Monday, June 14, 2021

Not Over

I hope that it will be over, but the UK, with a higher full vaccination rate than the US, is potentially facing a 3rd wave due to a variant, and delaying the scheduled relaxation of the final "lockdown" measures.

I don't know what the precise policies should be, but the message pushed, by so many bored and comfortable media commenters, that vaccinated people should let their freak flags fly and we should resume coughing into each other's mouths as a greeting as quickly as possible, has not been helpful. It's one thing to allow things, another to encourage them, and yet another to try to bully people into them.

Every small and mostly costless bit of restraint is still helpful, and encouraging otherwise is a mistake. I'm not saying everyone should stay home and refrain from being anywhere in public, but it's still prudent to say, "go out to enjoy yourselves, but show some restraint. Keep a bit of social distancing if it isn't too hard. Wear a mask when easy - why not?"

The smartest boys on the internet insisted that any such messaging would discourage people from being vaccinated, as it would ruin the "reward." That's a glibertarian perspective that only people who spent the last 15 months comfortably working from home could have. The real result is stripping any workplace/other public protections when lots of people, for whatever reasons, are still not vaccinated.