One view on dealing with the coronavirus is that we have to learn to live with it. What does "live with it" mean to you?

live with it to me means stop discriminating against people who arent vaccinated and get on with your own life.

Trust your own vaccination to keep you safe and take your own precautions without being overly concerned about everyone else. Stop listening to the fear mongering and go outside.

It’s not only completely wrong, as we simply cannot live with those viruses, no, it’s also very egocentric and inconsiderate behavior, because there are are people outside who don’t want to live with the viruses and prefer a complete zero Covid strategy instead, like me for example. So how dare you to force me into living with potentially deadly viruses?

Australia's trying out this approach, aren't they? They're just "letting it rip" through communities and states hoping for what, herd immunity? We'll see if it works.

Assuming Covid whittles down to something akin to the flu, then well, just be smart and cautious when you're leaving the house. Try not to touch your face after touching a public surface or sanitize them first. Carry a pocket size hand sanitizer in your bag for quick access. Wear a mask while in indoor public spaces, especially if it's crowded. Walk or bike to your destination if possible. Stay home if you're ill. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. Basically, just be sensible when you're outside and be mindful of others. These lockdowns, SoE's, border restrictions etc. have all proven that they don't stop the virus from spreading so just follow protocol, get vaccinated if you're medically able to, follow the quarantine rules etc. etc. and go about your life. It's a new normal; we just have to deal with it.

Doing things differently. Doing more things at home. Working, Studying and Working out all from home when possible. Basically not going back to the old normal.

It means taking the vaccine as recommended and accepting the science.

@purple_depressed_bacon sums it up very well, but NOT behaving like @Blacklabel wants us to. Then the vast majority of us WILL feel comfortable to eat and drink out, travel and get on with as much as normal. Pleased for you @Aly Rustom, bur personally can't think of anything worse. I like my social life.

To me it means living as I did before the pandemic, while taking care of my health to naturally reinforce my immunity with natural exposures to pathogens, while having access to diverse home treatment options if I ever have symptoms.

To me it means living as I did before the pandemic, while taking care of my health to naturally reinforce my immunity with natural exposures to pathogens, while having access to diverse home treatment options if I ever have symptoms.

This is false. There is no evidence you were alive before the pandemic, and the consensus among all institutions is that natural exposure to pathogens provides no immunity whatsoever.

but NOT behaving like @Blacklabel wants us to.

so keep discriminating against people, but dont take your own precautions, dont trust your own vaccine to protect you, listen to the fear mongering and dont go outside?

maybe you didnt bother to read what I said if you are for the opposite of it?

Just like living with any other Virus or Bacteria sharing this planet with us form the start.

so keep discriminating against people, but dont take your own precautions, dont trust your own vaccine to protect you, listen to the fear mongering and dont go outside?

maybe you didnt bother to read what I said if you are for the opposite of it?

Exactly!

Live in a society with the coronavirus.

To me, it means the virus falling to a level where it does not impact society.

My definition of this is where there is no risk of hospitals being jammed full of people with a disease that can be avoided with masks and vaccines, and going back to doing cancer screenings, hip replacements, cataract operations, delivering babies people now feel safe having, etc. etc. like before. So long as Covid carries a serious risk of filling every ICU bed to the detriment of other sick people, we're going to have to take steps to mitigate it.

Treating it as we do flu. Get a jab when appropriate. Carry on as normal. Work normally, shop normally, go on holiday normally. No homeprisonment, no border blocks, no quarantine. Two year moral panic (as we had with BSE and HIV) ends.

People have always died of flu, of Hepatitis and of other virus. Some will die of this one.

China may wish to go the full North Korea. That's their choice. Can't see it working out well.

I just don’t like your comparison with naturally developing and us surrounding other bacteria, viruses, like flu etc. This one has been or still is extinguishable, avoidable, semi artificial or men-made, a result of human research or even more. Of course we all have to accept and to live with those other , natural viruses , that exist aeons longer than us. But this special one has been unnecessarily added as an additional and avoidable burden. That’s why I have a problem with accepting and living with it, no, in contrary, I demand more efforts to stop further spreading and to implement measures directed to extinction of them, the earlier the better and more probable. I really wonder what has been done all the two years…obviously nothing at all.

There is no reason why we should live with the virus. There are enough vaccines helping us not to get severely sick, masks and social distancing help us not to get infected and the narrative "get it and get through" has been proved nonsense with every new virus variant.

Get your vaccine shot, booster when time is due, wear masks and keep a distrance. That's the only way to control the epidemic.

Not getting vaccines, not wearing masks and not keeping a distance will encourage the virus to develop more variants, probably a more nasty one.

