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I feel like it’s gonna start returning to lock-down levels before it gets better
Isn’t it already past lockdown levels? Florida has more cases than ever before.
Ah yes I just looked, it’s just Florida that’s at an all time high, not the rest of the country. Still real fucking bad though.
There’s still this sense that if you’re vaccinated, you’re good to go.
Inevitable when we gave up on half-assed lockdowns because the vaccine would be here in a few months anyways.
In hindsight, the most unbelievable part of any disaster movie (Armageddon, The Core, etc.) is the notion that capitalism would have any sort of semi-competent response to an existential crisis.
There’s still this sense that if you’re vaccinated, you’re good to go.It's true though. Based on American cultural values up to and including now, you are good to go if you're vaccinated (your grandmother, someone else's kid, preventing future superbugs etc is another story)
You know exactly what those values are, and there's no contradiction here.
Nah, a giant asteroid impact is still the sort of problem capitalism can solve. Some aerospace company makes a pile of money fixing that one, so it gets fixed. We didn't have any trouble producing vaccines under capitalism either.
Problems that need collective action, or to reduce production, are the sorts of things that capitalism falls over at.
A company could make a pile of money from carbon capture technology, renewable energy, rebuilding flood-damaged areas, etc., too. The profits could even go to companies that currently benefit from the fossil fuel economy, which would mitigate a big conflict.
The issue I see is with problems that require politicians representing the people's interests to take the lead, not capital. The political organs of capitalist countries have become so subservient to capital that they're incapable of setting the agenda, even in ways that could easily be turned to benefit existing interests. So the public good, if it gets addressed at all, gets addressed a day late, a dollar short, and thoroughly half-assed. This is what we've seen with Covid, and it's what we've seen (to an even sloppier extent) with climate change, too. The collective action problems you describe are one species of this, but I think any crisis requiring decisive, immediate political action is a pretty bleak scenario under this advanced stage of capitalism.
In the article it says "it's like we don't have vaccines" and like... No shit? Some states like 30% of people are vaxxed which means it still has 70% of the population to work through.
Even in States where it's at 50%, there's still so many people for the more contagious, more deadly vairant to spread.
The vax still works, both in curbing infection, serious Illness, and death. Don't go around spitting in to random people's mouths but this article really underplays the lack of vaccinations in a lot of the country.
Edit: Like just to note, something like 95% of hospitalizations are unvaxxed people and 99% of deaths in cal since the delta variant became the most prominent strain have been in unvaxxed people.
This is horrifying
I keep coming back to this question tho; suppose we locked down again, what would we be locking down for?
At the beginning of the pandemic we locked down to hopefully starve the virus of fuel (people to spread to) and thus end the pandemic. The US quickly failed at this. Then the purpose of the lockdown was to slow the spread to save lives while we waited on the vaccine. Now we have the vaccine.
Say we locked down again. What for? To slow the spread for what? A better vaccine perhaps, I haven't heard anyone say anything like that. To just slow the spread? Ok so we flatten the curve or whatever again and we start to reopen. We'll just be in the same place we are now a few months after that! I guess we should be slowing the spread while we wait for approval for the vaccine to be used in kids, that's makes alot of sense but again I haven't heard anyone say this.
It's so horrifying because the US is completely unwilling to take anyway out of this pandemic that doesn't involve needlessly killing hundreds of thousands more people.
In general, a slower spread is better than a faster spread because hospital resources are limited. That's the big thing. It needs to be slowed as much as possible.
There's not necessarily an end to this, which is of course politically unsustainable. Prepare for discourse nitpicking about what constitutes a mass grave
Prepare for discourse nitpicking about what constitutes a mass grave
Having already been involved in that discourse in regards to the mass child graves being found at Canadian residential schools, let me just tell you all now- it's more horrifying than you would imagine
True I wasn't considering hospital resources. Even if we never actually stop the virus, slowing the spread would save lives for that reason alone I suppose.
But yeah I agree there is no end to this. Best case scenario seems to be that getting a covid booster becomes just like getting a flu shot each year but we'll probably be looking at thousands of covid deaths every year for a long time
Yeah I agree, that's what the US should have done at the beginning. We know it works because it worked in Australia, new Zealand, Vietnam, and china.
