Dude, visit Trump country, nobody is wearing mask. Rep governors are already lifting mask rules. Last summer in the middle of Pennsyltucky people went to Walmart without mask, although there was a sign that you needed one and nobody enforced that. Private shops never asked for mask. And this was when vaccine was just a dream. You really expect people behave better when the numbers are down? Get fucking real...
Yep vaccines don't work and they kill more than they save while being covered up to count as covid deaths, fir more FEAR more lockdowns and control. This is never going away, till Great Reset is pushed through
Dude everywhere that put masks in had increase in cases 2 week later, literally everywhere they where put in to increase spread not decrease it. And literally everywhere that rolled out vaccine had increase in covid lol deaths 3 to 4 days later, which is odd as average covid deaths are 14days after symptoms. There not even testing covid positive but still going down as covid. Still aware of 1 covid death and 11 vaccine deaths, 7 suicides, 3 cancer deaths.
Vaccines kill more than they safe?? Wow... hope it's ironic because otherwise it's Qanonshitlike# I understand concerns about vaccines, or anything one puts in one's body. Some have reactions. Some people die for a nut crumb. But that vaccines kill more than they safe means not believing in science. Not believing in science is like denying mathematic.... a bit like saying that 2+2=957, because someone said so, because its conventional.
On the basic 11 ( Vaccine Deaths ) are GREATER than 1 Covid death, that's basic logic right ?? I'm going to have to say YES INDEED!!! Science isn't RELIGION, stop worshiping scientists, they lie, have bills, houses, mortgages like everyone else and they are buyable and make mistakes, Sheldon Cooper is a character played by a actor and nothing like 99% of real scientists, learn this!!! A lot of Scientists are agreeing with me, the 1's you don't agree with and there trying to shut up, why are they doing that ?? Enjoy your vaccines, especially the Oxford AstroBS 1, scared of covid, role up your sleeve and take your chances, most have bad Flu for 3 days, if your old and weak then it kills you, why a lot of countries tried to not role out to over 65s, but WHO said no it's fine, hateful people. 1 of the care homes had ZERO deaths all year from Covid, then 6 within 4 days of Oxford Vaccine so, all went down as Covid deaths, all tested NEGATIVE for Covid. Obviously your not hearing this from a Scientist so why listen!
We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April Feb. 18, 2021 12:35 pm ET PRINT TEXT 1,661 ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN KOZLOWSKI Listen to this article 7 minutes 00:00 / 06:35 1x Amid the dire Covid warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored: Cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it a miracle pill. Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted? In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity. OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH Biden's Pushback on Student Loans 00:00 1x SUBSCRIBE Now add people getting vaccinated. As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, and the figure is rising fast. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March. There is reason to think the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection. As more people have been infected, most of whom have mild or no symptoms, there are fewer Americans left to be infected. At the current trajectory, I expect Covid will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life. NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP Opinion: Morning Editorial Report All the day's Opinion headlines. SUBSCRIBE Antibody studies almost certainly underestimate natural immunity. Antibody testing doesn’t capture antigen-specific T-cells, which develop “memory” once they are activated by the virus. Survivors of the 1918 Spanish flu were found in 2008—90 years later—to have memory cells still able to produce neutralizing antibodies. Researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute found that the percentage of people mounting a T-cell response after mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 infection consistently exceeded the percentage with detectable antibodies. T-cell immunity was even present in people who were exposed to infected family members but never developed symptoms. A group of U.K. scientists in September pointed out that the medical community may be under-appreciating the prevalence of immunity from activated T-cells. Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. would also suggest much broader immunity than recognized. About 1 in 600 Americans has died of Covid-19, which translates to a population fatality rate of about 0.15%. The Covid-19 infection fatality rate is about 0.23%. These numbers indicate that roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population has had the infection. In my own conversations with medical experts, I have noticed that they too often dismiss natural immunity, arguing that we don’t have data. The data certainly doesn’t fit the classic randomized-controlled-trial model of the old-guard medical establishment. There’s no control group. But the observational data is compelling. I have argued for months that we could save more American lives if those with prior Covid-19 infection forgo