Coronavirus (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2) outbreak discussion

[Sdajii]

Again, just a guess. So far that's all you have done regarding vaccine candidates.

In terms of efficacy, there's a tonne of evidence to say it's extraordinarily unlikely that we'll ever have a vaccine which works for this virus.

In terms of safety, I haven't claimed to be doing anything more than speculate and I've said it will most likely be fairly safe, but it's extremely risky to rush through the usual safety protocols. This is just basic common sense and in line with what any reasonable scientist will say. I'm not making any outrageous claims or anything in saying that if you develop a vaccine in a fraction of the time any other vaccine in history has been made in, and you skip or rush through safety procedures, you're taking a risk.

 

[wayneL]

A comment from the NYT's above

"

citybumpkin
Earth
July 8
Times Pick


I know people probably feel like a lot is attributed to racism these days. But really, the popular obsession with praising and following Sweden’s model, in contrast with refusal to follow what South Korea or Taiwan has done, makes me wonder. Sweden has 5,447 COVID deaths out of a population less than 10 million. South Korea has 5 times that population but only 285 deaths. And really, if you want comparisons, how people live in the Seoul Metropolitan Area is closer to big American population centers like the New York’s metro region (whose population is bigger than all of Sweden’s.) But why this eternal obsession with all things nordic, and disdain to learn from Asia?
"

I think the ignored metric is the number of deaths that may have been caused by severe lockdown. I don't have that number and it seems to be pretty hard to get hold of with any accuracy.

I can't speak for everyone of course, and I expect my opinion to have much disagreement, but I would prefer to take my (calculated) risks and have liberty, rather than have some government, which I have no faith in, to take my liberty away with out any scientific basis.

I believe it is up to me to ascertain my risks. Here in Queensland those risks are virtually nil (not to say those wrists might not increase at some point in the future)

Also, my mum is 90 years old and has seriously dodgy lungs (interestingly, a result of pneumonia from an influenza infection 20 years ago).

She has an indeterminate amount of time left on this planet, but I'm sure we can all agree that it isn't long. She obviously doesn't want to die but also does not want to *not* live either.

Hence, she is quite prepared to take the risk of living her life, visiting her friends and family, and enjoy the fruits of life with what time she has.

As much as it would be distressing for her to catch the virus and die, I support her 100% in this. In no way do I support her being forcibly locked up in her home and lived as a virtual prisoner of the state.

A common sense approach obviously applies, but quality of life matters more than quantity as a prisoner, that is her opinion.

As for me and Mrs, we are around 60 and and no way want to catch the damned virus, but both of us agree in no way do we want to live in this dystopian world which has been created, largely because of fear rather than actual data.

FFS, I make my living underneath a half a tonne, or more, of fight or flight for the sake of somebody else's hobby. My risk on any given day is a multitude higher than any freaking virus.

My choice.

My missus at 60 years old got face planted off a client's horse only 3 weeks ago. She is quite ok, a bit hurt but no serious injuries... But it could have been a lot worse. Should could quite easily have been killed.

I think if anything happened to her I think I would top myself, seriously, but do I stop her doing her work?

No freaking way. Her life, her choice, it's what makes her life worth living.

Live life, live free, or it ain't worth it, you're just existing.

 

[basilio]

Simply posting a link doesn't mean that link contains what you claim it to!

There isn't anything in the link which says anything like 'X percent of recovered patients have X, Y and Z permanent issues'. It's all very vague, it's clearly just scaremongering.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Sdajii I normally I refuse to engage with you because frankly you seem to have no capacity to see beyond your own fixated views.

That paper from the Peter Wark Conjoint Professor, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle. brought together a wealth of international experience on the ongoing effects on COVID 19.

I don't believe you even read the article in full. If you did and can still make the comments you make then...WTF ?

 

[basilio]

Another relevant anecdote on how easily COVID 19 is transmitted.

'The whole church has got it, just about': dozens with Covid-19 after Alabama Baptist revival
More than 40 people were infected with the coronavirus after attending a multi-day revival event at a north Alabama Baptist church, according to the congregation’s pastor.

“The whole church has got it, just about,” Pastor Daryl Ross of Warrior Creek Missionary Baptist church in Marshall county told AI.com.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/coronavirus-alabama-covid-19-baptist-church-revival

 

[Sdajii]

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Sdajii I normally I refuse to engage with you because frankly you seem to have no capacity to see beyond your own fixated views.

