I just listened to the latest Death Panel podcast which, to no one's surprise, has a pretty bleak outlook (with good reason) about the covid situation in the USA right now and in the near future, but I also recently traveled a little through Canada (leaving quarantine, more or less, for the first time since the pandemic began, masking outside our car or hotel room almost 100% of the time) and had a quick look at the covid data for the USA and the world. I know the data is purposefully inadequate and incomplete, but globally and within the USA it looks as though—dare I say it—covid is on the decline. Will there be another massive spike or some vicious new variant in the winter or fall or some other catastrophe which makes us long for the days of covid, maybe. Is this pure and hopeful speculation, probably. Are there still a ton of people who are sick, disabled, or seriously affected by covid (losing wages, jobs, family, etc.), 100% yes. But is it also possible that we will soon get a vaccine from our comrades in Cuba/China/Vietnam that will stop covid and all its variants permanently? Also possibly yes.
Anecdotally, traveling through Quebec, it honestly did seem like covid is over, or at least that very few people care about it. Few people were masked but nobody seemed sick. I just got back from a bus station in the rural northeastern USA, however, and there was one dude there who almost certainly had covid—he was coughing like crazy, I mean he had one of the worst coughs I've ever heard, and he looked like shit. School has also been in session for about three weeks where I live and I haven't heard anything about anyone getting sick there. We homeschool our kids because of the pandemic but they still play (masked and outside only) with neighborhood kids in the afternoon and as far as I know they haven't said anything about serious health problems at the school—which is super lib and where I believe most of the people inside the building are vaccinated.
So I'm curious about what everyone is feeling/thinking about covid right now based on the limited data we can access as well as your own personal experience with what's up around you. Am I right, am I wrong, is this post a total waste of time? Let me know.
Covid is over, it's only the old and sick who are dying. :liberalism:
I think the amount of sickness we see this winter will be horrifying, and it will be blamed on people masking up in previous winters and "weakening their immune system". People who think covid is over won't bother to wear a mask or stay home when they get sick, and they certainly won't get a covid test unless they are hospitalized or they are sick enough to call a doctor for advice, so a lot of it will be blamed on whatever cold or flu circulates along with covid.
Staffing in stores and restuarants has been abysmal all summer, and it will get worse, so people will be added pressure into working while sick and to not test for covid. Back to normal, only much worse.
I've become accustomed to not getting sick with various resperatory illnesses every couple months, accompanied by lingering coughs, and will continue to mask up indoors and in crowded areas. I also live with and work with people who are likely to be hit hardest from a covid infection, so I'm doing what I can to not catch or spread that shit.
I expect a lot of excess deaths, heart attacks, strokes, and mysterious liver diseases in kids in the months following the peak of the winter wave. Since testing has largely been dismantled and discouraged, it may not even be a wave, just a slowly rising plateau of illness until at least one of the several covid strains now circulating develops to become immune evasive and everyone gets various degrees of fucked.
It all comes down to how much people are impacted by covid reinfections. I'm only seeing evidence that the damage compounds with each infection, including risk of long term heatlh issues, but some people are on their fourth infection, or have been going out all the time and partying and feel fine. I assume the younger you are, the more hits you can take on average before something becomes obviously and irreversibly wrong, but who knows?