Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[Tom P.]

Not downplaying vaccines at all. You claim it's known?
Ok, if you get a Pfizer vaccine in March of 2021, how effective will it be in 18 months, in September 2022 against new variants that haven't even been detected yet?
Ok, by what percentage does the JNJ vaccine reduce transmission of the SA variant?

Come on, if these things are known, tell us!

How long do the antibodies from the vaccine last in the blood stream?
How long is that level maintained? How does that level change 6 months after vaccine? 1 year after?

What is the response to the vaccine in those under 12?

At what level do we reach herd immunity? Is it 50%? 70%? You said it's known, so tell us!

What is the exact portion of the population that will get vaccinated in the next 6 months... You said it's known, so tell us? (yes, it impacts the threat to someone who is vaccinated. As the threat to a vaccinated person is much lower from another vaccinated person).

You said it's all known -- So tell us?

Again, by the criteria you are insisting on and the level of certainty that you want, we will *never* eliminate restrictions and go back to normal. There will always be unknowns about what is going to happen with the virus and vaccines in the future. At some point, we have to resume our lives and accept that reasonable risk. My guess is that we, as a society, make that decision this summer. It could be a bit earlier or a bit later. But I do know that society is not going to sit around waiting another 18-24 months waiting on more "certainty" about what the future will hold.

 

[DisneyFan32]

They won't, it's not politically advantageous for them to do so.

So Texas will be okay as they lift masks soon? Another surge may be not or or coming....

 

[danlb_2000]

So Texas will be okay as they lift masks soon? Another surge may be not or or coming....

Nobody knows. People may remain responsible without the mandates and things could stay ok. On the other hand people could get to complacent and they could see another spike in cases.

 

[DisneyCane]

So Texas will be okay as they lift masks soon? Another surge may be not or or coming....

Florida hasn't ever had a mask mandate and the local ones haven't been enforceable for several months and Florida has been more "okay" than Texas measured in daily cases per 100k for quite some time.

 

[GoofGoof]

Again, by the criteria you are insisting on and the level of certainty that you want, we will *never* eliminate restrictions and go back to normal. There will always be unknowns about what is going to happen with the virus and vaccines in the future. At some point, we have to resume our lives and accept that reasonable risk. My guess is that we, as a society, make that decision this summer. It could be a bit earlier or a bit later. But I do know that society is not going to sit around waiting another 18-24 months waiting on more "certainty" about what the future will hold.

Yeah, there’s never going to be complete certainty. I think at some point after the vaccine is readily available to everyone as long as the cases are low enough we will see the restrictions come off. 18-24 months isn’t even a conversation, we can’t even get people now to wait 2 months until May. Once most people have been vaccinated come May/June who exactly is going to be left to follow Covid restrictions. The 20% who won’t get the vaccine are mostly Covid deniers who never wanted to follow anything. I have said since December we are vaccine or bust in this country and it’s more true today then ever. God help us if enough people don’t take it or if some new variant defeats the vaccines. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.

 

[GoofGoof]

Nobody knows. People may remain responsible without the mandates and things could stay ok. On the other hand people could get to complacent and they could see another spike in cases.

I work with a lot of people in TX mostly in the Houston area and this is true. Just because the Governor says everything is open and no masks doesn’t mean people will crowd into bars and lock doorknobs now. Moat of the people I talked to on the ground there said they have no plans to change their behavior.

 

[havoc315]

Again, by the criteria you are insisting on and the level of certainty that you want, we will *never* eliminate restrictions and go back to normal. There will always be unknowns about what is going to happen with the virus and vaccines in the future. At some point, we have to resume our lives and accept that reasonable risk. My guess is that we, as a society, make that decision this summer. It could be a bit earlier or a bit later. But I do know that society is not going to sit around waiting another 18-24 months waiting on more "certainty" about what the future will hold.

That's simply not true. Once cases get low enough, where we can test and contact trace, then we don't need restrictions. There will be a "new normal." Everyone agrees on that.

