TupamarosShakur

The advice to wear cloth masks early on in the pandemic was based on a soon to be outdated understanding of how Covid and other respiratory diseases spread. Most health authorities have still not fully caught up, wallowing in outdated science based on a misunderstanding of research describing the spread of tuberculosis.

Of course there is also the propaganda push to not accept the most recent science because no one wants to deal with Covid. Surgical and cloth masks are “better than nothing,” but it has become clear that the advice to wear those two types specifically early in the pandemic could never have combatted Covid to any effective degree.

Supposedly it’s actually down from 2019 so they’re hoping it’s just rebounding back to normal levels ”post-pandemic.” Which again shows how useful masks are at stopping all respiratory infectious disease, not just Covid. But I guess most of us would rather live with Victorian era diseases than be slightly inconvenienced in the interest of eradicating them.

Did you see this outcome coming?

Yes. Since the beginning the push was to not close down because "the economy." A better historian of the pandemic might've saved the numerous videos in early 2020 of various think tank ghouls going on live TV to suggest (paraphrased) "the amount of people we'll save is not worth it to shut down the economy." Spring 2020 I expressed to my sister the fear that Trump was going to stop testing because less tests=less covid. It was later that year he actually suggested it, and then of course this is what has actually happened throughout the Biden years.

Was there a tipping point?

I saw the current "just ignore covid and act like everything's normal" state of affairs coming from the start, but I think the biggest moment this became clear was when vaccines were announced. Like Spring or Summer 2020 my mom says "did you hear, they're aiming to have vaccines by the end of the year" and my heart just dropped. It was clear at that moment that how we were going to "get out" of the pandemic was a vaccine-only response. We'd hold together some semblance of covid restrictions until the vaccines were available, then we'd gradually remove any and all protections. And that's exactly what happened.

Did your views evolve over time? Or diverge in specific ways?

Yeah late 2019/early 2020 I really didn't care about covid. I thought the fears about covid were just anti-China propaganda (and in my defense a lot of the early reporting on Covid did amount to anti-China propaganda). My dad, and to a lesser extent my mom, was actually the ones who cared about covid first. That first week in March when we shut down I actually went to hang out maskless at my friend's place (of course we were still being told not to wear masks so of course I was maskless). I think later that week is when I had the sudden realization that oh shit this is a pandemic that's overloading our health care system, and that Covid was a big deal.

2020 was actually probably the time I felt best because most people around me also cared to some extent. Some people cared more than others, but it all sort of evened out to an okay equilibrium of my community as a whole caring about covid. However as everyone has decided Covid no longer matters, I've had to correct in the opposite direction, becoming more cautious and more restrictive wrt what I do. If other people aren't going to take care of the community, then I need to pick up the slack to take care of myself.

the dude quoting 1984 under the CDC director barely mentioning masks satire is dead

yeah they need to change it already. If not for Omicron, then for BA.2.86. Also I should've acknowledged people have been trying to bring back the cooler names, like calling BA.2.86/JN.1 "Pirola," I just feel like it hasn't caught on as much. Maybe because normal people just don't care about covid anymore, so anyone still talking about covid is a scientist/has dug into the science, and using the pango terminology is just more specific

Omicron was so dominant that it pretty much outcompeted all other variants like delta and gamma and stuff. At this point nearly all variants existing are descendants of omicron in one way or another.

Yes, the workers are wrong. This is a better way to do it. Unfortunately, many waiters really do come out ahead with tipping, especially those working at higher end restaurants, conventionally attractive by euro standards, or just really good people skills, so they argue tipping is good actually. It benefits some individually, but collectively a lot do not end up with more money this way. It’s part of the whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps ideology - yes you theoretically could do better with tipping, but how many do, compared with the many who don’t? But of course restaurantbusinessonline would prefer business owners still be paying less than minimum wage, so they find those workers whose interests for whatever reason line up with theirs.

Yeah, is it possible our let it rip strategy just killed off the most vulnerable people in the US, whereas Australia and Canada had more protections in place (not sure about Canada but I know Australia did at least in the first year - also I can't imagine Canada had less protections than the US) that now that they've moved closer to the US "let it rip" strategy they're seeing more deaths, whereas we just decided to go let it rip from the start pretty much?

Also I was reading yesterday that there's no standardized way to categorize leading causes of death. Maybe this has something to do with it? Not sure how U.S. statistics compare with Australian and Canadian statistics in that regard though so maybe not.

I am interested to see what happens to the other leading causes of death, since covid can make them all worse.

This is definitely what's being ignored in the data, even for Canada. Heart diseases are in the top two leading causes of death for all Australia, Canada and the U.S. We know Covid can cause heart disease, and the risk remains high for months after an infection. I don't believe there's really any way to prove Covid caused heart disease in terms of biomarkers or anything, but that possibility that not only is covid one of the top leading causes of death, but also it's contributing to many of the other leading causes of death seems to be ignored by all the data, unsurprisingly.

Yeah I ended up finding the statistics last night. it's interesting the US has seen the exact opposite trend as Canada, with life expectancy going up and Covid moving from the third to fourth leading cause of death.

edit: Life expectancy: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr031.pdf

Leading causes of death: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm

One of the common refrains from 2020 that I remember is "case numbers don't matter, you have to look at death rate." Well, now that death rate has gone up, do you think any action will be taken by those who were so concerned with the death rate back then?

Anyway, this is interesting. Do you know if there are any numbers out yet for the USA? I can only find 2021 numbers.

With this it’s not even virus x though, it’s viruses we’ve previously had under control, but our entire population has decided that nah, we’d rather resurrect Victorian-era diseases

Cardi B continues to be cool