BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

uziq wrote:

right, just as i thought. 'we can keep this up indefinitely'. no, 95% of the world's population really cannot.

Exactly my point, first world countries can deal with this through vaccinations, lockdowns and quarantines, the likelihood of vaccinating the world to 95% either at all or fast enough to stay ahead of new variants is exactly zero.
I'll be surprised if the world ever gets as high as 70% - this is the perfect situation for vaccine resistant variants to develop.

So vaccines by themselves aren't going to work, no chance whatsoever - whats your plan?

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2022-01-11 04:53:28)

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

every covid wave peaks and breaks. omicron seems to have done its worst in SA within about 5-6 weeks.

er no, positive tests and actual infections are completely decoupled now, there's not the test capacity and people have been told to not bother getting tested.

not in every country. every wave peaks and is either superseded by a new variant or slowly decreases as passive immunity increases. if 1 in 30 people a week are getting infected with omicron, that situation isn't infinitely extensible, dilbert: after a certain point a fifth of the population have already been exposed to it, and it's ability to transmit and spread is greatly retarded (admittedly this effect was more pronounced with earlier variants than omicron).

So vaccines by themselves aren't going to work, no chance whatsoever - whats your plan?

i have said all along that vaccinations are utterly key, but not that they're the only tool at our disposal. we will soon have antivirals and other therapeutics available for everyday use -- big benefit to dealing with the effects, mild or otherwise, of omicron/omicron+.

i have also said all along that testing and contact tracing for travel, major public events, etc, is surely prudent and wise. so long as they can be supplied cheaply/freely and in a form that is easily accessible, those measures seem eminently advisable (and, importantly, practicable) for the next few years. ditto requiring people to be vaccinated to enter certain venues, or to engage in certain group activities; i have no problem, in fact, with airlines enforcing vaccine mandates for long-distance travel.

importantly, though, society should be able to re-open whilst also retaining the above suite of measures. advocating for 'indefinite' lockdown or 'indefinite' closed anything is stupid and unnecessary, at this point. the rates of serious illness and death have been completely decoupled from new cases and, furthermore and importantly, more or less flatlined since we achieved widespread vaccination (+recent boosters). this pandemic is simply not the same beast anymore. the chances of a new wave breaking out in a highly vaccinated population and posing a serious threat of widespread death, as we saw frequently in year 1, is simply not going to happen anymore. therefore having entire cities in clampdowns with people not allowed to leave their residences is fucking insane. it doesn't achieve any measurable result in the medium- or long-term (i.e. the virus resurges anyway in quick order) and it certainly isn't necessary to stem the tide of deaths (vaccines do that, durh).

china is about as good a model as medieval city-states, at this point. larssen and cybargs have very neatly adumbrated why. their covid strategy has been thoroughly politicized at this point, and they're in major face-saving mode; they have the olympics and other huge events of focussed global attention very soon; their vaccine possibly doesn't even work. locking down entire cities would make sense when your basic vaccine is utterly broken, yes. even with our outdated (soon-to-be updated) vaccines, our situation is nothing alike.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-11 05:03:29)

I have heard one explanation of why South Africa did so well during the Omicron wave is because the average age of people there is much lower than elsewhere. They are also going through summer right now.

Omicron is just starting in latin america. Brazil entering a new phase of infections rapidly increasing, mid summer.

It has partly to do with low average age in the population but also with the fact that the cultures in warmer climates especially are very outdoors. No seasonality and continuous warm weather seems to work quite well against covid.

The deaths are ramping up in the U.S. 2 week average in the U.S. is +36% for deaths. Hospitalizations are at an all time high. Hospitalizations 2 week average is +83%.

The case numbers aren't breaking yet.

There's no reason kids shouldn't be in school right now.

when have i been partying and 'travelling'? i relocated once in 3 years, after self-isolating with zero social contact, not even with my then-gf, for the first 18 months. you meanwhile were sat at home with your family like a newt, so, erm, no change at all to your usual lifestyle, really.

living in korea for the last year i've had MORE restrictions on social life, not less. you absolute fucking idiot. korea has had a closing-time curfew for 90% of my time here, only relaxing it for all of about 4 weeks in the late autumn.

korea has had maximum groups sizes (2/4/6, with a group of 2 people being the maximum for the bulk of the entire summer).

korea has mandatory mask wearing outdoors - even during maximum humidity 36 degree days, even alone when walking through the city at night.

korea has had mandatory testing, mandatory self-isolation if you're in the same area as a reported case (been caught twice this way = 25 days, in total, combined of self-isolation at home; that's almost a month of my last 12, plus the 2 weeks i took in quarantine when i arrived here).

the UK has had NO restrictions during most of last year. as soon as the vaccine programme kicked off in earnest - and you'll remember the UK was basically one of the first 2/3 nations globally, leading the pack - all the social restrictions went out the window. clubs open. bars open. masks, by god! no contact tracing, no sign-in codes, no mandatory testing, very few curfews, if any ... i could go on. i practically uprooted myself and moved to a country with a much more severe, much more invasive approach to covid, with many, many more rules and a much higher pressure to conform to them. 'partying and travelling'. unbelievable. the giant raves and partying have been happening in the UNITED KINGDOM and EUROPE.

