At the moment it has a pretty low (~0) person to person infection rate.
But, it does have a 56% mortality rate (Covid was between 3%-5%) so I don’t think we should be fucking around with our response to it.
Viruses can mutate and that R value (person to person transmission rate) can shoot up after a mutation.
I would much rather us have an “overblown” response than an inadequate response like we did with Covid. .
Higher mortality rate generally means lower transmission since the infected don’t live long enough to pass it along. If it mutates to be less fatal then I’ll be more worried.
My Facebook is hammered with articles about how it’s overblown and is being used by governments to silence you and bring on a new pandemic where they force you to wear masks and keep you locked inside your house. Something something 15 minute cities, the WEF, and a guy named Klaus.
Lots of people taking pictures holding chickens and other fowl to spite “the new plandemic” so chances are we’re gonna have another real one. Just based on the fact that people are purposefully trying to expose themselves to “get back at science”.
When I worked in retail I had to ask people to wear a mask. Not a problem at all. But there was this one lady who came behind the counter an coughed on me? Technically it was assault because I even got spit on me.
Like at what point does someone cross into being just plain evil.
That’s just downright awful. I’m sorry you were assaulted by a waste of flesh.
I’ve mostly worked retail jobs in my life, but I got lucky and avoided any public-facing work during peak COVID. Customer service is rough at the best of times, but I can’t imagine having to deal with the anti-mask crowd.
It’s pretty concerning, as health authorities in the USA don’t seem to do enough to prevent the situation from getting worse. The dairy industry doesn’t want its profits to be touched, and several politicians seem to be more concerned about the economic impacts. Various far-right groups basically created the framework for their anti-science actions with the COVID pandemic and various anti-vaxx groups that existed before it. Therefore they will double down in their efforts to resist any kinds of mitigation efforts because of “freedom” and “do not comply”. Hell, many of them are buying raw milk in hopes of “gaining immunity” and of course “owning the libs”!
It could be said that I am already preparing. When at work, doing groceries, hitting the gym and so on, I am wearing an FFP2 mask (equivalent to N95). This is exceptional here in Finland, where many people have drunk the Kool-Aid of “COVID being over” fed by the THL, our equivalent to your CDC. The only people I have seen masking actively are people collecting bottles from streets and parks! The THL has done similar blunders about public health messaging and “studies”.
I am not losing my night’s sleep because of this, but who knows what happens in the coming months?
arious far-right groups basically created the framework for their anti-science actions with the COVID pandemic and various anti-vaxx groups that existed before it. Therefore they will double down in their efforts to resist any kinds of mitigation efforts because of “freedom” and “do not comply”. Hell, many of them are buying raw milk in hopes of “gaining immunity” and of course “owning the libs”!
That was a “viable” strategy for a disease with a 1% mortality rate. H5N1 is expected to be much higher AFAICT. And there is some solid analysis showing that this particular form of owning the libs resulted in some swung elections.
So, one thing to consider is that “how bad it gets” can be directly related to how well people and governments prepare. For example, if the CDC starts work on having vaccines made and stockpiled now, they may be able to react quickly and decisively to any outbreaks as they happen and prevent them from growing to a pandemic level. If infections are kept to low levels and the CDC ultimately has a lot of left over vaccines, did it “over react”? It’s actually a hard question to answer, because it’s entirely possibly that the end result was a direct result of that stockpiling and rapid reaction, leading to some level of wastage. However, had those precautionary steps not been taken, shit would have hit the fan.
We had something similar back with the Y2K Bug was being talked about. Companies lost their shit over it. But, when the date finally rolled over, it seemed to be a huge nothing-burger. Part of the reason it was such a nothing-burger was the fact that companies actually did a lot of work to validate and fix software before the date roll over. So, in retrospect, lots of people talk about the Y2K bug like it was all hype. But, had action not been taken ahead of time, it really would have caused a lot of problems.
This is the perennial problem with proactive fixes, if they are done right, people won’t be sure you have done anything at all. So, it is often difficult to get people to prioritize future problems. Even when the cost to fix those problems now will be vastly less than waiting until the problem actually arrives.
So no, I don’t think it’s “overblown” per se. It something that governments and health organizations should be tracking and should be working to have plans and resources available for. On a personal level, not much is changing. It’s not currently at a level that I feel I need to make major lifestyle changes to avoid. The CDC puts the risk as currently low, and has seen no cases of human to human transmission. If any of that changes, I’ll re-evaluate.
I never stopped my COVID routine so I’m not really doing anything different to prepare but I am at least a little prepared. Going to buy one of those emergency 5-gallon buckets of dehydrated food this time around though, like next time I’m at a bulk food not as shit hits the fan.
I haven’t put much thought into if it is overblown because realistically I’d prefer to see a big fuss over nothing than to see people sit back with a beer while their neighbors die. So I’m not going to treat it like we’re overreacting I’m going to be pretty serious about things.
