Hacker News Reader

Comment by jleyank | Hacker News Reader

Because COVID changed (fortunately, I hope). Delta was bad, but Omicron was not so the pressure on people to pay attention was reduced/removed. Hopefully, the changes to Omicron don't return "strength" to go along with "transmissibility". The signal-to-noise ratio for COVID was terrible, and people just decided it was over. The last wave didn't end up in hospital and if they think about it at all they assume all future waves won't either. Hope so...

Endemic COVID, which is sorta the endgame that people want/expect, has it turning into somewhere between a cold and a bad flu in strength/effect. We'll see.

View on HN

> Endemic COVID, which is sorta the endgame that people want/expect

Textbook case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was said from the beginning that would be the ultimate result and very little was done as a coordinated global effort to avoid it. And that inspired little confidence in regard to the next pandemic, whenever it may be.

There was much done, but to ill effect with a large percentage of people actively blocking any efforts. What do you suggest should have been done that wasn’t attempted?

A lot to unpack but off the top of my head, the US was wide open compared to UK/EU; the biggest mistake initially was the communication from WHO and CDC recommending that masks were not necessary, and subsequent backtrack that eroded public confidence leading to even less compliance; mask mandates were dropped everywhere; and the worst is this insistence of combatting fomite transmission—which is completely false—having hand sanitizers installed everywhere but nowhere do you find improvements to ventilation and air filtration, for instance.

edit: and I agree a lot was done, but certainly not in any unified manner. in this age of hyper-globalized economies, countries cannot effectively act as individual entities when dealing with pandemics.

You’ve seen how the public has reacted to mask mandates. When something requires cooperation of the entire world, it’s at that point more about risk mitigation than elimination.

We have seen similar or even worse numbers in UK/EU over time. Theres a notion of being open, and then there’s public conformance.

Totally agree masking and filtration could have been massively improved, but it wasn’t known for a while that masks were the right thing. Everyone needs to give the health officials some latitude when something is brand new and being studied in real time. Of course communication could be improved, but it didn’t help it was also politically inconvenient (along with all the false information) so the comms no matter what would be challenged.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com