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Amen. We have been so unbelievably myopic with COVID it truly hurts my head. Even today, ask someone who's COVID-obsessed, "What exactly is your longer-term pla

Amen. We have been so unbelievably myopic with COVID it truly hurts my head. Even today, ask someone who's COVID-obsessed, "What exactly is your longer-term plan here?" and watch as their mind breaks down. Too many people have completely stopped thinking about what they're trying to achieve and how they're going to do it. Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous.

rootusrootus 5y ago
> Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous. Which half?
- syshum 5y ago
  The 1/2 at the extremes ends of the Horseshoe of Politics... The Covid Deniers, and the Authoritarian "new normal" types that believe government is our parent. People that believe when it comes to COVID I should have no personal choice, I have to either be forced to vaxx, or the vaxx should be banned, I should be forced to mask, or the mask should be banned... People that reject liberty in the face of emergency
  - wavefunction 5y ago
    The problem is that we tried to allow people to be "personally responsible" and we ended up with a worse wave of the pandemic than the original one. People were not responsible, and they were definitely not "personally responsible" seeing how they've tied up our medical system, burnt out medical workers and kept people with normal medical emergencies or conditions from getting the care they require. Liberty is freedom+responsibility. All I hear about is freedom without responsibility though.
    - syshum 5y ago
      So your rebuttable is "we gave you a choice, and you choose wrong" That is not really a choice. Does the mugger give me a "choice" when he holds a gun to my head and threatens me with violence if do not do as he desire.
      - a_conservative 5y ago
        It depends on who you ask! If you ask the mugger, he will likely say that you did have a choice.
  - ikrenji 5y ago
    the pandemic is not a philosophical problem, it has nothing to do with liberty or freedom. it is purely a scientific problem with a scientific solution - the fucking vaccine
    - jpadkins 5y ago
      just curious: Why are you so confident that the vaccine is the solution? There are countries or populations with very high rate of vaccination that still see community spread (Israel, that UK ship, etc). Are you mentally prepared for the possibility that this is not true? What evidence would convince you that the vaccine won't 'solve' the pandemic?
      - VintageCool 5y ago
        Israel only has a 61% fully vaccinated rate. It is having to deal with widespread vaccine skepticism just like the US. Since the Delta variant is so much more infectious than the original covid, you'd have to get to 90% vaccination rates to count as "herd immunity" against this disease.
        sreque 5y ago
        Your numbers are misleading and deceptive. 78% of the eligible population and 90% of the most vulnerable have been vaccinated in Israel. Children under 12, who are ineligible for the vaccine, are at insanely low risk from covid and at insanely low risk of spreading it. Pretending they have to be vaccinated to achieve "herd immunity" is a lie and is fear mongering. Data show that unvaccinated children are safer than vaccinated adults. COVID will become endemic. Everyone knows this. All that's left is for politicians to vilify political opponents for potential votes and try to consolidate more power in the meantime.
        monetus 5y ago
        It will be endemic longer the more people (i.e. you) imply that there is nothing to be done. Edit: I don't mean to say that is what you meant, I just mean to say that the spread can be contained and the virus can be pushed out of whole regions before new variants arrive. It appears like you are saying that is impossible or not worth trying to attain.
- rednerrus 5y ago
  Where the horseshoe touches.
- slg 5y ago
  Some vaccination rates[1]: Democrats: 88% Republicans: 55% Republicans who support party more than Trump: 62% Republicans who support Trump more than party: 46% Biden voters in 2020 general election: 91% Trump voters in 2020 general election: 50% Let's not "both sides" this issue. It should be obvious who is to blame for the US's less than stellar vaccination rates and it isn't well-intentioned but manipulative messaging coming from health officials. [1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/nbc-news-poll-shows-demographic-breakdown-vaccinated-u-s-n1277514 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/nbc-news-pol...
  - gorwell 5y ago
    I don't think we should go down that road. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-demographics-trends https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-demogr...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - slg 5y ago
      Can you explain what you think your link is showing? I honestly can't tell. First off there is this disclaimer: >These demographic data represent the geographic areas that contributed data and might differ by populations prioritized within each jurisdiction’s vaccination phase. Therefore, these data may not be generalizable to the entire US population. That page also shows the overall percentage of the population with at least one shot is 75.7% and yet no demographic group reaches that number except those over 50 years old. It seems clear that the CDC data is incomplete enough to not be fully trusted, but even if we do trust it, it doesn't do anything to disprove that the highest contributor to a person's vaccination status (besides potentially age) is their personal politics.
      - dnissley 5y ago
        The page explains this with a small note: "Race/Ethnicity data were available for 64% receiving at least one dose and 69.1% of people fully vaccinated". So increasing the numbers by about 50% to account for that makes it look more reasonable. Regardless, if we're nitpicking data quality surely a random nbc news poll doesn't exactly pass muster either.
jowday 5y ago
>Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous. The pandemic is largely over culturally and mentally for pretty much all of the country - I'm in the middle of San Francisco and the only real remaining enforced anti-COVID measures are flashing your vaccine card before going into bars, masks inside of gyms, and masking and demasking when you enter restaurants - although I remember a friend with kids telling me there's still some strangeness at schools. No one's really locked down anymore outside of a few holdouts in each state.
- rayiner 5y ago
  > The pandemic is largely over culturally and mentally for pretty much all of the country - I'm in the middle of San Francisco and the only real remaining enforced anti-COVID measures are flashing your vaccine card before going into bars, masks inside of gyms, and masking and demasking when you enter restaurants - although I remember a friend with kids telling me there's still some strangeness at schools. That's a real understatement. Here in Maryland, my 8 year old is still in a mask at school both inside and outside. She's been a trooper with all the precautions over the last year and a half, but started crying when she heard her school was going to do masking again in the fall, because it means probably another year of social distancing in schools (not being able to play with all your friends, etc). The masks really interfere with her gymnastics class, because of O2 restrictions as well as difficulty hearing/understanding what instructors are saying. My 3 year old is masked all day in preschool, as well as at his extracurriculars. He does a "toddler crossfit" type class where all the kids and instructors are masked, and it's a disaster. At this age their ability to comprehend instructions is marginal to begin with. Add the muffled speech and inability to see facial expressions and it means the kids have a lot of trouble understanding what's going on. I've done A/B testing helping my kid with the activities. With a mask on, he has a much harder time understanding me, and also mistakes my mood--e.g. he can't see me smiling so he interprets my giving him directions as yelling (it's loud in the gym obviously). Wearing a mask, as we did for 4-5 hours on a flight recently, weirds out my 2 month old since he can't see my face. We are not going to even try to send him to daycare with masked caregivers. I hate to sound like a nutter--I'm a STEM major, I know how to "science"--but I don't trust that they actually have considered the developmental effects on infants not being able to see faces for 8 hours a day at daycare.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
elihu 5y ago
Long term plan in my mind was to get enough people vaccinated that community spread stops being a thing. We were almost there in late spring prior to delta variant showing up, but now the situation has changed and the percentage of the population that has to be immune to stop the virus has gotten a lot higher. So now the long term plan is for the holdouts to either change their minds and get vaccinated (and many of them have), or for natural herd immunity to take over when there aren't enough people who have neither been infected or vaccinated for the virus to spread to. It seems like the current wave has probably hit a peak. No idea what happens next. New infections could dwindle away to almost nothing, or we might have another big wave. At this point anyone in the U.S. who wants the vaccine can get it. It's sad that over a thousand people a day are still dying of this, but those are the risks that people have for some reason chosen to take. If we continue to have waves of new infections, I don't know what the long term strategy is. We could drop all restrictions and "let nature run its course". A substantial portion of vaccinated people are probably going to be on board with that as long as we don't have a new variant that the vaccines are ineffective against. We could keep rigid restrictions on masking, social distancing, and large gatherings. That's really disruptive though to schools and churches and a lot of businesses, not to mention taking a long term toll on mental health. I do wish those in wealthier countries like the U.S. were more invested in getting vaccines to everyone that wants it, anywhere in the world. New variants can come from anywhere.
- VintageCool 5y ago
  I think the current wave is going to drift Northwards as the weather turns colder and people spend more time socializing inside.
- cjdaly 5y ago
  > get enough people vaccinated that community spread stops being a thing The problem with this plan is that vaccinated people still catch and spread the virus. The available vaccines do not create "herd immunity" in the traditional sense. I think the best argument for getting a vaccine now is you will be much less likely to get hospitalized (and/or die) if you catch COVID after being vaccinated. But that argument may not apply to people who already caught it, recovered and now have some natural immunity.
glenda 5y ago
Out of curiosity, what is your long term plan? From my perspective people who aren’t concerned about contracting and spreading covid are the short term thinkers - they just want to have things back to how they used to be right now without any thought about mitigating the threat.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lmm 5y ago
  My long term plan is to accept that covid will be endemic and will kill a certain number of people each year, just as we already do with regular flu. (I'm all for more anti-death measures in the long term, but in QALY terms there are much higher priorities e.g. tougher licensing and stricter penalties for drivers who kill people). I believe that that's the inevitable endgame, and the only remaining question is how long we prolong the economic damage and human suffering of the restrictions out of some hair-shirt sense of virtue in doing so.
mike00632 5y ago
What do you think is the long term plan of "flu-obsessed" people, a.k.a. doctors, when they recommend getting the yearly flu vaccine?
- lmm 5y ago
  Their long term plan seemed to be to not worry too much about what proportion of people get the flu vaccine (and certainly not about documenting who has or hasn't had one), and live a normal life (travel, party, etc.) even while flu is spreading.

