In 2000 it was “elect Nader or the world will end.” Then it was, if was in Iraq, the world will end. Then elect Obama or the world will end. Then if Trump’s elected the world will end, then “whew, close one, he was elected and the world almost ended but we prevented it.” So much practice with “x or the world will end.” In real terms whatever the actual concerns were have been so displaced. Covid just walked into this atmosphere. I don’t know if they enjoy this per se but they can’t stop the doomsday stuff. I think it does not necessarily correlate with actual fear; it’s a relentless rehearsal of the appearance of fear. It’s the logical conclusion of “if you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention.” No one can do 100% outrage for decades at a clip. But they have to seem like they are, so workarounds are employed.
There's about 2 weeks from infection to hospitalization, and 2 weeks from hospitalization to death, so this feels about the right time to see the first death.
I think we've done more than enough to aid the healthcare system, personally. We're allowed to have lives. They've been saying for almost two years now they're on the verge of collapse. Perhaps if they structured themselves not to run at capacity 100% of the time, they'd be better prepared for a foreseeable event like a winter surge.
The healthcare industry really holds all of the cards here and it's high time they made good with their side of the bargain. It's not like they don't know it's December, is it?
And we can still sympathize with those who work at ground level and, unlike the politicos and the admins, deal with the dying and the sick in crisis conditions every day. I'm grateful to them. But I also pay my taxes, pay my insurance, and choose not to be obese. I've really done enough for them and I'm not going to stop going to concerts for their sake.
Which “they” are you talking about though? The nurses and CNAs and hospital staff aren’t the ones making decisions about how hospitals are run. But they are the ones bearing the brunt. Perhaps they ought to go on strike. Except, oh wait.
The "they" in that final sentence refers to the nurses and doctors and so on. I'm genuinely sorry if they're at the end of their rope, but all-cause mortality is also a thing, and the deaths of despair from continued isolation are now a global phenomenon. If someone has to bear the brunt of this, at least let it be those who are paid precisely for that service. Not because I want them to suffer, but because they're the ones best-placed to do it.
Seems like you are failing to apply any sort of cost benefit here. Presumably, if I go outside, I could get hit by a car. That would add to the pressures of the health care community during Omicron. Should I not go outside? What about the costs imposed on me and everyone socially connected to me (friends, family) if I do that? Don’t the odds of that risk occurring, along with the probable severity of the injury, matter a lot? If you answer those questions honestly I think you have to come around to Freddie’s view.
I’d also note your post shows pretty clear signs you’re reasoning emotionally and tribally (clearly liberal, identifying only with health care workers and not caring about people harmed by locking down, name calling of people with other views). Not really modes of reasoning known for quality results.
Yes, this is a reductio ad absurdum, a form of reasoning by analogy, and as an analogy, car accidents are not literally the same as what we are discussing. When you attack small elements of an analogy, and fail to address the actual thrust of what is being said, you are lawyering/missing the point.
For example: I would note you have still failed to do any cost benefit analysis, by, for example, ignoring the harm you are putting on people (should people really not get to socialize over drinks at all if it is key to their happiness, what about the economic damage), avoiding thinking through the available alternatives and their alternative cost-benefit calculation (like those noted in Freddie's post--the infectiousness aspect could be handled by the higher risk taking more precautions), etc.
Also, your attempts to distinguish car accidents aren't as strong as you think. Is one order of magnitude in deaths really a big enough of a difference to you to justify such different responses? Also, note I was saying that the issue with car accidents is they increase the burden of hospitals (your big concern), not that they result in more death--and there are 4.6 million car crash injuries per year, which presumably adds a lot of burden to already-burdened hospitals.
Edited: My first response was a bit catty, so apologies there.
the health care authorities of this country, who are apparently once again asking your friends to take on a massive burden, have failed to take any of the basic steps that could have made things easier on them. things like:
- building out healthcare capacity in anticipation of future seasonal surges, which anyone with a lick of sense could have predicted
- building out test and vaccination capacity, again in advance of expectable seasonal outbreaks, or an entirely unsurprising new mutation that evades existing vaccines more effectively
- building out any kind of early warning or detection system that might notice new mutations before they've infected half the state of New York
- telling people clearly and plainly that wearing a piece of paper or cloth over your face is a highly ineffective method of protection against airborne droplets, and if you want to avoid breathing them in you should invest in an actual, properly worn and fitted, N95 type mask
- upgrading our vaccine development, testing, and deployment system to actually respond in time when new strains of the virus arise which can evade existing vaccines--which, again, could have been seen coming a mile off!
now, to cover for their own utter failure to anticipate or prepare for trivially predictable events, your beloved healthcare authorities are asking your friends to sacrifice themselves, while they ask you to go on the internet and insult anyone who has the nerve to want to spend a holiday with their family and friends. for how long will you stay loyal and do as they ask?
I've got a "tude." Because I dutifully did everything suggested to reduce the spread (reasonably; I didn't mask outside, for example) for 18 months. The original lockdown and flatten the curve were NOT designed to be *THE* response to COVID. They were designed to get us beyond our unprepared stage.
We are STILL unprepared. You feel for those in front line health care? I feel for them too. Why did we not expand their numbers and facilities considerably over the last 18 months? I'm not suggesting no one has tried to do so; I'm suggesting we put shockingly little creativity into it.
I'm also annoyed that we continue to use largely less-effective masks when there are more effective ones available. If we need to wear masks, they should be the best ones we reasonably can. There's not much difference in discomfort between a surgical mask and an N95 (actually, in some ways, the N95 is better since it doesn't hurt the ears as much, at least if you have a head-strap one). Early in the pandemic, it made a lot of sense to just wear *something* because we didn't know exactly what worked and the stuff we were pretty sure worked was in short supply. Now it makes much less sense.
Finally, define a realistic and reasonable point at which we will stop limiting gatherings and wearing masks. Maybe something like effective hospital bed seasonal surge capacity vs. projected hospitalization cases, if we think that is an effective metric. If we don't have any realistic and reasonable goal to work towards, we won't get there. These goals should be LOCAL, not national. Having a ton of extra capacity in the Hamptons doesn't do much good for people in Baltimore (unless we'd like to create some kind of air lift infrastructure to help deal with surges).
I've got a tude because I don't even know if we are making progress at all, and because it feels like there's just been very limited creativity and hard thinking about what the problems are and how we can solve them. Our answer is just a Boxer-like "I will work harder!" "I will isolate more! I will be less comfortable! I will be more unhappy!" Really? THIS is the best we can do?
