^ Really?

1. Who developed multiple highly effective vaccines in record time?
2. How many trillions have we spent on COVID relief legislation?
3. There are public masking and social distancing mandates everywhere. Compliance is of course varied, but that's pretty much the case all over the world in free societies.
4. How rapidly did a large proportion of the population shift to working from home? It happened overnight in the US
5. School reopening is still happening very slowly in many places. In Illinois, 50% of students are still e-learning, despite CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommending in-person learning.

Plenty took it seriously in America.

Yes, really. The vaccine development was a truly worldwide effort, though of course a number of major American groups had major leadership roles. As for spending trillions, on a per capita basis we've certainly spent less than many other nations, for better or for worse. Some states took early and decisive action on mask wearing and social distancing, while others have either been forced to or never did implement them in any meaningful way. This should have been a national mandate, not a state or local one.

Also, as you said, compliance varied. Varied immensely, not just from state to state but region to region. Again, this needed to be a national mandate.

As for schools, that's a huge one. I see all sides of the debate here, and I'm not sure which side I really fall on. At this point, schools should be reopening with proper measures in place, and school staff should have priority for vaccinations, in my opinion.

All in all, many nations took COVID-19 more seriously than we have done.

Aaron (Glowrock)

^ There just is no basis for such a broad statement of "America did not take this seriously". It's a statement completely devoid of any nuance.

Reality is, plenty of people took it seriously (Americans). You aren't going to get 360 million people in a society that values free will and free speech to agree.

But a lot of people went through a lot of pain and sacrifice, and lost a lot (I know, I talk to them EVERY DAY). I think we can do better as people today by cutting out this crap of waving fingers at each other. It's toxic and it's not serving any one any good.

This is a virus that nobody on Earth knew existed 14 months ago. The media is talking about kids dying from corona because it is newsworthy and we literally did not know if kids could die from it 12 months ago.

They're also talking about it because kids are experiencing long-term "long haul" symptoms in addition to weird, debilitating side effects.

I've seen gun nuts use the same tactics: "How dare you talk about gun deaths that didn't occur within fifty feet of your own home! You should focus only on the events that are of local concern! Why, people might start to think there's a small, minor, tiny issue with gun deaths if you didn't, and we can't have that!"

You'll note that this demand that local news stay local only applies if it cannot be used to an advantage by the side wishing to downplay the issue.

LOL. No it's not. Being vigilant and informed is however. Fear is driving people into mental illness. Staying home and becoming complete shut-ins or driving around in a car alone with a mask on. How is that healthy?

We see the statistics along with the climbing death toll and we've heard the science. Most people do not need to be reminded constantly that the sky is falling. A year in to this, most of us aware of the severity and are proactive about not getting exposed. The media is a business and sensationalism and hype sells.

Alas, a sizeable minority of the population absolutely refuses to acknowledge the statistics and simply closes their eyes, ears and brains, instead simply believing some crap they read on some naturalnews.com site or something like that. It's pathetic.

I'm with you about the media being overall sensationalistic, but I'm not entirely sure that sensationalism wasn't called for with COVID, as it seems to take enormous, almost herculean efforts to convince tens of millions of Americans to pull their heads out of their collective asses and do the right thing.

Aaron (Glowrock)

There is informing the public and then there is manipulation and fear mongering in order to keep people glued to the TV.

Yes, people are aware that people can die of COVID as well as countless other diseases. But there needs to be a standard here, and it's been known for a while that the for-profit media has no standards.

Here is what an informed public needs to know about the affect of COVID on children, from actual data pulled by the WHO in December, 2020. This is from real research by real people who care about knowing the truth, not clicks on Social Media and ratings on TV:

(Pulled from Wikepedia):

^ But you seem hell bent on being worried about what a minority of people think or do, and then cast a wide net and say that "Americans failed". That's completely unnecessary.

And I'm glad you agree that the media is being "sensationalistic", but I've got news for you. That might have been helpful in April 2020, but it's not helpful today. We don't need the "sky is falling" fear wave that they keep trying to spread. The media obviously want to cling to the COVID story as long as it draws viewership.

We have science now. And not the fake "follow the science" bumper sticker type of science that some parade around. REAL data. People can make informed decisions, and I just posted some of it above.

