COVID-19 thread

[MacAnDàil]

Except for some people at the EU, those in favour of closing the border because of an actual problem (a pandemic) were often the exact opposite to those wanting border controls because of migrants, especially migrants from countries they don't like.

[Ares Land]

Except for some people at the EU, those in favour of closing the border because of an actual problem (a pandemic) were often the exact opposite to those wanting border controls because of migrants, especially migrants from countries they don't like.

Yes! Exactly!

I don't know how it is in the US (not much different, I suspect) but here in the EU we're completely incapable of effectively checking and testing people returning from business trips to Brazil or India. You understand, it's not that easy. (Or say they tell us.)
But, as we found out in Ceuta, it's a lot easier when the targets are poor and Moroccan.

[Nortaneous]

I suggested that around January 20-22 would have been a good time to end international travel -- but recommanding that at the time would've required some seriously impressive forethought.

But December? That would have required some eerie powers of prescience!

We have something called a "Central Intelligence Agency". It can earn its paycheck.

Forbidding international travel to a place nobody ever heard about is a little easier than forbidding all travel to major world cities. Who could've guessed?

Sure, Nauru has an easier time forbidding international travel than the US, but they blew their phosphate trust on off-Broadway plays and we put a man on the moon. "But it's hard!" is no excuse when millions of lives are at stake.

It's a "conspiracy theory" in the same sense that the lab leak hypothesis was.

So definitely a conspiracy then?
Pfizer and BioNTech had other customers; European leaders don't give a damn about Trump's reelection, and we didn't get the vaccines any sooner.
For what a real vaccine conspiracy looks like: check out Sinovac or Sputnik-V. That's what sensible politicians with too much power do: they cobble together something barely adequate, rush it through testing and proclaim the crisis is over. (If you ever admitted there was a crisis in the first place.)

Plus, elaying vaccines and causing thousands of unnecessary death just to make Trump look bad?. Man, talk about overkill. The one thing you have to do to make Trump look bad is let him talk.

Why did they decide - after a discussion with the FDA - to deviate from their published protocol? And do European leaders really not care who the commander in chief of their friendly neighborhood superpower is?

(Doesn't Sputnik V basically work?)

Except for some people at the EU, those in favour of closing the border because of an actual problem (a pandemic) were often the exact opposite to those wanting border controls because of migrants, especially migrants from countries they don't like.

What I saw in the US was the other way around. Our anti-border-control types held fast to the idea that border control is always both racist and impossible, and responded to the response to the pandemic by getting very mad that anyone would propose anything about borders, suggesting that it was just a flu and not worth worrying about, and so on. The political polarity of the issue in general was the opposite of what we're used to until around the time of the mask mandate - I first heard about it in January from some far-right extremists, who went on to spend a few months getting mad at Democrat-aligned rags like Vox for running articles about how everything was going to be fine. (IIRC, one of the rags even brought in a psychologist to talk about how the people getting worried about the Wuhan flu just had a mental disorder.)

[Ares Land]

We have something called a "Central Intelligence Agency". It can earn its paycheck.

Sure, but it didn't nor did its counterparts in many other countries. I'd love to know why too!
And I can't say I'm not intrigued by the fact that countries that have an obvious interest in watching the PRC very carefully, Vietnam and Taiwan, fori instance took the situation very seriously, very early on.

And do European leaders really not care who the commander in chief of their friendly neighborhood superpower is?

I know this is a weird take, but hear me out.
Why should they, really? Europe-US relationships aren't going to change much anyway. It's all decided ultimately by national/supranational interest, which doesn't change that much.
As far as we can tell, Macron kind of liked Trump. Bush made tired old clowns like Schröder or Chirac look like Father of the Nation-types. The European public doesn't understand Republican -- whenever the US President is a Republican, we feel grateful that we don't have that at home. When our leaders disagree with their American opposite number (as is bound to happen), it looks like they're standing up to the American bully.
However, we love Democratic presidents. We start to wonder why our president isn't more like Obama. Or Biden. And when we can't agree with them, it makes our leaders look bad.

(Doesn't Sputnik V basically work?)

It looks very promising on paper but so did Sinovac and apparently, 62% of Russians don't want it. I mean, the story put forward by the Russian government (it was ready in August and it had 99% efficiency) does make me suspicious. As they, huge is true.

