The belief that we could control a virus by controlling human beings is only the most recent mistake of man’s hubris. — NOS4A2

It's not that recent as disease and pestilence have been the norm in human history. To have ships on quarantine for example is an age old way fight diseases.



Interestingly Stephen Pinker has remarked that Xenophobia is an evolutionary defense against epidemics.

I think it's because a lot of vaccines do result in herd immunity that a lot of people assumed this would be the case as well. — Benkei

Yeah, I think you're right, it was more a media (or possibly even just social) narrative than anything specifc. The pharmaceuticals were clearly more circumspect about their claims than I recalled.

One thing I do remember from the time is epidemiologists actually asking the pharmaceuticals to test for reduced transmission whilst they were doing the Ps III, they wouldn't do it. Not a 'valuable endpoint' apparently (meaning there's no additional income they can make from knowing that, on top of knowing the vaccine is safe and effective).

Gotta love a public-private partnership, but at least that work was done eventually...

Some Americans believe the vaccine has a nano tracking device in it. Like, they really believe that. — frank

You guys are so cute. We don't mention David Icke though, he's one of ours, sorry.

The original data showed that the vaccines had an effective rate in the 90+%, J and J slightly lower. Had enough people vaccinated, covid as it existed then would have been eradicated. — Hanover

Enough people couldn't have vaccinated early on, even if they wanted to, because there wasn't enough of the vaccine, and in many countries, there still isn't. Like India, where Delta is from.

The reintroduction of masks and threats of shut down are caused by the irrational decision of the anti-vax people, who have convinced themselves that their right to die of the delta variant is sacred. If I were permitted to let you die and not be forced to heroically exhaust common resources to treat you, I'd buy into your Randian libertarian wet dream and let God sort out your bad decisions. But we don't live by that ethic today. If today's ethics require I protect against Darwin, they require you play along too.

Oh god. Millenia of philosophy down the drain.

Mankind will probably recover from covid, but less likely from the stupidity and hostility with which so many people respond to it.

Enough people couldn't have vaccinated early on, even if they wanted to, because there wasn't enough of the vaccine, and in many countries, there still isn't. Like India, where Delta is from — baker

I can't speak beyond the US, but vaccines have been available for all since April. You've also been able to walk in without an appointment for well over a month and get vaccinated for free. There is no excuse for anyone from California to New York to be caught up in this wave and get sick from Covid.

So sure, I have a different view of those in India, but that's not who I was referring to.

god. Millenia of philosophy down the drain. — baker

And yet you provide no philosophy at all, just a lament your excuses aren't taken seriously.

And yet you provide no philosophy at all, just a lament your excuses aren't taken seriously. — Hanover

What excuses? Copy-paste them.

What excuses? Copy-paste them. — baker

Enough people couldn't have vaccinated early on, even if they wanted to, because there wasn't enough of the vaccine, and in many countries, there still isn't. Like India, where Delta is from — baker

You call this an "excuse"??

Oh dear.

And yet you provide no philosophy at all, just a lament your excuses aren't taken seriously. — Hanover

Alas, philosophy provides little protection from viruses.

Really??? I wonder... :chin:

The reason for the masks (and eventual possible shutdowns) is to protect the unvaccinated. https://www.yahoo.com/news/nih-director-acknowledges-mask-mandates-141636429.html

That is, the very people hell bent on keeping the economy going and whining about masking are the cause of the interruptions with the economy and the cause for increased masking.

This isn't a right versus left battle. It's an irresponsible/ignorant versus responsible/informed battle, with the former wanting to protect their right to be irrational.

:up:

Hospitals are starting to mandate vaccination. Mine has, and we're discovering who was never vaccinated, so who was potentially exposing old people to Covid19 unnecessarily (while passing out Ativan).

Hospitals are starting to mandate vaccination. Mine has, and we're discovering who was never vaccinated, so who was potentially exposing old people to Covid19 unnecessarily (while passing out Ativan). — frank

The one glimmer of hope is that the 65+ numbers are truly impressive, in some states at 100%, even Alabama at 84%. https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-tracker

Oh, Alabama is higher than I thought. That's encouraging

Many different things threaten us in this life we live. How should we measure the threat? Are physical as opposed to psychological threats the primary ones? Is the divorce rate less of a concern than the death rate? What about the effect of divorce on the souls of children?

