Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Forogil]

I think it was Pfizer's or biontech's CEO who said in an interview a few months back that we will have to learn to live with covid.
They can adjust their mRNA vaccine within a couple of weeks but we'll never really catch up or eradicate it.

WHO have said similar things, stating that so far we have only managed to completely eradicate one disease through vaccination.

I hope he's wrong.

Yes, it would be good if they were wrong.

[Forogil]

I'm sure people felt we'd have to live with polio and small pox too.

Not really. Public health experts recognized that it would be possible to eradicate small pox and it might be possible to eradicate polio.

Influenza and coronaviruses, including sars-cov-2, are different. Here's a quick summary: https://www.popsci.com/infectious-di...sles-smallpox/

Sars-cov-2 mutate too much (although slower than influenza), have animal hosts, and isn't bad enough that eradication will be a priority all around the globe.
Obviously it can change in the future.

The prospect of locking down and preventing the spread of the virus is too horrifying for many of the wealthy elite to bare thinking about.

The point is that such measures cannot stop the disease; only slow it down due to the factors above.
It will also take a higher toll of the wealthy elite (since the wealthy elite is to a large extent old men, which are risk factors) compared to other diseases.

The animal hosts mean that even if we locked down every human for more than a month at the same time the disease could then resurface the next year - by jumping back from some animals.

We probably wont eradicate it at this point, that ship probably sailed when countries were evacuating their citizens out of wuhan's quarrantine,

The ship sailed before that, as it had already spread undetected to several countries before the quarantine.

The Wuhan lockdown started January 23rd, the disease was already detected in seven countries by then or people already traveling without any evacuation as the first case in Italy arrived January 23rd (the first US case was detected January 20 - and he had arrived January 15th). Note that there might be additional cases that weren't detected.

[Gaidax]

It's pretty clear we will have to live with it for a very long time vaccine or not. I hope next step will be development of effective medicine to treat it.

[Forogil]

Public health experts havent been around for that long, small pox and polio have, I'm sure in a time before public health was even a concept the idea of people not dying of these horrific diseases was wishful thinking.

None of your point contradicts the facts I presented, and your points aren't even that accurate.

Public health initiatives have been around since the at least ancient civilizations like the greeks, and there are written quarantine rules in the bible from 7th century BCE; they have just gotten better and more evidence-based.

Smallpox is only known since 3rd century BCE (it may have been around earlier - but we don't know that), vaccination efforts (or inoculation, but approximately the same) started in the 1500s. People didn't know that it was caused by a virus - as viruses weren't discovered by then, but they could see that it worked. Polio was endemic at low rate throughout history, but the pandemic outbreaks of polio first started during just a few centuries ago when more modern public health initiatives were already starting.

But none of that changes the fact that public health experts, including WHO, find it likely that sars-cov-2 (and variants) will be with us for the future, and eradication is unrealistic.

Locking down preventing the spread and the use of a vaccine would mean we could live lives where covid is a rarity at worst and eradicated at best.

The point was that the virus mutates making the current vaccines less effective. Eradication of covid-19 isn't realistic currently, and based on asymptomatic spread it instead seems that we will require regular vaccination in most countries, in contrast to diseases where you only need vaccination when going to a few countries, and also in contrast to vaccines that you last for decades (like for measles).

We stop the spread of diseases in animals routinely, we just need to identify which animals spread it and manage it from there.

Like we routinely stop the flu after having identified birds and mammals as hosts?
We sometimes cull farms - which may reduce the case numbers, but it certainly doesn't stop the flu.

[Forogil]

It's pretty clear we will have to live with it for a very long time vaccine or not. I hope next step will be development of effective medicine to treat it.

As I understand it the health professionals are already better at treating it (in addition to use of some medicine like dexamethasone at the right time), and even just reducing the peaks will help as currently people die as the ICU staff is overworked.
One problem is that we don't know how much better they are, and another is that it would be good if those options were even better.

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How do viruses evolve?

It depends a bit. Sars-cov-2 is a single-stranded RNA-virus with some extras to reduce mutations. But basically it evolves by not being copied correctly.

How can we slow down the evolution and contain its spread?

