I worry also about an overreaction. At some level people who can survive a virus with little to no symptoms are better off contracting it than not, if only to form the antibodies to be ready for future mutants they might come in contact with. The behavior changes we make because of COVID could be dooming a lot of people to one day encounter much worse mutant viruses they could have been ready for.
I really hate this kind of logic. I get where it comes from but I still hate it.
I have a genetic disorder that causes a compromised immune system, so germ control is my life. My life got better in some important ways with the entire rest of the world being less germy and disgusting.
About one of out every five people is officially labeled "handicapped" and at least one study suggests that up to three out of every five people may have more minor impairments that they mostly cover up and don't want to label as a "handicap" because it's stigmatizing. A great many people with various handicaps are immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable.
A lot of handicapped people saw some things improve for themselves while the entire world temporarily felt that germ control was super important. As one of those people, I am very concerned that "business as usual" will be a terrible thing for me.
I've tried to figure out how to write about what kinds of best practices I would like to see, but that never really gelled in part because I became very concerned it would make me a target for the fear and anger of a lot of people during a global crisis. I didn't want some sort of lynch mob to descend upon me while much of the world applauded their depravity because, hey, scapegoats rather than solutions seems to be a very popular pursuit in the world generally, even during "normal" times and folks seem to double down on that during crises.
Maybe I will still find a way to write about it and have some kind of influence on moving the needle gently but firmly in the right direction. And maybe not. I don't have much of an audience and like Rodney Dangerfield "I get no respect" and yadda.
I do not have those problems. I am sorry you do. Sucks.
But, I am definitely not returning to "normal" pre Covid behavior.
I got Covid early on. It was extremely rough. Should probably have been in the hospital, but frankly worried about that a lot given what was happening.
Made it through, as did my family.
Those experiences were why we played it very safe. Lots of negatives in doing that, but there were some positives, damn good takeaways:
We basically saw a no flu season. Haven't caught much more than a sneeze. That is awful nice.
Travel, work, life balance got reset. Turns out a whole lot more can be done without doing those things as much. Good for the planet, good for a lot of people, me, mine.
Health care in the US is broken, and so is our governance. This whole thing has made me see just how severe cost and risk exposure for way too many people really is!
Our response, information distribution, and I could go on for a long while here is frankly and completely unacceptable.
There is real work to do and we have been running balls out and basically ignoring it, marginalizing costs and risks and in general just do not have our national priorities in order.
Just know others hear you. We felt it too. Felt it differently, but I do not think that matters.
> Health care in the US is broken, and so is our governance. This whole thing has made me see just how severe cost and risk exposure for way too many people really is!
There are a lot of people who benefit from health care being broken so I’m very pessimistic if we will see single payer in our lifetime. We all need to keep fighting for it but to be realistic it might not happen in the next thirty years.
There is an order, if not two more who do not benefit, and it is unnecessary.
I agree with you. However, I will also no longer be quiet about it. My own costs and risks have been insane. Future impacted in the negative multiple times now.
Would not have been most other parts of the world.
Frankly, the cost and risk exposure will hit a point where people move in mass, or it won't and we trundle along for a decade or two.
Nobody knows.
What I do know is I have reached a point where I will act in solidarity with others on this matter and will make very aggressive trade offs too. It is now a priority.
I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen, who naturalized (by descent, via my 4 Croatian great-grandparents, even though I only needed 1) as Croatian over the US healthcare system. Because I am an European Union citizen, I can live/work/retire in the EU and EFTA countries (minus Lichtenstein--has an immigration quota), due to Freedom of Movement rights. I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent). Anyways, even though the neurological diseases are in pharmaceutical remission, I require a lot of unusual and expensive treatments to stay alive. I am an electrical engineering graduate student, who has studied healthcare systems and delivery, and I understand the logistics and the bureaucracy involved. I am also an expert on processes involving acquiring citizenship. Feel free to shoot me an email, if you want (see my profile).
Ironically, the best resource for navigating the various intricacies of various countries' health systems, globally, with respect to living a long life, is the IMHE group. You know, the group that was famous for the coronavirus projections at the beginning of the pandemic in the USA. All of their peer-reviewed publications are open access, too.
This is probably the most important research article to consult and study (although there are several others): Forecasting life expectancy, years of life lost, and all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 250 causes of death: reference and alternative scenarios for 2016–40 for 195 countries and territories using data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016: http://www.healthdata.org/research-article/forecasting-life-...
M4A is socialism and is just too easy a target in the U.S. At some point there will beer a republicans president, and due to the structural advantages it’s likely he will have full control over all branches. Not sure that a real democracy can survive that.
But, I am definitely not returning to "normal" pre Covid behavior.
What would this look like, in practice? Of course on a macro scale we'll see changes like increasing adoption and acceptance of remote work/meetings, but in terms of individual behavior what can or should change?
I assume 10 years from now (barring another pandemic) we won't all be wearing masks and gloves all the time or strictly maintaining a six-foot distance from all other people, but offhand I see myself maintaining a few habits to varying degrees of strictness:
* Consistently washing my hands after touching mail or packages
* Letting packages sit by the front door for a day or two before bringing them further inside and opening them
* Pressing crosswalk buttons with my elbow
* Flushing non-automatic public toilets/urinals with my foot and opening/closing restroom doors with my foot, my elbow, or my hand and a paper towel
* Immediately showering and changing after being in public
* Wiping down groceries before putting them away
* If I need to go out in public while sick for whatever reason, wearing an N95/equivalent mask (not that I had a habit of going out while sick to begin with / I can't specifically recall having ever done so, but if I had ever needed to it certainly wouldn't have occurred to me or struck me as socially acceptable to put on a mask)
* When I return to the gym, consistently wearing gloves (I bought a bunch of full-fingered workout gloves and did this for a week or two last year just before everything shut down, and resumed the habit at home after a sliver of metal broke off of one of my dumbbell handles and got stuck in my finger)
* Maybe continuing to wear gloves while in public in general, or even just semi-regularly using hand sanitizer
Your list is a lot like mine. Giving the basics a higher priority for the longer term, and teaching these to young ones, along with appropriate norms are how I intend on playing it all going forward.
