4 ms·

Yup, abandoning "zero covid" is abandoning the one thing the government should do - protect us from external threats to our life. If some country were threaten

by geofft 5y ago

Yup, abandoning "zero covid" is abandoning the one thing the government should do - protect us from external threats to our life. If some country were threatening to invade, the government would use every means at its disposal - including temporarily suppressing the civil liberties of certain people by drafting them into the military - to protect us. When a couple thousand people died twenty years ago, the US jumped headfirst into a twenty-year war against a country loosely linked to the people behind it and an uninvolved neighboring country that we didn't like, too, just in case. But now that we have a hundred-fold more deaths in this country and no signs of it stopping, just because we can't see the enemy, we're surrendering? It's nonsense. And besides the actual cost, it's going to make a lot of people feel like the only government that can fulfill the legitimate limited role of government competently is a giant authoritarian one. A whole lot of people are saying things like "I wish the government would tell me what to do to keep safe. I find it exhausting to figure this out for myself." They aren't going to be particularly open to pro-civil-liberties arguments after this experience.

nradov 5y ago
Given that the current vaccines don't prevent transmission, and there are multiple animal hosts, how exactly could "zero covid" be accomplished? https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/covid-rampant-deer-research-shows-rcna10181 https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/covid-rampant-d...
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Testing and quarantine, as well as work-from-home where possible and proper ventilation/masking where not possible. Why on Earth do we have schools open at a time when Omikron is rampant?
  - nradov 5y ago
    Those measures might slow down transmission slightly. But they wouldn't be anywhere near sufficient to achieve "zero covid". In the end we'll all eventually get exposed. Fortunately the vaccines and other therapies are fairly effective at preventing deaths. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://youtu.be/GklHGYY8vN8 https://youtu.be/GklHGYY8vN8 The only major country still even attempting a "zero covid" strategy is China, and they're failing. In open societies the measures that China is taking aren't even practically or legally feasible. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/03/china/xian-covid-outbreak-lockdown-mic-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/03/china/xian-covid-outbreak-loc...
    - HarryHirsch 5y ago
      South Korea seems to be doing well, and they qualify as open and democratic. Current incidence 8 cases per 100000 people (US: 200 cases per 100000), tendency falling. It's unclear why people are talking defeatism. The current state of affairs in the US is a political choice, one that is unacceptable. (And why do you quote Vinay Prasad on COVID? He is an oncologist by trade, and some of his pronounciations are frankly loopy.)
      - nradov 5y ago
        Cases in South Korea have risen and fallen many times. They have never reached "zero covid", and their current measures obviously can't be sustained forever. South Korea also has highly secure international borders. That situation will never exist in the USA. Everything Dr. Vinay Prasad stated in the linked article seems scientifically accurate. Do you have a substantiative criticism, or are you going to stick with ad hominem attacks?
        HarryHirsch 5y ago
        Incidence in South Korea has been consistently two orders of magnitude less than in the US, due to adequate containment methods. I haven't read about unrest or concerns about exonomic output because of the COVID measures in Korea. Have you? No idea where the notion comes from that the dismal state of affairs in the US is due to porous borders - there's enough community transmission going on so we won't have to worry about imports through air travel or illegal immigration. Once local transmission is squashed we can worry about quarantining international travelers or corralling migrants. Come on, Prasad invoking the Nazis over mask mandates? That was out of order.
      - Const-me 5y ago
        > Current incidence 8 cases per 100000 people (US: 200 cases per 100000) This page says 100k active cases, they have 51m population, that’s the same 200 cases per 100k people: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-kore... > tendency falling The graph below on that page only shows it’s only falling for the last few days. BTW, South Korea population is ~6 times less than the US, yet they are making 33 times fewer COVID tests: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-per-day?country=KOR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-...
effie 5y ago
But COVID isn't really an external threat. It is very much internal, it is now almost endemic virus, a very different problem from a foreign organization invading country. You can't fight it the same way a military fights a foreign enemy. Iraq isn't a direct neighbour to Afghanistan. And invasion to Iraq didn't have anything to do with protecting Americans "just in case", it was a war crime that killed half a million people on false pretenses, probably pushed through just to benefit military contractors and few people egos. I don't think governments are surrendering on COVID, but they're not putting in much heroic effort either. It's a moderate-to-weak crisis, and those get milked and not let go to waste. Yes, some people are inclined to demand stronger even authoritarian government restrictions and action, in the hopes that will help to end this. That kind of cure may turn out to be worse than the disease. We should demand better healthcare instead.

