8 ms·

I'm fully vax'd and boosted. I'll probably continue to get boosted in the future. All that said? I feel like the government did a really bad job communicatin

I'm fully vax'd and boosted. I'll probably continue to get boosted in the future. All that said? I feel like the government did a really bad job communicating who needs the booster and when. First, they gave vague recommendations to immunocompromised folks. They said everyone else probably didn't need it. Then they said well, ok for older folks. Then this new omni variant comes out and they're badgering everyone to get boosted NOW or your no longer considered fully vaccinated. There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start, and did a phased rollout of the booster just like they did with the original vaccine. Edit: My point is that they knew there was reduced efficacy of the vaccine back in September. They knew the general public would eventually need a vaccine. They should have had a plan to gradually get the population boosted. If they had, most who wanted a booster would have had one before omni existed.

sophacles 5y ago
So what you're saying is the government should have predicted the future perfectly, and given Post-Omicron guidelines months before it emerged?
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  The government said, at first, that nobody needed to go out and buy masks, because they won't do any good. And then the government said you had to wear a mask or you couldn't enter into buildings. Now, the reasoning for the former was that they were concerned about PPE supplies, but that doesn't change the fact they reversed themselves very shortly, and expected people to forget the earlier messaging. The government didn't need to be an oracle with a perfect track record, but I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that they should have been honest. If you can't see how the pandemic was used for political purposes, I don't know what to say.
  - thakoppno 5y ago
    > “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.” It seems to me from this excerpt of his email to a colleague on February 5, 2020, Fauci really did not think masks were effective initially.
    - larkost 5y ago
      This was the medical community's censuses at the time. Turns out now we know that this hinged on a few misunderstandings and generalizations, and have turned that corner. But at the time it was the best information we had: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
  - bluGill 5y ago
    It is the they don't do any good communication that is irresponsible. There was already evidence otherwise that they ignored, and the rest of the statement was based on zero evidence.
  - hooande 5y ago
    Everyone thought that covid spread via touch back then. remember all the hand sanitizer and UV lights? then we learned that it was mostly airborne This goes back to the comment you replied to. The government can't give perfect hindsight advice at the beginning of any situation. it seems like your complaint here is "science isn't perfect"
  - sophacles 5y ago
    I think you are reading way more into my response than I wrote. I literally rephrased a position specifically about the government's communication of booster shots in the form of a question highlighting the illogical portion of the position. * I have not made and continue to not make any statements regarding mask communication, nor about reports on reasoning for that. * I am not engaging in nor countering absurd conspiracy theories * I am not broadcasting my feelings and thoughts on political purposes and what I do or do not see to you, so I don't know why you think you are capable of surmising what I can and cannot see. * I do find hilarious how very angry you are that I pointed a logical inconsistency.
    - deltarholamda 5y ago
      Your response inferred something from the OP that was clearly never implied. Nobody expects perfect knowledge of the future, and suggesting the OP was asking for that is (charitably) a snarky way of pointing out a logical inconsistency. But pointing out the the messaging from the government has been, at best, muddled--and at worst, misleading, if not downright dishonest--you interpret as "anger"? I find that pretty disingenuous. You are again inferring that which is not implied.
      - deleted 5y ago
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- wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  Nope. The government knew the vaccines were getting less effective back in september. They knew everyone would eventually need a booster. If they had put in a plan to get that done, I wouldn't have had a problem. As things stood? The CDC basically said 'you should get a booster only if you're high risk'. They went back and forth over whether to recommend it to the general public for the longest time. This lead to a lot of confusion, and a lot of folks essentially shrugged and went on with their life. If they had been consistent with messaging a much higher percentage of the population would currently be boosted.
- will4274 5y ago
  I'd appreciate if the government could just predict the future as well as hacker news. It doesn't need to be perfect. Look, they're gonna tell us to get booster again in 2022. I know it. You probably know it. Everybody knows it. Why haven't the CDC said it?
ASinclair 5y ago
> There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start, and did a phased rollout of the booster just like they did with the original vaccine. Biden called for a booster dose for everyone in September. The CDC and the FDA didn't agree.
yupper32 5y ago
I still don't understand how people don't get that recommendations change. It's like two years in, how are people not getting how this works?
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Because when the recommendations change, it's usually a "we were wrong all along" change, not a "the recommendations were right before, but now circumstances have changed" change.
VeninVidiaVicii 5y ago
This is effectively a disconnect between science and public policy. Science teaches us to keep our minds open to new data, so we can make new conclusions as we go. People just seem to get pissed when public policy changes in light of new data, lending to the narrative that scientists don't know what they're talking about.
