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America is giving up on the pandemic?

theatlantic.com

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Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#51
post #3

A thing I've noticed is that they stopped mentioning the daily numbers on the radio (NPR, more specifically Iowa Public Radio). It's sort of like the media has extracted all the juice they can from the pandemic and now we're just left with the pulpy mess that no one really wants to deal with.

>>It's sort of like the media has extracted all the juice they can from the pandemic

NPR is not "the media". It is one media outlet out of many.

Furthermore, NPR's website (along with that of all major media outlets) still contains live updates, trackers, charts. The only difference now is they have taken a backseat to the much more immediate and relevant news, which are the protests.

edit: lmao, i guess people dislike facts. keep downvoting, it won't bother me. ;)

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#52
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a lot of it, for better or worse. I feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about anything but the protests lately, lest they be branded as not supporting the protests.

What’s crazy though is for the first time in my life I actually fear for the future existence of the US. I watched 9/11 in real time and that didn’t feel as much of a threat to our existence as this does. There’s an actual civil war movement among the extremists now. I don’t think that existed during the civil rights movement days, even. Nor even the Vietnam fallout.

Do you have a link to the civil war movement claim? Are they being reported anywhere or by anyone?

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#53
I think that, even after other things are opened up, they should continue to ban business travel and commercial airplane travel for some more time. This will mitigate international spreading (I don't how by how much, but it will help a bit). More testing would also be helpful. This way, you might have better data to work with.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#54
post #11
post #4

The concerns are right but public assembly is critical in a democracy, and cannot be put on hold indefinitely. It's probably the most fundamental right in any civil society and with all these takes I have seen on twitter about COVID and the protests, a lot of people seem to seriously unerestimate the value that free assembly has. Covid as bad as it is will be an issue of the near future, civil rights gains or losses…

Assembly is valuable, but there's a certain misery that comes with self-isolating for two weeks living on canned beans, having many businesses shut down, and working so hard at this to protect the lives of your elderly parents or your asthmatic sibling... ... And then watching 10,000 people pack together downtown exercising their right to free assembly, and likely undoing all those months of progress.

> there's a certain misery that comes with [...] watching 10,000 people pack together downtown exercising their right to free assembly, and likely undoing all those months of progress.

Yep, that's called privilege.

And I'm not even trying to be snarky. From the perspective of the protesters, taking this opportunity to protest and possibly achieve change means hopefully lowering the general mortality risk for generations to come, not just in the immediate COVID future.

If the first thing that comes to our mind is "ah shit, all that progress" or "I could get sick" and not "I have an opportunity to really make a difference," it's because that difference doesn't matter as much to us compared to the risk of getting sick, and the fact that that difference doesn't matter as much is a product of privilege.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#56
post #47

This is a pretty heavily politicized article for something that is marked as "Science" by the publishers. The authors have a clear political agenda that bleeds through onto the page.

It's from the Atlantic. Of course it has a political agenda. That's why people read it.

True. I guess I was hoping that they would at least avoid pushing the agenda in something that they themselves mark as "Science".

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#57
post #6
post #4

The concerns are right but public assembly is critical in a democracy, and cannot be put on hold indefinitely. It's probably the most fundamental right in any civil society and with all these takes I have seen on twitter about COVID and the protests, a lot of people seem to seriously unerestimate the value that free assembly has. Covid as bad as it is will be an issue of the near future, civil rights gains or losses…

Additionally, mask usage is seriously high at these protests. I’ll literally be marching down the street and see folks on rooftop bars, beers in hand, elbow to elbow, not a mask in sight. that scares me more than a protest where you can freely trail behind at distance.

I went to a protest in my town and there wasn't an unmasked person in sight. I think that if you showed up without one, you would get called out and asked to leave.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#58
post #16

Not a surprise, COVID19 is pretty soft compared to the historic pandemics. I'm actually suprised that this continued for so long, I gave the lockdowns 4 week, but I guess the media propaganda blessed it with longer life. Just to clarify about Covid: -The highest deathrate from it is around 1%, CDC reports 0.30 lately. -Hits predominantly the old parts of the population -The death comes in a normal way - pneumonia ->…

Link to source? Current data on cdc is 1,920,904 cases and 109,901 deaths which is 5.7% (and it doesn't appear to be changing much). That's about 20 times higher than your figure of 0.3%.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#60
post #16

Not a surprise, COVID19 is pretty soft compared to the historic pandemics. I'm actually suprised that this continued for so long, I gave the lockdowns 4 week, but I guess the media propaganda blessed it with longer life. Just to clarify about Covid: -The highest deathrate from it is around 1%, CDC reports 0.30 lately. -Hits predominantly the old parts of the population -The death comes in a normal way - pneumonia ->…

> Not a surprise, COVID19 is pretty soft compared to the historic pandemics.

Well, it isn't done and I'd say in terms of raw deaths it's pretty significant. Particularly when you recognize that a lot of those previous bad pandemics coincided with terrible water/sewage and insufficient healthcare.

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