> Endemic COVID, which is sorta the endgame that people want/expect

Textbook case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was said from the beginning that would be the ultimate result and very little was done as a coordinated global effort to avoid it. And that inspired little confidence in regard to the next pandemic, whenever it may be.

There was much done, but to ill effect with a large percentage of people actively blocking any efforts. What do you suggest should have been done that wasn’t attempted?

A lot to unpack but off the top of my head, the US was wide open compared to UK/EU; the biggest mistake initially was the communication from WHO and CDC recommending that masks were not necessary, and subsequent backtrack that eroded public confidence leading to even less compliance; mask mandates were dropped everywhere; and the worst is this insistence of combatting fomite transmission—which is completely false—having hand sanitizers installed everywhere but nowhere do you find improvements to ventilation and air filtration, for instance.

edit: and I agree a lot was done, but certainly not in any unified manner. in this age of hyper-globalized economies, countries cannot effectively act as individual entities when dealing with pandemics.

You’ve seen how the public has reacted to mask mandates. When something requires cooperation of the entire world, it’s at that point more about risk mitigation than elimination.

We have seen similar or even worse numbers in UK/EU over time. Theres a notion of being open, and then there’s public conformance.

Totally agree masking and filtration could have been massively improved, but it wasn’t known for a while that masks were the right thing. Everyone needs to give the health officials some latitude when something is brand new and being studied in real time. Of course communication could be improved, but it didn’t help it was also politically inconvenient (along with all the false information) so the comms no matter what would be challenged.

> peoples initial state of extreme fear(that they were told to have)

Estimated US flu deaths[0] between 2010 and 2020 (i.e. 10 years): 359K.

Estimated US Covid-19 deaths[1] between January 2020 and today (i.e. 2.5 years): 1,044,557

Can we stop with this disingenuous narrative? People rightfully perceived a level of heightened risk, ahead of a working vaccine, and took reasonable precautions. If it was as dangerous as the flu, we would have seen 90K deaths not 1M+.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

~75% of those deaths were among people of retirement age or older. I think it's fair to question whether it was "reasonable precaution" to shut down schools, people's workplace, and entire sectors of the economy. Simply showing the total body count doesn't even begin to describe the complexity of balanced risk assessment for younger people and what was allowed to be considered a "disingenuous narrative" or not.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...

Operation of our economy relies a lot on free or paid labor from old people, though. We can't isolate them and keep the economy running normally.

How do you think poor people get child care so they can go to work, for one thing?

I do think there's room to criticize what was done, but I don't think "just isolate old people" was ever a practical option, and I don't think the alternative of "we're keeping things open and not isolating old people, so make sure you say anything you've been meaning to to your elderly parents really soon, because... well, you know" was ever gonna go over well.

> I think it's fair to question whether it was "reasonable precaution" to shut down schools,

I know enough teachers and was privy to their thoughts and observations during the pandemic that I'm quite confident schools were going to shut down no matter what official policy was. Lots of teachers are married to higher earners, and they're basically all working because they want to. They'd have stopped wanting to, and the schools wouldn't have been able to remain open with normal hours and procedures, with their much-reduced staff. A couple districts I know for a fact faced near-revolt over measures that were regarded as insufficient and coupled with tone-deaf messaging, and had to adjust or the scenario above was definitely going to happen and they'd have lost 10+% of their staff all at once, which is enough to completely mess them up.

Whether their opinions were based on reality hardly matters: fact is, schools were going to shutdown, one way or another.

For younger than 60 years olds it was just like flu. Second link on duckduckgo shows average age of mortality from Covid is 81.5 https://www.brightworkresearch.com/how-the-average-age-of-mo...

dont think you can compare numbers like that, in which years between 2010 and 2020 did they flu test traffic deaths and stabbing victims?

That's a fairly psychopathic take on the situation.

'Psychopathic' is a generous take, as it would assume some level of truth. The take is just wrong and mindlessly repeats the contrarian bullshit we've been hearing for the past two years. I'm very disappointed to be reading it on hackernews actually.

If it wasn't for the last two sentences I would have thought this wasn't satire.

Good god, from calling an order of magnitude in difference as only "a few" to the false equivalences, you really nailed the poor logic I saw at the beginning of the pandemic.

There used to be a time when young people challenged the government narrative. Now they are the most vociferous in repeating and amplifying it without an ounce of doubt or questioning.