4 ms·

Is a scenario where we have to work from home a couple of times a year for a few days due to a mild infection really such a nightmare? Considering the constant

Is a scenario where we have to work from home a couple of times a year for a few days due to a mild infection really such a nightmare? Considering the constant lockdowns we'll need to prevent it, that sounds a lot worse tbh. Of course it's possible a dangerous strain will emerge but I think it's worth the risk.

sudosysgen 5y ago
There is a lot more that can be done besides lockdowns - we can have actually useful contact tracing and testing. There are tons of measures that can be implemented to reduce transmission. We're giving up on all of that. Besides, viral infections are very damaging to the human body. An infection severe enough to knock you out for multiple days multiple times a year, on top of all the other disease we have, each time rolling the dice on long term side effects, is far worse than "work from home a couple of times a day". If there is an only 5% rate of long term side effects (which is much less than it is at now), and you end up catching it twice a year, that means you're guaranteeing most people to suffer from long term side effects. Not to mention, unless we're sending sick kids to school, parents will be in deep shit. And on a personal preference level, I would much rather have a week or two of lockdown every year on average until we can develop a vaccine that can prevent reinfection and mutation or treatments and testing or w/e is needed to limit it, than to be guaranteed to get sick for a week or two at random times alone and risk severe long term effects every time. Even the Chinese didn't have constant lockdowns. The majority of Chinese people didn't even see a single lockdown this year. If their government was competent enough to keep a basic surveillance testing regime the lockdown in Shanghai might have already been over.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  I absolutely love the goalposts for some people seem to have shifted from “this ends when we have a vaccine” all the way to “this ends when we have a newer, better vaccine”. When will people finally accept this is a battle that cannot be won. Humans cannot stop a contagious respiratory virus any better than they can stop a hurricane, tornado or earthquake.
  - jseban 5y ago
    > Humans cannot stop a contagious respiratory virus any better than they can stop a hurricane, tornado or earthquake. Yep, and these actions of trying to stop the virus with border closings and lockdowns was 100% ideas from china and north korea, the crazy thing, as mentioned in other comments, is that the western world followed and also went on this futile insane don quijotean crusade.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    The vaccines simply don't work as well anymore. If they were still as effective as they were at the start, we wouldn't be here. We could have ensured that by limiting worldwide transmission and distributing the vaccines more homogeneously, but we didn't. Also, we can and have stopped contagious respiratory viruses. Multiple times.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      > Also, we can and have stopped contagious respiratory viruses. Multiple times. Ones this contagious and mutative though?
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        COVID is actually not a very mutative virus. The only reason it mutates so fast is because we let it spread so much. The more a virus spreads, the more it mutates. As far as contagion, we have eradicated smallpox, which is right around the estimates for contagion of Omicron.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  The problem with contact tracing is that it's hard to do at large scale. And the effects of the contact tracing are preventative quarantines which are also harmful to the economy. Testing is a good one though, I have some issues with the masks (due to illness in the past) and I often agree with colleagues not to wear one but test instead. I might even do that when they're not mandatory anymore (hopefully soon). But we have many viral infections we come into contact with on a daily basis. We can't avoid them all :) > Not to mention, unless we're sending sick kids to school, parents will be in deep shit. This is exactly caused by the quarantines and lockdowns, not by the virus itself. > And on a personal preference level, I would much rather have a week or two of lockdown every year on average But it won't be a week or two of lockdown. The Netherlands had a major lockdown this christmas for Omikron, they took it too seriously as they wanted to wait for confirmation it was not going to overload the health system. After they lifted things, it came right up (though didn't overload the health system, as per experience from other countries). With the contagiousness at the high level of Omikron, a lockdown will only be effective for its duration. We'll be in a lockdown nightmare.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    I think you're missing the point about lockdowns. I will give you an interesting datapoint : this is the first time that Shanghai has come under lockdown. The majority of China did not have to go through any lockdown at all. When you lockdown earlier and for longer, paradoxically, you spend orders of magnitude less time in aggregate under lockdown. You're from the Netherlands, and I'm Canadian - we both spent much more time under lockdown than the average Chinese citizen. And their goverment isn't massively more capable than ours and is definitely capable of fucking up, it's just we chose a course of action that leads to more lockdowns and more COVID. We do not come into contact with viral infections with a significant risk of death and that reinfect you in mere months every day. Actually, I struggle to think of any other virus with these. > But it won't be a week or two of lockdown. The Netherlands had a major lockdown this christmas for Omikron, they took it too seriously as they wanted to wait for confirmation it was not going to overload the health system. After they lifted things, it came right up (though didn't overload the health system, as per experience from other countries). It will be a week or two. The way the Netherlands locked down is ineffective, because they waited way too long. If you wait untill the health system is on the verge of collapsing every time, you will paradoxically have many more lockdowns. If you lockdown cities, or even neighborhoods, as early as there are a few cases, the majority of the country will never even be locked down. > With the contagiousness at the high level of Omikron, a lockdown will only be effective for its duration. We'll be in a lockdown nightmare. That's simply not true. You get that impression because me and you both lived through very poorly designed lockdowns from the very beginning of the pandemic, which all ended up the same way. Omicron presents a more arduous version of the same problem - if you lockdown too late, you have to lockdown longer. If you lockdown too short, you will have to lockdown again. The difference with Omicron is that lockdowns have to be engaged earlier, that's all.
robonerd 5y ago
> work from home That this is possible at all for you is a privilege many do not enjoy.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  No, but we were talking of a nightmare to society. In western societies people not able to work from home are a minority. Most of these would not be able to work during the lockdowns either so either way it works out the same, not a positive in favour of lockdowns.

