D&D and the rising pandemic

[Dannyalcatraz]

The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired.

The Texas doctor had six hours. Now that a vial of COVID-19 vaccine had been opened on this late December night, he had to find 10 eligible people for its remaining doses before the precious medicine expired. In six hours. Scrambling, the doctor made house calls and directed people to his home...

www.yahoo.com

 

[billd91]

The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired.

The Texas doctor had six hours. Now that a vial of COVID-19 vaccine had been opened on this late December night, he had to find 10 eligible people for its remaining doses before the precious medicine expired. In six hours. Scrambling, the doctor made house calls and directed people to his home...

www.yahoo.com

Hopefully, if convened, the grand jury will do the right thing and refuse to indict. Otherwise, this does smack of being racially motivated...

 

[Zardnaar]

Insofar as trends are not guarantees, that's true. And certainly, given that we are annoyed when pizza takes too long to show up, it won't happen "quickly" on our terms. But quickly, maybe even lightning speed, in evolutionary terms.

One can look at previous pandemics. They seem to hang around for around 3 years.

They generally seem to mutate into less deadly variants.

 

[Umbran]

One can look at previous pandemics. They seem to hang around for around 3 years.

The number of useful historical examples, though, is small, making the trend a bit difficult to be sure of. And (we can hope) this time around is different, as other pandemics did not have such successful vaccine development programs.

News this morning is that Pfizer and Moderna have both increased and stepped up their delivery schedules - it is expected they'll deliver enough vaccine for 300 million Americans by May

 

[Garthanos]

The number of useful historical examples, though, is small, making the trend a bit difficult to be sure of. And (we can hope) this time around is different, as other pandemics did not have such successful vaccine development programs.

News this morning is that Pfizer and Moderna have both increased and stepped up their delivery schedules - it is expected they'll deliver enough vaccine for 300 million Americans by May

around 2 months sooner than previously

 

[Umbran]

around 2 months sooner than previously

Yeah. They started with a July estimate, moved back to June, and now to May. So there's a good hope that everyone is vaccinated by mid-summer or so.

Oh, and a cite for this news: Biden Announces Deal For 200 Million More COVID-19 Vaccines

 

[Garthanos]

That's not how viral mutation works though; you'll get various strains with various traits, and the most successful are not necessarily the most problematic.

The more successful tend to be less deadly... they can still have horrible linger effects

 

[Umbran]

The more successful tend to be less deadly... they can still have horrible linger effects

Nobody is saying that the thing is going to become negligible. Merely that chances are over time it will get better for humans, rather than worse.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The more successful tend to be less deadly... they can still have horrible linger effects

To an extent; counterselection is usually for early mortality, but you can absolutely get something like AIDS which is successful and still lethal, it just takes a while (barring modern drug treatments). But that still, in practice, tends select out a fair number of really bad infections over time; its just not a certainty that, as you say, it'll avoid long-term effects.

Or, a long-winded way of saying what Umbran says above.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The number of useful historical examples, though, is small, making the trend a bit difficult to be sure of. And (we can hope) this time around is different, as other pandemics did not have such successful vaccine development programs.

News this morning is that Pfizer and Moderna have both increased and stepped up their delivery schedules - it is expected they'll deliver enough vaccine for 300 million Americans by May

There’s also a few notable counterexamples, like smallpox and bubonic plague. Neither evolved into less deadly forms. One, we used vaccination to eradicate in the wild, and the other we changed our behavior in order to minimize its impact on us (PLUS developed treatments to survive it).

See also anthrax, SARS, MERS, ebola, Marburg, Lhasa, and Hantavirus.