Name me a single country that has successfully used forced extreme measures + restrictions to counter the virus? On the other hand many places that didn't use them fare as well as those who did (death-wise).
You are right that there are things we should be doing. Testing in hospitals makes sense for instance since someone who is taking chemotherapy won't be able to handle it and getting infected while you are in hsopital for other reasons is exaclty the worse timing. Looking after older people makes sense, vaccinating them should be a priorty. Preventing young people from hanging out, going to school and the like? No.
I am from Croatia and here we had the opposite problem with covid deaths at the beginning of pandemic where after people died they would be tested for virus and counted as a death by covid. Just stop and think about that and how stupid that is. You can have the virus in your nose without being sick, die of a heart attack and be counted as death by covid. We were for a long time one of European countries with the least amount of restrictions and for most of pandemic we had less of equal number of deaths by covid as Germany who had more restrictions and whose medical care is better than ours. During the last year that changed a bit since as I said we our health care doesn't have nearly as much resources as other more advanced EU countries and in the mean time those other places started easing their restriction while our 'great leaders' tried to find excuses to keep them since admiting that you kept terrorizing population with it, while you yourself mostly didn't bother with them is… well, not a good look to say the least.
When someone correctly predicts how the number of cases will go; when someone doesn't offer any advice regarding personal measures aside from the obvious ones, refuses to make millions because his lab would have to charge several times more than he wanted per a PCR test, spends his time researching and reading articles after realizing that most people / scientist don't, has published numerous papers on viruses (epidemic) in the past and is a leading expert in world in his field (not viruses) that has founded a successful lab here in Croatia which is the leading lab in the world in said field , gives advices mostly for how to handle pandemic as whole...
You misunderstood what I meant by people die by flu. I wanted to say that flu is still a dangerous virus as well. You shouldn't treat it lightly and this a bit more severe type of flu.
Okayyyyy and how does this mitigate Trump being the loudest anti science “and let’s get everyone sick” voice and Republicans since his exodus continuing to drop the ball on combating the virus?
It doesn't. At all. I'm pointing out something ironic. A broken clock is still right twice a day and so on. That a man that anti-science was so close to doing something right.
Reminder that a good part of how Trump got elected was playing to the insecurity, pettiness, ignorance, and gullibility of a good section of the American Electorate
That is true and won't argue with that. I just wonder how much thing would've been different if news hadn't treated him so well or if it had treated him rather fairly.
All that aside those viruses were never treated as being “lesser threats” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Have you forgotten that in most other places hospitals reduced their operations to the point of almost shut down? People couldn't get appointments they were meant to? They couldn't go to diagnostic search because of pandemic? People wouldn't bother to since it was so annoying to go through administrative hoops just to deal with something that might not be super urgent? How many times have you read in papers that number of people dying of cancer for instance has dramatically increased during first years of pandemic? Have you ever thought how many people in other countries didn't (won't) get the care they need now if you continue to treat covid as something special. So yes, in that sense other viruses were treated as a lesser threat than covid.
Also if the virus should be treated as any other respiratory illness then that means people should get the vaccine if possible and also isolate themselves if they have the virus instead of putting themselves in a position to infect other people and spread it you know which is what people tend to recommend to counter spreading the flu?
Ummm.. yes? They shouldn't be forced to isolate for week though? Nor should they be forced to go in total lockdown either where they are forbidden any interaction with outside world. Also flu shots are recommended primarily for older population (above 50) and that is definitely the population that should have close to 100% vacination rate. Kids though? Absolutely not. If you are between 20-40 you should decide for yourself if you want to get a shot or not. Another thing to keep in mind with flu is that every year it targets a different strand of virus, while covid vaccines are still made for the first strand. That doesn't mean they are useless and again older population should get shots if they haven't already been infected by covid till now. Sadly the efficiency has been somewhat underwhelming. Can you call something a vaccine if you need to take it every 3-4 months as seems to be the case with the most popular covid one (at least here - Pfizer's). Another thing that makes no sense when it comes to vaccinating people is that people who got over it fine are often ignored even though they will have a far better protection vs any strain of covid than those who have only been vacinated.
So asking people who had covid and got through it without any problems to get a shot is downright insulting. I'm saying that because of beurocratic insanity that prevails/ed in many European countries where vaccinated people are treated as more immune (or were) than those who got over covid. Our greatest weapon against viruses is our own immune system and living in fear, constantly being bombarded by news that creates stress and anxiety over is a real problem.
I'm mentoning those other conditions since many of them are related to being overweight. And guess what happened in places where people were forbidden from going out, excercising and so on, population got fatter. Which is another comorbidity that greatly affects the outcome of covid infection. And did we even start on how the whole situation has had a negative effect on people's mental issues? The whole situation is FAAR more intricate then just virus bad and a whole lot of issues that are caused by our response to it have not been really talked about. That is why focusing so much on covid and deaths by covid itself might not be the best thing right now.
Question is cancer & diabetes as contagious as Covid also do they kill as quickly as Covid or take months and even years to kill you?
And on the flip side you will likely get over covid in a week, these issues stay with you forever and many of them need to be diagnosed early to have the most successful treatment and they can affect how you will be able to handle other viruses in future.