The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

It's obvious why China had been imposing such strict lockdowns.  Their healthcare system is, in fact, overwhelmed.

That leads to the question, why?  We have been doing vaccinations for years now.  We should have reached herd immunity.  Nobody follows any precautions in the US anymore and our healthcare system is not overwhelmed.

Herd immunity is no longer going to happen with COVID.  That was potentially possible with the very first strains, where vaccination greatly reduced the rate of transmission.

With the current state of whatever version we're on, vaccination and previous infection affects severity, but doesn't reduce transmission enough to allow for herd immunity.  In short, you can get COVID over and over again, just like the flu, so there's no way to stamp it out.

It is either now or will become endemic, which just means we always deal with it.  The virus will likely continue to mutate.



As for China, it's hard to say exactly, but I think the best guess is that the vaccine that they developed isn't nearly as effective against these more virulent strains and they're not likely to come clean about any shortcomings they have.

That does not add up.

If the vaccines were not as effective, it should have happened during the delta wave. 

Most Americans have only one booster.  Also, it is no longer a pandemic of the unvaccinated in America.  America should be experiencing the same thing as China

It does add up.

The vaccines available in America are very good at preventing severe illness.  They may offer some protection to prevent transmission, but it isn't enough to reduce community spread any meaningful amount.



The original strain of COVID was much less likely to be caught at all if you were vaccinated.  But viruses are living and evolve, so the strains that are easier to spread are the ones that take over.  Thus, the vaccines were still good at keeping you from getting very sick, but not at stopping spread.

Science isn't fortune-telling.  You have info based on data, but as you gather more data, you modify your stance.  Originally, nobody knew if COVID was going to be a seasonal thing that you caught over and over again.  If it was like chicken-pox and you only could get it once, then herd immunity was possible.  But as the virus mutated and became more virulent, herd immunity was no longer a possibility.



Maybe (but probably not), we couldn't eradicated the original strain of COVID, if everyone was on the same page.  But the world is a big place, so that just wasn't happening.

With most Americans choosing not to receive a second booster, shouldn’t we have seen a similar spike in America?

Both the USA and China started rolling out vaccines in 2021

They were effective in the USA that year, particularly against Delta and Omicron.

Their protection waned over time.

Most people have chosen not to get more than one booster.

By this time, anybody who only got one booster should have lost all protection by now

Yet, America has not seen a spike.  China has

It cannot be due the ineffectiveness of China’s vaccines because most people in the United States have lost all protection the vaccine offered.

Other reasons

1) a new variant, which is cause for concern
2) more people in less space

A spike in what, deaths or infections?

It doesn't seem like the vaccine is preventing infection to any meaningful amount, so booster or not, no....infection rates would more likely be tied to seasonal things (weather, travel, gathering) and public habits (masking, staying home when you feel sick, avoiding risky situations).

As for deaths (this is how I guess that it works, but I don't know for sure) I would imagine that you retain some level of resistance long-term.  So yes, regular boosters are best, but if you got a booster last year, that's probably better than nothing even if you missed this one.  Also, those who at the highest risk probably are getting all the necessary shots.  And, not to mention, but COVID weeded out 1 million people in the US that were susceptible. 


Waned, but did they wane to 0?


I think this last statement is likely incorrect.  You probably retain some level of resistance from previous vaccination and transmission.  So, if you got the booster a year ago, but caught a mild case of COVID that didn't hit you, it's more immunity.

It's like the Flu.

The flu kills people every year.  A lot of people.  People who are super high risk often get vaccinated (old people, teachers, etc).   Some people get the flu and survive with some level of resistance.  Some people die from it.

Do you intentionally ignore information that has been disseminated? China did not focus of vaccines or vaccination. They tried to go old school with societal lockdown, becausee that is what the CCCP and Xi understand. Raw unchecked power over the people of China.
Their home.grown vaccine is not mRNA based like Moderna, Pfizer, or J&J. It has been a failure against COVID., and the government refused to allow the mRNA vaccines to be imported into China, and only recently relaxed that restriction for Germany to send over vaccines for their citizens living in China. The government focused on lockdowns and testing instead of encouraging the population to vaccinate. Now they have a much lower pool of.vaccinated people, and they are paying the price.
All of which has been reported on in-depth.
Not sure the angle you are searching for by posting about China, other than I have a sneaking suspicion it involves you having a red ball cap.

