[ideonexus]

It depends entirely on who you talk to. Urban America is taking this threat seriously and locking down for the winter while rural America thinks it's a hoax. In Virginia, our cities are keeping the curve flattened, while the virus is surging off the charts in our rural communities.

Nothing convinces them. When a loved one dies of asphyxiation, they shrug it off and say that person died of obesity, old age, or a lack of vitamins. We have nurses telling stories of patients struggling to breath, but who still refuse to believe this virus is real and only cease gasping about the "fake news" when they are intubated.

Complicating this is our HIPAA regulations. The media can't show you what's happening inside our hospitals right now. They can only show the refrigeration trucks for bodies and roads closed for oxygen trucks outside the hospitals. So the conspiracy theorists claim these are for show and that the hospitals are actually empty.

With the complete abdication of leadership at the federal level--where some of our officials are openly urging citizens to fight against policies slowing the spread of the virus, we can do nothing but stay inside and hope to ride this out.

[mixmastamyk]

A bit melodramatic. However I'd say the hoax folks will reap what they sow. The truth always comes out eventually. Personal responsibility is a thing as well.

Collateral damage is a shame, but there's a limit to how much you force other people to do what you want. So be it.

[xnyan]

>A bit melodramatic

It might seem so, but I'd say it's accurate, for exmaple:

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real,’” Doering said, adding that some patients prefer to believe that they have pneumonia or other diseases rather than covid-19, despite seeing their positive test results.[1]

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/16/south-dakot...

[mixmastamyk]

It sounds harsh, but people die every day, many because of their own negligence. We can warn them ahead of time the best we can, but that's about it.

Keep in mind the general urge to call them morons has the opposite effect. Not saying anyone in the thread specifically has done that, but melodrama/hand-wringing is in the neighborhood.

[anon9001]

I think that's pretty accurate, but even in Urban America there's a divide between people who aren't taking any chances vs people who are wearing PPE but are living their best life.

For me, I'm just not going anywhere or doing anything. It turns out that I can have everything delivered, and my risk is essentially 0. I'm going to wait it out until there's a vaccine. If the numbers dip very low in my area, I might try to squeeze in a doctor and dentist visit. I'm not immunocompromised, but it's not that hard to live as if I was. I'm considering this whole thing a bit of an experiment to see how self-sufficient I can be.

Conversely, I have coworkers that are traveling all over the country (wearing masks), and staying at cheap airbnb's. Some are relocating because of the changing housing market. If you don't mind taking on a minimal amount of risk, you can get a lot of good deals on flights/hotels/airbnbs/apartments/etc right now. Personally, even a little risk isn't worth it when I know there's 95% effective vaccine being manufactured.

At this point, it's obvious that we'll never get rid of COVID-19 entirely as a disease. Hopefully it'll become a disease only for the people that believe in "fake news" and "anti-vax".