There are two main factors: the more people that have the disease the more chances it has to evolve, but on the other hand the more we try to contain its spread with measures that (as usual) are less than 100% effective the more likely it is to evolve to bypass those measures in the future.

[Granyala]

The prospect of locking down and preventing the spread of the virus is too horrifying for many of the wealthy elite to bare thinking about.

Actually, the lockdowns hit poor people in 3rd world countries far harder than us wealthy people.
Yeah sure we lose a few units of currency and it sucks but for them it's a matter of being able to put food on the table or not.

[Forogil]

Actually, the lockdowns hit poor people in 3rd world countries far harder than us wealthy people.

True, and in India there were 350 deaths due to lockdown reported in May 2020, due to police brutality, lack of food, or run over by trains when trying to avoid those consequences. Some poor countries have done better; both in terms of avoiding bad consequences from lockdown and in terms of stopping the disease - Vietnam is often cited as a good example.

The long-term impact for children of school-closures in poor countries (whereas in developed countries kids at least can zoom into class-room) and lack of vaccination (for other diseases) is also unclear; basically whether it is a one-year-exception or development has been set back more than a decade.

[Granyala]

The whole lockdown thing includes providing economic support, but instead of a coming together of nations to fight a disease we had wealthy nations hoarding ppe and medical equipment.

Yeah which 3rd would countries are sooo capable of doing.
No, not even we could support all of the rest of the world.
Our countries are reaching their limits just caring for their own citizens and despite that, many existences have been destroyed.

We had a chance to shut this down and stop a new deadly disease from taking hold

That was never actually the case. Stop dreaming and face reality.

[Forogil]

That's definitely some creative use of the term "because of lockdown", cops killing people isn't because of lockdown, the police in India are brutal outside of lockdown too and India is also poverty stricken and people starve outside of lockdown.

The police enforce lockdown by using excessive force against persons and people die as a result. Yes, that is "because of lockdown".
And the government telling day-workers that there is no work for months, and not giving them food during that time will also cause problems.

What should have happened though is that western and wealthy countries, instead of shitting the bed should have been providing aid.

Some equally poor countries have managed well. It's always easier to blame some outside boogeymen (like the western world) instead of saying that many countries, rich and poor, could be managed better - but the pandemic couldn't be stopped.

Much of this the result of callousness and selfishness not "lockdown", which does have a toll but nothing like 2 and a half million dead does. The world could have been back to relative normality in a few months but instead one of the most "developed" nations on earth decided to ignore science and continue it's death cult worship of the economy.

Many rich countries have failed at various levels, but the idea that the world could have been back to normality in a few months if the US just had done something differently is a pure delusion; and not based on science.

In many cases there might also be unknown factors influencing the spread, so just picking on case and going from that isn't science either.
Since using the US all the time is boring, look at Czechia - it seemed to manage well during the spring of 2020. Was that because it used the right measures?
But currently Czechia isn't doing great. Is it because a switch of strategy, that the original measures weren't sustainable in the long run, or just random chance?

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Yeah you're struggling because (I'm guessing the we you're referring to is the US) you let a virus run rampant.

The poster you reply to isn't from the US (I believe it's Germany - led by a scientist). The UK has 1651 reported deaths per million, US 1430, and Germany 740, the best in Europe seems to be Norway at 107. Below that level you need to be in a country without useable land borders and compliant population.

Note that I wrote reported deaths. India has reported a similar small number of deaths compared to population as Norway, and only 10 million cases. In reality India has larger numbers, perhaps 400-600 million cases based on scientific studies, and perhaps half a million or a million deaths (or more) based on fatality rates from those cases. (The UK and US also have a bit more deaths than reported.)

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Some less good news. Vaccines seems actually to be less effective against the "South African variant" (501.V2 - which includes the E484K escape mutation):

The latest is that Astra-Zeneca vaccine seems a lot less effective (at least in terms of moderate and mild cases) against this variant - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ica-variant-ft

Follow-up:

South Africa now halts AZ vaccine due to this - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/s...ainst-n1256981

[Forogil]

Those cherries tasting good?

No, your cherry-picking attempts are bad.

