Vaccine

Under your definition no country then is highly vaxxed. Per The Guardian's tracker, Israel is as 153 doses per 100 people, with only Iceland (also having problems) and Uruguay higher.

As for Duke county, the problem again is part of that 88% month to month is going to fall in effectiveness so even if they hit 90% it will continue to fall from there. That's the problem...if you think the number is 90%, and if the vaccine drops in effectiveness over time, there's no way to get there using the Gottlieb/Israeli approach....it's the UK/Denmark/Singapore or bust then.
90%-
Yes. That is the problem. By the definition that matters, very few places are really fully vaccinated.

But it isn‘t my definition to choose. The threshold is whatever it is. Do you have any reason to believe that the herd immunity threshold is anything less than 90% ?


Degradation-
I am not so worried about the gradual degradation in vaccine effectiveness. Other vaccines also need boosters, and it never really bothered me.

Besides, there are two factors pulling in the opposite direction. The fraction of the population that can be vaccinated will rise as we approve youth dosages. More importantly, at some point we will have a booster which targets Delta specifically. Between vaccinating more people and having better targeted shots, I’m not too worried about the long term plan for vaccinations.
 
Will Hound every stop ignoring whether school transmission leads to added community spread?

Trick question. No he won’t.
Actually they have found that schools are not a driver of community spread. Lots of articles about that.

So why exactly are we playing safety theater with a group of individuals who have no risk?
 
Actually they have found that schools are not a driver of community spread. Lots of articles about that.

So why exactly are we playing safety theater with a group of individuals who have no risk?

Are you trying to be the last person to use the empty phrase "safety theater"?
 
No. It would be an absurd argument and demonstrably false. Which then raises the question of what are you trying to say when you bring up SARS and MERS?

By "It" do you mean the following?:

1) Official case tallies of the MERS and SARS outbreaks are actually gross underestimates.
2) In reality, both were global pandemics of comparable magnitude to what we have with CoV-2.
3) However, due to a relative dearth of PCR testing and (presumably) other broad-population assessments of infection, the true scale of the MERS and SARS pandemics went undetected.
4) Additionally, fatalities associated with the proposed MERS and SARS pandemics essentially did not produce a signal over the day-to-day noise of people dying of all kinds of things.
5) Therefore, the only reason anybody is making any kind of fuss over CoV-2 is that a push for PCR testing revealed the scale of it, otherwise we'd all have kept skipping down the path on our merry way.
 
90%-
Yes. That is the problem. By the definition that matters, very few places are really fully vaccinated.

But it isn‘t my definition to choose. The threshold is whatever it is. Do you have any reason to believe that the herd immunity threshold is anything less than 90% ?


Degradation-
I am not so worried about the gradual degradation in vaccine effectiveness. Other vaccines also need boosters, and it never really bothered me.

Besides, there are two factors pulling in the opposite direction. The fraction of the population that can be vaccinated will rise as we approve youth dosages. More importantly, at some point we will have a booster which targets Delta specifically. Between vaccinating more people and having better targeted shots, I’m not too worried about the long term plan for vaccinations.

As for boosters -- remember when we got a flu shot every year, even though it was the "same" flu year after year?

(...except for the annual mix of new variants, and the limited life of the vaccination's power, and other things pretty much in parallel with current covid vaccine issues...)
 
90%-
Yes. That is the problem. By the definition that matters, very few places are really fully vaccinated.

But it isn‘t my definition to choose. The threshold is whatever it is. Do you have any reason to believe that the herd immunity threshold is anything less than 90% ?


Degradation-
I am not so worried about the gradual degradation in vaccine effectiveness. Other vaccines also need boosters, and it never really bothered me.

Besides, there are two factors pulling in the opposite direction. The fraction of the population that can be vaccinated will rise as we approve youth dosages. More importantly, at some point we will have a booster which targets Delta specifically. Between vaccinating more people and having better targeted shots, I’m not too worried about the long term plan for vaccinations.

The problem there is you won't get to it. First, it basically requires an admission by the US authorities that they probably goofed by having the shots too close together (which is going to tick people off but it's less than if you hide it and tick people off who later find out about it). Second, you've got to convince all those people to take the booster. Third, those boosters are at least initially not going to target the Delta specifically (so potentially there's a 4th shot on the table). If you aren't there in Israel, you won't get there without some really very high handed tactics like ostracizing the people who won't get tripled vaxxed from civilized society or even dragging them kicking and screaming there. If that's the number, and if there is vaccine degradation, you are left with either very high handed authoritarian tactics or the UK approach (the UK though spaced out their vaccines, which means like Israel it will go worse for us here).
 
