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Does anyone have a sense as to when US society will completely eliminate COVID measures? Is it just me or is there no clear exit criteria anymore? This will g
by colordrops 5y ago
Does anyone have a sense as to when US society will completely eliminate COVID measures? Is it just me or is there no clear exit criteria anymore? This will go on forever without exit criteria.
- School-Cotton 5y agoIt seems like we are experiencing a very slow and gradual offramp from the restrictions, rather than something that will have a clearly defined endpoint. 2021 is already "mostly normal", for me. I hope sometime in 2022 we will be back to "100% normal", but I'm not confident.
- avaika 5y agoIt really really depends on where you are. E.g. in my country it's almost like "normal". But that's not what you think. People just don't follow restrictions, people don't wear masks, abuse vaccination (simply skip or even buy fake vaccination certificate to fulfill government / employer requirements). The only difference from "normal" is increased workload on hospitals and daily news "over thousand people died today from covid-19". When it's absolutely unbearable for healthcare system, government also introduces soft lockdown where restaurants / cafes / public places are closed. Then everything goes back to "normal". I really don't see how it can be 100% normal next year. At least in here.
- kgin 5y agoMasks became a regular fixture in Asia after original SARS. Not by regulation, but they just became an ordinary item used by people to avoid getting sick or avoid getting others sick.
- School-Cotton 5y agoHaving been to many parts of Asia before Covid hit, masks were indeed not unusual, but were never worn by _everyone_ or even the majority of people, even in crowded places like subways.
- kgin 5y agoAh, yes that’s more what I meant to say. We’ll get to a place where masks aren’t required anywhere, but we may never return to a world where masks are a weird or unusual sight.
- mostertoaster 5y agoProbably about as long as they will make us take our shoes off at the airport.
- anthonypasq 5y agonot exactly sure where you live but they are completely gone in most of the country. I live in a solidly blue New England state and I havent seriously thought about Covid for months. been going to packed bars, house parties, restaurants, music festivals, concerts all with no masks
- pwned1 5y agoExcept now we have a federal government which thinks it knows best and will force medical decisions on you.
- jungturk 5y agoYes, the US populace has elected to fund a public health organization which has advised on public health measures since its inception (which is not recent or coincident with Covid-19). You are not forced to take any vaccine, though many (public and private) institutions will require you to do so to participate in their functions (e.g. attending public school, serving in the military, working in hospitals, etc...). In any case, the will being applied is that of the people (indirectly) through its (mostly) elected representatives (who could abolish the public health organization any time it chose), not some nefarious government.
- zionic 5y ago> You are not forced to take any vaccine Can we please just stop? “Take this or lose your job and pension” is not a choice.
- jatone 5y agoand forcing people to work with walking bioweapons is not a choice either, so I don't see your point. losing a job is not nearly as problematic as killing people because someone couldn't be arsed to take a couple jabs.
- 5y ago
- pwned1 5y agoDepends where you are. In many places life is back to normal and we're free human beings again.
- wincy 5y agoI live in Kansas and have basically forgotten COVID is a thing. The people who wanted to get vaccinated like me have and those who haven’t, haven’t. Nobody asks about it and no businesses have any sort of mask requirements. Half of the people at the grocery store wear masks and the other half don’t. Everyone seems to be getting along. Next door in Kansas City Missouri I stopped at a gas station and an employee was shouting at a woman to put on a mask, then was yelling at the same woman to leave because she refused to comply. I’m glad she didn’t see me because I literally didn’t think to bring a mask with me and needed to run to the restroom. I guess 5 miles difference magically makes COVID much more contagious.
- danielvf 5y agoPretty much the same story in South Carolina. Outside retail workers, mask usage in my hyper local area is about 2%. Life has been basically completely normal since June 2020.
