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Comment by Vampiero | Hacker News Reader

> I feel this massive gravitational pull to go back to what we were doing before,” Van Kerkhove said. “There’s no way we should be going back.”

> “One of the big reasons we wanted to hold this conference is because we couldn’t meet in person during the pandemic,” said virologist Kei Sato of the University of Tokyo, an organizer

Maybe the "massive gravitational pull to what we were doing before" is just a natural equilibrium state. If we didn't behave this way we'd still be locked inside our homes fearing the virus. The fact that only 1000 people died from it in 2024 in the US is proof enough that this specific pandemic is over.

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> The fact that only 1000 people died from it in 2024 in the US is proof enough that this specific pandemic is over.

I’m not sure if you got that number from the article, but if you did, that’s per week (but in the whole world, with 75% in the US):

> Figures from October 2024 showed at least 1000 people died from COVID-19 each week, 75% of them in the United States, and that’s relying only on data from the 34 countries that still report deaths to the World Health Organization (WHO)

Not debating whether or not it’s “over”, but if you’re going by that number, your number is about 40x off.

In the long run I don't think it's the death count that matters.

Every time one of these goes endemic, the immune systems of all future humans get a slightly heavier burden to bear. The effect of all those passengers adds up. We'll eventually have a make or break moment and fail because we're in a viral haze and not thinking clearly. It's worth learning from the past so we can forestall that moment as long as possible.

I don't think that means more isolation. I think it means more thinking about the ecology of zoonotic diseases. Less contact with risky organisms, maybe we change our diet or where we decide to build, etc.

> at least 1000 people died from COVID-19 each week, 75% of them in the United States

Unless that percentage is an artifact of more accurate reporting in the US, I am now even more disappointed in the state of US health care and public health.

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