Coronavirus and You - Page 371

On April 17 2021 07:25 Sermokala wrote:
So you got the vaccine but don't somehow belive in it or care about how it works?

On April 17 2021 08:14 GoTuNk! wrote:


I get the impression he believes vaccines actually work after 14 days, and as such, will resume his life as normal. You cannot drive all risks to the absolute 0.

On April 17 2021 08:56 Lmui wrote:
Masking goes away when the risk drops to a point where untrusted strangers can reasonably be expected to not have covid, especially if you are someone who does not have immunity to covid. Benefit of the doubt cannot be expected here because those most likely to continue spreading covid are those that pay least heed to covid restrictions.

To much of the world, you are an untrusted stranger.
I hope you're still masking up in public places.

I expect masking up in public places to be in place until 4-6 weeks after vaccine supply outstrips demand, and covid cases locally drop below some arbitrary threshold. Before then, for the protection of the employees who cannot leave the location, I'll mask up.

Good news worldwide though, Pfizer's doing a helluva job of increasing supply. At this rate I'm likely to be eligible for the first dose of a vaccine mid-late May. My parents should be eligible in a week or so (Age going downwards, and they're around 4 years away from the current cutoff).

Moderna's dropping the ball on production and AZ/J&J have clotting issues, so we'll see how it goes.

On April 17 2021 16:48 Magic Powers wrote:
The problem is not the fact that there's a virus around. The problem is that it mutates faster the more of it exists. If the existing virus was the problem, we could've been well through most of the pandemic months ago.
This is what happened: One version of sars-cov-2 spread uncontrolled in China. It quickly mutated into another version. It then spread throughout the rest of the world, first slowly and then rapidly gaining speed. As it kept spreading it also kept mutating, and those new mutations kept spreading. As an example, in Austria the first arriving version of sars-cov-2 eventually had an R of <1. But because - for some reason unbeknownst to me - arriving individuals weren't being sufficiently quarantined and tracked, the UK variant of the virus started spreading, which had an R of >1. Many other countries have experienced that same problem.
This means two things: Firstly, the infection rate in many countries is higher than it would be had every country secured its borders. Even without vaccines many countries could've been sitting rosey now, simply by dealing with only one mutation of the virus. That by itself wouldn't have solved the problem, but it would've lessened it by a lot. Secondly, the vaccines aren't as effective as they could otherwise be. See AZ for being ineffectual against the South African strain.
Vaccines are also not yet proven to offer immunity. What does this mean? Vaccinated individuals can be protected against the harmful and sometimes deadly disease called "covid-19". But that doesn't mean that they're immune against the infection - they may be carrying the virus at some point by getting infected, but surviving it without health problems due to being vaccinated. This means they can perhaps still transmit the virus to others after having been vaccinated. We don't know if this is true or false, yet, because we weren't able to conduct human challenge trials to figure out to what extent (and if at all) any of the vaccines offer immunity - which is the thing that can lead to herd immunity.
As long as not close to 90% of a population is fully vaccinated with protection levels that are very high (e.g. 95%) we will not be able to fight the pandemic effectively. Again, we only need to look at a country like Austria (also Germany, the Netherlands, and many others). We still haven't enacted a strict lockdown (unlike Singapore, Australia, NZ, for example) that would stand a chance at eradicating the virus. What this means is that at least one of the measures taken (lockdowns, vaccination, individual quarantines plus track and trace) must be total until complete eradication of the virus. Australia, NZ and Singapore used lockdowns, Israel used vaccines (also the UAE, will be interesting to see if they have similar success with it) and Taiwan used quarantines combined with extreme border security plus track and trace.
Even South Korea - which has been performing exceptionally well with its own strategy while never enacting a national lockdown - is having trouble, as cases are once again on the rise. This tells us that any measure works only if done to fullest effect.

To conclude, vaccines only protect the individual, unless a total vaccination plan for the whole country is enacted. That by itself sounds acceptable, doesn't it? Well, if you look back to what I said earlier in my comment, if we don't eradicate the virus, it will keep mutating. The faster it does so (which depends on its prevalence, i.e. on the infection rate), the faster it'll overcome the protection from various vaccines, including yours. Also remember that you being vaccinated doesn't necessitate immunity, meaning you could still contribute to the spread. That means a vaccination strategy that only protects the individual and doesn't solve the pandemic/epidemic eventually becomes useless, the only question is "when?" It could be tomorrow or in a few months or next year. And it's going to happen over and over again. And that means more lockdowns, unless eventually your government enacts a lockdown that is so strict that it can actually eradicate the virus (see aforementioned examples).