Yeah. The US is apparently already at ~50% antibodies, not counting vaccination. So, there’s a floor on the upside of the vaccine: It did no more than halve deaths. We’re in the middle of a surge, and it looks like most of the remaining 50% will end up catching covid before being vaccinated, so the percentage saved by vaccination will continue to drop.
The ideal strategy without hindsight was conventional wisdom: Protect the vulnerable and stiff upper lip for the rest. That would have more than halved casualties.
With the benefit of hindsight, a 3 month shutdown while hospitals got their acts together (combined with protecting the vulnerable) would have roughly quartered the remaining deaths, but at far lower cost than the full shutdown.
This was predicted by some of the old-guard epidemiologists, which is why they were against the shutdown in the first place.
The cancel culture folks lumped them in with MAGA anti-vaxxers (I blame both sides) and got them censored by the big platforms. Here we are, with 100,000’s unnecessarily dead, trillions squandered, and many careers, businesses and educations ruined.
I suspect roughly zero people have learned a lesson from this. Hopefully I’m overly cynical.
The ideal strategy without hindsight was conventional wisdom: Protect the vulnerable and stiff upper lip for the rest. That would have more than halved casualties.
With the benefit of hindsight, a 3 month shutdown while hospitals got their acts together (combined with protecting the vulnerable) would have roughly quartered the remaining deaths, but at far lower cost than the full shutdown.
This was predicted by some of the old-guard epidemiologists, which is why they were against the shutdown in the first place.
The cancel culture folks lumped them in with MAGA anti-vaxxers (I blame both sides) and got them censored by the big platforms. Here we are, with 100,000’s unnecessarily dead, trillions squandered, and many careers, businesses and educations ruined.
I suspect roughly zero people have learned a lesson from this. Hopefully I’m overly cynical.