rootusrootus 5y ago

> Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous. Which half?

syshum 5y ago
The 1/2 at the extremes ends of the Horseshoe of Politics... The Covid Deniers, and the Authoritarian "new normal" types that believe government is our parent. People that believe when it comes to COVID I should have no personal choice, I have to either be forced to vaxx, or the vaxx should be banned, I should be forced to mask, or the mask should be banned... People that reject liberty in the face of emergency
- wavefunction 5y ago
  The problem is that we tried to allow people to be "personally responsible" and we ended up with a worse wave of the pandemic than the original one. People were not responsible, and they were definitely not "personally responsible" seeing how they've tied up our medical system, burnt out medical workers and kept people with normal medical emergencies or conditions from getting the care they require. Liberty is freedom+responsibility. All I hear about is freedom without responsibility though.
  - syshum 5y ago
    So your rebuttable is "we gave you a choice, and you choose wrong" That is not really a choice. Does the mugger give me a "choice" when he holds a gun to my head and threatens me with violence if do not do as he desire.
    - a_conservative 5y ago
      It depends on who you ask! If you ask the mugger, he will likely say that you did have a choice.
- ikrenji 5y ago
  the pandemic is not a philosophical problem, it has nothing to do with liberty or freedom. it is purely a scientific problem with a scientific solution - the fucking vaccine
  - jpadkins 5y ago
    just curious: Why are you so confident that the vaccine is the solution? There are countries or populations with very high rate of vaccination that still see community spread (Israel, that UK ship, etc). Are you mentally prepared for the possibility that this is not true? What evidence would convince you that the vaccine won't 'solve' the pandemic?
    - VintageCool 5y ago
      Israel only has a 61% fully vaccinated rate. It is having to deal with widespread vaccine skepticism just like the US. Since the Delta variant is so much more infectious than the original covid, you'd have to get to 90% vaccination rates to count as "herd immunity" against this disease.
      - sreque 5y ago
        Your numbers are misleading and deceptive. 78% of the eligible population and 90% of the most vulnerable have been vaccinated in Israel. Children under 12, who are ineligible for the vaccine, are at insanely low risk from covid and at insanely low risk of spreading it. Pretending they have to be vaccinated to achieve "herd immunity" is a lie and is fear mongering. Data show that unvaccinated children are safer than vaccinated adults. COVID will become endemic. Everyone knows this. All that's left is for politicians to vilify political opponents for potential votes and try to consolidate more power in the meantime.
        monetus 5y ago
        It will be endemic longer the more people (i.e. you) imply that there is nothing to be done. Edit: I don't mean to say that is what you meant, I just mean to say that the spread can be contained and the virus can be pushed out of whole regions before new variants arrive. It appears like you are saying that is impossible or not worth trying to attain.
rednerrus 5y ago
Where the horseshoe touches.
slg 5y ago
Some vaccination rates[1]: Democrats: 88% Republicans: 55% Republicans who support party more than Trump: 62% Republicans who support Trump more than party: 46% Biden voters in 2020 general election: 91% Trump voters in 2020 general election: 50% Let's not "both sides" this issue. It should be obvious who is to blame for the US's less than stellar vaccination rates and it isn't well-intentioned but manipulative messaging coming from health officials. [1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/nbc-news-poll-shows-demographic-breakdown-vaccinated-u-s-n1277514 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/nbc-news-pol...
- gorwell 5y ago
  I don't think we should go down that road. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-demographics-trends https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-demogr...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - slg 5y ago
    Can you explain what you think your link is showing? I honestly can't tell. First off there is this disclaimer: >These demographic data represent the geographic areas that contributed data and might differ by populations prioritized within each jurisdiction’s vaccination phase. Therefore, these data may not be generalizable to the entire US population. That page also shows the overall percentage of the population with at least one shot is 75.7% and yet no demographic group reaches that number except those over 50 years old. It seems clear that the CDC data is incomplete enough to not be fully trusted, but even if we do trust it, it doesn't do anything to disprove that the highest contributor to a person's vaccination status (besides potentially age) is their personal politics.
    - dnissley 5y ago
      The page explains this with a small note: "Race/Ethnicity data were available for 64% receiving at least one dose and 69.1% of people fully vaccinated". So increasing the numbers by about 50% to account for that makes it look more reasonable. Regardless, if we're nitpicking data quality surely a random nbc news poll doesn't exactly pass muster either.

