I agree. I think Biden’s doing what he’s politically incentivized to do, it just drives me crazy that the voters aren’t demanding that he do whatever it takes to defeat COVID. Of course he’s shying away from politically bruising battles and trying lots of things that could turn out to be costly flops. He doesn’t feel like he needs to do those things.
Or he thinks he would lose those fights even if he tries his hardest.
Gonna need a pretty detailed cite on that one.
Kids here might have had a week off if a classmate was positive but schools haven’t been ‘out’
UK schools are year-round with no breaks at all? Wookie’s point is US schools usually take a break from the end of May-ish until the end of August so while Delta’s been running loose in the States schools have mostly been in summer break.
Yeah, should have clarified - UK school break 6-7 weeks for summer i.e ours broke up from school for summer 23 July and will be back 1 September.
Point being Delta was still raging here and kids were still in schools, with no adverse effects on child fatalities - no comment on long term effects as unknown
But ya, loads of kids caught delta
This is by far the oddest part of your take. mRNA research has and is getting billions of research dollars? Our Top Woman is happily working on all kinds of new shit and will probably get the Nobel. The idea that “Luddite progressives” are somehow hamstringing Moderna’s research is absurd.
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It is simultaneously true that vaccines alone aren’t the answer and that antivaxxers are unbelievably stupid clowns that are endangering us all.
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lots of really weird takes here the past 24 hours.
Well, heaven forbid I take the time to read your articles and think about my response.
I guess the part I was taking issue with, then, was “now.” All the vaccines are most effective against the original strain, the strain they were designed to combat. All of them have been slightly but measurably less effective against every labeled variant of concern at preventing infection, hospitalization, and death. As it shows in your own citation, the vaccines seem to be slightly but measurably more effective against delta than against alpha w.r.t. hospitalizations. It feels like ages ago since alpha was the only real variant of concern, and it had been much more abundant than delta until very recently, just the last couple-few months. So, I guess it seems odd to seem so much more concerned about vaccine effectiveness now compared with 6 months ago, because now the prevailing variant is actually less prone to either infecting or hospitalizing people who are vaccinated compared with the prevailing variants 6 months ago.
This guy is still not wrong, even in light of the study that showed vaccinated people can, briefly, have viral loads comparable to the unvaccinated, because it seems like he’s speaking for the aggregate group rather than saying it’s strictly true for all individuals at all times. I don’t think anyone would be surprised by the existence of some patients with high viral loads in the noses of vaccinated people with breakthrough infections. Maybe this guy was surprised, but that’s pretty much on him. Having a symptomatic infection is part-and-parcel with having a high viral load. But given that this status is much more ephemeral compared with unvaccinated people, the time-averaged ability for any vaccinated individual to spread the virus is going to be much lower, and as such, it’s clear that the vaccine knocks down transmission as well as protecting individuals from infection. Should vaccinated people still mask up knowing this? Sure, I do.
I agree with this.
My disagreement is about saying that now is that much more dangerous for vaccinated people compared with 6-8 months ago or so. Until recently, the alpha variant has been highly abundant, and it’s a greater risk to the vaccinated then the delta variant, all else being equal. I suppose the high and rising case load now means that there is greater absolute risk now for vaccinated people, but that’s more of an issue of the case load than the variant. When it comes to expectations, I would have hypothesized that the delta variant to be incrementally more dangerous to the vaccinated compared to alpha. I was wrong. It appears to be incrementally less.
If you look closely at your earlier citation, or, say, this one:
Most of the participants in the study are health care workers, and we’re still seeing that they have robust protection in aggregate when fully vaccinated, and that population is certain to have the earliest vaccinated in it. Worring about fading immunity seems to be based mostly on fear of the unknown rather than any actual data. From what I can see, vaccination is holding up well.
There are only two ways that this pandemic can end: eradication via isolation or herd immunity. Humanity in all or nearly all nations has shown a collective failure to abide by isolation to knock down cases, so herd immunity is the only way this ends. Masking is good. It buys us time for vaccinations, and it helps prevent flooding hospitals, but it’s not going to end the pandemic. With the transmissibility advantage of the delta variant, we’re not going to end the pandemic until 90%+ of the population has either been vaccinated or has had the virus. Masks aren’t going to change that.
