Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The article from The Wall Street Journal suggests that nations like Australia, China, and New Zealand-countries that have embraced a policy of eliminating COVID-19 completely-are being 'unrealistic.' The right answer, according to The WSJ, is to hustle COVID-19 into the endemic phase, and learn to live with it.

"This, and this is a carefully considered response, is not just a formula for millions of deaths, but an absolute ticket to the end of the line for America, and likely for what we currently think of as modern society. We simply cannot live with endemic COVID-19.

[...]

"It would look like a world where businesses and schools frequently have to close for days or weeks because too many people were simply too ill to carry on. On a purely economic basis, the CDC estimates that outages due to the flu cost American business over $10 billion a year; COVID-19's impact would be many times that amount, and far more disruptive.

[...]

"Endemic COVID-19 doesn't mean it boils at a low level everywhere, filling a predictable 10% of hospital beds and generating lots of opportunities to send bedside balloons that could be appreciated by patients in between visits from comfort dogs. Endemic COVID-19 would behave exactly the same as epidemic COVID-19: in surges, waves, or spikes-pick your descriptor. Every single locality in the nation would be subject to a possible overrun of the local healthcare system at any time.

"The scenes that have appeared so many times over the last year-tents being erected in parking lots, exhausted nurses wandering hallways choked with patients-would recur again and again, unless the healthcare system is expanded to deal with a world where not only is median hospital bed and ICU occupancy considerably higher, but both are subject to a maximum rate that far exceeds capacity.

[...]

"Those opening their arms to endemic COVID-19 are forgetting what might be the most important factors of this whole discussion: Social distancing measures have been wildly effective. Masks work. Limitations on social gatherings work. Required testing and checks for vaccination work.

"Drop all that for 'normal,' and what will come won't be 'like the pandemic, but manageable.' It will be 'like the pandemic, and quite a bit worse.'

[...]

"Going back to our watercooler, when Cecelia comes back to the office after two weeks of flu, she may be wiped out from body aches and dehydration. But she doesn't come back with hearing loss, brain fog, and a fresh case of diabetes. Thus the cost of COVID-19 can't be compared to that of the flu, because in addition to the greater number of deaths, COVID-19 causes enormously more long-term illness than any current endemic disease."

-- Mark Sumner (Devilstower), "COVID-19 must be eliminated, not become endemic, if America is to survive", 2021-10-02 [go read the whole thing, for numbers and reasoning and just how horrible it'd be]