That paper from the Peter Wark Conjoint Professor, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle. brought together a wealth of international experience on the ongoing effects on COVID 19.

I don't believe you even read the article in full. If you did and can still make the comments you make then...WTF ?

I read it.

It lists potential effects other than the usually discussed one, usually without even an attempt at giving vague figures. The figures it does give mostly relate to the things we already hear all about.

If we were to write an article about the common cold using the exact same standards we could come up with something equally scary.

What I said, which you disputed, and used this link to refute, going to far as to use enlarged font size in bold to highlight what you were talking about, related to permanent affects. Your article does not address this in a meaningful way.

 

[basilio]

I read it.

It lists potential effects other than the usually discussed one, usually without even an attempt at giving vague figures. The figures it does give mostly relate to the things we already hear all about.

If we were to write an article about the common cold using the exact same standards we could come up with something equally scary.

What I said, which you disputed, and used this link to refute, going to far as to use enlarged font size in bold to highlight what you were talking about, related to permanent affects. Your article does not address this in a meaningful way.

Not correct at all.
It doesn't simply list potential effects. It describes what has happened. It also refers to a range of studies that have noted the ongoing effects of COVID 19 on many people who have been infected.

By definition it is too early to say effects are permanent. We would need to wait for another 40-50 years wouldn't we to establish that beyond doubt ?

But for the meantime we could recognise that this infection has already demonstrated an ongoing series of effects on many people.

Enough. I assume anyone else can read reports from medical experts and make up their own minds.

 

[IFocus]

I think the ignored metric is the number of deaths that may have been caused by severe lockdown. I don't have that number and it seems to be pretty hard to get hold of with any accuracy.

I can't speak for everyone of course, and I expect my opinion to have much disagreement, but I would prefer to take my (calculated) risks and have liberty, rather than have some government, which I have no faith in, to take my liberty away with out any scientific basis.

I believe it is up to me to ascertain my risks. Here in Queensland those risks are virtually nil (not to say those wrists might not increase at some point in the future)

Also, my mum is 90 years old and has seriously dodgy lungs (interestingly, a result of pneumonia from an influenza infection 20 years ago).

She has an indeterminate amount of time left on this planet, but I'm sure we can all agree that it isn't long. She obviously doesn't want to die but also does not want to *not* live either.

Hence, she is quite prepared to take the risk of living her life, visiting her friends and family, and enjoy the fruits of life with what time she has.

As much as it would be distressing for her to catch the virus and die, I support her 100% in this. In no way do I support her being forcibly locked up in her home and lived as a virtual prisoner of the state.

A common sense approach obviously applies, but quality of life matters more than quantity as a prisoner, that is her opinion.

As for me and Mrs, we are around 60 and and no way want to catch the damned virus, but both of us agree in no way do we want to live in this dystopian world which has been created, largely because of fear rather than actual data.

FFS, I make my living underneath a half a tonne, or more, of fight or flight for the sake of somebody else's hobby. My risk on any given day is a multitude higher than any freaking virus.

My choice.

My missus at 60 years old got face planted off a client's horse only 3 weeks ago. She is quite ok, a bit hurt but no serious injuries... But it could have been a lot worse. Should could quite easily have been killed.

I think if anything happened to her I think I would top myself, seriously, but do I stop her doing her work?

No freaking way. Her life, her choice, it's what makes her life worth living.

Live life, live free, or it ain't worth it, you're just existing.

I have tried to find what the mortality rate is from lock downs suicide being the most obvious one and the best I found was this an estimation.

The numbers show a problem with suicide but a bigger one if the virus gets away in the community the argument presented is that funding resources need to be increased for mental health not a change of direction regarding the virus.

Make of it what you will

"The silent death toll of COVID-19 revealed: Huge 25 per cent jump in suicides each year"

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/h...r/news-story/b4154626a16c9cc25c3b79b7880041ef

As for lock downs i don't think they have to be that severe, it requires people to just follow the rules to reduce contact spreading behaviours which if you read about the Swedes that's what they have done including reducing the numbers at gathering etc they have never said they were for the herd immunity thing others have claimed that.