Assuming that physical threats are primary, which ones take precedence? Are deaths by automobile to be taken slightly? How about death due to gun violence? How about drug overdoses?

But you can’t separate the two, for a spate of gun violence might erupt from an increase in the divorce rate, or from an increase in drug use by parents despairing over the loss of their children...

...society has, however, learned to deal with these problems in a general way: when there is a “mental health crisis”, we never hear of therapists not having enough couches to accommodate all the new patients overflowing their offices, like we hear of hospitals not having enough beds to accommodate all the Covid patients coming in. The measure, therefore, of a health crisis, mental or physical (and it’s never mental), is how much stress it places upon the resources of the hospital to accommodate all the incoming patients in a way that accords with standard proceeded: if you have to triage, put ER patients under a tent without immediate access to a ventilator in the parking-lot, then it is a crisis.

There is no actual, legitimate debate. Which is more important, your freedom to not wear a mask and not get vaccinated, or my freedom to not get a lethal or mutilating infection from you?
The only exception is the very rare corner cases of people who legitimately cannot do either, or kids in the case of the vaccine.

The actual "freedom" under debate is the freedom to display tokens of allegiance to Der Clownen Fürher. Such displays, to such a baleful lord, must come at a price.

Which should come first safety or freedom of choice? — SteveMinjares

It is an imposition on civil liberties, and governments should and sometimes do acknowledge that.

But freedom of choice is not really a criteria. If your not wearing a mask only affected you, then it would be much more straightforward, but if your not wearing a mask causes others to fall ill or die, then that ought to overrule the freedom of choice argument.

Where I am, mask wearing is compulsory in shops, you can be fined, I think it's $500.00 for breaches, but myself and everyone I know just goes along, for those reasons.

The lunatic anti-vax, anti-mask fringe have blood on their hands in this matter.

The reason for the masks (and eventual possible shutdowns) is to protect the unvaccinated. https://www.yahoo.com/news/nih-director-acknowledges-mask-mandates-141636429.html

That is, the very people hell bent on keeping the economy going and whining about masking are the cause of the interruptions with the economy and the cause for increased masking.

This isn't a right versus left battle. It's an irresponsible/ignorant versus responsible/informed battle, with the former wanting to protect their right to be irrational. — Hanover

It's telling how readily 'expert' opinion is wielded and dropped depending on it's correlation with current social group ideology. Experts from public health tell you to mask and vaccinate - anyone who doesn't is an idiot. Experts from public health tell you that blaming the people themselves has no part in a public health response - fuck 'em, they don't know what they're talking about.

Even if it were true that masking protected the unvaccinated (which it isn't - masking protects the vaccinated too, some 15-35% of whom will not be adequately protected by the vaccine they took), are we to similarly resent protection for other lifestyle choices? Should we rail against treating the ailments of smokers, the overweight, those who don't exercise enough, those whole eat too much bacon...?

Are you a semi-vegetarian, never-smoker, low alcohol consuming, frequent runner in a stress-free job? Why is choosing not to have the available antibodies and so putting oneself at higher risk any different to choosing any of the above lifestyle choices, all of which have been demonstrably linked to diseases which put more ten times more pressure on health services than the pandemic has, hell, all of which have been implicated in the severity of Covid.

Only one lifestyle inflicted weakness is railed against - not having the antibodies to one variant of covid-19. One could be overweight, have type II diabetes, have cancer-risking polyps from poor diet, have lung fibrosis from smoking, have high cholesterol from poor diets and lack of exercise, have a weakened heart from a sedentary lifestyle, have lowered immune response from poor exercise and stress management... All are choices one made which left one more at risk of diseases which the public health services have to manage.

One particular lifestyle choice which has become the badge of choice for the 'right-minded' gang is the only one railed against. Can you explain why?

At what point should we wait till we decide that safety takes precedence over freedom of choice? — SteveMinjares

Who's 'we' in this?

The lunatic anti-vax, anti-mask fringe have blood on their hands in this matter. — Wayfarer

I'll repeat the advice from the experts I posted in the main coronavirus thread.

