i am nothing like so resigned. but here is what – provably – flattens the curve of highly infectious new variants:SuperJail Warden wrote:
We should all just give up.
- social distancing measures, limiting group sizes, wearing masks, minimizing contact in the general population.
- closure of offices, schools, limiting of public transport, and moving to WFH arrangements wherever possible.
- increased precautions such as regular testing, the use of vaccine passports, contact tracing for venues.
- vaccination and booster drives which dramatically slash the rates of hospitalization and death.
- and, yes, though it isn't a good thing to hear, increased levels of herd-immunity as infection rates rise within the (largely vaccinated) population, too.
banning a particular class of visitor and saying only 'important' business people and traders can come and go will not do a single fucking thing about the rate of a variant's spread. it is literally farting into a brisk wind. the omicron variant already has a series of known-about mutations that have foiled our testing diagnostics in the past. hotel quarantines and 'essential' travel are more compromised and open to leaks than they have ever been. if you don't enact the above measures amongst the general population, that is, on the tens or hundreds of millions of people who can spead omicron freely between themselves, then focussing on a few thousand ingressing air passengers is sheer insanity.
of course, this winter we are not in a particularly strong situation. 30-40% of people are still as yet unvaccinated or are now badly in need of a booster shot. that's a large enough proportion of people to still nuke medical systems and hospital intakes with even mild-to-severe cases of disease. it is an approaching public health emergency. but this is nothing like a sudden twist in the history of the pandemic that will confound our efforts. take your fucking booster and avoid weddings, funerals, office parties and nightclubs for the winter season, people.
pfizer confirmed last week that their new antiviral pill is highly effective. within the next 12–18 months we will begin to see some next-generation vaccines which are better able to deal with new variants, or a wider range of known variants. yes, the short-term boosters are not ideal. they are a stop-gap. but they work. get your fucking booster and carry on.
zero major pandemics have been solved historically by lockdowns or border closures. it literally has never happened. massive global pandemics like the spanish flu burned themselves out when they evolved into more highly infectious but less deadly forms, effectively enabling widespread exposure and immunity. the first few waves tend to be the nastiest and most virulent, as we have seen in covid. but the levels of hospitalization, most telling in south africa, where people have been infected with several consecutive waves of covid, are very, very low. that's what happens when a virus becomes more transmissible and spreads amongst a population who have been exposed to other covid strains for 2 years already.
Last edited by uziq (2021-12-16 21:00:00)