It was always about personal responsibility which we know hasn't worked in Australia..

The problem is you get a Victoria where rampant drop kicks break the rules and spread the virus note the Korea comment above people there have a community spirit and follow the rules.

As for taking risks to feel alive I am all for it much to my families dismay was surfing an offshore reef a few days ago very long paddle out took a couple of rag doll floggings in waves of consequence but in those moments I was very alive searching for the next breath

 

[satanoperca]

Lets try and use the KISS theory.

1. Is there a chance of creating a vaccine? Yes
2. Could the said vaccine be effective? Maybe
3. What is the likelihood on past performance of vaccine creations, it being available within 2 years? 0
4. Has there ever in the past been a situation to we can immunize 6 Billion people? no
5. So how effective is the vaccine? Well if we vaccinate all Australians and do not allow foreigners or international travels into the country, then it might work.
6. Is point 5 feasible? No
7. However, let's say, that a vaccine is available within 2 years and lets say that the vaccine was 85% effective. Do we lock down the country for 2 years waiting for the miracle to happen? Depends on your beliefs.
8. And lets think a little outside the square, over the next 2 years, we find that this virus, while deadly, is not as bad as we have been led to believe. So we have a vaccine for this virus (given it has not mutated and given we can create enough vaccine, but WAIT : Convid-20 arrives, do we continue to lock down the country for another 2 years, waiting for another miracle vaccine to be created.
9. So I could keep creating what-if scenarios, or could we just look at the available data and make some changes to the current policies and accept the data.
10. People are going to die, well that is life
11. You might never be able to rid our communities from this virus, crap, reminds me of the war on drugs. That worked out well, drugs have not been eradicated from our communities, failed policy.
12. So do we move forward, accept the new reality or believe that someone we are greater than nature itself. Again, another crap moment might be hard for most to accept, but removing some humans of this earth might actually save this earth.
13. And before I hear everyones bleating issues about my comments, I have had to deal with 2 infectious diseases with a mortality rate of over 20%. So harden up peoples, life is hard.

 

[wayneL]

I have tried to find what the mortality rate is from lock downs suicide being the most obvious one and the best I found was this an estimation.

The numbers show a problem with suicide but a bigger one if the virus gets away in the community the argument presented is that funding resources need to be increased for mental health not a change of direction regarding the virus.

Make of it what you will

"The silent death toll of COVID-19 revealed: Huge 25 per cent jump in suicides each year"

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/h...r/news-story/b4154626a16c9cc25c3b79b7880041ef

As for lock downs i don't think they have to be that severe, it requires people to just follow the rules to reduce contact spreading behaviours which if you read about the Swedes that's what they have done including reducing the numbers at gathering etc they have never said they were for the herd immunity thing others have claimed that.

It was always about personal responsibility which we know hasn't worked in Australia..

The problem is you get a Victoria where rampant drop kicks break the rules and spread the virus note the Korea comment above people there have a community spirit and follow the rules.

As for taking risks to feel alive I am all for it much to my families dismay was surfing an offshore reef a few days ago very long paddle out took a couple of rag doll floggings in waves of consequence but in those moments I was very alive searching for the next breath

Love it.

Have had many such experiences on offshore reefs prior to wrecking my shoulder (paddling just was too painful after that)... Especially what you termed "feeling alive".

 

[wayneL]

Re GIGI from Monday's Q&A

https://www.fresheconomicthinking.com/2020/07/what-is-gigi-actually-saying-about-covid.html?m=1

Monday, July 27, 2020
botched their attempts to quantify it.

The puzzle to me is that everyone seems to want to say Gigi is trading off lives for the economy. Her point is that a functioning economy delivers health and welfare outcomes, and hence the trade-off is about lives for lives.

For some reason, saying this is a new taboo.

Policy decisions that explicitly make this trade-off occur all the time. Should we fund more medical research? Should we install traffic lights? Should we make people wear seat belts? Should we ban alcohol and cigarettes? Should we legalise recreational drugs?

Policy analysts, particularly economists, spend careers looking at these welfare and livelihood trade-offs in all sorts of policy domains.

When she says "man up" she means that we need to face up to the fact that we cannot create a pre-COVID world. There are going to be losses of life quality and quantity, either from the virus or our response to it.

