Vaccine

It's not a nefarious plot....it's the incentives. Now we're into the realm of economics and the impact of incentives on human behavior. In terms of the structure, there has been a lot of money to be made out of COVID. From the beginning, for example, Fauci heavily funneled money into studying vaccines, less money to study new drugs, and almost no money for repurposed medicines. Have you asked yourself why?

Masks are a similar story. Remember the story of lockdowns (at least in the west excluding the very severe initial lockdowns imposed by some of the Europeans) has been that white collar workers basically work from home, but blue collar workers (ranging not just in supermarkets and pharmacies garbage fire police and medical offices/hospitals, but also pot shops, liquor stores, constructions, plumbing, heading/air, fast food, restaurant take out, factories, and even retail) had to keep working. So you had the well off basically able to isolate but the not so well off forced to work. Needless to say some of the "essential workers" (among which remember teachers were too scared to work) were worried about spending long hours with coworkers and magically the government came out with "masks are better than vaccines"...and when the Danish study came out, it was pulled from publication twice (which the authors the study themselves attributed to the fact that there was censorship).

Then remember there was the entire CDC school reopenings guidance and it turned out one group which was drafting it was the teachers unions.

I know you might like to think that science is this purity, but when it gets mixed in with politics it's not, and it's terribly naive of you to assume it is (no doubt because being a part of that group, you want to think the best of it). It's not a grand conspiracy theory, but it does have to do with human incentives...and as I told dad4 before: I'm not interested in preaching....preachers have their role in society....I'm also not interested in the purity of the science....that's what people in the field are for....what I'm interested in is policy, but because of the failure of science, we are left with a paucity of conclusions, so lot's of people are guessing, and more often than not, those on team panic/safety have been more wrong than rightl

p.s. I'm actually not putting in that much effort into it. As I've noted, one of the limitations which I will gladly cope to is that I don't have the time or interest to deep dive. I'm only interested to the extent it has any actual impact on policy, which i can in turn use to see where the future is going.
 
How about this?


Ahhh, the CDC, AKA Floppy Noodle. And yes, they have a really tough job. Unfortunately they've been unable to stay out of the political spotlight for 20 months - making their job harder and planting the seed that they are not a reliable source of info.

Maybe next time they won't let administrations, campaigns, and big pharma be their marketing machine. Now they are questioned, mocked, ridiculed whenever new information is released.
 
I know you might like to think that science is this purity, but when it gets mixed in with politics it's not, and it's terribly naive of you to assume it is (no doubt because being a part of that group, you want to think the best of it).

No. It's a human endeavor with its successes, failures, weaknesses, strengths, good, bad and the ugly. And I'd say it's because i see it that way that I'm not prone to this conspiratorial team this and team that, which I find curious. The thing about purity, whatever that means, is coming from you. You say that's not how you see it but, well, I have to say it sure sounds like it. Poking at it, however, can only be a good thing so keep going. All I'm saying is you may want to consider a different methodology because your current one does not seem to be making inroads.
 
No. It's a human endeavor with its successes, failures, weaknesses, strengths, good, bad and the ugly. And I'd say it's because i see it that way that I'm not prone to this conspiratorial team this and team that, which I find curious. The thing about purity, whatever that means, is coming from you. You say that's not how you see it but, well, I have to say it sure sounds like it. Poking at it, however, can only be a good thing so keep going. All I'm saying is you may want to consider a different methodology because your current one does not seem to be making inroads.

depends on the function. Again, if you look at my track record, it's been much more solid than dad4s or anyone on team panic/safety. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

And no, you can't just justify the limitations as "well, it's a human endeavor so it's flawed". You have to poke at it and ask why is it flawed... and that's where you come to incentives.

I've told the story before. My son and I played a LARP at Disneyland. The game, though, was broken and so the gamedesigners kept trying to jigger with it. But what was frustrating for them was that every time they did that, people would respond to the incentives by finding new ways to break the game. I loved that experience...I wish every econ student could experience it...humans are wonderful (both rational and panicky) creatures that respond to incentives. They never were able to fix it, just produce different outcomes based on the incentives placed. Again, the reason you don't see this is because of the difference in our training....mine is to look at policy from a critical outlook....yours is to study a particular subject matter and try and determine a truth. This perspective is both your strength and limitation, but it's a limitation shared by many on team panic/safety, which is why so often they've failed.
 
This is going to push us towards booster mandates (which also explains why the UK is looking to revise it's definition of fully vaxxed). IF it hold up, the other open question is how long does this immunity last. Just from anecdotal evidence of having spoken to various people with different experience of the booster, my gut tells me after the one booster, willingness to comply is going to drop severely, unless you get to the point that whatever the applicable product's side effects approach some point where they mirror the flu vaccine (and remember even with the flu vaccine we have only about 50% compliance depending on the jurisidiction)

 
No. It's a human endeavor with its successes, failures, weaknesses, strengths, good, bad and the ugly. And I'd say it's because i see it that way that I'm not prone to this conspiratorial team this and team that, which I find curious. The thing about purity, whatever that means, is coming from you. You say that's not how you see it but, well, I have to say it sure sounds like it. Poking at it, however, can only be a good thing so keep going. All I'm saying is you may want to consider a different methodology because your current one does not seem to be making inroads.
To some it’s just easier to see complicity as opposed to sifting through the complex and nuanced. Good guys vs bad guys, cops vs robbers, the news media vs “the holy and righteous”.
 
