[HN Gopher] What Happened in 2021
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What Happened in 2021
Author : tosh
Score : 31 points
Date : 2022-01-01 00:34 UTC (22 hours ago)
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| umvi wrote:
| > I predicted that vaccines plus immunity from those who had been
| infected would end the pandemic by mid-year 2021.
|
| Me too. I'm still wondering why, in most first world countries
| with free vaccines, we are still having authoritarian crackdowns
| and culture wars. Does the media just love perpetuating a state
| of constant crisis? If widespread vaccine availability didn't
| trigger a return to normalcy, I don't know what will. Seems like
| we will be doing pandemic measures for years to come at this rate
| since scaling healthcare in any way is off the table for some
| reason.
| Karunamon wrote:
| >Does the media just love perpetuating a state of constant
| crisis?
|
| Constant catastrophosizing drives engagement, it's that simple.
| This is the reason you'll never hear 'stay calm' messages that
| are not tempered by a 'but'. Anger and fear are powerful
| emotions, and the media will hammer those buttons as hard as
| they can (unless given a powerful incentive not to), the
| effects on society be damned.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Exactly and that's why for me personally all media is biased
| trash driven by money/power/greed directly or indirectly to
| be ignored.
|
| For covid news I get it directly from my medical friends
| working in hospitals or this time around all the people (two
| handfuls) I know and they know dealing with Covid. Personally
| worst I've experienced first and second hand since it started
| but each person who isn't OLD recovers quickly vaxed or not.
| jude- wrote:
| The problem is that a certain slice of the population adamantly
| refuses to wear a mask or get a vaccine, thereby prolonging the
| pandemic.
| nradov wrote:
| While I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by
| getting vaccinated, the virus will be around forever. Any
| talk of "prolonging" is absurd.
|
| https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
|
| You obviously can't expect people to continue wearing masks
| indefinitely. That would be ridiculous.
| xeromal wrote:
| But Omicron is infecting vaccinated at a very high rate. At
| this point, damned if you do or damned if you don't.
|
| We need to start moving on at this point.
| awsthro00945 wrote:
| This is a false equivalency. Being vaccinated or not is the
| difference between requiring days/weeks in the hospital or
| only spending 1-2 days with a mild headache. It's "mildly
| inconvenienced if you do, damned if you don't".
|
| I was at the hospital yesterday (for something unrelated to
| covid) and there are 0 rooms available. The hallways are
| still packed with unvaccinated people with covid laying in
| every open space they can find. Nurses and doctors are
| still worked past their breaking point.
|
| We cannot move on until the thick-skulled members of
| society realize that their unwillingness to get vaccinated
| is _the_ number one thing stopping us from moving on.
| xeromal wrote:
| It ain't happening though so we need to move on with it.
| There are too many stubborn people in the United States
| and probably elsewhere.
|
| There are people who would rather die than take the
| vaccine for whatever ridiculous reason so why are we
| sitting around waiting for them.
| awsthro00945 wrote:
| I'll say it again: we _cannot_ move on with it until
| people are vaccinated. It 's not a choice. It's not
| something where we just say "eh well it looks like it
| won't get better so let's move on". It physically cannot
| happen.
| loudmax wrote:
| I think there's a possibility that omicron may mark the
| end of this pandemic. Anybody who refuses to get
| vaccinated will very likely get omicron within the next
| few weeks. So your immune system will either develop
| antibodies as a result of being vaccinated, or as a
| result of being infected. Well, there is the third option
| of dying from covid, but the current evidence seems to
| indicate that the risk of hospitalization or death from
| omicron is lower than from covid-19 or delta.
|
| To be sure, the descendants of the novel coronavirus that
| appeared in Wuhan in 2019 will float around the human
| population indefinitely. Omicron isn't the end of covid,
| but it could be the end of widespread hospitalizations
| and deaths. At least until the next crisis comes along.
| nradov wrote:
| I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by
| getting vaccinated, but moving on is an entirely separate
| issue. We can move on as soon as people stop panicking
| and decide to accept the risks. In fact that's already
| happening in some states.
|
| Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that another
| coronavirus HCoV-OC43 caused another worldwide pandemic
| starting in 1889. It killed a lot of people. There were
| no vaccines or effective treatments. The same virus is
| still endemic today; the only reason it doesn't kill many
| people today is that most of us get infected as youths
| and the resulting immunity protects us later in life.
| People moved on.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544107/
| xeromal wrote:
| So let's assume these people never get vaccinated. We
| wait forever?
| awsthro00945 wrote:
| You're still not understanding. We are not "waiting".
| Waiting implies that we are making some type of conscious
| choice to put things on hold. But there is no choice. We
| cannot simply choose to stop waiting. We _cannot_ move on
| until people are vaccinated. We are _blocked_ , not
| waiting.
