There are enough anti-vaxxers that the disease is likely to persist forever, albeit at a very low rate. Think how hard it has been with polio. Somewhere, there is a religious leader who will see as a plot to sterilize girls or install a chip into everyone or … If polio were ever to return to the US it will not be wiped out this time because of all the idiots. There is no vaccine against idiocy.
Hopefully this pandemic ends with a vaccine and the realization that vulnerability to biological attack is extraordinary. If a natural pandemic is this disruptive an engineered microbe or virus could be absolutely devastating.
Ironically, if COVID-19 had been more deadly, fewer people might have died.
Actually there is. But the injector make a very loud BANG when you administer it.
Yup, kills the host too fast. Can’t spread.
Well, not exactly. There’s no reason that a more fatal disease would necessarily be more quickly fatal. This disease could have killed children at the same rate and pace as seniors. Thus being more lethal but have a similar spread.
It’s the long asymptomatic period that makes COVID such a spreader despite the fact the actual transmissibility parameter from one known-sick person breathing on one known-healthy-nonimmune person is so poor.
The deniers love to fasten on the low per-exposure transmissibility, but forget that an asymptomatic spreader can encounter hundreds or thousands of people over the week they’re obliviously spreading. And all a single spreader has to do is infect 1 other person to keep it going, or 1.1 other people (on average) to have it go exponential.
A disease that was asymptomatic but transmissble for 3 weeks followed by even a 100% drop dead rate would be all but unstoppable in our current societies.
I’m thinking of something like smallpox. We are woefully underprepared for biological warfare. It’s scary.
Well there’s not much to be done about it outside of normal pandemic responses. It’s almost like being unprepared for a nuclear war. There’s little point in preparing.
Do you know anybody under 55 who has it? It still is often the sickest you have ever been.
If things keep on going the way they are going now, for the next month, I’m thinking that a lot of the anti-vax sentiment will have been cut off by a scary reality.
However, if I am wrong, and claims that 36 percent of nurses have made up their mind not to be vaccinated are true, this thing is going to drag out.
The important thing is to vaccinate those at highest risk of spreading it due to public contact, like teachers, health care works, and retail clerks. I’m 65 and will take it the minute I can get it. But if people like me, who work from home, are offered it early due to common risk factors like age, pre-existing medical conditions, or race, while the guy behind the pizza counter is sent to the back of the line, it is going to take much longer to beat this down into being a rare disease.
So what? I don’t care if it is the worst tummy ache you ever had. We’re talking about real damage, not 2 weeks off work.
And also, I reject your assertion. Most people under 55 barely notice it.
I’m not sure if you oppose my whole post, or just the part about severity of illness…
If you are correct, perhaps younger people should get the vaccine first, as they are more likely to spread it, day after day, without realizing need to self-quarantine.
I won’t seriously suggest that younger people be prioritized, but rather that those in public contract jobs go first regardless of age.
I guess I reject most of your post, just extra specifically the quoted part. Lol.
The way they seem to be going is correct. Healthcare workers as they are the grand disease vector and also we need them at work. Older people because they’re the ones who die. Then work your way down the age cohorts. With super dialed in numbers, yeah maybe there’s a better way. But it isn’t assuming grocery store clerks or pizza guys are main concern just because they interact with the public.