"Christie Aschwanden is a science journalist in Cedaredge, Colorado." This is not by an epidemiologist.<p>It looks like Israel will be the first country to hit a very high vaccination level. 55.4 percent of Israelis have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Over 70% of old people. The government is pushing hard on this.
Pfizer says they're seeing 97% vaccine effectiveness at preventing illness.<p>Israel cut a deal with Pfizer to get priority on vaccine shipments in exchange for sending extensive data on how it is working back to Pfizer.[1] So Israel has more than enough vaccine for their population.
Already, Israel's coronavirus death rate is down to 0.15 deaths/day/100K people. It was 0.72 back in January.<p>So watch Israel to see what happens when the vaccination percentage gets to a high level.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3aae4345-46cc-4636-a3f9-a93a6762f87f" rel="nofollow">https://www.ft.com/content/3aae4345-46cc-4636-a3f9-a93a6762f...</a>
First and foremost SARS-CoV-2 will never go away because it infects animals. Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. So it will never go away and we need to prepare for it.<p>The main goal is to make it survivable, ie. akin to the flu, and not cause hospitals to get overrun like we have seen so many times around the world in the last year.
This is a lot less depressing when you consider that vaccines have shown astounding results so far at preventing disease. COVID is a lot less scary if you’re extremely unlikely to get very sick from it. This article touches on that a bit, but it’s buried until the end.<p>There’s a lot of optimism to be had here, I think. Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good — maybe we can’t eradicate COVID, but we can make it a lot more tolerable to share this planet with it.
I think the biggest win will be disinfecting shopping cart handles. A few years before, I even have posts about it, how it didn't make sense that these where not disinfected during Flu season. I thought it was disgusting actually since people are handling food, between touching these handles.<p>We will probably get some innovation in face masks too.
For anyone in the construction/renovation industry having access to better working face masks will help prevent all kinds of lung damaging diseases.<p>There's probably other benefits, like more people working from home.
But overall, its been terrible. I see homeless people in my city like never before. Huge surge in mental health issues too.And nursing homes with their current configurations are old people slaughter houses.
HCoV-OC43 is an endemic betacoronavirus very similar to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). We don't have significant herd immunity to it. Instead most people get infected as youths and develop a level of immunity which protects against severe symptoms during subsequent reinfections. But it still kills frail elderly and immunocompromised patients.<p>We don't have proof of when HCoV-OC43 first emerged but circumstantial evidence indicates that it probably caused the 1889-1890 pandemic and killed about 0.06% of the world population. If we allowed SARS-CoV-2 to run it’s course without vaccination then the outcome would probably be similar or a little worse because the population today is on average older with a higher incidence of co-morbid conditions. (I am not suggesting we follow that approach.)<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/#!po=92.1053" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/#!po=92...</a>
It will be different this time!!(says the media) <- no it won't.<p>I like to base my findings on history and previous pandemics and how they were dealt with. The swine flu of 1918-1919[1] which was more deadly(IFR rate 2% [2]) than covid-19(IFR rate 1.15% [3]) did in fact go away, it was the last major pandemic the world has endured and once herd immunity is reached the virus will no longer have any "tinder" to burn through as either the vaccine or catching the virus to get antibodies will stop the virus in its tracks.<p>But what about mutations? coronaviruses mutate more slowly compared to the flu virus[4], and sequencing and testing is already underway for vaccines for the new variants[5].<p>Lastly the thing no one is really talking about is people die every year during flu season. The really old, the really sick etc, so I suspect that a good amount of deaths with covid are non-preventable and would have happened anyways due to the flu, which by the way is pretty much non-existent this year[6] <- with that link look at one year ago and you will see a stark change in the activity of the flu, its incredible as every state has the lowest activity the CDC measures.<p>[1] - <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoratio...</a>
[2] - <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971220305117" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122...</a>
[3] - <a href="https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201030/covid-19-infection-fatality-ratio-is-about-one-point-15-percent" rel="nofollow">https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201030/covid-19-infection-...</a>
[4] - <a href="https://rtmagazine.com/disorders-diseases/infectious-diseases/influenza/covid-mutates-slower-flu-who/" rel="nofollow">https://rtmagazine.com/disorders-diseases/infectious-disease...</a>
[5] - <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/new-sars-cov-2-variants-how-can-vaccines-be-adapted#Adapting-vaccines-to-match-variants" rel="nofollow">https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/new-sars-cov-2-var...</a>
[6] - <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#ILIActivityMap" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#ILIActivityMap</a>
“Herd immunity is only relevant if we have a transmission-blocking vaccine. If we don’t, then the only way to get herd immunity in the population is to give everyone the vaccine,” says Shweta Bansal, a mathematical biologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC.<p>Does... Not... Compute. She is contradicting herself in the very next sentence.<p>Herd immunity is only possible with a transmission blocking vaccine. This makes sense, as once you’re vaccinated, you are unable to transmit the virus to someone else.<p>With that first statement, herd immunity is now not relevant, and therefore is not possible, so why mention it as a possibility?<p>It’s not possible, but we’re just going to vaccinate everyone anyways. Is she benefiting financially from this or something? I don’t understand.<p>Until we have transmission blocking vaccines, the concept of herd immunity is irrelevant. That goes not just for COVID-19, but for every other vaccination campaign as well. Large scale vaccination campaigns likely decrease transmission, but it doesn’t guarantee the end of any outbreak.
