Living in a dense, student-heavy neighborhood of the Boston area, I really hope that this isn't the thinking of many students who just arrived, from all over.
The thinking is understandable, but a pandemic like Covid-19 seems like one scenario in which a billion small individual sacrifices together could've (and possibly still can) be a dramatically positive net benefit to the world.
One way to think about the significance of minor individual sacrifice like voluntarily masking (where it's not absolutely required by law/rules) is that every infection will tend to spread exponentially. Passing it on to even only one person seems like that would likely result in at least one tragedy for someone else's family. IIUC, masking reduces that significantly, so masking when I believe there's a significant risk of spread seems an easy decision to me.
I am willing to wear a mask and practice social distancing for a period of time—in the aim of some goal. I'm not willing to do it forever. Which is why I wore a mask until this summer when vaccines were widely available.
Give me an end date, and explain why things will be different then, and I'll do it! Honestly! But right now, I'm looking around and I'm not seeing a timeline.
It's a pandemic. Why would you expect a firm end date?
I know we're living in strange and difficult times, but I feel like a lot of people haven't accepted that just because you're tired of it, doesn't mean the pandemic is over, doesn't mean it's a good idea to stop taking measures to reduce illness and death.
> It's a pandemic. Why would you expect a firm end date?
Or an event, and a plausible way the world will get there. Please tell me what the goal is.
I don't think COVID is ever going to go away, just as the flu has never gone away, and every number I've seen indicates that if you're vaccinated (!), the risk of either virus putting you in the hospital is similar.
That seems to me like it's as good as it's gonna get.
I think a major reason the FDA is dragging their heels is because children under 12 are not at serious risk from COVID in the first place, so the risk vs reward calculous is very different.
Which is subsequently why I'm not particularly worried. Yes, the stories of the children who are in the hospital are heartbreaking, but they're the outliers.
Edit: Actually, I just realized something... now that the Pfizer vaccine is fully FDA approved, parents should be able to find a pediatrician who will administer the vaccine off-label, if they want their kids to have it badly enough...
If kids truly needed a vaccine, they’d be approved by now. The fact is kids are not at all even close to being at risk of covid. This is something that all these public health “experts” should be cheering about but I good news hasn’t been allowed since March of 2020. Good news around covid has always been met with outrage and mockery.
Because we think the powers that be might not ever let it be "over". Remember that after it became apparent that "two weeks" was a lie, the next lie where the goalposts were moved to was "once a vaccine is widely available".
> Remember that after it became apparent that "two weeks" was a lie...
It wasn't a lie.
First off, significant portions of the population refused to take the measures advised.
Second, it's on you if you took "two weeks to slow the spread" (and yes, it was slow, not stop; https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/trumps-coronavirus-guideline...) as "two weeks to slow the spread and then we're done". That's an absurd misunderstanding of the point of it.
^ Just to be clear, I personally don't think there's some conspiracy. I just think a lot of people aren't reasoning about the level of risk in a rational way. They absolutely were in 2020, but now we have widely-available vaccines.
I don't know when this will end, nor what the end will look like.
To consult recent history, my layperson's vague impression is, if early on we'd had better leadership and precautions compliance, we would've already incurred vastly fewer family tragedies, and the pandemic might've even been all but over by now.
So, personally (and I know my situation is easier than many people's), I can hold out longer with precautions, and I'm not yet willing to just give in to the same mistakes that seemed to contribute to us getting into the current challenging situation.
The thinking is understandable, but a pandemic like Covid-19 seems like one scenario in which a billion small individual sacrifices together could've (and possibly still can) be a dramatically positive net benefit to the world.
One way to think about the significance of minor individual sacrifice like voluntarily masking (where it's not absolutely required by law/rules) is that every infection will tend to spread exponentially. Passing it on to even only one person seems like that would likely result in at least one tragedy for someone else's family. IIUC, masking reduces that significantly, so masking when I believe there's a significant risk of spread seems an easy decision to me.