[shajznnckfke]

The virus is pretty bad, right? Ought we be making a cost-benefit analysis where we compare the risks of side effects from the vaccine to the risks of the spread of the virus? In comparison to a vaccine like Gardisil, which surely prevents far fewer deaths than a covid-19 vaccine will, wouldn’t such an analysis actually indicate that the trials be rushed to some extent?

I’m feeling anxious that the current political milieu has a few factors pushing against deployment of a vaccine:

1. Republicans have been downplaying the virus the whole time, so they don’t take the need for a vaccine seriously.

2. Democrats are justifiably afraid of Trump pushing out a vaccine to get a pre-election “win”.

What I’m worried about:

1. Huge numbers of people dying every day from covid-19, with so many people out of work and struggling, with no end in sight other than a vaccine.

What’s the worst-case scenario for undiscovered side-effects on a treatment that has already been tested on thousands of people for months, and how probable is that risk?

[gizmo686]

Covid isn't that bad when compared to the potential harm that a dangerous vaccine could cause when injected into billions of people. Particularly because deploying the vaccine would not immediately stop all the covid19 damage. Further, deploying a dangerous or innefective vaccine would also cause significant long term damage to public health by fueling doubt in healthcare; particuarly since antivaccers are already a growing public health concern.

If we want to rush the process safely, the way forward is a challenge trial; where we deliberatly expose vaccinated people to the virus to see if they get infected. If you cannot get that experiment passed an ethics review board, you should not be able to get widespread deployment of an untested vaccine passed.

[kurthr]

This is quite simply false based on a worst case scenario of a 1976 Swine Flue vaccine level fallout, which had <10ppm cases for those given the vaccine (of which ~50% had severe effects or died).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_sy...

Your chance of getting COVID over the next year is certainly greater than 1% even if you live in a fairly unaffected area of the US (and are likely closer to 10% without extreme measures), while your chance of dying is almost 1% and severe effects (hospitalization) are in the 3-5% range.

https://covid19-scenarios.org/

About 20 million people are expected to get COVID over the next year and over 500 people per day are expected to die every day in the US until there is a vaccine. That is with current economic closure, before schools reopen, and with some fraction of people wearing masks.

Even if you think your chances of becoming very sick from COVID are <1/1000 (no pre-existing conditions <30yrs old), and you think you are so very careful that your chances of illness are 1% , and you don't care about spreading to anyone else... you are better off taking the worst case vaccine we know of.

[ethanbond]

The worst case vaccine to ever hit the market which is a significantly different thing than the worst case vaccine we’ve ever developed.

Do you know how many failed drugs go into a successful one? The success rate is absolutely abysmal.

[kurthr]

Do you read Derek Lowe?

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/03/co...

If you don't, you should... and yes, I do. The swine flu vaccine was accelerated. Many drugs for cancer will literally kill you (slower than the cancer), so the safety of a drug needs to be measured against placebo and demonstrate significant improvement. First, do no harm.

[xnyan]

Are you arguing that the 1976 Swine Flue vaccine incident is the worst possible case or the worst possible case on record? If the former, then what is your evidence or reasoning for that? If the latter, how do we know that this is the worst case we can expect?

[kurthr]

Well, the worst case is that the vaccine is actually a highly contagious world ending bioweapon that causes the extinction of humanity, so the latter.

How do you know that the current death rate for COVID19 won't eventually be much higher for those who have "recovered"? Maybe all those asymptomatic youngsters are actually going to develop horrible debilitating lung and blood disorders? We work with the data we have, and nothing suggests the vaccines are worse than the virus or even 1000x less bad.

Of course we should test them and find the best one(s), and an extra month or three are worth the potential risk trade-off... waiting 3 years "to be sure" is just going to needlessly kill millions.

[xnyan]

It sounds like in judgment of which is worse: over or underestimating the risks of the virus versus taking additional time for more testing.

