So far it has been an extremely reliable product that was fun to get some scripts running on. I use a raspberry pie with a cron job to update the board with the weather and my daily schedule. Board actually looks extremely repairable for each individual character, and have has no issues with reliability in ~6mo.
API currently is through a rest interface which they have promised to keep free despite charging for plugins shared through their a subscription model. They had promised a native/local API but I have not heard anything from that.
Overall would recommend but it falls in the tech art category for sure.
Agreed it is a solid risk. I want to spend some time with wireshark to see if I can get something of my own going until an official local api is released.
I’d switch the order of the testimonials so it says: company name, title. Right now it reads like a bunch of testimonials from your own company when looking around.
This feels like an irresponsible title on behalf of the author. People don’t get the vaccine strictly on the strength of the vaccine. It’s considering the risk of getting COVID, understanding the long term side effects, and minimizing risk for those around you. It’s also about avoiding mutations of the virus as the higher availability of the virus only provides more opportunities for it to mutate into something more resistant or possessing other less desirable traits.
I understand that the post goes into these types of details but with the proliferation of “I read the title so I read the article” types a much less clickbait title should have been chosen. This only vindicates people looking to confirm their biases and leaves out the nuance that is so important to science.
> This feels like an irresponsible title on behalf of the author
The title describes the content of the article. I think people should be treated as adults (esp. on HN). We should be able to discuss Covid-19 science and data without always fearing misinterpretation from anti-vaxxers.
The original title of the paper was "Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity:
reinfections versus breakthrough infections." It's important to point out that the paper isn't just one fact but a collection of facts that form nuance.
To me science mags title is much more sensationalistic and there is a reason they did not chose a title more closely aligned to what the authors of the original study chose.
go step into the world of "covid vaccines are bad!" for a second (/r/newnormal) and you'll rescind this statement. It's getting out of hand, between misinformation and politicizing how we treat an infectious virus.
Sorry, no. This is why there are anti-vaxxers to begin with. Communication is key. Scientists and health professionals fail at it. Listing cold facts does not effectively communicate to the broad public, because they receive the message not by learning the new facts to change their word view, but by trying to fit it in their world view. Messaging is critical in public communication.
> This is why there are anti-vaxxers to begin with.
No, this isn't the reason. Straight, clear communication of facts from professionals is one of the best ways to combat erroneous viewpoints.
Telling people the truth (including what you don't yet know) and letting them freely assume their own risks is a powerful way to win them over.
> because they receive the message not by learning the new facts to change their word view, but by trying to fit it in their world view
People don't change their worldview because someone tries to change it for them. Straight facts without manipulation of any sort is the best way.
People know when they're being manipulated, talked down to, and lied to. That's the worst way to try to change their opinion. Fauci and other officials did a lot of this early on, unfortunately, and they lost credibility with large swaths of the public, leaving a truth vacuum that badly misinformed youtubers rushed in to fill.
> No, this isn't the reason. Straight, clear communication of facts from professionals is one of the best ways to combat erroneous viewpoints.
For better and for worse, this is not true with most people. Most people are most open to changing their viewpoints if you engage them in a manner where you try to take their side, first, and then lead them in a new direction.
Straight facts might work best for you, but I'm afraid they're pretty much a sure-fire away to turn off most adults who've already made up their minds and don't already agree with you.
You're right that communication is critical, but it's precisely because facts are omitted that causes the problem. Those facts just come out later, and that only makes things worse. Instead of transparency and straight forward communication, public health officials are engaging in manipulation of the public. So called noble lies, like telling people masks don't work in order to cover for the lack of mask availability. That burned their credibility and is just one example.
The lies and lies by omission are literal oxygen to anti-vaxxers because they can point out, with proof, that we were lied to. Naturally the next question is, what else are we being lied to about?
Stop lying, start treating people like adults, be upfront from the start, and you'll see anti-vax and anti-expert sentiment dissipate.
I would also point out that there is an intentional conflation between anti-vaxxers (those opposed to all vaccines) and vaccine hesitant (those who are pro-vaccine generally, but are weary about a new vaccine or were already infected and have natural immunity). The latter are being grouped with the former, and this has also destroyed a great amount of credibility and trust.
> Start treating people like adults, be upfront from the start, and you'll see anti-vax sentiment dissipate.
I've only seen Anti-vaxxers treated as adults from the onset, being upfront about the data etc. It just get disputed, debated and then denied.
I'm burnt out and numb to them at this point. I do agree with you that information shouldn't be omitted; However, the damage is done at this point. It's not going to stop either.
"Do this willingly and this can all be over...okay, that didn't work, now we're going to make you" isn't exactly what I'd call treating someone like an adult.
I'm not convinced the biosecurity state will go away anymore than the TSA will disappear tomorrow. Government agencies rarely cede power back to the citizenry.
Every single government, bureaucracy, expert, official, authority in anyway all gained power during covid. A lot of them “discovering” powers they had no idea they had (CDC, evictions).
I agree it’s unlikely anyone will give it up willingly.
Here is the full conclusion of the paper, rather than the blog post which summarizes the paper:
> This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.
No - we have anti-vaxxers because nobody will debate them. Instead we ask them not to post their nonsense and so they just retreat to their echo-chambers and begin reinforcing their views to each other.
I've seen many online debates with antivaxers and nobody convinces anybody of anything. People just get angrier and more hardened in their opinions. Everyone goes into it with an us vs them mentality instead of open minded.
Sorry, no. This is why there are anti-vaxxers to begin with. Trying to hide crucial information inside the article or censor it altogether just fuels all these misinformation campaigns.
The volume of criticism for posting verifiable facts that might be misused in illogical arguments, is really frustrating.
It's as if we need to post a disclaimer in advance that we agree with the consensus first in order to post a fact like OP.
