“ As I wrote last year, America decided it went overboard on Covid, even though a major report in JAMA Health Forum last month suggested that nearly 250,000 lives might’ve been saved if the least restrictive states had followed the policy path of the most restrictive ones — and that up to 200,000 additional lives might’ve been lost if the most restrictive states had instead followed the policy paths of the least restrictive. (And remember: These two poles are not “do nothing” and “lock down like China in 2020 forever”; they represent merely the gap between American states that intervened more and those that intervened less.)
This growing indifference has affected those still worrying about Covid — last year the C.D.C. stopped a lot of its pandemic data collection, making some basic facts like total deaths from Covid-19 much harder to track down than they once were, and over time, campaigns for paid sick leave and OSHA reforms to workplace safety standards have somewhat floundered, as well.
It has also helped bring about a more retributive phase of Covid retrospectives, in which mayors and governors, columnists and television commentators routinely and casually describe efforts at mitigation as excessive. More than half of states have passed laws tying the hands of public health officials in the case of a future pandemic. A much celebrated project testing wastewater for circulating pathogens in 41 states was abruptly shut down last month. And there is increasing enthusiasm among elected officials from New York to North Carolina for outright bans on mask wearing. Not mask mandates, which might require masking under certain worrying circumstances, but mask wearing at all. Some proposals have included vague mentions of medical and religious exemptions, but if they proceed it’s not hard to imagine that an immunocompromised octogenarian boarding a city bus during the height of flu season would feel discouraged from wearing a mask for protection, then forced to justify it by disclosing his health condition. One such bill passed this week in Nassau County, New York.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/opinion/bird-flu-covid.html
Wear a fking mask in indoor public places with lots of people especially .. It’s not that much to do.
As for the CDC, if this flu starts jumping between humans and kills many, it will be Covid deja vu again. Nassau county a bitch of a MAGA shithole.
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