How many other nations are doing this besides Russia? Why not? If you’re asking me to make a bet, I’m going to side with the vast majority of nation-states. not a guarantee by any means, but the best choice unless I decide to go back to school to study viral infections.

[kurthr]

If the virus was 10x more deadly (if it was 10x more contagious we'd almost all have it by now), I'd probably advocate for even more accelerated testing and deployment (we're close to the edge for full deployment over the next 9 months even in developed countries as it is). It's a trade-off between deaths from the virus and from a vaccine... once the vaccine is 100x lower risk than the virus you start rolling out to high risk profiles (front line medical and essential workers along with 60+ / pre-existing) since they have disproportionate >10x risk of transmission & death... then as production and deployment catch up roll out to medium (30s-50s especially with kids) after another 3-6 months and eventually low risk profiles (those 20s and under without kids or pre-existing conditions). That extra 6 month delay balances some of the risk between virus and vaccine. Since we'll have several different vaccines to choose from we can also pick the most effective ones that have the lowest side effects for later inoculation, while higher risk groups just need some protection today.

[partyboat1586]

>How do you know that the current death rate for COVID19 won't eventually be much higher for those who have "recovered"? Maybe all those asymptomatic youngsters are actually going to develop horrible debilitating lung and blood disorders?

The same could be said about the vaccine since we will have no long term studies.

[s1artibartfast]

For what it's worth, The infection fatality rate 20-29 I have seen is about 7/100,000. I have seen many drugs with higher death rates form side-effects.

[tylerhou]

Deaths are not the only metric. We still don't know the potential long-term side effects of COVID, even for "low-risk" people.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haul...

[kurthr]

The death rate for GBS from the swine flu vaccine was considered horrific at ~5ppm. I don't wish that on anyone, but I'd note that its still 10x better than the COVID death rate for the cohort you've found (average 25), and I certainly hope they don't asymptomatically spread that disease to parents (50) or grandparents (75), which are orders of magnitude worse off.

[s1artibartfast]

Who considers it horrific and in what context?

Here are some common causes of death for ages 20-29 in the USA[1]:

Poisoning kills 460 ppm

suicide kills 336 ppm

Motor vehicles kill 331 ppm

Homicide kills 245 ppm

Heart disease kills 80 ppm

[1] https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcause.html

[shajznnckfke]

Given the way this story is going, I’m somewhat expecting a future where right-wingers refuse to wear masks but happily take the vaccine, while the left goes antivax and refuses to take it (because it was “rushed by Trump”) but continues to wear masks. Perhaps by our powers combined, we’ll defeat the virus!

[takeda]

That's why they want to absolutely make sure it won't cause a damage. The vaccine in 1976 was rushed for political reasons and that didn't end up well besides hurting many people it is also still used as an argument why you should not vaccinate.

[shajznnckfke]

I feel we are overweighting the importance of the political meta-game here and underweighting the real ongoing suffering caused by the virus (in terms of health, but also in economic deprivation).

But if we’re going to talk about the meta-game, I think a swift return to normalcy after the vaccine is distributed could do a lot for the public’s opinion of the importance of vaccination. It could marginalize the antivax movement for decades to come.

[takeda]

Vaccine won't restore normalcy at least not immediately.

> I think a swift return to normalcy after the vaccine is distributed could do a lot for the public’s opinion of the importance of vaccination. It could marginalize the antivax movement for decades to come.

A bad vaccine could absolutely cause havoc. And do the exact opposite, that's why they are being careful. If our president wouldn't politicize it, they wouldn't even have to say it.

[staticassertion]

Why would the people who refuse to wear masks take a vaccine? They think the virus is a hoax.

[codezero]

Not OP, and don’t feel strongly, but I’ll give my opinion on what might make that happen:

Mask is visible - sign of compliance. You can get a flu shot and not tell your ultra-right-wing friends. Even on the right there is a spectrum of course, and folks march to the beat with certain signals, masks seem to be one of them thanks to behavioral modeling from leadership.

