Will we keep society locked down indefinitely?

[Edge-]

I haven't looked at any of the data but I wouldn't be surprised if our Flu season in 2020 showed a significant decline in cases compared to prior years.

Saw some headlines to this effect. I imagine the mixture of masks + folks going out less had a big impact. Hopefully masks become common enough in the future that we'll see meaningful declines in annual flu rates compared to the pre-covid era. Wouldn't be a bad side effect at all.

[Spectral]

Is it one of those American fountains where the water shoots up at an angle and whoever is drinking doesn't even have to touch anything?

Yep, that's the sort. In my case I was trying to refill a water bottle because it was hot. Oh well, we've at least gotten the priorities sorted out a bit more coherently at this point.

[francisbaud]

I think we're still lucky that this pandemic happened when a large proportion of the population has access to internet at home. It's way easier to pass through lockdowns when we're connected to other people (family, friends, strangers...) via internet, especially for those who are alone. I can only imagine, 30 years ago, how this pandemic could have been even a bigger factor of distress for so many people.

[Slant]

Yep, that's the sort. In my case I was trying to refill a water bottle because it was hot. Oh well, we've at least gotten the priorities sorted out a bit more coherently at this point.

That's probably one of the more hygienic things the US has. I've always wondered why we didn't pick up on it. At least for schools. I've seen (and been) kids hanging on faucets so many times that I'm surprised people want to open up schools again at all during this pandemic.

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I think we're still lucky that this pandemic happened when a large proportion of the population has access to internet at home. It's way easier to pass through lockdowns when we're connected to other people (family, friends, strangers...) via internet, especially for those who are alone. I can only imagine, 30 years ago, how this pandemic could have been even a bigger factor of distress for so many people.

30 years ago the degenerates wouldn't have a platform to drive anyone into their paranoid anxiety, Facebook to create pointless feuds over semantics and other bullshit that aggravated a lot of problems we're seeing now. Imagine a country's federal Gouvernment ordering a freaking lockdown 30 years ago. People would just have done it. But no, these days you have dipshits using Facebook to agree and break the rules in some dirty club's badly ventilated cellar with 100 other people to really get that superspreader going.

Imagine talking to your neighbour for a change... thank fuck we have the internet so we don't have to speak to the neighbour across the hall for some social interaction. How weird would that be, people living next door knowing each other.

We've lost a lot of things with the internet. I'm a big fan of the internet, but it's not as rosy as you think it is.

[PACOX]

Apart from taking precautions because why be dick and make things worse...I'm pretty indifferent to it all. A mask doesn't really add or take away from 'me'. Social distancing is just another reality of life to be navigated through. It doesn't stop me from being 'me' just restricts certain I can do or how I do them.

[s_bushido]

I can only imagine, 30 years ago, how this pandemic could have been even a bigger factor of distress for so many people.

30 years ago we probably wouldn't have had governments actively sabotaging efforts to contain the spread, while sowing mistrust of the efforts that were being taken among the populace...

It would have definitely sucked without the internet, but at the same time there would have been a smaller platform for the conspiratorial dipshits to spread their nonsense. Hell, if anything it might have helped video rentals survive a little longer, if they moved to some sort of delivery/pickup service.

[PACOX]

I think we're still lucky that this pandemic happened when a large proportion of the population has access to internet at home. It's way easier to pass through lockdowns when we're connected to other people (family, friends, strangers...) via internet, especially for those who are alone. I can only imagine, 30 years ago, how this pandemic could have been even a bigger factor of distress for so many people.

Not really. Most people who ever existed were content within living with living their entire lives within 100 miles of where they grew up. You tell people, "there's sickness beyond the treeline and risk dooming your entire town if you cross it' they stay built entire superstitions around it. Not saying the latter is healthy people are perfectly fine with adapting and living within their means. Society didn't collapse because they couldn't get a haircut or go to Blizzcon.

30 years ago we could have had proper social bubbles instead of national lockdowns.

Europeans had to do a lot of shady shit to spread smallpox across the Americas over a long period of time. Straight up biological warfare. COVID-19 spread in weeks because people couldn't relax for 2 weeks or so.

[kamuimac]

I'm not against lockdowns, I just wonder how long we can realistically keep it like this.

There are a couple of things I'm looking at;
1. We have reached the point of no return. The disease is here to stay. We are never getting rid of it. It will exist alongside us just like other diseases you catch on a yearly basis, like the flu (Covid is worse, I'm just making the point that it's here to stay, just like it and it won't go away).
2. The virus might mutate, making vaccines less effecting and/or useless.

So what are we looking at? For how long can we keep this up? Are we still gonna have lockdowns 10 years from now?
At some point we have to learn to live with the disease, because it's part of reality. Yes, it has been right up until this point to do what has been needed, but we can't keep it up forever, or can we? At some point, the mental health degradation will become just as dangerous as the virus, I think.