I AM a frontline healthcare worker (hospitalist NP, have been caring for covid patients since day zero, basically), and I will have an utter mental breakdown (and have come close a few times already) if people don’t stop shaming me for wanting—no, needing, because connection is a genuine human need—to see my friends. In person.
At the beginning of the pandemic I was so terrified of infecting my loved ones that I sent my then five year old son away to live with my ex and my ex in-laws in a distant, much more rural town. I then spent a solid three months dealing with dying Covid patients, including doing chest compressions with inadequate PPE because we didn’t have any, all without anyone to see in person or touch me or hug me or give me even the slightest amount of basic affection other than my cat. I have a very nice cat, but this is not sufficient to my needs.
I can keep doing my job, but I. am. done. with not seeing loved ones and otherwise putting my life on hold. 100% done. The donest of done.
I am uninterested and in fact outright against in any kind of shaming or coercing or scolding or chastising or moral grandstanding that tries to prevent me or anyone else from living their lives.
I would much, much, MUCH rather live in a world where more people need me to take care of them after contracting Covid than in a world where no one gets Covid but we’ve taken away much of what makes life worth living in the first place.
I’m triple vaxxed and wear a mask at all indoor public locations. I also test when symptomatic. Other than that I live my life, seeing anyone I want to see, going to any event I want to go to, without interrogating others about their vaccination status or trying to shame other people into not living THEIR lives or doing elaborate risk calculations in advance of every possible exposure. I simply don’t worry about Covid other than vaccinating, masking, and testing.
That’s the only way I can continue, after two years, to take care of Covid patient after Covid patient without losing my mind, and frankly I think it’s a perfectly reasonable way.
I am more than happy to extend the same courtesy to everyone else, and definitely don’t appreciate scoldings undertaken on my behalf.
The vaccines provide mostly personal protection but personal protection keeps you out of the hospital and the more people kept out of the hospital, the safer everyone is because it ensures that we all have a place to go when we have a trauma injury or heart attack and it is the right thing to do for overwhelmed and overworked healthcare workers.
I represent a bunch of nurses who would be happy to picket in front of your house in order to convince you otherwise.
ICUs ARE overwhelmed. Everyone is working overtime. Critical care nurses are down 30%. And the vast majority of people doing the overwhelming are unvaccinated COVID patients.
It's terrible. Hospital health care is collapsing.
Very few nurses were terminated--something like one percent? Many of the hospitals I work with were giving out "religious exemptions" like candy so they wouldn't lose employees.
No, it's not the vaccine requirement at all that's causing the shortage. It's critical care nurses, who have been dumped on for years, saying, "You know, you can't pay me enough to deal with this crap" and moving to areas with a better work-life balance.
On another substack, someone estimated that we would get 150K deaths from Omicron.
But instead of spread out over a year, I think those will happen in maybe a month or two. And with 64K ICU beds in the country, I think those will just be filled up quickly.
I've been following Zvi too. I like his style! But if I had to bet, I'd guess that Omicron won't be as virulent as Delta but will be infectious enough to make up for the difference in hospitalizations.
Devil’s advocate - I agree that “get food delivered instead of going to the store” merely shifts the risk from yourself to another, but what about “stay at home or hang out in small groups as opposed to attend large gatherings/parties/events”? I think that’s the stronger version of the argument. Not one that I find personally compelling, but for more individualistic reasons - I too feel that I have done my part by getting vaccinated and obeying mask mandates, etc, and I am ready to get back to my normal life. I’m especially unwilling to make large sacrifices when the vast majority of the country is on board with returning to (relative) normalcy.
Yeah that was my disappointment with Yong's Atlantic article. Ok, cancel your birthday party if you must, but please spare me the self-pity and martyrdom.
Right. There are ways to be more careful that don’t burden delivery workers. Do your own grocery shopping, but don’t eat in restaurants. Don’t gather with friends indoors. Don’t travel for the holidays. Cancel your kid’s play date. Don’t get your nails or hair done. That’s what people mean by social responsibility.
I’m a germaphobe with anxiety who has been very careful for the whole pandemic, snd I’m still skipping things like the salon. But I’m gathering with family for the holidays, including someone traveling by air.
I think the difference between me and those calling for maximum caution is that I’ve given up. From what I’ve read about Omicron, getting infected is inevitable.
If I believed avoiding restaurants made a difference I’d probably be one of those scolds… but at this point I think we’re all going to be exposed. Get vaccinated and hope for the best.
Noah Blum had a great tweet: "The hard truth is that nobody out there is doing the absolute most cautious things to avoid covid, but everyone looks at the person who is being one degree less cautious than them as the place where the problem starts."
That's the thing about this whole situation, you can worry all you want but what the fuck is that going to do about it? Indifference to the predicament and a positive attitude about what you can do in the moment to make life more bearable is all that you can do. COVID took away my entire senior year of college - but at the end of the day I did whatever I could to make sure I could have a great time *within reason*. It's almost like people want you to be miserable and stoop down to their level of fucking neuroticism so you can wither away and be miserable with them. Fuck all that, I'm here to have fun.
Anyone driving 10 mph slower than me is easy to pass; anyone driving 10 mph faster than me has a car I'm jealous of. It's the people going juuuuussssst a little bit slower or faster who cause the friction, because there's no way to easily solve the problem without someone either slowing down or speeding up.
The gold medal has to go to people who pass you only to get in front of you and then immediately slow down to 5mph less than the speed you've been at for like the last 100 hours. My caveman rage really comes on strong at that point.
That and people who will go to their grave having never turned right at a red light. I once got a citation for expired tags (was really poor at the time and had to make hard financial choices) because this guy in front of me refused to turn right at the light. There was no one in his way and plenty of room for him to turn.
It was a really long light, I was like 2 blocks from work, and I shit you not, I literally sat there in horror as I watched the cop walk out of the gas station next to me with his hot coffee and doughnut, get in his patrol car, casually back out and pull up behind me, and flick on his lights as soon as he saw my tags. I could have strangled the guy in front of me to death right there in the intersection.
Last night in the car was a great teaching moment when the 3yo wouldn’t stop whining and moaning about something he wanted that was impossible in that moment. “See kids?” I said to the older two. “This is what happens when you hold so strongly to your opinions that you end up ruining life for everyone else over something you could just let go of.”
"it would have been smart if we had all fought to make vaccination as free of culture war trappings as possible; unfortunately, we did the opposite"
I guess my response to this is: who was doing this? And why?
