Some people, like New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, can not await the end of Covid.
Over the last year Leonhardt falsely predicted the end of the pandemic every few months. He then mumbled about pundit fallibility, including his own, only to again fall for it.
Pandemic in Retreat, Feb 11 2021
Covid on the Run, May 20 2021
The pandemic may now be in permanent retreat in the U.S.
Covid, in Retreat, Oct 4 2021
Pundit Accountability, Jan 10 2022
Writers and experts should be transparent about what they got wrong.
Omicron Is in Retreat, Jan 19 2022
The last headline line may by chance turn out to be correct as the next wave of Covid will likely come from a different SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern. There is no law or guarantee that it will be less severe or less immune evasive. In might in fact be the opposite on both counts.
It is not the only thing Leonhardt got wrong:
The New York Times’ David Leonhardt and others would have you believe that liberal overreaction to the pandemic is as big a problem as the anti-vax right.
There is a movement afoot just as insidious as right-wingers refusing to wear masks and get vaccinated. It’s progressives who are fully vaccinated but whose overcautious attitude toward Covid-19 is harming a generation of children and preventing society from getting over the pandemic.
Or so posits David Leonhardt, a journalist at The New York Times who has written about this phenomenon in his newsletter [..] to discuss the alarming trend of liberals who just won’t quit Covid. The fact that poll respondents who are fully vaccinated and boosted seem more worried about getting sick, Leonhardt wrote this week, suggests “both political tribes really do seem to be struggling to read the evidence objectively. As a result, the country is suffering thousands of preventable deaths every week while also accepting a preventable crisis of isolation that’s falling particularly hard on children.”
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In pieces like these, there is typically little or no discussion of the actual reasons people may be concerned about getting sick. Not everyone is worried about their personal demise. They may instead be worried about spreading the virus to elderly or immunocompromised people or to children who aren’t eligible or allowed to get vaccinated, or they may be concerned about overwhelming hospitals, developing a “mild” course of Covid that nevertheless leads to long-term illness or disability, missing work while sick, losing childcare after they or their kids test positive, or falling behind in school. The choice isn’t a binary between being afraid for one’s own personal safety or carrying on. Mass death isn’t inevitable; being concerned about the vulnerable or the course of the pandemic as whole isn’t pathological.
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There are indeed “two Covid Americas,” but not in the way commentators like Leonhardt envision it. There are those who are still at genuine risk, and those who feel too inconvenienced to protect them. The former group have no choice but to take Covid seriously. The least the latter group could do is stop suggesting that those who value the vulnerable are pathologically silly.
People are right to still be concerned about Covid. When some say 'I'm done with it' others will suffer. Unfortunately being 'done with it' is a move that societies seem to just make after some time.
John M. Barry has written a book about the great influenza pandemic. Based on case numbers in Britain it is often claimed that the 1918-1919 pandemic came in three waves. But, Barry writes, there was a fourth one and it was also quite deadly:
Most histories of the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed at least 50 million people worldwide say it ended in the summer of 1919 when a third wave of the respiratory contagion finally subsided.
Yet the virus continued to kill. A variant that emerged in 1920 was lethal enough that it should have counted as a fourth wave. In some cities, among them Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Kansas City, Mo., deaths exceeded even those in the second wave, responsible for most of the pandemic’s deaths in the United States. This occurred despite the fact that the U.S. population had plenty of natural immunity from the influenza virus after two years of several waves of infection and after viral lethality in the third wave had already decreased.
Nearly all cities in the United States imposed restrictions during the pandemic’s virulent second wave, which peaked in the fall of 1918. That winter, some cities reimposed controls when a third, though less deadly wave struck. But virtually no city responded in 1920. People were weary of influenza, and so were public officials. Newspapers were filled with frightening news about the virus, but no one cared. People at the time ignored this fourth wave; so did historians. The virus mutated into ordinary seasonal influenza in 1921, but the world had moved on well before.
Barry writes that we should not repeat that mistake.
Unfortunately a repeat is exactly what is likely to happen. There will be more waves, they will be deadly, but no one will give a fuck.