For example, OP's fact correlates with the recent study that demonstrated that getting one shot of Moderna and one shot of Pfizer was more effective than getting two shots of either.
...and none of that is a surprise to virologists, because a diversity of antibodies is obviously going to be more effective at combating infection, and more importantly, provide broader protection against variants.
...but instead OP gets downvotes because of the fear that some imbecile is going to repost this all over Facebook in order to convince people to not get vaccinated.
Think about the consequences of this reflex. We cannot talk about the truth in-depth because less informed people might be mislead by misinterpreting it. This diminishes the quality of our conversations. It puts a cap on the intelligence of this community.
...and when you first identify this phenomenon - you begin to recognize it all over the place on social media. True verifiable facts being downvoted because they might maybe work against the "greater good" agenda in a less sophisticated forum. ...and that ultimately causes a dumbing down of the conversations - something very noticeable on Reddit and Twitter.
This isn't just some random fact. It's extremely relevant to the pandemic.
Knowing that previously infected people maintain immunity high levels against variants is important for people making informed decisions about their situations.
What GP is really worried about is this fact being misused to incentivize people NOT to get the vaccine.
> It is not clickbait, (if true) this is just a fact.
And I was pointing out that this statement is based on flawed logic. I wasn't commenting on truth/falsehood or clickbait/non-clickbait. I'm just objecting to incorrectly reasoning from one to the other.
> This isn't just some random fact. It's extremely relevant to the pandemic.
I don't disagree with it being relevant but if one reads just the title of this article and had previously been infected they may believe they do not need to be vaccinated, but that isn't the case.
I disagree and there are also doctors and experts that disagree.
There is no reason to assume medical experts are free of groupthink. There is also no reason to assume the medical industrial and related government regulators are free from corruption. Which makes it all the more important to question the advice we are given by “experts” and ask if it makes any sense. To me it doesn’t.
There is no reason to assume that medical professionals are corrupt in encouraging people to be vaccinated, either. Especially given that the data shows better protection among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
Totally. The key is, once new information comes in to base decisions on the updated information. I'm glad that our public health officials are doing so.
Pedantically, dying from covid makes it even less likely you'll catch it again... Really this is all just confusing what the actual goal is: to end the pandemic while minimizing death and suffering
Well, actually pedantic anti-vaxers would formulate it as "If you survive covid 19, you will have greater immunity to covid than you would get from surviving taking the vaccine"
>the actual goal is: to end the pandemic while minimizing death and suffering
We can all agree we want less death and suffering. However, it isn't difficult to imagine that other goals may exist.
"The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world" - Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum
Yes, but strategically we should probably write headlines that be can't taken out of context to disingenuously argue that they "prove" that vaccines are worthless.
Anyway, re-reading your point... My headline wasn't intended to be aimed at any person. It's a hypothetical statement about covid immunity level after surviving covid. Glad I didn't go into journalism.
That's exactly it. Almost everyone in my immediate family is more concerned about getting the vaccine than they are covid. And this is AFTER someone in the family has died from it. It is extremely concerning how bad this has gotten. My own mother literally had a panic attack after getting her first shot. My kids' school administrators are making decisions based on these illogical conclusions. I have had school staff tell me that it's best that they all go ahead and get covid. They compared it to chicken pox parties from the 80s. When I mentioned shingles, they told me that was a different disease. I have an at risk child at home. My tolerance for stupidity is waning.
I'm afraid the general publicly is woefully underequipped to engage in nuanced discussions around this topic. They need simple and clear instructions.
In Minnesota 645k people had covid and 7k died. In contrast 3M are vaccinated and basically nobody has died from the vaccine. In the US 363M vaccine doses have been given and about 7k may have died from vaccination side effects vs 628k who have died from covid from covid.
But you miss human emotions 101: If someone tells you they are worried about something, you don’t throw facts at them as the first thing. You ask them to tell more about their emotions, hear them and make them feel heard. They might as well be missing factual data (as the case with vaccine hesitating folks) but their emotions are real, and unless they are treated as a person they’d be close to influence because they are in a skeptic, anxious state to begin with.
Often people barge in like performing an exorcism expecting the power of data compelling the “possessed” demonized other to the “light”. Such vilification is a self-fulfilling process.
You are more likely to get hurt or die in car accident on the way to get your vaccine then from the vaccine itself. After that car accident when you are in the hospital recovering you will probably get covid there.
Not only you are still throwing bunch of numbers and data only this time using comparatives ("more likely"), you seem to have also mistaken me as someone in need of convincing, which shows you haven't listened to what I've said careful enough to understand it. If I was a person that needed to be convinced, I would trust you even less just on that basis.
Finally you make the assumption that people have a problem with understanding the propositions. I'm saying they have a problem with not being heard about their emotions. You've just demonstrated that, in addition to not listening well.
Vaccine protection is weakening over time (boosters), mutations evading the vaccine are around the corner (Pfizer CEO), epidemiological profile is vastly different between <20 and >70. There are 4 other coronaviruses kids get exposed to when young with no vaccine and naturally build immunity for it for a lifetime.
Over 30: Take the vaccine and hope for the best.
Under 20:
a. Take the vaccine and be naked when the vaccine resistant variant eventually emerges.
b. Don't take the vaccine and build wide spectrum immunity to infections from covid family. Considering that the risk of complications from covid infection for this age group is in the same ballpark as the flu.
> a. Take the vaccine and be naked when the vaccine resistant variant eventually emerges.
First, this is deeply deeply misleading, to the point of being misinformation. The idea that a version of COVID will pop out that renders the current vaccines completely useless is founded in nothing but alarmist speculation. Could it happen? Maybe. But we have a virus now that's known to be dangerous, for which we have a vaccine that's very effective. To not take that vaccine, now, based on this speculative fear is completely nonsensical.
