Exactly. We don't have any evidence that it will. Either we drag this out, or rip the band aid off.....

The white CDC vaxx card is accepted in Italy and other European countries. Show it and you're in. Still need a negative test to return to the US which is ridiculous.

Yeah, I know people who entered Italy this summer by presenting the CDC card.

With the breakthrough cases popping up, don't expect the testing requirement to be lifted anytime soon for return flights to the U.S.

Has anyone used this for the UK to avoid their 10-day quarantine rule? Right now the only vaccine passport they accept is the NHS digitial passport, which you can't register for if you aren't a UK citizen.

The whole UK health system and Covid response is a shitshow, so it doesn’t surprise me that this would be an issue.

When I went to Spain earlier this month, I also showed my paper CDC vaccination card and not my NHS digital pass, which Spain apparently doesn’t accept.

Countries just need to stop being particular and accept whatever is reasonable proof of vaccination.

Tail risk.

.

What the hell does that mean?

Statistical probability; e.g. a black swan event. In other words, the risk of Covid variants will completely breakthrough the vaccines is minimal. Not sure if I agree with that considering the amount of people not getting vaccinated and enabling variants to mutate.

https://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...tributions.png

First of all, each replication of the virus is an opportunity for a critical mutation. Second, in the billions of people worldwide who have or will get infected, in each of whom there can be billions of replications, there will be 10 to the ? (12th, 15th?) power chances for a critical mutation. And we don't even know what a critical mutation might be--the real issue is how different the mutated spike protein would have to be, either chemically or stereotypically, from the original protein to be unaffected by antibodies toward the original.

But given the number of chances for a critical mutation, calculations like "tail risk" mean almost nothing. A better analogy is the one about an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters producing Shakespeare's plays or the Bible. The number of replications = critical mutation opportunities may not be infinite, but it's unimaginably huge and that means it's likely that eventually a breakthrough mutation will happen. That isn't disastrous: It will probably be fairly easy to produce a new vaccine that's effective against it but the issue will be how much testing and red tape governments put in front of the ability to start using a new vaccine quickly.

While all of this is true, there is no particular reason for a more deadly variant to be selected for. Viruses are selected for infectiousness - the potentially deadly immune response neither helps nor hinders it generally speaking. This means that a variant like Delta which can infect the unvaccinated, but causes asymptomatic or mild cases, works good enough to continue widely spreading, and likely won't be crowded out by a strain with similar virulence but an easier time circumventing the vaccines.

Mandating the vaccine is really the best hope. Obviously we can’t grab people and force them to get shots, but making it so that life is very difficult without a vaccine should be a strategy.

Some thoughts for US States:

1. Mandate a vaccine card to enter drivers license renewal facilities
2. Heck, require a vaccine card to enter any State or Federal building or office
3. All schools, Universities, Colleges need to require vaccine for 12 and older
4. To get the die hard Trumpians, require proof of vaccination to renew hunting or fishing licenses, for commercial driving licenses (truckers, etc)
5. Proof of vaccination needed for all trade incense renewals (GC, plumbing, electrical, etc) as well as most other licenses that involve working with the public (medical, dental, dental hygienist, hairstyling, pharmaceutical, tattoo parlor, liquor, etc)

I realize these are a long shot and legally questionable, but we need to get creative with the vaccine hesitant fucktards

Exactly. Good luck convincing the general public or most of the people here of this obvious point. Most people are too caught up in this Sci-Fi-esque hysteria of “the deadly mutant is coming, run for your lives!” Fear is one of the most potent weapons out there.

I don’t even think we need to, or should, cross that particular rubicon.

- We have vaccines that are widely available and free
- The vaccines provide very strong protection against serious illness or death; 98% of hospital admissions in the US are now unvaccinated people
- The healthcare system is no longer under significant strain due to Covid
- Younger people were never in any meaningful danger from Covid
- It is extremely unlikely for the virus to mutate into a highly vaccine-resistant variant in the near term
- It is practically impossible to completely eliminate Covid globally through vaccination

All of this taken together means we’re done.

You offer people the vaccine, they can have it or take their chances. Vaccinated people aren’t actually at risk from infected people around them - that’s the point of the vaccines.

While a vaccine-resistant strain is theoretically possible, it’s very unlikely to just emerge all of a sudden. Perhaps with mutation on mutation on mutation, if we’re unlucky, but that would take time and the scientific/medical community will obviously be monitoring it and developing targeted boosters as necessary.

