12 ms·

On Covid

52 points by elmalto 5y ago

rel2thr 5y ago
I don’t think it’s fair to say we ‘have antivirals’ yet, the supply is so low and is not expected to really ever be enough for worldwide demand on the current ramp plans We really need another warp speed project to produce these antivirals Things look good now because omicron is mild, but no guarantee that all of the next variants will be mild . If one of them is severe we will really wish we had warp speeded the antivirals
- bszupnick 5y ago
  worldwide? Only The West is important. (sarcasm, obviously, but unfortunately a common undertone with a lot of conversations in general but specifically on covid.
shafyy 5y ago
> And you can wear masks if you are uncomfortable on the plane or the subway. We’ve normalized mask-wearing in the US now and that is a good thing. I really hope he's right and it's normalized, but I do fear that many people will go back to not staying at home and not wearing masks when they feel sick. And people who do wear masks, will do so catching lampooning gazes from others.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  > And you can wear masks if you are uncomfortable on the plane or the subway. My understanding was that mask-wearing was mostly to protect others. Has that changed?
  - timerol 5y ago
    Masks always provided some benefit both ways, but the benefit is maximized if everyone is wearing them. N95s and similar have started to become more common, and those have substantial benefit to the wearer, even in a crowded room of unmasked people. If I am wearing an N95 and you are not wearing a mask, I am more protected than if both you and I are wearing surgical masks.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    This was my understanding about surgical masks pre-covid, but I plan on wearing a better-sealing (KN95, KF94, N95) on public transportation, airplanes, and in busy places like supermarkets for the rest of my life. If I can avoid even 10% of the colds or other viruses over the course of my life it seems like a very worthwhile tradeoff.
    - seanalltogether 5y ago
      Every year I travel to the east coast for Christmas and every year except this year I've gotten sick during travel. I'm happy to normalize masks cause I want to wear them on planes to avoid feeling miserable the whole time.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    You can actually get some protection wearing and N95 mask. Though those aren’t popular in the west because they often have exhalation valves that make people paranoid (the CDC says they are ok since they allow for a better seal and are filtered).
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    The change has been the realization that anything less than a properly fitting KN95 mask is basically useless.
    - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
      According to this large randomised trial [1], simple interventions to increase the use of surgical masks reduced infection by 11%, and by nearly 35% in over 60s. That doesn't seem useless. Of course, if you're only talking about protecting yourself from others, then a KN95 mask is clearly the way forward. [1] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...
- rob_c 5y ago
  "you can" critical and very clear wording, would never stop someone wearing them. But we never addressed a) how to wear them or b) the advertising that they're the be-all end-all solution is wrong and shouldn't have presented them this way.
- bserge 5y ago
  Mask wear becoming a normal thing is one of the few good things to come out of the response to Covid. I like them, they provide privacy from people and cameras, while also increasing protection from many viruses and bacteria (provided you don't take it off to scratch your nose). Common cold and the flu has gotten way less common since 2020. Freaking amazing, since the symptoms can literally incapacitate me for a week or two. I hate the cold and flu.
elliottkember 5y ago
> First, we have less severe variants now. Please don't assume that future variants will be less and less severe. It's what we all want to hear, but this "covid is over" mentality is what will help produce the next, possibly really nasty, variant.
- rob_c 5y ago
  please stop being alarmist
  - rob_c 5y ago
    loving the downvotes, again for being respectful on this. Lets retry: Please stop with the anti-intellectualism and fear-baiting based on personal feelings!
- tomp 5y ago
  I thought the general theory of "virus evolution" was towards less severe variants. Of course, more severe variants can always develop. Holds same for flu, HIV, ... not just COVID.
  - eli 5y ago
    Not really. The virus, lacking feelings, doesn't particularly care how sick you get. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/08/facebook-posts/viruses-and-other-pathogens-can-evolve-become-more/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/08/facebook-p...
    - unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
      In declaring the statement 'false', the Facebook fact checker confirmed there is a longstanding scientific theory it is true and provided confusing would-be counter-examples of variants of viruses exhibiting treatment resistance and cross-species leaps. Omicron demonstrated that treatment resistance is really incidental to severity, and COVID already is a problem for humans -- the question clearly was not asked by a pigeon or monkey for whom cross-species leaps of a human virus could be problematic. The would be fact check was not especially illuminating. I personally credit the prediction attributed to Luc Montagnier back in 2020 that because COVID exhibited unnatural characteristics that exacerbated the severity of illness, he predicted that over time the characteristics would evolve out of the virus and result in a more benign illness. This is a reason why it would have been useful to have a scientific debate over the lab leak theory, because the origin of the virus informs our best guess of the path it may take in the future, which has so far confirmed to this prediction.
eli 5y ago
Thousands of Americans are losing their lives every day to Covid. New cases are MUCH higher than they were at any point in 2020 or 2021 (though it looks like we may finally have crossed the peak of this wave). I'm sorry, but it isn't over yet. I wish it was. However wishing it or asserting it doesn't make it true. This was a sensible argument to make in July 2021 when vaccines were more effective and cases were literally 1/10th as prevalent. I encourage the "over it" crowd to talk to the parents of young children, a cancer patient, or literally anyone who works at a hospital.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  There's a difference between effectiveness against "new cases" vs. heavy illness. Deaths/severity is not rising even though there are a lot of new cases. Deaths ( = going down): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#daily-deaths https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#... Severe cases ( small increase): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#serious-critical https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#... While new cases > x 7 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#daily-cases https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#... Additionally, it should be noted that the severe cases with Omicron are almost all unvaccinated ( not even boostered). If you want to check stats, please try to find a source that seperates delta ( which is not gone!) from Omicron. Edit: And since it's January. An honest comparison would be Januari 2021 with Delta because of family / friend gatherings. It's a pretty busy social time ;)
  - eli 5y ago
    Thousands of Americans dying a day isn't bad enough? How much worse does it need to get before it's something we should still be very concerned about? And deaths are in fact rising. According to your chart they were around 6000/day (7 day average) on Jan 1 and are 7600/day in the most recent data two weeks later.