Second, it's a false dichotomy:
c. Take the vaccine, get a mild breakthrough case of covid later that builds even stronger protection.
This is also a possibility. The open scenario is: take the vaccine, don't get a breakthrough case (vaccines work as intended and quickly suppress it), but do get a vaccine-resistant infection later on.
If there is more information on the long-term behavior of the immune system conditioned on vaccines and/or natural immunity and/or mutations, please share. My understanding is that nobody has a complete understanding and a reliable prediction model. Everybody is making educated guesses in the dark, though I am very open to learn more from credible sources.
> Everybody is making educated guesses in the dark,
We are absolutely not.
Are there many things we don't know about the function of the immune system?
Sure.
Are we "in the dark"? This couldn't be more incorrect, and again, borders on deeply misleading misinformation.
Frankly, this smells a lot like the kind of climate change denial we used to hear. i.e., because there was uncertainty, we therefore can trust nothing and know nothing. And that "logic" was just as flawed, then, as it is now.
Did we know ahead of time if mRNA vaccine immunity is stronger / weaker than post covid-infection natural immunity? For each strain?
Did we know ahead of time when/where Delta will arise? Did we know ahead of time its infectiousness / virulence parameters?
Do we know when / where the next strain will arise? Do we know if it will be more/less infectious than Delta? Do we know if it will be more/less virulent than Delta? How about per age group?
Do we know whether vaccines protect against potential future vaccine resistant strains? Admittedly an oxymoron, but such is the ridiculousness of this conversation.
What we do know is that the virus is likely to mutate to avoid the narrow spectrum mRNA vaccines. We don't know when / where / how.
That's what I call educated guesses in the dark.
PS. Please do us a favor and keep your ad-hominems for yourself. It may feel good in the moment, but it doesn't strengthen your arguments.
The virus will mutate no matter what regardless of vaccine. It's not the vaccines that are driving mutations. The vaccine basically programs a set of immune system regex stream filters. Maybe some mutants get past it, well then the immune system will generates another response to it as it goes on to infect other cells in the body etc...
Some of the original variants are thought to have arisen out of immuno-compromised pre-vaccinated patients. Maybe they got IVIg, monoclonal antibodies, or convalescent plasma.
Umm. Presumably you've had the chickenpox vaccine, the TDAP vaccine, and a bunch of others as a kid as a condition to go to school. These have been well studied for decades.
> but do get a vaccine-resistant infection later on.
This is a redherring.
This would be the equivalent to have never encountered covid and getting infected by that variant then. So you know maybe a new kid born in the next few months or something.
It'd also be equivalent to someone getting chemo that wipes out their immune system and now gets covid after they recover.
We are taking an open bet: will the vaccine resistant covid strain(s) that are likely to emerge be more/less virulent than Delta or not? I don't have a crystal ball, but given that we know that for <20s the risk of complications from Delta is vanishingly small, why take the bet?
Insofar as their rights don't impact the rights of others.
Individuals have a right to drink alcohol. They do not have a right to then drive a car.
Vaccination by mandate is an extension of that reasoning. You have a right not to get vaccinated, but you don't have a right to participate in the public. Because restricting public interaction is neigh impossible (Even with imprisonment) the lesser of the two evils is mandated vaccination.
> Is there a limit to what a collective or technocrat can medically impose upon an individual, where and why do we draw this line?
Yes, communicable illnesses prevention. That's the line. It's something that seems to have been lost on the modern era. It was not controversial 50, 100, or 150+ years ago to quarantine people with disease by force of government (but often just voluntarily). This notion that there is no public interest in disease prevention and instead it's a "individual choice" is modern. Likely due to the advances in medicine, ironically vaccination, that have weakened the effects of most diseases.
I dislike this moral pearl clutching. Perhaps it's because I'm more morally a utilitarian.
At the end of the day, the harm caused by vaccination is next to 0 for almost all the population. The small percentage with adverse reactions is a small price to pay for society to work in general. The alternative is a lot more harm that we are currently seeing from the covid deaths.
>It was not controversial 50, 100, or 150+ years ago to quarantine people
However there are unprecedented measures taken today. We're nearly 2 years into lockdowns. Moratoriums on rent, unemployment subsidies, massive increases in gov spending and a host of other unprecedented economic interventions.
There are debates over why the least vulnerable, healthy populations are subject to the same restrictions as the obese and elderly. If obesity is a risk factor and we have a "collective responsibility", then why hasn't the gov mandated exercise?
>At the end of the day, the harm caused by vaccination is next to 0 for almost all the population. The small percentage with adverse reactions is a small price to pay for society...
And if this were untrue, where would we see this information? Are there no other incentives we should be considering, such as the great reset, vaccine passports, digital ID, CBDCs or even vanilla economic interventions? We're dealing with a trust deficit in public figures and media institutions. It is hard to blame the cynic for previous incidents of propaganda.
> The alternative is a lot more harm that we are currently seeing from the covid deaths.
I'm not convinced a voluntary quarantine of high risk groups would be more harmful medically or economically. The response has caused incalculable economic damage and disruption of individual's lives.
However there are unprecedented measures taken today. We're nearly 2 years into lockdowns. Moratoriums on rent, unemployment subsidies, massive increases in gov spending and a host of other unprecedented economic interventions.
These are ineffective because of people's refusal to cooperate. These methods work best if we work together. Because some people chose to ignore measures, it means we're prolonging the misery.
There are debates over why the least vulnerable, healthy populations are subject to the same restrictions as the obese and elderly. If obesity is a risk factor and we have a "collective responsibility", then why hasn't the gov mandated exercise?
Because the least vulnerable and healthy population can spread diseases to the obese and the elderly.
