More like being inundated by smoke. My town is currently experiencing intermittent days of smokiness from fires burning 100s of miles away. People are dying in those fires. Homes are being destroyed.

But the local fire department isn't doing anything about it. Nobody around here is installing sprinklers as a precaution. They act like there is no fire at all.

Covid is a serious thing. But "engulfed by flames" is the exact overstatement that causes people to question the motivation of fear-mongers.

I'm vaccinated. I wear a mask. I think too many people are whipping up a frenzy for profit. Why don't we lockdown our highways when there are 600,000 deaths from auto accidents? Why not lockdown breweries when there are 2 million drunk-driving incidents? Why isn't there a frenzy over influenza?

Covid frenzy has a better marketing campaign. It's the kind of thing that has people claiming we are "engulfed by flames" when things get smoky.

> Why don't we lockdown our highways when there are 600,000 deaths from auto accidents?

We mandate seat belts, air bags, guard rails, road construction standards, backup cameras, crumple zones, and quite a few other elements involved in road safety. Per-mile road deaths have been on a precipitous decline for decades due to ongoing increases in safety mandates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

So 35000 deaths per year is ok? 100000? 250000? 1.5 million (diabetes)?

500000 hospitalizations (influenza)?

What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.

Whats crazy is people have already forgotten that we had large outbreaks and hospitals overrun. The hospitals were way over capacity with the sick. Covid is not a normal problem.

I don't know about the US, but every country that has winter has hospitals "overrun" with flu every year and never such authoritarian measures were taken.

According to this table [1], we spent about double on coronavirus public funding in 2020 as we do _every_ year for diabetes. As an emergent situation with potential for much more death, that seems proportional.

Also, according to [2], "The majority of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes." So the majority of deaths are possibly preventable, which sounds familiar to the debate around COVID.

Finally, to suggest diabetes and coronaviruses are at all the same is an ignorant statement. It's not like _nobody_ cares about diabetes. It just happens to be its own tough nut to crack. What have you contributed to the body of knowledge about it?

> What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.

Indeed. This is why I strictly limit my news consumption, but it's not completely useless. I scan for trends and dig into sources and details. The stuff I linked in this comment took me all of 5 minutes to find with Internet searches.

[1]: https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/

[2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes

> What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.

I think initially the correct answer in the case of COVID-19 was more specifically: whatever endangers existing profits most. The whole situation spelled uncertainty at the beginning, and that's bad for everything where "business as usual" is highly profitable. The rushed response and large scale mismanagement this caused is what brought into existence the "never let a crisis go to waste" part that came after.

You nailed it on the head. The fear mongering is absurd, and largely money driven. I would think we suffer many many more deaths from diabetes than 1.5 million/year. Of course, if you die in the hospital from diabetes complications with Covid, you get counted as a "covid death". :-/

well there are legal consequences of causing or being part of an accident, unlike spreading COVID or Influenza. So we don't consider road deaths okay by nearly any metric. If you want to call out bad comparisons your position should be included in that. Not only do we put tons of safety precautions in place on the road, people get in serious trouble when they have been negligent. And we also have tons of companies currently trying to remove the human driver error from the equation entirely.

The idea of conflating other causes of death with COVID is just perfection over progress. Sure there are other systems that aren't perfect but that doesn't mean COVID isn't worth addressing.

Those are band-aids. A car-lockdown would save lots of lives.

GPs point is: compared to other drama, covid's hype seems out of proportion. I agree.

My wife is a children's ER doctor. They are now seeing all patients up to 25 because the adult ER can't handle the number of COVID patients. The pediatric ICU is also now full (in contrast to the earlier COVID waves were virtually no children required treatment).

She's never had to do that because of a bad flu season. More than 90% of the adults in the hospital for COVID and 100% of the kids are unvaccinated.

People wouldn't even be discussing shutting down schools and businesses to get this under control if we had a 90% vaccination rate.

The government is not compelling you to get covid.

The government often is compelling people to in areas where basic safety precautions are not required in public spaces.

In nearly all other aspects of life, inflicting harm on others results in some sort of liability. Unsafe activities are regulated. However, in this time of massive death, massive hospitalization, massive long term health complications, basic safety is being thrown out the window to appease political tribalism.

The government isn't compelling me to get vaccinated, either.

Yes they are, all sorts of "freedoms" hinge on it now.

