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The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#641

Post by criticaltinker »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #588
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…

> 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 versus public health", etc.

Looking back through human history we can find numerous examples where scientific consensus was wrong, or where we created powerful new tools that backfired in unexpected ways. Diversity in opinion and choice is natures way of arriving at optimal decisions. Although it feels like friction and divisive arguments to us now, these are critical discussions that help expand everyone's knowledge and awareness.

At one level it appears to be chaos, but at a higher level it appears as harmony. We are now living in the age of the super-organism. The age where we all must become acutely aware that the separation between you and I - the separation between self and other - must be dissolved and reformulated, for the survival of our species and our planet.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#642

Post by Clubber »

craftinator wrote: post #617
l30n4da5 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turning vaccines into a political wedge issue is one of the stupidest things I've seen in my life. This is just history repeating itself, unfortunately. The Spanish flu had people protesting the counter-measures put in place to reduce transmission, as well.

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 messaging in both Trump's and Biden's administrations. The sad thing is many people still hold up the government / bureaucrats / politicians as omnipotent. It's called the novel corona virus because it's new. What we think today may not be true next month or next year.

I think one of the big problems of course is the government / bureaucrats / politicians are afraid to be straight with us. They think we'll freak out set everything on fire or something at the first hint of bad news. I feel their elusiveness is much, much worse; now trust is pretty low which makes the already ineffective government / bureaucrats / politicians' messaging even more ineffective. The government / bureaucrats / politicians found a hole and made it much bigger.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#643

Post by tboyd47 »

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…

Any time you use the government to force people to do something against their will, you have made the issue political. Politics is the business of force.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#644

Post by dongping »

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, the world is still in the middle of the pandemic.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#646

Post by makomk »

criticaltinker wrote: post #619
werm82 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some research has shown that they don't do very well at stopping spread, so why all the fuss to force people to get vaccinated? Do you have a link/links to where you read that vaccines don't do well at stopping the spread? Everything I've read is that vaccines, while not 100% effective at stopping the vaccinated person from infecting someone else, significantly lower the risk of spreading the virus[0]. That risk dr…

GP's statement contradicts the scientific literature - vaccination does reduce viral load of subsequent infection, and consequently reduces transmission [1]. However folks should be aware that immunity acquired through natural infection is robust and durable, and also has the same effect of reducing viral load and transmission [2]. It has been documented that people with asymptomatic infection will clear the virus qu…

Covid-19 vaccination used to reduce viral load of subsequent infections. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work with the current Delta variant - both the CDC in the US and PHE in the UK have released studies finding that the viral load of vaccinated and unvaccinated people is basically the same. They're also not so effective at stopping people from catching the Delta variant, and when you combine that with its higher infectivity it's basically impossible to get herd immunity using them.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#647

Post by Negitivefrags »

amatecha wrote: post #623
dstaley wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or what about the fact we are 2 years into this and we still haven't built a significant amount of hospitals? If I understand correctly, there isn't a lack of literal beds/space; it's a lack of personnel. Basically hospitals are unable to staff themselves at the levels needed to accomodate being basically 100% full. This is compounded by the fact that hospitals are struggling to retain healthcare workers, who are b…

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…

When you are told there is a lack of beds, it really doesn't have to mean a lack of physical beds.

A bed that isn't staffed with a nurse is no more useful then laying in your bed at home.

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#648

Post by [deleted] »

dstaley wrote: post #581
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 what about the fact we are 2 years into this and we still haven't built a significant amount of hospitals? If I understand correctly, there isn't a lack of literal beds/space; it's a lack of personnel. Basically hospitals are unable to staff themselves at the levels needed to accomodate being basically 100% full. This is compounded by the fact that hospitals are struggling to retain healthcare workers, who are b…

[deleted]

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#649

Post by gfodor »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #588
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…

> 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 soon will probably bar you from your local grocery store (now that that is normalized.)

Re: The Coronavirus Is Here Forever

#650

Post by ghettoimp »

itsoktocry wrote: post #574
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…

> 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.

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