I think cases will continue to rise as itâs summer and there is a massive amount of socializing and partying going on, especially in tourist spots like Florida and California. I wouldnât be surprised if we get to 100-200k cases a day within the next month and then see a decline in the following months. Just like every other surge that lasts a few months and then declines. We could see 1k deaths per day at some point over that 1-2 time period.
The question is can you stop that happening, and the answer is you cannot. How do you stop young people socializing during the summer? There is no way restrictions will be reimposed, other than maybe closing indoor bars or nightclubs on a local level. The pressure is to vaccinate those that are reluctant.
I would expect at least that in terms of case numbers and deaths. Iâd venture it could be a very conservative estimate given that the UK has seen x 25 case growth since they bottomed out, while the US has only recently begun its Delta case rise and was still seeing 200 deaths a day at that bottoming out point.
Even if it topped out at the figures you predict, that shows how much of a threat Covid still is, surely?
In the US I donât think you will stop young people socialising, the individualism is too burned into people.
But the real problem in the US is the all out war on vaccines from right wing media and politics. Itâs insane. Such a war on reality is a demonstration of how civilisations collapse.
No, itâs more of an age thing. A sizable percentage of the 18-40 demographic do not believe Covid represents a serious threat to them, and even if it is a threat they also see risk from the vaccines and do not see a clear advantage of vaccine over disease. That attitude is certainly more prevalent among younger less educated males that vote Republican, but thereâs also about a third of young Democrats who are also not planning to get vaccinated. I donât think the latter group are influenced by right wing media.
I donât see any threat of civilization collapsing because young healthy people are not getting vaccinated and getting Covid. At the end of the day it is up to them, they are the ones willing to take the risk.
Of course itâs a factor for the subset of people who pay attention to right wing media. The biggest factor though is people in the 18-40 age bracket do not see Covid as a serious threat to them, and thatâs based on the reality of seeing lots of people in that age bracket get infected and have no or mild symptoms. Covid has been very prevalent among young people in the US since summer 2020 as for a sizable number they simply donât care about contracting it.
Thereâs roughly 70 million people in the US in the 18-40 age bracket that have not had Covid, and 40% of them are reluctant to take a vaccine, so letâs say 30 million. The split is around 60:40 Republican voters to Democrat voters, so 12 million young Democrats are vaccine resistant.
Are you saying that 12 million young Democrats are vaccine resistant because of right wing media? Thatâs an extraordinary claim.
Yes I think the disinformation of right wing media, because it is so insistent, so relentless and so amplified, is very pervasive and unfortunately sometimes persuasive even for some people who are not themselves naturally right wing. In this country I think there is a cohort of young women who are concerned abut being vaccinated because they perceive it could affect their fertility, stuff like that. It would be ludicrous to suggest all of them are far right but the disinformation and fear mongering that is creating that fear is coming from overwhelmingly right wing sources.
In Britain there is a thing where quite lot of people from ethnic minorities are reluctant to be vaccinated and again the disinformation that is causing this phenomenon is coming from overwhelmingly right wing sources even if the majority of victims are not right wing. People of colour in the UK are very often, and understandably, distrustful of government, because government in Britain has a long record of being systematically biased against them. Right-wing disinformation sets out to exploit this understandable distrust by painting vaccines as a tool of government control.
Like all good conspiracy theories, it starts with a grain of truth and extrapolates something much bigger and completely untruthful from it.
I would venture this phenomenon is very much at play in the US as well and I think itâs definitely certainly strongly at play in Eastern Europe.
People are entitled to believe what they want to believe. Often, what they believe is flat out wrong. What is certainly true is that being vaccinated significantly reduces the risk of health complications for younger people and shows societal solidarity, because societies cannot escape this problem in any sort of orderly way without mass vaccination.
Itâs absolutely undeniable that the US faces a massive right-wing disinformation war that is steadily undermining and destabilising its society. Britain faces similar. Many or most countries face similar. This right-wing disinformation war is an existential threat to democracy and any sort of decent liberal society anywhere. It needs to be defeated, routed - but until people come to terms with the fact it is actually happening, it will eat away at societies like a virulent cancer, until societies collapse.
Whatâs interesting is that some governments across Europe are introducing more restrictions on non vaccinated people, and some are even introducing additional rewardsbfor getting vaccinated, and the reason is more to do with encouraging take up where it is low ahead of the winter. Countries with low take up are fucked come winter.