vaccines until all vulnerable seniors get their first dose. Several studies demonstrate that natural immunity should protect those who had Covid-19 until more vaccines are available. Half my friends in the medical community told me: Good idea. The other half said there isn’t enough data on natural immunity, despite the fact that reinfections have occurred in less than 1% of people—and when they do occur, the cases are mild. But the consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since Jan. 8 can be explained only by natural immunity. Behavior didn’t suddenly improve over the holidays; Americans traveled more over Christmas than they had since March. Vaccines also don’t explain the steep decline in January. Vaccination rates were low and they take weeks to kick in. My prediction that Covid-19 will be mostly gone by April is based on laboratory data, mathematical data, published literature and conversations with experts. But it’s also based on direct observation of how hard testing has been to get, especially for the poor. If you live in a wealthy community where worried people are vigilant about getting tested, you might think that most infections are captured by testing. But if you have seen the many barriers to testing for low-income Americans, you might think that very few infections have been captured at testing centers. Keep in mind that most infections are asymptomatic, which still triggers natural immunity. Many experts, along with politicians and journalists, are afraid to talk about herd immunity. The term has political overtones because some suggested the U.S. simply let Covid rip to achieve herd immunity. That was a reckless idea. But herd immunity is the inevitable result of viral spread and vaccination. When the chain of virus transmission has been broken in multiple places, it’s harder for it to spread—and that includes the new strains. Herd immunity has been well-documented in the Brazilian city of Manaus, where researchers in the Lancet reported the prevalence of prior Covid-19 infection to be 76%, resulting in a significant slowing of the infection. Doctors are watching a new strain that threatens to evade prior immunity. But countries where new variants have emerged, such as the U.K., South Africa and Brazil, are also seeing significant declines in daily new cases. The risk of new variants mutating around the prior vaccinated or natural immunity should be a reminder that Covid-19 will persist for decades after the pandemic is over. It should also instill a sense of urgency to develop, authorize and administer a vaccine targeted to new variants. Some medical experts privately agreed with my prediction that there may be very little Covid-19 by April but suggested that I not to talk publicly about herd immunity because people might become complacent and fail to take precautions or might decline the vaccine. But scientists shouldn’t try to manipulate the public by hiding the truth. As we encourage everyone to get a vaccine, we also need to reopen schools and society to limit the damage of closures and prolonged isolation. Contingency planning for an open economy by April can deliver hope to those in despair and to those who have made large personal sacrifices. Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, chief medical adviser to Sesame Care, and author of “The Price We Pay.”
A Quite Possibly Wonderful Summer Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. © Gabby Jones / Redux The summer of 2021 is shaping up to be historic. After months of soaring deaths and infections, COVID-19 cases across the United States are declining even more sharply than experts anticipated. This is expected to continue, and rates of serious illness and death will plummet even faster than cases, as high-risk populations are vaccinated. Even academics who have spent the pandemic delivering ominous warnings have shifted their tone to cautiously optimistic now that vaccination rates are exploding. Until very recently, Anthony Fauci had been citing August as the month by which the U.S. could vaccinate 70 to 80 percent of the population and reach herd immunity. Last week, he suddenly threw out May or early June as a window for when most Americans could have access to vaccines. Despite some concerns about new coronavirus variants, Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told me that he doesn’t see viral mutation as a reason to expect that most people couldn’t be well protected within that time frame. If all of this holds true, it would mean that many aspects of pre-pandemic life will return even before summer is upon us. Because case numbers guide local policies, much of the country could soon have reason to lift many or even most restrictions on distancing, gathering, and masking. Pre-pandemic norms could return to schools, churches, and restaurants. Sports, theater, and cultural events could resume. People could travel and dance indoors and hug grandparents, their own or others’. In most of the U.S., the summer could feel … “normal.” The feeling could even go beyond that. The pain wrought by the virus has differed enormously by location, race, and class, but a global pandemic still may be as close as the world can come to a shared tragedy. Periods of intense hardship are sometimes followed by unique moments of collective catharsis or awakening. The 1918 influenza that left the planet short of some 50 million people—several times as many as had