By Springtime (in 45-60 days) we'll be at the one year mark, fatigued by masks, rules, shutdowns, and authoritarians, in general. The news will be tedious about how many are being vaccinated (it will be a lot) -- and, the weather will turn warmer.
Then, many/most will say _fuck it_, I'm taking my life back. I'm visualizing that day, and will welcome it.
I said "fuck it, I'm taking my life back" months ago. And then I realized how little that is possible.
How are you going to protest your way into a concert that isn't performing?
How are you going to demand your way into a university that isn't teaching?
How are you going to riot your way into a Disneyland that isn't running?
How are you going to force your way into a sports stadium that isn't playing?
How are you going to disobey your way onto a cruise ship that isn't sailing?
We are much more at the whim of our authoritarian overlords destroying everything joyful in life than we ever realized. We are no longer ever allowed to make personal risk management decisions.
> We are no longer ever allowed to make personal risk management decisions.
Your freedom borders with mine - you should be allowed to do EVERYTHING which doesn't affect others without their consent.
Ignoring COVID-19 precautionary measures isn't one of those things, and I am happy the joy-destroying authoritarian overlords took that choice from you.
That's just silly. By the same logic you could claim than no one should be allowed to drive cars, because an inattentive driver might kill you. If you're afraid then you're welcome to shelter in place alone for the rest of your life.
> you should be allowed to do EVERYTHING which doesn't affect others without their consent
People don't exist in vacuums. Nearly every decision you make is going to affect society somehow. If you decide to eat fast food for every meal and become obese, that isn't happening in a vacuum. Sooner or later you will start putting strain on the healthcare system and if enough people do the same, the "joy-destroying overlords" are going to start taxing sugar and fat (or other agency-limiting measures) to save you from yourself. Is that the world you want to live in - where the government has to increasingly limit everyone's agency in order to save more lives?
People can't do these things even WITH everyone's consent.
What if I and 500 of my friends want to have a comics convention? With everyone fully aware and accepting of any risks?
Nope, absolutely not allowed anywhere in the entire damn world.
It's right there in the US Constitution. "No law abridging the freedom of the people to peaceably assemble." It does not say "except in case of arbitrarily-declared forever-lasting so-called emergency." If you want it to say that, amend it. If such an amendment wouldn't pass, that's because it damn well shouldn't.
This is freedom-destroying authoritarianism, and the frightened sheep like you eat it up. This is where democracy breaks, if 51% of people want to lock down the other 49% forever, the other 49% are fucked forever.
If you fear contagion and think you need to stay away from me, that is on YOU to restrict YOUR activities. You do not get to restrict mine.
A higher number of people die of the flu and common cold every normal year because we don’t do lockdowns. Are you okay with that? Why or why not?
If not, then you must admit that, _of course_, increasing longevity to the absolute maximum possible extent should not be the only goal of public policy. And then it becomes clear that we’re talking about degrees. How many deaths are worth how much misery, suffering, and lost time among healthy people? Reasonable people can answer that question in different ways, but clearly the answer isn’t “zero”.
People should choose their own risk management decisions, not have a government forcibly do it for them. If you're concerned, you can choose to restrict yourself, but you have no business restricting me and any number of people that mutually wish to interact with me.
> We are no longer ever allowed to make personal risk management decisions.
Living life like there's no pandemic is not just personal risk, it's risk to other people and to society as a whole. If you don't understand that a year in, you're either not capable of understanding or you just don't care.
In a society many things we do expose others to some level of risk, even absent a pandemic. That risk obviously can't be zero. So please quantify the level of risk we should be allowed to create for others.
Obesity and heart disease have been killing far more people in the US than covid and yet Mcdonalds and Coke advertisements are everywhere inbetween television entertainment.
Also note obesity/heart disease are among the greatest risk factors of poor health outcomes for covid.
Why is there little to no mention of eating healthy and exercising in the government's health guidelines to combat this threat?
There are countless other examples of bureaucrats caring more about money and power than public health - while putting on the appearance of caring for public health. See also: the war on drugs.
Overeating and poor exercise only hurts yourself. The difference is that you going to a concert, contracting corona and passing it around our household/workplace may kill somebody completely unrelated to the initial risk vector, how would you feel if your neighbour eating McDonald’s directly affected your health?
Even before coronavirus, going to a concert, contracting influenza and passing it around could have killed someone. Influenza kills thousands every year, asymptomatic transmission is common, and the vaccine is only partially effective. COVID-19 is significantly more deadly but that's just a difference in degree; the same fundamentals still applied. So by your logic apparently concerts shouldn't have ever been permitted at all.
Corona is substantially more deadly, and long term effects can be permanent, it’s also in addition to the flu. By your logic we should just let corona run it’s course? You’re willing to let others die just so you can see a concert?
We can all ask ourself : How many time I would accept to be confined now to live one more day/week/month/year at the end of my life. Now we can use this ratio and apply it to our current choice to calibrate how much we stay confined.
Isn't it better to live life fully when we are young and healthy, than to hide inside our homes in hopes for an extremely small chance that we might have a little extra time when we are old and decrepit?
Seems like this ratio would vary greatly among such demographics.
>Overeating and poor exercise only hurts yourself.
Obese people are twice as likely to be hospitalized for covid.
When hospital beds are being overrun, someone elses life long decisions to disregard their own health does indeed affect other peoples health negatively.
Are you into apocalypses? There's the British quick-spreading strain, and there are the Brazilian and South African variants that the vaccine does not offer good protection against. I predict that COVID will be like Picardy Fever, not like the Spanish Flu - there will be outbreaks every few years here and there.
The apocalypse scenario is unlikely with the population having some resistance to the virus after vaccination even if new variants possibly render the vaccine less effective. We obviously do not have enough data yet to understand the vaccine's efficacy against these new strains but a lot of scientists are saying it will be "good enough" while we work on vaccines to handle the variants.
If this thing can basically be treated no differently than the common cold once vaccinated by most people and in the outliers something a little worse there will be no popular support to continue draconian lock down measures.
The goal is to stop the bleeding. The patient is on the floor right now and haemorrhaging liters blood. We want to stabilize the patient and let them get on with their life as quickly as possible. We cannot let perfect be the enemy of "Good Enough" here.
Agreed. Hospital overflows is the main issue - and we know that things are far worse in winter than in summer. Come May things will be heading back to normal, and hospital collapse won’t be the concern it was this year come next October due to widespread vaccination.
At least in the west, global logistics of vaccination seem to have collapsed. We need to, as a species, get on top of vaccine rollout for next time. It’s delayed at the moment because we didn’t make enough vials over summer FFS.
Global eradication of diseases is very hard, because there are lots of areas that don’t have much money or government capacity to dedicate to disease control. Developed countries have brought quite a few diseases to near-extinction within their borders; tuberculosis is the obvious comparison, given the similarity in symptoms, transmissibility, and vaccine efficacy.
You'd be surprised with respect to tuberculosis. We use a vaccine developed 100 years ago, a vaccine which actually doesn't really work in adults (and immunity from the vaccine gets lost by adulthood), and antibiotic resistant strains are only becoming more prevalent.
Then, many/most will say _fuck it_, I'm taking my life back. I'm visualizing that day, and will welcome it.