Wizards Board COVID-19 Thread

[nate33]

I can forgive extreme stupidity - but not when that logic is leading people to die for absolutely no sane reason and to hospital over-crowding for absolutely no sane reason. So it's not like I can ever forgive what you're doing. Was I out of line? Yes. Do I regret it? No - even though I realize you are incapable of thinking out of the bounds of your political leaders.

So where are we?

Do you cede that the vaccines aren't stopping the spread? Do you have an alternative explanation for Iceland and the HMS Queen Elizabeth?

How many times does it have to be pointed out to you that people who have been vaccinated have not been dying or even getting hospitalized at anywhere near the rate that non-vaccintated people have?

Yes, there are some unknowns going forward, and we will have to get booster shots at some point with probably improved vaccinations, but people's lives have been saved and made better because of vaccinations, and they will continue to be saved because of vaccinations. And I'm not going to respond to any irrrelevant garbage that you're more than likely misinterpreting to try to justify your nonsensical views.

People not getting vaccinated are causing completely unnecessary deaths and sickness all over the world, and that is unforgivable. And trying to rationalize that away is unforgivable.

I give up.

I don't understand why you keep going to the public health argument when vaccines aren't stopping the spread. It's an individual choice matter now.

I've already stated that vaccines do indeed mitigate the symptoms. Getting vaccinated makes obvious sense if you are in a high risk group.

[kblack]

Man, I haven’t been around here in YEARS. Good to see the same folks still holding it down. My 2 cents of this vaccine debate. It's true that real world results show that the vaccinated are spreading the virus. If you remember, the CDC said that the vaccinated would be unlikely to spread the virus back in February. What happened? The Variants have changed that. Why do we have variants? Because the virus remains active and mutated. Because so many remain unvaccinated, this will continue to happen. There are too many examples of vaccines virtually eradicating viruses. As long as folks remain unvaccinated, there is no end in sight for COVID-19.

Vaccines can eradicate some types of viruses, but not this one. This virus is more like the flu in that it mutates quickly and it survives in many animal hosts as well. I know you want to believe that vaccination will put an end to this, but it won't.

Those other examples of vaccines eliminating viruses, but those were different types of viruses that didn't mutate as readily.

The point is we don't stand a chance of masses remained unvaccinated. The virus will continue to mate and cause death worldwide. Even when that inevitably happens, people will continue to feel no sense of social responsibility in this matter. It's all about ME.

[nate33]

Man, I haven’t been around here in YEARS. Good to see the same folks still holding it down. My 2 cents of this vaccine debate. It's true that real world results show that the vaccinated are spreading the virus. If you remember, the CDC said that the vaccinated would be unlikely to spread the virus back in February. What happened? The Variants have changed that. Why do we have variants? Because the virus remains active and mutated. Because so many remain unvaccinated, this will continue to happen. There are too many examples of vaccines virtually eradicating viruses. As long as folks remain unvaccinated, there is no end in sight for COVID-19.

Vaccines can eradicate some types of viruses, but not this one. This virus is more like the flu in that it mutates quickly and it survives in many animal hosts as well. I know you want to believe that vaccination will put an end to this, but it won't.

Those other examples of vaccines eliminating viruses, but those were different types of viruses that didn't mutate as readily.

The point is we don't stand a chance of masses remained unvaccinated. The virus will continue to mate and cause death worldwide. Even when that inevitably happens, people will continue to feel no sense of social responsibility in this matter. It's all about ME.

What makes you think that the virus is mutating more readily in the unvaccinated rather than the vaccinated? If anything, the vaccinated are exerting a selective pressure to encourage mutation of the virus to evade the vaccine. In an unvaccinated host, the virus has no need to mutate because it can spread just fine.

Furthermore, we are just one country. Do you think getting our vaccine compliance rate up from 60% to 80% will make a hill of beans difference when there are roughly 4 billion people in third world countries with vaccination rates south of 20%. Even if we somehow got 100% vaccinated and totally extinguished the virus here (which is impossible), it's still mutating elsewhere and will reinfect us with a new strain.

