Comment by fivea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fivea | Hacker News Reader

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> Let’s really cement the goalposts where they are so this endless march of (...)

I really don't understand what point you tried to make. There is no goalpost being moved. We have a disease that so far, according to official statistics that are chronically underreported and in some cases blatantly whitewashed, has killed over 5 million people throughout the world. For the past year we benefitted from a better-than-nothing set of vaccines that took the edge out of the disease, but whose effectiveness was further reduced by subsequent variants combined with militant opposition even to basic higiene. Hell, each and every single time I took a jab, I received a flier informing me if the need to wash hands frequently, practice social distancing, wear facemasks in public, and avoid gatherings.

What exactly do you believe has changed, exactly?

If anything, only vaccine uptake has changed, and thankly for the better in spite of this moronic militant opposition. Yet, even if that resulted in a lower death rate, we still have health services completely overwhelmed and unable to cope. Even the US has been breaking death count records.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

Please do tell me, what exactly do you believe has changed?

The message from governments and public health officials have morphed constantly over the past 2 years. I know that dynamic situations require a dynamic response and I also know that people are demanding certainty from officials in an uncertain situation so I don’t really blame anyone. But with that said and since you asked:

- March 2020: Flatten the curve, stay-home orders until we can get enough PPE to medical staff. Don’t worry about masks doctors need them and y’all wear them wrong probably.

- April 2020: Keep hunkering down as we get contact tracing and those contract tracing apps

- May 2020: Lol jk masks work you should all wear masks. Once there is a vaccine we can go back to normal.

- Summer 2020: lots of hedging, students are probably doing fine with remote. Kids like social media anyway so they will be alright

Fall 2020: The curve was flat all summer but not flat enough and now it’s going up again. Lockdown!

Winter 21: Vaccines are here! Ticket to normality!

Spring 21: seriously we promise the vaccines are so good, cdc even said so. Mask off. Here comes herd immunity

Summer 21: actually jk. Vaccines are good but delta! Mask on, Future.

Fall 21: Omicron time! Back to fear, and maybe a booster? We will see the CDC can’t decide.

Winter 21: Oh yeah, should have gotten that booster. Also the cloth masks don’t really work, gotta wear N95! But it’s fine, this variant will make the disease endemic

Now: Endemic doesn’t mean safe dude, get your mask on, live in fear. We might need to close schools again.

Oh you are right, nothing has changed really between today and two years ago, except for all the things they said between those two points!

> The message from governments and public health officials have morphed constantly over the past 2 years (...)

It really hasn't, and it boggles the mind how anyone could even attempt to gaslight about this well-documented topic.

The only charitable interpretation I have of this blatantly unrealistic assertion is whether, for some reason, people intentionally ignore the correlation between how waves start and how they motivate decisive but politically risky moves to reign them back in, the increase in vaccine uptake and it's impact on hospital admittances and death rate, and the impact of new strains.

Also, it boggles the mind how anyone can try to spin scientific progresses, such as the quantification of the impact of adopting makeshift solutions of cloth masks, as somehow things changing. I mean, is it really surprising that cloth masks aren't as efficient as N95 masks?

Where exactly comes this blatant attempt to gaslight everyone around topics that are so easy to corroborate ad verify?

There is absolutely no gas-lighting, which please do not misuse the term[1]. Two people can have very different lived experiences within the same time period and expressing those earnestly is not gaslighting.

Which, judging by your use of the term “jab” I’m going to assume you are British or Irish, in which case we’ve certainly had different experiences as I’m a west-coast American.

My argument around N-95 versus cloth was that it was clear from day 1 to any reasonable person that N-95 offers better protection than cloth masks. We had two years of business and school closures, several stimulus packages etc. and it wasn’t until literally last week that the government put forward a plan to distribute N-95 masks at pharmacies at no cost. That should have been standard operating procedure from day 1, but not. Culture was too focused on the performative act of masking over actually using effectual masks.

And you mention “how waves start” and how that motivates how decisive action is taken. It was clear over a year ago that this virus was incredibly seasonal, with outbreaks aligning with when “inside time” happens (winter in the North of the USA, Summer in the South). It was clear over a year ago that this virus is entirely spread via aerosols, and is very unlikely to spread outside. Yet we were closing beaches and chastising unmasked people outside. And while we should all wash our hands, doing so doesn’t really impact an aerosolized respiratory virus. So if public health experts have been so prudently adjusting advice based on constantly evolving data, why were we all so married to the NPIs that we decided on in March 2020? It seems everyone picked their “side” then and refused to cede an inch to the other “side”, which is abhorrent behavior all around.

Of course vaccines have reduced death and hospitalization. As of right now, 74% of adult Americans are fully vaccinated. That means 74% of adults have very strong protection against severe illness. 88% of 65+ adults are protected via two doses. A year ago this would have been considered a miracle. On top of that we have an antiviral that reduces severe disease risk greatly even and especially among high risk. Any of these miracles, (vaccines, treatments) on 2020 would have been enough to avoid lockdowns (and maybe even masks) but now in 2022, we get the constant drumbeat of “well it’s not _quite_ safe enough yet”.

