RE: Are lockdowns justified?
April 14, 2021 at 4:24 am
(This post was last modified: April 14, 2021 at 4:44 am by FlatAssembler.)
(April 13, 2021 at 5:20 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: (Didn’t want to quote all that mess)I don't think it is fair to bring up smallpox vaccination here. You need to understand that smallpox was the only virus in human history we eradicated via vaccination. You need to consider there are many diseases we tried to eradicate via vaccination and failed. Furthermore, smallpox is a DNA virus, which almost never mutates. COVID is an RNA virus, which means it will mutate. So, a vaccine which is 80% effective this year will probably be far less effective the next year. A lot better comparison is comparing COVID vaccines to influenza vaccinations.
FA points out that the low end of the vaccines’ effectiveness is 68% and the high end is 95% and questions whether this will be enough to end the pandemic.
His numbers give a median value of around 80%. This is significantly higher that the number of infected/recovered people to establish herd immunity (generally stated as about 70%). So, the answer seems to be ‘yes’. Inoculating 70% of a population with a vaccine that is 80% effective will be enough to end the pandemic.
As to the inevitable objection, ‘Why don’t we wait for herd immunity to kick in on its own?’, it’s worth noting that smallpox killed at least 300 million people (possibly as many as 500 million) in the 20th century alone. Herd immunity never kicked in. Smallpox was stopped by ...wait for it...an aggressive vaccine inoculation programme.
Boru
(April 13, 2021 at 10:08 pm)arewethereyet Wrote:Assuming COVID is spread only by droplets, that it is not airborne, closing schools does not make a lot of sense. Children who get COVID almost always have no symptoms whatsoever, they do not cough when they have COVID to spread the aerosol.(April 13, 2021 at 9:38 pm)Irreligious Atheist Wrote: I don't like the school closures. Schools to be closed after spring break here in Ontario, possibly for the rest of the school year. They were just saying a couple days ago that schools were safe and were going to remain open during the lockdown, and then changed their minds just like that for whatever reason. Kids do way better in person. My kids' high school hasn't even had a case in a couple of months.
Whatever reason?
Ontario schools moved to online only after April break – Kingston News (kingstonist.com)
“We are seeing a rapidly deteriorating situation with a record number of COVID cases and hospital admissions threatening to overwhelm our health care system,” said Premier Ford. “As I have always said we will do whatever it takes to ensure everyone stays safe. By keeping kids home longer after spring break we will limit community transmission, take pressure off our hospitals and allow more time to rollout our COVID-19 vaccine plan.”
(April 12, 2021 at 1:43 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Trumpist is becoming a catchall term for right wing nutjobs. A person is definitely a right wing nutjob if they think that anyone should die for the dow. Wanna know what shut our economy down, over here in the US? Not mask mandates. Not occupancy limits. Same thing that killed half a million of us. Covid.Well, yes, plague is not good for the economy. However, lockdowns also do damage to the economy and mental health, and it is unclear whether they help against COVID. If they do help, they help the rich at the expense of the poor. Rich people do jobs which can be done from home. Poor people do not. In lockdowns, many poor people will do delivery work, meeting even more people than usual and get infected by COVID which they otherwise would not. "Check your privilege." may be a good response to those advocating lockdowns.
Plague.....not....good....for...economy.
(April 13, 2021 at 4:02 pm)SUNGULA Wrote: So we have established Croatia is full of morons.Every country is. However, Croatia, as well as most of the Eastern Europe, is doing well on International Science Olympiads. At the International Olympiad in Informatics, for example, we are doing better than Canada and Finland: https://stats.ioinformatics.org/countrie...total_desc