> The Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If you’re vaccinated, your chances of getting severely sick are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ effectiveness and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that Covid now appears to present less danger than a normal flu.
> For the unvaccinated, however, Covid is worse than any other common virus. It has killed more than 865,000 Americans, the vast majority unvaccinated. In the weeks before vaccines became widely available, Covid was the country’s No. 1 cause of death, above even cancer and heart disease.
At this point if an adult in the US is unvaccinated it is (1) almost certainly by choice (there are some people who cannot get it for medical reasons but they make up only a very tiny fraction of the unvaccinated), and (2) it is very unlikely that any evidence or logical arguments will chance their minds.
With COVID becoming endemic everyone is going to get antibodies, with the only choice being whether you get your first antibodies by vaccination or by getting COVID.
The only question really then is how fast do we want the unvaccinated to do the getting antibodies by getting COVID thing. The faster they get it, the faster we can be as done with COVID as we are ever going to be.
I'd say the answer to that should be determined by the hospital capacity. If a region has sufficient hospital capacity that it would not be overwhelmed by the increase in COVID cases among the unvaccinated go ahead and lift most restrictions.
Apologies in advance for getting on my soapbox, but this has been on my mind for a while.
The way in which the media has gotten everyone to say "the unvaccinated" is a 'disease' against basic science (not even getting into the divisive nature of this). I would go as far as saying if you read any paper, study, or other that refers to the "unvaccinated" as a single cohort, you are reading vaccine propaganda, not science, or certainly not good science.
This must stop. Prior infection immunity is basic science that we've known for eons, and ignoring it is so blatantly glaring an omission, it should make the most staunch pro-vaccine person pause and say: "why are they so adamant to vaccinate those with prior infection?". One would expect prior infection to be robust, and multiple studies, including even the CDC's most recent shows it to be easily as good if not better and longer lasting than the vaccine. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.
If you think any of the above is "anti-vax" then I would suggest the media has won and science is dead. I'm not suggesting the vaccine doesn't work. I'm not suggesting it doesn't provide protection against severe disease and death. I'm not suggesting anyone go out and intentionally try to get COVID, but a HUGE # of people have already had it and ignoring them is downright unscientific. If you are a rational person who wants to see good science and are unemotional and detached from outcomes, then you will want to see proper study cohorts, and combining prior infection in with the "unvaccinated" cohort, is just bad science. This bad science fuels the anti-vaxx movement even more, and honestly, it is hard blame them.
I agree - I am worried about taking hospital capacity claims at face value though.
From what I've seen, it was common for hospitals to report being overwhelmed even during flu seasons pre-covid. I wouldn't classify that level of 'overwhelmed' worthy of mandates upon society.
I don't doubt that during these periods of time hospital resources are strained in some way, but there's a difference between this routine level of being overwhelmed and a level where freedoms should be restricted from the general public.
I don't have a good model for where the line should be drawn, but I lean towards not imposing restrictions unless massive benefit can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt.
> I'd say the answer to that should be determined by the hospital capacity. If a region has sufficient hospital capacity that it would not be overwhelmed by the increase in COVID cases among the unvaccinated go ahead and lift most restrictions.
Having anyone's freedoms dependent on available hospital capacity is a terrible way to run a society. Note that these freedoms were debated and won in an era where medicine was terrible.
The vaxxed and unvaxxed populations both rely on the same medical infrastructure. So when the unvaxxed fill hospitals to recover or die, they are consuming scarce resources that are required by the population at large for other things like birth, cancer, surgery, etc. Sadly, we don't have an ethical way to let all the unvaxxed get covid without impacting the medical system negatively for the rest of us.
I wanted to comment a little on the "choice" thing. I'm not sure that every person who is unvaccinated chose that. I had to try very hard to get my three doses. For the first series, I had to go to a faraway FEMA-run site. For the booster, I scheduled three appointments with CVS; the first two times, they canceled my appointment on the walk over (I made the first like 3 weeks in advance, and they canceled with 10 minutes notice -- "sorry, we ran out".) I did eventually get that third dose; but each signup took me about 15 minutes of typing in all of my medical information (`insert into form_responses (email, json_blob_that_is_passed_to_the_final_appointment_making_system) ...`?). I imagine some people just gave up after their first appointment was canceled.
I never saw anyone talking about this; the government websites are like "go to CVS, you can just walk in!" but in reality no CVS locations were accepting walk-ins if you asked. And even appointments were tenuous.
I feel like it's fair to place 90% of the blame on individuals, but I also think big companies are misrepresenting themselves to the government, or the government isn't asking if they actually have vaccines or not.
I've never heard a convincing argument about why the COVID restrictions weren't literal violations of human rights. Often I got a variant of "I'm scared we're just going to do it". Most (all?) of the arguments for it turned out to be wrong - eg, vaccination has not slowed the spread, even marginally, according to the experience in Australia where COVID tore through a highly vaccinated population. In my state (~95% adults 12+ vaccinated) we have had more than a million cases (population 8 million) in 1.5 months. And the testing systems collapsed, probably quite a bit more in reality.
