I don't know if it's still a crisis, but I think America is saying it isn't, because it's tired of the fight. No matter which side you're on (real or not, overblown or not, etc.), America has been at war with itself for 2 years. People have given up trying to convince the other side who's right and who's wrong. Family's don't see each other, friends don't talk. I think everyone is realizing that's the amount of energy to continue is just too great, so people have become apathetic to whatever the outcome is.
I agree. Covid is not a crisis. For a vaxxed individual the risk looks very low. I’m happy to grab my boosters as needed and mask up during the winter. It doesn’t really matter. I would wager the virus will continue to grow less dangerous over time.<p>What’s utterly astonishing is what’s going on in Shanghai in spite of this.
Whatever your stance is, I think COVID showed how ineffective the federal government is in the face of a crisis. Imagine if COVID was more severe or something else entirely, we'd all be dead before our elected officials could figure out how it can benefit them. Pin it on incompetence, negligence, political grandstanding--the federal government could not contain the crisis and was always months behind what we needed.<p>We were mass producing ventilators when we should've been mass producing tests or masks, we were going maskless based on trailing data instead of the current spikes etc. It was like a shitty game of telephone where people died because the messaging became so delayed and distorted.
The crisis is the mentality of people clinging to the belief that they are about to die if others don't (pick your poison):<p>- mask, lock down, hide from others etc
I think there is an interesting aspect of this - how society treats death, what is philosophy of death in that society, etc.<p>Colleague's grandpa passed away in Scandinavia. As it was summertime, all the extended family is on vacation, abroad and etc. they put the body in the freezer and schedule funeral at some time when everybody's back.<p>On the other hand I have read about Japanese (might be any other Far East country) culture where passing away of father requires something like a year of mourning. Culture doesn't allow you to go to work for a year as you would look insensitive. However not showing up at work for a year is also a big nono. So it becomes a huge strain on all the family.<p>And we can imagine how these two cultures can have very different approaches to crisis like that, crisis itself is of a very different scope because of culture.
We’ve reached the point where people who wanted to vaccinated have and those who don’t won’t. Considering that there seems to be boosters every so often it feels like it will be seasonal like the flu.
Early on in the pandemic when we saw stories like this about entire families who succumbed to covid:<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/new-jersey-family-coronavirus.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/new-jersey-famil...</a><p>...I wondered if the problem in the U.S. is really an obesity "epidemic" and not a COVID epidemic. The statistics for non-elderly deaths seem to bear this out. (Of course, the NY Times neglected to comment on the elephant in the room.)<p>I was never a COVID skeptic -- I got vaccinated, and I wore N-95 masks, fitted as best I could, when indoors in crowds. I rarely ate in restaurants so giving that up wasn't a big lifestyle change for me. (I was fortunate to have a decent supply of N-95 and N-99 masks pre-pandemic because I often visit places where things are fabricated, and dust and particles are around.)<p>But I was skeptical about mask mandates for one simple fact -- whenever I was out in public, I'd observe that only about 30% of people were wearing masks in a way that could possibly do anything -- covering the nose and mouth, and not taking it on and off continuously / not touching the face. So we'll never really know if masks work on population studies.<p>There was a lot of "theatre" -- (I fly a lot for work, and still flew during the pandemic to Europe and the mid-east quite often. I have multiple passports so I could get into places even during times when tourism was banned). Airplanes <i>never</i> banned CPAP use in flight, even though study after study from previous airborne viruses showed CPAP to aersolize a person's exhalate and spread disease. (See <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7298691/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7298691/</a> ). United Airlines claimed that they were following the guidelines of the "Cleveland Clinic" for their covid mitigation, and yet that clinic warns about CPAP machines. (The reality is, the airlines didn't want to battle the ADA rules, so they put the public at risk.)
My faith in polls took a massive, massive hit after recent elections and political cycles. Also the US had a political regime point at 30-40% approval ratings and said "those people want it so we're doing it." Seemingly turning any poll into a pretext for any political changes.<p>Sorry, but, until something changes in the world of polls dramatically I have to underweight their importance.
> with cases rising, and hospitalizations and deaths holding steady at low levels.<p>That... seems to confirm the idea that it's no longer a crisis?<p>Again, the crisis is in the hospital systems. Flattening the curve was all about controlling infection rates in order to ensure the systems continue to function. COVID zero and crushing the curve was never a public health goal in North America.<p>If you accept that, then the reality is COVID is here to stay. That much is a given.<p>So if we've reached the point of mostly decoupling hospital/ICU/death rates from case rates (or at least dramatically lowering the frequency with which a COVID case escalates to hospitalization/ICU/death) through a mix of vaccines, antivirals, and other measures, then it seems perfectly reasonable to conclude that the crisis has past.<p>And I say all that as someone who still compulsively wears a mask in a lot of circumstances.<p>Is there something in that analysis that I'm missing?
The number of infections is down.<p>Restrictions mostly gone / loosening without any disastrous results.<p>Sounds about right for now.<p>I worry about COVID, but I also worry about wearing out people / society / side effects. If there's space to loosen restrictions I'm all for it.<p>Let the scientists keep a lookout, let the citizens relax.
My first impression of this sort of survey is → "define: crisis." I'm not even sure how I would answer this survey without some definitional clarity, and I'm probably one of the most cautious people around.
Meanwhile, the flu is now on a steep uptick from some 25y historic low.<p>We merely replaced one common pandemic with another only last time the government decided to try at some draconian public policy.
We have vaccines, lockdowns are inneffective...literally what else is there to do. We can't just cower in fear in our basements for the rest of our lives. It took 50 years after the first mass vaccination rollout for the Polio vaccine for it to be "eradicated" - i'm not putting up with draconian public health measures for the rest of my life. EFF THAT
This poll also tells that most americans quickly forget anything and everything, even if it's supposedly a threat to survival of human kind, unless the mass media talks about the 'grave dangers' 24/7. I'm glad to admit that americans aren't that easy to distract from real issues.
What if it is still a crisis? What are we going to do? Take a sweater? Everyone who could be vaccinated is vaccinated. Everything that could have been done is done with notable exception of ramping up therapeutics production
It's like car crashes and mass shootings. Both are preventable. But we just choose to ignore them because doing something about it would be too hard and not fun.
The powers that be have concluded that a significant fraction of the population suffering IQ loss due to long covid is preferable to continuing to print money to bail out the economy.
I find the polling now to be useless: the media is currently focused on what gets better ratings (Ukraine) and formerly Covid-hysterical politicians are downplaying their (IMO) destructive actions presumably due to horrendously bad polling.<p>What happens a bit down the road when the election cycle passes, Ukraine (hopefully) gets resolved, and it's flu season again and the hysteria starts getting good ratings again? Are the highly malleable crowd going to be reprogrammed to go back into "Wear the Mask" and "No Jab, No Job" mode?