I sincerely didn't imagine anyone still thought this was feasible. Is this really still an aspiration that can be offered with a straight face?
I want to point and laugh, but this is NPR so I know that's not allowed...
A good analogy is that of TB in most of Europe. When I moved from South Africa to the Netherlands, I had to have a chest X-ray every 6 months for 2 years to make sure I'm not infectious with TB. The disease has not been eradicated, but there are measures in place to make sure people don't die of consumption like it's the 1800s. We can do the same with covid, there is just a supreme lack of will to do so.
Is that...true? I'm a native English speaker, and "elimination" and "eradication" are completely synonymous to me, at least in terms of denotation. That is to say, both of these mean "absolutely no SARS-CoV-2 remains." The dictionary agrees with this, too: eliminate is defined as "completely remove or get rid of (something)". What you're describing sounds a lot more like "containment"
I'd certainly accept that epidemiologists have their own lingo that differs from natural English, but it also...kinda sounds like you might be mistaken.
Do you have any evidence for this claim? It shouldn't need to be pointed out that COVID is vastly more contagious than TB. What sort of tracing system do you imagine implementing to achieve containment? You'd probably need a video record of every waking moment of every soul, subject to instantaneous remote analysis by authorities. And now the deer as well...
And as in the Ebola case we really didn't have a good picture of what is happening with pets until late. Cats can pick it and ferrets most probably.
Seriously, can't we just accept reality and get back to normal. Those that want the vaccine should get it and those that don't shouldn't. I think the harm being caused by the ridiculous mandates at this point have done equal harm.
No, we can't, because in most places in the world people who have nothing to do with COVID can't get into hospitals or be seen by doctors, when there is an infection wave, which at the moment is fueled by the unvaccinated. Deers won't take up hospital beds, but the unvaccinated will continue to strain health care systems.
Some countries have, some haven't been able to yet. I'm not going to start ideological arguments just want to bring you a new perspective.
The main criteria is your healthcare capacity.
In the Netherlands facemasks are only mandatory in public transit at this point. But you need a vaccine or test certificate to go to a restaurant/bar. The number of infections went up with everybody going back to the offices, but the hospitalizations and deaths are still on the low numbers.
In Germany you have regions like Saxony with extremely low numbers of vaccinated people, infection numbers also went up, but the hospitalizations are equally high, and the healthcare system is now strained with beds being repurposed for covid wards and surgeries cancelled.
My point is that _if_ we have unlimited healthcare resources and capacity then yes, theoretically, everything could go back to normal. But irrespective of where you sit ideologically our resources are finite, so our decisions have consequences.
Then again, the more probable explanation is that what we're seeing is the result of social media changing the dynamics of the society.
> Seriously, can't we just accept reality and get back to normal. Those that want the vaccine should get it and those that don't shouldn't. I think the harm being caused by the ridiculous mandates at this point have done equal harm.
People seem to forget all those folks who can't get their surgeries, early cancer screening, undiagnosed chest pain etc. Those are deaths and suffering that won't ever appear in official covid mortality stats but they are out there, everywhere. During Spring 2021 in India outbreak alone, officially there was 500k deaths, but heightened mortality for that period was more like 5 millions (that covers undetected covid and everything else).
A more general rant - it pains me to no end see how covid crisis brutally highlighted the fact that large part of population is utterly irrational, emotional, believes all kinds of lies very easily and is, is selfish, arrogant, self-centered, and for the lack of better word, plain dumb. You can't win with dumb. We saw it earlier with elections, we saw it on football stadiums etc. but this is worse. And I don't see a way out.
Bodily autonomy is very important to me, but it does not mean that you are allowed to cause real harm to others' bodies.
The antivaxxers have nothing. They're ridiculous morons who try to undermine society. Meet fire with fire, marginalize these idiots if they refuse to get their shit together.
Surely there’s no realistic hope of that anyway. It’s long been assumed than SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic in humans, just like existing human Coronaviruses.
But those are very different viruses to SARS-CoV-2. Even if we could achieve 100% vaccination coverage, it’s likely that the virus would still circulate because our immunity is not 100% effective at preventing infection and shedding.
When Denmark discovered that COVID19 was running wild in their mink farms, they culled millions of minks and banned the entire industry which was the third largest within the agricultural sector in the country.
Or we could vaccinate the deer and let the natural selection act over the Qmamon crew, of course. Even the big birds are vaccinated (and Colbert is a genius).
American dear are wild.
Deer and humans live in very close proximity. I routinely startle deer just getting the mail and stuff.
There are enough antivaxers that I think those hopes have been dashed already.
[1] https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/taeglich-aktualisierte-grafi...
The key thing that gets left off of that statement: are we treating it better based on the science of the last year.
Is that study financed? Close your eyes and think if an agency would even try to apply for that research project.
We all know the answer.
A polio vaccine means that I won't get polio. A rubella vaccine means I won't get rubella. A Covid vaccine means that I'm only 10-40% as likely to get Covid. (Chime in with more accurate numbers if you have them.) And it means that I'm less likely to get a severe case.
That's not nothing. It's significant, both to me as an individual, and for society-wide epidemiological reasons. But it's not the same as the other vaccines. "One of these is not like the others."
And, yeah, I might get a one-in-a-million breakthrough case for polio or rubella. One of these things still isn't like the others.
So: The Covid vaccine works, but it doesn't work - not in the same way that other vaccines do. (In the same way, the flu vaccine works, but doesn't work.)