But yes, there are always stupid people out there. I really think there is no point in worrying about them. We'll never change everybody's mind no matter how hard we try, in a nation this big.

Yeah. I also think a lot of it is overconfidence in what the government, health officials, and media actually know about the virus at any point in time. The truth is that they didn't know anything about it a year ago, and there is still a LOT they don't know today. A year ago they literally were telling us to worry more about the flu than about COVID. This was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association almost a year ago to the day:

About three weeks later the first stay at home order in New York went into effect. And over the next two months about 30,000 people died from the virus in New York alone. That's about the same number of people that died from the flu in the entire country in 2019.

I am really getting tired of the "people aren't taking it seriously!" line.

They say the same stuff here in Chicago. Like 90% of people are wearing masks OUTSIDE. Probably 99.5% are wearing masks inside. My God. Its just a way to put blame on people, to make one feel good. Its a damn virus. When its freezing outside I see the air blowing out of my mask, these things aren't bulletproof. Life happens.

Unless you stay home 24/7 and order everything online, you are a part of the problem. Get over it. It's life, it's a virus, there's no such thing as perfect. And to expect 100% of people to go along is insane. 100% of people don't do anything, hence we have crime.

^ I encourage you to consider whether you actually understand the scientific method, because you sound pretty much as bad as the people you criticize.

It is perfectly defensible for scientists and health officials to have not known much about COVID a year ago, and to perhaps give inaccurate recommendations at the time.

Fast forward to today, there is an overwhelming amount of data to pull from, and the recommendations are more precise and useful. As time passes you should listen to scientists more and media figures less.

We suffer from a disease in America, but it's not just COVID.

It's a disease of arrogance and shaming. It's a disease of lack of compassion. The way people were complete assholes to eachother during COVID was worse in many ways than the disease itself.

There should have been more compassion and understanding. Instead it was "This disease is all BS" or "You're a bad person because you won't isolate at home!". All of it is bad. Anyone who disagrees with this is part of the problem, not the solution.

Did you actually read what I wrote? I encourage you to work on your reading comprehension skills.

He should have more compassion and understanding about what you wrote, but ended up shaming you. Some of this is CE kinda stuff, but I see those who fled have hidden here.
Anyway, basically everything is normal where I am except masks, indoor dining, and schools (some are open in CA). I see people complaining about restaurants but as soon as this thing started almost all of them immediately adapted. Either with to-go or eating outside....mainly because we had gone through "lockdowns" with power and fires. People here were ready.

Just to give you benefit of the doubt, I went ahead and reread your last few posts. Here is my response:


I encourage you to consider whether you actually understand the scientific method, because you sound pretty much as bad as the people you criticize.

It is perfectly defensible for scientists and health officials to have not known much about COVID a year ago, and to perhaps give inaccurate recommendations at the time.

Fast forward to today, there is an overwhelming amount of data to pull from, and the recommendations are more precise and useful. As time passes you should listen to scientists more and media figures less.

Almost a year in, I think the US has done a decent job in spite of the lack of overall cohesive plan and anti science groups/slant/matter of inconvenience.

500000 deaths while mostly wearing masks and mostly being acutely aware is still kinda a lot..... That maybe a bad flu year for the US, but I've never seen masks worn in the US outside of rare circumstances.

My position is permanently work from home now. I work for a niche pharmacy benefits manager who also does production (putting the pills in the bottle and shipping it out), and the office space I used to occupy is now storage for hundreds of bottles of medication. We are like a much smaller Optum RX.

Nope, you still can't read apparently.

^ Well I guess I don't quite understand what we are debating. Or if we are debating anything at all?

My whole point going back for a LONG time is to follow science. Data.

When you do that, recommendations change as we learn more.

I don't know if you feel the same way. But I do think that there are some people who are glued to ideas from April 2020, and aren't able to shake that initial fear. With science and data, recommendations become more refined.

The idea here is to reduce transmission while also allowing people to restore some semblance of mental health. What works, what doesn't work? What is a useless strategy versus what is more effective, etc

There is still a LOT of data missing. That is my point. Data has been collected for one year, and based off of a population whose normal activities have been drastically altered. The truth is we don't know what mortality rates look like for for any situation other than American society operating with very reduced in person contact.