Nothing is free of culture war trappings any longer. Absolutely nothing. So this is less an indictment of our collective Covid response and more an indictment of the absolute shitshow of a culture Americans currently inhabit. The best thing to do is to act like a reasonable person that lives in a society and ignore the freakouts; of course, that is largely impossible without a great deal of personal willpower. Not being on social media helps.
the vaccine was politicized from the very beginning - starting the with announcement of operation warp speed. You're right in that it is practically impossible to free anything of culture war trappings. This is the bane of American existence
Right. I'm not disagreeing the vaccine was politicized. But I think it's important to ask the questions, and we are not going to get ourselves out of this cultural hole if we pretend that everyone is equally as responsible for it. Or maybe we will, I don't know. Maybe it's an attitude of "it doesn't matter who broke the lamp, you were all playing baseball in the living room." I don't know.
Good point. I blame the media, but surely the media is responding to incentives from readers, and surely the readers are responding to messages from the thought leaders of our culture... round and round we go. It's hard to see where the chicken ends and the egg begins.
We predicted the people who were going to resist, but instead of quietly taking them aside and asking them what it would take to get them on board, we decided to mock them as idiots.
Which, fine, you're not wrong. But you're also not achieving your goal.
The hilarious thing about the politicizing of this pandemic has been watching the teams switch each time. At the start Trump was shutting down travel and Democrats and the media said that was a racist overreaction to something that was no worse than the flu (and also that masks were useless). Then Trump tried to downplay it to save the stock market and both teams jumped onto opposite sides. Suddenly it was very serious to the left and overblown to the right. Then when the vaccines were announced late in campaign season Biden and Harris sowed doubt by claiming to be wary of a Trump-rushed vaccine and discouraging anyone from taking it unless the data was fully transparent. Once they were in office that flipped around too. The tribalism is so arbitrary no one even knows what they’re for, they just know they’re against the other guys.
> The best thing to do is to act like a reasonable person that lives in a society and ignore the freakouts.
I'm don't know if this is possible any more. "Silence is violence." The keep-your-head-down approach has done nothing but let loons take almost all the major positions in non-profits and both major political parties. The ACLU, they used to be sane and principled! Now they court a handful of wealthy donors, and don't care if it costs them donations from chumps like me. (I've redirected my money to the FIRE these days, one of the few orgs that has taken a stand against this stuff.)
I don't have a good answer for what should be done, I'm sorry to say. I'm just frustrated. And yeah, I know this can't last forever -- but the longer it does, the worse it'll be for everyone when it falls apart.
This seems... like venting, yeah. I've worked in the non-profit space for over 10 years and whatever you're seeing, I'm not seeing. People like to say that shit about the ACLU but never have any specifics. Like, don't give to the ACLU (I don't either) but it's because they have plenty of money, not because I don't support their overall mission. The ACLU isn't raising their money from "a handful of wealthy donors."
I'm generally of a mind with Scott Greenfield, even if he's overall more conservative than I. Though I may, double-checking be wrong about the cause of the shift: it might genuinely be bending towards culture war stuff because it gets donations en masse.
As with most of this crap nowadays, I blame social media and cable news. It should be relatively easy to get the shot and go on living without making a big show of it. But nope; too many people are absolutely addicted to owning the libs or owning the cons because there's nothing apolitical in life that gives them any pleasure.
Don't forget about conservative talk radio; it still shapes the political views of millions of Americans and is a major vector of vaccine resistance and coronavirus misinformation. Rush Limbaugh and his hundreds of radio host acolytes pretty much invented "owning the libs." I'm hoping the recent covid deaths of 5 talk show hosts is sobering to that crowd, but I'm not counting on it.
Yeah. And despite some holdouts, the vaccine uptake story is, honestly, a great triumph, and something we should be proud of. Figures from the WSJ this week ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-case-count-11594333471 -- it is unfortunately paywalled ) put the fully-vaccinated rate at 72.5% for those 18 and up, and an astounding 87.5% for those 65 and up. Given the problems with health care access in this country overall, given that Covid has unfortunately been a point of political polarization, and given the general American proclivity for orneriness, I think that's a wonderful success.
Yeah, I never understood the frowning over vaccination rates, since they only look bad in a total vaccuum. There were anti-innoculation protests in the 19th century, and any school administrator or public health worker can tell you that a small, vocal chunk of Americans have always resisted vaccination. The Covid vaccination campaign is unprecedented in its scale and speed--it barely makes sense to talk about "success" or "failure" when the very fact of it was hard to imagine a decade ago.
Because, exactly with the culture war, there are two types of people on the offensive side:
1. Those who genuinely believe We Can Do Better and There Is So Much Work To Be Done. These are the people who think COVID confers a 30% hospitalization rate, that the healthcare system is on the constant verge of collapse, and that dancing nurses are heroes.
2. Then there are those who know the truth but like having item 1 as their personal army. They know that mass vaccination is a great success, but they don't care. Instead, they are roaming the countryside shooting survivors for sport.
Really this entire vaccine thing is the most "America fuck yeah" story of my life. We developed a vaccine to a novel coronavirus in months (remember, people were saying this was impossible), got it produced at massive quantities within a year of the pandemic starting, and vaccinated the vast majority of the country!! We rock!!
This is a Rorhschach Test. If you can look at what we pulled off, and think this says something bad about humanity, you need to think about your world outlook.
I want to add that I think there was probably a backfire from banning Trump. If he were on Twitter, he'd no doubt be promoting the vaccine that he sincerely thinks he single-handedly invented
One is to abstain from *discretionary* outings and gatherings with other people. Yes, you have to get food somehow -- maybe mitigate the risk by going at odd hours. Maybe you don't need to see the new Spider Man in the theater? Maybe, like Ed Yong, cancel a birthday party or make it virtual. Maybe cook more meals in. In general, at the margins, opt against choices that include going out among crowds, particularly indoors.
To which I would answer that my social responsibility includes more than just minimizing the risk I could be infected with or spread COVID. I have a responsibility to the organizations I am a part of to be as effective as possible at them. I have a responsibility to my friends and family members to be as present as I can be to them. And I have a responsibility to keep myself as happy and mentally healthy as possible so I can be my best self, and that may involve pursuing activities that increase my risk profile.
I think the other answer might be that the article betrays an attitude of something less than full commitment to the COVID protocols is demoralizing to those who are trying and sends the wrong message to those tempted to not comply. Maybe it's silly from a scientific standpoint to mask outdoors, but it strengthens the social norm for masking and sends the message that you're willing to do your part.
Maybe there is some value in playing our part in COVID theatre, but as the timelines grow, I think it's more important that the measures we take are sustainable and make sense, so I think some skepticism is healthy.
Sure, but we all know people that basically haven't changed their behavior since March 2020, which, unless you're immune compromised or something, is... a choice.
