Covid-19 Discussion (moderated)

Improvement in what, vaccine rollouts?

You're right.  Fixed.  I also checked the video to make sure I didn't pull the 3 vs. 4 weeks from from there.

So here is my take on these two quotes. The "just" a doctor and the Nobel Prize are both correct. The problem that I see with the comment made by the Nobel Prize recipient is that he thought he was making a harmless wise comment that would have been appropriate at any other given instance. He is probably correct. But during a pandemic, to have such a respected position and to make a careless comment that might lead thousands of people to interpret it as the basis to not take the covid vaccines, while people are dying left and right is wrong and misguided. Right now everyone needs to be on the same page to get people to vaccinate to bring the numbers down. What we don't need are Nobel Prize recipients making witty smart-aleck remarks that could be used for sound-bytes for conspiracist theorists, which would cause more misinformation to spread (there is already too much around). 

So in essence, both were correct, but that comment was made at the wrong time and place. The Nobel Prize recipient should have at least further clarified and said that people should vaccinate anyways, since the odds of life-threatening long-term side effects are so slim and are far outweighed by the benefit granted by the vaccine, to prevent severe covid-19 symptoms.

but ur not a mod

If you watch the mRNA video I posted, you'll see that there are actually less chances of harmful *long term* vaccine side effects using the new technology becuase of how it works, and zero chances of actually getting infected with Covid-19.  There's always some chance of a new technology having unforeseen consequences.  But comparing the two alternatives of Covid-19's known dangers vs. a tested and approved vaccine is a pretty easy choice for the majority of people.

The argument that you don't know the long term effects applies to Covid-19 equally, or have you not read any of the articles about long haulers or multi-inflammatory syndrome in children that get Covid-19?

Get ready, because mRNA is going to be used for more than vaccines, and it will improve a wide variety of treatments in the future, and treatments that are improved will not be done the old way anymore...so if you are going to wait decades to see if you will accept mRNA treatments, then you might not be able to get a specific treatment you actually need.

Do you wait 25 years to try a new prescription drug?  Do you have a smartphone that uses Bluetooth and emits signals in a heretofore unused wavelength?  Did you forego LED TVs when they came out, because we don't know the long term effects of exposure to LED TVs ...

It's irresponsible to tell people to forego the vaccine if they are young...because death is not the only permanent outcome from Covid-19.  Chances are very high that everyone posting here about being worried about vaccines has already been vaccinated, for Polio among others.  Ironically, young people don't even know what a world with a pandemic is like, this is their first taste of it.  But there's been a global pandemic as often as not through the centuries.  You're lucky, you are going to have a vaccine available only a year in.  In all likelihood, very few in today's world will ever suffer through a stereotypical "bring out your dead" plague scenario where bodies are just piled in the streets. 

If all "young people" listened to your advice, herd immunity would only be reached by attrition and casualties.

The CDC press conferences (normal procedure during previous outbreaks) were shut down by the administration in March, to downplay the virus.  There's little argument about that .  Don't get into the politics of it.

As for video games, Plague, Inc. which is built on actual pandemic spread modeling software, predicts pretty much the exact statistical spread of Covid-19 when you set it up with the right R naught value, etc.  Which makes you wonder why governments all around the world can be caught so flat-footed.  Some notable exceptions prove the rule there.  For the US the answer is more apparent...existing contingency plans were not followed, and organizations and funding were gutted beforehand.

Yes, although there's no point in calling it "a kind of natural selection".  It *is* natural selection in its purest and most efficient form, and it will continue to happen and new variants will keep coming the more the virus is allowed to hang around; that's what viruses do. 

That is a virus strain's main advantage over a human beings, its short lifecycle and distributed nature (in the sense that in one human body's worth of propagating virus, there are a gazillion opportunities for mutations) means it will evolve much faster.  If the virus is infecting a billion people instead of a million people, that's 1,000 times more chances to win the lottery and evolve into a superior mutation.  In this case, it's even worse, because 3 mutations in generally the same direction means that the original virus had a lot of room to improve the "hooks" it uses to attach to cells, so we are letting this virus continue to evolve largely unchecked at our own peril.

Without technology, a virus like this just runs through the entire human race.  Our main advantage is that our brains have allowed us to surpass evolution and apply methods that no other species can.

In other words, get vaccinated .

lol

That is not what he said....he only said it's not 100% ...he never said it was not safe i heard the interview! 

You must be kidding?

I knew exactly that you were talking about him.and about this interview..... he is very nuanced in all his comments and you cannot take only one part of what he say....you need to take all the phrases has a whole

The journalist(sensationalism or right wing?)  is trying to make him say what he didn't say and he correct him at one point...

Le Figaro and France soir are right wing media  

He Think that there was not enough testing on humans...so yes your quote is right!

Yes, I was not talking about you when I said that .  I have found a lot of journalists do this...when they don't totally understand what they are reporting, they soften and disclaimer it by saying "sort of", "a kind of", "almost like", etc. but it's better to do the homework and then make definitive declarations.  Softened definitions are what leave room for people to inject their own biases, etc.

I was wrong;I just didn't remember that part of the interview;it was a long time ago!