- millzlane 5y ago
  The fact that recent science can be proven wrong after more data come out seems to be some sort of "gotcha!" for them.
  - smegsicle 5y ago
    "Science" can't be wrong, just the interpretation. And if the popular interpreters are frequently wrong, they should be called out.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  I don't object to policy changes in light of new data, but do object to policy made based on preliminary data, knowing full well that we don't understand everything yet, and then changing every few months or even more often, and just shouting "SCIENCE!" if anyone questions any of it.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    What's the alternative to setting policy on preliminary data? Are you proposing something like "government should never react to anything until 12 months have passed since it started happening." So something like COVID just cannot be responded to initially?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - landemva 5y ago
      It has been nearly two years and government MSHA hasn't mandated anything to specifically change for workers. The inspectors did reduce the small group chats, which I suspect is going to be counter-productive for injury counts in the medium term. Someone senior in MSHA has big stones for not getting on the safety theater bandwagon like OSHA did.
haswell 5y ago
> There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start I think it's worth considering a different framing: > "There would have been so much less confusion if COVID variants and transmission/hospitalization/death rates remained consistent from the start" It's easy to call out the communication, and don't get me wrong, it surely could have been better. But I often see this sentiment without acknowledging that the communication problems are a symptom, and driven by a very unpredictable situation, and very appropriate changes in policy based on that evolving situation.
- azinman2 5y ago
  Exactly. It’s quite an unfair criticism, and it keeps being applied retroactively to thinks like masking, lockdowns, etc. It’s like people expect a government to have completely knowledge from day 1 of a new virus and all of its mutations across all of time. Throw in politicization of it, tons of non-mutual “facts” going around, a heap of anecdotes, and you’ve got a communications nightmare.
  - gattilorenz 5y ago
    > It’s like people expect a government to have completely knowledge from day 1 of a new virus and all of its mutations across all of time No, that's not what is being said. In the case of boosters, the communication (c|sh)ould have been "we're gonna give booster. For now we think only immunocompromised people will need them, but we can't really rule out other options. Further research will tell us whether other categories, or perhaps the whole population, could need it, although this does not seem the case at the moment." Of course there's multiple problems with this: you don't sound on top of things, media will extract the most definitive quote from it anyway, hard to imagine the worst case scenario, etc. But it does seem that most government are messing up the communication badly (either sounding very paternalistic, blaming the citizens, never showing uncertainty despite the situation, changing measures before the previous ones can show an effect, etc.), at least for what I would consider a good, mature way to communicate with citizens. I'm no expert, tho.
    - 5y ago
toast0 5y ago
> There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start. While that's true, I don't think it's reasonable unless, like a sibling suggested, the disease would be consistent from the start. What would be nice is if they contemplated and acknowledged that the recommendations would be changing. Rather than saying 'others don't need a booster', they should be saying 'at this time, based on current understanding, etc, others don't need a booster'. In some situations, they can probably suggest what conditions might cause a change in recommendations.
- detaro 5y ago
  > What would be nice is if they contemplated and acknowledged that the recommendations would be changing. But they do. E.g. go through https://web.archive.org/web/20210715000000*/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/booster-shot.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210715000000*/https://www.cdc...., it's always wrapped in "We are monitoring the situation. High-risk populations first. Recommendations will be adjusted as needed." disclaimers. But we have a strong tendency to only remember the short head-line version, even if we looked at the full statement at the time. And if you go by headlines or equivalent short news, it's likely you haven't seen the disclaimer, but good luck getting the details into headlines. It's a pattern that repeats over and over in discussions of this.
nerdponx 5y ago
I'll wait until the booster actually becomes specific to the current strain. Ideally I'd also like the vaccine to not make me sick for 2 days, since most other common vaccines don't (e.g. influenza). But maybe that's just not possible. Not having increased risk of heart inflammation and rare dangerous thromboses would be nice too, but then again it seems like Covid causes those anyway. So maybe we just need to update our base rates for those conditions and move on from the way things used to be. Plus, if I can still spread Covid and make grandma critically ill even after I have the booster, whereas I'm at super low risk for serious illness, is the booster even doing anything to reduce hospital utilization? I had what I think was omicron, and it seems like I don't really need a booster on top of it... or do I? The point is that I have no idea what the right thing to do is. I feel like there's no public health response in the USA anymore. The President is just telling people to f*cking "Google it", everyone seems to be either a paranoid wacko anti-vax Covid denier Bill-Gates-is-coming-for-your-body-fluids-and-children cultist or a "trust the science" cultist, and the big pharma companies (Pfizer, Moderna) seem to be just raking it in hand over fist with all these vaccine doses. Seems like everyone has to brush up on their statistics and start reading the research, because the news and government agencies just aren't worth a damn anymore when it comes to communicating. It seems that the Trump legacy of "abject societal dysfunction" is here to stay. </rant>
