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Covid 5 years later: Learning from a pandemic many are forgetting

75 points by Anon84 2y ago

consumerx 2y ago
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pixxel 2y ago
I won’t forget.
Vampiero 2y ago
> I feel this massive gravitational pull to go back to what we were doing before,” Van Kerkhove said. “There’s no way we should be going back.” > “One of the big reasons we wanted to hold this conference is because we couldn’t meet in person during the pandemic,” said virologist Kei Sato of the University of Tokyo, an organizer Maybe the "massive gravitational pull to what we were doing before" is just a natural equilibrium state. If we didn't behave this way we'd still be locked inside our homes fearing the virus. The fact that only 1000 people died from it in 2024 in the US is proof enough that this specific pandemic is over.
- jader201 2y ago
  > The fact that only 1000 people died from it in 2024 in the US is proof enough that this specific pandemic is over. I’m not sure if you got that number from the article, but if you did, that’s per week (but in the whole world, with 75% in the US): > Figures from October 2024 showed at least 1000 people died from COVID-19 each week, 75% of them in the United States, and that’s relying only on data from the 34 countries that still report deaths to the World Health Organization (WHO) Not debating whether or not it’s “over”, but if you’re going by that number, your number is about 40x off.
- dmckeon 2y ago
  > at least 1000 people died from COVID-19 each week, 75% of them in the United States Unless that percentage is an artifact of more accurate reporting in the US, I am now even more disappointed in the state of US health care and public health.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  In the long run I don't think it's the death count that matters. Every time one of these goes endemic, the immune systems of all future humans get a slightly heavier burden to bear. The effect of all those passengers adds up. We'll eventually have a make or break moment and fail because we're in a viral haze and not thinking clearly. It's worth learning from the past so we can forestall that moment as long as possible. I don't think that means more isolation. I think it means more thinking about the ecology of zoonotic diseases. Less contact with risky organisms, maybe we change our diet or where we decide to build, etc.
forgetfreeman 2y ago
The deep stupidity with which this subject has been met by political organizations and the broader populace has caused me to reexamine most of my expectations of "adult" behavior from both groups. In 50 years on this planet I've never been closer to losing the battle with nihilism.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  The response was truly insane.
  - defrost 2y ago
    It seemed entirely appropriate and exactly on point from my PoV: On 24 March, Western Australia closed its borders to the rest of Australia, and on 1 April, the state implemented borders between regions in the state. By mid-April 2020, the state had eliminated community transmission of COVID-19, becoming one of the few places in the world to do so. Elsewhere (the UK and US in particular) looked like a total clusterf*ck. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Western_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Western_A... and: https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-the-premier-and-cabinet/review-of-was-covid-19-management-and-response https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-the-premier...
    - yieldcrv 2y ago
      > During May 2022, Western Australia experienced sharply rising cases amongst the highest per capita cases seen anywhere in the world throughout the pandemic. Just delaying it to 2022 according to those same articles, as it had already exited the evolutionary fit population’s memory everywhere else in the world
      - defrost 2y ago
        Delaying any free active COVID presence until 99% of the state population had been double vaccinated and following COVID infections resulted in very few hospitalisations and one of the lowest per capita COVID death rates globally. I suggest you read the articles, from the linked Wikipedia source: Why are there so many Covid cases in Australia? Prof Catherine Bennett, the chair in epidemiology at Deakin University, said Australia’s high reported infection rate may be the result of high “case ascertainment”. Although PCR testing rates have dropped off in Australia, “we’re probably still doing it more so than anywhere else in the world”, Bennett said. “We still have free PCR testing. A lot of countries don’t.” The number of confirmed Covid cases shouldn’t be relied on in isolation, Bennett said. “If you compare us to, say, the UK, they look much better for infection rates,” she said. “The UK’s confirmed case rate is 128 cases per million – less than a tenth of Australia’s 1,515 figure. “Yet their hospitalisation rate per million is 209, and ours is 124. It suggests that they probably have twice as many [true] cases [as Australia].” ~ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/07/explainer-why-are-covid-infection-rates-in-australia-so-high-compared-to-other-countries https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/07/explainer-why-... In short, we paid attention to case numbers, when we had zero cases we had zero cases and when we had 1,500 mild infections post vaccnation we had 1,500 mild infections. Other places seemed to run on guesswork and magical thinking.