This is now taking it one step further - this argument is as an assumption - suggesting people have to give up their freedoms because people paying for their own hospital capacity is unacceptable to you. I say that because the sort of person who is pro-freedom to the point of not wanting a vaccine might well overlap with the population of people pro-freedom enough that they want individuals to pay for their own healthcare.
This is not a sustainable position against 2019 business-as-usual. I agree with the headline.
It looks like that's more Americans than have been killed in combat in all of the wars of the 20th century combined [1]
Granted it's less than the UK lost in WW1 alone, so it's perhaps more a testament to how few the US managed to loose in the world wars (compared to Europe), but it's still wild to realize.
I saw that email. David Leonhart I believe, who is one of my preferred NYT journalists.
Something that was conspicuously absent from the paragraph regarding the unvaccinated vs. the vaccinated paragraph preceding it:
Risk stratification by age. When talking about the vaccinated, he calls out the "even in people over age 65".
There is zero question that vaccines reduce the relative risk for people under 65, however, it should be noted that the absolute risk for healthy people in this category is orders of magnitude lower purely by virtue of their age. Unhealthy people in this category should be vaccinated, of course.
Just an example of narrative bias creeping in, even from the relatively top-flight Leonhart.
Anyway, not disagreeing with you, just calling out a specific example of why the journalism on COVID has been, primarily unintentionally, misleading.
>” At this point if an adult in the US is unvaccinated it is (1) almost certainly by choice (there are some people who cannot get it for medical reasons but they make up only a very tiny fraction of the unvaccinated), and (2) it is very unlikely that any evidence or logical arguments will chance their minds.”
This typical line of thought ignores a huge issue. Vaccine mandates don’t help per se, but it’s an issue that is pretty bad to just gloss over.
Articles like this really need to describe some sort of policy or plan for the 7 million or so immunocompromised people in America.
Like at least mention them and advocate something. Don’t just gloss over 7 million people. Propose something like Priority access to the new Pfizer pills and additional assistance with other things to avoid high risk activities.
> If a region has sufficient hospital capacity that it would not be overwhelmed by the increase in COVID cases among the unvaccinated go ahead and lift most restrictions.
This is basically the reasoning used in Ireland; the hospitals weren't overwhelmed as Omicron peaked in the first week or so of January, so overnight we went from really quite restricted to all restrictions except mask requirements gone. Over 95% of Irish adults are vaccinated, so this isn't a trick that will work everywhere, but... for now it seems to be going okay.
My sense is the government has silently taken this stance and that hospitals aren't at risk of collapse like they were a year or more ago. I also get the feeling the vaccinated have given up on the unvaccinated too just based on how rarely I now see posts on social media. It's like a tacit acceptance that if people are going to choose to die, so be it.
I actually wonder if this not caring is what will actually defuse this particular anti-vaxx movement. Or it'll just be the next vaccine and the Covid vaccine issues will be completely forgotten. I mean when was the last time you heard about vaccines causing autism?
what's interesting here is the underlying psychology that makes people susceptible to manipulation by thinking they're in the know on some Big Lie. This seems to be nothing new however and I can't help but think of this quote from Goebbels of all people [1]:
> “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
> I'd say the answer to that should be determined by the hospital capacity. If a region has sufficient hospital capacity that it would not be overwhelmed by the increase in COVID cases among the unvaccinated go ahead and lift most restrictions.
You forget the second order effect here: the more unvaccinated people hospitals have to treat, the more likely their nurses and doctors are to quit, even if "the hospital is not overloaded". The more likely they are to quit, the more likely people are to die of other preventable causes in the future (because once they're burned and quit, they're not coming back).
> The faster they get it, the faster we can be as done with COVID as we are ever going to be.
This reminds me of the arguments that unvaccinated were the cause of COVID-19 and were endangering those who are vaccinated. Vaccinated people get and spread COVID still. In fact, recent studies show natural immunity or vaxxed plus COVID causes much more antibodies than simply getting vaccinated, especially with a vaccine that targets an old mutation that has proven much less effective against Omicron and the likes. The vaccinated people will prob continue to get vaccinated a few times a year until they get a less dangerous variant.
It is so amazing to me how many people don't seem to recognize this.
My (somewhat baseless) speculation on this is that a lot of the people in forums like HN are early adopter types who mostly work from home, and so were able to avoid exposure and got the vaccine relatively early. From this standpoint, I could see it being harder to empathize with folks who were exposed in everyday life (it's just a simple jab, I did it, why can't everyone else? Or maybe even those folks must be bad/lesser people if they didn't stop themselves from being infected).
Combine that with the constant onslaught of media time that pointedly ignores the categories that you breakdown above, and maybe it's no wonder that people have the opinions on this that they do.
The other thing that needs bringing into the discussion is vulnerability.
The average of death with Covid in the US is 80.
If every healthy 30 year old and under in the US declined the vaccine, this would barely move the needle. They personally are not vulnerable and are not likely to end up in hospital.
Reading this discussion, you would think that vaccinated = safe, unvaccinated = certain doom. Age is a much stronger predicter than vaccine status.
