COVID - When will it all end?

[northofnorth]

Not anytime soon, if the past is a guide to the future.

You'd only have to recall the response to the AIDS epidemic to realise that the irrational, visceral response to this disease will likely persist for years; maybe a decade.

It took years for the fear of AIDS to abate among the general population, but not before Australia collectively time-travelled to the 14th century and went on a witch-hunt that saw a 3-year-old girl hounded out of the country for the crime of having caught the disease via a blood transfusion.

The neurological process that triggers an instinctive recoil from pathogens is also the same mechanism that triggers moral disgust; and, once triggered, runs its course, presenting as group hysteria among the so triggered, like a pathogen itself.

'The three-year-old and her family were shunned, and even forced into hiding, before eventually being hounded from the country'.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-18/ ... s/10491934

[Valkie]

I dunno, I still worry about aids.

In my rescue job, I would have to think real hard before I gave resuscitation to anyone.
We have tools now that exclude the need for mouth to mouth, but there is blood and even other biological matter present when someone is injured.
One small scratch and you could end up with anything.

Some of the injured we see have a lot of blood (propeller injury, cuts, amputations etc)

We are inoculated with all the common and possible ones, but aids is still out there.

[Prime Minister for Canyons]

Not sure you should worry Valkie, I'm like you in a rescue position. The transmission due to HIV is significantly reduced by aggressive early treatment and the drug regimens are a lot more effective these days

[northofnorth]

And then there's the Dunning-Kruger effect which, during the America's Cup hysteria, turned everyone overnight into a yachting expert; so the pandemic has turned so many of us into overnight expert virologists and epidemiologists.

There will be homebake panaceas, spruiked by self-styled experts in warding off covid, hustled for years.

[Nom De Plume]

The whole thing is just absurd. Apparently, even though I am vaccinated, society will accuse me of being an anti-vaxer because I am pro-choice and find this whole medical apartheid govt has entailed us to as profoundly ignorant, offensive and totalitarian.

[northofnorth]

The whole thing is just absurd. Apparently, even though I am vaccinated, society will accuse me of being an anti-vaxer because I am pro-choice and find this whole medical apartheid govt has entailed us to as profoundly ignorant, offensive and totalitarian.

Human nature.

There are some causes not worth fighting for and I think pro-choice on vaccinations is one of those causes.

To be quasi-religious about it...

The fully vaccinated have become 'The righteous Ones'. First dosers, the 'redemption seekers'. The ineligible and sick, the 'Innocent Victims'. The wilfully unvaccinated, 'the sinners'. The wilfully unvaccinated and sick, 'the divinely chastised'. The fully-vaccinated and sick, the 'tough tittyers'!

We 'righteous ones' are in the vast majority and soon the 'sinners' will only make up the proverbial 5%.

As of today: 87.4% of us are fully vaccinated. 92.1% have had their first dose, leaving only 7.9% of us still in the state of 'sin'.