Ignoring the realities of COVID

[firecat]

The Case for Wearing Masks Forever by Emma Green for The New Yorker

The title is clickbait but the article is interesting. It’s about the organization https://peoplescdc.org/ which argues that the sudden shift to “the pandemic is over” is bullshit, and provides alternative analysis of the data.

the People’s C.D.C. [is] a ragtag coalition of academics, doctors, activists, and artists who…have made it their mission to distribute information about the pandemic—what they see as real information
….
“the C.D.C.’s data and guidelines have been distorted by powerful forces with vested interests in keeping people at work.”
…
The People’s C.D.C. strongly supports mask mandates… arguing that “the vaccine-only strategy promoted by the CDC is insufficient.” The group has noted that resistance to masks is most common among white people.

Comments

[sabotabby]

I really appreciate them. I don't know what the balance is between feasibility and survival as a species—I mask now, when it's unpopular and I'm a tiny minority, but I can't imagine functioning like this forever. But. No one has the will to end this. And public health authorities can no longer be trusted.

[conuly]

Well... if it's just covid, we presumably could survive it as a species the same way we survived the plague - by enduring generations of misery and death until we eventually evolved a modicum of resistance and also a rudimentary understanding of hygiene.

Though with the antibiotic shortages I'm actually more worried about strep right now.

[sabotabby]

I'm concerned about the double punch of weakened immune systems from covid + strep. It's killed multiple kids here.

But yeah, short lives of misery and death is kind of the default for our species.

[conuly]

Mmm.

Strep is, of course, the bacteria ultimately responsible for scarlet fever. What's *really weird* is that scarlet fever mysteriously became a lot less serious sometime in the mid-20th century and we actually don't know why.

That's always been a little concerning in the back of my mind since I found it out (after the kids got scarlet fever for the first time) and now I'm wondering if our lack of understanding for why that happened has come back to bite us.

[sabotabby]

Well, in grim Today I Learned news...

I had no idea.

[firecat]

I have no doubt the species will survive. I just have this funny notion that if we can figure out how to diminish suffering we should act on it. Of course, then there’s the problem of defining suffering.

[deakat]

I'm so disheartened by the government's focus on avoiding anything that will hurt the ability of the owner class to continue increasing their profits at the expense of workers' health and lives. There's a Discord server that I find helpful when I need to be among kindred spirits: Covid Precaution Community.

[firecat]

Thank you, I’m glad to know of the discord.

[ladythmpr]

Thanks for the link. I too feel that we aren't taking COVID seriously enough. I think it's probable that in a few years' time, we're going to have a lot of fallout from long COVID.

Our household never stopped wearing face coverings when outside our immediate house/yard, and we've largely curtailed indoor activities, except that children have to go to school. However, once spring comes, I doubt that I will be able to limit activities AT ALL. About the best I will be able to do is insist on mask wearing while indoors. And since I contracted COVID while outdoors AND masked, there are those who wonder what is the point of continuing to try to avoid COVID.

[firecat]

I hope the fallout from long COVID isn’t swept under the rug the way it is now, and the way other chronic disabling illnesses are now.

I’m sorry you got it, even outdoors and masked! I guess it’s all a numbers game.

[greghousesgf]

If I have to wear a mask every time I go out for the rest of my life, so be it.

[firecat]

I’m trying not to think about my whole life, just maybe one month at a time.

[noelfigart]

I work for a hospital. I am in a building full of classrooms and am the only masked petson here.

[ladythmpr]

OY. You'd think hospitals would know better. However, I've had a similar experience - There's an orthopedic surgeon that I've been seeing about my knee and he barely put his mask on and fiddled with it ALL THE TIME, when all the other people in his office and all the patients are required to wear masks.

[silveradept]

The message that the pandemic is over is bullshit. It would at least be accurate for the authorities to say "we have changed tactics from trying to prevent spread to trying to prevent death and serious illness," since that's what most of what we have now is for.

The resistance from white people seems to be one part "I don't want to be inconvenienced" and one part "this is supposed to be a plague that kills all the non-white people according to God's will."

[firecat]

It would at least be accurate for the authorities to say "we have changed tactics from trying to prevent spread to trying to prevent death and serious illness,"

The signals I'm getting suggest they're going to stop trying on that front soon, too. Stopping tracking, stopping paying for tests, etc.