Coronavirus. The n(in)th sequel.

[Zardnaar]

No - it is a once-in-century disaster, likely it will be the "biggest deal" in our lifetimes, in a historical sense - but still it is not a threat to a nation, few things are.

On top of everything else it might.

Eg looming debt crisis in America and China.

 

[Snowygerry]

Plagues have brought down a few empires in the past.

In most all those cases the plague was coupled with an invasion, one of the few things that *can* actually threaten a nation, along with revolution obviously.

Now it may well be that some future historians will find that Covid marked the high point of the "USA" and after decline ensued, much like here :

To some, the plague was the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. To others it was a minor event, documented by Galen and other writers but little more deadly than other epidemics which frequently ravaged parts of the empire.

History suggests another factor is needed though :

The ancient chroniclers portray the plague as a disaster for the Roman army with the army "reduced almost to extinction."[28] This came in 166 at the beginning at the Marcomannic Wars in which German tribes were invading Roman territory south of the middle Danube River

 

[Samson]

In most all those cases the plague was coupled with an invasion, one of the few things that *can* actually threaten a nation, along with revolution obviously.

Now it may well be that some future historians will find that Covid marked the high point of the "USA" and after decline ensued, much like here :



History suggests another factor is needed though :

There are plenty of people who say that the other factors are already here. For example, here is a article from new scientist in 2018 saying that the two cycles of turbulence (~ 2 generations/cycle) and inequality (2-3 hundred years/cycle) are combining about now which is a particular risk of collapse.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Thx for the link. If we had identical twins and one got a childhood disease and the other didn't, is there any way the twin who got sick will transmit that experience to their kids via inherited resistance while the other does not? I thought our DNA changes for various reasons, the invading bug and immune response might leave their mark in the DNA that gets passed along.

This reminds me of the discredited 19th century theory of Lamarckism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism

and the more recent and better evidenced theory of Epigenetic Inheritance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

neither of which are considered to be significant regarding humans.

 

[Samson]

This reminds me of the discredited 19th century theory of Lamarckism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism

and the more recent and better evidenced theory of Epigenetic Inheritance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

neither of which are considered to be significant regarding humans.

Epigenetics is certainly considered significant regarding humans, just not well understood.

 

[The_J]

It would be interesting to see if these childhood vaccinations improve the immune responses of their descendants. For example, if generations of children get the polio vaccine will the vaccine gradually become unnecessary?

Yes, but rather because it will be erradicated (hopefully).
As the discussion above, epigenetics is not well understood, and I don't think there is currently evidence that it influences the immune system (although I admit that might change in the future). Immune system is one thing where I bet that the influence of the environment is certainly the most important one.

The natural immunity doctor had covid and was left with an even stronger immune system than the vaccinated doctor.

Yes, probably, but then you need to see the other circumstances: Why did one get it, the other one not? Maybe because one was more cautious, and the other one not? Because one hospital has more protective equipment, and the other one not? If there is the choice to be protected, or not, then I'd also prefer someone who does make that choice, and not the one who doesn't (for most reasons).
So there are more things to consider.

Unnecessary for people who already got covid.

That might be. Hopefully we'll have at some point that knowledge, and can use the vaccine doses better.
But right now it might again be better to lean towards some potential additional protection with minor side effects instead of not having it.

But how many people who had covid and recovered died from a 2nd infection? Thats the number to compare to the mortality rate of the vaccinated group. One Israeli study said Pfizer recipients were 27x more likely to get symptomatic infection than people who got their protection from covid. I suspect part of the reason is people who got covid did so thru the respiratory system and the vaccine is injected.

I'm not following.
I mean the people who got covid already had a symptomatic infection. They're unlikely to get it again .

Well I wouldn't say a lethal, highly contagious virus is not a danger - it is, but is hardly a threat to a nation state as such is it ?

I think that depends on how lethal the organism is (okay, it's not zombie disease, but if it was...).
For Covid probably not.

