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The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#851

Post by roody15 »

tialaramex wrote: post #565
autokad wrote: post #521

There is lots of competition for the top of the stupidity list. NYC locking down all summer and then 'opening up' in September seemed top of the list to me. It's not that I thought they should have stayed locked down the entire time, its that they should have opened in the summer so they could lock down in the winter if they really needed it. But seriously though, locking down in the summer to only open up in flu sea…

> Or maybe the whole 'if we just lock down for two weeks, this will be over' tops the list of stupidity New Zealand had 26 deaths in over a year of the pandemic. Not 26 per 100k population. Not 26 per day. Twenty six people full stop. Because in fact "We go hard and we go early" works. Right now they are locked down (since last week) because they had one case in their community, but of course it isn't ever one case a…

New Zealand is an island.. elimination strategy would not work in many other locations

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#852

Post by rkk3 »

ghettoimp wrote: post #650
itsoktocry wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not 26 per 100k population I know people like to think that doing the per-capita calculation puts every country on an even footing for comparison. But it's kind of silly to straight compare countries with vastly different geographies and economies, regardless of population normalization. > I think there's a fair chance they'll beat it again If they are locked down, again, 16 months into this thing, they never beat…

Uh. The US is suffering another 9/11 every few days. In huge parts of the country, life is nowhere near normal. That's what they beat, and God willing will beat again.

> The US is suffering another 9/11 every few days.

Except no, it is not 9/11. People with a year or two of life expectancy dying is not the same as what happened with 9/11 & not the same as Vietnam. Millions of people die every year in the US, it's what happens to the old, the sick and eventually to us all.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#853

Post by dilap »

nradov wrote: post #35
xyzzy21 wrote: post #4

Yes. And it will evolve into a fairly benign endemic virus just like its cousin: the common cold coronavirus.

It's not that the virus will necessarily evolve to become benign, but rather that most people will get infected when they're young and build up natural immunity which protects them later in life. This is what already happens with the other 4 endemic common cold coronaviruses. Each of them probably killed a lot of people when they first emerged. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/

so what happens if kids in lockdown now (e.g. australia) grow up w/o exposure to the common cold? is it suddenly going to become a big deal for them later in life?

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#854

Post by socialdemocrat »

hcurtiss wrote: post #568
tialaramex wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or maybe the whole 'if we just lock down for two weeks, this will be over' tops the list of stupidity New Zealand had 26 deaths in over a year of the pandemic. Not 26 per 100k population. Not 26 per day. Twenty six people full stop. Because in fact "We go hard and we go early" works. Right now they are locked down (since last week) because they had one case in their community, but of course it isn't ever one case a…

Yes. For small island countries like New Zealand it works "great." This was never an option for countries like the US, or even most of Europe. Much less so for countries like India. But we'll see how it goes. If New Zealand and Australia persist in this notion that they're going to stay locked down until the virus goes away, particularly with its endemicity now inevitable, I think you will soon find vast swaths of th…

Edit: Don’t mean to sound nasty, but this type of reasoning gets repeated so often without much criticism.

It worked for China too, so don’t come with this “small countries” crap. The US is “small” relative to China. Okay… now we get the “easy in a dictatorship” response to which I offer Japan. A democracy, with relatively large and dense population, yet have had relative few cases… although I am sure an excuse can be invented for them too…

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#855

Post by JamesBarney »

dunco wrote: post #839
amatecha wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely a lack of beds. Someone I know was in emergency last week (totally unrelated to pandemic) and had to wait an entire day before actually being properly admitted to a ward because there were no beds available for them. So they layed in an emergency room "booth"[0] for close to 24 hours, until a bed became available. There are lots of news articles about the lack of beds/capacity all o…

"beds" and capacity can be synonymous in casual medical conversation. If the staff had plenty of literal beds, but no staff for them, they might still tell you that they had no beds, because they are just saying they don't have the capacity.

