Vaccine

watfly said:
Are you conceding that we can't stop the virus?

I recall saying early on that the virus will linger for awhile because it will always find the path of least resistance regardless of what we do, while you professed we could control the virus and reach zero covid with various policies. It's the false premise that we can eliminate the virus that causes the goalposts to move. Mitigate yes, eliminate no.

Queue its the unvaccinated, anti-maskers, and restriction ignoring population's fault that Covid hasn't been eliminated.
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You answered your own question. Mitigation is both possible and desirable. It does, however, require things like vaccines and masks.

You want to believe we can mitigate the virus while ignoring our best tools against it. That doesn’t work.
 
dad4 said:
The hip hop musician was giving his expert opinion on the vaccine.

Such an opinion is about as useful as hip hop music produced by aerosol scientists.

Catchy, wasn’t it?
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You don't need an expert to have an opinion on how good the vaccine is. The experts call tell us if it stops death (it's imperfect, but except among those for who it's imperfect 1 shot seems to do the job), stops severe disease (it's imperfect), transmission of illness (problematic), or catching illness (against the omicron, likely poor). Once we know that everyone can decide for themselves how good the product is, and he's calling you out. You don't need to be an expert to see that.

"Dr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks".
 
dad4 said:
You answered your own question. Mitigation is both possible and desirable. It does, however, require things like vaccines and masks.

You want to believe we can mitigate the virus while ignoring our best tools against it. That doesn’t work.
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Again, you fail time and time again to do a cost benefit analysis. Perpetual masks is not a thing which is desirable and carries enormous costs. A vaccine that is leaky and requires multiple injections limits its benefit. Vaccine mandates carry an enormous societal cost.

Mitigation has failed, the omicron is apparently less severe, and the shots do well in holding up still against severe disease. Time for all of us to catch our colds and take our chances (including you).
 
dad4 said:
I’m not sure what you mean by “not very good”.

By any measure, they’ve already saved millions of lives. Can you imagine how many more would have died in the Delta surge if we’d had no vaccine for those over 60?

Will they have a better vaccine sometime in the future? Probably. But that’s different from saying the current one is bad.
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I mean they are not very good, the data is there. Imagine how many more would have lived had the vaccine worked better? Even so, more people died this year than last. Why? don't really know. I'm sure there is some person out there that would like to pontificate on the matter.

Big Pharma doen't always get it right. They get it wrong often actually. Sometimes they do it deliberately, sometimes they don't. I like to think that the scientists charged with research/development are trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately the executive types are 100% in it for the GP.

Interesting how quick on the draw they've been on Omicron, even though the data is skewing towards sniffles. It's likley the trend is true but we'll have to wait and see once it hits the older population, which it will. They weren't so quick on the draw for Delta, just more boosting of the same stuff. All of a sudden, in spite of initial data coming out of SA, Omicron is the new boogey man. Don't you worry, Big Pharm to the rescue.

It is impressive how quick we developed vaccines, no doubt there. A tremendous amount of your dollars went into it - it's the only way it could have happened. If you are not skeptical of what's to come from the ilk of pfizer, AZ, Moderna, etc, then you are very naive. As long as governments continue to pony up dollars up front for doses, CEOs will continue to give interviews that influence public opinion.

But go ahead and take your booster for the umpteenth time, just keep the boosters away from your kid. (If i were giving you unsolicited advice).
 
espola said:
Back in the days when the best vaccines were produced from a melange of attenuated or killed viruses, the antibodies developed in the body came after exposure to a wide range of phenotypes, thus giving a wider foundation to the immunity. I fear that the current genetic engineering vaccines are too much exactly the same, thus narrowing the effectiveness against new strains that don't depend on the mechanism attacked by the vaccine and resulting antibodies. Some scientific commentators have suggested that that is how omicron evades the vaccine. If a new vaccine is developed specifically to attack omicron, that is admitting to some degree that it is essentially a new disease.
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You must have talked to the MRNA dudes. Novelty is the kryptonite of vaccines. Unfortunately this virus acts so damn weird that we had to go with what we had to try and stop the bleed. Vaccine re-design is already underway but it may take time. In the meantime, the strategy is to boost and to HOPE the virus continues to degrade as it mutates. Sniffles are a good thing. Hopefully Omicron remains true to initial surveillance and isn't as dangerous to the 65 and older party crowd.
 
espola said:
We could always wait a few more years. How many would die in that time?
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Until they get the vaccine right, more will continue to die. The vaccinated are dying now, just not a rate that the media deems worthy of reporting. Not gory enough or valuable to a narrative. But the vaccinated are dying. Wonder why that data point isn't being tracked? - Died with/without vaccine? Or maybe died with/without being boosted.
 
dad4 said:
And, if 20% of the country refused to get their measles shots, you’d see new measles variants all the time, too.
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Wrong… especially if you’re implying that this disease mutations evade vaccinations.