What will happen is that the virus will continue to mutate to spread more readily and be less deadly (just as the Delta variant spreads more readily but is less deadly than Alpha). Over time, it will become like the flu, and eventually like the common cold. That's what viruses do.

[DCZards]

How many times does it have to be pointed out to you that people who have been vaccinated have not been dying or even getting hospitalized at anywhere near the rate that non-vaccintated people have?

This really is the bottom line. It's not the spread of the virus that is forcing some jurisdictions to return to mitigation measures. It's the rise in hospitalizations and death...which is almost entirely among the unvaccinated.

And, whether Nate wants to acknowledge it or not, that negatively affects ALL of us. The non-vaccinated are taking us backwards when it comes to fighting the pandemic, and that's inexcusable because many of the non-vaccinated have misinformed, bull**** reasons for not getting vaccinated.

[doclinkin]

Vaccines can eradicate some types of viruses, but not this one. This virus is more like the flu in that it mutates quickly and it survives in many animal hosts as well. I know you want to believe that vaccination will put an end to this, but it won't.

Those other examples of vaccines eliminating viruses, but those were different types of viruses that didn't mutate as readily.

The point is we don't stand a chance of masses remained unvaccinated. The virus will continue to mate and cause death worldwide. Even when that inevitably happens, people will continue to feel no sense of social responsibility in this matter. It's all about ME.

What makes you think that the virus is mutating more readily in the unvaccinated rather than the vaccinated?

You referred to it earlier in nodding to the studies cited. Viral load. The more virus there is, the more instances of mutations, the more chance for there to be a mutation that spreads more efficiently. With vaccinations you are dumping flame retardant on a forest, more than clear-cutting a firebreak. You cannot completely cut it off and contain it, but you can slow its spread, and possibly prevent some variants from arising that might have popped up in the trillions of additional instances of replication that you have snuffed.

The fact that the effectiveness of vaccinations is declining is not a reason to abort the attempt to vaccinate the populace, it gives urgency to do it ASAP. India had no chance to vaccinate their entire populace. They don't have the infrastructure, distribution, hell, some places are a long bus ride away from the refrigeration required to keep the vaccine effective. It makes sense that in a country with a population of over 1 billion in close quarters that they would become a breeding ground for new variants.

Similarly it makes sense that China would be better at snuffing it, despite their population density, since they do have the infrastructure to control human behavior. Do we require a totalitarian autocracy to enforce public safety with vaccination round-ups? Man, I doubt it. I know that is the fear of many. But we have an infrastructure that can not only deliver vaccines, but also to educate people. Yeah even if you are young and healthy seeming it makes sense to wear a mask. And get vaccinated. Yes if you are vaccinated, you should still wear a mask in crowded areas. It simply acts as a firewall on spreading the virus to those who are not young and healthy.

However, there is a massive public toll when sick people overwhelm our health systems. If we had swiftly as a society ensured that everyone was vaccinated, I suspect that rate of vaccine decay would have been blunted, even halted. New variants are not spreading from places like Iceland. They pop up from India, Brazil. If you reduce the viral load, in any host, you will slow the mutation rate of the virus. If you block avenues of transmission, you will prevent the swift growth of new and more deadly variants. If we had delivered vaccines to India as quickly as we produced them, then yes, we very well could have prevented the mutation in whichever individual the Delta variant incubated.

[nate33]

The point is we don't stand a chance of masses remained unvaccinated. The virus will continue to mate and cause death worldwide. Even when that inevitably happens, people will continue to feel no sense of social responsibility in this matter. It's all about ME.

What makes you think that the virus is mutating more readily in the unvaccinated rather than the vaccinated?

You referred to it earlier in nodding to the studies cited. Viral load. The more virus there is, the more instances of mutations, the more chance for there to be a mutation that spreads more efficiently. With vaccinations you are dumping flame retardant on a forest, more than clear-cutting a firebreak. You cannot completely cut it off and contain it, but you can slow its spread, and possibly prevent some variants from arising that might have popped up in the trillions of additional instances of replication that you have snuffed.