Or you can do nothing and have long lockdowns like the UK.

WHEN is the last time the UK had a long lockdown? LMAO. certainly not since i moved to korea. long lockdowns have precisely been off the table since last spring, when vaccines were understood to have changed the entire calculus. i moved to korea last spring!

please tell me more about my 'venality'. once again, dilbert, i am speaking on behalf of YOUR OWN POPULATION, the MAJORITY OF WHOM supported plans to 'reopen and live with covid'. you're speaking for the people of melbourne and sydney, really, sat there in your state of 1.6 million people, watching the cows graze? shut up and fuck off.

'the situation just works in australia, if you used our model you wouldn't need long lockdowns like the UK'.
melbourne: LONGEST CONTINUOUS LOCKDOWN IN THE WORLD, DURING THE WHOLE PANDEMIC.

How will vaccines solve the problem when they aren't very effective, aren't very effective for long and global takeup is going to be below the threshold for usefulness?

jesus christ. the vaccines aren't effective for very long because they're 2.5 YEARS OUT OF DATE. they were developed based on the original ancestor strain of covid, which is a very different-shaped microorganism to the one we find today. pfizer and moderna are already testing a vaccine that has been updated for omicron/+. it's like saying 'how will we ever cope with flu again? i just took the 2019 flu vaccine and it's only giving me 40% protection!'

the first-generation of vaccines were 90%+ EFFECTIVE even up to and including delta. the continued generations are going to tighten our grip on this pandemic. get a fucking grip on yourself. you are an hysterical idiot.

Expect the smelly STEM nerds you despise

i work with STEM nerds all day long. i respect them. i have been here talking about the immense achievements and reassurances of science. what are you doing, +3 years into the pandemic? still talking about spooky 'unforeseen consequences' of vaccination, sounding every bit like a cracked fucking antivaxxer skeptic, recycling their rhetoric. it's amazing - you position yourself as a tribune of the sciences but everything you post here is pseudo-scientific, conspiracy nut nonsense. you're mentally ill. you should take mushrooms.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-12 02:15:59)

no, no, you don't understand. because the vaccines lose their effectivity, 2 years later, we should never bother with vaccines.

plus, wE dN't knOw the LonG-tErM conSeQeuenceZ. 5G might give us cancer

Have there been studies on the effects of frequency of vaccination? Does inserting the same vector multiple times decrease immune response?

Larssen wrote:

Have there been studies on the effects of frequency of vaccination? Does inserting the same vector multiple times decrease immune response?

an mRNA vaccine does not insert a 'vector' into your body. it’s literally an instruction telling your body to produce more of an antibody. which is why they’re so effective.

any side-effects people report are the effects of the immune system stepping up antibody production, which means a generalised inflammatory response. it’s not your body fighting off a ‘vector’ of infection.

as cyborgs pointed out, there are just as many diseases which have frequent ‘booster’ treatments or which require multi-part injections. the number of ‘one shot - lifetime immunity’ vaccines is actually not that large. afaik we've only eradicated 2-3 major diseases in the modern era with a 'silver bullet'-type vaccine (e.g. smallpox).

the general wisdom with any sort of vaccination is that triggering that immune system/antibody response gifts you a period of lasting protection. whether it's 6 months or 5 years or a lifetime. regularly being vaccinated doesn't 'weaken' you to the disease - that's the obverse of the entire principle of the thing. the vaccine itself might have diminishing returns, sure, if your antibody levels are already high. and there might be unwanted side-effects and drawbacks of having your immune system constantly on high-alert mode, producing said antibodies (fatigue, fevers, headaches, etc.)

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-12 05:04:13)

Cybargs wrote:

mfw flu vaccines lose effiacy faster than rona vaccine. mein gott

it's a disaster!!!!! old people should be shielded and locked down forever.

Which is what I added in my edit. Point was not to sift through studies/articles manually to answer this specific question.

Granted since the technology has only just entered the market I reckon there's still much to learn about application and durability of effectiveness etc.