A bizarre thing that just occurred to me is because of the Russia news, Covid response is effectively over now. We have completely stopped talking about it, and when we’re done with the Russia stuff, we are not going to start talking about it again.
Basically everything is already open and mask mandates at this point are essentially private business dress codes, so the only thing that was keeping any semblance of an actual mitigation strategy afloat with people talking about it, which we won’t do any more.
Not that what is happening in Ukraine isn’t a humanitarian atrocity but it will likely lead to far fewer deaths than have occurred because of Covid, a thing still killing thousands daily and we have all forgotten about in like 24 hours.
My dad got put on a ventilator today. He's old and had cancer and diabetes so he probably doesn't have long. I'm across the country and can't see him. I'm just jaded
Frankly I think that was happening anyway and it didn't need help from the Russia/Ukraine news event to help distract for it.
Like they're not wrong, but, i don't think it really made a difference
I have to disagree with you. If what happened in Ukraine didn't happen for another year - of course the US mask stuff was going to happen anyway and many libs would be very pleased. But I think the war is a huge distraction and now a lot of covid news will be intentionally ignored by the media and polling will show the public cares less and less about the dangers of covid.
The "new normal" becomes normalized even faster.
Hmm yes I see your point.
I don't think we needed the Ukraine distraction to make completely giving up on COVID mediation possible but it could very well accelerate that process
I just checked the 7 day average: ~1,900. I guess it's only matter of time before some medical ghoul on Twitter proclaims that things are getting better and as their evidence of this - they say we have under one thousand deaths a day.
Wow, let's celebrate.
I don’t have quite the doomer view on this but yeah it does fit the general pattern of shit and hellworld. However, while we’re doing our damnedest to pretend COVID is “over,” it’s still killing people. We might never go back to 2020-early 21 measures but more dangerous variants can still drop at any time and shit. Doctors/every medical professional still have to deal with the nightmare too. We may go to more absurd lengths but I don’t believe the pandemic can be entirely ignored.
yup, look at the nursing and medicine subs on reddit. to me, this says quite a bit about how powerful the media is in controlling the ideas and actions of individuals.
I don’t believe the pandemic can be entirely ignored.
You underestimate our power :grillman:
To reuse a phrase from the title - a funny thing just occurred to me. I can't remember the last time I saw a covid segment on CNN or MSNBC. Has it actually been more than a week for me? I have no idea. My sense of time has been destroyed. In any case - it's very odd but typical of American tv news. War is the brightest, shiniest object imaginable and it's going to get far more viewers.
That’s ok, mentally I feel like I’m still in 2015, brain is absolute mush :deeper-sadness:
What you say about war is true though. Especially if it gets any hairier. For example, I think I heard something about Biden’s Supreme Court nominee - I had forgotten all about that shit and it barely registered when I heard it.
It's goofy to quote yourself but I'm going to anyway. I said this ~30 minutes ago in the war mega...
I wonder how many cable tv news viewers are at me right now. Biden’s doing the dog and pony show of presenting this supreme court pick to the nation and I couldn’t give less of a fuck. I’ve got CNN and MSNBC on mute. I’m impatiently waiting for them to go back to Ukraine already.
Ninja edit: MNSBC is back to Ukraine!
I think I turned the TV on just now at exactly the same time you did lmao
I had this thought today as well.
What was the last push in covid discourse? That thing about how we're expected to catch it on average every 18 months (wasn't that based on Delta, too)? And around the same time how some significant number of 'mild' cases still showed symptoms, disability etc months later? And the stuff about it being in organs, systems disruption etc
This might really accelerate putting it to bed, good reason for any coverage to get bumped off the front page
What was the last push in covid discourse?
If the US had universal healthcare - long covid could still become a horrible problem. In reality - it could become an enormous problem. It's very scary to me how easily many Americans can bury the head in the sand about future problems.
I just read through this paper the other day about the possibility for COVID to deplete T cells with every infection. I hope it doesn't turn out to be entirely accurate, or at least that the effect is much smaller than we think, because otherwise we are definitely going to have a problem with long COVID. It'll just be a matter of time before everyone accumulates some sort of lasting damage from reinfections. I'm very worried.
I've intentionally avoiding reading detailed stuff about long covid. I suffer from insomnia as it is and I can be a bit of a hypochondriac. I don't need more one thing on top of the already large pile of things I worry about.
Same on the hypochondria. I'm only reading about this stuff because I've already gotten some degree of long covid from the first wave, and I need to convince myself that it still makes sense to do everything in my power to avoid getting infected again. That's been my gut feeling this whole time but the chorus of voices calling inevitable, inevitable, succumb to the virus has just been getting louder and louder.
there can only be one wheel of history turning at a time and we all have to take turns pushing the car to make it work