But your genetic disorder shouldn’t be extended to negatively impact others, knowing your unique situation means you need to manage your risks. It’s entirely unfair and a violation of privacy for people to have to be brought into your health decisions and vice versa. Why would it ever be reasonable to expect the government to keep tabs on random strangers just because I have a genetic health condition?
I would much rather die than force someone else to suddenly be required to base their free agency around what happens to work best for me, especially because I am 100% going to die no matter what.
It just seems totally illogical to remove freedoms at scale to prevent something that is ultimately inevitable.
Basically seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water, what’s the point of having a society at all if people have to be micro-managed to the point of being enslaved to each other’s mortality? It just seems so obviously a mistake and a huge slippery slope.
What’s next, they tell us which people have to die so the rest of us don’t have to be burdened with them? That is essentially exactly what this type of government/healthcare overreach is doing.
I shouldn't have to tell people I have a genetic disorder to have them respect my desire to keep their damn hands off of me.
Expecting random strangers to not touch me is not some huge invasive expectation. Quite the contrary: The people who think they are entitled to touch me are being invasive and making an imposition. People should not feel that because I'm poor or an attractive woman or whatever that touching me is appropriate behavior when we are total strangers.
That's just one example and I don't intend to discuss this further with you.
I very much agree to getting rid of the mandatory handshaking habit. And quite some similar customs. Like in the supermarket yesterday, with everyone wearing masks, limited people inside etc. - but then at the cashier I was expected to use the same dirty digital pen to sign the payment by card, like everybody else did. Such idiocity.
But for the rest, do you expect people to continiue to wear masks after this?
In general, are you aware, that the youth of this planet is pretty much on standby since a year? They are not really threatened by covid, yet they have to pay the highest toll in the restrictions - because their life is not established, they have to move around to set up their life. Which they cannot really do now. They could also say, fuck the old and weak, we won't sacrifice more for them - we got to live our lives now - but they are largely not doing it. So maybe it is not such a shitty egoistic world after all?
But for the rest, do you expect people to continiue to wear masks after this?
No, I don't expect people to wear masks as the new norm.
I haven't managed to write in earnest because I think people treat masks like plus two magic items in the game of Pandemic and I mostly hate them and this is not exactly a good place from which to gain an audience and yadda under current circumstances.
Oh, that is surprising, I mean, I hate the masks, too, but my immune system is quite good, so I wear it only for the sake of other people. May I ask, why you object to masks for yourself?
It is an "US" problem. Frankly, we have a number of US problems brewing and we have them due to not having our priorities in order as a people, human beings.
Another way of looking at it is that most people are incompetent at being selfish.
A competently selfish person would realize that having compassion for their fellow human beings is one of the most selfish traits they could ever have.
Indeed. The advantages add right up quickly. In my view, that it does not all end up in a spreadsheet or bank account makes this a harder discussion than it needs to be.
I understand you hold that opinion. Also understand it is a minority opinion. And hey, I get it. Many people do not like to be told what they have to do.
Humans, this place we inhabit works the way it works. There will be tradeoffs.
Managing public health is one of them. There are many others.
Sincerely, I wish you had the option to live in a personal vacuum, "you do you" style, but that option is currently unavailable.
There are some options given you are willing to either forego many of the benefits that come with a well developed society, or accumulate wealth sufficient to isolate yourself.
Barring those, yeah. You are just another member of the public.
Don't get me wrong I'm very open to a cleaner world. I watch videos of people walking around Tokyo and I marvel at the clean streets. Minimizing places for viruses to grow and mutate is a common ground I think nobody would attack anyone for suggesting, if they're well thought out and not attached to something already political anyway.
I totally agree with this. I’m not disabled but I do have a pretty crappy upper respiratory system, and I used to get URT infections regularly, like 7-8 times a year. In 2020? Not one. I think my increased awareness about hygiene and the same from the general public really had an effect. And yes, masks too. If there’s one thing positive I hope we can take from this, it is normalizing mask-wearing when you are sick or expect to be around sick people. I plan to continue the practice myself, and pay much more attention to hygiene and personal space, like not touching people unnecessarily.
Imo it's hard. Different people get different consequences from different approaches. Now, I'm no expert, but I know a little bit about allergies - and I believe it's fairly well known that not being exposed to dirty environments, animals and nature have caused a huge increase in allergies all around the world (but very much the most in the developed world). I guess what I'm saying is that it's not that simple, and a lot comes down to politics.
I believe it's fairly well known that not being exposed to dirty environments, animals and nature have caused a huge increase in allergies all around the world (but very much the most in the developed world).
I keep hearing that but I don't really know where that idea comes from. I am skeptical of that idea.
I don't think things are simple at all. That's part of why my desire to write on the topic hasn't really gone anywhere.
I haven't had so much as a cold in the last... checks calendar... year. Humans are much more capable of containing basic every-day pathogens than we seem to have thought.
