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Comment by AnotherGoodName | Hacker News Reader

I took bets with others on when we'd be allowed return to the office. This was in March 2020.

Some said April, some stated June or July. One outrageous bet was January 2021 which we all took as a bit of a joke. No way would this last that long. "People will wear masks and isolate and we'll beat this".

We made the same bet in March 2021, laughing at our previous bad estimates. The furthest out was again January next year. That was a ridiculous suggestion we thought. "The vaccine is here it should be over soon".

I wonder how 2022 will go.

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I've scoffed at covid skeptics since Winter 2020. There was already enough info out at the time about conditions in China and initial cases spreading globally to see that it was no joke. Then people continuously kick the can down the road saying after summer, no after winter, no after spring, no after summer again. It's not that hard to see that this isn't something we're going to overcome in a year or two.

This is only my opinion, but really, we cannot afford to continue like this for months and months, or hell, even years. Once most of the population will be vaccinated, there will absolutely be no reason to keep facilities closed anymore. The reason lockdowns were decided was because the virus caused hospitals and medical facilities to struggle under the weight of critical cases. With the vaccine, and even if new variants appear, the number of people having to go to the hospital will plummet. We'll have to find one way or another to live with the virus as it will never be eradicated completely.

> Once most of the population will be vaccinated, there will absolutely be no reason to keep facilities closed anymore

Most of the population has been vaccinated.

50.4% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...

I think the parent is implying enough vaccinations to slow the spread of COVID. Clearly Delta is proving that 50.4% vaccination rate is not even close to good enough, unless we're willing to consign the other 49.6% to their fate.

Why can’t we keep going like this? Profit continues whether workers go back to the office or not. Companies are making money hand over fist right now.

If this stretches past the end of 2021, WFH will simply be a feature of the white collar economy. Companies are already finding it hard to break inertia and get people back into the office; after another 6 months of this they’re not even going to try.

There are people who are suffering greatly under these arrangements and it's not talked about much. It's much easier to understand how hard it is to have kids at home while juggling work than it is to understand the detrimental effect of Big Tech having you move somewhere, then shutting off any ability you have to form social connections

There's a lot of ways to nerdsnipe that argument, ex. "just move back!"...it's too late, those social connections are gone

Right, but this assumes that nobody was suffering under the pre-pandemic work culture. For many people I talk to, their lives have significantly improved under this dynamic. Yes, with kids.

There are also a lot of places to make social connections that aren’t work.

Yes, you're right, as you point out, I mentioned them.

You're, of course, right that work isn't the only place to meet people, but that's trivially true in a way that feels insulting - my intent was to point out the other side of the coin is being trivialized, and it's on me that I wasn't clear on the that. And earnestly, is there really a ton of places to make social connections available right now?

And some people were suffering when they had to spend 2+ hours commuting every day. When they never saw their kids.

Being remote does not mean working from home. Being remote does not mean never going out, quite the opposite actually, you just need to be intentional about it.

Sorry - my comment was more of a general "we can't keep everything closed and continue to impose lockdowns" rather than "we have to stop WFH and everyone should go back to the office," in spite of the article.

Still, to expand on the issue of WFH, I absolutely see no problem with it and I even advocated for it before the pandemic. I just wish everyone who wants to go back to the office for legitimate reasons (because they like to see their co-workers, because they have bad working conditions at home and what not) were able to if vaccinated.

Yeah I guess that’s what I’m saying - whatever version of “lockdown” we’re currently in (which is simply recommended but not required masking in my city) is probably the “new normal”. The economy has proven it can function effectively and even grow GDP at this level. And covid is probably never going away given the intransigence.

I don’t think there’s political appetite to lock down things again. The left won’t go along with lockdowns this time; they’re too bitter at the right for causing this to drag out.

If "if" the holdouts can be convinced there won't be a reason anymore, right now though the resistance has become ideological so god only knows when this'll end.

I hope so. There's this unfortunate tendency, myself included, to treat going back to the office as not taking health seriously, and when that's combined with a lot of people having stable social structures like a family or roots in the area, group discussion centers around this as an endless snow day.

But, it's not: if you moved from a smaller city to one of the expensive FAANG areas the past few years, you were trading remote work for getting to work with people. My mental state is...not great...with the isolation of leaving behind my social circle to move here, and now not having a social circle built up here. I almost feel cheated that I moved to work here, this is _exactly_ what I ran away from: remote work, coworkers with no incentive/forcing function to collaborate, and detached management "managing" problems by rote bon mots that don't actually fix anything.

> With the vaccine, and even if new variants appear, the number of people having to go to the hospital will plummet.

I mean, I think Delta (at least in the US, I won't speak to/for other countries) has proven this incorrect since we have multiple instances of hospitals filling up right now even though (IIRC) we just hit the 70% first shot mark (for 18+).

Also we haven't yet, and I hope we never, see a variant that not only causes lots of breakthrough cases but also results in higher rates of hospitalization/ICU/vent/death even for the vaccinated.

What we can't afford is to continue to put up with the unvaccinated. My state, just a few hours ago, announced that 70%+ of our hospitals are now collectively going to require the vaccination to continue working there and it's my fervent hope that more and more private sector companies do the same (as have at least a few major manufactures in my state). I'd actually prefer to see something akin to what NY just did. I understand the privacy concerns with having to prove vaccination status but the alternative (what we did for the last 1.5 years+) is not something I'm willing to put up. I'm so incredibly tired of having the people who refuse to do the bare minimum drag the rest of us down.

The floodgates on private employer requirements seem to be opening pretty rapidly. Two in-person tech conferences I plan to attend in the fall are both requiring vaccinations to attend.

It seems especially reasonable when going somewhere (like a conference or an office that allows continued WFH) is pretty much optional. Of course, it's more complicated if, say, you're in sales and it's customers who impose the requirement.

The 70% with one shot is weighted to areas like Northeast and hospitals filling up is in Southern US. Averaging those stats over the entire US misses that aspect.

Yes, that is correct. I was trying to use the most favorable interpretation of the data in my reply but yes, it’s closer to 50% (at least fully) in most places. My state included.

In the book Apollo's Arrow (which came out in oct 2020), Dr. Christakis said

"Either way, we will be wearing masks, for example, and avoiding crowded places. I’ll call this the immediate pandemic period. For a few years after we either reach herd immunity or have a widely distributed vaccine, people will still be recovering from the overall clinical, psychological, social, and economic shock of the pandemic and the adjustments it required, perhaps through 2024. I’ll call this the intermediate pandemic period. Then, gradually, things will return to “normal”—albeit in a world with some persistent changes. Around 2024, the post-pandemic period will likely begin"

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