Last year, I was basically going to the supermarket, eating outdoors, seeing my mom, and very occasionally hooking up with people I trusted. These were all things I either had to do (who can afford to get their groceries delivered for 2 years? Not me) or things I had to do for my mental health. And lo and behold... I never got sick.
Once I was double vaxxed, I started playing D&D in person again, eating indoors, dating more, indoor sports leagues, and a couple movies. Basically the only things I wasn't doing post-Covid that I was doing pre-Covid was traveling and going to conventions. And lo and behold... I never got sick.
I also never stopped wearing a mask indoors when around the general public. It's basically nothing to me (I actually kind of like it not having to worry about putting on a socially-acceptable face.)
A friend of mine recently told us that while unlikely, their 4 year old COULD die if they get covid, and they therefore are going to continue to isolate as much as humanly possible. Until... when? Nobody would say for sure. Some seem to think we still might do away with covid, rather than this disease continuing to circulate and mutate for the rest of our lives. Consider me a skeptic.
However, they also felt that people like me (fully vaccinated, still masking indoors), would impose heightened risk upon them by my willingness to go out in public in the potential presence of the unvaccinated. That could certainly be true. But when the AAP says "In states reporting, 0.00%-0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death", it doesn't make me feel that bad. But how do I tell someone else what risk is acceptable for their kid?
To me that means they can continue sealing themselves off from the world if they so choose. I do not believe it is my social responsibility to take every step I can to minimize risks for six degrees of separation for everyone I meet at this point in the covid saga. I suspect some of my friends would simply disagree with that. Not sure where to go from there.
But kind of a bummer that some of them likely won't attend my bachelor party as a result :(
Yeesh. Their kid was probably far more likely to have died of SIDS in infancy than to one day die of COVID as a preschooler. Maybe don’t open with that though.
After over a year of lockdown quarantine and so on, I endured an emotional breakdown. I did everything asked of me. But at some point, the mental health tradeoffs starts to tip the scale.
What is it with this self-destructive liberal-left proclivity towards a kind of neo-Victorian performing-morality-for-the-unwashed-masses? Rife with ecclesiastical decrees, banishments, anointments? It’s almost designed for failure.
I will continue to boost and mask where asked, but there’s something increasingly suspicious about this perpetual state of fear, shame, anxiety, distrust, and so on, that anyone turning on CNN will come to experience, until the Prozac commercial starts.
We’re no use to our family and friends, maybe even communities, if we have them, when we turn towards despair. At some point we just have to accept the things we cannot change and have the wisdom to move on.
Most people crowing about "social responsibility" believe they are more socially responsible than the "bad people." It's a vehicle to make yourself feel superior (like so much of the rest of our public discourse). While you're at it, if you never get behind the wheel you can contribute to lowering highway deaths. Do your part!
My reaction to your last essay wasn't that I thought you or anyone should worry more or feel worse -- it was to challenge your assumption that everyone expressing huge amounts of angst and depair is doing so as a form of performative oneupmanship. Some are, some aren't. Personally, I'm struggling to avoid drowning in despair but I'm not suggesting that others try to match me.
I’m really sorry you’re struggling. Of course I have no clue what your circumstances are, but I read yesterday’s post as a bit of free cognitive behavioral therapy for the percentage of people who are inappropriately absorbing trauma that may not be theirs to own.
Having most people stay at home while having a small fraction of people doing delivery to everyone who is staying at home does probably reduce spread relative to having everyone going out to do their own errands. Such an arrangement thus creates both a shift of risk (from stay-at-homers to the delivery underclass) and a reduction in total risk (due to fewer total interactions between people).
i don't think that's necessarily incorrect but.... until when? some people bought into this idea of "until the virus goes away" at the start but it's become increasingly clear that it won't go away. so... until there's a vaccine? until there are effective treatments? until we figure out some way to update our vaccine versions faster than the virus can mutate around them? until Anthony Fauci personally goes on TV and gives every American permission to throw out their face coverings and hang out inside the mall?
because lately, everyone asking "until when?" has started to realize the answer is "until you give up and move on with your life" and the real joke is that that's always been the only answer that matters
Tell that to my vet, whose website states (verbatim): "In case one might be wondering, we're planning to remain curbside-only throughout the duration of COVID."
I’m with you on this one. Perhaps it would be less, to use a popular term, inequitable if we paid the essential workers a wage that reflected their risk.
Yes, and with good pay a lot of them want the work. They’re not on Instacart hoping they don’t get orders. I always get groceries delivered (started before the pandemic) and I get messages thanking me for the business. I tip between $20 and $25 and rate 5 stars even when something is wrong (because it affects their pay).
Sometimes I feel like a privileged asshole when I’m like reviewing photos of yogurt and deciding which ones I want. But not ordering delivery wouldn’t make anyone’s life better.
My cousin in Northern Ireland has been a grocery store personal shopper for several years, and she’s happy with the job and likes the majority of her customers. As with any low-status job, if you treat someone like a peasant they’re going to feel bad and if you show gratitude for their work they’ll feel good.
Sorry, but there aren't any externalities related to your behavior at this stage of COVID.
The vaccines primarily provide personal protection.
The virus is extremely infectious and quarantining, etc. doesn't make a big difference. We're all going to get it.
We are also at near max population benefit from vaccination.
People who are arguing otherwise are neurotics or otherwise poorly incentivized and should be ignored.
Don't go out if you're symptomatic. But otherwise, if you're vaccinated, live your life. If you have someone high risk in your life encourage them to get vaccinated (although they probably already are).
Yeah they're stuck in their own amygdalas and will find every excuse to remain there.
https://dictionary.apa.org/secondary-gain
In 2000 it was “elect Nader or the world will end.” Then it was, if was in Iraq, the world will end. Then elect Obama or the world will end. Then if Trump’s elected the world will end, then “whew, close one, he was elected and the world almost ended but we prevented it.” So much practice with “x or the world will end.” In real terms whatever the actual concerns were have been so displaced. Covid just walked into this atmosphere. I don’t know if they enjoy this per se but they can’t stop the doomsday stuff. I think it does not necessarily correlate with actual fear; it’s a relentless rehearsal of the appearance of fear. It’s the logical conclusion of “if you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention.” No one can do 100% outrage for decades at a clip. But they have to seem like they are, so workarounds are employed.
Omicron could quite possibly end the pandemic. Wouldn't that be terrible?
There's about 2 weeks from infection to hospitalization, and 2 weeks from hospitalization to death, so this feels about the right time to see the first death.
I think we've done more than enough to aid the healthcare system, personally. We're allowed to have lives. They've been saying for almost two years now they're on the verge of collapse. Perhaps if they structured themselves not to run at capacity 100% of the time, they'd be better prepared for a foreseeable event like a winter surge.