The fact that the effectiveness of vaccinations is declining is not a reason to abort the attempt to vaccinate the populace, it gives urgency to do it ASAP. India had no chance to vaccinate their entire populace. They don't have the infrastructure, distribution, hell, some places are a long bus ride away from the refrigeration required to keep the vaccine effective. It makes sense that in a country with a population of over 1 billion in close quarters that they would become a breeding ground for new variants.

Similarly it makes sense that China would be better at snuffing it, despite their population density, since they do have the infrastructure to control human behavior. Do we require a totalitarian autocracy to enforce public safety with vaccination round-ups? Man, I doubt it. I know that is the fear of many. But we have an infrastructure that can not only deliver vaccines, but also to educate people. Yeah even if you are young and healthy seeming it makes sense to wear a mask. And get vaccinated. Yes if you are vaccinated, you should still wear a mask in crowded areas. It simply acts as a firewall on spreading the virus to those who are not young and healthy.

However, there is a massive public toll when sick people overwhelm our health systems. If we had swiftly as a society ensured that everyone was vaccinated, I suspect that rate of vaccine decay would have been blunted, even halted. New variants are not spreading from places like Iceland. They pop up from India, Brazil. If you reduce the viral load, in any host, you will slow the mutation rate of the virus. If you block avenues of transmission, you will prevent the swift growth of new and more deadly variants. If we had delivered vaccines to India as quickly as we produced them, then yes, we very well could have prevented the mutation in whichever individual the Delta variant incubated.

That's an interesting argument. I'll have to think about that. It does make sense that a higher viral load will have more reproduction and therefore more opportunities for random mutation.

On the other hand, a leaky vaccine seems like it would provide the right type of environment for the worst type of undesirable mutation: the type that escapes the vaccine. I think of a vaccinated host as equivalent to using antibiotics but not finishing off the bottle that was prescribed to you. It's providing just enough of an impediment for the virus to look for ways to mutate around it.

[Kanyewest]

Seasonality. All the southern states are getting hit now just as they got hit last summer. People go indoors in the summer in the South.

We had the same pattern last year. Southern conservatives were laughing at the incompetence in the north when Covid raged in the winter. Now northern liberals get to laugh at the incompetence of the south as the virus rages in the summer. Neither side is right. The virus simply spreads when people are indoors more.

By indoors are you talking about nightclubs?

The 10 day forecast in Miami has no days projected with a high temp over 90. Why would people feel the need to stay inside? High temps in the summer in Florida aren't much higher than high temps in DC.

Arizona is a lot hotter than Florida (several days over 100 on 10 day forcase in scottsdale) but their Covid cases are only a fraction of Floridas:

On Friday, the state reported 2,826 new COVID-19 cases and 42 new known deaths as hospitalizations for the disease have recently increased. There were 1,309 patients hospitalized across Arizona for known or suspected COVID-19 as of Thursday, the most since the start of March.

Friday's new case report marked the highest daily addition of new cases since March 5.

Previous days this week saw the following new case reports: 2,066 on July 31, 2,306 on Aug. 1, 1,846 on Aug. 2, 1,974 on Aug. 3, 2,286 on Aug. 4 and 2,289 on Aug. 5.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2021/08/06/aug-6-arizona-covid-19-update-2-826-new-cases-42-new-deaths/5511509001/


While Florida has 20k new cases per day.


All the people at the Florida beaches must not have gotten the indoor memo. There are live cams for a lot of those beaches, which are routinely packed. Golf courses are also packed, as they have been ever since covid hit.

Covid is raging in Florida because DeSantis a nutjob, not because people are inside. That is laughable.

Florida currently has the highest daily case rate. That's true. But they are outperforming Texas, Arizona and New Mexico in to cumulative cases (per capita), and outperforming AZ and NM by a mile in total cumulative deaths, despite having the oldest population. Florida has also dramatically outperformed the northern states in total cumulative deaths. States like NJ, NY and MA have nearly double the death rate.