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  That's fine but the booster has shown that it likely incurs much longer term stability to immune resistance to all current strains that we know about, including omicron. If you look up the history of vaccinations you will see similar results and why some are carefully spaced apart at certain intervals as they train the human immune system
- ggreer 5y ago
  > I'll wait until the booster actually becomes specific to the current strain. By the time the Omicron-specific vaccines are approved by the various government health bureaucracies, Omicron will have run its course. Unless you want to live like a hermit for the next few months, it's probably best to get a booster and live your life. All of my friends & acquaintances who've contracted omicron have had a booster shot and all of them said that the worst part was isolating. Their symptoms were extremely mild- just a sore throat or cough for a few days. It would be nice if one could choose a lower dose of vaccine. The second shot (and booster) of Pfizer were absolutely brutal for me. A baby aspirin version of the vaccine would provide most of the protection without the days of debilitating pain and fever. When I got my booster I asked the guy giving the shot if he could inject a partial dose because my previous reaction was so bad. He just laughed, emptied the syringe into my arm, and told me to drink lots of water. :(
deleted 5y ago
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majormajor 5y ago
Consistent messaging from the start in a situation where information and knowledge is very limited in the start = not learning. The problem here is that we have a lot of internalization of changing your mind is bad in the political arena. "Flip flopping," etc. Inquiry is discouraged. The article is actually much more interesting because it's about how views are changing differently for different groups even inside the same partisan grouping. It shows that conversation and messaging is an ongoing thing.
- Jiro 5y ago
  Changing your mind because of new evidence is good. Changing your mind because the evidence is pretty much the same, but the previous conclusion has become inconvenient for you, is not good.
ren_engineer 5y ago
the bigger problem is that their initial selling point for the vaccine was "get your 2 shots and everything goes back to normal". Many people grudgingly got it despite some hesitancy and now have even less trust of the government now that the goal posts are shifting yet again
- bluGill 5y ago
  If enough people had got their shots worldwide that would have worked. However enough is at least 80% of the world population, and maybe as much as 95%. There wasn't enough supply in the world. If the 95% number is correct kids young enough still are not approved to reach that, mutations keep making the number higher, though we might need to get a new vaccine that covers new variants.
  - ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
    >If enough people had got their shots worldwide that would have worked. One of the theories on the origin of omicron seems to be that it evolved in animals for a while before jumping back to humans (the weirdness being that it's not evolved from Delta, and it has a number of mutations all at once). [1] And even if it's not the origin of this variant, it could easily be the origin of a future variant (that's why they're considering it). And it's quite unlikely we could vaccinate every animal on the planet, so this idea that if we had just gotten all our shots this variant would have never happened is pretty ridiculous. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-did-omicron-covid-variant-evolve-animals-humans-2021-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-did-omicron-covid-varian...
    - bluGill 5y ago
      If we had vaccinated soon/fast enough we could have prevented the to animal transmission in the first place
      - elihu 5y ago
        I don't think that's a realistic expectation. If millions of people have a highly infectious disease, then it's very likely to spread to any wildlife (that aren't naturally immune) in the same general area as those infected humans. By the time the vaccines were available, Covid was basically everywhere.
missblit 5y ago
> Then this new omni variant comes out and they're badgering everyone to get boosted NOW or your no longer considered fully vaccinated. Currently the CDC still considers someone fully vaccinated after the two dose series. As far as I can tell there aren't any booster requirements at the national level.
deleted 5y ago
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mschuster91 5y ago
> There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start, and did a phased rollout of the booster just like they did with the original vaccine. The problem is: science is continuous discovery of and adaptation to new facts. In a society where significant amounts of the population have such a low respect for science that they seriously believe that Earth was created by God 6000 years ago, it is obvious that these people literally cannot grasp or cope with the fact that new discoveries come in timespans of single-digit weeks... Omicron was discovered at the end of November, barely a month later cases worldwide reached Delta records and now they went through the roofs. I agree that there have been communication fuck-ups by politicians and the media, but basic science education in schools (and scientist staff in mass media) would have lessened the impact dramatically.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I think the CDC did as good as you could when you design by committee. I didn't have any trouble following their recommendations or logic. It was an ongoing problem with incomplete knowledge on their part. It's certainly better than what Fox News was spewing. Science is ugly, but it is self-correcting, Fox and antivax people are not. At least that's how I see it.

