Why is this comment being downvoted? What part isn't true?
This statement seems very specific to the US cultural context:
“The only way to get compliance from people and get accommodation [is] if we demonstrate the ability to withdraw these [mandates] in the same manner in which we put them in,” Gottlieb added.
In Canada, there have been experiments with slowly increasing the number of areas where you are required to have a vaccine in order to enter. They put it on Beer/Liquor stores recently and it saw a huge jump in the number of vaccine appoints.
They are putting the requirement on big box stores (e.g. Home Depot/Lowes/Walmart, excluding the pharmacy areas) now and probably will see another jump.
That said, it does appear that this current wave is mostly over, but deaths are primarily among the unvaccinated, so it is probably still a good idea to aim for near full vaccination:
Covid vaccines should be treated similarly to other public health vaccines, like Polio. Although we really need more effective Gen2 vaccines that do not require constant boosters and they need to outright prevent infection rather than just reducing the death rate. These Gen1 vaccines and their semi-effectiveness have been incredibly confusing to the general public.
It doesn't stop the spread, but it slows it and reduces the severity of the disease. Both of which help our health services to cope. You might care because you want healthcare to be available for yourself or your loved ones should they need it.
Not necessarily. Because vaccines suppress symptoms, people who would otherwise isolate in the presence of symptoms could be unaware they are infected and transmitting to others.
My understanding is that people with suppressed symptoms are also less likely to transmit it. This makes sense given that we know coughing and sneezing is a primary transmission vector. So if you're not coughing and sneezing you're much less likely to transmit it. Of course you still can transmit it just by breathing, but it's just less likely.
I would also add that I'm speaking in the context of the UK. Here we have freely and widely available lateral flow tests (you can order packs of tests online or pick them up from local chemists, and there is no charge in either case), and people are encouraged to test regularly, especially if attending a social event and even if you have no symptoms. And a lot of people are required to test regularly as part of their jobs, or in order to attend to school. In this context, it's quite likely that asymptomatic cases get picked up anyway.
Ok, so if suppressed symptoms means less likely to spread it- then restrictions based on vaccination status mean nothing. Restrictions based on symptoms are the only restrictions that make sense. I'm not arguing with you, but just pointing out one of the most ridiculous things that I'm currently going through here in Chicago. I am not allowed to workout at a gym, sit down and eat at a restaurant, but if I'm vaccinated, even if I'm sick, I can live my life unrestricted. I am now driving an extra 20 miles daily to workout as my partner was kicked from her gym for not being vaccinated. Great for the environment. Meanwhile- she caught covid a few weeks ago, and despite being pregnant, was recovered within 2 days. We isolated for a week, and I never had symptoms whatsoever. Natural immunity. Meanwhile, and this is anecdotal, but everyone we know that has has had a really bad time with covid during the past month, has also been vaccinated and boosted. And if they had mild cases, they didn't isolate like we did- they just assumed that they were fine because they are vaccinated. But we are the selfish ones.
You wrote: "Meanwhile, and this is anecdotal, but everyone we know that has has had a really bad time with covid during the past month, has also been vaccinated and boosted"
Death is 10x more likely if you are not vaccinated, your anecdote aside:
Without controlling for age and comorbidities, this doesn't mean much. You can break down by age, but the categories are ridiculously broad, 18-49, then narrower age bands afterwards.
Another breakdown that we will never see is the data broken down by death within two weeks of any shot(lumped in with unvaccinated) and death after full vaccination lapses. Which is an ever shortening window.
Finally, how are the denominators being calculated? For the United States, we are basically guessing at this point, given that we only have an insanely large range of estimated undocumented people in the country alone.
I think you should look at Canada and compare it to the US. In Canada there were lockdowns and aggressive vaccination campaigns with high compliance. Death and infection rates are 3x lower than the US per capita.
It isn't a perfect test but the general populations and habits between Canada and US are somewhat comparable otherwise.
I think it is fair to argue that maybe it wasn't worth it, as most of the deaths were primarily among the old and frail. But it does seem that the policy and cultural differences did have an effect.
Cross-country or even cross-state comparisons are highly problematic for many reasons. Many narratives can and have been constructed, which are a far cry from a structured scientific study. Three macro differences between US and Canada: universal healthcare, obesity rates and 90% difference in population size.
None of which changes the fact that vaccinated people can transmit unknowingly.
The effects of eating five cheeseburgers a day are spread out over decades. The result of a group of people choosing to each five cheeseburgers a day is a tiny increase in the average load on the health care system over many many years.
