Coronavirus - the new pandemic

[Frustration]

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.

There was never a window to stop it.

[Frustration]

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

The vaccines reduce severity, so lethal cases are now merely moderately bad, bad cases are minor, and minor cases are asymptomatic.

The asymptomatic cases are still perfectly capable of spreading the virus, of course, given how infectious it is. There's just no longer any obvious sign that the person is sick.

In one sense, this is no different than before - people could transmit Covid before they developed symptoms. But now there isn't even a symptomatic period that makes it obvious.

The evolution of new strains will continue. And eventually, the moderate resistance granted by the vaccines runs out. How many people will persist in getting booster shots when the issue seems to have been resolved? Hopefully those who are genuinely at-risk will keep it up - what the others do doesn't truly matter, since they can receive and spread the illness either way.

[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

The vaccines reduce severity, so lethal cases are now merely moderately bad, bad cases are minor, and minor cases are asymptomatic.

The asymptomatic cases are still perfectly capable of spreading the virus, of course, given how infectious it is. There's just no longer any obvious sign that the person is sick.

In one sense, this is no different than before - people could transmit Covid before they developed symptoms. But now there isn't even a symptomatic period that makes it obvious.

The evolution of new strains will continue. And eventually, the moderate resistance granted by the vaccines runs out. How many people will persist in getting booster shots when the issue seems to have been resolved? Hopefully those who are genuinely at-risk will keep it up - what the others do doesn't truly matter, since they can receive and spread the illness either way.

There's plenty of evidence that current strains are less dangerous anyway, and that for many the vaccine effectiveness will have declined quite significantly by now.

If plenty of people aren't even being symptomatic that's not a sign of a particularly dangerous disease. Yes, it can still hit some people very severely, but we live with a vast mulitude of things of equivalent risk.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

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

The vaccines reduce severity, so lethal cases are now merely moderately bad, bad cases are minor, and minor cases are asymptomatic.

The asymptomatic cases are still perfectly capable of spreading the virus, of course, given how infectious it is. There's just no longer any obvious sign that the person is sick.

In one sense, this is no different than before - people could transmit Covid before they developed symptoms. But now there isn't even a symptomatic period that makes it obvious.

The evolution of new strains will continue. And eventually, the moderate resistance granted by the vaccines runs out. How many people will persist in getting booster shots when the issue seems to have been resolved? Hopefully those who are genuinely at-risk will keep it up - what the others do doesn't truly matter, since they can receive and spread the illness either way.

There's plenty of evidence that current strains are less dangerous anyway, and that for many the vaccine effectiveness will have declined quite significantly by now.

If plenty of people aren't even being symptomatic that's not a sign of a particularly dangerous disease. Yes, it can still hit some people very severely, but we live with a vast mulitude of things of equivalent risk.

Yeah like stress from talking on internet forums!!

[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.

There was never a window to stop it.

There was.

Could have Eminent Domained the copyright on the vaccine. Could have opened up the supply lines. Could have let the world vaccinate back when vaccines would have mattered.
Didn't, because capitalism.

[sayla0079]

Could have started working on a Vaccine sooner if Trump had gotten off his ass and stopped acting like it was a hoax when there were inklings of it months before the news broke.

[Frustration]

The vaccines don't stop the spread of the virus. They don't even slow it down. If anything, they encourage its spread, by reducing the symptoms of people who otherwise might isolate themselves.

Why is it people are so resistant to acknowledging simple facts? In FN's case, it's because it's FN, but there are lots of others who just can't bring themselves to face reality on this topic.

[sayla0079]

There's a lot of could have, should have, would have, but there is no point in dwelling on them.

[McAvoy]

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.

There was never a window to stop it.

There was.

Could have Eminent Domained the copyright on the vaccine. Could have opened up the supply lines. Could have let the world vaccinate back when vaccines would have mattered.
Didn't, because capitalism.

The only real window we had was the initial stages from spreading. Even then, that would have been a gigantic task. After that then it was here to stay.

I mean the only probably to kill the virus would be a 100% pure quarantine. No one allowed outside. No contact with anyone but people who live in the same household.

Logistically that was impossible and as a society would have never happened.

[Frustration]

Given our inability to keep people from crossing our southern border, there's simply no way we could have prevented Covid from entering as well. Even the older strains of the virus, which were less contagious than the recent ones, were still highly communicable, and transmittable before symptoms were obvious.

We could perhaps have stopped the virus from coming in through other means, if we'd shut down every form of international travel at once and quarantined all passengers indefinitely. Although there are some indications that the virus was already spreading before it was recognized. But ultimately it would have made little difference - how long could that be kept up?

What Covid has done is twofold: it's shown us how much harm people will put up with when they're frightened, and it's shown us how poorly prepared we are if a truly dangerous disease begins to spread. We're willing to drive the child suicide rate through the roof, but not to forbid food delivery.