    - NicoJuicy 5y ago
      First of all. Not thousands, but 571 as i checked on a population of 320.000.000 in the US and with a reasonable amount of people unvaccinated ( and they chose for this, other people aren't responsible for other people's decisions) And as mentioned in my above comment. Can you show me how many are dying because of Omicron specific and how many are related to previous Delta infection that were already admitted in the hospital? I'm not saying people aren't dying. Lockdowns aren't in place for the flu and that has also 52 k. deaths per year ( = 145 per year) and is much less contagious as Omicron. Also, Delta is not gone yet. You have to compare numbers with reality. Otherwise I can ask you at how many deaths per year you would reduce restrictions or at what death/severity rate. 0 is definitely impossible as some people will remain unvaccinated. You could have the same argument that 10 people are dying per year... PS. Compare it with December 2020/January 2021 which would be comparable with visiting family/friends multiple times. We aren't anywhere near that peak with *7 infections.
wokwokwok 5y ago
> It is time to stop obsessing about Covid. It is time to stop politicizing Covid. It is time to stop tweeting about Covid. It is time to stop reading about Covid. It is time to start healing and it is time to start moving on. Is it? I mean, I’d like that to be true too. …but are things not still a bit too screwed up to be pretending everything is fine quite yet? > The current 7-day moving average of new deaths (1,749) has decreased 0.3% compared with the previous 7-day moving average (1,754). As of January 19, 2022, a total of 856,288 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the United States. (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi...)
- warning26 5y ago
  Yeah that part was a bit weird; the Tweets preceding those seemed to indicate that after the omicron wave subsides it will be time to do those things. Then, however, it immediately switches to the present tense and implies that right now we should immediately throw all caution to the wind.
- e40 5y ago
  When hospitals are not choked with unvaccinated people, that's the time to stop obsessing. I'm still reading too many stories of people dying of non-covid reasons because they can't get medical care due to unvaccinated people taking up those resources. EDIT: all parts of each country are not equal. In the Bay Area, the hospitals are doing (mostly) fine.
  - tjr225 5y ago
    At what point do we blame our broken health care system that seemingly can’t handle something as mild as omicron? Now.
    - kevingadd 5y ago
      We can blame both. People talking about herd immunity and intentionally filling the hospitals are going to overwhelm any system, and european countries had problems like this too when COVID was at its worst there.
cblconfederate 5y ago
It really doesn't seem we have other 'pressing matters' , unless those matters are manufactured somehow. Can the world return to its habits of consuming recklessly, traveling like there's no tomorrow, office routine every day, low tech schooling and ignore the fact that it's largely unprepared for a new pandemic? Maybe, but it would seem more like reckless yoloers than future-thinking people.
- rob_c 5y ago
  "low tech schooling and ignore the fact that it's largely unprepared for a new pandemic" Unfortunately our education (comparing US and UK) are both not going to be solved by increased tech imo (not in the sense of tablets for all). But as I've said for years we should be seriously looking at airflow in educational establishments, as well as improved buildings. Having been on both sides of the lecture hall and teaching environment, a well ventilated room helps huge amounts for concentration and informed debate. Air quality can drag down the room and atmosphere as well as being unhealthy.
- bserge 5y ago
basisword 5y ago
Maybe he’s right. Hopefully he’s right. But personally, I feel like this is just more shortsightedness. I’ve lost track of the number of times my employer thought it was time to get back to the office - only for restrictions to be increased a month later as cases rise. This cycle repeats and people seem to not learn. They get overly optimistic and then kicked in the teeth. Yes, things are better than they’ve been but 4 months ago we also thought it was over until Omicron arrived. How long until another more serious variant comes along that escapes vaccines? Predicting the end of Covid when the world is in the middle/late stage of a huge wave seems super shortsighted.
- warning26 5y ago
  Exactly -- remember this past summer when the pandemic was over? Or how about after fall, when the pandemic was also over? If there's one thing predicable about the the pandemic, it's that it is unpredictable. I, too, hope that omicron is the much-hyped final wave, just like delta was supposed to have been. But to declare that it definitely, totally, is the final wave right now seems a bit premature.
- watwut 5y ago
  > I’ve lost track of the number of times my employer thought it was time to get back to the office This has nothing to do with employer thinking and trying to predict covid. This is all about some managers feeling lonely. And even as it sounds cynical, I really mean it and think it is factor in this. The other factors are also some management feeling less in control or thinking it will be more productive. But imo, them feeling lonely, especially those who have no real social life outside of work, is a factor. People love to pretend that companies and management are all about rationality, but they are not. Their emotions influence their actions a lot (so are developers emotions etc).
- peteradio 5y ago
  I think there is reason to be a bit more hopeful in America at least when you consider a few things: 1) Natural immunity is quite robust: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm7104e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm... Now, that is according the CDC whose governance has sought to give the impression that natural immunity is not so great (perhaps for generally good reasons). But now they see fit to give the impression that natural immunity is pretty substantial, clearly giving much more immunity weight than vaccine alone. So that is some clear signal just reading between the lines. 2) Seroprevelance indicating natural exposure is quite high overall in the U.S. and especially so in some regions, see for yourself what that looks like in your own region: https://covid19serohub.nih.gov/ https://covid19serohub.nih.gov/ (nucleocapsid is proxy for exposure and recovery) Now, you might look at those numbers and see only 30% or so, but realize this is end of October statistics. Many (dare I say all?) regions in the U.S. have seen en exceptional wave since those statistics were collected. I would be confident to say 50% - 100% increase in statistics of recovered. edit: I'm just some guy on the internet so if you think this stuff is wrong or misrepresented, call my ass out. If you are not capable of parsing the references I give you, assume I have bad intentions.
afavour 5y ago
