Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Elegiac]

Again, in the US.

And I already said similar policies should be extended elsewhere.

Again, you're fishing for a double standard that doesn't exist.

[Rasulis]

There is already going to be a lot of hidden fees for those unvaccinated.

Carnival Cruise Line adds $150 testing fee, travel insurance requirement for unvaccinated guests

Carnival Cruise Line is navigating Florida’s vaccine passport law by adjusting its stance on allowing unvaccinated guests on sailings, but is now requiring they both pay $150 for COVID-19 testing and pay for travel insurance.

BTW, you will be paying that $150 pcr test every time you disembark/embark at any ports. So you could be paying multiple times on a single cruise.

Norwegian Cruise Line Will Abandon Florida if State's COVID Vaccine Law Not Reversed

Business or FREEDOM!!!!

Passenger livestreams removal from cruise ship after she claims COVID mix-up

Get the vaccine! It is free.

[Elegiac]

We are talking here about penalties, not taxes when buying smokes or alcohol.

Hint: If you're resorting to semantics, you've already lost the argument. Rofl.

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There is already going to be a lot of hidden fees for those unvaccinated.

I wonder how soon after the first companies start firing people for being unvaccinated we'll hear the people who pushed right to work laws do an about face.

[Specialka]

Hint: If you're resorting to semantics, you've already lost the argument. Rofl.

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I wonder how soon after the first companies start firing people for being unvaccinated we'll hear the people who pushed right to work laws do an about face.

Or that you can be precise from the get go so you won't stand corrected.

[PhaelixWW]

Or that you can be precise from the get go so you won't stand corrected.

Why do you believe that there's not some overlap between taxes and penalties? Some things can be both.

[Edge-]

Or that you can be precise from the get go so you won't stand corrected.

Novel thought: An anti-vax tax.

Refusal to get the vaccine without a legitimate medical reason should result in a tax penalty to help defray the public health costs of that decision.

Why not apply that to smoking ? Or drinking ?

This is you losing this argument dude. Those additional taxes on cigarettes beyond the standard sales tax? That's the tax penalty to defray the public health costs. That's a bit part of the point of "sin" taxes (in addition to attempting to deter that behavior).

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https://www.cnn.com/videos/media/202...usiness-media/

In case anyone is wondering what the anti-vaccine propaganda in the US looks like, this is a good clip.

I particularly like the guy in there who said, "A vaccine is going against nature."

I can't believe that we're literally going backwards on one of the biggest advances in medicine that's allowed us to defeat countless life threatening diseases that can cripple people for life.

Remember that last time you visited your friend in an iron lung because he got polio? Neither do I.

[Granyala]

Many more adolescents could become hospitalized, Hotez said, adding up to 30% of children infected will develop long-haul covid.

If that is indeed the case, the recommendation for the vaccine will change and children will be vaccinated.

[Edge-]

If that is indeed the case, the recommendation for the vaccine will change and children will be vaccinated.

Some children. Given that we're already having a helluva time with adults, and many of those same hesitant adults will refuse the vaccine for their child, we'll continue to run into the same problems.

Fucking hell, these nutters are increasingly turning against vaccines across the fucking board. I guess without outbreaks of these diseases some people don't realize how important vaccines are. Maybe we need another generation of children to suffer in iron lungs so these people wake the fuck up.

[Granyala]

Some children.

Most children. Let's not be overly dramatic here, ok?

Sure, the diehards will not vaccinate their kiddos either.
That's their choice to make, I guess. Unless we want to inoculate them at gunpoint, we will have to live with their unwise choices.
After all, it is our choice not to force the issue.

If we get 80% inoculated, 10% get immunity via infection (half of the non vaccinated population), we are at heard immunity levels.
Convincing these 80% is going to be a challenge, however.

[Edge-]

Unless we want to inoculate them at gunpoint, we will have to live with their unwise choices.

If these people weren't pervasive throughout governments because vaccines are apparently now political (avoiding the politics topic as best I can), there are multitude of options. Protecting businesses that choose to only serve vaccinated individuals, incentivizing vaccinations and disensentivizing remaining unvaccinated (limiting access to some government programs, for example).

Also, aggressively going after misinformation/disinformation, but that's a whole other ball of wax.

After all, it is our choice not to force the issue.

Sure, I guess we need a generation of kids in iron lungs to remind these people why a small pinch in the arm and a few days of feeling crummy isn't a tall ask.

Convincing these 80% is going to be a challenge, however.

Which is my point. There are significant enough numbers that we're unlikely to hit those high targets to begin with.

[Forogil]

If that is indeed the case, the recommendation for the vaccine will change and children will be vaccinated.

Well, the claim was "up to 30%", technically that means any number not above 30%, right?

