3 ms·

I was once of the “this’ll be over by the end of April” people, but I didn’t mean the virus would be gone. Only that the initial response would be over (“flatte

by mwint 5y ago

I was once of the “this’ll be over by the end of April” people, but I didn’t mean the virus would be gone. Only that the initial response would be over (“flatten the curve”) and we’d go back to normal, accepting the deaths. I didn’t think the new goal would become “no one can ever die of this”. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have said this would be over soon.

zrail 5y ago
As far as I can tell, most public health decisions made up until this summer have been about preventing collapse of hospital systems. Individual health is of secondary importance to the system being able to handle ordinary levels of non-covid events. Something changed a few months ago and now some states in the US are making decisions seemingly designed to collapse their health systems. It's tragically short sighted.
- Izkata 5y ago
  > As far as I can tell, most public health decisions made up until this summer have been about preventing collapse of hospital systems. If that were true, they wouldn't have gotten rid of the pop-up hospitals over a year ago.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    They weren't needed at the time, though. Why maintain them popped up in any one location when the biggest spikes have been moving around?
simiones 5y ago
> I didn’t think the new goal would become “no one can ever die of this”. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have said this would be over soon. Which place, specifically, do you think has gone with this kind of thinking? Because in all countries I know of outside of East Asia, this virus has been allowed to kill many more people than virtually any other infectious disease in the last 10 years.
vmception 5y ago
This is insightful, but how was that convincing either? To me, it was more obvious that hard viral mitigations would last for 18 months (until 2022) before there were options available for people (such as an option for vaccines), and I was surprised by the speed of viral sequencing and then emergency authorizations. That was new technology and was impressive, for the people interested in vaccines the option was available. I don't see how flatten the curve was convincing, in March 2020 or in hindsight. That's separate from the comical moving goalposts of various Governors and counties.

by mwint 5y ago

zrail 5y ago

As far as I can tell, most public health decisions made up until this summer have been about preventing collapse of hospital systems. Individual health is of secondary importance to the system being able to handle ordinary levels of non-covid events. Something changed a few months ago and now some states in the US are making decisions seemingly designed to collapse their health systems. It's tragically short sighted.

Izkata 5y ago
> As far as I can tell, most public health decisions made up until this summer have been about preventing collapse of hospital systems. If that were true, they wouldn't have gotten rid of the pop-up hospitals over a year ago.
- majormajor 5y ago
  They weren't needed at the time, though. Why maintain them popped up in any one location when the biggest spikes have been moving around?

simiones 5y ago

> I didn’t think the new goal would become “no one can ever die of this”. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have said this would be over soon. Which place, specifically, do you think has gone with this kind of thinking? Because in all countries I know of outside of East Asia, this virus has been allowed to kill many more people than virtually any other infectious disease in the last 10 years.

vmception 5y ago

This is insightful, but how was that convincing either? To me, it was more obvious that hard viral mitigations would last for 18 months (until 2022) before there were options available for people (such as an option for vaccines), and I was surprised by the speed of viral sequencing and then emergency authorizations. That was new technology and was impressive, for the people interested in vaccines the option was available. I don't see how flatten the curve was convincing, in March 2020 or in hindsight. That's separate from the comical moving goalposts of various Governors and counties.