Any advice on convincing fully vaccinated family members that we need to stop worrying so much about COVID now? The response I keep getting even after showing them the numbers is that “but COVID keeps changing, there could always be a new variant spreading through the population that is significantly more severe/deadly/evading the vaccines.” I’m not an epidemiologist, but that seems like a worry that (with full vaccination) is pretty much on par with “we could have a new pandemic, so we should all mask and constantly take precautions”—especially considering that from my understanding, influenza is much more likely to mutate and responds significantly less well to vaccination? At this point, for fully vaccinated, relatively young, healthy people in 75%+ vaxxed communities, are there meaningful risks from COVID more dangerous than base risks from influenza?
I think the answer is: there is a limit to how transmissible Covid can get. I don’t know that there’s a way to prove that it can’t get worse than Delta, but when I look at nextstrain.org and consider that Covid has now has been hosted by billions of people, and has had several orders of magnitude more opportunities to replicate and evolve, and as of yet it hasn’t come up with anything much better than Delta.
Re convincing family to stop worrying—sounds tricky. I know this sounds corny, but try using “I” statements.
As for “meaningful differences” between covid and flu—the last remaining meaningful difference is the lack of an antiviral. In a couple months we’ll have a choice of two. Feel free to message me if you want to rehearse your convos with your family
Any advice on convincing fully vaccinated family members that we need to stop worrying so much about COVID now? The response I keep getting even after showing them the numbers is that “but COVID keeps changing, there could always be a new variant spreading through the population that is significantly more severe/deadly/evading the vaccines.” I’m not an epidemiologist, but that seems like a worry that (with full vaccination) is pretty much on par with “we could have a new pandemic, so we should all mask and constantly take precautions”—especially considering that from my understanding, influenza is much more likely to mutate and responds significantly less well to vaccination? At this point, for fully vaccinated, relatively young, healthy people in 75%+ vaxxed communities, are there meaningful risks from COVID more dangerous than base risks from influenza?
I know I just said this above, but will give some more context. A few months ago I asked a similar question. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mXBBHAEXj2JyPC6Dt/is-there-a-theoretical-upper-limit-on-the-r0-of-covid
I think the answer is: there is a limit to how transmissible Covid can get. I don’t know that there’s a way to prove that it can’t get worse than Delta, but when I look at nextstrain.org and consider that Covid has now has been hosted by billions of people, and has had several orders of magnitude more opportunities to replicate and evolve, and as of yet it hasn’t come up with anything much better than Delta.
Re convincing family to stop worrying—sounds tricky. I know this sounds corny, but try using “I” statements.
As for “meaningful differences” between covid and flu—the last remaining meaningful difference is the lack of an antiviral. In a couple months we’ll have a choice of two. Feel free to message me if you want to rehearse your convos with your family