How and if we can learn to live with COVID

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Now it is definite, we need to learn how to live with COVID waxing and waning if not forever, for an indefinite amount of time. We are going to have to learn to live with refusnicks living life like “normal” and others shutting down at every outbreak including the flu, and yes some people are going to quarantine themselves for the remainder of their lives because they know those living normally increased their risk.

For those who have gotten vaxxed, boosted and sacrificed crucial social needs fury at the refusenicks is understandable. This was all avoidable if only the refusnicks listened to science we all be back to almost normal by now. That is a maybe at best. That belief was a combination of hubris and wishful thinking. We were promised a repeat of the polio vaccine where herd immunity was achieved but as the flu vaccines showed that never was a given.

I have no doubt that if people followed social distancing, masked up and got vaccinated as soon as possible the outcome would have been better. But that ship has sailed. At this stage trying to get people to “listen to the science” is a lost cause. All the breakthrough cases sealed the fate of that campaign, the refusnicks have won it. Not fair, not correct does not matter.

Can we learn to live with it? Early indications are not good the economy and mental health is still being messed with. Absences from sickness is doing the job without government help.

Why can’t we handle it? Past generations were able to handle greater challenges and uncertainty. Past generations did not have the expectations of just google it and problem solved. Google or a version of it is not going away either.

Sure the increase in knowledge will ease uncertainty. It will not solve the basic socio/political problems. How to get out of this version of a destructive thought loop both on a societal and personal level is not something I have the answer for.

I more or less got used to it.To me putting on a mask feels the same as putting on clothes. Kind of like something I have to do. In fact there was that occasion when I forgot to put a mask while walking down the hallway and it felt almost exactly like a dream I have when I forget to put on clothes.

On a flip site, in certain cafes/restaurants I "can" be without a mask provided that I am sitting. And that kind of gives me a sense of freedom.

One thing I am wondering about is: if covid WOULD come to an end, how would it feel like to walk into a building without a mask? Would I still feel as if I have no clothes? Thats a good question.

By the way I am one of those people who refused to get vaccinated. But I don't see a point of rebelling against masks. After all putting on a mask is reversible while getting vaccinated isn't. Thats the difference.

Back to the topic of getting used to it, here is a good contrast. So, back when it started, I was all up in arms about it, disinfecting everythign I could disinfect, changing clothes when I were to walk into the house, etc. Yet I haven't heard of a mask yet. Right now I am not scared at all and live my usual life, don't ever put 6 feet distance, etc. Yet I put on a mask as a routine. So thats a weird thought: if I think of being without a mask as being "totally free, liberated", then back in March 2020 I was all "free and liberated" despite being scared as hell. Funny if I look at it that way.

Last edited by QFT on 26 Dec 2021, 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

When you say "we" you are really only talking about us culturally superior Westerners. The experience in China, for example, is completely different but then we all hate China so what happens there or why is irrelevant.

As I see it, this is like many things in history. What seems shocking when it first happens, sooner or later becomes routine. Probably the best example is how civilian airports became high-security facilities when, within my memory, they had no more security than do rail stations.

There is a lot we don't know about pandemics but we are also learning more every day. At some point, life will "normalize" but it won't be exactly the same as before. Will it be subjectively worse? I think it all depends on your attitude.

What I find unique about COVID-19 as compared to earlier epidemics is that it is a deadly disease however it seems most people who contract it don't suffer life-changing consequences. Compare this to polio or Spanish Flu. Most people were seriously frightened by those two. It has already outright killed 800,000 Americans and will most likely kill at least a million, yet the average person doesn't see it as a serious threat to well-being on a level with Islamist Terrorism (US death toll to date 3503). Therefore if you fearful enough to actually wish for mask mandates (probably the best example) you expose yourself to a certain degree of ridicule, in fact you will start asking yourself whether the time has come to stop worrying and love the bug.

Actually the best analogy might be the HIV epidemic. Although for most of us, exposure to HIV is laughably easy to avoid, at first people were seriously alarmed and frightened and then you had public displays of mourning for those who had died, and eventually when treatments became available people basically stopped caring. Like 100s of thousands were still getting sick and many still dying but it was no longer newsworthy.

I expect vaccines will continue to be developed and many will continue to take those vaccines, and more treatments will become available, and at some point people will get used to the idea of seeing people wearing masks in public.

I expect (with no guarantees!) that the short-term crisis will end in a couple months and life next Summer will seem pretty close to "normal" (as it was this past Summer) and by next Winter we will have better plans to deal with whatever happens. By then, the aftermath of the mid-term elections will be a far bigger news item than the coronavirus.

Last edited by MaxE on 26 Dec 2021, 1:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually there are two opposite analogies. One is HIV epidemics, that stayed with us. The other is spanish flu, that came and gone. Its actually a good question where COVID would fall on this spectrum.

There is an interesting connection between HIV and Covid, both are negative wrt to Fauci's actions.

In the 2020 summer, I had an interesting convo with the college student / groc cashier, he was committed to catching it. It meant two weeks paid vacation in Montana at the height of summer for him, that and natural immunity is usually the best. I agreed even tho I was aged and borderline obese. Middle August, I was seeing ~300 people per day, these people were from all over the US, but mostly Utah, Idaho, and Washington. I had a bad summer cold, dry cough, and loss of taste continued for a long time period. Recently, I had a sneezing attack for no reason and then spent a week with loss of appetite. Coincidence or not, as this is the symptom assoc with Omnicron?

Why is there no talk of natural immunity? Is it not required for herd immunity?

But what about the long term damage? I read that post-covid people's brains age by 10 years and they are more likely to get Alzcheimers later in life. That plus also their lungs will be permanently worse too.

