I can’t understand it. Look at what Covid is doing right now. It’s fucking awful. Why couldn’t they just stay with Zero-COVID till everyone got vaccinated? Why haven’t they vaccinated everyone by now? It’s so frustrating. Who the fuck cares if someone assholes protested with blank paper? Just…why?
I would easily rather have occasional lockdowns to prevent spread for the rest of my life than get covid over and over for the rest of my life. In a heartbeat.
While I acknowledge that these people think the lockdowns suck the fact is they simply do not understand how bad the alternative is. I truly believe this is a classic case of “People in socialist countries not comprehending how evil and cruel life under capitalism can be because it seems so bad that it couldn’t possibly be true”
Edit: Than not then
Like, what, is it supposed to be a hard choice between “you can safely go to the club but only 10 months out of the year” or “you can go to the club at any time but you’ll likely catch a deadly disease”? That’s the easiest fucking choice of all time.
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Cool. I know people who got it 1 time and fucking died. And more people who can still barely go up stairs months later.
Ok, I also knew people that died in car crashes, should we ban all cars immediately overnight?
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:rocz-yes:
That’s not the relevant comparison though. People die in car crashes which is why we require licenses, ban driving under the influence of drugs, have speed limits, require seat belts, revoke licenses from dangerous drivers, etc.
I’d say the pandemic version of that would be contact tracing, and isolated lockdowns to prevent spread, along with masks and vaccines.
Sure, sounds reasonable. The point is city-wide lockdowns forever with no end in sight are just not a reasonable policy IMO.
K, the discussion shouldn’t be about doing away with zero-covid then and more about the specific decision criteria for determining where and when to lock down. I never said they were perfect.
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
No it’s not ebola, it’s far more dangerous than Ebola because it’s far more infectious. How are you comparing a virus that’s killed tens of millions to one that’s killed thousands at most and say the thousands is the worse one?
Skin cancer also kills more people than ebola, should we ban people going out into the sun?
Eradicating Covid is not happening, all countries are gonna have to find ways to live with it. I trust China will be able to find ways to minimize excess deaths, I can't imagine them having it as bad as the US.
When did I say we needed to stop anything that kills more people than Ebola? You know that’s a dumb as fuck comparison
So on what basis should countries be hyperfocused on Covid then? There are plenty of things that kill more people than Covid.
There are not. And the fact that you think there are shows how you misunderstand the seriousness of this virus. There are two things that cause more deaths than Covid, heart disease and cancer. And we spend a lot of time and money trying to bring those numbers down, and their solutions are much much more difficult than covid.
The next cause after covid is car accidents, and as we already agreed we have put restrictions in place that are of similar severity as China’s lockdowns to bring those numbers down.
The solution for most of those heart disease deaths is leading a healthier lifestyle yet I don't see people here calling for a decades long mandatory enforced diet and fitness campaign.
Also I really doubt Covid is gonna remain one of the leading causes of death for years, deaths are down this year.
Why not? Every time you catch it it weakens your immune system. There’s nothing to say a disease can’t be a leading cause of death every year for centuries. See: Smallpox.
Because the facts are that we're getting less deaths this year worldwide, so unless you have a theory that there's a whole bunch of unaccounted for Covid deaths I'll just take that at face value.
Yeah it’s not gonna stay AS high as it was, because the most vulnerable people already died from it. But the flu is cause of death #9, and there’s no reason at all to believe covid deaths will ever be as low as the flu.
And to be clear, I think the amount of flu deaths we allow to happen is also unacceptable. We should have random screening tests for flu during flu season, masks in crowded areas, and mandatory flu vaccines. A large portion of flu deaths could be prevented if we took relatively small steps as a society.
Sure, that sounds reasonable. What's not reasonable is IMO lockdowns for diseases that we have no chance of eradicating anymore. Everything else should be utilized.
I think it depends on how wide the lockdown and how high the spread. I would absolutely want a lockdown of my whole city if 20% of my city currently actively had the flu. If the coworker who sits next to me tests positive for flu, I should be home for a few days to make sure I don’t have it. And importantly, I should not have a choice in that. Those rules go more severely for covid.
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Yes. They didn't though, whether we like it or not. Material conditions changed, Covid is here to stay unfortunately.
Also tbh it was unreasonable to expect from the whole world to contain Covid given the state of development of the world, especially the Global South.
The West has absolutely no excuse, however most African nations didn't even stand a chance in the first place given their position.
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