sophacles 5y ago

So what you're saying is the government should have predicted the future perfectly, and given Post-Omicron guidelines months before it emerged?

deltarholamda 5y ago
The government said, at first, that nobody needed to go out and buy masks, because they won't do any good. And then the government said you had to wear a mask or you couldn't enter into buildings. Now, the reasoning for the former was that they were concerned about PPE supplies, but that doesn't change the fact they reversed themselves very shortly, and expected people to forget the earlier messaging. The government didn't need to be an oracle with a perfect track record, but I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that they should have been honest. If you can't see how the pandemic was used for political purposes, I don't know what to say.
- thakoppno 5y ago
  > “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.” It seems to me from this excerpt of his email to a colleague on February 5, 2020, Fauci really did not think masks were effective initially.
  - larkost 5y ago
    This was the medical community's censuses at the time. Turns out now we know that this hinged on a few misunderstandings and generalizations, and have turned that corner. But at the time it was the best information we had: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
- bluGill 5y ago
  It is the they don't do any good communication that is irresponsible. There was already evidence otherwise that they ignored, and the rest of the statement was based on zero evidence.
- hooande 5y ago
  Everyone thought that covid spread via touch back then. remember all the hand sanitizer and UV lights? then we learned that it was mostly airborne This goes back to the comment you replied to. The government can't give perfect hindsight advice at the beginning of any situation. it seems like your complaint here is "science isn't perfect"
- sophacles 5y ago
  I think you are reading way more into my response than I wrote. I literally rephrased a position specifically about the government's communication of booster shots in the form of a question highlighting the illogical portion of the position. * I have not made and continue to not make any statements regarding mask communication, nor about reports on reasoning for that. * I am not engaging in nor countering absurd conspiracy theories * I am not broadcasting my feelings and thoughts on political purposes and what I do or do not see to you, so I don't know why you think you are capable of surmising what I can and cannot see. * I do find hilarious how very angry you are that I pointed a logical inconsistency.
  - deltarholamda 5y ago
    Your response inferred something from the OP that was clearly never implied. Nobody expects perfect knowledge of the future, and suggesting the OP was asking for that is (charitably) a snarky way of pointing out a logical inconsistency. But pointing out the the messaging from the government has been, at best, muddled--and at worst, misleading, if not downright dishonest--you interpret as "anger"? I find that pretty disingenuous. You are again inferring that which is not implied.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
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wing-_-nuts 5y ago
Nope. The government knew the vaccines were getting less effective back in september. They knew everyone would eventually need a booster. If they had put in a plan to get that done, I wouldn't have had a problem. As things stood? The CDC basically said 'you should get a booster only if you're high risk'. They went back and forth over whether to recommend it to the general public for the longest time. This lead to a lot of confusion, and a lot of folks essentially shrugged and went on with their life. If they had been consistent with messaging a much higher percentage of the population would currently be boosted.
will4274 5y ago
I'd appreciate if the government could just predict the future as well as hacker news. It doesn't need to be perfect. Look, they're gonna tell us to get booster again in 2022. I know it. You probably know it. Everybody knows it. Why haven't the CDC said it?

ASinclair 5y ago

yupper32 5y ago

I still don't understand how people don't get that recommendations change. It's like two years in, how are people not getting how this works?

josephcsible 5y ago
Because when the recommendations change, it's usually a "we were wrong all along" change, not a "the recommendations were right before, but now circumstances have changed" change.