(I'm entirely prepared to reeavaluate a lot of things if it turns out that Sputnik V works as advertised with no major caveats. But I'm not holding my breath. What can I say? I just don't like or trust Putin.)

What I saw in the US was the other way around. Our anti-border-control types held fast to the idea that border control is always both racist and impossible, and responded to the response to the pandemic by getting very mad that anyone would propose anything about borders, suggesting that it was just a flu and not worth worrying about, and so on.

Here the government did say that border control from Wuhan would be racist and impossible.
But our government isn't reallly anti-border control: again, when the people at the border are poor and Muslim they find that border control is neither racist, nor impossible.

The political polarity of the issue in general was the opposite of what we're used to until around the time of the mask mandate - I first heard about it in January from some far-right extremists, who went on to spend a few months getting mad at Democrat-aligned rags like Vox for running articles about how everything was going to be fine. (IIRC, one of the rags even brought in a psychologist to talk about how the people getting worried about the Wuhan flu just had a mental disorder.)

I'm glad you made that observation, and relieved to learn I'm not the only one who noticed: the ones panicking in January were far right, populist or survivalist types.

We didn't have Trump to polarize the issue, so a careful observer will note that here, the very vocal people on both sides, antivaxxers and lockdown/vaccine hardliners are right wingers, and that you'll find both types on the far right.
Left-wingers (with many exceptions, granted) are careful to sidestep the issue entirely and focus on the social consequences instead.

[alynnidalar]

I suggested that around January 20-22 would have been a good time to end international travel -- but recommanding that at the time would've required some seriously impressive forethought.

But December? That would have required some eerie powers of prescience!

We have something called a "Central Intelligence Agency". It can earn its paycheck.

The idea that the CIA are experts in predicting infectious disease is pretty funny. I appreciate the laugh!

[Nortaneous]

It looks very promising on paper but so did Sinovac and apparently, 62% of Russians don't want it. I mean, the story put forward by the Russian government (it was ready in August and it had 99% efficiency) does make me suspicious. As they, huge is true.

(I'm entirely prepared to reeavaluate a lot of things if it turns out that Sputnik V works as advertised with no major caveats. But I'm not holding my breath. What can I say? I just don't like or trust Putin.)

The Moderna vaccine was designed and shipping for tests in February. I don't think August is implausible.

The idea that the CIA are experts in predicting infectious disease is pretty funny. I appreciate the laugh!

CIA nominally exists to gather intelligence in foreign countries. Predicting epidemics in China is in their job description.

CDC has at least one intelligence agency of its own (EIS), which also fucked the goat. Maybe we should replace both of them with, like, a National Department of Bronze Age Mindset.

[Ares Land]

The Moderna vaccine was designed and shipping for tests in February. I don't think August is implausible.

It's just like any engineering job: the testing phase is when the work begins, not when it ends.

***
On intelligence: I do agree that China was covering up something, and that it's generally a great idea to pay attention when genocidal dictatorships are covering up stuff.


Generally, though... I feel we're all being very hard on ourselves.
We can say the management of COVID-19 was a fuck-up, but a fuck-up compared to what? all the other times we successfully identified, controlled and vaccinated against a new pandemic in less than two years?

[doctor shark]

It looks very promising on paper but so did Sinovac and apparently, 62% of Russians don't want it. I mean, the story put forward by the Russian government (it was ready in August and it had 99% efficiency) does make me suspicious. As they, huge is true.

(I'm entirely prepared to reeavaluate a lot of things if it turns out that Sputnik V works as advertised with no major caveats. But I'm not holding my breath. What can I say? I just don't like or trust Putin.)

The Moderna vaccine was designed and shipping for tests in February. I don't think August is implausible.

As a laboratory scientist, I'd say August would've been very implausible.

While the technology for RNA vaccines has been under development for a while (one of my coworkers is working on an mRNA vaccine for the Spring Viraemia of Carp Virus), no other mRNA vaccines are on the market. Sputnik's difference is that it's based on a viral vector, which is a known technology and used in Ebola vaccines. There's a big difference, I'd say, between a vaccine based on a known technology versus one that's a new platform that has yet to be tested.

