As the United States enters year three of the Covid-19 pandemic, a large share of Americans are ready to “get on” with their lives.
Seventy percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “It’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives,” when asked in a Monmouth University poll.
The survey shows that 78% of people who reported having had Covid believe it’s time to move on. Not surprisingly, responses indicate a clear partisan divide with 89% of Republicans agreeing with the statement, versus just 47% of Democrats. Among independents, 71% said it’s time to move on.
How do you feel about lockdowns being a thing of the past? The CDC admitted cloth masks are ineffective, how does this influence Americans' thoughts on controlling covid in the past and future?
It's like that Michelle Goldberg column awhile back, wondering what it means to be "done" with covid. We do need to move forward, with lessons learned and safer practices in place. Seems like a lot just want to be done in the manner of the ostrich with his head in the sand, or the monkey who sees no evil. That's a recipe for potential disaster.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I feel like we will never truly be "done" with COVID. I think it is here to stay.. but in the same way that the flu is here to stay. I think that once it is again under control, whatever they may look like or however that may be measured, it will have merely a yearly appearance.. or at least this is what I am hoping for. Sort of like how the flue has a "season."
ReplyDeleteI try to see the positive in everything, even if there seems to be nothing to show. I think there is an act of moving forward that needs to happen. I know COVID is not going anywhere, but I do believe that as a society we can move forward and be future oriented on how we plan to combat things of this nature in the future.
Interesting read, Curtis!
I have a sick gut feeling that Covid is here to stay forever. I have a lot of family members with comorbidities that are still recovering from Covid symptoms after months of being "Covid-free." Long Covid is still a major concern for lots of people and with the Covid death toll on the rise in America, I don't think this fear is unjustified. Covid is scary and lockdowns were damaging to so many aspects of our lives, but I guess that's the key right there - damaging to our lives isn't lethal. We got to keep living, which isn't something you can say for almost 1 million Americans. I think humans are worth suffering for; if it meant someone got to keep their family members around for a few more years, I would go back into full lockdown this minute.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure people thought that the 1918 pandemic would never end. Clearly it did. What feels like forever now will eventually pass, just like every other pandemic in human history. I feel like it's our part to do what we can now, and be optimistic for the future. Eventually, it will be a thing of the past, but as of right now I would definitely not discredit Covid.
ReplyDeleteWhat We Can Learn From How the 1918 Pandemic Ended
ReplyDeleteWednesday, 2 February, 2022
By John M. Barry who is a professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
https://share.smartnews.com/GNNu8
Most histories of the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed at least 50 million people worldwide say it ended in the summer of 1919 when a third wave of the respiratory contagion finally subsided.
Yet the virus continued to kill. A variant that emerged in 1920 was lethal enough that it should have counted as a fourth wave. In some cities, among them Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Kansas City, Mo., deaths exceeded even those in the second wave, responsible for most of the pandemic’s deaths in the United States. This occurred despite the fact that the US population had plenty of natural immunity from the influenza virus after two years of several waves of infection and after viral lethality in the third wave had already decreased.
Nearly all cities in the United States imposed restrictions during the pandemic’s virulent second wave, which peaked in the fall of 1918. That winter, some cities reimposed controls when a third, though less deadly wave struck. But virtually no city responded in 1920. People were weary of influenza, and so were public officials. Newspapers were filled with frightening news about the virus, but no one cared. People at the time ignored this fourth wave; so did historians. The virus mutated into ordinary seasonal influenza in 1921, but the world had moved on well before.
We should not repeat that mistake.
I would be interested in seeing more studies about the effectiveness of cloth masks, why we believed that covid was droplet based to begin with when previous iterations were also aerosol.
ReplyDeleteIt is unfortunate because I feel the only reason why we will never be "done with covid" is because of the actions of humans. I feel like it was only taken seriously at the very beginning. Now there's less and less mask mandates and social distancing reinforcements in the U.S. I really don't understand how people are so comfortable with just "moving on" when there's still thousands of cases happening everyday globally and mainly from the U.S. I think it's a matter of trying to get the virus under control instead of completely obliterating it because that could take forever.
ReplyDeleteI think it may be easy for people to say lets just "move on" with COVID if they haven't been effected or had a mild case. The fact remains that people are still dying and if the world moves on without addressing this, aren't we complicit in letting these deaths continue? The CDC recommends doubling up on cloth/surgical masks or wearing N95 or KN95. However, I think that the consensus is that something is better than nothing.
ReplyDelete