The COVID-19 pandemic

[ac3r]

The WHO has officially declared the pandemic to be over: https://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/1...5037989890

At last! Now to pick up the pieces of this debacle...

It will be interesting to study the Swedish response to everything versus other countries.

They did not play along with the draconian measures (lockdowns, forcing people to wear masks etc) and vaccine coercion (firing people in droves, forbidding them from working etc) that so many other countries implemented. And yet...they had amongst the lowest number of excess deaths (and Covid-19 attributed deaths) depending on methodology when compared to dozens of other developed nations as well as a low number of cases despite minimal uptake in mask wearing. My Swedish ex would often tell me how little people cared there, herself included. Yet overall it wasn't bad.

It should hopefully provide us with good research on public health measures with regards to respiratory diseases which spread via droplets. Those countries which went all in with public health safety measures tended to fare worse than those who didn't bother. A lot surely comes down to things like health care quality and population density, but nonetheless this offers a unique look at how to respond to such things in the future.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/swed...-the-data/

[clasher]

Doesn't seem like Sweden did better than its neighbours: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scathing-e...d=83644832

[taylortbb]

Doesn't seem like Sweden did better than its neighbours: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scathing-e...d=83644832

Exactly. The only proper comparison for Sweden is Denmark/Norway/Finland. Comparing against France, Italy, Canada, etc, just has so many additional confounding variables.

[danbrotherston]

Sweden did far worse than their neighbours and were frankly, horrific, in their response. 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177...1421994848

Is ac3r suggesting they are a good model to follow? I guess if you hate grandma maybe.

[tomh009]

It will be interesting to study the Swedish response to everything versus other countries.

You can't just pick and choose countries at random to compare to, as there are too many other variables. But if you compare them to their neighbours in Norway and Finland--which also have similar healthcare and social systems--Sweden does not look particularly good.

[plam]

It is indeed really easy to cherry pick data and ignore confounding variables.

Just because the PHEIC is over doesn't mean that COVID is not still killing people. At this point it's unlikely to kill me, but it is still quite good at killing old people and the immunocompromised.

I would also rather not run the risk of catching long COVID, which I think affects about 8% of cases to some extent and can be really bad in some cases. Brain fog? Post-exertional malaise? No thanks.

Better ventilation should be helpful. I don't really want to be in places with high CO2 anyway. Waterloo region schools seem to have a lot of air purifiers.

[danbrotherston]

It is indeed really easy to cherry pick data and ignore confounding variables.

Just because the PHEIC is over doesn't mean that COVID is not still killing people. At this point it's unlikely to kill me, but it is still quite good at killing old people and the immunocompromised.

I would also rather not run the risk of catching long COVID, which I think affects about 8% of cases to some extent and can be really bad in some cases. Brain fog? Post-exertional malaise? No thanks.

Better ventilation should be helpful. I don't really want to be in places with high CO2 anyway. Waterloo region schools seem to have a lot of air purifiers.

Not to mention updated vaccinations...something which seems to have been drastically scaled back in a lot of places.

To say nothing of masking around vulnerable people (and perhaps even in crowded spaces).

Seems there's a lot we should be doing, but just aren't.

[ac3r]

It's still killing people, but we cannot live in a public health emergency in perpetuity. It has just as drastic impacts on things as the disease itself does. It was inevitable that we'd have to declare an end to this. The #bringbackmasks crowd is free to keep wearing 2 cent Chinese face masks and ill-fitted N95s as long as they wish and get a million booster shots. But it's clear the majority don't care anymore. Even in hospitals, half the staff don't bother anymore unless they're directly caring for a patient.

[taylortbb]

It's still killing people, but we cannot live in a public health emergency in perpetuity. It has just as drastic impacts on things as the disease itself does. It was inevitable that we'd have to declare an end to this. The #bringbackmasks crowd is free to keep wearing 2 cent Chinese face masks and ill-fitted N95s as long as they wish and get a million booster shots. But it's clear the majority don't care anymore. Even in hospitals, half the staff don't bother anymore unless they're directly caring for a patient.

I don't think this really defends your original point about Sweden though. I've pretty much resumed living my life like I did before, except in additional to my annual flu shot I expect to get an annual Covid booster. I agree that we're out of the emergency phase, even though people will keep dying from Covid (people also died from the flu). Masking in healthcare settings probably still makes sense though IMO.

But none of this contradicts that Sweden's response was objectively inferior to their neighbours. Now we have vaccines, we have treatments, etc, but none of that was true in 2020. Most of the deaths of 2020 were a public health failure, as was our failure to eliminate the virus in early 2020. A bunch of people died in Sweden in 2020 that didn't need to. It's not like the rest of Scandinavia is still in lockdown, I was in Copenhagen last year and didn't see a single mask (literally).

There's a big difference between thinking we should still be in lock down (we shouldn't), and thinking that lock downs in 2020 were unjustified (they actually saved a lot of lives).

[panamaniac]

It's still killing people, but we cannot live in a public health emergency in perpetuity. It has just as drastic impacts on things as the disease itself does. It was inevitable that we'd have to declare an end to this. The #bringbackmasks crowd is free to keep wearing 2 cent Chinese face masks and ill-fitted N95s as long as they wish and get a million booster shots. But it's clear the majority don't care anymore. Even in hospitals, half the staff don't bother anymore unless they're directly caring for a patient.

