I have literally only seen people opposed to vaccine mandates bring this up. It's a fake talking point to paint people in favor of mandates as misinformed.
You're saying that a handful of your anecdotes are a perpetual fake talking point? I have seen the exact opposite. People are generally misinformed. In case you need a counterpoint to your anecdotes, read the upthread:
> I agree that everybody should get vaccinated. Let's make this virus extinct.
Sure, but we can make the virus largely irrelevant in terms of its impact on peoples lives. We can reduce the number of people who suffer long term consequences, the number of deaths, and the load on hospitals. We can make it harder for new, more dangerous, variants to arise.
Or just dogmatically stick to the "unvaccinated people are selfish" because it best fits your political world view - damn the science?
Want to make this virus irrelevant? If Omicron is as mild as the doctors in South Africa are reporting then here is our path to herd immunity. Which is going to happen no matter what governments fuss and fume about. Even New Zealand finally gave up on their ridiculous quarantine strategy.
I’m just confused about the argument you are making here - that if our options are:
A) let’s all get a couple of shots to reduce our risk of death, serious illness, and make it less likely that other people get sick, not to mention making it less likely that new variants will emerge by making transmission harder
or
B) let’s have no vaccinations and let the virus sort it out, like we did with, say, the 1918 flu? Or polio, measles, or smallpox?
or
C) let people get vaccinated or not, it’s their business, but putting societal pressure on them is overbearing and eventually pointless
That of those options we should choose either B or C? Because B is how we dealt with illnesses until we had vaccinations to make them harder to get and less deadly. Then we started…vaccinating people. And now measles is still a thing, but no one worries about it, except that cases are going up because people aren’t getting vaccinated. So B seems like a bad plan, because we tried that and it sucked, and then we did A with measles and things got a lot better.
C is certainly a lot more personal liberty-oriented, which I get the appeal of, but society is fundamentally about giving up some amount of individual liberty in exchange for shared and communal benefits. C is actually what is happening in some places with measles vaccinations, where individuals say, “I don’t need to be vaccinated because herd immunity will save me”, which not only means that (despite claiming personal liberty) those people are relying on the vaccinated people to protect them, but that they’re willing to put others at risk (because vaccines aren’t perfect) in exchange for their individual liberty. This seems like C is a pretty raw deal for the liberty and rights of the people who would rather not get infected by, say, measles. Or Covid.
B and C both seem like bad plans. A seems pretty good, but I realize you’re not going to be convinced of that. B is pretty indefensible, I don’t think anyone would argue we should just let Covid run through the world and kill millions and millions more people. Or maybe you do, I don’t know. Seems bad.
But with C, the only way you can argue it’s not selfish to look after your own preferences is if you believe that the outcomes of option A, B, and C are the same. That it doesn’t matter - the same amount of people will die, and the same amount of people will get infected, and the same amount of people will permanently lose their sense of taste or smell, and the same amount of people will end up in the hospital. That fundamentally the outcomes of all three scenarios are identical. But there’s no way that’s the case, right? It just doesn’t make sense.
So if there IS a difference, then A is everyone doing as much as reasonably possible to make things better, B is everyone giving up and accepting whatever happens, and C is valuing your interests above the opportunity to help others. That’s the definition of selfishness.
> but putting societal pressure on them is overbearing and eventually pointless
> ...
> and C is valuing your interests above the opportunity to help others. That’s the definition of selfishness.
This, I think, highlights the fundamental blind spot in reasoning of many who pushes the vax or other measures to 100% "uptake". What do the people think will happen once somebody submits to the pressure? Masked and vaxed and fine and dandy? Quite the opposite, I believe. The resistance in the remaining population is not at the rational level, it is very visceral, primal, fight-or-flight feeling. Even though, I think, it was largely provoked by the initial torrent of equally irrational measures, it is not something that is going to change. Submitting to pressure doesn't mean forgetting or forgiving. The solid foundation is being laid for a very broken society for a generation to come. The internal trust in society is as shaken as never before. Society with 5-10% of people broken, bitter and vengeful is not healthy. The fallout is going to be very bad, in unexpected way. Cruel and unusual.
