Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Easy to say when you are not one of the few at risk. But what do you do if you a teacher and are one of the ones at risk? Or you work at a school and live with one of the people who are at risk? Do you choose your job at the risk of your life, or the life of a loved one?

Rewind back to the Winter and Spring of 2020, and there was still a lot we didn't know about COVID. But there were studies, done in multiple countries, that linked spread of the virus with schools being open. And a number of school employees who stressed a desire not to return to school, likely because they had mitigating risk factors, and/or lived with someone who did. Leaving schools and school boards with impossible decisions.

Thankfully, global pandemics are rare events. But when they do hit, there is no winning, only mitigating the damage. And keeping schools opened would have forced many teachers to decide between their jobs and risking their lives. And many older, more experienced teachers did quit because they didn't feel it was safe to return to the classroom. Which is also a loss for the children in many cases. Again, no winning during a pandemic.

 

“We couldn’t have known” has now become the gateway to future totalitarian schemes we can only imagine.

 

Thankfully, global pandemics that involve novel viruses don't come around too often. And to say, "We couldn't have known," when it comes to novel viruses that cause global pandemics isn't an excuse we can use more than about once a century.

 

We couldn’t have known that 2020 would see perhaps the deadliest mass-psychotic episode in human history.

 

Given COVID hit in late 2019 in places like China and Italy, we could have predicted 2020 would have been problematic, since COVID was already an epidemic in these places, we had limited treatments for the virus at the time, no vaccine, and viruses always find a way to spread, we could have done a lot better. But our POTUS decided to toss the Pandemic Playbook left by his predecessors in the trash.

 

A select number of pneumonia cases, in Wuhan, occasioned panic. A wholly fraudulent test was rushed out to authenticate an exotic disease. And for reasons still unknown, China practically goaded the rest of the world into an unprecedented lockdowns that have utterly broken people.

 

Maybe just write this shit down in your diary, bro. Everyone on here thinks you’re bat shit crazy and you’re just embarrassing yourself. Q might not admit it because you’re antivax but even he is thinking it.

 

That’s how mass-psychosis works. The herd runs to the cliff. Anyone running the other way is regarded as mad.

 

This is also how single psychosis works. You’re adamantly convinced (with rock ribbed certitude) that you’re right while the rest of the entire world is wrong. An ounce of self awareness would work wonders for you.

 

I’m keenly aware that I am by no means alone in my perceptions. In fact, I have an idea for a bumper sticker. Hope it’s not taken ...

WE ARE EVERYWHERE

 

I have no doubt you have an online echo chamber of similarly crazy minded folks. Maybe go spew this shit to them. You aren’t going to find a single person on this website that agrees with you that viruses aren’t real.

 

Will the big echo chamber please stop beating up on the little echo chamber ?

 

Nonsense. Your lockdown utopia was a disaster. We should have never shut down. And for you to support harming the youngest and most innocent is just sad. All jobs are/were essential. Especially teachers.

 

How quickly we forget the way the Italians viewed COVID as just another flu, to a few weeks later being in total panic in a complete lockdown a few weeks later. Or the multiple models showing over 2 million dead Americans had we not locked down. And this was with the original strain on COVID, not the more virulent Delta or more transmissable Omicron.

Again, it's easy to say we should have done X, if X doesn't effect you in any way. As a parent with school age kids, school closures stunk. They were awful. But whom am I to demand a 55 year old teacher with diabetes either teach in class or retire out of fear for her life?

As is, over 200,000 Americans under the v age of 65 did die of COVID. How many more might there have been had we just did as the Italians did first, and treat this as just another flu?

Even with mitigation measures, COVID was the third leading cause of death behind cancer and heart disease. And COVID deaths accounted for more deaths than all other communicable diseases combined. There's a reason why the Italians panicked. The world hadn't seen anything like this in 100 years. But you still think we should have made the same mistake they did?

 

Just ignore that poster. That poster was wrong on lockdowns, school closures, masks and vaxxing kids. Why bother having a rational discussion with anyone who was literally so wrong and refuses to admit they were wrong. It’s a joke really. I just laugh at his posts and move on. He’s a fear monger.

 

Panic-induced PCR-based pseudo-epidemic with massive reclassification of deaths.

 

No. It was dumb to shut down. We knew from Italy who was at risk. We did not need to shut down and cause all the harm we did. We could have done focused protection. It was not hard to understand and see that. In fact that was the protocol that was supposed to be used.

 

Italy was the first country to go China.

 

How do you do focused protection? Don't people need to work with the elderly? And what should the healthy teacher who lives with an elderly parent and diabetic spouse do? Work and split the house in two and never spend time with family?

Overly simplistic answer to a one in a lifetime global pandemic is laughable. What you suggest is logistically impossible. It's why no country on Earth did it.