This drum is getting tiresome:
"We can't have masks! We need to just assume the risks!"
"We can't have short term shut downs of non-essential businesses! We need to just assume the risks!"
"You can't expect people to social distance! We need to just assume the risks!"
"It's mostly old people that are dying anyway, we need to just assume the risks!"

Who said anything about sitting around for 18-24 months? IF we aggressively vaccinate, and appropriately mitigate until we get to that point, then we can get the virus down to negligible levels within 2-6 months, or so. If not enough people willingly vaccinate, then we can use a passport -- where only vaccinated people go back to normal, we can do that with a good sense of certainty in another 4-6 months.

 

[seascape]

Everyone will never be vaccinated unless we forcibly vaccinate, 20% of this country is anti vaccine and prefers to believe Bill gates implants microchips in every vaccine to control us.

And if 20% refuse to be vaccinated, we will have everyone that wants to be vaccinated done by April 30. However, some of the 20% will have already been infected and developed antibodies so the pandemic will be over by April 30 because we will have heard immunity.

 

[havoc315]

Yeah, there’s never going to be complete certainty. I think at some point after the vaccine is readily available to everyone as long as the cases are low enough we will see the restrictions come off. 18-24 months isn’t even a conversation, we can’t even get people now to wait 2 months until May. Once most people have been vaccinated come May/June who exactly is going to be left to follow Covid restrictions. The 20% who won’t get the vaccine are mostly Covid deniers who never wanted to follow anything. I have said since December we are vaccine or bust in this country and it’s more true today then ever. God help us if enough people don’t take it or if some new variant defeats the vaccines. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.

We really don't know that, we don't know how many people won't get the vaccine. You're working on the assumption that it will be 20% of adults.

At a recent on-line forum for my school district, the majority of parents are opposed to regular school fully returning until all their kids are vaccinated. The parents overwhelmingly want to keep the mask mandate in schools for 2021-2022 if kids are not fully vaccinated by then.

So there are plenty of people left to follow Covid restrictions after May/June.

A major debate about vaccine passports may come to fruition. We may get to a point by fall where it's, "adults can go back to "normal" as long as they have their vaccine passport." Refuse to get vaccinated? No going to the gym or concerts or even the grocery store anymore.

 

[Patcheslee]

But that's not how science works. We don't know what "low enough" is.

If the public needs a number, stick to 0. When a given community has 0 cases, it can definitely normalize with testing in place to identify any new outbreak.

Now, we can likely normalize a bit before we get to 0, but we don't know what number that is yet.

Jackson Co Indiana 1 New reported case today with 24 tests. We haven't been this low since March 24th last year.

 

[hopemax]

Everyone has read this week's NY Times article about Brazil’s P1 variant, yes? Brazil is being quite the case study on why relying on natural immunity is not a good enough solution. The calculations toward herd immunity will have to be based on vaccination rates. The percentage of people with natural immunity might buy some time to get shots in arms against existing variants, but we shouldn’t get too comfortable thinking we can just add a percentage of them to the vaccine group and call it good for future protection.

Virus Variant in Brazil Infected Many Who Had Already Recovered From Covid-19 (Published 2021)

The first detailed studies of the so-called P.1 variant show how it devastated a Brazilian city. Now scientists want to know what it will do elsewhere.

www.nytimes.com

Evidence via patient records that 25-61% of Manaus’ second wave were re-infections, that antibodies from people originally infected are less reactive to the P1 strain, evidence that the China vaccine Brazil is using (CoronaVac) is less effective against P1 than other types in lab tests.

"Dr. Faria said “an increasing body of evidence” suggests that most cases in the second wave were the result of reinfections."

This is not a panic message, but a stay vigilant because this is not just going to disappear overnight, and what happens in the rest of world still has an impact on what happens here. Get vaccinated, but in the mean time we still need other precautions. We're probably not that far off from the UK variant vs Brazilian variant biological WWE death match for dominance, but hopefully we can get the vaccines done so it's playing out in surveillance of a few thousand cases and not tens of thousands of cases.