Sure, you may say it is selfishness. It is not rational selfishness though. As I said, it is a visceral reaction which is very hard to explain, to put into words, therefore all you hear is "we don't want it". It is sort of a mental condition, and pushing through to the end won't cure that condition, only make it worse. Such condition is nothing to be proud of, but punitive correctional measures aren't known to work against diseases, mental included. Even criminals are not prosecuted if suspected to be in acute mental condition.
I would hope the nature of the resistance is properly recognised and not vilified. After all, we've complied with all the past vaccine "soft-mandates" for our children and ourselves, but always thought that generous exemption provisions were very good! Letting people make choices without pushing them into the corner is beneficial for society. I always thought the society's capacity for compassion was bigger than my own. Unfortunately, it is not what transpired.
At this moment I'd be ok with increased insurance premiums, testing regime for travel and high-risk settings, tax surcharge or even mandatory community service as alternative to vax. Something we can rationally discuss. "Bodily autonomy" - face masks included - is simply not something I can engage with rationally.
I’m not arguing that everyone should be forced to get vaccinated - I’m saying that people who choose not to are selfish. And they shouldn’t be immune to some level of personal impact, lots of people make personal choices that have negative impact. I once turned down an incredibly lucrative opportunity because I disagreed with the products I’d be working on. The father of a friend of mine was a professional pilot who never got above flying for a regional airline because his cigarette addiction meant he struggled to go more than three hours between cigarettes. Personal choices have impacts.
The argument that you make is odd, though, which seems to be that people have been so pushed around by these horrible, unreasonable asks that they have a “visceral fight-or-flight” response and hence have a “mental condition” that prevents them from adapting - and not accepting that demonstrates a lack of compassion.
That argument, for what it’s worth, has been trotted out to justify everything from segregation, to fighting gay rights, to objecting to seat belts. Just because people don’t like something they find objectionable doesn’t make them irrational. Saying they are robs them of their agency as humans, and also conveniently obviates them of their responsibility to their community.
“But what is the end game?”
To get to where almost everyone is vaccinated, which is where we are with measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, typhoid, etc. It’s not that complicated.
“ I always thought the society's capacity for compassion was bigger than my own.”
Man, me too. If you had asked me in 2019 if there would be a controversy about adding one more vaccination to the roster of vaccines we give almost everyone (and invest billions in encouraging and distributing), I would have said, “no way - in most of the world, most people see vaccines as something that’s important to help themselves and their community “. In 1947 there was a smallpox outbreak in NYC and millions of people showed up to get vaccinated because it was the right thing to do to protect their community. Their compassion was for others.
To be clear, I don’t think people who don’t want to get vaccinated are monsters or evil. They don’t need to be vilified. No, they’re more in the realm of the person in the community who once in a while has a drink too many and drives home when they shouldnt - probably nothing bad will happen, but it shows a real lack of personal responsibility for their impact on others.
Thank you for the civil answer. I found enough in it to agree with and upvote.
> That argument, for what it’s worth, has been trotted out to justify everything ...
It may be a tired argument, but it doesn't make it false. Sometimes people really do have deep convictions they cannot be rationalized from. Looks like I do, and I'm not happy about it. Only it was never a problem before covid. I was brought up in the spirit of never asking for help or claiming any deficiency until you absolutely, positively, completely unable to handle the situation on your own. Also you must be sure that who you ask is able and willing to provide such help. I thought society progressed enough to tolerate conscientious objection of sorts. Turns out I was wrong. I struggled to keep up and cried for help, first time in my life - and received a good lesson to never ask for compassion again.
> Personal choices have impacts.
They certainly do. I just disagree that it is purely personal. The other side absolves itself from any consequences of the choice pushed upon individual, while being very happy to trump on them if the "natural" impact of "inferior" choice is not bad enough.
> people have been so pushed around by these horrible, unreasonable asks
I haven't said that. Some may very well be reasonable, but it is very hard to see in the pile of punitive-only measures.
Well, at least I have tried to explain how some people, myself included, see and feel in the situation. I'm getting more hints of my inability to communicate this, and nobody in a position to influence the measures gives any consideration to it. This is why I stand with my belief that the side-effect of "where almost everyone is vaccinated" will be not what these people are expecting, in a cruel and unusual way.
