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Aelyn's avatar

It strikes me that there's another factor in play here: Do we as a society and as individuals care about working to prevent harm to others more at risk?

Our society tends to focus on the greatest good for the greatest number, especially of those we center - as opposed to preventing harm for those on the margins. We tend more so than other counties to be individualistic rather than focusing on the vulnerable.

From my point of view, people and government declaring this to already be endemic, dropping protections like masking or free tests, dropping funding, etc. are effectively saying to vulnerable people that "Your deaths are acceptable to us." Sometimes this is crass and obvious as a form of social homocide, other times it's more subtle as part of focusing on "normal" people and not thinking about others.

Granted that everyone will die someday, but for me a key question is whether society believes it is entitled to the deaths of those less fortunate so people can go to a movie?

This isn't a new issue, but rather one COVID has put into stark relief. COVID's effects have quite disproportionally harmed older people, poorer people, disabled people, minorities, etc. Declaring COVID "over" magnifies those harms.

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Don Oltmann's avatar

Brilliant post! Now, if we could just get the two camps of scientists/ engineers to stop yelling at each other...

...it would help.

You are spot on that this is complicated!

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