I've seen a few posts like this recently and I have to confess: I don't get it. What does "it is time to stop obsessing about Covid" mean? I have small children so I'm still living in some kind of COVID purgatory but for the majority of the population COVID hasn't really been an obsession for quite a while. People are dining indoors, they're traveling, socializing... life more or less is back to normal. Schools are shutting down from time to time but that's because teachers are getting sick with COVID, hardly because of some irrational "obsession". If anything it shows we maybe stopped caring too early. Of course, a lot more people are still working remotely, something I consider to be a plus but that I suspect venture capitalists like the author do not. So when I see someone like that advocating “unlearning many of the behaviors we’ve learned in the last two years” I'm immediately suspicious. > We’ve got other pressing matters to deal with. [...] We have other health care challenges to tackle. One of the most pressing issues with healthcare today is the sheer number of COVID patients overwhelming the ability for a hospital to do anything other than treat COVID. Yes, even with the milder Omicron variant. Again: if anything this suggests that this lack of obsession has come too early, not too late. And has any call to "stop politicizing" something ever worked? That's simply not the world we're living in (these days, at least). The vaccine is politicized. Masks are politicized. You can’t just wish that away.
- immibis 5y ago
  It's one out of a large number of propaganda lines or "NPC script lines" where the ultimate goal is to convince the reader/listener to decide that we should simply stick our heads in the sand and pretend the COVID-19 pandemic does not exist. You are lucky if you have not been exposed to this propaganda very much yet. You might notice that the editorial reads as if the word "Covid" refers to "that time when the government told us to wear masks and get vaccines and all that stuff." I'm not sure if people actually hold this view or just pretend to, but it's not uncommon. It's trying to give off the aura of "Oh, remember when all those silly people told us to wear masks, it was just a silly thing that happened one time, why are we still talking about it, we should just forget it ever happened." People with attitudes similar to the author are the reason there is still a COVID-19 pandemic, in the developed world at least. I'm surprised you don't have experience with them by now.
the_gastropod 5y ago
> It is time to stop obsessing about Covid. It is time to stop politicizing Covid. It is time to stop tweeting about Covid. It is time to stop reading about Covid. It is time to start healing and it is time to start moving on. 2,000+ (and increasing) Americans are dying every day from this disease—as bad as the bad old days of Spring 2020. Why is this attitude so pervasive? It doesn't seem to be backed by anything aside from boredom of dealing with living in a pandemic. > We have vaccines if you want them. We will have anti-virals if you need them. > And you can wear masks if you are uncomfortable on the plane or the subway. This is the individualistic thinking that's caused us so much friction. It's no different than "if you want to be a safe driver, don't drink and drive!". The drunk-driver and the unvacced/unmasked put all of us at risk. It's selfish behavior, and should be treated as such, instead of described as "personal freedom". > We’ve normalized mask-wearing in the US now and that is a good thing. Have we, though? Across the country, people will harass and threaten you, for no reason other than they've seen you wearing a face mask. I've been mocked in NYC—the bastion of progressivism in the US. What do you think it's like wearing a mask in Kansas?
gz5 5y ago
>Covid was terrible, we are scarred from it, but we cannot let it divide us and we cannot let it drive us crazy. There are more important things facing us and let’s go deal with them now. C-19 is still very fresh in our minds. Let's use that to drive action to learn from it and try to ensure the next one is less catastrophic. If we turn our attention away too quickly, this won't happen. Even as we speak, we have school districts in the US closed indefinitely* and many nations around the world without testing, vaccines, antivirals or proper healthcare. The future may be here (let's hope that this is the beginning of the end while being healthfully paranoid that it may not be), but it is definitely not evenly distributed. * https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2022/01/21/flint-public-schools-staying-virtual-indefinitely-due-to-large-amount-of-positive-covid-19-cases/ https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2022/01/21/flint-public-schools...
Ozzie_osman 5y ago
Most of the discussion in the threads is around whether covid is over as a pandemic. I think this post gets something else wrong.. The economic story. The claim in the post is "covid is over, so everything will reset to precovid levels." I think there's a much bigger correction happening potentially that will be worse than "we're right back where we started".
ramesh31 5y ago
What worries me more is the next time, when there's multiple different viruses and the death rate is much higher. Given that there are two possible scenarios for the origin of COVID; natural transmission or lab origin, I find the former to be a far more terrifying prospect. If it were a lab outbreak, that's a protocol problem that can be addressed to prevent it in the future. If it was natural transmission, why hasn't this happened before? Why isn't it happening again right now? Why isn't there 10 different viruses at once, that are much more deadly? What happens when that occurs? If this happened naturally, it will happen again. And I just pray that we are prepared.
- immibis 5y ago
  It has happened plenty of times. HIV, for one? But such transmission is quite rare and only seems to occur every few decades. That's for "interesting" viruses, by the way. "Boring" viruses probably get transmitted all the time. Most things are boring.
zcw100 5y ago
"It is time to stop politicizing Covid." but their argument amounts to "you need to just stop fighting me and give me what I want". What exactly do we unlearn when he quotes, "unlearn many of the behaviors we’ve learned in the last two years"? What hardships are we going to go through if we continue to wear masks a little longer than necessary? Do I really need to shake your hand when we greet? Believe it or not people don't want to stay at home, not be able to work and they definitely don't like being sick and dying. Know when we'll go back to normal? When people stop dying so much. This is going to have massive long term effects and I'm not talking about anything from having worn a mask. I'm talking about the long term effects of the virus. I'm positive you'll be seeing advertisements for the next 40 years for "Covid treatment centers of America". If this person really wants to get back to normal maybe we should start by passing legislation now to deny Mediare benefits to anyone suffering from Covid complications who refused to be vaccinated. I'd be happy to support conservatives in saying, "Why should I be taxed to pay for the results of your decision?" or allow covid complications be be considered a preexisting condition for unvaccinated. Why should I have to pay through my insurance premiums for your ER visit?
- peteradio 5y ago
  Sounds like you are a customer for a new type of insurance policy which right or wrong discriminates against unvaccinated. Weirdly enough I think the unvaccinated would see their policies go down in price because we are by and large young. Are you sure you want to cleave populations in two based on that policy change, are you certain it will benefit you in the way you expect?
  - zcw100 5y ago
    Ah, discriminates against the unvaccinated sort of like how they discriminate against smokers right now?...ya, I'm cool with that.
gomox 5y ago
There's one interesting thought in the article: that financial markets could be correctly predicting the end of the Covid pandemic phase. The unwinding of the Covid trade doesn't necessarily correlate with that, but it's a reasonable proposition. Most of the other stuff is opinions and I agree with the sentiment of many of the other commenters: You might be right, and I certainly would like you to be right, but there's little hard evidence that you are, and June 2021 was a nice cautionary tale that you very well might not be.
- Yoric 5y ago
