It's putting a scarlet letter on these people and shaming them for making their own choice about their own bodies.
I think we've determined from other issues that "separate but equal" isn't actually equal. That absolutely applies here.
I think we've determined from other issues that "separate but equal" isn't actually equal. That absolutely applies here.
Yes, that's how de Blasio phrases it, but I think there's more to it than how he's talked about it.
The way I see these mandates is an effort to have people maintain a person R-naught of less than 1. How each person achieve that is up to them. They can wear masks, they can get vaccinated, they can avoid places with high transmission rates (such as indoor dining/shopping), or a combination of all these things. And ideally we find more options for people to take so that that everyone can help achieve a personal R-naught in a way that best fits their needs.
Ultimately, the goal is to create a win-win scenario where on a personal level individuals can choose what degree of transmission prevention they want to pursue, and on a social level we're organized so that everyone is (hopefully) not infecting others, or doing so so sparsely that the infection rate is going down.
The goal now is to find a comfortable equilibrium in which society can continue to do its thing without explosive outbreaks of Covid. These sort of mandates help get us there. This is all still very new and we need to find more methods in which we can reach that equilibrium, and we should continue to look for them, but we can't let Covid-19 run rampant until we feel we've all the options we like.
What makes you say this? There is literally no other city in our country doing a lockdown like this. Many places are still opened up and not experiencing a surge. Even in Missouri, cases have dropped in many regions in the last few days without such lockdowns, and hospitals have not been overloaded.
As of 3 weeks ago Missouri had to expand their hospital system explicitly for delta variants? https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-micha...
Don't get me wrong, there has been an increase in cases and the R0 needs to be lowered. But draconian measures aren't necessarily required, as Greene County MO's recent infection rates have shown[1]. The R0 sits at below 0 now, and hospital case loads have stabilized.
[1] https://www.covidactnow.org/us/missouri-mo/county/greene_cou...