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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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I think we need to walk back a little and manage the expectations as to what "the pandemic is over" means and always meant. It doesn't mean "Covid will go away". It won't. It will never go away. The pandemic is over because it entered into the endemic stage. All the things we did during the pandemic phase of Covid was to save as many people as possible until
A) a vaccine was found (check) and
B) an endemic variant emerged. (Check) an endemic variant is a mutation that's harmless enough so people don't become too sick and spread the bastard around. That's what Omicron is.
Yes, people die of Covid. People die of many pathogens, bow we have one more. But we cannot make it go away. We could mask up, keep distance forever, but that would cost us dearly, if not economically, at least mentally. There will always be Covid deaths from now on and nothing can change that as far as we know. Yet, that was clear from almost day 1 of the pandemic.
Besides: look at who dies of Covid. It's those with weakened immune systems mostly. I want everyone to live as long and as happily as possible, but we need to acknowledge that some are sicker than others and all of us will die. Those who die of Covid are compromised on a way that would have them die from the flu or any number of other pathogens around (for the most part).
Like it or not, that's what the world is like and always has been like. Until we find a way to eradicate viruses, people will die from Covid. End of story.
That's funny, wearing a mask never cost me anything mentally, but I'm not surrounded by Dunning Krueger rednecks who make fun of masks so I got that going for me.
I really don't understand why there's so much hostility towards masks. I've always worn masks when I was sick and it was never a big deal for me. Wearing a mask all the time during 2020-2023 wasn't a bother either.
I don't get it either. I was working in a hospital lab in TX for H1N1 (swine flu) in 2009. The hospital lined up all staff members to get the brand new H1N1 vaccine and you either got it or signed a declination. Declining meant you got a sticker on your badge requiring you to wear a mask for the entire flu season while at work. No fits, no protests, and everyone cooperated. My mind is blown by how toxic the rhetoric became.
You've added an extra 'e' to Kruger
Endemic illnesses get spread around and kill people all the time. Endemic actually just means "statistically naturally occurring within a given population". It shouldn't have been allowed to get to endemic levels, but half of America thought the pandemic wasn't real and didn't wear masks or isolate.
First of all, there is more than the US. So let's not get into US centrism. I'm from Germany and we had issues with those ppl as well. The US alone would not have been able to stop this at all. Secondly, the endemic stage was guaranteed to happen in the very moment Covid left Wuhan province. That was the last time it was stoppable. Given it's incubation time, there was no way we could have caught all infected in time as soon as it left the very distinct borders it first occurred in.
Fucking Boris Johnson thought the UK could get through the pandemic through herd immunity and cost the lives of thousands.
They might die of the flu anyway is a horrific justification. If someone isn't getting vaccinated and masking up they're really just saying they don't care if other people die as long as they don't have to be inconvenienced.
Yet another comment that sounds rational at face value, but is actually insane when considering the high rates of long covid and how much about it is unknown.
The most dangerous thing when COVID emerged was it's novelty. Since no one's immune system had seen anything like it before, it had free reign to do widespread damage to it's victims often without any immune response and spread like wildfire.
Most of the planet is has either caught COVID, been immunized, or both at this point. Even though the variant changes it's not a completely novel disease. As such the damage it can do is limited.
At this point enacting controls other than immunization will be counterproductive. Remember that any control you place on a pathogen is a selection pressure for it to evolve to overcome it. So masks, distancing etc. that we half-assed at the heat of the pandemic will make the pathogen evolve to overcome them.
The best and most effective control is immunization. We need to hold the other controls in reserve for if/when that fails.
The idea that we should just let immunocompromised people die is horrific and disgusting holy shit.
Justifying it based on “that’s what the world is and always will be like” is just as shitty, because it is essentially saying “I don’t think we should strive to change this because of the fact it happened in the past, and it is still happening now when we haven’t done much to change it.”
Source on it being endemic? Because I don't think WHO or CDC declared it endemic. It's expected to become endemic -- that's pretty much common sense -- but the only thing that's happened is the rescinding of public health emergencies, which is not the same as the pandemic being over or it becoming endemic.
The WHO ended it's public health emergency of international concern in 2023.
"Endemic" means that we can predict infection rates. This can happen one year after it has become stable at the earliest, so the fact that it's not called "endemic" yet isn't because we have have left emergency territory, it's because we need at least one year's worth of "stable" data to call it endemic.
So authorities declaring something to be endemic isnt exactly the same as a pandemic being over. They declared the latter, will declare the former with enough data.
So how many new viruses does it take before we panic? What if every five years a new world changing virus like Covid comes out? What if we all get sick so often our bodies can no longer supply enough Tcells? Compare this to tech. Would you surf the Internet without a firewall?
Not comparable, not how viruses work.
We actually saw COVID coming (researchers and scientists did at least, there are been papers and documentary about it even), but there's a very low chance we'd get yet another pandemic so soon
It was already predicted? How can something like that be done?
How can someone predict a rapidly mutating virus will appear in new forms?
Is that a serious question? The common cold? SARS? MERS?
That's like asking how I can predict a new Star Wars show or movie will come out in the future.
Might not. But probably will.
Lets start again, the OP said that they (Scientists) saw a pandemic coming, and then says how the chance of another pandemic is very low, so I was asking how it can be said whether a new pandemic is coming or not, is there some sort of timeframe they follow?
(I am not presenting this as an argument, it’s a genuine question, I feel like I need to make this clear)
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/pandemics-epidemics-disease-covid-likelyhood/
Despite the link, it's just statistical averages regarding frequency. And my understanding is, partially due to climate change and partially due to a more globalized world, pandemics will increase in frequency.
Even if we got one again... Is a life dictated by fear of the next mean thing worth living?
How dare you! If you don't panic right this instant people will die and it will be your fault.
Oh... Ah ... Sorry, I didn't know that. So....
AAÄAAAAAAH JUDGEMENT DAY IS UPON US!
Is that better?
Thank you
Don't worry, I understood that you weren't being serious.
Yeah each and every Covid death is a tragedy but how many people committed suicide during lockdown? How much did our society and culture suffer from shutting everything down except the bare essentials? How many people went broke because they couldn't work from home?
I think the lockdown was worth it back in 2020-2021. But at some point you just need to accept that people are going to die no matter what, and there's nothing we can do to eradicate Covid forever.