  > The unwinding of the Covid trade doesn't necessarily correlate with that, but it's a reasonable proposition. It's certainly an interesting thought, but why would it be true?
- immibis 5y ago
  Or it could simply be the collapse of the financial market as it fails to be propped up for much longer than it was supposed to be.
throwthere 5y ago
I’ve never met Fred but I’ve read his articles, particularly the Ives mba series ones multiple times. Like any intellectual, they push to grow their knowledge and sometimes venture outside their area of competence. They don’t realize they’re living in a relatively healthy area of society surrounded by people with easy access to medical care and without comorbidities. omnicron is less lethal than the other variants but it still threatens significant lives, takes icu beds and takes an enormous toll on the nurses working with a still steady stream of dying patients. We all want to move on, and Omnicron looks to be peaking soon— the nature of the beast is omnicron has only affected half the people it will. I guess I agree there’s reason to be optimistic. But I don’t think now is the time we stop talking about it.
oxymoran 5y ago
A)wasn’t hard to see covid coming, no insider info was needed. 2 years ago I, an insurance adjuster with no inside info, was freaking out about what was happening in China. B)The unwinding of the covid trade has nothing to do with the current stock market implosion. Peloton and Netflix aren’t down because covid is ending. All stocks were inflated because of a decade of quantitative easing and 0% interest rates. Some were further inflated more due to covid. But the money printer has stopped going brrrr and interest rates are going to rise soon which is being priced into the market. Buckle up, we are heading for recession. Also not hard to see if you are paying attention.
GrandMasterPuba 5y ago
I feel like I'm being gaslit. By blog posts, the media, Twitter, social media, my work - everyone. I keep up to date with the latest studies on Covid. Sars-Cov-2 is not a respiratory virus; it's a circulatory virus. And its long term effects on the body are not widely understood. Everyone is acting like because Omicron doesn't make you cough that Covid is over. But scientists are finding deeply concerning long term effects - neurological effects, telomere and biological aging effects, autoimmune activation, long Covid, micro blood clotting - in a non-trivial percentage of Covid cases. Even asymptomatic and vaccinated individuals. It's becoming increasingly apparent that having Covid will result in a lifelong disability for at least some percentage of survivors. But we just ignore that so we can go back to normal? Because Covid is "endemic?" Endemicity was the failure state - it means we gave up. Covid should have never gotten to that point.
- immibis 5y ago
  It's not everyone. The people with views like this editorial are the minority of people, but they are a very loud minority. If they would put as much effort into not spreading COVID as they put into convincing the rest of us to convincing the rest of us that COVID isn't a big deal or doesn't exist, there would be no pandemic today.
csours 5y ago
* I am not a doctor, this comment is for entertainment purposes only * I do think it's time to start thinking about what the end of the pandemic looks like: 1. Sars-Cov-2 will be around forever. People will continue to get sick and die from it. 2. There will be more peaks on the infection and death charts. These are real people with real families. It will suck for them. 3. At some point one of the peaks will be the highest. 6 months or so after the highest peak is reached, the pandemic will be over. We'll only see this in hindsight. It may take a year to tell that the last peak was the highest. The disease won't be over, but it won't be the single most important thing in everyone's life. It will drop from the #1 or #2 cause of death down to #10 or #20, eventually. This may be different around the world. Countries that have had low numbers of infections and deaths may have huge spikes of infection and deaths. 4. There will be more variants, and they are not guaranteed to be milder, especially to individual infected people. There may be variants that affect children more. I personally don't think that is likely, but there are no guarantees. 5. Early in the pandemic, there was a lot of judgment on people who got sick. We'll have to let go of this. Speaking down to people doesn't help. Judging people doesn't help. 6. Some people will continue to wear masks for a long time. Some people won't feel comfortable in groups. Give them time. Don't force the issue. Give them space. I will probably wear a mask in crowded public places for a long time (grocery stores, airports, public transport). 7. We'll be learning about this disease for a long time. Hopefully government bodies learn how to plan and communicate better. Hopefully we step up our disease vector surveillance and tracking efforts 8. We won't get common understanding back unless people work for it. Dividing people with moralistic and righteousness-based messages is currently a winning strategy. I won't call this a "both sides" thing, I call it a "human nature" thing. I don't really understand why some people are standing on "their rights" - I guess it plays better than saying "I'm scared"
- immibis 5y ago
  Your point 1 is missing a big disclaimer. 1. Sars-Cov-2 will be around forever because the population votes for it to be that way.
  - csours 5y ago
    The virus spreads to other animals - no disease agent with an animal reservoir has ever been eradicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir I wish it were otherwise, and maybe in the future it will be so.
cameldrv 5y ago
"The current death rate of COVID in the US is about what a bad flu season would be." Currently 2000 people a day are dying in the U.S. from COVID. That's an annualized rate of 730,000 deaths per year. The CDC estimates that the worst flu season in the last 10 years was 2017-2018 and that Flu caused 52,000 deaths. That puts the current death rate of COVID at 14x where a bad flu season would be. Perhaps it is his judgment that the level of attention COVID is getting is still not warranted, but one must start with the basic facts correct in order to make this judgment.
- rob_c 5y ago
  and the definition of a covid death is rather liberal compared to a flu death with no underlying conditions... the whole mess is political
  - cameldrv 5y ago
    I can't say precisely how these deaths are defined. I can say that I know several people personally who have died of COVID just in the past month. I can't ever remember anyone I know dying of the Flu.
    - rob_c 5y ago
      I'm not questioning this. But unfortunately it is by definition anecdotal. I know 3 over 90s who are still going, and a mix of expose risk and health status. I'm sorry for your loss.
      - cameldrv 5y ago
        Yes, I also know a ton of people who didn't die from it. That does not change the fact that COVID is much more lethal than the flu, which was the original claim to justify the article.
        rob_c 5y ago
        again, as per my comment, you cannot make this assessment based on bad data, please stop insisting on it. In the UK(Eng+Wales) it has killed <13k total with no underlying conditions as reported by the ONS. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsfromcovid19withnootherunderlyingcauses https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre... This alone should worry people! The total kill count is supposed to be 100x this which is a heck of a disparity, and shows there is something bad about the data.
benpiper 5y ago
People have come to realize a few important things: - Omicron is comparable to a really bad cold for most people - The vaccines reduce the risk of death for only a very short time, then the effect wears off, and they have unknown long-term sequelae - Living like it's 2020 is not sustainable

