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Whether it's over or not, it's over. Polling shows people are done with it. Trust in the related institutions is at an all time low. No politician is going t

Whether it's over or not, it's over. Polling shows people are done with it. Trust in the related institutions is at an all time low. No politician is going to get in front of this bus.

ryandrake 5y ago
I think the COVID-Is-Over crowd needs to send that memo to COVID, it didn't get the message, yet. We've been here before multiple times now. Politicians rush to "get back to normal" and then a few weeks or months later, the next wave hits. Will we ever learn?
teawrecks 5y ago
If we had another spike in 2 weeks that turned out to be the worst so far, would you still say that? Everyone would still be done with it, and yet it would be objectively not over. It's not just about people acknowledging it exists, it exists regardless.
- Izkata 5y ago
  Yes, even you said it yourself: > Everyone would still be done with it Hospitalizations and deaths have been so low for so long that as soon as people stop paying attention, it is over. We've been out of the pandemic phase and crossed over into endemicity for most of a year. Time to get used to it.
  - jupp0r 5y ago
    Death rates are still quite high - 1500 deaths per day, the maximum were around 3000 in February 2021. This is in times where lots of precautions were still in place (school masking for example). Life expectancy in the US dropped by a year in 2020 [1], with much worse drops for minority populations (3 years for the latino population) and 10 years of progress of equalizing white and non-white life expectancies has been reversed. Is this an acceptable steady state for society? I don't think it should be. This is all preventable and we otherwise spend lots of resources on improving these metrics. What you are saying sounds like people being done with lung cancer and start smoking again. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014746118 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014746118
    - doopy1 5y ago
      How is it preventable beyond what we have in place today?
      - jupp0r 5y ago
        Vaccine mandates would probably be the most effective strategy. This would reduce the death toll and also otherwise severe disease (and also long covid from the data we are seeing) by a factor of 10. At that point, we might as well drop all other measures and live with 10k dead people from this per year. Currently, it's still at an unacceptable level for society, even if one is only considering the economic impact and doesn't care about human suffering.
    - avar 5y ago
      If diet related illnesses were unknown before COVID they'd have had an even more dramatic impact on those numbers. We've not only decided that's an "acceptable steady state", but actively embraced it. > Life expectancy in the US dropped by a year in 2020. In other words: it dropped around 1/10th as much as the difference between today and 1970. Do you think the average person in 1970 would have accepted 10x the invasiveness of the measures we've had for the last couple of years to reach parity, or were they just used to the "normal"? You can argue that we should or shouldn't do something, but claiming that human beings aren't fine with perpetually dealing with this level of risk is rather absurd.
      - Izkata 5y ago
        > In other words: it dropped around 1/10th as much as the difference between today and 1970. Another way of putting it: We're back to where we were as recently as 2007.
        avar 5y ago
        Another way to put it: How many Americans in 2018 were clamoring to spend massive amounts of GDP on reaching parity with countries like Peru, Costa Rica, Austria, France, South Korea and Japan? Those countries have (respectively) around 1-6 additional years of life expectancy compared to the US[1]. Or, to put it another way: Life expectancy peaked in the US in 2014[2], while it kept rising in most peer countries. That certainly made the news, and something was being done about the root causes of that, but by and large it was being ignored politically. Again, none of this is an argument for or against any particular COVID measures. I'm just pointing out that it's a particularly egregious case of historical blinders & end-of-history thinking to think that human beings as a species can't get used to the relatively small (in a historical context) rise in risk the world has seen in the last couple of years. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... 2. https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peaked-in-2014/ https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peak...
- handoflixue 5y ago
  > If we had another spike in 2 weeks that turned out to be the worst so far, would you still say that? People SHOULD update in light of new evidence. Right now I think I am quite safe from crime. If I get robbed twice next month, I will absolutely re-evaluate that statement. That said, the most recent spike was vastly milder than previous spikes, so it would be extremely surprising to suddenly have The Worst Spike Ever
jupp0r 5y ago
It's been "over" several times already (remember "it will be gone by easter"?). This time won't be the last, the data just doesn't justify that assumption yet. What you are saying is: "Society thinks it is now ok to have ~1000 deaths from this disease per day" as a steady state. The problem with that is that the health infrastructure to deal with this amount of disease on top of other seasonal diseases like influenza just isn't there in most places. People being done with it will change again when tumor removal surgery and other procedures need to be postponed and general quality of life is suffering. There is also the aspect that lots of people will still take precautions like not eating out in crowded indoor spaces when seasonal infection rates are high. This will change business environments in the long run, whether we like it or not.
- handoflixue 5y ago
  > It's been "over" several times already Yes, but there are concrete reasons it didn't end: new variants showed up, and in the case of omicron in particular it was able to overwhelm resistance established by previous strains. That can absolutely happen again, but increasing vaccination rates across the globe mean the odds of a new variant are lower.
  - jupp0r 5y ago
    I don't think odds of a new variant are lower. Vaccines turned out to not be effective against infection after a few months (they are very effective against severe disease). People who are vaccinated might clear the infection faster but as long as there is viral replication there will be mutations. At the same time, evolutionary pressure to evade vaccine protection is increasing as more people are vaccinated.

