COVID-19

[Giantpants]

snowyowl, I would bet that he's going to extend it. I think his hope is that the rest of the states overestimate the virus (which they didn't) or the virus by some miracle left New York.

Governor Cuomo has been doing the extensions in smaller increments, which is interesting. Like, I think the first one was until April 1st (iirc), then April 20th, and now May 15th. It was pretty clear that the first two would get a further extension, but I wonder if he is gonna keep with the 15 days at a time strategy or start doing larger calls like other states have. Maybe it's to keep morale high? To make people feel like the "end is in sight?" I don't really know lol

Maybe he's trying to find a middle ground between the people yelling about too-drastic decisions and the people yelling at no action being taken? I feel like this gives people of both viewpoints less reason to complain.

EDIT: then again, having a range of time to plan for is helpful as well.

Perhaps the middle ground thing, but whatever he's doing it seems to be working at least in terms of backlash and approval. I saw a source say that Andrew Cuomo was towards the top of the list of people who the public generally trusted, right up there with Anthony Fauci and "your state's governor."

[sneepity]

COVID-19 will probably go in a history textbook or two, but I wonder if all the dumb reactions we all had will go in those textbooks as well, or simply be forgotten with time... then again, things on the internet last.

Like with the Black Death we know about bloodletting and plague masks and other things that didn't work, but those didn't seem ridiculous at the time, whereas some of the reactions lately we know are not the most logical.

Or maybe we'll go down in history just as the time period that thought 5G carried diseases.

EDIT: Hi people from the future!

[JoeyC]

I mean I'm technically from the future, as relative to SilverBreeze's post, so hello person of the past!

[OpticsNerd]

COVID-19 will probably go in a history textbook or two, but I wonder if all the dumb reactions we all had will go in those textbooks as well, or simply be forgotten with time... then again, things on the internet last.

Like with the Black Death we know about bloodletting and plague masks and other things that didn't work, but those didn't seem ridiculous at the time, whereas some of the reactions lately we know are not the most logical.

Or maybe we'll go down in history just as the time period that thought 5G carried diseases.

EDIT: Hi people from the future!

Ah yes... dumb reactions. Here's a list of some of them:

-People claiming the virus is "just a flu"
-People saying the virus is fake before getting infected themselves and eventually warning people about the virus
-People protesting against the lockdown because they want to go to the beach and have fun. Very selfish and stupid reason to protest as it puts others at risk.
-People believing the virus was engineered in a lab and was either unintentionally released or released as a bioweapon
-Trump and Disinformation Minister Pompeo claiming there is "enormous evidence" that the virus was created in the Wuhan lab despite all existing scientific evidence suggesting otherwise
-Trump suggesting the injection of bleach/disinfectants into the body, using UV light and heat to treat coronavirus patients
-Pence not wearing a mask when visiting coronavirus patients
-Trump ending funding to WHO because WHO wanted to be neutral rather than be a US imperialist puppet
-Trump sending an ultimatum to WHO threatening to permanently end funding to it if it doesn't improve by his standards within 30 days
-Trump sidelining the CDC likely because he believes he knows more about disease control and prevention than public health experts
-US government and mainstream media making absurd, exaggerated and false claims regarding a country they hardly know anything about(China)
-US government claiming China's numbers are fake and way under-counted while not providing any actual data to prove their claim. They say China's case and death rates are unrealistically low while ignoring the fact that some other East Asian countries have even lower rates. This is just a desperate attempt by the US government to justify their disastrous pandemic response because if they can somehow prove China's numbers are actually higher than the US's they can justify the high US death toll.
-US government claiming China supposedly covered up all important information and that's the reason why they couldn't contain the virus. Well guess what? Countries like Taiwan and South Korea knew the same amount of information as the US yet were actually successful at containing the virus.
-US government claiming China knew about the virus in November but hid it from the world to cover it up. A cluster of pneumonia cases was first reported to Chinese health officials on Dec. 27 by the REAL whistle-blower and China announced it to the world 4 days later. China only traced a case back to November through tests done after the report on Dec. 27.
-US government claiming China silences all whistle-blowers while using Li Wenliang as their "evidence". As mentioned above, the real whistle-blower was the doctor who reported the pneumonia to health officials on Dec. 27. Li Wenliang was not the real whistle-blower and he was not silenced/arrested unlike what US media claims(he got a warning, but US media exaggerated and twisted this into an outrageous story), even though he did contribute a lot to fighting the outbreak in the early stages. He was also honored by the government following his death.
-Contrary to what US media claims, Taiwan's message to WHO on Dec. 31 was not to warn them about human-to-human transmission but rather to ask WHO for additional information. WHO did not know about confirmed human-to-human transmission on Dec. 31 except the US government claims this and is a reason they withdrew funding.
-The US has fired its own whistle-blowers. Most recently a woman managing coronavirus data was given orders to censor the data and was fired because she refused to do so. Many other whistle-blowers have faced a similar fate. Perhaps it's the US that is covering up.
-So much is still unknown about the origin of the virus, yet the US government still acts like it knows without sufficient evidence to back up their claims. The lab origin theory has been debunked and the wet market origin has been mostly debunked as well since even earlier cases had no connection to the market. France recently discovered that they had coronavirus cases back in December 2019 that went undetected. This mostly likely means the virus was already circulating around the world before anyone knew about it. It's not surprising either, since viruses like this one can be easily confused with the flu or other respiratory diseases. Some people in the US who got extremely sick in November-December 2019 with symptoms of COVID-19 who haven't felt sick since then have tested positive for coronavirus antibodies. While this certainly does not guarantee that they were infected back then since some infected people are asymptomatic, it's something that deserves an investigation. Some French athletes returned from the World Military Games in October 2019 in Wuhan with flu-like symptoms. So to summarize, the US government's narrative regarding the origin is likely false and there is still so much we need to know to determine the exact origin of the virus.
-People committing hate crimes against people of Asian descent that are motivated by the existence of the coronavirus
-US heavily politicizing the virus and focusing on shifting blame to China so it can bolster its global image rather than dealing with its own coronavirus problem
-US hijacking shipments of medical supplies meant for other countries
-An overall lack of global cooperation to combat the virus

