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  1. #31
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    Again, everything would be open by now if we had taken the lockdown seriously from the get go instead of acting like pretending the virus didn’t exist was actually a viable option. And every time we rush to reopen again, we prolong the pandemic more. Get mad at me all you want, that won’t change the facts.

  2. #32
    Old school comic book fan WestPhillyPunisher's Avatar
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    I'm of the opinion that the virus isn't going away anytime soon, if at all. Sure, it figures to be diminished as more and more people get vaccinated, including (hopefully) all the stubborn ones hopelessly clinging to the Trump and Faux News inspired lie that it was a myth. I suspect there might be one or two more variants in the pipeline like delta, something that well could be inevitable as the virus mutates. I can envision a situation down the road where people get annual booster shots for COVID, similar to what we get now for the flu. I'm perfectly fine with that. And even for people who contract the virus, are put through hell and survive, the battle for them is far from over, called "Long Haulers", those survivors end up facing weeks, perhaps months worth of physical, and possibly, psychological maladies from dealing with the virus. Short and sweet, our battle with COVID isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.
    Avatar: Here's to the late, great Steve Dillon. Best. Punisher. Artist. EVER!

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post
    What about the pandemic brought out the best in anyone? Sure, times of crisis and adversity are also a chance for us to show that as a society we could come together and make the necessary sacrifices to overcome these challenges together, but I feel like even the most pessimistic and nihilistic outlook could not have predicted just how selfish and petty everyone was going to be.

    I mean, just the entire premise to this thread is absurd. Things will go back to normal once the virus is eradicated, full stop. If, as it looks increasingly likely now, that it will just be a recurring feature that will never completely go away, then life can never go back to the way it was before the pandemic. Who cares whether or not you can go to the movies or baseball games when people are dying? It's not even as if these public gatherings we yearn for are actually accomplishing anything meaningful, people are just yearning for the freedom to consume again, and come on that's pathetic.
    There was a lot, at least at the start, of People actually giving a ****. In the UK at least, People came together, a lot of charity work was done and People were more willing to help others.

    There were still silly situations, like toilet paper becoming increasingly rare. But there was a sort of "well, we just got to do this and everything will be fine".

    18 months later, and it feels like the opposite is true now. A lot of People are getting fed up and jaded, and that's after an eventful year where just about everything happened.

    Over here, we've had probably the most incompetent governments we've had in our lifetime, with our own prime minister getting Covid himself after boasting about shaking hands with People and ending up getting it really bad.
    He came out of it still downplaying it and now restrictions have been lifted, even through no one wants it.

    There's a lot of good still around, but yeah, some People are just awful, as shown when we have folks who want to hang NHS staff.

  4. #34
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by FFJamie94 View Post
    There was a lot, at least at the start, of People actually giving a ****. In the UK at least, People came together, a lot of charity work was done and People were more willing to help others.
    I’m thinking about Captain Sir Tom Moore who helped to raise millions for the health service at the beginning of the pandemic…

    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/02/u...ntl/index.html
    “Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelena View Post
    I’m thinking about Captain Sir Tom Moore who helped to raise millions for the health service at the beginning of the pandemic…

    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/02/u...ntl/index.html
    I was thinking of him too

  6. #36
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    There was simply never going to be an easy end to COVID. A worldwide end to COVID would require nearly 5-6 Billion people getting vaccinated. I don't think people realize the complexity of that feat given the lack of healthcare infrastructure in the global south when we can't even get close to the equivalent per capita numbers in the US. The unfettered spread of corona in high population/poorly vaccinated areas like India with poor health infrastructure and superspreader events (like Modi-ji's large election rallies and Kumbh Mela) means you are going to continue to have waves of new variants spread across the globe until everyone reaches the magic numbers for herd immunity.
    Last edited by Bruce Wayne; 07-25-2021 at 12:47 PM.

  7. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bruce Wayne View Post
    There was simply never going to be an easy end to COVID. A worldwide end to COVID would require nearly 5-6 Billion people getting vaccinated. I don't think people realize the complexity of that feat given the lack of healthcare infrastructure in the global south when we can't even get close to the equivalent per capita numbers in the US. The unfettered spread of corona in high population/poorly vaccinated areas like India with poor health infrastructure and superspreader events (like Modi-ji's large election rallies and Kumbh Mela) means you are going to continue to have waves of new variants spread across the globe until everyone reaches the magic numbers for herd immunity.
    I mean it doesn’t help that wealthy nations have been hoarding vaccines, which are starting to go to waste now that the remaining unvaccinated population won’t get them, and is refusing to loosen IP restrictions that would allow global production to ramp up.