Exercise is a useful health intervention. It's also not very effective for losing weight. It's also the government's fault that we are obese to begin with, because the governments are responsible for urban design, dietary and market regulation.
I'm not convinced a voluntary quarantine of high risk groups would be more harmful medically or economically. The response has caused incalculable economic damage and disruption of individual's lives.
It is unclear to me why only partial quarantine would be useful. It just means that the virus are spreading among the healthy. The moment we stop the quarantine, the moment people starts dying.
> These are ineffective because of people's refusal to cooperate.
In what sense is this not an unfalsifiable hypothesis? Are cases exploding in Japan because of the 1% of people who don't wear masks in public there? Are Australia and New Zealand trapped in dystopian house arrest because there are just boatloads of degenerates who won't follow the rules?
What the hell good is a public health intervention if it requires an impossibly perfect 100% level of compliance to even work? And crumbles to pieces the second you relax the restriction?
If 10% or 20% weren't following the rules, it'd probably be fine.
However, because COVID in the US is a political thing, it's easily 30%+ of americans that aren't "following the rules". In my state of Idaho, there were rallies to get together and burn masks. [1]
Have you ever heard of mask burning rallies in either Japan or Australia?
It's not political in most nations. This is primarily a US problem.
Anecdotally, at the height of COVID compliance in Idaho I never saw > 50% masking participation.
> There are debates over why the least vulnerable, healthy populations are subject to the same restrictions as the obese and elderly.
The studies are still out, but early reports are showing that delta is hitting more than just the old and the fat [1].
In particular, pregnant woman seem to be at particularly high risk of death. [2]
The problem with these communicable disease is they can mutate. Delta appears to be breaking a lot of the older assumptions about who is at risk. Perhaps that's because the older population is better vaccinated than the younger population and delta is just more deadly for all.
> If obesity is a risk factor and we have a "collective responsibility", then why hasn't the gov mandated exercise?
Because whether or not you exercise does not change your ability to spread COVID. It may improve your chances of survival but it does not change the burden one way or another on how you are affecting society around.
Further, it will take months/years to lose enough weight to eventually move out of the risk category for COVID. A vaccine takes minutes.
> And if this were untrue, where would we see this information? Are there no other incentives we should be considering, such as the great reset, vaccine passports, digital ID, CBDCs or even vanilla economic interventions? We're dealing with a trust deficit in public figures and media institutions. It is hard to blame the cynic for previous incidents of propaganda.
The trust problem is precisely from propaganda. It's because, frankly, Trump kept saying "fake news" and casting doubt on experts without a shred of evidence backing his assertions. Pushing untested and unproven medications which ultimately spawned the "ivermectin" crowd which is now taking horse dewormer to try and combat covid.
The deficit because an autocrat got power and pulled the typical move of an autocrat.
The experts have been straight through covid. It's the yellow journalists and russian interference [3] that have been spitting out mistrust where none existed previously.
>Because whether or not you exercise does not change your ability to spread COVID. It may improve your chances of survival but it does not change the burden one way or another on how you are affecting society around.
Yes, but under your theory of collectivism, we all have a responsibility to protect these obese individuals via authoritarian measures. Therefore, if they were not obese, we would not be burdened by the collective responsibility they impose upon us.
I'm disappointed that you've brought Trump into the discussion. I'm not a fan of the political classes as a rule, so it pains me to defend him here. He was recently panned for recommending the vaccine to his followers at a rally in Alabama.
As for autocracy, it seems a bit ironic to level this accusation in a discussion defending authoritarian lockdowns and medical interventions.
If you can't see any other problems with the mainstream political landscape outside of your focus on Mr. Trump, then there's really nothing more to say here. I could cite Iraqi WMD, Snowden's revelations, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the lab leak controversy or a number of other incidents, but it seems futile at this point.
When you play the Trump card you reveal your hand as a partisan.
This is an elementary precaution that everyone, vaccinated or not, should voluntarily take at symptom onset. Not only for covid, but for flu as well. However, preemptively restricting the rights of healthy people, just because they may eventually catch a disease, is unheard of.
> However, preemptively restricting the rights of healthy people, just because they may eventually catch a disease, is unheard of.
It is not. In fact, most quarantines take exactly that form where entire households, communities, or in the extreme case cities are locked down. [1]
COVID is unique in that it is both more deadly and more infectious than the flu. That's why the measures have been so extreme. They are warranted.
Further, COVID has the major issue that a large number of people are asymptomatic. It doesn't work to say "Well, just have people feeling sick stay home" when a large number of people that are spreading the disease don't even know they have it. [2]
> 'you don't have a right to participate in the public'.
I was perhaps unclear, I mean "being infected with a disease removes your right to participate in public". Without the disease modifier, yes, you have a right to public interaction. Just like you have a right to drive without the drunk modifier.
In any event, even the UN agrees that quarantining seemingly healthy people in the face of covid isn't a human rights violation. [3]
'quarantine' comes from Italian 'quarantina': ‘forty days’. It's not 'persempre'. By its very name it implies a time limited action.
Link 3 does not support your point: 'The term “quarantine” refers to the separation and restriction of movement of non-sick persons to see if they become sick.'. There is no blanket support for indefinite restriction of rights.
Furthermore, the 'line' is muddy. Vaccines are only 66% effective against delta. This means that 33% of vaccinated people are, under your definition, walking public health risks that may catch covid and start shedding virus in the population. Thus we should also indefinitely quarantine vaccinated people.
> Link 3 does not support your point: 'The term “quarantine” refers to the separation and restriction of movement of non-sick persons to see if they become sick.'. There is no blanket support for indefinite restriction of rights.
