Ask HN: Are you surprised how impotent technology has been with respect to Covid

No. As a young bioinformatician in industry who has to nearly beg for a salary greater than a PhD stipend for a skill set which would net +30-50% in other settings with more than a years experience and disproportionate responsibilities relative to colleagues(who all get paid equally or more for skills which are more widely available)... I'm trying to leave this field. As a whole I don't recommend it, and if it's not someone like me doing this work, then who is.

Technology has been very potent. WFH would be difficult to impossible without widespread networking. Home-delivered pasta would have been possible with a landline, but is still much easier today.

I'm not sure where you live but technology has been extremely potent where I live. We managed to lower one of the most rapidly growing pandemics from 4 digits a day new infections to one. And we also managed to safely get back into the new normal with no increase in new cases, drive back to the office, open malls, have gatherings.

A lot of this is via communication, daily press conferences, contact tracking, rapidly drafting new laws and emergency procedures. 10 years ago, we wouldn't have been able to effectively work from home. If we were at the tech levels 50 years ago, this would have been a disaster.

And if you think US/Brazil and so on are doing badly, they've still managed to flatten the curve and ramp up mass manufacturing. A lot of that was done via citizen campaigns, weeks before governments started to take action. Twitter may have saved thousands of lives.

The fact there are simultaneous vaccines entering final phases of testing as I'm typing this is breathtaking. These usually take years, decades even.

And Yes, I've really enjoyed getting my food selected, paid, and delivered from my phone.

what? no.