Further lockdowns should not be tolerated, this mask-wearing nonsense needs to end, and there is no justification for the step toward authoritarianism that vaccine mandates entail.

1. What if those workers are "essential", like so many people were in the spring and summer of 2020, before any vaccine?
2. The second sentence can be changed to justify never leaving the house: "Most importantly, workplace commutes have led to serious injuries and deaths." Now you have justified never driving to work.

^ Plus those serious illnesses and deaths took place pre- vaccines. If they take place now it’s only the unvaccinated individual that would suffer, and that’s their own damn fault.

Just having enough companies start to require vaccination as a condition of employment will be enough. We're getting close to that becoming commonplace.

They put themselves at risk and should be rewarded with extra pay, unless COVID isn't a big deal. COVID must be a big deal in order to ask these kind of questions.
The lockdowns saved a lot of these kind of deaths from happening more lockdowns? :D
As per the thread we lead CA in new cases I guess, so my county is adapting bay area rules. The masks are coming and I have a pack ready to go in my truck.
What if people in the trailer parks don't have a job? Asking for my area.

Great is the enemy of good. We really just need to get to good (+80% vaxxed). If we get to great (100%) then that's great, but that's probably not a realistic goal. But, whenever those people want to get a job they'll probably eventually be required to prove that they got vaccinated.

What should the real herd immunity be, if 80% is good? I was under the impression that after 70% we are fully back to normal. My area just passed 50% and it seems everybody is firm with their vaccine position for now.

80% is probably not a reasonable goal at this point, if we're talking about America as a whole. Sure, there might be some neighborhoods, cities, or even metro areas with 80%+ vaccination rates (even the high vaccine uptake Bay Area is still only at 77% fully vaccinated for ages 12+), but as you zoom out, CA is only at 63% fully vaccinated for ages 18+.

The US right now is only at 60% fully vaccinated for ages 18+ and 57% for ages 12+.

Like TWAK said, everybody is likely firm with their vaccine position right now, so I don't see how we'll ever get to 80%.

The R value of Delta is much, much higher than regular COVID. Each infected person infects 10 or more people - basically everyone they come into contact with who is unvaccinated plus some who were vaccinated as well, because they shed 1200 times more virus.

A higher R value means a much higher proportion of the general public needs to be immune/resistant (either due to prior infection or vaccines) before it burns itself out.

"More" or "less deadly" has little to do with it. The ability to escape neutralization by the vaccines does. A strain which can escape neutralization would be far more infectious. The delta and lambda strains actually have that to a mild degree but eventually it seems likely strains with it to an even higher degree will randomly happen.

We are going to get to high degrees of immunity because most people who don't get vaccinated are going to get covid and with the infectiousness of delta that may happen quicker than many think.

The delta strain of SARS-CoV-2 is now probably more infectious that was the Spanish Flu. That burned itself out after 2 years and 2 waves. I suspect the current wave of covid could be the last in the developed world UNLESS a strain emerges that is substantially different immunologically though if that happens there's no telling if it is more deadly or less deadly. It could actually produce a milder illness--something humans could just live with.

Effects of businesses downsizing their space and going to hybrid work from home schedules continues to be felt. I wonder how permanent it will be?
https://therealdeal.com/miami/2021/0...ession-levels/

Most unvaccinated people globally are in areas where the vast majority of people are still unvaccinated - meaning there is limited utility for the virus to mutate in such a way to circumvent vaccines...yet.

^ And this is where you repeatedly and, mind-numbingly, just fail to grasp what others are saying.

Being "deadly" has EVERYTHING to do with it. I don't get how this idea keeps sailing way over your head. If catching COVID (for vaccinated people) does not cause any meaningful death rate above, say, common cold or Flu or RSV, then there is nothing more to care about.

But I'm sure you still don't get it, because you are being willfully obstinate about this particular issue.

An editorial that I wholeheartedly agree with
 

July 23, 2021
Put away the COVID-shot carrots. It's time for some sticks.

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opin...me-some-sticks

It's definitely hard to tell where things head from here. My prediction is less mass leasing of major space by smaller companies, with a move towards the use of co-working spaces. Maybe bigger companies with money keep their signature spaces (the Chases of the world). I suspect more and more people though will want to be in an office environment, but not necessarily cubicles with co-workers.