Right now, vaccinations don't matter.  Most people in the US have not gotten more than one booster, so all protection should be gone.  If the same variants are present in both the US and China, the effects should be similar.

Things don't make sense.

Incorrect.  Any level of vaccination provides more protection against getting seriously sick from COVID than being unvaccinated.

That doesn't make sense.

If that was true, we wouldn't need boosters.

And the virus mutates to AVOID the vaccines.  That's why we need flu shots every year.

I

Boosters make it more effective but any level of vaccination provides more protection than none.

I’ve only had one booster and sure I might get whatever the hell variant is going around but i have less of a chance of getting it than than someone with zero vaccinations, and I do do I’ll *most likely* have less of an illness than someone who refused to get “jabbed”

That's why you need boosters: to help protect you against the new mutant variants.

COVID vaccines do not provide simple pass/fail protection (and as I've mentioned before, there is not and has never been any such thing as a "100% effective" vaccine).  It is a sliding scale, where those who have never been vaccinated are at the "most at risk" end, and those who have received all boosters are at the "least at risk" end.  Staying up-to-date on your boosters makes you 1) less likely to catch COVID and 2) less likely to have serious symptoms if you do catch it.

And the ignorance continues. The boosters do not disappear. Their efficacy wanes from peak over time, but it doesn't go away completely. What has happened in the United States is different from what is happening in China. China has a much lower vaccination rate than us and their vaccine is less effective. This why they are having issues right now.

Omicron is reportedly more transmissive than Delta, but less severe.  This means more people can catch it, effects will be minor for those who are previously vaccinated.  But breakthrough infections of Omicron were more prevalent, which is why both Pfizer and Moderna have issued updated boosters with better protection against Omicron.  While I don't claim to know much about the Chinese version of the vaccine, it may not be as effective against the Omicron variant as the other US versions.

Questions:

1) What variant is causing the surge in China?

2) Has that variant invaded the US yet?

I am trying to write this out to figure it out.

1) Both the US and China started rolling out vaccines in 2021

2) The US vaccines were effective, China's were not. 

3) Omicron is more transmissive, but less severe than Delta

4) Because the US vaccines were effective, even those in the United States who received only one booster have more protection than similarly vaccinated people in China.

5) Therefore, the US has not been affected by any recent surges, whereas China, because of their ineffective vaccines, is now experiencing a surge because the Omicron is much more transmissible and their vaccines are far less effective.  Because the US vaccines were so effective, even people who have only received one booster have increased protection against Omicron than the unvaccinated and those who received China's vaccine

Is this correct?

I disagree with point 5. The US has been affected by recent surges. You get an increase in winter. We’re still having 30k reported cases a day but many states don’t bother recording cases any more.

We will probably see a surge with the new variant that is currently out but mortality will be stable because of vaccines and the virus being weaker ( in terms of lethality, it’s evolved to be more contagious as less deadly it is its survival strategy, killing your host isn’t a good way to live )

As Dave mentioned somewhere, the virus is now endemic and part of life. As we get older it is something we will have to worry about, just like pneumonia and the flu already are.

Many of us here will lose parents and grandparents to this, and some of us will die from it ourselves. Every winter for thousands of years the elderly and the immune compromised faced an increase in death, now there is one more thing added to the mix.

So it goes.

Also, something you're overlooking....

China has roughly 3x more people than the US.  We don't know if anyone in China is receiving boosters, or if some are getting vaccines at all.  Who has data on that?  Some people in the US have 3, 4, even 5 boosters.

In the US, Covid shots are free.  They are paid for by our government.  Do we know if they are free in China?

Good summary.

I just read the other day that COVID is still the 3rd biggest cause of death in the US.



I think we collectively learned lessons from COVID and I'm hoping that the long term we take with us is stuff like normalizing staying home when you're sick, masking when you're sick and you need to be in public, getting vaccinated when you're at risk, etc.