[partyboat1586]

Right wingers who don't wear a mask are not motivated by their friends seeing them without a mask. They are individualists. They do it because they see it as resisting being controlled by anyone or subjugated. They are also heavily anti-vax for the same reason. The amount of pressure there is in public to wear a mask is enough that it selects for individualists as the people not wearing masks.

[shajznnckfke]

I think if Trump were to triumphantly and controversially announce approval of a vaccine, it would become a badge of honor among his fans.

[outside1234]

They think whatever Trump tells them to think. So if Trump tells them to take a shot, they will take the shot (FOR FREEDOM!).

[spamizbad]

The 1976 swine flu outbreak is one example of what can go wrong if you rush a vaccine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak

It was rushed by the Ford administration for political reasons and got a lot of people very sick.

[BurningFrog]

Let's quantify "a lot of people".

Out of 45 million vaccinated, 450 got Guillain-Barré Syndrome. I couldn't find info on if any of them died.

That would have been acceptable if it had stopped a disaster, but as it turned out the 1976 Swine Flu epidemic never really materialized as expected.

With Covid killing 1000 Americans per day, I think we should happily accept those odds of side effects or worse.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

If a few hundred people get a brutal side-effect, that's enough ammo for anti-vaxers to severely cripple the general public's trust in our public health systems.

Somewhat frustratingly, this vaccine needs to be held to the same standards of safety & efficacy as any other vaccine, but I do wish they'd let immunocompromised people get access to the thing a notch earlier than they would otherwise.

[Wowfunhappy]

Well, I don’t know what to do about that, but it seems to me that not releasing a vaccine which:

- Lowers the public’s chance of contracting COVID by 50%

- Causes 0.001% of the public to get seriously ill.

...then withholding that vaccine from everyone because some people who don’t understand probability may have a temper-tantrum would be deeply immoral.

None of this contradicts your point per se, but I don’t know what to do about it.

[emiliobumachar]

AFAIK immunocompromised people are legitimately excluded from vaccination and have to rely on herd immunity.

[BickNowstrom]

I think a lot of ammo for anti-vaxers comes from the government and media not being completely honest about vaccine side-effects. That's because it is difficult for an individualist or a socialist to separate public health from individual health. The CDC is not your personal physician. The CDC worries when newspapers publish facts about vaccines, such that some vaccines can cause severe and traumatic side effects, while being 52% effective, because they worry about obtaining herd immunity and need people to accept the vaccine for that. They want you to go through weird little side-effects, like not enjoying alcohol for months, so you don't infect a senior they count in the flu statistics. It's when "do no harm" means sacrificing the lives of a few to save the many.

Then there are political and funding concerns. If your own government funds your research to investigate if Agent Orange is harmful to the point of culpability costing billions, you are very careful and delicate with your conclusions. If your vaccination tests show that black Africans show more severe adverse effects, or that, maybe yes, the connection between vaccination and (worsening of) autism is both plausible and understudied, what do you do? For them its a single kid, maybe 2-3 in 100.000 which will start to suffer from autism years earlier, and a disease eradicated. For anti-vaxers, it is their kid.

Essential workers and at-risk people are first in line to receive the vaccine. The hope was availability in September, and public rollout in the beginning of 2021.

The anti-vax conspiracy mud has completely destroyed online information about this subject. There are more such subjects, where it is very difficult to find what the anti-activists are freaking out about. For instance, my gut tells me that physical and mental torture can be effective to obtain useful information. That that's why the mob, military, and police mainly use it for. But, online, nothing: torture is completely ineffective for the first 10 pages of Google. The Holocaust is another obvious one. 5G rollout ("completely safe, maybe, we don't know for sure. Improved Youtube streaming is important tho!"). Or try to find information on how the riots created a spike in infections. All news sites report on the same non-peer reviewed non-scientific institute paper, saying the riots caused spikes is a lie, yet the paper clearly postulates that riots increased infection for black participants and their families, but taken on the whole, they likely caused non-protestors to stay at home more for fear of violence and this reduced virus spread.

