Thread by @AlexandraErin

"We have to learn how to live with the virus!"

Okay. Masks on, lather up, keep your distance, shut things down, cancel gatherings, be careful.

"No. We have to learn how to LIVE WITH it."

Payments to everyone to keep things afloat?

"No. LIVE WITH it."

...do you mean die?

"We lose thousands to the flu every year!"

Yeah, and that's with a robust but not perfect or universal vaccination effort, education, and a few simple, sensible mitigation attempts. A completely uncontrolled flu season would be terrifying.

Imagine if we *did* start wearing masks and keeping our distance during flu season. Imagine if we'd all been washing and sanitizing our hands sufficiently all along.

Imagine how much lower those flu numbers could have been this whole time.

Imagine if people could take time off from work when they get sick without losing pay, their jobs, and their homes. Imagine how much lower those flu numbers could have been this whole time.

"Thousands die from flu every year!" is a reason to take a novel virus seriously. We see what a virus can do when we are vaccinating and when we're "living with" it anyway.

The flu death toll isn't an argument to take coronavirus less seriously. Maybe we should take flu more so?

"We could just protect the vulnerable!"

We don't know who "the vulnerable" are. There are some broad statistical trends but the world is not divided into "vulnerable" and "invulnerable" by some objective measurement.

The best way to protect vulnerable populations is to prevent as much growth and spread of the virus as possible. Every new hotspot, every spike, every superspreader event... that's more angles of attack for the virus to reach people it can kill. Or severely impair.