blindriver 2y ago
The biggest takeaway is don’t lie to the public, no matter how moral you think you are being. Credibility of and trust in the scientific establishment has been ruined for an entire generation. Telling people under 18 to get the vaccine or not attend school, or that vaccine immunity was somehow magically better than natural immunity were the two things that really turned me against it. And this is after I myself got the vaccine very early (March 21), because I trusted the science. Now I have no trust in anything the government or any pharma company tells me anymore because it’s clear we have been lied to on several levels.
- consumerx 2y ago
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- jaapbadlands 2y ago
  Building immunity via vaccines rather than naturally deprives the living virus a potential host to evolve in. It also means you don't have to contract the virus in order to build immunity, meaning the first time you get the virus, a vaccinated person's body would be more prepared, which means more people could more contract the disease at once, without collapsing the health system - allowing it to be safer at the community level to free up movement. I just think you misunderstood the reasoning, you weren't being "lied to".
  - ingohelpinger 2y ago
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  - blindriver 2y ago
    No, they were telling/forcing people who already got covid that they needed the vaccine as well. I know this because it happened to my children in California. Then they justified it by lying to us that vaccine acquired immunity was better than natural immunity through infection. This didn’t sound scientific at all but they let it continue because they wanted everyone to get vaccinated for some reason.
- g-b-r 2y ago
Traubenfuchs 2y ago
At large, covid was never dangerous to children and (healthy) (non-senior) adults. The fear of whole working populations becoming crippled and unable to work due to „long covid“ (mostly just good old PVFS/SEID/CFS) was quickly disproven. Policies never reflected that, disproportionately harming the young mentally, physically and economically. The damaged trust in governments and public health organisations was immense and on an irreparable level. Rightfully so, as for example in Austria, the stationary clerk store had to check my vaccination certificate before selling me a pen.
- dailykoder 2y ago
  >At large, covid was never dangerous to children and (healthy) (non-senior) adults. We didn't know that in the first place though. We expected it, but I shared the sentiment of better be safe then sorry. At least for 2020. I think after that it got handled extremly badly. I can only speak of germany from personal experience though. While I still can understand _some_ of the decissions made by politics, I think they were communicated very very bad and not discussed openly
  - logicchains 2y ago
    We absolutely did know this in the first place; China published detailed mortality data by age group in Wuhan. The media just refused to publish it, fearmongering to the benefit of its aging, at-risk owners.
  - switch007 2y ago
    COVID is in a group of viruses with not dissimilar characteristics. It wasn't a completely unknown virus.
    - Izkata 2y ago
      I've maintained for a while the worst thing that happened early on was calling it a "novel coronavirus". In this context, "novel" is medical/scientific jargon that doesn't mean what the average person thinks it means. It should never have made it to the public, because it created a misunderstanding about what was going on. It simply meant "humans haven't encountered this virus before so no one has immunity". Instead the common understanding became "this virus is so different we can't rely on any previous knowledge and have to start from scratch".
dailykoder 2y ago
I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusion to draw for myelf out of this. Gladly nothing happened to myself. I don't even know if I ever had covid. At least I never had a positive test and I did quite a bit of them. Maybe I just have a lucky immune system (or a good one because I dont fear getting sick and run into all sorts of viruses?) I myself tend to lean towards the first group, but also recognize that masks during covid might have been a good thing. At least in the beginning when we didn't know what we can expect. So does anyone have any literature on how good masks are, if we should be wearing them and if so, when we should?
- sfblah 2y ago