Continuing to wear masks in health facilities and LTC homes, among others, seems like a no-brainer.

[ijmorlan]

It's still killing people, but we cannot live in a public health emergency in perpetuity. It has just as drastic impacts on things as the disease itself does. It was inevitable that we'd have to declare an end to this. The #bringbackmasks crowd is free to keep wearing 2 cent Chinese face masks and ill-fitted N95s as long as they wish and get a million booster shots. But it's clear the majority don't care anymore. Even in hospitals, half the staff don't bother anymore unless they're directly caring for a patient.

Continuing to wear masks in health facilities and LTC homes, among others, seems like a no-brainer.

And refusal should be dealt with in the same way that any other refusal to follow health and safety rules in the workplace, e.g., “I don’t feel a need to wash my hands before cooking”.

[danbrotherston]

*sigh*....

Recognizing and adapting behaviour to new situations is not "living in fear" it is not a "perpetual emergency", it is simply common sense. We wear seat belts, we wash our hands, we get vaccinations, hell, lots of cultures already wear masks, and for crying out loud, our clothing is an adaptation. We do these things because we (most of us) are smart enough to recognize changes in our environment, in ourselves, and our scientific understanding and leverage that awareness to improve our lives.

Denying these changes and refusing to adapt isn't being smart, it isn't being independent, it's just living in the past. 2019 is gone, it will never come back we live in a universe with linear time. You can be self destructive by refusing to face our new reality, or you can move forward. It is a real shame that our society is being dragged down by those who refuse to work towards a better future.

I am especially frustrated by the failure of medical organizations to adapt. You can make an argument for or against wearing a mask on a crowded train or a busy supermarket, but a care ward where immunocompomised severely ill patients are being treated next to patients who carry communicable diseases...the idea that we won't require masks there...we are truly being governed at all levels by the worst of us.

[ac3r]

Masks are still required in hospitals (unsure about LTC, but I'd imagine many are still following that policy) for direct patient care, but apart from that they've all got rid of the rules. Someone I know who works at GRH says most staff don't bother now unless they're doing care and after 3+ years of them, I can't blame them.
I often visit her during lunch and can confirm, at least half the staff and visitors stopped bothering.

Though as expected, it didn't take long for an outbreak to occur. She told me there's one currently on the 5th (or 6th?) floor. But at this point, they aren't really treating it as anything worse than influenza. If a patient has it, they're kept in a single room until they test negative as has always been the case. They're not kept in a negative pressure room or anything (they never were) either. It's mostly just a minor annoyance now. The vast majority of Canadians got vaccinated (though unless you are getting boosted as much as possible, that has waned away for most) and the virus itself mutated enough that it rarely causes the need for intensive care in people. The vast majority of people getting infected at this point will do just fine and get over it, hence why the mask rules are all but gone everywhere.

There's still the weird crowd - both healthcare professionals and regular people - who spend every second of their life obsessing about masks and shit, but nobody is listening to them anymore outside of their little Twitter circles. Healthcare organization bodies have all concluded that it's okay to not wear a mask anymore and that's based on actual evidence. People like to blame Ford and yes he makes the decisions, but it's the healthcare bodies that have all said it's time to get over this already.

The virus will always be out there and killing people, but so does SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, countless strains of influenza...heck even tuberculosis. We'll all be catching this for the rest of our lives. Not much you can do about it now, except to try and maintain a healthy body so that when you do get it again and again, it impacts you no worse than a common cold causing coronavirus does. Some will be unlucky, but that's the way life goes.

[plam]

The vast majority of people getting infected at this point will do just fine and get over it, hence why the mask rules are all but gone everywhere.

[...]

Not much you can do about it now, except to try and maintain a healthy body so that when you do get it again and again, it impacts you no worse than a common cold causing coronavirus does. Some will be unlucky, but that's the way life goes.

Here's the thing. Society is absolutely terrible at providing care for chronic conditions, and this virus still does cause chronic debilitation. We just ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen. Because if you have a chronic condition, you're not out there making noise. You're just dropped from society. Yes, most people are OK. My estimate is that about 8% of people have some form of long COVID and, for some of them, things just aren't quite the same afterwards; e.g. my friend used to do ultramarathons, got COVID, and seems pretty OK now. But if you ask him, he'll say that he's not completely cured. And it's worse for old people.

So, yes, I think we should care.

I also think that there are things that we should do as a society. I can't imagine why I would want to be on a plane or a train without a mask for an extended time. Heck, the CDC finally said, yes, COVID is transmitted via aerosols. So another thing we can do as a society is ensure that there should be adequate ventilation. We don't ever want places with > 2000 ppm CO2 even in the absence of COVID. They're terrible for cognitive function.

[tomh009]

My estimate is that about 8% of people have some form of long COVID (...)

Long COVID is a serious issue. But it sounds like what you are referring to is not the usual, rather severe, long COVID, but the case where the person has not 100% recovered, even after a long time. Is that correct?

And is your estimate of 8% of the total population? 8% of people who had COVID at least once? 8% of infections? 8% of symptomatic infections? Something else? Because, at a glance, 8% is a huge number.