Regardless of where people stand on how the virus originated, the point is to treat it like the wartime threat that it is instead of some inconvenience to shake off. This is not going to be over in one sitting. “Yay vaccine shots done and bam! Back to normal!”
There needs to be a way that people figure out how to adjust to the long term reality of Covid while not shutting everything down. I personally believe masks, temperature checks in closed quarters, distancing, are part of the conversation. But not stupidly so. Which is what has been the case this entire run, especially in our country.
In parts of Asia, people where masks regardless because of pollution and go about their daily lives and their economies are thriving. Their public spaces are immaculate with or without a pandemic. Our cities operate like little more than pig sties by comparison.
Among the worst aspects of all this is the resistance in the part of NIH/CDC to advocate for adequate but less than perfect TREATMENTS for COVID.
“This is not going to be over in one sitting. “Yay vaccine shots done and bam! Back to normal!”…
I personally believe masks, temperature checks in closed quarters, distancing, are part of the conversation….”
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Well, for my family we’ ARE back to normal. Every one of my family has immunity either from vaccination or naturally from having had COVID-19. Any additional exposure to the virus merely strengthens our existing immunity.
Your “conversation” can include masks, temperature checks and distancing but please don’t subject us to them or require us to do them.
Hopefully you live in a Democrat controlled area, so that your expectations for masking, social distancing, closed businesses, remote schooling, etc. can easily be met and you can feel virtuous.
Where I live, we are going about our lives now.
How are masks part of the conversation? They don’t help and they are harmful to users, that’s a fact not opinion. As to the rest, the whole point of it all was to get people to take shots. It’s time people woke up to what is really happening.
I think when we eventually get enough people vaccinated (or recovered from infection), we'll see a dramatic drop in activity levels. What we've seen so far is that even though vaccination is less effective against the Delta (India) variant for infection, it's still extremely effective at preventing hospitalization and death. Not perfect, but extremely effective. 99.2% of COVID-19 deaths in June in the US were among unvaccinated people despite the fact that 89% of Americans over 65 have had one vaccine dose and 79% are fully vaccinated. Over 90% of the people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Iowa are unvaccinated. And that's seen elsewhere as well. If/when more people are vaccinated, Delta won't matter.
"There needs to be a way that people figure out how to adjust to the long term reality of Covid while not shutting everything down."
I agree there. I've been against the shutdowns and lockdowns from the start. I think that if a new variant were to emerge that caused more hospitalizations and deaths among those vaccinated or recovered from previous COVID-19 infection, we should have rules ready to help businesses operate safely. A lot of the groundwork for that was laid last fall and winter. Businesses were open, but they did business differently. I think that's a good approach.
But I don't think there needs to be any change right now. Delta isn't doing anything special to those who are vaccinated besides getting a few more people to show up positive on a PCR test. They aren't being hospitalized more or dying more. And vaccines are readily available to everyone with significant risk for hospitalization and death. If people want to choose not to get vaccinated, that's fine. They've made their choice. And those who are hospitalized or die suffer the consequences of their choices. Keep businesses open and operating as usual unless the business themselves want to make their own changes.
"In parts of Asia, people where masks regardless because of pollution and go about their daily lives and their economies are thriving. Their public spaces are immaculate with or without a pandemic. Our cities operate like little more than pig sties by comparison."
I don't disagree that more attention to sanitation can do wonders for public health. And I most certainly agree that cities are filthy and disgusting. That's exactly why I avoid cities as much as possible; pandemic or not. I've heard some people talking about masking up for cold and flu season. I don't think that's a terrible idea, so long as it's voluntary. Certainly we crushed cold and flu season this past year.
"Among the worst aspects of all this is the resistance in the part of NIH/CDC to advocate for adequate but less than perfect TREATMENTS for COVID."
I would like to see increased availability and use of monoclonal antibody therapy as it's been demonstrated time and time again to be an effective tool to treat those with serious COVID-19 infection. For things like Ivermectin/HCQ/etc. there just isn't much evidence for them, but I would be happy to see larger, higher quality clinical trials to see if they can be useful in some fashion.
But based on the evidence available so far, I believe the most lives would be saved by getting everyone 13 and over vaccinated and providing monoclonal antibody therapy immediately to anyone with symptomatic COVID-19. If that happened tomorrow, I would bet my family home that deaths would drop to near-zero for COVID-19.
“Our cities operate like little more than pig sties by comparison.”
IIRC for the mass transit in NYC (subways, buses, etc.) they responded to Covid by increasing their cleaning schedule to once a week for each vehicle!
40 years ago I was in Amsterdam and coming in at 3 am. The streets and squares were filthy with litter and sleeping/drunk people laying around. I was out at 5:30am to catch a flight.
Everything was sparkling clean and the wet surfaces from their wash were gleaming as the sun came up. It sort of freaked me out - like something out of the movie Soylent Green!