What "rights" are is muddy. I'm not proposing an outright quarantine. Nobody is. However, I thought it prudent to point out that the "quarantining of healthy individuals" is not unique or unjustified. Your previous comment suggested that all quarantines are human rights violations.
However, what I see from all medical experts is social distancing, masking, and getting vaccination. Those are the "rights" being infringed on at the moment.
At one point, the CDC did recommend that someone vaccinated didn't need to mask up. Unfortunately, that changed with Delta as you correctly point out.
A vaccine + mask would be highly effective at stopping the spread of delta.
Perpetually quarantining certain classes of people is abject tyranny. Worse, the line is muddy: there are false positives (unvaccinated, but with solid post-covid immunity) and false negatives (vaccinated, but with breakthrough infections). Doing a 40 day isolation to see if there is an active outbreak is completely different than isolation in perpetuity: 'you don't have a right to participate in the public'.
I have yet to see medical evidence that vaccinating under 20s, for which the risk of covid-infection complications are vanishingly small, has significant positive effects for them. There are people that have already got covid, and their immunity to covid is much stronger than that of mRNA vaccinated people (see the OP article). These 2 classes of unvaccinated people should not be forced to undertake an unnecessary medical procedure with an unclear long-term risk profile.
Covid is endemic, there is no path to ZeroCovid. Thus population-level arguments are uncompelling: we are all going to be exposed to one or more covid strains during our lifetime. Given how post-infection immunity is strong (see the OP article), the bulk of the argument comes down to how to manage the first exposure.
Riddle me out: There are vaccines, they work really well, I am vaccinated, you probably are vaccinated. Vaccinate your loved ones. We are safe, to the extent of mRNA vaccines are long-term safe. Why do you have to insist that everyone has to take them, to the extent of proposing abject tyranny to accomplish this goal? What are you afraid of?
> The fears that come online for the COVID thesis: I fear dying from the virus and being responsible for the death of others. I also fear being called dumb for not understanding the science and shamed for being called a bad person by failing to act in ways that would protect others.
> The fears that come online for the COVID antithesis: I fear losing freedoms and giving my power away to top-down control structures that can slip into totalitarianism. I also fear being societally segregated and persecuted by those scapegoating me for this mess.
(If it wasn't clear yet, I also worry about a medical covid antithesis: for <20s, getting the mRNA vaccines is unnecessary and potentially long-term worse than doing nothing.)
> Perpetually quarantining certain classes of people is abject tyranny.
Where do you see anyone proposing a perpetual quarantine? Do you feel we are currently under one?
> has significant positive effects for them
Because covid has something like a 1->2% mortality rate among the unvacinated, for 98%+ of the entire population a covid vaccine doesn't provide any positive effects.
Indeed, most diseases we vaccinate follow a similar pattern.
So why should any vaccination be applied?
At the end of the day it's a numbers game, the more people that are vaccinated and continue to keep their vaccinations up to date, the fewer people will be killed by illness. Vaccinations prevent more suffering than they cause. A little arm soreness is a small price to pay if it saves several lives.
This is especially important for herd immunity. The more people are vaccinated the more protected vulnerable populations are (including the vaccinated population).
> Covid is endemic, there is no path to ZeroCovid. Thus population-level arguments are uncompelling: we are all going to be exposed to one or more covid strains during our lifetime. Given how post-infection immunity is strong (see the OP article), the bulk of the argument comes down to how to manage the first exposure.
Sadly, I agree that we are past ever eliminating COVID. So next steps are what's reasonable.
With that, I think we aren't out of the woods for government and public actions against covid. We are currently in a state of being overwhelmed in our ICUs by covid. That says to me that masking and vaccination pushes should be pushed longer. Until we've exited the stage where our ICUs are overburdened it's hard to think that we should be lifting restrictions. [1]
> Riddle me out: There are vaccines, they work really well, I am vaccinated, you probably are vaccinated. Vaccinate your loved ones. We are safe, to the extent of mRNA vaccines are long-term safe. Why do you have to insist that everyone has to take them, to the extent of proposing abject tyranny to accomplish this goal? What are you afraid of?
I think saying that a vaccination mandate is "abject tyranny" is hyperbole. The vast majority of children have vaccine mandates against a bunch of diseases. Are they under an oppressive thumb? Are their lives ruined or harmed?
It is reasonable to push, and push hard, for people to be vaccinated. It isn't asking people to sell their souls, chop off an arm, or anything else. It's a small prick that you've been through. Anyone can get it, nobody is restricted from getting it.
The "tyranny" they'd experience by refusing to take the vaccine is the same sort of "tyranny" someone would experience if they decided to walk around a public park refusing clothing.
What freedoms are actually lost by a vaccine mandate? Vaccines aren't an inherent quality of anyone. It's not immutable like age or race. Tyranny is specifically persecution over aspects individuals can't control. Tyranny doesn't have a quick escape hatch of being poked in the arm.
The fact is, a switch out of the oppressed group takes 10 seconds.
The fear that this is a "slippery slope" is moot, because we already have vaccine mandates for other diseases. The only slip here is adding one more disease to the list.
You fear tyranny, can you see why I'd see that as irrational? Are you really afraid that the unvaccinated will be sent to the gas chambers? Even if this were a slope, how do you see the next steps of tyranny? "Oh, we mandated a vaccine and that went well, now let's round up the xxxxxx and oppress them!".
abject tyranny = 'you don't have a right to participate in the public'. I have a right to participate in society. My kids have a right to participate in society. Nobody can take away that right in perpetuity, under no circumstances. Including conditioning on (miraculous, but shoddy) mRNA vaccines.