The effect of COVID on the health care system is a large short term spike in load.
It is almost always in almost all systems much easier to deal with a long term small steady increase in load than to deal with a short term massive spike.
> result of a group of people choosing to each five cheeseburgers a day is a tiny increase in the average load on the health care system over many many years.
You are exaggerating and minimizing all at the same time. It doesn't take five cheeseburgers a day to wreck your body. The healthcare system is overloaded, and has been for years precisely because of how many health issues come from our poor diets.
> The American Diabetes Association (ADA) released new research on March 22, 2018 estimating the total costs of diagnosed diabetes have risen to $327 billion in 2017 from $245 billion in 2012, when the cost was last examined.
> This figure represents a 26% increase over a five-year period.
Yeah this whole thing is extremely frustrating to me, it's simply ignoring reality. I would love to not care about other peoples choices, but I can't do that when I have family members who had surgery delayed because of COVID cases taking over hospitals.
I can not find studies about Omicron right now, but Nature reports that vaccination provably reduces the spread of Delta variant, but requires boosters in the 3 month range to maintain effectiveness:
We have entire government agencies dedicated to food safety and health (FDA and USDA). We also have laws governing trans fat and nutritional facts/disclosure.
I think parent post is implying that the situation with Omicron is much more complicated.
Alpha, Delta variants, sure, we can see them evolving pretty much site by site to become the things that they are. There are enough uploaded sequences you can basically watch it happening.
I suppose you can blame the unvaxxed for increasing the probability of such variants.
But Omicron turns up with a freakishly weird number of synonymous vs non-synonymous mutations in the spike, lots of adaptions for immune evasion and... it's rooted in the phylogenetic tree back in 2020? So it just evolved in secret for 18 months, becoming incredibly transmissible while managing not to infect a single person who got sequenced? Bear in mind that is conservatively 100 generations, usually. It's super weird. Whatever process produced Omicron, it was radically different than regular infection and transmission.
This is not something we could reasonably have expected from say, increased infections due to some people not being vaccinated.
In fact all the variants from "regular" transmission over the course of this pandemic - the result of hundreds of millions of infections - are being out-competed by this bolt from the blue.
"... researchers looking at SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in people who had recovered found that the difference between the highest and lowest levels varied by a factor of over 1,000. The researchers saw even more variability when they looked at neutralizing antibodies—those known to bind to the virus and prevent it from infecting cells. Neutralizing antibody levels in recovered people varied over a range of 40,000-fold, and up to 20 percent of people didn't have any detectable level of neutralizing antibody."
But hey, don't let mere science stand in the way of a good catchphrase.
EDIT: I'm quite aware I won't change anybody's opinions. I'm also aware that providing opposing evidence will even strengthen beliefs. So, yeah, I shouldn't have risen to the bait. Regardless, good luck!
This would be a lot more constructive if you included a link. Or at least explained more.
Not everyone reading will have the same background you do, especially when the issue is something technical like discounting a serology study because you know of more convincing ones.
There's a lot of talk of antibodies because researchers studying vaccine effectiveness prior to everyone being exposed need something to measure.
It's hard to measure the overall effectiveness of a person's immune response, so they measure antibodies, which are not the whole story. It might not even be the important part. I think this is why GP is derisive of serology.
The immune system is quite complicated.
Personally I suspect that advising people who had breakthrough infections to keep getting boosters will turn out to be bad advice. We'll see I guess.
This statement seems very specific to the US cultural context:
“The only way to get compliance from people and get accommodation [is] if we demonstrate the ability to withdraw these [mandates] in the same manner in which we put them in,” Gottlieb added.
In Canada, there have been experiments with slowly increasing the number of areas where you are required to have a vaccine in order to enter. They put it on Beer/Liquor stores recently and it saw a huge jump in the number of vaccine appoints.
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/first-dose-vaccinations-quadrupl...
They are putting the requirement on big box stores (e.g. Home Depot/Lowes/Walmart, excluding the pharmacy areas) now and probably will see another jump.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1995579971859
That said, it does appear that this current wave is mostly over, but deaths are primarily among the unvaccinated, so it is probably still a good idea to aim for near full vaccination:
https://twitter.com/OurWorldInData/status/148607668061993779...
Covid vaccines should be treated similarly to other public health vaccines, like Polio. Although we really need more effective Gen2 vaccines that do not require constant boosters and they need to outright prevent infection rather than just reducing the death rate. These Gen1 vaccines and their semi-effectiveness have been incredibly confusing to the general public.