Coronavirus Pandemic

[Dio]

Did he posit an alternative strategy?

[KlaxonCow]

Did he posit an alternative strategy?

Well, there was a tiny window of opportunity right at the beginning, when the WHO issued its highest warning and it was still essentially a Chinese epidemic, where the whole international community could have shut down all international travel, where this could have been different.

Because the thing about a novel virus is that, yes, no-one has immunity to it but, equally, it doesn't have an endemic foothold and it's vulnerable to rapid extinction. In those first few months, if we'd really shut down its means of spread then the numbers could have been hammered down to a permanent zero, and Covid sent to extinction.

And it really wouldn't have had to be held for that long, as China got its own internal Covid rates to zero shortly after most of the world followed it into lockdown. So if the rest of the world had really gotten serious with keeping it as a Chinese epidemic, then China would have hammered it down to a permanent zero shortly after... and Covid could have been nothing more than a historical footnote of a few months, at most.

Yes, while shutting down all international travel is very drastic, the point is that, well, look what happened anyway. You didn't "save" the airlines any pain whatsoever - instead of a couple of months of compensated-for pain, they had 18 months of effective furloughed non-existence (and, actually, over 2 years later, it's not as if all that has gone back to 100% pre-pandemic levels. People are starting to return to travel and holidays, but it's not exactly an opening of the floodgates).

And, yes, I said "compensated-for pain", because while, pre-pandemic, we might baulk at the notion of mothballing all the airlines for 2 to 3 months as expensive, we then got to see what "expensive" really means when the entire planet had to mothball... well, absolutely everything... for 18 months. Like, paying everyone's wages. just giving "free money" to businesses, rapidly building tons of temporary hospitals, etc..

Throwing a few billion at Branson and his mates to shut up - in both senses of the word - for a few months? An utter bargain for the price! And because that didn't happen, the world got to see that not doing so was simply the most catastrophic economic decision ever made. Because the amount of cash that had to be thrown away to keep the world turning for 18 months, while no-one did much of anything, was, without question, the biggest "bail out" in all of human history. Not least because the entire planet was bailing out the entirety of all their industries and citizens simultaneously. All of them. Simultaneously. By many country miles, that's the most expensive bad decision there's ever been, in the planet's entire history.

There was that "window of opportunity" there to send this thing packing early on. Being novel had the advantage, for the virus, that no-one had any natural immunity but, equally, the grand disadvantage of that is that, in that phase, it was incredibly vulnerable to extinction. A heavy-handed crackdown in those first few months - when, basically, the WHO issued that exact warning and instruction, but no-one took it seriously - could have seen this thing sent the way of the dodo in short order.

But, yeah, by the time the rest of the world was following China with lockdowns, that was already too late. If the world had done what it ended up doing just two months later anyway, there was the possibility to keep it in China and then China itself was hammering it down to zero cases internally by end of March / April.

But, well, that "window of opportunity" occurred before the world was forced into lockdown, so by the time the world was actually taking this seriously, it was already too late.

The problem is that, well, human psychology is broken in this regard. It objectively would have been better to voluntarily inflict some small economic pain on ourselves for a few months, rather than be forced to endure over 18 months of the worst economic pain in all of human history (and it's still going, because economies don't instantly right themselves, so we're going to have years and years of this remaining "a bit shit" - as you can't shut down the planet for 18 months without economic repercussions "echoing" on for many years to come).

It would have required the politicians of this world to realise that there is something that's a higher priority than the economy. As the old saying reminds us, "you can't take it with you". So, by definition, basic survival must overrule getting rich every single time - because there's zero utility in being a billionaire corpse.

I've said this before, relating to "storefronts" like Steam or iTunes or Amazon: What's more valuable than money? Because, yes, there is something more economically valuable than money. And that's the very ability to make money in the first place. What's more valuable than any individual pay cheque? Well, having a job that ensures those pay cheques keep coming every single month.

There is something more valuable than money itself - and I mean that in a 100% hard-nosed economic sense, not in some wishy-washy poetic "love is more precious than money" way (though, hey, there is that too) - and that's the very ability to make money in the first place. Because, if you ain't got that, then you ain't got money and you've got no opportunity to make any either.

Money is NOT the top-tier "false god" you should worship. That honour goes to "basic survival". Sure, thereafter, kow-tow at the shrine of money all you like, as your preferred second tier "house god", if you want. But the true "Big Guy" here is survival. And, echoing the meme, "always has been".

But, yeah, once the world was starting mass lockdowns in all directions that was an "already far too late" situation. At that point, with the contagiousness of this virus, then "endemic" became impossible to avoid. If we're being forced to lockdown, then the shit has already hit the fan and it's too late.

There was a "what if?" path down which this didn't have to happen, which could have spared us all these last few years of shit.

But that was happening at the point where Boris couldn't even be bothered to show up to Cobra meetings, such was his erroneous level of not comprehending the severity of the problem to come. The WHO issued their warning - and that should have been the starting gun for serious action - but no-one did anything remotely useful for two or three months afterwards, by which time it was already too late.

Like, at the very least, why weren't January and February used to get the PPE and start building the field hospitals in preparation?

That had serious repercussions, as the WHO and governments of the world wrongly advised against masks for the first few crucial months, just because they were scared of "a run on PPE" - that there'd be so many people all over the planet trying to grab up masks, like it was toilet roll, that there'd be none left for healthcare workers, who did need it as a priority.

