I wish they would just come out and be honest about the situation. It was frustrating two years ago and they're frustratingly silent now too.
I only hope if they DO receive word of the variant they make it known quickly. The nature of the PCR assay suggests it is easy to detect.
The CDC is probably silent because they're slow and inefficient, so they have nothing very certain to say. If there's dishonesty, it's not the main theme.
Furthermore, there are talented people at the CDC. Plenty of those.
If they don't get a lot of work or communication done, it's organizational inefficiency.
Speaking of paranoia, I think their poor communication led to plenty of paranoia two years ago, and it seems like there's plenty of paranoia now again.
I think being more truthful and communicative would lead to less paranoia, not more.
P: > I would be very careful not to fall into paranoia. It's easy and destructive.
Two years ago, paranoia might have helped. (Although considering how many places are now starting to abandon the zero-COVID goal, it might not have worked forever).
She got into it in earnest about 4 years ago, and sends me and my siblings low hundred or thousands view YouTube videos saying all kinds of crazy stuff with a biblical spin.
I think COVID was a sign for her that she’s on the right path.
Honestly, I haven’t dug in too greatly. I recently heard that most Christian groups are run by troll farms. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was caught in one of these schemes.
That's an easy statement to make two years later. Now that we have the benefit of hindsight, we know a lot of things that would have helped.
When you make evidence-based decisions, you are going to get some things wrong. The only way around that is to gather more evidence, and that takes time (and loads of money.)
That begs the question as to whether an evidence-based approach is the right approach in all circumstances.
Another way around it is to not fully rely on an evidence-based approach, and take precautions before the evidence comes in. In some circumstances (e.g. rapid spread of an poorly understood disease) waiting for an evidence-based decision before taking precautions might be too slow.
The issue is that they really didn't know how rapidly it was spreading at the beginning.
That was never a goal, anywhere.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59257496
"Why has Australia switched tack on Covid zero?":
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58406526
"‘Zero Covid’ strategies are being abandoned as the highly infectious delta variant dominates":
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/zero-covid-strategies-abando...
("New Zealand has become the latest country to abandon a zero Covid strategy"... "This zero Covid strategy, also employed by the likes of China and Taiwan...")
How could any sane person think zero covid was possible??
Let's say you manage to vaccinate 100% of Canada. Great. Now you .. what? Close the borders forever?
And closing means no truckers, pilots entering??
And on top of that, there is always a resoviour in the wild...
The news literally makes stuff up these days. What sane government would think covid would vanish?
Quebec's current plan is to let it flow through the population now. If you aren't vaccinated, that's on you. If you are, well, we're done with lockdowns. We've done all we can.
And so kids now wear no masks on school.
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/end-of-mask-mand...
Of course, no one is really puzzled, the news needs a story.
The local media however, seemed to think it was a goal.
Thus, I am often hesitant to accept the media blathering on about such nonsense, and generally suspect hyped and click baitish behaviour.
I suppose a few crazy places thought this was possible, although I cannot imagine why, so I suppose I am wrong with my all encompassing statement.
I come from a place that has a lot of vaccinated people, ICUs have been at 4% since may and still there is an increase in restrictions because of a recent uptake in cases which don't result in hospitalisation since a lot of people, as I said, took the vaccine.
A lot of people sick but well enough that they don't need a hospital means a lot of people possibly transmitting the disease.
There is a point on the other extreme too, in that the people that get into an ICU overwhelmingly refused to vaccinate, and it isn't fair to disrupt the entire society because of them. But well, the pandemics is full of unfair situations, and refusing treatment to people with unrelated diseases because ICUs are full isn't fair either. Everybody is in a crazy game of balancing things the best possible way without full information.
My son’s school, which has had 2 cases through early November, had 20% of the student body positive.
Isn't this honest? You want them to speculate, but what's the point?
Don't we all already know Omicron is likely already here? So what does the CDC add? What we really need to know is how serious it is -- how deadly X how infectious -- and the CDC doesn't know that (yet).
They are simply incapable of giving the public the unvarnished truth, as such I think we the public need to be looking to non-governmental sources for the actual truth. This becomes a problem because historically that has been the role of journalism sadly today journalists have the exact same competing interests thus are also incapable of telling the public the truth.
I dont know the solution, but truth is the causality of the current age of information.