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Hibiscus_Syrup OP wrote (edited )

So, for those of you who don't know, here's a tldr.

This is the main vaccine SA worked on getting initially, and they just arrived.
SA has a new variant, and they've now just confirmed Astrazeneca doesn't prevent you from getting sick. It might prevent you from getting very sick but that has not been shown in any good study yet.

There's more to the clusterfuck, but essentially we have a problem:

Seems like there are fuckloads of variants emerging. Vaccines will be useless. Really they will just make way for the variants which can evade them. It seems to me like, unless we are squashing it all, everywhere, which seems impossible with the current state of the world, the virus will remain potentially in most places, in always-mutating variants, endemic.

Which makes me not sure that there will be an end to this, especially not for postcolonies. It doesn't seem like vaccines can keep up with variant mutation at a global level for such a contagious virus.

Do you think that this will go away?

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Hibiscus_Syrup OP wrote (edited )

tldr of the tldr:

NIHILISM INTENSIFIES

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kin wrote

This shit is increasing... And the whole deal with vaccines royalties are Colonial shackles over and over. The British response to South Africa requesting the break of the patents was despiteful. The periphery of capitalism will suffer the effects but sure the Rich folks will not give a damn

And the whole idea that the virus is not natural occuring don't look ludicrous anymore.

I agree with some communists right now, we need planetary commons, and health and biotech need to be free from corporations and billionaires.

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Hibiscus_Syrup OP wrote

I agree with some communists right now, we need planetary commons, and health and biotech need to be free from corporations and billionaires.

I think that a planetary commons would do that, but I think that a planetary commons is a pipe dream. Because it probably requires that the whole world fundamentally change at a rate that is not possible for humans.

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kin wrote

Agreed, and the "declaration of planetary Commons" would accomplish anything by itself.

Then Nihilism realism kick again to help me come to sense. We can even deal with our trash properly... What a disgrace

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[deleted] wrote

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86944 wrote

The new variants were around before that for certain. It takes awhile to notice a new one and they were only confirmed around the vaccine approval.

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[deleted] wrote

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mofongo wrote

Viruses mutate all the time and coronaviruses are very good at that. It was never a question if it will mutate but when. Additionally, new mutations are not news unless they're significant enough.

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BrowseDuringClass1917 wrote

It seems to me like, unless we are squashing it all, everywhere,

Yes, but that would be evil authoritarianism like CHINA and VIETNAM and CUBA! Scary communist countries! Whatever they do we MUST do the opposite! It is NECESSARY for Western Civilization and the FREEDOM granted to us by the MARKET! Die for the green line on the graph.

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Hibiscus_Syrup OP wrote

I can't tell what exactly you're saying and who it's meant to address.

Either ways in case it's not clear I don't think that communist states can create a planetary commons, and when I said "unless we are squashing it all, everywhere" I was referring to an anti-authoritarian planetary commons.

Are you proposing we get a world government?

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existential1 wrote

Kill that part of your brain that even dreams of having a moment of weakness where you believe the government can be competent.

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Hibiscus_Syrup OP wrote

I think I'd been assuming that something(s) non-governmental had the capacities to put this pandemic away after a few years, but I now just think I hadn't thought it through properly enough, which I find quite odd.

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Hibiscus_Syrup OP wrote

The Brazil Variant Is Exposing the World’s Vulnerability :

"The coming year could be a story of two worlds undermining each other. Certain countries will approach herd immunity by vaccinating almost every citizen. Other countries could see mass casualties and catastrophic waves of reinfection—potentially with variants that evolved in response to the immunity conferred by the very vaccines to which these populations do not have access. In the process, these hot spots themselves will facilitate rapid evolution, giving rise to even more variants that could make the vaccinated populations susceptible to disease once again. In a recursive loop, the virus could come back to haunt the vaccinated, leading to new surges and lockdowns in coming years. The countries that hoard the vaccine without a plan to help others do so at their own peril."

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86944 wrote

This is going to become a yearly thing just like the flu. Tweaking the vaccines for different variants is just going to be a normal thing like the yearly flu shot.

Silly me, thinking that 40 N95 masks was enough before this went down.

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Hibiscus_Syrup OP wrote

Why do you think that? This is much more contagious than the flu and more deadly, so wouldn't we just have continued lockdowns, masks, border bullshit, mental wellbeing catastrophe, and so on?

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86944 wrote

I didn't mean to imply the current situation would come to an end soon. Just that it would eventually get under control, but never actually go away. Just like the swine flu didn't go away after the spanish flu pandemic.

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Hibiscus_Syrup OP wrote

The US announced a travel ban from SA to the US on the 26th of Jan.

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