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I do not have those problems. I am sorry you do. Sucks. But, I am definitely not returning to "normal" pre Covid behavior. I got Covid early on. It was ext

I do not have those problems. I am sorry you do. Sucks. But, I am definitely not returning to "normal" pre Covid behavior. I got Covid early on. It was extremely rough. Should probably have been in the hospital, but frankly worried about that a lot given what was happening. Made it through, as did my family. Those experiences were why we played it very safe. Lots of negatives in doing that, but there were some positives, damn good takeaways: We basically saw a no flu season. Haven't caught much more than a sneeze. That is awful nice. Travel, work, life balance got reset. Turns out a whole lot more can be done without doing those things as much. Good for the planet, good for a lot of people, me, mine. Health care in the US is broken, and so is our governance. This whole thing has made me see just how severe cost and risk exposure for way too many people really is! Our response, information distribution, and I could go on for a long while here is frankly and completely unacceptable. There is real work to do and we have been running balls out and basically ignoring it, marginalizing costs and risks and in general just do not have our national priorities in order. Just know others hear you. We felt it too. Felt it differently, but I do not think that matters. Stay safe. Bet your ass I am going to.

mcny 6y ago
> Health care in the US is broken, and so is our governance. This whole thing has made me see just how severe cost and risk exposure for way too many people really is! There are a lot of people who benefit from health care being broken so I’m very pessimistic if we will see single payer in our lifetime. We all need to keep fighting for it but to be realistic it might not happen in the next thirty years.
- ddingus 6y ago
  There is an order, if not two more who do not benefit, and it is unnecessary. I agree with you. However, I will also no longer be quiet about it. My own costs and risks have been insane. Future impacted in the negative multiple times now. Would not have been most other parts of the world. Frankly, the cost and risk exposure will hit a point where people move in mass, or it won't and we trundle along for a decade or two. Nobody knows. What I do know is I have reached a point where I will act in solidarity with others on this matter and will make very aggressive trade offs too. It is now a priority.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    M4A is socialism and is just too easy a target in the U.S. At some point there will beer a republicans president, and due to the structural advantages it’s likely he will have full control over all branches. Not sure that a real democracy can survive that.
    - ddingus 6y ago
      Well there's a ton of Americans, and those numbers are growing, of people who may not survive this one. It's a real mess.
  - disabled 6y ago
    I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen, who naturalized (by descent, via my 4 Croatian great-grandparents, even though I only needed 1) as Croatian over the US healthcare system. Because I am an European Union citizen, I can live/work/retire in the EU and EFTA countries (minus Lichtenstein--has an immigration quota), due to Freedom of Movement rights. I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent). Anyways, even though the neurological diseases are in pharmaceutical remission, I require a lot of unusual and expensive treatments to stay alive. I am an electrical engineering graduate student, who has studied healthcare systems and delivery, and I understand the logistics and the bureaucracy involved. I am also an expert on processes involving acquiring citizenship. Feel free to shoot me an email, if you want (see my profile). Ironically, the best resource for navigating the various intricacies of various countries' health systems, globally, with respect to living a long life, is the IMHE group. You know, the group that was famous for the coronavirus projections at the beginning of the pandemic in the USA. All of their peer-reviewed publications are open access, too. This is probably the most important research article to consult and study (although there are several others): Forecasting life expectancy, years of life lost, and all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 250 causes of death: reference and alternative scenarios for 2016–40 for 195 countries and territories using data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016: http://www.healthdata.org/research-article/forecasting-life-expectancy-years-life-lost-and-all-cause-and-cause-specific http://www.healthdata.org/research-article/forecasting-life-... This is an easy, but startling read: How healthy will we be in 2040?: http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/how-healthy-will-we-be-2040 http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/how-healthy-will-we-b... Anyways, feel free to shoot me an email, if you want advice on this sort of stuff. I will be glad to help. I have studied this for hundreds of hours.
buu700 6y ago
But, I am definitely not returning to "normal" pre Covid behavior. What would this look like, in practice? Of course on a macro scale we'll see changes like increasing adoption and acceptance of remote work/meetings, but in terms of individual behavior what can or should change? I assume 10 years from now (barring another pandemic) we won't all be wearing masks and gloves all the time or strictly maintaining a six-foot distance from all other people, but offhand I see myself maintaining a few habits to varying degrees of strictness: * Consistently washing my hands after touching mail or packages * Letting packages sit by the front door for a day or two before bringing them further inside and opening them * Pressing crosswalk buttons with my elbow * Flushing non-automatic public toilets/urinals with my foot and opening/closing restroom doors with my foot, my elbow, or my hand and a paper towel * Immediately showering and changing after being in public * Wiping down groceries before putting them away * If I need to go out in public while sick for whatever reason, wearing an N95/equivalent mask (not that I had a habit of going out while sick to begin with / I can't specifically recall having ever done so, but if I had ever needed to it certainly wouldn't have occurred to me or struck me as socially acceptable to put on a mask) * When I return to the gym, consistently wearing gloves (I bought a bunch of full-fingered workout gloves and did this for a week or two last year just before everything shut down, and resumed the habit at home after a sliver of metal broke off of one of my dumbbell handles and got stuck in my finger) * Maybe continuing to wear gloves while in public in general, or even just semi-regularly using hand sanitizer
- ddingus 6y ago
  Your list is a lot like mine. Giving the basics a higher priority for the longer term, and teaching these to young ones, along with appropriate norms are how I intend on playing it all going forward.

