13 ms·

> There were plenty of knowledgeable people saying all along that sterilizing nutralizing immunity in the mucosa was unlikely to be achievable for a vaccine aga

by ssl232 5y ago

> There were plenty of knowledgeable people saying all along that sterilizing nutralizing immunity in the mucosa was unlikely to be achievable for a vaccine against a respiratory virus that most commonly had no viremic phase, particularly as a shot given in the arm. You are absolutely right, this has been my experience too. Pointing out what you did about (lack of) sterilising and (importance of) mucosal immunity usually got you downvoted here up until recently. It doesn't matter what your political persuasion is (I am, or at least I was, going into the pandemic, a left liberal), the idea that the vaccines would end the pandemic if only enough people got 1, 2, 3 or more doses was gaslighting from the beginning, probably arising from flippant remarks from politicians when asked for target dates to lift lockdown restrictions - "when X% are vaccinated!". And the idea that this was never what was being said about them this time last year is also gaslighting that's happening right now. The problem is that this is a very nuanced subject. Everyone thinks they know what's going on, because they've been told it's simple: get vaccinated/boosted, work from home and do as we say and this will all be over. Much of the data being used to justify this was one or more of badly collected, badly analysed or badly interpreted by dishonest politicians, journalists, scientists and members of the public pushing their own (or their bosses') agendas. Instead of opponents' arguments being heard and countered in public ("sunlight is the best disinfectant"), they have been deplatformed under the auspices of "public safety". Scientists have lost their jobs for saying something to counter the narrative - it has become illegal to disagree with the scientists the politicians listen to, under punishment of losing your livelihood. It has been a total shitshow that has exposed how corrupt the whole system is. It has made me quite depressed at how little we've apparently learned since the last century. I thought we were living in the age of science, but what we have right now is far, far from it; maybe we should call it the age of misinformation - driven by humans' psychological maladaptation to their own incredible invention, the internet.

