Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

You really have to lie to yourself. Hard. To shield yourself from the enormity of what has happened, that you have underwritten, since 2020.

 

When dealing with a virus that is transmitted airborne, the more human to human contact there is, the great the viral spread. I've already linked a study from Israel and Germany about the role schools had when it came to viral transmission. Here's another one from the NCBI.

With schools open, you put the adults who work at them at a greater risk of getting COVID. And it's not just teachers who are adults who work at school. There is also support staff, from the custodian, to cafeteria workers, to office staff, all the way up to the Principal. If any of these people happen to live with at-risk adults, or live with people who work with at-risk adults, such as someone who works at a senior care facility, by keeping schools open, you have raised the risk of the viral infection for those most vulnerable.

Again, you're a Principal or School Board member, and you demand your school be open. A 40-something teacher who is healthy, but lives with their 70 something parent, and married to a 50-year old with diabetes is refusing to return to the classroom. Do you make this teacher choose between his/her job or family? Or do you finally realize the logistics of what you are trying to do is impossible, because it's not just the elderly. Not just those that work with the elderly either. It's those that live or work with those who work with the elderly.

No country in the world did as you suggested, except for maybe Sweden. And Sweden's mortality rate from COVID as compared to their Nordic neighbors in Norway was nearly 10X higher.

Again, there is no winning during a global pandemic caused by a novel virus. There's only mitigation. And the less contact people had with others, the lower the transmission rate. The more contact, the higher the RO, which leads to more people sick and dying.

 

If cough and kill Grandma is true - and if you can actually hide from submicroscopic particles - we no choice but to either lock down forever, or reckon with the likelihood we’re going to have to kill grandmas.

 

The choice isn't binary. We can do things to mitigate the risk. For example, vaccinations, for both the flu and COVID. Stay home when we're not feeling sick is another, simple thing we all should do. Still, it's true, some of us will cough and kill grandma, and this has happened every year with the flu. But flu mortality numbers in a bad year are usually less than 50,000 a year. COVID quickly became the third leading cause of death the US, and has killed more in 3 years than the flu does in 20.

 

In the past, stay home if sick was considered all that was necessary.

BUT, that did not prevent people from coming into work sick. If for no other reason, they didn’t believe they could afford to stay home.

And when sick people came to work, they’d wave you off with “Don’t get close to me. I’ve got the crud.”

But nobody feared the crud.

2020ff stands as the most effective terror campaign in memory. It has literally broken people and exposed how fragile humanity is.

 

The only thing you have correct here is that there is no winning and only mitigation. We caused far more damage by shutting down things. The consequences have been far worse because of the idiotic decisions made to keep schools shut down. Those kids (especially the ones with fewer resources) were irreparably harmed by these awful decisions. Biggest public health disaster of our lifetime.

 

In short, the only thing mitigation strategies did was to demoralize people, literally make them ill, and even kill them by means other that a microbe.

 

Attention is a helluva of a drug.

 

We saw what happened in countries that didn't shut down right away. Italy, for one. Then Great Britain, which went for a herd immunity strategy to start. What happened in these countries? Widespread panic after people saw just how deadly COVID was, followed by lockdowns. We were right not to follow their lead. The fact that a country that barely locked down anything (Sweden) had nearly 10X the COVID mortality rate of its neighbor (Norway) should be further proof that lockdowns were necessary.

And you still refuse to answer my question. What do you tell the teacher who lives with an aging parent and spouse with diabetes? Do you force them to choose their job or their family?

 

I understand there’s an ignore feature.

 

I tell them they’re beset by a false dilemma. But to you I’d remind that isolation proved deadly.

 

Somebody somewhere didn’t wear a mask. This is a tragedy that could easily have been prevented ...

 

The same thing you tell the healthcare workers/super market workers/firemen/police/etc/etc/etc that worked through the pandemic.

 

And do you accept the premise the more human to human contact there was during the height of the pandemic, the greater the spread. And the greater the spread, the more people in the hospital and morgue. And that keeping schools open, there would have been a higher body count than we already had?

All evidence points to this fact. The more open a country was, the higher the death toll. Again, see early pandemic UK and Sweden.

It's an awful choice for sure. But in my opinion, saving the most lives and keeping as many people out of the hospital was the right decision. People, especially kids, can catch up on their education later in life. Dead people are dead forever, unless there's a future zombie apocalypse, of course. In my opinion, we didn't lock down enough. We also did horribly when it came to testing and contact tracing early on.

 

Sweden, with the softest mitigation program in the West, had far fewer excess deaths than the large majority of its peers.

 

I'm trying to help you here. Stop trying to have a rational conversation with someone who isn't being rational. It's a waste of your time. This person was literally wrong on almost every covid issue going back almost 3 years. Just laugh and move on.

 

Where’s the fun in that ? Besides, there is always the possibility, however remote, of changing someone’s mind. I’ve seen it happen. It’s happened to me.

 

Sweden's peers being Finland and Norway. Sweden had about 1900 deaths per million. Finland had about 1100 deaths. Norway was down about 750 deaths per million. I'm not sure the math checks out on Sweden having fewer deaths.

 

This is what lockdow ers have been doing since late 2020. Sweden was supposed to become a necropolis for not enacting strict lockdowns. When it became evident that Sweden’s excess deaths were lower, sometimes much lower, than peer nations, lockdowners shifted attention to Norway and Finland.

Interestingly, the one thing Tegnell regretted was locking down nursing homes where Sweden saw the bulk of its excess deaths.

It’s almost as if lockdowns kill people.

 

We do not shut down during flu season. We caused way more damage than necessary for a disease that is not that dangerous to most. The UK and Sweden each have a lower case mortality death rate than the United States but about the same when you start bringing in risk factors (the US is far more unhealthy).

Global hunger and starvation caused by the worst public health decisions of our lifetime make covid look like nothing. There are consequences for decisions. And it is clear we made the wrong decisions. One thing is for sure. We need to learn and make sure we never make these same mistakes again. Thankfully you are a minority still supporting such damaging policies.