I'm just curious, does anyone actually think that they won't, at some point, get Covid?
I sincerely hope I don't get it. I know several people that have had it and they had a terrible time with it though they have mostly recovered. One may have permanent heart damage. Keep in mind, for everyone that dies from it, about 10 people will have lasting health problems from it. It's not a binary "die or don't die" situation. It appears the vaccines are doing well in early testing in terms of raising an immune response, and it appears likely that early next year a vaccine can be widely deployed, if scaled up trials show good safety and prove efficacy in preventing infection or reducing severity of illness (the first trials simply looked at antibody generation and so could say nothing about efficacy)
I mean it's out there, masks may or may not slow it down, but they won't stop it.
Actually masks reduce the relative likelihood of spreading it from infected people to others, by trapping droplets from infected people, and doing so reduces the R (reproduction) value. If we all mask up and reduce risky behaviors (e.g. bars, parties without proper distancing) we can bring the R value below 1, which means every day there will be fewer infected people and eventually we get to just mop-up mode like most of Europe is right now, with few infected people out there an strong tracing to keep potentially infected people from infecting others. We can win in the short term and keep most of the economy open if we just do basic things like this.
This stuff was found alive and well on surfaces of a cruise ship 17 days after it had been evacuated.
Wrong, it was detected on surfaces by PCR tests looking for the viral RNA. It is unlikely that the virus remains infectious very long. Though detectable by PCR, it is unlikely to be still able to cause infection after hours to a few days at most. The viral particle, to be active, needs its capsule intact and this part of it breaks down easily on its own over time when dry or on exposure to light.
Obviously masks won't help, and could possibly even aid in (messing with your mask after touching something) surface contamination. This virus is out there. We can stop it about like we stop the flu or a common cold.
Masks have been shown to help all over the world. It's true you have to take care in handling the masks. Most places in Asia have less problems than us with flu and colds because people either sick or potentially sick (like, living with a person with a flu) will wear a mask when in public. Hopefully this will become the norm in the US. It is already becoming the norm in Europe according to some of my colleagues that live there.
About half of us won't ever even know we were infected, we may be infected now or already have been.
True. Something like 40% of infections appear to be asymptomatic. A few more percent may be infectious but pre-symptomatic.
Most of the other half may show some symptoms of varying degree, and then recover, while a few may succumb to the effects of the virus and leave this earth. But that happens everyday, from something. Hell covid might kill me in a week or two, or I might choke on a chicken bone this evening.
Watch out for the chicken bone my friend, but your odds with COVID-19 are much worse than with dinner.
So, for every 100 people infected with the virus (infections, not cases!!), something like 1 % of them die based on data to date. Estimates I've seen range from 0.5% go 1.5%, largely based on the subject pool. The CASE fatality rate last time I looked was 4% or so, but remember that's a number that depends on how many people are being discovered (tested/diagnosed) and so will vary widely from place to place. But generally speaking, if you are infected you've got a 40% chance of not even knowing it, and a 1% chance of dying. But let's say you get infected... dying isn't the only bad outcome. You might feel awful for a few weeks as is typical. You might need to go into a hospital for a protracted stay. You might need to have a tube down your throat. All of these happen MUCH MORE FREQUENTLY than dying. And even after you recover, it's now being understood that systemic cardiovascular damage is common, which means your heart and or lungs may not work as well as before for months, years, or even permanently. Something like 10% of cases being followed (cases, not infections) show long term or likely permanent damage. Yuk.
They are now starting to say that once you've had covid, you may lose immunity after a few months.
This may be true. It's also possible that some degree of immunity persists, and you could get it again after months, but a more mild case. It's too early to tell.
So unless you are not only willing to get a vaccine, you may need to get it every 3 months, and you may be better protected, assuming the virus doesn't develop a strain the vaccine won't work against. I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer, I'm just being real.
The immunity raised by the vaccine is likely more potent and longer lasting than that from having the disease, based on the mechanisms involved. Only clinical studies will tell us this for sure, but it is reasonable to think that a vaccine might provide a degree of protection for at least a year.
We will most likely all get this at some point, and we will most likely be fine. Creating this type of panic just seems to me like creating a panic over swimming, eating, driving, flying, walking, running, or any of the millions of other things we do every day that has the potential to kill us.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Sorry to shout, but his is just completely bad reasoning. So far in the US we've had more that 4M cases and probably 40M people have been infected at some point, so an estimated 12% of the US has been infected. This has been going on mostly since March in terms of numbers, so we are about 5 months in and about 5-8 months away from the availability of mass vaccinations. It's gone exponential again here, rising in most states and severely so in a half dozen. By masking and avoiding high risk activities we can bring it under control. Remember the infections we've had so far have resulted in close to 150k deaths already; anything we can do to minimize the spread saves a lot of lives. None of the other activities you mention has something like a 1% death rate from doing the activity, either individually or cumulatively over a course of months.
It's a personal choice for me, but I'd rather live my life without fear, and enjoy all the moments I can. Heck with my luck, I could wear a mask, go through 16 bottles of hand sanitizer a day and stay home and never leave and a gas pipe would develop a leak and I'd die in a fiery death anyway.
We can die at any moment for sure, but let's not play with matches near the propane filling station, ok?
If we as a country can keep it to 200k deaths before mass vaccination, isn't that better than 300k? or 400k? We have the ability to improve our outcome by doing simple things while keeping most of the economy open.
Just assuming we can't have much of an effect and we're all destined to get it is very dangerous. We CAN and MUST take practical measures to stem the tide.
Not doing so condemns hundreds of thousands of US people to death needlessly. We ignored this thing long enough early on and now are the world's poster child for a botched response. Let's not make it worse than it needs to be.
Now that's post-COVID normal.
So I can't argue with that, lol 
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