one of them, was triple-vaccinated and negative tested beforehand. And yet, here we are. This is in line with previous superspreader events back in early 2020. At this point I am highly skeptical that there is any reduced transmission with current outdated vaccines and new variants we have. It is difficult to know now if these vaccines prevented the transmission of the original strain. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, it doesn't matter now, it is extinct anyway. But the data shows that vaccines' effect on transmission right now is fairly minimal.

by mithr 5y ago

shmel 5y ago

Will it even help? In what country did it help? France mandated vaxx passports literally everywhere (pretty much like you suggest) and yet they reported, what, 270k cases just today? Why do you expect a different result in the US from the very same policy?

mathgorges 5y ago
I believe that the comment you're replying to is meaning to imply that remote learning mandates are primarily to protect the unvaccinated (who are at a considerably greater risk of death due to COVID complications). That is to say: if there were more vaccinated people there would be less need for remote learning since the risk calculus would be very different. (My science isn't strong enough to take a stance here, I'm merely providing my understanding of the comment you're replying to)
mithr 5y ago
I don't know what exactly France did and why it does or doesn't work for them, but the article was less about the net number of new cases, and more about the impact of shutting down schools/society. We know that, if you're vaccinated, you're both less likely to get COVID (not necessarily unlikely, with the new super-infectious variants, but less likely), and once you have it, are less likely to have a high viral load and thus spread it, especially if you don't have symptoms. If we knew that, for example, all of the diners and all of the staff at a restaurant were fully vaccinated, then the likelihood of catching COVID at that restaurant would be drastically reduced -- we'd still be exposed to the odd symptomless-but-contagious person as well as to the occasional person who has symptoms but decided to dine out anyhow, but it'd be very different math than "anyone working or dining here may not be vaccinated in the first place and may have attended an unvaxxed 300-person indoor wedding two days ago". Same with schools: today, you can be an anti-vaxxer and send your kids to the same school as mine. Being an anti-vaxxer not only means that you're not vaccinated, but also that you're more likely to discount the entire pandemic and spend time in large gatherings with other unvaccinated people. And of course your children go with you. And you pick them up from school, and go to their basketball practice, and attend meetings. By allowing willfully-unvaccinated people to seamlessly mingle with the rest of society, we're increasing everyone's risk. No one claims that by doing this we'll bring the number of cases down to zero, that's not actually the point. The point is that we'll be far less likely to catch COVID at any regulated place.
- shmel 5y ago
  It is funny how much you are talking math. Can you put any hard numbers on your intuition about "risk drastically reduced"? Or is it your own psychological feeling of safety similar to the one when people are scared of airplanes, but don't think twice before driving? Here is a recent omicron case study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021v1.full-text https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021v... Two thirds of the gathering was infected. Everybody, every single one of them, was triple-vaccinated and negative tested beforehand. And yet, here we are. This is in line with previous superspreader events back in early 2020. At this point I am highly skeptical that there is any reduced transmission with current outdated vaccines and new variants we have. It is difficult to know now if these vaccines prevented the transmission of the original strain. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, it doesn't matter now, it is extinct anyway. But the data shows that vaccines' effect on transmission right now is fairly minimal.