The problem there is you won't get to it. First, it basically requires an admission by the US authorities that they probably goofed by having the shots too close together (which is going to tick people off but it's less than if you hide it and tick people off who later find out about it). Second, you've got to convince all those people to take the booster. Third, those boosters are at least initially not going to target the Delta specifically (so potentially there's a 4th shot on the table). If you aren't there in Israel, you won't get there without some really very high handed tactics like ostracizing the people who won't get tripled vaxxed from civilized society or even dragging them kicking and screaming there. If that's the number, and if there is vaccine degradation, you are left with either very high handed authoritarian tactics or the UK approach (the UK though spaced out their vaccines, which means like Israel it will go worse for us here).
I don’t think we will get there with vaccines alone.

25% of adults are choosing to experience Delta without getting the vaccine first. So long as that is true, our national vaccination rate will have a very hard time getting to 90.
 
I don’t think we will get there with vaccines alone.

25% of adults are choosing to experience Delta without getting the vaccine first. So long as that is true, our national vaccination rate will have a very hard time getting to 90.

If so, and let's assume arguendo masks work remarkably well (you pick the number of transmission reduction), then why masks? If the vaccine efficiency reduces over time, wouldn't you want those people who are responsible enough to get vaccinated to get COVID now while their vaccine protection is high. Why then, masks, if all they'll do is prolong this?
 
Actually they have found that schools are not a driver of community spread. Lots of articles about that.

So why exactly are we playing safety theater with a group of individuals who have no risk?
I think those studies are all pre-delta. And they mostly apply only to places with low community case rates. Hard to find such places right about now,

The recent Marin school outbreak was a clear case of non-student cases cased by in-school transmission.
 
If so, and let's assume arguendo masks work remarkably well (you pick the number of transmission reduction), then why masks? If the vaccine efficiency reduces over time, wouldn't you want those people who are responsible enough to get vaccinated to get COVID now while their vaccine protection is high. Why then, masks, if all they'll do is prolong this?
Because my kid’s school has community members who cannot be vaccinated. A mask costs me next to nothing, and helps protect them.
 
I think those studies are all pre-delta. And they mostly apply only to places with low community case rates. Hard to find such places right about now,

The recent Marin school outbreak was a clear case of non-student cases cased by in-school transmission.
Don't gaslight, it was caused by an adult teacher who thought that masks provided significant "source" protection. Don't scapegoat the children or schools to fit your narrative.
 
Don't gaslight, it was caused by an adult teacher who thought that masks provided significant "source" protection. Don't scapegoat the children or schools to fit your narrative.
The adult took off her mask. Are you saying she thought the mask was significant source protection while it was in her pocket? Seems unlikely.

She was following your rule about not going to work when sick. Based on what she believed, it was just allergies. Therefore, she continued to teach. After all, each person knows themself best. She had years of experience with allergies, and really ought to know what allergies feel like.

This is what you get when your sole line of defense is “stay home when sick”. People misinterpret symptoms and infect others.
 
Because my kid’s school has community members who cannot be vaccinated. A mask costs me next to nothing, and helps protect them.

That's always going to be the case. You've laid out that your goal is zero goal (or at least your aspiration)...the means then you want to get there is perpetual masking. Either that or at some point you say close enough....right now it's looking like at least a half more year til we get to the 5s. So what's your close enough? What's your off ramp?
 
The adult took off her mask. Are you saying she thought the mask was significant source protection while it was in her pocket? Seems unlikely.

She was following your rule about not going to work when sick. Based on what she believed, it was just allergies. Therefore, she continued to teach. After all, each person knows themself best. She had years of experience with allergies, and really ought to know what allergies feel like.

This is what you get when your sole line of defense is “stay home when sick”. People misinterpret symptoms and infect others.
She got tested and continued to teach for two days. So she at least she had a suspicion it may be Covid. Her symptoms did progress, so yes very early on she in good faith could have thought it was allergies.

The fact that she got tested and still worked means she thought masks provided significant protection. That's the biggest problem, not the children.
 
Either that or at some point you say close enough....right now it's looking like at least a half more year til we get to the 5s. So what's your close enough? What's your off ramp?
He seems not to have an off ramp. This time last year he was forecasting doom with schools and universities.

He is essentially making a variation of the same predictions now.

The solution is always the same. Wear a mask that doesnt make a difference, and so on.
 
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