I'm absolutely fine with you sequestering yourself. However, please note that the vast majority of the USA is not going to find it possible to self sequester. Besides, sequestering of those who can sequester was opposed by a significant percent of Americans, who refused to do anything to avoid COVID. We're still going to require medical science solutions as well as first responders, hospitals, etc. And, if there is a possibility of strategies oriented to slowing the arrival of new pandemics, those should be part of the planned activities.
The principles of quarantine are very different than simple sequestration. I leveraged the principle of quarantine so that we could regularly visit with my elderly in-laws without any of us being at risk from Covid. I used principles of quarantine so that we could maintain contact with those we cared about most. I would much rather spend time with my in-laws and be at no risk than be in contact strangers at a grocery store that were infected and potentially infected and a risk to me. Essentially, I quarantined you and other infected and potentially infected people. You didn’t realize that’s what was happening and you didn’t have a choice. I had control of your quarantine parameters, leaving you in quarantine until such time you and other potential threats were of negligible risk to me. I seldom spent more than 6-7 hours a day indoors and travelled at least 14 miles from home nearly every day while I had you in quarantine. I also took a couple 1500 mile road trips while I had you in quarantine. Sequestration is not a good term to describe how I leveraged the principles of quarantine during Covid. No, not everyone can do it exactly the way I did. But nearly everyone could have been safer and happier/less stressed if they had taken my approach. Sequestration is not necessary or desirable. Instead, everyone should plan how best to apply principles of quarantine to their lifestyle and family structure. I will take this opportunity to point out it’s easy to ignore the principles of quarantine with a disease like Covid that had a 0.4% IFR overall and a 0.05% IFR in the under 70 age demographic. Believe me, if you are really worried about another pandemic you better give some thought to quarantine. If another pandemic similar to Covid were to have an IFR of 1% we would have over 2,000,000 deaths instead of the million from Covid. If we had a pandemic with a 20% IFR we would have over 40,000,000 dead. An IFR of 50% would see 100,000,000 dead. What do you think your willingness to isolate or quarantine others who are potentially infected would be in that case? And what would you do if you were not prepared to avoid going the grocery store twice a week? You would be very happy to have the option of quarantining everyone who was a threat to you. That’s why I quarantined you. Because you are unwilling to engage in the majority of the best mitigations available to combat infection and severe disease. Ya’ll were not even aware of most of the ways to prevent Covid. They were withheld from you. When you are told, you reject them, as our discussion demonstrates. Dude. What I am describing to you IS medical science. What you have been told by your politicians and public health bureaucrats is not medical science. It’s mostly diametrically opposed to science. That’s why it is ineffective. As I said. My methods keep people from needing the hospital. I’m advocating for preventing infection and severe disease, not ignoring prevention and trying to save people already severely ill. Sure. If you can convince anyone to do that for you I’m not at all opposed. But I’ve pointed out more than once it is not in your government’s best interest to do so.
This won't stop the next pandemic. It may reduce the number of pandemics and increase the time between pandemics, but it will not stop them. At some point, a virus is going to mutate enough to become dangerous to humans.
It may help prevent cross species infections. Close contact with wild animals known to carry dangerous viruses, such as bats, should be avoided.
I certainly agree. Reducing the risk of death to zero is undoubtedly not an attainable goal. However, that has never been a required goal in terms of natural disasters, foreign policy, worker safety, transportation safety, food/health safety, etc., etc. This pandemic was a giant disaster in terms of lives lost, economic loss, and probably other dimensions. And, there are very clear ways in which those terms could be reduced.
Yes, there are some known repositories for disease that have the potential of changing to enter humans. But, the various areas of the world that are giving rise to these diseases have populations that depend on contact with those animals - camels, alpacas, pangolins, monkeys, dogs, duikers, pangolins, etc., etc., etc. Plus, bats! These animals can be food sources, work animals, pets, sources of fiber, pests, etc. - an integral part of a human society.
I work in IT Security and we talk about Risk vs Cost all the time. If you are spending more money on security than the worth of what you are protecting, then you are doing it wrong. Granted, it is impossible to convert human lives into money, but there are limits on how much we will lose vs much much we could lose.
I didn't say anything about sequestering anyone - maybe 557 did?? Anyway, yes - we should be planning to be more prepared and resilient to pandemic as well as investing in science concerning how and where these diseases are entering the human population. Maybe more, too?? This would be a small investment compared to what COVID has cost us and will continue to cost us. Where is monkeypox headed?? What's the prognosis for this invasion? https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/us-map.html https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/world-map.html
No I never mentioned sequestering. You introduced that into our conversation. I was talking about my methods of quarantining you and other potentially infected individuals without your consent. I explained sequestration is a totally different thing.