“ it is very hard to see in the pile of punitive-only measures.”
Aka unreasonable. Which sort of makes the point. But also - it’s tough for me to be civil when your argument is, “why isn’t anyone taking my feelings into account?”, when that has literally never been the standard for anything related to a common good. I don’t care how you feel about being allowed to drive drunk, because it’s dangerous to others. I don’t care if you don’t want to allow minorities to live in your neighborhood, they have the right to live wherever they want. And I don’t care if you don’t want to get one more vaccination on top of the 5+ we require for work and/or school, it is part of participating in a functional society.
If no one hears you “crying out for help”, think of how the people whose lives have been affected by this disease feel, knowing that there are people who COULD be helping but don’t want to.
Sorry, I seem to have mistook passive-aggressive for civil.
My point is not that anyone should care how I feel, in particular. I only give it out here, on a semi-anonymous forum, never IRL.
The point is, quite the sizeable proportion of people feel like that, and it is a pain for them which they won't forget or forgive, even if they choose to submit to demands. In fact, many voluntarily vaccinated people feel exactly the same, for them cooperation with any future government initiatives is out of question now. It doesn't invalidate the pain of those catching or dying from the disease, it just another pain in it's own right.
"Common good" cannot be built on pain, history is littered with unsuccessful attempts. Governments all around the world are choosing to ignore this (proving them incompetent) for some reason, and in doing so they may find themselves very unpleasantly surprised. Unless this is the end game they are looking for (proving them evil), but that would be too much of a conspiracy to suggest.
We could do that for smoking too, but since smoking is a choice, we let people smoke and die. Why not do the same with the vaccines? As with smoking, the unvaccinated are taking all the risks.
Except that the resources that are going to care for the unvaccinated might block someone who is vaccinated from needed medical care. It also increases the amount of exposure someone who IS vaccinated needs to contend with, and as is mentioned over and over again, vaccines are imperfect. A colleague of mine has an elderly father who is vaccinated and in the ICU with Covid. The odds are much higher that he was infected by an unvaccinated person.
Also smoking is a terrible example - we tax cigarettes highly to discourage smoking because it’s a drag on our medical system. We ban the act of smoking in a wide variety of locations because it has an impact on other peoples health. Some buildings even disallow people to smoke in their private homes, and some cities disallow smoking in offices. We put restrictions on almost every aspect of smoking because it doesn’t only affect the smoker.
Surely you can‘t be comparing administering a vaccine (which has much fewer adverse effects than the disease of which it prevents severe outcomes) to euthanasia?
Aside from the absurdity of comparing recommended vaccination as a responsible social welfare act to the murder of children, the comparison isn’t even apt. My point was about short-term and critical healthcare resources, and the eugenics argument was about long term waste of societal resources. If anything, the smoking comparison is a little more apt because smokers ARE long term drains on societal resources. But still no one is arguing about killing smokers.
It has been happening for smoking, at least in some places. Speaking from experience in the US:
Smoking sections in restaurants have all but disappeared, taxes have increased on cigarettes dramatically, warning labels have been placed on boxes/cartons, and so on.
The process has been to try and remove second-hand smoke from those areas where it might affect non-smokers. Traveling abroad to China and Hong Kong a couple years ago it was almost unbearable dealing with people smoking everywhere.
Similar to how as a non-smoker my health risk is non-negligible being exposed to second-hand smoke, so too is my health at risk by unvaccinated individuals running around with higher viral loads increasing the chance and rate of breakthrough infections, and also increased risk of future mutations that could potentially bring about another pandemic.
Very clearly with smoking we've been moving towards a system where you can make whatever health choices you want as long as you aren't impacting the health of others - why should it be any different for vaccines of any kind?
<<Very clearly with smoking we've been moving towards a system where you can make whatever health choices you want as long as you aren't impacting the health of others - why should it be any different for vaccines of any kind?
I think we have long established that just me existing is not something people are willing to tolerate. Hell, just my presence impacts the life of others; sometimes even in a negative way. There is even a system to deal with issues like that. It is called civil law.