Like when a restaurant tells you they don't have any available tables, when you can clearly see empty tables.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#856

Post by hfdskghkj »

tialaramex wrote: post #565
autokad wrote: post #521

There is lots of competition for the top of the stupidity list. NYC locking down all summer and then 'opening up' in September seemed top of the list to me. It's not that I thought they should have stayed locked down the entire time, its that they should have opened in the summer so they could lock down in the winter if they really needed it. But seriously though, locking down in the summer to only open up in flu sea…

> Or maybe the whole 'if we just lock down for two weeks, this will be over' tops the list of stupidity New Zealand had 26 deaths in over a year of the pandemic. Not 26 per 100k population. Not 26 per day. Twenty six people full stop. Because in fact "We go hard and we go early" works. Right now they are locked down (since last week) because they had one case in their community, but of course it isn't ever one case a…

>New Zealand had 26 deaths in over a year of the pandemic. Not 26 per 100k population. Not 26 per day. Twenty six people full stop. Because in fact "We go hard and we go early" works.

We could tackle smoking and obesity similarly to similar effect.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#857

Post by natural219 »

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…

This all sounds well and dandy, except the best data we have for covid-19 shows a .2% - .3% infection fatality rate, about 2x or 3x worse than the seasonal flu, which is still -- as we learned in May 2020 -- highly gated to people with severe age- and weight- related comorbidities.

In short, comparing this to chicken pox or other epidemics with "massive body counts" is flatly asinine. It's a slightly worse version of the regular flu; always has been, seemingly always will be.

Fwiw, I've been saying the same thing for 1.5 years now, which is what the original data reflects, which hasn't changed since then. Whenever we get new data that changes our understanding, we should reevaluate at that point.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#858

Post by spoonjim »

tialaramex wrote: post #565
autokad wrote: post #521

There is lots of competition for the top of the stupidity list. NYC locking down all summer and then 'opening up' in September seemed top of the list to me. It's not that I thought they should have stayed locked down the entire time, its that they should have opened in the summer so they could lock down in the winter if they really needed it. But seriously though, locking down in the summer to only open up in flu sea…

> Or maybe the whole 'if we just lock down for two weeks, this will be over' tops the list of stupidity New Zealand had 26 deaths in over a year of the pandemic. Not 26 per 100k population. Not 26 per day. Twenty six people full stop. Because in fact "We go hard and we go early" works. Right now they are locked down (since last week) because they had one case in their community, but of course it isn't ever one case a…

New Zealand is not really a replicable model. It has a lot of unique properties like the combination of wealth, remoteness, culture, population density, etc. Not a lot that other countries can learn from it. Other countries could learn more from countries like Vietnam.

If you want to learn how to get a basketball in the hoop reliably, you’re better off asking a regular guy than a 7 footer who will say “well just put it in.”

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#859

Post by dogpuncher »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #753
tialaramex wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or maybe the whole 'if we just lock down for two weeks, this will be over' tops the list of stupidity New Zealand had 26 deaths in over a year of the pandemic. Not 26 per 100k population. Not 26 per day. Twenty six people full stop. Because in fact "We go hard and we go early" works. Right now they are locked down (since last week) because they had one case in their community, but of course it isn't ever one case a…

As others have pointed out they're able to totally control their border and quarantine every single arrival. But more importantly, how will it end for them? Australia and New Zealand are among the worst corona zealot nations. New Zealand just shut down everything over a single case and the PM told people to not even talk to each other anymore. How will they get out of this? If they looked at the facts they'd understa…

> New Zealand just shut down everything over a single case

It's maddening to see someone peddling this narrative in a discussion on HN.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#860

Post by ds206 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #835
paulddraper wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flu is endemic, but another 1918 could happen at any time. True, though usually viruses mutate into less virulent forms. There's good reason to suspect that long-term COVID will be on the order of influenza or the common cold -- common and mild for most patients. > Turning vaccines into a political wedge issue is one of the stupidest things I've seen in my life. Probably, but even the question of whether vaccines s…

> There's good reason to suspect that long-term COVID will be on the order of influenza or the common cold -- common and mild for most patients. In slovenia, by some estimates of our expert group, half the country got infected by covid (~1mio), 4450 died, almost half of them in old age/nursing homes, and out of all that, only 4 were under 35yo, only one (out of those 5) under 25, and we count every death within 28day…

This is why I'm unvaccinated... low risk
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