I think the limitations of trying to have a serious discussion in this format are becoming apparent as it seems like you are misinterpreting my position. That's my fault for not explaining more clearly. I will try to clarify a few things.
photofly wrote: ↑Fri Dec 31, 2021 7:10 pm
The messages I come away with are that
1. you believe you are in favour of protecting the vulnerable
I am. Not at any cost, and I'm sorry if that is what offends you, but generally speaking, I most certainly am.
photofly wrote: ↑Fri Dec 31, 2021 7:10 pm
2. old people are prey to "natural selection"
They are. This isn't ground breaking news. I'm assuming we're all adult enough to be able to confront and openly discuss uncomfortable truths. This is one of them. After a certain point in our aging process, our bodies begin to decline in their abilities to fight off disease, recover, etc. As a result, the elderly get sick and die at rates far higher than the rest of the population. I invoke this idea not to suggest that because this is true, we shouldn't care or try, but rather that we need to accept the fact that in spite of our best efforts, these people will unfortunately, always bear a disproportionate brunt of things like pandemics. To be clear, I'm merely observing an obvious fact, which I can do while simultaneously holding the belief that we can and should protect them. Furthermore, I believe that there has to be other possible tactics to protect them, beyond what we have done. Trotting them out as though they're a group of sacred cows in order to shut down any such discussion and critical examination of those tactics benefits no one. Believing that there could possibly be other equally effective, yet less costly to society at large (more on that later) ways to protect them, does
not equate to a lack of care for them. I will never understand the impulse to blindly defend the status quo to the point of not allowing skepticism of it. I think we can do better for everyone else while not sacrificing the necessary level of protection.
photofly wrote: ↑Fri Dec 31, 2021 7:10 pm
3. people who are unwell "due to their own choices" are hypocrites for expecting to be protected, and by extension, anyone who is not unwell should not advocate protecting those who are unwell "due to their own choices".
I disagree with your use of the term "unwell" in your assessment of my position, but if it's easier than "people who have not taken an active role in the pursuit and maintenance of their own health optimization", call it what you want. But the fact of the matter is that in spite of decades of science on health, its benefits (especially with regards to fighting viral infections), diet, exercise, longevity, etc, most people do not take an active role in their own health. This is precisely the same problem you have with anti vaxxers: that they are ignoring established science to the overall detriment of their personal health, and by extension our socialized health care system. Look, if we can't agree on these three facts, we will never see eye to eye on this. 1- Health is important for longevity and successfully fighting viral infections, among many other things. 2- Optimal health can be improved and maintained only with the active participation of its person. 3- Most people do not take an active role in optimizing their health. With that in mind, it is not the expectation of protection that I find hypocritical. However,
refusing to take an active preventative role in one's own health, and then demanding that other people undergo a medical intervention (that they may not want) on your behalf, is the height of hypocrisy. If you are a person who has never prioritized your own health, you simply cannot ask a stranger to prioritize your health equal to or higher than their own, without being a hypocrite. That
is hypocritical by definition.
photofly wrote: ↑Fri Dec 31, 2021 7:10 pm
I can't square points 2 and 3 with point 1. Protecting the vulnerable means protecting all the vulnerable, no matter why they're vulnerable.
The circumstances of one's vulnerability are not important to me. They should be protected regardless. But not at any cost. I understand that might be hard for more sensitive people to hear, but let's be adults here. We all actually already know this is how it works. If it were protection for everyone at any cost, we would have experienced lockdowns that made what we actually went through, look like a joke. We could have locked down our borders and literally locked everyone in their houses with the military in full hazmat gear patrolling the streets until there were zero cases of covid. We did a "lite", temporary version of this for only as long as it took to keep the situation manageable. We accepted that zero is not a reasonable risk tolerance level because the measures would be too draconian. We accepted that we will try to protect people, but not at any cost. This isn't because we don't care about the vulnerable, it's because we're realistic enough to know it's unreasonable to only accept "zero". Anyone offended by this, needs to grow up and join reality. As pilots we should be used to this concept. In aviation, risk can never be eliminated, only mitigated. Same with life. If we're all mature enough to accept this, then we can accept that we can't protect everyone at all times. And if we can accept that along with other fundamental truths, we see that vulnerable people will disproportionately be affected by gaps in our protection. It's not because anyone bears them any ill will, or doesn't care, it's simply that we can't offer 100% protection.
