I don't mean to present a false dichotomy, thank you for alerting me that I may have. Slowing it down is obviously helpful and anything we can do to accomplish that is important. In Canada I'm still doing everything I can because it's not clear that we've peaked - the government is saying we have but they've also cut way down on testing so I'm not sure. In South Africa and increasingly in the UK it looks like a different story.

Once hospitalizations are in decline most of the population will have been exposed.

> Slowing it down is obviously helpful and anything we can do to accomplish that is important.

It's not that simple. It's not a matter of doing something good vs not doing it, that's what an oversimplified black and white thinking is. It's about priorities, and about looking at certain types of damage compared to other types of damage, and choosing the best path that causes the least overall damage.

Ireland is on the tail of their omicron peak ( based on cases, hospitalizations, and icu beds). Ireland has a very high vax percentage, well over 90+ in the covered groups, with high penetration of boosters as well.

The case peak from omicron was 7x the delta numbers, hospitalization numbers were 2x, and icu was actually down.

I feel like omicron has burned through here, and there’s not a huge risk to opening at this point.

At the point when we have another infectious strain going around, they’re going to have to reevaluate, but that’s later.

Some people just have black-white thinking. See also "vaccines are not working" and lots of other nonsense.

I feel like I really started to have more empathy and better understand the world the moment in my life where I realized that black and white don't actually exist, they're unattainable ideals. It's all just shades of gray. It's so rare to find things like math where the answer is either right or wrong.

It really depends on the subject. 1+1=2 according to the rules of arithmetic.

Yes. But also, in current culture, it is politically useful to pretend you have only black and white thinking.

I dont think all or even most of people who use those is truly confused and dont understand. Instead, allowing anything else then "if not 100% miracle it dont work" would force them to admit they are wrong or politicians they root for are wront.

It is much easier to beat the other side in argument if you pretend you are too simple to understand percentages and shades. Because contemporary culture treats nuance as weakness and pretty much accepts that kind of argument.

I kind of resent being lumped in with a politically motivated, black-and-white, feign ignorance kind of crowd. I try to assess the data as it arises, and the data about Omicron is markedly different than previous variants. I don't think I said anything in my comment that deserves this attack.

If anything, attacking anything that hints of "maybe we should reassess given current data" as being the same as the antimask/antivax rhetoric of the last two years is itself exactly what you are criticising.

We need a mechanism to separate academic inquiry from a political tactic that disguises itself as academic inquiry. Unfortunately, the courtesy of extending good faith by default has been heavily exploited, so out of strategic necessity many assume bad faith by default. Naturally, this assumption should be revised once somebody proves that they're actually interested in details rather than fighting. If we had alternative methods of proving "seriousness" (e.g. academic credentials in academic settings), we could sidestep the requirement, but here on the internet it probably has to be this way.

It's a pity, but no, it's not the same as antimask/antivax rhetoric.

I expanded on previous comments. Yours was 3 levels up. I wanted to make the exact point I did - a lot of black and white thinking is in fact manipulative.

Pretending that all those people don't understand does not help anything. Which is why I made that point.

It is repeated patten from the start of pandemic. If something is not 100% perfect, there is not point on doing it and anyone doing it is stupid sheep. No matter how full hospitals are, you are stupid sheep for doing small things that take chances down (like getting vaccine). Pretending that massive powerful media machine broadcasting these are just confused serves no one.

> Some people just have black-white thinking. See also "vaccines are not working" and lots of other nonsense.

The same applies to people who assume that unvaccinated people must be idiots.