Yale Sociologist Nick Christakis: COVID-19 Will Reshape Humanity | Amanpour and Company https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZhr8Hz03jY
Dec 21, 2021
With Omicron on the rise, what might next year have in store? Nicholas Christakis is director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale University and author of the bestseller "Apollo’s Arrow." He speaks with Hari Sreenivasan about the next phase of the pandemic.
Nicholas Christakis: How To End the Covid Pandemic Nick Gillespie | 11.10.2021 https://reason.com/podcast/2021/11/10/nicholas-christakis-how-to-end-the-covid-pandemic/ Misinformation and bad policy can only be defeated by robust, open debate in the public square.
All respiratory pandemics follow a script, one that's as much social and political as it is medical or epidemiological, says Yale sociologist and medical doctor Nicholas Christakis, who has just released a new paperback edition of his authoritative book, Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live. He remarked on the Covid-19 pandemic’s catastrophic impacts. This is a $16 trillion virus; “$8 trillion of damage to our economy…and $8 trillion of damage because of the death, disability, and illness the virus caused us,” said Christakis. “It’s like going to every family of four in this country and taking away $200,000 from them.” He argues that the economic ramifications are inevitable and apart from government restrictions; “economies need social interaction” and that ceases during pandemics. “It’s not we who are causing our economy to collapse. It’s the virus.” ..
He made predictions about the remaining timeline of this pandemic. Christakis explained that this “beginning phase” of the Covid-19 pandemic will last into 2022. By this time, “everyone in our country, probably everyone on the planet…will either be infected with the germ or be vaccinated…No one will escape.”
The next phase will be ushered in via herd immunity. The timing of this will be complicated by the unpredictability of variants. When we eventually enter this “intermediate phase”, we will find that we have been “devastated” and are left to “clean up the clinical, social, and psychological destruction” in the pandemic’s wake. Virus-related disability, gaps in children’s education, grief, job loss, higher taxes, and inflation are just some of the Covid-induced issues we will all need to deal with during this period.
“In addition to the moral and economic rationale, we have an epidemiological rationale,” he posited. “To the extent that other parts of the world are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, they are like petri dishes for the emergence for new, dangerous strains of the virus that will inevitably reach our shores.”
He concluded by arguing that “plagues offer new challenges and new opportunities.” Christakis finished on an optimistic note with a quotation from Albert Camus. “What we learn in time of pestilence: there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”
Afshine Emrani MD FACC (@afshineemrani) Tweeted:
@RWMaloneMD What I'm seeing with #Omicron.
1) Everyone will be exposed in next few weeks.
2) Almost everyone gets a mild form of common cold. Trivial hospitalization. Trivial oxygenation needed.
3) Omicron replaces Delta.
4) Omicron acts as a natural vaccine, Herd immunity.
4) End pandemic. https://twitter.com/afshineemrani/status/1473398842334744576?s=20
Comment: About omicron: I wanted to know if there is science on when and the conditions under which a virus becomes endemic before another strain hits to make it a vaccine like virus!!
I mean if we need for it to spread.. then all young healthy people should party till the new year