by geofft 5y ago

nradov 5y ago

Given that the current vaccines don't prevent transmission, and there are multiple animal hosts, how exactly could "zero covid" be accomplished? https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/covid-rampant-deer-research-shows-rcna10181 https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/covid-rampant-d...

HarryHirsch 5y ago
Testing and quarantine, as well as work-from-home where possible and proper ventilation/masking where not possible. Why on Earth do we have schools open at a time when Omikron is rampant?
- nradov 5y ago
  Those measures might slow down transmission slightly. But they wouldn't be anywhere near sufficient to achieve "zero covid". In the end we'll all eventually get exposed. Fortunately the vaccines and other therapies are fairly effective at preventing deaths. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://youtu.be/GklHGYY8vN8 https://youtu.be/GklHGYY8vN8 The only major country still even attempting a "zero covid" strategy is China, and they're failing. In open societies the measures that China is taking aren't even practically or legally feasible. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/03/china/xian-covid-outbreak-lockdown-mic-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/03/china/xian-covid-outbreak-loc...
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    South Korea seems to be doing well, and they qualify as open and democratic. Current incidence 8 cases per 100000 people (US: 200 cases per 100000), tendency falling. It's unclear why people are talking defeatism. The current state of affairs in the US is a political choice, one that is unacceptable. (And why do you quote Vinay Prasad on COVID? He is an oncologist by trade, and some of his pronounciations are frankly loopy.)
    - nradov 5y ago
      Cases in South Korea have risen and fallen many times. They have never reached "zero covid", and their current measures obviously can't be sustained forever. South Korea also has highly secure international borders. That situation will never exist in the USA. Everything Dr. Vinay Prasad stated in the linked article seems scientifically accurate. Do you have a substantiative criticism, or are you going to stick with ad hominem attacks?
      - HarryHirsch 5y ago
        Incidence in South Korea has been consistently two orders of magnitude less than in the US, due to adequate containment methods. I haven't read about unrest or concerns about exonomic output because of the COVID measures in Korea. Have you? No idea where the notion comes from that the dismal state of affairs in the US is due to porous borders - there's enough community transmission going on so we won't have to worry about imports through air travel or illegal immigration. Once local transmission is squashed we can worry about quarantining international travelers or corralling migrants. Come on, Prasad invoking the Nazis over mask mandates? That was out of order.
    - Const-me 5y ago
      > Current incidence 8 cases per 100000 people (US: 200 cases per 100000) This page says 100k active cases, they have 51m population, that’s the same 200 cases per 100k people: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-kore... > tendency falling The graph below on that page only shows it’s only falling for the last few days. BTW, South Korea population is ~6 times less than the US, yet they are making 33 times fewer COVID tests: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-per-day?country=KOR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-...

effie 5y ago

But COVID isn't really an external threat. It is very much internal, it is now almost endemic virus, a very different problem from a foreign organization invading country. You can't fight it the same way a military fights a foreign enemy. Iraq isn't a direct neighbour to Afghanistan. And invasion to Iraq didn't have anything to do with protecting Americans "just in case", it was a war crime that killed half a million people on false pretenses, probably pushed through just to benefit military contractors and few people egos. I don't think governments are surrendering on COVID, but they're not putting in much heroic effort either. It's a moderate-to-weak crisis, and those get milked and not let go to waste. Yes, some people are inclined to demand stronger even authoritarian government restrictions and action, in the hopes that will help to end this. That kind of cure may turn out to be worse than the disease. We should demand better healthcare instead.