Excellent essay on "Covid fatigue"

[86Hawkeye]

Oops. Surprised Biden was still saying that in July. I thought we knew by then that vaccinated people could get it.

Yeah, Team Biden put most of their eggs into the vaccine basket. The approach should’ve been more balanced with emphasis on testing and therapeutics. That wouldn’t work though because they wanted the anti-vaxxers to suffer.

 

[Urohawk]

I never thought I would see this in my lifetime.

There are no easy answers.

And there really aren't any "correct" answers when there NO answers that 1/2 the population will ever agree with.

Disagree. Just got back from Costa Rica. People were wearing masks walking out in the street with no one near them. They have a 70.5% vaccination rate. The people not complying were American tourists. I think I saw two people with chin covers.

Latin and South American are now the most highly vaccinated regions in the world.

 

[West Duval Nole]

TLDR

 

[torbee]

Disagree. Just got back from Costa Rica. People were wearing masks walking out in the street with no one near them. They have a 70.5% vaccination rate. The people not complying were American tourists. I think I saw two people with chin covers.

Latin and South American are now the most highly vaccinated regions in the world.

Just heard a story on NPR about how American servicemen being lax with preventative measures has caused the infection rate on Okinawa to spike by like 40 percent and the Japanese are pissed.

 

[Nole Lou]

Yeah, Team Biden put most of their eggs into the vaccine basket. The approach should’ve been more balanced with emphasis on testing and therapeutics. That wouldn’t work though because they wanted the anti-vaxxers to suffer.

To be fair...EVERYONE I follow on this, and I take pretty good pride on following non-partisan, deep in the science based people (Monica Gandhi, Muge Cevic, etc) that take into account both the epidemiology and the greater public health, thought we'd vaccinate our way to herd immunity and stopping community transmission.

I don't blame Biden for that, or anyone else really. Frankly, that's something that everyone from Biden to DeSantis expected. That was a miss, and frankly, I'd like to see a deep dive on how and why we whiffed on that one. We weren't supposed to need 100% vaccination to stop the spread, nobody of any seriousness ever expected that kind of vaccine uptake.

I'd like an honest assessment of whether it was the variants, or whether the trials overestimated the effect on transmission, or whether everyone smart just made bad projections from good data. But instead everyone has either memory-holed that expectation and is pretending that the vaccine was always ONLY about preventing serious illness (which it does splendidly), or is just ignoring reality and pretending we can still vaccinate ourselves to herd immunity.

But that's really neither here nor there...everyone along with Biden expected to vaccinate out of it.

The only issue I take with it is that it was clear six months ago. When the summer spike hit, smart people were saying "Uh oh, it wasn't supposed to look like this", based on the vaccination rates. The issue wasn't that Florida was doomed at 60% vaccinated and New Jersey was swell at 64% vaccinated or whatever... what was happening in the South was not expected to be happening at their vaccination rates.

The dumb/partisan people said it was because of DeathSantis and stupid Republicans in the South, and that the Northeast would be great because they had 5% more vaccinated, but that was never going to happen. People are just now slowly coming around to having to deal with the idea and strategy of an endemic virus, when it was clear to a lot of people this summer.

And maybe if they'd recognized that, they could have ramped up test production, etc. A lot of reports are that the administration balked on expanding test production and capabilities because Biden thought it would discourage vaccination. We could have been six months further along on test production, at home tests, testing capacity, therapeutics.

If I was Biden, I probably wouldn't have abruptly switched gears this summer out of nowhere, but I would have seen what was happening and started the off ramp as far as rhetoric and expectations, and he could be landing more softly now, instead of looking like he's waving the white flag. They were talking about "ending the virus" until way too recently.

 

[ThorneStockton]

To be fair...EVERYONE I follow on this, and I take pretty good pride on following non-partisan, deep in the science based people (Monica Gandhi, Muge Cevic, etc) that take into account both the epidemiology and the greater public health, thought we'd vaccinate our way to herd immunity and stopping community transmission.

I don't blame Biden for that, or anyone else really. Frankly, that's something that everyone from Biden to DeSantis expected. That was a miss, and frankly, I'd like to see a deep dive on how and why we whiffed on that one. We weren't supposed to need 100% vaccination to stop the spread, nobody of any seriousness ever expected that kind of vaccine uptake.

I'd like an honest assessment of whether it was the variants, or whether the trials overestimated the effect on transmission, or whether everyone smart just made bad projections from good data. But instead everyone has either memory-holed that expectation and is pretending that the vaccine was always ONLY about preventing serious illness (which it does splendidly), or is just ignoring reality and pretending we can still vaccinate ourselves to herd immunity.

But that's really neither here nor there...everyone along with Biden expected to vaccinate out of it.

The only issue I take with it is that it was clear six months ago. When the summer spike hit, smart people were saying "Uh oh, it wasn't supposed to look like this", based on the vaccination rates. The issue wasn't that Florida was doomed at 60% vaccinated and New Jersey was swell at 64% vaccinated or whatever... what was happening in the South was not expected to be happening at their vaccination rates.

The dumb/partisan people said it was because of DeathSantis and stupid Republicans in the South, and that the Northeast would be great because they had 5% more vaccinated, but that was never going to happen. People are just now slowly coming around to having to deal with the idea and strategy of an endemic virus, when it was clear to a lot of people this summer.

And maybe if they'd recognized that, they could have ramped up test production, etc. A lot of reports are that the administration balked on expanding test production and capabilities because Biden thought it would discourage vaccination. We could have been six months further along on test production, at home tests, testing capacity, therapeutics.

If I was Biden, I probably wouldn't have abruptly switched gears this summer out of nowhere, but I would have seen what was happening and started the off ramp as far as rhetoric and expectations, and he could be landing more softly now, instead of looking like he's waving the white flag. They were talking about "ending the virus" until way too recently.

Just a reminder, "stupid Republicans" are not contained to just the South. More people voted for Trump in New Jersey than in Mississippi as an example. Relatively, sure, we've all seen the maps where the South looks like shit across all sorts of different metrics, but that doesn't mean it's limited to the South. Plenty of stupid, uneducated, unhealthy, poor people all over the country.

 

[Hawk_4shur]

Disagree. Just got back from Costa Rica. People were wearing masks walking out in the street with no one near them. They have a 70.5% vaccination rate. The people not complying were American tourists. I think I saw two people with chin covers.

Latin and South American are now the most highly vaccinated regions in the world.

Well, that was kind of my point. I was trying to say even a good answer won't be "the right answer" for half the country.

 

[artradley]

Just a reminder, "stupid Republicans" are not contained to just the South. More people voted for Trump in New Jersey than in Mississippi as an example. Relatively, sure, we've all seen the maps where the South looks like shit across all sorts of different metrics, but that doesn't mean it's limited to the South. Plenty of stupid, uneducated, unhealthy, poor people all over the country.

Long ago this ceased being a north vs south issue. It’s an urban vs suburban vs rural issue.

 

[globalhawk]

Yeah, Team Biden put most of their eggs into the vaccine basket. The approach should’ve been more balanced with emphasis on testing and therapeutics. That wouldn’t work though because they wanted the anti-vaxxers to suffer.

This right here is why our country is messed up.