Covid does not have 1-2% mortality rate among the unvaccinated. The difference between <20s and >70s is orders of magnitude. From BBC: 'Data from the first 12 months of the pandemic in England shows 25 under-18s died from Covid. [...] 13 living with complex neuro-disabilities [...] 6 had no underlying conditions recorded in the last five years. [...] 25 deaths in a population of some 12 million children in England gives a broad, overall mortality rate of 2 per million children.' For comparison, the death rate from drowning for 5-19s in US is 1/100k, 5x larger (20x if we only count healthy children). For 1-4s the drowning death rate is a calamitous 3/100k, 15x larger (60x if we only count healthy children). And that's just drowning.
We need to get a grip.
Traditional vaccines provide long term, often lifelong protection against nasty diseases. Some of them are sterilizing the virus, leading to eradication of the disease. mRNA vaccines do not prevent infection, do not prevent transmission, need a 6 month booster and are at risk of becoming obsolete and require a different vaccine strain (and then we boost each vaccine strain every 6 months?!)
> Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told Fox it was likely a vaccine-resistant variant would emerge.
> Bourla said Pfizer could make a shot tailor-made for such a variant within 95 days of its discovery.
> The CDC director said the virus could be "a few mutations" away from evolving to evade vaccines.
Article 29. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. ... In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. ... These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
Which between them basically nullify articles 1 though 28 to the extent that the infringement can be justified on the basis of "morality" or "public order" or "duties the community"… which is how governments aiming to present themselves as anything more than petty criminal gangs have always justified violating human rights, with or without the UDHR.
Regarding the original quote, though:
> you don't have a right to participate in the public
You do have a right to participate in the public—or more precisely, no one has the right to stop you from interacting voluntarily with whichever members of the public you choose, so long as the other parties consent to the interaction. However, if that participation in the public leads to you getting someone else sick through your own negligence or reckless disregard for others' welfare then you are morally responsible for the consequences of that infection and liable to make the injured party whole, or as close to whole as they can possibly get. Ergo, you ought to take steps to ensure that doesn't happen, for example though vaccination, for your own sake as well as others'.
How did you read that into my comment? There certainly are human rights. The UDHR just doesn't protect them nearly as well as it should. Eliminating the limitations that articles 29 and 30 impose on the rights enumerated in the rest of the document would be a good start, along with certain other contradictions (articles 22, 23, 24, 25, 26.1-2, 27.2, and 28—you can't have a natural right to services which someone else would have to provide to you; that implies slavery, which is contrary to article 4) and some irrelevant commentary (articles 13.3, 25.2) about the authors' preferences about how society is organized which has no bearing on human rights. But the first 20 articles are mostly fine. They should have just stopped there.
Sorry. I quoted a somewhat non-controversial source, then didn't pick up that you were rightfully describing that UDHR is weak, not prescribing that human rights are obsolete unless we all just take the vaccine.
You appear to believe it would be immoral to lie to people to get them to take the vaccine. I don't believe anti-vaxxers want to die from COVID. Is it not also immoral to allow people who don't wish to die to die needlessly? It would seem to be a "lesser of two evils" sort of situation, and, in that case, the harm of lying is probably less than the harm of allowing people to die senselessly.
I don't want to be lied to in any form by my government. I believe they can always govern by telling the truth, and if they did so they would find themselves commanding more respect from the people.
I suggest, if you are unfamiliar with his work, that you read up on Kant's categorical imperative, in particular his absolute prohibition against lying. He argues that lying, even noble lying, is bad because it dehumanises the ones being lied to. If we stop treating each other as humans with rights, needs and desires, we will find ourselves in a very bad place - history has shown us that.
> I don't want to be lied to in any form by my government.
Completely understandable, and, I agree.
> I believe they can always govern by telling the truth, and if they did so they would find themselves commanding more respect from the people.
Regarding "can always govern by telling the truth," that's demonstrably untrue. For instance, there is such a thing as classified information for a reason (that reason ostensibly being national security). Yes, this does get abused at times, but that's not an argument that the government should not classify any information. Given your reference to Kant, I don't necessarily expect you to find this persuasive, but, I wager many reasonable people would.
> ...Kant's categorical imperative....
I am actually familiar, but I reject the logic of it. It's... well... too categorical. I can't accept a principle that forbids me to take an action that may save a life. For example, I would be prohibited from hiding someone in my home who's being pursued by people who want to kill them, if the pursuers asked me directly where that person was.
> If we stop treating each other as humans with rights, needs and desires, we will find ourselves in a very bad place - history has shown us that.
I agree with this, but I reject the idea that not following the categorical imperative at all times necessarily deprives anyone of any right.
The Murderer at the Door hypothetical is commonly mentioned in response to Kant, but I don't think this serves as reason to reject the overall thesis. Kant also said that there is no right for someone to obtain information from another against their will. You don't need to tell someone who comes to your house looking for someone they plan to harm that they are there. You simply tell them they have no right to know who is in your house, and that they should bugger off! In the context of the current discussion, the government doesn't have the moral duty to reply to requests for classified information, they simply say they cannot provide classified information. If the public are unsatisfied with that answer, they need to vote them out.
Now I understand that, stretched to extremes, Kant's theory gets rather tricky to defend, such as a hypothetical situation of a Nazi coming to your house to ask if you are harbouring Jews he plans to kill. But Kant and others since have argued ways to deal with such situations too, though I must admit I haven't studied their arguments in detail and wouldn't do them justice to try to paraphrase. But I don't think we're really dealing with such a high stakes situation in the context of this discussion, so I think "lower order" arguments in favour of Kant (like mine) suffice. This is something I expect you'll disagree with given your response.
Coming back to the original context of governments lying to people to get them to have vaccines: I think it's possible to do huge damage to public trust in government and science if lies are told for the (always subjective) "greater good", even if the immediate outcome is positive. Governments should understand Kant.
