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[Pwnzerfaust]

Actually, I was ready last summer already, when it was lifted the first time. If not for the restoration of mandates, I wouldn't have worn it even during the Omicron spike. Because I'm vaccinated, and boosted, and I don't believe the minor risk of what would be no worse than a cold or flu is worth the inconvenience.

[ChairmanPoo]

If the health officials say it's good enough, then it's good enough for me.

...though you sound like someone who didn't think that it was good enough for you when the health officials were saying otherwise.

What you have is not a pure health assessment, but what happens when the health assessment is no longer strong enough to overcome the populist opinion. I'll bet ya that the true opinion of the advisors, behind meeting room doors, is that it would be generally better to continue, but they're under pressure to compromise this opinion because less informed opinions want 'normality'.

Which means the recovery curve will stay plateaued (or even blip upwards a bit) compared to how it could have been if everyone could give it another month or so of (frankly) trivial caution.

So little inconvenience, for most people, but it seems to be a hill they want to die on (hopefully not literally, but it still might be for some) just for bravado purposes.

Like I said, I won't tell you what to do, but I think you're overly eager to fricassee your facemask.

It's really not worth your time to argue with denialists. Specially with western goverments going into pandemic denial as well, despite wave #6 being deadlier than #5. Look after yourself and your family because that's the best we can do anywhere outside East Asia

[Robot Parade Leader]

The only people I know who really understand this whole covid mess basically say we botched it. The doctors, nurses, lawyers, healthcare administrators, and lab techs dealing with this are all just kinda burnt out. We could've gotten rid of this like we did with smallpox and polio. We're kinda screwed now. It's not going anywhere and will probably mutate to different variants too, again.

From what I can tell, it's all out of context. Yes, the little surgical masks were never really good enough, because we really needed everyone in N95 masks for a few months. Still better than nothing but not good enough. Somehow getting people good masks wasn't going to happen, even though we could've reorganized things and America is allegedly the best economic production country. Couldn't get the good  masks though, because whoever somehow plans what gets made (a person, or "the market," or whatever) wasn't going to really do that. There shouldn't have been any shortage of good masks. You'd think "supply and demand" or whatever would've led to production of actual filter masks or something. I thought we were supposed to be able to make/buy things. Nope.

I know one person I trust who had a plan to fix this at the beginning but she said they'd never do it because of politics.  It would've been a pretty ok plan. Making tons of actually good masks to boost the economy and fight covid and then mass producing the vaccine when we came up with it.... Taking cruise ships they were scrapping (because that industry was hit hard) and making them into hospital ships. It was surprisingly detailed. But she was right too many people wouldn't play ball.  You can't tell them anything or some of them will get mad enough to hurt you. Or in the case of a bunch of truck drivers, protest in Canada's capital by blocking everything off with semi trucks. It's just kind of a shit show. I know enough to know I'm not brilliant. I don't know what else to call it.

I feel like I'm the only one still wearing a mask around me. I have N95 ones. Vaxxed. Boosted, until we need another of those. All I can say is I'm really grateful all this pushback wasn't around when they were vaccinating against polio and stuff. There's no point arguing with people about asymptomatic spread or how a "mild" case just means you don't go to the hospital but someone else might die from it still. I have no idea anymore. "Common sense" was supposed to be better than this. Nothing makes sense.

[Pwnzerfaust]

If the health officials say it's good enough, then it's good enough for me.

...though you sound like someone who didn't think that it was good enough for you when the health officials were saying otherwise.

What you have is not a pure health assessment, but what happens when the health assessment is no longer strong enough to overcome the populist opinion. I'll bet ya that the true opinion of the advisors, behind meeting room doors, is that it would be generally better to continue, but they're under pressure to compromise this opinion because less informed opinions want 'normality'.

Which means the recovery curve will stay plateaued (or even blip upwards a bit) compared to how it could have been if everyone could give it another month or so of (frankly) trivial caution.

So little inconvenience, for most people, but it seems to be a hill they want to die on (hopefully not literally, but it still might be for some) just for bravado purposes.

Like I said, I won't tell you what to do, but I think you're overly eager to fricassee your facemask.

It's really not worth your time to argue with denialists. Specially with western goverments going into pandemic denial as well, despite wave #6 being deadlier than #5. Look after yourself and your family because that's the best we can do anywhere outside East Asia

Not a denialist, a realist - a realist that this is an endemic now, and that vaccines are widely available, and that there's no point in maintaining the safety theater anymore.

