I agree with much of this. At what point will individuals start thinking about the broader community/national/global ramifications?
–Will it take the US going into an economic depression? Think of all the businesses and industries that will need bail out money…Airlines, hotels, city transportation services (busses, trains, etc.), and more. There’s just not enough money to go around to save them all.
–Over 100,000 businesses in the US have already permanently closed. The rate of closures will accelerate in the winter months. This impacts all of us.
–What about further educational losses for K-12 students? As homerdog says, the divide between the haves and have nots grows larger every single day that kids can’t be in school, it will be a year with only virtual school for many before we know it. Many students will never make these educational losses up. What will it take for people to demand their kids go to school? Data show that schools are generally not the source of outbreaks. To whit…UK and France are on lockdown (essential businesses closed) but schools are open.
–Are people aware of the rapidly increasing rates of mental health disorders (which were already too high pre-pandemic)? Should we just turn our backs?
This is a public health crisis, and I would hope at some point more individuals begin to behave as such. The selfish attitudes that are common on this thread make me sad.
Kudos to the several hundred thousand people who have signed up to participate in the various covid vaccine and drug trials, and the people who go to work every day to provide goods and services for those who have the luxury of staying in their homes.
I’ll end by asking my original question again: At what point will individuals start thinking about the broader community/national/global ramifications during the greatest public health crisis of our lifetime?
Here are published reports about the covid vaccine preventing or not preventing asymptomatic infection:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/opinion/coronavirus-vaccine-prevention.html
“But even if one, or more, of those efforts succeeds, a vaccine might not end the pandemic. This is partly because we seem to be focused at the moment on developing the kind of vaccine that may well prevent Covid-19, the disease, but that wouldn’t do enough to stop the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.”
This goes back to the original question way back in March. Is it policy or the virus itself that affects the economy and more? Different places tried different courses of action. Sweden tried what we’re doing now and at least some leaders there regret it. We tried a different approach and it didn’t work well either, mostly because too many individuals didn’t buy in. The places who “won” seem to be those who contained the virus, but they were usually lucky enough to be islands and/or have a population who saw the benefits and willingly/begrudgingly complied.
Our economy took a hit (something new/scary) and has been coming back as we learn more (safer options), but now our actions have the virus skyrocketing. Time will tell if that puts the economy into freefall or not. If it’s the virus itself, policy isn’t going to be able to help.
If your diss was at us, we’ve been doing our share to keep the economy going. We’re getting take out more than we ate out. Instead of pocketing our travel dollars we’ve increased our charitable giving to food banks and other Covid help (rent, utilities, etc) organizations. H remains quite employed, and has gotten several places around here to allow remote meetings - keeping people safe(r). We have a son who is at the hospital working with patients and donating time to a free clinic. We have a DIL who is tutoring disadvantaged kids trying to help them keep up with their schoolwork. Everyone is just doing things as safely as we can knowing what we know on how to stay safer. We aren’t shrugging and saying “let the virus run free.” To me, that’s just plain dumb. Doing the rest is a no brainer to try to help our community.
But let’s be clear about what “older adults” means in this context. Something like 80% of deaths are in people over 75. Don’t quote me on that, but that’s the ballpark we’re looking at. So over-75s are the age group at dramatically higher risk, and the age group we’d most like to protect. How many of the vaccine recipients were over 75? When I’ve read about “older adults” in vaccine trials, they seem to be talking about people over 50 or 55.
Now, I want to protect people between 50 and 75! That includes me! If the new President’s FDA approves a vaccine, I will try to get it. But I do worry about a vaccine possibly not protecting people over 75 while allowing unchecked transmission, and I look forward to seeing the actual data from Pfizer.
My (uneducated) guess is that it’s faster for the drug companies to develop a vaccine that focuses on the disease and not transmission since this is an emergency. I get that it’s a herculean task to get a large majority of people vaccinated but, if that’s what the government is shooting for, then that will also stymie transmission because we’d just be looking at vaccinated people near other vaccinated people. So people should get vaccinated!
I’m always surprised when there are posters on CC who don’t even have college kids anymore so those of you hanging out on your farms with no worries about Covid are living a different situation that those of us who have college kids.
Live vaccines keep your immune system healthy (idk about others.) There is research going on now about prior live vaccine use possibly helping to prevent severe symptoms of covid. I haven’t seen anything conclusive yet.
My daughter works for a major medical facility. They do weekly calls about COVID. Two things this week. They say the vaccine news is good but there are many more steps to go through. They are telling all their on site employees to not travel or host family and friends for the holidays.
I’m glad there are parents still participating on CC, long after their kids have grown. I value reading about others’ perspectives and experiences, even if they are far from my own. Those posters were here long before many of us, and I appreciate the wisdom they can offer.