“Globally, measles remains a leading cause of childhood deaths and an estimated 160 000 children die each year from complications of the disease.”
 
watfly said:
HOPE is never a good strategy whether its health policy or business.
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sometimes we don't have a choice. For some policy questions, the answer to "what's to be done?" really is nothing. For some business (e.g., Sears, buggy whips), nothing was going to save them. In this case, we had an imperfect solution....humans are brilliant and we will come up with better ones but it will take time....in the mean time "what's to be done?"....there's not much that can be done that isn't harmful and maybe even counterproductive....it's sucks but that's the reality.
 
And we will see more reflection on this as time goes on.

Bad trend. But a lot of people like dad are/were for increased gov power/surviellance.

The cost we have paid and will pay is too high. Once gov gains power it rarely gives it up.

MSN

www.msn.com
 
what-happened said:
I mean they are not very good, the data is there. Imagine how many more would have lived had the vaccine worked better? Even so, more people died this year than last. Why? don't really know. I'm sure there is some person out there that would like to pontificate on the matter.

Big Pharma doen't always get it right. They get it wrong often actually. Sometimes they do it deliberately, sometimes they don't. I like to think that the scientists charged with research/development are trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately the executive types are 100% in it for the GP.

Interesting how quick on the draw they've been on Omicron, even though the data is skewing towards sniffles. It's likley the trend is true but we'll have to wait and see once it hits the older population, which it will. They weren't so quick on the draw for Delta, just more boosting of the same stuff. All of a sudden, in spite of initial data coming out of SA, Omicron is the new boogey man. Don't you worry, Big Pharm to the rescue.

It is impressive how quick we developed vaccines, no doubt there. A tremendous amount of your dollars went into it - it's the only way it could have happened. If you are not skeptical of what's to come from the ilk of pfizer, AZ, Moderna, etc, then you are very naive. As long as governments continue to pony up dollars up front for doses, CEOs will continue to give interviews that influence public opinion.

But go ahead and take your booster for the umpteenth time, just keep the boosters away from your kid. (If i were giving you unsolicited advice).
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The difference between the omicron response and the delta response is, to me, reassuring. They are different variants with different risks. And the responses have been quite different, as is appropriate.

A pharma friend of mine recently toasted omicron. Not because of profits- alpha and delta got no such honors. It is because a high transmissibility, low severity variant will do a ton of good if it outcompetes delta and stays low virulence. Not so cynical as you think.
 
N00B said:
Wrong… especially if you’re implying that this disease mutations evade vaccinations.

“Globally, measles remains a leading cause of childhood deaths and an estimated 160 000 children die each year from complications of the disease.”
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www.cdc.gov

Global Measles Outbreaks

Global measles outbreaks information (including top 10 countries)
www.cdc.gov www.cdc.gov

The worst one listed is Nigeria with just over 6k cases. What’s your source?
 
Grace T. said:
sometimes we don't have a choice. For some policy questions, the answer to "what's to be done?" really is nothing. For some business (e.g., Sears, buggy whips), nothing was going to save them. In this case, we had an imperfect solution....humans are brilliant and we will come up with better ones but it will take time....in the mean time "what's to be done?"....there's not much that can be done that isn't harmful and maybe even counterproductive....it's sucks but that's the reality.
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There's not much that can be done policy-wise but for the vast majority of people exercising and getting their weight down to where they aren't obese is absolutely within their control and will improve their health - both mental and physical - and won't just be specific to COVID. Too many people have become plants waiting for the government's water and fertilizer. Think of how many lives we'd save if we mandated acceptable BMI. I bet it's a hell of a lot more than mandating masking. I might need a few more weeks of healthy living to be within the acceptable range, so let's not rush this through.
 
dad4 said:
Read the polio vaccine history. It’s not as clear cut as you think. There were plenty of bumps in the road, even after approval of the first doses.
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IMO the more relevant story for this current pandemic but would be the history of small pox in the New World, from an immunologically naieve population, to different forms of endemic circulation in different groups, to vaccine development, to public health campaigns to what is probably the best example of eradication we currently have. Jared Diamond tried to tell part of that story, but his representation of the biology (understandably) was not the strong suit and flawed in places. Writing the story from the perspective of the virus and the virus hunters would make for a good holiday read I think.
 
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