But the virus is endemic and vaccines will not stop it from being caught by everybody at some point.
You can't lockdown the virus away. You can't stop the spread by canceling flights either. Just seems like awful policymaking driven by virtue signaling.
Covid is here forever, and that's life.
I fully expect to contract the virus at some point, and that's fine. I'm well protected by vaccination and the rate of propagation in the country is moderate enough that the hospitals aren't being overwhelmed by huge surges in infections and deaths any more.
Slowing down and limiting the impact of the virus doesn't stop it, correct, but it does massively reduce the damage it causes. That is very much worth doing, as the experience here in the UK clearly shows.
Did the stricter lockdowns make a difference in the end?
We were hammered early on because we are very highly connected with the rest of the world. London is very international, and Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world, out of proportion to our population size. We were always going to take a heavy hit.
Nevertheless as soon as vaccines became available we have had broad adoption, and ever since we've been reaping the rewards. Delta arrived here early, but by then our vaccine take up was enough that it didn't really make as much of an impact on us as it has elsewhere.
It's just amazing to me that in 2021 here on HN the fact that vaccines protect against viruses is an actual question, or in any way political.
They likely also have some marginal impact on transmissibility.
But the data shows pretty clearly that the effect on reduction in transmissibility is quite low, or else there would be an obvious relationship in the data in infection rate vs vaccine uptake... Which clearly there isn't. If you believe otherwise, please share data proving some macro effect of reduced case counts correlated with vaccine uptake.
There's nothing political about what I'm saying. I am arguing against policies that are not backed by the data or science.
People proposing policies that are not evidence based are the political ones.
In places where hospitals were under capacity, deaths were significantly lower. Germany is a good example of this.
Overwhelmed healthcare systems, by comparison, saw lots more deaths.
Once it escaped Wuhan the goal was no longer to contain, but to control and soften the impact.
Plenty of people live their whole lives without catching smallpox or polio. We have/can develop effective vaccines for COVID. Why should it be different?
Not all viruses are the same, and sarscov2 is much more like cold/flu than polio.
Specifically, saracov2 has reservoirs in animals. Unless you had an effective vaccine that also works for cats, dogs, deer etc and the ability to actually deploy it (think wild deer all over the US), it’s here to stay.
Good thing we didn't take that attitude with smallpox. Or polio. We have eradicated disease. It's not like we've never done this before.
There's something called proportionate response. Personally I think policymakers should consider the actual pros and cons and the weight of them, rather than virtue signal as if everybody can be saved from every ailment, and acting as if second order effects don't exist.
We also could have locked down every winter to save people from dying due to flu. Why do you think we didn't do that before, when it could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives? Why don't we wear masks 24/7 to protect from flu?
Vaccination stopped smallpox and polio. Failure at Zero Covid is the result of poor, anti-realistic policies and attitudes - like yours, for example.
It's not because it's impossible, either economically or scientifically.
Vaccination did not stop measles or whooping cough, and has not even reduced their spread (only their symptoms) despite decades of availability.
Both of their vaccines are leaky - just like the Covid vaccine.
Measles vaccine is, indeed, likely the best vaccine ever in terms of efficiency and safety. It’s also sterilizing rather than leaky.