[ethanbond]

Yeah, um, the point of trials is to find out what those odds are.

They can easily be much, much, much worse.

[shajznnckfke]

There’s no hard line where we need to test for t months, and then we will find out if the vaccine is safe. There is no magic threshold where suddenly we know the answer for sure. It’s more like: the size of the error bars on our estimate of the harm y in quality-adjusted-life-years (QALY) is constrained by some function on the time t, where there is diminishing returns as t increases. It’s always going to be possible that there’s some side-effect that doesn’t show up until t+1 months.

Further, we could build an expression of our estimate z of the total harm caused by the virus (including downstream harms like “deaths of despair” from economic damage). By minimizing y-z over t, we can find out the best time to release the vaccine (maybe to the most at-risk populations first).

I don’t think anyone at the FDA is doing this calculation. I think they are just trying to get y below some threshold, which is probably quite low compared to z. My goal in this conversation is to advocate for the people who will suffer and die because of that gap - and hope there is someone better qualified than me that fills that role in the government helping decide what to do. My fear is that the FDA is a highly conservative institution using processes that aren’t well-adapted to the current epidemic.

To add more color, I think if the vaccine comes out with unexpected side-effects, heads will roll at the FDA. But no heads will roll at the FDA over the many thousands who could have been saved by releasing a vaccine sooner.

[hilbertseries]

I don’t think your fear is well founded. The fact that these vaccines are already in phase 3 trials, despite being developed earlier this year, is a testament to how much the FDA understands the current situation. Look up how long it usually takes a vaccine to get from development to phase three trials, I can guarantee you it’s not six months. People in this thread are quite alarmist. Vaccine trials usually take a long time, because whatever is trying to be cured isn’t a pandemic. In a pandemic you can run trials and get results quickly in a large area. Any side effects of these vaccines are going to show up quickly, it runs through your bloodstream and then your immune system takes care of it. We’re running large phase three trials and we’ll have a sense of effectiveness and general safety in a few months.

[nfw2]

Fauci spoke on this matter recently. He said that phase 3 completion is not dependent on time, but rather dependent on the number of events (infections) in the control group.

This to me suggests the main blocker for approval now is proving efficacy, and that we already have enough data to conduct the time-based safety analysis you described with reasonable confidence.

There is another potential safety concern that the vaccine could exacerbate COVID infections. I don't know how critical this concern is, but it would also be constrained by number of infection events, not time.

[saalweachter]

Also, what the reduction is risk of catching the disease in question is.

[Robotbeat]

They can’t easily be “much, much, much” worse for a vaccine that has already been through orders of magnitude more screening than the Swine Flu vaccine.

The Precautionary Principle cuts both ways, and I think this breaks peoples’ brains.

[BurningFrog]

I completely agree.

[seanmcdirmid]

The death rate for the syndrome is 7.5% according to wiki, so maybe 40 deaths?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_sy...

[hjnilsson]

You don’t need to go so far back. The 2009 swine flu pandemic vaccine caused Narcolepsy in about 10 / 100 000 vaccinated, all of which were children aged 12-16 (which is not a group included in trials, by the way).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix

[shajznnckfke]

Is this the worst-case scenario? It doesn’t sound nearly as bad as covid-19.

My concern is that there’s an agency whose job is to minimize the risk of harm from a covid-19 vaccine, but not an agency whose job is to balance the risk of harm from a vaccine with the ongoing harm from not having a vaccine.

[timr]

"Is this the worst-case scenario? It doesn’t sound nearly as bad as covid-19."

This is a case where the media hysteria surrounding the risks of Covid isn't helping anyone. If polling is to be believed, the general public significantly overestimates their personal risk of mortality from the virus:

https://us.beyondbullsandbears.com/2020/07/28/on-my-mind-the...