52 points by elmalto 5y ago

I don’t think it’s fair to say we ‘have antivirals’ yet, the supply is so low and is not expected to really ever be enough for worldwide demand on the current ramp plans We really need another warp speed project to produce these antivirals Things look good now because omicron is mild, but no guarantee that all of the next variants will be mild . If one of them is severe we will really wish we had warp speeded the antivirals

bszupnick 5y ago
worldwide? Only The West is important. (sarcasm, obviously, but unfortunately a common undertone with a lot of conversations in general but specifically on covid.

shafyy 5y ago

> And you can wear masks if you are uncomfortable on the plane or the subway. We’ve normalized mask-wearing in the US now and that is a good thing. I really hope he's right and it's normalized, but I do fear that many people will go back to not staying at home and not wearing masks when they feel sick. And people who do wear masks, will do so catching lampooning gazes from others.

CoastalCoder 5y ago
> And you can wear masks if you are uncomfortable on the plane or the subway. My understanding was that mask-wearing was mostly to protect others. Has that changed?
- timerol 5y ago
  Masks always provided some benefit both ways, but the benefit is maximized if everyone is wearing them. N95s and similar have started to become more common, and those have substantial benefit to the wearer, even in a crowded room of unmasked people. If I am wearing an N95 and you are not wearing a mask, I am more protected than if both you and I are wearing surgical masks.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  This was my understanding about surgical masks pre-covid, but I plan on wearing a better-sealing (KN95, KF94, N95) on public transportation, airplanes, and in busy places like supermarkets for the rest of my life. If I can avoid even 10% of the colds or other viruses over the course of my life it seems like a very worthwhile tradeoff.
  - seanalltogether 5y ago
    Every year I travel to the east coast for Christmas and every year except this year I've gotten sick during travel. I'm happy to normalize masks cause I want to wear them on planes to avoid feeling miserable the whole time.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  You can actually get some protection wearing and N95 mask. Though those aren’t popular in the west because they often have exhalation valves that make people paranoid (the CDC says they are ok since they allow for a better seal and are filtered).
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  The change has been the realization that anything less than a properly fitting KN95 mask is basically useless.
  - MattPalmer1086 5y ago
    According to this large randomised trial [1], simple interventions to increase the use of surgical masks reduced infection by 11%, and by nearly 35% in over 60s. That doesn't seem useless. Of course, if you're only talking about protecting yourself from others, then a KN95 mask is clearly the way forward. [1] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...
rob_c 5y ago
"you can" critical and very clear wording, would never stop someone wearing them. But we never addressed a) how to wear them or b) the advertising that they're the be-all end-all solution is wrong and shouldn't have presented them this way.
bserge 5y ago
Mask wear becoming a normal thing is one of the few good things to come out of the response to Covid. I like them, they provide privacy from people and cameras, while also increasing protection from many viruses and bacteria (provided you don't take it off to scratch your nose). Common cold and the flu has gotten way less common since 2020. Freaking amazing, since the symptoms can literally incapacitate me for a week or two. I hate the cold and flu.

elliottkember 5y ago

> First, we have less severe variants now. Please don't assume that future variants will be less and less severe. It's what we all want to hear, but this "covid is over" mentality is what will help produce the next, possibly really nasty, variant.

rob_c 5y ago
please stop being alarmist
- rob_c 5y ago
  loving the downvotes, again for being respectful on this. Lets retry: Please stop with the anti-intellectualism and fear-baiting based on personal feelings!
tomp 5y ago
I thought the general theory of "virus evolution" was towards less severe variants. Of course, more severe variants can always develop. Holds same for flu, HIV, ... not just COVID.
- eli 5y ago
  Not really. The virus, lacking feelings, doesn't particularly care how sick you get. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/08/facebook-posts/viruses-and-other-pathogens-can-evolve-become-more/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/08/facebook-p...
  - unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
    In declaring the statement 'false', the Facebook fact checker confirmed there is a longstanding scientific theory it is true and provided confusing would-be counter-examples of variants of viruses exhibiting treatment resistance and cross-species leaps. Omicron demonstrated that treatment resistance is really incidental to severity, and COVID already is a problem for humans -- the question clearly was not asked by a pigeon or monkey for whom cross-species leaps of a human virus could be problematic. The would be fact check was not especially illuminating. I personally credit the prediction attributed to Luc Montagnier back in 2020 that because COVID exhibited unnatural characteristics that exacerbated the severity of illness, he predicted that over time the characteristics would evolve out of the virus and result in a more benign illness. This is a reason why it would have been useful to have a scientific debate over the lab leak theory, because the origin of the virus informs our best guess of the path it may take in the future, which has so far confirmed to this prediction.

eli 5y ago

Thousands of Americans are losing their lives every day to Covid. New cases are MUCH higher than they were at any point in 2020 or 2021 (though it looks like we may finally have crossed the peak of this wave). I'm sorry, but it isn't over yet. I wish it was. However wishing it or asserting it doesn't make it true. This was a sensible argument to make in July 2021 when vaccines were more effective and cases were literally 1/10th as prevalent. I encourage the "over it" crowd to talk to the parents of young children, a cancer patient, or literally anyone who works at a hospital.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
There's a difference between effectiveness against "new cases" vs. heavy illness. Deaths/severity is not rising even though there are a lot of new cases. Deaths ( = going down): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#daily-deaths https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#... Severe cases ( small increase): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#serious-critical https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#... While new cases > x 7 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#daily-cases https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#... Additionally, it should be noted that the severe cases with Omicron are almost all unvaccinated ( not even boostered). If you want to check stats, please try to find a source that seperates delta ( which is not gone!) from Omicron. Edit: And since it's January. An honest comparison would be Januari 2021 with Delta because of family / friend gatherings. It's a pretty busy social time ;)
- eli 5y ago
  Thousands of Americans dying a day isn't bad enough? How much worse does it need to get before it's something we should still be very concerned about? And deaths are in fact rising. According to your chart they were around 6000/day (7 day average) on Jan 1 and are 7600/day in the most recent data two weeks later.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    First of all. Not thousands, but 571 as i checked on a population of 320.000.000 in the US and with a reasonable amount of people unvaccinated ( and they chose for this, other people aren't responsible for other people's decisions) And as mentioned in my above comment. Can you show me how many are dying because of Omicron specific and how many are related to previous Delta infection that were already admitted in the hospital? I'm not saying people aren't dying. Lockdowns aren't in place for the flu and that has also 52 k. deaths per year ( = 145 per year) and is much less contagious as Omicron. Also, Delta is not gone yet. You have to compare numbers with reality. Otherwise I can ask you at how many deaths per year you would reduce restrictions or at what death/severity rate. 0 is definitely impossible as some people will remain unvaccinated. You could have the same argument that 10 people are dying per year... PS. Compare it with December 2020/January 2021 which would be comparable with visiting family/friends multiple times. We aren't anywhere near that peak with *7 infections.