I want to go through some of the strange things I see when talking about our COVID policy response, and some of the things people say to avoid facing the reality of this trade-off. My personal view is that the reasonable thing to do is to make sure our policy response does not shorten lives and reduce their quality more than COVID would. I hope that this helps people to understand where Gigi is coming from.

1. The exponential growth and tail risk story
One of the big claims early on was that those talking down the risk didn’t understand exponential growth. Strangely, exponential growth doesn’t usually apply to virus propagation. The pattern is well-understood to be logistic growth, which is going to saturate the population at some point. The unknown was merely where that point would be.

2. Virus prevalence estimates
How much of the population has been exposed to the virus? This is another area where the worst-case scenarios got all the airplay, and where more sensible estimates were ignored. The more prevalent the virus was, the lower the overall mortality. You can see the media incentive for publicising the high mortality estimates, even though it was known quite early on what the realistic estimates were.

3. Infection and case fatality rates
Initially, the highest estimates were promoted, but the reality is that the range of 0.25-0.65% for infection fatality is the current view. If two-thirds of the population is infected overall, that is a worst-case scenario of about 0.16-0.4% of the population dying from COVID, or a few months of normal deaths brought forward in time.

4. Getting the orders of magnitude right
I asked my Mum when she was panicking about the COVID outbreak how many people she thought had died. She said 5.

These days when informed about COVID deaths I ask how many people die each day in normal times. No one seems to know, or care.

Nearly 8,000 people die every day in the US. Fear does not care for statistics.

The 6,000 coronavirus deaths likely to come from the virus in Sweden are equal to around 24 days of normal expected deaths.

A good rule of thumb is that 8 in 1,000 people die every year (0.8%), or about 60 million globally.

For perspective, the seasonal flu in Australia kills 1,500 to 3,000 people, with about 18,000 hospitalisations.

In Queensland last year 285 people ended up in ICU due to flu.

5. Getting the cost of life right
Everyone dies, so dying of one thing today simply stops you dying from something else later. Deaths are life-shortening. In the trade-off I described above, economic recessions and lower future output are also life-shortening. There is no point talking about “prevented deaths”, only shorter lives (that whole quality/quantity thing). If people die a year to two younger than otherwise from COVID, then that’s not too bad. If they die 30 years younger than otherwise, the loss is fifteen times worse per death.

6. But what about transmission!
Another argument is that coronavirus can have lasting effects on some people. Yes. And? Others say that you might feel bad transmitting the disease to others. Yes. And? These issues are true of all viruses. They were true of last year’s record 1,300 flu deaths. There are hundreds of people out there who transmitted the flu virus to someone last year and it killed them. Where was the outrage then?

7. Or do recessions save lives?
I’ve heard the argument that recessions decrease traffic and workplace fatalities, reducing crude death rates. I can’t make a judgement about whether this is true, but it makes perfect sense and could be. But it only raises another question—if recessions save lives as a general matter, why aren’t we trying to orchestrate recessions all the time? If it is logical to do it for coronavirus, then it is logical to do it for traffic fatalities, workplace deaths, or whatever other indirect mechanisms of death are at play during economic expansions.

8. The poorest countries suffer the most
There are global costs to lives from large scale lockdowns. Global vaccination programs for preventable diseases are being delayed, costing lives right now. Construction of health facilities is being delayed, costing lives in the future. Their general development and progress are hampered. Worse still, with very young populations, most poor countries have relatively few people at risk of COVID.

9. The endgame. What endgame?
After a month of “flatten the curve” rhetoric, which basically had the right intention, there was a silent shift towards “crush and eliminate”. How does this make sense in a globalised world where the virus is going to saturate the rest of the world population? What endgame does that entail?

Being a national bubble with no international travel for years until a vaccine adds to the human cost of our policy response. If (or when?) the bubble is breached we get outbreaks anyway. New Zealand is hailed as a success on this front. But until when? The first person who arrives with COVID will simply take NZ back to square one.

10. The counterfactual
This is tricky to consider. Is there a “no panic” counterfactual where the media doesn’t whip up society into a frenzy? I think there is, and this means that the “people would voluntarily lockdown” argument doesn’t fly. Why would they voluntarily lockdown?

The 2017 flu season was nearly 4x worse than the 2016 flu season, with 1,255 deaths compared to 464 the prior year.

