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The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#861

Post by Scoundreller »

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…

> Today, thanks to air travel, the world is a village. Wuhan is exposed one week, and the world the next.

I'm really hoping we can reduce the intermixing by some degree by banning lineups at airports security screen and customs/immigration lines, but I'm not holding my breath.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#862

Post by aantix »

nojs wrote: post #784
tdfx wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We go hard and we go early" works. "We go hard and we go early" works *in a small, remote island nation that is willing to hermetically seal itself off from the rest of the world.

It’s also worked pretty well in China.

Where they forceably took citizens for quarantine?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/video-appears-show-people...

Yeah, that's not happening in the U.S. Not without starting a civil war.

"Later the policy became even more aggressive, with officials going door to door for health checks, and forcing anyone ill into isolation. A disabled boy reportedly died after he was left without food, water or help when his his father and brother were quarantined."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/chinas-coronav...

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#863

Post by LAC-Tech »

tdfx wrote: post #764
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…

> "We go hard and we go early" works. "We go hard and we go early" works *in a small, remote island nation that is willing to hermetically seal itself off from the rest of the world.

Being a remote island nation really doesn't make much difference in the era of Air travel. It has (had) very high immigration rates and a lot of tourists.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#864

Post by vmception »

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…

ICU capacity should be the only metric for any mitigation measure.

Building greater capacity and staffing should be the focus.

The lack of capacity has been the justification for lockdowns since after summer 2020, and likely will be in some areas in the future. Its about periodic and seasonal things that occur while COVID is also taking up some bandwidth, not about whether it stops the spread at all. The messaging has been lackluster and hyperbolic and conflicting the whole time and will continue to be.

Sorry about your experience, its not worthwhile to stay frustrated on crowd reactions, this is a fast moving scenario and consensus will never be reached on the various overlapping chapters.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#865

Post by Clewza313 »

dogpuncher wrote: post #859
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that's a literal description of what they did last week:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/17/new-zealand-to...

One (1) positive case, entire nation placed on maximum level 4 lockdown where you can't leave your house except for a very short list of permitted reasons.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#866

Post by dcolkitt »

t-writescode wrote: post #661
h3cate wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 needin…

The RAND healthcare study showed that drastic drops in medical expenditures had virtually no impact on mortality. Potentially even negative impact.[1]

The reality is if you're a health adult, an overburdened ER or OR poses a very small risk. Probably much less than what could be made up by eating one extra daily serving of vegetables.[2] You have far more to fear from lockdown induced supply chain disruptions that cause fresh produce shortages at the local grocer.

[1]https://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-med... [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4727264/

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#867

Post by rattray »

baxtr wrote: post #607
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…

I like your comment, but not this part: > The thing is, COVID-19 is not endemic yet and, even once it is, will likely retain the capability of mutating into a strain that causes a new deadly pandemic. I don't think that's possible, since I am not aware of a precedent. Meaning: the other 4 endemic coronaviruses which also started as pandemic and now are harmless cold viruses never caused a new deathly pandemic in a mu…

None of the others were an engineered chimera virus, which this may have been. What you say is reassuring to me, but this could be different.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#868

Post by moralestapia »

Pyramus wrote: post #82
nradov wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

This is the correct answer and should be highlighted more. The virus doesn't evolve to become benign, it's the hosts that will evolve. In addition to the endemic coronaviruses that you stated, another example are endemic/seasonal influenza strains vs. new strains. (Yes the virus will evolve but in general mutations will optimise for transmission and be indifferent to lethality.)

Uuuhm... no?

Evolving implies some change to the genetic material, compared w/ prior generations.

Viruses can do that, and quite quickly, we can't.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#869

Post by m0zg »

It is surprisingly difficult to explain this even to otherwise intelligent people. Everyone has been so brainwashed by mass media's narrative of "stopping covid" that they don't see that even in January of 2020 it was already impossible to "stop" it in any meaningful way. And they're still talking about it today. The strategy, it seems to me, should be to vaccinate as many people as possible, and then, within 6 months of that curve flatlining somewhere at 85-90% just let 'er rip and get people to acquire long-lasting immunity from COVID itself, while they are still protected by vaccine antibodies. And those who decline the vaccine should be treated as adults, and allowed to take the risk, too. There can't be _that_ many of such people given that by CDCs own estimates 120M+ people in the US already had the disease [1]. We will all get it eventually. A year or two from now, we'll be getting it 2-3 times a year and it'll be totally normal. Masks or no masks, you are getting covid. But with a vax you have a much greater chance of suriving it. This should be the messaging, yet we get total incompetence and incoherence out of people who should know better.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#870

Post by JackFr »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #854
hcurtiss wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Hmmmm. Japan, I wonder what’s happening there right now.
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