And that is a big "If", and it depends on what is meant with "long" - some studies defined "long" cases as the ones lasting a month, but then most disappear over the following months. And other studies found that age is a major risk factor - so it seems unlikely that children will be that much at risk.

It is also possible that some of the anxiety and other issues isn't primarily caused by the disease - it's been a strange year for many.

Hopefully people will know more at some point.

[Edge-]

https://twitter.com/KyleHoranNC5/sta...12917068050434

In addition to being fired, the former head of Tennessee's vaccine efforts was apparently sent a muzzle by someone. Anti-vaxxers are increasingly appearing to act with outward hostility towards medical professionals.

[Elegiac]

That's their choice to make, I guess. Unless we want to inoculate them at gunpoint

Whatever works.

[Omega10]

https://twitter.com/KyleHoranNC5/sta...12917068050434

In addition to being fired, the former head of Tennessee's vaccine efforts was apparently sent a muzzle by someone. Anti-vaxxers are increasingly appearing to act with outward hostility towards medical professionals.

My wife and I went to get our auto license renewals at the DMV. There was only 1 other person there other than us that wore masks. At least people social distanced. The anti-mask anti-social distancing groups are fighting hard, and they are winning.

So I have read quite a few articles about this and that, and listened to the news (yuck) since my wife has it on at various times of the day. Here are a few of the sentences hidden in various articles and on TV that I found interesting. Interesting? Definitely not surprising.

One article talked about how unlikely it was that the virus would get as bad as it was last year. Oh goody, current projections are that it's unlikely to peak at 3k deaths a day. 2k deaths a day is still a lot of deaths.

It has been reported that, theoretically, the vaccines would last for years. On the ground studies in Israel showed that the vaccine wears out after just 6 months or so.

Probably they are both correct. In many people, the vaccine presumably WILL work for years. For others - the timeline is more like months. Then again, the delta variant is a lot stronger than the original virus, so this might just be the result of a stronger virus reducing the effectiveness of vaccines from 90% to 60% effectiveness rather than the vaccine wearing off. Either way, being properly vaccinated is not the same as full protection, and masks and social distancing are still necessary.

Across the country, in 40 states the virus numbers are starting to go back up. The July 4th Strengthen the Virus Holiday Celebrations have not kicked in yet, and football season is coming up soon. As you pointed out here, and Tennessee is only a slight outlier in how viciously they have gone after masks and social distancing and getting the vaccine, Americans will make sure that there will be many other Super Spreader events to make the virus strong.

And oh yeah, the delta virus is strong enough to defeat the immune systems of teenagers and even children. And very shortly we will be putting children in close contact with other unvaccinated children all day long. School will be a very good way to maximize the number of people that get the virus.

Apparently health professionals (I wish I had a link to that article) are starting to project a wave that is most likely going to be less bad than last year. If I were going to bet, I'd bet on it being worse. Americans are DETERMINED to ... FUCK THE VIRUS, as they said last year at Sturgiss. It turned out badly last year, and with the huge efforts that Americans are making to spread the virus this year, I believe that this will be a banner year for the virus in the US.

[PhaelixWW]

It has been reported that, theoretically, the vaccines would last for years. On the ground studies in Israel showed that the vaccine wears out after just 6 months or so.

These are actually two separate things.

The vaccine produces a robust immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, during which your body produces antibodies. Those antibodies (which are the easy way to measure immune response) begin to wane at a certain point, as they must. But the vaccine also teaches your adaptive immune system (memory B cells & T cells) how to create these antibodies again when they're needed.

So while the antibodies might wane after 6 months, leaving you more prone to reinfection, your ability to create these antibodies quickly on demand looks like it will last for years, which will prevent said reinfection from progressing to a serious case.

I posted a good NYTimes article about it a few days ago (the full article is quoted in the original post):

It's an older article, sir, but it checks out...

NYTimes: (Oct 2020) Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Studies Showing Waning Coronavirus Antibodies

[Corvus]

Good news everyone. We don't have to worry about the delta variant because apparently it doesn't exist. I heard that, repeatedly, from an anti-vaxxer.

I was afraid to ask why they would think that, mostly because it was liable to melt my brain. Best guess is they refuse to admit it so they can blame an increase in numbers (of a virus they really don't believe in anyway) on vaccines not working rather than ignorant fools like themselves not getting vaccinated and allowing the virus to mutate.

Oh, and they proudly said they'd never get tested, even if sick and don't ever plan on wearing masks.

We'd be downright screwed if anything as nasty as the black death turned up again.

[Omega10]

These are actually two separate things.

The vaccine produces a robust immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, during which your body produces antibodies. Those antibodies (which are the easy way to measure immune response) begin to wane at a certain point, as they must. But the vaccine also teaches your adaptive immune system (memory B cells & T cells) how to create these antibodies again when they're needed.