I would say perhaps this was due to states where Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey were largely where the 1st wave happened in the US and I'm wondering if they were less cautious than Washington State and Washington DC where initial cases were reported or maybe it was more inevitable in places like NYC due to its density. Or were there policy difference that one could point to such as social distancing? it did take some time for NY to get its act together and shutdown areas- they had many more cases once social distancing was implemented.

Even then, Northern states like Maryland, DC, Virginia, Maine, and Vermont have outperformed Florida since the pandemic has started if we are looking simply at deaths per 100,000. DC in particular is very impressive because it has the highest population density per square mile- eight times higher than the next state in New Jersey- and 29 times that of Florida (although obviously Florida and other states has population centers that may be dense or denser than DC).

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density

Florida's number- which has the 3rd highest amount of death per 100,000 in the last week. I would be curious to see how those numbers bear out since the beginning of 2021 but I'm unable to find the data at this point of time.

[nate33]

I would say perhaps this was due to states where Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey were largely where the 1st wave happened in the US and I'm wondering if they were less cautious than Washington State and Washington DC where initial cases were reported or maybe it was more inevitable in places like NYC due to its density. Or were there policy difference that one could point to such as social distancing? it did take some time for NY to get its act together and shutdown areas- they had many more cases once social distancing was implemented.

Even then, Northern states like Maryland, DC, Virginia, Maine, and Vermont have outperformed Florida since the pandemic has started if we are looking simply at deaths per 100,000. DC in particular is very impressive because it has the highest population density per square mile- eight times higher than the next state in New Jersey- and 29 times that of Florida (although obviously Florida and other states has population centers that may be dense or denser than DC).

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density

Florida's number- which has the 3rd highest amount of death per 100,000 in the last week. I would be curious to see how those numbers bear out since the beginning of 2021 but I'm unable to find the data at this point of time.

Those are plausible hypotheses.

Another thing is the Northwest and coastal California has temperate climate all year round. There's less dry air, either from air-conditioning or frequent heating of dry air, and the virus thrives in dry air.

But one thing about Florida's strategy is that it takes advantage of natural immunity gained by having the young contract the virus while being extremely low risk. There will be less dry tinder, so to speak, during future virus outbreaks. We really won't be able to grade the performance of any jurisdiction until this whole thing is over.

Sweden, for example, looked like total fools early on, but is looking better and better as time wears on.

And there is a price to pay for extreme lockdowns. Higher suicides and drug overdoses, fewer voluntary visits to the hospital for preventive measures, etc. All-cause deaths will probably be a better way to compare differing strategies. And that will take some time for all the data to roll in.

[dckingsfan]

Are we really talking about Covid strategies in the Summer League thread? Especially really bad theories?

[doclinkin]

What makes you think that the virus is mutating more readily in the unvaccinated rather than the vaccinated?

You referred to it earlier in nodding to the studies cited. Viral load. The more virus there is, the more instances of mutations, the more chance for there to be a mutation that spreads more efficiently. With vaccinations you are dumping flame retardant on a forest, more than clear-cutting a firebreak. You cannot completely cut it off and contain it, but you can slow its spread, and possibly prevent some variants from arising that might have popped up in the trillions of additional instances of replication that you have snuffed.

The fact that the effectiveness of vaccinations is declining is not a reason to abort the attempt to vaccinate the populace, it gives urgency to do it ASAP. India had no chance to vaccinate their entire populace. They don't have the infrastructure, distribution, hell, some places are a long bus ride away from the refrigeration required to keep the vaccine effective. It makes sense that in a country with a population of over 1 billion in close quarters that they would become a breeding ground for new variants.

Similarly it makes sense that China would be better at snuffing it, despite their population density, since they do have the infrastructure to control human behavior. Do we require a totalitarian autocracy to enforce public safety with vaccination round-ups? Man, I doubt it. I know that is the fear of many. But we have an infrastructure that can not only deliver vaccines, but also to educate people. Yeah even if you are young and healthy seeming it makes sense to wear a mask. And get vaccinated. Yes if you are vaccinated, you should still wear a mask in crowded areas. It simply acts as a firewall on spreading the virus to those who are not young and healthy.

