Europe considers new Covid-19 strategy: accepting the virus | Hacker News Reader

Europe considers new Covid-19 strategy: accepting the virus

apnews.com

7 pointssteelstraw8 comments

Honestly, yes, COVID is now ineradicable, if there even was any chance of eradicating it. Let's pull our heads out of the sand and be rational about it. We just have to accept the consequences of having it around forever and deal with the likelihood of catching it throughout our lives as best we can:

- accept reduced life expectancy for people who are elderly or overweight

- spacing and strong ventilation in public indoor places by default

- reduce our reliance on IRL entertainment and socializing

- spread out our cities to build less dense housing and more suburbs

- on trips outside the home, avoid public transit and prefer personal vehicles

- reduce our reliance on mass public education in overcrowded schools

Also, get the vaccine.

> - reduce our reliance on IRL entertainment and socializing

No other disease in history has ever made everyone permanently reduce their quality of life. Why should we for this one?

> - on trips outside the home, avoid public transit and prefer personal vehicles

So can we finally stop making cities so car-hostile?

Yes! Cities need wider streets, more parking lots and cheaper ones, less enforcement, fewer places where drivers have to yield to pedestrians, higher speed limits, and fewer traffic lights and stop signs! Driving around in a city is such an unpleasant chore, that many of these things would be a huge help.

> fewer places where drivers have to yield to pedestrians

You sound sarcastic, but doing this by means of grade-separated crossings would actually be a good idea.

“New” doesn’t feel like the right word since for a long time it’s been known we’d need to shift to living with it. Getting the timing right for that shift has immense consequences, but I’d say it’s more a “next phase” in strategy rather than a “new” strategy.

No we must vaccinate with at least 3 more shots. Pfizer jets doesn't come cheap you know.

We've had endemic diseases before, it didn't make them better.

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