It's just like any engineering job: the testing phase is when the work begins, not when it ends.

Exactly! And the thing is that, especially in Europe and the US, the human testing regimen is fairly thorough (and for good reason: see, for example, thalidomide), and for many, if not all, scientists, the data analysis is the hardest and most involved part of any study. As a physicist, I can confirm: experiments are the easy bits; data analysis is the more painful.

At the risk of repeating things people know, there are normally three phases to testing:
Phase I: The safety study (is this medicine safe, without even looking at whether or not it works?). This normally is on a fairly small scale.
Phase II: The efficacy study (what dosage and dosing regimen are needed to produce the desired effect, taking into mind side effects?). Often divided into IIa (the dosage) and IIb (more to confirm IIa).
Phase III: The larger-scale study (using the data obtained from phase II, in a larger sample size, does it work as expected?).
Each of these phases can take several years. Traditionally, for most drugs, this can be as long as 20 years. Some of them can be combined, like I/II and II/III, but there is some sequencing necessary: you can't, for example, do a phase III study if you don't know the dosage you need to produce the desired effect. And these are all for good reason: for something like this, once public trust is lost, it's almost impossible to win back, so people need to be certain that the things that they are putting into their bodies will (largely) act as promised.

Just for going off the official timeline of the Moderna, which is exceptionally accelerated compared to the usual process:
• Phase I began in April 2020.
• Phase II, in tandem with Phase I, began in May 2020.
• Phase III began in July 2020. This is when the most important study began, so there's no way a vaccine would be ready to market in August.
• The first results from (ongoing) Phase III studies weren't published until December 2020. The first emergency marketing authorizations came in January, if I remember correctly.

[Nortaneous]

Generally, though... I feel we're all being very hard on ourselves.
We can say the management of COVID-19 was a fuck-up, but a fuck-up compared to what? all the other times we successfully identified, controlled and vaccinated against a new pandemic in less than two years?

Once you get to the point where you need large-scale vaccination against a new pandemic, you've already failed at containment. But I think you're underselling the public health successes of the past century! The US hasn't had a huge epidemic of ebola, zika, or SARS, and has eliminated malaria, polio, and smallpox.

Massive public health failures in the arena of infectious disease are harder to list. AIDS, obviously, but its long incubation period would've made it difficult anyway. Tuberculosis? It escaped elimination, developed multiple drug resistance, is latent in at least a single-digit percentage of the US population, and doesn't have a good vaccine. (There is a tuberculosis vaccine, but it sucks.)

It still seems like our civilization has lost some capability. Old-timers have stories about how they vaccinated everyone in NYC against polio or something in a weekend. And there were a lot of massive fuckups from the responsible authorities - although for all I know this was also the case for polio and smallpox and it's just far enough in the past that no one remembers. If we're lucky, the past year will be half a paragraph in a history textbook and the fuckups will all be pruned for irrelevance.

As a laboratory scientist, I'd say August would've been very implausible.

While the technology for RNA vaccines has been under development for a while (one of my coworkers is working on an mRNA vaccine for the Spring Viraemia of Carp Virus), no other mRNA vaccines are on the market. Sputnik's difference is that it's based on a viral vector, which is a known technology and used in Ebola vaccines. There's a big difference, I'd say, between a vaccine based on a known technology versus one that's a new platform that has yet to be tested.

What about it being a known technology makes it take longer?

Just for going off the official timeline of the Moderna, which is exceptionally accelerated compared to the usual process:
• Phase I began in April 2020.
• Phase II, in tandem with Phase I, began in May 2020.
• Phase III began in July 2020. This is when the most important study began, so there's no way a vaccine would be ready to market in August.
• The first results from (ongoing) Phase III studies weren't published until December 2020. The first emergency marketing authorizations came in January, if I remember correctly.

I'd been assuming Sputnik V made its accelerated timetable with rapid development and human challenge trials or something, but actually they just authorized it before Phase III, which is extremely questionable. Phases I and II lasted from June to August and were published in September, and Phase III lasted from September to November and had an interim analysis published in February.

Procedural violations don't necessarily imply substantive failure, though. Isn't every COVID vaccine technically in procedural violation? Sputnik V is just more so than most.