  My advice is to look at studies done before 2020 when it became political. My research suggests that, while masks probably do something, it's very hard to measure the exact impacts. The prevailing wisdom before 2020 was that masking the public for viruses didn't do anything. For medical professionals, very strict masking protocols were needed to get any assurance of safety.
  - dailykoder 2y ago
    >For medical professionals, very strict masking protocols were needed to get any assurance of safety. That's a very good point. As I understood it, even if we ignore the people that don't cover their nose, you have to be very careful when putting one on, to get the desired protection. Most people just don't care enough about it. Also use them to often, yada yada yada...
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    The prevailing wisdom before 2020 was that almost no virus was airborne; and you needed to assume new ones weren't, lest all hell break loose. That's how we got the pandemic.
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atorodius 2y ago
I skimmed the article but did not find my question answered: what's the current view on whether the political and social response was properly done?
- 01100011 2y ago
  Properly done with what the consensus opinion was at the time the decisions were made, or properly done in hindsight and colored with political bias? It's weird to me how quickly folks forgot the depth of our ignorance during the beginning of covid. Do you remember when we all started washing our groceries when we got home because we weren't even sure if covid survived on surfaces? Remember when we were desperate to slow the curve because medical staff were overwhelmed and people were dying from lack of services? Sure, in hindsight we really screwed kids up with lockdowns. We probably kept it all going too far for too long. There was probably politics on both sides and lack of purely rational decisions on both sides.
  - the_snooze 2y ago
    >We probably kept it all going too far for too long. That's where I've landed looking back on it. The first month or so of staying home, being overly cautious, and "flattening the curve" made sense given the unknowns. But limiting outdoor gatherings in some contexts but not others (no-go on outdoor parties, but George Floyd protests are fine), keeping kids in Zoom school through 2021, and continued neuroticism even after vaccines were widely available---all that left a sour taste in my mouth.
    - 01100011 2y ago
      Remember when it was forbidden to take off your mask on a plane... unless you were eating? Somehow food killed the virus. There was a lot of stupidity. But I'm also hearing from people who are convinced of a vast conspiracy and believe we knew day one that the lockdowns were a bad idea(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration). But we didn't know. It's tempting to cherry-pick the well reasoned opinions of a minority of experts especially when it backs up your worldview but I'm not having it.
alex1138 2y ago
Here's a good primer https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html
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alex1138 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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- dullcrisp 2y ago
  Science isn’t a proper noun unless you’re talking about the journal.
  - alex1138 2y ago
    It's kind of mocking 'The Science' (to which Fauci equated himself) but also just how bastardized discourse has become in relation to it Like yeah, science and censorship is completely natural... right? This shouldn't be politicized
- logicchains 2y ago
  Science has meant that for over a decade since it started deplatforming any scientist who studied the link between race and intelligence. And before anyone says "why does it matter, only racists would care about that", it matters because some social scientists are claiming that the disparity in outcomes for different races across society is due to society being unfair/biased, but such outcomes would be expected even in a perfectly fair society if the distribution of heritable traits correlated to economic success (e.g. IQ, time preference) was different across different races.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Who could possibly doubt The Bellend Curve?
  - tptacek 2y ago
    No such deplatforming has happened. Rather, the results have not said what heriditarians hoped they'd say, and it doesn't make any sense for them, rhetorically, to write updates about GWAS studies that complicate or rebut their claims, so they're left citing bizarre claims Richard Lynn made about the relative IQ of different countries.
ricksunny 2y ago
Utter origins propaganda from Jon Cohen, demonstrating his usual biased set of interviewees (only Bloom serves as the fig-leaf exception). To get a quote from Baric unrelated to origins, when that fellow is at the absolute epicenter of FOIA litigation (led by USRighttoKnow) on the topic, is simple journalistic malpractice.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