Whether it's over or not, it's over. Polling shows people are done with it. Trust in the related institutions is at an all time low. No politician is going to get in front of this bus.

ryandrake 5y ago

I think the COVID-Is-Over crowd needs to send that memo to COVID, it didn't get the message, yet. We've been here before multiple times now. Politicians rush to "get back to normal" and then a few weeks or months later, the next wave hits. Will we ever learn?

teawrecks 5y ago

If we had another spike in 2 weeks that turned out to be the worst so far, would you still say that? Everyone would still be done with it, and yet it would be objectively not over. It's not just about people acknowledging it exists, it exists regardless.

Izkata 5y ago
Yes, even you said it yourself: > Everyone would still be done with it Hospitalizations and deaths have been so low for so long that as soon as people stop paying attention, it is over. We've been out of the pandemic phase and crossed over into endemicity for most of a year. Time to get used to it.
- jupp0r 5y ago
  Death rates are still quite high - 1500 deaths per day, the maximum were around 3000 in February 2021. This is in times where lots of precautions were still in place (school masking for example). Life expectancy in the US dropped by a year in 2020 [1], with much worse drops for minority populations (3 years for the latino population) and 10 years of progress of equalizing white and non-white life expectancies has been reversed. Is this an acceptable steady state for society? I don't think it should be. This is all preventable and we otherwise spend lots of resources on improving these metrics. What you are saying sounds like people being done with lung cancer and start smoking again. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014746118 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014746118
  - doopy1 5y ago
    How is it preventable beyond what we have in place today?
    - jupp0r 5y ago
      Vaccine mandates would probably be the most effective strategy. This would reduce the death toll and also otherwise severe disease (and also long covid from the data we are seeing) by a factor of 10. At that point, we might as well drop all other measures and live with 10k dead people from this per year. Currently, it's still at an unacceptable level for society, even if one is only considering the economic impact and doesn't care about human suffering.
  - avar 5y ago
    If diet related illnesses were unknown before COVID they'd have had an even more dramatic impact on those numbers. We've not only decided that's an "acceptable steady state", but actively embraced it. > Life expectancy in the US dropped by a year in 2020. In other words: it dropped around 1/10th as much as the difference between today and 1970. Do you think the average person in 1970 would have accepted 10x the invasiveness of the measures we've had for the last couple of years to reach parity, or were they just used to the "normal"? You can argue that we should or shouldn't do something, but claiming that human beings aren't fine with perpetually dealing with this level of risk is rather absurd.
    - Izkata 5y ago
      > In other words: it dropped around 1/10th as much as the difference between today and 1970. Another way of putting it: We're back to where we were as recently as 2007.
      - avar 5y ago
        Another way to put it: How many Americans in 2018 were clamoring to spend massive amounts of GDP on reaching parity with countries like Peru, Costa Rica, Austria, France, South Korea and Japan? Those countries have (respectively) around 1-6 additional years of life expectancy compared to the US[1]. Or, to put it another way: Life expectancy peaked in the US in 2014[2], while it kept rising in most peer countries. That certainly made the news, and something was being done about the root causes of that, but by and large it was being ignored politically. Again, none of this is an argument for or against any particular COVID measures. I'm just pointing out that it's a particularly egregious case of historical blinders & end-of-history thinking to think that human beings as a species can't get used to the relatively small (in a historical context) rise in risk the world has seen in the last couple of years. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... 2. https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peaked-in-2014/ https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peak...
handoflixue 5y ago
> If we had another spike in 2 weeks that turned out to be the worst so far, would you still say that? People SHOULD update in light of new evidence. Right now I think I am quite safe from crime. If I get robbed twice next month, I will absolutely re-evaluate that statement. That said, the most recent spike was vastly milder than previous spikes, so it would be extremely surprising to suddenly have The Worst Spike Ever

jupp0r 5y ago

It's been "over" several times already (remember "it will be gone by easter"?). This time won't be the last, the data just doesn't justify that assumption yet. What you are saying is: "Society thinks it is now ok to have ~1000 deaths from this disease per day" as a steady state. The problem with that is that the health infrastructure to deal with this amount of disease on top of other seasonal diseases like influenza just isn't there in most places. People being done with it will change again when tumor removal surgery and other procedures need to be postponed and general quality of life is suffering. There is also the aspect that lots of people will still take precautions like not eating out in crowded indoor spaces when seasonal infection rates are high. This will change business environments in the long run, whether we like it or not.

handoflixue 5y ago
> It's been "over" several times already Yes, but there are concrete reasons it didn't end: new variants showed up, and in the case of omicron in particular it was able to overwhelm resistance established by previous strains. That can absolutely happen again, but increasing vaccination rates across the globe mean the odds of a new variant are lower.
- jupp0r 5y ago
  I don't think odds of a new variant are lower. Vaccines turned out to not be effective against infection after a few months (they are very effective against severe disease). People who are vaccinated might clear the infection faster but as long as there is viral replication there will be mutations. At the same time, evolutionary pressure to evade vaccine protection is increasing as more people are vaccinated.