w4read

As I said, everybody will eventually get it. So it desn't matter what you do, a new variant could always emerge. In a best case scenario you will be able to flatten the curve. But because hospitals are doing mostly fine, there's really no point. In fact, because vaccines becomes less effective with time you would actually in some sense want more people to get the virus now rather than later.

Almost everybody will get it either way, so measures won't really reduce that risk to any significant degree. The whole point was to reduce the risk of health care collapse, now that threat is gone in many countries, particularly in the UK which is way past their peak with daily cases going down for over a week now.

I guess that's what happens when you don't agree with the consequences.

I would certainly agree with you that with the earlier variants, it has made sense the way governments around the world generally have handled the situation. And then we can always discuss details of course, but overall measures have been justified to a large degree I believe. But now, with the omicron variant taking fully over most places, the situation has changed drastically imo. Apparently, everybody is going to get the virus because it's so transmissible, so the risk of mutation will probably be there whether we have lock downs or not. In fact, lock down like they have in China now for instance will only delay the problem. The main argument for lock downs has always been the risk of the health care system collapsing. And the focus here has mainly been on ICU because that's where the hospitals are most vulnerable when it comes to resources. Now, with omicron cases exploding and also peaking some places like in the UK, the number of patients has goes down as a result of delta cases checking out from the hospital, while at the same time not that many new cases with omicron cases come in. In addition, people with omicron are staying in hospital for a shorter period of time which has also contributed to this reduction. So now the new argument is that people are getting covid everywhere so that absence from work will be a threatening factor in the health care as well as in other important sectors. But this becomes a problem partly because of the measures that was taken against covid such as quarantine and staying home when you have a positive test, even though your'e not ill. So at this point, it seems to me like we are digging ourselves a hole and not facing the reality that essentially everyone is going to get the virus. Imo the focus should be on how to make this process as smooth as possible for all parties, with an emphasis on reducing all the hassle that comes with different measures as much as possible. We also don't now if the measures we take right now helps at all. In Scotland they have a higher and steaper curve than the rest of the UK, with relatively more cases than the other countries compared to earlier waves, despite having more restrictions. So that's something to consider as well. When it comes to masks they seem like low hanging fruits not necessarily because they help that much, but the costs are minor as you say. Vaccines undoubtedly positive also.

@Leo Gura I'm curious to know more specifically how you evaluate whether or not political measures are good or bad. Personally I tend to have a very pragmatic cost benefit approach when dealing with these large scale society issues. Frankly, because that's all I really know. But it seems like this way of thinking doesn't suit the covid case for some reason. Maybe it's to complex and I'm not able to consider all factors, I don't know. So taking the example with lock down measures, how would you go forward if you were going to decide whether or not to prolong a lockdown with one week?

Here's an interesting math experience for you: Let's say the government is unsure if they want to prolong a lockdown. And let's say that they do it for a week only in order to reduce the damage and open up as soon as they consider it beneficial. So let's use the US as an example: With a population of 330.000.000 you are essentially taking 330.000.000/52= 6.346.153, which is 6,3 million years of quality life from people. So assuming the average person has 40 years left to live or so, this would be 158.653 lives. But hey, it's not like their taking away our lives, their just reducing our quality of life a bit. Let's say that the avarage persons life quality is cut in half, by 50%. So then it would be 158.653*50%= 79.326 lives. That is the collective damage just in quality of life not even talking about all the economic and social ramifications outside of that. A simple, but illustrating example which also underlines why individual freedom is important, and how we can end up undervaluing it. I mean what does one week matter for each and one of us individually? I mean, you would be selfish if you couldn't handle ONE more week?

It's already entering the endemic phase certain places. South Africa is basically back to normal, and UK seems to have past the peak in number of cases. This will be over pretty soon I believe.

I also wish we could discuss omicron, so tired of this vaccine stuff. Fortunately, we haven't seen the things you fear, at least not when it comes to deaths. Some countries such as South Africa, UK, Denmark and Norway have had omicron for 6-7 weeks now and the cases has increased exponentially. This is not the case with hospitalizations though which has increased linearly in Denmark, but even gone down in Norway. New confirmed deaths have also gone down quite a bit the last weeks for most countries. This may be because of omicron replacing delta still some places, but nothing so far is supporting your suspicions. I guess it's pretty safe to say at this point that omicron is significantly less severe than delta, and the risk of needing oxygen and dying is far less. Anyway, it will be interesting to see in the next couple of weeks when the cases potentially skyrocket certain places.

W This is way to simplistic. First of all, there is no guarantee that a third dose has less risk to it compared to having COVID, or in particular Omicron, after two doses. If you are a healthy young individual you may be better off just having the virus at this point. In my country they don't recommend the vaccine to people under 29 who are healthy with no underlying diseases. That doesn't mean that they recommend not to take it though, but still, it is not as obviously preferable as you might think. And if we are going to take your collectivism a further step back: Why don't we give our third and forth doses to people in certain poor countries where 90% of people haven't even had ONE dose? A more even distribution of the vaccines has been praised by WHO for months now, and this is what will give us the best odds of getting out of this pandemic with the least damage.

@BlackPhil I can agree with you that after the rising of omicron, which by all means seems to be a significantly less lethal variant ( between 90-50% less severe than the delta if Im not mistaken) and where there is questionable whether the vaccine have any effect when it comes to actually getting the disease, it is harder to say whether taking the vaccine at this point is nesscessary or not. In my country, they are no longer "recommending" young people to take the vaccine, or more specifically the booster dose. The argument that you should take the vaccine to protect the elderly no longer counts with the new variant, which seemingly infects anyone, vaccinated or not. So it is more a question of personal risk at this point. Although, if you protect yourself you also protect society in a sense by reducing the risk of the health care system collapsing. Tbf I'm not actually sure why they push out booster doses in a lot of countries when still huge parts of africa haven't even gotten their first dose. In Israel they are even proposing the 4th dose which makes me shake my head a bit. Bare in mind that this is what can bite us in the ass ( and already did with omicron in south africa). Countries with less vaccination coverage where the virus can mutate freely without any limits. WHO has been pushing for a more evenly distribution of vaccine for a long time now, which is one of the key factors in mitigating covid risk.

It probably is a good estimate. But the point is not the number itself. The point is to be inspired by it. 10.000 is more inspirational than 9.000 or 8.000. So it has more impactf, basically.

Not sure how many courses of treatment we would need in order to have a global impact, but if we have 180.000 by new years as the article suggest that would be three times as many as there are people hospitalized in the us at the moment, which is a good start I guess.

Seems like an important factor determining the risk of the heart disease myocarditis is whether or not they use "aspiration", which is a technique meant to ensure that the vaccine doesn't go to the blood. Denmark has been following this procedure during the whole pandemic and has a significantly lower occurence of myocarditis ( 129 cases or 0,003% of the amount vaccinated) compared to for instance Norway ( 274 cases or 0,0073% of the vaccinated) who hasn't had this as a part of their routine.

You visit a doctor.

Well that's the whole issue. People view this totally different. Some people view this as a serious crisis where the entire health care system is going to collapse within weeks. For these people it obviously makes sense to enforce lock downs and reduce contact as much as possible. Others however, look at the situation from South Africa and translate that into what is gonna happen in other parts of the world. And they are of the impression that this will be a regular innocent flue that passes within a month or two.