It's disappointing to see how comments on this topic always center around whether masking worked or not and whether it was a lab leak or not. These just aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. It's like we got in a car crash and instead of taking about how we can be safer drivers we're debating which brand of crutches is best. I wish we'd zoom out a bit and look for some more impactful questions to ask. Questions like: - How many fewer pandemics would we have if we stopped eating mammals? - Does dwindling diversity among wild animals make for greater risk? (Presumably so, because the remaining ones start to look like a monoculture) How can we prioritize the types of conservation work that most effectively mitigate this? - How much more effective could our vaccines be if we equipped people with the genes for CAS9? (Such that our vaccines could be CRISPR targeting RNA). - How much better could our surveillance be if it were more common to sequence samples from sick people? How much cheaper does sequencing need to get before that can happen? Can we achieve that with policy alone or is there engineering work to do?
- alex1138 2y ago
  Lab leak matters when studying viral transmission (and general characteristics of the virus), especially if it's been enhanced via gain of function research It also matters when the basic doctor-patient relationship is interfered with
  - oneshtein 2y ago
    If we look at final report of Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: COVID-19 ORIGIN: COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The FIVE strongest arguments in favor of the “lab leak” theory include: 1) The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature. Yes. 2) Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events. Yes. 3) Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels. Other biolabs can match this description too. 4) Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market. Covid-like virus is not a Covid-19. 5) By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. Yes. So, yes, it realy looks like a leak from a biolab or a deliberate spreading of the virus in preparation to a war or a trade war.
NicholasGurr 2y ago
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Uw5ssYPc 2y ago
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reify 2y ago
I also questioned the vialibily of face masks early on in the the covid scare.. I have grown mushrooms at home for many years and to prevent contamination entering my grain bags and jars, I have to use an extremely fine filters. I use a Microppose Synthetic Filter Discs which have a 99.97% Filtration efficiency down to 0.22μm (microns). The standard face mask is 0.3μm and is 95% efficient at 0.3 microns. This means that the filter media is effective at filtering 95% of airborne particles as long as they are larger than 0.3 microns in diameter. The Coronavirus molecules tend to be about 0.1 microns in diameter Masks do not prevent Coronavirus molecules from passing through the mask, However, Coronavirus molecules do not float freely around in the air and usually travel around as part of fluid droplets that become airborne created by coughing and sneezing. These droplets are supposed to be about 0.5μm so the masks could prevent water droplets from entering the body. I still have my doubts though.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  You might benefit from a more robust understanding of filtration mechanisms and updating your mental model of airborn covid to include the medium in which it's broadcast. Folks aren't outgassing raw virii with no associated droplet material, so your particle size is off. Additionally N95 can absolutely filter particulate well below the rated 0.3 microns, it's just less effective at doing so. Summary: masks absolutely filter airborn covid when rated material is used with correct fitment.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    I don't think that matters. We exhale so much moisture that cloth masks are saturated in 10-15 minutes, and after that the air pressure just recreates the droplets as it goes through the mask, spreading it from the outside.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      Lol what. You do understand that van der Waals force is a significant driver of filtration at this scale yes? We're not talking about corralling coffee grounds here.
pss314 2y ago
NDTV, one of India's news organizations, reported the article "HMPV Outbreak In China: Symptoms, Spread And What You Should Know" https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/hmpv-outbreak-in-china-symptoms-spread-and-what-you-should-know-7389007 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/hmpv-outbreak-in-china-sympt...
t0bia_s 2y ago
How many politics, that made decisions that cost us billions, are investigated because of this? Do we really have democracy? That means equality under the law for everyone. How many healthy people that died because of covid do you know personally? How many healthy people that that suddenly got cancer or struggle with conception after 2021 you know personally? Why is mortality in wealthy countries still rising? https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps What is an origin of covid virus?

