[dQw4w9WgXcQ]

No doubt that post-viral fatigue is a thing, but I wonder how much of Long COVID is the collective COVID anxiety and fear that continues to be fomented by all information sources (news, media, socials, etc). At this point we need to go back to pre-COVID in terms of how much attention it receives. We have vaccines, time to move on, the pandemic is over. Basically COVID needs to take a similar mental profile as the flu, which is that we annoyed everyone about vaccines yearly but other than that it was not nightly news and discussion, with warnings plastered everywhere like it's the Cold War. Even worse you have leaders branding this fear+anxiety-laced behavior as the "new normal"

I think behaving as-if the pandemic is over will do collectively far more for the well-being + psyche of fatigued citizens who have likely felt some measure of hope disappear over the past year. It does no benefit to keep circulating disproportionate levels of information about an uncertain and vague threat when we have the solution in vaccines. At this point "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" as the saying goes.

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's not a position the huge majority of doctors and scientists agree with.

Why should anyone believe you instead of them?

[gonehome]

This straight appeal to authority is particularly weak given the last year or so.

- lab leak hypothesis

- “masks don’t work”

- “not transmissible via the air”

- “it’s not a pandemic, don’t panic”

The authority has shown its capacity to be wrong here repeatedly and in obvious ways. This isn’t direct support of what OP said, but appeal to authority does little for me. The specifics matter.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

The appeal to scientific authority is only weak if you are looking for a way to downplay the virus. How many scientific authorities were saying "It's not a pandemic, don't panic"?

[unishark]

I think the "not a pandemic" was a reference to the WHO's month-plus delay in declaring a pandemic.

There was definitely a mindset of potential panic being worse than the disease itself early on. Perhaps not downplaying per se, so much as resisting making any major pronouncements of danger until the evidence was overwhelming.

[gonehome]

I’m not looking to downplay the virus - the initial downplay came from Vox and the NYT (journalists, not scientists - but often pretending they’re delivering scientific consensus): https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handsha...

They also framed virus fears at the time as racism and complained about border closures.

The “masks don’t work” arguments came from scientific authority though.

Same with “not transmitted via the air” and dismissing the lab leak hypothesis.

I’m not arguing with a partisan position - partisanship is what lead to a lot of dumb positions from scientific authority (and politicians too obviously).

[x86_64Ubuntu]

You are citing points whereby there was confusion about the scientific consensus, but what has been the overarching consensus this whole time? It hasn't been masks don't work, it hasn't been social distancing doesn't work and it hasn't been "not transmitted via the air".

[gonehome]

Respectfully, I think you’re cherry picking the current (more correct) understanding and missing what the consensus was at the time with the benefit of hindsight.

At the time “masks don’t work, “it’s not airborne”, and especially “it wasn’t a lab leak” were the overarching consensus - it was a handful of minority voices that pushed back on this, and they were not the authority.

The authorities largely failed us, my guess is because of political partisanship and motivated reasoning (along with a weaker MSM with bad journalists and some CCP pressure on WHO).

It was largely specific individual voices that were more correct at each step, rather than authority. The trick is you had to be able to tell which ones.

[dQw4w9WgXcQ]

Are we saying vaccines are not the solution?

[Ensorceled]

The majority of the world is not vaccinated. Hell, in some US states the majority is not vaccinated.

[wussboy]

I think you’re talking past each other. Is the virus still with us (your point)? Yes. Do we have a potent and effective vaccine which, for vaccinated persons means the virus is no longer a threat (the other person’s point)? Yes.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Do we have enough supplies of those vaccines yet, worldwide? Have we vaccinated sufficient people yet, worldwide?

Sadly, no and no.

Even in many US states it's also not enough yet.

And many countries must be looking at their situation regarding vaccine production in general, particularly dependency on other countries, and finding that to be something that they want to secure for themselves.

> for vaccinated persons means the virus is no longer a threat

I would call it a much diminished threat, which would be further diminished by vaccinating more other people, rather than "no threat".

[hanniabu]

Still not enough vaccinated for herd immunity. And considering the effectiveness of the vaccine drops from ~95% to ~65% 6 months after (around more for a majority of people) then it's looking further from all clear.

[rhino369]

We were vaccinated enough for heard immunity from the original variants. That’s why infections were cratering even in places with no social distancing rules.

Delta variant is probably going to change that. Some parts of the country will have a delta wave. But it’s going to be mostly in vaccinated people with serious infections.

[maxerickson]

Outside the northeast, US states are barely above 50%.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/states-r...

(link says march-15, page is updated through July 8)

[rhino369]

You can probably add another 15%-20% from recovered immunity.

[ricardobeat]

> the pandemic is over

This is surprising to read, guess it depends on where you live? Different countries are still at different stages of the pandemic, and it is most certainly not over for a lot of them, especially with the delta variant causing a third/fourth wave.

[gonehome]

Yeah - I’m guessing American.

The pandemic is over in America (for now), definitely not true for all of the rest of the world though.

I do suspect while there are long term complications from particularly bad covid cases (lung damage, etc.) - the OP is probably right that the more generic “long covid” symptoms (fatigue, brain fog, heart rate) sound a lot like physical symptoms of anxiety - I’d expect probably those numbers to go down.

[dannyw]

Australian here, in Sydney, we just entered our harshest lockdown days ago. We have achieved more or less zero COVID cases until Delta came.

Fully vaccinated rate: 6%

Ability for under 40s to get a vaccine: Only if you lie.

[roenxi]

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021... is a good summary of Australia's vaccine rollout.

[dannyw]

What these statistics don't show you: even if you are an eligible <39 year old, the earliest booking you can make now is in october.

[throwaway8689]

Oz probably has the means to produce vaccine and speed up roll out if the situation gets worse there.

[Tarsul]

especially when talking about UK, it's far from over (no matter what Boris Johnson is telling his people). With 30.000 cases per day and more opening up planned (and the Euro finals tomorrow), more and more people will get covid. Even if the death rate will be low compared to last year, people will get long covid. Probably hundreds of thousands of people. There are already 400k people in UK who suffer for more than 1 year from long covid. [1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/01/almost-400000-ha...

[helge9210]

> pandemic is over

This is but true in a sense that pandemic never started.