 

[Berzerker]

'I dont really have a firm answer' - Anthony Fauci on why people who got covid should get vaccinated

 

[EnglishEdward]

There is a degree of completion mania in the UK.

And that gets coupled with system inflexibility.

The NHS knew very well that I had had Covid, yet I was bombarded with
letters, texts and phone calls within the three months post infection window.

 

[Zardnaar]

So in sane parts of the USA/Europe what are the numbers saying in cases/death with high vaccination rates?

70, 80, 90?

Think Portugal hit 98% of eligible population vaccinated.

 

[uppi]

text quoted. Since twitter doesn't work on many devices.

I would clean up it up, but I have to leave in a few minutes for something, and its a long ass thread. Might edit later.

I think there is a fatal flaw in the reasoning. It compares the effective R of the flu with the R0 of Covid. Partly, this is because we cannot really determine the R0 for the flu at this point. But it is important to keep in mind that the effective R of endemic Covid will be quite different, because it is modified by a partial immunity of the population.

It might very well be, that the spread of endemic Covid will be much slower than that of the flu (that for now the vaccines are more effective than the flu vaccines is evidence for that). Or it could still spread faster. Or we might be lucky and it is going to be effectively eliminated by herd immunity. The point is, we don't know.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Guardian reports 67.2% of total population fully vaccinated in the UK.

There is another ten per cent who have had one jab.

 

[amadeus]

Kinda self defeating to punch down at conspiracy theorists who dont trust the government by throwing covid at them.

I don’t want their trust, I want their compliance.

 

[Snowygerry]

There are plenty of people who say that the other factors are already here. For example, here is a article from new scientist in 2018 saying that the two cycles of turbulence (~ 2 generations/cycle) and inequality (2-3 hundred years/cycle) are combining about now which is a particular risk of collapse.

Very interesting article - worthy of a thread of its own imho.

But seen in this light a pandemic (or even the invasion) would just be the final nail in the coffin of a "civilisation" already in the process of "collapsing" or as they put it "losing complexity"...

Even in the imho unlikely case the USA was in danger of collapse and this pandemic was the final push to shove it over the edge, that would still not be the "end" of "Western civilisation" which after all predates the US by centuries if not millennia.

When the Roman Empire broke up, new societies emerged, but their hierarchies, cultures and economies were less sophisticated, and people lived shorter, unhealthier lives.

Not so sure of this - Rome was one of the unhealthiest places you could live even at the height of the empire.

An overpopulated city built in a marsh, target for every would-be Germanic conqueror, focal point of palace revolutions, insane despots, recruiting ground for the Roman armies, slave industry etc.

I'd be very weary of comparing the US to the Roman empire in this context

That kind of across-the-board loss of complexity is unlikely today, says Turchin, but he doesn’t rule out milder versions of it: the break-up of the European Union, say, or the US losing its empire in the form of NATO and close allies such as South Korea.

It was unlikely then too - imho.

With the Romans went written history only be resumed when the monks started writing their chronicles - so the truth is we know very little of the "complexity" of society in the so-called "dark ages".

 

[Snowygerry]

So in sane parts of the USA/Europe what are the numbers saying in cases/death with high vaccination rates?

70, 80, 90?

Deaths have been stable for several months now, Covid accounts for a few % of total deaths daily, far behind things like heart disease, cancer etc.

https://datastudio.google.com/embed/reporting/c14a5cfc-cab7-4812-848c-0369173148ab/page/QTSKB

 

[El_Machinae]

I don’t want their trust, I want their compliance.

You need the trust of the people they talk to.
The next pandemic has the potential to be mountains worse. I wish with all my heart that we could have covered the hesitant with herd immunity, but we also needed this practice run.

The antivax community would have found something else if our regulators had insisted on much more science (reading the tea leaves that an antivax-supported president would complicate rollout). But needing to hide data in order to get good compliance isn't the level of technology that will get us through the next one

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Any/all government is force.