  8. #38
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    The barriers to mass producing enough for billions is not just a few patents. Moderna for example announced it's not enforcing its COVID patents. It's not enough of the vaccine producing infrastructure in the first place to produce billions of vaccines. You can invalidate all the patents they want and it still won't change the fact that there are bottlenecks for critical tools and personnel to be able to use this recently developed technology to develop vaccines (adenovirus vectors/mrna). You don't seem to have an inkling of the tremendous resources needed to make billions of vaccines or that the barriers to this are not just patents and intellectual property.
    Last edited by Bruce Wayne; 07-25-2021 at 02:46 PM.

  9. #39
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    We've dealt with small outbreaks of similar things before, SARS/MERS/Bird Flu/etc. They pop up, kill a bunch of people, then burn out. Covid 19 was the first worldwide sustained pandemic of my lifetime, but given the rise in population maybe this is just how things are going to be from now on. Maybe we deal with Covid and something else pops up in its place in a few years. Maybe there will be cycles of viruses that we're going to have to deal with, and the idea of "going back to normal" isn't realistic.

  10. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bruce Wayne View Post
    The barriers to mass producing enough for billions is not just a few patents. Moderna for example announced it's not enforcing its COVID patents. It's not enough of the vaccine producing infrastructure in the first place to produce billions of vaccines. You can invalidate all the patents they want and it still won't change the fact that there are bottlenecks for critical tools and personnel to be able to use this recently developed technology to develop vaccines (adenovirus vectors/mrna). You don't seem to have an inkling of the tremendous resources needed to make billions of vaccines or that the barriers to this are not just patents and intellectual property.
    That's not an argument for not lifting the IP restrictions, that's an argument that we need to be doing more in addition to that in order to provide these countries with the resources and expertise needed to set up their own vaccine production. After all, given the nature of infectious disease, none of us are truly safe until all of us are safe, and that the virus doesn't respect borders, especially when we aren't implementing any type of quarantine on arrival.

    And if we're not going to do that, the least we could do is to not tut-tut at these poor shithole countries who are simply too backwards and corrupt to get the virus under control as if it were some type of intractable problem, because it absolutely is within our power to help them fix it. But of course, that would interfere with big pharma's profits and the foreign policy blob's plans to use the vaccine as a cudgel to advance geopolitical aims.

  11. #41
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bruce Wayne View Post
    The barriers to mass producing enough for billions is not just a few patents. Moderna for example announced it's not enforcing its COVID patents. It's not enough of the vaccine producing infrastructure in the first place to produce billions of vaccines. You can invalidate all the patents they want and it still won't change the fact that there are bottlenecks for critical tools and personnel to be able to use this recently developed technology to develop vaccines (adenovirus vectors/mrna). You don't seem to have an inkling of the tremendous resources needed to make billions of vaccines or that the barriers to this are not just patents and intellectual property.
    It is also what the representative of Sanofi said. It’s not a problem of patents.

    I’m confident, though… The citizens of these countries are pushing their governments to do what is necessary and there’s the international help, more efficient now that the most developped countries have been, more or less, vaccinated.
    “Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe

  12. #42
    CBR's Good Fairy Kieran_Frost's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post
    Again, everything would be open by now if we had taken the lockdown seriously from the get go instead of acting like pretending the virus didn’t exist was actually a viable option. And every time we rush to reopen again, we prolong the pandemic more. Get mad at me all you want, that won’t change the facts.
    Look, you're obviously hurting and this is where your anger and misplaced phrasing is coming from. You're angry seeing people not take this seriously, you're angry at Covid continuing so long and you feel that blame is on the few ruining it for the many, I get it, I really do. And I'll never tell someone to suppress their anger on any given subject, because rage is an emotion like any other, and emotions matter BUT while I understand where you're coming from, you have to acknowledge when that anger has unintended consequences. FOUR different posters have said (paraphrasing) "that was far too harsh and not okay". If you want people to listen to your views, if you want people to respect your opinion and have it carry weight you need to be an adult, and admit when you mis-spoke. Your comment was insulting and dismissive to very real issues people are dealing with, and when challenged on it you've double down and said "get mad at me" rather than take a second, breath, and realise you didn't mean to be so callous and unkind and apologise for it. Don't double down, don't be that guy. Be better than that guy.
    #truthbombOFLOVE

    Quote Originally Posted by FFJamie94 View Post
    There was a lot, at least at the start, of People actually giving a ****. In the UK at least, People came together, a lot of charity work was done and People were more willing to help others.

    There were still silly situations, like toilet paper becoming increasingly rare. But there was a sort of "well, we just got to do this and everything will be fine".