mcny 6y ago

> Health care in the US is broken, and so is our governance. This whole thing has made me see just how severe cost and risk exposure for way too many people really is! There are a lot of people who benefit from health care being broken so I’m very pessimistic if we will see single payer in our lifetime. We all need to keep fighting for it but to be realistic it might not happen in the next thirty years.

ddingus 6y ago
There is an order, if not two more who do not benefit, and it is unnecessary. I agree with you. However, I will also no longer be quiet about it. My own costs and risks have been insane. Future impacted in the negative multiple times now. Would not have been most other parts of the world. Frankly, the cost and risk exposure will hit a point where people move in mass, or it won't and we trundle along for a decade or two. Nobody knows. What I do know is I have reached a point where I will act in solidarity with others on this matter and will make very aggressive trade offs too. It is now a priority.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  M4A is socialism and is just too easy a target in the U.S. At some point there will beer a republicans president, and due to the structural advantages it’s likely he will have full control over all branches. Not sure that a real democracy can survive that.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    Well there's a ton of Americans, and those numbers are growing, of people who may not survive this one. It's a real mess.
- disabled 6y ago
  I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen, who naturalized (by descent, via my 4 Croatian great-grandparents, even though I only needed 1) as Croatian over the US healthcare system. Because I am an European Union citizen, I can live/work/retire in the EU and EFTA countries (minus Lichtenstein--has an immigration quota), due to Freedom of Movement rights. I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent). Anyways, even though the neurological diseases are in pharmaceutical remission, I require a lot of unusual and expensive treatments to stay alive. I am an electrical engineering graduate student, who has studied healthcare systems and delivery, and I understand the logistics and the bureaucracy involved. I am also an expert on processes involving acquiring citizenship. Feel free to shoot me an email, if you want (see my profile). Ironically, the best resource for navigating the various intricacies of various countries' health systems, globally, with respect to living a long life, is the IMHE group. You know, the group that was famous for the coronavirus projections at the beginning of the pandemic in the USA. All of their peer-reviewed publications are open access, too. This is probably the most important research article to consult and study (although there are several others): Forecasting life expectancy, years of life lost, and all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 250 causes of death: reference and alternative scenarios for 2016–40 for 195 countries and territories using data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016: http://www.healthdata.org/research-article/forecasting-life-expectancy-years-life-lost-and-all-cause-and-cause-specific http://www.healthdata.org/research-article/forecasting-life-... This is an easy, but startling read: How healthy will we be in 2040?: http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/how-healthy-will-we-be-2040 http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/how-healthy-will-we-b... Anyways, feel free to shoot me an email, if you want advice on this sort of stuff. I will be glad to help. I have studied this for hundreds of hours.

buu700 6y ago

But, I am definitely not returning to "normal" pre Covid behavior. What would this look like, in practice? Of course on a macro scale we'll see changes like increasing adoption and acceptance of remote work/meetings, but in terms of individual behavior what can or should change? I assume 10 years from now (barring another pandemic) we won't all be wearing masks and gloves all the time or strictly maintaining a six-foot distance from all other people, but offhand I see myself maintaining a few habits to varying degrees of strictness: * Consistently washing my hands after touching mail or packages * Letting packages sit by the front door for a day or two before bringing them further inside and opening them * Pressing crosswalk buttons with my elbow * Flushing non-automatic public toilets/urinals with my foot and opening/closing restroom doors with my foot, my elbow, or my hand and a paper towel * Immediately showering and changing after being in public * Wiping down groceries before putting them away * If I need to go out in public while sick for whatever reason, wearing an N95/equivalent mask (not that I had a habit of going out while sick to begin with / I can't specifically recall having ever done so, but if I had ever needed to it certainly wouldn't have occurred to me or struck me as socially acceptable to put on a mask) * When I return to the gym, consistently wearing gloves (I bought a bunch of full-fingered workout gloves and did this for a week or two last year just before everything shut down, and resumed the habit at home after a sliver of metal broke off of one of my dumbbell handles and got stuck in my finger) * Maybe continuing to wear gloves while in public in general, or even just semi-regularly using hand sanitizer

ddingus 6y ago
Your list is a lot like mine. Giving the basics a higher priority for the longer term, and teaching these to young ones, along with appropriate norms are how I intend on playing it all going forward.