[mcbits]

The vaccines, while "better than nothing" and much cheaper than giving everyone a 6-month supply of N95 masks, were mostly a flop. We have a long way to go before we can just print up vaccines to head off emerging epidemics, but hopefully the lessons learned through this failure will lead to faster progress.

[vlovich123]

That’s a novel take I hadn’t heard before. What data are you looking at to come to that conclusion?

[mcbits]

N95 masks were going for upwards of $50 during the shortage, but even at a nominal $1 apiece (and not including emergency capital investment to increase production), it would have cost $182.50 to $365 per person for 1-2 masks a day for 6 months.

Moderna was given $1 billion for the vaccine development, or about $3 per person, and then $1.5 billion for 100 million doses, or $15 per dose, totaling about $48 for 3 doses at that rate.

You can dig into the other rounds of funding if you're still skeptical, but clearly the vaccines were much cheaper than 6 months of the type of masks that, unlike the vaccines, are actually effective at preventing transmission of the virus.

[nextaccountic]

Vaccines were wildly successful at preventing deaths even though the virus continue to circulate. Omicron isn't milder - Covid variants in general are milder on vaccinated people, and today there's a lot of vaccinated people.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/13/health/covid-19-vaccines-...

[mcbits]

Even with almost everyone vaccinated and/or repeatedly exposed to the virus to refresh their immunity, the virus killed over 70,000 in the US in that last 6 months and over 250,000 in the last year.

In the first months of the pandemic, healthcare workers spent 14-hour shifts surrounded by deathly ill patients and still only rarely caught it themselves thanks to their PPE, in particular the masks that were invented for this very purpose.

It's obvious what could actually eradicate this virus that has multiplied the flu (which was already an annual crisis) ten-fold. Maybe next time a rapidly developed and deployed vaccine will do it, but not this time.

[nradov]

It's obvious that nothing could actually eradicate this virus. Even if you somehow magically eliminated it from every human there are still multiple animal reservoirs that are impossible to control. Someone would just catch it from another mammal again and the pandemic would restart.

[wizofaus]

It is? Or did you leave out a "not"? "Everyone wearing PPE all the time" is hardly an "obvious" solution...

[mcbits]

Not all the time and only for a few months. It would have worked in 2020 if people had access to real PPE (not bandanas and chin straps). And if we didn't have large employers like Publix and the NY Dept of Corrections prohibiting their employees from wearing the PPE that they already had. Many lessons are available to be learned by those willing.

[jjeaff]

This is just conjecture. The vaccines were a huge success at preventing severe illness and saved millions of lives.

Many people working in hospital environments wore N95 masks, gowns, and face shields. You might as well just say that vaccines were a failure because we could have just asked the world public to go on a diet and lose weight. It would be about as likely as getting the whole world to walk around in hazmat suits.

[mcbits]

Gowns and face shields (and gloves) are extra layers of defense, but the masks provide almost all of the benefit. People aren't getting infected in substantial numbers through their eyes or ears or skin, although we couldn't be sure of that at first.