- 40four 5y agoI live in South Carolina as well, and I can confirm (I think you meant 2021 not 2020?). Most people in my city have been going about life as usual since ~ May if this year. Almost nobody wears masks. Everything is open. And guess what? We’re all good! The sky isn’t falling. Hospitals aren’t being overrun. Life is good, and I can remember the last time I worried or had anxiety about Covid. There seems to be a group of people who still believe we can ‘beat’ Covid. That somehow we make it go away, with endless restrictions. In reality, it is here to stay, and we will have to live with it for the rest of our lives.
- VRay 5y agohttps://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/south-carolina?view=daily-deaths&tab=trend https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/sout... Doesn’t look too bad so far as the USA goes, although if legal gun owners or Mexican cartel members were out there killing 40 people a day, you’d be screaming bloody murder about it
- TheHypnotist 5y agoMy company is fairly standard with the state we are in. They are extremely cautious, put emphasis on safety, but did get to a point where if you are vaccinated, you can go maskless... right up until the delta variant surge started infecting and killing people at an alarming rate. Now we're JUST starting to talk about relaxing again. If this is any barometer, not to mention the rate of which we are seeing pills/vaccines/what have you, I imagine 2022. Outside of work, things are largely "normal". For what it's worth - I live in a dense Northern state not seeing a surge of cases.
- jartelt 5y agoI could see things starting to really ease up once all children have had a chance to be vaccinated and everyone else has had a chance to get their 6 month booster shot.
- Steltek 5y agoNot everyone is eligible for a booster shot.
- jungturk 5y agoThis is true, but moot in my area. The local pharmacies that administer the vaccines are not validating your eligibility. Those I know who are interested in the 3rd round, and beyond 6 months from their 2nd, have received it.
- Steltek 5y agoPeople making up their own rules is the defining problem of the pandemic.
- wonderwonder 5y agoSure, but I don't think people getting a booster that may not be qualified are going to prolong the pandemic, quite the opposite. There is more than enough supply.
- foogazi 5y agoRight now - sure, same case with the covid vaccine in the first few months it was available
- jartelt 5y agoYes - which why I doubt we will see full "reopening" everywhere until they open up boosters to everyone and provide time for people who want them to get them.
- salemh 5y ago
- willcipriano 5y agoAfter the midterms is my guess.
- jasonpeacock 5y agoWhen hospitalization rates are down. In many metro areas the ICU are still full of un-vaccinated COVID patients, which means people with normal emergencies can't get a bed. Thus, COVID precautions are necessary to reduce the rate of infection to levels that do not overwhelm the healthcare system. And all those areas that have "returned to normal" are sending their COVID patients to regions that are still masking because they've exhausted their local ICU capacity.
- Loughla 5y ago>And all those areas that have "returned to normal" are sending their COVID patients to regions that are still masking because they've exhausted their local ICU capacity. This has been my experience as well. My state is pretty strict overall, but my area of my state is not. Our hospital has been operating at capacity for 6 months or so, but nobody is talking about it. Because we can just ship to where they have stricter COVID control measures. We're causing problems for other people because we can't be bothered to be part of society. It's a joke all around. The entire world. Nihilism is almost impossible to escape right now.
- VRay 5y agoIt’s pretty amazing how stupid and shortsighted people are. We’re so good at overlooking the horrible situation we’re in and focusing on other things that are completely irrelevant I used to think that one of the worst things in the USA was that 100 people per day die in preventable car accidents, but now we’re getting 10x that from a virus and people pretend that it isn’t happening
- ryandrake 5y agoThe last two years have convinced me: When the Zombie Apocalypse comes, zombies are biting and killing people in the streets, and neighborhoods are burning down, 50% of the country (world?) will whistle and just continue to go about their day, shopping, going out to eat, sending their kids to school, and looking down at all those hysterical alarmists bunkering up trying to defend themselves from the hoard. "Government, don't force me to change my life! I have the freedom to pretend everything is normal!"