You may even split up (1) into omicron-recovered and other-variants-recovered, since recovering from omicron strain seems to give a stronger resistance against reinfection for both omicron and delta, whereas recovering from delta offers little reinfection resistance to omicron[1].
Good breakdown. I'd propose further breaking out of each category based on whether the person is immunosuppressed (for example from medication given to organ transplant recipients) or otherwise immunocompromised.
“In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions.”
I feel that you need to include the people for masks and those against it. Unlike vaccines, masks do not lose efficacy over time or due to new variants. Both anti-vax and pro-vaccine supporters can fall into the anti-mask category. I don’t understand why people in the West are so anti-mask. It's been two years since I've gotten sick with anything.
1. Covid-recovered and Vaccinated + pro-mask
2. Covid-recovered and Partly-vaccinated + pro-mask
3. Covid-recovered + pro-mask
4. Vaccinated + pro-mask
5. Partly-vaccinated (< 14 days after 2nd shot) + pro-mask
6. Covid-recovered and Vaccinated + anti-mask
7. Covid-recovered and Partly-vaccinated + anti-mask
8. Covid-recovered + anti-mask
9. Vaccinated + anti-mask
10. Partly-vaccinated (< 14 days after 2nd shot) + anti-mask
There's also a further separation that is veeery relevant: age groups. There are sometimes graphs that split them out if you go digging far enough, but the graphs that make headlines are usually along the lines of "death rate, fully vaccinated versus unvaccinated" (which as you point out has its own issues). Not splitting it out into age groups gives casual readers the impression that mortality is evenly distributed along all age groups, which it most definitely is not.
I'm vaccinated and boostered by my own choice. My problem with mandates is where does it end? Why this mandate and not other mandates? Who gets to decide that?
I feel like given that vaccines do an acceptable job at reducing risk of hospitalization and death, there is only really a few things worth discussing, in relevant order:
- Are hospitals actually being overloaded by covid cases to the point of being an issue (according to many, yes. but according to [1] Johns Hopkins, no, or only in some cases?).
- Are the unvaccinated actually the majority of the covid related cases (as far as I'm aware, yes).
- Is this localized (state or city specific), or is this a federal issue.
- Are unvaccinated hospitalizations significantly worse compared to other personal decisions (diet, exercise, risky hobbies).
- Finally, what actions, if any, should be taken to correct the hospital load? (nothing, vaccine mandates, accelerated hospital expansion, turning people away, etc)
- If the answer to the previous is nothing, then what are we even doing?
The focus on just asking "vaccine mandate, yes or no" feels like it's missing most of the discussion.
Remember when the US invaded Iraq to "find weapons of mass destruction"? Then a year or two later that shifted to "fighting the terrorist there so we don't have to fight them here", then "winning hearts and minds" or something.
Once you get a mandate for a large-scale, politically charged activity it will never stop; the goal posts will be moved again and again, as many times as it takes and as often as necessary to put the "other side" on the defensive.
We're many weeks past "three weeks to flatten the curve", every week we hear more excuses. My friends pick them up and start parroting them in near perfect unison. I don't actually have any Republican friends, but if I did I'm sure I'd hear something similar from them too. This is no longer about fighting a disease, if it ever was (I also remember the response to AIDS being somewhat less dramatic than to COVID), this is about securing access to resources and power for one group over another. If it means thousands of your followers are discouraged from taking potentially life saving vaccinations (that you yourself have taken) and die as a result, so be it. If it means subjecting billions of people to years of unnecessary and demonstrably ineffective pandemic theater, crushing the financial future of the next generations, and destroying vast swaths of small businesses people have spent their lives building while realizing unprecedented returns on your own portfolio, so be it. The people running this do not care about any of this in the slightest, it's just an excuse to enrich themselves, and for a certain segment of the upper middle class to feel morally superior to others while they take Zoom calls from home and order dinners from Seamless. I guess this is getting boring for them now, so we're starting to be allowed to hear a trickle of stories like this.
> Are unvaccinated hospitalizations significantly worse compared to other personal decisions (diet, exercise, risky hobbies).
I mean, clearly, yes. Those, in themselves, never (or at least virtually never) cause sudden exhaustion of hospital capacity. Now, many covid cases, particularly unvaccinated cases, have some sort of lifestyle problem as a comorbidity, but that's not really the point.
> - Are the unvaccinated actually the majority of the covid related cases (as far as I'm aware, yes).
They needn't be a majority. The mandate acts to reduce strain on the hospital, so ask whether it achieves that (I think the answer is yes)
> - Are unvaccinated hospitalizations significantly worse compared to other personal decisions (diet, exercise, risky hobbies).
It is harder to fix these than getting a jab.
> - Finally, what actions, if any, should be taken to correct the hospital load? (nothing, vaccine mandates, accelerated hospital expansion, turning people away, etc)
An alternative would be to charge unvaccinated people a premium on hospital costs, as I'm sure health insurance providers would be keen to do.
