Brin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brin_bellway) wrote2022-03-21 01:14 pm
brin_bellway) wrote2022-03-21 01:14 pm
And today in "our suffering is not inevitable"
[cw: illness]
Breaking news: "First influenza case in Waterloo Region for the 2021-2022 season"
The first known case! It's *late March* and we're *just now* having the *first* known case!
We don't have to have a perpetual influenza pandemic anymore. We have the capacity, not yet to *eradicate* it, but at least to render it non-endemic-in-rich-countries. Any country whose residents can afford a steady supply of N95-or-above filters, those residents can collectively *choose not to have* an influenza epidemic that winter.
They're not gonna *do* it, of course. People aren't that motivated, not enough of them to form a critical mass anyway. But there *are* many more starfish in the proverbial ocean now, and also I *do* have hope that we won't see another 2009, where we have an *extra* bad influenza pandemic and people just shrug and go "welp, a lot of people are gonna die and a lot of people are gonna get Long Flu (this happened to my brother's Cub Scout co-leader in 2009!) and a lot of people are gonna suffer horribly for a week or two, but whaddaya gonna do". People carry a pandemic playbook in their minds now, and a bad enough plague may yet convince them to break the measures back out.
Breaking news: "First influenza case in Waterloo Region for the 2021-2022 season"
The first known case! It's *late March* and we're *just now* having the *first* known case!
We don't have to have a perpetual influenza pandemic anymore. We have the capacity, not yet to *eradicate* it, but at least to render it non-endemic-in-rich-countries. Any country whose residents can afford a steady supply of N95-or-above filters, those residents can collectively *choose not to have* an influenza epidemic that winter.
They're not gonna *do* it, of course. People aren't that motivated, not enough of them to form a critical mass anyway. But there *are* many more starfish in the proverbial ocean now, and also I *do* have hope that we won't see another 2009, where we have an *extra* bad influenza pandemic and people just shrug and go "welp, a lot of people are gonna die and a lot of people are gonna get Long Flu (this happened to my brother's Cub Scout co-leader in 2009!) and a lot of people are gonna suffer horribly for a week or two, but whaddaya gonna do". People carry a pandemic playbook in their minds now, and a bad enough plague may yet convince them to break the measures back out.