The first response to Covid was totally out of measure in my opinion
Inconveniencing boomers consuming their sit-in restaurant treats until they started blockading hospitals and breaking into government buildings until those inconveniences were rolled back was "out of measure?"
Death is not the only negative outcome from Covid infection. When you consider the literature on Covid causing grey matter loss, prion disease, chronic vasculitis, cardiac disease, autoimmune disease, etc, you could argue death is actually one of the preferred outcomes.
Immunity isn’t an on/off switch and the virus is mutating to escape immune detection. It seems like you do not have a solid grasp on the kinetics of vaccine and viral immunity, is there a question I can answer for you or would you like some resources that might help improve your comprehension?
I’m extra freaked that now Covid is endemic in the deer populations because Cervid Wasting Disease is also endemic and I’m afraid they will interact somehow…
I blame the combination of how over-hyped the (real) issue of Y2K was combined with how successfully we handled it (partly because everyone was so worked up about it) leading to the (common issue for IT professionals) take away of "well nothing went wrong, why did we put all that effort into trying to stop something going wrong?" for no small part of why people weren't as willing to try to stop/minimise Covid as they otherwise might have been (of course it was always going to be a harder sell as Y2K mostly required from the general public that they don't have a tantrum about organisations paying professionals to fix the problem directly whereas Covid required the general public to follow the advice of the professionals in taking action in their own lives.)
That's not how any of the COVID vaccines were reported to work. No such thing as total immunity.
The virus is deadly depending on what conditions are met (underlying risk factors, etc.). Not all of those conditions are obvious or well-studied, so it always seemed to me like a lottery who gets killed by the virus.
Furthermore, I don't believe the article is fearmongering. As I said in a separate comment, it's more like "hey, there might be a bit of an outbreak in some places this flu season, so keep some N95s on hand just in case numbers go up." I HIGHLY doubt we would see another shutdown.
Chicken pox? Pretty much one and done. COVID? Falls off rapidly after 3 months, whether you catch it or get the vaccine
Plus, every mutation is a dice roll on how much existing immunity will apply. It could be exactly the same as the last strain, or the old immunity might not help at all
covid exposure exacerbates my disability. my immune system freaks out and gives me months of debilitating migraines - it's had me more or less stuck in bed for 6 months at this point. another exposure would cost me my wfh job. and that's without infection - just exposure. pretending covid is over throws people like me under the bus.
Because it generates clicks (and thus revenue) for media conglomerates. Capitalism baby, let's take all that anxiety and depression and turn it into some instant cash!
I am anti-capitalist, yeah - which far-right talking points am I repeating? Obviously I'm not perfect and we're all susceptible to propaganda etc. so if you can point out what it is I've written that seems to support the far-right it would be very helpful!
I've not got anything against people wearing masks, clearly it's helpful for reducing the spread of COVID, flu, etc. - I wrote elsewhere in this thread that I think it would be good to see people wearing masks more commonly around flu season as well.
I do think the article is sensationalist, though - it implies that there is broad scientific consensus that masks should be mandated again, but when you read it, it's just a single tweet containing the opinion that it's a good idea to wear a mask if you're going to be in a crowded place.
What generates clicks?
Sensationalist, anxiety-inducing headlines from news websites - particularly ones which desperately want COVID (or some other pandemic) to return in force. Do you remember all of the media frenzy around monkeypox a few months ago? That's a really good example. There's this pervasive sense that the press are almost hoping for some horrible new pandemic or for COVID to mutate in a way that makes it much more virulent, just so that they can get more clicks.
To answer your question, while you didn't say it outright, your response makes a likely inference to be that you believe COVID reporting was overblown to generate revenue.
That is the far-right taking point they are most likely referring to.
The number of hospitalizations and deaths is a statistic that was tracked and the far-right lead a campaign to discredit those statistics. Later, the far-right lead a campaign to say that vaccination should have resulted in full immunity, which it was never reported to do, in an effort to discredit scientists and make their followers feel validated in their decision to not vaccinate.
I don’t believe that reporting about the pandemic was overblown at the time that the pandemic was a public health crisis, actually I believe it was underreported, quite significantly.
However, I believe that the combination of the huge uncertainty, people desperately trying to keep up to date, people being off work or working from home, the huge amount of conversation around COVID news stories, etc. that the news websites got an unprecedented amount of traffic, clicks and revenue, and since that has tapered off, they’re basically like an addict desperate for a fix. They’ll present any minor COVID news, no matter how inconsequential, as a far bigger issue than it really is.
I don’t really believe that COVID will make a resurgence, but if it does, I’ll be there encouraging people to wear a mask. But I’m not gonna freak out and declare a state of emergency because a researcher tweeted some toilet thought.
The pushback against the perfectly sensible responses to the pandemic was orchestrated by far-right political entities as a way to rally their supporters against "the oppressive left-wing/liberal agenda to control and exploit you!".
Old media is already dead. This is new media - clickbait, virally sharable on social media, completely baseless, head-empty journalism. It's very successful, sadly. Get an ad-blocker, start ignoring these websites as much as you can, use archive.is instead of directly linking to their websites, don't share articles, take everything written on them with a huge mound of salt. Do everything you can to stop their spread, and do everything you can to support real journalism.