[rotting bones]

If the Latin American border is closed, will the Americans who left to get cheap insulin and other medical treatment in Mexico be able to get back in?

Regarding Cultural Preservation TM, your children are not YOUR children. Even if you love your way of life, God knows why, it is physically impossible for your children to keep it alive for long. It may survive in a recognizable form for a few generations, tops. You cannot show up to the future through your children. Regardless of who has more children today, what will show up in the future is a foreign country, or if you wait long enough, an unrecognizable species. I already cannot recognize medieval Islam in what today's peasant hordes insist on calling "Islam". Preservation TM is precisely what there is none of in physical reality. Pretending that we do not live in a world of eternal perishing doesn't change anything.

I also don't understand why people still think dictatorship and an autarkic economy will improve society when all mathematical models and real world examples indicate the contrary. For the results of dictatorship, read The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. Is there any reason to think other countries with an autarkic economy won't look like North Korea? Because that is the prime objective of Juche.

However, I agree that all significant contemporary political factions are fascist if you extend their demands far enough.

[Ares Land]

Once you get to the point where you need large-scale vaccination against a new pandemic, you've already failed at containment. But I think you're underselling the public health successes of the past century! The US hasn't had a huge epidemic of ebola, zika, or SARS, and has eliminated malaria, polio, and smallpox.

None of the diseases that you cited are nearly as contagious. In the 20th century, the diseases that come closest are various flu epidemics - the Spanish flu, or the Hong Kong flu of 1968. Neither came close to being contained, and neither were nearly as contagious as Covid. (As I recall, Covid-19 is four to five times as contagious as the flu.)
Frankly I don't know if we suck at containment or not, because we really have nothing to compare the current situation to.

It still seems like our civilization has lost some capability. Old-timers have stories about how they vaccinated everyone in NYC against polio or something in a weekend. And there were a lot of massive fuckups from the responsible authorities - although for all I know this was also the case for polio and smallpox and it's just far enough in the past that no one remembers.

We did eliminate malaria, TB and polio, but that took decades.
Polio was possibly around for millenia before medicine started figuring out what hit people, in the 19th century. The first vaccines were ready in 1955, close to a century later. Early polio vacccines had a not negligible chance of killing you, giving you cancer or just giving you polio. (Some early batches still had live virus. I think that's more sporting than our measly negligible chances of blood clots.)

This time we figured out what was hitting us, before it was coming and had vaccines ready in about a year.

Still, the story of NYC being vaccinated in a weekend intrigued me, and much as I love old folks' tall tales, I had to dig up a bit:
From https://www.archives.nyc/blog/2018/5/24 ... io-vaccine:

In April 1955 the Salk vaccine was declared successful and the New York City Department of Health under Commissioner Baumgartner began a systematic program to inoculate school children right away. In the first year 899,010 New York City residents were given the vaccine. By 1956, 45% of New Yorkers under age 20 were inoculated.

Two years isn't quite a weekend, but still that's a very impressive feat. Now how are we doing in 2021?
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/cov ... age#people
42% of New Yorkers have been vaccinated, in under six months. About four times as fast. (And that's with two doses, and a vaccine that's a logistical nightmare. Also, did you notice how we got a vaccine that has to be stored at -80°C and everyone involved was just like: 'oh, sure, OK, no problem, I do that?' I know in the 50s men were men and all that, but still I think they'd have blanched a bit more.)

So, I don't know. It doesn't look like we lost any capabilities.

I mean, seriously, we got the thing's DNA code on freaking GitHub. If Covid had happened in the 50's, the pandemic would've been really quick. I think it would've gone about that way: step 1) everybody starts coughing; step 2) the dust settles; step 3) 'hey? why did fifty million die from the common cold?'

[doctor shark]

As a laboratory scientist, I'd say August would've been very implausible.

While the technology for RNA vaccines has been under development for a while (one of my coworkers is working on an mRNA vaccine for the Spring Viraemia of Carp Virus), no other mRNA vaccines are on the market. Sputnik's difference is that it's based on a viral vector, which is a known technology and used in Ebola vaccines. There's a big difference, I'd say, between a vaccine based on a known technology versus one that's a new platform that has yet to be tested.

What about it being a known technology makes it take longer?