I had covid three weeks ago. As far as my lungs they tested oxygen and said it was 97. So they refused to do lung exray no matter how much I insisted because oxygen was normal. As far as brain they refused to do brain scan either. I did notice that right after covid I felt like I was sort of in a dream. But right now I don't notice any difference from the way my brain usually was prior to that. But just the fact that I don't notice a difference doesn't prove that there isn't.

In any case I don't get how people can be "committed to catching it" given the possibility of long term consequences such as those.

I don't hate China. It is simply too far away to think about. Just like all those other far away countries.

But from very little that I heard, I remember reading back in 2020 that China recovered better than others and they were ending that corontine. Although, just like everyone else, they expected new wave to come with possibility of new corontine. But they were enjoying their "temporary" recovery.

I haven't really bothered looking up any updates after that (and what I am describing is about May 2020). Did any of you followed China past that? How is it doing as of now?

On a separate note, one of my fellow graduate students, who is from Vietnam, said that they have a very strict corontine policies so that they can't even go to the grocery store, they have to order food, and sometimes it takes days if not weeks for food to arrive. She was suspecting they had political reasons to try and kill them by starvation, while covid was just an excuse.

All pneumonia has long term damage to the lungs. How would they know a brain aged 10 years from a mild cold? Lot's of people processed the virus with just a mild cold, some just thought they had allergies.

They saw it on brain scans of people who had covid. It lost gray matter among other things.

Thats why I kept trying to get a nurse at university health service to arrange a brain scan for me. But she refused to.

The problem is Omicron is a game changer, its so transmissible its not even close to the original COVID where you can take certain precautions like mask waring, social distancing etc. and have a good probability of avoiding it.

Omicron is not like that, someone in a store queue or bus has it near you, you`ll probably get it too.

In fact, they say nearly everyone will be exposed to it, unless you live in some sort of nuclear bunker somewhere on your own & have everything delivered to you & de-contaminated

Fortunately, it appears it’s not so dangerous as delta, but if its twice as infectious & half as dangerous the two cancel each other out.

Its early days the authorities haven’t got to grips with this fact yet, but it could make normal life impossible for a while.

I think that's an exaggeration. The Omicron wave in S. Africa has already peaked and to my knowledge most people there didn't get it. It did spread very rapidly though, but many people in S. Africa live in shanty towns or even dormitories so it would seems it's not quite so much of a threat as originally feared. It is Summer there though. Had this happened in Winter I can see how it might have been MUCH worse.

There are not too many if any Chinese WP members. Also whatever is going in China is well hidden.



Pneumonia is not a disease but a symptom of a number of conditions.

I have discussed this a lot elsewhere but Long Covid frightens me more than COVID. Since I am vaxxed and boosted I do not worry about severe initial COVID too much but debilitating Long Term COVID after mild cases is not uncommon. There has not been enough time to know how or if Omnicron will cause Long Term Covid. I do have significant long-term disabilities from a stroke and especially tongue cancer. I do not want more. I understand there are such things as long flu and so on but it happens a lot more with COVID and can mess up any part of the body.


I have never gotten used to masking or seeing others masked. My policy did not change for months. If I was indoors I and I do not know if everybody is vaccinated mask on. Because of omicron surge mask is on indoors if there are people. I never wore a mask outdoors taking a walk. If it is so transmittable that I can get it from somebody across the street, all mitigation is probably futile. I cut down but did not stop hand sanitizing/disinfecting. That has proved not to be a big source of spread(at least until omicron.)

I tend to take the view that if they want you to wear a mask in a place, it's worth considering not being there in the first place. I don't think masks give much protection in general. A little bit if you use it properly (which isn't such a trivial undertaking).

As for the future of Covid, I suspect people will gradually get sick of avoiding the risks, so will governments, and at the same time the medics will get better and better at creating and administering vaccines, and at rolling out coping strategies efficiently. Even now it's not that hard to tweak the profile of a vaccine for better specificity against a given mutant. Procedures for keeping down the risks when people mix on public transport etc. will become easier and more predictable. So eventually I expect things to settle down. I don't think Covid will go away but I think we'll start to see it as just another disease that you could catch. But it might be a year or two yet.

In the UK I think one of the biggest unknowns is what will happen to the NHS. They haven't been completely overwhelmed to the point of closing their doors to Covid cases, but the service for anything other than Covid has taken a huge knock and it hasn't recovered yet, and the staff are in many cases burned out from being overworked and under-resourced.

Why would you "sacrifice" being in various places just so that you wouldn't wear a mask? Sure, the mask doesn't help much, but no harm is done either. So just view it as a part of dress code or something.

With vaccines its a different story. I wouldn't get vaccinated period, no matter how many places I would end up not going to as a result. But mask is not such a big deal. You can always take the mask off once you are out, but you can't take the vaccine off, so thats the difference.

No, what I meant was that if they're telling people to mask up, that suggests there's a Covid danger in being there, and like I say, I don't have much faith in masks as a protective measure. I'm not strongly against masks and would wear one if it was demanded of me just to avoid getting into trouble, though I'm mindful of them carrying certain risks of their own if you don't handle them carefully.

Vaccines are indeed a different story, but personally I don't think they're particularly dangerous, having had 2 and come to no obvious harm, and I think the science speaks for itself about their protective value. It's certainly given me a lot more confidence in situations where I'm in a potentially Covid-infested environment, and self-isolation was getting increasingly difficult to keep up. If I'd been offered the Oxford-Astra-Zeneca or the Johnson & Johnson I might have turned it down because of the blood clot risk, the inferior protection and the faster decay of the protection it does give, but if that had been all there was, I might have accepted it on a balance-of-risks basis. As it was, I got the Moderna. But if you don't want a jab, don't get a jab.

I don't think there is any correlation between masking policy and covid danger in a given place. Its just that some places are following orders more closely than others.