What are your thoughts?

yes. its what agenda 2030 is all about.

you will be controlled fully due to new vaccination passports and invigilation underrule of megacorps. it already started with FB banning of US president and cutting off entire continent of autralia from news. it will get only worse from now on as goverments do nothing to prevent it.

people are delusional if they belive they will go back to how they used to live - maybe if they move out to 3rd world countries

all this under banner of n-variation of covid 19 , then covid 2021 , then covid 2023 and how long they want.

nothign controls people better then fear.

[XDurionX]

I admit this has kept peoples interest for longer then I expected. At some point I figured people would just accept it was the new seasonal flu and move on..

That said as long as it continues I get full wages for half shifts due to the "vital" nature of my work so I'm not complaining.

Must be very vital if they can afford to let you work half the time.

[kamuimac]

most people who recover, still have lingering side effects.

of you are "lucky" its just loss of taste and/or smell (lucky is in quotations, because it could be worse, it could be your sense of smell returns partially and everything smells rancid. tastes rancid too). if you are not so lucky, its permanent heart and/or lung damage. in some people its digestive system damage. covid attacks internal organs and even with recovery, damage lingers.

we don't know yet for sure if loss of taste/smell can be retrained. there were some people who were successful at learning again post injury or whatnot, long before covid, so there might be SOME home. its a long retraining process. we don't know if its going to be effective for everyone who undertakes it.


https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...m-effects.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00055-6
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/2020...rn-after-covid

if you are "lucky" then its nothing.

why do i know ? because unlike many people here i actually had covid in october last year and all it was was 2 days of 39 degrees temperature and then week of 38. then i fully recovered in a week. and nothign could prevent it as i could it in work where nobody wears masks anyway .

similiar was with most of people i know who had covid.

yes virus is very real - but all those lockdowns are nonsense only negatively impacting economy and our future.

[Forogil]

Not really. Most people who ever existed were content within living with living their entire lives within 100 miles of where they grew up. You tell people, "there's sickness beyond the treeline and risk dooming your entire town if you cross it' they stay built entire superstitions around it.

Most people didn't wander much, but that primarily slowed down diseases without stopping them. And to know that there's a sickness beyond the treeline you need to talk to the ones beyond the treeline - which in those days meant meeting them, so...

The 1918 pandemic played out about as this one, and the earlier the Black Death in the 1300s spread across Europe, not in a couple of weeks, but in a couple of years (the earlier plague pandemic also spread - but that took decades). And the plague literally decimated the European population several times over.

[PACOX]

if you are "lucky" then its nothing.

why do i know ? because unlike many people here i actually had covid in october last year and all it was was 2 days of 39 degrees temperature and then week of 38. then i fully recovered in a week. and nothign could prevent it as i could it in work where nobody wears masks anyway .

similiar was with most of people i know who had covid.

yes virus is very real - but all those lockdowns are nonsense only negatively impacting economy and our future.

First, a week-long fever of 38C isn't good...certainly glad you feel better thats a sign that you're body was really going through some things.

You do know there's a number of factors that play into how long and serve a case is right? I've seen cases where the person only sheded for a week but body is still recovering to this day. A particular one where someone shedded for almost a month but a fever lasted a day. The latter is actually a lot more concerning than the person who still has symptoms because the long-term effects of the disease aren't exactly understood yet. Symptoms are an immune response, no response is almost as alarming as an over-response.

A year ago SARS-CoV-2 was a virus not particularly adapted to humans. A year later its 'learning' through a number of successful variants to easily bind to human cells while becomes more infectious and deadly in part due to lockdowns. Not the lockdowns themselves but people ignorning them and creating the perfect conditions for the virus to become bother more infectious and deadly at the same time. If you didn't know, the virus binds to ACE2 receptors. What are those? In sort they are receptors found in the cells of vitual organs, not just your longs, that help regulate your blood pressue. Some pathologists classify the virus as circulatory disease that enters through your lungs. The new strains better escaping the longs and attaching to ACE2 receptors throughout the body, thus attacking the entire body. This is why we're seeing underlying damage/injury to hearts, kidneys, and even the brain in patients that report they feel fine. We're trying to keep the virus from getting at attacking the body while buying time to develop long lasting treatments and vaccines.

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Most people didn't wander much, but that primarily slowed down diseases without stopping them. And to know that there's a sickness beyond the treeline you need to talk to the ones beyond the treeline - which in those days meant meeting them, so...

The 1918 pandemic played out about as this one, and the earlier the Black Death in the 1300s spread across Europe, not in a couple of weeks, but in a couple of years (the earlier plague pandemic also spread - but that took decades). And the plague literally decimated the European population several times over.

