Propaganda vs Real Risk Scenarios: Sickness is health.

Arijit Chakravarty is a biologist who uses biotech and math to understand and write about Covid. He wrote a very long thread that I'll abridge here:  

"Over the last five years, we as a society have developed a set of norms about Covid. As someone who's been actively publishing on the subject, I notice it very strongly. People will ask, 'Why are you still masking?', then wince when they hear my reply. . . . My reply is obviously not what they want to hear, so I often get the 'that was too much' look from my wife and kids. This plays out in the public sphere as well. 'Expert' opinion that's soothing or reassuring is platformed, even if it's repeatedly wrong. This is a form of propaganda (calm-mongering) and distracts us from the reality. 

Calm-mongering serves to form an Overton Window about what futures are - and are not - discussable in polite conversation when it comes to The Virus That Must Not Be Named. 'Experts' have debated seasonality, herd immunity, hybrid immunity, and viral attenuation for years. Much of this is closer to fantasy in the context of Covid. The chance this virus will attenuate (evolve to become milder), to pick one example, is very low. . . . But still, the oft-baffled experts wax (and wane) lyrical about these possibilities.

Here's the thing: endless discussions like these are reckless because they promote a false picture of a disease being tamed. But risk is not being discussed in the public sphere. . . . For any kind of rational risk mitigation, the downside of the situation has to be discussable. . . . 

There are two major risk scenarios worth discussing:

1. Attritional Risk: Repeated Covid infections over a lifetime can only cause cumulative damage. Additional infections can't undo existing Long Covid damage. We can debate whether damage will accumulate faster or slower, but lower per-infection frequency of Long Covid doesn't mean much if the plan is for everyone to get it once or twice yearly. And we don't know how long Long Covid effects last - some last at least three years. . . .  

2. Sudden Catastrophe: Repeated viral evolution leaves the risk of higher infection fatality rates (IFRs*) open. Note that IFR doesn't have to reach SARS levels - a Delta-like IFR (1.5%) could still rival the 1918 flu in death toll. As a thought exercise, let's consider what would happen in such a scenario:

An outcome like this is plausible and within the tail risk of the current pandemic - more likely than the virus suddenly losing its virulence. What will we do if such a situation arises? What's the plan? Is there a plan? When the strategy with every new outbreak is to sweep it under the rug, how will this work out with the downside scenarios for this pandemic? . . . The worst historical pandemics killed 10-40% of people and caused decades of instability. . . . collapse is a distinct risk. . . .  The house always wins if you gamble long enough. To allow repeated waves of SARS-CoV-2 is to place a bet on viral evolution. 

We are engaged in an uncontrolled experiment without historical precedent. We are allowing ourselves to be repeatedly exposed to a substance that we don't fully understand. We don't know what the long-term consequences of that exposure are. Is there any other substance that we do this with??  It's a wildly irresponsible and reckless course of action and - get this - asking 'What's the risk here?' is now the imprudent and dangerous thing to do. 

Orwell's 1984 was not intended as a how-to manual. 

The virus itself is changing; it's evolving. It's doing the thing that 'experts' assured us it wouldn't do. Still we debate whether it will become mild or seasonal or polite. The question we should be asking is, "What are the consequences of another punctuated equilibrium event like Omicron BA.1 [when there's a big burst of evolutionary change]?" Because it's not off the table. Not by a long shot. What's the plan if it comes to pass?

Risk mitigation is best done with worst-case scenarios, not wishful thinking." 

AND if Covid is the test, we are definitely going to fail the H5N1 exam. 

We know the problem, and we know the solutions: Wear an N95 whenever in public as we work on cleaning indoor air (ventilation and filtration) and adding in upper room UV products in all the hospitals, schools, prisons, stores, gyms, churches, restaurants.... If a building does not have a CO2 monitor proudly displayed and a list of mitigation strategies taken, then keep your mask on inside. 

It's doable. A little pricey, but some restaurants (like Apricot Tree Cafe) have gotten on board already, bringing in customers by advertising a zero rate of infection from their establishment. It's very possible!! Imagine if we had started all this back in 2020 and had finished by now, instead of so many scientists ripping their hair out like modern day Cassandras. 

It took ten years after people started dying from AIDS for public health to openly suggest wearing condoms. We don't have that long to wait for governmental agencies to kick into gear. Learn the science, and mitigate your own exposure as best you can. It's all we've got. 

Still nothing has dissuaded me from the idea that elites are okay with it as a handy way to reduce the population load in the face of coming starvation from climate change's effects on agriculture and now H5NI's effects on beef and poultry farming. Why else would so many of them keep spouting out such obvious lies about the safety of catching these diseases?? We can keep consuming safely while wearing N95s!! It the reason they spout the propaganda is the economy, and they need us shopping, then they can teach us how to buy all the things without getting sick. It's only if they want us dead or too disabled to protest that they'll keep lying about how dangerous this virus is to the point that hospitals took off masks in wards that always had them (neo-natal, cancer...). It's also what makes AI so vital despite exacerbating water shortages. They need a way to continue to be entertained once all the writers and artists die off because they don't have a creative bone in their greedy little power-hungry bodies. But that's just crazy talk, right? 

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*It took me ages to figure out what IFR stood for -- went through many links to aviation and random widgets before finding ONE study that used the acronym! It's so obvious once found that I can't imagine how I didn't think of it on my own. Funny how that works.