That loss of trust in giving us correct/congruent information from leaders is absolutely hurting America right now
> In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.
> "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent," Fauci said. "Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85."
The rest of the interview doesn't make it sound any better.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210212003533/https://www.nytim...
Maybe government officials should just give the facts straight and not try to manipulate the public. Even if the lies work in the short run they have longer lasting effects on government trust (as I'd argue we're seeing now, a year later)
Herd immunity is still the holy grail of dealing with an infectious disease like this. If new evidence says we're not going to reach it, for whatever reason, then you have to shift tactics to something else that may not be as ideal but is more likely achievable.
While I understand that messages/information changing can cause some genuine confusion, the concept that once information is delivered it must never change and if it does then you can't trust any of it is just a wedge used to sow mistrust. While it may be comforting to have that sort of authority/consistency, anybody who tells you they know everything about everything immediately is lying to you.
We don't have herd immunity for _many_ pathogens, yet this is the one we irrevocably change society (in ways I would argue are more harmful to humans than this particular virus)? Nobody has a black and white information, yet our leaders are treating that way and refuse to outline off-ramps to these restrictions.
One adjusts approaches based on changing data. Being flexible is a positive trait.
If people refuse to take the vaccine, then obviously the US will never reach it. It's not inconsistent to say that the US _must_ reach it, yet will not.
The Michael Osterholm podcast goes into this last week.
"So when B117 came along and we see anywhere from 50 to 100 percent more transmission than previous strains, that automatically had to move herd immunity levels up to accomplish the slowing down of transmission. And we don't know what that is. I can truly tell you, as an epidemiologist in the trenches for 46 years, B117 is much more infectious than the strains we dealt with 6 months ago. But I can't tell you with any certainty what that means. So let's just at the outset say, you know, we'd all like to try to achieve concepts of herd immunity, but I don't know what they are. And I can only hope that we can slow down transmission. But I don't have a sense that by itself will ever stop it." [0]
It does not circulate sufficiently but neither is a critical mass of vaccinated people reached due to vaccine reluctance.
> Early on, the target herd immunity threshold was estimated to be about 60 to 70 percent of the population. Most experts, including Dr. Fauci, expected that the United States would be able to reach it once vaccines were available.
> But as vaccines were developed and distribution ramped up through the winter and into the spring, estimates of the threshold began to rise. That is because the initial calculations were based on the contagiousness of the original version of the virus. The predominant variant now circulating in the United States, called B.1.1.7 and first identified in Britain, is about 60 percent more transmissible.
> As a result, experts now calculate the herd immunity threshold to be at least 80 percent. If even more contagious variants develop, or if scientists find that immunized people can still transmit the virus, the calculation will have to be revised upward again.
Also why isn't immunization from natural infection counting? I've seen to reason to _discount_ it; it just seems they are looking for ways to juke the stats
Transmissibility, viral load and virulence should all be correlated.
Alizon, S., Hurford, A., Mideo, N. and Van Baalen, M. (2009). Virulence evolution and the trade-off hypothesis: history, current state of affairs and the future. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22, 245–259.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1420-9101...
When you read stories that a particular variant increases one or two of those three and not the other, you should treat it skeptically. All three should tend to move together.
B.1.1.7 is most likely more lethal, any studies contradicting that are probably not picking appropriate controls to compare against (e.g. the most vulnerable sub-populations of demographic slices having been already hit by old school D614G, so lethality appearing to fall no matter what).
I mean, if it was a _lot_ less lethal, and became permanently dominant, then the problem goes away. I think your mistake is in assuming that it is less lethal. What gave you that idea? It is believed to probably be _more_ lethal.
> Also why isn't immunization from natural infection counting?
It 'counts', but less so than vaccine immunity, because some variants defeat it while not defeating most vaccines (there's some messiness at the edges here; for instance AZ may not work very well for the South African variant).
The goal posts have moved a bit (largely because the shiny new Kent variant is more infectious, and because it's now fairly clear that some variants can break through natural immunity) but that's the virus's doing, not the experts.
Slower and fewer vaccinations increases the chances of new strains developing, and increases the chances of strains that are less affected by vaccination.
Research, especially on something like a new virus, takes time. We know more about the virus now than we did a year ago, so of course predictions and recommendations are going to change. That is not weakness, that is science.
Because they're still collecting data on whether or not vaccinated people can still be transmitters of the virus. And when visiting a business, the business doesn't know who is and isn't vaccinated, so it's easier to just still require masks on everybody.
Also, imagine if we decide to reopen, unmask, and gather again, only for COVID cases to have a massive spike, and have to shut down again. They're playing it safe until we either have more data, or enough people have been vaccinated that it doesn't matter.
Its EASY to have draconian and blanket restrictions. Its HARD to sit down and come up with more reasonable policy that balance risk and preserving some semblance of liberty.
There were only two segments of people who couldn’t handle the draconian blanket restrictions for a short time, the poor and the stupid. I forgive the poor, our government failed them.
Great work on the association fallacy and invoking godwin. Pieces of flare? Maybe Mike Judge can cast you in a sequel to one of his other films.