21–30 of 159 posts
It really doesn't seem we have other 'pressing matters' , unless those matters are manufactured somehow. Can the world return to its habits of consuming recklessly, traveling like there's no tomorrow, office routine every day, low tech schooling and ignore the fact that it's largely unprepared for a new pandemic? Maybe, but it would seem more like reckless yoloers than future-thinking people.
> It is time to stop obsessing about Covid. It is time to stop politicizing Covid. It is time to stop tweeting about Covid. It is time to stop reading about Covid. It is time to start healing and it is time to start moving on. Is it? I mean, I’d like that to be true too. …but are things not still a bit too screwed up to be pretending everything is fine quite yet? > The current 7-day moving average of new deaths (1,74…
Thousands of Americans are losing their lives every day to Covid. New cases are MUCH higher than they were at any point in 2020 or 2021 (though it looks like we may finally have crossed the peak of this wave). I'm sorry, but it isn't over yet. I wish it was. However wishing it or asserting it doesn't make it true. This was a sensible argument to make in July 2021 when vaccines were more effective and cases were liter…
Deaths/severity is not rising even though there are a lot of new cases.
Deaths ( = going down): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#...
Severe cases ( small increase): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#...
While new cases > x 7 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#...
Additionally, it should be noted that the severe cases with Omicron are almost all unvaccinated ( not even boostered). If you want to check stats, please try to find a source that seperates delta ( which is not gone!) from Omicron.
Edit: And since it's January. An honest comparison would be Januari 2021 with Delta because of family / friend gatherings. It's a pretty busy social time ;)
> First, we have less severe variants now. Please don't assume that future variants will be less and less severe. It's what we all want to hear, but this "covid is over" mentality is what will help produce the next, possibly really nasty, variant.
We have the technology to make COVID just a nuisance to broad swaths of the population. Let them live their lives. Now is absolutely the time to quit the tut-tutting. I don't understand why people are so against taking an easy W like this.
> First, we have less severe variants now. Please don't assume that future variants will be less and less severe. It's what we all want to hear, but this "covid is over" mentality is what will help produce the next, possibly really nasty, variant.
I think this is simply about reassessing our risk calculus with the fact that the current Covid variant is mild enough that it can be gradually folded into the background noise of seasonal viruses that we deal with every year.
> First, we have less severe variants now. Please don't assume that future variants will be less and less severe. It's what we all want to hear, but this "covid is over" mentality is what will help produce the next, possibly really nasty, variant.
>this "covid is over" mentality is what will help produce the next, possibly really nasty, variant. Can you back this up? It's my understanding that our actions now have almost no bearing on what happens with future variants.
> It is time to stop obsessing about Covid. It is time to stop politicizing Covid. It is time to stop tweeting about Covid. It is time to stop reading about Covid. It is time to start healing and it is time to start moving on. Is it? I mean, I’d like that to be true too. …but are things not still a bit too screwed up to be pretending everything is fine quite yet? > The current 7-day moving average of new deaths (1,74…
EDIT: all parts of each country are not equal. In the Bay Area, the hospitals are doing (mostly) fine.
> First, we have less severe variants now. Please don't assume that future variants will be less and less severe. It's what we all want to hear, but this "covid is over" mentality is what will help produce the next, possibly really nasty, variant.
I thought the general theory of "virus evolution" was towards less severe variants. Of course, more severe variants can always develop. Holds same for flu, HIV, ... not just COVID.
Often that selection pressure works towards less dangerous variants because that gives them more opportunity to infect others.
Sometimes a virus kills off everyone who is susceptible to it. So it's now less dangerous to those who remain.
In the caae of Covid, it is infectious long before it kills, and so there is no great selection pressure for it to become less dangerous.
Thousands of Americans are losing their lives every day to Covid. New cases are MUCH higher than they were at any point in 2020 or 2021 (though it looks like we may finally have crossed the peak of this wave). I'm sorry, but it isn't over yet. I wish it was. However wishing it or asserting it doesn't make it true. This was a sensible argument to make in July 2021 when vaccines were more effective and cases were liter…
We didn’t keep kids from school, we didn’t panic when hospitals were overwhelmed, we didn’t shut down businesses.
Of course, a lot more people are still working remotely, something I consider to be a plus but that I suspect venture capitalists like the author do not. So when I see someone like that advocating “unlearning many of the behaviors we’ve learned in the last two years” I'm immediately suspicious.
> We’ve got other pressing matters to deal with. [...] We have other health care challenges to tackle.
One of the most pressing issues with healthcare today is the sheer number of COVID patients overwhelming the ability for a hospital to do anything other than treat COVID. Yes, even with the milder Omicron variant. Again: if anything this suggests that this lack of obsession has come too early, not too late.
And has any call to "stop politicizing" something ever worked? That's simply not the world we're living in (these days, at least). The vaccine is politicized. Masks are politicized. You can’t just wish that away.