My better half who happens to be a very successful and intelligent MD says this is gonna be our lives for awhile, far from over.
Bingo! We just went through a year of mixed-messaging with respect to this crisis. A lot of lives could have been saved if everyone had just worn a mask. Remember a mask of less than a properly fitted N95 does not protect you from the virus. Its job is to prevent people who are COVID-positive from spreading the disease (i.e., your wearing a mask protects me from you and my wearing a mask protects you from me). That is what a lot people do not get.
If people doubt that wearing a mask works, colds and the flu are at records lows this year. The flu usually starts in the southern hemisphere each year during their winter, which is our summer. It spreads to the US when the seasons flip-flop. The heavy use of masks in the southern hemisphere stopped the flu from spreading, which, in turn, stopped it from spreading to the northern hemisphere.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flu-season-never-came-to-the-southern-hemisphere1/
In other words, as my governor says, just wear the darn mask. COVID will be over one day, but until then we need to remain vigilent. The Spanish Fly circled the planet three times before it was extinguished.
while the US has certain strongly guaranteed freedoms regarding freedom of movement/travel/religious service attendance(maybe that one) etc. canada doesnt. on one hand it became really apparent to me how easily my freedom to do things i expect "normally" can be taken away on a whim (not minimizing the situation, but it was done very quickly without any public concensus). they just turn on "emergency act" and i am no longer free to travel, even within canada from province to province.
it also means it would have been theoretically possible to do what vietnam/taiwan and other places in asia did.
-from the beginning, take it seriously.
-mandatory 14 day quarantine for anyone entering the country that is actually enforced and monitored. (google korea/vietnam/etc on this)
-simply state the seriousness that it is wished to be dealt with from the beginning, not slowly, slowly gradually while doing half-measures until it becomes a disaster AND people are exhausted from annoying half-measures for 9 months then attempting a co-ordinated serious effort.
-understand the importance of N95 or KN95 type masks for any kind of real human-heavy interactions that people have
if we had just done a 99% full societal shutdown of 2 to 3 weeks at the beginning we could have massively mitigated this entire years worth of crap.
Topic: Devils Back Bone Vienna lager clone. (Read 2786 times)