The healthcare industry really holds all of the cards here and it's high time they made good with their side of the bargain. It's not like they don't know it's December, is it?
And we can still sympathize with those who work at ground level and, unlike the politicos and the admins, deal with the dying and the sick in crisis conditions every day. I'm grateful to them. But I also pay my taxes, pay my insurance, and choose not to be obese. I've really done enough for them and I'm not going to stop going to concerts for their sake.
Which “they” are you talking about though? The nurses and CNAs and hospital staff aren’t the ones making decisions about how hospitals are run. But they are the ones bearing the brunt. Perhaps they ought to go on strike. Except, oh wait.
The "they" in that final sentence refers to the nurses and doctors and so on. I'm genuinely sorry if they're at the end of their rope, but all-cause mortality is also a thing, and the deaths of despair from continued isolation are now a global phenomenon. If someone has to bear the brunt of this, at least let it be those who are paid precisely for that service. Not because I want them to suffer, but because they're the ones best-placed to do it.
Put the vaccine in the fentanyl.
Not all deaths of despair are suicide, as you're surely aware. Look at alcohol, heart, drugs.
This omicron wave is one of the reasons we shouldn’t have squandered people’s isolation endurance over the past 2 years unnecessarily.
Seems like you are failing to apply any sort of cost benefit here. Presumably, if I go outside, I could get hit by a car. That would add to the pressures of the health care community during Omicron. Should I not go outside? What about the costs imposed on me and everyone socially connected to me (friends, family) if I do that? Don’t the odds of that risk occurring, along with the probable severity of the injury, matter a lot? If you answer those questions honestly I think you have to come around to Freddie’s view.
I’d also note your post shows pretty clear signs you’re reasoning emotionally and tribally (clearly liberal, identifying only with health care workers and not caring about people harmed by locking down, name calling of people with other views). Not really modes of reasoning known for quality results.
Yes, this is a reductio ad absurdum, a form of reasoning by analogy, and as an analogy, car accidents are not literally the same as what we are discussing. When you attack small elements of an analogy, and fail to address the actual thrust of what is being said, you are lawyering/missing the point.
For example: I would note you have still failed to do any cost benefit analysis, by, for example, ignoring the harm you are putting on people (should people really not get to socialize over drinks at all if it is key to their happiness, what about the economic damage), avoiding thinking through the available alternatives and their alternative cost-benefit calculation (like those noted in Freddie's post--the infectiousness aspect could be handled by the higher risk taking more precautions), etc.
Also, your attempts to distinguish car accidents aren't as strong as you think. Is one order of magnitude in deaths really a big enough of a difference to you to justify such different responses? Also, note I was saying that the issue with car accidents is they increase the burden of hospitals (your big concern), not that they result in more death--and there are 4.6 million car crash injuries per year, which presumably adds a lot of burden to already-burdened hospitals.
Edited: My first response was a bit catty, so apologies there.
the health care authorities of this country, who are apparently once again asking your friends to take on a massive burden, have failed to take any of the basic steps that could have made things easier on them. things like:
- building out healthcare capacity in anticipation of future seasonal surges, which anyone with a lick of sense could have predicted
- building out test and vaccination capacity, again in advance of expectable seasonal outbreaks, or an entirely unsurprising new mutation that evades existing vaccines more effectively
- building out any kind of early warning or detection system that might notice new mutations before they've infected half the state of New York
- telling people clearly and plainly that wearing a piece of paper or cloth over your face is a highly ineffective method of protection against airborne droplets, and if you want to avoid breathing them in you should invest in an actual, properly worn and fitted, N95 type mask
- upgrading our vaccine development, testing, and deployment system to actually respond in time when new strains of the virus arise which can evade existing vaccines--which, again, could have been seen coming a mile off!
now, to cover for their own utter failure to anticipate or prepare for trivially predictable events, your beloved healthcare authorities are asking your friends to sacrifice themselves, while they ask you to go on the internet and insult anyone who has the nerve to want to spend a holiday with their family and friends. for how long will you stay loyal and do as they ask?
I've got a "tude." Because I dutifully did everything suggested to reduce the spread (reasonably; I didn't mask outside, for example) for 18 months. The original lockdown and flatten the curve were NOT designed to be *THE* response to COVID. They were designed to get us beyond our unprepared stage.
We are STILL unprepared. You feel for those in front line health care? I feel for them too. Why did we not expand their numbers and facilities considerably over the last 18 months? I'm not suggesting no one has tried to do so; I'm suggesting we put shockingly little creativity into it.
I'm also annoyed that we continue to use largely less-effective masks when there are more effective ones available. If we need to wear masks, they should be the best ones we reasonably can. There's not much difference in discomfort between a surgical mask and an N95 (actually, in some ways, the N95 is better since it doesn't hurt the ears as much, at least if you have a head-strap one). Early in the pandemic, it made a lot of sense to just wear *something* because we didn't know exactly what worked and the stuff we were pretty sure worked was in short supply. Now it makes much less sense.
Finally, define a realistic and reasonable point at which we will stop limiting gatherings and wearing masks. Maybe something like effective hospital bed seasonal surge capacity vs. projected hospitalization cases, if we think that is an effective metric. If we don't have any realistic and reasonable goal to work towards, we won't get there. These goals should be LOCAL, not national. Having a ton of extra capacity in the Hamptons doesn't do much good for people in Baltimore (unless we'd like to create some kind of air lift infrastructure to help deal with surges).
I've got a tude because I don't even know if we are making progress at all, and because it feels like there's just been very limited creativity and hard thinking about what the problems are and how we can solve them. Our answer is just a Boxer-like "I will work harder!" "I will isolate more! I will be less comfortable! I will be more unhappy!" Really? THIS is the best we can do?
I AM a frontline healthcare worker (hospitalist NP, have been caring for covid patients since day zero, basically), and I will have an utter mental breakdown (and have come close a few times already) if people don’t stop shaming me for wanting—no, needing, because connection is a genuine human need—to see my friends. In person.
At the beginning of the pandemic I was so terrified of infecting my loved ones that I sent my then five year old son away to live with my ex and my ex in-laws in a distant, much more rural town. I then spent a solid three months dealing with dying Covid patients, including doing chest compressions with inadequate PPE because we didn’t have any, all without anyone to see in person or touch me or hug me or give me even the slightest amount of basic affection other than my cat. I have a very nice cat, but this is not sufficient to my needs.
I can keep doing my job, but I. am. done. with not seeing loved ones and otherwise putting my life on hold. 100% done. The donest of done.
