I'm grateful to the scientists doing their job and worrying about, studying and developing boosters against variants. The rest of us should focus on vaccinating the world as fast as possible, and especially what more transmissible/severe variants mean for the *unvaccinated.*
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Let me add: as vaccination scales to millions there will be some "breakthrough" cases—even few severe ones, especially among the elderly. Even common colds can cause deadly outbreaks in nursing homes. But every piece of real life data so far looks great. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/fourth-surge-variant-vaccine/618463/ …pic.twitter.com/k6L9BH4ulC
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Folks asking: We already know the two mRNA vaccines also overwhelmingly cut down any infection, including silent asymptomatic ones, *and* studies indicate even breakthrough disease after vaccination has lower viral load (hence likely less infectious). https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/fourth-surge-variant-vaccine/618463/ …pic.twitter.com/EdWaVcmkxp
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zeynep tufekci Retweeted Rick
Yeah. I constantly hear people invoke "immune evasion" (almost always a partial indication from studies that do not pertain to the whole immune system) as if it means vaccines becoming useless against variants. No! Anyway, let's vaccinate the world, ASAP.https://twitter.com/ricksterps/status/1379078510350860289 …
zeynep tufekci added,
Rick @ricksterpsI wish we weren't allergic to good news involving covid. A lot of really positive data coming out recently. If I just read headlines I would believe the vaccines won't protect me from all the variants and they are only good for like 6 months. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1379064102824316929 …Show this thread15 replies 94 retweets 635 likesShow this thread -
zeynep tufekci Retweeted Nate Silver
Let's put this here, but keep in mind: tens of millions in the US remain unvaccinated and are *just as much at risk* if infected (if not more, as some variants may also be more deadly). Vaccines are amazing, but the work is to vaccinate everyone, globally.https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1379090275969216519 …
zeynep tufekci added,
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Flabbergasted at how much speculative worrying there is out there against current/future variants making our vaccines completely “ineffective” (I’ll easily take a bet against that) when the real issue is we have AMAZING vaccines that DO work, but not enough of them for the world!
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Replying to @zeynep
Hard to blame people for worrying given the alarmism that’s rampant in clickbait coverage and among some high-follower Twitter accounts...
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Replying to @notdred
I’m really at a loss what to do. Not blaming people. It’s in the news, it’s coming from (otherwise well-credentialed) experts. And seems the (many) who know better don’t openly pushback because parts of pandemic/expert social media has become so cliquish and hostile? Not sure.
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I have a reasonably similar academic background to yours and have been following your work all year. This experience has been radicalizing for me. I am a technocrat by nature. But the COVID response is making me question...everything. It's not a conspiracy, but it's very bad.
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I understood moral panics coming into this. I just didn't expect that highly educated populations would be so susceptible to them. And I understood media incentives, but I presumed there was some editorial or institutional backstop on hysteria. Really a sobering experience.
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The most interesting part of all this for me, has been a lot of sociological processes I know about, think about, write about, teach about... well, I had completely underestimated how powerful they *actually* are despite it being in my field/work.
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100%. I work in product design and one of my core professional insights is "people like to be told what to do." They think they want choice, but actually find it overwhelming. Most folks prefer comfortable defaults. I didn't realize how broadly "comfortable" might be defined.
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