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"when it comes to managing diseases the value is in acting before things have gone bad" There is no value to acting at the government level. If there's any wor

"when it comes to managing diseases the value is in acting before things have gone bad" There is no value to acting at the government level. If there's any work to do here it's with pharma firms. Governments have shown repeatedly that they lack even the most basic skills needed to fight disease. They are literally incapable of even accurately defining their goals and basic words let alone actually defeating a disease: - COVID case counts in 2022 are now much higher than at any time in the past. - Highly vaccinated places have more cases than lower vaccinated places (e.g. Scotland vs England, former DDR vs rest of Germany). Almost all "deaths in proximity to a positive COVID test" are in the vaccinated. Fauci, vaccinated 4x, has now had COVID symptoms for a month and counting after Paxlovid failed to cure him. - Mask mandates were repealed with no increase in cases. - Birth rates 9 months after vaccination reached women of childbearing age (never tested in the trials) are now ~15%-20% lower than normal. - Lockdowns are now widely recognized to have had no effect at all. Shanghai's toughest lockdown in the world led to people starving because they weren't allowed out to buy food, whilst simultaneously failing to reduce case counts. - The vast sums of money required for these failed anti-COVID policies have now wrecked the economy, leading to the highest inflation ever seen for people under the age of about 45. - Public health officials have repeatedly made scientific claims they knew were false in order to manipulate people's behavior and then admitted to lying on the record in major newspapers. That's just a tiny sampling of the recent failures of public health. What we need is for these people to go away, reflect on their failures, learn about 1000 lessons and come back in a decade when they have managed to clear house and fix the systematic vulnerability to pseudo-science that typifies their field. Of course, what they'll actually do is ignore monkeypox because fighting it means inconveniencing gay men, whilst waiting for the next virus they can try to make into COVID2.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
We would not have ANY COVID vaccines if not for the _billions_ of dollars the US government spent with Operation Warp Speed. The entire operation (warp speed, building and funding multiple vaccines at once to only keep the working one at the end) was something the government designed _decades ago_ and kept as a potential mitigation for pandemics. We're in a position for you to comfortably post hot garbage takes from a brand new throwaway account from the COVID-free safety of your home because the government acted to respond to this pandemic...
- junofan 4y ago
  > The entire operation (warp speed, building and funding multiple vaccines at once to only keep the working one at the end) was something the government designed _decades ago_ That’s just not possible. Rapid-response vaccine platforms didn’t exist. And indeed [1] > The idea for Warp Speed was hatched in early April, says the official, a scientist, who was given permission to discuss it with Science if his name was not used. "Looking around, it became clear that without a really heroic effort, none of the existing efforts to produce vaccine was going to lead us to have vaccine to prevent what looks increasingly like a second wave that could sweep come October, November." [1]: https://www.science.org/content/article/unveiling-warp-speed-white-house-s-america-first-push-coronavirus-vaccine https://www.science.org/content/article/unveiling-warp-speed...
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1 > In particular, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched in 2017; its goal is to create the technological infrastructure needed for rapid and affordable development of vaccines against several of the viruses known to have epidemic potential, including MERS, Ebola and Zika. CEPI has partly funded work on SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, including that by Moderna and at Oxford. CEPI is where the idea for Operation Warp Speed came from... More generally though the article I reference is chock full of instances where without government funding and help we would never have had vaccines so quickly. The crackpot poster I replied to was trying to insinuate government did nothing and could do nothing to help. This is an absolutely incorrect assertion. We have vaccines because of government help and response in the early days (and years preceding!) of the pandemic.
smallerfish 4y ago
I mean, just your first fact is wrong on its face. > COVID case counts in 2022 are now much higher than at any time in the past. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=Weekly&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=USA~GBR~CAN~DEU~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... If you're going to make counter-prevailing claims, you're going to need some solid references to back up your data, sport.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Normalize by positivity rate when using that source. I said case counts, not positive test counts. People are testing less than in the past but sources which control for that show higher numbers.
  - smallerfish 4y ago
    Again, my larger point about references stands. You have a counter-prevailing narrative. If you want to be a truthsayer, come bearing unimpeachable references for your data.
    - origin_path 4y ago
      Fine - here's a reference for you. I didn't include any previously because I thought this was well known. It's for the UK because the UK has some data sources that are survey based and independent of how much people choose to test/when: https://health-study.joinzoe.com/post/1-in-15-have-covid-in-new-record-high https://health-study.joinzoe.com/post/1-in-15-have-covid-in-... "Prof Spector: While COVID cases continue to soar to all-time highs, the rate of increase is showing signs of slowing down." That was for the end of March. ONS survey tracks similarly and shows numbers heading back up to the prior peak already achieved in March. The page has some useful graphs that put it in perspective and show the scale of the problem. It's matched by anecdata from the people around me. In the past few weeks most of my friends have reported getting COVID. It's just a cold so it puts them in bed with lemsips for a few days, not a big deal, but the massive incidence rates are very noticeable. One friend said he got COVID and had to cancel some meetings, but two were already cancelled by the other party for the exact same reason. That sort of thing hasn't happened before and for some of them, it's their first time. So it feels correct that infection rates are off the charts. Multiple perspectives yield the same answer.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