Right but what are you arguing? That we just let things play out? Neither of those pandemics were allowed to just play out, well not after we recognized our own ignorance that allowed them to be absolutely devestating.

No one knew WTF was going on with the plague. Once folks got an inkling of an idea they clamped down, adapted society and snuffed it out. There were many societal repercussions during and after the onset of the pandemic. The plague exists to this day but no one is particulary worried about it because precautions are firmlly and globably engrained.

You could say the Black Plague led to modern medicine if not for the Spanish Flu being a better example. Another devestating pandemic. A pandemic that esactribated by anti-lockdowns and brought undercontrol by them too. A pandemic that taught us a lot about what to do and not to due during outbreaks. The pandemic that reineforced modern quarentines, contact tracing, lockdowns, curve flattening, hygenine, all those practices that have worked to prevent pandemics and contain endemics for 100 years. Lockdowns work. Masks work. History warned us and still is. And of course we didn't get rid of the flu. What we did though is drastically cut down the spread of the most deadly forms of influenza while mitigating the more annoying types through vaccinations, preventative measures, quarentines, etc.


The world is looking down the barrel of a loaded gun with SARS-CoV-2. We can follow through with measures (poorly in say the US) to kill the intitial wave, let medicine catch up, live with much less deadly albeit annoying form of the virust. Or we can be stubborn jackasses and usher in year two of COVID with a virus that spent its first year learning to go toe-to-toe with the human body. One that will mostly likely burn itself into a less deadly form as virusess do but not before it makes 2020 look like a practice round.


I'm content with short term announces to prevent long term problems.

[Forogil]

Right but what are you arguing? That we just let things play out? Neither of those pandemics were allowed to just play out, well not after we recognized our own ignorance that allowed them to be absolutely devestating.

No one knew WTF was going on with the plague. Once folks got an inkling of an idea they clamped down, adapted society and snuffed it out. There were many societal repercussions during and after the onset of the pandemic. The plague exists to this day but no one is particulary worried about it because precautions are firmlly and globably engrained.

My point that I agree with the previous point:

I think we're still lucky that this pandemic happened when a large proportion of the population has access to internet at home. It's way easier to pass through lockdowns when we're connected to other people (family, friends, strangers...) via internet, especially for those who are alone. I can only imagine, 30 years ago, how this pandemic could have been even a bigger factor of distress for so many people.

I agree and we don't have to imagine as there were a pandemic 30 years ago.

We thus know how pandemics played out 15-40, 100 and 700 years ago - and we are, despite missteps, handling it better now; due to better communication and also obviously also due to better healthcare, better development of medicine, etc.

We also know that we get past those things and afterwards we have smaller changes than people thought at the time, even though the diseases are still with us. The fact that most people didn't recall that we had a pandemic 30 years ago and the flu pandemic of 1918 before this pandemic was only a vague memory confirms this.

[francisbaud]

[...] Imagine a country's federal Gouvernment ordering a freaking lockdown 30 years ago. People would just have done it. But no, these days you have dipshits using Facebook to agree and break the rules in some dirty club's badly ventilated cellar with 100 other people to really get that superspreader going.

It's not as simple IMO, during the Spanish Flu there was no internet and still many people were refractory to the lockdown and mask ordinances.

"During the Spanish flu era, officials pushing public health mandates to stop the pandemic in its tracks were met with pushback across the country. From San Francisco to Atlanta, Denver to Cleveland, pockets of opposition sprang up to decry the effects of the restrictions on businesses, religious communities and ordinary people."

"The efficacy of the various demonstrations offers a potential warning about how such strong opposition forced cities to roll back orders too quickly and disrupt what public health officials believed was a fairly tractable pandemic."

"Navarro believes the group had only one meeting in late January, which was attended by about 2,000 people who did not wear masks"

"The mayor, over the protest of his own Board of Health, decided to remove the closure orders, and it was only about three weeks into their epidemic,"

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...onary-n1202111

Imagine talking to your neighbour for a change... thank fuck we have the internet so we don't have to speak to the neighbour across the hall for some social interaction. How weird would that be, people living next door knowing each other.

We've lost a lot of things with the internet. I'm a big fan of the internet, but it's not as rosy as you think it is.

Surely talking to neighbors can be an interesting social activity for some time (maybe an hour a day?), but we'd have to find things to do for the rest of the day. Phone is an alternative and a great way to keep in touch with the family and friends, but internet still remains the most efficient way to connect with others, through social medias, video conferences, phone calls, chats, etc. Also the amount of entertainment we get from the internet is unrivaled (YouTube, video games, articles, books, forums, etc.).

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30 years ago we probably wouldn't have had governments actively sabotaging efforts to contain the spread, while sowing mistrust of the efforts that were being taken among the populace...