75 points by Anon84 2y ago

consumerx 2y ago

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pixxel 2y ago

I won’t forget.

Vampiero 2y ago

> I feel this massive gravitational pull to go back to what we were doing before,” Van Kerkhove said. “There’s no way we should be going back.” > “One of the big reasons we wanted to hold this conference is because we couldn’t meet in person during the pandemic,” said virologist Kei Sato of the University of Tokyo, an organizer Maybe the "massive gravitational pull to what we were doing before" is just a natural equilibrium state. If we didn't behave this way we'd still be locked inside our homes fearing the virus. The fact that only 1000 people died from it in 2024 in the US is proof enough that this specific pandemic is over.

jader201 2y ago
> The fact that only 1000 people died from it in 2024 in the US is proof enough that this specific pandemic is over. I’m not sure if you got that number from the article, but if you did, that’s per week (but in the whole world, with 75% in the US): > Figures from October 2024 showed at least 1000 people died from COVID-19 each week, 75% of them in the United States, and that’s relying only on data from the 34 countries that still report deaths to the World Health Organization (WHO) Not debating whether or not it’s “over”, but if you’re going by that number, your number is about 40x off.
dmckeon 2y ago
> at least 1000 people died from COVID-19 each week, 75% of them in the United States Unless that percentage is an artifact of more accurate reporting in the US, I am now even more disappointed in the state of US health care and public health.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
In the long run I don't think it's the death count that matters. Every time one of these goes endemic, the immune systems of all future humans get a slightly heavier burden to bear. The effect of all those passengers adds up. We'll eventually have a make or break moment and fail because we're in a viral haze and not thinking clearly. It's worth learning from the past so we can forestall that moment as long as possible. I don't think that means more isolation. I think it means more thinking about the ecology of zoonotic diseases. Less contact with risky organisms, maybe we change our diet or where we decide to build, etc.

forgetfreeman 2y ago

The deep stupidity with which this subject has been met by political organizations and the broader populace has caused me to reexamine most of my expectations of "adult" behavior from both groups. In 50 years on this planet I've never been closer to losing the battle with nihilism.

paulddraper 2y ago
The response was truly insane.
- defrost 2y ago
  It seemed entirely appropriate and exactly on point from my PoV: On 24 March, Western Australia closed its borders to the rest of Australia, and on 1 April, the state implemented borders between regions in the state. By mid-April 2020, the state had eliminated community transmission of COVID-19, becoming one of the few places in the world to do so. Elsewhere (the UK and US in particular) looked like a total clusterf*ck. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Western_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Western_A... and: https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-the-premier-and-cabinet/review-of-was-covid-19-management-and-response https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-the-premier...
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    > During May 2022, Western Australia experienced sharply rising cases amongst the highest per capita cases seen anywhere in the world throughout the pandemic. Just delaying it to 2022 according to those same articles, as it had already exited the evolutionary fit population’s memory everywhere else in the world
    - defrost 2y ago
      Delaying any free active COVID presence until 99% of the state population had been double vaccinated and following COVID infections resulted in very few hospitalisations and one of the lowest per capita COVID death rates globally. I suggest you read the articles, from the linked Wikipedia source: Why are there so many Covid cases in Australia? Prof Catherine Bennett, the chair in epidemiology at Deakin University, said Australia’s high reported infection rate may be the result of high “case ascertainment”. Although PCR testing rates have dropped off in Australia, “we’re probably still doing it more so than anywhere else in the world”, Bennett said. “We still have free PCR testing. A lot of countries don’t.” The number of confirmed Covid cases shouldn’t be relied on in isolation, Bennett said. “If you compare us to, say, the UK, they look much better for infection rates,” she said. “The UK’s confirmed case rate is 128 cases per million – less than a tenth of Australia’s 1,515 figure. “Yet their hospitalisation rate per million is 209, and ours is 124. It suggests that they probably have twice as many [true] cases [as Australia].” ~ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/07/explainer-why-are-covid-infection-rates-in-australia-so-high-compared-to-other-countries https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/07/explainer-why-... In short, we paid attention to case numbers, when we had zero cases we had zero cases and when we had 1,500 mild infections post vaccnation we had 1,500 mild infections. Other places seemed to run on guesswork and magical thinking.