> “The only way to get compliance from people and get accommodation [is] if we demonstrate the ability to withdraw these [mandates] in the same manner in which we put them in,” Gottlieb added.
Nope. That line was crossed a long time ago. I can't imagine people suddenly regaining trust in pharma companies and health care agencies now because they backed off at this point.
I think everyone should get vaccinated, but at this point if you aren't...you aren't going to. So, it's a waste. I think it's time to move on from this. It is understandable that people are afraid of getting sick, dying etc., but 2-3 years is a long part of your life. It's ruining lives in more ways than just people getting sick.
I feel bad for people that live in a constant state of fear in states/countries that have been incredibly strict. My state has been more or less the same now, nothing in my life has really changed aside from the price increases and shortages in both goods and labor. I can't travel to many places I want to though because of fear I'll get there, and everything will be locked down. When this first started I was upset with people going out, etc. but as time has marched on, we know enough about the virus in terms of prevention, treatment, and the low chance of serious infection.
I think my opinion is pretty popular among the populace, but it's astounding how it has not been treated as such in the media and government.
> The word ‘endemic’ has become one of the most misused of the pandemic. And many of the errant assumptions made encourage a misplaced complacency. It doesn’t mean that COVID-19 will come to a natural end.
> In other words, a disease can be endemic and both widespread and deadly. Malaria killed more than 600,000 people in 2020. Ten million fell ill with tuberculosis that same year and 1.5 million died. Endemic certainly does not mean that evolution has somehow tamed a pathogen so that life simply returns to ‘normal’.
> Stating that an infection will become endemic says nothing about how long it might take to reach stasis, what the case rates, morbidity levels or death rates will be or, crucially, how much of a population — and which sectors — will be susceptible. Nor does it suggest guaranteed stability: there can still be disruptive waves from endemic infections, as seen with the US measles outbreak in 2019. Health policies and individual behaviour will determine what form — out of many possibilities — endemic COVID-19 takes.
Something can be endemic and deadly and still something we accept the consequences of without government imposed restrictions.
For example: HIV is something that is now endemic and (still) deadly. And yet we don't go around forcibly shutting down gay bathhouses, bars, and Grindr and implementing condom and prep mandates, even though they would be effective at reducing its spread. And for good reason: it'd be a massive (and homophobic) violation of civil liberties.
But because mask and vaccine resistance is red tribe coded, a lot of people who would usually be level-headed about epidemiology and cost-benefit analyses end up in a stance driven more by moralizing than sound science.
The Omicron variant has so far shown itself to be milder and overall less dangerous to the vaccinated and unvaccinated. So far it appears to leave patients with good immunity after recovery.
This trend is playing out in the US and western Europe. Ireland has dropped its restrictions .. Denmark also just announced dropping restrictions.
The board member is correct here, despite anyones personal thoughts on covid vaccinations, vaccine requirements etc.. at least for now this latest variant seems to be forcing a change in narrative.
If everyone is unmasked and the Omicron variant seems to burn through the vaccines in terms of infection but not serious illness, does that mean that it can lead to more mutations and more _bad_ mutations if so many people get it? What's the "mutation rate" in a person who has mild or no symptoms and how infectious are they?
It just seems if one sick person creates a bad variant that is more infectious or even more deadly (and burn through the vaccines like Omicron) and everyone is unmasked/etc at the same time then such a variant could spread wide without immediate detection. I have no idea if any of this is true so take it with a grain of salt...
I could not care less, but then it seems these guys --through lots of lobby and special interest groups-- basically dictate governmental policy the world over.
Am I the only one who finds it heinous that “Pfizer board member” is supposed to give this position more credence as opposed to what should just be clearly obvious to any level headed civic minded individual in the American/western tradition?
“Okay y’all, weve profited at your expense quite enough, let’s dial it back a little before causing too much societal damage writ large” -“Pfizer board member
I think this is kind of a big "duh" statement. Mandates were issued in the face or surging numbers and we now have waning numbers. I'm very hesitant to declare victory too soon but the day is seemingly coming soon. Of course, we'll have to reverse course yet again if there's a new wave which very well might happen. The next stage should shipping billions of doses to the poor nations that haven't gotten any yet.
Why are people so afraid of something that has less than 0.01% of killing them? I am living my life as normally as I can, yet I am unvaccinated and rarely ever wear a mask. I feel mankind has handled this poorly, and has created many more unnecessary problems. I wish more people would join me, living life to its fullest. This thing will only be over when WE decide it is.
His record at the FDA is better than I would have expected from someone with such deep industry ties but it looks like he took the job to heart and did it well.
At this point with the rate Omicron has been spreading here in Australia I don't think masks are making much/any difference anymore - seems like this variant is just off the charts w.r.t transmissibility.
Vaccine mandates though I think make sense for the same reason we have mandated immunization in Australia for many other diseases. Unlike somewhere like the US you can't attend a school (any school, not just public schools) without the appropriate vaccines or a medical diagnosis exempting you. So a vaccine mandate for Covid-19 isn't really anything new here. Despite that there is now some political debate about it because we seem to have imported a lot of US hysteria the last decade or two.