[Robot Parade Leader]

All I'm gonna say is:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/forecasting/forecasting-us.html

"predicts that the number of newly reported COVID-19 deaths will remain stable or have an uncertain trend over the next 4 weeks, with 5,800 to 21,700 new deaths likely reported in the week ending March 5, 2022. The national ensemble predicts that a total of 942,000 to 978,000 COVID-19 deaths will be reported by this date."

https://covidusa.net/
Feb 9, 2022: 77,139,262 Cases. 910,205 Deaths. 48,584,797

I don't know; just stay as safe as you can everyone.

[Pwnzerfaust]

Everything in life is a tradeoff, and I believe that the tradeoff I'm making is the correct one for me. I'm glad my state is going to be allowing me to make that tradeoff.

[heydude6]

The only people I know who really understand this whole covid mess basically say we botched it. The doctors, nurses, lawyers, healthcare administrators, and lab techs dealing with this are all just kinda burnt out. We could've gotten rid of this like we did with smallpox and polio. We're kinda screwed now. It's not going anywhere and will probably mutate to different variants too, again.

From what I can tell, it's all out of context. Yes, the little surgical masks were never really good enough, because we really needed everyone in N95 masks for a few months. Still better than nothing but not good enough. Somehow getting people good masks wasn't going to happen, even though we could've reorganized things and America is allegedly the best economic production country. Couldn't get the good  masks though, because whoever somehow plans what gets made (a person, or "the market," or whatever) wasn't going to really do that. There shouldn't have been any shortage of good masks. You'd think "supply and demand" or whatever would've led to production of actual filter masks or something. I thought we were supposed to be able to make/buy things. Nope.

I know one person I trust who had a plan to fix this at the beginning but she said they'd never do it because of politics.  It would've been a pretty ok plan. Making tons of actually good masks to boost the economy and fight covid and then mass producing the vaccine when we came up with it.... Taking cruise ships they were scrapping (because that industry was hit hard) and making them into hospital ships. It was surprisingly detailed. But she was right too many people wouldn't play ball.  You can't tell them anything or some of them will get mad enough to hurt you. Or in the case of a bunch of truck drivers, protest in Canada's capital by blocking everything off with semi trucks. It's just kind of a shit show. I know enough to know I'm not brilliant. I don't know what else to call it.

I feel like I'm the only one still wearing a mask around me. I have N95 ones. Vaxxed. Boosted, until we need another of those. All I can say is I'm really grateful all this pushback wasn't around when they were vaccinating against polio and stuff. There's no point arguing with people about asymptomatic spread or how a "mild" case just means you don't go to the hospital but someone else might die from it still. I have no idea anymore. "Common sense" was supposed to be better than this. Nothing makes sense.

Yup, we've lost. And the worst part is that you can't even blame it on big corporations* deliberately spreading misinformation like you could with climate change. Sure, there were many little corporations who profiteered off of the crisis: clickbaity news outlets, cloth-mask manufacturers, and snake-oil salesmen, but these were not organized attempts to bring down society. Most of the fault unfortunately goes to human stupidity, and I'm not just talking about the anti-vaxxers (take note politicians).

There is no end-game anymore. If we gave them another year of lockdowns, we still wouldn't be any closer to re-opening society than we are now. That's why people are giving up.

Thanks for sharing your piece Robot Parade, it was about time someone said it.

*The vaccine manufacturers made some profit I guess, but the only thing I really blame them for is hoarding their IP and refusing to work with other pharma companies to maximize vaccine output. Refusing to give third-world countries their shots is what lead to things like delta.

[ChairmanPoo]

The antivaxxers are a nuisance, but not the major problem for this mess. It was lack of political will all along.


By the way, I dont believe it's too late by any means. But I don't believe there's any political will to sort it out. The West's plan is to plod through until between repeated reinfections and boosters (and don't believe for a minute that the 3rd shot was the final one*) the population has enough, not herd immunity per se, but enough background immunity to avoid the worst of it. With far more people dead or with sequelae than if we had done the sane thing. But thats what people want apparently.


* my prediction is that the omicron specific shots will start to be rolled out probably around easter. If goverments get particularily stingy it might be delayed to September or so. But barring fuckups probably no later.

[hector13]

I guess we better lock up everyone at risk of Covid because some people cannot handle even the most minor of inconveniences.

I mean, hey, the politicians rescinding restrictions have given them a choice back haven’t they? Stay at home or risk their life going about their daily business, like earning money or buying groceries or seeing a doctor.

It never ceases to surprise the levels of selfishness the human race can descend to, that the loss of a dollar is somehow more important than the loss of a life.

Some days I wish I was a psychopath.

