Coronavirus - the new pandemic

[McAvoy]

If others call you out, it's not me, it's you.

You ignore arguments multiple times, claim not to know what those instances are, then talk trash?

Yeah, we're done.

Again, where? You constantly make these claims.

Now I am the one trash talking?

[hammerofglass]

Given Frustration's username I think this is technically art.

[Frustration]

So let's see where the world is at:

We have vaccines which reduce the severity of infection such that death from the current strain is fairly unlikely even for vulnerable people. Vaccines which don't prevent infection, production of virus, and transmission; vaccines that lose their effectiveness in less than a year, and that work only for strains that currently exist.

We also have the widespread abandonment of masks, which while not extraordinarily effective, did a reasonably good job at preventing transmission. So the virus can continue replicating and evolving.

Arguably the reaction to Covid has been irrational ever since the properties of the virus became known, but if we assume previous concern was appropriate, the abandonment of masks is irrational to the extreme. So no matter what, people are crazy - the only things to argue about are precisely what people have been crazy about, and when.

I suspect we're going to see future strains arise and vulnerable people dying from them, but the media not making much of a story out of the issue, and the majority not caring. After all, the vast majority of people were never at much of a risk. We'll just have a new form of 'flu' going around and higher death rates from respiratory failure among the elderly than before.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Man, we're really going to be dealing with this thing forever, as in Forever. The political will to actually deal with it isn't there, the window to stop it has been missed. It may eventually be safe to be in crowds if everyone is masked and vaccinated, but that's as good as it will get. Even the chance to salvage something good out of this misfortune and use the situation to fix or replace obviously corrupt systems is gone.

Somebody tell me I'm wrong, please. I dare you.

[TGLS]

Somebody tell me I'm wrong, please. I dare you.

Look at the Spanish Flu. There were a series of outbreaks, and eventually it evolved to become less deadly and that was the end of that.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I really hope that's right. My epidemiologist friend paints a grimmer picture. Like "eventually it'll be safe to be in masked, vaccinated crowds" "outdoor events are better" kind of future. There isn't really the political will to deal with this in any useful manner.

[McAvoy]

I really hope that's right. My epidemiologist friend paints a grimmer picture. Like "eventually it'll be safe to be in masked, vaccinated crowds" "outdoor events are better" kind of future. There isn't really the political will to deal with this in any useful manner.

Yeah I think too many people are just done with any kind of measures against Covid. In the US, we got roughly half the country treating masks like it's the devils diaper. The other side getting more and more relaxed with it all, that no way in hell we could do more to combat it.

Short of Covid turning into a Super version where it destroys lung tissue and you drown in blood and it targets adults from 20-50 years old only.

[Riedquat]

In the UK very few people appear to be bothering with masks any more, in crowds or elsewhere. Cases have been high but largely not very severe, and they appear to be declining again now anyway (hard to tell on cases alone because free testing has been stopped, which will have a big impact on detected cases, but hospital admissions appear to have peaked too.

[hammerofglass]

In the US lot of the remaining rules are weird and stupid half measures. Like one member of the household has a positive test and is required to quarantine, but the rest of the household is not so they still have to go to work and school. So it's not actually containing it at all, it's just inconveniencing people.

[Riedquat]

Meanwhile Boris Johnson's now getting fined for breaking the rules he put in place...