So while the antibodies might wane after 6 months, leaving you more prone to reinfection, your ability to create these antibodies quickly on demand looks like it will last for years, which will prevent said reinfection from progressing to a serious case.

I posted a good NYTimes article about it a few days ago (the full article is quoted in the original post):

So the net results of this is:

Over time, fully vaccinated people will lose some of their ability to resist the virus (most or all of it? I guess this hasn't been determined yet).
However, the adaptive immune system will reduce the amount of damage the virus does to you.

So you can still pass it on to un-vaccinated people (or vaccinated ones for that matter), it's just that for the vaccinated people that get it - it will be a bit like a severe flu, while for un-vaccinated people effects will include a decent chance of hospitalization.

[Rasulis]

So the net results of this is:

Over time, fully vaccinated people will lose some of their ability to resist the virus (most or all of it? I guess this hasn't been determined yet).
However, the adaptive immune system will reduce the amount of damage the virus does to you.

So you can still pass it on to un-vaccinated people (or vaccinated ones for that matter), it's just that for the vaccinated people that get it - it will be a bit like a severe flu, while for un-vaccinated people effects will include a decent chance of hospitalization.

More like mild allergy. Under most circumstances, as soon as the CD4+ T cells detected the virus, the B cells would start producing the appropriate antibodies within hours and the CD8+ T cells would kill the infected cells. Nine out of ten, the virus would not have the chance to replicate to the point where it became infectious.

[PhaelixWW]

Yale: How Long Will Your Coronavirus Vaccination Last?

...

In April, a report in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) said that in all 33 participants who had received the Moderna vaccine during the Phase I trial, protection remained high for six months after the second shot.

That same month, Pfizer reported that its vaccine was still highly effective at six months. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was introduced at a later date and researchers are still gathering post-vaccination data.

“The current data on the [Pfizer and Moderna] mRNA vaccines is very promising,” says Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, a professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Iwasaki notes that the NEJM report on the Moderna vaccine showed a gradual decline in antibody protection in its subjects—and, based on slope, she says that is hopeful news. “If antibodies are going down very quickly, you would expect that to last for a short time.” The slow decline raises hopes that the mRNA vaccines will be protective for at least a year, if not longer, she says. “In addition to circulating antibodies, memory B cells and T cells can respond quickly to control infection. It could be many more years, unless there are variants that are able to evade this kind of immunity.”

...

T cells, which scientists are still studying for their ability to kill virus-infected cells in the context of COVID-19, may also provide important protection, although that is more difficult to measure. Last year, a study in Nature showed that people who were infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a different coronavirus outbreak that killed almost 800 people in 2003, maintained T-cell immunity 17 years after they recovered.

“The other way that we can approximate, from a clinical level, how long protection lasts is by looking at natural immunity,” says Dr. Meyer. This means studying people who developed immunity after being infected with COVID-19. “We know for at least the first few months after symptomatic disease—and even longer—that people are unlikely to become reinfected,” she says.

But while natural immunity can provide useful information, it’s important to know that immunity induced by the mRNA vaccines is stronger and more reliable than from infection, says Iwasaki. That’s because levels of natural immunity tend to differ from person to person. “Vaccines normalize the response to a very high level, where it uniformly uplifts everybody,” she says. “If you are starting with the high level, even if you start to decline from that level, it will take much longer before you need a booster.”

[Granyala]

If these people weren't pervasive throughout governments because vaccines are apparently now political (avoiding the politics topic as best I can), there are multitude of options. Protecting businesses that choose to only serve vaccinated individuals, incentivizing vaccinations and disensentivizing remaining unvaccinated (limiting access to some government programs, for example).

Also, aggressively going after misinformation/disinformation, but that's a whole other ball of wax.

Sure, I guess we need a generation of kids in iron lungs to remind these people why a small pinch in the arm and a few days of feeling crummy isn't a tall ask.

Which is my point. There are significant enough numbers that we're unlikely to hit those high targets to begin with.

Yeah ok, this is probably unique to the US. Nothing political about the vaccine here, at least I didn't notice anything.

Still you fail to understand my point:
We (as in the govt) give people the option to say "No". In doing so, we communicate "this situation isn't bad enough to force the vaccine on people". Which then gets interpreted by some "ok, apparently it's not a problem if I say no.".

You are peddling a double standard here: you want "democracy" and "freedom of choice" yet you diss and belittle people for actually making the choice, because in your eyes, it is the wrong choice.

Sorry, buddy, but things don't work that way in real life. If the situation is dire, you need to force people. You do not give them a choice. Lamenting on about a "death cult" doesn't help either.

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Whatever works.

Honestly, with the amount of fuss made about C19, I don't understand why govt shy away from mandatory inoculation. *shrug*
Is it a serious problem now or isn't it? Apparently not serious enough.