Quarantining is one possible methodology that planners could investigate and include as determined to make sense. For example, there has been quarantining in conjunction with travel. But, that is hardly a significant part of any plan for defending America against pandemic.
Well many countries successfully used principles of quarantine to protect their citizens. Americans are simply too irresponsible and misinformed to benefit much from applying principles of quarantine. But informed individuals and families can greatly benefit. As I did. You can’t because you have other priorities higher on your list than ability to avoid infection. That’s ok. It’s your right. But it doesn’t invalidate the fact principles of quarantine are the most effective epidemiological strategies that exist.
You need to be more specific, because the use of quarantine in some countries was not something that America would even SLIGHTLY allow. I've never opposed your willingness to take specific actions, and they are probably effective for you and your family. But, that does NOT constitute a plan for the defense of America. Sorry. It just doesn't even come close.
Allow? Nobody tried to stop me quarantining you! It doesn’t really have much to do with what’s allowed, it’s more about how serious people are about taking responsibility for themselves and how bad they wish to remain uninfected. I really don’t know what kind of plan works for people that value dining out over avoiding infection or that are too ignorant to understand wearing masks where infection risk is almost zero but not wearing them where infection risk is highest is not effective mitigation. I guess you can stockpile masks, but what good is that if the same people who withheld masks from you before control the supply? You can make all kinds of preparations at governmental level but if those “in charge” are still known liars and fools I don’t think those preparations matter much. The best preparation would be to address the American diet and exercise problem, but again neither the “leaders” nor “followers” are interested in that. Basically Americans are into virtue signaling but not effective mitigations. I don’t know how you plan around that especially when we know the planners have priorities that are not public health.
You are not aware that not only do diseases mutate, but that there are often a great many that are very close to each other? Just look up SHF sometime. That has long been considered fatal to most primates, but humans were immune to. But humans can also get it, even if it is not fatal. And in a disease with similar symptoms, Ebola is universally fatal to both primates and humans. Other than Ebola Restin, which for some reason humans are asymptomatic carriers of. As for MP, we know it can be caught by humans for over 50 years now. And because it is also part of the orthopoxvirus family, it is related to smallpox, chickenpox, and cowpox. Recently some have even been wondering if the reduction of smallpox vaccinations is part of the reason it is now spreading. Since that virus was "eliminated", most now no longer get vaccinated for it. And the smallpox vaccination was 85% effective in preventing the transmission of monkeypox. Truth is, there is always some pandemic going on. Always had been.
You're making a strong argument that there is a continuing biological threat to America - and everywhere else, too. And, that it exists even without there being any nefarious attempt by some foreign power. Surely that supports the notion that we should have plans in place for the event that one of these threats appears likely to grow to pandemic proportion here.
~ But government has never exaggerated the seriousness to push totalitarian policies. This is a first — hopefully the last.
What’s interesting is reading the early posts (from over 1 year ago) in this thread and seeing how utterly wrong some people were. The data is in and we know a lot more - masking the general public is not effective, Covid was very similar to the annual flu, the vaccine does not prevent infection or transmission, the lockdowns were not effective and did far more harm than good. And even now some people reject the science and believe the old myths.
~ Sad but true. Personally I am surprised and dismayed at the insistence by so many Americans that Covid-19 is another bubonic plague that will eventually kill or cripple anyone not vaccinated. The medical community especially should be ashamed for cooperating without resistance . This entire over-hyped debacle certainly shows the effectiveness of government ability to conduct social engineering on the populace with not much resistance. Monkeypox is next . Get ready ...
At this point it has to be assumed the people still supporting masking, the vax, lockdowns, distancing, and pushing the scamdemic are on the take.
Masking was just as effective during the Spanish Influenza a century earlier. It was simply a placebo to make people feel better. What was completely missing was quarantine. That was the normal solution in the era before antibiotics and modern vaccinations. If somebody in a household caught something, they were mandated by law to remain in their home until they were medically cleared. This time, that never happened. You could go to the doctor because you feel sick, get diagnosed with COVID, and still just keep doing what you were doing before. Go shopping, go to see a movie, there was literally nothing to stop you. Hell, it was not all that long ago that some damned fool with Tuberculosis got on a plane and flew when his doctor told him not to, and people actually got outraged when he was arrested for it. And I know of that happening at least 3 times in the last 2 decades. What we need to do is bring back quarantine, and actually enforce it.
I don't think we have ever had an effective national quarantine. Back in the 90s, Docs tried to reform health care, and they wanted the ability to do a quarantine, but it didn't happen. China can pull off a quarantine, but I doubt we ever will.