Vaccine mandate will help keep herd immunity maintained which reduces deaths among those that actually can't get the vaccine rather than just anti-vax nonsense.
Why is this comment being downvoted? What part isn't true?
This statement seems very specific to the US cultural context:
“The only way to get compliance from people and get accommodation [is] if we demonstrate the ability to withdraw these [mandates] in the same manner in which we put them in,” Gottlieb added.
In Canada, there have been experiments with slowly increasing the number of areas where you are required to have a vaccine in order to enter. They put it on Beer/Liquor stores recently and it saw a huge jump in the number of vaccine appoints.
They are putting the requirement on big box stores (e.g. Home Depot/Lowes/Walmart, excluding the pharmacy areas) now and probably will see another jump.
That said, it does appear that this current wave is mostly over, but deaths are primarily among the unvaccinated, so it is probably still a good idea to aim for near full vaccination:
Covid vaccines should be treated similarly to other public health vaccines, like Polio. Although we really need more effective Gen2 vaccines that do not require constant boosters and they need to outright prevent infection rather than just reducing the death rate. These Gen1 vaccines and their semi-effectiveness have been incredibly confusing to the general public.
Pfizer would be smart to not push for mandates -- as would anyone else wanting to see more vaccinations, period. More people would probably get their vaccine by choice if it were not forced on them. WE have known this for a long time. Glad they are catching wind of how this all works, psychologically.
[+] [-] tzs|4 years ago|reply
> The Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If you’re vaccinated, your chances of getting severely sick are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ effectiveness and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that Covid now appears to present less danger than a normal flu.
> For the unvaccinated, however, Covid is worse than any other common virus. It has killed more than 865,000 Americans, the vast majority unvaccinated. In the weeks before vaccines became widely available, Covid was the country’s No. 1 cause of death, above even cancer and heart disease.
At this point if an adult in the US is unvaccinated it is (1) almost certainly by choice (there are some people who cannot get it for medical reasons but they make up only a very tiny fraction of the unvaccinated), and (2) it is very unlikely that any evidence or logical arguments will chance their minds.
With COVID becoming endemic everyone is going to get antibodies, with the only choice being whether you get your first antibodies by vaccination or by getting COVID.
The only question really then is how fast do we want the unvaccinated to do the getting antibodies by getting COVID thing. The faster they get it, the faster we can be as done with COVID as we are ever going to be.
I'd say the answer to that should be determined by the hospital capacity. If a region has sufficient hospital capacity that it would not be overwhelmed by the increase in COVID cases among the unvaccinated go ahead and lift most restrictions.
[+] [-] nu11ptr|4 years ago|reply
The way in which the media has gotten everyone to say "the unvaccinated" is a 'disease' against basic science (not even getting into the divisive nature of this). I would go as far as saying if you read any paper, study, or other that refers to the "unvaccinated" as a single cohort, you are reading vaccine propaganda, not science, or certainly not good science.
This must stop. Prior infection immunity is basic science that we've known for eons, and ignoring it is so blatantly glaring an omission, it should make the most staunch pro-vaccine person pause and say: "why are they so adamant to vaccinate those with prior infection?". One would expect prior infection to be robust, and multiple studies, including even the CDC's most recent shows it to be easily as good if not better and longer lasting than the vaccine. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.
If you think any of the above is "anti-vax" then I would suggest the media has won and science is dead. I'm not suggesting the vaccine doesn't work. I'm not suggesting it doesn't provide protection against severe disease and death. I'm not suggesting anyone go out and intentionally try to get COVID, but a HUGE # of people have already had it and ignoring them is downright unscientific. If you are a rational person who wants to see good science and are unemotional and detached from outcomes, then you will want to see proper study cohorts, and combining prior infection in with the "unvaccinated" cohort, is just bad science. This bad science fuels the anti-vaxx movement even more, and honestly, it is hard blame them.
[+] [-] skillpass|4 years ago|reply
From what I've seen, it was common for hospitals to report being overwhelmed even during flu seasons pre-covid. I wouldn't classify that level of 'overwhelmed' worthy of mandates upon society.
I don't doubt that during these periods of time hospital resources are strained in some way, but there's a difference between this routine level of being overwhelmed and a level where freedoms should be restricted from the general public.
I don't have a good model for where the line should be drawn, but I lean towards not imposing restrictions unless massive benefit can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt.
[+] [-] theandrewbailey|4 years ago|reply
Having anyone's freedoms dependent on available hospital capacity is a terrible way to run a society. Note that these freedoms were debated and won in an era where medicine was terrible.
[+] [-] tynpeddler|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|4 years ago|reply
I never saw anyone talking about this; the government websites are like "go to CVS, you can just walk in!" but in reality no CVS locations were accepting walk-ins if you asked. And even appointments were tenuous.
I feel like it's fair to place 90% of the blame on individuals, but I also think big companies are misrepresenting themselves to the government, or the government isn't asking if they actually have vaccines or not.