In relative terms, the 2017 flu season was huge. It also had the risk of being multiple times bigger given the state of knowledge in the early stages. Yet no one panicked and shut down society.

If people don’t notice a 4x jump in flu deaths, would they notice a 10x jump from coronavirus deaths and voluntarily lockdown? I would argue they wouldn’t.

The “don’t panic, don’t lock down, invest in health resources” counterfactual is a plausible one.

11. The un-science cancel culture
The Twitter mob has decided it can decide what is science and what is not, while at the same time attributing all variation in the COVID outbreaks across different countries or states to the policy response, leaving no space for randomness or luck.

This is “un-science”.

There is also nothing the un-science mob loves more than cancel culture. If my Twitter searches are anything to go by, plenty of people now want Gigi to be fired from her job. Yes, for raising the point that we should try and save the most lives possible by accounting for the cost to lives from our response to COVID, she is being “cancelled”.

12. A final thought
One thing I have learned to do to help maintain perspective is to turn a problem around and ask the reverse question. How many early deaths would we tolerate to avoid a large recession? Is your answer really zero? Even a global one?

How many early deaths do we tolerate by not spending more on the public health system? Where is the outcry

 

[Sdajii]

Not correct at all.
It doesn't simply list potential effects. It describes what has happened. It also refers to a range of studies that have noted the ongoing effects of COVID 19 on many people who have been infected.

By definition it is too early to say effects are permanent. We would need to wait for another 40-50 years wouldn't we to establish that beyond doubt ?

But for the meantime we could recognise that this infection has already demonstrated an ongoing series of effects on many people.

Enough. I assume anyone else can read reports from medical experts and make up their own minds.

This scaremongering only makes sense if you ignore numbers (which your article does).

We do already have a wide variety of respiratory infections, including many coronaviruses, which have been infecting people for as long as there have been people. Once the infection is gone, the damage to the respiratory system is just damage, it's not a virus. People get permanent lung damage etc from the flu and the common cold etc.

The proportion of people with serious damage after recovery is low. Heck, the number of people who get seriously ill at all after infection is fairly low! We already know that the number of people with serious damage is low, and even if you only want to use the smallest, most basic application of logic, you realise that since not all of that is permanent, the total proportion of people with permanent damage is not high.

Your article doesn't even touch on this with numbers! You literally go to the trouble of using bold, enlarged font to yell about your point, then simply use a link to an article which doesn't address it. You then get upset about me not seeing things your way!

 

[satanoperca]

My comments are in RED

2. Virus prevalence estimates
How much of the population has been exposed to the virus? Everyone, well nearly everyone, I am sure some never like to be connected to the community via normal human to human activity that is not behind a keyboard
This is another area where the worst-case scenarios got all the airplay, and where more sensible estimates were ignored. The more prevalent the virus was, the lower the overall mortality. You can see the media incentive for publicising the high mortality estimates, even though it was known quite early on what the realistic estimates were.

3. Infection and case fatality rates
Initially, the highest estimates were promoted, but the reality is that the range of 0.25-0.65% for infection fatality is the current view. If two-thirds of the population is infected overall, that is a worst-case scenario of about 0.16-0.4% of the population dying from COVID, or a few months of normal deaths brought forward in time.
I believe that some posters here have been trying to point out this fact, it is not as bad as being portrayed.

4. Getting the orders of magnitude right
I asked my Mum when she was panicking about the COVID outbreak how many people she thought had died. She said 5.

These days when informed about COVID deaths I ask how many people die each day in normal times. No one seems to know, or care.

Nearly 8,000 people die every day in the US. Fear does not care for statistics.

The 6,000 coronavirus deaths likely to come from the virus in Sweden are equal to around 24 days of normal expected deaths.

A good rule of thumb is that 8 in 1,000 people die every year (0.8%), or about 60 million globally.

For perspective, the seasonal flu in Australia kills 1,500 to 3,000 people, with about 18,000 hospitalisations.