I keep advocating my model I am following where I go into WeWorks to work. I am around people, there's socialization, but they aren't my co workers. I can see a future where people come in a couple days, pow-wow in conference rooms, or in spaces for a couple days, then work from home the rest of the week.

Then again, we will see .... I could be completely off in my predictions.

Disagree.

We aren’t going to eliminate Covid, which would be the only real purpose of universal vaccination. It’s not polio. Vaccinated people protected and unvaccinated people (most of whom will be fine) are not. So what.

It's worth noting even if we could miraculously get high vaccine uptake tomorrow, it would take an additional 6 weeks or so until those vaccinated today became protected - and another 2 weeks for it to actually register in national numbers.

In contrast, some easing back into social distancing by the non-vaccinated would slow down the growth of case counts almost immediately (like, within 2 weeks).

The mask guidance / mandate was never lifted for the unvaccinated. The guidance has always been that only vaccinated people were protected enough to go without masks. I'm not sure that reimposing a blanket mask mandate actually fixes the issue.

We aren't going to eliminate Covid because the extent of politicization and non compliance. When polio hit, everyone just got vaccinated. Those who thought Jonas Salk was injecting vacuum tubes into their bodies had no voice.

No, you are being befuddled.

I am talking about the virus being deadly, not the disease and I am responding to a point made by someone else. The issue was about viral mutations not covid. You are just setting up a straw man in this comment because the discussion seems to be beyond you (which I find astounding but true).

Covid is likely to eliminate itself if we don't. There will be more death and disease that way, but I suspect it will happen.

The degree to which people who've had covid are "fine" in the long run is not known at this point.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-vacc...id-11627038001

The symptoms could be auto-immune as this article suggests but we know covid is associated with pathologic blood clotting and these syptoms sound to me an awful lot like they could be the result of scattered micro-thrombi or emboli.

^ So obviously, assume the worst case scenario, right Howard?

How's basement life? :haha:

You're obsessed and simply don't know what you are talking about. Also, you never post fact any more--just your own opinion which is unsupported by fact.

No, we aren’t going to eliminate Covid because it’s an easily transmissible and not very deadly respiratory virus. Polio is spread by fecal-mouth contact. You don’t get it because someone on the same bus coughs. Better hygiene and clean water had as much to do with it as vaccination.

And it wouldn’t matter how much political alignment and compliance existed in the US, it would still be present around the world, which is more globalised and interconnected.

There is very little vaccine resistance in the U.K., relative to the US or even France, and it won’t be eliminated here either.

The water did not suddenly get cleaner in 1955 but polio almost disappeared in developed countries.

the SW Missouri Delta varient hotspot thats been on the news is spreading NE, StL City and County instituting mask mandates.

They're b-a-a-a-c-k!

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...090670/enhance

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...090664/enhance

But it was never as widespread before that. Eliminating Covid through vaccination is like eliminating influenza through vaccination. Not going to happen.

Covid is most analogous to a bad flu. It’s nothing like polio.

^^^
They may be back but where are the riders? Used to be so crowded people would be hanging off the sides.

^ They re all working from home.

That’s the irony of San Francisco’s role of being the premier tech center. A victim of its own success, tech made it possible for all of the overpaid & socially awkward dorks that once commuted to their jobs to now fulfill their lifelong dream of no longer having to interact with people.

They can now eat Cheetos on their couch and play with their computers while getting paid.

Meanwhile the city and commercial landlords sit there wondering, “Now what the fuck are we gonna do?”

But remote is a great lifestyle. One of the highlights last summer working from home was when I had an appointment for a regular checkup with my primary care physician. Before the appointment I made him get on Zoom - the thing cool people use, and on one monitor I worked and the other I demanded and watched him wipe down his office with Clorox wipes. Sometimes I had to point out spots he missed. Once I was satisfied I went the appointment. After my appointment I made him write an email to me thanking me for my business, of course this was before I paid him. Paying that bill is still up in the air as I push that can down the road as long as I can. I walked out of his office laughing and thinking that idiot has to wear a mask at work all day and go into an office. Once home I went back to my couch to work.

^ :haha:

Looks like they're testing it. Also, aren't the cable cars mostly just a tourist trap now?

Sounds like some Australians are finally growing a pair?

https://apple.news/A7ZZI4U1KTz2N54s0dJKnXQ