Dr. Lucky Tran 
It isn't just about variants & surges. One of the major problems with COVID is that baseline levels of the virus are high for the majority of the year. That excludes many people, especially those at higher risk, from participating in society as most indoor spaces are unsafe.
It's infuriating to see minimizers keep saying that people don't need to worry because we aren't seeing a surge as large as Omicron. Without layers of public health protections a much lower (but still high) level of community spread can make many indoor spaces unsafe.
Of course this is all just deceit on the part of minimizers. Their real stance is that they don't care if people get reinfected over and over, and they don't care if the most vulnerable are excluded from society.
But minimizers can't say straight out that the real policy they support is unmitigated mass infection, so they keep repeating falsely reassuring statements like "don't worry about variants" or we "have the tools," so they can create the illusion of pretending to care.
The truth is that regardless of what's happening with variants, any high level of coronavirus spread makes many places inaccessible to many people. Because there's high levels most of the year, we are effectively locking higher risk people out of society. That's unacceptable.
And no, we don't have the "tools."
- pharma companies will be charging 4-5 times more for the new boosters
- we haven't sufficiently funded next gen vaccines that are better at reducing transmission
- we don't provide free N95s and we haven't educated people enough about respiratory protection
- we don't have regulations for clean indoor air and haven't sufficiently invested in it
- we haven't sufficiently invested in treatments for Long COVID, or engaged in a mass public infor campaign
No we are not in the same stage of the pandemic that we were in 2020. But COVID isn't gone as a threat for everyone. We have solutions, but enacting them means we need to stop minimizing & stop deliberately ignoring people who are speaking up about the harm they're experiencing.
Joseph Kohlmann@luckytran Still haunted by the observation that another ~100,000 people have died of Covid since last year 💔💔💔 https://twitter.com/wsbgnl/status/1691062805032849408
Dr. Brad Rosenheim has moved!@luckytran "We have the tools" is the most egregious propagated lie I can remember since weapons of mass destruction. And this was far more dangerous to Americans and Iraqis than those weapons ever would have been.
Samhain Night@luckytran caveat: Covid vaccines are still free in CA through November at the least.
Virginia S. O'Possum@luckytran Also apparently Paxlovid can be hard to find in some places.
Eniko (moved ➡ gamedev.place)@luckytran and it's getting harder and harder to get a pcr test and at-home tests continue to get less accurate
Shiny Amygdala, ph.DThe at home test the govt sent me didn't detect the COVID I caught. And I'm vaccinated and mask. I'm high risk and homebound, but my child brought it home from school (they are the only kid at their school that masks) . This is the link to my post where I go into everything that's happened to me since May:
Shiny Amygdala (@[email protected])
I need some strength. It's been an awful couple of months. Since I caught the virus one of the kids brought home from school in mid May I've had: 1) pneumonia 2) an internal groin abscess that caused the infection to spread down my leg 3) hospitalized for surgery and IV antibiotics 4) shingles I caught at the hospital and brought home to my children who now have chicken pox (and they are vaccine against it, too!) and now 5) a thrush infection on my tongue and down my esophagus I am mostly bed bound now. Hospice has been coming 2-3x/week since my hospital discharge on the 11th. I been having to take care of the surgical wound that is larger than I expected it to be. On top of this, the landlord is being a hideous human being, and we are dealing with harrassment over our complaints of a moldy toilet and shower that's been like this since we moved in. My immune system isn't working well and I'm scared for when school starts in the fall. CoVID could kill me. I will have to homeschool the younger 2 children and the oldest teen will still have to attend in-person school because of the special support services they need and their IEP. At least they are good about masking. The school isn't though. There's lots of students who go to school actively ill. And nobody except for my children mask. I know people are sick of hearing about COVID and everyone is done with COVID, but, COVID isn't done with us. I don't have a community or support network, and I'm all my children have. COVID or some other virus or infection could take me out. I need to stay healthy for my family. I'm in a dark dark place in life right now. My partner already lost a very good job (2 days ago was fired) because of having to care for me. So we are jobless now, without outside help. I'm scared and in pain, and I'm worried for my survival. I need strength to keep going. I don't want to die at 40. I don't want to join my big sister and mother. Not yet. I need many many more years on this earth. 💔😭
sabik@luckytran
"we have the tools" is like the old joke about the mathematician waking up to a fire, noting that there's a bucket of water available, and going back to sleep
we do have the tools, we're not using them 😢
GreySkiesI mean...just to expand on this a little. We do *not* actually have the tools. At least not to treat Covid. What we do have is Paxlovid. That is literally IT. And even that (IF you get a prescription for it) only lowers your chances of getting LC by around 25%. Lots of people take it and STILL get LC. This is not even getting into things like long term organ damage of which we don't know whether Paxlovid helps or not at all, or people with severe lactose intolerance (like myself) being all but unable to take Paxlovid (because it contains a lot of lactose).
We DO have the tools to prevent infection however. Those are the ones we chose not to use because they are too inconvenient for us basically, so we chose mass infection over that. It's easier. Speaking purely from a population standpoint. There are more systemic reasons as well why authorities are not propagating infection control measures.
All around, a sad, sorry state of affairs.
@GreySkies @luckytran
Exactly, we have the tools to prevent infection; we even got a new one a month or two ago, ASHRAE 241
We have existing laws mandating their use, by and large (OH&S)
We're just ignoring the tools and the laws; and also the infection, reinfection, disability and death