I think it's interdependent. I'm thinking there is a regional societal behavioral baseline if you will. Government policies and messaging have an impact on behavior above that baseline. Government actions impact future behaviors altering future behavioral baselines. The feedback loop drives future behaviors and what government can or should do. Here in the US and some western countries, that feedback loop is trending negatively overall with less trust in gov and experts. In Asia countries and some other countries (except for extreme cases like China), it's positive. SARS1 was a positive feedback loop that help many of these Asian countries to deal with SARS2 much better than the West in general. I'm sure sociologists will study this for years.
I think Japan comparisons are interesting as it had the luxury of having a top tier pharma industry that allowed the government to throw the kitchen sink at victims in their late stages. I think it helped them establish experiential treatments China is lacking. They managed to avoid "disaster" at the Olympics in the sense of being ground zero for the world, but an athlete was not a prime target for infection. That experience for a foreigner seems book worthy if only for posterity. What's also missing is how youths were able to skirt and defy lockdowns in the US, though I suppose a great many were Essential Workers. A lot of stress was generated around asymptomatic covid, but the transmission rates were not as crazy. The public was introduced to viral load at that time and it still sounds like a Boogeyman or what parents scare their children with to stay inside. I think China's failures are more interesting as it had the capacity and daring to do contact tracing with people's cell phones. Everyone there has a digital wallet so it seemed pretty simple to lock folks down or round the few thousand to a concentration camp. Did they fear urban density and an infection rate worse than measels? I also hear the tech is buggy and not ready for prime time. Tens of millions is okay... Hundreds of millions while integrated into local and regional command infra a different story. Overall I think it's good to discuss wins and losses. On one hand, the skeptical side has an uphill battle as they're using the same data against the orthodoxy while their on the ground followers don't have the patience to care and can cherry pick failures in hindsight. As for the orthodoxy, covid research seemed all over the place with unforseen results (which btw, makes the lab theory a lot more viable) . I get they were in a pressure cooker to do something, but it didn't put technocrats and public officials in a good position who were relying on that data to make life altering decisions. I don't think your local county public health official expected to be a war time tactician and at best had a hand in crafting these regulations every 10-20 years. In that sprit, it's a delicate balance of giving them the benefit of the doubt for doing their best while also allowing a rigorous and credible post mortem to do better with the best we know and have. Just a dump of my thoughts. Carry on...
Not in all instances…. Americans are independent minded… which made too many folks not take Covid seriously. We know conservatives had worse outcomes than democrats. It’s definitely attitudes and waistlines.
https://nypost.com/2022/12/03/scientist-who-worked-at-wuhan-lab-says-covid-man-made-virus/ Scientist who worked at Wuhan lab says COVID was man-made virus
That certainly appears to be a correlation but not a clear causality. Even accepting there is a connection between the vaccines and myocarditis 5 deaths out of millions who have taken the vaccines in just Germany alone would show that the vaccines are safe for the vast vast majority of people.
Me too. But never mind all the scores of peer-reviewed research articles on long COVID, as long as we can find just one paper somewhere that supports our beliefs, that'll do 'er!
I'm not denying that lingering symptoms after a viral infection exist, but a lot more of it seems to be psychosomatic than some of the more alarmist voices told us.
Right, there is long flu. Long covid is much more prevalent than long flu even though flu viruses have been around throughout our lifetimes. It's exactly that we knew viruses can cause long-lasting symptoms that we shouldn't be surprised that Sars2 viruses can also cause long-lasting symptoms. Long covid is real. It's not in the head (but can be literally). Researchers have identified one potential cause of it. https://time.com/6238147/microclots-long-covid/
As I said, we are not in disagreement that it exists. There can be various vested interests in making it appear more or less alarming than it is, though.
But are you a good judge of influence and power that can wield interests? You think leftist academic mathematicians and scientific researchers have more pull because "they want more grant money" than a trillion dollar industry that wants to maintain the status quo that made them a trillion dollar industry.
None of what you just wrote makes any sense, but that's ok. As I said, I don't hold anything against you, because you are not that smart, but you keep trying. Props for that.
