Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Covid is different because we have insanely effective cheap vaccines. You don't have to totally eliminate it to effectively make it a non-factor, but you do need as many people as possible vaccinated.

Lord Gonchar said:

If you thought this would go away. You were wrong. If you think the threat will remain as it was in 2020, you're still wrong.

When I take a step back and think things through, this is where ultimately my brain ends up.

I think I get caught up in the newness of this and think that if everyone in the country would get vaccinated then it would simply die out and be gone forever. But that is not reality, and that is just our country. Consider the whole world and there is zero chance this thing simply goes away forever. It will continue to spin around the world in one form or another. Nature (humans) will adapt to it, that is what our bodies do. And that is not faith over fear - it is how we are coded. Does the vaccine help us adapt by giving our bodies a head start? Absolutely. Are some people that get vaccinated still going to get sick and die? Absolutely. If you don't get vaccinated are you at a disadvantage. Absolutely.

We spent a lot of time back on page 6 (or something like that) of this thread debating if this just the flu. I took the tact that we are desensitized to the impact of the annual flue. 30-60K people die from it every year and no one seems to care. There is a vaccine, it is cheap, and it is widely available. Is it 100% effective - no it is not. Does it better your odds of dying from the flu - absolutely. Yet lots and lots of people do not get a flu shot. And lots and lots of people die from it. And no one cares. In a few years I believe the same thing will happen to covid. 30-60K people will die from it every year and no one will care. It will have just become part of life.

Now go get your shot.

Got my second dose of Pfizer about seven and a half hours ago. So pfar so good.

There was a NYT article that said the side effect spread was not as large as I thought been Moderna and Pfizer. For second dose, like 50 to 60% difference in likelihood. I ended up being down for about 36 hours with Moderna.

Shades said:

We spent a lot of time back on page 6 (or something like that) of this thread debating if this just the flu. I took the tact that we are desensitized to the impact of the annual flue. 30-60K people die from it every year and no one seems to care. There is a vaccine, it is cheap, and it is widely available. Is it 100% effective - no it is not. Does it better your odds of dying from the flu - absolutely. Yet lots and lots of people do not get a flu shot. And lots and lots of people die from it. And no one cares. In a few years I believe the same thing will happen to covid. 30-60K people will die from it every year and no one will care. It will have just become part of life.

Now go get your shot.

Maybe. Except Covid is way easier to spread and way more dangerous in aggregate than your garden variety flu (at least that's my understanding). So is it that crazy to think it will be 100K or 150K each year on top of the 30-60k for the flu? Maybe in a decade, things hit equilibrium at a different point as the Gonch quote predicts, but is there reason to believe that is a more likely outcome than it killing many more times the number of people than the flu does each year?

Also, even if we haven't eradicated measles or polio or mumps lots of other things that aren't in the "two officially eradicated diseases in the history of human kind," they're basically non-issues right now (especially if it weren't for the anti-vax idiots). The fact that we haven't officially eradicated them doesn't mean that we, as a species, haven't done a miraculous thing in making sure that our children and children's children will basically never have to worry about those things, ever (again, except for anti-vax idiots). I'd hate to think where we'd be if the previous generations had said, "I guess we'll just have to live with 30k cases of mumps/measles/polio every year because some people don't want to get the vaccine" especially since many of those vaccines aren't nearly as effective as the Covid vaccine.

I don't understand why we set the bar so low, collectively, when recent history is full of examples of us doing better.

Yes, that. My kid is 11, and next year he'll get the HPV vaccine. At best, that vaccine prevents 32,000 cases of cancer per year in the US, of which not all are fatal in the first place. But why even focus on the death part in the first place? Cancer often involves some degree of suffering if you survive it, so morally, why would you not want to prevent it if you have an obvious means to do so?

Covid is certainly worse, since you just have to breathe it in, and beyond temporary illness, a non-trivial portion of the population has long-term problems from it. There's are vaccines that cost a few bucks per dose, paid for by the government. This is not hard moral math.

I always feel so torn. I'm such a true neutral on the alignment chart.

I hate that you guys get me quasi-defending people avoiding the vaccine because I don't disagree with you. Everyone who can, should.

But at the same time, I don't agree with the indignation towards, nor the perception of risk/threat created by, those people being complete lugnuts.

What's a girl to do?

ApolloAndy said:

So is it that crazy to think it will be 100K or 150K each year on top of the 30-60k for the flu?

Maybe that is the number. And next year we will feel bad but it won't generate many pages of discussion. And the year after that it will barely register as a blip. And the 3rd year we will become numb to it. Its what humans do.

If that were not the case, why is not more of a big deal made about the flu deaths? In general no one cares about those deaths. Maybe the caring slider falls somewhere between 60K and 100K deaths? I think not, rather I think it touches on Gonch's point - we are living in this thing real time so it means more to us right now.

TheMillenniumRider said:

Putting a piece of cloth over your face is very different then putting a chemical mix developed in a year without long term testing into your body.

It's been about 22 hours since I had the nice RN working at CVS inject me with a chemical mix developed in a year without long term testing into my body. Aside from the same sore arm as last time, the Pfizer hasn't messed with me with me the way it has for others. Although I did have some pretty vivid, bizarre dreams last night, and a friend reminded me this morning I had the same thing last time.

Shades said:

If that were not the case, why is not more of a big deal made about the flu deaths?

Haven't we talked about that a year ago? 45 million Americans were flu infected in 2019, of which 50k died. We have 31 million infections of Covid, despite a half-assed effort to contain it, and 560k have died. A third less cases but 11x death and you can't understand the difference in response?