What are you talking about here? Sputnik V, based on an already used technology, was approved for emergency use first, in August.

Just for going off the official timeline of the Moderna, which is exceptionally accelerated compared to the usual process:
• Phase I began in April 2020.
• Phase II, in tandem with Phase I, began in May 2020.
• Phase III began in July 2020. This is when the most important study began, so there's no way a vaccine would be ready to market in August.
• The first results from (ongoing) Phase III studies weren't published until December 2020. The first emergency marketing authorizations came in January, if I remember correctly.

I'd been assuming Sputnik V made its accelerated timetable with rapid development and human challenge trials or something, but actually they just authorized it before Phase III, which is extremely questionable. Phases I and II lasted from June to August and were published in September, and Phase III lasted from September to November and had an interim analysis published in February.

Procedural violations don't necessarily imply substantive failure, though. Isn't every COVID vaccine technically in procedural violation? Sputnik V is just more so than most.

That's why the authorizations are called "emergency use authorization" (or something resemblant of that), to emphasize that they are not full authorizations and, in principle, subject to be rescinded at a later date. But these authorizations are based off of a sufficient body of preliminary data to show efficacy and not a wild guess that "it'll work".

[Nortaneous]

Once you get to the point where you need large-scale vaccination against a new pandemic, you've already failed at containment. But I think you're underselling the public health successes of the past century! The US hasn't had a huge epidemic of ebola, zika, or SARS, and has eliminated malaria, polio, and smallpox.

None of the diseases that you cited are nearly as contagious. In the 20th century, the diseases that come closest are various flu epidemics - the Spanish flu, or the Hong Kong flu of 1968. Neither came close to being contained, and neither were nearly as contagious as Covid. (As I recall, Covid-19 is four to five times as contagious as the flu.)
Frankly I don't know if we suck at containment or not, because we really have nothing to compare the current situation to.

I'm not sure what "four to five times as contagious" means. Random links on the first page of my search results say the R0 for the Spanish flu was estimated as 1.4-2.8, compared to 1.8-3.6 for SARS-CoV-2 and 2.0-3.0 for SARS-CoV-1. I'm not convinced that the current situation can't be compared to SARS.

The Spanish flu wasn't globally contained, but it was locally contained, for example in American Samoa.

Also, did you notice how we got a vaccine that has to be stored at -80°C and everyone involved was just like: 'oh, sure, OK, no problem, I do that?' I know in the 50s men were men and all that, but still I think they'd have blanched a bit more.

We didn't not - there were some nice PR opportunities for Dippin' Dots, which they took - but they did have commercially available dry ice back then - annual production was 15,000 tons in 1929. (Which is apparently less than the daily production capacity now, so I don't know if the logistics would've worked in the 1920s.)

What about it being a known technology makes it take longer?

What are you talking about here? Sputnik V, based on an already used technology, was approved for emergency use first, in August.

It was behind Moderna in its timetable, but approved for emergency use first because Russia decided to give it that approval earlier in the process.

[Ares Land]

I'm not sure what "four to five times as contagious" means. Random links on the first page of my search results say the R0 for the Spanish flu was estimated as 1.4-2.8, compared to 1.8-3.6 for SARS-CoV-2 and 2.0-3.0 for SARS-CoV-1.

I'd seen figures for SARS-CoV-2 as high as 4 or 5 -- but yes, it looks like these were wild high estimates.
But in any case, say 2.8 compared to 3.6 makes a huge difference in the long run, given the exponential nature of the progression.

I'm not convinced that the current situation can't be compared to SARS.

No, it can't There's been a total of 8,098 cases and 774 deaths for SARS. And the early response to SARS was terrible, compared to Covid-19. The Chinese government even issued an official apology!

The Spanish flu wasn't globally contained, but it was locally contained, for example in American Samoa.

Sure. But Covid is very well contained in American Samoa too. Policies applicable in American Samoa do not apply to the US mainland or continental Europe.

[Nortaneous]

No, it can't There's been a total of 8,098 cases and 774 deaths for SARS. And the early response to SARS was terrible, compared to Covid-19. The Chinese government even issued an official apology!

Compared to... covering it up for months, then claiming human transmission was impossible, then saying it must have come from a wet market, then pressuring international institutions into fucking up the response? It's hard to imagine the Chinese government apologizing for much of anything right now, so I wouldn't read too much into that.