The question is how much force, and when is it justified.

The regressive damages from covid-19 have been truly ignored by the loud antivax crowd. Though I definitely recognize the regressive impact of a mandate, and have noticed other people do as well, there's a gist of people throwing in that argument to supplement that they themselves don't wanna get vaccinated.

I'm sure they will throw in anything they think will help them get away with it. But if they started claiming that wearing a seatbelt as justification for not getting the vaccine, that doesn't mean you should stop wearing one.

I believe too many people are very significantly underestimating the legal and long-term ramifications of a mandate. Especially in the context of a disease/country where (almost) everyone who actually wants a vaccine, gets a vaccine.

Refusing to cover people who're mainly the victims of misinformation is the absolute height of bad governance.

Do you really believe that? Coming from governments that themselves spread misinformation (I include US and Canada among every other government here)? People are misinformed about health generally. They are also misinformed about laws, financial investments, and other life-ending or ruining tradeoffs. Governments, both yours and mine, *routinely* "refuse to cover" people who are victims of misinformation or lack of knowledge, across a wide range of spectrums. They even give in to lobbies to extend the degree to which this happens.

If we honestly, truly had governments that cared for the truth and well-being of the populace, we would see a lot less federal mandate/direct intervention and a lot more public announcements/informational spending backed with sources. Even now, I wonder if the policy of "mandating by executive fiat" has actually performed better than, say, spending that same money or even less on pushing out information about the disease/vaccines and normalizing the COVID vaccine to other vaccines to more people. "Anti-vax" has magically taken on a new meaning in the context of COVID...almost like most people who hesitate over COVID are not the same tiny % of people who refused any/all vaccines previously.

Rather than having big tech lock down information and using executive fiat, maybe such normalization would have afforded a better rate. Instead, we have politicized garbage where initially the vaccine was a "Trump" thing, until it wasn't, and somehow the change in political backdrop changed (partially) who wanted it vs not, as if the nature of the vaccine itself changed along with the politics. Ridiculous, but not unpredictable.

Plagues have brought down a few empires in the past.

COVID is a nasty disease and shouldn't be taken lightly, but it is absolute peanuts compared to the examples you're quoting. I believe you were trying to refute his point, but the above more so supports it. If COVID were 10-15x more deadly for people who contract it, and reliably killed a large % of adult working populations, it would be plausible as a nation-destroyer. That's not what we've observed, though, in contrast to those historical examples where ~25% or more of people who got them died (in the case of smallpox in western hemisphere, likely MUCH more).

 

[Sofista]

Rome was one of the unhealthiest places you could live even at the height of the empire.

An overpopulated city built in a marsh, target for every would-be Germanic conqueror, focal point of palace revolutions, insane despots, recruiting ground for the Roman armies, slave industry etc.

I'd be very weary of comparing the US to the Roman empire in this context

Yup, what have the Romans ever done for us?

“The aqueduct?”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.”

“And the sanitation.”

“Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?”

“Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.”
...

“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

“Brought peace.”

“Oh. Peace? Shut up!”

Should you want to read further...

 

[bernie14]

In isolation, you may be right about antibodies gained from infection. I’m concerned less with the direct scientific findings (which could change) and more on the ripple effect of giving vaccine opponents a Trojan horse that will further prolong this manmade disaster. Okay, so there’s a bit of guilt-by-association here, but ... why is it that when you get these proponents all together, it’s always the same cohort? The UFO people, the fake moon landing people, the flat earth people—eventually it should be asked why the heck there’s this constant alignment, and how much validity we should give them.

hmm, a frog in water might want to keep an eye on the canary

 

[stfoskey12]

The thing is, even if people who only have natural immunity have more protection than people who only got vaccinated, getting vaccinated after recovering from Covid still increases your level of immunity.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't think I should have to wear eyeglasses to drive. I have natural eyesight.