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Thursday, February 10, 2022
The right to be only human
On a personal level, I am not 100% in how far I should today limit my social interactions in view of the current COVID situation. On the one hand the number of cases is very high, due to the omicron variant.
My guess would be, that most people feel like this. Even with perfect information, you can't really know how much danger COVID poses to you today. We don't have perfect information, and some people are downright misinformed. The less information you have, the more you are "sure" of your point of view. Opinions on what the best course of action is vary widely. And a lot of factors can influence those opinions. You can imagine that somebody who makes his living in the hospitality or event industry has a very different opinion on this than somebody caring for an elderly relative in bad health.
What we forget sometimes, is that politicians are only human too. I do not think that any politician of any party in any country really knows the exact effect that COVID rules will have. Even scientists can't exactly calculate how much economic damage some restriction does, compared to how many lives it would save. Even if you could calculate it, it would be an impossible decision to make: How many lives is 1% GDP worth?
So to me it isn't surprising that governments everywhere differ widely in their response. The UK government plans on lifting all restrictions and wants to present a plan of "living with COVID". Meanwhile the Austrian government is the first to have implemented a vaccine mandate, where you can be fined if you aren't vaccinated. People have strong opinions about both of these extremes, but I really can't tell which one of them is more right or wrong than the other. There is presumably some end point in which nearly everybody is somewhat protected against the harsher outcomes of COVID, either by vaccination or by having had the disease, and all restrictions on social contacts are being dropped. But if we can be sure of one thing it is that nobody really knows when we will reach that point, neither scientists nor politicians.
- posted by Tobold @ 11:27 AM Permanent Link
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If governments have the data and are willing to provide access to it I think we'll learn a fascinating amount from the different approaches to COVID that we saw. We'll need that knowledge because this won't be the last pandemic. It seems like we lost a lot of applicable knowledge from previous pandemics just due to the elapsed time. I'm also curious to see what changes are immediately implemented to reduce the human and capital cost of pandemics.
The situation in Ireland is similar to the UK. Omicron ran through the population around Christmas (peaking around 8 January) but while the case rate was huge - and probably really much higher than recorded - the number of people in intensive care stayed constant, and the death rate even kept dropping from the tail of the previous Delta wave. Almost all restrictions have been dropped now.
I am living my life as normal at this point - I am vaccinated and for all I know I already got it without knowing. If I do come down with it the risk is slight.
I am living my life as normal at this point - I am vaccinated and for all I know I already got it without knowing. If I do come down with it the risk is slight.
That all sounds right as far as it goes, Tobold. Certainly there are no magic thresholds where Covid suddenly goes from being threatening to not threatening.
Personally I'm not remotely worried about Covid, but then I never was, not even back in Spring 2020. Overall Covid mortality risk is now down to about 2x flu, and I certainly never worried about flu.
Unless you had quite an unusual set of risk factors, or remained unvaccinated when Delta hit, there was never a point where Covid more than doubled your risk of death in the following year (i.e. you were always more likely to die of something else than Covid, even conditional on getting Covid). That's not *irrelevant*, but it's definitely not "panic" either.
Personally I'm not remotely worried about Covid, but then I never was, not even back in Spring 2020. Overall Covid mortality risk is now down to about 2x flu, and I certainly never worried about flu.
Unless you had quite an unusual set of risk factors, or remained unvaccinated when Delta hit, there was never a point where Covid more than doubled your risk of death in the following year (i.e. you were always more likely to die of something else than Covid, even conditional on getting Covid). That's not *irrelevant*, but it's definitely not "panic" either.
The fastest way to relative protection is for everyone to get vaccinated. We aren't there yet because of the number of holdouts and young children not being eligible.
Some countries see the current situation and decide that, because the risk to young children is extremely low and the unvaccinated have, by now, made the conscious decision to play with death, we may as well go back to normal. Others don't want to risk crippling their health systems with many preventable cases, hence vaccine mandates.
Some countries see the current situation and decide that, because the risk to young children is extremely low and the unvaccinated have, by now, made the conscious decision to play with death, we may as well go back to normal. Others don't want to risk crippling their health systems with many preventable cases, hence vaccine mandates.
I share the same approach: actually, I've been more or less ignoring COVID in my choices since the 2nd vaccine dose, with some exceptions. The first is that what I look at is the situation at the hospital: if it's full, I'm careful, and not just about COVID, being run over by a car while biking is not a good idea if there are not available hospital beds. The second is being careful if I have to interact with the elderly in the family. Vaccine or no, just by their age their risk is way higher. so I test before I go and if I'm ill I don't go (the same as I would do with flu, honestly). Meeting with friends has been back to normal since last summer, and my professional and associative activity just the same.
Same in Denmark. It seems Omicron -fornmost ppl- is a bad cold.
I work as a teacher and i think 70% has had a week at home,coughing. But has peaked now,and it seems fine.
If course there is always the risk of reinfection..
I work as a teacher and i think 70% has had a week at home,coughing. But has peaked now,and it seems fine.
If course there is always the risk of reinfection..
THanks Tobold !
Agree that not being able to properly estimate impact of COVID strategy is a big issue : you have to make guess with limited information, at a scale of a country. As an engineer, it is maddening, I hate when I cannot estimate scientifically the benefit/drawback balance before proposing solution, and in my job, it is impacting far less people.
One thing I disagree is the PIB/ Death rate decision : this type of decision is taken daily ( e.g. : balancing the public health system budget), and economic studies have shown that the value of a life can be estimated : around 5 - 10 million in western countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life )
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Agree that not being able to properly estimate impact of COVID strategy is a big issue : you have to make guess with limited information, at a scale of a country. As an engineer, it is maddening, I hate when I cannot estimate scientifically the benefit/drawback balance before proposing solution, and in my job, it is impacting far less people.
One thing I disagree is the PIB/ Death rate decision : this type of decision is taken daily ( e.g. : balancing the public health system budget), and economic studies have shown that the value of a life can be estimated : around 5 - 10 million in western countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life )
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