11 ms·

Another example is how many people advocated for (and how many countries essentially adopted) letting covid spread throughout the population (either like wildfi

by ummonk 3y ago

Another example is how many people advocated for (and how many countries essentially adopted) letting covid spread throughout the population (either like wildfire or via "flatten the curve") to get natural herd immunity because letting a poorly understood (but known to be quite deadly) virus spread through the population was doable but giving out vaccines that hadn't been through phase 2 trials wasn't.

gotoeleven 3y ago
[flagged]
- slaw 3y ago
  Sweden’s Covid death rate among lowest in Europe, despite avoiding strict lockdowns https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/swedens-death-rate-among-lowest-europe-despite-avoiding-strict/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
throwaway22032 3y ago
I mean, if anything, it was the other way around. We could point to death statistics and say "hey, that's provable harm". But quantifying the loss of quality of life from spending a year indoors, screwing the labour market and supply chain, messing up kids' socialization etc was harder, so we mostly just kind of ignored it.
cbsmith 3y ago
That's not entirely accurate. The case for letting covid spread hinges on whether you have the medical infrastructure to manage the pandemic. If you can handle a "more than flu season" chunk of your population needing medical care then there's no real pandemic threat. Unfortunately, many countries in the developed world reduced the size of their medical infrastructure because they could rely on flu vaccines to minimize the demands of flu season. Sure, you can try to flatten the curve, but COVID-19 proved to be difficult to contain, and initially we had little understanding of how transmissible it was, and what it would take to contain it. This meant you had to plan for a worse that was almost certainly worse than we'd actually face. The thing is, vaccines that haven't been through phase 2 trials can potentially make a pandemic worse. That's why you have to wait for them to resolve.
- ummonk 3y ago
  > The thing is, vaccines that haven't been through phase 2 trials can potentially make a pandemic worse. That's why you have to wait for them to resolve. You can do challenge trials. Especially if you're going to let the virus spread through the population anyway.
  - cbsmith 3y ago
    Isn't a challenge trial really just another way of doing a phase 2 trial? Whether you let it run through the population anyway really doesn't matter though. If you push the untested vaccine out to the population, you might turn a manageable problem into an unmanageable problem.
goatlover 3y ago
Was preventing the spread of covid throughout the population possible once China failed to contain the virus? Can you name one country that managed to do that? Even China eventually gave up.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Yes, it was possible, but like all collective action problems it involves people organizing for the general good at a cost to themselves. Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months, and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious respiratory illnesses, not just have stopped this single one from spreading. But it's not going to happen because a significant fraction of the population: 1) don't care (either from the get go or after a period of time), 2) think spreading the disease is a positive ('builds immunity'), or 3) make 'statistical decisions' that fail at points. Edit to add: I hope the downvotes are because I forgot to add the "for two months" to paragraph two. This could all have been over and done with between April and June of 2020 (or maybe a few months later to give time to ramp up mask production). Oh well, at least big Pharma made big bucks.
  - jdminhbg 3y ago
    > Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months, and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious respiratory illnesses, not just have stopped this single one from spreading. This is delusional. China did far more than this and still was not able to control Covid. And even in a fantasy world where you could actually stop all human-to-human contagion, many respiratory viruses have animal reservoirs, making the entire exercise pointless. It's comforting to think that it's all just a collective action problem and if people could be a little more self-sacrificing, we could make it go away, but it's simply not the case.
    - 3y ago

by ummonk 3y ago

gotoeleven 3y ago

[flagged]

slaw 3y ago
Sweden’s Covid death rate among lowest in Europe, despite avoiding strict lockdowns https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/swedens-death-rate-among-lowest-europe-despite-avoiding-strict/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...

throwaway22032 3y ago

I mean, if anything, it was the other way around. We could point to death statistics and say "hey, that's provable harm". But quantifying the loss of quality of life from spending a year indoors, screwing the labour market and supply chain, messing up kids' socialization etc was harder, so we mostly just kind of ignored it.

cbsmith 3y ago

That's not entirely accurate. The case for letting covid spread hinges on whether you have the medical infrastructure to manage the pandemic. If you can handle a "more than flu season" chunk of your population needing medical care then there's no real pandemic threat. Unfortunately, many countries in the developed world reduced the size of their medical infrastructure because they could rely on flu vaccines to minimize the demands of flu season. Sure, you can try to flatten the curve, but COVID-19 proved to be difficult to contain, and initially we had little understanding of how transmissible it was, and what it would take to contain it. This meant you had to plan for a worse that was almost certainly worse than we'd actually face. The thing is, vaccines that haven't been through phase 2 trials can potentially make a pandemic worse. That's why you have to wait for them to resolve.

ummonk 3y ago
> The thing is, vaccines that haven't been through phase 2 trials can potentially make a pandemic worse. That's why you have to wait for them to resolve. You can do challenge trials. Especially if you're going to let the virus spread through the population anyway.
- cbsmith 3y ago
  Isn't a challenge trial really just another way of doing a phase 2 trial? Whether you let it run through the population anyway really doesn't matter though. If you push the untested vaccine out to the population, you might turn a manageable problem into an unmanageable problem.

goatlover 3y ago

Was preventing the spread of covid throughout the population possible once China failed to contain the virus? Can you name one country that managed to do that? Even China eventually gave up.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Yes, it was possible, but like all collective action problems it involves people organizing for the general good at a cost to themselves. Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months, and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious respiratory illnesses, not just have stopped this single one from spreading. But it's not going to happen because a significant fraction of the population: 1) don't care (either from the get go or after a period of time), 2) think spreading the disease is a positive ('builds immunity'), or 3) make 'statistical decisions' that fail at points. Edit to add: I hope the downvotes are because I forgot to add the "for two months" to paragraph two. This could all have been over and done with between April and June of 2020 (or maybe a few months later to give time to ramp up mask production). Oh well, at least big Pharma made big bucks.
- jdminhbg 3y ago
  > Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months, and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious respiratory illnesses, not just have stopped this single one from spreading. This is delusional. China did far more than this and still was not able to control Covid. And even in a fantasy world where you could actually stop all human-to-human contagion, many respiratory viruses have animal reservoirs, making the entire exercise pointless. It's comforting to think that it's all just a collective action problem and if people could be a little more self-sacrificing, we could make it go away, but it's simply not the case.
  - 3y ago