COVID - Where are we now? Where are we going?

[Kim O'Hara]

Demographers and women’s-rights advocates alike say the looming baby bust is a damning indictment of the health care and childcare systems in the U.S. America is the only developed country that does not guarantee paid leave to new parents, and it does not offer universal childcare or universal pre-K. ...

I'm not sure how falling fertility rates are a *bad* thing - aren't they an unequivocally good thing? Of course the mechanism by which that is happening is the failure of public services in the US, but still, it's the direction we need to go globally

Um... I didn't say it was a bad thing - Time did, although I didn't make it obvious that my intro was part of their headline - and in fact I agree with you. It's a step in the right direction although the reasons are (or ought to be) embarrassing to US politicians and public servants.
I posted the news because it's another aspect of the profound impact of the illness on our world.
The pandemic has had other unanticipated benefits. For instance, flu deaths have dropped by about 90% because we have been hand-washing and social-distancing - well, some of us have.
It has also been a wake-up call about the fragility of supply chains in our globalised economy, and a number of countries are moving to be more self-sufficient. In turn, that has been community-building and employment-building, although we shouldn't expect too much from it.


Kim

[steveb1]

I don't want to wander too far from the thread's main concern, but I find myself even more worried about the US's immediate political future than I am about the pandemic. I fear the period between election day and government transition day. If the incumbent refuses to leave the Oval Office in the event of a victory of the other side, civil unrest and governmental reaction, including martial law, could result. That's my primary worry, with COVID-19 a close second.

[Queequeg]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/c ... -rise.html

“We were hoping we had escaped the Covid-19,” Mayor Tim Mahoney of Fargo, a practicing surgeon, said in an interview. “Now we’re just like everybody else in the country. It has hit us with a vengeance.

“We kind of thought we’d outsmart it, and you can’t outsmart this virus.”

[muni]

Sweden always had another approach, and I cannot say all countries had to do like that, I really don't know.

There has been vocal support and much criticism of Sweden's approach both from within Sweden and from outside. Here is a recent article from critics' side:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6513/159

Thank you.

Take care, be safe.

[narhwal90]

It has also been a wake-up call about the fragility of supply chains in our globalised economy, and a number of countries are moving to be more self-sufficient. In turn, that has been community-building and employment-building, although we shouldn't expect too much from it.


Kim

Around here there has a been a substantial if not huge, but so far sustained increase in volunteer effort in relation to food pantries. The catholic pantry where I volunteer along with the others run by other churches in the area have been running for quite a while. However this year there has been a big increase in volunteer headcounts and creation of larger scale food distribution systems. We were at about double the usual demand back in March, but over the spring months and since so many others opened up our demand dropped off a bit. We're back to more normal levels of demand now.. would be great if we got put out of business lol

During early pandemic the local and state gov't did a bit of organizing of pantries; regular telecons, information sharing and so on which has helped a lot. Our last pantry was yesterday, along with a long line of others we picked up a van-load of pre-boxed food being distributed on an industrial scale and gave it out to our folks. Our volunteer headcount is close to doubled, and covid procedures have streamlined and simplified our distribution process. Interestingly, our month-to-month selection has gotten a lot more diverse. We get a lot more donations of food rather than the parish buying everyhing, which frees up budget for things like toiletries, toothpaste/brushes, diapers and so on.

So far none of us has caught covid, but we are rigorous about masks, sanitization sprays, handwashing etc. If a customer doesn't have a mask we give them one.

[Norwegian]

From a CNN interview:

Mark Meadows: “We’re not going to control the pandemic, we are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations.”

Jake Tapper: “Why aren’t we going to get control of the pandemic?”

Meadows: “Because it is a contagious virus”

Tapper: "Why not make efforts to contain it?"

Meadows: "We are making efforts to contain it."

Tapper: "By running all over the country not wearing a mask?"

Meadows: "What we need to do is make sure we have the proper mitigation factors... make sure people don't die from this"

If Mark Meadows represents the current direction of the US government, it seems that they have given up.

[Johnny Dangerous]

They aren’t gonna come out and say it, but they are continuing to campaign because they know that the virus is less of a threat when you are wealthy and have Trump-level access to the best medical treatments.

They don’t care if anyone else gets it of course, and the further you get from power and wealth the more dangerous it is for you.

I mean, these people are simply completely morally bankrupt...but then, anyone paying attention knows that.

[Norwegian]

Some more about the total failures of the US govt.

[Queequeg]

I haven't looked inside the horse's mouth, but this is some pretty damn good news:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/heal ... fizer.html

The company said that the analysis found that the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective in preventing the disease among trial volunteers who had no evidence of prior coronavirus infection. If the results hold up, that level of protection would put it on par with highly effective childhood vaccines for diseases such as measles. No serious safety concerns have been observed, the company said.