wokwokwok 5y ago

> It is time to stop obsessing about Covid. It is time to stop politicizing Covid. It is time to stop tweeting about Covid. It is time to stop reading about Covid. It is time to start healing and it is time to start moving on. Is it? I mean, I’d like that to be true too. …but are things not still a bit too screwed up to be pretending everything is fine quite yet? > The current 7-day moving average of new deaths (1,749) has decreased 0.3% compared with the previous 7-day moving average (1,754). As of January 19, 2022, a total of 856,288 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the United States. (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi...)

warning26 5y ago
Yeah that part was a bit weird; the Tweets preceding those seemed to indicate that after the omicron wave subsides it will be time to do those things. Then, however, it immediately switches to the present tense and implies that right now we should immediately throw all caution to the wind.
e40 5y ago
When hospitals are not choked with unvaccinated people, that's the time to stop obsessing. I'm still reading too many stories of people dying of non-covid reasons because they can't get medical care due to unvaccinated people taking up those resources. EDIT: all parts of each country are not equal. In the Bay Area, the hospitals are doing (mostly) fine.
- tjr225 5y ago
  At what point do we blame our broken health care system that seemingly can’t handle something as mild as omicron? Now.
  - kevingadd 5y ago
    We can blame both. People talking about herd immunity and intentionally filling the hospitals are going to overwhelm any system, and european countries had problems like this too when COVID was at its worst there.

cblconfederate 5y ago

It really doesn't seem we have other 'pressing matters' , unless those matters are manufactured somehow. Can the world return to its habits of consuming recklessly, traveling like there's no tomorrow, office routine every day, low tech schooling and ignore the fact that it's largely unprepared for a new pandemic? Maybe, but it would seem more like reckless yoloers than future-thinking people.

rob_c 5y ago
"low tech schooling and ignore the fact that it's largely unprepared for a new pandemic" Unfortunately our education (comparing US and UK) are both not going to be solved by increased tech imo (not in the sense of tablets for all). But as I've said for years we should be seriously looking at airflow in educational establishments, as well as improved buildings. Having been on both sides of the lecture hall and teaching environment, a well ventilated room helps huge amounts for concentration and informed debate. Air quality can drag down the room and atmosphere as well as being unhealthy.
bserge 5y ago

basisword 5y ago

Maybe he’s right. Hopefully he’s right. But personally, I feel like this is just more shortsightedness. I’ve lost track of the number of times my employer thought it was time to get back to the office - only for restrictions to be increased a month later as cases rise. This cycle repeats and people seem to not learn. They get overly optimistic and then kicked in the teeth. Yes, things are better than they’ve been but 4 months ago we also thought it was over until Omicron arrived. How long until another more serious variant comes along that escapes vaccines? Predicting the end of Covid when the world is in the middle/late stage of a huge wave seems super shortsighted.

warning26 5y ago
Exactly -- remember this past summer when the pandemic was over? Or how about after fall, when the pandemic was also over? If there's one thing predicable about the the pandemic, it's that it is unpredictable. I, too, hope that omicron is the much-hyped final wave, just like delta was supposed to have been. But to declare that it definitely, totally, is the final wave right now seems a bit premature.
watwut 5y ago
> I’ve lost track of the number of times my employer thought it was time to get back to the office This has nothing to do with employer thinking and trying to predict covid. This is all about some managers feeling lonely. And even as it sounds cynical, I really mean it and think it is factor in this. The other factors are also some management feeling less in control or thinking it will be more productive. But imo, them feeling lonely, especially those who have no real social life outside of work, is a factor. People love to pretend that companies and management are all about rationality, but they are not. Their emotions influence their actions a lot (so are developers emotions etc).
peteradio 5y ago
I think there is reason to be a bit more hopeful in America at least when you consider a few things: 1) Natural immunity is quite robust: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm7104e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm... Now, that is according the CDC whose governance has sought to give the impression that natural immunity is not so great (perhaps for generally good reasons). But now they see fit to give the impression that natural immunity is pretty substantial, clearly giving much more immunity weight than vaccine alone. So that is some clear signal just reading between the lines. 2) Seroprevelance indicating natural exposure is quite high overall in the U.S. and especially so in some regions, see for yourself what that looks like in your own region: https://covid19serohub.nih.gov/ https://covid19serohub.nih.gov/ (nucleocapsid is proxy for exposure and recovery) Now, you might look at those numbers and see only 30% or so, but realize this is end of October statistics. Many (dare I say all?) regions in the U.S. have seen en exceptional wave since those statistics were collected. I would be confident to say 50% - 100% increase in statistics of recovered. edit: I'm just some guy on the internet so if you think this stuff is wrong or misrepresented, call my ass out. If you are not capable of parsing the references I give you, assume I have bad intentions.

afavour 5y ago

I've seen a few posts like this recently and I have to confess: I don't get it. What does "it is time to stop obsessing about Covid" mean? I have small children so I'm still living in some kind of COVID purgatory but for the majority of the population COVID hasn't really been an obsession for quite a while. People are dining indoors, they're traveling, socializing... life more or less is back to normal. Schools are shutting down from time to time but that's because teachers are getting sick with COVID, hardly because of some irrational "obsession". If anything it shows we maybe stopped caring too early. Of course, a lot more people are still working remotely, something I consider to be a plus but that I suspect venture capitalists like the author do not. So when I see someone like that advocating “unlearning many of the behaviors we’ve learned in the last two years” I'm immediately suspicious. > We’ve got other pressing matters to deal with. [...] We have other health care challenges to tackle. One of the most pressing issues with healthcare today is the sheer number of COVID patients overwhelming the ability for a hospital to do anything other than treat COVID. Yes, even with the milder Omicron variant. Again: if anything this suggests that this lack of obsession has come too early, not too late. And has any call to "stop politicizing" something ever worked? That's simply not the world we're living in (these days, at least). The vaccine is politicized. Masks are politicized. You can’t just wish that away.