I’m really optimistic about the Pfizer vaccine, both its success rate so far and that it could be ready earlier than anticipated. It IS a concern that it won’t stop transmission of this highly contagious virus, but if its preventing actual COVID disease in over 90%, that is a huge win. And, as someone posted upthread, hopefully this is just the tip of the iceberg. Scientists are collaborating with each other and there are more vaccine trials happening with other thousands of participants. Hopefully those trials will have published successes soon that will get us closer to our old “normal”. We are ~9 months into this, and it finally feels like there is a light at the end of the tunnel if we can just hang on through the winter. I’m happy to wear a mask while shopping, flying, etc for however long it takes, but it’d be nice to be able to expand our family/community bubbles safely and not have to stress over driving into the next state without having to test.
@Homerdog, you’re assuming this vaccine is a panacea. It’s far too soon to know. You’ve got results from one sort of study, that’s all.
“You seem very concerned that this vaccine might not prevent asymptomatic cases.” No, not the point.
Asymptomatic doesn’t mean you dont get the virus. Or transmit it.
Nor do we know longer term efficacy. We aren’t there yet. So go ahead and get vaccinated. But understand the limits. What “normal” do you really expect? No more masks, you can throw big parties, unbounded travel?
Normal things I’m ready for asap - normal college with all in person classes, no masks, parties, athletic competitions. The whole nine yards. Normal K-12 with kids in class, no masks, all ECs full throttle. Travel a go - masks on planes no big deal but be able to go on vacation and eat out like normal. That would include being able to go to our kids’ campuses to visit. Big parties? I don’t know. I don’t go to “big parties” but if full stadiums for sporting events or concerts have to wait a while, I don’t really care about that. I want to be able to visit with friends inside by fall 2021 without masks. For our lives at this time, that would be “normal”.
I just don’t think I’m too far off with this…at least from what I’m hearing. Was just listening to NPR and, again, another doctor saying that second quarter 2021 would be the beginning of getting back to “normal” and, by fall, we could be very close. Clearly, “normal” for everyone in the US is not wearing masks.
One of my kids, in grad school, lives alone, has a health condition and is extremely isolated. My elderly mother, 94, is basically locked inside a facility. I am late 60’s with health conditions and also isolated.
We are trying not to react with too much optimism to either the vaccine news or the news of Lilly’s monoclonal antibody (approved dose of the latter is too low for instance).
After much discussion, we will get any vaccines as soon as we possibly can. Normally I avoid new meds and vaccines, but this is different. Mental health is important too, and worth the risk of a new vaccine.
There is also the matter of contributing to community/national immunity. If the vaccine does not prevent transmission, then we all must wear masks and distance until everyone who wants a vaccine- whether early or late- has had one.
So I hope everyone at least considers getting the vaccine. Waiting 6-12 months sounds prudent but may delay the end of this dystopia.
Yes, but that article is from September. He didn’t know the interim data from Pfizer then, so in that article he’s talking about how the vaccine hurdle from the FDA is just 50% effectiveness, so just having a vaccine like that would not preclude the need for masks.
Yesterday, with the updated information, he definitely changed his tune in the interviews I saw. He looked overjoyed by the results, and someone upthread heard him say yesterday that he plans to play pickup basketball without a mask next year (I’d love to see the interview or article if anyone knows the source). New information bringing more rosy outlooks.
I would think this is a possibility. I see three ways it could happen:
Medical advances between effective treatments (already have dropped the death rate of known cases from 7% to 1.5% in the US as per a news bit my lad shared) and possible successful vaccines
Enough folks catch it between now and then that we actually have some sort of herd immunity among survivors strong enough to slow the virus significantly
It mutates off being as deadly
A combo of the three is also possible. The graphs will show us as time goes on. Data will be there via hospitalizations and deaths. Hopefully we’ll also get more about odds for long haulers.
The virus is definitely a disruption to life. I don’t think anyone doubts that or wants it to stay forever. I still opt to take comfort in knowing it’s “just” a virus and not the World Wars that drastically changed my grandparents and parents lives forever, including loss of life of family members + disruption (ending for some) of schooling, etc. If we have to deal with something, I’d rather deal with this.
Fauci originally estimated that the vaccine would have a 70-75% effectiveness. Even with 70% effectiveness, he still cautioned people that mask-wearing is here for a while:
This article is from October 22 - less than 3 weeks ago. Still sounds cautious.
Fauci mentioned the pick up basketball game on MSNBC maybe two months ago on Chris Hayes’ show. He mentioned early third/fourth quarter 2021. The thing that struck me at the time was “without masks”. I assume, from what we’ve been hearing from him lately, than might be moved up. You can see discussion about his comment on Hayes’ Twitter.