Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Update on Omicron

who.int

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 794 posts

Re: Update on Omicron

#771

Post by throwawaylinux »

chimprich wrote: post #740
throwawaylinux wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's tradeoffs for everything. We weren't all grandma killing fascists in the previous years for not locking ourselves in our homes and wearing masks and not going to large gatherings and shutting down businesses in response to influenza. Yet the flu killed many many people every year. We're not hateful anti science bigots for daring to drive automobiles despite that statistically contributing to killing many many…

> We're not hateful anti science bigots for daring to drive automobiles In most developed countries there are strict rules about driving. You are expected and required to drive according to certain rules to keep other people safe. There are rules for driving because the right of other people to not get injured or killed are considered more important than your right to do what you feel like. Do you think restricting y…

> In most developed countries there are strict rules about driving. You are expected and required to drive according to certain rules to keep other people safe. There are rules for driving because the right of other people to not get injured or killed are considered more important than your right to do what you feel like.

Driving your automobile legally on the road is statistically responsible for many many deaths. No two ways about it. That makes your next rhetorical question a failure. You also couldn't address the flu one either.

> Do you think restricting your right to drive drunk on a pavement is "strange collectivism"?

No.

Re: Update on Omicron

#772

Post by chiefalchemist »

DenisM wrote: post #497
metamet wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To that point, my grandma's retirement home was as well locked down as possible. But you know who didn't take it seriously? The staff who worked there and brought COVID in, which ended up killing her. There's no way of isolating them without isolating their staff, their families, everyone they interact with. With a virus as contagious as COVID, there doesn't appear to be a way to target portions of the population eff…

The staff could work like oil rig workers - in month-long shifts. Get quarantined for a week on the way in, do your shift, go home to your family. Not pleasant, but doable and a lot simpler than placing everyone's life on hold.

An improvement in testing (accuracy + turnaround time + cost) would also help significantly. But there's been little talk in investing in such a tool. That strikes me as a red flag. Instead, we're betting on the jab, and apparently that's not working out well. At all.

Re: Update on Omicron

#773

Post by corinroyal »

incrudible wrote: post #586
namanaggarwal wrote: post #578

For those commenting that it's just common cold and about herd immunity, I think we should not miss out on overload on our medical system. This is what happened in India, due to high number of cases (even if mild) the medical infrastructure completely crashed under the load and lead to far more deaths than just a flu could have caused. Wear mask and stay indoors if possible

> Wear mask and stay indoors if possible For all we know about transmission, you should stay outdoors, if possible. If this isn't possible, maximize ventilation. Limit contacts in general. Masks have a very modest impact on transmission.

Actually, a recent metastudy found that masking reduces transmission by 53%, which is huge. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211118/mask-wearing-cuts-n...

Re: Update on Omicron

#774

Post by corinroyal »

lobocinza wrote: post #735
junon wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Medical community should not be the only one making decisions that have such a massive impact on society. Perhaps not when it's economic, technological, wartime, etc. Sure. But when it comes to the healthcare of everyone (not just the individual), they absolutely should. The problem is that politicians seem to think they know more about healthcare than the experts do. > Why is your right keeping families separated…

> Perhaps not when it's economic, technological, wartime, etc. Sure. But when it comes to the healthcare of everyone (not just the individual), they absolutely should. The problem is that politicians seem to think they know more about healthcare than the experts do. In pandemic times medical community matters more but nobody should be the only one making decisions about the life of others. People on the front-line la…

This global pandemic is highly inconvenient to me, so I demand to be able to take actions which are likely to worsen and prolong it.

Re: Update on Omicron

#775

Post by corinroyal »

techdragon wrote: post #666
Dumblydorr wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was the government supposed to convince anti-vaxxers to do what they believe contains micro chips or what they believe is worse than the virus itself? This isn't on the government, this is on anti-vaxxers for swallowing garbage information, hook line and sinker. And you didn't lose 2 years of your life. You're alive, you didn't die due to the pandemic, did you? That's much less than can be said for 5 million othe…

Two years isn’t an inconceivable time to build additional hospital capacity and attempt efforts at preventing normal causes of medial and nursing school drop outs in order to bolster the number of adequately trained medical professionals available to staff those hospitals. In fact a lot of countries have an artificial cap on the number of doctors and nurses which is driven by various medical professional associations…

Maybe if more people voted for the party that typically funds healthcare, instead of the one that tends to defund healthcare, we would be further along on hospital capacity. There's only so much democrats can do when republicans insist on opposing everything sensible just because the hated opposition supports it.