People need to accept that humans are mortal and that we can’t “beat” every disease. This modern fragility is pitiful and self-destructive. Life must go on.
"vaccine hesitancy"<p>Is that anti-vaxxers / laziness?<p>Also, the US still has a very poorly designed system to promote herd immunity. Basically, you are charging people to contribute to herd immunity, rather than paying people to contribute to herd immunity.<p>COVID isn't even some "perfect bug" that maximizes the strategic/policy failures of US healthcare and preys on our self-interest. It's a very very mild pandemic compared to 20-40% death rate pandemics of yore. Maybe a death rate at those levels would spur "healthcare consumer self-interest" to vaccinate... but if there was an outright 3% death rate, would people's behavior change? 5%? 10%?<p>And for god sakes, stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. "Herd Immunity" isn't necessarily 100% resistance. We can achieve a great reduction with vaccinations even if it isn't perfect.<p>Edit: I was reading that I would be charged a 40-100$ administration fee. I guess that is being charged back to the government.<p>... this time.
virus spread is O(n^2)<p>vaccination is O(n)<p>if you want to beat the virus, seems the answer is to genetically engineer a weak variant with a bigger reproduction and let it rip?<p>common cold with the covid-19 spike protein?
>> "Israel began vaccinating its citizens in December 2020 [...] Now the problem is that young people don’t want to get their shots,” Aran says, so local authorities are enticing them with things such as free pizza and beer.<p>Forget the pizza. I would pay good money for a vaccination but in my area (Canada) vaccination is still only open to the elderly. At work I am doing double shifts to cover for all the people who are "working from home". I haven't seen my parents or other extended family in over a year. It has been six months since I've eaten in a sit-down restaurant. I've had to cut my own hair since christmas. If the kids in Israel aren't accepting the vaccine then ship those does to me and I'll give them to people who actually want this all to end.
I am truly baffled why the epidemiology community ever thought herd immunity will work. There is ample evidence that it is not a panacea. e.g. influenzae, hepatitis, meningitis, measles, mumps, rubella, yellow fever.
There are 3 possible scenarios related to viruses and humanity on Earth.<p>1) Normalcy: People live their lives as they have for thousands of years, and some percentage of people die from any number of viruses, but never enough to permanently trigger one of the other scenarios.<p>2) Extraterran: Humanity can no longer survive one or more of the viruses on Earth. Those of us who continue to live here must do so as if it were a foreign planet filled pathogens that will surely kill us, because they do.<p>3) Extinction: Humanity is ended by one or more viruses.<p>Of these 3 possible scenarios, the 1st one seems more likely than the others, and is what we should aim for before being forced into the 2nd one to avoid the 3rd. Right now we are living somewhere between the 1st and 2nd, and my intuition tells me that all our efforts related to coronaviruses, regardless of the strain, won't be able to save those whom are genetically unlucky enough to be predisposed to die from them forever. They will mutate, and eventually infect everyone, not unlike the common cold, and humanity will move on having lost somewhere between 1% and 10% of it's population, just as it would have had no curtailing measures been taken or vaccines developed at all; no different than it has been through the vast majority of our time on earth. While a higher population and the ease of global travel does mean that the virus side of the immunological arms race is boosted, all that does is raise the bar for ours. Either we'll pass, or we wont. Finally, while the deaths that have happened, and the future deaths that are likely to happen, on our path back to normalcy are certainly tragic: they have been, and will be, part and parcel of existing as organic beings living on a wild world. We cannot expect to only exist in nature when it is convenient for us. As long as we remain natural beings, we must accept that some of us will be eaten.