What Happened in 2021
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2021 was a bad year for me. My stocks didn't increase in value at all (bluechip tech), my house down-payment cash savings decreased in value by 20% (~$20K value just GONE in one year: That's two years of savings for me), my 15 year old car is too expensive to replace right now, and it's leaky/moldy. I've also been locked down in my comically small apartment for YEARS.
This upcoming year I am 100% NOT going to 'address troubling issues' or anything like it. I've fallen lower on Maslow's hierarchy than I have been since before I started my career. I'm going to try to increase my comp, and get into the "good side". People are making serious money during this pandemic, and I'm so jealous that I missed the boat. I could really use some gains to offset the absurd increase in housing/transportation costs, but it appears there's no relief on the horizon for me.
I’m a bit disappointed with statements like this. “Here is what’s wrong with the world: Climate change and COVID”. It’s such a limited view of the world and unfortunately shared by most of my colleagues and friends, that will likely lead to a lot of suffering when we get punched in the face by a war or human rights tragedy.
For example, no mention of the biggest events in 2021 in “What happened in 2021”, such as the authoritarian and increasingly dangerous China dismantling democracy in Hong Kong, no mention of the complete takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in the Middle East. No mention of broken supply chain or the economic catastrophe we are facing, inflation, or the energy crisis in Europe.
While I’m a believer in combating Climate Change, there are real world crises happening right now that people should care about. Not in 10, 15, or 20 years… but standing up for them would take some personal conviction. Ah but hey, look on the bright side, at least crypto is up.
Wondering what big year-end selloff he’s talking about, given the fact that the SP500 just made a new all time high only days ago.
Me too. I'm still wondering why, in most first world countries with free vaccines, we are still having authoritarian crackdowns and culture wars. Does the media just love perpetuating a state of constant crisis? If widespread vaccine availability didn't trigger a return to normalcy, I don't know what will. Seems like we will be doing pandemic measures for years to come at this rate since scaling healthcare in any way is off the table for some reason.
Constant catastrophosizing drives engagement, it's that simple. This is the reason you'll never hear 'stay calm' messages that are not tempered by a 'but'. Anger and fear are powerful emotions, and the media will hammer those buttons as hard as they can (unless given a powerful incentive not to), the effects on society be damned.
For covid news I get it directly from my medical friends working in hospitals or this time around all the people (two handfuls) I know and they know dealing with Covid. Personally worst I've experienced first and second hand since it started but each person who isn't OLD recovers quickly vaxed or not.
We need to start moving on at this point.
I was at the hospital yesterday (for something unrelated to covid) and there are 0 rooms available. The hallways are still packed with unvaccinated people with covid laying in every open space they can find. Nurses and doctors are still worked past their breaking point.
We cannot move on until the thick-skulled members of society realize that their unwillingness to get vaccinated is the number one thing stopping us from moving on.
There are people who would rather die than take the vaccine for whatever ridiculous reason so why are we sitting around waiting for them.
Eventually people will move on. It's the human condition.
Individuals can individually choose to pretend covid isn't a thing, but society as a whole cannot simply choose to suddenly restore our medical infrastructure, fix supply chains, grow the labor market, etc. Covid's effect on those things won't magically go away just because someone says "you know what, I'm tired of waiting on covid! I'm going to be normal now!"
Adjustments to these will happen over time and humanity may "continue", but when that happens is not a choice we make.
Yes, it might mean another 9 months to a year of lockdown, but it would be there still when (not if) another disaster occurs. Now, people will get angry at subsidizing private hospitals... but I could go on about how emergency care should be publicly funded anyway. But I digress.
Oh goodness no. There’s a supply limit for medical professionals that will take half a decade to solve even with unlimited funding. And as this is a worldwide issue, not just an American one, you can’t just outbid the rest of us for migrant healthcare workers.
Granted, I have zero power. I ask because I'm curious and just want to know.
In the UK we have issues with driving tests because everything closed down "cus Covid". Except the virus had nothing to do with it and now most of the instructors have already had their mild cold anyway.
0.2% of the population dying, heavily weighted towards the elderly, does not break supply chains.
To be sure, the descendants of the novel coronavirus that appeared in Wuhan in 2019 will float around the human population indefinitely. Omicron isn't the end of covid, but it could be the end of widespread hospitalizations and deaths. At least until the next crisis comes along.
Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that another coronavirus HCoV-OC43 caused another worldwide pandemic starting in 1889. It killed a lot of people. There were no vaccines or effective treatments. The same virus is still endemic today; the only reason it doesn't kill many people today is that most of us get infected as youths and the resulting immunity protects us later in life. People moved on.
It would be instructive to compare the virulence factors encoded in SARS-CoV-2 vs the common cold coronas.
People can move on when Covid stops making people seriously ill and compromising our healthcare systems. That is not yet, indeed the way we are going it may be never. Even if Omicron turns out to be 'mild', the next variant may not be.
Anecdote: I had to go to the ER in 2017 in San Francisco and my experience was exactly like this back then too. It was a ~4 hour wait in the ER waiting room, then another several hours on a bed in a bright loud busy hallway, then some tests, back to the hallway for a few hours, and then emergency inpatient surgery.
If you go to SF General, yes, you're in hell. Its an extremely poorly run city hospital that is where most GSW victims go, its busy. If you go to UCSF or CPMC, you'll get world class care.
Whenever I've had to go there its very speedy.
Indeed, if we had 100% vaccine uptake, or 100% sobriety, then all COVID incidents would be vaccinated just as all car crashes would have sober drivers.
“Learning to live with COVID” ought to imply “learning to live with masks and vaccines”, not “lose your sense of smell and be ill for an extra week each year”.
Seatbelts and vaccine's are high impact & low-cost. The same cannot be said about every possible driving or covid restriction. Closing schools has a real cost, sending kid's home from school for a week every time they have a fever has a real cost, requiring kids to wear masks for 8 hours a day has a real cost.
I think those policies will slowly go-away in the North East & West Coast as the public and media comes to term with how ineffective they are. 96% of the population of my county (including those not eligible) has had it least 1 covid vaccine dose. At some point you just stop benefiting from continued restrictions.
> Omicron won't be the last variant, and there is no guarantee that a future variant won't come along that is just as virulent but far more deadly.
And the next terrorist attack could be even more deadly - stay subscribed for our upcoming report on why you should be more afraid.
[1] https://www.e7health.com/post/210/the-best-and-worst-states-...
> And the next terrorist attack could be even more deadly
The current wave is a 9/11 every 3 days in just the USA: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths
The total USA fatalities over the entire pandemic so far is 282 9/11s.
The total worldwide so far is 1821 9/11s.
This is mainly a reason to not be afraid of terrorists rather than a reason to not be concerned about a disease.
> sending kid's home from school for a week every time they have a fever has a real cost,
Hmm. This is what happened to me as a child in the U.K. in the 90s, but perhaps the increasing frequency of both parents working makes this harder now.
Closing schools, sure, that’s got social etc. costs.
> requiring kids to wear masks for 8 hours a day has a real cost.
I don’t see how this is true. Care to elaborate?
Also, your school days are 8 hours? Mine were 09:00-15:30, plus travel time.
> I don’t see how this is true. Care to elaborate?
Kids are developing and need to learn facial non-verbal social cues. It also directly impacts learning, it's harder to understand the teacher, or for the teacher to understand the child. Do you think wearing a mask makes it easier to learn English as a second language? How about dealing with a speech impairment? And overall masking and other policies also just generally makes school less enjoyable more anxiety driven, which also leads to learning loss. They have a real-cost and just as important it is incredibly low-impact when you have other options like vaccination available.
> Also, your school days are 8 hours? Mine were 09:00-15:30, plus travel time.
The base school day sure, but the commute and morning/afternoon activities means masking up for even longer.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
[1] https://www.vox.com/22675358/us-car-deaths-year-traffic-covi...
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
You obviously can't expect people to continue wearing masks indefinitely. That would be ridiculous.
In the real world we accept risk vs reward. My neighbours having a kitchen knife in their house presents a nonzero risk to me, and that's a-ok and I don't wander about wearing a stab vest.
So it's not really "or", it's just "and".
You can either have everyone gets corona, or you can have everyone gets corona plus a miserable digital dystopia, loads of restrictions on everyday life etc.
Either way, unless you manage zero covid which is almost universally considered to be impossible at this point in most of the world, your options are still "hide inside forever" or "get corona". Which brings us right back full circle to risk vs reward.