blindriver 2y ago

The biggest takeaway is don’t lie to the public, no matter how moral you think you are being. Credibility of and trust in the scientific establishment has been ruined for an entire generation. Telling people under 18 to get the vaccine or not attend school, or that vaccine immunity was somehow magically better than natural immunity were the two things that really turned me against it. And this is after I myself got the vaccine very early (March 21), because I trusted the science. Now I have no trust in anything the government or any pharma company tells me anymore because it’s clear we have been lied to on several levels.

consumerx 2y ago
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jaapbadlands 2y ago
Building immunity via vaccines rather than naturally deprives the living virus a potential host to evolve in. It also means you don't have to contract the virus in order to build immunity, meaning the first time you get the virus, a vaccinated person's body would be more prepared, which means more people could more contract the disease at once, without collapsing the health system - allowing it to be safer at the community level to free up movement. I just think you misunderstood the reasoning, you weren't being "lied to".
- ingohelpinger 2y ago
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- blindriver 2y ago
  No, they were telling/forcing people who already got covid that they needed the vaccine as well. I know this because it happened to my children in California. Then they justified it by lying to us that vaccine acquired immunity was better than natural immunity through infection. This didn’t sound scientific at all but they let it continue because they wanted everyone to get vaccinated for some reason.
g-b-r 2y ago

Traubenfuchs 2y ago

At large, covid was never dangerous to children and (healthy) (non-senior) adults. The fear of whole working populations becoming crippled and unable to work due to „long covid“ (mostly just good old PVFS/SEID/CFS) was quickly disproven. Policies never reflected that, disproportionately harming the young mentally, physically and economically. The damaged trust in governments and public health organisations was immense and on an irreparable level. Rightfully so, as for example in Austria, the stationary clerk store had to check my vaccination certificate before selling me a pen.

dailykoder 2y ago
>At large, covid was never dangerous to children and (healthy) (non-senior) adults. We didn't know that in the first place though. We expected it, but I shared the sentiment of better be safe then sorry. At least for 2020. I think after that it got handled extremly badly. I can only speak of germany from personal experience though. While I still can understand _some_ of the decissions made by politics, I think they were communicated very very bad and not discussed openly
- logicchains 2y ago
  We absolutely did know this in the first place; China published detailed mortality data by age group in Wuhan. The media just refused to publish it, fearmongering to the benefit of its aging, at-risk owners.
- switch007 2y ago
  COVID is in a group of viruses with not dissimilar characteristics. It wasn't a completely unknown virus.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    I've maintained for a while the worst thing that happened early on was calling it a "novel coronavirus". In this context, "novel" is medical/scientific jargon that doesn't mean what the average person thinks it means. It should never have made it to the public, because it created a misunderstanding about what was going on. It simply meant "humans haven't encountered this virus before so no one has immunity". Instead the common understanding became "this virus is so different we can't rely on any previous knowledge and have to start from scratch".

dailykoder 2y ago

I still desperately want to know the current (scientific) state of wearing a mask. On the one side we have people that say 'our bodies need to learn again to fight against viruses' and the other side which wants you to put on a mask even if you have the smallest sign of a common cold. - Though, I do understand the fear of people who have/had long covid, MCFS or do know people who have, but I don't know what conclusion to draw for myelf out of this. Gladly nothing happened to myself. I don't even know if I ever had covid. At least I never had a positive test and I did quite a bit of them. Maybe I just have a lucky immune system (or a good one because I dont fear getting sick and run into all sorts of viruses?) I myself tend to lean towards the first group, but also recognize that masks during covid might have been a good thing. At least in the beginning when we didn't know what we can expect. So does anyone have any literature on how good masks are, if we should be wearing them and if so, when we should?