spookthesunset 5y ago
Couldn't have said it better. When I had multiple smart people I knew in real life yelling what amounts to word salad at me about how I'm so misguided and horrible for asking basic questions about the data... ...that is when I knew this whole thing was gonna last a long time and devolve into a complete shitshow. If people were allowed to express critical opinions and the general public was made aware of the actual numbers regarding covid risk we would have never done any of the things we did over the last two years. These anointed "experts" still have not told people to chill the fuck out about covid and children. We have two years of publicly available data saying they are at virtually no risk. Yet the CDC and Fauci both act like covid is some kind of grave danger to children. Dig deep enough into most of the pro-"what we've done"'s arguments and they are nothing more than thinly disguised appeals to authority.
- qsdf38100 5y ago
  I don’t get it, there was some hope that vaccines could end the pandemic. They didn’t. But they still help, at least by making people much less likely to die. Is there something to be mad at? Hell, even if they ended up not helping much, I wouldn’t be mad at governments for trying. I must be missing something.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    Nobodies pissed at the government for making vaccines available, they are pissed that they are having their livelihoods threatened based on false premises.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    Doesn't matter if the pandemic ended or not. Society (or at least the politicians) chose to regress. The virus is a virus. It doesn't tell us how to react to it. We do. Many states didn't regress during delta. They kept calm and carried on with normal. Only some states decided to regress. And the outcomes are almost identical--in the same ballpark at least.
    - altcognito 5y ago
      I’m always amused by mask mandates as regressing and “doing nothing for public health” as keeping calm.
      - spookthesunset 5y ago
        Mask mandates say “vaccines dont work” and “stay scared”. They are dehumanizing. Besides it doesn’t matter what you think about masks. The fact that many people resent wearing them is reason enough to rethink forcing people to wear them. We do live in society and not everybody considers Covid the only problem in existence. Especially post vaccine. Maybe people want to move on? Mayne those people have incredibly valid reasons for they wish? Maybe the government should respect that?
jacquesm 5y ago
> I am, or at least I was, going into the pandemic, a left liberal What's that got to do with it?
- libraryatnight 5y ago
  It certainly undermines the "Check out how rational I am" veneer this person is peddling. I also don't understand the overall argument - is the anger that someone out there thinks they're more protected via vaccine than they are? The message that I think most lay people that are pro-vaccine have in their heads, at least those in my social circle, is merely that they help. They reduce the risk of infection and if you get infected they reduce the chance of hospitalization/death. Those things are true. But the gp commenter seems to want to frame the pro-vaccine as being duped idiots. That's not accurate. Their comments have the energy of "Vaccines work, but not the way you think, so vaccination efforts are unnecessary" without saying it outright.
lamontcg 5y ago
> they've been told it's simple: get vaccinated/boosted It is that simple. 90% of the people in the hospitals are unvaccinated still. Cut the unvaccinated fraction of the population down by 1/3 and you cut the hospitalization rate for the next wave by roughly 1/3. Instead people are doing T-cells/B-cells and affinity maturation the hard slow way. If we had a 100% vaccination rate we'd be done. Don't know why everyone so desperately needs to look for counterintuitive ways to approach the very simple problem that when there's a global pandemic you mitigate it with vaccination. Any other result is intellectuals thinking too hard to try to impress themselves and probably missing basic facts in the process.
- jdrc 5y ago
  in my country the official figure is that "90% of hospitalized are unvaccinated or vaccinated without a booster". this certainly sounds like a doctored phrase and it dilutes trust to the medical system.
  - renaudg 5y ago
    It's simply accurate, and reflects the dramatic difference in vaccine efficacy between 2 and 3 doses (or rather, between a recent or more distant dose)
    - jdrc 5y ago
      The problem with that narrative is that it absolves responsibility for further action by pretending that the vaccines are the best we can do about this pandemic. It becomes a show and that's not good
- peteradio 5y ago
  > 90% of the people in the hospitals are unvaccinated still. Where is this true?
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    New York City: https://twitter.com/DougHenwood/status/1486807706954567685 https://twitter.com/DougHenwood/status/1486807706954567685 Pennsylvania: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/about-90percent-of-covid-19-patients-in-some-of-pas-hardest-hit-hospitals-are-unvaccinated/ar-AASxUzL https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/about-90percent-of-... Kansas City: https://www.newspressnow.com/news/national_news/coronavirus/covid-patients-overwhelm-kansas-city-hospitals-heres-how-many-arent-vaccinated/article_69e9479b-a43c-5a0c-b8ce-7c1ed784eae8.html https://www.newspressnow.com/news/national_news/coronavirus/... Missouri: https://www.newspressnow.com/news/regional_news/central_missouri/hospitals-seeing-worst-cases-of-covid-19-in-unvaccinated-as-omicron-surge-presses-on/article_88893a74-794c-54ef-9c35-198068f0a608.html https://www.newspressnow.com/news/regional_news/central_miss... Arizona over 80%: https://ktar.com/story/4856002/banner-health-leader-over-80-of-those-hospitalized-with-covid-are-unvaccinated/ https://ktar.com/story/4856002/banner-health-leader-over-80-... Boosters 90% effective against hospitalization with Omicron: https://fox8.com/news/coronavirus/cdc-boosters-90-effective-against-hospitalization-from-omicron/ https://fox8.com/news/coronavirus/cdc-boosters-90-effective-...
falamboram 5y ago
The immune system is nuanced, the question of whether you should get vaccinated is not. In no way does this article say you shouldn't get vaccinated.
drran 5y ago
The epidemic will be over when COVID-19 IFR will drop below acceptable level, even when SARS-CoV-2 will continue to circulate. I.e. when covid will be like regular fly, nobody will worry about it anymore. Is it wrong? There are two main strategies to achieve low death rate: 1) Natural — let weak people die. Cheap. 2) Semi-natural — let weak people to be infected, then try to rescue them. Costly. 3) Supportive — support weak people with vaccines, to help them survive. Costly, but cheaper than (2). Which one you prefer?
weq 5y ago
Amen. I havnt watched TV since the 2017 elections. Ive missed on everything including bushfires, natural disasters, pandemics, and capitalism. I can see clearly how the system works. I said i wouldnt watch a single news report (including Covid) until it was a "highlight reel" and man o man has mainstream society lost its glammer. its a machine, where the capitalists and poilticans jockie for your money using the power you can give them against you while smiling into the camera and saying they love you. FAANG you up the ass at every chance they get. Even the celebs are pawns, reliant on the ad companies for there bread and butter. ive never been free-er. I had my covid (health issues) 15yrs ago and realised that day that life was precious and u should not take it for granted. I quite everything, travelled the world, and experienced modern society in all its wonder. I met people everyday who wished they could quit and travel like me and i told them, you can. Unfortunately humans are not capable of infinite growth in a world where nature is being processed into profit in a constant grasp of more and more. Nature imposes its own limits. Virus are part of the moderisation game. They are a cost of buisness. Like our parents generation where the WW1/2 and The depression scared and and shaped them (and created this system), our children will be scared by the unresolved trauma their parents experienced during Covid.

