Comment by bart_spoon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bart_spoon | Hacker News Reader

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The entire premise of the author's argument is based upon the idea that nothing regarding the mechanics of the pandemic have changed, just our attitudes. But that's obviously wrong. Vaccinations are available. Effective treatments are available. Omicron is not Delta. We understand the disease orders of magnitude better than we did in March of 2020. The costs of emergency pandemic measures are compounding. Children haven't had a huge gap in their learning and socialization. Inflation is starting to skyrocket. Meanwhile, the actual fatality rate of Covid has plummeted.

There are a group of people who seem to be completely unable to process any of this, and while the rest of the world has moved on, they maintain a deathgrip on the fear and apocalyptic visions from 18+ months ago. Adapting to changing reality and refusing to entertain histrionics isn't "surrender", its what we would expect.

> Meanwhile, the actual fatality rate of Covid has plummeted.

However, the infection count has skyrocketed (even amongst the vaccinated), and the incidence of long-term negative health consequences for those infected is roughly the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated, months post recovery of initial infection.

There's a huge negative impact here that society has not yet realized.

The only real way to have not "given up" with such an infectious disease that is contagious without being symptomatic would to have been to go the China route of hard lockdowns + privacy crushing contact tracing and enforced curfews. Which, of course, practically no one would support unless the disease were far more deadly to people without comorbidities.

And even then you'd have to consider the serious long-term health affects that a multi-year hard lockdown would have on people.

>There's a huge negative impact here that society has not yet realized.

Applies to the writer too. Blue collar workers aren't getting paid enough, they have to go to work, pay for their rents and such. And yes they get Covid. Not everyone is a fancy writer who can sit at home self-isolating for months or years and work from there. Poor people never have, never had a choice, you either lose your home, your job or you get Covid and get with it. That's it

> the incidence of long-term negative health consequences for those infected is roughly the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated

Evidence? The "long-term consequences" of an ICU stay are nothing to sneeze at.

What percentage of unvaccinated covid cases end up in the ICU?

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