this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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I think a lot of people were waiting to see the results of the election. And COVID is still very real - immunocompromised people (e.g. elderly) will need to start taking vaccines twice rather than once per year due to recent mutations (except... hrm, I dunno if RFK will "allow* such, but at least that was the most recent guidance), plus everyone could get long COVID every time they get it despite the vaccine.
The pandemic changed our world, and it's nowhere close to being over.
Also, inflation, so less disposable income to "go out" with.
There's no "over". Coronavirus is here to stay now, just like the flu. Thankfully it has become a lot more benign as it has mutated, and we know a lot more about it and have vaccines now, so it's pretty manageable.
It's not benign. Long covid can be and often is permanent. You get that shit, and everything you care about in your life is now a distant second place.
What you're calling "benign" is everybody consciously choosing to ignore it, and act like anyone smart enough not to is somehow weird and wrong.
I hope we continue to manufacture vaccines in the future, rather than e.g. outlaw them. I wonder what would happen if government research into which strains are most prominent (needed to make the vaccines every year/season) were to be halted? Private companies may have to pick up the slack, like maybe you'll get your choice of a Google vs. Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Facebook vaccine? Maybe, if every accusation really is a confession, this time there really will be trackers embedded in them?
I say all that to emphasize that what "we" (all) know is in flux - e.g. if you were to ask RFK what he knows vs. the common man on the street vs. a scientist - and what will happen is heavily dependent upon the current status quo remaining in place. Which seems unlikely.
But maybe RFK will say something to anger Trump and be gone in a week or two, like so many before him. Who knows?
It’s benign in the sense of fatalities, but the lingering health issues from it seem more and more common now. I even know someone who is dealing with long term health symptoms that began right after dose 2 of the vaccine (I’m not an antivaxxer but this correlation is hard for them to ignore as they face their daily struggle to be the person they were before).
By 'the flu', do you mean that virus where one entire strain was eradicated by masking and distancing over the winter?
THAT flu? The one with the strain that died out after trivial effort? Do you want to use it as an example of some perennial curse, or are you saying that we can eradicate covid again with similarly trivial effort?
It's pretty clear that they meant "a constant factor in our daily lives", you really don't need to be this hostile.
I think their point is that, with effort, it can be become a thing of the past.
However, so many are unwilling to put forth the effort because it's either too inconvenient or they've been brainwashed into believing it's a hoax.
Maybe people who lived in red states developed this notion that no one put in the effort but where I live we certainly did on a large scale and it did not eliminate the virus. Other cultures who already had a healthy practice of masking when sick still got hit with COVID. This notion that we could have eliminated it if people had just put in a tiny effort… I don’t know where y’all are getting that from.
I think we could eliminate it if literally everyone put in a fairly minor effort - getting vaccinated, masking, washing hands, avoiding gatherings for a while.
Even in countries where the culture is to wear a mask when you are sick I guarantee significant minority selfishly ignores those practices - more than enough to spoil it for everyone else.
Also, masking helps lessen but doesn't prevent the spread in all cases. Many of the cultures that mask when sick do so because they are going to work or are out and about while sick. The more time you spend with someone, the higher the chances of transmission even if you are both masking.
If we could get 100% of people to do anything then the world would be a utopia tomorrow. Spoiler: that isn’t going to happen.
To keep it on point here, /u/Anticorp got yelled at above for saying that COVID is here to stay, as if this is some apathetic, defeated attitude.
I would posit that any hopes and dreams predicated on getting literally everyone to do literally anything are laughably naive and not even worth discussing.
Why are you hooting as if we’ve eliminated the flu? Strains come and go. The flu is very much here to stay and continues to kill people every year. We also masked and distanced for a very long time and didn’t eliminate COVID. I am struggling so hard to see what your point could possibly be other than to take a shrill tone with this person for having the audacity to face reality.