by ssl232 5y ago

spookthesunset 5y ago

Couldn't have said it better. When I had multiple smart people I knew in real life yelling what amounts to word salad at me about how I'm so misguided and horrible for asking basic questions about the data... ...that is when I knew this whole thing was gonna last a long time and devolve into a complete shitshow. If people were allowed to express critical opinions and the general public was made aware of the actual numbers regarding covid risk we would have never done any of the things we did over the last two years. These anointed "experts" still have not told people to chill the fuck out about covid and children. We have two years of publicly available data saying they are at virtually no risk. Yet the CDC and Fauci both act like covid is some kind of grave danger to children. Dig deep enough into most of the pro-"what we've done"'s arguments and they are nothing more than thinly disguised appeals to authority.

qsdf38100 5y ago
I don’t get it, there was some hope that vaccines could end the pandemic. They didn’t. But they still help, at least by making people much less likely to die. Is there something to be mad at? Hell, even if they ended up not helping much, I wouldn’t be mad at governments for trying. I must be missing something.
- peteradio 5y ago
  Nobodies pissed at the government for making vaccines available, they are pissed that they are having their livelihoods threatened based on false premises.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  Doesn't matter if the pandemic ended or not. Society (or at least the politicians) chose to regress. The virus is a virus. It doesn't tell us how to react to it. We do. Many states didn't regress during delta. They kept calm and carried on with normal. Only some states decided to regress. And the outcomes are almost identical--in the same ballpark at least.
  - altcognito 5y ago
    I’m always amused by mask mandates as regressing and “doing nothing for public health” as keeping calm.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      Mask mandates say “vaccines dont work” and “stay scared”. They are dehumanizing. Besides it doesn’t matter what you think about masks. The fact that many people resent wearing them is reason enough to rethink forcing people to wear them. We do live in society and not everybody considers Covid the only problem in existence. Especially post vaccine. Maybe people want to move on? Mayne those people have incredibly valid reasons for they wish? Maybe the government should respect that?

jacquesm 5y ago

> I am, or at least I was, going into the pandemic, a left liberal What's that got to do with it?

libraryatnight 5y ago
It certainly undermines the "Check out how rational I am" veneer this person is peddling. I also don't understand the overall argument - is the anger that someone out there thinks they're more protected via vaccine than they are? The message that I think most lay people that are pro-vaccine have in their heads, at least those in my social circle, is merely that they help. They reduce the risk of infection and if you get infected they reduce the chance of hospitalization/death. Those things are true. But the gp commenter seems to want to frame the pro-vaccine as being duped idiots. That's not accurate. Their comments have the energy of "Vaccines work, but not the way you think, so vaccination efforts are unnecessary" without saying it outright.

lamontcg 5y ago

> they've been told it's simple: get vaccinated/boosted It is that simple. 90% of the people in the hospitals are unvaccinated still. Cut the unvaccinated fraction of the population down by 1/3 and you cut the hospitalization rate for the next wave by roughly 1/3. Instead people are doing T-cells/B-cells and affinity maturation the hard slow way. If we had a 100% vaccination rate we'd be done. Don't know why everyone so desperately needs to look for counterintuitive ways to approach the very simple problem that when there's a global pandemic you mitigate it with vaccination. Any other result is intellectuals thinking too hard to try to impress themselves and probably missing basic facts in the process.