| xeromal wrote:
| Lol, you act like this is the first time in humanity's
| history that we've had a virus. Humanity continues
| despite it and we will continue despite many people
| choosing not get easily vaccinated.
|
| Eventually people will move on. It's the human condition.
| awsthro00945 wrote:
| Humanity "continuing" or "moving on" naturally due to the
| passage of time (which will be quite a long time) is a
| completely different thing than humanity "choosing" to
| move on. Your original comments imply/ask that humanity
| collectively "chooses" to move on and stop letting covid
| affect us, but again, that is simply not possible. It's
| not something we choose.
|
| Individuals can individually choose to pretend covid
| isn't a thing, but society as a whole cannot simply
| choose to suddenly restore our medical infrastructure,
| fix supply chains, grow the labor market, etc. Covid's
| effect on those things won't magically go away just
| because someone says "you know what, I'm tired of waiting
| on covid! I'm going to be normal now!"
|
| Adjustments to these will happen over time and humanity
| may "continue", but _when_ that happens is not a choice
| we make.
| xeromal wrote:
| See! We agree.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I mean, there is a third option that neither of you have
| presented. We could fix the emergency room and infectious
| disease ward situation with federal money, and then move
| on instead of using federal money to prolong lock downs.
| Addressing infrastructure isn't always popular, or the
| fastest, but it lasts longer and solves the problem of
| overcrowding.
|
| Yes, it might mean another 9 months to a year of
| lockdown, but it would be there still when (not if)
| another disaster occurs. Now, people will get angry at
| subsidizing private hospitals... but I could go on about
| how emergency care should be publicly funded anyway. But
| I digress.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Yes, it might mean another 9 months to a year of
| lockdown
|
| Oh goodness no. There's a supply limit for medical
| professionals that will take half a decade to solve even
| with unlimited funding. And as this is a worldwide issue,
| not just an American one, you can't just outbid the rest
| of us for migrant healthcare workers.
| [deleted]
| Lammy wrote:
| > I was at the hospital yesterday (for something
| unrelated to covid) and there are 0 rooms available. The
| hallways are still packed with unvaccinated people with
| covid laying in every open space they can find. Nurses
| and doctors are still worked past their breaking point.
|
| Anecdote: I had to go to the ER in 2017 in San Francisco
| and my experience was exactly like this back then too. It
| was a ~4 hour wait in the ER waiting room, then another
| several hours on a bed in a bright loud busy hallway,
| then some tests, back to the hallway for a few hours, and
| then emergency inpatient surgery.
| ben_w wrote:
| Seatbelts and drink driving rules don't totally eliminate
| car crashes, but they do reduce their frequency and
| consequences. Likewise vaccines and masks for COVID.
|
| Indeed, if we had 100% vaccine uptake, or 100% sobriety,
| then all COVID incidents would be vaccinated just as all
| car crashes would have sober drivers.
|
| "Learning to live with COVID" ought to imply "learning to
| live with masks and vaccines", not "lose your sense of
| smell and be ill for an extra week each year".
| phillipcarter wrote:
| My personal view, which is US-based, is that our government is
| filled with second-rate people from top to bottom. They have
| continually failed to communicate clearly about the virus,
| testing, masking, and vaccines throughout the past two years.
| They are still not providing good masks. They still talk about
| "washing your hands". They are not building better ventilation
| systems. They are not providing good rapid test kits. They are
| not passing laws that address our countless medical system
| inefficiencies. And so on, and so on. Anything they _are_ doing
| feels imperceptible from doing nothing.
|
| I think the sad reality is that we're going to have a lot more
| needless deaths in 2022. People with disabilities that are
| impacted by COVID will need to keep locking themselves up
| indefinitely - no government agency will help them, and their
| communities will ignore their problems. Vaccines will still not
| be taken by ~1/3 of the population. Is it even worth trying
| anymore with them? I guess yes, however frustrating, but only
| because it makes everyone else safer to do so. I do not see how
| 2022 is terribly different from 2021.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Nope, still going to kill a bunch of people and that will curb
| any real growth. Here's what will happen: April/may cases will
| be much lower, end of may people will party into June.
| June/July there will be a uptick until august just before
| school starts. September cases will climb, get slightly lower
| in October, then spike the second week of November and then
| continue until April/may. This is an infectious disease
| functioning in/on a human system and we well know how this
| works out. Everything I described above is the schedule for the
| Spanish flu, and coincidentally, covid. Because that is how
| humans work and do things. We have not progressed enough in the
| last 100 years to change this due to the luddite/zealot
| problems we have.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| I also thought widespread vaccination would end the pandemic in
| the US by mid-2021. I guess vaccination rates have to be very
| high, maybe > 90%, for that to work? Personally I've redefined
| my goal for dealing with the pandemic as merely, "I will not
| give Covid to anyone else," which still seems doable by spacing
| out social events and testing in between.
