Are Covid Restrictions the New TSA?

This silly: the post-9/11 overreaction was condemned because it was based on implausible threats, ineffective (remember how routinely auditors got weapons through?), and extremely expensive both in time and procurement. Terrorism vaguely defined also has no endpoint or exit conditions.

In contrast, we’re in the middle of a pandemic which has claimed millions of lives, and measures like masks and vaccination are cheap and have minimal downsides. There is no credible reason to believe anyone will continue restrictions when the pandemic is finally over. Vaccination gives us a clear exit path and a robust treatment will only accelerate that.

The author’s argument for children is a similar bit of emotion pretending to be reason. Children die less frequently, although Delta is hitting harder, but long-term complications are nothing to be cavalier about simply because the scientific evidence doesn’t support your lifestyle preferences. Going by the published stats and 50M under 12, letting COVID run rampant still means thousands of dead children (just in the United States), hundreds of thousands of kids with cases severe enough to require hospitalization, and at least an equal number with long-term effects we’re just starting to study. Wearing a mask and only dining outdoors for a few months longer seems like a much better option.

Once there is enough of a buffer in vaccination doses to suggest that everyone who wants one has got one, there isn't a lot of justification for serious COVID countermeasures.

Otherwise what is the endgame? Hermetically sealing every man, woman, child and dog? Life is risky and we all have a lot more medical problems than is commonly acknowledged.

EDIT And until airline travel is basically banned, it isn't like the powers-that-be are truly serious about stopping the spread. The delta variant wasn't unexpected and can't teleport, it crossed borders in a travelling host.

>Children at band practice ... long after it was known COVID-19 poses almost no risk to children

I wish articles wouldn't start out right away by broadcasting their black-and-white side-taking (the evidence here being the implication that there is no reason to control the spread of COVID among children if they have less severe symptoms on average).

Good analogy; even today it's hard to have a "cost vs benefits" discussion on the "War On [Terror,Drugs,Poverty]" or whatever you care to name, really.

"Covid theater" is as apt a description of so much of public policy this last year as "security theater" was of so much post 9-11 horseshit. It's all kabuki meant to show how well you dance with your tribe.

He keeps talking about cost-benefit analysis. He never explores the fact you can't have a cost-benefit analysis when you have information that is A) untrustworthy, B) constantly changing, or C) conflicting. In that situation, people are going to be either too safe or not safe enough, depending on what "team" you're on relative to them. Nobody can be right. We can spend all our time reading criticisms such as this one all day long and never get anywhere.

Somehow I missed the point in time when it became mandatory for employees to share their health conditions with employer. Do HIV (virus no less deadly for immunocompromised) positive person also has to report their status and current medication plan?

Unvaccinated are the troublemakers here. They enable mutations to occur and spread. If everyone is vaccinated then this can't happen.

We cared enough about 3,000 dying in NY that we slashed and burned our civil liberties.

We kinda-sorta care about 600,000 deaths and counting around the country... enough to ruin small businesses, but little enough to eventually relent and spread COVID more... and I guess see-saw periodically while people bitch and moan about wearing a mask. :D

This is drivel. The idea that we'll eventually worry too much about Covid and other similar viruses that we'll have a new infrastructure which'll be as useless and ineffective as the TSA is just plainly disingenuous.

Anyhow, anyone who advocates for defunding schools instead of advocating for fixing them thinks that capitalism works, so it shouldn't surprise us that the author would suggest that the logical consequence of A is Q.