    18 months later, and it feels like the opposite is true now. A lot of People are getting fed up and jaded, and that's after an eventful year where just about everything happened.
    I will say I was pleasantly surprised when I was on the tube and in the centre of London last Monday (the day the mask ban had been lifted), and I saw nearly as many people wearing them as when the mask requirement was in full effect. People are still doing their bit, and ultimately those 'shaking off the shackles' of masks, never wore them properly in the first place. The majority is still very good, very upstanding. And that made me smile (not that anyone could tell, because, like a good boy, I was still wearing my mask ).

    Quote Originally Posted by Bruce Wayne View Post
    There was simply never going to be an easy end to COVID. A worldwide end to COVID would require nearly 5-6 Billion people getting vaccinated. I don't think people realize the complexity of that feat given the lack of healthcare infrastructure in the global south when we can't even get close to the equivalent per capita numbers in the US. The unfettered spread of corona in high population/poorly vaccinated areas like India with poor health infrastructure and superspreader events (like Modi-ji's large election rallies and Kumbh Mela) means you are going to continue to have waves of new variants spread across the globe until everyone reaches the magic numbers for herd immunity.
    QUESTION: how long did it take to immunise the world against smallpox? That was the last time, that I can think of, where a GLOBAL effort was made to end a disease.
    "We are Shakespeare. We are Michelangelo. We are Tchaikovsky. We are Turing. We are Mercury. We are Wilde. We are Lincoln, Lorca, Leonardo da Vinci. We are Alexander the Great. We are Fredrick the Great. We are Rustin. We are Addams. We are Marsha! Marsha Marsha Marsha! We so generous, we DeGeneres. We are Ziggy Stardust hooked to the silver screen. Controversially we are Malcolm X. We are Plato. We are Aristotle. We are RuPaul, god dammit! And yes, we are Woolf."

  13. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kieran_Frost View Post
    Look, you're obviously hurting and this is where your anger and misplaced phrasing is coming from. You're angry seeing people not take this seriously, you're angry at Covid continuing so long and you feel that blame is on the few ruining it for the many, I get it, I really do. And I'll never tell someone to suppress their anger on any given subject, because rage is an emotion like any other, and emotions matter BUT while I understand where you're coming from, you have to acknowledge when that anger has unintended consequences. FOUR different posters have said (paraphrasing) "that was far too harsh and not okay". If you want people to listen to your views, if you want people to respect your opinion and have it carry weight you need to be an adult, and admit when you mis-spoke. Your comment was insulting and dismissive to very real issues people are dealing with, and when challenged on it you've double down and said "get mad at me" rather than take a second, breath, and realise you didn't mean to be so callous and unkind and apologise for it. Don't double down, don't be that guy. Be better than that guy.
    #truthbombOFLOVE


    I will say I was pleasantly surprised when I was on the tube and in the centre of London last Monday (the day the mask ban had been lifted), and I saw nearly as many people wearing them as when the mask requirement was in full effect. People are still doing their bit, and ultimately those 'shaking off the shackles' of masks, never wore them properly in the first place. The majority is still very good, very upstanding. And that made me smile (not that anyone could tell, because, like a good boy, I was still wearing my mask ).


    QUESTION: how long did it take to immunise the world against smallpox? That was the last time, that I can think of, where a GLOBAL effort was made to end a disease.
    Answer: Depends on how you measure it. We knew about how to do what we did since about 1796, when Jenner experimented in an unsafe and totally unethical manner on kids to use a process called variolation, which involved using the contents of a cowpox sore on a milkmaid to inject into the arm of a pre-teen boy, the son of his gardener, because that apparently is how the rolled in that time, the scum classes knew their place as experimental test subjects.

    But the global eradication effort got its start in the 1950s, and global eradication was claimed in 1977 when the last known patient was treated. So...we might be in for a bit of a wait...

  14. #44
    CBR's Good Fairy Kieran_Frost's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by achilles View Post
    Answer: the global eradication effort got its start in the 1950s, and global eradication was claimed in 1977 when the last known patient was treated. So...we might be in for a bit of a wait...
    Oh... SH*T!!!!
    "We are Shakespeare. We are Michelangelo. We are Tchaikovsky. We are Turing. We are Mercury. We are Wilde. We are Lincoln, Lorca, Leonardo da Vinci. We are Alexander the Great. We are Fredrick the Great. We are Rustin. We are Addams. We are Marsha! Marsha Marsha Marsha! We so generous, we DeGeneres. We are Ziggy Stardust hooked to the silver screen. Controversially we are Malcolm X. We are Plato. We are Aristotle. We are RuPaul, god dammit! And yes, we are Woolf."

  15. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kieran_Frost View Post
    Oh... SH*T!!!!
    Well, things are different now, our tech is better, so it might be a bit quicker, but really, this is a long haul thing, so patience is probably a good idea. Once good oral vaccines that don't need special storage and can be easily taken by anyone with no training...things will pick up. Along with possible boosters, that's the next development to look for.

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