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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   3087 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 29, 2024

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https://fortune.com/2024/09/26/bird-flu-us-health-officials-h5n1-cdc-information/

This is concerning IMO. Avian flu slowly but surely gets closer to becoming a human pandemic. The CDC and other officals drag their heels and drip-feed information each Friday afternoon. Farmers are reluctant to test their animals. The authorities lack authority to enforce testing.

There has been a human hospital patient with bird flu in Missouri. Why is that interesting? Because he had not been in direct contact with likely animal sources. A household contact of the patient became sick but was not tested. Several of the healthcare workers who cared for the patient have become sick too. It's too soon to declare human to human transmission however. It may be the case that the healthcare workers got covid or something.

The problem as a whole is not taken nearly seriously enough. My only hope is that the vaccines for both animal and human use are developed quickly enough to prevent a pandemic, or to or mitigate it before it starts. It's a race against the clock and the officials don't seem motivated to run.

At this point, the medical establishment and government don’t (or at least, I really, really hope they don’t) have enough credibility left to enforce anti-pandemic measures. Even if avian flu does become a human pandemic and is widely acknowledged as such, it’s probably just going to have to rip through the population like any other transmittable disease. Those who get sick, get sick; those who die, die; and those who survive eventually reach herd immunity.

At this point, the medical establishment and government don’t (or at least, I really, really hope they don’t) have enough credibility left to enforce anti-pandemic measures.

I'd like to note that it isn't just the medical establishment or the government (in the USA) that has lost credibility: the public has as well. Going into Covid lockdowns in March 2020, I might have thought that everyone would play along, now I know that there is no chance everyone will play along.

Even if you assume Lockdownism is ultimately correct on the facts, it is a classic prisoner's dilemma: my sacrifice of locking down and not going out is only worth anything if everyone else does as well. If I know in advance that everyone else is not going to lockdown, there is no societal value in my locking down.

And there is no way that anyone will convince me that the American public is gonna do shit-all about it.

I'd like to note that it isn't just the medical establishment or the government (in the USA) that has lost credibility: the public has as well. Going into Covid lockdowns in March 2020, I might have thought that everyone would play along, now I know that there is no chance everyone will play along.

It's fascinating and banging-my-head-to-the-wall inducing to read peoples comments here regarding lockdown and particularly those who assume that the Western response was universaly the same, or at least very similar, as the American response.

Finland never had a lockdown. Not a single one. When the pandemic hit in mid March, the only things forcibly closed were bars and restaurants (after massive public pressure). Yet everything shut down because 1) people voluntarily stopped going out, 2) many facilities owners didn't want the risk of spreading the infection (of which a lot was uncertain back then) and 3) many of the rest didn't want the bad PR. I personally skipped town for two months because I preferred having views like this instead of being stuck in the city with absolutely nothing happening. Apparently nature parks have never been as popular as during that time (and no, nobody even suggested restrictions to that - there's shitloads of open space in Finland, might as well let people enjoy it when it's especially useful).

So, in some places people do play along. It just seems that US is not one of those.

Playing along with "don't go to crowded pubs" and playing along with "you are going to be arrested if you go alone to an empty beach, but please please go to a massive protest where people around you scream in your face for hours" is playing two entirely different games.

It's fascinating and banging-my-head-to-the-wall inducing to read peoples comments here regarding lockdown and particularly those who assume that the Western response was universaly the same, or at least very similar, as the American response.

So, in some places people do play along. It just seems that US is not one of those.

Seems like you're making the same mistake as he is? All he said was "there is no chance everyone will play along", and Finland is not "everyone" any more than the US is. Europe made plenty of insane COVID-era decisions, and I think he's right that even pro-covid-measures people lost appetite to redo them for anything short of an airborne ebola-cancer-aids outbreak.

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