At least for me, the kind of people I know directly (in meatspace) with this attitude are the kind of people who decided the middle of the pandemic is the best time to make social visits to the elderly (for little other reason than being bored with the lockdown). And I know these people don't secretly want to murder their elders. After seeing plenty of that first and second-hand, it's kind of hard to not suspect motivated reasoning when someone goes out and says "sure I've considered the risks, there's no harm in 50-ish me dropping by my 80 years old mother on my way back from the private health clinic I work in" (real example I know, and that same clinic is staffed with people who consider the pandemic overblown and do the absolute minimum to protect themselves and their patients from it).
> PS: If you want to talk direct social risk and safety then it's time to ban alcohol for the greater safety of society.
It's been tried and decided against, but in this comparison, it's worth noting that harms caused by alcohol don't grow exponentially.
Yeah, we also have tried it with other drugs, we've been spending several decades ramping up regulations on automobiles to try to make them safer, and we have an emerging national debate about prescription painkillers as well.
I think whoever is planning for future pandemic responses should take that into account - the more normal, enjoyable things we can find ways to provide safely, the better.
I think the world ultimately was caught completely unprepared for this pandemic. I'm hoping that by the time the next one comes, we'll have given due considerations to psychological and emotional needs of everyone, so that even if we need to step into a cage for a while again, at least the cage will be a nice place to stay in.
I’ve been seeing this ageist and eugenics-like language coming up quite a lot lately and it’s really disturbing to me.
Why is it OK that hundreds of thousands of people are dying because they are mostly older? Should we amend our laws so it’s OK to murder anyone above a certain age, because they’re elderly so who cares?
Why is it OK that people with pre-existing health conditions are dying because they have these conditions? Should we never provide any health care services to people with any comorbidities because their lives don’t matter?
You may think you’re being rational by deciding these people have little to no societal value—survival of the fittest! they’re maximised their contribution to society!—but this seems like a maladaptive coping mechanism: minimisation[0] in order to avoid confronting the fact that, yes, this is actually a big problem and no, it’s not really OK that hundreds of thousands of people are dying needlessly due to a communicable disease. (Nor is it OK that government has failed to step in to protect those whose lives and livelihoods have been disrupted.)
These are human beings. They have families. Their deaths cause needless suffering, and that suffering goes far beyond just one old person dying from a preventable contagious disease. Humans do not live in vacuums.
It’s also a tragedy that other people—who are statistically unlikely to suffer any direct long-term consequence of infection—are suffering as a result of restrictions set on movements and activities to try to save lives. That people lose their livelihoods and have to go hungry, though, is a failure of government.
This is the worst possible interpretation of that statement, and not at all the argument they're going for.
The argument is that lockdown policy is being made over what's turned out to be barely noticeable in the larger picture, and those policies are causing a lot more suffering than necessary.
In other places where I see this argument, they often also say that lockdown-style measures should be enacted for the vulnerable, leaving the world business-as-usual for everyone else so that they can support the vulnerable.
Well... Yeah. If you considered the implications of harming others, then examined the data at hand, and concluded that not wearing a mask and not limiting your activities was what you wanted to do... Then yeah, that is selfish and "dumb" behavior.
This isn't a subjective thing. We have decently solid data now showing what the transmission rates are (we know certainly the lowest observed transmission rate), what the death rate is; we can objectively say that >180,000 in the US have died since March. So with all that being known, if you decide not to take the most basic steps to limit spreading it, you're either being incredibly selfish, or you're incapable of understanding that your actions have consequences. This is a definition, not an argument.
This is why we have laws against drunk driving; we know it kills people. It's bad for society. At least people who drive drunk have the plausible deniability that they were too impaired to make the rational decision to not drive while drunk. If unimpaired, you make that decision, there's no way to justify your actions.
* You're assuming death is the major potential consequence, and that there aren't potentially problems we haven't identified yet, and ignoring those we have[1]
* You're assuming the economy is crumbling because of social restrictions and lockdowns. It isn't. We could lift all restrictions today, and things would not return back to normal until PEOPLE STOP GETTING INFECTED AND DYING IN THIS STILL-VERY-MUCH-A-PANDEMIC.
[1]: https://gladstone.org/news/new-insights-how-covid-19-causes-...
...
> You simply put too much weight on the perceived danger of this almost-at-this-point-not-a-pandemic-anymore. We simply don't agree on how dangerous it is.
Something to reflect on here is that (a) the person you're replying to didn't accuse anyone of not taking others into account and (b) you invalidate their conclusions in the same way you believe they invalidated yours.
In my area, there were two points where ICUs got dangerously full. At the start, and then shortly after initial restrictions had been loosened. Fortunately, the spikes in case counts had been seen before, and restrictions were ramped up in response both times, and the hospitalization numbers flattened and then dropped. It certainly looks like a case of those restrictions being massively helpful, which you're discounting out of hand.
Why do people always assume that if someone is anti-mask or anti-lockdown that they didn't think about others before they made their decision? That they are selfish and dumb?
Stop making that assumption.
People do think it over. They do consider all points. And just because they come to a different conclusion than you doesn't make their conclusion invalid.
> What are the chances that because of this encounter, the pandemic grows more severe or goes on longer than it otherwise would have, extending the length of time before we can truly return to normal life?
ICUs are still fine. It is killing the elderly and those with co-morbidities. Any "spike" is barely a blip. The economy continues to crumble as days of social restrictions and lockdowns build up.
You think we don't consider the lives of others with our decision. We do.
You simply put too much weight on the perceived danger of this almost-at-this-point-not-a-pandemic-anymore. We simply don't agree on how dangerous it is.
PS: If you want to talk direct social risk and safety then it's time to ban alcohol for the greater safety of society.