I am uninterested and in fact outright against in any kind of shaming or coercing or scolding or chastising or moral grandstanding that tries to prevent me or anyone else from living their lives.
I would much, much, MUCH rather live in a world where more people need me to take care of them after contracting Covid than in a world where no one gets Covid but we’ve taken away much of what makes life worth living in the first place.
I’m triple vaxxed and wear a mask at all indoor public locations. I also test when symptomatic. Other than that I live my life, seeing anyone I want to see, going to any event I want to go to, without interrogating others about their vaccination status or trying to shame other people into not living THEIR lives or doing elaborate risk calculations in advance of every possible exposure. I simply don’t worry about Covid other than vaccinating, masking, and testing.
That’s the only way I can continue, after two years, to take care of Covid patient after Covid patient without losing my mind, and frankly I think it’s a perfectly reasonable way.
I am more than happy to extend the same courtesy to everyone else, and definitely don’t appreciate scoldings undertaken on my behalf.
Your healthcare facility is lucky to have you! I hope you get some time to enjoy the festive season with friends and family.
The vaccines provide mostly personal protection but personal protection keeps you out of the hospital and the more people kept out of the hospital, the safer everyone is because it ensures that we all have a place to go when we have a trauma injury or heart attack and it is the right thing to do for overwhelmed and overworked healthcare workers.
Yeah, I dunno.
We haven't been overwhelmed thus far.
Fact is most people likely get hospitalized are already vaxxed so this is moot. >95% for those 65 or older.
We haven't been overwhelmed??!!
I represent a bunch of nurses who would be happy to picket in front of your house in order to convince you otherwise.
ICUs ARE overwhelmed. Everyone is working overtime. Critical care nurses are down 30%. And the vast majority of people doing the overwhelming are unvaccinated COVID patients.
It's terrible. Hospital health care is collapsing.
Maybe they should hire back the ones they fired.
But then they wouldn't have a direct lever of control over the scope and duration of the "crisis".
Very few nurses were terminated--something like one percent? Many of the hospitals I work with were giving out "religious exemptions" like candy so they wouldn't lose employees.
No, it's not the vaccine requirement at all that's causing the shortage. It's critical care nurses, who have been dumped on for years, saying, "You know, you can't pay me enough to deal with this crap" and moving to areas with a better work-life balance.
On another substack, someone estimated that we would get 150K deaths from Omicron.
But instead of spread out over a year, I think those will happen in maybe a month or two. And with 64K ICU beds in the country, I think those will just be filled up quickly.
What do you think about trends in South Africa? It is falling off.
Where have you seen that?
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/omicron-post-8
I'm looking at the first graph, where Omicron is basically "Delta but at 3x speed." In a few more weeks we'll know how the death graph looks.
I've been following Zvi too. I like his style! But if I had to bet, I'd guess that Omicron won't be as virulent as Delta but will be infectious enough to make up for the difference in hospitalizations.
Devil’s advocate - I agree that “get food delivered instead of going to the store” merely shifts the risk from yourself to another, but what about “stay at home or hang out in small groups as opposed to attend large gatherings/parties/events”? I think that’s the stronger version of the argument. Not one that I find personally compelling, but for more individualistic reasons - I too feel that I have done my part by getting vaccinated and obeying mask mandates, etc, and I am ready to get back to my normal life. I’m especially unwilling to make large sacrifices when the vast majority of the country is on board with returning to (relative) normalcy.
Yeah that was my disappointment with Yong's Atlantic article. Ok, cancel your birthday party if you must, but please spare me the self-pity and martyrdom.
Right. There are ways to be more careful that don’t burden delivery workers. Do your own grocery shopping, but don’t eat in restaurants. Don’t gather with friends indoors. Don’t travel for the holidays. Cancel your kid’s play date. Don’t get your nails or hair done. That’s what people mean by social responsibility.
I’m a germaphobe with anxiety who has been very careful for the whole pandemic, snd I’m still skipping things like the salon. But I’m gathering with family for the holidays, including someone traveling by air.
I think the difference between me and those calling for maximum caution is that I’ve given up. From what I’ve read about Omicron, getting infected is inevitable.
If I believed avoiding restaurants made a difference I’d probably be one of those scolds… but at this point I think we’re all going to be exposed. Get vaccinated and hope for the best.
Your ancestors will be saying the same thing about you, btw.
Sorry, I deleted a snarky and useless reply. It just doesn't seem that this level of vitriol and judgment is good for anybody.
Noah Blum had a great tweet: "The hard truth is that nobody out there is doing the absolute most cautious things to avoid covid, but everyone looks at the person who is being one degree less cautious than them as the place where the problem starts."
That's the thing about this whole situation, you can worry all you want but what the fuck is that going to do about it? Indifference to the predicament and a positive attitude about what you can do in the moment to make life more bearable is all that you can do. COVID took away my entire senior year of college - but at the end of the day I did whatever I could to make sure I could have a great time *within reason*. It's almost like people want you to be miserable and stoop down to their level of fucking neuroticism so you can wither away and be miserable with them. Fuck all that, I'm here to have fun.
That's a great tweet, I see that going on all over the place.
As George Carlin said, anyone driving slower than you is a moron; anyone driving faster than you is a maniac.
Anyone driving 10 mph slower than me is easy to pass; anyone driving 10 mph faster than me has a car I'm jealous of. It's the people going juuuuussssst a little bit slower or faster who cause the friction, because there's no way to easily solve the problem without someone either slowing down or speeding up.
The gold medal has to go to people who pass you only to get in front of you and then immediately slow down to 5mph less than the speed you've been at for like the last 100 hours. My caveman rage really comes on strong at that point.
That and people who will go to their grave having never turned right at a red light. I once got a citation for expired tags (was really poor at the time and had to make hard financial choices) because this guy in front of me refused to turn right at the light. There was no one in his way and plenty of room for him to turn.
It was a really long light, I was like 2 blocks from work, and I shit you not, I literally sat there in horror as I watched the cop walk out of the gas station next to me with his hot coffee and doughnut, get in his patrol car, casually back out and pull up behind me, and flick on his lights as soon as he saw my tags. I could have strangled the guy in front of me to death right there in the intersection.
Mad respect if you're legit redlining your whip at all times haha.
Last night in the car was a great teaching moment when the 3yo wouldn’t stop whining and moaning about something he wanted that was impossible in that moment. “See kids?” I said to the older two. “This is what happens when you hold so strongly to your opinions that you end up ruining life for everyone else over something you could just let go of.”
"it would have been smart if we had all fought to make vaccination as free of culture war trappings as possible; unfortunately, we did the opposite"
I guess my response to this is: who was doing this? And why?
