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The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#661

Post by t-writescode »

h3cate wrote: post #633
pohl wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even less popular opinion: fear is irrelevant. What we actually have is a cultural gap in how risk is assessed. Some only consider individual risk of death. Others also consider risk to beyond death, and beyond themselves. Casting the latter as afraid is unhelpful.

If you are a healthy person then you are low risk. If you are unhealthy (smoke, overweight, health condition) then you are at risk. I think a lot of people demanding the mandating of vaccines and mask wearing are in the smokers / overweight category and yet those people are never told to become healthy in themselves. People with health conditions have thought about illnesses long before covid. Thoughts?

I think a look at Texas shows the real danger of Covid. Near 0% ER (edit: availability).

If you’re in a car accident, you may not get the life saving attention you need, because so many someones refused to vaccinate.

That’s the cascading effects we need to deal with, here.

I’m not worried about getting covid, myself. I wasn’t too worried before I was vaccinated and I’m not worried at all, now.

I’m terrified of needing normal, emergency medical care, or so-called elective surgeries (which is almost all surgeries, even the vital ones), and being unable to get it because thousands of beds are filled with people on respirators.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#662

Post by [deleted] »

Clubber wrote: post #642
craftinator wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just boggles my mind that with modern understanding of how these things work (and we have a MUCH more complete understanding than they had during the early 1900's), we repeat this ignorant mistake.

"Masks aren't effective" "Masks are effective" "Vaccinated don't have to wear masks" "Vaccinated should wear masks" "COVID is not airborne" "COVID is airborne" "COVID came from a wet market" "COVID came from a lab" "If you caught it, you have immunity" "If you caught it, you might not have immunity" It's not difficult to understand why there is so much confusion. Our government was and has been quite inept at its mes…

[deleted]

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#663

Post by mike00632 »

kansface wrote: post #595
gowld wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming the US Southern border for coronavirus spread is a racist and Republican (anti-immigration excuse-making) trope.

A quick search shows ~20% of immigrants being deported testing positive (up to 25%). There are something like 200K immigrants currently encountered by border patrol per month. Naively that's 50K people coming to the US each month with covid who are poor (probably can't self quarantine), live in dense, multi generational households and exist outside of the law. Realistically, we'd expect that ICE (deportation) contrib…

Shouldn't you think about a control group? Legal immigrants? Law enforcement gatherings? Prisoners? Local area positivity rate?

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#664

Post by grillvogel »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #504
beloch wrote: post #489

"The transition to endemic COVID-19 is also a psychological one. When everyone has some immunity, a COVID-19 diagnosis becomes as routine as diagnosis of strep or flu—not good news, but not a reason for particular fear or worry or embarrassment either. That means unlearning a year of messaging that said COVID-19 was not just a flu. If the confusion around the CDC dropping mask recommendations for the vaccinated earli…

People will always be sceptical of deviations from the status quo and politicians will always be there to capitalize on those fears for substantial gains of power. We have the most educated populis in human history and we're still seeing these problems. I'm not sure how you could fix vaccines becoming a political issue without major changes to the political structure.

"The largest decrease in hesitancy between January and May by education group was in those with a high school education or less. Hesitancy held constant in the most educated group (those with a PhD); by May PhD’s were the most hesitant group. "

https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/news/news-stories/2021/july/cov...

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#665

Post by Tobani »

gfodor wrote: post #649
johnnyanmac wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turning vaccines into a political wedge issue is one of the stupidest things I've seen in my life. Something tells me that this is just history repeating. The difference here is the same as your metaphor; the world is a village and now its much easier to see that one conspiracy nut every village has that gets outcasted. The problem of course is that now those nuts can band together in the thousands thanks to worldw…

Yes, calling people nuts is a sure fire way to solve this problem. The “nuts” were also saying covid was coming and was dangerous and were called crazy xenophobes. I’m vehemently pro-vax but there are as many idiots on both sides of this issue as there are non-idiots. Note that I need to disclose that, since the scarlet letter being handed out now has the power to prevent you from being on YouTube and in some places…

> The “nuts” were also saying covid was coming and was dangerous and were called crazy xenophobes.

I only ever saw people saying that calling it things like "Wuhan Flu" was xenophobic.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#666

Post by dpweb »

The only things pushed were masks and vaccines. Nothing about Vitamin D (or C for that matter) supplementation. No push for healthy lifestyles or reduction of obesity rate. Nothing about developing new mask or shield technologies. Nothing about the use of UV light safe to stand in that kills virus. Nothing about ventilation system technology. Or permanently moving some activities outdoors.

We should have had a full-court press in all areas to fight this virus. Not just a $100 billion for big pharma for a vaccine that always works, except when it doesn't. It's no wonder 25% of the US have adopted the idiotic position that they wont accept a mask or vaccine. People are so done with the 'new normal' for this week that just needs to be accepted.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#667

Post by MatteoFrigo »

javagram wrote: post #509
linuxftw wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such as chicken pox, once caused epidemics with massive body counts Never happened. Almost nobody ever died of chicken pox. Fear mongering like this is exactly why nobody trusts the CDC and FDA. It's all quackery.

What quackery? A quick google confirms that chickenpox has been speculated to have caused a serious epidemic among Native Americans. We know that European diseases wiped them out, it just isn’t necessarily clear which ones due to the lack of record keeping and medical knowledge at the time. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2957993/ > In the years before English settlers established the Plymouth colony (16…

Your case would be stronger if you linked an article that argues that chickenpox was the culprit. The article you quote suggests that the disease was leptospirosis.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#668

Post by jokethrowaway »

h3cate wrote: post #221
rossdavidh wrote: post #36

Good article, but doesn't mention the other reason that covid-19 is never going completely away: animal reservoirs. We know that dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, mink, white-tailed deer, a gorilla, and a tiger have been found to have been infected with covid-19. It is implausible that it will ever cease to have an animal reservoir, especially given the finding in Canada of 30% of white-tailed deer having it. Of dis…

Unpopular opinion but as countries get majority vaccinated they have to learn to not be as scared of it.

The fact this is an unpopular opinion drives me crazy.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#669

Post by wiremine »

criticaltinker wrote: post #641
johnnyanmac wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turning vaccines into a political wedge issue is one of the stupidest things I've seen in my life. Something tells me that this is just history repeating. The difference here is the same as your metaphor; the world is a village and now its much easier to see that one conspiracy nut every village has that gets outcasted. The problem of course is that now those nuts can band together in the thousands thanks to worldw…

The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are a "political wedge issue" not because of the "conspiracy nut in every village", but because the scientific literacy of the general public is astonishingly low, and the second and third order consequences of public health policy are tremendously complex. We must encourage discussions that move beyond overly-simplistic dualistic framing such as "vax versus anti-vax", "individual choice versu…

> "The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are a "political wedge issue" not because of the "conspiracy nut in every village", but because the scientific literacy of the general public is astonishingly low, and the second and third order consequences of public health policy are tremendously complex."

This. Feels like the future depends on identifying the root cause of these issues and working to overcome them.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#670

Post by grillvogel »

dongping wrote: post #644

Nonpharmaceutical interventions do work. With Internet and E-commerce, full scale lockdown becomes tenable. Together with mass PCR testing, the virus can be eradicated. The virus can't teleport, and it is here to stay only because the decision-makers thought that it was the cheaper option to let it spread (it is not), then didn't want to admit being wrong. It is sad to see that with all the technologies available, th…

permanent lockdown should be encouraged because we have the internet and can buy stuff online? sorry but no.
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