That is why I say the goal posts have moved. Almost anyone in the USA who wants protection can get it _for free_ and we still aren’t living life anywhere near “normally”. That is absurd.

[1] https://www.wellandgood.com/misuse-gaslighting/amp/

> It really hasn't, and it boggles the mind how anyone could even attempt to gaslight about this well-documented topic.

Just as one example, CDC quietly changed the definition of vaccination from producing "immunity to a disease" to producing "protection from a disease". This happened in September when it became clear that covid vaccines do not provide immunity (compare https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm in August and September in web.archive.org).

I am sure you will find a reason why this is not gaslighting. For me it is a pure form of exactly that.

By the way, CDCs did categorically claim in April 2021 that the vaccinated cannot spread the virus ( https://mobile.twitter.com/FortuneMagazine/status/1377810547... ). This is false as we know today.

> Just as one example, CDC quietly changed the definition of vaccination from producing "immunity to a disease" to producing "protection from a disease".

Enough with this bullshit. No one batted an eye when every single year everyone had to take the flu vaccine, and still some who did still ended up catching it. No one batted an eye when the BCG vaccine is advertised to have an effectiveness between zero and 78%. And in spite of that now we are supposed to mobilize out militant ignorance to rail against a specific vaccine because it's not a silver bullet? And this is a vaccine that was quite literally a makeshift, better than nothing, solution for an ongoing problem?

Don’t create a straw man. Nobody here is arguing against the vaccine. As I’ve said elsewhere it’s an absolute miracle and I am fully boosted and have been since I became eligible for the booster.

The argument was whether or not the health authorities are messaging things in a way that is both honest and transparent. The person you are replying to is arguing that they literally “moved the goalposts” of the intent of vaccines all-up to better align with real-world effectiveness. The argument is that the CDC again shot itself in the foot by making a sneaky edit that didn’t need to be made. Of course the goal of a vaccine is to provide immunity. Why change the wording? Just because the current approved vaccines don’t provide perfect sterilizing immunity doesn’t mean that that isn’t the intent. The edit makes it seem like they are changing to goal to make ambition match reality.

Fauci admitting he downplayed masks to make sure doctors had supplied is another such erosion of trust. Yes his cause was noble and yes he may have helped in the immediate term secure supplies but he also created the sound bite that anti-mask people rally behind. Caesar’s wife must be beyond suspicion.

My overall thesis is that public health officials have been treating the population like children since day one. A mix of not trusting the people with real data (cloth masks are minimally effective, vaccines aren’t perfect, children are at a lower risk) and worrying more about messaging than transparency. Another example, being pedantic on what gain of function is. Yes, what the grant proposals were aiming to do may not fit the scientific definition of gain of function but it certainly fits the laymen understanding of the term. So when a layman asks you about it, don’t scoff and try to obfuscate, answer what the layman was essentially asking which was “did the NIH in any way fund research that could have resulted in a virus that is better suited to infect humans”. And Fauci is smart enough to know that that is what was being asked. But instead he argued semantics while FOIA emails showed he knew exactly what the concerns were.

If you act untrustworthy don’t be surprised when people don’t trust you, even if it what are saying is true now.

The unvaccinated are getting hospitalized and dying by an order of magnitude more frequently than the vaxxed. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily

If you're vaccinated, then it really is "it's just a flu, bro." Time to live life and end this idiotic theater. Vaccines are great. Take the win.

Great talking points until you consider the litany of issues with only trusting the numbers. Consider these questions:

- Are unvaccinated with no previous infection and unvaccinated with natural immunity split out into separate categories?

- Are the vaccinated actually still fully vaxxed or are they MONTHS past when their protection is gone and they're still counted as vaccinated?

- Are post-vaccine deaths due to Myocarditis for example being counted as unvaccinated because they haven't reached the 14 day park post-vaccination?

Pointing only to numbers without questioning the methodology behind them is dangerous IMO

> Are unvaccinated with no previous infection and unvaccinated with natural immunity split out into separate categories?

Yes it the latter can prove via PCR test at the time of infection. Anecdotes don’t count

> Are the vaccinated actually still fully vaxxed or are they MONTHS past when their protection is gone and they're still counted as vaccinated?

Yes, it is on the individual to stay on top of things according to their own risk calculus. Vaccines protect the individual. As a thrice vaxxed person I don’t really care if everyone around me is not vaxxed.

> Are post-vaccine deaths due to Myocarditis for example being counted as unvaccinated because they haven't reached the 14 day park post-vaccination?

One of the problems I’ve had with our covid death counts has been counting people who has covid and died as died due to covid. I would be a hypocrite if I said we needed to be that loose with vaccine deaths

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