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Comment by eftychis | Hacker News Reader

People I know are getting COVID in the Bay Area -- multiple weeks sick (I can count at least 6 -- in the moment -- for the span of middle of October until now). We are still in the pandemic.

The problem is it has to stop everywhere for us to get complacent. Especially, given that everyone wants to travel -- and travel abroad.

Pandemic is here. Nothing is over. We are distracted with other things. Things are "good" in San Francisco and the Bay now. No guarantee it will be so tomorrow.

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Yea, it's not even remotely over. People are bored of it, and it makes them sad, so a lot of them stopped taking precautions, but it's not over. It just ripped through my family in Florida (again) since nobody is masking there and everyone is just carrying on as if it were 2019. My kid's school seems to perpetually has a case or two. I take it seriously by getting boosted, masking, continuing to avoid crowds and public places that are indoors, and I intend to keep doing so. People act like it's a TV show that got cancelled or something. Nuts.

Nuts is that on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence, your ascribing an efficacy in disease prevention to an intervention (wearing masks) that was widely understood to do no such thing prior to 2020.

Furthermore, respiratory disease avoidance on a society-wide scale has never and almost certainly will never be achieved. The assumption that it is an attainable goal is truly nuts.

Or people have weighed the costs/benefits and have decided that your preferred precautions aren't worth it anymore to them.

Same here. I live just north of NYC and it seems like pretty much everyone is getting covid. Luckily, mortality attributed to covid is continuing to decrease suggesting it's becoming less of an issue (in terms of deaths), but even with ~320 deaths a day, we're still looking at over 100k dying in the US every year of covid - despite the fact that a lot of the most vulnerable already died.

I think we just have a new normal in terms of life expectancy and mortality :(

Weren't we already in that same situation every year/decade prior to covid when between 20,000 and 50,000 would die from the flu each year?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_influenza_statis...

I think 20k/50k + an additional 100k from covid is pretty nasty, so I don't think it's the same at all. It's not like flu and covid are the same disease. I'm thinking covid will just add tens of thousands (or up to 100k like GP said). Sucks.

These groups intersect, so we can't just add the two numbers.

That is not "of Covid", it is "with Covid". We are still counting a Covid death for each person who has Covid at the time of death, regardless of what actually caused the death. Probably some of those people died exactly of Covid, but many died of at least two things, counting "having Covid" as one of the co-morbidities.

It should be clear by now that covid is never going away. No country managed to stop it, no matter how strict their policies were. Unless you plan to be a hermit for the rest of your life, expect to get covid every few years.

Or you could reasonably wear an N95 mask indoors. Hardly being a "hermit".

Several of my friends and coworkers do that. All of them have gotten covid. N95 masks reduce the risk of getting a respiratory disease, but they're nowhere close to foolproof.

A CDC study found that people who wore N95 masks were 83% less likely to get covid than people who wore no mask,[1] but that overstates their effectiveness. People who wear N95s tend to behave differently than people who don't wear masks. They get vaccinated more, avoid gatherings, and generally try to reduce their risk of infection in other ways. Also the timing of the study is important. It was conducted before more infectious variants such as omicron were around. And since it was conducted when California required masks indoors, only 5% of participants claimed no mask usage. So the study compared N95 people against the most hardcore anti-maskers, not the typical person who doesn't wear a mask these days.

It is for these reasons that I would bet that the real effectiveness of N95 masks is around 50%, not 83%. Useful, but not something that lets you go back to normal life risk-free.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm

I have been traveling a lot this past year (a dozen flights), vigilantly wearing an N95 mask while indoors, and I've yet to get sick. Meanwhile, my slightly less vigilant travel companion got Covid during one of our flights, possibly from removing her mask to take a drink of water. Was it luck? Maybe to some extent, but I'm much more confident in the effectiveness of a well-sealed N95 than I was a year ago, that's for sure.

I've noticed no pattern with me or my friends. I haven't gotten covid despite spending days unmasked, indoors, with people who were infectious. Some of my friends have gotten ridiculously unlucky, getting covid and taking weeks to recover despite being young, healthy, boosted, and wearing N95s everywhere. Of course general rules apply: A mask is better than nothing. Vaccines reduce the risk and severity of infection. But these interventions aren't as effective as originally claimed, and the variance in outcomes is massive. You can't just put on an N95, live life normally, and expect to avoid this disease.

It is endemic not pandemic anymore.

Endemic has a specific meaning - that there is an expected number of cases in a given population.

That's not really established for COVID-19.

Also, endemic doesn't mean something doesn't matter. In much of Africa, malaria is endemic.

What you mean is "As a society we stopped caring."

Not necessarily, endemic might mean that it matters, but those who are especially at risk are taking more precautions.

E.g. I see lots of young not wearing masks to protect themselves, and I see more older people protecting themselves with masks. Seems like a reasonable balance.

Pandemic means it is endemic "everywhere."

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pandemic-vs-endemi...

It does not describe severity. Ebola is endemic in parts of Africa. I still hope nobody gets it.

We can change the meanings of words for political reasons but who do we do a disservice too?

Given that it is a word from my mother language I find it a bit insulting when politicians decide to change my language though to benefit for a year or two.

Tl;Dr: Saying that covid is "endemic" to the whole world, is an insult to my ears, logic, and a whole language and people. They should pick a different word if they want to disagree with doctors worldwide.

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