> The rural-urban divide comes down to the understanding that death is the price for life, which has vanished in the urban millieu, but it's still visceral to those living closer to nature and its ubiquitous birth-life-death cycle.

This is a thought provoking viewpoint that could be explored better.

Beyond that though, the point of the first paragraph seems to be that "everybody is going to get it... those that will die will die". I disagree.

You anticipate one of the most concrete rebuttals to the first paragraph, vaccines, and then proceed to argue that vaccines are bad because they disrupt natural selection. This is an absurd argument. Are you opposed to children's hospitals because they disrupt natural selection? Your rebuttal is not relevant. What you have argued is a small and theoretical downside to vaccines, but it is not a rebuttal. Vaccines have completely eliminated multiple diseases. They will help with Covid and save lives, and the fact that they have a small downside by disrupting natural selection does not change the fact that they will help and save lives.

You only address vaccines while ignoring other counterpoints: I live in an area where our hospitals are at capacity. There are dozens (dozens!) of ICU bed available for millions of people. Only a couple dozen ICU beds for the entire state, and these beds need to serve not only the worst Covid cases but all other patients who have had heart attacks or any other health issues. I strongly disagree that "those that will die will die", but instead say that "those that don't have to die will die" if we don't wear masks and follow community guidelines.

You then close by asking for more charity. After having said "everybody is going to get it... those that will die will die... life goes on" you ask for others to have more charity...

That's the point. Live your life being ready to depart next week. Live your life being ready your loved ones to depart next week. That's not to say it's something to look forward to. Or not take reasonable precautions to avoid it. You will know worry, you will know suffering, and when the inevitable happens, you will know grief. Know that death is natural and inevitable. And yet here we are. We are here because our ancestors had the strength to raise the next generation, not because somehow individual death was defeated.

On the urban side, we are acting as if we have somehow become immortal, and that everybody must sacrifice everything, school, work, family, friends, so that some can live to 85 instead of 77. That is an unprecedented high price to ask.

Natural selection, it's cold and harsh. It doesn't fix individual, aside that the immune system is a natural selection mechanism within the organism level natural selection. It simply selects fit individuals to reproduce. We are well atuned to this mechanism, witness 'youth' or 'beauty'. Think of dental braces. In old times, without orthodontics, would be a visible marker of less than optimal fitness. Ugly. Negative selection pressure. As orthodontics becomes more prevalent, in the beginning everybody gets a beauty boost. Let's celebrate. Yet, in a few generations, in absence of any selection pressure, a larger and larger fraction of the population now needs dental braces. Teeth simply don't fit on the mandible anymore. We can handle this with technology, but it's a growing problem. Should we close orthodontics clinics tomorrow? Probably not, but that should not prevent us from recognizing the long term hidden costs of medical technology. 'Use sparingly, mostly for emergencies'.

Ultimately this is just the same old argument over personal freedoms, personal inconveniences, saving lives, and balancing it all.

> We are here because our ancestors had the strength to raise the next generation, not because somehow individual death was defeated.

Yes, no individual life (save one's own ancestors) is responsible for where we are now. But I would help a dying man on the sidewalk, I would be in favor of criminal charges against myself if I just passed him by. I would participate in a large scale search for a neighbor lost on a hike, and I would support the fuel and maintenance costs of helicopters and other search vehicles, and I would support those several rescuers who risk their lives to save one. I would support spending $400,000 to perform a quadruple bypass on a 77 year old man so he can live to be 85. I would take on personal inconvenience along with 50 of my neighbors to save a single life. I would follow community health guidelines. I would wear a mask.

Sometimes I wonder if people have been hurt so bad emotionally that they feel they need to project a lack of empathy as a way of showing others they are strong. That they are not a target. It's subconscious, probably. Thank you for patiently trying to get them to see your side of things.

> Beyond which we realize that we've inadvertently cultivated a debilitated fragile population that can only survive through sophisticated technological methods.

Can you think of a causal mechanism that would make the population more fragile because of vaccines? Or is it just some inocent poetry from the same old book than "everything that does not kill us makes us stronger"?

(From another answer I wrote in this thread) Think of dental braces. In old times, without orthodontics, misaligned teeth would be a visible marker of less than optimal fitness. Ugly. Negative selection pressure. As orthodontics becomes more prevalent, in the beginning lots of people get a beauty boost. Celebrate! Yet, in a few generations, a larger and larger fraction of the population now needs more and more sophisticated dental braces. Teeth simply don't fit on the mandible anymore, because there is no selection force to prefer people with good teeth as marriage partners. Everybody has visibly good teeth! We can keep this illusion going with technology, but it's a growing problem. Should we close orthodontics clinics tomorrow? Probably not, but that should not prevent us from recognizing the long term hidden costs of medical technology. Use sparingly, mostly for emergencies.

Sorry but arguing that it's better to let people die from illness rather than fight a virus with medicine will require more than an analogy.

I asked for a mechanism that would make the population more fragile overall (not only less resistant to a specific strain of a specific virus) if we train the immune system with a vaccine. Also keep in mind this is an age disease, ie those who are more likely to die from the virus will do so after their reproductive period.

(Note: do you seriously believe today's teeth are more troublesome and less fit for the job than in the past ?)

This is sophist crap, reverse-engineered to justify your dislike of urbanites. If the situation were reversed-- people in urban areas behaving carelessly and dying in droves while in rural areas people were taking appropriate precautions-- you'd be screaming about how it just proves that the "urban milieu" is atomized and doesn't care about anyone but themselves, while in rural areas people still care about their community above the individual.