I do think the COVID-19 pandemic will get a spot in future history textbooks. Some of the dumb reactions will probably be included, but mainly the political and economic ones rather than the ones regarding the conspiracy theories and the origin. We have only just started to see the economic and political effects and I'm personally curious to see how global politics will change as a result of this.

[jimmy-bond]

Woohoo indoors until June 30th. Fun.

[Mayur917]

How is everyone else holding up during this pandemic? Personally, working at the hospital in these trying times has been quite scary. I'd love to talk more about COVID-19, its Pfizer vaccine, and how The Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices will be making recommendations on each authorized vaccine based on dosage, schedule, and priority groups.

[MorningCoffee]

How is everyone else holding up during this pandemic? Personally, working at the hospital in these trying times has been quite scary. I'd love to talk more about COVID-19, its Pfizer vaccine, and how The Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices will be making recommendations on each authorized vaccine based on dosage, schedule, and priority groups.

I'm... okay i think? It's been crazy, and now with the new PA restrictions (our orchestra concert was cancelled ), I think we're gonna have another lockdown. The vaccine is really a new hope, but in an article my friend read about the vaccine, it specifically stated that "The vaccine does NOT contain human flesh, microchips, etc". It really disappoints me that there are so many people out there who really think the vaccine has microchips in it. And the fact that we need about 200 million out of the 300 million people in the US to be vaccinated for herd immunity (that's what i heard anyway from my family), it kind of makes me lose hope. But when that happens, I drink hot chocolate because that makes everything seem better .

[Mayur917]

How is everyone else holding up during this pandemic? Personally, working at the hospital in these trying times has been quite scary. I'd love to talk more about COVID-19, its Pfizer vaccine, and how The Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices will be making recommendations on each authorized vaccine based on dosage, schedule, and priority groups.

I'm... okay i think? It's been crazy, and now with the new PA restrictions (our orchestra concert was cancelled ), I think we're gonna have another lockdown. The vaccine is really a new hope, but in an article my friend read about the vaccine, it specifically stated that "The vaccine does NOT contain human flesh, microchips, etc". It really disappoints me that there are so many people out there who really think the vaccine has microchips in it. And the fact that we need about 200 million out of the 300 million people in the US to be vaccinated for herd immunity (that's what i heard anyway from my family), it kind of makes me lose hope. But when that happens, I drink hot chocolate because that makes everything seem better .

Escaping reality by drinking hot chocolate I see. In all seriousness, meeting supply-and-demand requirements will definitely be a struggling in this upcoming year. That's why it's still important to mask up, keep washing your hands frequently, and maintaining social distancing. I never heard about the microchip thing? Could you link me the article if you find it? Also, thanks for replying back. Take care and stay safe.

[pepperonipi]

How is everyone else holding up during this pandemic? Personally, working at the hospital in these trying times has been quite scary. I'd love to talk more about COVID-19, its Pfizer vaccine, and how The Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices will be making recommendations on each authorized vaccine based on dosage, schedule, and priority groups.

I'm... okay i think? It's been crazy, and now with the new PA restrictions (our orchestra concert was cancelled ), I think we're gonna have another lockdown. The vaccine is really a new hope, but in an article my friend read about the vaccine, it specifically stated that "The vaccine does NOT contain human flesh, microchips, etc". It really disappoints me that there are so many people out there who really think the vaccine has microchips in it. And the fact that we need about 200 million out of the 300 million people in the US to be vaccinated for herd immunity (that's what i heard anyway from my family), it kind of makes me lose hope. But when that happens, I drink hot chocolate because that makes everything seem better .

Escaping reality by drinking hot chocolate I see. In all seriousness, meeting supply-and-demand requirements will definitely be a struggling in this upcoming year. That's why it's still important to mask up, keep washing your hands frequently, and maintaining social distancing. I never heard about the microchip thing? Could you link me the article if you find it? Also, thanks for replying back. Take care and stay safe.

Honestly, I think I'm more excited. I believe that creating and approving a vaccine for COVID-19 is a great step in solving the struggles created by this pandemic. Obviously, as you guys have said, getting the vaccine around to people will be a challenge, both logistically and socially. But, people are becoming protected from the virus and I see that as a great start. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

Hopefully you all are staying safe.

[MorningCoffee]

COVID has been hard on everyone mentally, and we shouldn't judge people for needing a break from current world events. With not much to do besides stay home as much as possible, it's perfectly understandable to need a little pick-me-up like a comfort food or a good book/movie. Remember to engage in self care, even if it feels unnecessary!