In Queensland last year 285 people ended up in ICU due to flu.
This is my sore point with family and friends, have they ever looked at the other causalities in life, 10 deaths from Covid, big deal statistically, look at the bigger picture, people are dying all the time from a range of problems/issues/disorders/virus/social influences etc

5. Getting the cost of life right
Everyone dies, so dying of one thing today simply stops you dying from something else later. Deaths are life-shortening. In the trade-off I described above, economic recessions and lower future output are also life-shortening. There is no point talking about “prevented deaths”, only shorter lives (that whole quality/quantity thing). If people die a year to two younger than otherwise from COVID, then that’s not too bad. If they die 30 years younger than otherwise, the loss is fifteen times worse per death.
Agreed and a great statement

6. But what about transmission!
Another argument is that coronavirus can have lasting effects on some people. Yes. And? Others say that you might feel bad transmitting the disease to others. Yes. And? These issues are true of all viruses. They were true of last year’s record 1,300 flu deaths. There are hundreds of people out there who transmitted the flu virus to someone last year and it killed them. Where was the outrage then?

7. Or do recessions save lives?
I’ve heard the argument that recessions decrease traffic and workplace fatalities, reducing crude death rates. I can’t make a judgement about whether this is true, but it makes perfect sense and could be. But it only raises another question—if recessions save lives as a general matter, why aren’t we trying to orchestrate recessions all the time? If it is logical to do it for coronavirus, then it is logical to do it for traffic fatalities, workplace deaths, or whatever other indirect mechanisms of death are at play during economic expansions.

8. The poorest countries suffer the most
There are global costs to lives from large scale lockdowns. Global vaccination programs for preventable diseases are being delayed, costing lives right now. Construction of health facilities is being delayed, costing lives in the future. Their general development and progress are hampered. Worse still, with very young populations, most poor countries have relatively few people at risk of COVID.
Interesting point, I wonder if we pump $100B into better nutrinutrience, well being and excercise, how many lives we could save each year in Australia?

9. The endgame. What endgame?
After a month of “flatten the curve” rhetoric, which basically had the right intention, there was a silent shift towards “crush and eliminate”. How does this make sense in a globalised world where the virus is going to saturate the rest of the world population? What endgame does that entail?

Being a national bubble with no international travel for years until a vaccine adds to the human cost of our policy response. If (or when?) the bubble is breached we get outbreaks anyway. New Zealand is hailed as a success on this front. But until when? The first person who arrives with COVID will simply take NZ back to square one.
Exactly, what is the end game? Who is responsible to delivering the endgame, our govnuts, we a people? Who, when, how and why?

10. The counterfactual
This is tricky to consider. Is there a “no panic” counterfactual where the media doesn’t whip up society into a frenzy? I think there is, and this means that the “people would voluntarily lockdown” argument doesn’t fly. Why would they voluntarily lockdown?

The 2017 flu season was nearly 4x worse than the 2016 flu season, with 1,255 deaths compared to 464 the prior year.

In relative terms, the 2017 flu season was huge. It also had the risk of being multiple times bigger given the state of knowledge in the early stages. Yet no one panicked and shut down society.

If people don’t notice a 4x jump in flu deaths, would they notice a 10x jump from coronavirus deaths and voluntarily lockdown? I would argue they wouldn’t.

The “don’t panic, don’t lock down, invest in health resources” counterfactual is a plausible one.
The above is why I am angry, did we care, did people respond in the past?

11. The un-science cancel culture
The Twitter mob has decided it can decide what is science and what is not, while at the same time attributing all variation in the COVID outbreaks across different countries or states to the policy response, leaving no space for randomness or luck.

This is “un-science”.

There is also nothing the un-science mob loves more than cancel culture. If my Twitter searches are anything to go by, plenty of people now want Gigi to be fired from her job. Yes, for raising the point that we should try and save the most lives possible by accounting for the cost to lives from our response to COVID, she is being “cancelled”.
This is a more interesting point, how much is a life worth?
Most would say, whatever it takes. I sort of agree. But if we play the numbers and say that the average person contributes $20K to society through taxes and it is going to cost $1,000,000 to save a life and there are 10,000 lives to save, is everyone will to work for the next 10 years to save all their lives without any other provisions, like healthcare, police, infrastructure etc.
So with some basic variables and stats we could come to a figure.

12. A final thought
One thing I have learned to do to help maintain perspective is to turn a problem around and ask the reverse question. How many early deaths would we tolerate to avoid a large recession? Is your answer really zero? Even a global one?

