[ridiskdkfjsl]

the distinction between pandemic and endemic is political and typically related to “we don’t care to contain it”. It’s not related to immunity levels. The interesting thing is that it used to be citizens of poorer countries who would be fodder, now it’s also the richer ones which I think says something about the state of those countries and progress in general

[LorenPechtel]

I wouldn't say so much that we don't care to contain it, but that pandemic means it's sweeping over a population, endemic means it's simply always present in the population without major swings in prevalence. Impossible to contain because it's already everywhere.

[ridiskdkfjsl]

‘impossible to’ doesn’t really fit into my idea of the HN crowd.

It’s cost/benefit and leaders took the ‘keep the graph going up and to the right next quarter’ approach to the long term risks.

Containment is of course possible, it would just take technology improvements for diagnostic tests and education and investment in air quality.

The calculation is that saving the years of ill health aren’t worth disrupting the status quo

Edit: What’s the difference between sweeping over and always present? Whether we test and report it in the news or not?

[mardifoufs]

So it's possible, but not a single country in the world managed to do it, even with wide range of different political parties in power, alignment, economic systems, etc? Like if literally every single combination that we have of those things couldn't manage effective containment....Well I guess your claim is a bit unfalsifiable don't you think?

And the "chart goes" up is such a strawman, I'm sure there's no real life downside or long term risk to just shut down everything for (2) more weeks... but whatever. That's such a western mentality, that only comes with the privilege of not living in an economically ruined part of the world.

There's a reason why doomers and "zero COVID" proponents are usually in the vast majority white, privileged, urban residents. I'm sure some vague, very broad "long term risks" that we still haven't seen concretely outside of a tiny minority (even if hundreds of millions were infected) are more important than the actual, proven, repeated risks of "charts going down".

In a way there's an odd parallel with antivaxxers who love to claim that in just a little bit more we will see the long term risks that came with the vaccine lol

[LorenPechtel]

Human compliance isn't perfect. Without China-level enforcement all lockdowns were leaky. There's a point of can't.

Furthermore, Covid has animal hosts. Even if the would could cooperate on completely stamping it out it would soon jump back from some animal. We simply have to live with it, take what precautions you want in your personal life but there's no point in society at large doing so.

(I do, however, think that medical facilities should be mask-required. But I think they should have been pre-pandemic, also.)