- woodruffw 5y agoNYC's vaccination rate is trending towards 75%, and life is essentially back to normal with the addition of vaccine requirements for indoor dining and events (which strikes me as perfectly reasonable, given that we have a large tourism industry).
- jeffbee 5y agoI don't know but I haven't had a cold or any other infection in 18 months so I hope that wearing masks on trains, planes and buses stays forever. Also, shaking hands was always barbaric and I don't miss that, either.
- nradov 5y agoWhat a horrible idea. I'm not willing to wear a mask just to avoid a cold. We cannot allow irrational germaphobes to seize control of our society in the name of "safety".
- jatone 5y agojesus people they said they hope it stays: aka socially it becomes normalized. No one is advocating forcing people to wear masks forever.
- School-Cotton 5y agoI very strongly hope that it doesn't become socially normalized.
- guscost 5y agoAny society that normalizes this level of paranoid hypochondria will be a dead society before long.
- yibg 5y agoJapan seems to be doing ok.
- mixmastamyk 5y agoHat, sunglasses, mask now recommended for the facial-recognition future.
- onecommentman 5y ago
- jayknight 5y agoThis is a good article. I'm firmly on team do-what-it-takes-to-stop-the-spread, but no one has an exit strategy. I got a booster and we have appointments for two of our three kids to get there first shot. By mid-December I'm hoping to not have to think much about it anymore. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/11/what-americas-covid-goal-now/620572/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/11/what-amer...
- Filligree 5y agoThere are two possible exit strategies. - Vaccinate everyone who can be vaccinated, at gunpoint. - Allow everyone who is vulnerable to die, at which point the death rates will drop. Choose. Which one do you want?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- swader999 5y agoYou can't produce, distribute and vaccinate everyone at gun point fast enough before it mutates away from what your vax targeted. And this strategy ignores animal reservoirs where the virus can reside and come back.
- Vrondi 5y agoYou mean you're going to skip the rest of the boosters they'll want you to get each quarter forever?
- thr0w72594 5y agoSubramanian Kumar 2021 [1] found that there is no correlation between vaccination rates and new case rates on a country-wide level, or a county-wide level in the United States. This tracks with Dr. Vanden Bossche's assessment [2] from March of this year that mass vaccination with prophylactic vaccines will actually prolong and worsen the pandemic due to shedding of infectious variants. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ [2] https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/ https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/
- selimthegrim 5y agoVanden Bossche seems alone in this regard? Surely NPIs would ameliorate that?
- AndrewBissell 5y agoAside from islands closing their borders and implementing extremely strict testing and quarantine regimes (and even these don't hold up forever), the evidence for the effectiveness of NPIs is a lot thinner than you might intuitively expect.
- rileyphone 5y agoseveral comments on the quality of its science here - https://pubpeer.com/publications/693A0D3B374ACED0103ADDEA0D905E https://pubpeer.com/publications/693A0D3B374ACED0103ADDEA0D9...
- jeffbee 5y agoImagine having this data and concluding there is no relationship between vaccination and new case rate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=8481107_10654_2021_808_Fig2_HTML.jpg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/t...
- decebalus1 5y agoStop spreading misinformation. The 'study' is in itself a case study about shitty studies. Also check who Akhil Kumar is and what are his credentials.
- Server6 5y agoIt's fairly clear what the exit criteria is. Hospital capacity. When hospitals are filling up COVID measures are necessary. COVID is endemic now and will ebb and flow over the next decade. As such I would expect COVID measures to come and go based on local health department and hospital capacity needs.
- AndrewBissell 5y agoIt was a stroke of genius for the powers that be to convince people that they have a personal responsibility to restore/protect a health infrastructure that has been looted out, and structured if not designed to act in a predatory manner. They created new emergency powers and a new moral imperative to avoid contagious respiratory disease out of whole cloth. "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!"