VeninVidiaVicii 5y ago

This is effectively a disconnect between science and public policy. Science teaches us to keep our minds open to new data, so we can make new conclusions as we go. People just seem to get pissed when public policy changes in light of new data, lending to the narrative that scientists don't know what they're talking about.

millzlane 5y ago
The fact that recent science can be proven wrong after more data come out seems to be some sort of "gotcha!" for them.
- smegsicle 5y ago
  "Science" can't be wrong, just the interpretation. And if the popular interpreters are frequently wrong, they should be called out.
throwawayboise 5y ago
I don't object to policy changes in light of new data, but do object to policy made based on preliminary data, knowing full well that we don't understand everything yet, and then changing every few months or even more often, and just shouting "SCIENCE!" if anyone questions any of it.
- majormajor 5y ago
  What's the alternative to setting policy on preliminary data? Are you proposing something like "government should never react to anything until 12 months have passed since it started happening." So something like COVID just cannot be responded to initially?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - landemva 5y ago
    It has been nearly two years and government MSHA hasn't mandated anything to specifically change for workers. The inspectors did reduce the small group chats, which I suspect is going to be counter-productive for injury counts in the medium term. Someone senior in MSHA has big stones for not getting on the safety theater bandwagon like OSHA did.

haswell 5y ago

> There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start I think it's worth considering a different framing: > "There would have been so much less confusion if COVID variants and transmission/hospitalization/death rates remained consistent from the start" It's easy to call out the communication, and don't get me wrong, it surely could have been better. But I often see this sentiment without acknowledging that the communication problems are a symptom, and driven by a very unpredictable situation, and very appropriate changes in policy based on that evolving situation.

azinman2 5y ago
Exactly. It’s quite an unfair criticism, and it keeps being applied retroactively to thinks like masking, lockdowns, etc. It’s like people expect a government to have completely knowledge from day 1 of a new virus and all of its mutations across all of time. Throw in politicization of it, tons of non-mutual “facts” going around, a heap of anecdotes, and you’ve got a communications nightmare.
- gattilorenz 5y ago
  > It’s like people expect a government to have completely knowledge from day 1 of a new virus and all of its mutations across all of time No, that's not what is being said. In the case of boosters, the communication (c|sh)ould have been "we're gonna give booster. For now we think only immunocompromised people will need them, but we can't really rule out other options. Further research will tell us whether other categories, or perhaps the whole population, could need it, although this does not seem the case at the moment." Of course there's multiple problems with this: you don't sound on top of things, media will extract the most definitive quote from it anyway, hard to imagine the worst case scenario, etc. But it does seem that most government are messing up the communication badly (either sounding very paternalistic, blaming the citizens, never showing uncertainty despite the situation, changing measures before the previous ones can show an effect, etc.), at least for what I would consider a good, mature way to communicate with citizens. I'm no expert, tho.
  - 5y ago

toast0 5y ago

> There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start. While that's true, I don't think it's reasonable unless, like a sibling suggested, the disease would be consistent from the start. What would be nice is if they contemplated and acknowledged that the recommendations would be changing. Rather than saying 'others don't need a booster', they should be saying 'at this time, based on current understanding, etc, others don't need a booster'. In some situations, they can probably suggest what conditions might cause a change in recommendations.

detaro 5y ago
> What would be nice is if they contemplated and acknowledged that the recommendations would be changing. But they do. E.g. go through https://web.archive.org/web/20210715000000*/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/booster-shot.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210715000000*/https://www.cdc...., it's always wrapped in "We are monitoring the situation. High-risk populations first. Recommendations will be adjusted as needed." disclaimers. But we have a strong tendency to only remember the short head-line version, even if we looked at the full statement at the time. And if you go by headlines or equivalent short news, it's likely you haven't seen the disclaimer, but good luck getting the details into headlines. It's a pattern that repeats over and over in discussions of this.

nerdponx 5y ago

I'll wait until the booster actually becomes specific to the current strain. Ideally I'd also like the vaccine to not make me sick for 2 days, since most other common vaccines don't (e.g. influenza). But maybe that's just not possible. Not having increased risk of heart inflammation and rare dangerous thromboses would be nice too, but then again it seems like Covid causes those anyway. So maybe we just need to update our base rates for those conditions and move on from the way things used to be. Plus, if I can still spread Covid and make grandma critically ill even after I have the booster, whereas I'm at super low risk for serious illness, is the booster even doing anything to reduce hospital utilization? I had what I think was omicron, and it seems like I don't really need a booster on top of it... or do I? The point is that I have no idea what the right thing to do is. I feel like there's no public health response in the USA anymore. The President is just telling people to f*cking "Google it", everyone seems to be either a paranoid wacko anti-vax Covid denier Bill-Gates-is-coming-for-your-body-fluids-and-children cultist or a "trust the science" cultist, and the big pharma companies (Pfizer, Moderna) seem to be just raking it in hand over fist with all these vaccine doses. Seems like everyone has to brush up on their statistics and start reading the research, because the news and government agencies just aren't worth a damn anymore when it comes to communicating. It seems that the Trump legacy of "abject societal dysfunction" is here to stay. </rant>

