Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[grumbler]

Can you get to the fucking point you're trying to make, instead of this death by a thousand questions routine?  I'm sure you're seeing some connection between this story and me pointing out to you that making safety policy decisions requires a finite price of life, but I assure you that this logic is too tenuous to discover by Socratic method.  Why don't you just shit it out already so that you're not the only one being enlightened here?

I think the reason he can't make an argument is because this story is unrelated to any argument that you have made.  It isn't clear whether he is not bright enough to realize that, or he thinks you are not bright enough to realize that.

[Sheilbh]

I think saying that without vaccine we'll never live a normal life again is just nuts.  If we won't ever develop a vaccine, I'm pretty sure the whole world is going to just say fuck it and hope for the best.  Putting COVID-19 in mortality terms, if you get it, your annual mortality doubles.  If you had a 0.2% chance of dying that year, it now becomes 0.4% chance, and if you had a 5% chance of dying, it becomes a 10% chance.  It's not something to dismiss, but frankly it's not bad enough to be living in a permanent siege mode.

Sure and I wonder when the point that opinions shift happens.  But I also think people's behaviour would change without lockdown - I think that'll happen until there's a vaccine/cure. Obviously that change will be lower if we're not making a conscious, social decision to distance.

[crazy canuck]

There are like, 30 vaccines being tested? Pretty sure some will work. There are actually few viruses we don't have a vaccine for, and only HIV has seen significant resources poured into it.

actually, there are quite a few viruses that do not have a vaccine.  Even if one does not count the flu and cold viruses.

I hope you are right.  But a lot of those tests are trying formulations already made for other things that researchers hope will have some positive results. There is hope, but normally it takes 10 years.  Of course a lot more effort is being poured into this so we will see.

[crazy canuck]

I think saying that without vaccine we'll never live a normal life again is just nuts.  If we won't ever develop a vaccine, I'm pretty sure the whole world is going to just say fuck it and hope for the best.  Putting COVID-19 in mortality terms, if you get it, your annual mortality doubles.  If you had a 0.2% chance of dying that year, it now becomes 0.4% chance, and if you had a 5% chance of dying, it becomes a 10% chance.  It's not something to dismiss, but frankly it's not bad enough to be living in a permanent siege mode.

Sure and I wonder when the point that opinions shift happens.  But I also think people's behaviour would change without lockdown - I think that'll happen until there's a vaccine/cure. Obviously that change will be lower if we're not making a conscious, social decision to distance.

I think it unlikely most would willingly be crammed into a sporting event, as an example, without widespread effective vaccination programs.  Here most stores were not ordered closed, but they had to close because people didnt want to go shopping.  That effect will change over time but I doubt life is going to go back to pre COVID without a vaccine.  Businesses are gearing up for the new normal of social distancing.  The market of consumers will likely prefer those businesses who take their safety seriously.  A minuscule amount of people will do the calculus DGuller suggests and simply not care.

[Barrister]

There are like, 30 vaccines being tested? Pretty sure some will work. There are actually few viruses we don't have a vaccine for, and only HIV has seen significant resources poured into it.

actually, there are quite a few viruses that do not have a vaccine.  Even if one does not count the flu and cold viruses.

I hope you are right.  But a lot of those tests are trying formulations already made for other things that researchers hope will have some positive results. There is hope, but normally it takes 10 years.  Of course a lot more effort is being poured into this so we will see.

Problem with the flu is it is a multitude of different strains and mutations.

Problem with the common cold is it is actually a whole bunch of different viruses of different types.

We won't know for sure, but SARS-CoV-2 is a single virus that doesn't appear to mutate rapidly.  It does look like a good candidate for a vaccine.

[Sheilbh]

I think it unlikely most would willingly be crammed into a sporting event, as an example, without widespread effective vaccination programs.  Here most stores were not ordered closed, but they had to close because people didnt want to go shopping.  That effect will change over time but I doubt life is going to go back to pre COVID without a vaccine.  Businesses are gearing up for the new normal of social distancing.  The market of consumers will likely prefer those businesses who take their safety seriously.  A minuscule amount of people will do the calculus DGuller suggests and simply not care.

This is why I think the lockdown v economy dichotomy is probably wrong.

And in the UK and I think the US too most of change happened before lockdowns were ordered. In the UK they happened after the government advised people to start socially distancing. I don't think society is something that government's turned off with a switch, or can turn back on.

[DGuller]

I think it unlikely most would willingly be crammed into a sporting event, as an example, without widespread effective vaccination programs.  Here most stores were not ordered closed, but they had to close because people didnt want to go shopping.  That effect will change over time but I doubt life is going to go back to pre COVID without a vaccine.  Businesses are gearing up for the new normal of social distancing.  The market of consumers will likely prefer those businesses who take their safety seriously.  A minuscule amount of people will do the calculus DGuller suggests and simply not care.

People won't do the calculus, but they'll act as if they did.  In a way that's one way that the infamous $10 million figure cost of life is derived; it calculates the implicit price people put on their lives when they make decisions that affect their risk of death.  If nothing at all changes on the medical front with COVID-19, people will just get used to the danger in time and it'll be normalized, especially if you can only be sick with it once in your lifetime.  People get used to a lot more deadly situations than that.

[PDH]

I think the normalization argument must be tempered with a couple of things:  1) If the virus comes in waves then normalization becomes akin to "waiting for the next round" which implies massive social and psychological changes, and 2) A long term reoccurring illness with mortality that is higher will also rate massive social changes.

While history is not a great predictor, it can give some clues.  The centuries of reoccurring Black Death, though obviously far more lethal than Covid-19, led to pretty massive social, economic, and political changes.  The very morbid nature of post-Black Death life is striking, and it was a culturally adaptive measure that allowed life to continue, but in a greatly changed way.

What I am saying is that short of a complete and effective vaccine, things are not going back to a pre-covid normal.

[PDH]

People won't do the calculus, but they'll act as if they did. 

And to address this directly.  Everyone will do calculus about the disease, but the variables are manifold and the weight of such things varies according to social group, personal psychology, and societal reactions.

[Iormlund]

What I am saying is that short of a complete and effective vaccine, things are not going back to a pre-covid normal.

An effective therapy would probably have the same effect.

I'm relatively optimist on that front. Monoclonal antibody therapy, for example, has boomed in the last 20 years. Those medications are tremendously lucrative. The one I use is AFAIK the highest grossing drug in the world. So pharma has gotten pretty good at making them.

[celedhring]

The regional government of Andalucía has given the preliminary results for the nationwide immunity survey (results for just that region): 1%. They are one of the regions that have controlled the virus the best, but it's still ridiculously low. This was obtained after testing 16,000 people.

Full nationwide results are expected in around 3 weeks.

[Sheilbh]

Photo from the French return to school:

[Grey Fox]

That's our world now.

[Maladict]

Looks like a harsh version of Guantanamo, for kids.

[Sheilbh]

As someone on Twitter said it looks like something from an episode of Dr Who