Covid despair
8 Jul 2020 11:51![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nwhikerHow many lives are going to be lost because Trump wants schools to re-open, to help his re-election?
How many lives are going to be lost because Trump and his cronies refuse to wear masks?
How many lives are going to be lost because Trump and his administration wasted precious time at the beginning of the pandemic, and also while we were in lock-down, without getting a testing strategy, a contact tracking strategy, an aid to people strategy in place?
It fills me with despair. It's a bad day, today. I don't know why, I just want to cry.
This Lancet study is part of why.
I've never trusted herd immunity to be the major way we got out of this pandemic. My hope was and in ways remains a vaccine. That said, it's a freaking coronavirus, and we don't have a great track record of vaccines against those. My honest expectation was that we'd get a mildly effective vaccine, and between that and modifications to daily life (masks, some distancing etc), we'd manage until the pandemic died out. I expected this would be a 2-3 year thing.
I'm not feeling so confident right now. There are concerns about potential vaccination uptake and effectiveness (see Fauci a few weeks ago... and yesterday... Fauci says Covid-19 vaccine may not get US to herd immunity if too many people refuse to get it) and Fauci warns that COVID-19 vaccine protection may be ‘finite’ for example).
We cannot afford to fuck up the vaccination program. We already have a large number of vaccine denialists and fucking this up would add more fuel to their fire.
Every decision in the US needs to be thought of in the context that a good portion of the population does not understand that recommendations can change when data changes. As soon as the recommendation changes, they see conspiracy theories everywhere.
We cannot afford to fuck up. We CANNOT.
So. Herd immunity is not going to get us out of this, at least not without a staggering number of deaths. A vaccine is not going to get us out of this. Beheviour modification is not going to get us out of this.
The chilling thing is that even a Biden presidency will not get us out of this. The people who are going to listen are already listening. The stoopid isn't ever going to, and certainly won't to a Joe Biden.
We are going to be perpetually in a case of endemic pandemic, parias from the world.
It is not lost on me that China, the source of this virus, is going to come out of this as the new superpower. TBC, I am not saying that this was their plan, or that the virus is manmade or that they acted perfectly at the inception of this crisis (which they did not). But by being willing to continue to engage with the world, as well as having the world's supply of PPE dependent on them, they are becoming the de-facto leaders. We weren't great, as world leaders go, never living up to our vision of ourselves. But, overall, I think we're a better prospect thatn China. Too bad we've decided to opt ourselves out of the position. I don't know that it will be open for us to take back when we get more reasonable leadership again.
How many lives are going to be lost because Trump and his cronies refuse to wear masks?
How many lives are going to be lost because Trump and his administration wasted precious time at the beginning of the pandemic, and also while we were in lock-down, without getting a testing strategy, a contact tracking strategy, an aid to people strategy in place?
It fills me with despair. It's a bad day, today. I don't know why, I just want to cry.
This Lancet study is part of why.
I've never trusted herd immunity to be the major way we got out of this pandemic. My hope was and in ways remains a vaccine. That said, it's a freaking coronavirus, and we don't have a great track record of vaccines against those. My honest expectation was that we'd get a mildly effective vaccine, and between that and modifications to daily life (masks, some distancing etc), we'd manage until the pandemic died out. I expected this would be a 2-3 year thing.
I'm not feeling so confident right now. There are concerns about potential vaccination uptake and effectiveness (see Fauci a few weeks ago... and yesterday... Fauci says Covid-19 vaccine may not get US to herd immunity if too many people refuse to get it) and Fauci warns that COVID-19 vaccine protection may be ‘finite’ for example).
We cannot afford to fuck up the vaccination program. We already have a large number of vaccine denialists and fucking this up would add more fuel to their fire.
Every decision in the US needs to be thought of in the context that a good portion of the population does not understand that recommendations can change when data changes. As soon as the recommendation changes, they see conspiracy theories everywhere.
We cannot afford to fuck up. We CANNOT.
So. Herd immunity is not going to get us out of this, at least not without a staggering number of deaths. A vaccine is not going to get us out of this. Beheviour modification is not going to get us out of this.
The chilling thing is that even a Biden presidency will not get us out of this. The people who are going to listen are already listening. The stoopid isn't ever going to, and certainly won't to a Joe Biden.
We are going to be perpetually in a case of endemic pandemic, parias from the world.
It is not lost on me that China, the source of this virus, is going to come out of this as the new superpower. TBC, I am not saying that this was their plan, or that the virus is manmade or that they acted perfectly at the inception of this crisis (which they did not). But by being willing to continue to engage with the world, as well as having the world's supply of PPE dependent on them, they are becoming the de-facto leaders. We weren't great, as world leaders go, never living up to our vision of ourselves. But, overall, I think we're a better prospect thatn China. Too bad we've decided to opt ourselves out of the position. I don't know that it will be open for us to take back when we get more reasonable leadership again.
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