It's what happens when your president ISN'T Donald Trump.

[purbeast0]

You think the pandemic is going to be over in spring or something?

Da fuck are you even talking about?

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Da fuck are you even talking about?

Well if the pandemic is still raging why would Grand Cayman lift the two week quarantine requirement? The best case scenario I have seen for the US is the non high risk general public having access to the vaccine starting in May, and it's a two shot treatment. So hard to see the pandemic being under control in the US in any time in spring, especially when Fauci is saying we could need as much as 85-90% vaccination / infection to hit herd immunity.

 

[shortylickens]

The virus is never going to disappear. We'll live with it forever, like influenza, rhinovirus, and HIV. Vaccines will keep it in check, and people will go back to their normal lives, but the virus is permanent.
You know what's really sad? The vast majority of us were not directly affected by it and will only remember coronavirus because of the quarantine and the armed mask protests and Donald being a giant dumb child about it. No one is gonna remember 300 thousand names. Its too many and we just don't care.

The pandemic will be over when the bulk of the population gets a vaccine and it stops spreading like crazy.

 

[MrSquished]

We hail from a country that jails more people per capita than any other. And a large part of that is for behavioral control reasons, shaming, and continued shaming even after the time is served. Americans have no leg to stand on in this matter.

Excellent point. Our prison system is often for profit too. It's an absolutely horrible system here.

 

[Muse]

Well if the pandemic is still raging why would Grand Cayman lift the two week quarantine requirement? The best case scenario I have seen for the US is the non high risk general public having access to the vaccine starting in May, and it's a two shot treatment. So hard to see the pandemic being under control in the US in any time in spring, especially when Fauci is saying we could need as much as 85-90% vaccination / infection to hit herd immunity.

Figure things getting better in August, September, hopefully by Halloween fairly under control. 2021 Fall/Winter holidays hopefully pretty "normal." A lot depends on the virus not mutating to the point where the vaccines lose effectiveness, also anti-vaxxers not being a big thing.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

The virus is never going to disappear. We'll live with it forever, like influenza, rhinovirus, and HIV. Vaccines will keep it in check, and people will go back to their normal lives, but the virus is permanent.
You know what's really sad? The vast majority of us were not directly affected by it and will only remember coronavirus because of the quarantine and the armed mask protests and Donald being a giant dumb child about it. No one is gonna remember 300 thousand names. Its too many and we just don't care.

The pandemic will be over when the bulk of the population gets a vaccine and it stops spreading like crazy.

Yeah this virus will become the fifth endemic coronavirus just like the other four endemic coronaviruses responsible for things like the common cold. I always wonder when those crossed over into our species if they killed a lot of people too, and how much of our resistance to those other coronaviruses are evolution by natural selection of our populations by who is resistant vs the virus' evolution by natural selection to be much less damaging to the host so that it has a greater chance to replicate. I would guess more the latter since viruses replicate many orders of magnitude faster than humans.

But this virus hasn't affected you? I know about 10 people who have had it (confirmed by test), two killed by it, one of whom was a family member in his 30s. I have another family member who has just tested negative after a couple of really rough weeks but he's got some symptoms that worry me about him being a long haul case. I have a neighbor who got very sick early in the year with the exact same pneumonia symptoms consistent with COVID and his doctors didn't know what the hell it could be because this was before much was known about the virus, but I suspect there is a decent chance he was a very early case in the US.

Almost all of us have had our lives turned upside down. God it's shitty to not go see my parents, my brother and his wife and kids, my uncles and aunts, my cousins and their kids, and so on Christmas Eve like we have been doing for 30 years. I haven't eaten in a restaurant since the first week of March. Haven't been to a single movie in 2020. Haven't hung out with friends period since early March. Haven't gone to a bar since early March. I have it a lot better than many I suspect, but my life is still turned upside down with no real ability to socialize.

And you're calling this prematurely. There is absolutely no doubt that January is going to be the worst month of the pandemic. My area, San Antonio, Texas, is now in its second nightmare wave of new infections even worse than the summer one we had that almost overwhelmed our hospitals and killed the two people I know who have succumbed to COVID, and it's just going to get worse because so many fuckheads have to gather in large groups for Christmas and pretend we don't have a killer virus raging in our population.

It's not 300,000 right now, it's 400,000 which you can see from the excess deaths (so many COVID deaths were called pneumonia deaths, especially early on in the pandemic when there was little testing available). About 1 in 850 Americans alive at the beginning of 2020 have been killed by COVID and we're looking at at least two more horrific months in the best case, eg the case that UK/SouthAfrica strain can still be controlled by the two vaccines we have. Half a million dead seems an almost certainty and I wouldn't be that surprised to see us beat our total of 675k deaths from H1N1 from 1918-1920.

 

[ralfy]

Most don't know this, but similar has been happening in countries where leaders are like Trump, i.e., authoritarian, if not dictatorial. Examples include various Asian countries like Vietnam and Singapore. Others, like Taiwan and South Korea, have had lengthy histories of martial law and cultures where people obey authorities.

 

[Muse]

The virus is never going to disappear. We'll live with it forever, like influenza, rhinovirus, and HIV. Vaccines will keep it in check, and people will go back to their normal lives, but the virus is permanent.
You know what's really sad? The vast majority of us were not directly affected by it and will only remember coronavirus because of the quarantine and the armed mask protests and Donald being a giant dumb child about it. No one is gonna remember 300 thousand names. Its too many and we just don't care.

The pandemic will be over when the bulk of the population gets a vaccine and it stops spreading like crazy.

If you lose someone dear to you, you never forget.

The funny thing for me is this: Nobody I am close to has even come down with covid-19 AFAIK. But it looks like I will suffer a lasting blow:

Before the pandemic I used to play golf averaging 2x/week, 8 months out of the year. I have not hit a single ball this year because the pandemic hit just as weather got decent and the courses became playable. My home course shut down immediately. When it reopened with modifications and restrictions, I didn't go because I'm at special risk and didn't want to mess with the confusion. A guy I used to play with called me last week and he tells me it's a madhouse at my home course. Everyone and his brother, etc., complete duffers, newbies, has taken up the game. Both parking lots are jammed full all the time (they NEVER used to be full... NEVER). He says I'll hate it. Worse than this is that it won't go away. Like he said, now "they're hooked." Golf is like that, people get hooked. I used to be able to go to my home course and just "get on," didn't need a reservation. Those days may be gone forever.

 

[sdifox]

Most don't know this, but similar has been happening in countries where leaders are like Trump, i.e., authoritarian, if not dictatorial. Examples include various Asian countries like Vietnam and Singapore. Others, like Taiwan and South Korea, have had lengthy histories of martial law and cultures where people obey authorities.

It's like you never even heard of COVID-19....