just been killed in a gruesome war—gave way to the Roaring ’20s, when Americans danced and flouted Prohibition, hearing the notes that weren’t being played. For some, the summer of 2021 might conjure that of 1967, when barefoot people swayed languidly in the grass, united by an appreciation for the tenuousness of life. Pre-pandemic complaints about a crowded subway car or a mediocre sandwich could be replaced by the awe of simply riding a bus or sitting in a diner. People might go out of their way to talk with strangers, merely to gaze upon the long-forbidden, exposed mouth of a speaking human. In short, the summer could feel revelatory. The dramatic change in the trajectory and tenor of the news could give a sense that the pandemic is over. The energy of the moment could be an opportunity—or Americans could be dancing in the eye of a hurricane. The life expectancy in the United States is now a year shorter than before COVID-19. No other country has endured so much death and illness. But for all the failures that led to this point, the U.S. does finally seem to be experiencing some protective effects of population-level immunity. Recent research from Columbia University estimates that the U.S. is already much closer to Fauci’s stated threshold of 70 to 80 percent than our case numbers suggest. Owing to minimal and patchwork testing efforts, lead researcher Jeff Shaman told me, the actual number of infections in the U.S. has likely been about five times higher than reported. This would mean that about one in three Americans has already been infected by SARS-CoV-2. This does not alter the goal of vaccinating as many people as possible, but it does mean that while vaccines are rolling out, transmission rates should fall much more rapidly than if the population were all totally susceptible to the virus. In some parts of the United States that have been hit extremely hard by the virus, the numbers give a sense that—if vaccination continues apace—the worst is behind us in those areas. In North and South Dakota, where leaders have been reluctant to require preventive measures, the per capita death rate is about 34 percent higher than the national average, and 13 percent of the population has had a confirmed case. “That probably means that 60 or 65 percent of the population has been infected there,” Shaman said. “That could mean they’re creeping up on herd immunity.” Indeed, North Dakotans have seen relatively few cases this winter, even while most of the U.S. saw a horrific surge. The state’s mask mandate expired a month ago. For the past six days, the state has reported zero COVID-19 deaths. [Read: The good news of COVID-19 is sticking, for now] The warming weather and longer days should also decrease transmission. In much of the world, summers have proved safer than winters during the pandemic, “apparently by virtue of how much time people spend outdoors, and how likely they are to keep windows open and have fresh air circulating,” says Saad Omer, a vaccinologist and the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health. Light and heat can kill the virus directly, but their main effect seems to be making the world more hospitable for us simply to go outside, be social, move our bodies, and improve our baseline levels of health. Although most experts are hesitant to make concrete predictions about exactly when the U.S. can consider its outbreak over, personal plans can be revealing. Jha has famously been hoping to have a July 4 barbecue in his backyard, including 20 people. By August, he told me, he hopes to travel with his family. The pandemic expert and former assistant secretary of homeland security Juliette Kayyem told me much the same last month: “I have plans to travel abroad in August. I feel like the world will start to move well before then.” Where exactly that world is going, however, is far from certain. A beautiful, COVID-free summer may be a vision of hope, and possibly a reality for many, but optimistic projections about the coming months in the U.S. can mean losing sight of a far more unsettling global picture. As things get better, the world could fall into the same patterns that got us to the point of nearly half a million American deaths. “I’m feeling generally optimistic for the U.S. this summer,” Omer says. “But I’m also having nightmares.” Under no circumstances is the coronavirus simply going to disappear this summer. Cases will drop, and restrictions will lift in many places. But rather than an abrupt end to the pandemic, the coming months will be more like the beginning of an extended and still-volatile tail of the outbreak globally. What that will look like, and how long it will last, depends on how nations cooperate and coordinate—or fail to. Regardless of how quickly the immediate threat of viral illness subsides in the U.S., America’s choices in the coming weeks and months could mean the difference between a pandemic that ends this year and one that haunts everyone indefinitely. Though Shaman’s projections about herd immunity may sound hopeful, the fact that the U.S. was able to identify such a small fraction of our cases is evidence of profound, persistent failures in detection, communication, and prevention. Rapid testing will be key to containing local outbreaks, especially next fall and winter. This infrastructure is not yet in place, nor do many Americans have easy access to high-quality masks. We also have a far-from-impeccable