Update on Omicron

Of course, because there's no local context and you have all the information required to infer that. If you're in Europe I understand but in my local context "staying at home" as I was doing would have a near zero impact on improving this global pandemic while being a huge cost for my well-being and health.

I live in a poor country with cases slowly approaching zero, a high vaccination rate and in the midst of the hot/humid season. Also staying at home is a luxury that the large majority of the population can't afford so my decision has a linear effect because nobody on my neighborhood will be "staying at home" or using masks anyways. Right now poverty and hunger are more of an issue than Covid.

Oh yeah let's ignore all the economical, social and health issues that are side effect of the "staying at home" and insist on social shaming and in a policy that is unsustainable. Let's adopt a dogmatic approach to solve novel issues.

If you want to shorten the global pandemic please lobby your politicians into not holding but subsidizing vaccines to poor countries.

I'm a supporter of building longer term effects that contribute into making society more robust against Covid and other kinds of airborne diseases. Like proper indoor ventilation in public spaces, load balancing, better respirators for daily use. Improved vaccine manufacturing capability and shorter lead times for vaccine development. I understand that they are not mutually exclusively in theory but there's so much we can lobby for at the same time and I prefer not to waste it.

Well millions of people believed the Trump Russia election hacking conspiracy theory despite having no basis in reality and having never seen any evidence for it.

Maybe after that was exposed people became a bit more skeptical of such narratives. It follows the same recipe as many social engineering tricks you get taught about in basic corporate security education but it really goes back a long way to low tech confidence tricks and scams -- a huge problem, a sense of urgency, and you mustn't ask questions otherwise you're a bad person.

Not saying covid or vaccines are a conspiracy theory, just that it follows and easily recognizable pattern that has been abused in the past. And people recognize patterns even subconsciously.

I guess ? I wonder whats the magnitude of flu infections vs covid in absolute numbers.

Also I guess not all viruses mutate in the same way?

So why didn't they skip "Mu", which as others have pointed out is a far more common name than Xi?

Everyone knows the real reason they skipped Xi, you're not fooling anybody.

Thank you very much for saying this. It was refreshing and surprising to see. Upvoted.

I agree with lot, especially with this: "things are more nuanced than that". I also understand the need for somewhat restrictive response to health crisis. Unfortunately, the nuance appears to be lost on many "in the power", who seem to be pushing the most restrictive approach just for the sake of being restrictive. They completely ignore the fact that many employed measures concern some people on a much, much different level than, say, some new taxes or road rules would. The division of society that they create now goes much deeper than disagreement on almost any other political issue, and they either incompetent enough to not give it a thought, or just plain evil to be doing it deliberately. I don't see any other explanation. I understand that in politics moderate position is almost impossible to hold, but no one is even pretending.

They all seem to be in a race to impose a mountain of most conspicious, symbolic and hostile measures on top of a handful that make sense, and then pretend that people are rejecting the good part. No, people are just unable and unwilling to fish for an ounce of gold in the barrel of fertilizer that is pushed upon us. No one is willing to acknowledge and discuss the nuance, hence people are forced to assume a radical position and find themselves in a company which they, in the normal times, would avoid.

In short, I don't expect for it all to end well and end soon. The regimes based on premise that 100% of participants are marching in lockstep, even involuntary so, always end in blood, in my opinion. And, as I said, the issues with worldwide "response" to "pandemic" go so very deep, at primal level, so the explosion of violence is inevitable. At the moment I don't see what can compel someone to hang around to witness the destruction.