Coronavirus Vaccine Discussion

[finley]

@wingedpant

I strongly disagree. I actually used to have this viewpoint, but around last September I changed my mind.

There are deaths, yes. But there are also many consequences resulting from letting the pandemic rage. It’s now becoming clearer than ever that there are long-term consequences from Covid infection. People who were previously young and healthy are suffering a huge variety of physical and mental traumas.

This study (Functional decline in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic - PubMed) looks at people who got Covid in March to April 2020. Now, over a year later, there are a sizeable proportion who needed physical therapy, who still suffer deficits in physical performance. That means not just consequences for them, but also their families, their employers, and the economy for the long-term.

Plus, many of the deaths are decidedly NOT old people at the end of their life. It’s true that Covid does an excellent job of culling the nursing home people and that demographic, but there are plenty of 60-75 year olds who would have lived another 10-15 years if not for Covid. I knew two of them personally. One was a 68 year old who was totally healthy, still working every day. Got Covid, pneumonia, blood clot, dead. He should have lived another 15 years and been able to see his grandkids graduate and get their first jobs.

It’s true that Covid does an excellent job of culling the nursing home people and that demographic,

No, it isn’t true. They managed to kill a lot of people in nursing homes by locking them inside - thereby guaranteeing Diamond Princess-level contagion - but in the general population only 1 in 100 of the very old died of COVID. The annual death rate in that demographic increased from about 20% to 21%.

And what, then, is to be done? Even if everything you say is true, how do you stop those things happening? What specifically could have been done to ensure that your 68-year-old friend/relative would be alive today? What level of (excess) deaths should we aim for? 1 in 1000? Less? Who will we hurt or kill in order to achieve that? Do we seek their consent? And if not, why?

Most people seem unwilling to accept that there is no way out. There is no solution. It’s Nature 1, humans 0, and if we had any sense we’d be taking our lumps, showing a bit of humility, and making sure it doesn’t happen again - or, when it does happen again, that we’re ready to cope.

And maybe it’s “only” 2 deaths per 1,000. But look at India. Do you want hospitals being crushed, people refused ambulances, paying for oxygen cylinders on the black market, or just dying in traffic jams leading to hospital?

Yes, I see India. But that situation says more about India than about COVID, does it not? So again - what do you propose India should do? What magic wand can they wave to solve the problem? The unfortunate fact is that this is happening because India is India.

The way out is to do these restrictions to buy time, like Taiwan is doing.

How much time? And at what cost? And with what ultimate goal if (as you seem to implicitly accept) the end result is the same?

Where is your evidence that “these restrictions” do, in fact, buy time, given that the few countries that did not do them had a very, very low death rate, even among older people?

And perhaps we should tactfully leave aside the fact that Taiwan had plenty of time. A year, in fact. And apparently didn’t do anything useful with it.

And yes, vaccinate as many people as possible, beginning with those most at risk. If we’re lucky, we can more or less eradicate Covid by breaking chains of transmission.

But didn’t you argue earlier that, if you hit a particular “sweet spot” of vaccination coverage, you’re likely to make things worse?

In reality, it will become like flu where it always exists, periodically coming back.

It would do this whether we intervene or not. Since this pandemic has now been raging for an abnormally long time, one has to wonder whether our interventions are making things worse.

There are some countries which seem to have been lucky. We definitely don’t understand everything about this virus, and it’s weird how some countries have been relatively unaffected. The African continent, for example, is largely unaffected. However, their testing is non-existent to unreliable, their reporting is non-existent, and their population median age is really young.

It’s something that really ought to be looked into. And as with a lot of things about the pandemic, I find it utterly bizarre that these things are not known and nobody seems interested in finding out the reasons.

But the average population of some wealthy country with an ageing population is going to have a really, really bad time.

Why? What makes you think the virus is going to become so much more virulent?

[dan2006]

I’ve heard and read a lot about ivermectin. Unfortunately western doctors won’t prescribe things off label in the West since they don’t want any lawsuits. Online pharmacies that will ship without prescription have been sold out of that stuff for a year now.

[felinner]

I think it’s like what happened to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Fareed criticizes Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause: The damage has been...

[quandary]

US COVID-19 vaccine adverse events analysis for J&J, Moderna, and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines based on data from VAERS. Data are US and territories only and not entirely scientific (e.g. it’s not possible to know whether the deaths are caused by the vaccines or not):

U.S. COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events Analysis

[tando]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/03/bahrain-seychelles-sinopharm-vaccine/

[wingedpant]

Honestly man, being a “herd immunity” proponent is so early-2020, lol

It’s just a ridiculous proposition which is destined to fail. No rational person holds that viewpoint any more.

Common sense says that if you have zero restrictions let the virus run rife in Taiwan and you’ll have an overwhelmed healthcare system, 10,000’s of excess deaths etc.

You need evidence that the restrictions buy time? Have you paid any attention whatsoever over the last 18 months? Look at Taiwan over the last couple weeks. Numbers holding steady at 2-500 per day. You seriously believe that if they let schools, restaurants etc re-open that those numbers wouldn’t immediately skyrocket? Again, it’s comical that somebody can still hold this view in mid-2021.

As for other countries - some of them are straight up lying. Many African countries claim to have zero cases. Obviously it’s nonsense. Many of them are covering up the truth. Most of them simply don’t have the testing capability. They’re also not as interconnected. No high speed rail between cities. Not as many high rise buildings with shared elevators. And finally, the median age of the African continent is 19 years old, which helps.