How many early deaths do we tolerate by not spending more on the public health system? Where is the outcry

We have already spent to much, but those that have become or are complacent in not finding the truth cannot complain.

 

[rederob]

In terms of efficacy, there's a tonne of evidence to say it's extraordinarily unlikely that we'll ever have a vaccine which works for this virus.

No.
You have nothing to base that on - again, you are guessing.

In terms of safety, I haven't claimed to be doing anything more than speculate and I've said it will most likely be fairly safe, but it's extremely risky to rush through the usual safety protocols.

Another guess. There are 3 phases to pass. Several candidates are already at the last stage.

This is just basic common sense and in line with what any reasonable scientist will say.

Yet another guess - at what point do you stop?

I'm not making any outrageous claims or anything in saying that if you develop a vaccine in a fraction of the time any other vaccine in history has been made in, and you skip or rush through safety procedures, you're taking a risk.

Yes, "if." But no evidence it is happening.

 

[Sdajii]

No.
You have nothing to base that on - again, you are guessing.

Good grief, many virologists around the world are saying it, I've been through this so many times in multiple threads on this forum, but in a nutshell: Unless you're very old, they've been trying to make vaccines for corona viruses since before you were born. Not one has been successful, ever. The SARS outbreak was the best part of 20 years ago now. SARS is closely related and very similar to SARS-COV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19). Making a vaccine for them is technically much the same. Great efforts have been made to produce a SARS vaccine for the best part of 20 years, they have come up with nothing. Respiratory pathogens are very difficult to make vaccines for because of the way the immune system responds to them and how antibodies are produced, stored, etc, and how the immune system's memory functions for them. Part of it is to do with the fact that the respiratory system is effectively an external part of the body (this much is relevant to all respiratory infections). We don't have any vaccines for respiratory pathogens which are highly effective (TB for example is generally not bothered with, the flu is about the best we have but even that isn't very effective, it has been researched and worked with for decades and we're limited by the human body's limitations which we're not going to be changing without genetic engineering of humans, etc etc) and coronaviruses are a totally unrelated pathogen to anything we have any vaccine for and they have their own problems which make vaccines impossible (some viruses just can't have vaccines made for them, HIV being a well known example).

I'm not just guessing. It's extraordinarily unlikely that a vaccine will be possible, the above just scratches the surface.

Another guess. There are 3 phases to pass. Several candidates are already at the last stage.

It's easy enough to get through stage 1, exploratory phase, obviously. It's easy enough to get a product which can be injected into a monkey and not to any obvious damage. It's easy enough to get a monkey to produce antigens to antibodies you inject into it. Hey, we could literally have done that for HIV in our spare time in the genetics labs I used to work in if we'd had monkeys to play with. That doesn't mean you have a functional vaccine and it doesn't even mean you know it's anywhere safe enough to put into people.

Yes, "if." But no evidence it is happening.

I say they're rushing this through and you respond with 'there's no evidence of that'. Great.

 

[SirRumpole]

Good grief, many virologists around the world are saying it, I've been through this so many times in multiple threads on this forum, but in a nutshell: Unless you're very old, they've been trying to make vaccines for corona viruses since before you were born. Not one has been successful, ever. The SARS outbreak was the best part of 20 years ago now. SARS is closely related and very similar to SARS-COV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19). Making a vaccine for them is technically much the same. Great efforts have been made to produce a SARS vaccine for the best part of 20 years, they have come up with nothing. Respiratory pathogens are very difficult to make vaccines for because of the way the immune system responds to them and how antibodies are produced, stored, etc, and how the immune system's memory functions for them. Part of it is to do with the fact that the respiratory system is effectively an external part of the body (this much is relevant to all respiratory infections). We don't have any vaccines for respiratory pathogens which are highly effective (TB for example is generally not bothered with, the flu is about the best we have but even that isn't very effective, it has been researched and worked with for decades and we're limited by the human body's limitations which we're not going to be changing without genetic engineering of humans, etc etc) and coronaviruses are a totally unrelated pathogen to anything we have any vaccine for and they have their own problems which make vaccines impossible (some viruses just can't have vaccines made for them, HIV being a well known example).

I'm not just guessing. It's extraordinarily unlikely that a vaccine will be possible, the above just scratches the surface.