[+] [-] roenxi|4 years ago|reply
This is now taking it one step further - this argument is as an assumption - suggesting people have to give up their freedoms because people paying for their own hospital capacity is unacceptable to you. I say that because the sort of person who is pro-freedom to the point of not wanting a vaccine might well overlap with the population of people pro-freedom enough that they want individuals to pay for their own healthcare.
This is not a sustainable position against 2019 business-as-usual. I agree with the headline.
[+] [-] gibspaulding|4 years ago|reply
It looks like that's more Americans than have been killed in combat in all of the wars of the 20th century combined [1]
Granted it's less than the UK lost in WW1 alone, so it's perhaps more a testament to how few the US managed to loose in the world wars (compared to Europe), but it's still wild to realize.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009819/total-us-militar...
[+] [-] JPKab|4 years ago|reply
Something that was conspicuously absent from the paragraph regarding the unvaccinated vs. the vaccinated paragraph preceding it:
Risk stratification by age. When talking about the vaccinated, he calls out the "even in people over age 65".
There is zero question that vaccines reduce the relative risk for people under 65, however, it should be noted that the absolute risk for healthy people in this category is orders of magnitude lower purely by virtue of their age. Unhealthy people in this category should be vaccinated, of course.
Just an example of narrative bias creeping in, even from the relatively top-flight Leonhart.
Anyway, not disagreeing with you, just calling out a specific example of why the journalism on COVID has been, primarily unintentionally, misleading.
[+] [-] eli|4 years ago|reply
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/22/do-vacci... (https://archive.fo/g2vHF)
[+] [-] mint2|4 years ago|reply
This typical line of thought ignores a huge issue. Vaccine mandates don’t help per se, but it’s an issue that is pretty bad to just gloss over.
Articles like this really need to describe some sort of policy or plan for the 7 million or so immunocompromised people in America.
Like at least mention them and advocate something. Don’t just gloss over 7 million people. Propose something like Priority access to the new Pfizer pills and additional assistance with other things to avoid high risk activities.
[+] [-] rsynnott|4 years ago|reply
This is basically the reasoning used in Ireland; the hospitals weren't overwhelmed as Omicron peaked in the first week or so of January, so overnight we went from really quite restricted to all restrictions except mask requirements gone. Over 95% of Irish adults are vaccinated, so this isn't a trick that will work everywhere, but... for now it seems to be going okay.
[+] [-] cletus|4 years ago|reply
My sense is the government has silently taken this stance and that hospitals aren't at risk of collapse like they were a year or more ago. I also get the feeling the vaccinated have given up on the unvaccinated too just based on how rarely I now see posts on social media. It's like a tacit acceptance that if people are going to choose to die, so be it.
I actually wonder if this not caring is what will actually defuse this particular anti-vaxx movement. Or it'll just be the next vaccine and the Covid vaccine issues will be completely forgotten. I mean when was the last time you heard about vaccines causing autism?
what's interesting here is the underlying psychology that makes people susceptible to manipulation by thinking they're in the know on some Big Lie. This seems to be nothing new however and I can't help but think of this quote from Goebbels of all people [1]:
> “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
[1]: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-...
[+] [-] Consultant32452|4 years ago|reply
https://www.wcax.com/2021/12/22/covid-positive-vermonters-wi...
I'm sure there's plenty of actual sick people too. But we need a serious change to our messaging.
[+] [-] maskil|4 years ago|reply
Are you aware that vaccines are failing spectacularly with regards to Omicron infection?
Hospitalizations are another story, but this notion of the vaccines ending Covid is just not holding up with new variants.
[+] [-] thatfrenchguy|4 years ago|reply
You forget the second order effect here: the more unvaccinated people hospitals have to treat, the more likely their nurses and doctors are to quit, even if "the hospital is not overloaded". The more likely they are to quit, the more likely people are to die of other preventable causes in the future (because once they're burned and quit, they're not coming back).
[+] [-] encryptluks2|4 years ago|reply
This reminds me of the arguments that unvaccinated were the cause of COVID-19 and were endangering those who are vaccinated. Vaccinated people get and spread COVID still. In fact, recent studies show natural immunity or vaxxed plus COVID causes much more antibodies than simply getting vaccinated, especially with a vaccine that targets an old mutation that has proven much less effective against Omicron and the likes. The vaccinated people will prob continue to get vaccinated a few times a year until they get a less dangerous variant.
[+] [-] walterbell|4 years ago|reply
#1 was already a high percentage in 2021 and is now higher due to Omicron.
Edit: CDC estimated pre-Omicron #1 as 146 million people (as of Oct 2021), https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
[+] [-] ifyoubuildit|4 years ago|reply
My (somewhat baseless) speculation on this is that a lot of the people in forums like HN are early adopter types who mostly work from home, and so were able to avoid exposure and got the vaccine relatively early. From this standpoint, I could see it being harder to empathize with folks who were exposed in everyday life (it's just a simple jab, I did it, why can't everyone else? Or maybe even those folks must be bad/lesser people if they didn't stop themselves from being infected).
Combine that with the constant onslaught of media time that pointedly ignores the categories that you breakdown above, and maybe it's no wonder that people have the opinions on this that they do.