sudosysgen 5y ago

There is a lot more that can be done besides lockdowns - we can have actually useful contact tracing and testing. There are tons of measures that can be implemented to reduce transmission. We're giving up on all of that. Besides, viral infections are very damaging to the human body. An infection severe enough to knock you out for multiple days multiple times a year, on top of all the other disease we have, each time rolling the dice on long term side effects, is far worse than "work from home a couple of times a day". If there is an only 5% rate of long term side effects (which is much less than it is at now), and you end up catching it twice a year, that means you're guaranteeing most people to suffer from long term side effects. Not to mention, unless we're sending sick kids to school, parents will be in deep shit. And on a personal preference level, I would much rather have a week or two of lockdown every year on average until we can develop a vaccine that can prevent reinfection and mutation or treatments and testing or w/e is needed to limit it, than to be guaranteed to get sick for a week or two at random times alone and risk severe long term effects every time. Even the Chinese didn't have constant lockdowns. The majority of Chinese people didn't even see a single lockdown this year. If their government was competent enough to keep a basic surveillance testing regime the lockdown in Shanghai might have already been over.

spookthesunset 5y ago
I absolutely love the goalposts for some people seem to have shifted from “this ends when we have a vaccine” all the way to “this ends when we have a newer, better vaccine”. When will people finally accept this is a battle that cannot be won. Humans cannot stop a contagious respiratory virus any better than they can stop a hurricane, tornado or earthquake.
- jseban 5y ago
  > Humans cannot stop a contagious respiratory virus any better than they can stop a hurricane, tornado or earthquake. Yep, and these actions of trying to stop the virus with border closings and lockdowns was 100% ideas from china and north korea, the crazy thing, as mentioned in other comments, is that the western world followed and also went on this futile insane don quijotean crusade.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  The vaccines simply don't work as well anymore. If they were still as effective as they were at the start, we wouldn't be here. We could have ensured that by limiting worldwide transmission and distributing the vaccines more homogeneously, but we didn't. Also, we can and have stopped contagious respiratory viruses. Multiple times.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    > Also, we can and have stopped contagious respiratory viruses. Multiple times. Ones this contagious and mutative though?
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      COVID is actually not a very mutative virus. The only reason it mutates so fast is because we let it spread so much. The more a virus spreads, the more it mutates. As far as contagion, we have eradicated smallpox, which is right around the estimates for contagion of Omicron.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
The problem with contact tracing is that it's hard to do at large scale. And the effects of the contact tracing are preventative quarantines which are also harmful to the economy. Testing is a good one though, I have some issues with the masks (due to illness in the past) and I often agree with colleagues not to wear one but test instead. I might even do that when they're not mandatory anymore (hopefully soon). But we have many viral infections we come into contact with on a daily basis. We can't avoid them all :) > Not to mention, unless we're sending sick kids to school, parents will be in deep shit. This is exactly caused by the quarantines and lockdowns, not by the virus itself. > And on a personal preference level, I would much rather have a week or two of lockdown every year on average But it won't be a week or two of lockdown. The Netherlands had a major lockdown this christmas for Omikron, they took it too seriously as they wanted to wait for confirmation it was not going to overload the health system. After they lifted things, it came right up (though didn't overload the health system, as per experience from other countries). With the contagiousness at the high level of Omikron, a lockdown will only be effective for its duration. We'll be in a lockdown nightmare.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  I think you're missing the point about lockdowns. I will give you an interesting datapoint : this is the first time that Shanghai has come under lockdown. The majority of China did not have to go through any lockdown at all. When you lockdown earlier and for longer, paradoxically, you spend orders of magnitude less time in aggregate under lockdown. You're from the Netherlands, and I'm Canadian - we both spent much more time under lockdown than the average Chinese citizen. And their goverment isn't massively more capable than ours and is definitely capable of fucking up, it's just we chose a course of action that leads to more lockdowns and more COVID. We do not come into contact with viral infections with a significant risk of death and that reinfect you in mere months every day. Actually, I struggle to think of any other virus with these. > But it won't be a week or two of lockdown. The Netherlands had a major lockdown this christmas for Omikron, they took it too seriously as they wanted to wait for confirmation it was not going to overload the health system. After they lifted things, it came right up (though didn't overload the health system, as per experience from other countries). It will be a week or two. The way the Netherlands locked down is ineffective, because they waited way too long. If you wait untill the health system is on the verge of collapsing every time, you will paradoxically have many more lockdowns. If you lockdown cities, or even neighborhoods, as early as there are a few cases, the majority of the country will never even be locked down. > With the contagiousness at the high level of Omikron, a lockdown will only be effective for its duration. We'll be in a lockdown nightmare. That's simply not true. You get that impression because me and you both lived through very poorly designed lockdowns from the very beginning of the pandemic, which all ended up the same way. Omicron presents a more arduous version of the same problem - if you lockdown too late, you have to lockdown longer. If you lockdown too short, you will have to lockdown again. The difference with Omicron is that lockdowns have to be engaged earlier, that's all.

robonerd 5y ago

> work from home That this is possible at all for you is a privilege many do not enjoy.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
No, but we were talking of a nightmare to society. In western societies people not able to work from home are a minority. Most of these would not be able to work during the lockdowns either so either way it works out the same, not a positive in favour of lockdowns.