But advising against masks with a respiratory virus? That was a catastrophic error. Indeed, one that persisted for a few months, that it guided the horrible decision to dump Covid into care homes. And the WHO actually backed that one for a long time.

This is why "nudge units" should have no place at the decision table.

Like, part of why the government initially pursued "wild herd immunity" - which, by the way, we now know is 100% impossible, as you can re-catch and spread this thing despite being jabbed or having natural immunity, so "herd immunity" becomes a pointless goal at that point, as it simply can't halt the spread of the virus (so it is now simply objective fact that everyone who died or got severely and permanently ill, in pursuit of "wild herd immunity" did so for absolutely no reason whatsoever. None. It was the wrong call. It's not opinion anymore, it's now just plain fact - such "herd immunity" is, in fact, impossible, so every action taken in pursuit of it was just making shit worse for no advantage whatsoever and my "told you so" on that can be written in 100 foot tall flashing letters) - was because they thought that absolutely no-one would obey lockdown (and that's psychological "projection" at its finest, eh? As, actually, most people have self-preservation instincts that overrule their egos... and the only ones who couldn't take their own rules seriously enough to obey them were Dom and Boris and their mates, setting up the rules, as they just couldn't fathom the concept that something might out-prioritise their own egos).

But, yeah, with what we know now, that "window of opportunity" was already shut by the time the world was locking down in March. "Endemic" was guaranteed at that point.

But there was a "what if?" where this all played out very differently.

Where, you know, the politicians actually took the WHO's warning seriously and listened to the epidemiologists, who've been warning us that we were overdue for decades. But I guess the problem there was that it became too much of "a boy cried wolf", so people stopped listening, as there'd been too many times when the wolf never appeared that, ah, folks started believing that there were no wolves and wolves aren't really a problem to take seriously anymore... and that's really what sealed our fate.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Tldr; time machine.

[Dio]

The earliest that extreme lockdown would have been seen as practical in the West is the point at which Italy's health system started to come under extreme strain, which is far too late to allow for containment. It seems very unlikely to me that anyone would more more quickly than that (nobody outside of authoritarian systems did, not even in the nations which by most accounts are considered to have handled this well).

It's more than human psychology, too. This is one of the most random viruses ever encountered in terms of pathological effects. It's not an Ebola or smallpox-class threat where the benefits of containment would be quickly obvious and the chance of asymptomatic transmission was less.

But yes, there should certainly have been some dusting off of plans and reviewing of data at the start of the year "just in case" that would have led to at least a week or two earlier lockdown and both a shorter lockdown and fewer deaths in the first phase.

[PFVA]

And around 3 weeks after masks stopped to be mandatory cases are in full rise in spite of a lot. less testin, and deaths too.

And now they are saying that Covid is not over and people have to use common sense about masks.

[Foozwah]

Common sense seems to be in short supply world-wide.

I still mask in any indoor public setting, but I am very much in the minority - often the only person in a shop/supermarket doing so. Can't imagine why Australia has gone from among the best to now having one of the worst infection rates in the world...

Am now the only one in my immediate family to have not had it yet - in the last two months my partner and both kids have been positive, first my eldest then about five weeks later my youngest and missus - and I somehow dodged it whilst in week-long home iso with them twice, but it feels like getting it is unavoidable/inevitable. Especially with two kids in school - since mask mandates were dropped there infection has skyrocketed.

There just appears to be no game plan any more: no end-game beyond "do nothing, let everyone keep getting infected over and over, until everyone has Long Covid or dies".

[Cloudane]

It seems we are destined to get a new variant (or at least a new sub-variant of Omicron) every few months or so and a new wave as each one evades immunity more. Scary.

[Foozwah]

Very much so. It seems there isn't the political will, or the broader public will, to do anything else to combat it.

[Little stoned kiwi]

There isn't much anyone can do. Wearing masks and perhaps booster shots (if they are an option) is all we can do.
Wearing masks should become the new normal as it will help with more than just COVID. Some basic manors to respect personal space would also be nice.

[PFVA]

2nd booster shot (or the 4th dose) starts next week for the people over 80. They had planned to start right before Autumn but it's being anticipated due to the high number of cases and increase in deaths. The new sub-variant of Omicron the BA.5 is already responsible for 20% of the new cases.

I went to the mall this morning, I hadn't been there in 3 weeks and half of the people were wearing masks, the other half wasn't.

[Ollie]

Went to the dentist today. Apart from the dentist herself and her assistant, absolutely nobody I saw was wearing a mask. Not the receptionists, not the other patients in the waiting room, nobody on the way there or back. It's essentially not a thing any more in the minds and behaviour of practically everyone.

Meanwhile estimated prevalence looks to be bottoming out at around 1 in 40, and is probably going to start rising again soon. And I hear the chances of getting Long Covid from the current variant are higher than the previous one. Don't worry though, there are a couple of even more transmissible variants starting to gain ground. Maybe they'll be better. Just keep passing it around, and eventually we're bound to get a variant that gives everyone superpowers, right?

[F-ZeroOne]

That’s the vaccines job, remember? Turning everyone into Magneto…

[Dio]

If you're looking for good news, the patients in ICU continue to decline at a steady rate as more people gain immunity.

[merman]

1 million dead in the USA from COVID-19. And that’s the officially declared figure, excess deaths are higher.

[Cloudane]

Makes you think. If it'd been a million in a terrorist attack the world would be a pile of smoking irradiated rubble by now