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By *lansman OP Man
over a year ago
Sheffield |
doom-mongering might be a reaction to the constant goalpost moving by scientists and the politicians following them. At first the restrictions were just to stop the NHS from being overwhelmed, rather than to stop the disease itself. Then we moved into a suppression strategy "until a vaccine comes along". Then the vaccine came along, faster than seemed reasonable to hope 11 months ago, and the scientists are saying "we can't lift restrictions even with a vaccine". Some are quite openly saying we can never go back to normal.
The new obsession with mutations arguably sets the bar we have to reach before we can go back to normal so high that there is a high chance it will never be reached. This virus will mutate. Some of the mutations will be resistant to any given vaccine. If we decide we can't open the borders until the chance of a vaccine-resistant mutation is eliminated we may well be waiting for ever. The chances of this disease being eradicated are not 0 but they are likely very slim. We are not realistically going to be able to vaccinate 80% of the world population before a vaccine-resistant variant comes along - as the South African variant has shown.
When scientists are so open in telling us that we may never be able to go back to normal, or at least not for an extremely long, indefinite period, I am not surprised that so many people are feeling hopeless about ever going back to normal.
Additionally, you are right that pandemics have a natural ending point. But that ending point, historically, has tended to happen when *gasp* herd immunity is reached. Clearly historically most pandemics were not ended by a mass vaccination programme, or the locking down of most countries. Now, there are perfectly fair reasons why some people do not want to contemplate naturally acquired herd immunity for Covid. But let's not pretend that we can reach a natural ending point for the pandemic if we don't allow people to catch it.
We have decided that we are not willing to contemplate natural herd immunity, so we will only end the pandemic via a vaccine. Yet, even with a vaccine, we will probably never go back to normal if we are not willing to tolerate any Covid deaths, because we are unlikely to ever reach zero-Covid on a global basis. Border restrictions are a severe curtailment on liberty - historically only highly authoritarian nations have prevented their citizens from travelling abroad. They are also extremely economically damaging, and prevent people from being able to see relatives who live in other countries.
It is time for a serious conversation about what level of Covid we are willing to tolerate. If the answer is zero, get ready for a hopeless, miserable life - for everyone - for ever. Don't forget that countries that have achieved zero Covid have, in reality, gone back into lockdown when even 1 case enters the country. A zero covid strategy really means you can re-enter lockdown at any moment. Do you want to live under the threat of lockdown until you die?
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