jowday 5y ago

>Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous. The pandemic is largely over culturally and mentally for pretty much all of the country - I'm in the middle of San Francisco and the only real remaining enforced anti-COVID measures are flashing your vaccine card before going into bars, masks inside of gyms, and masking and demasking when you enter restaurants - although I remember a friend with kids telling me there's still some strangeness at schools. No one's really locked down anymore outside of a few holdouts in each state.

rayiner 5y ago
> The pandemic is largely over culturally and mentally for pretty much all of the country - I'm in the middle of San Francisco and the only real remaining enforced anti-COVID measures are flashing your vaccine card before going into bars, masks inside of gyms, and masking and demasking when you enter restaurants - although I remember a friend with kids telling me there's still some strangeness at schools. That's a real understatement. Here in Maryland, my 8 year old is still in a mask at school both inside and outside. She's been a trooper with all the precautions over the last year and a half, but started crying when she heard her school was going to do masking again in the fall, because it means probably another year of social distancing in schools (not being able to play with all your friends, etc). The masks really interfere with her gymnastics class, because of O2 restrictions as well as difficulty hearing/understanding what instructors are saying. My 3 year old is masked all day in preschool, as well as at his extracurriculars. He does a "toddler crossfit" type class where all the kids and instructors are masked, and it's a disaster. At this age their ability to comprehend instructions is marginal to begin with. Add the muffled speech and inability to see facial expressions and it means the kids have a lot of trouble understanding what's going on. I've done A/B testing helping my kid with the activities. With a mask on, he has a much harder time understanding me, and also mistakes my mood--e.g. he can't see me smiling so he interprets my giving him directions as yelling (it's loud in the gym obviously). Wearing a mask, as we did for 4-5 hours on a flight recently, weirds out my 2 month old since he can't see my face. We are not going to even try to send him to daycare with masked caregivers. I hate to sound like a nutter--I'm a STEM major, I know how to "science"--but I don't trust that they actually have considered the developmental effects on infants not being able to see faces for 8 hours a day at daycare.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

elihu 5y ago

Long term plan in my mind was to get enough people vaccinated that community spread stops being a thing. We were almost there in late spring prior to delta variant showing up, but now the situation has changed and the percentage of the population that has to be immune to stop the virus has gotten a lot higher. So now the long term plan is for the holdouts to either change their minds and get vaccinated (and many of them have), or for natural herd immunity to take over when there aren't enough people who have neither been infected or vaccinated for the virus to spread to. It seems like the current wave has probably hit a peak. No idea what happens next. New infections could dwindle away to almost nothing, or we might have another big wave. At this point anyone in the U.S. who wants the vaccine can get it. It's sad that over a thousand people a day are still dying of this, but those are the risks that people have for some reason chosen to take. If we continue to have waves of new infections, I don't know what the long term strategy is. We could drop all restrictions and "let nature run its course". A substantial portion of vaccinated people are probably going to be on board with that as long as we don't have a new variant that the vaccines are ineffective against. We could keep rigid restrictions on masking, social distancing, and large gatherings. That's really disruptive though to schools and churches and a lot of businesses, not to mention taking a long term toll on mental health. I do wish those in wealthier countries like the U.S. were more invested in getting vaccines to everyone that wants it, anywhere in the world. New variants can come from anywhere.

VintageCool 5y ago
I think the current wave is going to drift Northwards as the weather turns colder and people spend more time socializing inside.
cjdaly 5y ago
> get enough people vaccinated that community spread stops being a thing The problem with this plan is that vaccinated people still catch and spread the virus. The available vaccines do not create "herd immunity" in the traditional sense. I think the best argument for getting a vaccine now is you will be much less likely to get hospitalized (and/or die) if you catch COVID after being vaccinated. But that argument may not apply to people who already caught it, recovered and now have some natural immunity.

glenda 5y ago

Out of curiosity, what is your long term plan? From my perspective people who aren’t concerned about contracting and spreading covid are the short term thinkers - they just want to have things back to how they used to be right now without any thought about mitigating the threat.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lmm 5y ago
My long term plan is to accept that covid will be endemic and will kill a certain number of people each year, just as we already do with regular flu. (I'm all for more anti-death measures in the long term, but in QALY terms there are much higher priorities e.g. tougher licensing and stricter penalties for drivers who kill people). I believe that that's the inevitable endgame, and the only remaining question is how long we prolong the economic damage and human suffering of the restrictions out of some hair-shirt sense of virtue in doing so.

mike00632 5y ago

What do you think is the long term plan of "flu-obsessed" people, a.k.a. doctors, when they recommend getting the yearly flu vaccine?

lmm 5y ago
Their long term plan seemed to be to not worry too much about what proportion of people get the flu vaccine (and certainly not about documenting who has or hasn't had one), and live a normal life (travel, party, etc.) even while flu is spreading.