Society Will Never Be Free of Covid-19–It’s Time to Embrace Harm Reduction

I sincerely think Covid is now just being used to decrease carbon emissions by having everyone work from home or at least not exit houses as much due to mass hysteria of "yet another variant". Viruses of all kinds will keep trying to kill us regardless if we call it the flu or covid, if we keep everyone scared to exit their houses they will invariably use less resources from the world.

So yeah, a world free of covid isn't on anyone's best interest.

I'm sick of these "Covid will not be eradicated" doom and gloom articles; it seems they are always peddling politics or a poorly disguised anti-vaxx messaging.

> The only human virus ever to be eradicated was smallpox, and that took 200 years

Bullshit; it would not take 200 years with our current level of technology and understanding.

Smallpox was declared by the WHO to be eradicated in 1980. The last naturally occurring case was in 1977.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine

"The smallpox vaccine was the first vaccine to be developed against a contagious disease. In 1796, the British doctor Edward Jenner demonstrated that an infection with the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against the deadly smallpox virus. Cowpox served as a natural vaccine until the modern smallpox vaccine emerged in the 20th century. From 1958 to 1977, the World Health Organization conducted a global vaccination campaign that eradicated smallpox, making it the only human disease to be eradicated."

Really, if we honestly look at it, the actual eradication of smallpox took only 20 years. The 1796-195x years were just hobbling along with poor vaccines and half-assed effort.

Also, most of the focused effort was only the last 10 years of that.

"Smallpox was eradicated by a massive international search for outbreaks, backed up with a vaccination program, starting in 1967. It was organised and co-ordinated by a World Health Organization (WHO) unit, set up and headed by Donald Henderson. The last case in the Americas occurred in 1971 (Brazil), south-east Asia (Indonesia) in 1972, and on the Indian subcontinent in 1975 (Bangladesh). After two years of intensive searches, what proved to be the last endemic case anywhere in the world occurred in Somalia, in October 1977."

So, there is support in taking the viewpoint that when the effort was properly stepped up, it was licked in ten years.

The way to address it is to treat public health as a national security issue. This is actually what happened here in the UK after WW1 and pushed forward hard after WW2 with the establishment of the NHS.

In WW1 the UK armed forces were shocked at the low levels of health and nutrition in recruits, such that large numbers were unfit to serve. This also affected labour available for strategic industries like arms and munitions. This is why the establishment of robust public health systems and a public primary care system were not controversial here and mostly still aren't. I say this as a lifelong conservative voter. This isn't about socialism. We're not a huge nation and we needed a healthy capable population.

We're waging a global war on this virus, whether we like it or not. What we need is co-ordinated and effective action on a global scale to combat it. The virus itself, and the delta variant has showed that what happens in one country is of vital interest to the rest of the world, we're all in this together. However the first step to effective international action is for the nations with the resources to act globally to put their own houses in order first. Here in Britain this is what we've done, with a few missteps and misjudgements along the way, but we're finally on top of this thing.

Vaccination, vaccination, vaccination. All the other tools we have - lockdowns, mitigating treatments, masks, they're all useful tools in their place, but the Vaccine research efforts were our Manhattan project. The vaccines are the wonder weapons. They're the path to getting on top of this thing.

We're in this for the long haul. New variants will arise that are more infection, more deadly, vaccine resistant, or all three. We need to be ready for them. This is the real deal, it's a proper global war with a massive global body count, and we need to stop bickering about it and get organised.

> public health officials should be telling individuals some basic things that they can do to really reduce harm: people with symptoms of a respiratory infection, vaccinated or unvaccinated, should stay the hell away. They shouldn’t visit vulnerable friends or relatives. They should cancel social plans. They should call in sick for work. They should get tested and stay home until recovered. Employers should insist that sick employees stay home.

Not only telling people. We should work to enable this. Missing a week of work can be expensive and many are broke. There is a perverse incentive here. I'm not sure the best way to address it.

In the spirit of embracing harm reduction, perhaps it's time to consider whom pronouncements by the Koch-funded Cato Institute are intended to benefit.

Bring on the downvotes.

There are a lot of things we could do that are effective that would boil down to cultural changes. I just know how to effectively promote such approaches.

I have a compromised immune system. Germ control is a big part of my life.

I do simple things that are readily available, like get takeout instead of eating at the restaurant and use self checkout as much as possible. I know these strategies are effective. I just don't know how to get past a bunch of people wanting to dismiss it as anecdotal and "That's just your opinion, man!"

Which makes no sense to me given the current state of things. But that's how it tends to go, if people are bothering to be polite. It sometimes is a lot uglier, which makes it hard to bring up such ideas at all.

Harm reduction would mean keeping masking and mandating vaccines for a couple years until the situation stabilizes whereupon more traditional flu measure would be enough. While areas are still seeing icu and LO2 shortages when restrictions are relaxed, any valid harm reduction requires at a minimum continued masking and vaccinations.

Simply don't understand the rush to open; historically pandemics have disrupted societies for decades. This is a chance to do something new and move away from a financial system that is destroying Earth.