But why do we stop at smoking? Why aren't we going after farts and methane. After all, did you know that methane gas poisoning can cause death? Surely, if we researched it a little more, we would maybe find out that it causes cancer of something.
In Louisiana we don't let people smoke in lots of places.
No smoking in schools, no smoking in restaurants, no smoking in workplaces, no smoking in public buildings.
Is that not similar to Germany disallowing unvaccinated (and not naturally immune) from non-essential indoor shopping/leisure activities? Or requiring testing for employees who are not vaccinated/naturally immune?
Aside from the dangers of secondhand smoke (which we have laws to limit the impact of), you can't "catch" smoking from someone else. Unless they force-feed you cigarettes until you get addicted, anyway.
I guess the main difference is that covid patients can clog UIT very quickly and there isn't a lot that can be done beforehand. Smokers come in a more predictable and easier to manage way.
This is only true, because we've built enough rooms and trained and hired enough teams of people to take care of fat people. In my country, nurses are still paid more working as store clerks than in hospitals, so yeah...
And if many countries can mandate curfews, lockdowns, mandatory quarantenes etc., why not ban sugary foods, sugary drinks, fast food, etc.?
I mean.. I'm against any sort of bans, but generally, more people die from being fat than from covid itself.... if every life matters, why no theirs?
My best guess is that the power law governing covid epidemics growth poses a greater threat (in terms of costs and casualties) than slow evolving obesity crisis.
I guess we are pretty lucky that we don’t all have heart attacks simultaneously or it could be a real drag on the hospitals. But yes, the risks and concerns are absolutely equal between those two scenarios.
That's because you apparently can't read. The only thing I said was that treating sick people is why we have the healthcare system. If you think treating COVID patients is too much just triage differently and lower the priority, treat more important things instead. Don't force me to get a medical procedure against my will for the sake of the government healthcare infrastructure.
I can read words, but not minds. You asked a rhethorical question that didn't illustrate your position in the slightest. If you wanted to say "let people with COVID die on the streets so I can remain unvaccinated" then please just say that.
I do think it is important to use the correct terminology here. This disease and the vaccines are already a huge spread of misinformation, so lets expand on the “sure” bit from this sentence a little. It is saying quite a lot:
I don’t think any expert nor any public health department is working with the goal of eradication in mind. So we should acknowledge the fact that these vaccines will probably not eradicate COVID. We will have people getting sick from COVID and we will have more COVID variants for the foreseeable future. Even after most people have been thoroughly vaccinated. And given the slow global spread of vaccines we will also probably see more lockdown measures to slow the spread of the virus beyond the current vaccine capabilities.
Now that said, remember that with the vaccines:
> we can make the virus largely irrelevant in terms of its impact on peoples lives. We can reduce the number of people who suffer long term consequences, the number of deaths, and the load on hospitals. We can make it harder for new, more dangerous, variants to arise.
>I don’t think any expert nor any public health department is working with the goal of eradication in mind
I believe I speak for many when I say, "I have no idea what the experts' have in mind" (and that's not a good thing).
So they're trying hard to get everyone vaccinated - a noble goal, perhaps, as our current roster of vaccines diminish symptoms and greatly reduce hospitalization and fatality rates. But..."Stop the spread, get vaccinated"...what? Like the parent said, all of the currently-approved intramuscular Covid-19 vaccines have proven to have a negligible effect on transmission rate.
Early on, experts probably made an educated guess or wish that these vaccines would be sterilizing and started information campaigns on this premise. When this turned out to be not true, their "Stop the spread, get vaccinated" became "You unvaccinated are the problem, you are holding us back, and you will be locked down immediately". Rather than address their mistake, rather than open up transparently, they doubled down on the lie. Not a good way to build trust.
> Like the parent said, all of the currently-approved intramuscular Covid-19 vaccines have proven to have a negligible effect on transmission rate.
Multiple studies show that vaccinated people have lower transmission than unvaccinated.