stjohnswarts 5y ago
That's fine but the booster has shown that it likely incurs much longer term stability to immune resistance to all current strains that we know about, including omicron. If you look up the history of vaccinations you will see similar results and why some are carefully spaced apart at certain intervals as they train the human immune system
ggreer 5y ago
> I'll wait until the booster actually becomes specific to the current strain. By the time the Omicron-specific vaccines are approved by the various government health bureaucracies, Omicron will have run its course. Unless you want to live like a hermit for the next few months, it's probably best to get a booster and live your life. All of my friends & acquaintances who've contracted omicron have had a booster shot and all of them said that the worst part was isolating. Their symptoms were extremely mild- just a sore throat or cough for a few days. It would be nice if one could choose a lower dose of vaccine. The second shot (and booster) of Pfizer were absolutely brutal for me. A baby aspirin version of the vaccine would provide most of the protection without the days of debilitating pain and fever. When I got my booster I asked the guy giving the shot if he could inject a partial dose because my previous reaction was so bad. He just laughed, emptied the syringe into my arm, and told me to drink lots of water. :(

deleted 5y ago

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majormajor 5y ago

Consistent messaging from the start in a situation where information and knowledge is very limited in the start = not learning. The problem here is that we have a lot of internalization of changing your mind is bad in the political arena. "Flip flopping," etc. Inquiry is discouraged. The article is actually much more interesting because it's about how views are changing differently for different groups even inside the same partisan grouping. It shows that conversation and messaging is an ongoing thing.

Jiro 5y ago
Changing your mind because of new evidence is good. Changing your mind because the evidence is pretty much the same, but the previous conclusion has become inconvenient for you, is not good.

ren_engineer 5y ago

the bigger problem is that their initial selling point for the vaccine was "get your 2 shots and everything goes back to normal". Many people grudgingly got it despite some hesitancy and now have even less trust of the government now that the goal posts are shifting yet again

bluGill 5y ago
If enough people had got their shots worldwide that would have worked. However enough is at least 80% of the world population, and maybe as much as 95%. There wasn't enough supply in the world. If the 95% number is correct kids young enough still are not approved to reach that, mutations keep making the number higher, though we might need to get a new vaccine that covers new variants.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
  >If enough people had got their shots worldwide that would have worked. One of the theories on the origin of omicron seems to be that it evolved in animals for a while before jumping back to humans (the weirdness being that it's not evolved from Delta, and it has a number of mutations all at once). [1] And even if it's not the origin of this variant, it could easily be the origin of a future variant (that's why they're considering it). And it's quite unlikely we could vaccinate every animal on the planet, so this idea that if we had just gotten all our shots this variant would have never happened is pretty ridiculous. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-did-omicron-covid-variant-evolve-animals-humans-2021-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-did-omicron-covid-varian...
  - bluGill 5y ago
    If we had vaccinated soon/fast enough we could have prevented the to animal transmission in the first place
    - elihu 5y ago
      I don't think that's a realistic expectation. If millions of people have a highly infectious disease, then it's very likely to spread to any wildlife (that aren't naturally immune) in the same general area as those infected humans. By the time the vaccines were available, Covid was basically everywhere.

missblit 5y ago

> Then this new omni variant comes out and they're badgering everyone to get boosted NOW or your no longer considered fully vaccinated. Currently the CDC still considers someone fully vaccinated after the two dose series. As far as I can tell there aren't any booster requirements at the national level.

deleted 5y ago

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mschuster91 5y ago

> There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start, and did a phased rollout of the booster just like they did with the original vaccine. The problem is: science is continuous discovery of and adaptation to new facts. In a society where significant amounts of the population have such a low respect for science that they seriously believe that Earth was created by God 6000 years ago, it is obvious that these people literally cannot grasp or cope with the fact that new discoveries come in timespans of single-digit weeks... Omicron was discovered at the end of November, barely a month later cases worldwide reached Delta records and now they went through the roofs. I agree that there have been communication fuck-ups by politicians and the media, but basic science education in schools (and scientist staff in mass media) would have lessened the impact dramatically.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

I think the CDC did as good as you could when you design by committee. I didn't have any trouble following their recommendations or logic. It was an ongoing problem with incomplete knowledge on their part. It's certainly better than what Fox News was spewing. Science is ugly, but it is self-correcting, Fox and antivax people are not. At least that's how I see it.