I’d have won my bet on a technicality—I see almost zero proper use of quality masks, though pretty pervasive mask theater. Seems prior infection is slightly less long-term effective than hoped, and vaccination about as expected.
We’re closest to equilibrium #1+2 (vaccines fairly effective at preventing serious problems, but not at eliminating the virus entirely), but we haven’t seen a variant that really tests our responsiveness, so I’d argue it’s not a long-term equilibrium yet. Nobody talks about herd immunity any longer, as far as I can tell.
The vaccine does not prevent the transmission (to my best knowledge, for both Delta and Omicron; I am not anti-vaccine). A simple calculation suggests that the linear contribution (reduce the death rate, etc.) provided by the vaccines was dominated by the exponential contribution of increasing R0 of the Omicron. It looks like the only equilibrium is still universal N95/other PPE, in theory.
I wonder if we mean different things by the word “equilibrium”. I think it means a somewhat stable outcome as a balance of opposing forces. Universal proper masks isn’t happening and isn’t sustainable (people hate it), so will never be an equilibrium.
Vaccines that bring individual risk down to tolerable levels, and some amount of NPI theater, so that the disease continues to infect people but most people aren’t severely harmed could be a possible equilibrium, but I don’t think it’s been going on very widely for long enough to call it one yet.
Do you have any new thoughts after two years?
I’d have won my bet on a technicality—I see almost zero proper use of quality masks, though pretty pervasive mask theater. Seems prior infection is slightly less long-term effective than hoped, and vaccination about as expected.
We’re closest to equilibrium #1+2 (vaccines fairly effective at preventing serious problems, but not at eliminating the virus entirely), but we haven’t seen a variant that really tests our responsiveness, so I’d argue it’s not a long-term equilibrium yet. Nobody talks about herd immunity any longer, as far as I can tell.
The vaccine does not prevent the transmission (to my best knowledge, for both Delta and Omicron; I am not anti-vaccine). A simple calculation suggests that the linear contribution (reduce the death rate, etc.) provided by the vaccines was dominated by the exponential contribution of increasing R0 of the Omicron. It looks like the only equilibrium is still universal N95/other PPE, in theory.
I wonder if we mean different things by the word “equilibrium”. I think it means a somewhat stable outcome as a balance of opposing forces. Universal proper masks isn’t happening and isn’t sustainable (people hate it), so will never be an equilibrium.
Vaccines that bring individual risk down to tolerable levels, and some amount of NPI theater, so that the disease continues to infect people but most people aren’t severely harmed could be a possible equilibrium, but I don’t think it’s been going on very widely for long enough to call it one yet.