A point not many people are raising is its winter in the northern hemisphere, so naturally the R0 will increase. Why this new strain is so prevalent? My personal opinion is since schools opened up they have acted as the main vector. Going undetected for an extended period, I read children are 'being hit the hardest' ie their is a lot more asymptomatic children. The latter point is just conjecture but the note on winter I do think has merit.
Overtime the virus will be less deadly to all age groups and likely become another common cold virus. I read a article in hn the other day talking about how all cold virus might have started as pandemics.
Based in history pandemics last 18 months. Two winters and one summer. But that is during natural spread rather than nation wide lockdown.
While I'm ranting, I believe masks were always a vector to get people the smallest viral dose. Have you seen anyone with a mask, they touch it every few seconds and even reuse it. I remember back 12months ago I was panning on wearing different clothes inside from outside, having a buffer area in my house and having a mask cycle were they spend 3 days in the suns UV.
I don't think the virus will get as much news, a important catalyst is when their is government mandate of the pcr cycle number. If they reduce it they can stimulate low infection numbers.
In my personal opinion mass testing was the biggest mistake, after it hit large community spread they should have only tested in hospitals for research purposes and held all data at a national security level for 10 years.
People are just not mentally able to deal with such situation, look at social media for an example their is so much pure rage in the world. Even in my county NZ the anger on social media is shocking. Its the same logic that you should not tell people about aliens (in movies) because people as a group can not take the stress.
We on HN are a bad sample, we are probably more likely to be logical. Where most people would have strong emotions.
I read this title as "Ireland events" as social unrest. I know this is not the subject, but its equally vaild, given what we have witnessed over the last year.