Engaging in discussions about the validity of complementary or even contradictory inferences can support an effective response. However, it is not feasible to engage meaningfully within 280 characters or if value judgments are ascribed to only certain positions. Public health means that the consensus view may have blindspots, so we must encourage healthy debate and dialogue. Debate was stifled during covid-19 in the name of fear. We witnessed social media platforms censoring scientific views and positions, only later to rescind those bans (e.g. the lab leak hypothesis). But equally we have seen misinformation proliferate on social media platforms. How to manage, foster, and regulate social media businesses must be part of future disaster planning.

Public health means going on TV and saying that the Governor is failing, not that people are failing. Yet, over and over, we heard experts lament that it was private gatherings and bad people, and not bad systems and weak leadership that failed. The inattention to the structural and network risks including structural racism that increased risks for some and not others is antithetical to public health. Shame-based messaging has no role in a pandemic. — Monica Gandhi, Vinay Prasad, and Stefan Baral writing in the BMJ

The blood is on the hands of the people whose responsibility it was to pay for the monitoring which should have caught the emergence early, but didn't due to tax cuts. It's on the hands of the people who delayed in shutting borders and locking down hotspots. It's on the hands of the authorities whose mixed messages have sown this confusion in the first place. It's on the hands of organisations like Facebook, whose draconian banning of alternate opinion which later turned out to be perfectly valid has, without doubt, put faith in media messages back by a hundred years. It's on the hands of the virologists who signed Daszak's letter and allowed him to lead the enquiry into the lab leak despite the glaring conflict of interest, putting trust in 'the science' at it's lowest point in the pandemic, just when it needed a real boost.

At very bottom of the list of the bloody-handed, are the few people caught up in all this mess without enough knowledge and intelligence in these matters to find their way through it.

Which should come first safety or freedom of choice? — SteveMinjares

I think safety comes first. If we allow people act so freely they will not respect public rules and spaces because most of them do not care at all.
Wearing a mask should be as important as a security car belt as you explained. Delta variation appeared due to the big and quick infections among the people. The only way of preventing this issue is more responsibility...
Do the most of the people have responsibility? No so we have to act applying the law

The fact nobody wants to be around philosophers does help.

Precisely why I'm against vaccine passports. People make shit choices all the time. I have a stressful job and exercise too little. I'm even aware I should be doing more about the latter but don't give it priority. It's relatively stupid but it's not as if it makes me Satan.

Yeah. Worse still, as Baral and dozens of others in public health have pointed out (to stony silence from the media), it draws attention away from the very thing we need the spotlight firmly pointing at - which responses worked and which didn't? What needs doing better next time? Those suggesting that the main improvement would be 'have a population who unquestioningly do as they're told' should stop and think about what they're suggesting for a minute.

It's not even necessary for everyone to be vaccinated, so blame-shaming those that aren't is even more ridiculous. As a public health intervention, one of the reasons why mass vaccinations are such an excellent policy is that they don't need 100% compliance to work - people can continue to be stupid, or rebellious, or individualistic, or untrusting... whatever, as people always will be. It doesn't matter, the policy will still work pretty well.

What doesn't work is shutting down emerging disease monitoring to save a bit of cash, or closing community health services just as they're needed most, or promoting lifestyles which make one more vulnerable to diseases like this, or providing little to no support for those needing to isolate...etc. I'm ranting, but it pisses me off that people have become so obsessed with the inevitable handful of resistance when there's good solid targets of blame available. We're at over 70% take up in England. That's really good for a first time vaccine, we couldn't realistically expect better than that.

In England we are still wearing masks and there is still talk of people having to have Covid_19 passports to show that they have been vaccinated to enter some venues.

As far as mask wearing, I think that most people are accepting it but if it becomes like wearing a seat belt it would be a problem. That is because many people find it hard doing things while wearing a mask. Personally, I have tripped over a couple of times, got knocked down by a bike once, and knocked over items on shelves because I can't see what I am doing. That is because the mask steams up my glasses. I even sometimes stop wearing my glasses in shops because it becomes so hard to see.

Also, we don't know how much protection masks provide really. They only protect others rather than the wearer and it is not as if there have been scientific studies to show that masks have stopped transmission of the virus. It probably only stops the spread of germs if people cough.