Sure. But Covid is very well contained in American Samoa too. Policies applicable in American Samoa do not apply to the US mainland or continental Europe.

Why not? We put a man on the moon - why can't we close a few airports?

[Travis B.]

Sure. But Covid is very well contained in American Samoa too. Policies applicable in American Samoa do not apply to the US mainland or continental Europe.

Why not? We put a man on the moon - why can't we close a few airports?

Because by the time you realize there is a problem, it is far too late, and it is pointless by then, because the virus is already spreading in your own country. It only worked in the case of American Samoa because of A) luck and B) there are very few channels to close in the first place. And it is not "a few airports", but every source of international flights in the entire US, along with the entire land borders of the US.

[bradrn]

Sure. But Covid is very well contained in American Samoa too. Policies applicable in American Samoa do not apply to the US mainland or continental Europe.

Why not? We put a man on the moon - why can't we close a few airports?

Because by the time you realize there is a problem, it is far too late, and it is pointless by then, because the virus is already spreading in your own country. It only worked in the case of American Samoa because of A) luck and B) there are very few channels to close in the first place.

It worked in Australia. We closed all the borders in February 2020 as soon as we started to have ~100 cases/day; that let us focus on eliminating cases within the country, a goal which becomes much much harder if you have infected people arriving all the time. Now, a year later, we have suppressed COVID-19 to the extend that 15 cases/day is considered a major outbreak and cause for panic.

And as for your objections about why this shouldn’t work: (A) Australia wasn’t too lucky, since we already had about a thousand cases total when we closed the border; and (B) Australia has many channels to close, all over the country, and there’s quite a lot of people who want to come through them.

[Nortaneous]

Because by the time you realize there is a problem, it is far too late

The government of Taiwan had COVID response measures in place in January 2020.

And it is not "a few airports", but every source of international flights in the entire US, along with the entire land borders of the US.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the US stopped having airspace. It's not entirely without precedent.

[Ares Land]

I looked up a bit on pandemic responses this morning, and I'm very surprised at how (comparatively) lenient the US were wrt to borders.

France, and EU countries in general closed their borders approximately when Australia did. (For various reasons, we didn't do as well, chiefly: it was at least two weeks too late.)

[zompist]

I looked up a bit on pandemic responses this morning, and I'm very surprised at how (comparatively) lenient the US were wrt to borders.

I'm guessing Nort had wet dreams about "closing the borders" because it fits in with his anti-immigrant crusade.

Of course, all the Western countries did limit travel, among other distancing measures. Done right, this could be part of an effective response. Countries that really have limited Covid, e.g. South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Australia, took the virus seriously from early on. They didn't just "close the border"; they quarantined arriving nationals, ramped up testing, and instituted strict contact tracing. It's not that the US did a bad job at this; it's that it never tried it. This strategy is not compatible with the president lying to the public that the virus is a hoax and/or "just the flu."

Trump's response was hobbled, not enhanced, by his racism. He thought it was a big thing to stop Chinese from traveling to the US on Jan. 31. But Americans were allowed back without testing and contact tracing, and they quickly spread the virus. (IIRC it would be legally difficult to prevent Americans from returning to their own country. But having them all come back at once, in crowded airplanes and customs lines, is the opposite of hindering the spread of the virus.)

If you're not going to have an effective response, the best you can do is buy time with social distancing, to keep your health services from cratering. We're actually extraordinarily lucky that vaccines were developed so fast— last spring, the best estimates were that it could take 18 months.

Mongolia is an interesting case study, by the way. They closed the borders on January 27— just 4 days after the lockdown in Wuhan. Mongolians were allowed back in the country in batches, subject to strict quarantine (paid for the by the government). Schools, churches, and other mass gatherings were closed. It worked— 0 deaths all last year. For some reason, however, they're experiencing a surge in cases and deaths right now. It's not easy to be super-vigilant for over a year.

Some commentators have pointed out that the conservative response to Covid has been more or less the same as their response to 9/11: "defy the terror" by not taking any measures against it; yell at non-white people or beat them up. Amazingly, the virus doesn't fucking care about "defiance" or being yelled at.