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Comment by adam_arthur | Hacker News Reader

The gist OP is getting at, though not put so eloquently, is that covid is endemic and there will continue to be deaths, even in a world with 100% vaccinated and boosted people.

So covid being "over" is really a state of mind/choice of when to accept that it's endemic and drop the hysterics/restrictions.

Omicron should be cheered as an effectively natural vaccine that looks to quickly end the worst of covid, yet media continues to fear monger about case counts, by and large. I am seeing some articles speaking to it as beneficial though.

The fear a lot of people have over covid is totally out of proportion with the actual data, and media by and large continues to stoke these fears.

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I dunno, people working in the health care system are getting burned out and quitting in droves. I'd kind of like there to be doctors and nurses there to take care of me if I need to go to the hospital for whatever reason. Your state of mind seems irrelevant to this.

Well, it seems hospital systems are more than happy to fire their staff if they aren't vaccinated, so there must not be much of a shortage.

And the point is Omicron is largely benign, which is reflected in data at this point.

There's no need for 95%+ of people who catch it to go to the hospital. Look at the South African data... Hospitalizations are order of magnitude below cases with omicron, vs Delta.

But single variable policy proponents, like you appear to be, don't care about the facts or the science, just number of cases.

Personally I'd rather advocate for policy that looks at the actual data in regards to health outcomes, as well as other variables that take into account second order effects of any policy. That's called following the science.

Covid extremists are the religious ones at this point. I'm glad society is finally rejecting their failed views and authoritarian virtue signaling. Of which has made 0 difference state by state in the US, by and large. Check FL or TX vs CA or NY (e.g. the data, the science).

We're living in a bizarro world where these people think they have the scientific high ground, but are actually following mass group think/bubble mentality and ignoring anything beyond case counts.

I don’t know where you are, or what policies they are following. Where I live, the stated policy is to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, which seems reasonable. I really can’t comment on the rest of your post.

> Omicron should be cheered as an effectively natural vaccine that looks to quickly end the worst of covid

In the medium term yes; in the short term, with millions of unvaccinated people and a very fast exponential growth, it still has potential to overflow healthcare.

That was elegant and much more insightful.

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