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.

Tweet

  • farter [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    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

    • inshallah2 [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      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.

      • sappho [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        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.

        • inshallah2 [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          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.

          • sappho [she/her]
            ·
            3 years ago

            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.