Nothing is free of culture war trappings any longer. Absolutely nothing. So this is less an indictment of our collective Covid response and more an indictment of the absolute shitshow of a culture Americans currently inhabit. The best thing to do is to act like a reasonable person that lives in a society and ignore the freakouts; of course, that is largely impossible without a great deal of personal willpower. Not being on social media helps.
the vaccine was politicized from the very beginning - starting the with announcement of operation warp speed. You're right in that it is practically impossible to free anything of culture war trappings. This is the bane of American existence
Right. I'm not disagreeing the vaccine was politicized. But I think it's important to ask the questions, and we are not going to get ourselves out of this cultural hole if we pretend that everyone is equally as responsible for it. Or maybe we will, I don't know. Maybe it's an attitude of "it doesn't matter who broke the lamp, you were all playing baseball in the living room." I don't know.
Good point. I blame the media, but surely the media is responding to incentives from readers, and surely the readers are responding to messages from the thought leaders of our culture... round and round we go. It's hard to see where the chicken ends and the egg begins.
Yes. Perhaps it’s time we moved on to the I Don’t Care Who Started It phase of the pandemic.
Both of you, go to your rooms! /sarc
We predicted the people who were going to resist, but instead of quietly taking them aside and asking them what it would take to get them on board, we decided to mock them as idiots.
Which, fine, you're not wrong. But you're also not achieving your goal.
The hilarious thing about the politicizing of this pandemic has been watching the teams switch each time. At the start Trump was shutting down travel and Democrats and the media said that was a racist overreaction to something that was no worse than the flu (and also that masks were useless). Then Trump tried to downplay it to save the stock market and both teams jumped onto opposite sides. Suddenly it was very serious to the left and overblown to the right. Then when the vaccines were announced late in campaign season Biden and Harris sowed doubt by claiming to be wary of a Trump-rushed vaccine and discouraging anyone from taking it unless the data was fully transparent. Once they were in office that flipped around too. The tribalism is so arbitrary no one even knows what they’re for, they just know they’re against the other guys.
Including most of the commentariats right here and now. If you are reading these words, I'm talking about you.
> The best thing to do is to act like a reasonable person that lives in a society and ignore the freakouts.
I'm don't know if this is possible any more. "Silence is violence." The keep-your-head-down approach has done nothing but let loons take almost all the major positions in non-profits and both major political parties. The ACLU, they used to be sane and principled! Now they court a handful of wealthy donors, and don't care if it costs them donations from chumps like me. (I've redirected my money to the FIRE these days, one of the few orgs that has taken a stand against this stuff.)
I don't have a good answer for what should be done, I'm sorry to say. I'm just frustrated. And yeah, I know this can't last forever -- but the longer it does, the worse it'll be for everyone when it falls apart.
This seems... like venting, yeah. I've worked in the non-profit space for over 10 years and whatever you're seeing, I'm not seeing. People like to say that shit about the ACLU but never have any specifics. Like, don't give to the ACLU (I don't either) but it's because they have plenty of money, not because I don't support their overall mission. The ACLU isn't raising their money from "a handful of wealthy donors."
I'm generally of a mind with Scott Greenfield, even if he's overall more conservative than I. Though I may, double-checking be wrong about the cause of the shift: it might genuinely be bending towards culture war stuff because it gets donations en masse.
Anyways, https://blog.simplejustice.us/?s=aclu
Twitter
As with most of this crap nowadays, I blame social media and cable news. It should be relatively easy to get the shot and go on living without making a big show of it. But nope; too many people are absolutely addicted to owning the libs or owning the cons because there's nothing apolitical in life that gives them any pleasure.
Don't forget about conservative talk radio; it still shapes the political views of millions of Americans and is a major vector of vaccine resistance and coronavirus misinformation. Rush Limbaugh and his hundreds of radio host acolytes pretty much invented "owning the libs." I'm hoping the recent covid deaths of 5 talk show hosts is sobering to that crowd, but I'm not counting on it.
Yeah. And despite some holdouts, the vaccine uptake story is, honestly, a great triumph, and something we should be proud of. Figures from the WSJ this week ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-case-count-11594333471 -- it is unfortunately paywalled ) put the fully-vaccinated rate at 72.5% for those 18 and up, and an astounding 87.5% for those 65 and up. Given the problems with health care access in this country overall, given that Covid has unfortunately been a point of political polarization, and given the general American proclivity for orneriness, I think that's a wonderful success.
Yeah, I never understood the frowning over vaccination rates, since they only look bad in a total vaccuum. There were anti-innoculation protests in the 19th century, and any school administrator or public health worker can tell you that a small, vocal chunk of Americans have always resisted vaccination. The Covid vaccination campaign is unprecedented in its scale and speed--it barely makes sense to talk about "success" or "failure" when the very fact of it was hard to imagine a decade ago.
Because, exactly with the culture war, there are two types of people on the offensive side:
1. Those who genuinely believe We Can Do Better and There Is So Much Work To Be Done. These are the people who think COVID confers a 30% hospitalization rate, that the healthcare system is on the constant verge of collapse, and that dancing nurses are heroes.
2. Then there are those who know the truth but like having item 1 as their personal army. They know that mass vaccination is a great success, but they don't care. Instead, they are roaming the countryside shooting survivors for sport.
Really this entire vaccine thing is the most "America fuck yeah" story of my life. We developed a vaccine to a novel coronavirus in months (remember, people were saying this was impossible), got it produced at massive quantities within a year of the pandemic starting, and vaccinated the vast majority of the country!! We rock!!
This is a Rorhschach Test. If you can look at what we pulled off, and think this says something bad about humanity, you need to think about your world outlook.
I want to add that I think there was probably a backfire from banning Trump. If he were on Twitter, he'd no doubt be promoting the vaccine that he sincerely thinks he single-handedly invented
Maybe although I think he was truly taken aback when booed for telling people to get vaccinated.
Just a day or two ago he told them again to do it, despite knowing they'd boo.
I think it's the first time in his life he did a brave thing.
I didn’t know that and I’m glad to hear it, no matter the reason.
Let’s not forget, he had COVID. He likely knows just how close he came to the abyss.
I think there's two answers to the question.
One is to abstain from *discretionary* outings and gatherings with other people. Yes, you have to get food somehow -- maybe mitigate the risk by going at odd hours. Maybe you don't need to see the new Spider Man in the theater? Maybe, like Ed Yong, cancel a birthday party or make it virtual. Maybe cook more meals in. In general, at the margins, opt against choices that include going out among crowds, particularly indoors.
