Vaccine

kickingandscreaming said:
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.
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BTW, anyone that doesn't support this is an anti-healther.
 
EvilGoalie 21 said:
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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I'm reading Isaacson's book The Code Breaker right now. It focuses on the career of Jennifer Doudna, but rolls in everything from Watson's The Double Helix onward.
 
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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That's why HOPE is bad policy. We had lockdowns based on the HOPE that it would eliminate or significantly mitigate Covid while knowing for certain that it would negatively impact education, our economy (although in some sectors it had a positive albeit likely temporary impact), mental health, other health conditions, etc.

Unfortunately, politicians don't typically get reelected for not doing something to address short term problems (long term problems are virtually irrelevant to them). So they implemented policies which were mostly form over substance but have created long-term implications and unfortunately for their reelection hopes, short term problems as well. Andrew Cuomo is the poster child for how politicians fucked-up the Covid response (with assists to DeBlasio), although that turned out to be the least of his problems. The Cuomo brothers possess the scary combination of arrogance, incompetence and moral bankruptcy.
 
what-happened said:
Unfortunately this virus acts so damn weird
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I view it differently I guess. The virus is acting pretty much within the parameters of well know biological and epidemiological principles. The fact that it kicking our ass in certain kinds of ways as it does so does not make it a head scratcher really. Rather, we should be more like the Elephant's Child, a bit warm but not at all astonished.
 
espola said:
Jordan Klepper has a new video where he interviews So Cal vaccine resisters. How to avoid covid? "Live a lifestyle of wellness." (Apparently, it's a yoga thing)

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Is health and wellness less effective than a vaccination for many individuals, particularly the obese? I don't think we can answer that question either way. I personally believe health and wellness with a vaccine is the best route. But to claim one is superior than the other, we really don't have compelling data to support one over the other.
 
dad4 said:
Over time, circumstances change. We learn more. New variants evolve. It is inevitable that recommendations will change, too.

Did you expect the world to stop for you, to make it easier to keep up?
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You anti-science, anti-immune system tyrants have been falling behind since day one while you people keep hyping cases over deaths and comparing this pandemic to the last pandemic that mandated vaccines and locked down economies. Just in case you were wondering what Nazi germany was like. You're just one of those ordinary guys that Robert Browning wrote about.
 
EvilGoalie 21 said:
I view it differently I guess. The virus is acting pretty much within the parameters of well know biological and epidemiological principles. The fact that it kicking our ass in certain kinds of ways as it does so does not make it a head scratcher really. Rather, we should be more like the Elephant's Child, a bit warm but not at all astonished.
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Completely agree - it's biologically behving like a virus (corona), following the playbook.. Epidmeiologists are behaving like they should (those not on TV). It's the disease that's making many scratch their heads.
 
dad4 said:
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.
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It should be reassuring. Mutations that trend towards the sniffles is a great thing. Why have the responses been appropriate? That statement doesn't make sense. We didn't close borders for Delta, but have for Omicron?

Omicron will eventually outcompete Delta if more transmissable, just the way it goes. First we have to get through our Delta surge, which is still happening and is a danger certain demographics right now.

What side of the building does your pharma friend work at? Scientist or seller? While SA tells everyone to calm down, people aren't dying, Pharma CEOs are stirring the pot, like they always do. Doses have to be sold before Omicron's true colors are known. Funny how disease drives an industry to profit.
 
what-happened said:
It should be reassuring. Mutations that trend towards the sniffles is a great thing. Why have the responses been appropriate? That statement doesn't make sense. We didn't close borders for Delta, but have for Omicron?

Omicron will eventually outcompete Delta if more transmissable, just the way it goes. First we have to get through our Delta surge, which is still happening and is a danger certain demographics right now.

What side of the building does your pharma friend work at? Scientist or seller? While SA tells everyone to calm down, people aren't dying, Pharma CEOs are stirring the pot, like they always do. Doses have to be sold before Omicron's true colors are known. Funny how disease drives an industry to profit.
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I thought you were referring to the pharma decision to move quicker on an omicron-specific booster than on a delta-specific booster. Reasonable because you need a new vaccine if there is a chance the old one will stop working.

I was not referring to closing borders in response to a variant. The question there is how much it slows things down, and I don’t have a good way to get my head round that.

Science side. I can’t tell you what the sales guys think of it. But they can sell something else. If covid doesn’t get to me, my blood pressure will, and there’s money in that, too.

I’m sure the finance guys have the worst angle on it. Ramping up for a disease that disappears is a sunk cost nightmare for them.
 
espola said:
Earlier you admitted that the vaccine results in fewer severe cases and deaths. Now you call it a failure. "Screw you and your mandates" is a selfish attitude that we first noticed when you evaded common-sense protocols by taking your child three states away to avoid them.
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Not that any state was safe to hear you cowards tell it. But please continue with your eloquent ignorance.
 
what-happened said:
It's the disease that's making many scratch their heads.
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Yep, and its a good point. The pathways leading to the hyperinflammation/auto-immune dergulation in COViD19 are pretty clear. But what constitutes the tipping point beyond which the immune system doesn't turn itself off the way its supposed to, why we see the same type of deregulated circuitry working its way out in a different kind of way in MIS-C, those issues are not clear. It means that the most important aspects of "risk assessment" as we talk about it rests on a set of parameters that we do not really understand, and which could conceivably change. Those hypotheticals are powerful pyschological drivers.
 
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