Covid: Long Notes

The people who are spreading covid, they want us to get used to the deaths, to treating some people as disposable. That way when they build the death camps and start the summary executions, some of the public will already have accepted mass killings.

Notes

(Largely from a number of tweets directed at anti-maskers.)

• Three dose vaccines are not uncommon – the polio vaccine takes four. The three-dose mRNA covid vaccines are some of the best ever, but no vaccine is enough by itself.
• Covid, it seems, is going to enter the ranks of those diseases that cause long-term post-viral syndromes of obscure origin.
• The rate of full recovery from Covid is probably below 90%, not 99.8%. It could be as low as 50%. One cannot look only at deaths in doing the accounting.
• Covid has a five day pre-symptomatic infectious period when you don’t know if you have the virus or not. When covid is widespread in the community masking is one of the effective steps to control it.
• The anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers seem to think that controlling an infectious disease is like shooting an enemy – one good shot and it's over. It's not. To control an infectious disease takes multiple measures, each of which reduces the odds of transmission. So: vaccines, masks, distancing, quarantine, ventilation and air purification. If enough steps are taken, the infection dies out. This “Oh, this isn't perfect therefore it's useless” is nonsense. WHO has just approved a malaria vaccine that is only 50% effective – this after decades of research. Malaria is tough. But, in conjunction with other measures that vaccine makes a difference, so it's being distributed. The best covid vaccines are much better than 50% effective. If vaccination, masking, distancing, quarantine, ventilation and air purification were seriously undertaken and well carried out, we could kill covid.
• It is striking how the advocates of individual responsibility refuse to take even the most modest steps to control a deadly disease.
• These people who are so gleefully unmasking: they don’t have any idea of what is about to hit them.

Actions

The fight for adequate infection control measures for covid and other new diseases, like the fight to get seat belts and other automobile safety measures accepted, will be won over a generation. Over time building codes will be rewritten to require better ventilation. We could work towards modernization of the legal response to infectious disease. It seems to me that, at least, the laws about spreading an infectious disease could be modernized – currently there is no legal standard and limited legal grounds for action against even egregious abuses. Another thing activism could do is normalize mask-wearing when people have symptomatic respiratory infections. This will at least control flu and colds (not a small thing) and prepare us for future waves of airborne infectious agents.