Covid-19 will never become an endemic illness and will always behave like an epidemic virus, an expert in biosecurity has warned.

I need to stop looking at this shit, it doesn’t help :doomer:

Somewhat relatedly, what this tweet’s is suggesting is sobering. From the replies:

The image says that infection waves will come faster and faster as time proceeds, that variants will multiply faster and faster and eventually this leads to entropy (utter chaos). In your real life situation it will mean constant infection with multiple variants of SARS-COV-2.

I’m gonna have a drink, I think.

  • learntocod [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The whole “it’s just going to get more mild and fade into the background” idea drives me nuts.

    Comparing it to other diseases is kind of like comparing car accidents. As you cartwheel through the median at 200 kph “don’t worry, historically, most of these are just fender benders”

    Seriously, it’s a random process and it’s not this “new coronavirus” it’s all of them out there, mutating away in a billion people a day. A virus isn’t even really alive, it’s like a glitch. Flip a couple bits here and it’s mild, flip a couple there and it’s deadly. It’s not like a virus that kills its host will necessarily burn itself out, it might burn itself in by slamming the system so hard that the west can’t even manage their existing countermeasures.

    Also, just wait for the lab leak of gain-of-function flu. We’ve established that, as a species, we do not have an immune system and a large portion of the population actively resists any attempt to create one.

    • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It’s not like a virus that kills its host will necessarily burn itself out, it might burn itself in by slamming the system so hard that the west can’t even manage their existing countermeasures.

      And in something like covid where the infectious time and the “you die” time are so far apart, there’s basically no pressure for it to be less deadly. Omicron was very slightly less deadly by a fluke. There is no reason to believe that will be a trend, and the next variant could just as well be more deadly

      • crime [she/her, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Omicron was very slightly less deadly by a fluke

        Omicron is as deadly as the alpha variant because that's what it evolved from, "less deadly" here means less deadly than the Delta variant

          • Mother [any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            We shut down for the alpha variant but are ok with the rampant spread of something as deadly but however many times more virulent (6?)

            • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              That’s the point I keep making, like my professors keep trying to get me to go to class in person and I’m like “Fuck no I still have the same risk assessment I had two years ago”