But from what I understand the delta variant is spreading at rates much higher than 2 people, it's more like 8 people per person infected. We'd have to have basically perpetual restrictions or mini lockdowns indefinitely.
Yeah good point. I think we've reaching peak vaccine tho, nobody who wants it doesn't have it yet, except kids because it hasn't been approved yet I guess.
In the worst of the winter surge, the country was registering 250,000 new cases per day; at its peak, that surge was killing roughly 3,000 Americans each day (often a bit above, but with a few dips below). Today, we have a bit more than 100,000 new cases each day, though the numbers are still rising as part of the Delta wave. If we had reduced mortality risk by 75 percent, that would mean about 300 daily deaths. If we had reduced it by 90 percent, it would mean 120. Instead, in our seven-day average, we just passed 500.
I expect that in a lot of places people just aren't testing almost at all anymore, this is likely why there is still a high death rate even with the reduced new cases, I'd bet the actual new cases are way higher and the reduced mortality risk probably is somewhere around the 75% mark.
This feels like the Occam's razor solution for why with the same variant and comparable vaccines we're doing worse than the UK/Israel. I mean, we know that our testing is godawful.
in our seven-day average, we just passed 500.
That means we reduced the mortality rate by just 58% roughly.
someone double check my math because I did that in my head due to laziness
i know it sounds like a humblebrag but being honestBut there's a lag right? The peak of new cases and peak of deaths shouldn't have occurred together right? So what's the number going to look like a week or two from now?
deaths are up. They're just not up as quickly as they were earlier in the year (due to vaxes).
So what’s the number going to look like a week or two from now?
the same. Mortality rate is total deaths/total cases.
the only way the mortality rate would get worse in a matter of days is if hospitals started running out of oxygen like in India. India's fiasco in May was 100% down to poor management + lack of resources of the UK-Kent variant, not anything to do with the new Delta one.
Yes, but by the time those later cases die, there will be even more new cases added to the list. Also this stuff was all relative (to the mortality rate of 2020) so it doesn't really matter
but yes the true mortality rate could only be figured in a hospital study or something like that.
But isn't it younger people being hospitalized? Like hey 50% better is great but it's still pretty alarming
At least part of the hidden killer is hospital capacity. An emergency room full of covid cases can't get people into surgery quickly, and some will catch it as they are weak and in recovery. People that need a routine procedure or operation end up dying because it can't be scheduled, then the whole system starts slowing down further as the nurses get shell shocked and burnt out.
Like ok....no shit people are dying. This was completely expected. We knew this wasn't over when the CDC said it was. We knew there would be variants as long as the vast majority of the planet was unvaccinated.
But in the US specifically, I'm having a hard time caring. My friends and I are all vaccinated. Even if we got sick we know that 95% of the people going to the hospital are unvaxxed. We know that 99% of the people dying are unvaxxed. And we know that most of the 1% of breakthrough deaths are in the elderly.
It fucking blows that we're so collectively stunted as a nation that we can't convince people to get vaccinated, but you reap what you sow. Apart from knocking doors to get people vaccinated there's nothing I can do about it.
As always, American stupidity hurts the vulnerable. If you have an existing condition, if you're elderly, hell maybe your hospital is just overrun and you can't have a normal procedure. But America isn't shutting down and people aren't putting their masks back on. Even if we did and cases went down, that would only serve to demotivate the unvaxxed further. Theres one way out of this and its letting the fire burn until there isn't any kindling left.
"you reap what you sow" okay but no, we reap individually what the ruling class, corporations, and the media have sown.
I don't want my grandma to die of covid because she lives in an assisted living facility in florida. I don't want my immunocompromised family members to die because they got coughed on by chuds. I don't want my nieces to get saddled with long-term health problems because the delta variant is ripping through their elementary school and they can't get vaxxed.
Well thats what I'm talking about. We're a country that worships capital. This is the result. I feel sympathy for all of the needless death and suffering. But this is just reality. I cant do anything except get vaccinated and wear a mask.
Provably untrue — minors, kids under 12, vaccination breakthroughs, the global south — but go off I guess
i mean it's not wrong that if the vast majority in america got vaccinated the virus would no longer be everywhere. in america so the baby brain people who won't get a vaccine are to blame as well. yes obviously we should still be doing shit like mask mandates but the article was about death.