To which I would answer that my social responsibility includes more than just minimizing the risk I could be infected with or spread COVID. I have a responsibility to the organizations I am a part of to be as effective as possible at them. I have a responsibility to my friends and family members to be as present as I can be to them. And I have a responsibility to keep myself as happy and mentally healthy as possible so I can be my best self, and that may involve pursuing activities that increase my risk profile.
I think the other answer might be that the article betrays an attitude of something less than full commitment to the COVID protocols is demoralizing to those who are trying and sends the wrong message to those tempted to not comply. Maybe it's silly from a scientific standpoint to mask outdoors, but it strengthens the social norm for masking and sends the message that you're willing to do your part.
Maybe there is some value in playing our part in COVID theatre, but as the timelines grow, I think it's more important that the measures we take are sustainable and make sense, so I think some skepticism is healthy.
Sure, but we all know people that basically haven't changed their behavior since March 2020, which, unless you're immune compromised or something, is... a choice.
Last year, I was basically going to the supermarket, eating outdoors, seeing my mom, and very occasionally hooking up with people I trusted. These were all things I either had to do (who can afford to get their groceries delivered for 2 years? Not me) or things I had to do for my mental health. And lo and behold... I never got sick.
Once I was double vaxxed, I started playing D&D in person again, eating indoors, dating more, indoor sports leagues, and a couple movies. Basically the only things I wasn't doing post-Covid that I was doing pre-Covid was traveling and going to conventions. And lo and behold... I never got sick.
I also never stopped wearing a mask indoors when around the general public. It's basically nothing to me (I actually kind of like it not having to worry about putting on a socially-acceptable face.)
A friend of mine recently told us that while unlikely, their 4 year old COULD die if they get covid, and they therefore are going to continue to isolate as much as humanly possible. Until... when? Nobody would say for sure. Some seem to think we still might do away with covid, rather than this disease continuing to circulate and mutate for the rest of our lives. Consider me a skeptic.
However, they also felt that people like me (fully vaccinated, still masking indoors), would impose heightened risk upon them by my willingness to go out in public in the potential presence of the unvaccinated. That could certainly be true. But when the AAP says "In states reporting, 0.00%-0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death", it doesn't make me feel that bad. But how do I tell someone else what risk is acceptable for their kid?
To me that means they can continue sealing themselves off from the world if they so choose. I do not believe it is my social responsibility to take every step I can to minimize risks for six degrees of separation for everyone I meet at this point in the covid saga. I suspect some of my friends would simply disagree with that. Not sure where to go from there.
But kind of a bummer that some of them likely won't attend my bachelor party as a result :(
Screw ‘‘em they probably wouldn’t be that fun at a bachelor party anyways.
They can’t handle their drugs or liquor for shit that’s for sure
Yeesh. Their kid was probably far more likely to have died of SIDS in infancy than to one day die of COVID as a preschooler. Maybe don’t open with that though.
F*ck yeah.
After over a year of lockdown quarantine and so on, I endured an emotional breakdown. I did everything asked of me. But at some point, the mental health tradeoffs starts to tip the scale.
What is it with this self-destructive liberal-left proclivity towards a kind of neo-Victorian performing-morality-for-the-unwashed-masses? Rife with ecclesiastical decrees, banishments, anointments? It’s almost designed for failure.
I will continue to boost and mask where asked, but there’s something increasingly suspicious about this perpetual state of fear, shame, anxiety, distrust, and so on, that anyone turning on CNN will come to experience, until the Prozac commercial starts.
We’re no use to our family and friends, maybe even communities, if we have them, when we turn towards despair. At some point we just have to accept the things we cannot change and have the wisdom to move on.
Most people crowing about "social responsibility" believe they are more socially responsible than the "bad people." It's a vehicle to make yourself feel superior (like so much of the rest of our public discourse). While you're at it, if you never get behind the wheel you can contribute to lowering highway deaths. Do your part!
Only you can prevent forest fires.
My reaction to your last essay wasn't that I thought you or anyone should worry more or feel worse -- it was to challenge your assumption that everyone expressing huge amounts of angst and depair is doing so as a form of performative oneupmanship. Some are, some aren't. Personally, I'm struggling to avoid drowning in despair but I'm not suggesting that others try to match me.
I’m really sorry you’re struggling. Of course I have no clue what your circumstances are, but I read yesterday’s post as a bit of free cognitive behavioral therapy for the percentage of people who are inappropriately absorbing trauma that may not be theirs to own.
Having most people stay at home while having a small fraction of people doing delivery to everyone who is staying at home does probably reduce spread relative to having everyone going out to do their own errands. Such an arrangement thus creates both a shift of risk (from stay-at-homers to the delivery underclass) and a reduction in total risk (due to fewer total interactions between people).
i don't think that's necessarily incorrect but.... until when? some people bought into this idea of "until the virus goes away" at the start but it's become increasingly clear that it won't go away. so... until there's a vaccine? until there are effective treatments? until we figure out some way to update our vaccine versions faster than the virus can mutate around them? until Anthony Fauci personally goes on TV and gives every American permission to throw out their face coverings and hang out inside the mall?
because lately, everyone asking "until when?" has started to realize the answer is "until you give up and move on with your life" and the real joke is that that's always been the only answer that matters
Tell that to my vet, whose website states (verbatim): "In case one might be wondering, we're planning to remain curbside-only throughout the duration of COVID."
I mean, I have news for them...
I’m with you on this one. Perhaps it would be less, to use a popular term, inequitable if we paid the essential workers a wage that reflected their risk.
Yes, and with good pay a lot of them want the work. They’re not on Instacart hoping they don’t get orders. I always get groceries delivered (started before the pandemic) and I get messages thanking me for the business. I tip between $20 and $25 and rate 5 stars even when something is wrong (because it affects their pay).
Sometimes I feel like a privileged asshole when I’m like reviewing photos of yogurt and deciding which ones I want. But not ordering delivery wouldn’t make anyone’s life better.
My cousin in Northern Ireland has been a grocery store personal shopper for several years, and she’s happy with the job and likes the majority of her customers. As with any low-status job, if you treat someone like a peasant they’re going to feel bad and if you show gratitude for their work they’ll feel good.
Sorry, but there aren't any externalities related to your behavior at this stage of COVID.
The vaccines primarily provide personal protection.
The virus is extremely infectious and quarantining, etc. doesn't make a big difference. We're all going to get it.
We are also at near max population benefit from vaccination.
People who are arguing otherwise are neurotics or otherwise poorly incentivized and should be ignored.
Don't go out if you're symptomatic. But otherwise, if you're vaccinated, live your life. If you have someone high risk in your life encourage them to get vaccinated (although they probably already are).
Fin.