As far as enforcing vaccines, I think it is starting to happen. If people are forced to show proof that they have been vaccinated to do many activities, I think that this would be going too far, and would restrict civil liberties. On the other hand, if loads of people choose to not be vaccinated there is no end to the spread of the virus, so it will go on indefinitely. Another problem is that even people who have been vaccinated can still get the virus, but it definitely does offer some hope.

So, generally, I would argue that mask wearing may be useful for stopping some transmission but it should not be enforced in the same way as seatbelts. Also, it will help if most people have vaccines but I am not sure that it can be enforced through people being only allowed to enter public places through proof of having been vaccinated.

On the other hand, we will probably get to the point where people can't get jobs in health care without agreeing to being vaccinated and, perhaps, that may be acceptable because it is to protect the public. This may be acceptable as a way of risk minimization in the same way as it being necessary to agree to police clearance in order to work with vulnerable people.

Overblown hysteria. The media have nothing better to report, and what better to draw attention than pretending there's a crisis.

The coronavirus has killed about 2,700 people so far. The flu kills roughly 60,000-70,000 people each year. — Tzeentch

This aged well.

One Year After Coronavirus Pandemic Declared, How Many Deaths From Covid-19?

As of March 11, 2021, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, the Covid-19 coronavirus has resulted in over 118.0 million reported Covid-19 cases and over 2.6 million deaths worldwide. The U.S. has had by far the most reported Covid-19 cases with over 29.1 million and the most reported Covid-19 deaths at over 529,000.

And that was with all the various rules re. masks and lockdowns. Imagine if we'd have just carried on as if it were the flu.

To mask or not to mask. Here is my opinion on this topic:

***** Please take OFF your mask to save grandma! *****

--This message is intended for our 'healthy vaccinated' people. If you are vaccinated but have an underlying condition (susceptible to the ill effects of covid), then this message is NOT for you.--

Q. -- What happens when the virus encounters an 'unmasked' healthy vaccinated person?
A. -- The virus (viral particles) dies, and is permanently removed from the environment, thereby making the environment less virally contaminated and safer for vulnerable people.
C. -- This is a GOOD thing. Cleaning up (removing) the virus from the environment helps save the lives of those people that are too vulnerable to get vaccinated.

Q. -- What happens when the virus encounters a 'masked' healthy vaccinated person?
A. -- Nothing. The virus (viral particles) continues on its way, keeping the environment virally contaminated, thereby increasing the likelihood of "killing grandma", and prolonging and perpetuating this pandemic.

**********
Be rational. Don't adhere to the irrational game of "let the rare exceptions dictate the general rule". This only results in more harm than good.

Demanding that lifeguards no longer jump into the pool to save an infant who fell in the deep end for fear that the lifeguards themselves might drown (or accidentally drown the infant) is highly irrational, and results in more harm than good.

Demanding that ambulance drivers no longer respond to the home or scene of an accident for fear of getting in an accident themselves (or accidentally killing someone) is highly irrational, and results in more harm than good.

Demanding that healthy vaccinated people put on masks for fear of dying themselves (or killing someone else) is highly irrational, and results in more harm than good.

***********
What say you?

What say you? — Roger Gregoire

That this kind of bullshit is one of the reasons why serious debate is next to impossible. Laymen weighing in with a superficial understanding of the science and no references or citations to back up their outlandish claims. If you can't present either your own credentials or a scientific paper to back up your assertions then please just stand down. It really shouldn't need to be pointed out that the situation is extremely serious with millions dying, we don't need armchair speculation, we certainly don't need imbeciles imploring people to take action against all scientific advice.

If you don't want to wear a mask, don't wear a mask. You need more than your ad hoc opinion before imploring others to do likewise.

Not once in your emotional rant did you refute my logic. -- can you? -- can you find a logical flaw in my words (other than just saying they are wrong)?

How about putting aside the emotion, ad hominems, and the irrationality (comitting an appeal-to-authority fallacy) and just simply point out the error you believe I am making.

Fair enough? Or are you not capable of a rational discussion? I'll wait...

Remember: Science that disregards logic is BAD Science.