However, there is a massive public toll when sick people overwhelm our health systems. If we had swiftly as a society ensured that everyone was vaccinated, I suspect that rate of vaccine decay would have been blunted, even halted. New variants are not spreading from places like Iceland. They pop up from India, Brazil. If you reduce the viral load, in any host, you will slow the mutation rate of the virus. If you block avenues of transmission, you will prevent the swift growth of new and more deadly variants. If we had delivered vaccines to India as quickly as we produced them, then yes, we very well could have prevented the mutation in whichever individual the Delta variant incubated.

That's an interesting argument. I'll have to think about that. It does make sense that a higher viral load will have more reproduction and therefore more opportunities for random mutation.

On the other hand, a leaky vaccine seems like it would provide the right type of environment for the worst type of undesirable mutation: the type that escapes the vaccine. I think of a vaccinated host as equivalent to using antibiotics but not finishing off the bottle that was prescribed to you. It's providing just enough of an impediment for the virus to look for ways to mutate around it.

Well, yeah. But in this argument the half finished bottle of antibiotics is all the people who are unvaccinated. As if the country or the world at large is the body within which the virus is reproducing. Again: viral load. The unvaccinated people are more likely to be incubating new viruses that may even be contracted by the vaccinated. Especially since they also don't want to wear masks, or distance themselves socially or avoid crowds. They become the ideal host. The vaccinated? less so. The masked? even less.

[doclinkin]

Are we really talking about Covid strategies in the Summer League thread? Especially really bad theories?

Clearly we need to change the title of the thread

[nate33]

That's an interesting argument. I'll have to think about that. It does make sense that a higher viral load will have more reproduction and therefore more opportunities for random mutation.

On the other hand, a leaky vaccine seems like it would provide the right type of environment for the worst type of undesirable mutation: the type that escapes the vaccine. I think of a vaccinated host as equivalent to using antibiotics but not finishing off the bottle that was prescribed to you. It's providing just enough of an impediment for the virus to look for ways to mutate around it.

Well, yeah. But in this argument the half finished bottle of antibiotics is all the people who are unvaccinated. As if the country or the world at large is the body within which the virus is reproducing. Again: viral load. The unvaccinated people are more likely to be incubating new viruses that may even be contracted by the vaccinated. Especially since they also don't want to wear masks, or distance themselves socially or avoid crowds. They become the ideal host. The vaccinated? less so. The masked? even less.

I don't think you are correct about this, but I'm open to be convinced.

Here's an article that describes the situation.
https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-transmission-vaccinated-people-risk-of-resistant-variant-2021-7?op=1

This article and other articles are saying that the risk of mutation is much higher between the first and second dose of the vaccine - i.e. partial protection is actually the worst scenario.

From the article:

Infections among people who are partially vaccinated raise the risk of a game-changing mutation because it takes time for the body to develop the antibodies, T cells, and B cells that fight the virus, and our immune response increases dramatically following the second dose. So if someone gets infected in the interim, it gives the virus a sneak peek at what it's up against. With Delta, research shows, a single shot of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines is only 33.5% effective against the variant.

"Not having all of us immunized creates a perfect circumstance for variants that are escape mutants to arise," James Hildreth, an immunologist and president of Meharry Medical College, told Insider in April. "If there are some people who have low levels of immunity, in a way, that's almost worse than having no immunity at all."

Hildreth added that partial immunity "can actually drive the formation and presence of viruses that do not bind to the antibody."

"They're going to take over, and be the ones transmitted," he said.

The reference to the partial protection being a worst case scenario came from a quote someone made in April, when it wasn't known that the vaccine is "leaky" even after the 2nd dose. I argue that our current situation, with the vaccine being somewhere between 40% and 80% effective is analogous to the partial protection afforded by just one dose. So the vaccinated are providing the ideal environment for mutation.