As noted by the link above, the vast majority of that risk is concentrated in the oldest/sickest people. If everyone in the population is given a vaccine with even a fraction of a percent mortality, it could vastly exceed the risk posed by the virus to younger people.

It would be tragic, for example, to see any serious side-effects from a vaccine in people under the age of 20, who have essentially no risk from infection.

[CydeWeys]

> It would be tragic, for example, to see any serious side-effects from a vaccine in people under the age of 20, who have essentially no risk from infection.

They have little risk of death if they have no comorbidities, but even for a 20 year old, just getting COVID-19 is likely gonna be worse than the side effects from almost any vaccine imaginable. I've had vaccine side effects and I've had COVID and I'd take ten more vaccine side effects over one COVID, please.

There's also the fact that vaccines are never 100% effective and that herd immunity is important, so the 20 year old still needs the vaccine to protect the older people they may run across. So even if the 20 year old is personally somehow guaranteed an asymptomatic, no-damage infection from COVID, they still need the vaccine. Vaccines don't just protect you, they protect everyone else, and a large part of their efficacy in reducing total population mortality is through these herd immunity effects, not just from protecting the individual people who've been vaccinated.

[timr]

"I've had vaccine side effects and I've had COVID and I'd take ten more vaccine side effects over one COVID, please."

I don't know what side-effects you've had from vaccines, but when I talk about risks, I'm not talking about headaches...people actually died from from the 1976 H1N1 vaccine.

[CydeWeys]

... yeah, and way more people are dying from COVID than have ever died from all vaccines put together.

[umanwizard]

> just getting COVID-19 is likely gonna be worse than the side effects from almost any vaccine imaginable

Do you have any non-anecdotal articles that quantify this?

[CydeWeys]

Do you just want to do more research, or are you contending that you think the harm from COVID-19 is actually less than the harm from the most severe side effects of a vaccine we've ever seen?

[nfw2]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...

Even with experimental concerns like the small sample size, 55% incidence of long-term neurological effects is pretty alarming

[shajznnckfke]

Maybe we should first distribute the vaccine to the elderly, then? It sounds like the trade-off benefits and risk would be different there.

[_ph_]

Not necessarily. Yes, the risk from Covid-19 is larger. But you do not know how well the vaccine works for elderly people. If the protection of the vaccine is relatively low, just vacinating elderly people does not make a huge difference in the outcome, if the general population has a lot of infected people. Vaccination is only partly about protecting the individual and a lot about preventing the spread of disease.

Take Rubella. If you are not pregnat, which means every male, you are at no risk by the disease. But Rubella gets vaccinated against these days as a standard vaccination, as the best way to preent pregnant women to get infected is, to prevent the spread in the population. And it is really nastily infective. When I was in the last year of high school, we had a breakout and to my knowledge, every single pupil in that year got infected.

[timr]

Maybe. You still have to be careful, though: your prior assumption is that older/sicker people are more likely to have side-effects from anything. It's also hard to find big enough groups of old/sick people to do sensitive statistical experiments.

Vaccine development is hard.

[b112]

On top of that, there are cases of many vaccines which are much less effective in the elderly.

While secondary causes are likely causing much of the higher mortality in the elderly, sometimes the immune system is just... not as strong. And yes, that does mean something other than COVID-19 could come along an 'get that person', but... here's my point:

https://www.cda-adc.ca/jcda/vol-66/issue-10/551.html

Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) induces neutralizing antibodies (anti-HBs) that protect against HBV infection. ... Response to vaccine following a 3-dose series is typically greater than 95% in young, healthy people, although it decreases with age (< 90% response at age 40 and only 75% response at age 60). Other factors such as smoking, obesity and chronic disease decrease vaccine efficacy and may be used to predict risk of nonresponse.6 Adverse events are minimal, although mild injection-site reactions may occur in 20% of recipients.

