I'm not 100% sure of the answer to this, and I don't think anyone is, but as a resident of Melbourne, AU (world's most locked down city!), I can categorically state that destroying the quality of life for an entire society just so that a small percentage of vulnerable people can prolong their life for a few years is absolutely not the answer.
It's not even a young vs. old thing at this stage. People aged 60+ (who were already lonely before) have suffered just the same as we have and I'm sure would have a very similar opinion to the rest of society.
What do you even mean? The population-weighted infection fatality rate is somewhere around 0.8% (for vanilla SARS-CoV-2), can you even imagine what that would mean in terms of deaths alone? We are not even talking about hospitalisations or severe cases or chronic disease, or the collapse of critical infrastructure and the economy.
I don't get this "Covid is just a problem for the old and weak" rhetoric, is that the society you want to live in?
Call it cold, but I'd rather live in a society where we throw the old and weak under the bus rather than make life unbearable for all.
Hell, I suspect even if I were old and weak I would have rather died surrounded by my family and friends in 2020 instead of gone through two years of isolation only to die alone in 2022.
It seems that there's been little effort or focus on how to cater for increased hospitalisations, or problem solving on how to ensure there are enough people trained to handle covid patients.
The only tools available are vaccines and lockdowns...
The rules are ridiculous - for example you have to wear a mask stepping inside a bar but as soon as you are seated you don't need one. You have to wear a mask to check in at the gym but as soon as you are in the gym you don't need one.
Everyone needs to check in with a QR code... for what reason I really don't know (assuming it's "just incase" a new variant emerges, but half suspect it's just a psychological trick to remind is of covid 24/7)...
I get that a small percentage of people get very sick and may die (and we should protect those people) but the way things are is just ridiculous and is a bunch of red tape that at this stage I don't think is really helping to do anything except keep people obedient and in constant fear.
Is that so? The pandemic seems far from over. I think it is a little early to draw any conclusions.
[1] https://www.dn.se/varlden/danmark-omikron-kan-fa-slut-pa-pan...
Best case: Omicron gives everyone a baseline resistance, so that future mutations are more like the flu. We'll get new mutations a couple times a year. Some will contact them, some won't. It will be fatal to those with comorbidities (just like the flu)
I don't think covid is ever actually going away, though. It is just too contagious.
We have 'only' 5 Million covid death while the estimate for spanish flu is at 50 Million.
1920 we had way less people, way less/none cheap air travel, fast transport.
We have never created a vaccine that fast and responded on such a global level together.
Have we?
Especially given that it's much much less lethal than the one 100 years ago.
Just imagine it would be okay to stay at home as a restaurant worker, not fearing to lose your job and knowing that nothing changes in a bad way when the pandemic is over.
We can easily afford this as a society. We just don't.
While we're all painfully aware of the shortcomings in various responses, it's disingenuous to say that the pandemic would "not have been an issue if we would talk to each other". Similarly, "just" taking our cumulative knowledge and resources and having WFH, vaccination, and all the other adjustments work instantly and without issue is a high bar; I've personally worked on projects over the past two years trying to help smooth the transition on a small subset or those adjustments, and it's not an easy undertaking.
To have a reasonable discussion of the tradeoffs of various measures, it requires acknowledgement of the challenges and drawbacks of the alternatives. I agree we've got far better capabilities than 100 years ago and we should have these discussions, but thought it might help to shift your framing a bit.
Interesting thought.
For what do we optimize actually? For the working class? For human lives?
You know what would have not been an issue if we would talk to each other and would find a global compromise independent of capitalism?
A pandemic.
We would just take our knowledge and resources we have and transform it temporarily in a setup in were its not an issue to work from home, work less for a year or two, have family and friend clusters were subgroups can visit each other without spreading virusus, high vaccine rate, masks everywere.
I don't mind discussing IF our society should throw older people under the bus, but only if we accept that we did a lot of stuff shitty before and we could do it much better.
But also lets not forget one thing: This is a pandemic. Our first pandemic in a modern time, unique to our society.
We have handled it much better than 100 years ago.