This is the problem we keep running into in this debate. I think a lot of the truisms you guys believe are dependent on the vaccine being completely protective. If vaccines stopped the spread, then they would indeed be a means of protecting others and it brings into play the public health argument for mandatory vaccination. If vaccines stopped the spread, then rapid vaccination of everyone would indeed reduce the selective pressure for mutation.

But vaccines don't stop the spread so it's time to consider revising the truisms you believe.

[dckingsfan]

Are we really talking about Covid strategies in the Summer League thread? Especially really bad theories?

Clearly we need to change the title of the thread

Right! First there is the stupidly of the herd immunity mantra. One need only look at Brazil and India to see how that worked out.

Then there is the notion that the vaccine doesn't stop the spread so we don't need to get vaccinated. This is a fallacy. The reason for the vaccine is that it stop serious illness, death and reduces long haulers. That keeps our hospitals open to handle other medical maladies. One need only look at my state of Texas to see that.

If one wants to debate Covid, I suggest they go here to be disabused of their misinformation:
viewtopic.php?f=69&t=2110733

Of course knowing that it is now misinformation makes it posting disinformation.

[gambitx777]

How did the summer league thread turn in to covid conversations with basketball fans . Lol

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[tontoz]

How did the summer league thread turn in to covid conversations with basketball fans . Lol

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using RealGM mobile app

I havent read all the way back but i assume it's because our first summer league game was cancelled. We didn't have enough players due to covid.

[I_Like_Dirt]

We do actually have restrictions on where you can and can't smoke anyway.

The entire push for individual health over public health kind of misses the point. To effectively combat covid beyond a superficial level you need to take a mass approach to the problem. Getting 60% of the population vaccinated doesn't actually do much. Treating it as an individual health issue is like arguing polio should be an individual health issue because we'd rather have that back. The in-between mostly just leans towards no vaccinations. Vaccines do help but they aren't some suit of armor for an individual. They are a collective treatment. I don't think Iceland is a very good comparison for a whole host of reasons - more tests, smaller population where everyone is in an island and related, etc. There are things to learn from them for sure but vaccines don't help isn't one of them.

I don't understand why Iceland (or Israel, or the UK) is not a good comparison. They are perfect comparisons: real world countries who are slightly ahead of us in the vaccination of their populations. And in all those countries, cases are surging. Indeed, in the case of Iceland and the UK, it's surging despite a much smaller seasonality bias (relative to the U.S.). Cold weather countries should have virtually no spread in August. They didn't last year.

Vaccination significantly reducing hospitalisation appears to be a house of cards too, based on the data from the UK. Current hospitalisations are 55% no jab, 35% both jabs, 10% one dose.

Side note: how funny is it that the sportsball forums are one of the only places on the internet that you can have an open, two sided discussion about this topic without having your posts plastered with fact checkers, censorship or being outright banned.

Go Wizards

55% of the hospitalizations from a much smaller number of people is rather significant, honestly. If 100% of the people were vaccinated, you would get 100% of the hospitalizations that were vaccinated. And beyond that, it's completely ignoring how vaccines are supposed to work. Not having that many people vaccinated isn't totally different from taking the alternator out of a car and then arguing that cars don't work and are just make believe.

As for Iceland specifically, if a person doesn't want to dismiss it - it has one of the lowest covid death rates in the world while the US has one of the highest. Suggesting what they're doing isn't working is... confusing. Even now, they have a spike in cases but many fewer people are dying on a per capita basis.

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[nate33]

Right! First there is the stupidly of the herd immunity mantra. One need only look at Brazil and India to see how that worked out.

Even if India is undercounting deaths by a factor of 5, they still have fewer deaths per capita than us and appear to be through the worst of it with about 70% of the population now showing antibodies and case rates close to zero. Not bad for a nation with a terrible health care system. Sweden also embraced a herd immunity strategy and has outperformed us and much of Europe (though not Norway and Finland, so other factors could be at play).

Then there is the notion that the vaccine doesn't stop the spread so we don't need to get vaccinated. This is a fallacy. The reason for the vaccine is that it stop serious illness, death and reduces long haulers. That keeps our hospitals open to handle other medical maladies. One need only look at my state of Texas to see that.