|
| Although I also find the media's tendency towards
| sensationalism to be annoying, the media industry and its
| audience are so fractured now I'm not sure they're the cause of
| anything. It feels like no one is in control and they (and us)
| are merely along for the ride. That is, I feel that, due to
| decentralized mass communication and targeted media delivery,
| social phenomena is tending towards emergent rather than
| directed behavior.
| imnotreallynew wrote:
| Malta is about at 90%, yet the government is introducing more
| mandates to the chagrin of residents[0]. There's been maybe
| ~three deaths in the entire country over the past couple of
| weeks; COVID hasn't even been in the top 5 causes of death
| for a long time. Yet, you'll now risk being fined EUR100 if
| you're outside walking by yourself without a mask (of course
| smoking in restaurants and going to nightclubs is allowed,
| because that makes freaking sense).
|
| Malta was even touting quite a bit about being the first
| European country to reach herd immunity..back in _May_.
|
| In my _opinion_ , anyone who believes continued restrictions
| have been about anything other than political theatre and
| positioning are utterly delusional.
|
| 0: https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/this-latest-masks-
| man...
| jpeloquin wrote:
| So 90% does remove Covid as an ongoing concern? That's
| encouraging. If you live in Malta, my condolences on
| dealing with restrictions that, on face value, are overly
| fearful and internally inconsistent.
| solresol wrote:
| Unfortunately not -- look at what is happening in NSW
| (Australia). >90% vaccination rate, and essentially
| exponential growth in cases and hospitalisation.
|
| The only things that changed were: omicron instead of
| delta, and the dropping of restrictions with a new
| premier.
| azakai wrote:
| COVID is far less dangerous than in 2020, but it is still a
| problem - it's not just a "media thing". COVID is still
| powerful enough to fill our hospitals past their ability to
| cope, and also we have enough uncertainty about long COVID that
| it's better to minimize infections. So we are not yet back to
| normalcy.
|
| Why is COVID still that dangerous? Not enough people are
| vaccinated, and not enough use masks (especially not good masks
| like N95s), and new variants are making things difficult.
|
| It is plausible that during 2022 we do return to something
| close to normal. But it depends on those three factors.
| daveevad wrote:
| > Not enough people are vaccinated
|
| Is it not the case that we essentially need to vaccinate
| _everyone in the whole world_ within a small time period,
| like 4 weeks, to prevent mutation and vaccine escape?
| azakai wrote:
| That would let us eradicate it entirely. It's worth trying.
| But we can still get mostly back to normal without that.
|
| If we get enough immunity that the worst COVID causes is a
| small bump in hospitalization and deaths once or twice a
| year then we could live with that and just wear masks
| during those weeks perhaps. We are much, much closer to
| that goal today than we were a year ago.
| nradov wrote:
| It's not possible to eradicate the virus. The vaccines
| are pretty good at preventing deaths, but they don't
| reliably prevent infection or transmission. There are
| also multiple animal reservoirs and those can't be
| vaccinated at all.
|
| The only human viruses we have managed to eradicate are
| smallpox and (almost) polio. The vaccines for those are
| generally much more effective, and there are no animal
| reservoirs.
| azakai wrote:
| You're probably right. We'd need a new type of vaccine
| that is more effective for that to be realistic. There is
| still hope for that though.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| > Even with a big year-end selloff, which I believe was mostly
| tax-driven
|
| Wondering what big year-end selloff he's talking about, given the
| fact that the SP500 just made a new all time high only days ago.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| tech stocks (outside FAANG) are way off highs. Most down
| 30-50%.
| dundarious wrote:
| Presumably Musk
| awsthro00945 wrote:
| Financial markets are more than just the SP500. The sentence
| before that is talking about both stock markets and crypto
| markets. Crypto (BTC specifically, but also others) dropped
| ~30% in December.
| LordFast wrote:
| And how much did crypto go up this year compared to S&P500?
| eulers_secret wrote:
| > But that also means that it is on us who have benefitted the
| most to work harder and invest to address some of these troubling
| issues.
|
| 2021 was a bad year for me. My stocks didn't increase in value
| _at all_ (bluechip tech), my house down-payment cash savings
| decreased in value by 20% (~$20K value just GONE in one year:
| That 's two years of savings for me), my 15 year old car is too
| expensive to replace right now, and it's leaky/moldy. I've also
| been locked down in my comically small apartment for YEARS.
|
| This upcoming year I am 100% NOT going to 'address troubling
| issues' or anything like it. I've fallen lower on Maslow's
| hierarchy than I have been since before I started my career. I'm
| going to try to increase my comp, and get into the "good side".
| People are making serious money during this pandemic, and I'm so
| jealous that I missed the boat. I could really use some gains to
| offset the absurd increase in housing/transportation costs, but
| it appears there's no relief on the horizon for me.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| What tech companies were you invested in that were flat? The
| sector grew the fastest of any major sector.
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