01-25-2021, 04:56 PM
(01-24-2021, 11:33 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-24-2021, 10:59 AM)David Horn Wrote:(01-23-2021, 02:31 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The COVID-19 pandemic is 'unnatural' in that such a pandemic supposedly does not fester in an advanced industrial society with a sophisticated political system -- until it does...
I don't agree. What made COVID so devastating in both the UK and the US was the unwillingness or incapability of the citizenry to comply with health restrictions, coupled with faux-frugality that meant it was impossible for most people (read: not well educated and/or well-to-do) to follow the strict rules. Sorry, but
both are features not bugs.
We're in the middle of a global pandemic and if you think wearing a flimsy mask is going to prevent you or a loved one from getting it or bringing it home then you're being foolish. I don't know anyone who didn't get it while wearing a mask in public. No, you and the grand puba have to figure out a way to shut down America without causing all kinds of problems like the Chinese regime can do today. We have a pesky little bug that can make people who wear masks just as sick as the ones who aren't wearing masks.
... and you are going to trust your life as a passenger in a car to a seat belt? A seat-belt might not prevent death or serious injury, but it can reduce the chance of either. See also a condom in the AIDS epidemic. That mask makes going out in public less likely to result in contracting the virus and should you have the virus and not know it, less likely to transmit it.
Until a certain level of the public gets inoculated for COVID-19 (I'm guessing 90%) we will still need to mask ourselves... even if we were inoculated, just to be certain.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.