I wouldn’t hold my breath, you, feel free to.
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Are you shitting me? Your history here is full of predictions that didn’t come to fruition. Your most recent being the Hunter Biden thread. You’ve blocked half the forum because you don’t like people correcting your crap.
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It’s good we are figuring out what works and what doesn’t. There WILL be a next time, and we need to study what was effective, what wasn’t, and why. And this post-mortem examination of our health and economic strategies dealing with the pandemic should be thorough and hopefully free from politics. We need to learn as much as we can so we are better prepared next time.
What will piss me off is the jackasses proudly saying “I told you so”, because they had no idea either, but bet against scientific advice on the side of possibly killing people for negligible to no upside. To be clear Im talking about the proud anti-maskers, covid is a hoax, no precauctions were ever needed kinda people. Very different from the folks who wanted the economy opened sooner, but were onboard taking the easy precautions.
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I agree with all of that, but I am surprised that this hadn’t been figured out before. It’s not like there is something unique about Covid that we couldn’t have learned from SARS or other airborne viruses, is there? We swung from masks aren’t needed to you need to wear two. We are just now learning that social distancing is pretty worthless and that ventilation is the most important precaution, and that barriers like plexiglass can make things worse, Why wasn’t this figured out already? Why were we studying things like gain of function rather than basic, simple things that could have saved a lot of trouble?
I think one of the big benefits of social distancing was simply lowering the concentration of people in a given space, effectively increasing the ability of ventilation to cycle in clean air.
IDK, why we didnt have a better understanding or better plan for prevention/mitigation of spread. But id bet it has to do with money not being allocated towards the research and implementation. Hopefully, with the money pouring into this sector (i think?) we will be much better prepared. Even for the upcoming flu season. Money is the driver, and this past year showed how much money was on the line if a pandemic hit… hopefully that translates to better strategies and technology moving forward.
Also, how crazy is it that airplanes went from “germ tubes” to “safer than any other indoor space”?
Exactly. That seems like one of those things that would have been figured out a long time ago.
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^^^^^ Maybe just a translation error. Here are Fauci’s parents.
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There are several possible explanations. Looking at the highlights of the seven hour testimony of Dominic Cummings, the former advisor to the UK PM (a description for the Yanks) about the UK government’s pandemic response - it seems that the decision makers were working under an implicit assumption that novel viruses, face masks and restrictive measures are a peculiarly Asian feature that through a combination of magic and wishful thinking somehow stay in Asia and that test-and-trace and public health measures are not applicable in non-Asian countries.
The second explanation is experience, as noted by the Aussie epidemiologist David Steadson - with the exception of Fauci and a select few experts in the CDC, most non-Asian epidemiologists did not have direct pandemic experience, as the last worldwide pandemic was the 1968 Hong Kong flu. They were simply unaware that vaccines would come relatively quickly.
For example, the European CDC was following non-applicable flu protocols, worrying about the economic impact of shutting airplane travel in those fateful weeks in January. While people were rolling out disinfectants, cleaning products and building plexiglass barriers to protect from droplets, Taiwanese were operating on the assumption that the virus is spread by aerosol.
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COVID isn’t more potent than SARS. Not by a long shot.
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A lot of these things are due mostly to misconception of messaging not the research studies themselves. Others are due to people misconstruing “mitigation” strategies with “prevention”. Not the same thing.
Also, this pandemic has seen the fastest, most collaborative, most widespread, most prolific explosion of research in the past 50+ years. I mean, it’s really unprecedented. Shit just takes time, and I think people don’t understand that a lot.
The alternative is also that a bunch of stuff gets published that shouldn’t have made it. This happens regardless, but happens more if you try to rush things.
The most frustrating thing has been people doing the whole “why should we listen to scientists a few months ago they said to do X.” Listen fucks it’s not like something that has been studied for decades. Science changes over time and of course we were going to screw up multiple things as we learned more.
Doctors used to prescribe cigarettes. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to doctors anymore.
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True since the black plague.
…people that wear masks outdoors…
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There is quite literally never a day that goes by without me thinking something along these lines at some point.
The popular image of a scientist is basically Einstein… A lone genius who is more or less infallible. But truth is very far from that. It’s like people have this 100%/0% attitude - as soon as scientists are wrong a few times it’s “they don’t know shit”.
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Are mostly under threat of a fine by the city/state…
But what makes Corona so different from all of the other viruses we HAVE been studying for decades? That’s my disconnect.
It’s not as deadly as the others so it’s more transmissible → pandemic, but it’s more deadly than the typical flu so ppl care