Yes, completely wrong. I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that I only care because it affected me.
Coronavirus has affected and still does affect me. I know people who have suffered and died from it.
Coronavirus has affected and still does affect me. I know people who have suffered and died from it.
In any case, I'm not here to preach. I would just like people to have some honesty and perspective in their opinions and arguments.
You're willing to risk the lives of the elderly and people with people with a less-effective immune response if you think the lives of the general population would be "better off"? Just say so. If people feel uncomfortable doing this realise that part of that discomfort is called "cognitive dissonance" (and realise that decision-makers have to do the same thing). Have a serious conversation with yourself before you decide that you need to create anonymous accounts on the internet to air your views.
I don't believe in risking the lives of the elderly and those with a less effective immune response, I have friends and family members in those positions.
There are far more variables involved than that. The most obvious counterpoint is that after about March 2020 (e.g. zero-covid off the table) there is no realistic situation in which 80 year olds can just go to the pub and not be at high risk.
Most of the world's response to coronavirus, in my view, was and is about as sane as if we decided to like, live underground to combat climate change.
Even if it works (why would it) you've lost, because now you live underground.
The lockdowns weren't permanent (or even that long, to be honest). The protective measures we have in place aren't very stringent (in most of the world). If we hadn't done what we had done, the loss of life would have been considerably worse, and even with the choices we made, it was still quite bad.
I understand that you're unhappy with having a couple years of your life inconvenienced, but you're very much not showing empathy with those who've lost considerably more than you, and aren't really putting much consideration into how much more could have been lost without your inconvenience.
The relevant variable is not my or your own personal situation but the sum total of all of the experiences of the people in the country.
I disagree that not supporting restrictions is not showing empathy with those who have lost loved ones from coronavirus. I think that this is a false dichotomy.
And you are willing to risk lives of people living near poverty line in poor countries, because stopping the economy and printing money in 2020 increased the number of people in extreme poverty and caused many more of them to die than would die otherwise.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56425115
The QALY tallies are not pretty.
Your argument is exactly equivalent to me telling you that you don’t really care that much about the rights of the individual.
Let’s flip this conversation on its head. why is it that people are surprised that a failure to make a basic decision to protect both oneself and others from a potentially lethal illness is met with sharp criticism and scorn, as it should be?
It all registers. I could equally say that you're disregarding the other ~99.9% of people whose lives have been affected by lockdowns. I don't think that's true though - I expect that you think their sacrifice was minor in comparison. Is that right?
We don't disagree that people should do basic things to prevent illness - what we disagree on is what a "basic thing" is.
> But it'd really not be that big a deal compared to stuff like saying "healthy 20 year olds in their prime at near zero risk from this virus are now legally forbidden from dating".
It sounded like you weren’t thinking how your behavior could result in spreading the virus to people who are more vulnerable.
I don't believe that "spreading the virus to people who are more vulnerable" is a meaningful concept for coronavirus. If you're immunocompromised (as, for example, my uncle is) then the outside world is now effectively a poison cloud and remains so regardless of what other people do in all realistic cases.
It's theoretically possible of course that if everyone else isolated as well the virus could die out, but post-April 2020 this became a 'frictionless plane' style scenario that couldn't actually exist in the real world.