croissant"SARS is not airborne." — Bonnie Henry, 2003
"Unlike SARS, COVID-19 is not airborne." — Bonnie Henry, 2020
"Unlike COVID-19, Hantavirus is not airborne." — Bonnie Henry, 2026
Gabriel Pettier@croissant the stakes, not the odds, right?
@tshirtman That is exactly why the precautionary principle is so important. Unfortunately, some incorrigibly believe that caution means "Let's be cautious about acting and wait for all the facts or for this to just blow over."
John"I've always interpreted the idea that we should take 'precautions' as being cautious about doing literally anything to prevent disease until it's already killed tens of thousands of people." - most public health people in 2026
@johnzajac @croissant i also really fear the wrong lessons were taken out of covid, public policy has been seen as a catastrophic failure, both enormously costly on the economy (we still pay the price to this day), ineffective at solving it (i still think lockdowns saved a lot of people, buying precious time and allowing the system to handle the load better, but in the end the resolution was "giving up"), and also it was so costly politically, that they don't want to go through that again.
Lockdowns didn't exist in the United States; most States had 2-4 weeks of precautions, followed by...literally nothing but death and disease. A few States (with big cities and blue govts) kept precautions for ~6 months, but they were never compulsory and people literally stopped caring about them by midsummer.
It's why our death toll and LC burden per capita is literally multiples larger than any other modern nation.
As with all half-measures poorly implemented with one foot out the door, these didn't work, and that lack of efficacy due to half-assery was attributed to *the technique* not the *amount of effort and fidelity put into implementing it*, because we live in a clownshoe full of toe fungus
Add to that the necessity for neofascists to shut down COVID social programs ASAP and we get the Long Con of "vax and relax" coupled with "but the death toll is low!" and "it's just a cold"
@johnzajac @croissant a lot of countries indeed did it more seriously (being in the netherlands, we had months of very strict, and more than a year of very encouraged remote work, australia probably did it the most, but at a very high social price), but ultimately they gave up, and we'll never convince the covid. skeptics that it was worth it (the avoided deaths being invisible). So i'm convinced the next health crisis will be handled with less precautions, not more.
"COVID skeptics" in the initial phases of the pandemic were 1) well funded and 2) tasked with creating the conditions necessary to get people back to work.
The ruling class has known since April/May 2020 that vaccines wouldn't work well bc coronaviruses evolve too quickly, but infra/healthcare was against their ideology so 🤷♂️
It's why govt/rich people have advanced air-cleaning systems and UV222 installed, but schools/public hospitals do not.
If you ever want nightmare fuel, read the op-eds by Great Barrington ghouls and their affiliated centrist boosters about how we should "infect all kids" to "create herd immunity" (we knew wasn't possible, btw) and "sacrifice the weak" to "get the economy back on track".
Truly reads like a manifesto of some psycho killer in a bleak dystopian crime thriller.
(those are not quotes from the pieces; they were far more circumspect and polite than to say that stuff *out loud*)
Gin Kangaroo@johnzajac @tshirtman @croissant Exactly. One only has to look at the infrastructure installed in e.g. WHO headquarters or virus security around meetings like DAVOS to know that the lies are only being fed to those who need to keep the capitalist machinery turning.
Saskboy K.@johnzajac @tshirtman @croissant I call them the #ReOpeners because they said they just wanted to "reopen the economy".