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We know about "soft lockdowns" too (in fact, it's now just standard practice around here). It's why our kids get less age-appropriate care - for example, they can't mix with the groups who share the same sleeping pattern as they do, and are forced to stick to whatever their "bubble" is doing. To me, this is incredibly developmentally inappropriate.

Yep. Sometimes when I air opinions like these, I get the response "but attitudes like that will keep the pandemic and shutdowns going for longer!". It's surprisingly hard to explain that I also don't want my nursery to shutdown if someone merely tests positive for Covid. Personally, I've decided to re-brand "asymptomatic" as "not ill".

Where have you heard those figures from? (I assume you are telling me that 5% of pre-schoolers, in your experience, have had chronic outcomes from Covid).

Yes, I have seen many preliminary studies linking Covid to many different long-term health problems [1]. Personally, and especially as Covid has been around for over 2 years at this point, I strongly prefer to avoid the obvious long-term damage caused to my kids by the disruption of their academic and social development.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/10/01/restless-an...

We had RSV do the rounds (twice) where I live, and all of us in our house were quite ill, fatigued, and snotty/coughy for about a month. Our friend's 6 month-old caught it and ended up in hospital.

Our youngest also had Croup last year, which is pretty scary if you don't know it. It shows up as a horrible, barking cough, and can make it look like your baby is suddenly struggling to breathe. We panicked and called an ambulance. The little one was just fine, but had the horrible cough (which is much worse at night) for a while.

Once our pre-school care re-opened (it was shut for many months after March 2020) and the regular diseases started circulation again, it felt like we were ill for several months, albeit with different diseases. We'd send our kids in on Monday, and wait to see what we'd have for the weekend...

I'm not saying this to complain - as I see it, this is the reality of life with the little snot-nosed monsters.

Interesting. Here in the UK, Delta wasn't too much of a concern. I suspect because the public messaging was much more focused on getting everyone vaccinated.

Of course hospitals are incapable of keeping you safe from an airbourne respiratory virus. Nothing can, short of a respirator.

The follow-up question is - if we can't stop infection in hospital buildings, where the most vulnerable are literally cooped up together for days and weeks at a time, what's the point of the rest of the restrictions? If you follow the logic used to set guidance and law where I live (ie, closures of various categories of business at various times, and ongoing), then logically we should also have shut down the hospitals...

Are you saying that until young kids can get vaccinated, it is not safe enough to remove shutdown protocols for preschools?

Parent of 2 very young kids here btw - it's been brutal, I feel your pain. Frankly, our kids get enough other diseases from nursery that a months-long scratchy cough doesn't sound too terrifying.

How can you simultaneously say that Covid will become endemic, and also that we need to try to control its mutation rate? Ongoing mutation is a fact of (viral) life.

It seems we have forgotten that ultimately, "basic survival needs" for humans (and especially vulnerable humans) includes social contact. You can't call infrequent visits from a staff member while covered from head to toe in various inffectual PPE, "social contact".

What's the difference between the two? Especially when the product in question requires the co-ordination of 10s (probably 100s) of thousands of engineers, designers, and operatives, as well as a mass-market able to make the initial investment worth it.

Does this mean that "things that have survived for 10 years are more durable than average", or "in the last 10 years, we have become unable to make useful, durable laptops"?

If it's the latter, then I can hear the footsteps of the Anti-Singularity getting ever closer....

Your implication is that the "full staffing" makes up for the fact that inmates can't leave nor have anyone visit. In which case, there is little difference between a care facility under lockdown, and a prison.

A friend's grandmother died alone, without having seen friends or family for months, shut in her room in a care facility during 2020.

I suppose you are one of the people who would also tell us that house arrest is "not hard".

>If we were rational and serious about making the biggest impact, we would reduce car dependency

I've spoken to a subset of EV proponents who would strongly disagree with this. They say that it's not feasible or even possible, or maybe even acceptable, to convince enough people to change their lifestyle this radically. Therefore, we need to just all buy EVs.

Personally I agree with you, although the huge boost that continuing new development gives to my field as an engineer is undeniable.

False.

>It has been one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

By percentage of global population, I beg to differ:

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

It also overwhelmingly killed the very elderly, an age category which didn't even exist at the times of most of those other pandemics in the list.

By your same description, prison is a "fully staffed assisted living facility".

I'm so glad to see someone else saying this. It absolutely will be remembered as a Mass Hysteria. It also has overtones of the worst that state religion has to offer. Ironically, W. Bernstein published a book in 2021 called "The Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups" that completely ignored our response to Covid (except to toe the party line). Even more ironically, Bernstein had harsh words for Mackay, author of the 1841 classic "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds", in which Mackay ignored the ongoing British Railway Bubble.

We also have data here in the UK, that somewhere near 35% of cases were contracted in hospital.

Parents who were also trying to hold down jobs. At the time, my partner and I had a 1 year old and were both working. It was incredibly difficult, stressful, and 100% not sustainable. We cracked after a few weeks. We also strongly believe that just putting young children in front of screens for hours at a time is detrimental to their development, and did not do that like so many other parents (who all justified it because they "had to" to keep working. That is another whole debate - I am sure that not many people would have gone to the effort we did during lockdowns and restrictions to shield our kids from the poor parenting practices that are now widespread).

Also, having young children is incredibly isolating, and already something like a lockdown in itself. Humans in that position are supposed to go out and see as many people as they can, usually in the form of meeting other parents at their houses, cafes, parks, etc. All of that was illegal, at least where I lived. My blood still boils thinking of how horribly harmful that was.

I had great-grandparents and grandparents die as a kid. It's probably happened to most people.