Sure, this is a general problem with finite limited resources that are collectively owned. The more you have, the less I get. When demand exceeds the supply, harm is unavoidable. And yes we should do what we can to drive down the demand, but I don't see what that has to do with forcing restrictions on people that are not at risk?
This deadly pandemic is not deadly for everyone.
People over 50 make up 1/3 of the population but 93% of covid deaths. I imagine this number is roughly proportional for hospitalizations by the same age groups. We can do some handwavy math and say if everyone under 50 was unvaccinated, they would only ever take up 7% of ICU beds.
Is 7% the difference between collapse or not? "One size fits all" doesn't make sense.
Further, I'm so confident I will never get sick and be hospitalized with covid that I'm happy to forgo my right to an ICU bed. Thus I'm decoupled from the dilemma. Or at least in an ideal world I would be able to make that choice. This was my assessment the first time I got covid, and now I likely have some level of immunity, so I'm even more confident now.
And as far as your hospital scenarios go, my point is we haven't seen the things you describe materialize. I'm sure there are a handful of cases, which is a tragedy, but if it's marginal then we shouldn't hold it up as a liminal crisis like we have been.
> Yes, we need to take the good of others into account. Like it or not we live in a society and our actions impact others.
Tell me the magic number for risk tolerance. If everyone self-quarantined from driving, and we switched to a delivery only economy, we could drastically reduce the number of motor vehicle fatalities. Do we not owe that to the greater good? What about for climate change? We should continue living like we did in 2020 forever.
> Collective action is what works.
It always works when your leaders are competent and have your best interests in mind. My country doesn't even recognize natural immunity, which I envy the UK for.
But free choice works too. Look at Florida, Sweden, people will still choose the vaccine. You don't need a mandate.
> If your main concern right now is the "freedom" ...
I can't believe the "vaccinated" are completely unconcerned by the trends regarding freedom right now.
You know its not an either/or situation, you can be concerned about both, right?
Look at Howard Springs Australia. Look at the vaccine passports. Look at the thread you're posting in. You probably think you're exempt. But immunity wanes, and variants will continue to emerge.
Governments never relinquish their emergency powers once they're enacted. This is just the latest "WMDs in Iraq". I can't speak for the UK, but in the US we still have the patriot act, and we just recently pulled out of Afghanistan.
20 years later we still live under the boogeyman of terrorism. Imagine if all the money we put into the war on terror went into better healthcare and other social goods?
All of this is to say, I don't have absolute trust in the vaccine or the plan or the people in charge, I don't trust them to make good decision nor to be honest.
If you want me to be onboard with "the plan", governments need to tell me
- What's in the vaccine.
- Exactly when they'll declare this over.
- That they'll undo all of their emergency powers afterwards.
Otherwise, just like the war on terror, this will never be over no matter how much we comply.
There are so many questionable things in this rambling waffle that it's hard to know where to start.
The idea that most people "not at risk" is wrong.
The idea that collective action is all about trusting government is wrong, it's primarily abut supporting the other people in your community. it's a very USA'ian line of thinking to jump to "Imma screw over my fellow citizens because the government can't be trusted. Freedom!".
The idea that Florida and Sweden are good examples is wrong.
And as above, the idea that the "freedom" implications and the "we've been lied to narrative" not the actual deadly pandemic is wrong. Do not confuse the one crisis (of democratic ideas) with the other (of infectious molecules) or your responses will not be appropriate. They operate at completely different levels of abstraction.
The idea that "we haven't seen the hospital scenarios you describe materialize" is, in my local area, wrong.
> Look at Howard Springs Australia. Look at the vaccine passports. Look at the thread you're posting in. You probably think you're exempt
I have no idea of the point you're trying to make, and please to make no assumptions at all about me.
I googled "Howard Springs" but I have no idea what crazy talking point I am supposed to be nodding along with now.
> governments need to tell me - Exactly when they'll declare this over
You can't vote on the virus's timeline. The only politicians who have tried to declare "it's over" are charlatans.
> governments need to tell me - What's in the vaccine.
Do I need to go into the reasons why this is paranoid delusional, confused idiocy? Governments don't design or manufacture the vaccines. Without a bio-medical background that you and I both lack it's just not comprehensible. And lastly, can you not google the layman's explainers and research papers? I understand why you didn't post this line alone in a comment - it would be flagged and deleted.
All in all, I feel like someone at a party who has engaged a stranger in conversation, and now regrets it, as they speak a lot but say absolutely nothing worth hearing.
Most people are "not at risk" in a sense that their risk is clearly much less than for others. There is no zero risk of anything, so we should not aim for that.
It would help if you explained what is wrong.
As it looks now, you just don't like what the stranger said and declare him not worth listening.
To me it is clear that vaccine passports is clearly not working and all this has become a big failure for politicians who don't know how to exit this failed strategy therefore double down on their plans.
This deadly pandemic is not deadly for everyone.
People over 50 make up 1/3 of the population but 93% of covid deaths. I imagine this number is roughly proportional for hospitalizations by the same age groups. We can do some handwavy math and say if everyone under 50 was unvaccinated, they would only ever take up 7% of ICU beds.
Is 7% the difference between collapse or not? "One size fits all" doesn't make sense.
Further, I'm so confident I will never get sick and be hospitalized with covid that I'm happy to forgo my right to an ICU bed. Thus I'm decoupled from the dilemma. Or at least in an ideal world I would be able to make that choice. This was my assessment the first time I got covid, and now I likely have some level of immunity, so I'm even more confident now.
And as far as your hospital scenarios go, my point is we haven't seen the things you describe materialize. I'm sure there are a handful of cases, which is a tragedy, but if it's marginal then we shouldn't hold it up as a liminal crisis like we have been.
> Yes, we need to take the good of others into account. Like it or not we live in a society and our actions impact others.
Tell me the magic number for risk tolerance. If everyone self-quarantined from driving, and we switched to a delivery only economy, we could drastically reduce the number of motor vehicle fatalities. Do we not owe that to the greater good? What about for climate change? We should continue living like we did in 2020 forever.
> Collective action is what works.
It always works when your leaders are competent and have your best interests in mind. My country doesn't even recognize natural immunity, which I envy the UK for.
But free choice works too. Look at Florida, Sweden, people will still choose the vaccine. You don't need a mandate.
> If your main concern right now is the "freedom" ...
I can't believe the "vaccinated" are completely unconcerned by the trends regarding freedom right now.
You know its not an either/or situation, you can be concerned about both, right?
Look at Howard Springs Australia. Look at the vaccine passports. Look at the thread you're posting in. You probably think you're exempt. But immunity wanes, and variants will continue to emerge.
Governments never relinquish their emergency powers once they're enacted. This is just the latest "WMDs in Iraq". I can't speak for the UK, but in the US we still have the patriot act, and we just recently pulled out of Afghanistan.
20 years later we still live under the boogeyman of terrorism. Imagine if all the money we put into the war on terror went into better healthcare and other social goods?
All of this is to say, I don't have absolute trust in the vaccine or the plan or the people in charge, I don't trust them to make good decision nor to be honest.
If you want me to be onboard with "the plan", governments need to tell me - What's in the vaccine. - Exactly when they'll declare this over. - That they'll undo all of their emergency powers afterwards.
Otherwise, just like the war on terror, this will never be over no matter how much we comply.