Re: Update on Omicron

#776

Post by corinroyal »

disambiguation wrote: post #737
throwawaye3422 wrote: post #663

I am so tired of this bullshit, it's so damn tiring. Everything feels, just so very useless, its just sad to see how much this thing has effected everyone, everyone I love, every stranger I see, we are all getting pushed to the limits, people are depressed some people are suffering in silence while governments and organizations like the WHO are not telling us exactly what's going on, they change the narrative everyda…

a lot of people feel this way. the only scrap of solace i've personally found in all this is that at least in historical terms, this isn't too bad as far as generational trials go. if once upon a time we made it through great wars, then we can make it through this.

Thank you. There are so many whiners on this site who act like following the recommended precautions is worse than dying. Sometimes it seems like entitlement is the pandemic.

Re: Update on Omicron

#777

Post by corinroyal »

sebow wrote: post #614

"Just trust us" The way people(as in the vast majority, the non-rulers) responded to this virus and the measures following it will remain a stain on humanity. You don't even have to wait to see the negative effects the restrictions, panicking rhetoric & messages(not about the severity of the virus per se) and dividing political hacks will have on the current/future generations, it's already here. Again, this authorit…

It's so disgusting how conservatives downplay the lethality of this disease, and get all hysterical about the inconvenience of the measures taken to stop it. Quit whining and supporting the fasists tring to prolong the pandemic for political gain, and maybe we can emerge from the crisis sooner.

Re: Update on Omicron

#778

Post by techdragon »

corinroyal wrote: post #775
techdragon wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years isn’t an inconceivable time to build additional hospital capacity and attempt efforts at preventing normal causes of medial and nursing school drop outs in order to bolster the number of adequately trained medical professionals available to staff those hospitals. In fact a lot of countries have an artificial cap on the number of doctors and nurses which is driven by various medical professional associations…

Maybe if more people voted for the party that typically funds healthcare, instead of the one that tends to defund healthcare, we would be further along on hospital capacity. There's only so much democrats can do when republicans insist on opposing everything sensible just because the hated opposition supports it.

That’s certainly one element of what’s happened in the USA… but I was trying to keep a more global perspective as the fact we are clearly watching the development of what may become an endemic infection like the seasonal influenza virus waves currently are makes it more clear than ever that in the long term this is a massive global issue we need to be coordinating better on.

The global nature of the situation makes any solutions focused on a single nation and their own citizens inadequate as they will just be eventually defeated by the natural mutant strains developing elsewhere. In fact “more doctors and nurses and hospital beds because we’re just going to let it happen” is the only local to national level strategy that has any long term ability to make a difference if the virus continues on its course to become endemic.

Re: Update on Omicron

#779

Post by corinroyal »

soared wrote: post #756
chrisjs95 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will we know if we actually saved net lives in 20 years? That's what I keep thinking. If we just let it run its course it could have been over in a few months and we would have been back to normal. History will tell.

> will we know > history will tell I’m not following the logic here. As opposed to lockdowns we should.. let everyone die so those who live could go outside a couple months earlier?

Yes, that is literally what so many libertarians on HN and elsewhere think. Who cares if people die or suffer as long as I am not inconvenienced. You see the mental contortions they go through in this thread alone. It's death by petulance as much as pestilence.

Re: Update on Omicron

#780

Post by corinroyal »

syshum wrote: post #352
ageofwant wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to low trust in government after decades of corruption and mismanagement of basically everything who can blame them ? And who stepped into into this void of authority... Facebook, bastion of truth and science and critical thinking. America's inability to curb its own propaganda machines and its capitalism uber alles rhetoric and group-think boomerangs right back. This pandemic has certainly shaken a lot of nuts o…

Ahh yes, lets blame capitalism for all things. You do realize that capitalism created the vaccine in the first place? That with out capitalism you would have no vaccine to complain about people refusing to take? I really am tried to seeing capitalism blamed on all the worlds problem when it has been capitalism more than anything else that has brought both peace and prosperity to the world

So capitalism is the only economic system capable of producing vaccines? If we had any other system of production, we would just be S.O.L because it takes an kleptocratic, imperialist oligarchy to make stuff?

It never fails to surprise me how little thinking technolibertarians do outside of their professional domains. I so wish we trained more generalists capable of recognising at a glance how ludicrous an argument like that is. People who's only qualification is that they're good with computers should really just stop thinking their opinions are useful on topics outside of their domains of expertise.

Post reply on HN