Turbine-powered Shutdown Karens: “A Vaccine That Stops Covid-19 Won’t Be Enough” (New York Times). Even if we have a vaccine that prevents coronavirus infection from turning into COVID-19 disease, it won’t be safe to leave our bunkers:
But even if one, or more, of those [vaccine development] 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.
A vaccine’s ability to forestall a disease is also how vaccine developers typically design — and how regulators typically evaluate — Phase 3 clinical trials for vaccine candidates.
Yet the best vaccines also serve another, critical, function: They block a pathogen’s transmission from one person to another. And this result, often called an “indirect” effect of vaccination, is no less important than the direct effect of preventing the disease caused by that pathogen. In fact, during a pandemic, it probably is even more important.
That’s what we should be focusing on right now. And yet we are not.
Stopping a virus’s transmission reduces the entire population’s overall exposure to the virus. It protects people who may be too frail to respond to a vaccine, who do not have access to the vaccine, who refuse to be immunized and whose immune response might wane over time.
Preventing the very transmission of SARS-CoV-2, no less than stopping it from turning into Covid-19, should be a main priority of current efforts to develop the vaccines to end this pandemic.
So… the shutdowns will continue even after people stop getting sick and/or dying from COVID-19.
In other recent coronaplague news:
- “One-third of people with COVID-19 lie about their symptoms, study shows” (CBC): the more dramatic the government response to isolating the infected, the more the infected will try to hide from the government.
They are lying about their symptoms in New Zealand https://jordanschachtel.substack.com/p/yes-new-zealand-is-forcing-citizens
Teachers sure are bent on destroying societies goodwill towards them.
@GB: This is where we’re going, everywhere. Even in states that have near-zero death rates, very low transmission, etc., what’s going to happen is the power of lies, damn lies, and statistics: If the state gets the cases down to 5 or 10 a day, and you get a spike of 20 or 30, or 50, obviously, the danger has DOUBLED or TRIPLED or QUINTUPLED. And because of the fear of headlines like: “Coronavirus cases spike 1000% in dogbreath county!” people with any symptoms at all, COVID or not, will be forced to quarantine and contact trace. Danbury, CT just shut down all its boat ramps on Candlewood Lake (which is the largest lake in CT), all of its sports leagues, etc., because of a recent spike in their case numbers.
https://www.courant.com/coronavirus/hc-news-coronavirus-danbury-candlewood-lake-boats-20200822-7jzxnylmijepxcsgg2wmjskb3e-story.html
This kind of response can be maintained forever, and it will be.
At least these physicians specializing in infectious diseases and vaccinology have played their hand: they want suppression at any cost, regardless of the cost (financially, emotionally, or otherwise).
“Focusing on how to block the coronavirus’s transmission is a much more efficient approach.”
Is forcing the shutdown of human life as we know it really “efficient”? Have these last six months where many states have been trying to block coronavirus transmission through government-ordered shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders and mask mandates been efficient in stopping the virus’s spread? Much more importantly, have they been effective? It seems these physicians are suffering from tunnel vision and possibly under a delusion that what they are suggesting is feasible and plausible, and doesn’t come with a hefty price tag of trade-offs in terms of emotional and physical well-being, education, the ability to earn a living, and other fundamental components of human existence.
At least we have finally gotten clarity on what it is some physicians and other ‘experts’ want: suppression. (As opposed to concepts like “flattening the curve” which seemed quickly after they were implemented to be advocating for suppression or elimination without actually saying it.) Now we can discuss whether that is truly a viable solution, and whether or not the costs of doing it will be worth it.
Jenne: For sure, we have been upsold quietly from flatten the curve to “eliminate the virus” (why not eliminate influenza while we’re at it, since it is that easy?). Americans, even the young ones, do seem to buy into the idea that their only goal as humans should be to avoid Covid-19.
I do not think that’s how vaccines and the immune system works. You get the vaccine. The [whatever] you are vaccinated against fails to multiply in your body (therefore not causing symptoms, and not causing you to be infectious). The end. A vaccine that allows the [whatever] to keep multiplying in your body yet stops you from developing symptoms works by magic.
Federico: It sounds like you don’t #BelieveScience !
I worked in epidemiology 10 years of my life, but I left when randoms on facebook showed me it was all lies.
In Massachusetts, the teacher’s union doesn’t want the teachers in the schools, even if they are doing distance learning from *empty classrooms*.
“MA Teachers Blast State’s School Reopening Guidelines”
“This new guidance is clearly designed to force local educators’ unions to agree to in-person learning regardless of the condition of the school buildings in their districts, indoor air quality, testing capabilities or area COVID-19 transmission rates.”
https://patch.com/massachusetts/medford/s/h7y9p/ma-teachers-blast-states-school-reopening-guidelines-patch-pm
Defund public schools. Most of the government bureaucracy, too.
Here, read about the “Next Normal” on ZDNET. Go with the Flow. Going Back to Work Isn’t Going to Work.
It’s a kind of accelerated techno-feudalism with a Green New Deal twist.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-next-normal-why-going-back-to-work-isnt-going-to-work/
“The future of large business is the autonomous enterprise powered by a technology stack that is designed to create value at the speed of need. Your next company is a starship.”
https://twitter.com/ValaAfshar/status/1294270144210964480
That’s some white hot shit, man. People are paying big to hire him and watch him Zoom it, baby. That’s why these guys get the big bucks in the tech. business. He and Elon Musk should get together and have a baby they can name after another industrial process control robot.
They leave out the idea that all these companies that don’t produce tangible things might just cease to exist.