What Happened in 2021

https://avc.com/2021/12/what-happened-in-2021/

by tosh • 5 years ago

38 68 5 years ago

umvi• 5 years ago

I predicted that vaccines plus immunity from those who had been infected would end the pandemic by mid-year 2021.

Me too. I'm still wondering why, in most first world countries with free vaccines, we are still having authoritarian crackdowns and culture wars. Does the media just love perpetuating a state of constant crisis? If widespread vaccine availability didn't trigger a return to normalcy, I don't know what will. Seems like we will be doing pandemic measures for years to come at this rate since scaling healthcare in any way is off the table for some reason.

Karunamon• 5 years ago

Does the media just love perpetuating a state of constant crisis?

Constant catastrophosizing drives engagement, it's that simple. This is the reason you'll never hear 'stay calm' messages that are not tempered by a 'but'. Anger and fear are powerful emotions, and the media will hammer those buttons as hard as they can (unless given a powerful incentive not to), the effects on society be damned.

paul7986• 5 years ago

Exactly and that's why for me personally all media is biased trash driven by money/power/greed directly or indirectly to be ignored.

For covid news I get it directly from my medical friends working in hospitals or this time around all the people (two handfuls) I know and they know dealing with Covid. Personally worst I've experienced first and second hand since it started but each person who isn't OLD recovers quickly vaxed or not.

jude-5• 5 years ago

The problem is that a certain slice of the population adamantly refuses to wear a mask or get a vaccine, thereby prolonging the pandemic.

xeromal5• 5 years ago

But Omicron is infecting vaccinated at a very high rate. At this point, damned if you do or damned if you don't.

We need to start moving on at this point.

nradov4• 5 years ago

While I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, the virus will be around forever. Any talk of "prolonging" is absurd.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

You obviously can't expect people to continue wearing masks indefinitely. That would be ridiculous.

azakai3• 5 years ago

COVID is far less dangerous than in 2020, but it is still a problem - it's not just a "media thing". COVID is still powerful enough to fill our hospitals past their ability to cope, and also we have enough uncertainty about long COVID that it's better to minimize infections. So we are not yet back to normalcy.

Why is COVID still that dangerous? Not enough people are vaccinated, and not enough use masks (especially not good masks like N95s), and new variants are making things difficult.

It is plausible that during 2022 we do return to something close to normal. But it depends on those three factors.

daveevad• 5 years ago

Not enough people are vaccinated

Is it not the case that we essentially need to vaccinate everyone in the whole world within a small time period, like 4 weeks, to prevent mutation and vaccine escape?

downrightmike• 5 years ago

Nope, still going to kill a bunch of people and that will curb any real growth. Here's what will happen: April/may cases will be much lower, end of may people will party into June. June/July there will be a uptick until august just before school starts. September cases will climb, get slightly lower in October, then spike the second week of November and then continue until April/may. This is an infectious disease functioning in/on a human system and we well know how this works out. Everything I described above is the schedule for the Spanish flu, and coincidentally, covid. Because that is how humans work and do things. We have not progressed enough in the last 100 years to change this due to the luddite/zealot problems we have.

jpeloquin2• 5 years ago

I also thought widespread vaccination would end the pandemic in the US by mid-2021. I guess vaccination rates have to be very high, maybe > 90%, for that to work? Personally I've redefined my goal for dealing with the pandemic as merely, "I will not give Covid to anyone else," which still seems doable by spacing out social events and testing in between.

Although I also find the media's tendency towards sensationalism to be annoying, the media industry and its audience are so fractured now I'm not sure they're the cause of anything. It feels like no one is in control and they (and us) are merely along for the ride. That is, I feel that, due to decentralized mass communication and targeted media delivery, social phenomena is tending towards emergent rather than directed behavior.

imnotreallynew• 5 years ago

Malta is about at 90%, yet the government is introducing more mandates to the chagrin of residents[0]. There’s been maybe ~three deaths in the entire country over the past couple of weeks; COVID hasn’t even been in the top 5 causes of death for a long time. Yet, you’ll now risk being fined €100 if you’re outside walking by yourself without a mask (of course smoking in restaurants and going to nightclubs is allowed, because that makes freaking sense).

Malta was even touting quite a bit about being the first European country to reach herd immunity..back in May.

In my opinion, anyone who believes continued restrictions have been about anything other than political theatre and positioning are utterly delusional.

0: https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/this-latest-masks-man...

phillipcarter2• 5 years ago

My personal view, which is US-based, is that our government is filled with second-rate people from top to bottom. They have continually failed to communicate clearly about the virus, testing, masking, and vaccines throughout the past two years. They are still not providing good masks. They still talk about "washing your hands". They are not building better ventilation systems. They are not providing good rapid test kits. They are not passing laws that address our countless medical system inefficiencies. And so on, and so on. Anything they are doing feels imperceptible from doing nothing.