[Pwnzerfaust]

People at risk of disease have always had to take extra precautions to make sure they aren't infected. The immunocompromised, those especially at risk of disease, whatever. Before COVID, it was understood and expected that the world was not going to cater to the tiny minority of those who are at heightened risk. Instead, it was up to those individuals to make the appropriate choices to keep themselves safe. I do not see why it should be any different now.

[Rolan7]

I don't like your avatar/PersonalText as much right now.

[wierd]

I guess we better lock up everyone at risk of Covid because some people cannot handle even the most minor of inconveniences.

I mean, hey, the politicians rescinding restrictions have given them a choice back haven’t they? Stay at home or risk their life going about their daily business, like earning money or buying groceries or seeing a doctor.

It never ceases to surprise the levels of selfishness the human race can descend to, that the loss of a dollar is somehow more important than the loss of a life.

Some days I wish I was a psychopath.

That's the rub:

The social machinery is predicated on putting human-grease into the cogs, or it grinds to a halt.  Doing that during a pandemic with a deadly disease quickly renders the population unfit for later work, but slowing or halting the rate of greasing the wheels makes the "Runs at "Maximum Efficiency!" (aka, no margin for change!) machinery of society break down, and shit gets real in different ways.

This is a realworld critique of running at Just-In-Time timetables, "Maximally Efficient Markets", and other fantasies concocted by economists to extract maximum value with minimum investment, and then public policy predicated on the continuance of that practice.

Some degree of inefficiency is good.  Situations like this global pandemic are illustrative of that.


Poo is correct, this is about lack of governmental will to govern during a time of crisis, and actually make hard decisions, and instead "Just allowing it to come apart, because governance is hard(tm)"

Proper governance would have kept failsafe margins for governmental and economic shutdowns, would have not tried to derail attempts to keep the economy on life support, would be open to, and ready for, changes in societal dynamics that change the status quo (like the great resignation is causing)-- etc.

It does that through retaining inefficiency of this type-- Regulation that prevents that kind of "Just in time" bullshit, and which prioritizes long term survival and fitness of the nation and public health, over short term quarterlies and anxious investors that dont give a fuck about tomorrow, excepting for when they get paid.

China is about the only fucking country with that mindset right now, and YES-- They fucking DID barricade people into their houses to MAKE them quarantine, because YES, people were NOT voluntarily isolating when they needed to.


I concur that Covid is now endemic--- It is that way, because world govts were too anxious to pull the hard shutdowns needed to halt its global spread early on, because "Economic consequences!!" (because no fault tolerance in the "Efficient!!" system)


There isn't a good solution for covid now.  Just one where more than 2/3 of the population suffers systemic illnesses related to post-covid syndrome. (and yes, that *IS* a thing.)


Hope those quarterly reports were fucking worth it. 

Hope those parties were worth it.

Hope the gaslighting was worth it.

[Pwnzerfaust]

Yes, it was inevitable that it was going to be endemic as soon as the response for it was botched. And now it's time to just accept it and move on with our lives. Can't turn back the clock, can't put the genie back in the bottle, can't put the horse back in the paddock after it's bolted, etc. etc.

[Rolan7]

Yes, it was inevitable that it was going to be endemic as soon as the response for it was botched. And now it's time to just accept it and move on with our lives. Can't turn back the clock, can't put the genie back in the bottle, can't put the horse back in the paddock after it's bolted, etc. etc.

You make a solid point.

However, we have "eliminated" various other viruses through worldwide efforts.  Flu-style diseases have proved resistant, but Covid wasn't the flu.

Once again, I resent everyone who fought against the initial vaccine rollout.  They were lied to.  I hate, deeply hate, the people who capitalized on the virus to boost themselves.  Those people ruined everything out of greed.

And sure, I still blame capitalist greed at the end of the day.  But some people knew exactly what they were doing.  There's survival, and then there's greed.

[Pwnzerfaust]

Yes, it was inevitable that it was going to be endemic as soon as the response for it was botched. And now it's time to just accept it and move on with our lives. Can't turn back the clock, can't put the genie back in the bottle, can't put the horse back in the paddock after it's bolted, etc. etc.

You make a solid point.

However, we have "eliminated" various other viruses through worldwide efforts.  Flu-style diseases have proved resistant, but Covid wasn't the flu.

You're right, it wasn't the flu - it was worse. It was more transmissible, had a longer asymptomatic incubation period, and seems to be quite readily mutable. As soon as it escaped the initial lockdowns and got into the wider world, endemic status became inevitable, sooner or later. It's following the same course as the 1918 flu pandemic - initial deadly strain followed by "mellowing out" and fading into the background with the other endemic viruses we as a species live with.