P.S. thanks for your level headed response, it's refreshing and rare to see in threads that discuss COVID.
P.P.S. sometimes it needs to be said explicitly: I am open to changing my views on this if I hear a convincing argument.
Based on the number of deaths, a very large percentage of people have already had COVID.
Given that there is a non-0% chance of death or harm from taking the vaccine, why should they then get vaccinated? They are already less of a risk to themselves and others than someone who has been vaccinated.
> The researchers also found that people who had SARS-CoV-2 previously and then received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine were more highly protected against reinfection than those who once had the virus and were still unvaccinated.
Which is still a good argument against double-vaccinating them, at least when vaccines were hard to come by (which is still the case in most of the world).
At least that’s how France does it, and that strategy might come in handy again as they plan to give boosters with influenza vaccines to everyone over 65.
I haven't done the sums but I suspect the risk of harm from the vaccine is less than the benefits the vaccine gives (especially when you factor in the duration of protecection depending when you had Covid vs when you had the vaccine).
I know people who've recovered from serious Covid and still got vaccinated. I would.
> People don’t get the vaccine strictly on the strength of the vaccine. It’s considering the risk of getting COVID, understanding the long term side effects, and minimizing risk for those around you. It’s also about avoiding mutations of the virus as the higher availability of the virus only provides more opportunities for it to mutate into something more resistant or possessing other less desirable traits.
Erm everyone I know under 40 got it because of a huge marketing campaign, wanting to travel with as few restrictions as possible and not wanting a vaccine passport to party.
> The research impresses Nussenzweig and other scientists who have reviewed a preprint of the results, posted yesterday on medRxiv
Its very irresponsible, look at this nonsense masquarading as peer review of a preprint 24 hours ago
Furthermore, getting a vaccine for last year’s ailment cannot be compared to this year’s ailment, although its obvious people dont really have a choice in the matter the study should at least lead with that. There will be delta specific vaccines soon, compare to natural immunity then.
Reposting for a well composted comment from Alex DeLarge for visibility and to add to the conversation:
> Here is a quick response on science and fiction parts as a follow up to my previous comment. I am not sure if I want to spend a lot of time on this one-sided, brand-bashing article to point out all the misinformation or truth hiding. Believe me when I say I come up with an immediate counter argument in a second when I read a paragraph in this piece.
> Unfortunately, I do have better things to do and hoping below should suffice.
> The science-fiction writer here understands the average reader’s quirks and their unwillingness to dig through all the “sources” cited here so he just hand-picked some data that works for the narrative.
> Hey, don’t get me wrong - I do agree it works pretty well for the aimed narrative.
> SCIENCE
> “Uber’s time is up.”
> Nope. It is not. Dull claim requires a dull answer but I’ll do you one better. Uber just raised $1.5B in senior notes due 2029. In plain language, this means that Uber is capable of raising money when it needs because there are investors out there who did their due diligence and concluded Uber will be good for its word.
> “Uber loses a lot of money. A lot of money. Billions. But it claims it’s making money. How does it do this? It lies. Uber eschews boring old generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and invents fanciful new forms of mathematics where losing money is good, actually.
> Every quarter, it releases new lies laid out like a profit-and-loss statement, and every quarter, Horan shows it’s losing money. Here he is on the company’s $6.8 billion (with a B!) loss last summer, predicting the company would be broke by mid-2021.
> It’s mid-2021. Uber is going broke.
> Yesterday, Horan published his 26th (!) analysis of Uber, breaking down its Q2–21 financials.”
> Yes, let’s address the financial elephant in the room. Adjusted EBITDA! What a fancy name, eh? Basically, all it does is to remove certain items from the profitabilty calculation as those are, well, called one time for a good reason. It is for investors/analysts so they are able to make good comparisons and educated decisions in the same industry. It is not to lie to those people who will never read their financial statements. This calculation is never meant for those people.
> Another misinformation is Uber avoiding using GAAP. Just go ahead and take a look at their last filing and tell me how they are avoiding using GAAP as it is required by law to publish results in GAAP.
> It is way past mid-2021 and Uber is not broke. I still see tons of cash ($4.4B) in their balance sheet and already shown their ability to raise money. It is going to be a bit cheesy but if Horan (who?) was right then he would not need 26 (!) analyses to prove it. One would suffice.
> “Uber increased road congestion.”
> From your source article: “And it’s always worth remembering, as transportation professionals say again and again, that congestion can be a sign that your city is thriving. “Congestion arises because we have people, and people go out and do things and they have jobs,” says Castiglione. Fighting congestion is good. But expecting traffic to disappear—or blaming it all on one or two players—isn’t realistic.”
> “Uber was never going to be profitable. Never.”
> I cannot decide if this is part is getting the science wrong or all together fiction so I guess it is a bit of both.
> Here is another one. FB was never going to be profitable. Never. Until one day it was. (FB founded in 2004, turned cash flow positive in 2009 and IPO’ed in 2012). I’ll prescribe Business 101 so you understand why companies are formed. Hint: It is related with profits.
> Uber in its last filing (2Q21) shows its revenue progress from its worst quarter (hello Covid19) to its current. It goes like this: $1.9B -> $2.8B -> $3.1B -> $2.9B -> $3.9B
> (I will not bother myself to explain “one-time item” so just took $2.9B instead of $3.5B for 1Q21.)
> It is only a matter of time and it just requires some clever lever pulling (read the guidance in the below link — page 14) for Uber to be able to become profitable. (First EBITDA, then GAAP).
> And yet you claim it was never going to be profitable. Huh, interesting! (in Larry David’s voice).
> “Cities, meanwhile, experienced a lost decade of transit activism. It’s true that Uber had upsides, like bringing transport to underserved communities of color — but because Uber was always doomed, this was a temporary mirage that would strand those communities again.”
