outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Even that should cut transmission a fair chunk, tbh? I thought they’d bought the Oxford one too, hope they bought a lot of refrigeration units for the Pfizer doses.

It’s only being given in hospitals in the UK initially for that reason (and yes if 50% of people are immune via vaccination that approaches what’s needed to eliminate community transmission, ie not quite herd immunity but outbreaks should be local and R much less than 1 so they die out pretty quickly).

I haven’t actually seen estimates of the herd immunity threshold for this one though so I’m kind of guessing. It’s higher than 50% (90% or something) for measles but measles is insanely contagious. No way is this one that high.

i think i've seen 70% bandied around

An interesting thing happens once you get to lower rates: contact tracing becomes doable/effective again, which can further reduce R. This is assuming you have competent and well funded public health authorities, and I suspect we’re going to find out over the months that this will be relevant that we ... don’t.

People avoiding contact tracing to protect their incomes is a big problem for contact tracing (along with the system been largely broken in places where local authorities aren't able to pick up the slack).

I'm hoping there's enough corresponding protect capitalism at all costs enthusiasm to counteract the growing antivaxx movement to help with the herd numbers.

Excl: Military converting mass vaccine centres
• LONDON Nightingale at ExCel
• EAST Robertson House, Stevenage
• SW Ashton Gate, Bristol
• SE Epsom racecourse, Surrey
• MIDLANDS Leicester racecourse
• NW Manchester Tennis & Football Club
• NE Newcastle Centre for Life

— Lucy Fisher (@LOS_Fisher) December 2, 2020

i can't see the vaccine rollout going any smoother than anything else in the last year, not least because of the temperature requirements and brexit being 4 weeks away.

and then we get into the haves and the havenots situation when there's already division in the government about lockdown. the vaccinated will be calling for opening up making the lives of the non-vaccinated more dangerous.

This will require robust messaging from governments, telling the vaccinated that it doesn't mean they can necessarily do exactly what they want as there'll still be a risk of transmission. So...expect the UK government to profoundly fuck that one up.

'mon the Jags!

(Scottish football reference alert)

You guys think we'll hit 50% adoption fast? I believe in vaccines but am still skeptical on these. Probably won't take it until we've seen a million or so safe cases. Think between (both warranted and unwarranted) skepticism, limited availablity and general public insanity it'll be a while. It'd be nice if we hit that by the end of 2021, but it might never happen.

I can't imagine we come close to 50% with this vaccine, not least because there's a suspicion/likelihood/possibility that this becomes an annual thing with a new vaccine each year, and a new one would then I assume already have to be rolled out mid-2021. As for skepticism, I dunno, I'm pretty confident in its apparent safety/efficacy. If I approached it with too much suspicion I'll inevitably glom on to the exceptions, which is partly what sends anti-vaxxers down that path. Then again, isn't there some hypothesis that the anti-vax movement stems at least in part from the mandatory flu vaccine campaign of 1976 and its own reported lapses in safety/efficacy?

Incidentally, it's sort of been buried beneath the noise, but the public health servants pretty much nailed the timeline back in March, didn't they? Second wave in the fall, vaccine available by mid 2021.

Some of these reported vaccines say they have 90-95% efficacy, but then you read in detail about the number of actual test subjects and the way they came to those numbers is... suspect.

For sure. But I have no idea how they do this stuff. The annual flu vaccine, for example, is different every year, does that mean they have to do a rigorous testing process annually? Must be no, right? Because sometimes the vaccine is less effective than predicted and sometimes more?

the flu vaccine is generally 3 or 4 vaccines, a different one for each different strain that they predict will be 'popular' that year. sometimes they predict wrongly so more people get flu. but that's not because the vaccine wasn't effective, you just didn't get the correct vaccine.

https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/lot-release/influenza-vaccine-2020-2021-season

"The committee recommended that the quadrivalent formulation of egg-based influenza vaccines for the U.S. 2020-2021 influenza season contain the following:

an A/Guangdong-Maonan/SWL1536/2019 (H1N1) pdm09-like virus;
an A/HongKong/2671/2019 (H3N2)-like virus;
a B/Washington/02/2019- like virus (B/Victoria lineage);
a B/Phuket/3073/2013-like virus (B/Yamagata lineage)."

