You know that the vaccine has been available for, like, nine months, right? Anyone who wanted to get it got it months ago, and has been rather safe. ICUs being full points to a problem with the medical system (and, at least in America, the medical system is well known to be broken), and if you don't want to fix that, there's a really easy political fix (which is to de-prioritize unvaccinated COVID patients, given that - again - there's a vaccine available, so if you willingly chose not to get it, then your medical care can wait until those who have unpreventable issues are helped).
We're well past the point where you can make the argument that these restrictions are for the greater good, because we've been in a state where one's health is almost entirely one's personal responsibility (you either take the vaccine and you're safe, or you don't and you're not) for months now.
If other people want to remain unvaccinated and that leads to them dying ("loss of human life on a massive scale"), they can do that.
You've hit an important central issue: that Governments (and/or HC systems) aren't ready to take this step. As such, I suspect it might be a logically easy concept, but as a political step, maybe not so much. :)
I mean, in the absence of a few thousand years worth of medical ethics, sure, that's an obvious step.
But it's very much not how things are done. The only place where anything even vaguely like this happens is with organ transplants. In general, hospital triage is based on need; if the unvaccinated person with covid is sicker than the blameless road traffic accident victim, and there's one ICU bed, well, it doesn't matter that they brought it on themselves; the covid patient gets it, and good luck to the road traffic accident victim.
This isn't _just_ a political issue (though it would also be a very difficult political issue); it is how the whole institution works.
Triage based on vaccination status would be a very extreme move, much more so than mandatory vaccinations to work or than unvaccinated-only lockdowns.
It's political suicide to do so. Takes courage to do the right thing.
Think cars, motorbikes, planes etc. They do all result in events where people die. But we keep them because they provide a lot of utility to many many people.
My view: Lockdowns absolutely help avoid disasters. But they are a temporary measure.
Lockdown while people get vaxxed, procedures updated and social adoption of masks can occur and any other handy measure. Then the lockdowns have to be eased to shift the risk mitigation load onto these other measures.
This is a complicated task. Every country/zone will have different trade offs. Everyone will have an opinion backed by an example from somewhere else.
I think the best we can do is:
- avoid disaster
- give people a fair and equitable chance to save themselves via vaccination
- implement sensible measures where possible/socially acceptable
- open up slowly, adjust as neccessary
- sadly, let the deliberately, knowingly unvaccinated fall as they may. While avoiding disaster...
So forced masks forever?
Maybe you lockdown supertight until leadership decisions figured out, communicated and logistically sorted out. One of those decisions may be that some lockdown restrictions can be eased if people wear masks. IE relax one mitigation measure by using another.
But that's up to each society to decide for themselves.
My own opinion, once everyone is vaccinated as best as they will, ease lockdowns and mask usage in stages so that vaccines can be tested in real world conditions for effectiveness AND hospitalisation rates are kept under control.
In an ideal future with covid, we'd have perfect vaccines, zero lockdown and zero masks. In reality, I think we can get pretty close but with vaccine booster shots instead.
Now fuck off with any other restrictions, that's where I think the line is.
Your anger should be directed at the unvaxxed because that’s what’s driving policy right now.
You're right it isn't any different, which is why we should all oppose it. Just be a use things are a certain way doesn't mean it is the right way.
It's *so easy* to say "we don't want to be told what to do" but then expect all the comforts of modern society. It's such a nieve take.
The alternative... A world where the only things that are illegal are infringements on someone else's rights. Why does it have to be anarchy or social conformity and control? It's not a dichotomy. Literally every time some group opposed some social control the bellyachers came out with the anarchy argument. No more segregation, let the women vote, let gay people do what they want, let people smoke weed... Good enough is simple, really simple: let everyone do whatever they want except infringe on the rights of others. What "comforts of modern society" do we lose by simplifying our rule set down to that?
It means you don't shit on your neighbour's porch.
It means you don't park in a handicap space, knock the old biddy who wanted it out of her wheelchair after she laboriously has got out of her car further away from the shop, and give her the finger as you walk away laughing.
It means you don't spit your boss in the face; don't cheat on your taxes, your creditors, or your wife; don't drive drunk or fuck toddlers in the arse.
It means all that, and a million other things like it.
Are you OK with that, or is any of the above something that you insist on your "right" to indulge in?
If not, then what the fuck is different about your "right" not to care whether you're coughing death-in-agony in the face of everyone you meet, that you must insist on that?!?
And fuck off with the restrictions.
If your actions only affected you, nobody would care at all.
So yes, my actions do only affect me, and potentially those who have chosen to take the same risk as me. Those who are vaccinated have the level of protection they signed up for, I have the level of protection I signed up for.
But then go out into the wilderness and die under some fucking tree, so you don't take a bed in the ICU from some poor fucker who needs it not because of their own stupidity.
Why does that have to be the standard? Why can't you accept alternatives? Perhaps covid antibodies from contracting the virus instead of vaccine? Or a negative covid test? Or masks? Or germicidal light to clean air? Or restricted public involvement?
Why must we follow those SPECIFIC standards before we can be free?
That's what restrictions and lockdowns are largely driven by: preventing disasters within the hospital system.
So... how do you weigh up loss of human life on a massive scale, against "living freely"?