- Mon Aug 02, 2021 10:10 am
#131486
"Instead of lockdowns, shouldn't they have given out the medical facts and let businesses decide how best to cope?"-johnfoibles
No, of course not.
40% of businesses are run by Trump supporters who still, to this day, think the pandemic is a joke. They ignore "medical facts" because they believe the government is trying to fool them, so how can they be trusted to make the right choices, johnny? They will not listen to "medical facts." They ridicule mask wearing and refuse to take common sense precautions. (This is a fact. I have been to such businesses and had to turn around and leave before they killed me.) I don't have to shop there, but their employees have to work there. And no one has the right to cultivate a super spreader venue just to satisfy their irrational partisan political bullshit. I may not shop there, but I will come in contact with their employees and customers outside their businesses, in a grocery store, on the sidewalk, or elsewhere. It's unavoidable.
Epidemics are not like other sorts of problems facing a political entity like the U.S.. Viruses don't care about politics or your screwed up interpretation of the Constitution. You can't fight epidemics with politics and rhetoric, which is what Trump tried (and failed) to do and the 40% of his supporters who simply refuse to get vaccinated for any reason, ever, are still trying to do. (Some of them actually think they can fight the pandemic with "Jesus". That's how ignorant they are.) They won't even get vaccinated when their own families start dying. They will continue to spread the disease in their indignant righteousness over their imaginary 'rights' that have nothing to do with a virus. You don't leave these kinds of suicidal people in charge of a life and death situation the way johnforbes is suggesting.
The bottom line is, a society can't rely on the most ignorant among the population to control how we fight a pandemic at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. That is exactly what johnforbes is proposing. They don't know anything about pandemics or how to stop them, and many don't even believe they are real, even in the face of more than 600,000 deaths. (Or, if you're johnforbes, more than 540,000 deaths still can't convince him.) Every country in the world is fighting this thing, but dimwitted Republicans still believe it is just a Democrat hoax and power grab. johnforbes is among those clowns. All the news reports from around the world can't put a dent in his thick partisan skull.
And I certainly shouldn't be sentenced to death because nit-picking assholes like johnforbes are whining about whether it's 600,000 deaths or 540,000 deaths, or whether the virus occurred naturally or was leaked from a lab (as if that matters in the least in fighting the pandemic) so he thinks he shouldn't be expected to follow the directions of the NIH and CDC because the numbers aren't perfect and the virus might have leaked from a lab. He's too stupid to understand the numbers never are perfect and never can be perfect, but are just tools, and the source of the virus doesn't change the fact that it is here and must be dealt with, regardless of where it came from. But someone's stupidity is no reason to ignore our public health experts who generally aren't as stupid as johnforbes, Donald Trump, and their ilk.
Incidentally, lockdowns have worked very well in Australia and New Zealand. People there have been walking around without masks and going to concerts and restaurants, etc. for the past year.Their businesses weren't destroyed en masse. New Zealand has had just 26 deaths and Australia has had just 925 deaths. The price they pay is occasional two week shut downs in limited areas whenever the virus shows up somewhere. The price we pay for our delusional 'rights' is 600,000 deaths and no end in sight, over stressed hospitals and exhausted medical staff, with another growing wave of illness that is almost exclusively hitting the young, healthy, and unvaccinated this time because we have bred a more virulent strain while Republicans are out getting votes by politicizing the pandemic.
Oh well, I guess it will mean that many fewer Trump voters next time around. So there is a silver lining to everything if you look for it hard enough.