WHO warned that the reported number of cases and deaths do not reflect the true numbers. Read more at straitstimes.com.

    • morry040
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      71 year ago

      The ongoing problem with new variants is that vaccine research has to forecast which mutations are going to be dominant by the time that the research has been undertaken. The boosters from a year ago were focused on BA5, but the latest EG5 variant quickly becoming dominant is from the XBB path.
      https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-summary

    • parrot-party
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      61 year ago

      In a way, people are right. It’s just the flu now. Not in symptoms or severity, but in the way that we’ll just have to keep doing regular vaccinations.

      • FfaerieOxide
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        61 year ago

        Just think, if we had shut down for 2~weeks at the beginning and enforced vaccination at gunpoint, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

        • pgm_01
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          81 year ago

          This is why we are completely screwed if a bird flu or other highly transmissible but more deadly than Covid virus starts spreading. There are people who not only will not follow basic health and safety guidelines, they will actively fight, and sabotage other’s attempts at following the guidelines.

          The other part of the equation is that if the wealthier countries had not only shut down but quickly provided vaccines for poorer more densely populated countries, the spread would also have been lessened.

          • @deo@beehaw.org
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            21 year ago

            Oh, you mean working together for the betterment of humanity as a whole? Fat chance.

        • @Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Nope, there was never a chance for us to eliminate it. By the time we even knew it existed Covid had been spreading worldwide for over 2 months (initial spread Oct-Nov 2019, discovered late Dec 2019), so there were a lot of unreported cases everywhere.

          And once it’s in a household it takes way longer than 2 weeks to eliminate due to delayed spread between household members. Also some people stay contagious for months.

          And I’m all for the vaccines, but they also don’t stop covid, they make it harder to get and reduce symptoms, but you can still get it and spread it even with the vaccine.

          The two weeks and it’s gone was a fantasy to sell people on lockdowns to slow down covid, it was never going to eliminate it.

          • FfaerieOxide
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            31 year ago

            They would have worked if we took them seriously.

            “They never would have worked” is a lie told by people unwilling to shoot violators.

            We could have ended it through a (relative to the length of the still ongoing pandemic) short period of massive testing and quarantine, like what Vietnam did.

            Instead white people had to be waited on by wage employees so their could feel important and now millions of people are permanently disabled.

            Also all the deaths.

            • @Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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              31 year ago

              Nope, covid was way too widespread, and exists in multiple animal species, meaning it can easily jump back to humans even if we got rid of it in our populations (which would never have happened).

              In all of human history we’ve eliminated a single disease, Smallpox, and it doesn’t spread through the air. Yet you think a few weeks lockdown would have actually gotten rid of a far more transmissible airborne illness? Get real.

                  • FfaerieOxide
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                    11 year ago

                    Wouldn’t have taken that many.

                    Especially if vaccine patents were not only shared, the vaccines were administered at the barrel of a gun.

                    We could have certainly fared better than the real world plan of “let’s infect everyone on purpose as quickly as possible”.

        • OpenStars
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          1 year ago

          I find it hilarious (at least you’ll laugh until you cry, and/or die) how for some, consent simply does not matter whatsoever.

          Have many of the symptoms? Wonder if it’s COVID? Enough to go get tested for it at least? And THEN go to visit your 90-year-old granny’s house, not bothering to tell her that? Knowing full well that she was just recovering from various sicknesses herself and so has a weak immune system? Edit: oh, and let’s say just after the vaccine was invented but before many people were able to get it yet.

          In that case, then you MIGHT be ARE a Republican. It is shocking to me how the death tolls were not much larger than they were… except they WERE, and we will never know by how much be of all the misrepresention of the deaths as “old age” or “diabetes”, bc obviously it simply could NOT have been COVID (except… remind me again why not?).

          Whether you choose to think it’s “merely the flu” or not, why doesn’t the recipient’s concerns matter AT ALL!?

          See, I told you it was “funny” - don’t you see how “hilarious” it all is? not at all akin to murder in any way, nope, not at all

          • FfaerieOxide
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            31 year ago

            Yes, jackass. That is what I am advocating. A world without the ravages and suffering of death and long covid.

            People who don’t want to be vaccinated (as is their right) should be given food deliveries so they can shelter at home.
            I obviously support bodily autonomy, but not the right to fill communal air with death.

            Some people might call “stay at home or get vaccinated” house arrest. They could go right on calling it that.
            So long as they’re vaccinated, they can even call it that in public.

            I prefer to think of it as a bank holiday with bullets.
            A fun little stay-cation enforced through violence.

              • FfaerieOxide
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                21 year ago

                The ones no one took and western nations refused to share the patent to?

                The ones I wanted (and still want) to force people to take at gunpoint?
                Those ones?

                The thing people didn’t use (while intentionally spreading plague “the own the libs”) didn’t work?
                Big wow.

              • FfaerieOxide
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                21 year ago

                You want a less glib answer?

                I prefer a world where people are forced with guns to care for their fellow humans and deal with communal problems than one where people are forced with gun to continually get infected with a disease that destroys the mind, heart, and blood vessels.

                …you know, like the threat of eviction and prison if you don’t let your employer infect you.

                I think a world where these people are stopped from spreading plague is preferable to one where these guys are stopped from “jay walking”.

                You call me a psychopath all you want.
                You are the one arguing for massive death and physical/mental debilitation.

                You’re arguing for a world where the poor are made to die for the rich while smiling, which I think is way more horrific than a little temporary social cooperation gently enforced by copper-jacketed steel.

                I consider forced quarantine and vaccination society-wide self-defense.
                I also find it far more justifiable than “lets ban masks at schools and work and infect every single person as quickly and as often as possible”.

                Your position is far more violent and to a much more horrific end than mine.

                • @KickMe@programming.dev
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                  01 year ago

                  I didn’t argue for anything, I’m just calling them like I see them, absurdly over the top authoritarian psychopath with reading comprehension issues.

                  • FfaerieOxide
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                    11 year ago

                    You argued against mandatory vaccination.

                    Mandatory vaccination would have prevented suffering and deaths.
                    Way I see it (if we’re calling things now) is you want people to die.

                    That sound’s worse than my position that preventable communicable disease should be prevented, but what do I know?
                    …apparently I’m the psychopath.

      • starlinguk
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        1 year ago

        The UK doesn’t even do that anymore, unless you’re over 65. Otherwise you can’t get vaccinated.