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New Covid wave has begun and masks should be worn again, scientists warn
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Unless the strain is killing a sizable amount of people getting it it'll be hard to get people to wear masks en masse again.
Even if it kills (which it likely will), our track record shows that didn't care enough about that, and in a decreasing manner. So it'll only be worse.
Pretty sure every virus has killed people, from the cold, to flu, and of course covid. It feels like now the death rate for the latest variants of covid are pretty comparable to the flu, the virus has lost a lot of its killing power over time.
That's the same shit that businesses were pushing last time because they didn't want to close for a few months, ended up making everything worse.
Yup. More effective action faster would have had a higher same-day-you-make-the-decision cost but would have been tremendously less harmful economically to all the entities blocking it for fear of the economic impact to them. They were digging a mass grave and then leaping into it.
I know I am a bit biased here because I didn't get sick and didn't really try that hard to avoid it either. I only wore a mask when I had to, I went to bars with friends, really didn't take any extra precautions, and I washed my hands normally. If I got covid I didn't notice it.
Personally I would hate if we went into lockdown again, but again, I didn't get sick, the worst I felt was when I got the vaccine.
I’ve you’ve been vaxxed, or had a previous infection, or get some paxlovid… yes. If not, no, not really any better. It hasn’t gotten weaker.
Do you have any studies or research to suggest covid hasn't gotten weaker?
Unfortunately, the myth that virii become weaker over time is a long standing misconception, and the anti-vax people pushed it because it fit their narrative.
These articles discuss it with immunologists & doctors & geneticists, though, so it seems that it’s a known truth and so, like gravity, isn’t extensively studied. Instead, they’re focusing on actual prevention via better vaccines and personal behavior/responsibility.
Hope this helps!
Https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/14/1072504127/fact-check-the-theory-that-sars-cov-2-is-becoming-milder
https://abc7ny.com/covid-update-pandemic-do-viruses-get-weaker-as-they-evolve-omicron-variant/11463220/
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-not-mutating-to-be-weaker-over-time-genetics-2020-7
https://en.as.com/en/2022/02/07/latest_news/1644263846_400285.html (note that this site is a Spanish-language sports site, but it was nice to find this there)
Thanks for the links!
To summarize the NPR one, and correct me if I am wrong, but they are confirming that the current variants are weaker, but that we shouldn't take that to mean the next variants will follow the same trend?
Kind of. It’s not that it’s weaker, it’s that it’s route into cells is less damaging, and so it’s less “severe” , though the article contradicts itself on that particular word.
FTA: “ this alternative entryway likely causes less damage inside the lungs”
"Omicron may be a small step back in severity. But it's probably more severe on its own than the original version of the virus,"
Before omicron came along, SARS-CoV-2 was actually evolving to be more severe, says Bhattacharyya, of Harvard Medical School. "We're looking at a virus that's gotten progressively more severe over time," he says.
Viruses tend to mutate to be more contagious and less lethal, it's just how natural selection/evolution works. The strains most likely to survive will be the ones that don't kill their hosts before they can do so.
That’s false. Show me your research.
Alright, here you go.
Death rates aren't a feeling. I want some hard numbers.
I feel like we just don't care if we live or die anymore.
I know I've read reports about the latest variants being much less deadly. I did see one study recently which for patients presenting to hospital covid was a few percentage points more likely to result in death compared to hospitalized flu patients. There were a lot more covid patients though.
Found it:
So there is some data backing up the feelings I've gotten from everything I've been hearing and seeing.
So that's almost twice as bad as the flu.
I mean, that's one way to look at it. I looked at it as only a couple percent higher death rate than the flu. Either way, a little less than 2x is way better than like 5x worse.
Obviously it's better than before, but it's also worth keeping in mind these deaths are in addition to the flu.
Also, there are good and bad flu seasons. I see no reason for COVID to not be the same.
There’s one crucial thing you overlooked in this: in 2020, most people hadn’t been infected, and hadn’t gotten the vaccine (because there was no vaccine until December,and even then it was in extremely short supply). Now, most people have some sort of immunity, be it from vaccine or from a prior infection. That definitely skews the hospitalization numbers downward. You can’t compare then and now, unfortunately, since there’s no real community that hasn’t been vaccinated and hasn’t caught it - and so you can’t compare their numbers.
That's fair, but I think you can still compare it to the flu, which is not that far off from covid percentage wise. At this point both the flu and covid should be at an equal level of people having vaccines and natural antibodies, right? Even if you go with covid being about twice as deadly as the flu, twice as deadly as almost nothing is still almost nothing.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans will die this year from COVID. Sure, almost nothing. Just a 9/11 every two weeks or so.
Thousands die every day from tons of other stuff also, just a part of life.
Wow... ghoul, much?
I call it reality.
And that's the problem.
That reality is reality? People die of lots of different things, I'm sorry I'm that's news to you.
It's the problem that people like you let this be reality. That we just dismiss millions of preventable deaths as mere statistics rather than doing simple and easy things like wearing masks during pandemics.
I wore one when I was required to and didn't wear one when I wasn't, so sorry for following the rules?
I’m sure “almost nothing” is quite comforting for the families of the 1.1 million Americans who died.
I'm sorry, but people die of lots of different things all the time, it sucks but it's a part of life
The issue is that it happens out of sight out of mind so it's just an abstract statistic that it's easy to ignore or pretend away. If Covid-19 killed you by making your head spontaneously fall off we'd have eliminated it or reduced it to a few tiny isolated pockets simply by the change in the public's attitude to it. But because it kills you "quietly" out of sight in a hospital bed or at home, people were able to just convince themselves everything is basically normal.
The time when people wore masks en masse must be something that I'm too American and lung-scarred to remember
Due to a history of smoking and multiple bouts of pneumonia I was already fairly sure that my "dying of old age" (which noone truly does) would consist of drowning on fluids from my own damaged lungs one day. Then the drowning on fluids from your own damaged lungs plague came and people decided they'd rather other people die by drowning on fluids from their own damaged lungs than follow simple enhanced hygiene practices for a bit.
Mostly I try to just block that out but it's come back into sharp focus today...
If you put about 15 minutes between an action and it's consequences there's a strong subset of our population that will just completely lose the connection between the two. That, to me, was the primary problem. Well, that and the fact that it's impossible to measure how many times you didn't get COVID due to masking or vaxxing