Do each of those individual vaccines bundled in the quad vaccine get thoroughly tested through rigorous trials for effectiveness each year? That's impressive, but it also seems...Sisyphean.

i can't see the vaccine rollout going any smoother than anything else in the last year,

this really

vaccines for some, miniature Union Jacks for others

We'll have red, white and blue running through our veins.

> Do each of those individual vaccines bundled in the quad vaccine get thoroughly tested through rigorous trials for effectiveness each year? That's impressive, but it also seems...Sisyphean.

dunno. but three of the strains look like they are new (based on the 2019)

how would you test them? deliberately infect people (or try to) with copies of the virus that you've somehow saved? can they test without people?

(she seemed a bit phased when i asked for the leaflet that came with my flu jab last year, but i wanted it for the list of strains. they just seem exotic somehow. i did go for a jab this year (on my birthday) but it was early and they were only doing at-risk people at the time and i never followed up)

ah, https://flucamp.com/

"Take part in a FluCamp study and be compensated for your time!

Viruses affect our immune systems in a variety of ways – some of which we don’t yet understand. Clinical studies are effective in researching how the body behaves when it encounters viruses, such as the common cold; both in healthy people, and those who suffer from conditions like asthma. Having a better understanding allows us to work out more effective and efficient treatments – and eventually even eradicate some of the most common viral illnesses altogether."

from £100 a day, 11-14 days. but you might die. 8)

i know no one wants to hear this, but: when you have 7+ billion people and we all require a cocktail of vaccines every year to preemptively guard against varieties of biological enemies across the world that we may come in to contact with, then we have way too many fucking people on the earth. "gaia theory" is not something i have ever taken seriously at all, but there is something to the idea that the giant thing that we all live on is actively trying to ward us off

it's not the fact that we have vaccines, or that we're taking pre-emptive steps to protect ourselves against things that are hurting us. medicine has been a thing for a long time. it's more like the lengths that we've gone to, at this point. we are allergic to our own environment now

I'd say it's more accurate to observe that the vaccine cocktail is part of what made the 7 billion pop happen in the first place

always have been karl, we’re just getting (slightly) better at dealing with it (in some respects). this is good!

xpost right

got it - more people is better

i know that's not what you mean, sorry.

Silby otm but also

then we have way too many fucking people on the earth.

i was definitely suggesting eugenics as a strategy

runs in the family

so the key is for humanity to multiply as quickly as possible, to build up greater gene diversity so that when the 99.8% virus comes, more of us will survive

I wasn’t saying you were. It was a bit of a leap because these arguments always end up arguing that (unspecified) populations need to be smaller, and there are always bad faith actors happy to leap in to push that agenda. Just getting in ahead of that argument.

the key is for humans to start emulating the virus

i didn't suggest eugenics, but if i would have kept going, i would have gone there. so you just went ahead a little bit to meet me there. hi!

and if i didn't suggest it, someone else would have.

(interestingly, this is true, but only in a context like the present, where there are way too many humans around so that it's eventually inevitable that someone will say something catastrophically dumb)

if there were only 10 people on the planet, maybe there would be a day that wasn't fucking terrible because there would be a chance that none of them would talk to each other

I don’t follow how covid or flu is evidence that the human population is too high (or too low).

it's just right

Earth 2020: goldilocks

i'll take my dumb guy saying dumb things offline

fuck this perfect world

The best of all possible worlds, apparently.

I have no opinion on whether the population is too high or too low or what. I just don’t follow how flu and covid are relevant to that question.

MOTHER EARTH IS TIRED OF OUR SHIT is what i think km is trying to say

but frankly i think mother earth has better things to do than worry about us. we’re a blip

- bob marley

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/RaggettBrain.jpg

got it - more people is better

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, December 2, 2020 4:44 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this quickly becomes a complicated and woo-woo topic but i do tend to think that ecosystems are intelligent, that we over-estimate our ability to thrive on earth when our raw numbers are so swollen, that we aren't that different from deer, that we need predators (of us) in order for the ecosystem we live in to sustain itself, that death needs to be in balance with life, etc. i.e. you aren't the only one who thinks along these lines, karl, and it's frustrating and honestly a little bit shallow when people shout 'eugenecist' at you for expressing something like 'there are too many people.' like i don't actually think mass killing is bad but i sure think we can put a lot more effort into making birth control easy and convenient for both men and women!