> In studies conducted before the emergence of the Delta variant, data from multiple studies in different countries suggested that people vaccinated with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines who develop COVID-19 generally have a lower viral load than unvaccinated people.(157, 165-169) This observation may indicate reduced transmissibility, as viral load has been identified as a key driver of transmission.(170) Studies from multiple countries found significantly reduced likelihood of transmission to household contacts from people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who were previously vaccinated for COVID-19.(171-176) For the Delta variant, early data indicate vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with Delta have similar levels of viral RNA and culturable virus detected, indicating that some vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 may be able to transmit the virus to others.(163, 164, 177-180) However, other studies have shown a more rapid decline in viral RNA and culturable virus in fully vaccinated people (96, 177, 180-182). One study observed that Delta infection in fully vaccinated persons was associated with significantly less transmission to contacts than persons who were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.(181) Together, these studies suggest that vaccinated people who become infected with Delta have potential to be less infectious than infected unvaccinated people.
We have no real studies, but if covid does "irreversible" small damage, even in vaccinated and that accumulates, it could lead to a life-expectancy drop of 30 years.
Obese people don't take up literally the entirety of ICU capacity in heavily-affected areas[1], nor does obesity spread exponentially in a matter of months.
But obese and overweight people are the strain on the system. That's it, to the tune of 78% of hospitalizations as of March '21[1]. I sincerely doubt the numbers have changed much since then and I'm not going to bother to look for a follow-up study. If people in the United States weren't outrageously unhealthy, this pandemic would not have caused the awfully high number of deaths that it did.
You are totally correct that obesity doesn't spread exponentially, but it exponentially increases your risk of having a bad time with this disease. This will sound harsh, but I'm not really a fan of locking down young healthy people and forcing them to put their lives on pause because so much of America can't go for a run or get in the squat rack. The conversation no one wants to have right now, because were so steeped in arguing over what vaccines - mandated or not - can or cannot do, is one about how we actually get Americans to shed some weight and eat better.
Ironically, closing the gyms "because covid" will make this problem worse.
The goal is to keep serious cases to a minimum so they don’t clog the healthcare system thus making people die of all sorts of other things because they couldn’t be treated.
>The goal is to keep serious cases to a minimum so they don’t clog the healthcare system...
Reminds me of 2 weeks to flatten the curve. Yet here we are. Why all the sudden are we at risk of clogging the healthcare system with some areas hitting 70%+ adult vaccination rates? Germany already has given out 124,401,062 doses of the vaccine. All I ever see is the goalposts being moved with this stuff.
I have taken the vaccine, but I am hesitant about mandates and vaccine passports.
I find it exhausting that people such as yourself seem to latch onto missed time frames as a reason to just assume all public health policy is bullshit. Yes, because when I say I'm going to finish some software project in 2 weeks, I absolutely always get it done in 2 weeks.
These are estimates. They are sometimes (often!) wrong. Sometimes they're wrong because the problem was underestimated. Sometimes they are wrong for political reasons.
Yes, "flattening the curve" took more than 2 weeks. Big deal. Doing so did absolutely reduce pressure on ICUs and saved many lives. And hell, if everyone had actually followed all the mandates and guidelines at the time, maybe it would have only taken two weeks. But people don't, and it's always hard to gauge how many people will refuse to cooperate, and in what ways, and exactly what effect that will have.
The reason the goalposts are moving is because this isn't a well-defined game with strictly-set rules. The virus doesn't care about our rules or projections. If it mutates, and the new variant does better against our vaccines, then... yes, the goalposts will move. Our utter failure to get high vaccination rates in poorer countries is likely a big cause of the new variants. It's all well and good to be sitting in a highly-vaccinated city in the first world, but all it takes is one person to fly in from somewhere with a new variant, and you're hosed.
You miss a time frame if you say "2 weeks" and end up having to lockdown for 3 instead. If you say "2 weeks" and end up with lockdowns for years you are either incompetent or lying or both.
If we look at the numbers for Germany they're now getting 60 thousand cases per day, which is three times more than any previous period.
More cases mean more people in hospitals. The situation was bad last winter, it can get worse fast.
Now, of course many are vaccinated, so that drops the likelihood of hospitalization, but unfortunately for them 30% of people are still unvaccinated.
So I can understand why they're nervous.
The thing about the vaccine also is that the effects drop with time unfortunately, so people need boosters. I've already gotten 3 shots and expect there will be more.