I'm not suggesting individuals, particularly high risk individuals, decline the vaccine. I'm just against mandates because it's now an individual choice and not a public health issue.

The hospital overload issue is more scare stories than anything. The fact is, hospitals can add more capacity as needed by reducing voluntary procedures and transferring patients. Hospital capacity was not seriously strained during the first wave last April:

For 98% of counties, the peak in new cases was well below hospital bed capacity. In 92% of counties, the peak was less than 75% of capacity.

Currently, case rates are about 25% of what they were in the first wave.

[I_Like_Dirt]

On balance of what we know, collective vaccination is the best option. There really isn't a way to dispute that beyond emotional arguments.

I absolutely dispute this in the case of young people or people who have recovered from infection.

It may or may not work out in this circumstance but it's the truth. Having people fight against it makes for something that's largely the equivalent of not taking vaccines at all. And this is where the costs of this can spiral exponentially: large scale vaccinations worldwide likely prevents this from being along term issue globally. Without that this has a much higher likelihood of becoming something like the flu but more serious that has much higher health care costs around the world and causes health problems for everyone in the long run.

This is where you are allowing your desire to resolve this problem to cloud your reasoning. You really, really want to put an end to this Covid disaster and you believe that if everyone would just do X, Y and Z, it would be over and we would win! But that's not reality. The reality is that the vaccines are leaky and there are animal reservoirs. Covid will never go away. It will become endemic like the flu.

You completely misunderstand me and are building a straw man. I don't know if covid can or can't be defeated. I'm open to either outcome being possible at this point. I'm just not going to ignore reams of history with vaccines.

As for you disputing recoveries as being safer without vaccines, realistically that's just not supported by any evidence. But beyond that, I'd be more than willing to support a compromise whereby people weren't rushed in to vaccines and instead took a larger view of public safety while we waited for more data - I'd even prefer that, to be honest. I can assume we both agree that there realistically isn't an appetite for those kinds of restrictions, even the most minor ones provoke an uproar - even those pushing for vaccines aren't particularly interested in anything but the most meaningless of measures on a macro level.

As an aside, I'm actually amused by some of the stuff that has been made clear by society at this stage. There is clearly more of a public appetite to enforce the banning of spaghetti straps and shorts on girls in public schools than there is for temporarily wearing masks in public for a couple years. Not to cast judgment about good or bad or other arbitrary terms. It's what the public wants and that is far more what's at the heart of all of this than anything to do with public safety, or what's good for the economy, or what's good for people.

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[nate33]

This makes sense to me:

Read on Twitter

[dckingsfan]

Right! First there is the stupidly of the herd immunity mantra. One need only look at Brazil and India to see how that worked out.

Even if India is undercounting deaths by a factor of 5, they still have fewer deaths per capita than us and appear to be through the worst of it with about 70% of the population now showing antibodies and case rates close to zero. Not bad for a nation with a terrible health care system. Sweden also embraced a herd immunity strategy and has outperformed us and much of Europe (though not Norway and Finland, so other factors could be at play).

Then there is the notion that the vaccine doesn't stop the spread so we don't need to get vaccinated. This is a fallacy. The reason for the vaccine is that it stop serious illness, death and reduces long haulers. That keeps our hospitals open to handle other medical maladies. One need only look at my state of Texas to see that.

I'm not suggesting individuals, particularly high risk individuals, decline the vaccine. I'm just against mandates because it's now an individual choice and not a public health issue.

The hospital overload issue is more scare stories than anything. The fact is, hospitals can add more capacity as needed by reducing voluntary procedures and transferring patients. Hospital capacity was not seriously strained during the first wave last April:

For 98% of counties, the peak in new cases was well below hospital bed capacity. In 92% of counties, the peak was less than 75% of capacity.

Currently, case rates are about 25% of what they were in the first wave.

Seriously - take this to another thread - this is the wrong place. Create a Covid thread or go here:
viewtopic.php?f=69&t=2110733