record of accepting lifesaving vaccines when they are on offer. Even assuming that almost everyone gets their shots as soon as possible, the Columbia researchers estimate that in the U.S. alone, roughly 29 million additional cases could occur between now and July, depending on how Americans decide to act and which restrictions states choose to lift. “We should really be redoubling our efforts to control the virus,” Shaman said. Variant strains that increase the transmissibility of the virus could also throw these estimates off, Shaman noted. As the virus mutates, the reliability of immunity from prior infections also changes. The recent outbreak in Manaus, Brazil, suggested that even high levels of past infection didn’t necessarily protect a population for long. Fundamentally, we still do not know how herd immunity will work—if it even does. “The most important thing to remind ourselves of is that herd immunity is only relevant to consider if we have a vaccine that blocks transmission,” says Shweta Bansal, a biologist at Georgetown University. If it turns out that vaccinated people can still carry and spread the virus, then a group cannot assume that they are protected because people around them are vaccinated. It would mean that the finish line is not 70 percent, but 100. [Read: The Brazil variant is exposing the world’s vulnerability] In the absence of a mythically perfect vaccine, the value of each dose depends almost entirely on how that dose is deployed. The situation in North Dakota, for example, stands in stark contrast to Vermont, where only 2 percent of the population has had a documented infection. In a place with low levels of immunity, each dose of the vaccine is more valuable than it would be elsewhere—more likely to save a life or prevent a chronic disease. The Trump administration’s approach to vaccination, since inherited by Joe Biden, was to leave it up to states to handle distribution individually, rather than allocate based on where the vaccines could have the biggest impact. Such an approach leaves pockets of the country open to surges in death and disease, despite national averages falling. As Bansal put it, even assuming that the vaccines do make herd immunity possible, the path will not be a straight line so much as “playing a game of whack-a-mole with COVID outbreaks.” If the differences in vulnerability are significant between towns, counties, and states, the global disparities are chasms. Vietnam, for example, is a country of 97 million people that has had fewer than 1,600 cases of COVID-19 and 35 deaths. They have done an exemplary job of controlling the virus, and presumably have very low levels of immunity. Nonetheless, the current scheme of vaccine production—wherein every country is on its own to produce or procure vaccines from private companies selling them at a profit—leads to redundancies at every level, from innovation to distribution, and severe misallocation when comparing one population with another. The coming months could see, for instance, vaccines going to healthy 20-year-olds in North Dakota before much older, chronically ill people in places such as Vietnam. Americans might have to wonder whether we’ll need to wait until April or May to get shots, but many low-income countries may not have widespread access until 2022, or possibly even 2023, notes Ruth Faden, a bioethics professor at Johns Hopkins University. This haphazard approach will mean deaths among high-risk people around the world who could’ve been saved by doses that went to teenage Americans this summer. “From a standpoint of global equity, this is profoundly wrong,” Faden says. Morality aside, it’s also dangerous for everyone. Providing the virus with new places to spread will allow it to linger with us indefinitely. The longer it sticks around, the more time it has to mutate—which is bad news for the entire world, Americans included. “As long as there are large swaths of people who are unprotected, then we’re going to see variants continue to pop up,” Faden says. “And it’s likely that some of those variants will evolve to escape the power of vaccines.” If we are lucky, year over year, SARS-CoV-2 will evolve to cause milder disease than it has these past two years. That would be consistent with the virus that spread in 1918, which became the seasonal flu. It never again produced the same level of mortality as it did during its first two years, but the virus continues to evolve and kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. Most of us have come to accept this as inevitable. For the coronavirus, that fate is not yet entirely sealed. It could still be avoided if we can draw as close as possible to global herd immunity, not a patchwork of immunized nations. This would require a unified effort of governments and pharmaceutical companies to ramp up vaccine production and coordinate distribution. “The reason we have to do all this careful rationing of the vaccines is that the supply is constrained, and the logistics of distribution weren’t worked out in advance,” says Ed Kaplan, a professor at Yale School of Management who has worked extensively in bioterrorism preparedness. “You need a centralized strategy.” Many experts see the United States as singularly positioned to make this happen. “We need to get vaccine manufacturers together and increase production tenfold,” Jha, the dean at Brown, told me, “and the World Health Organization isn’t going to