Obviously it would take more than america not fucking things up to have had things back to, take note here, relative normality.

The points remain: the world would currently not be back to normality regardless of US actions, and fatal endemic coronaviruses (sars-cov-2 and future variants) will almost certainly be recurring events - and would be that regardless of government actions.

That you don't trust health experts when they say this is actually part of the problem.

Disease management needs a great deal of compliance from the population, and the us made sure to poison the fuck out of that well.

Yes, but to think that those problems are primarily caused by the former US government has no nothing to with reality. People have looked for wonder-drugs and been vaccines-hesitant for a long time.

[Granyala]

I'm guessing the we you're referring to is the US

Seriously, I know this forum is Americacentric but the U.S. is not the navel of the world. *takes cover from angry Americans*
Germany, actually. So our government is far more restrictive than the US'. We are in a hard lockdown since mid December now.

No doubt about it that fuck-ups happened. That half cooked "lockdown light" we had in November damaged the economy for close to no gain in disease control.

[DarkAmbient]

Not cool with my government beginning to um and ah about ending lockdown once the oldies have been jabbed. The point of the lockdown was to ease pressure on the NHS, pressure which overwhelmingly came from the elderly. If they've been vaccinated that pressure should be significantly reduced.

[Edge-]

Not cool with my government beginning to um and ah about ending lockdown once the oldies have been jabbed. The point of the lockdown was to ease pressure on the NHS, pressure which overwhelmingly came from the elderly. If they've been vaccinated that pressure should be significantly reduced.

What's the ICU availability looking like? It takes time for immunization to take effect and social results to show, and even then re-opening is still a bad idea as it gives a false sense of confidence and can lead to further risky behaviors.

Erring on the side of caution is always preferable, even if it means more temporary pain in the short-term.

[DarkAmbient]

What's the ICU availability looking like? It takes time for immunization to take effect and social results to show, and even then re-opening is still a bad idea as it gives a false sense of confidence and can lead to further risky behaviors.

Erring on the side of caution is always preferable, even if it means more temporary pain in the short-term.

Number of covid patients in hospital has fallen from 38k mid January to 29k. Covid patients in mechanical ventilator beds has fallen from a peak of 4k to about 3.5k. Bearing in mind patients on ventilators was only around 70 in the summer, and is still higher than during the initial wave. So there is some lag to work through, but with nearly 90% of 80 year olds, over 80% of 75-79 year olds, and a third of 70-74 year olds already having their first jab as of February 4th, I don't see much point in continuing with the lockdown for much longer.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...e-jab-12179220

[Vash The Stampede]

How do viruses evolve? Surely not by dying inside the hosts?

When viruses copy their RNA a mistake will be made. Some good, some bad, but most of the time it does nothing. At some point a good mistake is made and that version of the virus will be better at reproduction. Since we gave the virus selection pressure, we made it easy for the virus to push for strains that are able to better infect. Only 1% of people have died from the virus, which for the virus isn't a concern. If it were more like the Spanish Flu where you had 50 million that died from it, then the virus would mutate to be less lethal but more contagious.

How can we slow down the evolution and contain its spread?

We do what humans do best. Fuck up ecosystems to the point where it causes a species to go extinct. If we were to keep everyone inside homes for like a few months and then vaccinate them, the virus would go extinct. That's impossible because not everyone is going to listen and lots of 3rd world countries have people that simply don't care.

If we have to deal with covid in our future it's entirely on us, we had the knowledge and resources to stop it. The US as one of the nations most powerful countries deserves all the hatred it will get for allowing a new plague take root in the world.

If anything the US is going to do nothing about it. I have more faith in the European Union to do something about it. The EU is more willing to shut down countries and give people money during this pandemic. Meanwhile the United States has people that want to keep their businesses open because they aren't getting enough from the government to survive. US has people that refuse to wear masks and believe the virus is fake news.

Good chance the EU is more likely to implement a UBI to fix their economy while Americans will need to wait 10 years to determine if socialism is bad.

[Forogil]

We do what humans do best. Fuck up ecosystems to the point where it causes a species to go extinct. If we were to keep everyone inside homes for like a few months and then vaccinate them, the virus would go extinct. That's impossible because not everyone is going to listen and lots of 3rd world countries have people that simply don't care.

