AdmiralKird wrote: ↑December 6 21, 11:54 pm
Buying time allows for the development of omicron tailored vaccine (if necessary) and getting it ready. Best case scenario I heard was March/April for the manufacturers to update the mRNA versions. If you can push the spread of omicron back by two weeks that's two extra weeks to stay ahead of it, not just when its starting to grow with low infection rates, but also pushing the peak of the wave back two weeks from when it infects hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously around the nation. this allows for more and more vulnerable to have potentially received a tailored vaccine and have had its immunity vest. So you're looking at saving thousands of lives in June or so.
Of course, it all depends on a lot of factors. Omicron might outpace vaccine development - but on the other hand, people are generally very stupid, many will not take something seriously until it happens to them or their loved ones and they won't wear a mask or do anything to prevent the spread of omicron. But there are also plenty of people who are only marginally very stupid, who will only take it seriously when they start to see devastation and lockdowns in countries like Italy putting on their best balcony renditions of Frozen. The more people that you can get to wear a mask over their nose instead of a chin diaper, the flatter the curve over here can be, etc. Time is helpful.
I understand what you're saying but don't agree with the majority of it.
To start, omicron is already here. How much does the travel ban push the peak back? You note pushing the peak back and pushing the spread back by two weeks is helpful, but I don't know where that timeframe came from aside from my made up example to demonstrate two weeks really is a fruitless amount of time to understand the situation and get a coherent plan in place. I'd also point out the delay of a peak and the delay of spread is not linear with the duration of a travel ban (eg, a 1 year travel ban doesn't push the peak back 1 year).
We would probably agree that if we could fathomably push the peak of omicron back to 2023, there is enough merit to give that path some consideration. However, there is no path. Same thing with delta and alpha and wild and etc etc etc. All the same things were tried on those and travel bans, flat out, didn't work. And, you then go on to mostly explain why in your second paragraph which I'll paraphrase as
many people don't care and come to the conclusion that time would somehow be helpful, presumably to change that. But I don't see how it will.
Regarding the vaccine timing, I can't get behind punishing a country that has done everything the international community has asked of them with transparency and forthright data sharing in the hopes that a travel ban will provide the theoretical minimum amount of time required to develop and administer a vaccine to the most vulnerable of the population. I'd also point out, we have no way of calc'ing when that peak will be because omicron is almost assuredly more transmissible and will spread faster than previous variants. Making the margins on that timeframe incredibly thin to the point of being negligible, imo, which brings me to this.
No one has shown the vaccine isn't effective against omicron, from what I've seen. I'm not talking about infections only severe infections. Of course the measurable antibodies will be less effective against at neutralizing the spike protein. This is true with any variant that will ever arise. If you design a condom for Person A, it's not going to fit as well on Person B. But we make condoms for the masses that aren't perfect fits and people use them to a high degree of efficacy. This is almost assuredly what is going to happen with omicron as well. And, I'll say it again....that is not accounting for the entire immune system, just the antibodies. So, even that theoretical minimum timeframe to develop and get the vulnerable boosted likely isn't necessary. I could be wrong, sure. But, I don't even need this part to be true for the above paragraph to be a standalone point.
Looking at all that, and adding in that omicron is likely less virulent/deadly, you end up with a more contagious, less severe variant of the same virus to which many immune systems are no longer naïve. We have a vaccine readily available to immunize people against the virus in the US.
I could change my position on needing to delay the spread iff it's shown vaccines and natural infections are largely ineffective at preventing severe disease, a relatively high degree of mutations are occurring within omicron, and healthcare infrastructure is more at risk than previous waves (too late for a travel ban at that point and no way of knowing now). (ETA) Also if there is ever an inkling of antibody dependent enhancement among a variant, that would probably be the biggest cause for concern of all, which of course is not the case here nor has it ever been shown with any variants to date.