 

[danlb_2000]

Everyone has read this week's NY Times article about Brazil’s P1 variant, yes? Brazil is being quite the case study on why relying on natural immunity is not a good enough solution. The calculations toward herd immunity will have to be based on vaccination rates. The percentage of people with natural immunity might buy some time to get shots in arms against existing variants, but we shouldn’t get too comfortable thinking we can just add a percentage of them to the vaccine group and call it good for future protection.

Virus Variant in Brazil Infected Many Who Had Already Recovered From Covid-19 (Published 2021)

The first detailed studies of the so-called P.1 variant show how it devastated a Brazilian city. Now scientists want to know what it will do elsewhere.

www.nytimes.com

Evidence via patient records that 25-61% of Manaus’ second wave were re-infections, that antibodies from people originally infected are less reactive to the P1 strain, evidence that the China vaccine Brazil is using (CoronaVac) is less effective against P1 than other types in lab tests.

"Dr. Faria said “an increasing body of evidence” suggests that most cases in the second wave were the result of reinfections."

This is not a panic message, but a stay vigilant because this is not just going to disappear overnight, and what happens in the rest of world still has an impact on what happens here. Get vaccinated, but in the mean time we still need other precautions. We're probably not that far off from the UK variant vs Brazilian variant biological WWE death match for dominance, but hopefully we can get the vaccines done so it's playing out in surveillance of a few thousand cases and not tens of thousands of cases.

But someone told me the pandemic would be over by the end of April!

 

[DCBaker]

Current Vaccine report -

 

[DisneyDebRob]

Everyone has read this week's NY Times article about Brazil’s P1 variant, yes? Brazil is being quite the case study on why relying on natural immunity is not a good enough solution. The calculations toward herd immunity will have to be based on vaccination rates. The percentage of people with natural immunity might buy some time to get shots in arms against existing variants, but we shouldn’t get too comfortable thinking we can just add a percentage of them to the vaccine group and call it good for future protection.

Virus Variant in Brazil Infected Many Who Had Already Recovered From Covid-19 (Published 2021)

The first detailed studies of the so-called P.1 variant show how it devastated a Brazilian city. Now scientists want to know what it will do elsewhere.

www.nytimes.com

Evidence via patient records that 25-61% of Manaus’ second wave were re-infections, that antibodies from people originally infected are less reactive to the P1 strain, evidence that the China vaccine Brazil is using (CoronaVac) is less effective against P1 than other types in lab tests.

"Dr. Faria said “an increasing body of evidence” suggests that most cases in the second wave were the result of reinfections."

This is not a panic message, but a stay vigilant because this is not just going to disappear overnight, and what happens in the rest of world still has an impact on what happens here. Get vaccinated, but in the mean time we still need other precautions. We're probably not that far off from the UK variant vs Brazilian variant biological WWE death match for dominance, but hopefully we can get the vaccines done so it's playing out in surveillance of a few thousand cases and not tens of thousands of cases.

Exactly this. In a global pandemic it means exactly that. Let’s get us vaccinated, for all who want it but the world needs to be vaccinated also unless we want to close our borders for extended period of time. There are countries who haven’t even started vaccinating yet. Over a 120 I believe.
What happens in the rest of the world does has a impact on us , so true. Stay vigilant and we can do it.

 

[DCBaker]

Numbers are out - there were 132 new reported deaths, along with 1 Non-Florida Resident death.

 

[havoc315]

Jackson Co Indiana 1 New reported case today with 24 tests. We haven't been this low since March 24th last year.

Exactly.... and that will be more common in more places over the next few months.

 

[mmascari]

We can't protect everybody from every thing.

Agree. We mostly don't even try to protect everyone from everything. We try to protect people from things they cannot control that are caused by others. Usually where the thing may not impact the person causing it.

We have rules around sewage/septic disposal and water supplies. They're designed prevent someone from peeing in someone else's water supply.

There you go again, downplaying the vaccines. The threat to somebody who has been vaccinated is not unknown. In fact, I made a post a few days ago where I actually calculated the risk of dying from COVID, assuming the current level community spread, is statistically irrelevant once somebody has been vaccinated compared to the risk of that person dying from any cause in the following 12 months.