Quite a few vaccines are like this. Less effective on the elderly. So we could end up with an even larger horror show, with some COVID-19 vaccines.

Such as, it has some bad side effects, AND, doesn't really help the most-at-risk group as much as desired!

What really bugs me is, there are what? Greater than 70 vaccines in development?

Some governments have pre-picked supposed winners. On top of all the other political bull going on, are they going to stick with those winners, regardless of outcome? Or have preferentiality to those specific vaccines?

Because I can imagine some being highly effective and safe, and others being the reverse.

[refurb]

Absolutely. Prioritize those at highest risk of Covid complications (elderly, comorbidities) or those at high risk of exposure (front line healthcare workers).

It will be interesting once vaccines become available. Vaccinating several billion people will have a lot of operational challenges and will likely take upwards of a year to complete.

[SpicyLemonZest]

It's not the worst case, just the worst one that's happened in a vaccine deployed at scale. The dengue vaccine is a famous example of why careful research and approval processes are required; it's effective and not too inherently dangerous, but was found to actually make the disease worse for people who haven't been infected in the past.

[andrekandre]

slight aside, but from that link, was surpised to see "jet injectors" were used in 1970s.... i just toally assumed this stuff was sci-fi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:8365_loresOLDSCHOOL.jpg

[bXVsbGVy]

I think this used at least at late 80's in developing world, I'm 30 and have a scar (almost impossible to notice). My parents have very deep scars.

[mardifoufs]

Yep, I think everyone from my parents generation in morocco have a very distinguishable, large round scar that resembles a burn scar. Not only does it look painful, but it also looks like an absolutely perfect way to spread diseases. They were lucky AIDs wasn't really around at the time!

[JMTQp8lwXL]

No point shipping a vaccine early if it doesn't actually work. That could do more damage, people thinking it's safe to be around others maskless, when in fact the world population instead received an ineffective vaccine.

[takeda]

And not working that's actually the better outcome of a bad vaccine. It could also have side effects that are worse than COVID-19.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I think you're misunderstanding the problem space here. We don't expect a coronavirus vaccine to prevent close to 100% of infections, so it's not a binary question of working vs. not working. The question is, how strong of an effect at what level of confidence is required to conclude that it's working well enough?

[JMTQp8lwXL]

The effect needs to be strong, because in ordinary times, many social circles cross paths and a much higher level of human contact occurs. The average person won't read into the nuance of 'the vaccine is X% effective, depending on risk factors Y and Z'. They'll rush to their ordinary behavior. While there isn't a vaccine, it's easier to obligate folks into social distancing. That strategy won't exist anymore once we have a vaccine, regardless of its efficacy.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I agree, but that's what the challenge is. We have to solve for the values of X, Y, and Z where we're comfortable with people's inevitable rush back to their ordinary behavior, and it's extraordinarily hard to figure out what those values should be.

[gniv]

> We don't expect a coronavirus vaccine to prevent close to 100% of infections

Why not? I would have thought we do. Most vaccines do (flu notwithstanding).

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't know the biological reasons behind it (I don't even know if the reasons are known, or if it's just based on early results), but Dr. Fauci's said that scientists are hoping for 75% effectiveness and 50-60% effectiveness would be acceptable. (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/07/coronavirus-vaccine-dr-fauci...)

[shajznnckfke]

We already know that some of the vaccine candidates work (ie. immune response). I’m not arguing we should ship untested vaccines, but challenging how many months we need to wait after testing.

[FreakyT]

We know that they trigger an immune response, but that alone doesn't necessarily mean much.

For example, an early SARS vaccine candidate triggered an immune response in tests, but that immune response in practice actually made SARS infections worse.[1]

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3335060/

[shajznnckfke]

Yeah, certainly we ought to see how animals and people with the vaccine react when exposed to the virus, but have we not already done that in the months these vaccine candidates have been tested? The current trials did things like give the vaccine to thousands of Brazilian health-care workers, which should have uncovered any issues like that (in the article you linked, the issue was uncovered by testing in a small sample of animals).

