• harpuajim@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Unless the strain is killing a sizable amount of people getting it it’ll be hard to get people to wear masks en masse again.

    • Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Even if it kills (which it likely will), our track record shows that didn’t care enough about that, and in a decreasing manner. So it’ll only be worse.

      • Chriskmee@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Pretty sure every virus has killed people, from the cold, to flu, and of course covid. It feels like now the death rate for the latest variants of covid are pretty comparable to the flu, the virus has lost a lot of its killing power over time.

        • SkepticElliptic@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          That’s the same shit that businesses were pushing last time because they didn’t want to close for a few months, ended up making everything worse.

          • Piers@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Yup. More effective action faster would have had a higher same-day-you-make-the-decision cost but would have been tremendously less harmful economically to all the entities blocking it for fear of the economic impact to them. They were digging a mass grave and then leaping into it.

          • Chriskmee@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I know I am a bit biased here because I didn’t get sick and didn’t really try that hard to avoid it either. I only wore a mask when I had to, I went to bars with friends, really didn’t take any extra precautions, and I washed my hands normally. If I got covid I didn’t notice it.

            Personally I would hate if we went into lockdown again, but again, I didn’t get sick, the worst I felt was when I got the vaccine.

        • Mbourgon everywhere@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’ve you’ve been vaxxed, or had a previous infection, or get some paxlovid… yes. If not, no, not really any better. It hasn’t gotten weaker.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Death rates aren’t a feeling. I want some hard numbers.

          I feel like we just don’t care if we live or die anymore.

          • Chriskmee@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I know I’ve read reports about the latest variants being much less deadly. I did see one study recently which for patients presenting to hospital covid was a few percentage points more likely to result in death compared to hospitalized flu patients. There were a lot more covid patients though.

            Found it:

            death rates among people hospitalized for COVID-19 were 17% to 21% in 2020 vs 6% in this study, while death rates for those hospitalized for influenza were 3.8% in 2020 vs 3.7% in this study

            https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2803749

            So there is some data backing up the feelings I’ve gotten from everything I’ve been hearing and seeing.

            • Mbourgon everywhere@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              There’s one crucial thing you overlooked in this: in 2020, most people hadn’t been infected, and hadn’t gotten the vaccine (because there was no vaccine until December,and even then it was in extremely short supply). Now, most people have some sort of immunity, be it from vaccine or from a prior infection. That definitely skews the hospitalization numbers downward. You can’t compare then and now, unfortunately, since there’s no real community that hasn’t been vaccinated and hasn’t caught it - and so you can’t compare their numbers.

              • Chriskmee@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                That’s fair, but I think you can still compare it to the flu, which is not that far off from covid percentage wise. At this point both the flu and covid should be at an equal level of people having vaccines and natural antibodies, right? Even if you go with covid being about twice as deadly as the flu, twice as deadly as almost nothing is still almost nothing.

                • holland@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Hundreds of thousands of Americans will die this year from COVID. Sure, almost nothing. Just a 9/11 every two weeks or so.

                  • Chriskmee@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    I’m sorry, but people die of lots of different things all the time, it sucks but it’s a part of life

              • Chriskmee@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                I mean, that’s one way to look at it. I looked at it as only a couple percent higher death rate than the flu. Either way, a little less than 2x is way better than like 5x worse.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Obviously it’s better than before, but it’s also worth keeping in mind these deaths are in addition to the flu.

                  Also, there are good and bad flu seasons. I see no reason for COVID to not be the same.

      • Piers@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        The issue is that it happens out of sight out of mind so it’s just an abstract statistic that it’s easy to ignore or pretend away. If Covid-19 killed you by making your head spontaneously fall off we’d have eliminated it or reduced it to a few tiny isolated pockets simply by the change in the public’s attitude to it. But because it kills you “quietly” out of sight in a hospital bed or at home, people were able to just convince themselves everything is basically normal.

    • reverendsteveii@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      get people to wear masks en masse again

      The time when people wore masks en masse must be something that I’m too American and lung-scarred to remember

      • Piers@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I’m too American and lung-scarred to remember

        Due to a history of smoking and multiple bouts of pneumonia I was already fairly sure that my “dying of old age” (which noone truly does) would consist of drowning on fluids from my own damaged lungs one day. Then the drowning on fluids from your own damaged lungs plague came and people decided they’d rather other people die by drowning on fluids from their own damaged lungs than follow simple enhanced hygiene practices for a bit.

        Mostly I try to just block that out but it’s come back into sharp focus today…

        • reverendsteveii@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          If you put about 15 minutes between an action and it’s consequences there’s a strong subset of our population that will just completely lose the connection between the two. That, to me, was the primary problem. Well, that and the fact that it’s impossible to measure how many times you didn’t get COVID due to masking or vaxxing