do it.” The WHO has aligned with other groups to form an advocacy network called COVAX, which has relied on donated doses from countries such as Russia and India, while the U.S. and Canada are focused on building up their own supplies. But no other country has the combination of wealth, influence, and infrastructure to orchestrate a definitive, global vaccination movement, Jha said. “Only the U.S. could lead an effort like that.” [Read: What’s the use of a pretty good vaccine?] After President Donald Trump abandoned the World Health Organization, abdicating responsibility to the global community and squandering American credibility, Biden promised to rebuild the country’s reputation as a leader in health and humanitarian efforts. So far, though, his vaccination approach has been emphatically “America first,” having negotiated deals to secure doses for everyone within our borders, with little mention of a pandemic beyond them. Public-health experts have proposed what a more ambitious initiative might look like, based on the way the U.S. invested in the HIV pandemic. Biden could establish the President’s Emergency Plan for Vaccine Access and Relief, or PEPVAR, modeled on the PEPFAR strategy to lead global AIDS eradication, which has been a boon for U.S. diplomacy as well as global health. As opposed to simply donating money or a certain number of vaccines, the U.S. could build a coalition that can actually solve this problem—and stand ready to address any emerging variants or new coronaviruses in the coming months and years. “We will look back with regret on the months the U.S. wasted by not engaging globally,” says Omer, the Yale vaccinologist. “It’s a leadership opportunity. What better moment to rally the world?” This is what could truly make the summer historic. Instead of aspiring to go back to the way things were, we go forward to how things could be. The canonical image of the Summer of Love may be most useful as a cautionary tale. In 1967, a visible minority listened to the Grateful Dead and discovered LSD, but their anti-war sentiment did not stop the U.S. from bombing civilians in Southeast Asia, and Richard Nixon won the White House that fall. The post-pandemic 1920s gave way to yet another war, and a world that would later be unprepared for a global outbreak of a deadly respiratory virus, despite 100 years’ notice. This summer could bring cause for celebration over not simply having made it through this morbid winter alive, but having built a system that can end this pandemic—and stop the next one. It could be when we ensure that no plague of this magnitude happens again. Related Podcast Listen to James Hamblin on an episode of Social Distance, the podcast from The Atlantic about the pandemic: Subscribe to Social Distance to receive new episodes as soon as they’re published.
Correct, only way this ends is enough of us have had it that it dies off just like Spanish Flu did. Uk had Herd none shielding / hiding away group by June 2020, shielders came out caused the 2nd wave, because they stopped the shielding before vaccines rolled out doh! To create deaths and fear and enable lockdowns. Sheilders wave heading down mid November matches Sweden, then boom ran up for no reason, reason is claimed to be mutation, but most of the deaths 3 to 4 days after vaccine and don't even test positive but still going down as covid not just me saying this few nurses came forward but got hidden and nobody cares. Why didnt Sweden follow UK and elsewhere and continue down as predicted, ah not vaccinating the at risk cause vaccine to risky for them! Looking more and more like Great Reset is winning, elite / big business which have doubled there wealth last year, where as jo public are getting massively in debt trying to stay afloat. Uk want to put every vaccine into everyone !iterally, so more vaccine deaths they can claim covid deaths and more lockdowns. Even WHO are against Lockdowns, but interestingly they ignore this advice only. Masks are stupid ofcourse they don't work, but divide and conquer, lefties blame the people that don't wear ( very few ) for them not working and Righties blame masks for spreading, gets the people fighting cause they are scared, science is with the righties unless there surgical masks or above and used once 15mins max and used correctly, nobody is doing this so making the spread slightly worse, not slightly less. Either way its slight and not worth arguing over. If masks worked you lefties wouldn't have to point the finger at righties for not using ridiculous! This isn't going to be allowed to go away until there plans are done many years away, and very few are fighting it and by the time the rest wake up it'll be to damn late, if it isn't already. Obviously you lefties will label me as a stupid conspiracy nut by 2030 think back bet my side is 99% right
Sweden are only using new RNA based Pfizer, this 1 is pretty damn safe short term, very few deaths from this 1, they've reported 23 5weeks back no updates since, it's the oxford vaccine I'm on 11 deaths days after, causes a severe flu reaction with covid symptoms from what I've seen worse than Covid itself, madness! I know of 6 younger people on there backs for days after oxford vaccine, including my mom, don't take Oxford 1, shut up, it's fine it's been tested so they say, omg I think I'm dying which i wouldn't of had it, no shit! ( Shes not to unhealthy for a 70year old so risk was low sub 1% )