A group of U.S. researchers has modelled where society’s current path — an unmitigated spread of COVID — would lead. They concluded that unfettered transmission could result in death tolls exceeding 100,000 a year in the U.S. alone. “Endemicity is not a victory,” they added.
:doomer:
It's a completely ridiculous claim. They're saying that after multiple years of effective COVID measures, with a population that aren't too big of babies to wear masks, with a low aversion to vaccination, with plenty of reasonable COVID measures still in place, is going to suddenly go from having barely any COVID deaths to having more than the US, when every western country is saying that COVID is a non-issue.
The end point of this stuff will be the same as much earlier in the pandemic when they made ridiculous predictions like this, and then they just say "China didn't report a trillion deaths therefore they're lying tricksters".
Just Google "China covid deaths" to see the amount of propaganda wish fulfillment by western media about this.
Not to mention, people seem to forget that China's COVID response was already very targeted the entire pandemic and most people didn't have restrictions most of the time. There was that BBC article early on that featured a maskless pool party in China, after China's successful initial defense against COVID. The 'lockdowns' were always targeted to high outbreak areas as far as I know. I think this latest media wave was only created because China announced a change in their policy (which the US was begging for, let's remember), so the US can use people's ignorance about it to make it seem like the cause for some big thing.
The change in policy is most likely a nothing burger. I haven't heard about any actual large increase in COVID cases or deaths to even close to a similar rate as every western country. These articles never actually compare numbers or anything like that, just insinuate that it's "bad" [for China].
Although I will say it is concerning how much heavy handed propaganda is coming from Chinese media itself about how the virus isn't that bad, repeating basically the same lines as the US.
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From what I've seen, the latest round of lockdowns wasn't stopping the spread of the virus nearly enough to be effective, so they went with the "fuck it, let's rip the band-aid off and have one big wave" approach.
I have no idea why n95s and air filtration weren't promoted in the past two years, but that's how it's been everywhere for some reason. No country on earth has fully come to grips with the airborne nature of the virus. I can only assume it's cost prohibitive, so everyone is kind of assuming reinfections won't be a problem?
Naomi Wu/Sexy Cyborg has been talking about how the government hasn't been taking effective measures like emphasizing masks and ventilation for a while now. Lots of complaints that efforts were being taken to control fomites that weren't actually spreading the virus while ignoring or at least under-emphasizing airborne spread.
Plus a lot of the Chinese Covid response has been devolved to regional governments. Apparently some are doing well while others, like Shanghai, have been an embarrassing shitshow for the entire pandemic.