“And the reality I get reading these posts is this:
1. Covid is a nasty, easily spread disease to be avoided as much as possible.
2. The vaccines don’t seem to be very effective. Perhaps they help a bit, but are way oversold.
3. Avoiding exposure is still the best preventative.”
Three solid observations.
The vaccines were carefully designed to counter a virus that no longer exists. It was mutated out of existence. I suspect that the 1000s of people that worked on those didn’t go to work each day with the intention of killing millions. And I suspect the vaccines were effective against the original virus for what turned out to be only weeks or months, but not really very long.
I’m pretty confident the 1000s that worked on AstraZeneca/Oxford were the same sort of folks. They didn’t go to work each day with the intention of killing millions. And ditto the Russians who worked on Sputnik V, or the India people working on ZyCoV-D. I just don’t see all those people growing up and looking in the mirror each day to say to themselves — okay, I’m off to work to kill another few million.
I have posted elsewhere, NYC has had zero excess deaths since Spring of 2020. Their Covid deaths simply stopped after about May 2020.
Their great secret? People shut themselves down. Office buildings have 30% occupancy and that is generating all sorts of bankruptcies, held off only via stimulus. If you’re not sitting in an office breathing virus all day, you don’t die. Ditto the subway. Work from home folks adhere to your point #3. Get away from people and stay away.
Of course, many businesses cannot survive this. There is no answer to this. None.
“Their great secret? People shut themselves down. Office buildings have 30% occupancy and that is generating all sorts of bankruptcies,”
Yes, but as you observe that cure may be worse than the disease.
“Of course, many businesses cannot survive this. There is no answer to this. None.”
Perhaps the best solution, actually the only solution, is to let it run its course with the least possible damage and continue fighting it with whatever we have at our disposal, without making things worse.
What I find deliciously ironic, in a somewhat sick way, is that this infinitesimally tiny, “organism” that’s not even considered a “life form” is beating the smartest, most vaunted life form in the world - us humans.