Which health authority or public health expert is claiming that today and hasn't shared updates with better data (=good news)? Yes, some people still bring that, but that's not because evil experts hide the true data from them.
There are evil people and some of them are in control of various parts of the narrative and they use that control for their own ends.
I guess you can always argue "but it's not properly explained and people don't understand it!!!", but so much information people keep claiming is hidden is just there and repeated in news reports once you read past the headlines. And at some point people need to deal with the fact that data is messy and not all numbers agree or mean the same thing and that that has reasons. I feel that goes back to the title of the submission here.
Well, it's not constant. Vaccination rates have a big impact.
And honestly, what "experts" are you even talking about? Of course the numbers are out there.
And people wonder why nobody takes this stuff seriously. Because not a bit of it makes sense.
That's a bold claim. I'd like to see your science.
Signed, person living in a country with almost no ongoing infections and with a high vaccination and mask-wearing rate.
Sure, but let's keep in mind what they can do when they are effective.
China averted the deaths of 2.5-3 million people with an effective lockdown program. That's incredible.
I'm not confident I can really think of any policy proposition that would save more lives off of the top of my head.
The fact that we failed to do the same will go down as a tragedy of massive magnitude.
e: The jingoism here can be a bit too much. Any praise of any Chinese policy gets downvotes, even if one recognizes them as a despotic, racist regime. It's nativistic ignorance, plain and simple.
- Work from home options or in the worst case unemployment benefits for duration of the pandemic - Reimbursement for food/goods delivery fees - N95 masks and training on fitting them properly - Hotel/AirBNB rooms as an alternative to congregate living - Small gated communities with entry quarantines / contact tracing
In the meantime those at low risk could have continued to live more normally and building up some herd immunity as a stopgap measure until vaccines were ready.
Certainly Sweden handled things more along these lines and in the long term their society would be better for it. China caused every single COVID death in the world, whether through labs or wet markets, so I wouldn't sing praises of authoritarian governments.
> in the long term their society would be better for it
No, I think successful suppression was both shown to be very possible and the better option. Political failure means that millions have already died, and more will follow. Of course, suppression is a no-go now, I'm not denying that.
> China caused every single COVID death in the world, whether through labs or wet markets, so I wouldn't sing praises of authoritarian governments.
It's a nation of 1.2 billion, many new viruses are bound to originate there. I think it is disingenuous to blame the governance of China for the outbreak.
We all know how our own government works. Are we honestly supposed to believe if this outbreak had originated domestically that we would have reacted fast enough to contain it? We couldn't even avert it when we had multiple months advance warning, China controlled an active infection within their own borders and has successfully suppressed a potential pandemic in the past (SARS). I don't think we've demonstrated any capacity to do the same.
The goal of the government is not to minimize the number of deaths at any cost.
Maybe not at any cost, but yeah I think there should be a pretty strong presumption towards improving people's welfare and not killing them.
Especially during this pandemic when so much low-hanging fruit has been intentionally left on the table--for instance, if "protecting people" was ever a goal, why has there been literally zero focus on vitamin D deficiency in the general population? This is simple, cheap, efficient, and a potent inhibitor of sars-cov-2, and yet the ruling class has seen to it that it has never been publicly pushed at all.
All of the ruling class's ideas happen to align with profit for pharmaceutical companies and greatly increased social control. Is that a coincidence?
To me, it's pretty clear that the driving force for these changes has been 700k people dying, not pharma profit.
I'm not going to continue replying, just an FYI.
I liked the bit where 3 million people didn't die, whereas 700k people died here.
https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...
Saying that it is better for 3 million people to be alive rather than dead is not an emotional appeal, it's actually quite rational if our goal is to not kill people.
Sure, if you only consider first-order effects from car accidents.
A world without easy transportation is a less well off one and one that likely has more people dying/living shorter lives than our present one.
Saying that someone dying is bad is not an appeal to emotion. I'm a consequentialist - I believe we should implement welfare improving policies.
A policy that saved 3 million people, in my view, is a net good one.
Perhaps you should practice what you preach.
The lockdowns and mandates are just one more example of generational warfare where the powers that be force the younger generations to sacrifice for the older generations that have already sucked dry every resource they possibly can.
I am so sick of Boomers and their ilk destroying the environment, destroying the economy, undermining democracy, defunding education, sending us into a two-decade war without a strategy or exit plan while collecting dividends from war profiteers, enslaving us in Ponzi schemes masquerading as social safety nets, forcing us into unemployment while racking up national debt we will have to pay back, and unconstitutionally placing the entire country under house arrest without charges, counsel, trial, or jury, all while brazenly lying to our faces about masks ("the typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus"), lockdowns ("two weeks to flatten the curve"), the origin of COVID ("Clearly Not a Lab Leak"), conflicts of interest ("NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan") and so many others it's impossible to keep track.
Western liberal democracy was founded on the simple premise that freedom is inherent, not merely a privilege doled out by the government — that we shall die on our feet before living on our knees. The nations of the world seem to have forgotten this these past two years, and forced — sometimes with violence — their own citizens to sacrifice their freedom with no end in sight.
Wanting to feel loved is not selfish. Wanting to work is not selfish. Wanting to see your friends, your family, is not selfish. Stealing the right to pursue life — real life, not just the continuation of breathing — that is what's selfish.
I wasn't talking about an entire generation, just what you wrote. I know plenty of younger folks who don't feel like they need to wish death upon boomers (and now Gen X) because they perceive that those earlier generations have somehow deliberately screwed them.
And if you aren't watching carefully, please note that millenials are quickly moving into the same every day choices that people before them made. This isn't a generational thing, there is no conspiracy.
This sentence alone is true, but it misses the fact that a) young children suffer from this disease too, b) these young children live with older people that are at more at risk, hence they can bring something back from their schools that may cost the lives of their parents (I don't think losing your parents when you're a kid is great for your development), and c) there's always the risk of more deadly variants emerging due to more transmission.
> [...] individuals should have a role in deciding what's right for them.
For matters that only concern them, yes. For matters of public health, where you can transmit something to others without their consent and potentially cause their death or long-term disability, no, you don't have that luxury. None of us do. Same reason why a single nation can't/shouldn't just pollute all the seas and cause tons of greenhouse gas emissions and kill the world for everyone. We may not like it but we [have to] live together and being in a society means looking out for each other.
You are free to not wear a mask or party by yourself, in your house, away from society.
Or you could frame it the other way. Instead of suppressing everyone's freedom, people who are too scared to resume a normal life could watch us live a free life through their window, from the security of their home.
I'm not aware of any country that had a democratic consultation to ask the people which way they wanted it.
All of this adds up to the fact that optimum precautions for an obese 70 year old guy is not a same as for a healthy 19 year old woman, and individuals should have a role in deciding what's right for them. While vast majority should take a vaccine, there may be a small group for whom it's a reasonable choice to hold off. Say you are a 19 year old healthy make and your risk from serious vaccine side effects is largest while your risk from COVID-19 is smallest. Plus, you already recovered from COVID during the time Delta variant was common. Are you really bonkers for making a decision either way?
Above all, society must not sacrifice its young for those of us who had a chance to live for quite a bit already.