5 ms·

No. First off, we still haven't had the level of death that we had in 1918, and almost certainly won't. Second, the narrative of vaccinated individuals being ma

No. First off, we still haven't had the level of death that we had in 1918, and almost certainly won't. Second, the narrative of vaccinated individuals being major spreaders of this disease is false. The virus is evolving due to mutations occurring while hopping from one unvaccinated person to another, full stop.

anshorei 5y ago
There's two major metrics to measure the severeness: the mortality rate and the infection rate. I think that "we haven't had the level of death we had in 1918 so the pandemic is less severe" ignores the fact that COVID-19 is far more infectious and therefore in a sense more severe since it will be awfully hard to get rid of for that reason (if we can indeed never get rid of it the number of deaths will keep growing, so might eventually catch up)
- piva00 5y ago
  Varicella is more infectious than SARS-CoV-2 and it's under control with vaccines, same pattern: spread through the air, R0 chickenpox > R0 COVID-19, vaccines help with immunity and even when infected developing a mild version of the disease. There is hope, we might not get rid off it but if we could control chickenpox that is quite more infectious, we can have a little hope. Even more with more modern medicine.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    > Varicella is more infectious than SARS-CoV-2 Well. So it was in our tentative models at the time of this author's writing (8 days). So it is not any more, as of a few days only (3 days). ...Ray Kurzweil was right. /Bitter Joke.
native_samples 5y ago
The UK now has a similar test positivity rate to what it had in November 2020 yet a hugely vaccinated population. If the vaccinated aren't spreading it then you're suggesting that the unvaccinated have become drastically more infectious for no apparent reason and in ways that don't show up in contract tracing data. I think the alternative explanations are more likely to be correct: the vaccine is actually not a vaccine in the traditional sense, it's more like a prophylactic. Vaccinated people aren't getting an immune response in the normal areas where it would usually enter and exit, like the nose and lungs, instead it's being injected into the arm. Also, COVID tests don't actually detect COVID or even SARS-CoV-2, they detect RNA debris from destroyed SARS-CoV-2. Thus it's expected that if someone's body fights off the virus immediately if they're exposed to it, they will still test positive.
- samus 5y ago
  The unvaccinated population is not uniformly distributed though. The vaccines is not rated for the age younger than 12 yet, and it will still take a while to roll it out in the younger age groups. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if most vaccine refusers are part of groups who collectively refuse to vaccinate. We know from measles outbreaks that this is often the case. Finally, most vaccines achieve their maximum effect only if both doses are given. If only one is given, all bets are off. > Also, COVID tests don't actually detect COVID or even SARS-CoV-2, they detect RNA debris from destroyed SARS-CoV-2. Thus it's expected that if someone's body fights off the virus immediately if they're exposed to it, they will still test positive. Slightly untrue. The particles gathered from infected and spreading persons are fully functional, by definition. To distinguish these cares from immune people, one would have to determine the percentage of viable virus particles. Hard to tell whether that's even feasible at scale. It's not too bad though. At worst this causes a higher than expected false-positive rate.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    It's not rated for children because they appear to be immune to COVID and thus basically no safety results can possibly make the risk/reward tradeoff make sense in that age group. "one would have to determine the percentage of viable virus particles. Hard to tell whether that's even feasible at scale ... It's not too bad though. At worst this causes a higher than expected false-positive rate." I'm not sure you're aware of the scale of the problem. There have been studies that correlated PCR test results with ability to do viral culturing and concluded about 60% of all positive test results did not imply infectiousness. For example, this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8166461/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8166461/
    - samus 5y ago
      > There have been studies that correlated PCR test results with ability to do viral culturing and concluded about 60% of all positive test results did not imply infectiousness. My point was that the viral culturing might not be feasible for large-scale testing. In that case, we might have to stick to PCR.

anshorei 5y ago

There's two major metrics to measure the severeness: the mortality rate and the infection rate. I think that "we haven't had the level of death we had in 1918 so the pandemic is less severe" ignores the fact that COVID-19 is far more infectious and therefore in a sense more severe since it will be awfully hard to get rid of for that reason (if we can indeed never get rid of it the number of deaths will keep growing, so might eventually catch up)

piva00 5y ago
Varicella is more infectious than SARS-CoV-2 and it's under control with vaccines, same pattern: spread through the air, R0 chickenpox > R0 COVID-19, vaccines help with immunity and even when infected developing a mild version of the disease. There is hope, we might not get rid off it but if we could control chickenpox that is quite more infectious, we can have a little hope. Even more with more modern medicine.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > Varicella is more infectious than SARS-CoV-2 Well. So it was in our tentative models at the time of this author's writing (8 days). So it is not any more, as of a few days only (3 days). ...Ray Kurzweil was right. /Bitter Joke.

native_samples 5y ago

The UK now has a similar test positivity rate to what it had in November 2020 yet a hugely vaccinated population. If the vaccinated aren't spreading it then you're suggesting that the unvaccinated have become drastically more infectious for no apparent reason and in ways that don't show up in contract tracing data. I think the alternative explanations are more likely to be correct: the vaccine is actually not a vaccine in the traditional sense, it's more like a prophylactic. Vaccinated people aren't getting an immune response in the normal areas where it would usually enter and exit, like the nose and lungs, instead it's being injected into the arm. Also, COVID tests don't actually detect COVID or even SARS-CoV-2, they detect RNA debris from destroyed SARS-CoV-2. Thus it's expected that if someone's body fights off the virus immediately if they're exposed to it, they will still test positive.

samus 5y ago
The unvaccinated population is not uniformly distributed though. The vaccines is not rated for the age younger than 12 yet, and it will still take a while to roll it out in the younger age groups. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if most vaccine refusers are part of groups who collectively refuse to vaccinate. We know from measles outbreaks that this is often the case. Finally, most vaccines achieve their maximum effect only if both doses are given. If only one is given, all bets are off. > Also, COVID tests don't actually detect COVID or even SARS-CoV-2, they detect RNA debris from destroyed SARS-CoV-2. Thus it's expected that if someone's body fights off the virus immediately if they're exposed to it, they will still test positive. Slightly untrue. The particles gathered from infected and spreading persons are fully functional, by definition. To distinguish these cares from immune people, one would have to determine the percentage of viable virus particles. Hard to tell whether that's even feasible at scale. It's not too bad though. At worst this causes a higher than expected false-positive rate.
- native_samples 5y ago
  It's not rated for children because they appear to be immune to COVID and thus basically no safety results can possibly make the risk/reward tradeoff make sense in that age group. "one would have to determine the percentage of viable virus particles. Hard to tell whether that's even feasible at scale ... It's not too bad though. At worst this causes a higher than expected false-positive rate." I'm not sure you're aware of the scale of the problem. There have been studies that correlated PCR test results with ability to do viral culturing and concluded about 60% of all positive test results did not imply infectiousness. For example, this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8166461/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8166461/
  - samus 5y ago
    > There have been studies that correlated PCR test results with ability to do viral culturing and concluded about 60% of all positive test results did not imply infectiousness. My point was that the viral culturing might not be feasible for large-scale testing. In that case, we might have to stick to PCR.