I think the sad reality is that we're going to have a lot more needless deaths in 2022. People with disabilities that are impacted by COVID will need to keep locking themselves up indefinitely - no government agency will help them, and their communities will ignore their problems. Vaccines will still not be taken by ~1/3 of the population. Is it even worth trying anymore with them? I guess yes, however frustrating, but only because it makes everyone else safer to do so. I do not see how 2022 is terribly different from 2021.

nradov4• 5 years ago

Most disabilities in general don't increase the fatality rate for COVID-19. Besides advanced age, the real risk factors are chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and hypovitaminosis D. Those conditions aren't usually classified as disabilities. Governments and communities can help to an extent by facilitating healthier choices but ultimately the patients have to commit to permanent lifestyle changes if they want to reduce their risks.

Warlockcraft2• 5 years ago

I'm an American. I find modern American society to be borderline braindead in regards to mathematical literacy, scientific literacy, economic literacy, and being able to fluently speak more than 1 language other than English. It is clear to me that older generations of America are more skilled than the younger people now. Back in the past, most older generations of America were much less overweight, obese, unhappy, illiterate, criminal, violent, lazy, spoiled, unprofessional, anti-family, anti-leisure time, etc. They were the ones that actually made America great. But now that American civilization has collapsed because of increasing wealth inequality and decaying infrastructure due to antisocially greedy oligarchs that economically abandoned the working class many decades ago, America is crumbling while China and Russia grow stronger economically, intellectually, and politically. China and Russia will defeat the U.S. in regards to geopolitical power because working class Americans are too poor to afford resources for improving themselves intellectually, financially, emotionally, and physically. Working class Americans have to illegally riot against the ruling class in order to get human rights back and get American civilization to stop collapsing because of increasing wealth inequality and decaying infrastructure. Because the ruling class is ruthless towards working class Americans now. This is why COVID deaths usually happen to working class Americans more than most Europeans for example. Because most Europeans have a social safety net at least.

MrPatan• 5 years ago

Does the media just love perpetuating a state of constant crisis?

Yes, of course. More clicks for little effort.

Many other interests are also aligned. No need for a conspiracy, it's just that if you ask a pharma company or a hospital "how's the pandemic going? the right answer will mean more resources and/or prestige for you!" you can already guess the answer.

IAmGraydon• 5 years ago

Even with a big year-end selloff, which I believe was mostly tax-driven

Wondering what big year-end selloff he’s talking about, given the fact that the SP500 just made a new all time high only days ago.

dundarious• 5 years ago

Presumably Musk

awsthro009456• 5 years ago

Financial markets are more than just the SP500. The sentence before that is talking about both stock markets and crypto markets. Crypto (BTC specifically, but also others) dropped ~30% in December.

LordFast• 5 years ago

And how much did crypto go up this year compared to S&P500?

danielmarkbruce• 5 years ago

tech stocks (outside FAANG) are way off highs. Most down 30-50%.

eulers_secret• 5 years ago

But that also means that it is on us who have benefitted the most to work harder and invest to address some of these troubling issues.

2021 was a bad year for me. My stocks didn't increase in value at all (bluechip tech), my house down-payment cash savings decreased in value by 20% (~$20K value just GONE in one year: That's two years of savings for me), my 15 year old car is too expensive to replace right now, and it's leaky/moldy. I've also been locked down in my comically small apartment for YEARS.

This upcoming year I am 100% NOT going to 'address troubling issues' or anything like it. I've fallen lower on Maslow's hierarchy than I have been since before I started my career. I'm going to try to increase my comp, and get into the "good side". People are making serious money during this pandemic, and I'm so jealous that I missed the boat. I could really use some gains to offset the absurd increase in housing/transportation costs, but it appears there's no relief on the horizon for me.

UncleMeat• 5 years ago

What tech companies were you invested in that were flat? The sector grew the fastest of any major sector.

luckman212• 5 years ago

Some pretty big names had a lackluster year. Amazon, Uber, Netflix... many others

oceanplexian• 5 years ago

But that also means that it is on us who have benefitted the most to work harder and invest to address some of these troubling issues. We are doing that with our first climate fund

I’m a bit disappointed with statements like this. “Here is what’s wrong with the world: Climate change and COVID”. It’s such a limited view of the world and unfortunately shared by most of my colleagues and friends, that will likely lead to a lot of suffering when we get punched in the face by a war or human rights tragedy.

For example, no mention of the biggest events in 2021 in “What happened in 2021”, such as the authoritarian and increasingly dangerous China dismantling democracy in Hong Kong, no mention of the complete takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in the Middle East. No mention of broken supply chain or the economic catastrophe we are facing, inflation, or the energy crisis in Europe.

While I’m a believer in combating Climate Change, there are real world crises happening right now that people should care about. Not in 10, 15, or 20 years… but standing up for them would take some personal conviction. Ah but hey, look on the bright side, at least crypto is up.

What Happened in 2021

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