[+] [-] benjaminwootton|4 years ago|reply
The average of death with Covid in the US is 80.
If every healthy 30 year old and under in the US declined the vaccine, this would barely move the needle. They personally are not vulnerable and are not likely to end up in hospital.
Reading this discussion, you would think that vaccinated = safe, unvaccinated = certain doom. Age is a much stronger predicter than vaccine status.
[+] [-] benstrumental|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/health/covid-omicron-anti...
[+] [-] thex10|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thebigspacefuck|4 years ago|reply
- Edward Bernays, “Propaganda”
[+] [-] chaostheory|4 years ago|reply
1. Covid-recovered and Vaccinated + pro-mask
2. Covid-recovered and Partly-vaccinated + pro-mask
3. Covid-recovered + pro-mask
4. Vaccinated + pro-mask
5. Partly-vaccinated (< 14 days after 2nd shot) + pro-mask
6. Covid-recovered and Vaccinated + anti-mask
7. Covid-recovered and Partly-vaccinated + anti-mask
8. Covid-recovered + anti-mask
9. Vaccinated + anti-mask
10. Partly-vaccinated (< 14 days after 2nd shot) + anti-mask
11. Covid-naive + Unvaccinated + anti-mask
[+] [-] xienze|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ls15|4 years ago|reply
> 1. Covid-recovered
> 2. Vaccinated
> 3. Partly-vaccinated (< 14 days after 2nd shot)
> 4. Covid-naive + Unvaccinated
And my group:
I consider this as the gold standard of SARS-CoV-2 immunization.[+] [-] xadhominemx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quaffapint|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xboxnolifes|4 years ago|reply
I feel like given that vaccines do an acceptable job at reducing risk of hospitalization and death, there is only really a few things worth discussing, in relevant order:
- Are hospitals actually being overloaded by covid cases to the point of being an issue (according to many, yes. but according to [1] Johns Hopkins, no, or only in some cases?).
- Are the unvaccinated actually the majority of the covid related cases (as far as I'm aware, yes).
- Is this localized (state or city specific), or is this a federal issue.
- Are unvaccinated hospitalizations significantly worse compared to other personal decisions (diet, exercise, risky hobbies).
- Finally, what actions, if any, should be taken to correct the hospital load? (nothing, vaccine mandates, accelerated hospital expansion, turning people away, etc)
- If the answer to the previous is nothing, then what are we even doing?
The focus on just asking "vaccine mandate, yes or no" feels like it's missing most of the discussion.
[1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/hospitalization-7-day-trend
[+] [-] throw__away7391|4 years ago|reply
Once you get a mandate for a large-scale, politically charged activity it will never stop; the goal posts will be moved again and again, as many times as it takes and as often as necessary to put the "other side" on the defensive.
We're many weeks past "three weeks to flatten the curve", every week we hear more excuses. My friends pick them up and start parroting them in near perfect unison. I don't actually have any Republican friends, but if I did I'm sure I'd hear something similar from them too. This is no longer about fighting a disease, if it ever was (I also remember the response to AIDS being somewhat less dramatic than to COVID), this is about securing access to resources and power for one group over another. If it means thousands of your followers are discouraged from taking potentially life saving vaccinations (that you yourself have taken) and die as a result, so be it. If it means subjecting billions of people to years of unnecessary and demonstrably ineffective pandemic theater, crushing the financial future of the next generations, and destroying vast swaths of small businesses people have spent their lives building while realizing unprecedented returns on your own portfolio, so be it. The people running this do not care about any of this in the slightest, it's just an excuse to enrich themselves, and for a certain segment of the upper middle class to feel morally superior to others while they take Zoom calls from home and order dinners from Seamless. I guess this is getting boring for them now, so we're starting to be allowed to hear a trickle of stories like this.
[+] [-] rsynnott|4 years ago|reply
I mean, clearly, yes. Those, in themselves, never (or at least virtually never) cause sudden exhaustion of hospital capacity. Now, many covid cases, particularly unvaccinated cases, have some sort of lifestyle problem as a comorbidity, but that's not really the point.
[+] [-] Fernicia|4 years ago|reply
They needn't be a majority. The mandate acts to reduce strain on the hospital, so ask whether it achieves that (I think the answer is yes)
> - Are unvaccinated hospitalizations significantly worse compared to other personal decisions (diet, exercise, risky hobbies).
It is harder to fix these than getting a jab.
> - Finally, what actions, if any, should be taken to correct the hospital load? (nothing, vaccine mandates, accelerated hospital expansion, turning people away, etc)
An alternative would be to charge unvaccinated people a premium on hospital costs, as I'm sure health insurance providers would be keen to do.
[+] [-] sudosysgen|4 years ago|reply
That is not true. Pfizer is going to be making a lot more money from their COVID treatments than from the vaccine.
[+] [-] andrewclunn|4 years ago|reply
Nope. That line was crossed a long time ago. I can't imagine people suddenly regaining trust in pharma companies and health care agencies now because they backed off at this point.
[+] [-] bencoder|4 years ago|reply
It's really the most divisive issue I've ever seen in my life.
