corona? :(

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Okay.
To be realistic for a moment. It's always dangerous to make predictions, but this virus is incredible.
Highly virulent, people can be contagious for days while hardly feeling sick, and the death rate is in the sweet spot: killing many, but not enough, and not quickly enough, to deplete nearby hosts, and the infected can infect several others before getting severe symptoms or dying. (A person can travel the world and be infectious without so much as a sore throat.)
It seems even more virulent than other common viral respiratory infections, like the common cold and influenza, but doesn't come in seasons (winter in the northern hemisphere). It's still dominant in winter months it seems, but still active/dormant. We've seen several waves of covid-19 so far, while there would have been just one influenza season.

If someone in 2019 had described a hypothetical virus to me with these traits I would have said it could never be eradicated, or even controlled. It would be like eradicating the common cold in the entire world.
My guess is at least 95-98% of a population (including children) would have to be fully vaccinated to get close to completely controlling it.
And that's with good vaccines. With the current vaccines that require constant boosters - meaning once an entire population has been vaccinated, you can start over again because 6 months have passed - it doesn't look realistic. And with travel you will constantly get new infections imported from countries wih high infection rates. So-called herd immunity doesn't look realistic so far.
We can reach a point where it's somewhat under control but there will be constant outbreaks and it will be a constant challenge for healthcare/hospitals for years to come. Not least in countries with poor healthcare systems.
 
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Once you have two vaccines in you this virus actually is pretty much a flu though. Also, the omicron variant seem to be less deadly which is the usual way viruses change. At this point I am not too worried, I do think that the worst is behind us.
 
Once you have two vaccines in you this virus actually is pretty much a flu though. Also, the omicron variant seem to be less deadly which is the usual way viruses change. At this point I am not too worried, I do think that the worst is behind us.
I've been active online lately since I needed a FB account for work, so I have a mini-crusade against local anti-vaxxers, and that includes a lot of fact checking and learning just to tell people they are wrong. (I'm even getting threats, which I take as a compliment for doing a good job,)
One of the possible fallacies I encountered from "hesitant" people is about the viruses evolving to be less deadly, so as not to kill their food and transport (us). If you look at the relatively long incubation period and the average time to kill at 14 days, I don't think there are any evolutionary pressures for the Covid virus to be less deadly, there's plenty of time for the host to infect others before dying.
You could expect such pressures being applied on Ebola as it's too deadly too quick to be good at spreading, but it needs a big reservoir to produce mutations faster (which it doesn't have afaik).
Well, at least that's how I understand virus evolution at the moment. The conclusion is that only transmissibility matters, the next mutation can be more or less deadly, and it wouldn't make a difference.

The other issue here is that two vaccine doses are fine - for several months, but the drop off in antibodies is significant, so you get less protection. If you want maximum safety you really need booster shots every 6 months (which may even need to be tailored to currently dominant mutations).
Hopefully we'll get longer lasting vaccines.

We are up for an omicron wave right now, and the bad thing about it is that even Covid survivors who are supposed to have high protection get re-infected and I suspect people who took their last vaccine months ago are at risk as well, not just the unvaccinated masses. So be careful out there folks, we are in for a ride.
 
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I've been active online lately since I needed a FB account for work, so I have a mini-crusade against local anti-vaxxers, and that includes a lot of fact checking and learning just to tell people they are wrong. (I'm even getting threats, which I take as a compliment for doing a good job,)
One of the possible fallacies I encountered from "hesitant" people is about the viruses evolving to be less deadly, so as not to kill their food and transport (us). If you look at the relatively long incubation period and the average time to kill at 14 days, I don't think there are any evolutionary pressures for the Covid virus to be less deadly, there's plenty of time for the host to infect others before dying.
You could expect such pressures being applied on Ebola as it's too deadly too quick to be good at spreading, but it needs a big reservoir to produce mutations faster (which it doesn't have afaik).
Well, at least that's how I understand virus evolution at the moment. The conclusion is that only transmissibility matters, the next mutation can be more or less deadly, and it wouldn't make a difference.

The other issue here is that two vaccine doses are fine - for several months, but the drop off in antibodies is significant, so you get less protection. If you want maximum safety you really need booster shots every 6 months (which may even need to be tailored to currently dominant mutations).
Hopefully we'll get longer lasting vaccines.