- AshamedCaptain 5y agoOnly you can prevent the dismantling of the health infrastructure!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- School-Cotton 5y ago> When hospitals are filling up COVID measures are necessary. They are only "necessary" if you are optimizing the metric "make sure hospitals run smoothly" over any other concerns. I hate this framing that Covid restrictions are ever forced on us, rather than being a policy choice with pros and cons.
- colordrops 5y agoI'd imagine that scaling up ICU capacity has to be more efficient than constantly enacting mandates on the entire population for a decade.
- 5y ago
- wonderwonder 5y agoFlorida is essentially back to normal. Cashiers in most of the large grocery chains and ~50% of restaurant workers still wear masks, hit and miss in most other stores. Most people who come to the house don't wear them, for example, have had a contractor, electrician and cleaning crew at the house in the last week. Electrician wore a mask, no one else did. People are vaccinated who wanted it (I am), and optimally a booster will be freely available soon. Schools ended the mask requirement at least in my county a couple weeks ago. Some businesses require their employees to all be vaccinated. Governor appears to be fighting against that, would not be surprised if those same businesses just don't hire unvaccinated people going forward and the situation is resolved via attrition.
- dragonwriter 5y agoMost COVID measures are not at the US federal level. Some mandated measures have exit criteria, at the level of government issuing them. > This will go on forever without exit criteria. It will go on without an exit decision, but the exit criteria that have been issued have frequently been adjusted anyway, because understanding of how current metrics project the future have evolved. Which is probably why their are fewer announced criteria and more reliance on periodic, holistic review.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thomascgalvin 5y ago> Does anyone have a sense as to when US society will completely eliminate COVID measures? Children are now eligible for a vaccine. It'll take a few weeks for this to trickle through the population, but we're pretty close to the point where everyone who wants a vaccination will have one. At that point, I expect restrictions to swiftly ease up. In Massachusetts, things are already mostly back to normal. With children protected, there's definitely a light at the end of the tunnel.
- pie42000 5y agoIn SF the only Covid measures are vaccination checks, and wearing masks indoors. 99% back to normal.
- rackjack 5y agoFor me, it's when the kids get vaccinated.
- _ea1k 5y agoThere won't be defined exit criteria. Each state will exit when its people decide the exiting is worth the risk. Some places will do that earlier than others, and quite a few practically already have.
- wonderwonder 5y agoMy guess is that the end game is when the vaccine mandate goes into effect in January. Most people will get vaccinated and those that don't wont and nothing will make them. At that point in time all that could be done has been done and life goes on. Optimally enough will be to grant some form of herd immunity or reducing the spread. I'll just get a booster when I can and go about my life. I have for all intents and purpose resumed normal life. I wear a mask in a grocery store most of the time just to give some respect to the cashiers who are wearing them but that's essentially it.
- bad_username 5y ago> Most people will get vaccinated and those that don't wont and nothing will make them. I am almost certain they will mandate the vaccination of children 5 and older.
- wonderwonder 5y agoI think that will be on a state by state basis as from my understanding the individual states set the vaccine requirements for schools. I guess the federal government could try to do something along the lines of the OSHA requirement but I think that would be a political misfire in this environment. Most of what (all) politicians do is to get reelected and I think mandating child Covid vaccination would not work in the current administrations favor especially considering what a good job the republican party has done leveraging the boogey man of critical race theory. So I am doubtful that they mandate vaccines for kids. I could be wrong though.
- jedberg 5y agoSanta Clara County (aka Silicon Valley) has put out hard limits as to when the mask mandates will leave: When hospitalization and community transmission is "low" based on the CDC definition of low, and when 80% of the total population is vaccinated or eight weeks from yesterday, whichever comes first. They also publish a dashboard with the information so anyone can see how we are progressing: https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboards https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboards We were at almost 80% vax rate for 12+ already and hospitalizations are currently low and have been for a while, however community transmission remains high. So at least in our county they have specific standards as to when the restrictions leave. Other than a mask mandate, there are no other restrictions anymore, except for school kids.