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
"Cures are nice, but the money is in chronic conditions."
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/22/fda-authorizes-pfizers-covid...
[+] [-] partiallypro|4 years ago|reply
I feel bad for people that live in a constant state of fear in states/countries that have been incredibly strict. My state has been more or less the same now, nothing in my life has really changed aside from the price increases and shortages in both goods and labor. I can't travel to many places I want to though because of fear I'll get there, and everything will be locked down. When this first started I was upset with people going out, etc. but as time has marched on, we know enough about the virus in terms of prevention, treatment, and the low chance of serious infection.
I think my opinion is pretty popular among the populace, but it's astounding how it has not been treated as such in the media and government.
[+] [-] res0nat0r|4 years ago|reply
> The word ‘endemic’ has become one of the most misused of the pandemic. And many of the errant assumptions made encourage a misplaced complacency. It doesn’t mean that COVID-19 will come to a natural end.
> In other words, a disease can be endemic and both widespread and deadly. Malaria killed more than 600,000 people in 2020. Ten million fell ill with tuberculosis that same year and 1.5 million died. Endemic certainly does not mean that evolution has somehow tamed a pathogen so that life simply returns to ‘normal’.
> Stating that an infection will become endemic says nothing about how long it might take to reach stasis, what the case rates, morbidity levels or death rates will be or, crucially, how much of a population — and which sectors — will be susceptible. Nor does it suggest guaranteed stability: there can still be disruptive waves from endemic infections, as seen with the US measles outbreak in 2019. Health policies and individual behaviour will determine what form — out of many possibilities — endemic COVID-19 takes.
[+] [-] scarmig|4 years ago|reply
For example: HIV is something that is now endemic and (still) deadly. And yet we don't go around forcibly shutting down gay bathhouses, bars, and Grindr and implementing condom and prep mandates, even though they would be effective at reducing its spread. And for good reason: it'd be a massive (and homophobic) violation of civil liberties.
But because mask and vaccine resistance is red tribe coded, a lot of people who would usually be level-headed about epidemiology and cost-benefit analyses end up in a stance driven more by moralizing than sound science.
[+] [-] CWuestefeld|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roody15|4 years ago|reply
This trend is playing out in the US and western Europe. Ireland has dropped its restrictions .. Denmark also just announced dropping restrictions.
The board member is correct here, despite anyones personal thoughts on covid vaccinations, vaccine requirements etc.. at least for now this latest variant seems to be forcing a change in narrative.
[+] [-] nimbleplum40|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffwd|4 years ago|reply
It just seems if one sick person creates a bad variant that is more infectious or even more deadly (and burn through the vaccines like Omicron) and everyone is unmasked/etc at the same time then such a variant could spread wide without immediate detection. I have no idea if any of this is true so take it with a grain of salt...
[+] [-] cies|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canoebuilder|4 years ago|reply
“Okay y’all, weve profited at your expense quite enough, let’s dial it back a little before causing too much societal damage writ large” -“Pfizer board member
[+] [-] tootie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tamaharbor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpgvm|4 years ago|reply
His record at the FDA is better than I would have expected from someone with such deep industry ties but it looks like he took the job to heart and did it well.
At this point with the rate Omicron has been spreading here in Australia I don't think masks are making much/any difference anymore - seems like this variant is just off the charts w.r.t transmissibility.
Vaccine mandates though I think make sense for the same reason we have mandated immunization in Australia for many other diseases. Unlike somewhere like the US you can't attend a school (any school, not just public schools) without the appropriate vaccines or a medical diagnosis exempting you. So a vaccine mandate for Covid-19 isn't really anything new here. Despite that there is now some political debate about it because we seem to have imported a lot of US hysteria the last decade or two.
Vaccine mandate will help keep herd immunity maintained which reduces deaths among those that actually can't get the vaccine rather than just anti-vax nonsense.
[+] [-] bhouston|4 years ago|reply
This statement seems very specific to the US cultural context:
“The only way to get compliance from people and get accommodation [is] if we demonstrate the ability to withdraw these [mandates] in the same manner in which we put them in,” Gottlieb added.
In Canada, there have been experiments with slowly increasing the number of areas where you are required to have a vaccine in order to enter. They put it on Beer/Liquor stores recently and it saw a huge jump in the number of vaccine appoints.
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/first-dose-vaccinations-quadrupl...
They are putting the requirement on big box stores (e.g. Home Depot/Lowes/Walmart, excluding the pharmacy areas) now and probably will see another jump.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1995579971859
That said, it does appear that this current wave is mostly over, but deaths are primarily among the unvaccinated, so it is probably still a good idea to aim for near full vaccination:
https://twitter.com/OurWorldInData/status/148607668061993779...
Covid vaccines should be treated similarly to other public health vaccines, like Polio. Although we really need more effective Gen2 vaccines that do not require constant boosters and they need to outright prevent infection rather than just reducing the death rate. These Gen1 vaccines and their semi-effectiveness have been incredibly confusing to the general public.
[+] [-] skarz|4 years ago|reply