[pwinnski]

We have a process with three stages of trials. No vaccine candidate has yet gone through all three stages, no.

[shajznnckfke]

What I’m arguing is that we don’t need complete phase 3 trials to establish efficacy - we can establish that based on early data from those (and earlier) trials, while accepting larger error bars on the risk of side effects.

[DoreenMichele]

with so many people out of work and struggling

This concern can be addressed other ways. I run two subreddits aimed at helping people establish an online income (as part of the goal).

In a post-covid world, I think we will do more good if we focus more on adapting to a new reality where increased germ control is a permanent expectation rather than expecting a vaccine to fix everything and allow us to return to "business as usual."

[talentedcoin]

I think this comment is correct and is something that is being missed in the present conversation. For those who disagree -- isn't it better to take realistic steps to help people instead of just crossing our fingers and waiting for a vaccine?

[SpicyLemonZest]

It just seems terribly dismissive of all the people who want and demand a return to business as usual. A plan for handling the coronavirus that doesn't include "here's when we'll open the bars" is missing a huge piece of the problem.

[DoreenMichele]

I honestly fail to see a connection between your statement and mine.

I don't generally drink alcohol and I have a permanently compromised immune system, so hanging out at bars isn't some normal part of my life. So I don't understand what you feel is so essential to "here's when we'll open the bars."

Also, a bar up the street from me has already re-opened and (when they were just doing take-out beer) I posted a photo of their take-out beer sign to the local subreddit I run at some point, even though I don't personally drink. So please don't take this as me being a tea-totaller who is dismissing alcohol when I say "I don't get it. I honestly don't get it. Can you please clarify?"

[SpicyLemonZest]

I guess I'm not sure how to respond. It's not about bars specifically; it's about returning to an environment where people are free to crowd about if they'd like. As long as there are top-down rules to micromanage where I can go and how many others I can go with, the problem isn't solved. "Maybe we should just get used to those rules" isn't a solution - in all but the hardest-hit areas, the rules are most of the problem!

[DoreenMichele]

top-down rules to micromanage

I don't operate that way. Generally speaking, that's antithetical to how I operate in life.

I think if we have more support for remote work for people who want/need it and more support for options like Little Caesar's pizza portal which allows for contactless take-out, that helps make life possible for the most vulnerable people. Given how long people are living and our success in keeping alive a lot of people with incurable conditions who need permanent accommodation, this doesn't impinge on the people who want to do a group activity.

If anything, it frees up space for them to have their group thing without so much exposure to random people so their group thing is safer to attend.

I had someone on HN say something to me once about wanting to "hug their mom" and how my comment on HN was somehow antithetical to that. I live with my two adult sons and I have a permanently compromised immune system. I feel strongly that being exposed to "your group" is generally less problematic than being exposed constantly to random stranger with god-knows-what other strains.

I'm not at all arguing for denying people the ability to go out. I've, in fact, been given hell for making statements about not liking mask mandates and not liking the lock down.

My Walmart is closed at night right now and before it closed I and my sons were managing germ control in part by doing a lot of our shopping at 2am when the Walmart was dead. And that's not possible now and going to Walmart is currently one of the most hazardous things we have to do.

So I'm not all interested in doing what you are seemingly arguing against. And I don't see how it has anything at all to do with what I am advocating for and stated above.

Edit:

I feel like you added this after I began typing and I didn't initially see it: "Maybe we should just get used to those rules" isn't a solution - in all but the hardest-hit areas, the rules are most of the problem!

I don't disagree with that. Reading into my statement that I am advocating for "just get used to the rules" is wildly misinterpreting my comment. I said nothing about accepting our current lock down rules at all.