Despite being fully vaxxed 40% of the Ottawa Senators has come down with COVID. Assuming it's not a fluke, it's more evidence of a really high breakthrough rate. Unless you are going to mandate the boosters (and those boosters are 1 and done), there's no point to vaccination mandate.

 
Despite being fully vaxxed 40% of the Ottawa Senators has come down with COVID. Assuming it's not a fluke, it's more evidence of a really high breakthrough rate. Unless you are going to mandate the boosters (and those boosters are 1 and done), there's no point to vaccination mandate.

What, exactly, do you mean by “came down with”?

Were any hospitalized? Bedridden? Anything to worry about?

All you’re saying is that ten vaccinated NHL players tested positive for covid, feel mostly ok, but are staying away from other people so they don’t spread it.

Sounds like a pretty normal day. The take-home message is probably that professional athletes should patronize only well ventilated strip clubs.
 
What, exactly, do you mean by “came down with”?

Were any hospitalized? Bedridden? Anything to worry about?

All you’re saying is that ten vaccinated NHL players tested positive for covid, feel mostly ok, but are staying away from other people so they don’t spread it.

Sounds like a pretty normal day. The take-home message is probably that professional athletes should patronize only well ventilated strip clubs.

That's cute. I approve. :)

There are two basic arguments that have been advanced for vaccine mandates. 1) to prevent community spread. If 40% of the team despite being vaccinated came down with COVID, that's not much by way of prevention on community spread. Unless the boosters provide long lasting protection against community spread, and you are prepared to mandate the boosters, there's no point to a vaccine mandate. And again, if 40% of the team is falling ill (short of long lasting natural immunity and/or boosters), herd immunity is a chimera. As you yourself outlined, the magic $1,000,000 question is how big is the breakthrough rate.

2) to protect stupid individuals from themselves from the severe harm of hospitalization/long covid/death. The problem with this argument is that if you don't trust people to make this decision for their own lives, why are you letting them vote (or have children).
 
Were any hospitalized? Bedridden? Anything to worry about?
Is that a function of the vaccine or the fact they're healthy young people? Maybe both to some extent, but don't pretend this is inherent only to the vaccinated. Plenty of unvaccinated athletes have had no issues from Covid, in fact, its extremely rare for professional athletes to have any ill effects from Covid.
 
Based on what's reported by Minnesota (its the easiest data to find for these metrics), it looks like breakthrough infections are twice as likely as reinfection (in terms of rate). Breakthrough is 72,268 cases over 3,234,905 vaccinated, or 2.25%, vs Reinfection is 8,996 cases vs 837,765 total cases, or 1.07%.

So the rate is double, but the number of cases is 8x higher for breakthrough cases. So remind me again why only the unvaccinated are the problem and why we should discriminate against the unvaccinated but previously infected?
 
Ahhh, the CDC, AKA Floppy Noodle. And yes, they have a really tough job. Unfortunately they've been unable to stay out of the political spotlight for 20 months - making their job harder and planting the seed that they are not a reliable source of info.

Maybe next time they won't let administrations, campaigns, and big pharma be their marketing machine. Now they are questioned, mocked, ridiculed whenever new information is released.

That's a curious way of admitting your error.
 
Is that a function of the vaccine or the fact they're healthy young people? Maybe both to some extent, but don't pretend this is inherent only to the vaccinated. Plenty of unvaccinated athletes have had no issues from Covid, in fact, its extremely rare for professional athletes to have any ill effects from Covid.
Completely agree that it is age, health, and vaccination all together. These guys were very low risk for multiple reasons.

Because of that, there is no conclusion to be drawn. At most, it’s one more piece of evidence that vaccinated people can still test positive for covid. We knew that.

It doesn’t even tell us much about the probability. If tells us nothing if they all got it at the same place that had very high viral concentrations. It tells us quite a bit if it was jumping from person to person in the clubhouse. But we can’t say which it was without going back in time and doing better contact tracing.
 
Completely agree that it is age, health, and vaccination all together. These guys were very low risk for multiple reasons.

Because of that, there is no conclusion to be drawn. At most, it’s one more piece of evidence that vaccinated people can still test positive for covid. We knew that.

It doesn’t even tell us much about the probability. If tells us nothing if they all got it at the same place that had very high viral concentrations. It tells us quite a bit if it was jumping from person to person in the clubhouse. But we can’t say which it was without going back in time and doing better contact tracing.

It does tell us one thing: breakthrough infections aren't "rare". True, it is entirely possible that a quarter if you throw it will come up heads 90/100 times....but it's not probable that such is the result on a cumulative basis. If breakthrough infections were "rare", you wouldn't have 40% of the team out at one time plus a few of the coaches.

p.s. again, not hard proof, but it is an anecdotal indication
 
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