This year we kill it: Corona Virus Thread Mark II

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The fun bit? Thalidomide wasn't even something pregnant women should have been taking. Doctors were just writing prescriptions for the placebo effect on morning sickness.

Nope. That's as accurate as saying that a certain hypertension medicine that comes in a blue diamond-shaped pill is just written for the placebo effect on the male reproductive organ. There is nothing placebo about the anti-emetic properties of thalidomide.

As to what percentage of mothers were affected, I cannot find the number, although wikipedia suggests the effect was strongly localized to West Germany, with a full half of all cases (which might explain the difference in our perception of the event - I too have not encountered anyone affected). If I'm reading this right, in fact, it sounds like there is not probabilities involved - if taken regularly before the third trimester, it will cause birth defects or outright death of the fetus. From that, I'd say that those not affected either didn't take it regularly, or only started taking it after it no longer would affect the development of the limbs. Not every pregnancy involves morning sickness so bad you need medicine, after all.

Grey Wolf

[halfeye]

Nope. That's as accurate as saying that a certain hypertension medicine that comes in a blue diamond-shaped pill is just written for the placebo effect on the male reproductive organ. There is nothing placebo about the anti-emetic properties of thalidomide.

As to what percentage of mothers were affected, I cannot find the number, although wikipedia suggests the effect was strongly localized to West Germany, with a full half of all cases (which might explain the difference in our perception of the event - I too have not encountered anyone affected). If I'm reading this right, in fact, it sounds like there is not probabilities involved - if taken regularly before the third trimester, it will cause birth defects or outright death of the fetus. From that, I'd say that those not affected either didn't take it regularly, or only started taking it after it no longer would affect the development of the limbs. Not every pregnancy involves morning sickness so bad you need medicine, after all.

Grey Wolf

There were a lot of cases in the UK too, though apparently Germany was worse. It wasn't whether mothers needed medicine for morning sickness, it was whether they wanted it, because it was advertised. There were probably cases in France, Holland, Italy, Spain, Portugal etc.

It was probably a real example of that joke "a first world problem", it wasn't allowed in the USA, which was good for the USA, and it wasn't available in poorer countries because it wasn't generally exported (there may well have been some rich people in poorer countries who were affected).

[halfeye]

The nature of Prisoner's Dilemma is that people using purely individual logic leads to the worst outcome for everyone including them. The solution in practice is social action rather than individual action in order to change the payouts. For example, punishing people for defecting by ostracizing them or rewarding them for cooperating or helping to offset the cases where they take a risk in order to cooperate and it goes badly.

That is to say, you can't escape the trap purely by thinking about what you and only you should do.

In my opinion it's worse than that, there is no escape once you are in it. The time for action is when it is being set up.

[NichG]

In my opinion it's worse than that, there is no escape once you are in it. The time for action is when it is being set up.

Well definitely there are points of greater or lesser leverage. But if you're in it, a lot depends on the specific dilemma I think. For something like Covid, if you have a bubble of 100 people who all agree to get vaccinated if at all possible and then provide community for each other once 80% has been met then you can get the benefits of herd immunity locally even if your broader organizational group doesn't. Organizing a vaccine buddies group to hold proof-of-immunity-only parties or community events is something a motivated individual could plausibly initiate.

But I think it'd be much harder to resolve highly distributed consequences of defection like tragedy of the commons situations unless you have some form of leverage or power at the scale of that community already in hand. And private individuals won't generally be able to get that sort of power.

[sihnfahl]

We've marked 50 million inoculated for COVID - well, at least one dose - but that's still just 1/6th of the US population.

But it does seem to be making a good impact in the areas with high vaccination rates.

My state, with its population of around 22 million, has about 1.5 million with two doses, and 1.2 million with the first.

So, on average, we're doing a little better than the US as a whole, but that's still a lot of potential carriers and cases.

[Tyndmyr]

That's really not bad. The US is ahead of quite a few other countries in vaccination, so relatively speaking...that's solid progress.

And that resistant pool of people effectively stacks with resistance gained from people who've had the disease, so the overall resistant population is at least somewhat higher.

Certainly not there yet, but that should definitely be enough to make a significant dent in the transmission rate.

[Bartmanhomer]

We've marked 50 million inoculated for COVID - well, at least one dose - but that's still just 1/6th of the US population.

But it does seem to be making a good impact in the areas with high vaccination rates.

My state, with its population of around 22 million, has about 1.5 million with two doses, and 1.2 million with the first.

So, on average, we're doing a little better than the US as a whole, but that's still a lot of potential carriers and cases.

That's really not bad. The US is ahead of quite a few other countries in vaccination, so relatively speaking...that's solid progress.

And that resistant pool of people effectively stacks with resistance gained from people who've had the disease, so the overall resistant population is at least somewhat higher.

Certainly not there yet, but that should definitely be enough to make a significant dent in the transmission rate.

At least my country (USA) is making some improvement in getting vaccinated. I'm very happy about it.

[farothel]

The J&J vaccine has been approved by for Emergency Use by the FDA. So you have a third vaccine in the US (after Pfizer and Moderna).

In Europe the date for approval I've seen circulate in the news is the 11th of March. That will give us a 4th vaccine, after Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Things are looking up at least.