I can't work in certain jobs without a security clearance.

The government is not forcing me to get a security clearance.

I’m pro vaccine, but requiring I take a test or prove my trustworthiness strike me as fundamentally different than requiring I inject something in my body.

They can't legally force you, so they're using other means to exert as much pressure as possible. Doesn't feel any better to a lot of people to know they weren't technically forced.

In this scenario, you're seeking a job for which a clearance is a prerequisite.

In this world, people with jobs are being fired for not getting vaccinated. It's not a small cohort either; it's the government and giant corporate entities.

There are a few notable exceptions, though, of employers that are not mandating vaccination. Pfizer, for one. The White House, for another. When the pharma that makes the thing, and the POTUS, who is making vaccination priority #1, don't require it, that is some laughably awful PR.

Pfizer is mandating it. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/vaccine-mandate-pfizer-will-...

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2021... says the White House has as well.

> The White House didn’t even establish a vaccine mandate for its own staffers until last month, despite the shot being available to them early in the year.

The headline even says "or undergo weekly testing"

If the government said that unvaccinated individuals were not allowed to purchase food, would you consider that OK, because they're not forcing you to stop eating?

Vanishingly small percentages of jobs require security clearance.

Vanishingly small percentages of freedoms require vaccination.

For me to agree with "vanishingly small", I should rarely encounter a vaccination requirement in my day to day life. The wishlist for places and activities that will require verification is so large I will be encountering them multiple times a day, for the rest of my life.

Yes, and that's perfectly fine because 1. you've been accepting that for other vaccines already and 2. there is no cost or significant risk to you from getting vaccinated, mostly just massive benefits. It's a win-win situation. Society is asking you to take 1 hour of your time to save your own life.

The fact that some people don't recognize that gift as what it is because they've been misinformed is irrelevant because, well, whatever they believe is simply not true.

No, not really. I've lived in states where vaccines were required to enter grade school, but there were religious and conscience exemptions. And flu shots are often required in health care. That status quo was far less invasive than what is being proposed here. I have never had to prove vaccination status to just do ordinary things in my life before.

You can’t drive a car without a license for the same reason: unlicensed drivers kill people at higher rates. Just like unvaccinated people kill others at higher rates.

>Just like unvaccinated people kill others at higher rates.

Source? Are you saying unvaccinated people are out there murdering others? Do people no longer have functional immune systems?

Sure, so long as you don't need groceries in a major city.

They also compel you to do things such as wear clothes and shoes in order to get service.

If you want to take part in exchange, you must do it in terms acceptable to both parties. You are not entitled to take from society on whatever terms you dictate on your own.

I live in a major city and I have never even heard of requiring vaccinations to buy groceries. Is this a thing that exists somewhere? I would love to read more on this.

I'm not aware of anywhere in the US requiring it for groceries.

NYC is notable for requiring it for indoor dining, gyms, and a few others. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/nyregion/nyc-vaccine-mand...

I've gone to a variety of stores in a major city, and never been asked for my vaccination status.

Which major City are you referring to that demands vaccination for grocery shopping?

how does the government response to you not being vaccinated interfere with you getting groceries?

Grocery curbside pickup and delivery are readily available in my non-major city.

That's great if you've got a vehicle and/or can pay the extra cost for delivery. The urban groups statistically most likely to be unvaccinated (blacks and hispanics) are also those statistically least likely to have a vehicle or be able to pay for delivery.

This discussion would only be relevant if there was any downside or personal cost to the obvious solution, which is to just get the damn vaccine.

Apart from facing one's cognitive dissonance, fears and ignorance, there is none. Just overwhelming benefits. It's perfectly okay for society to require it.

You don't need a vehicle for curbside pickup.

Make "vroom vroom" noises while you wait, if it makes you feel better.

There are literal quotes from governors, senators, and Congressional representatives talking about herd via infection. Suggesting seniors should do their part and die in order to save the economy.

Depending on where you live and who your political alignment is, the government is absolutely compelling you to get COVID.

That doesn't make it any less dangerous

If COVID was like getting engulfed by flames for children, you can be damn sure we'd be jabbing them. Why aren't we? Because it's way more context sensitive than the analogy permits, so it's a particularly useless analogy.

I'd be pretty fucking pissed if someone sprayed a fire extinguisher needlessly in my vicinity.