If we aren't to keep the world in lockdown, we need people to be out and about, but vaccinated, so this can truly be treated like a few bad flu years in a row.
Until the virus hopefully mutates towards a less severe thing and we can stop talking about it.
The initial estimate was that 70% of population (not only adult) would be sufficient to achieve herd immunity, but the problem is that while the initial virus had R_0 of 2-3, the Delta variant's is about 6.
I'll start by saying I haven't been a supporter of vaccine mandates.
It's best if people can make this up for themselves. Given the right information it's not really a hard choice. And of course there can be personal reasons why it'd be wise to not get vaccinated, but those are rare.
The procedure is benign. Describing it as irreversible is technically true but practically it's scaremongering.
And it's for the sake of the people around you. Your society. So they don't die waiting for their healthcare services to unclog.
Edit: And it's also obviously for the sake of the person getting vaccinated, let's not forget that :)
>...fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.
Yes I know, it was clear early on. The study also says:
>Although vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and deaths from COVID-19, our findings suggest that vaccination is not sufficient to prevent transmission of the delta variant in household settings with prolonged exposures.
Which is what we're talking about here, preventing serious cases.
Since we have a global pandemic. This is a completely novel and unusual situation, why wouldn't you think that the solutions will be novel and unusual as well?
Because we know that the mRNA vaccines won't effectively end the pandemic and only provide a prophylactic benefit at best.
>...fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.
That benefit is hardly "at best". That's a fantastic intermediate step. Why is it decried as horrible just because it's not the final solution to the problem?
From listening to nurses and doctors, I get the impression that most people in hospitals with Covid-issues lately are vaccinated; and I trust real people with real experiences over authorities with agendas.
> I get the impression that most people in hospitals with Covid-issues lately are vaccinated
I read some statistics over that the other day. It is correct when looking only at hospital patients.
The explanation is that most who need hospital care come from a risk group. And risk groups are fully vaccinated by over 90% (here). So you end up with high absolute numbers of vaccinated hospital patients.
If you look at a somewhat comparable group of people, chances to need hospital care are manyfold for the unvaccinated. It's true for higher risk groups and for lower risk groups.
Vaccinations are not perfect protection against anything, but they reduce risk by a high factor.
You can look up all the statistics on vaccine effectiveness against serious cases. They work really well for that. They don’t work as well as first hoped against infection but data on third booster suggests better results on that front.
Look it up instead of asking me for proof, while you yourself are restating hearsay originating from who knows where.
I asked if you can prove that they stop hospitals from being overwhelmed, not whether they were effective. So far it's not looking very good, is that why you support the decision to mandate the shots?
I'm not sure I support a vaccine mandate.
I'm just saying that the vaccines work and it's foolish to claim otherwise.
I can understand hesitation to get vaccinated, but I'd like to ask those same people if they take any other medicine at all and if they have read the pamphlet that comes with those.
Also I'd like to ask if they are fine with getting a completely alien and known harmful substance into their body, the substance we call Coronavirus.
However, they do accomplish the goal of stopping it from being a pandemic. With enough people vaccinated to reduce the R-value below 1, reinfections from animal reservoirs will become inherently self-limiting.
The smallpox vaccine is a sterilizing vaccine, meaning you cannot be infected and cannot transmit it once you are vaccinated.
The MRNAs are non-sterilizing, as are many vaccines. They may reduce symptoms, reduce infections, and reduce transmission, but they are not considered a sterilizing vaccine.
Secondly, coronaviruses mutate much faster than smallpox, and have other hard to deal with stuff like asymptomatic transmission.
The only diseases we ever eradicated were polio and smallpox. I think we got rid of the guinea worm too. Out of all the many many diseases we have fought over the years.
The vaccines we have are non-sterilizing - and my understanding is that the reason is mostly because we needed at least something very quickly and sterilizing vaccines for respiratory virus are harder to research. It is not inherent property of the technology as far as I know.
Sterilizing vaccines for COVID seem to be theoretically possible. "Natural" infection generates stronger immune response on mucus membranes as well as deep inside the body and that provides higher protection against infection. There's no reason why that wouldn't be possible to replicate using a vaccine. But nobody succeeded at making one yet, so we'll have to see if it's practical.
