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I'll admit to not really understanding social dynamics, but surely such a drastic fatality rate will scare people into this being taken more seriously?
It’s easy to say Americans will just merrily go about their business with even a 10% case fatality rate, but that’s ascribing a level of irrationality to them that is simply not reasonable. Tell people they have a 10% chance of dying if they go out to a restaurant and not even the chuddiest chud doesn’t have that much of a death wish.
Covid was horrible, of course, but the reality is that there’s tens of millions of white middle class (and higher) Americans who at most lost a grandparent to Covid. It was a terribly deadly disease but it wasn’t deadly enough to people with adequate access to resources and health care for them to be able to not ignore it. Even a “good” CFR associated with bird flu could many orders of magnitude more deadly than COVID, you can’t take the Covid experience and extrapolate.
That's my thinking as well.
I don't necessarily disagree that people in the US would take a bird flu pandemic with a much higher fatality rate than COVID more seriously. I do think it's worth pointing out that COVID is still a serious problem that the vast majority of people are ignoring even if they know it means putting their well-being at risk. Even according to the CDC, COVID has been killing an average of 525 people in the US a week over the last 12 weeks. To compare, gun violence deaths minus suicides in the US in 2024 was about 319 deaths per week. It's also well known at this point that even a "mild" COVID infection comes with significant risks of long term complications, from a severely increased chance of heart attack and stroke, to neurological issues, to damage to the immune system, and more.
Obviously it is not killing as many people as it did early in the pandemic, nor is it anywhere near 10% CFR, but it is still something that people should be concerned over and yet are not. I've talked to many people who know these things, who agree that COVID is still something worth worrying about, and yet do not mask or even keep their vaccines up to date. These are normal people, not even your Q-Anon freaks. It worries me to imagine having to rely on those same people in the potential bird flu pandemic.
COVID kills you in the long term as it destroys your immune system and blood vessels
Climate change kills us all in the long term, but that hasn't made the people on power take it seriously either.
Smoking gives you cancer, red meat is a carcinogen, alcohol is literal poison, candy is more addictive than cocaine, asbestos is good for insulating heat.
Not saying these are all the same, but people suck at caring about anything other than short-term consequences and that's when they're being informed about them.
The million+ of USAmericans who perished from COVID have not scared anyone. I can count on one hand the number of people who wear any sort of mask to where I go to school, the first finger being me. No one is talking about this.
The biggest problem is that the capitalist took their lesson from COVID and are not giving this any coverage.
Also can't have people getting a taste of state support, or the lucky ones who could to experience a sort of temporary post-capitalist world. It made office workers too uppity and labor too undisciplined. Even in my "essential" public facing job that was living hell for months we basically give few shits about simpering customer service now.
It also destroyed the neoliberal illusion deployed during the Great Recession that says the state has to intervene. Now they can just roll the dice, hope the mortality rate is lowish, and even if not know they have their luxury bunkers and can finally get the population culling so many of the elite want (at least ecofash wing not the Breeder Kinksters)
The breeder kinksters would like it too, for them it’s all about their genes passing along, not others.
That isn't a kink, that's just eugenics.
i haven't seen anyone else wear a mask here in 2+ years
Doomlathing: The bird flu becomes a global pandemic. Billions die. This causes a brief reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which results in brief improvements of the climate. Capitalists use this to argue the climate crisis has been solved and the mass death was just "mother nature's immune system kicking in, killing off the sickness"; ecofascism reigns.
Some people would rather die than accept advice from someone they view as inferior. Some have a world view that depends on ignoring key parts of reality.
Nah, they'll say it's fake and blame it on China again because of the last big bird flu outbreak
no
Most will, the ones that don't will die in greater numbers.
We'll know for sure after the next stress test.