We are up for an omicron wave right now, and the bad thing about it is that even Covid survivors who are supposed to have high protection get re-infected and I suspect people who took their last vaccine months ago are at risk as well, not just the unvaccinated masses. So be careful out there folks, we are in for a ride.
Long term immunity does not come from antibody counts though, and in fact there's some evidence that the vaccines that are worse at that might be better in the long run because they seem to elicit better reaction from T cells (there's some talk about that in the technical YouTube video that I shared in this thread some time ago). Additionally, it's not so much about deadliness but about the symptoms. If you have mild to no symptoms you are more likely to keep going about your life as usual and spread the virus more, so I do think that this virus still has advantages from becoming more transmissible and less severe.

Now the argument that the antivaxxers made to you is nonsensical, because without the vaccine you would have to pave the world with dead bodies before it gets to the point where it's just one of the many endemic cold-like sicknesses. We also can't really tell for sure if the virus will evolve to be less deadly or not, it is just speculation and I wouldn't bet my life on it. The doctors who have been dealing with omicron in South Africa however seems to be moderately optimistic, and that's something I would say.

To be clear, I am also not saying that one should not get the booster. It would definitely be better if we could get vaccines out to countries that are mostly unvaccinated yet, but it's not like that's really up to any of us. In fact it might be better to get those boosters done ASAP so that maybe after that governments will share what's left.
 
Just came back home from getting my vaccine shot. Felt slight disorientation but it's not significant. A guy in front of me collapsed tho. Not a good sign.
 
Just came back home from getting my vaccine shot. Felt slight disorientation but it's not significant. A guy in front of me collapsed tho. Not a good sign.
Haha... someone is afraid of needles and is being a baby. Man up, it's just a piece of a program you will automatically execute to troll your immune system.
I had my vaccines with bunches of old people and witnessed no incidents whatsoever. On our government bus to the mortuary.
 
Just came back home from getting my vaccine shot. Felt slight disorientation but it's not significant. A guy in front of me collapsed tho. Not a good sign.
My sister-in-law ran a vaccination clinic here for several months last year and every day she'd see multiple people (the prevalent group was white, male, late 20's to 40's) act like they were dying from the shot or pretending to pass out while showing no symptoms of anaphylaxis or having pre-existing conditions which would cause this. They were, in short, ****ing pussies. I'll also note that during this time she never sent a single person to the hospital for an adverse reaction to the vaccine itself - hysteria, on the other hand...
 
Haha... someone is afraid of needles and is being a baby. Man up, it's just a piece of a program you will automatically execute to troll your immune system.
I had my vaccines with bunches of old people and witnessed no incidents whatsoever. On our government bus to the mortuary.
It was after getting the shot. We were in a line to get the certificate, and this curly ponytail guy in front of me just passed out.

act like they were dying from the shot or pretending to pass out while showing no symptoms of anaphylaxis or having pre-existing conditions which would cause this. They were, in short, ****ing pussies.
People are actually pretending about this ****? I understand fear-mongering, but actually pretending to pass out is ****ing stupid. Kids these days and their tiks toks, I swear to God.
 
Well, 'pretending' may not be the best word, in some cases (most, I'd argue), it's just brain hitting the panic button, similar way how some students faint around important exams. You're getting vaccinated against something that's been on everyone's mouth for last two years, the future is uncertain and creeps under the wardrobes keep whispering how it will potentially kill you on site, a lot of emotions to deal with and not everyone's equipped to do it.
 
Funny. Me and my colleagues run vaccinations at the hospital every flu season, and now also covid-19, and it's mostly young men who get unwell at the sight, or thought, of needles. I don't know any studies on it, but maybe it's universal with feeble young men :razz:
Can't remember we've ever had an anaphylactic shock.
 

It's all preliminary research and not peer reviewed, but still interesting.
 
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Funny. Me and my colleagues run vaccinations at the hospital every flu season, and now also covid-19, and it's mostly young men who get unwell at the sight, or thought, of needles. I don't know any studies on it, but maybe it's universal with feeble young men :razz:
Can't remember we've ever had an anaphylactic shock.
I got my second jab in mid August and was whondering why there were noticeably more guys at the vaccination centre than during the first time. One of the soldiers told me they had to close for almost an hour because of an anaphylactic shock.
 
Actually, since I wrote that we've had a possible shock - she was rushed off to the emergency room. Don't know what happened after that but she fulfilled the criteria.
Another woman had a severe reaction but no shock.
A lot of people are also getting vaccinated these days. Record amount of infected at the moment and holidays coming up.
 
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