It would have definitely sucked without the internet, but at the same time there would have been a smaller platform for the conspiratorial dipshits to spread their nonsense. Hell, if anything it might have helped video rentals survive a little longer, if they moved to some sort of delivery/pickup service.

What do you mean by "governments actively sabotaging efforts"?

Conspiracy theorists are fundamentally, in many case, people who are not willing to sacrifice liberty in the name of security. Generally, here and everywhere, people are anxious and wouldn't care to lose century-old freedoms if they get a promise or a feeling of safety in exchange.

[Kokolums]

Most pandemics, at some point, have a super deadly mutation that kills a lot of people. The 1918 Spanish Flu had a deadly second wave that was a mutation. The media is trying to hype up 500k people dying from covid but the big pandemic killers go north of 50 million dead. And covid *could* mutate into something that kills 50 million. Or it might not. We don't know. And its really unknowable at this point. Its actually still early days. This is still a very new disease.

The real harm being done is that everyone is trying to act confident. So IF we get that deadly mutation, the credibility of everyone in leadership will be destroyed. They need to be more humble in the face of this pandemic. If you hate conspiracy theories, the way to feed them is for Fauci and the government to act fully confident in their efforts and then a mutation changes everything and starts killing millions. And they are all walking right into it.

[Kathandira]

I'm not against lockdowns, I just wonder how long we can realistically keep it like this.

Yes we will be in lock down indefinitely if dumb pieces of shit do not abide by it.

Get vaccinated, social distance, wear a mask, and avoid going anywhere if it is not necessary.

- - - Updated - - -

Most pandemics, at some point, have a super deadly mutation that kills a lot of people. The 1918 Spanish Flu had a deadly second wave that was a mutation. The media is trying to hype up 500k people dying from covid but the big pandemic killers go north of 50 million dead. And covid *could* mutate into something that kills 50 million. Or it might not. We don't know. And its really unknowable at this point. Its actually still early days. This is still a very new disease.

The real harm being done is that everyone is trying to act confident. So IF we get that deadly mutation, the credibility of everyone in leadership will be destroyed. They need to be more humble in the face of this pandemic. If you hate conspiracy theories, the way to feed them is for Fauci and the government to act fully confident in their efforts and then a mutation changes everything and starts killing millions. And they are all walking right into it.

from the CDC:

It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world's population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.

Just want that to be clear in case anyone thinks this means just in the U.S.

[Slant]

It's not as simple IMO, during the Spanish Flu there was no internet and still many people were refractory to the lockdown and mask ordinances.

"During the Spanish flu era, officials pushing public health mandates to stop the pandemic in its tracks were met with pushback across the country. From San Francisco to Atlanta, Denver to Cleveland, pockets of opposition sprang up to decry the effects of the restrictions on businesses, religious communities and ordinary people."

"The efficacy of the various demonstrations offers a potential warning about how such strong opposition forced cities to roll back orders too quickly and disrupt what public health officials believed was a fairly tractable pandemic."

"Navarro believes the group had only one meeting in late January, which was attended by about 2,000 people who did not wear masks"

"The mayor, over the protest of his own Board of Health, decided to remove the closure orders, and it was only about three weeks into their epidemic,"

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...onary-n1202111

Surely talking to neighbors can be an interesting social activity for some time (maybe an hour a day?), but we'd have to find things to do for the rest of the day. Phone is an alternative and a great way to keep in touch with the family and friends, but internet still remains the most efficient way to connect with others, through social medias, video conferences, phone calls, chats, etc. Also the amount of entertainment we get from the internet is unrivaled (YouTube, video games, articles, books, forums, etc.).

All I'm saying is that we would've been fine 30 years ago. Just like we're fine now and people in a hundred years ask themselves "Oh god, how could they deal with this situation X with out computer-brain-implant interfaces, all that typing... SO MANUAL"

[francisbaud]

All I'm saying is that we would've been fine 30 years ago. Just like we're fine now and people in a hundred years ask themselves "Oh god, how could they deal with this situation X with out computer-brain-implant interfaces, all that typing... SO MANUAL"

True that, we always find ways to adapt and get through difficult situations. I agree that we would have been fine 30 years ago, maybe a bit more bored than we're now though!

[Dezerte]

I think certain things may become more commonplace like mask usage, social distancing and other health beneficial habits. I remember reading an interview where one scientist commented on the fact that we shouldn't shake hands as much, and how this could actually be a good habit to continue even after Covid.

[Slant]

True that, we always find ways to adapt and get through difficult situations. I agree that we would have been fine 30 years ago, maybe a bit more bored than we're now though!

I think I would have actually ran out of procrastinating things and be constructively improving myself. Thank fuck I have the internet with literally endless things to procrastinate.