Even keeping all humans indoors wouldn't work since it can also infect animals, and then jump back from those animals.

And even if vaccination almost certainly reduces the spread of the virus it is not clear if that will be enough for all of the vaccines.
There was a claim that AZ vaccine reduced something related to spread by 66% or so, that some journalist with more hype than math claimed stopped transmission. But reports say R is 3-4 (meaning that one person infects that many) without any precautions, and reducing that by 66% wouldn't suffice even if everyone was vaccinated.
It's likely that other vaccines with higher efficacy reduce it more, but we need to test more and it's not clear that all numbers are for the same thing.

[PACOX]

Even keeping all humans indoors wouldn't work since it can also infect animals, and then jump back from those animals.

And even if vaccination almost certainly reduces the spread of the virus it is not clear if that will be enough for all of the vaccines.
There was a claim that AZ vaccine reduced something related to spread by 66% or so, that some journalist with more hype than math claimed stopped transmission. But reports say R is 3-4 (meaning that one person infects that many) without any precautions, and reducing that by 66% wouldn't suffice even if everyone was vaccinated.
It's likely that other vaccines with higher efficacy reduce it more, but we need to test more and it's not clear that all numbers are for the same thing.

Animals being or becoming a vector is not necessary a problem and not a reason to throw caution to the wind. If a virus is primarily observed in x animal but could possibly spread to humans, it means that virus does not do well in human hosts. You can trade pandemics for endemics, see the worst kinds of influenza which rarely become pandemics due to preventive measures like quarantines and animal control. You might not eliminate an animal-borne virus but you can greatly reduce its chances of becoming a pandemic.


SARS-CoV-2 wasn't adapted full adapted to humans a year ago. We helped it get there with the 'herd immunity, it's not that bad, only kills the weak, what about the economy' fallacy.

Flatten the curve has always been about not crowding hospitals so people can be treated, buying time for treatments, mitigating spread, and most importantly not triggering new and effective strains. We've failed and now have 3 prominent strains now more suited to human cells and evade the human immune system.


Also the AZ vaccine should have never been approved by anyone. It's always been problematic. It was pushed through with money > health in mind.

[Edge-]

https://thehill.com/homenews/537860-...h-the-bucs-win

The Arch-Bishop of the Death Cult thinks you're silly and will gladly go maskless to drink a beer at a packed sporting event in the middle of a pandemic where a more contagious and sever mutation of the virus is spreading.

Seriously Florida, ignore this homicidal fuck and wear your god-damned masks.

[Forogil]

Animals being or becoming a vector is not necessary a problem and not a reason to throw caution to the wind. If a virus is primarily observed in x animal but could possibly spread to humans, it means that virus does not do well in human hosts.

Here it's currently more a case of it being primarily in humans and sometimes in animals; it's just that it does well enough in animals that there's some concern.

Also the AZ vaccine should have never been approved by anyone. It's always been problematic. It was pushed through with money > health in mind.

Well, speed and money - and a less effective vaccine now may be better than a more effective vaccine in a few months. We will see how much we can ramp up mRNA production capacity and whether the Russian vaccine is approved by EMA and FMA; as it should be similar to the AZ vaccine in many ways - just with a more clever design and working better.

- - - Updated - - -

https://thehill.com/homenews/537860-...h-the-bucs-win

The Arch-Bishop of the Death Cult thinks you're silly and will gladly go maskless to drink a beer at a packed sporting event in the middle of a pandemic where a more contagious and sever mutation of the virus is spreading.

In other news from that cult:
Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, R-Texas became first sitting member of congress to die of covid in office.
(Luke Letlow, a Republican from Louisiana died after being elected but before being sworn in.)

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p...id/4437038001/

[PACOX]

In other news from that cult:
Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, R-Texas became first sitting member of congress to die of covid in office.
(Luke Letlow, a Republican from Louisiana died after being elected but before being sworn in.)

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p...id/4437038001/

I'm confused as to why he wasn't vaccinated. And I bet a bunch of representatives are once again concerned that their Republican colleagues still pull down their masks for political stunts.