If that was the only risk, I wouldn't care at all about the unvaccinated. Unfortunately, vaccines work best when they have limited exposure to the virus they're protecting against. Given enough exposure events, the virus will mutate to one that that the vaccine isn't effective against. It will mutate to lots of things, some the vaccine will be more effective against. Some will be less contagious. Some may cause less impact, some more. Given enough interactions, the mutations that are resistant to the vaccine will be the ones that survive. The ones that aren't simply will not be able to infect anyone and will stop spreading.

That's where decisions people make have impacts beyond themselves.

We need a model that shows the interactions between vaccinated people and the virus at different community spread levels. How that rate of interaction and mutation impacts the chances of creating a variant the vaccine doesn't protect against.

I think at some point after the vaccine is readily available to everyone as long as the cases are low enough we will see the restrictions come off.

Fixed it for you.

Vaccine availability on it's own has no impact on if mitigations are needed. Vaccine usage should drive cases and community spread low enough. Then, based on that, restrictions should come off. Graduated based on different levels for different restrictions.

Once most people have been vaccinated come May/June who exactly is going to be left to follow Covid restrictions. The 20% who won’t get the vaccine are mostly Covid deniers who never wanted to follow anything. I have said since December we are vaccine or bust in this country and it’s more true today then ever. God help us if enough people don’t take it or if some new variant defeats the vaccines. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.

We're definitely vaccine or bust, that's for sure. If we don't get enough to vaccinate that cases and spread decrease, we're going to bust. Until then, even vaccinated people should be following mitigations. We want vaccinated people exposed to the virus at little as possible. Even with all the mitigations in place, there's still plenty of exposures happening, otherwise transmission would drop off even more.

 

[havoc315]

We're definitely vaccine or bust, that's for sure. If we don't get enough to vaccinate that cases and spread decrease, we're going to bust. Until then, even vaccinated people should be following mitigations. We want vaccinated people exposed to the virus at little as possible. Even with all the mitigations in place, there's still plenty of exposures happening, otherwise transmission would drop off even more.

... there is an alternative, though I don't know if we have the stomach for it. Strict vaccine passports. Then even if we don't vaccinate enough people, we can create an extremely safe bubble for those wise enough to vaccinate. (which will be a major incentive for more people to vaccinate).

 

[DisneyCane]

Current Vaccine report -

View attachment 536998View attachment 536999

Closing in on having more complete series than total documented cases in FL. In the grand scheme a meaningless metric but it will feel as if some sort of threshold has been reached.

 

[hopemax]

Who says a prediction can’t realistically happen? I can take a series of financial data and run a model and predict the stock market will drop 20% this year. If the data I have is extensive and shows that trends point that way I could believe it might realistically happen. That doesn’t mean it will. Anytime you are dealing with models and projecting something that is in reality unpredictable there are going to be many, many possible outcomes. None of these experts are saying it’s certain these variants become dominant or that if they do they defeat the vaccines. In each case they are saying it might happen. The media and the public read those headlines and conclude it‘s certain to happen.

And what, pray tell, will be the mechanism from preventing it?

At this level of global case levels and vaccination levels, and US levels of mitigation, there isn't one. It demonstrates a flaw in the messaging that in the rush to stop people from freaking out about every variant that makes the news cycle, that one with the demonstrated characteristics like the UK variant, that someone conscientious like you would interpret, that at this point in the life cycle there is still a chance that it might not become dominant. It's just evolutionary biology, and math at this point. Saying it might not, is as naïve as saying the original Covid might not become a world wide problem because cases were low.

Experts and journalists are so self conscious about how their words get misused, that they put in all these qualifiers and few wanted to go on record with which one of the multiple variants of concern would be the one to come out of the biological death match, superior before we had documented surveillance of the growth rates of each. But people like Trevor Bedford have been using the words "will become dominant" regarding the UK variant, for the last two months and urging decision makers to prepare. The uncertainty being projected is way more about outcome. A variant of concern doesn't necessarily mean "bad outcome." That's what they want to emphasize, so people don't freak out. But if people interpret that the existing variant is going to somehow retain dominance, that's a messaging problem.