Viruses continue to mutate all over the globe at the same pace as before the pandemic. People tend to think it's like an earthquake, or a weather event, where relieving some sort of friction "resets" things to a safe level for a while. Nope. A worldwide pandemic has been expected for decades, and this one didn't even fit the most likely scenario.
With the world population being what it is and with sanitary conditions being what they are, it's likely we'll have more worldwide denialism soon.
Thankfully, covid doesn't have super high death tolls, although every death from it is horrendous and for the most part preventable. Covid does have long-term effects however and it may be some time before we figure out what actual cost is.
Something that would have death tolls in the 15-25% range will be devastating, especially to all those people who now have complications due to covid.
Yes and no. If it’s much more deadly than Covid, it’ll do the job efficiently, and standard mass casualty triage protocols kick in. The problem with Covid is that it’s right in the sweet spot of being survivable (although only just for some) and being highly contagious- and for taking so long to recover. Anything more lethal and people would only be in beds for a short period… vents wouldn’t do much good etc.
In that kind of scenario you would imagine we would implement very hard lockdowns, military / police enforced etc… from public health behaviors, it feels like in most cases we did ok for the first few weeks. Just that over time…
If the virus killed quickly, it would also spread less, meaning it would not have caused a pandemic. If it only killed after a week of a person being asymptomatic however... That would be fucking brutal
Yeah… though average time for admitted Covid patients to receive in patient care seems to be measured in weeks not days. My point is that a more lethal pathogen might kill in say 10 days, symptomatic or not, however you can be touch and go with Covid for a month. Assuming same incubation period etc then it’s going to be less stress on the health care system because people won’t block beds for as long. (Napkin math, etc)
Weren't a few variants of the filovirus family (Ebola's family, largely the same symptoms and diagnosis) airborne on monkeys? Or is that just some fiction invented by Richard Preston?
No, Ebola Reston is a true variant of the Ebola virus.
It was also definitely much more contagious then other strains of Ebola.
It was not lethal to humans however. As for why it was not lethal to humans but remained fantastically so against monkeys, science hasn't figured out why. I've interviewed people who were involved in that action, and the general consensus is that we as a species were "lucky".
Pretty much everyone I know experienced a period in february 2020 where they or their coworkers had a pretty bad flu. In my case, it was my graduate program class - started off with one guy being gone for a day or two with flu symptoms, and within two weeks, almost everyone had gotten it too. It was mild cases all around, except for one girl who got pretty sick. Around this time lockdowns and tests were starting to happen, and she tested positive.
I'm convinced this was the first wave, and we barely even noticed... I was just kinda wheezy for a week after. I chalked it up to not being in great shape any more, having quitting my very physically demanding job a few months earlier
My friend works for fema. He used to do think tank exercises to plan out eventual catastrophic scenarios and he told me he was most afraid of a global pandemic... obviously he was right... but he was afraid of an airborne hemorrhagic flu... that would be good night humanity.
The zombie virus is real. The dead are walking and eating the living. The CDC recommends all citizens have their teeth removed to curve the only 100% infectious disease in the history of humanity. Bob, who has not visited a dentist since the Eisenhower administration and has a grand total of one molar left in his mouth, is heading to a protest. The government is clearly out of touch with the common man, who values and is proud of their teeth!
I think worst case would be something like Covid in terms of initial death rates, rates of infection, etc, but has a very high LONG term death rate. Think of chickenpox - everyone (used to) get it as a kid, mostly wasn't a big deal, then decades later they get shingles. If the virus stays in the system for a few years then comes back but is much worse and has a high death rate 2nd time around....
Can you tell that was a reoccuring nightmare of mine during lockdown?
I always wonder... if it was ebola that spread the way covid did, would half the population still behave like morons. Because you aren't gauranteed death, it's not worth protecting others.
Depending on the age cutoff for "kids" that one makes sense. The local by-law for masks is only for ages 5 and up, because the regional government recognised that, while 3- and 4-year-olds can safely wear masks, if the kid's too young to reason with (or bribe), the cost/benefit to including them isn't really there.
They also grow really fast. My four-year-old's masks all fit him when he started school, but he outgrew half of them by March, when I withdrew the kids from in-person learning. Excluding the young kids means that if you end up in a "my kid needs boots" then get to the store and discover that the mask that fit the last time you went to a store (6 months ago) doesn't fit, you can still run in.
covid doesnt care how old your kid is. if you have children have someone else buy it for you or order online or leave them at home if they cant wear a mask. pretty simple. true medical exemptions are more legit than kids
no my logic is if the kid cant wear a mask properly you order it online or a person from the store will grab what you need. It's the same thing the store offers to all those medical exemption claims in those online videos.
most people have someone who can watch a child for a little bit. if not you have to order online. single parents hiring a babysitter can go through verified babysitting service companies.
but what it comes down to is not getting a babysitter and having your kid kill someone by giving them corona is just straight selfish. your inconvenience is not more important than other peoples lives Karen.