[ffdjjjffjj]

Everyone wants to return to normal, but there’s still a pandemic. “We’ll open the bars when it’s safe” isn’t a satisfying answer but what good would lying about a timeline be?

[SpicyLemonZest]

It establishes a standard for when we need to start looking at alternate plans. The virus isn't going to completely disappear, so there's a very serious risk that "we'll open bars when it's safe" will end up meaning "we'll never open bars". Just look at Australia, where Victoria has been under strict curfew for something like 5 months this year because the only standard they set for leaving is "safe". If our plan is going to end up meaning bars stay closed for a decade, we need to throw it out and come up with an alternate plan, or we're just going to end up with no plan as people and politicians lose their tolerance for further restrictions.

[harambae]

I'm glad someone else realizes that individuals (outside unusually-nerdy HN readers... myself included) do not have infinite patience for enjoyable things being shut down. The DGAF attitude will hit a tipping point whether we want it to or not and jailing 40% of the population isn't possible, even in America with it's love of outsized incarceration [0].

[0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2...

[talentedcoin]

Idk. I think framing the problem in this way is missing a huge piece of the problem. Just because people want or demand a thing doesn’t mean that we as a society are going to be able to deliver it.

I think we need to think seriously about the fact that, even if COVID goes away, lockdowns like this could become part of the “new normal” (?) anyways. And by the time that happens a lot of affected businesses will already be gone or have to change.

[SpicyLemonZest]

You're not entirely wrong, but the flip side of the coin is that people won't comply with a rule just because we as a society would like them to. People will lock down for immediate severe outbreaks, as they used to for polio, but the longer lockdowns continue the more people will just say "no" and ignore them.

[eanzenberg]

I can definitely envision fascist-lite elected officials using lockdowns in the future willy nilly, because the people precisely have gone along with it.

[DoreenMichele]

To be clear, I'm actually arguing for finding solutions so that we can put a stop to such things.

I have zero interest in giving government officials any excuse to do such things. Finding actual solutions that actually work is the strongest possible means to combat such an outcome.

[shajznnckfke]

I do think there will be a permanent adjustment in society to deal with the risks created by this type of virus in the future. Tell everyone to start wearing masks as soon as the outbreak starts, instead of telling them that masks are only for idiots and healthcare workers. Isolate travelers from affected areas before it has a chance to spread, and so on. But I also expect that just about every occupation from industries that are shut down will continue to exist in this new world.

[DoreenMichele]

Well, I didn't say anything about eliminating jobs. Just that I, personally, see no reason to tie the idea of going back to work to a vaccine.

I think we would do better to look for germ control solutions that are already proven and available currently. As one example, ordering online or calling ahead and picking up is a way to support local eateries while minimizing the spread of germs. I'm a big fan of Little Caesar's pizza portal as a contactless pick-up option and I don't see any reason we can't actively promote such existing practices right here, right now, instead of seemingly hanging all hopes on "there will be a vaccine and after it comes out, we can just keep doing the same things the same way."

That seems like needless suffering to me. We don't know how long that will take and, in the mean time, people need to survive right now. Not having any money/resources at all coming in for X months is not survivable for most people who don't have savings and the like to live off of.

[shajznnckfke]

I agree that we should try to adjust to the world we find ourselves in, but there’s only so much problem-solving effort to go around, and I think most people are already trying to do what they can. It’s tough to reshape society on a dime.

[DoreenMichele]

I, personally, think there is insufficient focus on doing what is doable in the here and now. Society is reshaped all the time, every day, by every choice ever person makes. If we aren't even trying to push it in X direction because we are spending our energy justifying not bothering to try that -- "because it's too tough" -- then that strikes me as self-fulfilling prophecy.

I get really tired of self-fulfilling prophecy. Given what is at stake, I think we can and should do better than simply justifying our failures to adequately rise to the occasion.

[marcosdumay]

A bad vaccine is pretty bad, and can easily be much worse than the virus. That's why we test them.