> Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out... we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the world goes below 1, a good enough treatment that people no longer need to be afraid, or we develop a great culture of testing, contract tracing, masks, and isolation.
I think it's accurate to say the world took option #4 - stop caring. Yes there was a vaccine, but the vaccine didn't mark the end of the pandemic; the pandemic ended when people stopped caring that there was a pandemic.
That's not true. The pandemic ended as Omicron became the dominant strain, which was by some measures 90% less fatal than Delta.
It's selective breeding; because we became careful about recognizing symptoms, any severe strain would cause the infected to isolate and hence not infect others. Therefore, Omicron was often symptomless, and COVID-19 was no longer deemed as much of a threat.
I don't disagree with the general vibe here, but a few points:
- It's hard to compare Omicron vs delta because of the number of confounding variables - population heterogeneity, vaccine + infection induced immunity, etc.
- Severe strains with latency periods are invulnerable to symptom recognition. I don't think the asymptomatic period for the COVID variants varied as much in the lower bound as it did the upper bound. The point being -- behavioural changes are much more likely to be general caution (i.e. limiting contacts, spacing social events in time, etc.) than responsive (I feel unwell).
I think it's accurate to say the world took option #4 - stop caring. Yes there was a vaccine, but the vaccine didn't mark the end of the pandemic; the pandemic ended when people stopped caring that there was a pandemic.