What's the cost of this? Why, it's the very same as the cost of getting most everyone vaccinated for literally anything else we get vaccinated for! No one has a conniption about vaccine regimens for measles, mumps, polio, etc., because the programs for implementing them at scale have been so successful that hardly anyone gets hospitalized or dies from them anymore. Want to attend public school? Get vaccinated. Want to join the military? Get vaccinated. Want to live in a college dorm? Get vaccinated.
The marginal cost of adding one more required vaccine on top of the ones almost everyone regularly gets (and almost no one complains about) in order to participate in normal society is negligeable.
So no, it's not a case of "everyone gets corona" vs "everyone gets corona and we have a miserable digital dystopia", as you put it. It's a choice of "everyone gets corona and a lot of other people needlessly die for want of medical care" vs "everyone gets corona and/or the vaccine, you have to fill one more checkbox on your vaccine card (which already has a dozen or so), and comparatively fewer people die for want of medical care." Life will get back to normal either way; at this point it's really a question of dealing with the selfish, paranoid, delusional, despicable people who would rather see the mass death of their fellow countrymen over having to fill one more checkbox on their vaccine card.
France: About 150 deaths per day, 200K cases per day.
UK: About 150 deaths per day, 200K cases per day.
Same population size. Massive delta in restrictions.
I would say "have a good day", but after your big old rant about you wanting to force people into doing stuff and how they're all despicable, I mean, meh, look inwards.
I agree that being vaccinated is sensible. I just think that's it. Nothing else besides uberlockdowns have any demonstrable effect on long term mortality (e.g. over the course of a year). We don't need anal vaccine digital ID checks or FFP83 hazmat suits unless you just want to make the world worse because you're grumpy.
Why is COVID still that dangerous? Not enough people are vaccinated, and not enough use masks (especially not good masks like N95s), and new variants are making things difficult.
It is plausible that during 2022 we do return to something close to normal. But it depends on those three factors.
Is it not the case that we essentially need to vaccinate everyone in the whole world within a small time period, like 4 weeks, to prevent mutation and vaccine escape?
If we get enough immunity that the worst COVID causes is a small bump in hospitalization and deaths once or twice a year then we could live with that and just wear masks during those weeks perhaps. We are much, much closer to that goal today than we were a year ago.
The only human viruses we have managed to eradicate are smallpox and (almost) polio. The vaccines for those are generally much more effective, and there are no animal reservoirs.
Although I also find the media's tendency towards sensationalism to be annoying, the media industry and its audience are so fractured now I'm not sure they're the cause of anything. It feels like no one is in control and they (and us) are merely along for the ride. That is, I feel that, due to decentralized mass communication and targeted media delivery, social phenomena is tending towards emergent rather than directed behavior.
Malta was even touting quite a bit about being the first European country to reach herd immunity..back in May.
In my opinion, anyone who believes continued restrictions have been about anything other than political theatre and positioning are utterly delusional.
0: https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/this-latest-masks-man...
The only things that changed were: omicron instead of delta, and the dropping of restrictions with a new premier.
I think the sad reality is that we're going to have a lot more needless deaths in 2022. People with disabilities that are impacted by COVID will need to keep locking themselves up indefinitely - no government agency will help them, and their communities will ignore their problems. Vaccines will still not be taken by ~1/3 of the population. Is it even worth trying anymore with them? I guess yes, however frustrating, but only because it makes everyone else safer to do so. I do not see how 2022 is terribly different from 2021.
That is correct. And most cases of COVID don't result in death or even severe illnesses. But the point isn't that we should just be happy with the majority we have. I work directly with someone whose disability requires them to take immunosuppressants, and so now the pandemic has forced them to either (a) isolate from the rest of the world, (b) risk their body destroying itself, or (c) risk a more severe infection from COVID than someone else like them might have.
> Governments and communities can help to an extent by facilitating healthier choices but ultimately the patients have to commit to permanent lifestyle changes if they want to reduce their risks.
The point isn't that the governments and communities directly help those who suffer disabilities that make COVID far more dangerous. They point is that things in the US are far, far worse than they need to be, and there are very real things that the government could do starting right now to make it better, but it isn't.
Yes, of course. More clicks for little effort.
Many other interests are also aligned. No need for a conspiracy, it's just that if you ask a pharma company or a hospital "how's the pandemic going? the right answer will mean more resources and/or prestige for you!" you can already guess the answer.