immibis 5y ago
It's one out of a large number of propaganda lines or "NPC script lines" where the ultimate goal is to convince the reader/listener to decide that we should simply stick our heads in the sand and pretend the COVID-19 pandemic does not exist. You are lucky if you have not been exposed to this propaganda very much yet. You might notice that the editorial reads as if the word "Covid" refers to "that time when the government told us to wear masks and get vaccines and all that stuff." I'm not sure if people actually hold this view or just pretend to, but it's not uncommon. It's trying to give off the aura of "Oh, remember when all those silly people told us to wear masks, it was just a silly thing that happened one time, why are we still talking about it, we should just forget it ever happened." People with attitudes similar to the author are the reason there is still a COVID-19 pandemic, in the developed world at least. I'm surprised you don't have experience with them by now.

the_gastropod 5y ago

> It is time to stop obsessing about Covid. It is time to stop politicizing Covid. It is time to stop tweeting about Covid. It is time to stop reading about Covid. It is time to start healing and it is time to start moving on. 2,000+ (and increasing) Americans are dying every day from this disease—as bad as the bad old days of Spring 2020. Why is this attitude so pervasive? It doesn't seem to be backed by anything aside from boredom of dealing with living in a pandemic. > We have vaccines if you want them. We will have anti-virals if you need them. > And you can wear masks if you are uncomfortable on the plane or the subway. This is the individualistic thinking that's caused us so much friction. It's no different than "if you want to be a safe driver, don't drink and drive!". The drunk-driver and the unvacced/unmasked put all of us at risk. It's selfish behavior, and should be treated as such, instead of described as "personal freedom". > We’ve normalized mask-wearing in the US now and that is a good thing. Have we, though? Across the country, people will harass and threaten you, for no reason other than they've seen you wearing a face mask. I've been mocked in NYC—the bastion of progressivism in the US. What do you think it's like wearing a mask in Kansas?

gz5 5y ago

>Covid was terrible, we are scarred from it, but we cannot let it divide us and we cannot let it drive us crazy. There are more important things facing us and let’s go deal with them now. C-19 is still very fresh in our minds. Let's use that to drive action to learn from it and try to ensure the next one is less catastrophic. If we turn our attention away too quickly, this won't happen. Even as we speak, we have school districts in the US closed indefinitely* and many nations around the world without testing, vaccines, antivirals or proper healthcare. The future may be here (let's hope that this is the beginning of the end while being healthfully paranoid that it may not be), but it is definitely not evenly distributed. * https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2022/01/21/flint-public-schools-staying-virtual-indefinitely-due-to-large-amount-of-positive-covid-19-cases/ https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2022/01/21/flint-public-schools...

Ozzie_osman 5y ago

Most of the discussion in the threads is around whether covid is over as a pandemic. I think this post gets something else wrong.. The economic story. The claim in the post is "covid is over, so everything will reset to precovid levels." I think there's a much bigger correction happening potentially that will be worse than "we're right back where we started".

ramesh31 5y ago

What worries me more is the next time, when there's multiple different viruses and the death rate is much higher. Given that there are two possible scenarios for the origin of COVID; natural transmission or lab origin, I find the former to be a far more terrifying prospect. If it were a lab outbreak, that's a protocol problem that can be addressed to prevent it in the future. If it was natural transmission, why hasn't this happened before? Why isn't it happening again right now? Why isn't there 10 different viruses at once, that are much more deadly? What happens when that occurs? If this happened naturally, it will happen again. And I just pray that we are prepared.

immibis 5y ago
It has happened plenty of times. HIV, for one? But such transmission is quite rare and only seems to occur every few decades. That's for "interesting" viruses, by the way. "Boring" viruses probably get transmitted all the time. Most things are boring.

zcw100 5y ago

"It is time to stop politicizing Covid." but their argument amounts to "you need to just stop fighting me and give me what I want". What exactly do we unlearn when he quotes, "unlearn many of the behaviors we’ve learned in the last two years"? What hardships are we going to go through if we continue to wear masks a little longer than necessary? Do I really need to shake your hand when we greet? Believe it or not people don't want to stay at home, not be able to work and they definitely don't like being sick and dying. Know when we'll go back to normal? When people stop dying so much. This is going to have massive long term effects and I'm not talking about anything from having worn a mask. I'm talking about the long term effects of the virus. I'm positive you'll be seeing advertisements for the next 40 years for "Covid treatment centers of America". If this person really wants to get back to normal maybe we should start by passing legislation now to deny Mediare benefits to anyone suffering from Covid complications who refused to be vaccinated. I'd be happy to support conservatives in saying, "Why should I be taxed to pay for the results of your decision?" or allow covid complications be be considered a preexisting condition for unvaccinated. Why should I have to pay through my insurance premiums for your ER visit?

peteradio 5y ago
Sounds like you are a customer for a new type of insurance policy which right or wrong discriminates against unvaccinated. Weirdly enough I think the unvaccinated would see their policies go down in price because we are by and large young. Are you sure you want to cleave populations in two based on that policy change, are you certain it will benefit you in the way you expect?
- zcw100 5y ago
  Ah, discriminates against the unvaccinated sort of like how they discriminate against smokers right now?...ya, I'm cool with that.

gomox 5y ago

There's one interesting thought in the article: that financial markets could be correctly predicting the end of the Covid pandemic phase. The unwinding of the Covid trade doesn't necessarily correlate with that, but it's a reasonable proposition. Most of the other stuff is opinions and I agree with the sentiment of many of the other commenters: You might be right, and I certainly would like you to be right, but there's little hard evidence that you are, and June 2021 was a nice cautionary tale that you very well might not be.

