We aren't living through a pandemic anymore, we are now living in an endemic. Omicron isn't going away anytime soon - and we can't lock down businesses forever. Omicron can't be stopped by lockdown anyway (see challenges of containing it within China).
Secondly, it is highly unlikely that we would have got rid of Covid-19 even harsher lockdown measures earlier (e.g. see Omicron which happened because the original virus jumped to mice and back to humans - just humans locking down wouldn't have stopped this variant, we would have had to lock down all the rodents too).
My personal view - we have to stop viewing life as nothing but a vector for disease, and stop re-architecting our entire society and culture to avoid Covid infections (at huge societal costs to education, standards of living etc).
Ex. Flu, malaria, HIV, syphilis, and… COVID
Am I missing something?
Endemic for COVID, therefore, means that theres no locking it out because its everywhere.
And since COVID can jump species, its done. Game over. It will be with us forever.
https://intermountainhealthcare.org/blogs/topics/live-well/2...
It’s endemic. Its not going away. We are all going to get it. (Me: triple vaxxed, had covid 2x)
Getting vaccinated is a personal heath decision (which I encourage)
Time to move on.
If we are worried about killing people worldwide, far more people die of hunger-related causes each day, but we aren't rebuilding our entire society to save those people. But I can't see a reason why deaths from Covid are more of a tragedy than those we left to starve.
Or take smoking for instance - more people die each year from smoking than have died from Covid, but we seem more willing to ban human contact than to ban cigarettes? Seems backwards to me (especially considering c10% of smoking related deaths are from secondhand smoke in the USA!).
I know these might seem like a silly point, but why are we so focused on one single cause of death right now? We lock down our entire society to 'protect unvaccinated people worldwide', but then have continually cut foreign aid?
IMO - I think we have totally lost the plot and lost sight of what is important, but that's just my view.
I guess we could do that to the people unwilling to get vaxxinated. Tax them for their status and bar them from any building open to the public or place of employment.
Getting vaccinated does not stop you from getting Covid and it does not stop the spread of Covid.
I could see a tax break for being vaccinated as a viable incentive.
I’m not really seeing the difference.
We could get them to wear a yellow badge as well. /s
When I see people minimizing COVID, I wonder if they've somehow avoided seeing an excess death graph even once for the past year-and-a-half.
We have vaccines, we have better therapies. Lets move on.
Communism killed 20M people and we still flirt with that ideology.
In the UK where I am from, I’m not entirely sure you would come to that conclusion - you would probably find that the first two waves caused significant excess deaths but the impact of the last wave has been much lower (probably from a combination of multiple factors).
Uk government data below, see “all persons” tab:
https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiYmUwNmFhMjYtNGZhYS00N...
Looking at the (fairly low) excess deaths only tells half the story though - you also have to look at quality of living, which is undoubtedly lower in my view.
If you rode motorcycles you'd encounter this safety fascism attitude quite a bit. Ive had ppl flip out on me just for mentioning I disagree with helmet laws, even though I ride with 100% safety equipment 100% of the time.
They can take whatever measures they need to keep themselves safe. I assume they are not going into restaurants now since the mask situation is just theater.
Their unfortunate circumstances don’t mean they get to control others. If there was a concrete ask with end date that would be one thing but asking everyone else to live as if they are immunocompromised just because they are is not sustainable.
Writ large, its immoral failing Kant’s categorical imperative. Massive utilitarian fail (you got to count the lockdown suicides and others too!). Aesthetically gross (life glued indoors is not really living).
Reasonable accommodations are fine, and necessary and can include: wearing a mask if a known immunocompromised person is present. Setting up free grocery delivery for them. Ambulatory health care.
Locking down society is not reasonable.
Are you proposing that additional suicides due to lockdowns are comparable to the number of deaths prevented by social distancing and stay-at-home orders?
Also, why are you telling me this? Find a housebound person to tell that they're "not really living". Find an immunocompromised person to assure that it's fine if you never wear a mask except when they're nearby. (Don't do either of those things.)
The “artificial” refers to point that immunocompromised people already (justly!) have greatly extended lives because society has expanded a lot of resources on research and development for their care. These people are our sisters and brothers and should be taken care of, and have been to a large extent (otherwise they’d be dead).
They do have a claim to our assistance, and Ill gladly pay more taxes for better programs, but they don't have a claim to have society turned upside down on their behalf
Lockdowns are not reasonable accommodation.
“ Are you proposing that additional suicides due to lockdowns are comparable to the number of deaths prevented by social distancing and stay-at-home orders?”
Your original point was about immunocompromised, a small group. I gave one example of people that are being killed by lockdowns. Add deferred cancer patients, etc.
Anyway, today if you’re not immunocompromised and you’re still dying of COVID you probably made the choice not to get vaccinated. Which is fine, btw.
“ Also, why are you telling me this? ”
You want to lock me up in my room like a truant schoolboy.
“ Find a housebound person to tell that they're "not really living".”
They’d agree with the general sentiment. Certainly its harder to grasp at life’s meaning when your only companion is TV.
My very independent 95 year old grandma who has been housebound for two years due to COVID is uncharacteristically depressed. Which is why instead of a pseudo-philosophical talk like we’re having she’d probably appreciate it more if I took her for a walk in the mountainside (alas, she lives 10 000 km away).