sfblah 2y ago
My advice is to look at studies done before 2020 when it became political. My research suggests that, while masks probably do something, it's very hard to measure the exact impacts. The prevailing wisdom before 2020 was that masking the public for viruses didn't do anything. For medical professionals, very strict masking protocols were needed to get any assurance of safety.
- dailykoder 2y ago
  >For medical professionals, very strict masking protocols were needed to get any assurance of safety. That's a very good point. As I understood it, even if we ignore the people that don't cover their nose, you have to be very careful when putting one on, to get the desired protection. Most people just don't care enough about it. Also use them to often, yada yada yada...
- g-b-r 2y ago
  The prevailing wisdom before 2020 was that almost no virus was airborne; and you needed to assume new ones weren't, lest all hell break loose. That's how we got the pandemic.
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atorodius 2y ago

I skimmed the article but did not find my question answered: what's the current view on whether the political and social response was properly done?

01100011 2y ago
Properly done with what the consensus opinion was at the time the decisions were made, or properly done in hindsight and colored with political bias? It's weird to me how quickly folks forgot the depth of our ignorance during the beginning of covid. Do you remember when we all started washing our groceries when we got home because we weren't even sure if covid survived on surfaces? Remember when we were desperate to slow the curve because medical staff were overwhelmed and people were dying from lack of services? Sure, in hindsight we really screwed kids up with lockdowns. We probably kept it all going too far for too long. There was probably politics on both sides and lack of purely rational decisions on both sides.
- the_snooze 2y ago
  >We probably kept it all going too far for too long. That's where I've landed looking back on it. The first month or so of staying home, being overly cautious, and "flattening the curve" made sense given the unknowns. But limiting outdoor gatherings in some contexts but not others (no-go on outdoor parties, but George Floyd protests are fine), keeping kids in Zoom school through 2021, and continued neuroticism even after vaccines were widely available---all that left a sour taste in my mouth.
  - 01100011 2y ago
    Remember when it was forbidden to take off your mask on a plane... unless you were eating? Somehow food killed the virus. There was a lot of stupidity. But I'm also hearing from people who are convinced of a vast conspiracy and believe we knew day one that the lockdowns were a bad idea(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration). But we didn't know. It's tempting to cherry-pick the well reasoned opinions of a minority of experts especially when it backs up your worldview but I'm not having it.

alex1138 2y ago

Here's a good primer https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html https://rumble.com/vt62y6-covid-19-a-second-opinion.html

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alex1138 2y ago

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dullcrisp 2y ago
Science isn’t a proper noun unless you’re talking about the journal.
- alex1138 2y ago
  It's kind of mocking 'The Science' (to which Fauci equated himself) but also just how bastardized discourse has become in relation to it Like yeah, science and censorship is completely natural... right? This shouldn't be politicized
logicchains 2y ago
Science has meant that for over a decade since it started deplatforming any scientist who studied the link between race and intelligence. And before anyone says "why does it matter, only racists would care about that", it matters because some social scientists are claiming that the disparity in outcomes for different races across society is due to society being unfair/biased, but such outcomes would be expected even in a perfectly fair society if the distribution of heritable traits correlated to economic success (e.g. IQ, time preference) was different across different races.
- defrost 2y ago
  Who could possibly doubt The Bellend Curve?
- tptacek 2y ago
  No such deplatforming has happened. Rather, the results have not said what heriditarians hoped they'd say, and it doesn't make any sense for them, rhetorically, to write updates about GWAS studies that complicate or rebut their claims, so they're left citing bizarre claims Richard Lynn made about the relative IQ of different countries.

ricksunny 2y ago

Utter origins propaganda from Jon Cohen, demonstrating his usual biased set of interviewees (only Bloom serves as the fig-leaf exception). To get a quote from Baric unrelated to origins, when that fellow is at the absolute epicenter of FOIA litigation (led by USRighttoKnow) on the topic, is simple journalistic malpractice.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