Yoric 5y ago
> The unwinding of the Covid trade doesn't necessarily correlate with that, but it's a reasonable proposition. It's certainly an interesting thought, but why would it be true?
immibis 5y ago
Or it could simply be the collapse of the financial market as it fails to be propped up for much longer than it was supposed to be.

throwthere 5y ago

I’ve never met Fred but I’ve read his articles, particularly the Ives mba series ones multiple times. Like any intellectual, they push to grow their knowledge and sometimes venture outside their area of competence. They don’t realize they’re living in a relatively healthy area of society surrounded by people with easy access to medical care and without comorbidities. omnicron is less lethal than the other variants but it still threatens significant lives, takes icu beds and takes an enormous toll on the nurses working with a still steady stream of dying patients. We all want to move on, and Omnicron looks to be peaking soon— the nature of the beast is omnicron has only affected half the people it will. I guess I agree there’s reason to be optimistic. But I don’t think now is the time we stop talking about it.

oxymoran 5y ago

A)wasn’t hard to see covid coming, no insider info was needed. 2 years ago I, an insurance adjuster with no inside info, was freaking out about what was happening in China. B)The unwinding of the covid trade has nothing to do with the current stock market implosion. Peloton and Netflix aren’t down because covid is ending. All stocks were inflated because of a decade of quantitative easing and 0% interest rates. Some were further inflated more due to covid. But the money printer has stopped going brrrr and interest rates are going to rise soon which is being priced into the market. Buckle up, we are heading for recession. Also not hard to see if you are paying attention.

GrandMasterPuba 5y ago

I feel like I'm being gaslit. By blog posts, the media, Twitter, social media, my work - everyone. I keep up to date with the latest studies on Covid. Sars-Cov-2 is not a respiratory virus; it's a circulatory virus. And its long term effects on the body are not widely understood. Everyone is acting like because Omicron doesn't make you cough that Covid is over. But scientists are finding deeply concerning long term effects - neurological effects, telomere and biological aging effects, autoimmune activation, long Covid, micro blood clotting - in a non-trivial percentage of Covid cases. Even asymptomatic and vaccinated individuals. It's becoming increasingly apparent that having Covid will result in a lifelong disability for at least some percentage of survivors. But we just ignore that so we can go back to normal? Because Covid is "endemic?" Endemicity was the failure state - it means we gave up. Covid should have never gotten to that point.

immibis 5y ago
It's not everyone. The people with views like this editorial are the minority of people, but they are a very loud minority. If they would put as much effort into not spreading COVID as they put into convincing the rest of us to convincing the rest of us that COVID isn't a big deal or doesn't exist, there would be no pandemic today.

csours 5y ago

* I am not a doctor, this comment is for entertainment purposes only * I do think it's time to start thinking about what the end of the pandemic looks like: 1. Sars-Cov-2 will be around forever. People will continue to get sick and die from it. 2. There will be more peaks on the infection and death charts. These are real people with real families. It will suck for them. 3. At some point one of the peaks will be the highest. 6 months or so after the highest peak is reached, the pandemic will be over. We'll only see this in hindsight. It may take a year to tell that the last peak was the highest. The disease won't be over, but it won't be the single most important thing in everyone's life. It will drop from the #1 or #2 cause of death down to #10 or #20, eventually. This may be different around the world. Countries that have had low numbers of infections and deaths may have huge spikes of infection and deaths. 4. There will be more variants, and they are not guaranteed to be milder, especially to individual infected people. There may be variants that affect children more. I personally don't think that is likely, but there are no guarantees. 5. Early in the pandemic, there was a lot of judgment on people who got sick. We'll have to let go of this. Speaking down to people doesn't help. Judging people doesn't help. 6. Some people will continue to wear masks for a long time. Some people won't feel comfortable in groups. Give them time. Don't force the issue. Give them space. I will probably wear a mask in crowded public places for a long time (grocery stores, airports, public transport). 7. We'll be learning about this disease for a long time. Hopefully government bodies learn how to plan and communicate better. Hopefully we step up our disease vector surveillance and tracking efforts 8. We won't get common understanding back unless people work for it. Dividing people with moralistic and righteousness-based messages is currently a winning strategy. I won't call this a "both sides" thing, I call it a "human nature" thing. I don't really understand why some people are standing on "their rights" - I guess it plays better than saying "I'm scared"

immibis 5y ago
Your point 1 is missing a big disclaimer. 1. Sars-Cov-2 will be around forever because the population votes for it to be that way.
- csours 5y ago
  The virus spreads to other animals - no disease agent with an animal reservoir has ever been eradicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir I wish it were otherwise, and maybe in the future it will be so.

cameldrv 5y ago

"The current death rate of COVID in the US is about what a bad flu season would be." Currently 2000 people a day are dying in the U.S. from COVID. That's an annualized rate of 730,000 deaths per year. The CDC estimates that the worst flu season in the last 10 years was 2017-2018 and that Flu caused 52,000 deaths. That puts the current death rate of COVID at 14x where a bad flu season would be. Perhaps it is his judgment that the level of attention COVID is getting is still not warranted, but one must start with the basic facts correct in order to make this judgment.

rob_c 5y ago
and the definition of a covid death is rather liberal compared to a flu death with no underlying conditions... the whole mess is political
- cameldrv 5y ago
  I can't say precisely how these deaths are defined. I can say that I know several people personally who have died of COVID just in the past month. I can't ever remember anyone I know dying of the Flu.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    I'm not questioning this. But unfortunately it is by definition anecdotal. I know 3 over 90s who are still going, and a mix of expose risk and health status. I'm sorry for your loss.
    - cameldrv 5y ago
      Yes, I also know a ton of people who didn't die from it. That does not change the fact that COVID is much more lethal than the flu, which was the original claim to justify the article.
      - rob_c 5y ago
        again, as per my comment, you cannot make this assessment based on bad data, please stop insisting on it. In the UK(Eng+Wales) it has killed <13k total with no underlying conditions as reported by the ONS. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsfromcovid19withnootherunderlyingcauses https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre... This alone should worry people! The total kill count is supposed to be 100x this which is a heck of a disparity, and shows there is something bad about the data.

benpiper 5y ago

People have come to realize a few important things: - Omicron is comparable to a really bad cold for most people - The vaccines reduce the risk of death for only a very short time, then the effect wears off, and they have unknown long-term sequelae - Living like it's 2020 is not sustainable