jdrc 5y ago
in my country the official figure is that "90% of hospitalized are unvaccinated or vaccinated without a booster". this certainly sounds like a doctored phrase and it dilutes trust to the medical system.
- renaudg 5y ago
  It's simply accurate, and reflects the dramatic difference in vaccine efficacy between 2 and 3 doses (or rather, between a recent or more distant dose)
  - jdrc 5y ago
    The problem with that narrative is that it absolves responsibility for further action by pretending that the vaccines are the best we can do about this pandemic. It becomes a show and that's not good
peteradio 5y ago
> 90% of the people in the hospitals are unvaccinated still. Where is this true?
- lamontcg 5y ago
  New York City: https://twitter.com/DougHenwood/status/1486807706954567685 https://twitter.com/DougHenwood/status/1486807706954567685 Pennsylvania: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/about-90percent-of-covid-19-patients-in-some-of-pas-hardest-hit-hospitals-are-unvaccinated/ar-AASxUzL https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/about-90percent-of-... Kansas City: https://www.newspressnow.com/news/national_news/coronavirus/covid-patients-overwhelm-kansas-city-hospitals-heres-how-many-arent-vaccinated/article_69e9479b-a43c-5a0c-b8ce-7c1ed784eae8.html https://www.newspressnow.com/news/national_news/coronavirus/... Missouri: https://www.newspressnow.com/news/regional_news/central_missouri/hospitals-seeing-worst-cases-of-covid-19-in-unvaccinated-as-omicron-surge-presses-on/article_88893a74-794c-54ef-9c35-198068f0a608.html https://www.newspressnow.com/news/regional_news/central_miss... Arizona over 80%: https://ktar.com/story/4856002/banner-health-leader-over-80-of-those-hospitalized-with-covid-are-unvaccinated/ https://ktar.com/story/4856002/banner-health-leader-over-80-... Boosters 90% effective against hospitalization with Omicron: https://fox8.com/news/coronavirus/cdc-boosters-90-effective-against-hospitalization-from-omicron/ https://fox8.com/news/coronavirus/cdc-boosters-90-effective-...

falamboram 5y ago

The immune system is nuanced, the question of whether you should get vaccinated is not. In no way does this article say you shouldn't get vaccinated.

drran 5y ago

The epidemic will be over when COVID-19 IFR will drop below acceptable level, even when SARS-CoV-2 will continue to circulate. I.e. when covid will be like regular fly, nobody will worry about it anymore. Is it wrong? There are two main strategies to achieve low death rate: 1) Natural — let weak people die. Cheap. 2) Semi-natural — let weak people to be infected, then try to rescue them. Costly. 3) Supportive — support weak people with vaccines, to help them survive. Costly, but cheaper than (2). Which one you prefer?

weq 5y ago

Amen. I havnt watched TV since the 2017 elections. Ive missed on everything including bushfires, natural disasters, pandemics, and capitalism. I can see clearly how the system works. I said i wouldnt watch a single news report (including Covid) until it was a "highlight reel" and man o man has mainstream society lost its glammer. its a machine, where the capitalists and poilticans jockie for your money using the power you can give them against you while smiling into the camera and saying they love you. FAANG you up the ass at every chance they get. Even the celebs are pawns, reliant on the ad companies for there bread and butter. ive never been free-er. I had my covid (health issues) 15yrs ago and realised that day that life was precious and u should not take it for granted. I quite everything, travelled the world, and experienced modern society in all its wonder. I met people everyday who wished they could quit and travel like me and i told them, you can. Unfortunately humans are not capable of infinite growth in a world where nature is being processed into profit in a constant grasp of more and more. Nature imposes its own limits. Virus are part of the moderisation game. They are a cost of buisness. Like our parents generation where the WW1/2 and The depression scared and and shaped them (and created this system), our children will be scared by the unresolved trauma their parents experienced during Covid.