We have.

I understand the difference but why does no one care that 50K people die every year from the flue? Sure it is less contagious and less deadly than covid but it is still a lot of people dying and no one bats an eye at it. My guess is that if everyone got their flu shot and we all wore masks during flue season, because the vaccine is not as successful as covid's, we could save a whole lot of those 50K lives. Are those lives not worth the effort? Will we as a country be as demanding as we are with covid? No way. Why is that? I suspect it is because it has been happening for as long as any of us can remember and it is now just part of life. Which is exactly where will get to covid in a few years.

Oh, I think we bat eyes at the flu, plenty.
There’s a huge program encouraging people to get vaccinated, with an emphasis on citizens of a certain age. When “flu season” rolls around there’s lots of media attention, with messages and medical advice on how to avoid getting sick or spreading germs. And then there’s the schools, who have been known to close for weeks at a time to keep further transmission at bay.
And “get vaccinated every year” is always the lead.
When Covid came to town, advice was similar- avoid crowds, cover your cough, keep a distance, wash your hands like crazy, and stay home. The main difference was the lack of a shot, which may have spelt a greater sense of urgency and dread to most people.
But I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t say that flu and it’s casualties go unnoticed.

I get where he was going, it just depends on how close it hits home. The flu for many just doesn't do anything other then make us feel lousy for a bit. I don't know of anyone who came out worse than that. I don't think about the flu nor does anyone I know.

It kind of ties back to what Andy said a year ago, "it isn't some old people far away died type thing". We typically only care what happens when it is affecting us personally. We can show some empathy or concern, but we aren't likely to make major lifestyle changes unless forced to by law and rule, or unless something hits home.

I once had a conversation with someone about global warming and the homes in Florida. He mentioned that his daughter was on a team who was planning for fallout of ocean level rise and how the city of Miami was going to adjust and cope to it. He also mentioned how people are unlikely to do anything until the water starts lapping at their front doors.

Same for anything really. If there are any major takeaways from covid it is that humans are great at manipulating their environment to suit them, but absolutely suck at manipulating themselves and their lifestyles to suit their environment. there is a good lesson here for future events. I for one think it is going to be very cool to see what happens when we cross the tipping point for global warming, if I am alive to witness it.

Covid won't matter, nor will your job, social standing, systemic racism, or anything else. Everyone will be smack dab on a level playing field all over again, and he with the most firepower will probably come out on top. But that is another chapter for another day. ;)

• Israel may have reached a ‘sort of herd immunity’ from COVID, expert says
• Official: Chinese vaccines’ effectiveness low

You would think China would have made the perfect vaccine while they were creating it in the Wuhan lab.

Oh well. Maybe next time.

On a serious note, I did not know they were relying on their own home-made cocktails. Such pride.

TheMillenniumRider said:

I for one think it is going to be very cool to see what happens when we cross the tipping point for global warming, if I am alive to witness it.

Covid won't matter, nor will your job, social standing, systemic racism, or anything else. Everyone will be smack dab on a level playing field all over again, and he with the most firepower will probably come out on top. But that is another chapter for another day. ;)

You have this uncanny knack to write posts where I agree with 75% of what you're saying and then you suddenly take a total swerve at the end and I have no idea what you're thinking. I more or less agreed with everything you said up until "It will be cool when lots of people starve, are displaced, and/or die."

Also, if you think that will level the playing field, I'm not sure I could disagree more. Every crisis in history (including Covid) has hurt the poor and minorities disproportionately. War does. Disease does. Recession and depression does. Pollution does. Systemic injustice does. Everything. Global climate change will be no different and will continue to exacerbate the difference in health, opportunity, and privilege. The differences between the haves and the have nots will be greater, not smaller.

Shades said:

We have.

I understand the difference but why does no one care that 50K people die every year from the flue? Sure it is less contagious and less deadly than covid but it is still a lot of people dying and no one bats an eye at it. My guess is that if everyone got their flu shot and we all wore masks during flue season, because the vaccine is not as successful as covid's, we could save a whole lot of those 50K lives. Are those lives not worth the effort? Will we as a country be as demanding as we are with covid? No way. Why is that? I suspect it is because it has been happening for as long as any of us can remember and it is now just part of life. Which is exactly where will get to covid in a few years.

I just watched The Dark Knight again and the Joker makes an interesting point talking to Harvey Dent in the hospital, maybe the most salient point in the movie.

JOKER: I just did what I do best. I took your little plan, and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets, hmm? You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even when the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I told the press that, like, a gang-banger would get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everybody loses their minds!

That said, (and again, I've been saying this for a hundred pages) the flu, heart disease, cancer, car accidents, and other leading causes of death have never had the potential to grow exponentially. If you told me that Covid will kill 100k/year for eternity but never more, I'd be sad and it would suck, but I would get along with my day. The danger is if Covid figures out a way to kill another 500k some year down the road. That's not out of the realm of possibility and it's something we have to be vigilant for before we start assuming it will go to "flu like levels" in perpetuity. If we don't step up the vax efforts, it's a distinct possibility.

ApolloAndy said:

You have this uncanny knack to write posts where I agree with 75% of what you're saying and then you suddenly take a total swerve at the end

I was thinking the same thing with that post. And for whatever reason, I immediately stop paying as much attention when climate change is continually referred to as "global warming". There's no logical reason for that, but I always put more stock and credibility into anything and anyone referring to it as climate change.

Because snowballs on the Senate floor.