COVID19: Perspective From A (Sort Of...) Expert-Adjacent Person

I just have a bad feeling about it with regards to the efficacy of our current vaccines.

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I think it was mentioned here or in the What happened thread that we are likely going to need seasonal shots for it, much like influenza. I got that like a good boy in October, and at the time it was being suggested that it would lesson the severity of Covid-19.

I also have heard since then that we didn’t have an influenza wave, it seems strange and I am curious as to the scientific explanation.

With the speed in which it’s spreading and it’s ability to infect vaccinated individuals and make them contagious to others, I think it may render our current vaccines worthless when it comes to creating herd immunity. This is just a feeling from the limited amount of information I have atm.

EDIT:

I get part of the booster shots and all. The UK scientists have even stated that our current vaccines haven’t been proven to be able to completely prevent people from getting infected, just limiting the severity of symptoms. But goal should still be to eventually eradicate the virus through enough people being immune, or at least reducing it’s contagiousness to the point where vaccinated people who have it can be easily quarantined without spreading it as easily.

What I think we’re seeing is the inability of our top minds to keep up with the mutations this virus can go through and the speed in which it can do so. India is just one country with a large population and poor standards of living which allow the virus to incubate and mutate more easily. There’re also countries like Indonesia and the African continent. A vaccinated individual from Vietnam is part of a new cluster over here although the virus strain and chain of causation are unclear.

To be perfectly honest without intending to scare anyone since I could be, and am likely, completely wrong, I’m smelling another lockdown here in the near future despite vaccines being rolled out at a pretty fast pace so I’m currently making plans in anticipation of it. The government here has already banned all travellers from India and Bangladesh from entry. This is how seriously they’re taking it.

Again, these are all just opinions since I’m not a scientist nor am I educated in anything related to this don’t take this too seriously, guys. I could easily be dead wrong. I’m just answering the question I was asked honestly.

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At least it shows Indians have a sense of humor lol. They’re calling it the “Indian strain” in their local news. All the Sikh jokes I’ve ever heard were gleefully told to me by Sikhs.

The news is scary (apparently there are multiple “Indian variants”) but there’s still evidence that the vaccines prevent severe disease so that good.

I mean there’s been a “coronavirus pandemic” for decades since the common cold is a type of coronavirus but since the disease is so mild, no one cares.

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I agree. My real fear is that governments are going to keep on disrupting normal activities even if new strains evolve to something as mild as the flu.

The most recent report from India claims a new strain is “up to 15x more contagious” than existing ones. The earliest ones were supposed to be up to “5 times more contagious than H1N1”. Even if this causes much milder symptoms, it’s still way more contagious than the flu and will naturally lead to a rising and immense death toll even if the mortality rate is the same as the flu.

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I agree. I’m not saying that the new variants aren’t a problem anymore. I’m just saying that it might not be as big of a problem as the fear mongers might make it seem

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Here we go again…

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Massively dense crushes of humanity mixed with drastically different public sanitation ideas, combined with incredible amounts of widespread poverty, and shaken over a couple billion people… What could go wrong?

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Damn. I thought I could rely on Asians to believe the science and wear face masks.

Do you have a reason to think they don’t? I know in past decades I have heard references to some parts of Asia where a lot of people commonly wear masks. I thought it may have been to reduce larger particulate matter from pollution, they have some high population cities with bad smog, but I wonder if they are already clued into high population density making it a good idea to use them for disease control. It doesn’t completely solve the issue, but maybe reduces speed of transmission.

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So Nick, to be emasikinated or not?

The main person in this story claims a medical exemption to wearing a mask because of claustrophobia, I wonder how likely that is. Still, in the picture you can see a group of anti masker protestors who are close and unmasked. Why is it so important to skirt the masking rules?

yes. Those parts of Asia are places where Covid-19 has basically no community spread now

Japan is struggling a bit for other reasons

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Coronavirus spreading.

Many places do. Japan notably, as well as China (they’d have to regardless with the government, but their attitude is such that they generally would).

No doubt in China a significant part of that is particulate pollution these days, but also disease control.

Besides which, the other factors I mentioned kinda sorta play a part in disease transmission (not to mention no real safety net, so poor sole breadwinners work or their family starves if sick).

Nick trolls this subject hard and it about gets on my last nerve. Nobody ever claimed it would eliminate the virus entirely.

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It may just be me, but “fast engulfing” sounds a bit more than just not entirely eliminating. “The flame from my gas stove is fast engulfing my house.” “Turning the knob on my gas stove decreased the flame but didn’t eliminate it entirely.” I picture different scenarios.

I really don’t follow you. Fast engulfing would indicate that any slowing of the flames allows your house to last longer and possibly be saved. In a gas stove the flame is controlled from the start. A brand new virus by definition is not controlled.

Obviously. The flame would have to touch something flammable to spread. I didn’t think it necessary to say, “The flame from my gas stove touched a dish towel which enabled the flame to spread to my walls.”

It’s been a year, and “new waves of infections are fast engulfing a growing number of nations across South and Southeast Asia – with some grappling with their worst outbreaks since the pandemic began.” It just doesn’t sound like COVID is barely hanging on there, in a land filled with science-believing mask wearers.

I think COVID is worse when people don’t wear masks; but it may be just as bad when people do wear masks, because other people don’t wear masks. And, sometimes, it’s just as bad when everyone wears masks, because masks aren’t supposed to entirely eliminate it. But if everyone would just comply and wear masks, COVID would be eliminated.

It’s part of thinking it’s “cool” to be a selfish asshole 100% of the time. “That library sign says quiet please. No one tells me what to do I’m going to scream loudly at the top of my lungs.”

It’s not that doing something would be difficult. It’s that their identity is wrapped up in never doing anything that others are doing. Doesn’t matter if it might help people or not. That thought doesn’t cross their minds.

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I don’t know, if you are referencing the news story, if it is people who want to break the rules. It is in an area where people think their idea of the rules doesn’t come from the public health authority. They might not cheat you out of your savings, that is a plus.