Furthermore, many of them DID have a bunch of restrictions: Coronavirus in Africa: Five reasons why Covid-19 has been less deadly than elsewhere - BBC News

I don’t suppose anything will change your mind, but your whole viewpoint is totally ridiculous. There is a solution. You have common-sense restrictions, much like Taiwan is doing now, minimising short-term damage to the economy, and roll out vaccines as fast as possible.

[finley]

@wingedpant

Honestly man, being a “herd immunity” proponent is so early-2020, lol

It’s just a ridiculous proposition which is destined to fail. No rational person holds that viewpoint any more.

Oh, I know. It’s absolutely impossible that human immune systems would continue to work the same way they did in the past. The modern human is a hopeless, substandard product of dysgenics whose only hope for survival lies in pharmacology, right?

That phrase ‘herd immunity’ seems to be bandied about (usually in a negative sense) without any appreciation of what it means. The bottom line is that the human immune systems must at some point reach equilibrium with virus evolution. It isn’t a static endpoint, it’s a dynamic balance, and whatever you do, no other ultimate outcome exists (the virus will not kill everyone, and it will not disappear).

However, accepting that outcome as the best possible scenario does require accepting that a certain number of old people will die each year of all the ordinary respiratory diseases, with COVID added to the list of ordinary respiratory diseases. I think many people can’t accept this. People can die of anything else, it seems, and nobody will care, as long as they don’t die of COVID. So they’ll continue fiddling about with stuff, not even knowing why they’re doing it or what they intend to achieve.

@wingedpant

You seriously believe that if they let schools, restaurants etc re-open that those numbers wouldn’t immediately skyrocket? Again, it’s comical that somebody can still hold this view in mid-2021.

Probably. Maybe. And then they’d tail off again. The ebb and flow would be different. So what? Taiwan could have prepared for ‘skyrocketing’ cases. They chose not to.

The problem with Common Sense is that you cannot actually know what would have happened in alternative circumstances. So people pat themselves on the back because the “level 3” measures are working, but in actual fact there’s no reference curve to gauge success (or failure) against. And we don’t know the true number of cases anyway. You’ll announce with absolute certainty “but of course lockdowns work!” because it’s your firm belief that they do; the fact that there’s plenty of evidence suggesting they they make things worse (eg., the aforementioned deaths in care homes) will be dismissed out-of-hand because it violates your Common Sense.

We have science because Common Sense doesn’t always give the right answers. And the problem with life is that, sometimes, the right answer isn’t actually knowable, and we just have to take a guess.

I do wonder how this would have all panned out 20 years ago, when molecular biology was in its infancy and we wouldn’t have been able to do most of the stuff we’re doing today. I’m guessing we would have kept calm and carried on, just like in 1957, and it would have been forgotten within a few years (or until China released its next bioweapon, at least).

[Chris]

Herd immunity achieved through vaccination is the goal, and it is working in countries that have achieved it or are approaching it.

Herd immunity without vaccinations is achievable; however, it would mean that the pandemic (and its restrictions) will last many more years and tens of millions of people will die unnecessarily.

[finley]

You have no way of knowing that. It’s a guess. Nothing wrong with guesses, but your certainty is misplaced. Human technology ranged against Nature almost always causes more problems than it solves, but we never discover that until after the fact.

The problem with the “vaccines are the one and only solution” route is that all other solutions get ridiculed and ignored.

[tempogain]

@finley

Human technology ranged against Nature almost always causes more problems than it solves

I am highly skeptical of this statement Exhibit A, my house in this rainstorm

[finley]

There are ways of getting Nature to flow around things; putting up brick walls against her fails miserably. Houses can be designed in such a way that they sit within the context of what Nature needs to do; when they are not (as in the case of a concrete jungle) you need a whole load of other stuff to fix the problems that they cause. In this specific instance, you need an extremely expensive and complicated drainage system that Nature would normally provide for you in the form of vegetation and soil.

It’s not an either-or, but a matter of degree. The reason humans are never successful in direct conflict with Nature is that, at a purely physical level, she can throw a lot more energy/power into achieving desired goals than we can. Several orders of magnitude more.

[tempogain]

I admire your consistency, but my faith in technology is unshaken

[finley]

You and a few billion others. Which is why technology will continue to cause problems for the foreseeable future. (Cough)Gain of function(cough).

[Aikaili]

I’m in the same boat. I had the AZ vaccine here thinking I would be able to get the 2nd dose. However, I’m going back to the US and cannot find AZ there.
Did you get a different vaccine?

[Brianjones]

The second dose has-been approved, it will be available.

[Chris]

@finley

(Cough)Gain of function(cough).

“gain of function” is a term spreading among conspiracy nutters. Kind of like “shedding”. It’s conspiracy nonsense.

[tempogain]

Uh, what?

[Aikaili]

There is no schedule for someone like me. The medical community is busy taking care of urgent needs as they should. I’m going to the US and they don’t have AZ readily available. If I get the vaccination there, then that is one less person that Taiwan has to worry about vaccinating. Has anyone on this forum had experience with mixing and matching?

[finley]

um … yeah, what?

It’s a thing. GoF may not have been done in this particular case, but it is routinely done. “Viral shedding” is a valid medical term. It isn’t something “conspiracy nutters” made up.

I work with technology all the time. It’s what I do. I have a reasonably good intuitive handle on the cost-benefit tradeoffs involved in using it. Sometimes the costs are so high, and the benefits so small, that I often find myself thinking “what is the point of this particular technology, other than giving people with PhDs something to tinker with?”.

[Brianjones]

Well you have a good option there so whatever suits you.

The second dose will be available within max 12 weeks of the first dose. That means I will be able to get mine within a few weeks （edit July).