It's easy enough to get through stage 1, exploratory phase, obviously. It's easy enough to get a product which can be injected into a monkey and not to any obvious damage. It's easy enough to get a monkey to produce antigens to antibodies you inject into it. Hey, we could literally have done that for HIV in our spare time in the genetics labs I used to work in if we'd had monkeys to play with. That doesn't mean you have a functional vaccine and it doesn't even mean you know it's anywhere safe enough to put into people.



I say they're rushing this through and you respond with 'there's no evidence of that'. Great.

So I assume you think that any purported vaccine will be a decoy to make people think they are protected so they will be happy about going back to work and start making money for the bosses, otherwise why would the drug companies bother ?

So yeah, people may still come down with a sore throat and cough, but you've been vaccinated so it's just a common cold right, no need to worry, take a couple of days off or just soldier on as usual.

So how are they then going to explain all the older people or those with co-morbidities who keep flooding the hospital emergency departments and insist on dying ?

 

[Sdajii]

So I assume you think that any purported vaccine will be a decoy to make people think they are protected so they will be happy about going back to work and start making money for the bosses, otherwise why would the drug companies bother ?

Not really, no. I've already discussed this in detail on this forum in threads you've taken part in.

So how are they then going to explain all the older people or those with co-morbidities who keep flooding the hospital emergency departments and insist on dying ?

Read through recent posts, you're asking questions to the answers already given.

 

[rederob]

Good grief, many virologists around the world are saying it...

Guessing again - zero evidence a vaccine cannot be developed. You seem to be unaware that there are several different pathways to this vaccine. Furthermore, several vaccine candidates have built on former vaccine experience so this is not a start from scratch in every case.

I'm not just guessing. It's extraordinarily unlikely that a vaccine will be possible, the above just scratches the surface.

If it's not a guess, where is your evidence?

I say they're rushing this through and you respond with 'there's no evidence of that'. Great.

The phases are sequential and money is no object in most cases, nor willing volunteers. And as I said, some candidates are building from previous experience. Where is there evidence that safety protocols are being skipped?

Just stop guessing.

 

[ghotib]

Permanent damage doesn't show up after you're already over it (this is a ridiculous notion so many people are assuming!). Permanent damage is damage which is already done, exists after the virus is out of the system, and won't ever go away. It doesn't first show up after the virus is out of the system then never go away. The worst 10 million cases so far don't show this, yet we still somehow have an insane 'it's too soon to be sure' narrative.

Post-polio syndrome? Chicken pox/shingles? I have no idea if these are classed as permanent damage, but it seems like a reasonable description. In both cases the virus can lurk within the body for decades before the long term effects show up; maybe Covid can do the same.

At the risk of further exposing my ignorance further, I don't understand the assumption that any vaccine will be fake. Not saying it couldn't be, but from my utterly non-specialist reading:

(1) There is unprecedented sharing of information and techniques among the over a hundred organisations working on a vaccine. It seems reasonable to think that this is reducing the amount of duplicated effort;

(2) New techniques have come available that reduce the elapsed time required for clinical trials. I'm sorry I haven't been able to pin down where I read about this because it strikes me as too good to be true - maybe someone here can find documentation for what I'm pretty sure I remember.

 

[rederob]

Post-polio syndrome? Chicken pox/shingles? I have no idea if these are classed as permanent damage, but it seems like a reasonable description. In both cases the virus can lurk within the body for decades before the long term effects show up; maybe Covid can do the same.

At the risk of further exposing my ignorance further, I don't understand the assumption that any vaccine will be fake. Not saying it couldn't be, but from my utterly non-specialist reading:

(1) There is unprecedented sharing of information and techniques among the over a hundred organisations working on a vaccine. It seems reasonable to think that this is reducing the amount of duplicated effort;

(2) New techniques have come available that reduce the elapsed time required for clinical trials. I'm sorry I haven't been able to pin down where I read about this because it strikes me as too good to be true - maybe someone here can find documentation for what I'm pretty sure I remember.

Here's the current state of play with vaccines, and this links to a plain English explanation of who is doing what..
Note the variety of vaccine platforms, matched with different type of candidate vaccines.

 

[Smurf1976]

The proportion of people with serious damage after recovery is low. Heck, the number of people who get seriously ill at all after infection is fairly low!

What are the actual figures for those with ongoing damage?

What damage and how many?