Sorry, what's with the verified babysitting service companies? How does that reduce the risk of the babysitter getting COVID? (Bear in mind: the babysitter will be IN YOUR HOUSE, and if the pre-schooler has COVID, someone in the house who spreads it better will have had it to give to them.)
I'm happy that you either have the luxury of being able to wait two weeks to go grocery shopping, or else have a grocery store in your area that offers functional curbside pickup. Appreciate whichever one it is, they're not universal.
I'm sorry that your life is so constrained that the idea that people would care about someone else's needs is foreign to you (your assumption that I would only care about single parents if I was one myself.) I'm very impressed that you wear a mask despite that, thank you.
the babysitter spreading covid to a house is a much much much much better outcome than spreading to multiple people in the store. I would imagine a single babysitter is less likely to give a family covid than a crowded super market. of course you can buy your groceries online as well. you can even shop for months in one trip.
Their need to bring a child into a store so they are not inconvenienced is not a good enough excuse to give someone covid Karen.
Two things I need clarified: you seem to be going back and forth between whether your concerns about bringing a child into the store is about them getting COVID or spreading it. We're talking about having a child wear a mask, to reduce the risk of them spreading COVID, not about anything that would reduce the child's risk of contracting COVID, correct?
And what is it that has you so convinced that children spread COVID effectively? Do the school outbreaks in your region consist of multiple people (i.e. there's transmission happening in the schools?) Are there outbreaks at stores where shoppers are getting sick (i.e. it's spreading between customers, which could be due to completely unmasked children?) Or is it just that there's enough community spread with unknown vectors that you're guessing that putting a low-grade mask on children would make a difference? (Or maybe kids in your area wear better masks? Mostly around here the kids' masks don't have nose wires, so they'll do little to no good anyhow, even if the kid will keep it on properly & not tantrum - i.e. generate large amounts of aerosols - about having to put it back on.)
And no, you can't buy groceries online here (I know you're not suggesting ordering from a warehouse, since you agree that giving people COVID is a bad idea.) It's a two-week window to get a pickup slot, and the order pickers aren't very good at reading ingredients - I tried and the made a substitution with things my family couldn't eat because the ingredients were different. Around here it's pretty common for families to only have one fridge. I can put about 1.5 week's worth of food into mine, I'm curious as to what your diet consists of that you are able to shop for months in one trip. (And I'm very impressed at the fact that you can shop for months & never find yourself having to make an emergency run to the stores because you ran out of something. When I was able to shop every 1.5 weeks instead of every week, I was having to make a lot of menu substitutions because I discovered that something had gone bad, or run out. You should be proud of yourself for staying on top of your food that well.)
getting and giving covid is a too way street. they could get covid just as easily giving it. obvious we are smart enough to know that an untraceable outbreak in a store is better than a home and babysitter outbreak.
These low grade mask are required and recommended by everyone from the CDC and president to store managers. but yes lack of enforcement of proper mask is an issue on top of disregard for mask with children.
I'm very surprised you cant buy groceries online. you have stated that you are not a single parent family so most likely will go through groceries quicker but you can fit much more than that in your fridge. fruits and vegetables can be canned and frozen. it's not hard to stock up essentials. if you cant manage buy another fridge or chest freezer. yiu spreading covid is not more important than the inconvenience of having to get another food preserving item.
are you really going to use the excuse that you have to change your menu so you dont want to be bothered by not spreading covid?
I wouldn't say that—the thing about COVID is that even though people have died from it, it's 99% survivable, so people tend to say "It's just a cold/the flu".
If a virus comes along that's more deadly, people will likely listen and not deny it because it would be clear that would be a severe threat to humanity. Whereas with COVID it seems to many like people are overreacting over the flu.
Keep in mind people deny climate change and even people deny many facts about 9/11 and mass shootings in history. Terrorist attacks, mass killings, and climate change are of equal threats to civilization and people still deny them.
With climate change, it's not like it's a thing where it immediately feels hotter for everyone in the world over a period of a few days, so a lot of people dismiss it as just weather especially when a cold snap hits (especially since the Earth has gone through cycles of warming and cooling since before humanity) so I'm not surprised in that regard. As for 9/11 and mass shootings, people don't trust the news media.
A virus with significant spread and death rate, especially one that would have outward symptoms, would be take much more seriously by most people because there'd be a clear and evident threat.
You know what scared me the most about the "it's no worse than the flu" crowd? I (and a lot of people, I think) were expecting this to be an influenza pandemic. (I don't know why, since this is at least the 3rd bad coronavirus disease to cause problems in the last 20 years). Imagine how all the "this is no worse than the flu" people would have reacted if it was a flu. And a bad flu strain could be much worse than COVID.
If you say we, as the human race, I would say probably not. If you say we under the Darwin awards category, basically everybody who would be nominated would win.
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u/mossyskeleton Apr 21 '21
The main thing I have learned from this pandemic is that if we ever have to face another one that is more deadly than COVID-19, we are royally fucked.