> To call these people selfish is way off the mark

How so?

self·ish adjective (of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure.

> who want to visit their relatives for the holidays.

Thus, being selfish as they got no regards on the impact of others. In Quebec we got some private care home where 80% died of Covid. It only takes one to bring it.

> Perhaps it’s the politicians and others who are being selfish by imposing their will and desires.

Their will and desires of what? Of saving lifes? Sure caring about someone's else life is purely selfish, much more than wanting to spend time with others.

> it’s time we do a cost/benefit analysis that considers all costs and complications beyond covid.

The US is the one that killed the most to avoid theses "costs and complications". Was it worth it? Go see anyone that lost their grand parents because of this, many of them could have spend time with them today if it wasn't because someone else was selfish.

If you got high risk relative that you want to see, buy them a webcam or keep them permanently in your home please. Keep the risk to yourself. If you care about them, please reduce your risk too, they deserve that "cost and complication".

In my experience, most of the "high-risk" people in care homes would easily risk their life to visit their relatives for the holidays.

The two options are:

- Go for it, you have guaranteed quality time with family and (unknown) risk of dying.

- Stay isolated, guaranteed miserable time alone, then you die anyway a bit later.

I'm not surprised at their choices. We should not be optimizing for length of life at the cost of its quality.

An example of a false dichotomy if ever there was one.

In reality there is a whole continuum of options, such as reducing the number of relatives you visit, or not visiting them at the height of a wave of infections.

And of course "you die anyway a bit later" isn't true, with a vaccine on the way.

To be blunt, people in long term care homes don’t have a long time to live. A couple of years and often under declining health.

> 65% died within 1 year of nursing home admission

> 53% died within 6 months of nursing home admission

https://www.geripal.org/2010/08/length-of-stay-in-nursing-ho...

> There are “high-risk” people in care homes who want to visit their relatives for the holidays. To call these people selfish is way off the mark.

Why isn't this selfish? They put not only themselves, but also their families at risk.

Perhaps you'll say they're being "foolish" instead of "selfish" - perhaps they have been mislead to ignore or disbelieve the truth of how potent the virus is, or how miserable a way to die it is. But their own selfishness and their own self-interest can only make it easier for them to believe the lies or misinformation that would cause them to make such an error.

Couldn't agree more. You're asking 330 million Americans to give up some of their freedoms without any real plan or timeline; of course there is going to opposition.

Thanks for expressing this, I think most people are scared into silence by the self-righteous scolds among us.

But clearly - even globally - more than enough people are aware that some people will absolutely destroy any semblance of normal life, and irreparably damage the fabric of society in a frenzy of fear and panic, waving the banner of science, without acknowledging any of the complex decisions around risks, costs, etc.

> without any real plan or timeline

There's a very real plan, which is to develop a vaccine. And that plan seems to be going pretty well. The timeline will be dictated by the success of the plan, but it seems that most experts are reasonably confident that vaccines will be available next year.

That's not true at all, most states have very specific lockdown guidelines that call for degrees of restrictions based on measurements of infection and medical capacity. And of course the real plan is just to buy time until a vaccine is produced. So yeah, there are uncertainties and it's scary and frustrating, but that's no excuse to give up.

> High risk includes kids. It includes software-engineers who are in their 20s.

This is false.

To be fair, it's accurate if they also fall into an actual high-risk category like "immuno-compromised" like my sister, but I really doubt that's what the parent meant ;).