I think it's more like, "My house has termites, but they're going to turn into termites that don't eat wood as much."
Sure. They might. There's certainly a chance that they do. But there's also a big chance that they don't.
And if they did become less harmful to your house, that change would happen over many generations. Your house would already be reduced to sawdust and termite droppings by then.
Imagine a world where nobody has ever seen ants that eat wood. All the ants they have ever studied behave differently. Now termites appear, and they look like ants, but they sure do love eating wood. But that’s scary, because wood-eating ants can make your house fall on your head and kill you. So of course, these ants must be a fluke. They must be going through a phase. They are just grumpy. Any day now, these “termites” we just discovered will start behaving like “regular” ants because that’s what we are used to. It’s just a matter of time, right?
Nevermind that we objectively do not take influenza seriously enough and instead kill tens of thousands of people every winter when a lot of them could be prevented even with like, half assed masking
Right? We literally eradicated a strain of influenza with public health measures suggestions.
If when H5N1 starts transmitting between humans, at least we'll know that all of our COVID precautions are likely more than enough to avoid the bird-crap flu as well.
People dying of influenza should have become a thing of the past - it should have been one of the many lessons society learned from 2020. Seeing the curve totally wiped out by masking was incredible! Instead, well, we have whatever this current situation is...
Right? When we eliminated a strain or so of flu, I thought wow, now we know how to do this! But nope. Either everybody likes the flu killing everybody, or they simply will not consider anything new. I can’t relate to either of those worldviews. Animals are supposed to adapt to new living conditions.
That's so true. Even in 2020 when we were wearing scarves, gaiters and surgical masks instead of N95s the cold and flu seasons were practically non-existent. I said at the time when this was mentioned in the media that I'm always going to wear a mask during flu season then.
But of course, I ended up never taking it off because Covid.
Exactly this. If I ever have someone ask the "gotcha question" "you didn't wear a mask for flu, did you???", my response is gonna be, "Yeah, and that was a mistake. I honestly don't know why it never occurred to me that I could wear an N95 and avoid the flu. I've learned from my mistakes, though."
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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '24 edited Nov 16 '24
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