SpoogleDrummer

Personally I wear a mask for the employees of the places I go. They're stuck there with no choice so if wearing a mask can help them feel less anxious around me even in the slightest then I'll do it. I don't find masks uncomfortable or hard to breath is so it's no harm to me.

As for burnout I've felt burnt out for months, I work with nursing schools tracking requirements for students and the requirements keep changing on a per school basis so I've had to keep coming up with solutions for them.

Hiro11

I think you need to have a mindset shift. I don't believe this is ever going to be "over". Covid will become an endemic virus, it will continue to mutate and spew out new variants for the rest of time. We will need to learn to live with Covid. This has been the advice of experts since day one.

Given that, I believe "Zero Covid" is an unattainable concept and policies that aim to 100% prevent Covid cases are unsustainable. I believe the incidence of serious illness, hospitalization and death is far more important than case counts. That's a major shift in strategy and one lots of countries have not yet made. Ultimately, what matters is defanging Covid through vaccinations and treatment. We live with lots of endemic coronaviruses, Covid will end up being just one of them.

I believe we need to have a more rigorous debate about what strategies actually prevent the most death and prevent the most serious illnesses. Neither are 100% avoidable. We need to honestly discuss what level of risk-tolerance a society should have when confronted with a global pandemic. The answer can't be zero risk, that's not sustainable.

The great news is that medical science provably has solutions that work. Covid-19 was both a long predicted and likely inevitable pandemic. Epidemiologists have been talking about a global viral pandemic for decades. The huge risk posed by H5N1, SARS and the like over the decades has always been seen as a prelude to something bigger. Well, now we have "something bigger". The good news is that through Covid-19 many tough lessons have been learned, and many technologies have been proven to work. If you're looking for a silver lining, consider that this is likely the last global pandemic on this scale we will ever see.

civilservant

I think that might be the first time I have ever agreed with something that Hiro has said.

The turnover here over the last 18 months has been astronomical, right from the top all the way down. People are considering (and indeed moving into) careers completely different to their current one in order to get out of healthcare.

Add to this that the pipeline of new nurses and nursing assistants appears to have slowed to a trickle also, and you have a recipe for a staffing crisis. We have only seen the beginning of that right now.

tht

While it would be nice, I am not sure what makes you think that? Yes we have more tools to deal with these now, and now travel bans are a [acceptable] tool, governments may be able to delay spread if better surveillance is developed, but if other natural disasters are an indicator I would think we will see this type of pandemic more frequently than the previous 100 year interval. This article sums it up pretty well, while we may have the “tools” to deal with a pandemic like this more effectively than the past and, “You would have had to have been a psychopathic monster to not want to be part of the solution.” I think vacine development will be a lot faster next time, unfortunately the current anti vax trend makes me think we may even go backwards with diseases we don’t see in the developed world coming back in the future rather than stoping future yet unknown outbreaks. :-(

https://www.latimes.com/science/stor...ones?_amp=true

Shard

I think one of paradoxes of Covid 19 is that it hasn't been "obvious" enough. A mortality rate of 1% is far less than the 10-30% (SARS, MURS) and that it mostly impacts the elderly means the majority of the population see it as out of sight out of mind. Having said that, Covid-19 has been a good wake up call for governments to continue virology research, invest in manufacturing infrastructure and develop better communication/implementation strategies.

scrubbedexpat099

SultanOfSwing

To be honest, I've been burned out for a while. It's hard to word it in the right way because everybody's always looking for an angle and a quick 'gotcha' but I'll try.

From day one, I did everything that was asked of me. I went out and got my vaccine as soon as I could and I'm still being punished for it because others aren't willing to do their part.

I'm just tired of it. I am tired of continuing to have to wear my mask, to deprive me of the non-verbal communication I rely on on a day to day basis. I'm tired of people not vaccinating and being proud of it (I don't care anymore if they do or not but don't make it a bloody personality trait). I'm tired of reading or hearing about people being so happy to be forced into isolation because "zomg I'm a quirky introvert lolz. Well I am an introvert and they're just maladjusted, socially awkward and immature because I'm so starved of human contact I'd hug the ****ing postman if he doesn't drive off quickly enough.

At some point, I think we're going to have to start living with it, aren't we? Just be careful, stay away from others when sick, wash our hands, get boosted and we'll help each other out.

But it's not going away, that ship sailed 18 months ago.

I know I'm being needlessly bitchy but I'm just kind of done and I feel bad that I think that way but I am. It's not like I'm not still following guidelines or anything, but it's getting old even so.

The only part of this I don't agree with is your wording. I would say that it has already become endemic, or at least it is becoming endemic with the arrival of omicron.

Think of all the millions of viruses much worse than this one out there in the animal kingdom (maybe even elsewhere in space) that we will never encounter. Bad as this one was, it could have been infinitely worse.

But that's nature.

zzrmark

Bloody marvellous, how am I supposed to enjoy my greens when there's no cream cheese to accompany them?

scrubbedexpat099

Soylent White? I had completely forgotten how close we were to Soylent Green, I am not of the view that Covid is a one off either. Still of the view that it came out of research that went wrong and that scenario will become more and more possible. Plus of course the world is a lot smaller than in the age of the Black Death etc so yes we have modern medicine but also modern transportation.

I always expected agriculture to have collapse issues, historically starvation has been a main killer.

Shard

What the heck is this Soylent thing ?

scrubbedexpat099

Film set in a dystopian future where the plebs were fed Soylent Green, you do not want to know how it was made.

Shard

Sounds interesting ! I'm into dystopian futures. It looks old so I may be able to find it on one of free streaming platforms.

scrubbedexpat099

BristolUK

After not knowing Maradona's handball goal and Soylent Green what's next for not knowing, Fahrenheit 451? Sean Kerly's lads of 1988?

Shard

I do know Fahrenheight 451, started reading it a few years ago, but didn't get too far before it was due back in the library. I will put it on my 2022 reading list.