As someone who did my part with the social distancing, masks, and shots up to the 2nd booster, I genuinely just do not care any more. Let’s face it the worlds trending downwards now for whatever reason we want to blame it on. If the virus gets me that’s fine. I’ll probably not listen to any regulations if it ever got to it.
Same. I don’t drink milk and don’t eat meat anyway, so to “avoid it” there isn’t much more i can do. If the shit blows up, i don’t really care anymore. Random ass people still tell me how they never get vaccinated ever again because they got "tricked last time. Seriously, what do you even tell these people? The world is doomed and maybe that’s not a bad thing.
They have noses worthy of being our successor species. Something you’d see on the cover of a sci-fi novel called “Children of Earth” or something…1000013525
So, one thing to consider is that “how bad it gets” can be directly related to how well people and governments prepare. For example, if the CDC starts work on having vaccines made and stockpiled now, they may be able to react quickly and decisively to any outbreaks as they happen and prevent them from growing to a pandemic level. If infections are kept to low levels and the CDC ultimately has a lot of left over vaccines, did it “over react”? It’s actually a hard question to answer, because it’s entirely possibly that the end result was a direct result of that stockpiling and rapid reaction, leading to some level of wastage. However, had those precautionary steps not been taken, shit would have hit the fan.
We had something similar back with the Y2K Bug was being talked about. Companies lost their shit over it. But, when the date finally rolled over, it seemed to be a huge nothing-burger. Part of the reason it was such a nothing-burger was the fact that companies actually did a lot of work to validate and fix software before the date roll over. So, in retrospect, lots of people talk about the Y2K bug like it was all hype. But, had action not been taken ahead of time, it really would have caused a lot of problems.
This is the perennial problem with proactive fixes, if they are done right, people won’t be sure you have done anything at all. So, it is often difficult to get people to prioritize future problems. Even when the cost to fix those problems now will be vastly less than waiting until the problem actually arrives.
So no, I don’t think it’s “overblown” per se. It something that governments and health organizations should be tracking and should be working to have plans and resources available for. On a personal level, not much is changing. It’s not currently at a level that I feel I need to make major lifestyle changes to avoid. The CDC puts the risk as currently low, and has seen no cases of human to human transmission. If any of that changes, I’ll re-evaluate.
I think it’s good for early warning to reach the public. Ideally this would allow the public to support handling it post-haste. Realistically it probably will churn in the news, get a little worse, then depending on how/if it mutates, die off or go full blown and people will likely react similar to COVID. Maybe (and hopefully) a little more responsibly if the lethality stays high.
Already got a box of N95s and a stick with nails hammered into it to beat the next motherfucker that tries to accuse China of this one when it’s just plain, raw, yankee greed and shitty living qualities for the livestock they ‘raise’. Plus a healthy smattering of those same yankees being absolutely brickshittingly ignorant.
My Facebook is hammered with articles about how it’s overblown and is being used by governments to silence you and bring on a new pandemic where they force you to wear masks and keep you locked inside your house. Something something 15 minute cities, the WEF, and a guy named Klaus.
Lots of people taking pictures holding chickens and other fowl to spite “the new plandemic” so chances are we’re gonna have another real one. Just based on the fact that people are purposefully trying to expose themselves to “get back at science”.
When I worked in retail I had to ask people to wear a mask. Not a problem at all. But there was this one lady who came behind the counter an coughed on me? Technically it was assault because I even got spit on me.
Like at what point does someone cross into being just plain evil.
I’ve mostly worked retail jobs in my life, but I got lucky and avoided any public-facing work during peak COVID. Customer service is rough at the best of times, but I can’t imagine having to deal with the anti-mask crowd.
I loved it actually. Out of hundreds of people a day only one would require real handling. I don’t think they realized that they were that one special asshole.
I never stopped my COVID routine so I’m not really doing anything different to prepare but I am at least a little prepared. Going to buy one of those emergency 5-gallon buckets of dehydrated food this time around though, like next time I’m at a bulk food not as shit hits the fan.
I haven’t put much thought into if it is overblown because realistically I’d prefer to see a big fuss over nothing than to see people sit back with a beer while their neighbors die. So I’m not going to treat it like we’re overreacting I’m going to be pretty serious about things.
Nothing in particular that we didn't already do for covid. I have various PPE and we already only leave the house once every couple weeks on average. The only two things I think I could prepare better are: more canned/frozen veg in case we need to stay in longer, and more farm supplies for the same reason (this is my first year actually farming in land (not in my parking space/balcony), so there's a bit of a learning curve and I'm not good at it yet). We live in a very small town so health resources are scarce but, on the plus side, we live in a really small town and there aren't many people.