Perhaps because I cant be there for my grandma, next week we’re planning on taking my housebound ex-neighbors for a trip outside the city. They’re very lovely but they’re too old to drive and housebound to a large extent. I’m sure they agree with me about lockdowns.
“Find an immunocompromised person to assure that it's fine if you never wear a mask except when they're nearby.”
Does telling a friend with a kidney transplant that my kid goes to school without a mask count?
We have no chance with current medical tech of eliminating a highly mutagenic coronavirus. Even if we did the cost/benefit of doing so would not be adequate.
Mutagenic describes a mutagen which causes mutagenesis. https://www.nature.com/subjects/mutagenesis
Covid19 is not mutagenic. However, it is highly and continually mutated.
Keeping people locked up at home for a third season is absurd.
I don't consider myself locked up. I miss in person game nights the most, i miss dinner with friends (in a private home or restaurant) somewhat.
We do gamenights online using videochat and products like roll20 and boardgame arena. It's not super awesome but it works for us for now.
I leave the house, go on walks go shopping etc. But I take very reasonable precautions. I shop during low traffic times, get up early and hit the grocery store before work, I order food for pickup and wait outside for it. During the more temperate months we'd set up a few tables in the backyard and have friends over for meals, each 'pod' got their own table nicely distanced, we were probably a little louder than most dinner parties but it was nice just to have them around.
For a friends birthday we wanted to go see spiderman, we rented a theater (it was actually not especially expensive) invited about 20 people who we knew were supervaxxed and responsible enough not to come if they though they might be exposed and had a grand, masked and distanced, time.
I'm just trying to be responsible, I know several people that are immunocompromised and they can't even do half that stuff. I'm trying to be responsible so that they can. When some asshole declares that 'covid is over' I just realize how fucking narcissistic they are.
Unfortunately most are living under wildly different and much more difficult circumstances that they are being asked to bear month after month with no end and with dubious effect.
CDC told us not to wear masks initially. Democrats were vaccine skeptics until Biden won. But who cares? Thats in the past, get vaccinated or not. Go out or not. Just dont try to control others.
Also, the world hasn’t stopped it so it is unlikely ANY US only measure would have done much unless we went fill isolationist which would probably have had worse outcomes.
and then we have the mandates. presumably, your behavior is the same with v.s. without them. as is the case for most people i know. with the exception of my one friend who was building a japanese-style coin-operated 24/7 unstaffed arcade business in a stripmall off aurora. she ditched that a year into the pandemic because navigating the mandates as a business owner is not easy (how does one check vax cards at the door if their business only works because it’s unstaffed? once she does find a solution, how long until the next mandate changes things for her again? it’s settled down a little, but the policy changes were really chaotic through to last summer).
“return to normal” as a phrase is a bit ambiguous. does it mean everyone goes back to living how they did two years ago? or does it mean everyone, within each area of their life, has the option to return to what worked for them then, while keeping the parts of their current lifestyle they prefer? obviously, we can’t grant that level of optionality to every area of life without bifurcating society (e.g. separate schools for in-person vs virtual), which doesn’t sound great. but we can grant that optionality in lots of areas of life that are already adept at catering to different preferences — e.g. restaurants (if you want italian food, go to an italian restaurant), entertainment venues, gyms, and really most small/medium businesses.
i’d love for my friend to be able to open her arcade some day, and i know there are hundreds of other individuals in a similar position as hers trying to bring new things into our community. i think it’s reasonable that we allow a “return to normal” in the areas of life that are already adept at catering to different preferences, and leave the mandates only for those areas in which there’s less optionality (e.g. public transit, schools — for now, etc).
You are welcome to live any way you like, but please don't judge others for examining the situation and deciding how to live their own lives.
People complain about seattle's wetness a lot, but as someone that's lived here their whole life we generally get a few stright up downpour days, but most days (in the colder months) are somewhere in the overcast and misty to drizzly range.
It doesn't really change my assertions though. Even on days with downpours I'm pretty happy to swaddle myself in rainjackets and waterpoof shoes and take a walk or wait for takeout outside. When we had our little bout of snow this month I took walks every day, but little to no takeout because seattle essentially shuts down at the sight of the first flake.
It's frankly pretty weird that these comment threads are always so ragey and judgey, let alone the ones on Twitter. Everyone should chill a bit and stop reading the news stories stoking fears - at some point the mental effects are riskier than the physical ones, and I'd say that many in this thread are well past this point.
The QR code scanning is just for dining at the place (not takeout), and for things like long trains and planes. It’s not a big deal, except for the privacy implications.
My point was mostly that people aren’t holding back from going out, despite very high infection rates, and things appear to be mostly fine.
I'm in the northeast, and it has been this way for at least 9 months now. Just imagine how little life was impacted by restrictions in some other areas of the US. So IMO it's the people mad about "restrictions" that should calm down with the hyperbole. Yes there are also some hyper anxious pro-lockdown people, but reality doesn't reflect their opinion anyway. I don't get what there is to be upset about.
For those that are so angry about US-based restrictions, what have you been prevented from doing in the last 9 months?