Nearly every person I talk to in the real world understands that COVID is about compromises rather than hypothetical extremist solutions.
Yet the media always wants to portray this as a war between two sides: The die-hard anti-vaxxers who refuse to do anything versus the totalitarian pro-lockdown people who want society to grind to a halt until the virus disappears. Yes, it’s true that if you go searching for them it’s not hard to find internet extremists who fall into either camp. They may even come out of the woodwork if you post the right bait on social media.
But in my experience, the vast majority of people in the real world are somewhere in the middle rather than gravitating to extremes. They understand that some measures are necessary, some risk is inevitable, and there are no magic billets. Yet everywhere I look we’re giving headlines and attention to the smaller minority of people who want everything to be an extremist, one-sided debate.
I want to challenge a detail. I have rarely heard anyone talk about total lockdown since the vaccine came out.
I hear about two groups. The people (1) who don't want to do anything (vaccines or mask) and who want to force life to go back to normal, and (2) the people who want businesses and schools to enforce mask wearing and and encourage vaccinations. And really, the second group is compromising, in my opinion.
This is disingenuous, Australia is in lockdown right now.
You know there are people who (3) want mandatory vaccinations, passports and those without to be lockdown, fired, etc and then (4) the other extreme, for non-vaccinated people to be thrown into the ovens.
(2) is the reasonable spot, but most people (social media) and politicians seem to be pushing (3).
All I know is that I'm starting graduate school in the fall, and I've found out most of my classes are going to be online, even though all students are required to be vaccinated.
And I'm really freaking pissed off about it.
We just can't do this forever. If you're vaccinated, you're more likely to die in a car crash than from COVID. So why aren't we shutting down the roads?
I would say "because roads don't spread incessantly," but they kinda do these days.
The problem people aren't thinking about too much, but should be, is that the longer it circulates, the more it can evolve to something far more dangerous. Delta is already a little worse than what we started with, and there's still a lot of leeway. It's going to be a lot harder to get the numbers down low enough that our hospitals aren't constantly full of people dying from Covid than a lot of people keep pretending. It didn't affect kids much before. Now Delta is here, and the hospitals are filled with kids suffering in ways we thought they wouldn't be a year ago.
People are already being turned away from hospitals for non-Covid emergencies like cancer treatments because the beds are full of people with severe Covid. It isn't personal. It affects the masses.
That's why we need to be strict about getting this out of the general global population. It's not a good time to be wishy-washy about whether it affects you personally or not.
SARS-CoV-2 is now endemic in the worldwide human population, plus some animal reservoirs. It will never get out of the general population no matter what we do. The most likely scenario is that the majority of us will eventually be infected. It's time to face reality and stop pretending there we can get rid of it. Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing deaths.
Regardless of what one believes, we have to slow it down enough that our hospitals aren't so overrun that other emergencies take a back seat. That is already happening in a lot of places. Every time Covid peaks, for that matter. And just giving in, saying "it's endemic, get used to it" just allows for further mutation.
Media companies make money entirely by selling ideas to you (this is what the "advertisement industry" is.) When you're scared and depressed its easiest to sell things to you or change your mind, unfortunately you're best off ignoring the news and any organizations that function that way (see also: google, facebook, reddit.)
This was the conclusion that Don Lemon of CNN (of all places) came to after interviewing covid patients in Louisiana. He said few people were antivaxers. Mostly just people who hadn't gotten around to getting the vaccine or were a little bit hesitant to get it and wanted to wait just a little bit longer to get it.
Yet the media always wants to portray this as a war between two sides: The die-hard anti-vaxxers who refuse to do anything versus the totalitarian pro-lockdown people who want society to grind to a halt until the virus disappears. Yes, it’s true that if you go searching for them it’s not hard to find internet extremists who fall into either camp. They may even come out of the woodwork if you post the right bait on social media.
But in my experience, the vast majority of people in the real world are somewhere in the middle rather than gravitating to extremes. They understand that some measures are necessary, some risk is inevitable, and there are no magic billets. Yet everywhere I look we’re giving headlines and attention to the smaller minority of people who want everything to be an extremist, one-sided debate.