We would not have ANY COVID vaccines if not for the _billions_ of dollars the US government spent with Operation Warp Speed. The entire operation (warp speed, building and funding multiple vaccines at once to only keep the working one at the end) was something the government designed _decades ago_ and kept as a potential mitigation for pandemics. We're in a position for you to comfortably post hot garbage takes from a brand new throwaway account from the COVID-free safety of your home because the government acted to respond to this pandemic...

junofan 4y ago
> The entire operation (warp speed, building and funding multiple vaccines at once to only keep the working one at the end) was something the government designed _decades ago_ That’s just not possible. Rapid-response vaccine platforms didn’t exist. And indeed [1] > The idea for Warp Speed was hatched in early April, says the official, a scientist, who was given permission to discuss it with Science if his name was not used. "Looking around, it became clear that without a really heroic effort, none of the existing efforts to produce vaccine was going to lead us to have vaccine to prevent what looks increasingly like a second wave that could sweep come October, November." [1]: https://www.science.org/content/article/unveiling-warp-speed-white-house-s-america-first-push-coronavirus-vaccine https://www.science.org/content/article/unveiling-warp-speed...
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1 > In particular, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched in 2017; its goal is to create the technological infrastructure needed for rapid and affordable development of vaccines against several of the viruses known to have epidemic potential, including MERS, Ebola and Zika. CEPI has partly funded work on SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, including that by Moderna and at Oxford. CEPI is where the idea for Operation Warp Speed came from... More generally though the article I reference is chock full of instances where without government funding and help we would never have had vaccines so quickly. The crackpot poster I replied to was trying to insinuate government did nothing and could do nothing to help. This is an absolutely incorrect assertion. We have vaccines because of government help and response in the early days (and years preceding!) of the pandemic.

smallerfish 4y ago

I mean, just your first fact is wrong on its face. > COVID case counts in 2022 are now much higher than at any time in the past. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=Weekly&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=USA~GBR~CAN~DEU~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... If you're going to make counter-prevailing claims, you're going to need some solid references to back up your data, sport.

origin_path 4y ago
Normalize by positivity rate when using that source. I said case counts, not positive test counts. People are testing less than in the past but sources which control for that show higher numbers.
- smallerfish 4y ago
  Again, my larger point about references stands. You have a counter-prevailing narrative. If you want to be a truthsayer, come bearing unimpeachable references for your data.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Fine - here's a reference for you. I didn't include any previously because I thought this was well known. It's for the UK because the UK has some data sources that are survey based and independent of how much people choose to test/when: https://health-study.joinzoe.com/post/1-in-15-have-covid-in-new-record-high https://health-study.joinzoe.com/post/1-in-15-have-covid-in-... "Prof Spector: While COVID cases continue to soar to all-time highs, the rate of increase is showing signs of slowing down." That was for the end of March. ONS survey tracks similarly and shows numbers heading back up to the prior peak already achieved in March. The page has some useful graphs that put it in perspective and show the scale of the problem. It's matched by anecdata from the people around me. In the past few weeks most of my friends have reported getting COVID. It's just a cold so it puts them in bed with lemsips for a few days, not a big deal, but the massive incidence rates are very noticeable. One friend said he got COVID and had to cancel some meetings, but two were already cancelled by the other party for the exact same reason. That sort of thing hasn't happened before and for some of them, it's their first time. So it feels correct that infection rates are off the charts. Multiple perspectives yield the same answer.