> I seriously don’t understand the logic here. You say Uber did one good thing but because Uber was always doomed it is not a good thing anymore. How come we are having this discussion if Uber was always doomed? If Uber is not currently doomed that means it is still helping underserved communities, right?
> “Take the story that Uber could be a substitute for public transit. Private cars can’t substitute for buses, light rail and subways. It’s just fucking geometry. Number of cars * area occupied by cars * increased distances created by roads = infinity."
> First, where is this said story coming from? I cannot find any official statement that says Uber could be or wants to be a substitute for public transit. I do however see their plans to integrate public transport into their app to make it easier to go from point A to point B. Basically, you open their app and plan your whole trip which might include taking a bus or metro to a certain point and jump on an Uber to go to your next point and maybe ending your last mile on a scooter. I gotta add you must be really proud of with that formula when you finished forming it. Like hell yeah I showed them Uber boys.
> “This gives Uber a great new financial trick: they can put the inflated valuations of these regional Uber-alikes on their balance sheet to make it look like the company is sitting on a mountain of cash that will let it continue with its losses for years.”
> You gotta be kidding me. You have got to be kidding me here. You think Uber can just conjure up valuations for other companies and put some numbers on them to inflate its balance sheet. Below are some key search words as I am getting really annoyed by the financial ineptness shown here so not going to explain anymore.
> Nope. It is not. Dull claim requires a dull answer but I’ll do you one better. Uber just raised $1.5B in senior notes due 2029. In plain language, this means that Uber is capable of raising money when it needs because there are investors out there who did their due diligence and concluded Uber will be good for its word.
$1.5B is less than 6 months of operating costs for Uber. This comment also excludes any information on the interest rate of the debt being raised here. Is it a low interest debt because the lenders have confidence in the company? Is it a high interest predatory loan because Uber is desperate and needs cash? The fact that someone can get a long term note is, on its own, not useful information at all.
Even within that defense of Uber is the fact that the company has gone from 6.8B to 4.4B in one year, despite a 1.5B infusion. That... doesn't seem great.
If the pushback is that Uber isn't at zero yet, yes, that's true. So mid-2021 was clearly premature. ("The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent") And yes, their revenue is growing. If only revenue were profits!
This is the exact sentiment I hold as well. I think the demographics of hacker news may be slightly swayed towards people who already have established networks and industry experience.
Also the HN audience is far more remote-oriented than I’ve encountered among my coworkers over the course of my career, including > 4 years working full-remote.
Anonymity probably accounts for a decent portion of the discrepancy (meaning some of your co-workers would probably be anti-WFH in person, and pro-WFH anonymously)
We’ll, I can’t prove or disprove that claim, but most of my coworkers have always been very candid with their preferences. I find it difficult to believe that there’s a large number of people who regularly say one thing while secretly believing the opposite.
I think you'd be surprised by how many people don't really engage in outside-of-work anonymous programming forums, vs their personal contacts/friends/coworkers/ex-coworkers.
The handful of Reddit programming communities I've seen are also very uninterested in returning to work. I have to wonder if the difference isn't so much "established career" vs "newbie" and is more simply self-selection, with people who are comfortable working remotely more likely to engage frequently in online communities, and those more interested in in-person work less represented.
Also anyone who has been earning a FAANG salary for 5-10 years should have enough FU money to feel a lot less pressure to conform to unreasonable employer demands.
This might sound crazy but free may be worse than offering to charge. "Free" is saying my work offers no value and may even cost more through your time.
I am curious why unusual whales did not compare performance to market performance over set periods. I looked around for some papers and was unable to find anything recent. CATO published a report showing there is weak performance difference between senators and their stock portfolio [1].
If they are outperforming this should 100% be remedied but I'd be open if anyone has comments that would contradict this report?
he is selling a subscription. if it actually worked as well as he purports he would do it himself. way easier to collect recurring subs from gullible ppl.
I'm glad you are happy with your new Toyota but I think you are giving too much confidence in it's ability. Look at this evaluation between OpenPilot and Toyota TSS 2.0 https://youtu.be/z5-inxH92wM
Also free to checkout navigating SF with OpenPilot https://youtu.be/0TpMMoQ7GGg (30 min). I highly doubt you would find similar results with a Toyota TSS 2.0 system. Nevertheless, I will let the contents of the videos speak for themselves.
I have a Subaru with Eyesight, not a Toyota. But my point was more so that one of the most popular car manufacturers is giving away a system that is probably 70% as good as OpenPilot.
Those videos didn't really change my mind. I'm not convinced at all that it's really that much better on the highway. It's definitely better for non-highway driving, but it also had a few disengagements that he had to intervene for.
Look, if it was $1000 for Level 5 autonomy I would be the first in line to purchase it. But it's clearly not anywhere close to that yet.
I have a 2019 Subaru with Eyesight. The system isn't half as good as you think it is. The comma system is seriously so far ahead in regards to LKAS (lane centering, cornering, etc) than Subaru's eyesight system.
> The delivery and use of Ghost products will depend on our ability to meet certain reliability and performance levels, as well as receiving applicable regulatory approvals, which could take longer for certain car models and in certain jurisdictions. We continuously work to improve the functionality of our products, and as a result, some of the features depicted herein may be delivered to you via over-the-air software updates or equipment upgrades.
So far it has been an extremely reliable product that was fun to get some scripts running on. I use a raspberry pie with a cron job to update the board with the weather and my daily schedule. Board actually looks extremely repairable for each individual character, and have has no issues with reliability in ~6mo.
API currently is through a rest interface which they have promised to keep free despite charging for plugins shared through their a subscription model. They had promised a native/local API but I have not heard anything from that.
Overall would recommend but it falls in the tech art category for sure.