Because unfortunately the current generation of vaccines doesn't completely stop the spread - they certainly slow the spread in the weeks after the second shot, but then antibodies start to wane over the next months (which is why booster shots are being administered). Vaccines still protect from hospitalisation and death, though.
If you believe most virologists the only realistic scenario is that the virus becomes endemic, similar to most flu strains or other human corona viruses (which makes vaccination even more important!).
There are many treatments other than just the vaccine that can prevent hospitalization and death too. Some countries like India rely on them daily since the vaccines aren't widely available to them.
If you get infected with COVID there are far more options than "Sit around with a thumb up your ass until you have to be hospitalized and put on a ventilator".
Yes the vaccine doesn't kill it, but what would kill it is a REAL lock down.
Give everyone 2 months of salary, and 2 months of food. Nationalize food production for a month, give everyone shelf stable terrible food, the same crap that the majority of the anti-vaxxers have been hoarding for decades.
Its like a pretend apocalypse. They should LOVE it.
You can't send everybody home for two months, even if you give everybody two months of shelf stable food. Somebody needs to keep the utilities running. People still need fresh water to bath with, to wash their shit away. You might expect people to buy enough bottled water to drink for two months, but not enough to stay sanitary. And it's not just water; the power companies still need manpower to stay on, garbage still needs to be collected, plumbers still need to clear clogs and fix broken pipes. You clearly haven't given this idea of yours much serious consideration, so why should anybody else take it seriously?
COVID fear creates that sort of warped fantasy. But few nations are totalitarian enough to carry that out.
And large reservoirs of COVID would remain in wild animals, and other countries, and groups (like the elites & their children, or remote communities) that can't practically be forced to comply.
There are numerous reasons why we are incapable of a perfect lockdown of a region of any reasonable scale even before economic concerns. So it's use as a solution is more of a whataboutism for not considering reasonable actions.
I don't think this is true. The virus can survive in some for a long time. Same as with the flu. I think the endemic phase is absolutely inevitable. The only question is how long does it take, and how many people will be killed in the process. Both can only be reduced with vaxxination.
>> Yes the vaccine doesn't kill it, but what would kill it is a REAL lock down.
>>> Give everyone 2 months of salary, and 2 months of food. Nationalize food production for a month, give everyone shelf stable terrible food, the same crap that the majority of the anti-vaxxers have been hoarding for decades.
> Utter insanity. Who told you a "real" lockdown would stop the virus? Where did you get this "fact" from?
It stands to reason. An extreme lockdown as described will cause a virus to go extinct provided: 1) animal reservoirs are insignificant, 2) the immune system can clear the virus within the lockdown time, and 3) people actually comply.
Exceptions to 2 & 3 can likely be dealt if the lockdown is paired with and intensive testing and contact tracing program.
All of these things are likely true, because China and other countries have actually been successful at maintaining a Covid-zero policy (at great cost).
I agree that is the only way but it better be my day off when the lockdown happens. How would nursing home staff stay locked down? Or other people critical to ensuring we have power or that our water treatment plants keep running. But I do agree a more aggressive lock down could work but we will never be able again to do something like that. Not unless it starts killing people like Ebola and everyone in those jobs says screw it I quit and walks away.
How do you keep things like "power plants" and "water systems" running in this proposal? Either you allow so many exceptions that it's worthless, or you literally shut down modern civilization. It's far from clear that it can be blackstarted.
Unfortunately, that wouldn't really help long term, because the disease has spread through animal populations by now.
The only way to reliably stop this from being an ongoing pandemic is measures that reduce the R-value below 1 in a long-term manner, like mass vaccinations.
True. Thank you for acknowledging the point and adding further qualifications. Public discourse is rather disheartening. The options are either 100% vaccination or 0% vaccination, either strict house confinement or nightly clubbing, either masking while hiking in the woods or no masks ever. Life is a rich tradeoff of a myriad factors, somehow we reduced it to a handful of black/white binaries.
Yep, shut down energy production as well, these key workers will also stay at home. Just 2 months without electricity and internet, I am sure you will manage cowboy.