Sure, masking is better than not all else being equal, but it’s going to be a small effect compared to more shots in arms. I wear a mask mainly for a bit more protection for my girls, who are too young for a vaccine. I support mask mandates given the antipathy for validating vaccination status means that we have to mask everyone in order to mask the unvaccinated, but a masked, unvaccinated person is by far the bigger asshole and contributor to the ongoing pandemic compared with an unmasked but vaccinated person. I’m also not going to begrudge vaccinated people who engage in many of life’s basic pleasures, like small indoor gatherings with other vaccinated people, or not-terribly-crowded outdoor activites, without masks. It’s also pretty understandable that other vaccinated people would want to engage in other things with higher risk profiles than that, especially if they don’t have unvaccinated people around them. They’re still not the ones behind the ongoing rise in cases.
I really don’t get your analogy. To the extend that unmasked but vaccinated people have any culpability in the ongoing pandemic, it is in giving cover to the unmasked and unvaccinated who have always wished to take few or no precautions. The aggregate contributions of them to cases and to spread is very low. In a sane society that never politicized taking precautions, we could let the vaccinated go unmasked while the unvaccinated go masked, but that’s not the society we live in.
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I mean, 50 years ago the media might certainly have been extolling the amazing virtues of mRNA research to the public instead of sucking off Jeff Bezos for a week on CNN, but that’s more of an indictment of our corporate news hellscape than anything Joe Biden is doing policywise.
NYT ran an excerpt of the book today. Looks decent, although potentially one of those books whose entire value is in the introduction and the rest is just filler.
So, we’re thinking Biden voters are going to believe Trump would be a healthier alternative? I don’t know man. We’re all pretty firmly in our corners at this point aren’t we? Like here in Florida where covid is running wild again, DeSantis is pretty much making sure that any and all blame would go to him. He’s the one banning mask mandates and so forth. Defiance from the right is a good part of the reason why we are where we are today. And I think anyone on the fence could still see that.
I do agree that mandatory vaccination for federal employees should have been enacted earlier. Still, that’s like 1.2% of the population?
I mean it’s pretty firmly established elections are about turnout not changing people’s minds and I don’t see why this would be any different. My concern is that if the country is still a Covid hellscape well into 2022 that may have an effect on turnout in the midterms.
The woman who said it’s cool for pregnant women to drink alcohol has more gems to share?
The political damage will come in the form of apolitical voters who normally don’t vote going to the polls as single-issue voters to vote against politicians they associate with mask mandates and lockdowns. I suspect that this may have cost Democrats in 2020 and was one reason why elections were closer than expected.
And a perfect recipe for mutations to arise.
Partial immunes and breakthrough infections are perfect conditions for mutants to arrive in individuals. Then we expose those mutants to a rich growth media (elementary school kids, unvaxxed and unmasked) and let the fastest grower in kids thrive.
What could go wrong? But wtf do I know, I’m just a microbiologist that has experiences virus mutating in real time in almost this exact environment (survival of some bacteria in tanks followed by exposure to non resistant bacteria).
I literally could not design a better scheme for the development and selection for a stronger virus with more morbidity in kids.
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Your inability to accurately quote or paraphrase things is really odd. “Luddite” and “progressive” are used to describe different groups of people. Nor is there any implication that private research is being hamstrung by anyone.
The point is that the government isn’t trying to sell this as the next big thing and position itself as a leader/incubator of the new industry. Biotech companies are making that pitch to their investors and probably to NIH grant-issuers as well because it’s an incredibly good pitch. But the government could do a lot to speed this along by committing to buy 10 billion COVID doses for free export to poor countries, using the DPA to iron out any kinks in the supply chain, handing out grants for factories making glass vials or bioreactor tanks or whatever else is relevant. It’s really weird (and bad) that the politicians aren’t clamoring to take advantage of a new miracle technology.
Is there true herd immunity to delta? Seems pretty dicey given all the maths I’ve seen on the twitter. Especially if there is any sort of waning immunity or vaccine evasion through mutations (SAGE called this inevitable).
I sort of envision the end as we have near 100 percent sero conversion so infections running through society are less costly, maybe 100k deaths a year instead of 700,000 in the us or w/e. I expect everyone on this board will catch COVID several times.
Obviously some issues with this. Life expectancy probably takes a permanent hit, immunocompromised are perma fucked, poorer countries are perma fucked, under 5 seem likely to be unprotected for awhile and, if long COVID is a material thing or subsequent reinfection are compounding society is perma fucked.
Don’t really see where else this can head. We obviously aren’t eliminating and aren’t going to take real steps to limit community spread, so, is what it is.
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