Living with that one could mean dying with it.

*distance - wish we could have 60 seconds of mending after posting...

What does "live with it" mean to you?

Not having any more state of emergencies due to corona, be they quasi or not

It means accepting the risk of possible infection of a virus that can most likely will be life changing after contraction. With symptoms and possible negative effects on different organs and bodily system functions throughout your body. With the real possibility of lowering your overall life expectancy.

It means get a vaccine or natural immunity.

@Reckless - there is a third option, sadly, which is death.

o me it means living as I did before the pandemic, while taking care of my health to naturally reinforce my immunity with natural exposures to pathogens, while having access to diverse home treatment options if I ever have symptoms.

@Raw Beer - you display the pseudoscience prevalent in much of the vaccine-sceptic community. "Immunity" is acquired in one of two ways - either through a vaccine or through catching COVID. The latter may be fatal. However, neither actually makes you immune to future infections, just reduces the chance of future infections.

There is no reason why we should live with the virus. There are enough vaccines helping us not to get severely sick, masks and social distancing help us not to get infected and the narrative "get it and get through" has been proved nonsense with every new virus variant.

Get your vaccine shot, booster when time is due, wear masks and keep a distrance. That's the only way to control the epidemic.

@RonriiUrufu - we will never erradicate COVID-19. The only hope is that it mutates into a harmless variant, but we can have not certainty about this. As such we will have to live with it.

Despite saying that we don't have to live with it, you then give various ways in which to live with it - masks, social distancing etc.

Personally, assuming that it doesn't go away, I would rather accept a slightly higher risk than live the rest of my life with restrictions. Tuberculosis used to be endemic, yet we didn't mask and socially distance. With vaccines available, I think that we should go back to normal. Sadly it will pose an increased risk to the elderly and a number of the anti-vaxxers, but that is something we will have to live with.

We can live with this virus without any restrictions - we were already getting close to that point with delta. The UK already lifted all restrictions in July and cases levelled off around 30,000 per day with deaths hovering around 150/day - that was with Delta. Those deaths were mainly among COVID-naive patients - no doubt those numbers would continue to decrease as those people that refused vaccination either gained natural immunity through exposure to COVID or died of it. Compare that to the 200-300 deaths per day that you would typically see at the peak of the flu season. Omicron threw a spanner in the works as it terrified people with its much higher transmissibility and unknown virulence. However, we are now seeing that it quite significantly less severe than delta and even with cases absolutely rocketing in the UK, we did not see a corresponding increase in severe cases and deaths. This big peak will pass leaving behind even more immunity. New variants will emerge, but considering that Omicron's increase in transmissibility and decrease in virulence were mechanistically reverse sides of the same coin, it is less likely that the virus will be able to achieve both at the same time. We don't need to worry about immunity to infection, only to serious disease and both the current vaccines and infection-induced immunity are holding up in this respect even across variants - even the currently endemic coronaviruses have now been show to offer some degree of immunity to COVID. If we could handle 200-300 deaths per day in the flu season without any restrictions then I don't see why we can't handle 100-150 a day with COVID. We just need to stop freaking out about it.

Endemic Covid: Is the pandemic entering its endgame? - BBC News

the 200-300 deaths per day that you would typically see at the peak of the flu season

Where are you getting your stats from? In 2018 (ie pre-Covid) the UK had 1598 deaths from flu. If the flu season is three months in winter, we’re talking 15-20 deaths per day, not 200-300.

Where are you getting your stats from? In 2018 (ie pre-Covid) the UK had 1598 deaths from flu. If the flu season is three months in winter, we’re talking 15-20 deaths per day, not 200-300.

OK, so the 200-300 deaths per day was for a worse than average flu season and for the days in the middle of the flu season but we've never had any restrictions in place even at the peaks of the worst flu seasons. The number came from the BBC website link I tried to attach to my post, but obviously it isn't possible to post hyperlinks, so please search for the article by the title. Most of what I wrote in my post is repeated therein. The 150 deaths a day we were seeing in the UK having lifted all restrictions were higher than we would like, but again most of those were due to people who chose to not get vaccinated and would eventually come down as people gained natural immunity due to inevitable eventual infection. We also have highly effective antivirals coming through which would bring down that number further - the 15-20 deaths per day you mentioned (an average for a pretty mild flu season TBH) is likely not completely out of reach, especially with the less virulent omicron variant and the other points I made.

What does ‘living with’ it mean?

Think ‘ virulent flu variety’ without stirred up naïve paranoia we live with now.

It means stop whining and complaining about Japan.