JT was right when he said we should not let our guard down too soon and that April or whatever was too soon.
Churchill was right that variants were a very big deal and were likely going to kick our ass.
They both took lots of shit for those positions. Maybe that’s a sign we should show each other a bit more grace and humility.
Yes.
No, not even a little.
As to Delta variant being a very big deal for western countries he was right. I’m not sure how that is even debatable. I’m not here to litigate the rest.
I really don’t know that anyone argued that the delta variant wasn’t/wouldnt be a big deal. Churchill’s continued shitposting was that the vaccines were nearly useless, or severely diminished in efficacy, to the point that his posts started coming off as anti-vaxxer nonsense, against all the variants, and that is just absolutely not true.
Edit: Maybe one day there will be a variant that renders the MRNA vaccines useless, but that day has not come, and Churchill breathlessly posting bullshit with every new variant to make it seem like the vaccines are useless or near useless is no different then anti-vaxxer disinformation.
What your article actually says:
Walensky also noted a March 29 study that suggested that people with breakthrough COVID-19 infections after vaccination may pose less risk of spreading the virus because they carry lower amounts of virus in their respiratory tracts than unvaccinated COVID-19 patients. “These reduced viral loads hint at a potentially lower infectiousness, further contributing to vaccine effect on virus spread,” the study authors concluded. Lastly, Walensky highlighted an April 21 study in which vaccinated people with breakthrough COVID-19 infections in a skilled nursing home did not appear to have spread the infection onward in the facility.
This directly contradicts you.
Your other quote seems to have disappeared.
“High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus,” she said.
This isn’t in the article anymore. It’s in a few other places. Regardless, she probably misspoke a little bit. People infected with a virus can spread it. Your misunderstanding is the issue here though.
Maybe I’m misremembering but I seem to recall a lot of arguing re:variants with churchill. Maybe it was related to the vax but that isn’t the way I remember it. I also skipped litetally months of this thread so I am likely not the best encyclopedic source on what happened.
No, he wasn’t. The idea that a variant could come and wreak havoc was always understood as a risk. Churchill called every variant a disaster before it even happened. That’s not being right. He repeatedly used bad data and was dishonest multiple times about what his citations said.
Also, the vaccine remains quite effective. The issue here is a bunch of idiots didn’t get the vaccine. Variant or no, the issue here are the morons who didn’t get the vaccine. Delta doesn’t escape the vaccine effectively like he worried about so much.
JT was/is correct, least about not letting our guard down. Church made a lot of demonstrably false statements about variants that caught bans. I don’t think “variants will be a big deal” was a surprise to anyone.
Yeah, also this. If 100 percent of the population was vaccinated delta would not be spreading full stop.
Strip the context → misleadingly paraphrase → boldly attack → (sneak preview of events to come) complain that the post wasn’t written defensively enough to guard against a “good faith” misreading
One of my friends just texted our group chat that someone he knows tested positive for COVID and has just been gojng about his life, going to bars, work, etc. Florida is just a sump for the worst people in the US.
I don’t think I agree with this. Obviously we wouldn’t have 100k cases or stressed hospitals, but I think we’d still have clusters of COVID and spreader events. Guess it depends on the definition of spread.
My biggest immediate worry is how does healthcare system not fail in high spread areas? Already at prior peaks, faster doubling times, no mitigation, what am I missing?
What would even be the point of him getting tested if he’s going to go clubbing anyway?
Our only hope is that we reach burnthrough before that happens.
No clue
Israel has a much much higher vaccination rate than the US and the Delta variant is causing havoc.
They started giving out a 3rd vax today. Initial response was better than I thought but we’ll see how it goes
Without looking I’m guessing “havoc” is orders of magnitude less than “normal” here
Vaccine effectiveness is also a proxy for the tendency to get reinfected, and your claims about having ongoing outbreaks amidst a fully vaxxed population require a high propensity for either reinfection or vaccine escape. We’re not seeing vaccine effectiveness wear off over time or variants appreciably escaping them.
Is havoc referring to cases or deaths of hospitalizations? Because I think the metric to judge by now is the latter 2. It looks like the average covid death rate in Israel has remained pretty steady for the last 30 days.
If the vaccinated are just ending up having cold like symptoms for a week, I don’t that is havoc.
Right, the Luddites are the anti-vaxxers and the GOP at large who are obviously Luddites. The soi-disant progressives are the people who call themselves progressives but are exclusively invested in a particular kind of transformational change but get less excited about regular technological progress. And I’m not saying (did not say) that these people are somehow thwarting mRNA research. The argument I’m trying to make is that there are lots of things that the government could and should be doing specifically to beat COVID but also more generally to take advantage of the potential of mRNA vaccines that it’s not doing because it doesn’t really matter to society at large. Biden’s not going to win points for going all-out to realize the potential of mRNA vaccines as fast as possible and he’s not going to lose points because he didn’t do everything he could to scale up vaccine production in time to vaccinate Africa before X million people die. It’s just not important to people.
The government has already incubated the technology and spent jillions on tech transfer. It doesn’t have to sell anything to Joe Q Public, this stuff sells itself among people who work in the industry.
Yes, but I think this pretty much encapsulates the problem. You don’t need to sell the public on anything as long as what you want to do is fund some grants for basic research and spend jillions (read: single-digit millions) on getting things commercialized. But there’s much more that the government can get done if you do sell the public on it. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’m perfectly willing to concede for this discussion that the NIH and whoever else has done an impeccable job of shepherding the fundamental research along and getting it to a commercializable state. But there’s only so much that the bureaucracy can (or should be able to) do without getting political buy-in. I think that there’s much more that could be done if the political levels of the administration were pushing on it. That’s one area where I think the administration is failing, and I speculate that they’re failing at it because they don’t feel political pressure from the left or the right to turn in a really successful performance here.