Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

My best friend lost his aunt and father, both before vaccines were available. And my wife has lost three grandparents in the last year and a half. We've known people in our age group (30's), who've had it with varying symptoms pre and post vaccination including some with co-morbidities in the hospital.

I work in a small office of a very large manufacturing plant. A large majority of those around me are unvaccinated. I still wear my mask at all times and do not expect to change that anytime soon. But yeah, funerals suck.

Lord Gonchar said: Ok, so these two comments have me wondering how close/hard it was for everyone.

Travis' comment sort of took me back for a minute, and instantly had me wondering the same thing. As far as my family goes, my dad got diagnosed a couple weeks after Christmas last year. They put him in isolation in the hospital, but his symptoms never progressed beyond what felt like, in his own words, "the flu combined with a dose of asthma". That's literally it family-wise.

If we spread the circle out to friends and co-workers (that I'm in regular contact with) the case number gets slightly larger; maybe 4-5 (including their kids), but still nothing to write home about symptom wise.

Now if we consider students that I see day in and day out, the case count goes high enough that I wouldn't even bother to count (I would guess 50-100), but still no one that I know of with anything more than mild symptoms.

There has certainly been many times when it has struck me that we are living through the greatest pandemic in a century, and I don't even know anyone who has gotten what I would call "sick". To paraphrase Gonch, not trying to downplay anything, but how different our experiences have been is really striking.

It's weird to think about in a historical context. We're closing in on 800,000 American deaths, nearly 0.25% of the population, more than half of them after the vaccines became available. That estimate, using the last non-pandemic year as a relative mortality baseline, is probably too low. For comparison, there were 47,000 who died in combat in the Vietnam War. It was 291,000 combat deaths in World War II. The estimate for the 1918 pandemic was 675,000 in the US, which is much higher as a percentage given the lower population. 2,977 people died in the 9/11 attacks. About 1,500 people died when the Titanic sunk.

I bring up a variety of events because our responses are very different depending on the context. We deeply memorialize our citizens who die in service, and rightfully so. But why are we seemingly indifferent about people who die from a faceless pathogen? I mean, at some point, yes, it gets harder to empathize with people who willingly deny the simple science that can guard them from harm, but long before the vaccines, there was a pretty strong disregard for mitigation among a non-trivial portion of the population. And the thing is, I can play a part in keeping others safe by getting vaccinated. I can't easily do that for people serving in the military on the other side of the world. It makes me deeply question what it means to be "patriotic" and how freedom and responsibility go hand-in-hand.

I didn't include the number of those vaccinated because I don't have all the information. I do know of one who was vaccinated, and her immediate family used that to prove a point that vaccinations were useless.

I'm not close as close to most of the relatives who passed away, but people I am close to are. Same with friends who passed away.

I also know a lot of people who had COVID and were just fine.

I know a lot of people, and have a huge family. Half or more of them are anti-vaxers, even the educated ones. That's the reason I have seen so many people die.

Travis, I'm very sorry for all your losses and those of the people close to you. Thank you for sharing that.

Jeff said: “We're closing in on 800,000 American deaths, nearly 0.25% of the population, more than half of them after the vaccines became available.”

I would love to see the number of those deaths who were vaccinated vs not. I bet it’s pretty much a rounding error.

As for the 0.25% of the population, it amazes me that people see that as a very small number. I look at it like this: If I gave you a bag of 1,000 M&Ms (plain or peanut, whatever your pleasure), and told you 145 of them would make you sick and 3 would kill you, would you grab a handful? Replace that with 330M Americans, 48M Covid cases, and 800k deaths.

On Fox News, Kayleigh McEnany said of Biden, "No one has politicized this virus more."

Let that sink in for a few minutes.

I still believe strongly in the good that social media can do. But, there is no question that scholars will be writing about its impact on this pandemic in the years ahead.

LostKause said:

I do know of one who was vaccinated, and her immediate family used that to prove a point that vaccinations were useless.

That is deeply frustrating.

"One time a skydiver's parachute failed and he died, so parachutes are useless."

Do people not understand that with a vaccinated population of 200 million, if the vaccine is 95% effective that is still 10 million infections? Or roughly an additional 20% of all reported infections since the start of the pandemic.

Why do we have such a problem with the law of large numbers?

Guess I am more surprised by people who are suprised by political hacks who make political statements or by large numbers of people who suck at math.

Ultimately, people decide what they want to believe and then go looking for (and easily find) “evidence” to support that position. I’d be really curious to know how many people have changed their mind on any aspect of the pandemic since they adopted an initial stance.

As someone who is generally cautious, it was almost an instinctive reaction to omicron news to want to sound the alarm and it required/requires an intentional and concerted effort to not read everything as “evidence” that we’re all f’d.

Something about the preference for having been right all along over actually being right now. Edit: I guess they already named that confirmation bias.

ApolloAndy said:

I’d be really curious to know how many people have changed their mind on any aspect of the pandemic since they adopted an initial stance.

Changed? Probably not many.

Adjusted? A few more than changed, I'd bet.

Which is why I don't understand wasting brain cycles being annoyed/angry/flabbergasted at the decisions others make. I can't control that. Hell, I doubt I can even persuade that in any meaningful way. It's not something I feel like the effort in trying to change is worth. Makes much more sense to consider general stupidity a factor in the whole thing and adjust my own approach accordingly.

When talking with my therapist, we discuss "scope of impact" quite a bit. I experienced a lot of anxiety over the last few years over things I could not solve. I wanted to solve racism and science illiteracy, which of course I can't. The solution to this isn't indifference, it's narrowing scope. What can I affect?

To Andy's question, beliefs may not have changed much, but behaviors certainly did. Employer vaccine mandates absolutely moved the needle. 12+ vaccinations are at 81% for one dose, 69% for fully vaccinated. The fully was lingering around 50 prior to the wave of mandates. Apparently a fair number of people believed a job was more important than freedumb.

People gotta eat.

Lord Gonchar said:

Makes much more sense to consider general stupidity a factor in the whole thing and adjust my own approach accordingly.

For better or worse, I can't be that person. My personality is that when I see something which is obviously and patently wrong, I point it out and I correct it. Internally, that's what drives me in my personal ambitions, and I'd like to believe it has led and continues to lead to my willingness to change my own beliefs. But externally it's also what infuriates me about other people because I cannot relate to willful ignorance or apathy (as I'm sure many on this forum have noticed over the years).

I find it very hard to just let go of other people holding demonstrably wrong positions. Frankly, that's sometimes because I think I'm right and I think they ought to also know the right answer because "who wouldn't want to know the right answer?", but I also lose sleep just trying to understand how people could arrive at such an obviously wrong position and not care enough to realize it.

And to get extra meta, maybe my approach to life is demonstrably wrong and I ought to change it.

I find it very hard to just let go of other people holding demonstrably wrong positions.

I understand this view. But in my experience there are many people who think they are pushing for demonstratably correct positions who are really just pushing for other people to do what they want to do. Objective right/wrong doesn't exist in those cases. Significantly less compelling. Not saying you are doing that or do that. Or that it applies to any given aspect of Covid response.

Remember:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. ... Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.

Which is why I don't understand wasting brain cycles being annoyed/angry/flabbergasted at the decisions others make.

We live in a world where restaurant servers must wear masks to serve tables full of unmasked patrons.

If I wasted brain cycles “annoyed and angry” at perceived “stupid decisions”… I suspect the “masking of our servants” might be the one that causes a stroke.

<deleted response to demonstrably wrong position in effort to be more Gonchlike>

Good choice.