It's disappointing to see how comments on this topic always center around whether masking worked or not and whether it was a lab leak or not. These just aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. It's like we got in a car crash and instead of taking about how we can be safer drivers we're debating which brand of crutches is best. I wish we'd zoom out a bit and look for some more impactful questions to ask. Questions like: - How many fewer pandemics would we have if we stopped eating mammals? - Does dwindling diversity among wild animals make for greater risk? (Presumably so, because the remaining ones start to look like a monoculture) How can we prioritize the types of conservation work that most effectively mitigate this? - How much more effective could our vaccines be if we equipped people with the genes for CAS9? (Such that our vaccines could be CRISPR targeting RNA). - How much better could our surveillance be if it were more common to sequence samples from sick people? How much cheaper does sequencing need to get before that can happen? Can we achieve that with policy alone or is there engineering work to do?

alex1138 2y ago
Lab leak matters when studying viral transmission (and general characteristics of the virus), especially if it's been enhanced via gain of function research It also matters when the basic doctor-patient relationship is interfered with
- oneshtein 2y ago
  If we look at final report of Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic: COVID-19 ORIGIN: COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The FIVE strongest arguments in favor of the “lab leak” theory include: 1) The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature. Yes. 2) Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events. Yes. 3) Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels. Other biolabs can match this description too. 4) Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market. Covid-like virus is not a Covid-19. 5) By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. Yes. So, yes, it realy looks like a leak from a biolab or a deliberate spreading of the virus in preparation to a war or a trade war.

NicholasGurr 2y ago

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reify 2y ago

I also questioned the vialibily of face masks early on in the the covid scare.. I have grown mushrooms at home for many years and to prevent contamination entering my grain bags and jars, I have to use an extremely fine filters. I use a Microppose Synthetic Filter Discs which have a 99.97% Filtration efficiency down to 0.22μm (microns). The standard face mask is 0.3μm and is 95% efficient at 0.3 microns. This means that the filter media is effective at filtering 95% of airborne particles as long as they are larger than 0.3 microns in diameter. The Coronavirus molecules tend to be about 0.1 microns in diameter Masks do not prevent Coronavirus molecules from passing through the mask, However, Coronavirus molecules do not float freely around in the air and usually travel around as part of fluid droplets that become airborne created by coughing and sneezing. These droplets are supposed to be about 0.5μm so the masks could prevent water droplets from entering the body. I still have my doubts though.

forgetfreeman 2y ago
You might benefit from a more robust understanding of filtration mechanisms and updating your mental model of airborn covid to include the medium in which it's broadcast. Folks aren't outgassing raw virii with no associated droplet material, so your particle size is off. Additionally N95 can absolutely filter particulate well below the rated 0.3 microns, it's just less effective at doing so. Summary: masks absolutely filter airborn covid when rated material is used with correct fitment.
- Izkata 2y ago
  I don't think that matters. We exhale so much moisture that cloth masks are saturated in 10-15 minutes, and after that the air pressure just recreates the droplets as it goes through the mask, spreading it from the outside.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Lol what. You do understand that van der Waals force is a significant driver of filtration at this scale yes? We're not talking about corralling coffee grounds here.

pss314 2y ago

NDTV, one of India's news organizations, reported the article "HMPV Outbreak In China: Symptoms, Spread And What You Should Know" https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/hmpv-outbreak-in-china-symptoms-spread-and-what-you-should-know-7389007 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/hmpv-outbreak-in-china-sympt...

t0bia_s 2y ago

How many politics, that made decisions that cost us billions, are investigated because of this? Do we really have democracy? That means equality under the law for everyone. How many healthy people that died because of covid do you know personally? How many healthy people that that suddenly got cancer or struggle with conception after 2021 you know personally? Why is mortality in wealthy countries still rising? https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps What is an origin of covid virus?