photofly wrote: ↑Fri Dec 31, 2021 7:10 pm
The context in which you say this makes it clear you feel asking everyone to make sacrifices that benefit a small yet vulnerable section of the population is an unreasonable thing to do. But reverse it, and the horror of your position becomes apparent. You are suggesting that it would be more reasonable for that small yet vulnerable section of the population to be sacrificed because it will be better for everyone else. That protecting the old and the sick-by-their-own-choice is an unreasonable burden for the young-and-healthy majority to bear. I'm sure I don't have to remind you which societies have taken that position, and where it led.
I don't believe that is a fair assessment of my position and furthermore I believe it's an assessment that is based on thinking with blinders on, while my point is exactly that we should be removing our blinders. You seem to think I disagree with making the sacrifices we've all made to protect the vulnerable, as these are the only possible ways to mitigate the risk. However, it's the thinking that what we have done in the past are the
only ways to mitigate risk, that I disagree with. I'm certainly not suggesting that I have the answers, but I do believe it's crazy that for two years we never really changed our tactics (admittedly, we are starting to now, finally), even when it became apparent that those tactics weren't terribly effective and they came at a tremendous cost. We love to focus solely on the toll from covid. People are terrified of the case numbers. We never give any real thought to the cost of our mitigation efforts. Three million jobs lost, thousands of families dragged back below the poverty line, tens of thousands of young children now in tenuous home and family situations, often coupled with food uncertainty, just to name a few. In our efforts to protect the vulnerable from a medical danger, we've imperiled people vulnerable to poverty and social dangers and dragged thousands more into that vulnerable group. In a sense, we've robbed Peter to pay Paul. Did we weigh all these outcomes when we made our initial decisions? Probably not, and fair enough. We had to act fast. But in the intervening two years, did we look at the fallout and recalculate? Did we look for mitigation tactics that could have still provided good protection but had less adverse effects on the socially vulnerable? Maybe, but it doesn't seem that way. I find it hard to believe that our brightest minds couldn't have come up with a better approach. My personal opinion is that our leaders and officials have, on the whole, failed us, but they're doing a great job of keeping us too distracted with case numbers and the variant du jour, to notice.
photofly wrote: ↑Fri Dec 31, 2021 7:10 pm
I don't attribute to you ill-intent, just muddy thinking. You can't have it both ways. Protecting the vulnerable
means that everyone suffers. Being in favour of "protecting the vulnerable" but only to the extent that it's free, is not a position to which anyone needs to stake a claim. If you're going to boast about being in favour of protecting the vulnerable, you have to be ready to pay what that costs, and to ask and expect and everyone else to do so too. There is no "protect the vulnerable", otherwise.
I disagree with the notion that "everyone suffers" to protect the vulnerable. I've done the masks, the cancelled travel plans, the social distancing, the lockdowns, the first shot, the second shot, all of it. I haven't suffered at all. In fact, the pandemic has been a boon for me. It has advanced my professional, personal and financial well being across the board. But that's only because I started from a place of relative privilege. It's quite probable that you were lucky to start from a place of personal privilege as well, and so didn't feel any real negative effects. I'm extremely uncomfortable with asking anyone to do anything for me to begin with, doubly so when it's going to cost them. What might be a small cost for me, could be proportionately a much bigger burden for them. When you're not feeling much of a pinch, it's easy to assume everyone else won't either. And if there's no pain, why the fuss? I get it. It's an easy and alluring thought. But there is a huge portion of our population who are not so fortunate. As a result of the policies of the last two years, they are now in real trouble that they may not be able to get out of. Personally, I'm not comfortable demanding that those people make sacrifices so that my granny (who is in her 90s) can improve her chances of not getting covid by a fraction of a percent, and I know for a fact that she wouldn't either.